November 19, 2023 • 17 mins
Kids are subjected to violence, bullying, stiffling of thought and creativity. Yet we continue to dump funds into this. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. It is time we see the decline in our society and point a finger where part of that blame belongs. LIke, Share, Subscribe. Be great!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Line. Welcome to your donate,you eat it. I'm your host,
Sean. So this is my culturalpodcast, And I was thinking about something
that seems so integral to American culture, but should it be? That's the
(00:31):
American public school system. You know, I'm a graduate of American public school
I work for American public schools foryou know, twelve almost thirteen years.
Educators are my people. There's alot of good ones and there's a lot
of bad ones. But I wasinspired by something someone said, school sucks
(00:57):
public school specific. You know,how many times, if you're a parent,
how many times have you had tocoax your kid into going to school?
Why is that? You know?Why is it that our public schools
are failing time and time again despitehow much money they get. Now,
(01:18):
I can tell you when I wasworking for public schools, I was always
wondering why we couldn't get more fundingfor this or that or whatever. Never
in mind that we were always gettingmore public school funding one way or another,
Yet our results were always the sameno matter what was poured into it.
(01:38):
Rarely did you get a return oninvestment that was worth what you were
putting into it. You know,public schools the first place that most people
face violence, first place that they'regoing to be bullied either by a peer
or they're going to be bullied bya teacher or an administrator. Why is
that? Better? Question is whydo we keep doing the same thing and
(02:01):
expecting different results? You know,I asked myself that, being almost a
full year out of working for Ktwelve's and working in a different environment,
now I see how much is wasted. You know, how much resources are
(02:23):
wasted, how much time is wastedbecause of resource allocation. You know,
I once worked for a place wherewe had enterprise level applications that were there
to save time, but someone camein didn't like those. I wanted to
go to a less secure, lessenterprise level type product. Why ease inconvenience
(02:51):
for this person? Okay? Whydo we always flex systems, specifically in
public education for the least productive people? And I'm not talking about administrators,
and I'm not talking about what Ijust said there. I'm talking about how
(03:12):
many times does a public school focuson the one kid that is just never
ever going to improve, How manyother kids in that classroom are having to
wait because those issues are addressed withthat one kid, That one kid is
just as valuable, don't get mewrong, But how much time and how
(03:36):
much effort and how much resources arewe failing to allocate or failing to use
because we're focused on this one kid'sperformance. You know, name one other
organization that if you consistently saw themfail or consistently saw them fail, that
you would throw more money at andhope for a better solution. Yet we
(04:01):
do that time and time again withpublic schools. You know, it is
it's heartbreaking, especially having work forpublic schools, you know, for me
to finally come to that conclusion thatpublic schools are kind of a waste of
everything. And when I say that, I mean there are all very good
(04:23):
alternatives nowadays, especially after COVID.After COVID, teachers started seeing what was
being pushed down by those bad teachersthat don't actually weren't there for the kids.
They were there for pushing an agenda. You know, that's not what
education was or what it should havebeen. Yet here we are. You
(04:46):
know, how many states are theystandardizing on these agendas for kids that have
nothing to do with real education.You know, there was a point in
time to think that in doctoring ourkids was a pro was a good thing.
But what I wanted then and whatI still kind of do, is
(05:11):
in doctrination into knowing that you cansolve problems, You can address those needs
you have, you can learn thebasic skills you need to carry on through
your life. But as you lookat what's going on with the colleges,
this starts at the public school placeand goes through the colleges. Money keeps
(05:34):
being thrown at these problems and noneof them's ever solved. You know,
they're worried about social emotional learning rightnow, Well, doesn't that start with
the very beginning? How kids goto school, how kids progress through school,
and their experience they're going to get. Yet, as I just said,
(05:59):
and this is the truth, howmany times were you bullied in school?
How many times were you bullied bya teacher? You know? Name
how many good teachers you had throughoutyour public school education. You know,
I was talking to this one guy, and you know what he said,
There was one one out of twelveyears of his entire school career. So
(06:24):
never let it be said that oneperson can't make a difference. But that
was for their first six years oftheir career, or first five years of
their college or their public school career. There's five teachers for the next seven
(06:47):
school years that you're supposed to gothrough a public school, there's six or
seven more teachers per year, youknow, so seven that's forty nine more
teachers. But this one person couldonly name one. I'm fortunate enough to
where I can name several. Youknow, I can remember my first grade
(07:10):
teacher, Missus Kelty. She wasvery cool. She passed away a few
years ago. You know. Ican remember my German teacher in high school,
Rol Craig. You know, Ican remember my chemistry teacher in high
school, mister mcdoll. I canremember a junior high math professor, Miss
Braswell or Missus Bugnell the other thetwo math people that have kind of influenced
(07:35):
me into going a math direction whenI was going through my college career.
You know. But I think I'mthe exception or was I, Because I
was bullied a lot, you know, I if it weren't for some of
my peers and actually me joining footballteams and getting that camaraderie from somewhere else
(07:58):
that started pushing back against those peoplethat were, you know, bullying me.
But I can remember teachers doing ittoo, And I can remember a
couple of different times being as introvertedas I am is crying, not really
showing it outside, but sobbing becauseof situations I was put into because of
(08:20):
a public school. Yet we keepputting more tax dollars into a public school
and we're getting less and less out. Are our kids any better now than
they were when they started? Youknow, at what point in the public
school career do they learn not tosaying, not to dance, not to
(08:46):
paint a picture, just on theirown? You know, I was fortunate
enough that the last person that tookover the school district he was pushing us
in that direction, and I hopehe's very successful. Nevertheless, it makes
me think about all I've seen workingfor public schools. You know, there's
(09:09):
a lot of good that goes onthere, there's a lot of bad also,
And every one of those administrators knowsthat there's a cadre of teachers and
dogmatic administrators that aren't going to change, and you er, your hands are
(09:30):
kind of tied on how to addressthem. So what do you do?
And why is the public having tosuffer through this time and time again?
You know, no child left behindwas an idea that one president had to
kind of show off and say,hey, we're never going to leave a
kid's education behind. We're going tobenchmarkt and measure it. And then what
(09:54):
we ended up doing is teaching totests. We weren't engaging actual knowledge.
We're engauging whether a kid can passa test or not. Again, my
last administrator and the one before him, they were focused on trying to address
that and in a positive way.But how many other school districts are that
(10:18):
fortunate? You know? What aboutthe ones in California or New York.
There are teachers that come in timeand time again and punch a clock and
leave, and that culture that they'rebuilding is what we're seeing now. You
know, the decay, the downfallof the American identity is because of what's
(10:41):
happened in public education. Public publiceducation has become a babysitter for most people.
You know. It takes a realhard person, you know, And
to be full disclosure, I stillhave a sign who's going through public education
because he refuses to leave his friends. When he refuses to leave a welding
(11:01):
program, I think he'd be alot better off getting his ged and just
going ahead and going to college becausehe's that old. Because while you're in
the public education system, I thinknowadays specifically, you are stymied. There
is no growth, and the growththat is exhibited is inhibited at the same
(11:26):
time by those around you and bylack of effort from teachers. The really
good teachers, just like really goodlaw enforcement agents have started to retire because
of the stuff rolling down on theirshoulders. You know, you can only
do something for so long and hityour head against the wall before you realize
(11:50):
nothing's going to change. So why, and I ask you this honestly,
why are we funding public education?And why are kids still saying it sucks?
Because if we're forcing kids to goto school to go through something and
they're not getting anything out of it, or not getting the full benefit out
(12:13):
of it, and all they thinkabout is school sucks, why are we
still doing it? You know,the definition of insanity is doing the same
thing and expecting a different result.Yet in our culture we keep doing this
with education. Why is that?That's what I'm asking is because talking to
(12:37):
that one friend was pretty insightful becausethere's entirely two different mindsets here. Mine
was I made the best of itthat I could. But I'm also one
of those people. If you handme a flashlight in a book, throw
me in a closet, I'm goingto come out learning something from that flashlight
(12:58):
or from that book, and possiblythat flashlight or others wouldn't you know?
Other people aren't capable of it,And there's a skill gap between people.
You know, some of us aremore motivated do things others aren't. And
I understand that public education has toaddress both of those, But why are
(13:20):
they always focusing on the lowest commondenominator and not focusing on the rest of
the kids? They focus on twogroups, the lowest common denominator and the
highest common denominator, while the middlealways gets left behind. Why is that
the middle is the majority? Yettime and time again, who's asking for
(13:43):
more money for bonding? Who's askingfor more tax money? Who's asking for
higher pay raises? And don't getme wrong, educators are some of the
poorest paid people on planet Earth.They should be some of the highest,
but they should also have the performancethat goes with that, and they don't.
(14:03):
So what have we done to ourculture to egg this on? You
know, I've seen a couple peoplethat have come up. As I've been
going through this season of my life, I've spent a lot more time at
job fairs and seen people that Iactually would hope would never make it into
(14:26):
the teaching world attempting to get there. And while I understand the passion to
try to do something that seems toleave a mark to be one of those
cool teachers like I had, howmany of these idiots that are getting into
that program have no business being ateacher, And how many of them are
(14:46):
going to stick out through that justto punch the clock and kick the can
down the road, or worse yet, how many of them are motivated by
other quote unquote altruistic intentions where they'regoing to spread those things we don't want
(15:07):
in school. You know, notonly are violent, is violence very prevalence
in public schools, whether it's fromtheir peers or the teachers, kids are
preyed upon other ways. How manytimes have you heard about third teachers they're
hitting on and trying to mess aroundwith kids or have done that. Yet
(15:31):
the public education system still exists andis still funded very heavily by the American
people. Better question is why hasn'tthe market answered you know, why after
COVID have we not seen pod learningand better academies come out of this.
(15:54):
We have seen it to some degree, but shouldn't we see it a lot
more? I don't know. Theseare weird thoughts that I have when I'm
thinking about culture and doing my culturepodcast. You know, normally it's books
and movies I was thinking about.But this conversation stuck with me with this
person because rather than say, well, that's cool, you work for a
(16:15):
K twelve, it was one ofthe first people I've ever met that was
chastising me for it. You know, I learned a lot of things working
for K twelves. I work onenterprise systems, the likes of which a
lot of people would never know aboutor could ever know about. I owe
a lot to public K twelve educationmy personal in my personal life and my
(16:41):
professional life. So for me badmouthing them in this way and asking why
we're funding them, still, whyam I doing that? It's because it's
time. It's time the American peoplethat all of us look at our culture
and look what's going on in theworld and understand where some of this is
coming from, and it needs tobe addressed. Like, share, subscribe,
(17:07):
Most importantly, be great,
Line. Welcome to your donate,you eat it. I'm your host,
Sean. So this is my culturalpodcast, And I was thinking about something
that seems so integral to American culture, but should it be? That's the
(00:31):
American public school system. You know, I'm a graduate of American public school
I work for American public schools foryou know, twelve almost thirteen years.
Educators are my people. There's alot of good ones and there's a lot
of bad ones. But I wasinspired by something someone said, school sucks
(00:57):
public school specific. You know,how many times, if you're a parent,
how many times have you had tocoax your kid into going to school?
Why is that? You know?Why is it that our public schools
are failing time and time again despitehow much money they get. Now,
(01:18):
I can tell you when I wasworking for public schools, I was always
wondering why we couldn't get more fundingfor this or that or whatever. Never
in mind that we were always gettingmore public school funding one way or another,
Yet our results were always the sameno matter what was poured into it.
(01:38):
Rarely did you get a return oninvestment that was worth what you were
putting into it. You know,public schools the first place that most people
face violence, first place that they'regoing to be bullied either by a peer
or they're going to be bullied bya teacher or an administrator. Why is
that? Better? Question is whydo we keep doing the same thing and
(02:01):
expecting different results? You know,I asked myself that, being almost a
full year out of working for Ktwelve's and working in a different environment,
now I see how much is wasted. You know, how much resources are
(02:23):
wasted, how much time is wastedbecause of resource allocation. You know,
I once worked for a place wherewe had enterprise level applications that were there
to save time, but someone camein didn't like those. I wanted to
go to a less secure, lessenterprise level type product. Why ease inconvenience
(02:51):
for this person? Okay? Whydo we always flex systems, specifically in
public education for the least productive people? And I'm not talking about administrators,
and I'm not talking about what Ijust said there. I'm talking about how
(03:12):
many times does a public school focuson the one kid that is just never
ever going to improve, How manyother kids in that classroom are having to
wait because those issues are addressed withthat one kid, That one kid is
just as valuable, don't get mewrong, But how much time and how
(03:36):
much effort and how much resources arewe failing to allocate or failing to use
because we're focused on this one kid'sperformance. You know, name one other
organization that if you consistently saw themfail or consistently saw them fail, that
you would throw more money at andhope for a better solution. Yet we
(04:01):
do that time and time again withpublic schools. You know, it is
it's heartbreaking, especially having work forpublic schools, you know, for me
to finally come to that conclusion thatpublic schools are kind of a waste of
everything. And when I say that, I mean there are all very good
(04:23):
alternatives nowadays, especially after COVID.After COVID, teachers started seeing what was
being pushed down by those bad teachersthat don't actually weren't there for the kids.
They were there for pushing an agenda. You know, that's not what
education was or what it should havebeen. Yet here we are. You
(04:46):
know, how many states are theystandardizing on these agendas for kids that have
nothing to do with real education.You know, there was a point in
time to think that in doctoring ourkids was a pro was a good thing.
But what I wanted then and whatI still kind of do, is
(05:11):
in doctrination into knowing that you cansolve problems, You can address those needs
you have, you can learn thebasic skills you need to carry on through
your life. But as you lookat what's going on with the colleges,
this starts at the public school placeand goes through the colleges. Money keeps
(05:34):
being thrown at these problems and noneof them's ever solved. You know,
they're worried about social emotional learning rightnow, Well, doesn't that start with
the very beginning? How kids goto school, how kids progress through school,
and their experience they're going to get. Yet, as I just said,
(05:59):
and this is the truth, howmany times were you bullied in school?
How many times were you bullied bya teacher? You know? Name
how many good teachers you had throughoutyour public school education. You know,
I was talking to this one guy, and you know what he said,
There was one one out of twelveyears of his entire school career. So
(06:24):
never let it be said that oneperson can't make a difference. But that
was for their first six years oftheir career, or first five years of
their college or their public school career. There's five teachers for the next seven
(06:47):
school years that you're supposed to gothrough a public school, there's six or
seven more teachers per year, youknow, so seven that's forty nine more
teachers. But this one person couldonly name one. I'm fortunate enough to
where I can name several. Youknow, I can remember my first grade
(07:10):
teacher, Missus Kelty. She wasvery cool. She passed away a few
years ago. You know. Ican remember my German teacher in high school,
Rol Craig. You know, Ican remember my chemistry teacher in high
school, mister mcdoll. I canremember a junior high math professor, Miss
Braswell or Missus Bugnell the other thetwo math people that have kind of influenced
(07:35):
me into going a math direction whenI was going through my college career.
You know. But I think I'mthe exception or was I, Because I
was bullied a lot, you know, I if it weren't for some of
my peers and actually me joining footballteams and getting that camaraderie from somewhere else
(07:58):
that started pushing back against those peoplethat were, you know, bullying me.
But I can remember teachers doing ittoo, And I can remember a
couple of different times being as introvertedas I am is crying, not really
showing it outside, but sobbing becauseof situations I was put into because of
(08:20):
a public school. Yet we keepputting more tax dollars into a public school
and we're getting less and less out. Are our kids any better now than
they were when they started? Youknow, at what point in the public
school career do they learn not tosaying, not to dance, not to
(08:46):
paint a picture, just on theirown? You know, I was fortunate
enough that the last person that tookover the school district he was pushing us
in that direction, and I hopehe's very successful. Nevertheless, it makes
me think about all I've seen workingfor public schools. You know, there's
(09:09):
a lot of good that goes onthere, there's a lot of bad also,
And every one of those administrators knowsthat there's a cadre of teachers and
dogmatic administrators that aren't going to change, and you er, your hands are
(09:30):
kind of tied on how to addressthem. So what do you do?
And why is the public having tosuffer through this time and time again?
You know, no child left behindwas an idea that one president had to
kind of show off and say,hey, we're never going to leave a
kid's education behind. We're going tobenchmarkt and measure it. And then what
(09:54):
we ended up doing is teaching totests. We weren't engaging actual knowledge.
We're engauging whether a kid can passa test or not. Again, my
last administrator and the one before him, they were focused on trying to address
that and in a positive way.But how many other school districts are that
(10:18):
fortunate? You know? What aboutthe ones in California or New York.
There are teachers that come in timeand time again and punch a clock and
leave, and that culture that they'rebuilding is what we're seeing now. You
know, the decay, the downfallof the American identity is because of what's
(10:41):
happened in public education. Public publiceducation has become a babysitter for most people.
You know. It takes a realhard person, you know, And
to be full disclosure, I stillhave a sign who's going through public education
because he refuses to leave his friends. When he refuses to leave a welding
(11:01):
program, I think he'd be alot better off getting his ged and just
going ahead and going to college becausehe's that old. Because while you're in
the public education system, I thinknowadays specifically, you are stymied. There
is no growth, and the growththat is exhibited is inhibited at the same
(11:26):
time by those around you and bylack of effort from teachers. The really
good teachers, just like really goodlaw enforcement agents have started to retire because
of the stuff rolling down on theirshoulders. You know, you can only
do something for so long and hityour head against the wall before you realize
(11:50):
nothing's going to change. So why, and I ask you this honestly,
why are we funding public education?And why are kids still saying it sucks?
Because if we're forcing kids to goto school to go through something and
they're not getting anything out of it, or not getting the full benefit out
(12:13):
of it, and all they thinkabout is school sucks, why are we
still doing it? You know,the definition of insanity is doing the same
thing and expecting a different result.Yet in our culture we keep doing this
with education. Why is that?That's what I'm asking is because talking to
(12:37):
that one friend was pretty insightful becausethere's entirely two different mindsets here. Mine
was I made the best of itthat I could. But I'm also one
of those people. If you handme a flashlight in a book, throw
me in a closet, I'm goingto come out learning something from that flashlight
(12:58):
or from that book, and possiblythat flashlight or others wouldn't you know?
Other people aren't capable of it,And there's a skill gap between people.
You know, some of us aremore motivated do things others aren't. And
I understand that public education has toaddress both of those, But why are
(13:20):
they always focusing on the lowest commondenominator and not focusing on the rest of
the kids? They focus on twogroups, the lowest common denominator and the
highest common denominator, while the middlealways gets left behind. Why is that
the middle is the majority? Yettime and time again, who's asking for
(13:43):
more money for bonding? Who's askingfor more tax money? Who's asking for
higher pay raises? And don't getme wrong, educators are some of the
poorest paid people on planet Earth.They should be some of the highest,
but they should also have the performancethat goes with that, and they don't.
(14:03):
So what have we done to ourculture to egg this on? You
know, I've seen a couple peoplethat have come up. As I've been
going through this season of my life, I've spent a lot more time at
job fairs and seen people that Iactually would hope would never make it into
(14:26):
the teaching world attempting to get there. And while I understand the passion to
try to do something that seems toleave a mark to be one of those
cool teachers like I had, howmany of these idiots that are getting into
that program have no business being ateacher, And how many of them are
(14:46):
going to stick out through that justto punch the clock and kick the can
down the road, or worse yet, how many of them are motivated by
other quote unquote altruistic intentions where they'regoing to spread those things we don't want
(15:07):
in school. You know, notonly are violent, is violence very prevalence
in public schools, whether it's fromtheir peers or the teachers, kids are
preyed upon other ways. How manytimes have you heard about third teachers they're
hitting on and trying to mess aroundwith kids or have done that. Yet
(15:31):
the public education system still exists andis still funded very heavily by the American
people. Better question is why hasn'tthe market answered you know, why after
COVID have we not seen pod learningand better academies come out of this.
(15:54):
We have seen it to some degree, but shouldn't we see it a lot
more? I don't know. Theseare weird thoughts that I have when I'm
thinking about culture and doing my culturepodcast. You know, normally it's books
and movies I was thinking about.But this conversation stuck with me with this
person because rather than say, well, that's cool, you work for a
(16:15):
K twelve, it was one ofthe first people I've ever met that was
chastising me for it. You know, I learned a lot of things working
for K twelves. I work onenterprise systems, the likes of which a
lot of people would never know aboutor could ever know about. I owe
a lot to public K twelve educationmy personal in my personal life and my
(16:41):
professional life. So for me badmouthing them in this way and asking why
we're funding them, still, whyam I doing that? It's because it's
time. It's time the American peoplethat all of us look at our culture
and look what's going on in theworld and understand where some of this is
coming from, and it needs tobe addressed. Like, share, subscribe,
(17:07):
Most importantly, be great,
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