May 7, 2025 • 24 mins
In this episode, Karol interviews Jason Bedrick, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation focusing on education policy. They discuss Bedrick's journey into education policy, the evolution of school choice in America, the importance of classical education, and the cultural roots that influence education. Bedrick emphasizes the need for an affirmative vision in education and the importance of making consistent sacrifices to improve personal and societal outcomes. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on
Ihear Radio. My guest today is Jason Bedriick. Jason is
a research fellow at Heritage where he focuses on education issues. Hi, Jason,
so nice to have you.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
On, Carol. It's a pleasure to be on.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
So how did a nice Jewish boy like you get
mixed up with education policy at Heritage? Where did you
get your start?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
That's a great question. It really, I would say started
in college. I went to a business school because, like
a nice Jewish boy, the plan was to take over
the family business, which was a small furniture store in
New Hampshire. But a few weeks into my freshman year
was nine to eleven, and all of a sudden I
(00:46):
became much more interested in public policy than furniture or
or business, and at first international policy, but then eventually
domestic policy with a real focus on education. I always
loved school, loved education. I guess I did a paper
(01:09):
in my junior year on school choice. I could pick
any issue I wanted, and that was the issue, any
any issue I wanted, but it had to be like
really specific, couldn't be general. So I was like, we
should have a school choice in New Hampshire, and at
the time, there was a bill that was going through
the New Hampshire State Legislature for school choice and it
(01:29):
failed by a vote of one to seventy one to
one seventy two.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
You have that right at the front of your brain
to recall.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Huh, yes, Well, you know it was a turning point
because I was complaining to my professor about it after
class and he said, what are you going to do
about it? And I'm thinking, like, you know, I'm twenty
years old. I'm going to go back to my dorm
room and eat pizza and drink beer and play video games,
like what am I going to What am I going
to do? Education? Right exactly? But that question sort of
(02:02):
echoed in my head what are you going to do
about it? So eventually, you know, I ran for office.
I failed the first time around, but succeeded the second time.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Around, and I ran I not know this, what did
you run for?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I ran for state legislature because it failed by one vote,
and if I had been there instead of somebody else,
you know, it could have passed. When I served, I
was twenty three, my school voucher bill went down in flames.
But a few years later, when I was in grad school,
I had been in the minority party. But when I
(02:38):
was in grad school, the Republicans took back over. And
I got a call from a friend of mine who said,
you know, we're going to do school choice this time around.
So I took my master's thesis, I ripped it up
and I started over, and I did a master's thesis
on a school choice bill, and we went we got
it passed, and it's still still in operation today. That
(02:59):
was in twenty three Wealth.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
It's amazing. What made you care about this? Like I,
you know, you joke about going back to your dorm
room and eating pizza and drinking beer. I mean, I
was a conservative in college. I had beliefs, I had ideals,
But to care so specifically, especially about schooling when I
didn't have kids myself yet, that would have been a
reach for me. How did you come to care about it?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
I saw it really as the foundation of the American dream.
So the American dream is predicated on a quality of opportunity.
And I, you know, I chose my parents well, and
so I chose parents who could afford to live in
a school district that had high quality public schools, good
(03:43):
choice anything exactly, and we didn't have We were I
was in a very small town in New Hampshire, so
small that at the time there was no high school,
and they contracted with a neighboring school district, and then
that fell apart in the contracted with a different one.
The public school wasn't so good, so I ended up
going to a Catholic high school. And my parents could
(04:04):
afford to send me to a Catholic high school and
pay that tuition. But I realized that there are a
lot of families out there who can't afford a home
in a you know, an expensive home in a school
district that has a high quality public school, and can't
afford to pay private school tuition, and that if equality
(04:24):
of opportunity meant anything, it meant that everyone should have
access to a high quality education. And that's where I
fell in love with Milton Friedman's idea that the money
should follow the child. That even if there is a
case that the government should subsidize education, it doesn't follow
that the government should be providing the education because it
(04:46):
tends to be low quality, especially for lower income families,
and so you know, once I became passionately engaged with
that and saw that I could make a difference. One vote.
That's all it took, was one vote in the legislature
that sort of launched my public policy crusade for school choice.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Still impressive that you cared about it at such a
young age. I just I did not care about much
at that age. Did your parents have a problem with
you pursuing this instead of going into the family business
or instead of doing one of like the three professions
that Jews are allowed to do, you know, doctor, lawyer,
It could be accountant, it could be in my day
(05:30):
it was computer programmer. You know that the third profession
sometimes changes, but it's never education policy at Heritage.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, and they were always very supportive of everything that
I wanted to do. So and that wasn't the biggest change.
I mean, I grew up a very secular Jew, and
so at the same time in college, as I'm becoming
more politically aware, I was becoming more religiously engaged and
became observant. So I mean that was like a much
(06:01):
bigger deal for the family than you know, a change
in focus and you know, from business to politics.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, So they were they were like stunned by one thing,
so they didn't have time to like focus on the other. Right,
is your family business still around?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
No, my father Blessed Memory sold it probably close to
twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And so what would you be doing if it wasn't this?
Would you have gone into furniture?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Probably? You know, that was you know, I kind of
grew up in the family business. I spent you know,
summer breaks and winter breaks working as a janitor, working,
you know, in the accounting department, working in the marketing department,
you know, sort of learning all the aspects of the business.
So yeah, I think, you know, but for nine to
(06:49):
eleven and my budding interest in public policy, I would
be running a furniture store in New Hampshire right now, What.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Do you still want to do in education? Public policy?
I mean, the school choice is becoming not everywhere obviously,
there's still a lot of battles to fight, but it's
largely growing in popularity. I think compared to like a
decade or two ago, it's far more prevalent in different states.
What's the next frontier?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, I mean, so when I was in the legislature,
it was still a pretty fringe idea and I mean
it was defeated overwhelmingly and it was a small, little,
you know, low income program. Right now, New Hampshire is
close to passing universal education saving some house where every
single child in the state is going to have access
(07:40):
to an account that you can use for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks,
homeschool curricula, online learning, et cetera. They've already passed the law.
It's just about half the kids in the state are eligible,
and soon everyone will be eligible. So it's amazing, you know,
from let's see when I was in the legislature two
thousand seven, in two thousand and eight till today, you know,
(08:02):
not even twenty years and we've made all that progress.
So it's and that's sort of reflects the state of
play nationwide. Pre COVID, we didn't have any publicly funded
universal school choice programs, meaning that every child is eligible,
and now we have about fifteen and we're probably going
to end the year with eighteen. And if we get Texas,
(08:25):
which is looking like we will, more than half the
kids in the country will be eligible for school choice.
So still a lot of work to do and being
eligible and having you know, a scholarship is not the
same thing, so that there's a lot more work to do,
but the momentum is on our side, and we're, you know,
we're sort of hitting that tipping point. But I've been
(08:47):
working on school choice for two decades now, but I'm
working more on other issues. So this is all sort
of a preface to your question, what's next beyond school choice?
We have? I think school choice is a necessary condition
for solving our education woes, but it's not a sufficient condition.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
You know, I've seen the left essentially take over public
education and politicize it and dumb it down, and conservatives saying, well,
you should have choices is important, but it's not enough, right,
And a lot of school choice organizations, including ones that
I work for, like their main goal is you should
(09:31):
have a choice, and we're agnostic about what you choose.
And I get that, and I think the government should
be agnostic, but we as conservatives should not be agnostic
about what parents are choosing. Right. We have to be
putting forward a positive vision of American education, one that
is grounded in truth, one that you know, is content rich.
(09:56):
Where they are it's not just social studies, they're engaging
in real history, and they have. We are careful about
cultural transmission, transmitting the best that has been thought and
said in the West and especially you know, sort of
the American branch that goes through you know, England. We
(10:18):
have not been doing that in the public school system,
and we absolutely have to if we want to preserve
our way of life.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So how do you do that? Not that school choice
was an easy thing to get through, but this seems harder.
This seems like tougher because you're going to have to
I mean, teachers unions are always going to be an
obstacle for your battles, but this one is like they
to allow curriculum that they don't approve of is going
(10:47):
to be so much tougher than to get state legislatures
to allow parents to have the money file follow the child.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Well, I think the first thing is past school choice.
Second step, there's the classical education movement that has been
taking off, and so many families that I've spoken to
that send their kids to classical schools, but they themselves
didn't have a classical education, which is most of us
in this country say something along the lines of, oh,
(11:16):
this is what I was always looking for. I just
didn't know it existed. So I think that demand for
classical ED, which is only about one percent of kids
right now are going to classical schools, the demand is
much much higher, and the conservative movement should be doing
everything they can to foster the growth of classical ED.
(11:38):
Pull your kids out of public schools, put them whether
it's a private school, at charter school, find a classical school.
Put your kid in those schools. If you're homeschooling, there's
a lot of classical homeschool materials out there. And I
think what we will see is a shift as demand,
As awareness of classical ED grows and demand grows, you're
(11:58):
going to see a shift. I think even public schools
will start to adopt some of the things. You're not
going to have public schools go like full blown possible
for the most part, but I think they will. You know, Okay,
if we see that a bunch of families are leaving,
and why are they leaving, Well because they want that
classical school. Oh well, you know, we have a very
strong history curriculum over here, but we're actually reintroducing, you know,
(12:22):
some foreign language. You know, we're gonna have Latin or Greek,
or we're going to you know, focus more on primary sources.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Math won't be racist anymore, right.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Exactly, you'll see these sorts of things. And we've already
seen this sort of thing in Arizona. I mean I
see public schools that advertise, oh, we do the core
knowledge curriculum here, right, Well, why are they do that?
Well because they lost kids the they lost kids to
the charter school down the street. It's doing corn knowledge
and now they're advertising we do corn knowledge. So I
think that's that's the next step. We It's amazing, Yeah,
(12:55):
it is.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I haven't seen that in public schools at all, Like
where they're competing for the kids like that.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, you'll only spot you'll only have them competing where
there is a competitive market. Right. So you need to
have a robust, universal, fully funded private school choice program,
ideally an ESA. You need to have robust charter schools.
And what we have in Arizona too is intradistrict choice.
(13:21):
And when you add up those three categories of school
choice plus tax credit scholarships, more than half the kids
in Maricopa County, which is the largest county in the country,
actually more than half the kids are going to a school. Besides,
they're assigned district school.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
So it's a very competitive environment.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
That's amazing. I hope that spreads everywhere.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I'm from your lips to God's ears.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
That's right. What do you worry about, Acus?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
That is not supposed to worry. You're supposed to have
complete faith. But one thing that does greatly concern me
is that we are forgetting where we came from as
a culture. Will Herberg, it's a great sociologist, used to be.
I think he was a religion editor at National Review
(14:12):
and talked about cut flower culture. And you know, if
you take a flower and you cut it and you
put it in a vase, it'll still be beautiful for
a while. It'll still have a nice fragrance for a while,
but eventually it's going to wilton. It's going to die
because you have divorced it from its source of nurture,
and so it cannot live long, it cannot thrive. And
(14:36):
we really do have a Judeo Christian source that we
are cutting ourselves off from with this, especially with the
secularization of public schools, most people don't realize all of
the original school The first of all, there were no
public schools at the founding era. Right, all the schools
essentially were religious. Even with the Common Schools movement, you
(15:01):
had de facto non denominational Protestant public schools. And that's
why the Catholics were pushing so much for funding for
their schools. They said, you've got we're paying taxes for
the Protestant schools, meaning our own. Once we secularized, secularized
the public schools, we started to forget our roots, and
(15:24):
our commitments to things like religious liberty, for example, are
not It's not because we have persuaded people in the
abstract to believe in these things. It's because we have
an American story. Right. We were pilgrims who were persecuted
(15:45):
for their religious beliefs, and they were so devout that
they decided to cross an ocean in order to have
religious liberty in the New Land.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
And those Puritans saw themselves in biblical terms, right, they
were the new Israelites. The British king was the Pharaoh,
the Atlantic Ocean was the Red Sea, and they were
crossing it to come to the new Promised land. Right.
It's that story of who we are that is what
(16:16):
preserves our freedoms. And so if we divorce ourselves from that,
if we're no longer drawing from the well springs. And
just look at what our founding fathers, how religious they were,
and most people don't recognize it was such a religious
environment that even irreligious or you know, closet atheists of
(16:38):
Founding fathers like Thomas Paine, I don't know if you
count them as a Founding Father's pretty the most The
second most published book in the Founding era after the Bible,
was Thomas Pain's Common Sense. He explicitly makes the case
against monarchy, starting with First Samuel, chapter eight and Samuel
(16:59):
the prophet yelling at the Israelites, how dare you ask
for a king? Right? Why did he do that? If
he was not himself religious? He recognized that the Biblical
story was the most persuasive case you could make for
freedom and against monarchy. Right, the speeches of Abraham Lincoln.
(17:20):
You can't understand if you don't understand the religious source.
Martin Luther, King Junior, right, His argument for civil rights
and against Jim Crow was a don't forget he's the reverend,
doctor Martin Luther. It was a biblical based case, and
we are losing that. And that's what worries me as
(17:43):
a culture.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
It's so interesting. I feel like you're going to have
a tough time bridging that across Randy Wingarten. But I
believe in you. I think that I think if anyone
could do it, that is a very persuasive case. And
I really think that you are in perfect shape to
deliver that message.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
I'll be right back with Jason Bedrick. But first, do
you know, just like here in the US, Israel has
their own Independence Day in case you missed it this year,
Israel's Independence Day was a few days ago on May first.
But for the people of Israel, freedom is nothing more
than a daily struggle justice survive. There's no real peace,
(18:24):
only terror, no joy, just suffering. The Israeli government recognizes
the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews for ongoing help
to make sure the elderly, the sick, the wounded, soldiers,
and impoverished families don't fall through the cracks. Your gift
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(18:47):
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(19:10):
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Speaker 1 (19:22):
What would you tell your sixteen year old self if
you had to give yourself advice of how things would go?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Yeah, I don't. I don't know how generalizable this is
your audience, But I was thinking of the last.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Question, as you know, is advice generalized. But this is
for you.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
For myself, I would have gone back and told myself
to take the opportunity to spend a year in Israel.
You know, when you're young and you don't have a
wife and kids and a mortgage and a job and
all that, and you have this time. You have a
lot of freedom, and you really need to have that foundation.
(19:58):
To have spent a year you're in Israel, learning and
developing greater fluency with language and connecting with my roots.
I think would have been a tremendous experience. I did
a month, a month and a half. I did, as
you know, almost the summer, but only recognized after what
(20:21):
I was missing by not taking a gap year and
doing that.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Yeah, I think in general kids should be encouraged to
take gap years. A lot of them get to college
I kind of immature and you know, not really knowing
what they're going to do. It doesn't have to be
Israel obviously for a lot of people. But I love
the idea of that year where you go and you
learn something else, something maybe you never thought about before,
(20:45):
and experience new things. All of that is definitely up
my alley. Hope my kids do it. So I love
this conversation. I think you're amazing and you're doing such
incredible work in education. I think a lot of your
ideas are amazing, and I hope they come to fruition,
you know, from your lips et cetera. Leave us here
(21:08):
with your best tip for my listeners on how they
can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yes, so I was. I was discussing this question with
a close friend of mine, Jeremy Light, who's a fan
of yours listen to the podcast, and I was like,
I don't know what sort of advice to give, And
then I was thinking about, well, what's what's the greatest commandment?
And there's this very interesting discussion in the midrash among
the rabbis about you know, what is you know, for
(21:34):
more than two thousand years ago, what's the greatest commandment?
And some said, well, it's you know, smay Isral right,
Hero Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is won.
So like, you know, the great statement of Monotheism, which
is followed by you shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your might. Another rabbi says, no, no, it's via you
shall love your fellow as yourself, right, the great statement
(21:58):
of universe us love and brotherhood. And and then there's
another rabbi who says, no, it's you shall offer a
sheep in the morning, you shall offer a sheep in
the afternoon, right, And then somebody stands out and says
that he's the He's correct, that's that's the one. So
what what is this like? It seems it seems like bizarre, right,
(22:22):
uh uh. You know, we are a great monotheistic faith.
We believe in you know, loving your fellow. These are
like really important commandments. How is it that offering a
sacrifice in the morning in the evening is the great commandment?
And you know, as the late great Rabbi Jonathan Sachs
explains it, the message here really is that you need
(22:45):
every single day to wake up and make that sacrifice
in the morning, and then in the evening, you know,
before you go to sleep, you've got to make that
sacrifice again. If you just have those grand principles, they're abstract,
they're ephemeral, they're sort of floating out there. Oh yeah, God,
I believe in one God. Oh yeah, I love my fellow.
Really show it. Wake up every single day and do
(23:06):
what you have to do, right. And you know, so
that applies to so many aspects of our life. Obviously,
our relationship with God. If we really care, if we
really oh yes, I love God, we'll show it every morning,
wake up and pray before you go to bed, pray
right every single day. You have to put in the work.
And there was a great Hasidic reba that said, you know,
(23:28):
it's not just that you sacrifice for what you love.
You love what you sacrifice for. Right. Your emotions follow
your actions. You are what you do, and so in
your family life, right, you want to improve your family life,
you want to improve your relationship with your wife. Focus
(23:48):
on what you're doing for her, focus on for what
you're doing for your kids. Make those sacrifices and do
them consistently every single day. Make sure you're doing it
over and over again. You really want to learn more, Okay,
put your phone down, put it aside, pick up a
book every single day morning and evening. Spend some time
with that book. And you know, we understand this, Like
(24:11):
when it comes to going to the gym right, you
want to get fit, right, put down the sandwich, go
to the gym, put in the time. But that's you know,
this is the I think the message of the mission
of you have to make these sacrifices and you have
to make them consistently.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
I love that. Thank you so much. Jason. He is
Jason Bedwick. Check him out at Heritage, follow him on
x He's a really wonderful follow Thanks so much for coming.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
On, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marco
which show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on
Ihear Radio. My guest today is Jason Bedriick. Jason is
a research fellow at Heritage where he focuses on education issues. Hi, Jason,
so nice to have you.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
On, Carol. It's a pleasure to be on.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
So how did a nice Jewish boy like you get
mixed up with education policy at Heritage? Where did you
get your start?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
That's a great question. It really, I would say started
in college. I went to a business school because, like
a nice Jewish boy, the plan was to take over
the family business, which was a small furniture store in
New Hampshire. But a few weeks into my freshman year
was nine to eleven, and all of a sudden I
(00:46):
became much more interested in public policy than furniture or
or business, and at first international policy, but then eventually
domestic policy with a real focus on education. I always
loved school, loved education. I guess I did a paper
(01:09):
in my junior year on school choice. I could pick
any issue I wanted, and that was the issue, any
any issue I wanted, but it had to be like
really specific, couldn't be general. So I was like, we
should have a school choice in New Hampshire, and at
the time, there was a bill that was going through
the New Hampshire State Legislature for school choice and it
(01:29):
failed by a vote of one to seventy one to
one seventy two.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
You have that right at the front of your brain
to recall.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Huh, yes, Well, you know it was a turning point
because I was complaining to my professor about it after
class and he said, what are you going to do
about it? And I'm thinking, like, you know, I'm twenty
years old. I'm going to go back to my dorm
room and eat pizza and drink beer and play video games,
like what am I going to What am I going
to do? Education? Right exactly? But that question sort of
(02:02):
echoed in my head what are you going to do
about it? So eventually, you know, I ran for office.
I failed the first time around, but succeeded the second time.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Around, and I ran I not know this, what did
you run for?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I ran for state legislature because it failed by one vote,
and if I had been there instead of somebody else,
you know, it could have passed. When I served, I
was twenty three, my school voucher bill went down in flames.
But a few years later, when I was in grad school,
I had been in the minority party. But when I
(02:38):
was in grad school, the Republicans took back over. And
I got a call from a friend of mine who said,
you know, we're going to do school choice this time around.
So I took my master's thesis, I ripped it up
and I started over, and I did a master's thesis
on a school choice bill, and we went we got
it passed, and it's still still in operation today. That
(02:59):
was in twenty three Wealth.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
It's amazing. What made you care about this? Like I,
you know, you joke about going back to your dorm
room and eating pizza and drinking beer. I mean, I
was a conservative in college. I had beliefs, I had ideals,
But to care so specifically, especially about schooling when I
didn't have kids myself yet, that would have been a
reach for me. How did you come to care about it?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
I saw it really as the foundation of the American dream.
So the American dream is predicated on a quality of opportunity.
And I, you know, I chose my parents well, and
so I chose parents who could afford to live in
a school district that had high quality public schools, good
(03:43):
choice anything exactly, and we didn't have We were I
was in a very small town in New Hampshire, so
small that at the time there was no high school,
and they contracted with a neighboring school district, and then
that fell apart in the contracted with a different one.
The public school wasn't so good, so I ended up
going to a Catholic high school. And my parents could
(04:04):
afford to send me to a Catholic high school and
pay that tuition. But I realized that there are a
lot of families out there who can't afford a home
in a you know, an expensive home in a school
district that has a high quality public school, and can't
afford to pay private school tuition, and that if equality
(04:24):
of opportunity meant anything, it meant that everyone should have
access to a high quality education. And that's where I
fell in love with Milton Friedman's idea that the money
should follow the child. That even if there is a
case that the government should subsidize education, it doesn't follow
that the government should be providing the education because it
(04:46):
tends to be low quality, especially for lower income families,
and so you know, once I became passionately engaged with
that and saw that I could make a difference. One vote.
That's all it took, was one vote in the legislature
that sort of launched my public policy crusade for school choice.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Still impressive that you cared about it at such a
young age. I just I did not care about much
at that age. Did your parents have a problem with
you pursuing this instead of going into the family business
or instead of doing one of like the three professions
that Jews are allowed to do, you know, doctor, lawyer,
It could be accountant, it could be in my day
(05:30):
it was computer programmer. You know that the third profession
sometimes changes, but it's never education policy at Heritage.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, and they were always very supportive of everything that
I wanted to do. So and that wasn't the biggest change.
I mean, I grew up a very secular Jew, and
so at the same time in college, as I'm becoming
more politically aware, I was becoming more religiously engaged and
became observant. So I mean that was like a much
(06:01):
bigger deal for the family than you know, a change
in focus and you know, from business to politics.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, So they were they were like stunned by one thing,
so they didn't have time to like focus on the other. Right,
is your family business still around?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
No, my father Blessed Memory sold it probably close to
twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And so what would you be doing if it wasn't this?
Would you have gone into furniture?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Probably? You know, that was you know, I kind of
grew up in the family business. I spent you know,
summer breaks and winter breaks working as a janitor, working,
you know, in the accounting department, working in the marketing department,
you know, sort of learning all the aspects of the business.
So yeah, I think, you know, but for nine to
(06:49):
eleven and my budding interest in public policy, I would
be running a furniture store in New Hampshire right now, What.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Do you still want to do in education? Public policy?
I mean, the school choice is becoming not everywhere obviously,
there's still a lot of battles to fight, but it's
largely growing in popularity. I think compared to like a
decade or two ago, it's far more prevalent in different states.
What's the next frontier?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, I mean, so when I was in the legislature,
it was still a pretty fringe idea and I mean
it was defeated overwhelmingly and it was a small, little,
you know, low income program. Right now, New Hampshire is
close to passing universal education saving some house where every
single child in the state is going to have access
(07:40):
to an account that you can use for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks,
homeschool curricula, online learning, et cetera. They've already passed the law.
It's just about half the kids in the state are eligible,
and soon everyone will be eligible. So it's amazing, you know,
from let's see when I was in the legislature two
thousand seven, in two thousand and eight till today, you know,
(08:02):
not even twenty years and we've made all that progress.
So it's and that's sort of reflects the state of
play nationwide. Pre COVID, we didn't have any publicly funded
universal school choice programs, meaning that every child is eligible,
and now we have about fifteen and we're probably going
to end the year with eighteen. And if we get Texas,
(08:25):
which is looking like we will, more than half the
kids in the country will be eligible for school choice.
So still a lot of work to do and being
eligible and having you know, a scholarship is not the
same thing, so that there's a lot more work to do,
but the momentum is on our side, and we're, you know,
we're sort of hitting that tipping point. But I've been
(08:47):
working on school choice for two decades now, but I'm
working more on other issues. So this is all sort
of a preface to your question, what's next beyond school choice?
We have? I think school choice is a necessary condition
for solving our education woes, but it's not a sufficient condition.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
You know, I've seen the left essentially take over public
education and politicize it and dumb it down, and conservatives saying, well,
you should have choices is important, but it's not enough, right,
And a lot of school choice organizations, including ones that
I work for, like their main goal is you should
(09:31):
have a choice, and we're agnostic about what you choose.
And I get that, and I think the government should
be agnostic, but we as conservatives should not be agnostic
about what parents are choosing. Right. We have to be
putting forward a positive vision of American education, one that
is grounded in truth, one that you know, is content rich.
(09:56):
Where they are it's not just social studies, they're engaging
in real history, and they have. We are careful about
cultural transmission, transmitting the best that has been thought and
said in the West and especially you know, sort of
the American branch that goes through you know, England. We
(10:18):
have not been doing that in the public school system,
and we absolutely have to if we want to preserve
our way of life.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So how do you do that? Not that school choice
was an easy thing to get through, but this seems harder.
This seems like tougher because you're going to have to
I mean, teachers unions are always going to be an
obstacle for your battles, but this one is like they
to allow curriculum that they don't approve of is going
(10:47):
to be so much tougher than to get state legislatures
to allow parents to have the money file follow the child.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Well, I think the first thing is past school choice.
Second step, there's the classical education movement that has been
taking off, and so many families that I've spoken to
that send their kids to classical schools, but they themselves
didn't have a classical education, which is most of us
in this country say something along the lines of, oh,
(11:16):
this is what I was always looking for. I just
didn't know it existed. So I think that demand for
classical ED, which is only about one percent of kids
right now are going to classical schools, the demand is
much much higher, and the conservative movement should be doing
everything they can to foster the growth of classical ED.
(11:38):
Pull your kids out of public schools, put them whether
it's a private school, at charter school, find a classical school.
Put your kid in those schools. If you're homeschooling, there's
a lot of classical homeschool materials out there. And I
think what we will see is a shift as demand,
As awareness of classical ED grows and demand grows, you're
(11:58):
going to see a shift. I think even public schools
will start to adopt some of the things. You're not
going to have public schools go like full blown possible
for the most part, but I think they will. You know, Okay,
if we see that a bunch of families are leaving,
and why are they leaving, Well because they want that
classical school. Oh well, you know, we have a very
strong history curriculum over here, but we're actually reintroducing, you know,
(12:22):
some foreign language. You know, we're gonna have Latin or Greek,
or we're going to you know, focus more on primary sources.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Math won't be racist anymore, right.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Exactly, you'll see these sorts of things. And we've already
seen this sort of thing in Arizona. I mean I
see public schools that advertise, oh, we do the core
knowledge curriculum here, right, Well, why are they do that?
Well because they lost kids the they lost kids to
the charter school down the street. It's doing corn knowledge
and now they're advertising we do corn knowledge. So I
think that's that's the next step. We It's amazing, Yeah,
(12:55):
it is.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I haven't seen that in public schools at all, Like
where they're competing for the kids like that.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, you'll only spot you'll only have them competing where
there is a competitive market. Right. So you need to
have a robust, universal, fully funded private school choice program,
ideally an ESA. You need to have robust charter schools.
And what we have in Arizona too is intradistrict choice.
(13:21):
And when you add up those three categories of school
choice plus tax credit scholarships, more than half the kids
in Maricopa County, which is the largest county in the country,
actually more than half the kids are going to a school. Besides,
they're assigned district school.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
So it's a very competitive environment.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
That's amazing. I hope that spreads everywhere.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I'm from your lips to God's ears.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
That's right. What do you worry about, Acus?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
That is not supposed to worry. You're supposed to have
complete faith. But one thing that does greatly concern me
is that we are forgetting where we came from as
a culture. Will Herberg, it's a great sociologist, used to be.
I think he was a religion editor at National Review
(14:12):
and talked about cut flower culture. And you know, if
you take a flower and you cut it and you
put it in a vase, it'll still be beautiful for
a while. It'll still have a nice fragrance for a while,
but eventually it's going to wilton. It's going to die
because you have divorced it from its source of nurture,
and so it cannot live long, it cannot thrive. And
(14:36):
we really do have a Judeo Christian source that we
are cutting ourselves off from with this, especially with the
secularization of public schools, most people don't realize all of
the original school The first of all, there were no
public schools at the founding era. Right, all the schools
essentially were religious. Even with the Common Schools movement, you
(15:01):
had de facto non denominational Protestant public schools. And that's
why the Catholics were pushing so much for funding for
their schools. They said, you've got we're paying taxes for
the Protestant schools, meaning our own. Once we secularized, secularized
the public schools, we started to forget our roots, and
(15:24):
our commitments to things like religious liberty, for example, are
not It's not because we have persuaded people in the
abstract to believe in these things. It's because we have
an American story. Right. We were pilgrims who were persecuted
(15:45):
for their religious beliefs, and they were so devout that
they decided to cross an ocean in order to have
religious liberty in the New Land.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
And those Puritans saw themselves in biblical terms, right, they
were the new Israelites. The British king was the Pharaoh,
the Atlantic Ocean was the Red Sea, and they were
crossing it to come to the new Promised land. Right.
It's that story of who we are that is what
(16:16):
preserves our freedoms. And so if we divorce ourselves from that,
if we're no longer drawing from the well springs. And
just look at what our founding fathers, how religious they were,
and most people don't recognize it was such a religious
environment that even irreligious or you know, closet atheists of
(16:38):
Founding fathers like Thomas Paine, I don't know if you
count them as a Founding Father's pretty the most The
second most published book in the Founding era after the Bible,
was Thomas Pain's Common Sense. He explicitly makes the case
against monarchy, starting with First Samuel, chapter eight and Samuel
(16:59):
the prophet yelling at the Israelites, how dare you ask
for a king? Right? Why did he do that? If
he was not himself religious? He recognized that the Biblical
story was the most persuasive case you could make for
freedom and against monarchy. Right, the speeches of Abraham Lincoln.
(17:20):
You can't understand if you don't understand the religious source.
Martin Luther, King Junior, right, His argument for civil rights
and against Jim Crow was a don't forget he's the reverend,
doctor Martin Luther. It was a biblical based case, and
we are losing that. And that's what worries me as
(17:43):
a culture.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
It's so interesting. I feel like you're going to have
a tough time bridging that across Randy Wingarten. But I
believe in you. I think that I think if anyone
could do it, that is a very persuasive case. And
I really think that you are in perfect shape to
deliver that message.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
I'll be right back with Jason Bedrick. But first, do
you know, just like here in the US, Israel has
their own Independence Day in case you missed it this year,
Israel's Independence Day was a few days ago on May first.
But for the people of Israel, freedom is nothing more
than a daily struggle justice survive. There's no real peace,
(18:24):
only terror, no joy, just suffering. The Israeli government recognizes
the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews for ongoing help
to make sure the elderly, the sick, the wounded, soldiers,
and impoverished families don't fall through the cracks. Your gift
to the Fellowship today will provide life saving aid, medicine,
(18:47):
hearty meals, safety and comfort. I believe that when we
bless the people of Israel, we unlock God's blessing in
our lives as well. Show your support for Israel's independence
by making a life say even gift today, Paul to
make your gift at eight eight eight for eight eight
if CJ. That's eight eight eight for eight eight four
(19:10):
three two five, or go online at IFCJ dot org.
That's IFCJ dot org.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
What would you tell your sixteen year old self if
you had to give yourself advice of how things would go?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Yeah, I don't. I don't know how generalizable this is
your audience, But I was thinking of the last.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Question, as you know, is advice generalized. But this is
for you.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
For myself, I would have gone back and told myself
to take the opportunity to spend a year in Israel.
You know, when you're young and you don't have a
wife and kids and a mortgage and a job and
all that, and you have this time. You have a
lot of freedom, and you really need to have that foundation.
(19:58):
To have spent a year you're in Israel, learning and
developing greater fluency with language and connecting with my roots.
I think would have been a tremendous experience. I did
a month, a month and a half. I did, as
you know, almost the summer, but only recognized after what
(20:21):
I was missing by not taking a gap year and
doing that.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Yeah, I think in general kids should be encouraged to
take gap years. A lot of them get to college
I kind of immature and you know, not really knowing
what they're going to do. It doesn't have to be
Israel obviously for a lot of people. But I love
the idea of that year where you go and you
learn something else, something maybe you never thought about before,
(20:45):
and experience new things. All of that is definitely up
my alley. Hope my kids do it. So I love
this conversation. I think you're amazing and you're doing such
incredible work in education. I think a lot of your
ideas are amazing, and I hope they come to fruition,
you know, from your lips et cetera. Leave us here
(21:08):
with your best tip for my listeners on how they
can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yes, so I was. I was discussing this question with
a close friend of mine, Jeremy Light, who's a fan
of yours listen to the podcast, and I was like,
I don't know what sort of advice to give, And
then I was thinking about, well, what's what's the greatest commandment?
And there's this very interesting discussion in the midrash among
the rabbis about you know, what is you know, for
(21:34):
more than two thousand years ago, what's the greatest commandment?
And some said, well, it's you know, smay Isral right,
Hero Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is won.
So like, you know, the great statement of Monotheism, which
is followed by you shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your might. Another rabbi says, no, no, it's via you
shall love your fellow as yourself, right, the great statement
(21:58):
of universe us love and brotherhood. And and then there's
another rabbi who says, no, it's you shall offer a
sheep in the morning, you shall offer a sheep in
the afternoon, right, And then somebody stands out and says
that he's the He's correct, that's that's the one. So
what what is this like? It seems it seems like bizarre, right,
(22:22):
uh uh. You know, we are a great monotheistic faith.
We believe in you know, loving your fellow. These are
like really important commandments. How is it that offering a
sacrifice in the morning in the evening is the great commandment?
And you know, as the late great Rabbi Jonathan Sachs
explains it, the message here really is that you need
(22:45):
every single day to wake up and make that sacrifice
in the morning, and then in the evening, you know,
before you go to sleep, you've got to make that
sacrifice again. If you just have those grand principles, they're abstract,
they're ephemeral, they're sort of floating out there. Oh yeah, God,
I believe in one God. Oh yeah, I love my fellow.
Really show it. Wake up every single day and do
(23:06):
what you have to do, right. And you know, so
that applies to so many aspects of our life. Obviously,
our relationship with God. If we really care, if we
really oh yes, I love God, we'll show it every morning,
wake up and pray before you go to bed, pray
right every single day. You have to put in the work.
And there was a great Hasidic reba that said, you know,
(23:28):
it's not just that you sacrifice for what you love.
You love what you sacrifice for. Right. Your emotions follow
your actions. You are what you do, and so in
your family life, right, you want to improve your family life,
you want to improve your relationship with your wife. Focus
(23:48):
on what you're doing for her, focus on for what
you're doing for your kids. Make those sacrifices and do
them consistently every single day. Make sure you're doing it
over and over again. You really want to learn more, Okay,
put your phone down, put it aside, pick up a
book every single day morning and evening. Spend some time
with that book. And you know, we understand this, Like
(24:11):
when it comes to going to the gym right, you
want to get fit, right, put down the sandwich, go
to the gym, put in the time. But that's you know,
this is the I think the message of the mission
of you have to make these sacrifices and you have
to make them consistently.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
I love that. Thank you so much. Jason. He is
Jason Bedwick. Check him out at Heritage, follow him on
x He's a really wonderful follow Thanks so much for coming.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
On, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marco
which show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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