RPF0553-Consider_the_ROI_Youre_Getting_On_Your_Childrens_Education
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00:00:14.720 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, I want to talk to you about your child's
00:00:19.280 | education. And I want to ask you this question, are you getting your money's worth
00:00:26.320 | and your child's time's worth from their education? I'm recording this show in April of 2018 and we
00:00:36.400 | are soon to be arriving at the end of the normal academic year for students in the United States
00:00:43.920 | of America. At the end of the academic year, we have an important opportunity to stop and reflect
00:00:51.760 | upon the past year and ask ourselves, how are we doing? I really think it's important to regularly
00:00:58.240 | schedule time for introspection and analysis. At the end of the calendar year, we should sit down
00:01:04.480 | and analyze how did the last year go? Or at your birthday, you should sit down and analyze how did
00:01:10.320 | the last year go in your life? Or perhaps when celebrating your anniversary, you should sit down
00:01:15.120 | and speak with your spouse and ask each other, how did the last year go in our marriage?
00:01:20.560 | And with regard to education, we should always stop near the end of the academic year
00:01:26.320 | and analyze and say, how are we doing? How did it go? Are we on track or do we need to change
00:01:35.680 | course? It's important to do this while the memories are fresh, while you're still in the
00:01:40.640 | thick of it, not at the end of summer vacation when everything has faded into the oblivion of
00:01:46.560 | the past. And so I want to ask you that question today. How are you doing or how are your children
00:01:54.240 | doing? This is extremely important and I'm engaging today in a form of political activism,
00:02:00.960 | but I'm seeking to connect it very clearly to your finances. Elsewhere in the Radical
00:02:05.280 | Personal Finance archives, I've spoken extensively about the silliness that has gripped modern
00:02:11.280 | financial planning, wherein we spend all of our time and attention focused on saving for college
00:02:17.920 | and treating it merely as a financial exercise rather than actually thinking about the overall
00:02:23.360 | comprehensive structure of our children's education and seeking to invest our dollars
00:02:28.400 | where they do the most good. I've recorded an episode of Radical Personal Finance called
00:02:32.800 | "Why This Financial Advisor Refuses to Save for His Child's College." Yes, that's me. I'm the
00:02:38.160 | financial advisor and I presented a list of arguments in that show, but perhaps the most
00:02:44.240 | significant was the dollars that you save for your child's college are the least effective dollars.
00:02:52.000 | The most effective dollars are the dollars that you spend early in your child's life.
00:02:58.000 | Also, the dollars that you save for your child's college are the dollars that are the easiest for
00:03:05.920 | you or your child to replace later on, whereas the most effective dollars now, while your children are
00:03:15.280 | young, those are the dollars that can't really be replaced. There aren't a lot of government grants.
00:03:24.480 | There aren't a lot of scholarships. There aren't a lot of student loans available.
00:03:31.840 | The only thing that is available at a low cost is government schooling.
00:03:50.160 | Here in Florida where I live, the government is rolling out a whole new program to try to get
00:03:57.440 | your three-year-old enrolled in free schooling. The question would be, is that a good deal?
00:04:14.640 | Is it a good deal for you to take the free option of government schooling for your child?
00:04:26.720 | Well, let's talk about it. I want to assume that your child is currently enrolled in the
00:04:30.800 | government schools. Here would be a question. How many hours did your child spend in school
00:04:38.320 | this last year? How much money did that cost you, and are you getting your money's worth?
00:04:42.960 | I'll start first with the hours. According to the National Center for Education Statistics,
00:04:49.440 | if we look at a national average across the United States of America, the national average
00:04:55.200 | for the total amount of time spent in the classroom is 6.64 hours per day per student
00:05:03.200 | over the total of 180 days of instruction. It's about six and a half hours a day for 180 days.
00:05:11.040 | Multiply 6.64 hours per day times 180 days, and you wind up with 1,195 hours of total classroom
00:05:20.480 | time that your child has enjoyed, I mean, been involved in over the last year.
00:05:29.280 | Now, for the sake of some simple verbal math that's optimized for podcast delivery,
00:05:36.480 | I want to smooth these numbers just a little bit. Let's say that we start with about six and a half
00:05:42.000 | hours a day plus about 45 minutes or so getting to the school classroom and away from the school
00:05:47.680 | classroom. Let's average that out to about eight hours per day. Eight hours per day that your child
00:05:53.200 | is involved in the government school. Well, multiply eight hours per day times 180 days,
00:05:59.120 | and you wind up with 1,440 hours. Now, depending on other activities, that number may be higher
00:06:06.640 | or lower. Your child may be involved in extracurricular activities, which would add more
00:06:10.880 | time. Perhaps your child does homework. If you added one hour of homework per day, that would
00:06:17.120 | wind up being about nine hours per day. If we multiplied nine hours per day times 180 days,
00:06:22.000 | we'd wind up with 1,620 hours of total time. Let's just split the difference, and for the sake of
00:06:27.600 | verbal math, assume 1,500 hours of time from your child's life that has been consumed in their
00:06:36.480 | schooling this past academic year. Now, perhaps you have a hard time, like I do, of conceiving
00:06:43.040 | of 1,500 hours. That's not a unit that works well in the human brain. We don't really have a reference
00:06:51.040 | point for that. So, let's convert it into a reference point that we do have easily available
00:06:57.360 | to us, that of a 40-hour workweek. If you divide 1,500 hours into a 40-hour workweek, that means
00:07:03.440 | that your child has used 37.5 40-hour workweeks of their time involved in their schooling this
00:07:13.280 | last year. Or, if we divide it into an absolute daily number of 365 days per year, that comes out
00:07:21.520 | to 4.11 hours per day. So, the way that you can envision your child's time that has been involved
00:07:31.360 | in schooling is to think of them waking up each and every day, 365 days per year, no holidays,
00:07:37.040 | no weekends, no exceptions, and using 4.11 hours of their day from, let's just say, 8 a.m. to 12
00:07:43.520 | p.m. every single day of the year involved in schooling. That's the time that was involved.
00:07:52.640 | Now, what about the money? How much money was spent on your child's schooling this last year?
00:07:58.400 | Well, you could look at how much money you spent on your child's schooling, but unfortunately,
00:08:02.800 | that's an impossible number to calculate because we spread this burden out over people who have
00:08:08.800 | children and don't have children because, theoretically, it's good for society.
00:08:13.040 | Well, according to the, again, the National Center for Education Statistics,
00:08:17.040 | we spend, on average, across the United States of America, about $12,509 per year per student.
00:08:25.600 | Comes out to about $634 billion per year, or a total of $12,509 per government school student.
00:08:34.080 | Ranges a little bit each year, but it stays right in that number, about $12,500.
00:08:41.520 | So, divide the $12,509 per student into the 6.64 hours per day for 180 days,
00:08:50.720 | and you wind up with an hourly cost per student of $10.47 per hour of instruction.
00:08:56.640 | For every single student in the government school, with the time that they're in the class,
00:09:02.560 | it comes out to $10.47 per hour. Or if we were to use our 1,500-hour number,
00:09:08.640 | we'd wind up with, which includes a little bit of travel time and perhaps some homework time,
00:09:13.760 | et cetera. It comes out to an hourly cost of $8.34 per hour. So, my question to you is this.
00:09:20.160 | Are you getting your money's worth? Is your child getting our money's worth?
00:09:28.560 | Here at the end of the academic year, I want you to stop and take a very careful look at your child's
00:09:37.840 | growth over the past year, and rate it and assess it. How has their intellectual growth
00:09:48.960 | been? How would you rate it? How about their personal growth? How would you rate that?
00:09:56.080 | How about their character development, the strength of their character, the virtues they've developed?
00:10:04.080 | How's it going? Tell me about their skills. What skills have they learned and developed
00:10:13.120 | and applied that will be useful to them next year and the next year and a decade from now
00:10:19.360 | and 30 years from now? How are they doing? What have they learned? Tell me about what they've
00:10:27.280 | learned in the last year. If you were to sit down and take a marker from one year ago,
00:10:34.720 | what they knew one year ago and what they know today, what have they learned? What knowledge
00:10:40.480 | have they've acquired? What new skills have they developed and learned how to do? What have they
00:10:46.880 | learned how to do? Are they better at something? If so, what is it? Are you getting your money's
00:10:54.720 | worth? I challenge you to accurately complete this exercise. Now, ideally, of course, you would do it
00:11:04.800 | with your child. It'll be hard for your four-year-old to lay out what they've learned. You
00:11:09.920 | can assess that a little bit more. It'll be a little bit harder for you to lay out what your
00:11:14.640 | 16-year-old has learned, but it'll be more important for them to be able to do that for
00:11:19.680 | themselves. Tell me about their progress and are you getting your money's worth?
00:11:27.120 | Now, in general, I would say most listeners, if you take an accurate analysis of the total time
00:11:42.560 | of your child's life that has been consumed to produce those results that you're charting,
00:11:48.800 | and you compared it towards the personal ability that your child possesses,
00:11:56.480 | I think you're getting shortchanged. I think you're getting a bad deal
00:12:00.640 | because that 1,500-hour number is a huge number,
00:12:08.320 | and I want you to carefully think about that number as you consider the results.
00:12:14.000 | My guess would be that your child does have some results,
00:12:17.920 | but are they getting the results that they deserve to get? Are they getting the results
00:12:24.560 | that you want them to get from those 37-and-a-half, 40-hour work weeks that have been involved? From
00:12:33.520 | that four hours per day every single day of the year that they have invested into their activities
00:12:39.920 | there? Are you getting a good return on the investment of time? For a tiny handful of people,
00:12:52.400 | the answer will be yes, but for the vast, vast majority, the answer is a clear and unequivocal
00:13:02.000 | no. So, I want to encourage you to consider withdrawing your child from the government school
00:13:15.200 | and ending the madness of them wasting their time, their precious time, these most valuable hours
00:13:24.240 | of their life. Stop the madness of them wasting the majority of this valuable time
00:13:36.400 | for mediocre results. Now, in public, I lobby continuously for what I call "mere withdrawal"
00:13:47.680 | from government schools. What I mean by that is I don't advocate for any particular alternative.
00:13:53.360 | I don't claim, for example, that Montessori or classical education or Jeffersonian education or
00:14:00.240 | Charlotte Mason or the Prussian model, I don't claim that any one specific of these ideologies
00:14:04.880 | is superior. I don't advocate for private schools versus home schools. I don't say what you should
00:14:13.600 | do. These certainly are worthy debates and I engage in them privately, but I don't take a
00:14:18.400 | public advocacy position on this. After all, think about this. How could I possibly know
00:14:25.360 | what's right for you and your child and your family? How could I possibly know those unique
00:14:35.600 | circumstances that you face, those unique needs that you have in your family? How could I possibly
00:14:43.200 | know what unique characteristics and skills and abilities and interests your children have?
00:14:51.280 | How could I possibly lay out for you what you should do without actually sitting down
00:14:56.960 | with you and your spouse and your children and thinking about what your goals are?
00:15:02.320 | How could I possibly know the moral framework that your family holds,
00:15:08.240 | the things that are important to you, the things that you've decided you're going to
00:15:14.000 | teach your children? How could I possibly know the heroes that your family has?
00:15:21.120 | How could I possibly know the things that your family stands for? How could I dictate to you
00:15:27.680 | what you should do in your family
00:15:31.760 | unless I asked you first what you wanted to accomplish,
00:15:38.480 | unless I first got to know you and your children and started to understand your values and your
00:15:47.760 | your values and your goals, your aspirations, your family dynamics?
00:15:52.880 | How could I tell you what's right for you without knowing anything about you?
00:16:01.680 | Obviously, I couldn't possibly do that. And if you'll think about those questions I just asked,
00:16:14.560 | my hope is that you'll see why I unreservedly lobby for you to withdraw your child from government
00:16:26.560 | schools while also, without reservation, admitting that I don't know what's right for you and your
00:16:38.320 | family. Those two positions are in perfect harmony if you think about it.
00:16:47.440 | To help you consider some of these ideas, I thought it would be fun for me to read to you an
00:16:54.080 | excerpt from one of my favorite novels, a novel that I really have enjoyed. And I enjoy it because
00:17:02.560 | it's not just a story, but it's a useful story that's wrapped up with a whole lot of interesting,
00:17:08.240 | thought-provoking ideas. The novel is called Moulin la Baye by an author who goes by the
00:17:13.600 | pen name Boston Tea Party. His name is Kenneth W. Royce. And he wrote this novel years ago. It's
00:17:20.320 | called, again, Moulin la Baye, which is obviously an illusion, you know, the illusion back to
00:17:26.800 | Thermopylae and come and take him. But it's basically a political novel that discusses
00:17:33.680 | the idea of peaceful secession of a free state from the larger tyrannical United States. And it
00:17:43.120 | was published back in, for the first time, in 1997. It's very old, updated and printed in January
00:17:49.440 | 2004, was the last printing that I'm aware of. So it's very old, but it's a very carefully crafted
00:17:54.720 | novel that discusses a peaceful path of secession based upon individuals simply making individual
00:18:02.480 | choices for their lives. I will – I love the novel. It's really good. It's not the – it's
00:18:09.440 | not as grippingly written as is a, you know, a Tom Clancy thriller, but it's very well written and
00:18:17.440 | much better written than many other of this type of genre that I have consumed. But it's packed full
00:18:22.640 | of interesting ideas. And in this novel, the author publishes what – makes up what is published as
00:18:31.040 | a so-called interview in Playboy magazine, an interview with the governor of Wyoming.
00:18:36.800 | Now, this is coming after a decade and a half of a progression of what's called the Wyoming Free
00:18:42.000 | State Project, which was a competitor to the New Hampshire Free State Project. The – and it was –
00:18:47.200 | the book was written as essentially an outline, a plan for how liberty-minded individuals could
00:18:53.600 | proceed forward in a peaceful way to establish their own liberty-focused place to live. And so
00:19:00.240 | in the context of this novel, the author contrives this interview with a Playboy magazine reporter,
00:19:08.720 | journalist, and the governor of Wyoming. This interview is, again, I emphasize, contrived.
00:19:15.440 | However, it is well done in terms of its ability to share some of these ideas. And I thought it
00:19:22.960 | would be one of the most – a very persuasive way for me to convey to you some things for you to
00:19:28.560 | think about as you do this analysis so you can decide what's right for you and your family.
00:19:34.640 | I'm going to read it in the context of the narrative. Hopefully, you understand enough
00:19:38.960 | about the narrative of the novel to have an idea about the positioning of this interview within
00:19:45.120 | the novel. But the interview is fact-based and it's very much focused on these issues that I'm
00:19:51.760 | describing to you. Playboy interview James Preston, a second candid conversation with Wyoming's Laissez-Faire
00:19:59.440 | Party governor. Introductory note, James Preston's administration, with the enthusiastic support – let
00:20:06.560 | me pause for a moment on the introductory note, one more detail that you need – after a series of
00:20:10.960 | other liberty-oriented political moves wherein the voters of the state of Wyoming, after many years
00:20:18.160 | of focus, have systematically pulled apart and canceled many extant laws to move in the direction
00:20:27.360 | of liberty, then there is a constitutional amendment that is being proposed to the citizens
00:20:33.440 | of Wyoming to completely abolish state-run education and to disconnect the education and
00:20:39.920 | the state and to cancel any governmental involvement with schooling. And so in the
00:20:48.320 | context of that plotline, this interview appears. James Preston's administration, with the
00:20:53.760 | enthusiastic support of the Wyoming legislature, proposes to divest the government of public
00:20:58.640 | education and turn it completely over to local private concerns. Senator Schumer went so far
00:21:03.840 | as to call his goal "cannon fire on Fort Sumter." Even though 57% of Wyoming voters favored the
00:21:12.160 | privatization of education in a recent constitutional amendment election, several lawsuits have been
00:21:17.200 | filed in federal court to prevent it. Plaintiffs include the NEA, AFT, and other teachers unions,
00:21:22.320 | as well as a consortium of Wyoming parents. Two years following our first interview, we spoke
00:21:27.600 | with Governor James Preston about his "separation of education and state." Governor Preston,
00:21:34.960 | Playboy is very pleased to have you back for a second interview. Thank you, Tom. I certainly
00:21:39.440 | enjoyed the first one. Wyoming is the first state ever to propose dismantling its public education
00:21:45.520 | system. Much of the country seems horrified by this. Horrified, eh? Perhaps they wouldn't be
00:21:52.400 | so shocked if they'd ask themselves why any government on these shores is involved in education
00:21:57.920 | in the first place. If one lives with a malignant tumor long enough, it acquires the status of a
00:22:03.680 | vital organ. But to address your question, education is a matter of parental, not state,
00:22:09.120 | concern. We in Wyoming are reclaiming our right to eliminate the forcible government indoctrination
00:22:14.480 | of our children. The special election will be held in August, and we are confident that the
00:22:19.040 | proposed constitutional amendments will be ratified. The shrieking from the National
00:22:23.200 | Education Association about this is just amazing. They apparently believe that education is not
00:22:28.240 | possible without government schools. Well, they're half right, at least. How so? Government
00:22:34.480 | education does require government schools. You have been consistently and intensely critical of
00:22:41.600 | public schools, calling them "training camps for future slaves." How can you justify that claim
00:22:48.240 | when this country still enjoys the greatest amount of personal freedom in the world?
00:22:51.920 | First of all, to compare our level of freedom to that of other countries is not accurate,
00:22:57.520 | or even helpful. As I've long been fond of saying, America is merely the healthiest patient in the
00:23:03.520 | cancer ward. The comparison should be made against, one, the theoretical ideal, and two,
00:23:09.760 | against the greater freedom America once had until the 1920s. To compare our freedom to the
00:23:14.720 | rest of the world only serves to slyly misdirect us from the freedom we ourselves have already lost.
00:23:20.640 | It's a way of shrinking the yardstick of measurement. Contrasted to other nations,
00:23:25.520 | sure, we're still six feet tall. However, contrasted to ourself, which is the only
00:23:30.960 | proper standard in both the philosophic and historic senses, we have become a midget.
00:23:36.720 | And I am convinced that the government indoctrination of our schoolchildren
00:23:40.720 | has been largely to blame for this unnecessary decline. Really? How so?
00:23:47.280 | Well, because it was the stated and published goals of the public educators in the early 19th
00:23:54.480 | century. Their object was not quality education, but docile citizens. Not independent thought,
00:24:01.600 | but conformity. Intellectuals of every era have distrusted the common man, likening him to a
00:24:08.800 | coarse beast of burden which must be kept under yoke. They greatly feared popular uprisings.
00:24:15.200 | Shea's Rebellion in 1786 Massachusetts, which sparked the Annapolis and Philadelphia
00:24:20.480 | constitutional conventions, was still fresh on Bostonians' minds in 1818, where the first public
00:24:26.880 | school movement began in America. Then many educators traveled to Prussia to learn their
00:24:31.680 | methods. Why Prussia? Gatto's fine book, Dumbing Us Down, outlined the whole sordid story.
00:24:39.120 | When Napoleon trounced Prussia in 1806 at the Battle of Jena, intellectuals decided that the
00:24:44.480 | reason for their defeat was a failure of the troops versus their commanders. They concluded
00:24:49.280 | that Prussian soldiers were too independent and thought too much for themselves. As if soldiers
00:24:55.440 | would fall into philosophical debates over Kant in the field. Pretty much. No commander once
00:25:01.520 | an army of deeply contemplative troops. This reminds me of a story about Henry Kissinger.
00:25:07.520 | He was once asked if he feared assassination. He thought for a moment and replied, "No,
00:25:13.040 | because only an intellectual would ever choose me." And even then he couldn't decide to pull
00:25:18.320 | the trigger. But seriously, the Prussian intellectuals believed that their citizens
00:25:23.360 | simply were not obedient enough and hesitated to fire on the enemy. The US army noticed the
00:25:29.520 | same thing during World War II when researchers discovered that only 20% of American soldiers
00:25:34.880 | would fire on an exposed enemy. The army addressed this and by the Korean War, some 55% of soldiers
00:25:42.080 | would fire to kill. By Vietnam, it was 90%. With the conditioning from violent films,
00:25:47.840 | video games, and military simulators, the percentage today is about 100%.
00:25:52.080 | This has spilled over into our police, who have donned an alarmingly military guise.
00:25:59.120 | Federal law enforcement is now predominantly composed of agents with little on-site conscience.
00:26:04.400 | For example, a very high percentage of FBI agents for the past 50 years have been Mormons and/or
00:26:10.720 | ex-Marines. Why is that? Because their members are naturally "yes, sir" type of folks,
00:26:17.200 | which explains why the FBI wants them. They are what Eric Hoffer calls "true believers." They
00:26:23.520 | will obey even the most ghastly orders if there is a sufficient gloss of "God" and "country."
00:26:29.520 | As an ex-Marine myself, I got only as far as "Captain" since everybody knows that there was
00:26:33.920 | only so much crap I'd take. Anyway, the Prussians' goal of education was to create pliable students
00:26:41.280 | to be molded into compliant citizens, meaning those who work and fight at the behest of the
00:26:46.960 | government and never have to decide to pull the trigger. This was accomplished by purposely
00:26:52.240 | not training the students how to think. How did Prussian schools teach students not to think?
00:26:58.400 | Teaching not to think sounds like an oxymoron. Mustn't education, any education, awaken minds
00:27:05.120 | and activate the thought process? No, not at all. Teaching by rote, a series of "disconnected facts,"
00:27:14.160 | is not the same as teaching one to actually think. What the Prussians did was unequivocally
00:27:20.560 | premeditated. They rearranged their school system into three tiers as a very broad pyramid.
00:27:27.280 | About 1% of students were taught to think in the "académie." These would be the future leaders,
00:27:36.000 | doctors, lawyers, business chairmen, etc. About 5% were somewhat taught to think in the "réel
00:27:43.360 | julen." They would become the middle managers and politicians. Some mental faculty was required,
00:27:49.600 | but not too much. The rest, 94% of students, were left in the "volkskullen" to learn harmony,
00:27:57.280 | obedience, and docility. Cooks, mechanics, laborers, and most importantly, soldiers.
00:28:04.240 | Reading was very much discouraged as it tended to provoke dissent amongst the proletariat.
00:28:11.760 | It still does. How were these Prussian "volkskullen" different? Their most telling trait
00:28:19.600 | was severe regimentation. The very word "kindergarten" means "garden of children."
00:28:27.120 | Think about that. The Prussian educators not only had to get their indoctrinating paws on children
00:28:32.960 | as young as four years old, but they had the nerve to refer to them with a horticultural analogy.
00:28:39.680 | "Sorry, Ing, you're not a unique person. You're just one plant in the garden.
00:28:43.840 | Children are not a bunch of plants to be grown and harvested."
00:28:49.200 | I never thought of it quite like that, but the analogy is inherently dehumanizing.
00:28:56.160 | Absolutely. The battle for the metaphor is the most important, as it pre-structures thought,
00:29:03.040 | and thus action. In fact, we could continue their farming analogy even further.
00:29:08.480 | The testing which placed students in their "proper tier" of schooling were like threshers
00:29:14.160 | separating the "academie" wheat from the "volkskullen" chaff. Yes, that follows.
00:29:21.520 | So how were things taught in the "volkskullen"? They took the grand subject of life and chopped
00:29:28.000 | it up into little subsets. Instead of illuminating the mysteries of living as a holistic system,
00:29:34.560 | as it most certainly is, they cleaved mathematics from music, philosophy from language, and so on.
00:29:42.480 | They taught the pixels, but not the picture formed by the pixels. In doing so,
00:29:49.200 | they created adults who could not see. Could you elaborate on that? Of course.
00:29:56.160 | Thinking really is all about seeing. Our brains are wired to receive information mostly by sight,
00:30:03.760 | about 80%. In fact, PET scans of the brain have proven that visualizing an object stimulates the
00:30:11.760 | same area of the brain as actually seeing the object. The eye is merely the camera for the
00:30:18.320 | recording tape of the brain. We only know what we have seen. That's why dreams often seem so real.
00:30:25.040 | The taped version is just as vivid to the mind as the live version. Physiologically,
00:30:31.760 | there's almost no difference. That's why sports trainers stress the repetitive visualization of
00:30:38.400 | movement, constant mental rehearsals. It actually imprints athletic memory, as the mind cannot
00:30:46.080 | distinguish between mental versus physical rehearsal. It's no coincidence that when one
00:30:53.440 | has a eureka moment, one says, "Oh, I see." What Prussian Vokstulen did was intentionally prevent
00:31:02.160 | the child from ever opening its mind's eye. The goal was to keep the people at large mentally
00:31:08.160 | blind. Sure, the masses stumble about fairly well in the pretense of seeing, just as a blind person
00:31:15.760 | with a cane can walk across town. But make no mistake, they are stumbling about in the dark
00:31:23.280 | by feel. By segregating subjects and teaching them out of order, the mind's eye is never trained to
00:31:32.240 | see the big picture. Vision, I tell you, is the key to nearly everything in life.
00:31:38.720 | If you can't see it, you can't know it or do it. I understand your point, but I'm not convinced that
00:31:48.080 | merely teaching by subject necessarily stunts mental growth. Okay, let's take mathematics,
00:31:54.560 | for example. It is without dispute that the USA scores lowest in math amongst the Western world.
00:32:00.240 | I recall we may have beaten Portugal once, but not by much. The most exciting thing about math
00:32:07.680 | is not the numbers, but the theory. Mathematics is a way of understanding particular kinds of
00:32:13.920 | relationships. Numbers are simply the alphabet of expression. For example, what is 7 times 19?
00:32:21.920 | It's 133. Now, did I multiply 7 times 10, which is 70, and then 7 times 9, adding the 63 to the 70?
00:32:32.960 | No, I took a shortcut. Why go through all of that when 7 times 20 is 140 and 7 times 19 is merely
00:32:41.760 | 140 minus 7? But kids aren't being taught to take shortcuts because they can't see the numerical
00:32:50.400 | landscape and recognize shortcuts when they exist. They're taught to literally go by the numbers,
00:32:57.040 | like a blind man tapping with his cane. What is not seen is not understood. Do you see?
00:33:05.520 | Yes, I do, but does your analogy hold for higher mathematics? Well, if we know that A has a
00:33:15.360 | specific relation to C, and that A also has a specific relation to B, then we can figure out
00:33:23.280 | what B is to C. That's algebra, to use what you know to learn what you don't. Calculus is even
00:33:31.920 | more fascinating because it explains relationships at an even deeper level. Physics, especially
00:33:37.600 | quantum physics, gets really hairy. Either life has the possibility for many states and is forced
00:33:43.360 | by observation to be in one particular state, or life is many worlds in simultaneous coexistence,
00:33:50.960 | which appear to us as a single state. Whichever it is, the math of quantum physics contends that
00:33:56.800 | life is much more surreal and inexplicable than imagined under Newtonian physics. But instead of
00:34:04.000 | firing up students about the marvel of math, teachers immediately bog them down in quadratic
00:34:09.760 | equations and log tables. It's like trying to teach dancing by steps but without the rhythm.
00:34:14.800 | My point is this. Mathematics are merely one tool for understanding and enjoying life.
00:34:21.120 | Art is another. So is science, music, etc. The mind, the awakened mind,
00:34:27.360 | uses all of these rays of light in its lens to see, to understand. The more rays of light,
00:34:37.280 | the more chromatic your picture. This was the avowed purpose of the long lost classical education.
00:34:43.600 | On a related note, it constantly amazes me how much of life can be grasped by analogy.
00:34:50.240 | We learn about life analogously through nature, through human relationships, and through science.
00:34:55.200 | It's all grist for the mill. So back to the Prussian system of education.
00:34:59.440 | Yes, the Volksschulen. They broke up life into pieces. By dividing life, they conquered free
00:35:06.160 | inquisition. They conquered thought itself. Then they broke up the pieces into units,
00:35:11.600 | and units into small blocks of class time lasting 50 minutes. First, regiment the entire student
00:35:18.320 | body by artificial age groups. No more one room schoolhouse. This separates older students from
00:35:25.680 | younger ones, which reduces socialization and nullifies any generational continuity. I mean,
00:35:32.880 | do you work or vacation solely with 34 year olds? It's ridiculous, but accepted without a thought in
00:35:40.160 | government schools. You're right. Nowhere else are you placed in a strict age group.
00:35:46.400 | If you really dwell on it, it seems quite odd. I don't think that we even remotely understand the
00:35:51.680 | sociological damage it's done. So children are clumped together by age, their first experience
00:35:57.840 | of being part of a collective. Then get them accustomed to moving by a series of ringing
00:36:02.960 | bells. The bell commands when to sit down and stay, when to stand up and leave, when to eat,
00:36:08.560 | when to play, and when to go home. Pavlov's bell, day in and day out for 12 years. Class starts and
00:36:16.560 | then ends 50 minutes later. Who can possibly learn anything during these cruel and artificial blocks
00:36:23.360 | of time? Just when you've become interested in a lesson, it's time to rush off with the herd to the
00:36:28.480 | next class. The whole arrangement is little more than moving cattle from field to field.
00:36:36.240 | Another analogy. No problem. Playboy interviews are known for free-form digressions.
00:36:41.600 | Yes, well, I'll try not to abuse the privilege. So what were we talking about? Anyway, the New
00:36:49.600 | England educators of the 19th century studied Prussian education and imported it to America.
00:36:55.600 | Massachusetts passed the first compulsory attendance law in 1852. Parents who resisted
00:37:02.480 | had their children taken from them by the state militia. Barnstable on Cape Cod held out until
00:37:08.320 | the 1880s. By 1900, compulsory attendance laws were universal. It is vital to understand that
00:37:15.520 | none of this was necessary, as basic literacy was 98% before government schools, after which
00:37:26.560 | it never exceeded 91%. Just as in Prussia, reading was discouraged. After all, illiteracy
00:37:35.440 | is the first and the most effective form of censorship. Basic literacy had to be maintained
00:37:42.640 | until the advent of auditory mass propaganda, the common household radio of the 1930s. After the
00:37:48.960 | 1950s, TV did all the speaking, and literacy was thereafter shot to hell. Anyway, the school year
00:37:56.080 | grew longer and longer, from 12 weeks to 10 months. When I was a child, we weren't in school
00:38:01.200 | after Memorial Day or before Labor Day. We'll probably see it grow to 11 months if the current
00:38:06.480 | bill in Congress passes. As if 10 months of crappy schooling isn't enough, the state has
00:38:12.240 | increasingly asserted that your child belongs to them, not to you. This is undiluted communist and
00:38:18.720 | Nazi doctrine. Tell us something about your own education. Did you go to public or private schools?
00:38:24.960 | I went to both, about 50/50. By law, the Prussian model still serves as the basis for our schools
00:38:30.560 | today, including most of the private ones if they want to receive government money.
00:38:34.640 | Even though my private education was engineered on Prussian lines, it was nonetheless at least
00:38:40.640 | twice the quality as the government schools I attended. I give credit to several particular
00:38:45.440 | teachers and professors of mine who conscientiously taught me how to think. Fortunately, they appeared
00:38:51.840 | in a rather relay form, and I was not long without my next mentor. So whatever auspicious mental
00:38:58.400 | faculty I am accused to possess, I owe to these dedicated men and women, most of whom I encountered
00:39:04.800 | in private schools. And because of the perception and finances of my parents, I was not only allowed
00:39:10.400 | to, but encouraged to attend private school. If your private education was nonetheless
00:39:17.680 | structured along the Prussian model, and you survived, then how can the same structure really
00:39:22.880 | be so detrimental for public school children? I mean, you don't seem visibly harmed by your
00:39:27.600 | education. Well, I survived in spite of the system, not because of it. Actually, my mother
00:39:34.080 | had homeschooled me before kindergarten, and I already knew how to read at a second grade level.
00:39:38.960 | Both of my parents were avid readers, which sort of rubbed off on me. My kindergarten teacher in
00:39:44.720 | private school, by the way, was superb, almost Montessorian. I now see what a difference she
00:39:50.560 | made. Had I gone exclusively to government schools, I might not have made it. Too many children don't.
00:39:55.840 | What do you mean, "Too many children don't"? Think about it, Tom. You march off to school with
00:40:02.720 | your chronological peers, with whom you'll graduate twelve years later. Class of 2018 is merely
00:40:09.600 | Orwellian Newspeak for "Heard of 2018." If you fail to keep up to the statistical mean,
00:40:16.800 | you get sent to remedial or special ed classes. You open your books when you're told, you eat when
00:40:22.960 | you're told, you pee when you're told, you go home when you're told. You do everything as a group
00:40:27.920 | and nothing as an individual. You even shower together, which is calculated to strip away a
00:40:33.360 | child's sense of self and dignity. Even in seventh grade, I thought it was weird. I mean, where else
00:40:38.960 | is one forced to bathe in public? Well, in the military, of course. Right, that other bastion
00:40:46.240 | of individualism. So are you seeing the bigger picture here, Tom? Government schools are kiddie
00:40:52.000 | boot camps designed by one of the most militaristic races in modern history. The parallels are
00:40:58.240 | profound. Can you imagine army basic training without the preconditioning of grade school?
00:41:03.680 | Wouldn't work. Draftees would be too independent. So you've got to sand them down while they're
00:41:09.360 | schoolchildren. You go through metal detectors at the door and suffer obtrusive searches by the
00:41:14.960 | dog-handling drug cops. You're encouraged to snitch on your fellow students as well as on
00:41:19.920 | your own family. Doodle a third grade picture of a rifle-toting soldier or fighter plane with
00:41:24.640 | missiles and you'll get expelled for violent tendencies. Same thing if you defend yourself
00:41:29.760 | against the schoolyard bully. Fail to intimately describe your dreams, your fears, your aspirations,
00:41:36.480 | and they'll call in the school shrink. Become bored or fidgety in class, and who wouldn't?
00:41:42.080 | And you're sent to Nurse Ritalin or Dr. Prozac. So what have you learned after 12 years? That there
00:41:48.160 | is no such thing as personal privacy and that the Bill of Rights died long ago. That private property
00:41:53.920 | is whatever the authorities allow. You've learned to go with the flow and not rock the boat and that
00:42:00.080 | you can't fight city hall. You've learned that the needs of the many take precedence over the needs
00:42:05.680 | of the few or the one. You've learned to shut up and do what you're told. And if you encounter
00:42:11.920 | somebody who hasn't learned these things, you turn him in for suspicious or anti-social behavior.
00:42:18.720 | In short, you have learned to be a slave within a police state. Oh, come on now,
00:42:24.560 | slave within a police state? Isn't that tilting at hyperbole? I'll let you answer that yourself.
00:42:31.200 | So you believe that we do have personal privacy? That the Bill of Rights is in effect? That your
00:42:39.600 | private property is off limits to bureaucrats? That you have a right to the fruits of your own
00:42:46.000 | labor and take home 100% of your paycheck? That your individual opinion is heard and respected by
00:42:52.880 | the high-thinking throng? That you actually have a say in national government? That you can speak
00:42:59.920 | your mind without fear of retribution? That nobody will shun you as an extremist or turn you in as a
00:43:07.040 | terrorist? That you're a free man in a free country? Do you actually believe any of that?
00:43:14.160 | And if you don't, then how can I be tilting at hyperbole?
00:43:18.240 | Hmm. You touch on many issues inherent to the eternal balancing of public and private concerns.
00:43:26.400 | Sounds like you attended government schools, did you? Well, yes, I did. It shows. I don't say that
00:43:34.160 | to insult you, but since my suspicion was correct, it rather proves my point, doesn't it?
00:43:40.800 | How so? Because your natural response to my challenge was to defend governmental intrusiveness.
00:43:47.680 | I did not defend governmental intrusiveness. You did, in two ways. First, by not attacking it,
00:43:55.920 | and second, by implying that it should exist in counterbalance to private interests. You did not
00:44:03.120 | unreservedly defend an individual's right to his or her own life, which tells me one of two things.
00:44:08.880 | Either you don't believe in such a right, or if you do, you feel that you have too much to risk
00:44:14.880 | by freely admitting it. So, which is it? I do not believe that those issues are as clear-cut
00:44:20.960 | as you describe in what I believe. There are many shades of gray. Gray is more deadly than black or
00:44:27.920 | white. Extremism has never killed as well as moderateness. Please explain. Black or white
00:44:35.680 | opinions are emphatic and demand an emphatic response. Gray opinions do not, which in turn
00:44:42.400 | allows bad gray opinions to flourish when they should be challenged. Sometimes moderation is
00:44:49.360 | called for, but generally it's just BS. Do you have children, Tom? Yes, two daughters, seven and
00:44:57.200 | ten. Where do they go to school? At a private school. Oh, and you place them there because
00:45:04.720 | you believe in government schools, right? Well, the public schools in our district are not great.
00:45:12.240 | I'm not surprised. They're not really great anywhere. They were not designed to educate,
00:45:18.800 | but to indoctrinate. You can't reform a system which was designed to wither the human mind and
00:45:25.680 | spirit. The government schools are doing exactly what they're supposed to do. But you and your wife
00:45:31.200 | feel so strongly about quality education for your little girls that you choose to pay twice for it
00:45:37.280 | since you pay school taxes that you don't use. I guess that's true. Gee, Tom, you could just move
00:45:43.840 | to Wyoming and pay just once, not twice. Do you actually believe that the United States is ready,
00:45:50.720 | much less eager for the kind of sweeping educational reform you propose? I can't speak for
00:45:57.040 | the United States. Nobody can. We're too large of a country for one opinion on the matter, or on any
00:46:04.080 | matter for that fact. That is precisely why the 50 states must be allowed to once again run their
00:46:10.240 | own affairs. I have never declared that what we have chosen in Wyoming should be de rigueur for
00:46:15.680 | Massachusetts, but unfortunately, Massachusetts believes their system to be de rigueur for all of
00:46:21.840 | us. And we got it. We have a Prussian Massachusetts system of government schools, which mandates
00:46:28.800 | conformity at the expense of thinking. That's over with in Wyoming, and we'll put our literacy
00:46:35.360 | rates and SAT scores up against any slave school in the nation, especially those in Massachusetts.
00:46:41.200 | I still have difficulty in believing public schools to be as poor as you suggest.
00:46:47.600 | If one judges the tree by its fruit, then public education collapsed about 30 years ago. Clerks
00:46:54.000 | cannot count change without the register doing it for them. A third of people today do not know who
00:46:59.680 | won World War II, and nobody can properly diagram a sentence. Why the average PhD cannot pass a
00:47:06.080 | college entrance exam from 1906. How much more evidence do you need? Still, aren't you being too
00:47:12.800 | harsh on the public schools? They do the best they can with the student material they're given.
00:47:17.360 | It's not their fault we have drugs and gang violence. Nonsense, Tom. It is precisely their
00:47:23.840 | fault. The socialist government schools don't reflect the problems of the outside world.
00:47:30.000 | They are causing these problems. Why are the children into drugs, gangs, and self-mutilation?
00:47:40.080 | Why are children exhibiting the social pathologies of prison inmates?
00:47:45.040 | Because they are prison inmates. There's more freedom at a low-security federal work camp
00:47:53.840 | than there is at the local government high school. Children get kidnapped at the age of five
00:47:59.040 | and sentenced to 12 years of excruciatingly dull and damaging programming. It's a sham,
00:48:06.640 | and kids know it and were shocked when they rebel. Compare Columbine to Attica,
00:48:14.400 | and the murderous rampage of Harris and Klebold becomes more understandable.
00:48:18.320 | After 12 years of indoctrination at the obscene expense of awakened minds,
00:48:25.680 | most kids have no job prospects beyond McDonald's. Who else can afford to pay a totally unskilled and
00:48:32.160 | unthinking employee the current minimum wage of $12.65 an hour? While they're pushing a colorful
00:48:38.400 | icon of French fries on the register because they can't do the math, their gangsta pals are laughing
00:48:44.640 | at them for even working at all. Running drugs can make more money in a single day than a month
00:48:49.520 | of flipping burgers. The entire socialist agenda has created an unnatural America where children
00:48:56.320 | cannot work and do not want to if they could. And who pays for it? Mom with her two jobs. She works
00:49:04.400 | just to pay the family's tax bill, much of it for the local government youth propaganda camp.
00:49:10.240 | That's assuming she works. Often she's a ward of the state on food stamps, AFDC, public housing,
00:49:15.760 | etc. If the father actually tries to support her and his children, she loses her welfare checks.
00:49:22.080 | All this has transformed and ruined our society. So don't defend the government schools as being
00:49:28.880 | blameless. They're not. Not by a long shot. If they had actually educated children, we'd today
00:49:36.400 | have grown adults with real minds and real futures. If you had taken the children of 1890s parents
00:49:43.600 | and put them in today's schools and society, they'd have been horrified and livid with the results.
00:49:52.240 | Even the liberals are finally getting concerned. How so? Well, I have a comic actor friend in
00:49:58.320 | Hollywood who is quite well known through his stand-up and movie career. Although we vastly
00:50:03.680 | differ on political and religious matters, he once commented that it was absolutely criminal
00:50:08.880 | that public schools were such cesspools of gang violence, drugs, and apathy. He said that the
00:50:15.520 | issue totally transcended any political sensitivities and that our schools were not
00:50:20.080 | tranquil havens for real learning was a national outrage. I was quite stunned by Rick's intense
00:50:30.880 | opinion and wholeheartedly agreed with him. We are currently digging the grave of government
00:50:36.320 | education in Wyoming. Within two years, we will have achieved separation of school and state.
00:50:41.840 | Education will at last revert to being a family matter, not a government one. The government
00:50:48.480 | teachers, however, are howling like scowled banshees. You never heard such caterwalling.
00:50:54.480 | I ask them why they're worried about private sector competition if their government schools
00:50:58.480 | are so good. They've no answer for that. They're like Hugo salesmen squealing about the new VW
00:51:04.800 | dealership going in across the street. Hugo salesmen who secretly drive Volkswagens. What do
00:51:11.520 | you mean? That many government teachers send their children to private schools. In Chicago, 40% do,
00:51:18.880 | and in DC, 90% do. It's just like Congress having exempted themselves from their own social security
00:51:25.600 | creature and enjoying a fully funded private scheme. Government employees should be required
00:51:31.120 | to live under their own programs. Private schools are well and good for those families who can
00:51:37.040 | afford them. But what about poor families? Is it fair that they have no option but public education?
00:51:42.720 | I don't buy that, Tom. People have an amazing knack for affording that which is important to
00:51:49.280 | them. I've seen so-called poor people with a DVD collection to rival my own, satellite dishes and
00:51:56.080 | big screen TVs in every mobile home. Poor people in America drive better cars than do wealthy people
00:52:01.920 | in many countries. If education is important, they will find a way to pay for it. But what
00:52:08.160 | about those living on a fixed income? Yes, well, who fixed it? Money comes from other people who
00:52:15.920 | spend it only for perceived value. Why have a fixed perceived value? Anybody can increase their
00:52:22.400 | value to others. Instead of spending over 30 hours a week watching TV as a sedative, why not find
00:52:28.000 | some productive work? Learn a foreign language from a library, teaching tapes, learn a skill.
00:52:32.880 | But why should innocent children be denied the best education just because they were born to
00:52:38.720 | low-income parents? And children born to wealthy parents have an unfair advantage? It's an advantage
00:52:46.560 | but not an unfair one. Is it fair that low-income parents were born in America?
00:52:51.680 | Go visit the third world and you'll see some really low-income families. It's not a matter of
00:52:57.440 | fairness. Look, as human beings who can learn from history, we are capable of not making the
00:53:02.640 | mistakes of others if we choose not to. This has been the backdrop of Western culture. Observe,
00:53:10.000 | learn, progress ad infinitum. My parents and my wife's parents worked hard and they worked smart.
00:53:17.520 | They taught us to do the same and we did. My wife and I looked for a mate with the same values and
00:53:23.120 | work ethics in order to further that through our children. A family's history, wealth or poverty,
00:53:30.320 | is not accidental. It is cumulative. It is mostly a result of choice, of sequential programming.
00:53:39.280 | How much of all this is nature and how much is nurture? Nobody knows exactly. However, both can
00:53:45.840 | be skewed in a family's favor. Over time, enough quality nurture will improve nature. It takes
00:53:53.040 | conscious effort and constant work because the default is to remain lazy and stupid. Those who
00:54:00.560 | work hard and smart deserve to reap the benefits which pass on to their children. That is not
00:54:06.240 | unfair. That is life. If low-income families are not spending more time at the library than in
00:54:12.960 | front of the TV, then they are dooming their children to poverty. Being broke is a state of
00:54:19.360 | finances. Being poor is a state of mind. It is poor thinking which causes poverty and government
00:54:27.520 | schools are the academies of ignorance. They are programming the masses to fail and they are doing
00:54:34.320 | so on purpose. But if the poor cannot yet afford private schools, what can they do? Home school,
00:54:42.400 | of course. Even single mothers on welfare can afford to home school. You are a strong supporter
00:54:48.560 | of home schooling. Why? First of all, it is the right of the parents. Even though the motto of
00:54:55.920 | UNICEF is "Every child is our child," and even though Hillary Rodham Clinton believes that
00:55:02.160 | there is no such thing as other people's children, children are not the property of the state.
00:55:11.040 | Secondly, home schoolers consistently test in the 85th percentile at a tenth of the cost of
00:55:18.080 | government schools. Now, how the NEA can bitch about home schooling with those results just
00:55:23.760 | astounds me. Until America demands a separation of school and state, the private schools must
00:55:29.680 | operate at a severe disadvantage. Even though they do a better job at less than half the cost,
00:55:36.000 | parents are still forced to first fund the government schools. Those parents who cannot
00:55:42.240 | afford private schools have largely turned to home schooling because it's affordable and it's
00:55:47.040 | effective. An immigrant family from Honduras moved to Riverton, Wyoming about 15 years ago.
00:55:53.120 | Their home school daughter just won the national spelling bee. In fact, home schoolers have won
00:55:58.080 | it 16 times in the past 20 years. It's wonderfully embarrassing. Columnist Vin Suprinowicz put it
00:56:10.720 | well. He once wrote that every experiment needs a control group. Regarding gun ownership and the
00:56:16.640 | daily bearing of arms, Vermont and Alaska are the control group for DC and New York City.
00:56:22.720 | For the government schools, the control group is the home schoolers. Amateur housewives are,
00:56:30.400 | regardless of their race, income, and even educational level, teaching their children
00:56:35.680 | better than the professionals. By the seventh grade, home schoolers are two years ahead,
00:56:41.440 | and the NEA and the AFT are going bat guano over this. The home schooling movement has saved a
00:56:47.120 | large remnant of children from the zombie academies and their dangerous environments.
00:56:52.880 | These several million children are the seed corn of the future,
00:56:56.480 | seed corn which otherwise would have been consumed, leaving us to starve years ago.
00:57:01.680 | What about home schoolers' lack of socialization? Oh, you mean their lack of odd clothes,
00:57:09.040 | tattoos, and body piercings? That they don't act like prison inmates? That lack of socialization
00:57:15.680 | is a myth. Home schoolers are highly involved in many things, such as scouting, church, sports,
00:57:20.480 | field trips, camping, gymnastics, etc. They're not missing out, and university studies have
00:57:25.360 | proven that. Although there are no easy answers, the one unimpeachable fact is that parents
00:57:33.360 | generally know what's best for their own children. The only disagreement will come from those who
00:57:39.600 | want to cleave children from their families and grind out every spark of individual thought.
00:57:46.720 | I would rather see children taught to be socialists by their home schooling parents
00:57:53.440 | than children taught to be laissez-faire capitalists by government schools. Although
00:57:59.760 | either case is pretty far-fetched, that's how deep my conviction on this goes.
00:58:03.920 | What do you consider the most outrageous thing about government schools?
00:58:09.520 | That every school system today has its own Dr. Mengel ready and eager to forcibly prescribe
00:58:15.280 | some very sophisticated and dangerous brain-chemical-altering drugs, such as Ritalin
00:58:21.120 | or Prozac. Pot would be less harmful. Not even prison inmates are drugged at the 30% rate of
00:58:27.600 | our schoolchildren. Many so-called "ADD" or hyperactive children are simply bored and frustrated
00:58:34.800 | by their cud-chewing environment. I know I was. I believe that the current bio-intrusions on our
00:58:40.720 | schoolchildren will someday be looked upon with the horror that we now view ancient bloodletting.
00:58:46.560 | Here is a statistic the NEA won't tell you. Over 90% of all infamous killer kids were taking or
00:58:52.640 | had been recently taking some form of government-prescribed brain-chemical-altering drug.
00:58:57.440 | Kip Kinkle had been on Prozac, for example. Guns are not the problem. Damaged kids are the problem,
00:59:04.080 | and it is the government school system which is doing the damage. Has anybody ever noticed that
00:59:09.360 | mass shootings never seem to occur in private or parochial schools?
00:59:13.280 | What about the rights of parents who wish to keep their children in the current school system?
00:59:18.400 | You're mixing what are actually two separate issues. If some parents desire Prussian-style
00:59:25.440 | education, then that's their right. They can start up a private school under that format if they wish.
00:59:30.720 | Nobody's stopping them. However, no parent has the right to force childless strangers at gunpoint
00:59:38.160 | to pay for schools, Prussian or not. When you say "at gunpoint," are you speaking of taxes?
00:59:44.160 | Well, of course. Quit paying taxes, and obese, de-student, pistol-packing agents of the state
00:59:50.800 | will eventually show up at your door. If you resist, they will evict you. Resist eviction,
00:59:56.080 | and they will kill you. Don't you know that all taxes are implicitly collected by threat of a
01:00:00.480 | gun, pay, or die? This is a cold, hard fact that Americans refuse to face. But Tom, no purpose of
01:00:07.600 | government is so important as to justify making citizens homeless or dead. No tax collector has
01:00:15.040 | ever put a gun to my head to collect my taxes. I don't dispute that. However, you've been trained
01:00:21.760 | by the government to pay without a fuss. So you do. But haven't you ever resented some use of your
01:00:30.800 | tax dollars that you wish you could opt out of? Some US military operation overseas, perhaps?
01:00:36.880 | Only about three or four times a day. Well, the cost of government is public knowledge.
01:00:43.040 | Why didn't you calculate what percentage it constituted of your income taxes and refuse to
01:00:49.440 | pay it on explicitly moral grounds, even if it amounted to only $14? My share of it wouldn't
01:00:58.160 | likely be worth the trouble. The trouble of calculating the amount or the trouble of standing
01:01:03.760 | up for your belief? Probably both. Well, then you help make my point for me. We suffer under a large
01:01:13.280 | central government, which nips away at us one bite at a time, and we're too cowed to even quantify
01:01:18.800 | the injury, much less protest. What if nobody were required to pay taxes? Who would pay then?
01:01:25.520 | If we truly desired what we were paying for in taxes, then no coercion would really be necessary.
01:01:33.120 | In the free market, we pay for a movie rather than sneaking in. We pay for a dinner rather
01:01:38.320 | than sneaking out. Why can't government compete for its resources like everybody else? Because
01:01:44.480 | folks don't like what the government is selling. No, taxes are a form of robbery to fund something
01:01:50.880 | that the victim would not purchase voluntarily. And to top it off, the thief proclaims that he
01:01:56.080 | is robbing you for your own good. I stand by our right to be governed solely by our informed
01:02:01.920 | consent. That is at the heart of libertarian politics. This tired old notion that nothing
01:02:09.360 | would get done but for the government and taxes is nonsense. People want roads and schools,
01:02:17.280 | and they will find some way to pay for them in the private sector. I don't want to force anybody to
01:02:22.000 | be free, yet many Americans would force me to be a slave on their Washington, D.C. plantation
01:02:29.840 | if they could. It reeks of closed shop unionism. Join or else. They should have the decency to let
01:02:38.880 | others live their own adult lives as they see fit. Such rugged individualism comes easy for a man of
01:02:47.280 | your race and upbringing, but it hardly seems appropriate for those disadvantaged members of
01:02:52.320 | our society. Well, men of my race and upbringing are at the helm of the socialist ship of state,
01:03:00.320 | so why didn't I go that direction? Still, you can't deny that libertarianism makes much more
01:03:06.880 | sense for a white, wealthy entrepreneur than for a crippled minority. Oh, which crippled minority do
01:03:14.000 | you mean? I don't follow you. Well, do you mean a crippled minority who has maintained his personal
01:03:20.800 | dignity and works for an honest living, or a crippled minority who blames the world for his
01:03:26.160 | condition and votes for his government check? Oh, well, right. You see, it has nothing to do with
01:03:34.240 | race, education, or handicap. It has everything to do with character. I know several wealthy,
01:03:41.920 | white businessmen so venal and conniving that I would not take their personal check.
01:03:47.680 | Conversely, I know a black woman in Sheridan with MS who founded what is now a thriving
01:03:54.000 | internet business and is one of the most honorable and industrious people I know.
01:03:58.240 | Those with the mentality of a master or slave or thief, whatever their race or condition,
01:04:06.240 | need a socialist state. Those who value private property and hard work, whatever their race or
01:04:14.400 | condition, only wish to be left alone, and Wyoming is America's haven for them. They're long overdue
01:04:22.000 | for a haven. Today, they have one. We've proven that over the past two and a half years, and we're
01:04:27.440 | not through yet. Freedom is always unfinished business. Thank you, Governor Preston, for this
01:04:34.000 | second interview. It's always interesting, and for me too. We're still waiting for you to visit us
01:04:38.480 | in Wyoming. It's looking more and more inviting all the time. That concludes that particular
01:04:46.000 | article, which again is a fictional account that is written in the context of a novel called "Moulin
01:04:52.480 | La Baie" by Boston Tea Party. The entire novel is extremely strong, of course, in its ideological
01:04:59.760 | activism. It is quite fun if you enjoy such novels. I would enjoy reading it. I really liked it,
01:05:06.640 | and I think that you might enjoy it too. I enjoy that format. I always fear when reading to you
01:05:13.600 | pieces like that, that you will be annoyed by one or two of your own pet peeves and will miss the
01:05:22.400 | bigger picture. We have a tendency so frequently to do that. We read something, we listen to
01:05:27.920 | something, "Well, I don't like this," and so we reject the rest of it. So my hope is that you
01:05:33.440 | don't miss in the handful of things that you and I might disagree with that were recorded in that
01:05:38.640 | interview, that you don't miss the big picture. The big picture that I am seeking to focus you on
01:05:45.440 | is the education of your children, and I ask you this. Do the analysis, and don't tell me,
01:05:55.920 | but sit and talk with your children, with your wife, with your husband. Sit and talk together
01:06:04.800 | as a family about the progress that you're making and ask, "Is this the most effective way to do
01:06:10.480 | this?" Now, I personally am fully convinced that your involvement and your children's involvement
01:06:22.160 | in the government school system is not the right way, but I do concede that perhaps you may be a
01:06:29.360 | parent of the lucky few, the lucky few who seem to be able to navigate the labyrinth of government
01:06:36.320 | schooling at escape with their love of learning intact. It still seems woefully inefficient to me
01:06:42.240 | if you were going to take 1500 hours per year times 12 years, totaling 18,000 hours.
01:06:51.760 | It's very hard for me to believe that you and your student
01:06:57.840 | could not have dramatically superior results in another context.
01:07:07.040 | That's what's always so frustrating in this discussion, is that we have a tendency to
01:07:11.680 | gauge the effectiveness of our personal choices not against the ideal,
01:07:18.240 | but against our own experience. We always contrast ourself to something that is inherently
01:07:25.360 | limited. So the example would be if you're looking and saying, "Well, I'm going to have my child
01:07:31.440 | invest 18,000 hours of their life in this enterprise. And look, my child graduated valedictorian,
01:07:38.240 | and they like learning, and they went off, and they're going to go and become a doctor."
01:07:41.760 | Great. I don't doubt that. What I do deny is that that same child, when put in a different context,
01:07:49.120 | would not get better results. And this is, for me, deeply personal. The interview that I read for you
01:07:56.400 | was by Boston Tea Party. That was his mindset and of his fictional character that he created,
01:08:02.240 | Governor Preston. But my own personal offense at the Prussian style of education is the massive
01:08:09.840 | waste of time. And I'm not going to go on ranting on this subject. Just a few final points, and I
01:08:15.600 | will close today's show. But to conceive, if you take your most competent 18-year-old graduate,
01:08:27.520 | the valedictorian at the local government school, if you were to take that child
01:08:33.920 | and put them into... And just put them at home, use that natural enthusiasm for learning, that
01:08:42.880 | natural inherent motivation, that strong family dynamic that must have been present to encourage
01:08:50.160 | them on to academic greatness. It doesn't happen without family support. If you were to take that
01:08:57.200 | same character that enabled that child to sit at home and study when they would probably have
01:09:04.240 | rather been doing something more indulgent, and you were to put them into a different context,
01:09:11.200 | a private at school or a homeschool context, they would have been able to achieve those
01:09:16.320 | same results on perhaps 20% of the time. The average homeschooled student in the United
01:09:22.400 | States of America, the average family spends something like... And I don't have these numbers
01:09:26.320 | in front of me, but my memory is pretty good on this. Something like $600 a year on the cost of
01:09:32.080 | their child's school materials. Now, that doesn't include the value of a parent, usually the mother,
01:09:39.280 | that doesn't include the value of the mother's time in that schooling. Whereas in the government
01:09:44.240 | school, you're paying for the time of the teacher. So it's not a fair comparison to say, "Well,
01:09:48.080 | it's $600 versus 12,500," unless we were to add a dollar value to the parent's time and then add in
01:09:55.280 | the cost of security, the cost of a big fancy bill, all the rest of this stuff. So it's not a
01:09:58.720 | true thing. But most parents spend about $600 a year. And most homeschool students
01:10:05.040 | do their schooling, many of them in traditional kind of curricula, most homeschool students do
01:10:13.120 | their schooling in about three to four hours a day and get more done in three to four hours a day
01:10:17.600 | than most government school children get done in nine or 10 hours a day.
01:10:22.400 | And if you took that valedictorian who is probably investing an average of 10 or 11 hours a day with
01:10:28.880 | the extra study time required, and you free them of the entire system, they'll get better results.
01:10:37.440 | Now, you do the math, do the math on the time, but I am convinced beyond measure that that amount of
01:10:48.240 | time that you're telling your children to invest in something can be so much better served
01:10:54.400 | with something that is carefully tailored to them. Which is why, in closing, I encourage you,
01:11:03.360 | as we finish this academic year, consider carefully the results that you are getting
01:11:10.320 | with your money, with your time, and see if there might not be a better solution for next year.
01:11:21.920 | Thank you for listening. You've honored me with your time and attention, and I'm grateful for that.
01:11:27.520 | And I hope that I've effectively served you today with some ideas and strategies and tactics and
01:11:32.960 | techniques and tools that will help move you towards your goals. Before you go, three simple
01:11:39.040 | requests. One, if there's an idea that's been helpful to you in today's show, make a plan to
01:11:45.440 | take action on it. Listening does lead to learning, but learning in and of itself doesn't automatically
01:11:52.400 | lead to a life change. It's action that leads to a life change. So take action. Two, take something
01:12:02.400 | that was helpful to you in today's show and share it with somebody that you care about. I'm depending
01:12:08.400 | on you to be a co-laborer with me in helping me to propagate the message that I'm seeking to share.
01:12:15.360 | That helps the person that you are engaging with, and it also helps you because teaching others is
01:12:23.040 | one of the most effective ways for you to learn and for you to cement your learning. Three, if
01:12:30.160 | there's an idea that's been specifically helpful to you in today's show, make a plan to take action
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