Welcome to Episode 12 of the Olasky interview. I'm your host, Jill Nelson. Today we'll hear Marvin's

2011 interview with conservative author and commentator William Bennett. Bennett has a long and

impressive resume. He served as Secretary of Education during the

Reagan administration. He also worked on drug control policy under President George H.W. Bush.

He writes extensively about issues involving culture, education, and political history.

He published his best-known work, The Book of Virtues, in 1993. And in 2004, Bennett began

hosting his popular radio show Morning in America. He retired from that in 2016, but launched a podcast,

the Bill Bennett show, the next year. Marvin Alasky joins us now to set up this interview with

Bill Bennett. Hi, Marvin.

Hey, Jill.

You did this interview in 2011, so that was more than two presidential cycles ago.

But many of the education-related things you talked about are still pretty relevant today.

Calls to abolish the education department and the push for school choice are two examples.

What about this conversation with Bill Bennett still resonates with you?

One thing that resonates is how hard it's been to make any educational progress,

as long as we keep on making the same mistakes over and over again.

So that resonates with me.

I think we're just not making progress in that area.

There's a basic problem in our public school system that we haven't dealt with. And much as

charter schools have often made some improvements, they don't deal with the basic problem, namely

when you exile God from the premises,

then kids are gonna turn out in a way different

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