Hey guys, welcome to relatable happy Tuesday this episode is brought to you by our friends at good ranchers go to good ranchers.com slash alley. That's good ranchers.com slash alley.

All right today we are talking to Pete Hedge set he has a Fox news host and he recently wrote a book about American education and the history of American education that we are talking about today and it really is an awesome conversation.

I mean the man knows his stuff you're going to learn some things I think about the American education system what we are facing what we have been facing for a very long time that you probably didn't know how we got here to public education being the mess that it is in the United States and then also he is going to talk to us about how we can strategically get out of it. So I'm so excited for you to hear this now before we get into this conversation let me tell you about our first sponsor for the day and that is

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Thank you so much for joining me there's a million things I could ask you to thank you all about yes but I specifically want to talk to you first and foremost about your book battle for the American mine a brooding a century of miseducation so according to your book there is a 16 hour war being waged against the American child's mind is that correct what do you mean by that yeah we that was the original title of the book the 16,000 hour war that's the amount of time.

And so many of the kids are in public education or any in a K through 12 education from from K through 12 and as parents for so long we've defaulted to what's easy what's convenient what's local of what we're used to and over time and we tell the whole story in the book that war has been waged without most parents knowing the the extent to which the left has

the lunacy of college right we have for quite some time and we missed the fact that progressives have been focusing intentionally for over 100 years on shaping the affections of our youngest kids down to elementary school because they knew changing their world view then was far more powerful to social change than trying to deprogram them in college.

So this 16,000 hour war is something we've mostly not been fighting but the right has why do you think it took us so long to recognize that we've been talking about the craziness as you said of what's going on in the university system but as you mentioned in your book they're typically showing up to college already at least a little bit

indoctrinated or at least vulnerable to the bad ideas that they are hearing from their professors thanks to the 16 hour war so why is it taken really you know this long for us to realize what's going on.

I think there's a lot of nostalgia about public school. I went to public school my dad was a public school teacher everybody wants to believe that if it was good enough for me it's good enough for my kids I'll give them the values they need over the dinner table or at church on Sunday or Wednesday night and okay there's a little bit of bias but we can

move past it I want them to be on a sports team and be go to prom and have all the big experiences and there's a lot of pride in public education system at least there has been until now and so it's my mom protested in the 80s and 90s at the PTA in the school board in my school in a very conservative you know suburban town in Minnesota middle class but it was tinkering at the margins it wasn't quite revealing itself yet and I think in the first chapter we call the last two and a half years the COVID-19

was the COVID-19 moment that moment when this classroom came into our homes we were looking over the shoulders of our kids and we saw common core math and we saw critical race theory mass diversity equity inclusion we saw gender theory and gender pronouns and parents said whoa how do we get here and we actually started this book before the COVID-19

started so we were changing it and editing it real time as we were learning even more alongside parents and I what we discovered through our research is that

Ernest Hemingway once wrote of bankruptcy it happens gradually until it happens quickly right is this was not something that happened because of Obama or something happened just because of the unions or the 60s this was an intentional targeting and school has always been such a coherent aspect of how we as Americans identify

themselves that if we don't like the school we move to a better zip code or a a place that's just put in a new gym where they've got a lot of STEM courses or AP courses and we assume OK our kid will be just fine and this COVID-19

moment I think has broken that paradigm the unions have exposed themselves for who they are so we have this new opportunity to look under the hood question is what are

the parents are out there for the parents we obviously have a very distinct point of view in the book but first the first step to recovery is understanding the depth of your problem and I was in the same boat is everybody else five years ago with kids in public school thinking they'll be OK

I'm learning in real time to tell us the role that you believe the teachers unions have played in this that's something we've talked about on the show a lot but tell us your perspective

I would argue there's there's not a more powerful institution in American politics certainly in the American classroom than the NEA and AFT and when you when you dig into these unions they actually used to be

professional teachers associations that pass that were conservative by inclination that passed out scripture and Bible verses and classical works to young kids to learn how to read grammar and understand different concepts they were effectively co-opted by the unionization movement the progressive movement and the hard core government union movement in the early 50s and 60s and co-worst into becoming public teacher unions at which point they married up with the progressives who were at the beginning of the year.

One of the names you'll meet in this book is John Dewey a lot of people know him as the father of a modern American progressive schools he was also the founder of the AFT and he was also the honorary lifetime president of the NEA so from the beginning it's been atheists progressives charting the course of the NEA married up with public unions empowered by politicians and then they codified their power the moment of the day.

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