Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 07-07-26_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

07-07-26_TUESDAY_7AM

This hour of the Bill Myers Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausur drilling.com. Join the conversation 7705633 on Pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday. You got a pebble. Go ahead and let me know about that, all right? Rob Schloffers are going to join me. We're going to talk about why Oregon K through 12 seems to be failing so dramatically. What could be done about this?

And no, it's not about money. I know that the teachers unions will usually try to, God, you know, if you were financially supported, we'd be okay. No, no, you're still going down the woke agenda nonsense. That's still, you know, the mother's milk of what's coming out of the teachers' colleges, unfortunately. I wish that weren't the case. I would just love to be able to just come on and say everything's fine there. But nope, nope, it's not.

You know, last hour I'd mentioned that in my second hometown, like I said, I was born in New Kensington, which was outside of Pittsburgh. but I had, I did really my formative years were really Mylan, Ohio. Mylan, Ohio, birthplace of Thomas Edison, town of about 2000, just a village, just a village, really. Kind of like a big gold hill with a picket, white picket fences, kind of like a Norman Rockwell kind of place. Wonderful, wonderful town, really was. But Kelly's Island, which was north of Sandusky, which was about 10 miles away from where I was growing up there, in the middle of Lake Erie just got rained on last night, 17 inches.

And so they're trying to try to get it all cleaned up there right now. There's only about 2,300 people that live there now. And the reason why I bring up Kelly's Island, why it just, it was like an aspirin flashback to my childhood. Because the reason I know anything about Kelly's Island is that that's where we used to have band camp in high school, Edison High School. And that was when, you know, you were either, In my school, my graduating class of 1979 was only, I think, like maybe 170 people, maybe. And that was like the peak.

That was the peak of the baby boomer years coming through. 170, you graduated there, maybe 165, somewhere like that. And you were either a football player or you were in band. Well, you know, me, I'm not a sports guy. So I was in band and I learned to play a lot of instruments, taught myself, you know, to do that. And so high school band was my life in those days. It really was. And so every summer, right about this time, really, we would all get on the ferry, leave Sandesky with our instruments.

And we went over to the 4-H camp on Kelly's Island. Kelly's Island is about four square miles, very small island, about 10 miles out into Lake Erie. It's a beautiful camp, beautiful old 4-H camp. And then we would march for a week and do all sorts of, we go through our routines, learn to play the songs. doing our dancing routines and marching and getting it all down. And in marching band, I was playing Tim Toms, the triple drums, you know, at that time. And the part that would, though, that struck me, though, is that how different it was. This was about 50 years ago when I went.

And when you were a freshman, as I was in 1975, you had to go through initiation. This was a tradition that the bands had had forever. And I was thinking, gosh, there's no way the school system would probably be sued out of existence for doing it today. But what would happen is that if you were a freshman, the senior class that year, it would be like 30, 35 senior class members in the marching band, they'd get to indoctrinate you. We're not indoctrinate you, but initiate you. It was hazing. Essentially, they would haze you.

they would have that you would get tarred and feathered they would put caro syrup on you on your body and then they'd sprinkle oatmeal on you and then you'd march around that day and you know it was all kind of in fun you know it wasn't serious

but I look back at that and I think oh my gosh I wonder if they were just sued out of out of existence but they used to do things like that taring and feathering my friend Bob Warbant who I told you He had passed away last year.

He's the one that was egging me on because I knew how to play a few instruments at that time. I only do keyboards these days. But back then, yeah, I learned drums and saxophone and piano. I did all sorts of things, right? And he says, go ahead and tell the seniors that you can play everything. I said, I don't want to do that. I just get in trouble. Oh, do it.

So I was being egged on by, you know, you go do that, Bill. And so I went there and introduced myself and I said, yeah, I play practically everything here. Ooh, I was under selection for extra special treatment in the initiation process. I had to compose songs every day praising the senior class of Edison High School and having to do all that. And I survived it just fine. You know, yeah, I guess today it was hazing. It would be called hazing. Today, I guess it was cruel by today's standards.

But I have to tell you, in some ways, going through those. those hazing rituals, it really brought us together. Our marching band was a really tight unit and award-winning. And we would just do anything for that band director. It was kind of like of military precision, but yet we were just having the time of our lives, really, at that point. And I was just curious that if you ever had to go through stuff like that and what your experience was, I mean, our stuff was kind of innocent,

but yeah, it was humiliating. Yeah, it's humiliating to walk around with half a cantaloupe stuck on your head like Kathy Bost did, one of my classmates one year, because she had to leave early. And so, well, we got to initiate her and give her own, her end hazing. Did you have any of that back in your days? Did anything like that happened or was this just unique? Maybe a football team, do you ever have hazing? Maybe one too far. I don't know, but I remember it was kind of innocent fun, but I don't know if our parents would have approved, if my mother would have approved if she knew about that.

I don't know if we told her or not. Maybe it was afterwards, but both Mike and I were, my brother Mike and I, were in Marching Band. And yep, we knew. That's what happened. You got hazed. The seniors got to abuse the freshmen, and then the next year's seniors got to abuse them, and eventually the freshman got to abuse the seniors on your own.

So there we go. That's the way it went. 770-M-E-D. So did you get any hazing in school? Tell me your story if he had one. Was it similar to mine or maybe it got serious? other than that, whatever else is on your mind. It is pebble in your shoe Tuesday.

Hi, good morning. KMED, who's this? This is Minor Day. Dave, how you doing, buddy? What's up? Well, I'll tell you the story of my hazing, but I wanted to get my pet bees out first. Okay.

I've been watching on YouTube all these AI-generated videos on the climate dam on how much fish spools are going up, and they got beautiful. Doug fir trees drawn along the river that don't exist. Those trees aren't there. It's hard clay that's next to those river banks. Well, you might find other deciduous trees like Willow or whatever, but you're not going to find Doug Byrd next to the river.

Well, the envirals have to put out a good story after blowing out the infrastructure that kept the river cool. Well, I didn't show a long line of salmon with spooling Paul. of them that's just absolutely looking at it, you can tell it's fake. Oh, man, that is so sad. So much of the internet right now, Dave, is such AI slop. It gets disappointing

sometime. You have to be cynical about everything you'll watch these days. So, all right, well, thanks for letting me know. I'll look for the clam with fake stuff, all right? Now then, your Pee or your... I want to just say... What's your hazing? The football team. I was on the football team, and, no,

I didn't have any talent. I just got a big heart. You love to play it. What did they do to you? Did they haze you? And how did it work? They did what they call a word lady. You stick your head in the toilet.

But it took 20 of them to do it. And I got so much respect on that. Yeah. Oh, okay. Now, did they dunk you underneath, or was it just like they stuck your head in the toilet? because I do remember the swirlies. I never had that done, but I have heard of people that had to endure it.

Okay, I'm sorry, Dave, I lost you on the phone there, but get back to me, okay? So swirlies, so he got a swirley as part of his football indoctrination or initiation at that time. Hi, KM.D., good morning. Who's this? Morning, Bill. This is Phil, Roe River. Phil, what's going on? What's on your mind today? It's people in your shoe Tuesday. Well, it's just the indoctrination or hazing thing. I did 20 years in the Navy, and when you cross the line of the equator, and you call it a shellback, and you would get hit with like two-foot-long pieces of fire hose.

You had to crawl through two-week-old wet garbage trash from the gallery. You had to, and we called it the baby, and they would rub grease from the engineering department all over this big fat guy's belly, and they'd rub your nose in it. It was pretty brutal, and you had to walk around on your, crawl around on your hands and knees the entire day on this rough asphalt surface on the Navy chips. It was, it's definitely brutal. What do you think it says about us when we get involved in stuff like that? Now, like I said, the stuff I was dealing with when high school band was pretty tame by comparison to what, you know, to what you're describing. But what is it about that initiation? Is it, is it almost like going back to that tribal lore when you had to, you know, survive some challenges to be a member of the tribe?

What do you think drives that? I've always wondered. Absolutely, because after the carnage, about as nicely as I can put it, there'd be a big ceremony, and the captain and all the officers would give you your shellback card, and to this day I still carry it in my wallet. Do you really?

Even today? Yeah. Well, yeah, that was 50 years ago. but it really brought the crew together that, you know, you became a tight-knit group, like you said, with your band. Yeah. And we were just like, you know, we operated as a unit. I don't know what it is about those kind of hazing incidents, and I know that that is completely off guard today. You know, or you can't do that.

It's off the table these days. I don't think anybody could get away with this. You'd probably be sued out of existence if you did it now, wouldn't you? Well, absolutely. You know, they took the hazing and indoctrination. Some people have taken it a bit too far and ruined it for everybody else. And that's probably what has happened over the ages. Yeah.

I guess that as life has really gotten safer and safer and safer, maybe the initiation process like that with hazing and all the rest of it was bringing back some of that risk somehow. That I think that, especially type A personalities, you need to feel like, hey, you know, I did it. I crossed to that line. I made it. I made it through the battle. That sort of thing.

I think it was part of the thing that probably got rid of the hazing and stuff is, you know, in the frats and, you know, the fraternity parties in college. I think that's where the line got crossed many, many times. And it just became too much. Yeah, especially when you have people dying through like drinking rituals, you know, that kind of thing. Big, exactly. Yeah, drink themselves to death and stuff. We, yeah, no one's advocating for that. But, yeah, having, having Cairo syrup thrown on me and, uh, and oatmeal, you know,

sprinkled, like it's not the worst. I've gone through worse since that time, you know? You, you look back at that incident right there and you just laugh. That is funny. But I'll tell you, though, when you're a freshman, it's kind of serious, right? Because you're being held out there in front of everyone. You're being, you're being singled out. It's like you're already nervous because you don't know anything as a freshman.

Exactly. Great story. Thanks for sharing that, Phil. 770KMED. Good morning. Hi, this is Bill. Who's this? Hey, Bill, it's Lucretia. Morning, Lucretia. What's on your mind today? It's Pebble in your shoot Tuesday. What's going on? Boy, you got me going yesterday with Bart Allen and all, and I was wondering, you know, a little more about that 97% consensus, you know, figure on global warming. I found out this guy, John Cook, was a former cartoonist. And, and where. developer. He had no scientific background whatsoever. He got a degree in cognitive science in

2016, but they came out with his whole climate change thing. Yeah, and who is this again? I don't know him, whereas the name slips me for some reason. Yeah, John Cook. He created the website skeptical science. He's the one that put together citizen scientists. Now, citizen scientists. These are people that just went to his website where he put together some numbers of humans are causing global warming. Now, he's affiliated with these three big universities over in Australia is not part of the – you remember the Club of Rome in 1991? Remember that I read that article of all the people said, we've got to be industrialists. We can never allow all these people to have, you know, so much. We've got to break down America. Yeah, I got to do it.

That was 91. So he's where he came from, who knows, but he put together citizens and scientists. These are people with not even a science degree, not even a college degree. They're just people that analyze this site. He put up 12,000 articles. And only about 3% of them even stated that humans had anything to do with it. It's really interesting to read this of the 12,000 articles. So only 3% thought humans did have to do with the change of climate?

Well, there were the 4,000 papers that did express extant, not necessarily that humans were causing it. That was 97%. It was just the number of papers that did have a stance, but they didn't say humans were causing it because CO2. They've incited that once again the aviation was causing two-thirds of the warming, two-thirds of the warming by humans. Well, that would be, that's an interesting take, and that would actually make some sense because you are talking about the generation of cloud cover. Right. Yeah, yeah, and also putting more water vapor into the air, too. And then these stupid little pictures that say, oh, well, because.

of this, this and this, they're saying, oh, there's more, oh, gosh, I'm sorry, there's so much here that they, it's just amazing to look at. And they're citizen scientists. These are, you know how even the- Okay, well, now, if you can make it kind of draw, or tie it into a bow, though, what is, is there a problem with the citizen scientists in general or not, in your view? Well, number one, they're not even scientists. They're just people that went to the site and said, hey, this article does say something about humans may be a factor. But the one thing I want to be careful about is that does this mean, though, that just because we're citizens and not scientists, can we not engage in the scientific method, though?

I want to get to the point where I want to be very careful that we don't always depend on, while someone has the credential, hence, it doesn't matter what I'm able to observe. It doesn't matter what I observe or see. I have to listen to the, well, you know, pay attention and listen to the science. You've got to listen to what the government says, otherwise you're a conspiracy theorist. Right. So I want to be careful about that. So, okay, so we can knock these skeptical scientists, but is it necessarily a bad thing for people to think scientifically, though? No, it's just that when you understand how they put it together, this 97%, it's totally BS, because it's just the only thing that, yes, humans could.

But the fossil fuel is causing more carbon dioxide in the air, but it's really more of the coal in the air and on the trees. And it makes the point that spring is coming sooner. I found that we kept on having late winter and it would warm, but then it would get cold again, unlike in the past. But usually around February, it starts warming up and it stays warming up. It doesn't get real cold again and all. But it's really interesting the stupid little simple pictures because he got a degree in cognitive science, which is basically about learning how humans think and has nothing to do with. He has no, in any knowledge of atmospheric physics.

Right. So, well, maybe when he has a degree in cognitive science, maybe this guy is very good, Ben, at manipulating other people's. Exactly. Yeah, and that's kind of what I was getting at. A point well taken, and thanks for making it, Lucretia. How interesting. The skeptical science, a scientist.

Hi, KMEDE, good morning. You get, you get, wrap this segment. Who's this? Morning. Hello? Good morning. Hi. This is Frankie from Eagle Point.

Hey, Frankie, good head of you on. What's on your mind? Yeah, I just wanted to, uh, mentioned that in high school, I graduated No-6, and the Hainty they did when freshmen, when they came in, they just, they would wrap them up and they would take a permanent marker and write a capital F on their forehead. I thought that was pretty funny. That's what we went through. Out of curiosity, did people get sued out of existence for doing that now? And do you have to, you know, do the seniors now have to go to the freshmen and carry them on their

shoulders and talk about what wonderful people they are and being, you know, mild and inclusive and, you know, not domineering at all. Who knows? Who knows? But I know they don't do that anymore. They soften quite a bit. Okay. Yeah.

I guess maybe society in general has softened a bit. Appreciate the call. Thanks for checking it from EP. 732 at KMED. We're going to be talking about education, though, and K-12 schools from a different angle. Why are they having such difficulty actually producing? A reasonably competent student, and yeah, the numbers are looking rough. We're going to have Rob Schlaffer on, and he's going to be doing a seminar next month at the Medford Library.

I know this is kind of like a month and a half early on it, but let's shed a little love on it coming up. You know the moment. At 9 on KMED. All righty, it is 736. We're going to check news here in just a moment, catch up with the rest of things. And then Rob Schlaffer joins me from the Oregon Education Project. No, no, no, you know, maybe if we hazed people, the kids would, maybe we'll have to ask you about hazing.

Oh, no, no, no. That is about the opposite extreme of what's going on. It's all about coddling the kids. Okay, okay, we'll do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll talk about that here. Just a minute. Poor snowflake kids.

Okay. All right, we'll talk with Rob about that here and just a minute. He's going to be putting on a seminar or a presentation. We'll talk more about that here in just a bit. You know, we're live from the Army Navy Marine Store. You can see that on the big screen to my left and maybe to your right when you're looking at it. But there are stores that you run into and then there are stores that you walk around and just kind of absorb because you never know what you're going to find. Well, that's what the Army Navy Marine Store and Central Points doing.

20,000 items, 15,000 square foot store. It's everything. Military surplus to outdoor gear and boots and bags and flags and patches and pins and decals, knives, clothes, clothes, clothes, clothes, and snips and snails and puppy dog tails and you know all that kind of stuff, right? You'll enjoy this. Make the trip to the Army Navy Marine store at 5100 Crater Lake Avenue. It's in Central Point of shop online. ArmyNavymarine.com. On the battlefield, there's a saying America's military men and... Commercial.com. Progressive cash with the insurance company and affiliates.

2025 national average safe driver enrollment discount savings for new progressive customers. Excludes mandatory program participants. Not available in all states. Driving data could increase or decrease premiums at renewal. Hi, I'm Kelly Bales with Vuterte retirement advisors and I'm on KMED. Great to have you here. It's 741. on. Maybe a pebble in your shoe Tuesday, but a big pebble in the entire state of Oregon's boot has to do with the performance of K-12 education and maybe even higher education if it's run by the state. And joining me in studio is Rob Schloffer. Rob Schloffer is with the Oregon Education Project. And what's the website again here, Rob? OregonEd.com.Oregoned.info. Oregon ed. Info. Very good. And it's just interesting. I was talking with one of your former colleagues yesterday.

Yesterday, yesterday, Marla. Oh, yeah, Marla. Yeah, Marla asked us. And, of course, she's still working on that.

I was just telling her how she's an amazing person because I like the patron state of lost causes. I agree with you. They're sorry. I love Marla and I think what she's doing is important. But, yeah. Yeah,

well, and it has to do. She's putting on a film festival tonight over at the, at the Medford Library. Yeah. And it has to do with, I think it's my Omaha. And it's once again, and I appreciate trying to get the left and the right and the conservatives and non-conservatives and things to kind of get a little bit of symponogical.

I can appreciate that. Well, particularly, in Marla's case, it's particularly important to get the people on the left to understand people on the right because data has shown for a long time that that's a big problem. People on the right, we, you know, people who are more conservative or liberal, I mean, classically liberal, understand progressives. but progressives don't understand conservatives. And I will understand. In fact, I can understand what a progressive says. Well, it's not compassionate to do this to the homeless or whatever or whatever sock puppet issue that we're talking about. I said, I completely understand.

I am sympathetic too. However, then you start looking, here is the pragmatic approach that we need. There needs to be carrot and a stick. And we're dealing with flawed humanity. Exactly. And that really, you know, getting to education, Bill, The underlying problem with Oregon education and education broadly in America and in the Western world is the influence of progressivism. That is the real source of the problem, particularly here in Oregon.

You were talking earlier about the, I was joking about the snowflake, you know, the codling of the kids. And progressivism has this idea that we're all basically good and that it's the system. It's the externals that is what corrupts us. opposed to what you just articulated, which is more of a conservative orientation. This isn't well, actually humans are kind of flawed, and we need to have structures in place to kind of contain some of that flawedness. And again, that's what our Constitution is about. It's a constrained democratic kind of vision. How do we keep this in place? Yeah, and understanding that, you know, even the best person you know, give them a little power, and sometimes it just goes sideways.

Exactly. Exactly. And in schools, if you have of you of children that what we really need to be doing is not so much, you know, telling them, you know, giving them facts and information, but we need to be kind of drawing out their own internal sense of knowledge and learning and what have you. That really is the problem with a lot of our education. There's a lot of talk about student-centered education. And what that can mean is the teacher is now the guide on the side to allow the student to kind of find for him. herself or herself to discover learning. And as cognitive scientists and educational psychologists have shown for decades now, that's exactly wrong. And a lot of our classrooms today do not

reflect the older style of explicit teaching, where the teacher really is kind of the expert. It doesn't mean the teacher doesn't try and get students to engage and that doesn't mean There's not interaction. But the teacher is definitely driving an agenda where a student has to work hard to obtain a body of knowledge. And that makes sense. But I'm wondering if perhaps the progressive mind looks at that as patriarchal or hierarchal. Yes. This is the hierarchy and the hierarchy is bad.

That's exactly right. It is. Yeah. And again, that's a big part of the problem. And, you know, these talks that I'm doing, I'm going to be doing four talks that kind of cover four of the big areas, I think, that are at back of the failure of our schools. And the first one is the science of learning, which I came on a few months ago and we talked at length about what the science of learning is. And briefly, briefly, if you could cover that ground again. Yeah, well, the science of learning, and again, it's a term you'll hear a lot.

So people will talk about the science of learning, the science of learning. What it basically means is as opposed to kind of relying upon our intuitions about how kids learn, which is what progressive educators tend to do, it actually goes into the laboratory, so to speak. Cognitive science actually study how we acquire knowledge, how learning really happens in terms of the brain. And it's bringing that into the training teachers how to teach, which is critical because like I said, said most teachers today do not are not trained in that kind of environment. A big part of what's called the science of learning is what's called the science of reading, which is kind of a subset of that. I'm glad you brought that up. Right. Okay, the science of reading, because normally when I heard, you know, talk coming out of the Oregon Education Department or Department of Education

about, well, we need to get back to the science of reading. I'm thinking, uh-oh, because normally when I hear a state bureaucrat talk about, we're going to get back to the science, I start either guarding my wallet or wanting to yank my kids out anymore because I'm just learning, is this just another fad of the moment? Because that's what we have suffered from for decades, really. Well, and again, that's why you have to be careful with these phrases. Even now, the science of reading is back on the ascendancy. It was on the ascendancy in the early 2000s when George W. Bush came in. And Bush did a lot of good things for education. One of them was getting back to a phonics-based approach to teaching reading.

Again, it's the idea that children have to learn how to read as opposed to methodologies that kind of want the student to kind of on their own kind of intuit the reading process and come out of it on their own by through cueing and other means. And the science of reading says, no, no, no, no, no. We have to go back to actually teaching kids how to sound, what the sounds are, what the what phonics are, how to decode and do those kinds of things. Yeah, the building blocks of the language. Right. And then it's now on the ascendancy because there's been some great reporting,

among other things over the past five, six years. And so nationwide, there's been a movement back to the science of reading. And the fact that our test scores on reading especially have fallen since about 2012, 2013 consistently has kind of been an impetus for schools to say, well, we need to do something about that. That's something as, okay, we need to get the science of reading back into the classroom. Now, here's an interesting fact. Oregon has 17 higher education institutions to train teachers to teach in the classroom and give them their basics.

Only two of those 17 trained teachers in the science of reading. And those two are Southern Oregon University and Eastern Oregon University. That means U of O, Portland State, OSU. they are all training teachers to teach reading the wrong way. Oh, no, the old whole language, cueing, these kinds of things. And other words, instead of learning the building blocks of reading, it would be you have to look and identify the word. Right. And getting the, again, this is a problem with higher education in general.

It's not responding to the actual science behind education. And again, cognitive psychology is a young discipline. It's only really come online in the last, you know, three, maybe four decades. And so we now have a really good idea of how kids learn. We're not just guessing so much anymore. But we cannot get schools of education to train teachers correctly. So that means that most of the – and this has been going on for a long time. time. That means that most of the teachers that are in our schools in Oregon do not know how to

teach reading. Not only that, but it isn't just the science of reading. They're not getting, again, this larger view of the science of learning. So they don't really know how kids learn in the first place. That is kind of scary. What could be done in your opinion? Rob Schloffer with me with the Oregon Education Project, OregonEd.Info. What is the methodology you think to steer this gigantic educational ship of state away from the iceberg, which we've been grinding against, I think, for a number of decades. Well, most states now have, legislatures have passed laws directing their departments of education to begin to focus on the science of reading.

And that includes Oregon. Oregon in 2333 passed legislation to support the science of reading. The problem is, in states like Oregon, they have little, there's very little, there's no way to kind of force the local school district to do that because our schools are very localized and very independent. So what has to happen is local school boards in particular have to really double down on this and then teachers in the classroom. One of the things that I've discovered in the last two years since I launched the Oregon Education Project is much of what happens in our children's learning happens in the classroom. Teachers in Oregon especially have a lot of freedom to do in the classroom kind of what they feel is necessary. And that can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing.

But if you have teachers with a lot of freedom who don't really understand the proper way to train reading and the proper way or the science of learning, as we're talking about, a lot of that freedom is not helping at the moment. It isn't, which is why I'm doing. This is why I produced this, you know, I did this 12-page kind of primer on the science. of learning as an overview. And I'm going to be doing on the first exchange that I'm going to be doing, I'm hoping to reach parents and teachers. But not just, you know, parents too, because parents, if they have concerns about their kids, I want them to understand this kind of stuff so that they can find out what exactly

is going on in the classroom. Because I think we've talked about this before, it's very difficult to find out exactly what's happening in classrooms here in Oregon. It's not real easy. Why is that? It's, you know, it's hard to, it's hard for me to kind of figure out. But, I mean, I've been at this for a couple of years on the education front, and I still have a hard time knowing.

And again, part of it is because classrooms really differ, because of teachers are able to kind of, you know, choose their own curriculum and choose their own, the stuff that they do. that they present to students and what have you. And again, that can be a really great thing. And we've got some great educators who work really hard and do really good work. But we also have a lot of educators who are kind of going along with whatever happens to be popular. And whatever happens to be popular tends to not be particularly sound. Okay. Rob Schloffer with me from the Oregon Education Project, OregonEd.info.

You can read out more about this. I know this is way in advance of this community exchange. It's going to be Thursday, August 27th, and we're going to be starting getting back in that educational mode. That's what I'm doing it. And that's the week before school starts. Teachers are going to be doing in-service days. And again, I'm hoping that we can get some teachers out to do this because I'm going to lay out kind of the basics of the science of learning. We're also going to look a little bit about – we'll look broadly at what the problems are in Oregon education because it's not just the science of learning.

learning. What I'm curious about, though, is this mostly an Oregon public education problem, or is there a difference, I guess, in either private or parochial schools around the area? I think it depends. For example, a lot of classical, we have a lot of classical schools and classical Christian schools. Those schools tend to follow the old traditional methodologies of instruction, which were sound. I mean, they intuitively understood how kids learned. Of course, it's the intellectuals who came along and kind of upended a lot of that traditional education. I mean, to this day, we used to think of education as being primarily about the acquisition of knowledge, right?

But that is not what schools are about, certainly not an Oregon. The focus of Oregon is upon the well-being of the student. It's how the student feels about him. or her self in the school. That's the number one issue for the Oregon Department of Education. Boy, that's a pretty soft, squishy mission, isn't it? Right. And, of course, that brings us to, you know, how do you fix Oregon schools?

And, of course, the only way that you're, in my opinion, you're going to be able to fix Oregon schools is by doing that Betsy Johnson. Remember Betsy Johnson, the feisty, former kind of Democrat who ran for governor? Yeah. She told me, says, we need to gut the Oregon Department of Education. beginning with the board. In Oregon, the governor is the superintendent of the schools, and that means she makes political appointments to, she hires the state superintendent, and she puts the places the people on the board. And because Oregon is such a radically

progressive political state, Tina Kotech has appointed an all-female board. They are all but one, out of the nine members all but one identify as women of color, and they are focused on racial equity in those kinds of issues, you know, DEI kinds of things. Which, unfortunately, is not going to help the standard K-12 students really grasp anything of real import. Right, and it's this particular, and I may have mentioned this the last time I was on,

and the current director of the Oregon Department of Education was hired in 2023, kind of as we were coming out of the pandemic, And everybody knew in 2023 that test scores had been going down for a decade prior to the pandemic. And then in the pandemic, they just plummeted. Everybody around the country knew, whoa, we got to do something to get kids caught up. You would have thought a thoughtful, sensible governor would have said, I need to bring somebody in who knows how to, who's focused on the science of learning, the basics of education to kind of turn this around. And instead, they brought in a gal whose claim to fame was getting critical race theory embedded in the Portland school district, the largest school district in Oregon. Her background is in culturally responsive teaching, which is all about how do we get children of color.

How do we bridge the equity gap? And again, it's not to say that that is an important issue, but not in the light of the fact. It's not the prime educational director. And the state school board, because they are all. all focused on that kind of stuff, they are not focused on raising test scores. They're not focused on getting classes, getting teachers trained, investing the monies needed to retrain teachers, which is a big part of the problem. We need to retrain teachers into how to teach. All right. Rob Schloffer, the education, the Oregon Education project with me. It's 758.

If you have a quick question for Rob, I'll be happy to take a call or two here, just a moment. 770-5633. We'll continue that conversation. It's Daisy's Gold Beach Lumber's 67th anniversary, and we take great pride in being a trusted resource for your home improvement needs, serving our customers in the communities we call home. To celebrate, we're giving away five $50 gift cards at each store location, plus exciting anniversary exclusive deals all month long. Stop in, enter to win, and celebrate 67 years with us. From our family

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Dot.com. Sweetwater sanitation. Their service is the difference. The French fries are so crispy and delicious, the ketchup is lonely and the burgers are jealous. Try an order at Diner 62. You're here in the Bill Myers Show on 1063, KMED. This is KMED and KMED HD-Won. Medford, KBXG Grants Pass. Transletter K-294AS-A-F Rogue River, okay? back with Rob Schloffer from the Oregon Education Project, and we're taking your calls here now.

Lauren, you've been working with kids for a number of years, and you have an observation or question here for Rob Schloffer from the Oregon Education Project. Go ahead. Both, actually. One thing is, Rob, I want to ask you, do you think, how much do you think parental involvement with our elementary kids has made a difference?

Because I've got opinion. I just kind of pick your brain on that. What do you think? Well, my experience, And again, this is just my experience is there is a profound lack of parental involvement in the schools. I think that's one of the problems. And then when you talk to, for example, locally here at Medford School, if you talk to Jeannie and others, parents are not really that engaged unless something kind of comes up. And on this particular issue, why our schools are failing, it doesn't seem like parents are engaged at all.

Again, that's my take, having just talked to people and been working on it for a couple of years. So what is your observation there, Lauren? I was going to agree with them. I work with students, I'm a substitute teaching assistant, work at the first grade kindergartners a lot. And I know the ones that are accelerating and I know their parents are right behind them. Yes. And I also know that when you go off to, like, religious schools, they pay a lot of money for those kids to be there. so they're really going to be on top of it.

Yes, and you see that in the test scores. Yeah, those schools tend to be more successful. Right. All right. Lauren, thank you so much for the comment. And let me get to Brad. Brad, you had a question about the OEA or comment. Go ahead.

All right. Go ahead. Hey, Brad, Brad here. Good morning. Hey, Brad. So the Oregon Public School I went to in the 60s and 70s were among the best schools in the nation and now we're at the bottom. Yep.

So why wouldn't the Oregon Education Association with 40,000 members in over $30 million a year in revenue, why wouldn't they be all over these recommendations you've been discussing with Bill? That's an interesting question. Thank you, Brad. What do you say? Well, the first thing I would say is I've discovered that you have to make a distinction between the OEA at the state level and what may be the local union group, so it could

vary. But by and large, you know, the Oregon Education Association is completely woke, so to speak. they are again like our board of education and our in our the superintendent of the the director of the organ department of education they are very much focused on those kind of social kinds of issues diversity equity inclusion and that kind of thing i do know that there is resistance to uh through the science of reading california for example their union which tracks very much along the same lines as oea does they have been one of the the leading, they have been resisting efforts to get the science of reading kind of mandated, so to speak, in local, in local school districts and local classrooms.

So they've not been particularly good on this. And again, because they tend to have an act, in my opinion, at least, they seem to have a very activist. The new head of the, just as an aside, the new head of the Oregon Education Association is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. So they are to the left of Tina Kotech, in fact. they would not endorse Tina Kotech in this last primary. So that gives you an idea at the state level, at least, of what kind of where they're coming from.

Yeah, a lot of politics involved in this. Hi, KMED. Good morning. You're on with Rob Schloffer. Who's this? This is John. Yeah, John, go ahead. Question or comment?

Comment. Once the students learn how to read, how do we engage the students to actually think for themselves, not just be programmed? Well, the most important thing. that I would say we need to do is we need to return to a knowledge-based curriculum. Again, I teach critical thinking. You can't teach a student to think critically if they don't know anything. And there has been a de-emphasis upon knowledge acquisition in our schools actually for a very long time, and that's largely the fruit of progressive education. The whole idea is get a student doing something

and they'll figure out things on their own. Again, it's this idea of let this the student discover things as opposed to, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, students don't know anything. You need to have a grasp of basic facts, basic knowledge before you can think critically about any kind of a topic. So it is in that mix. And again, this gets back to how we used to do education for, well, literally for centuries. We used to build on those foundations of knowledge. And at that point, once a student has some basic knowledge, then begin to work at the

interrelations of knowledge. And that's how critical thinking kind of begins to form. All right. Very good. John, I appreciate the call. Hey, I'm out of time for this particular guest, but it's always a spirited and stimulating conversation. And I appreciate you coming in here. Before we take off, I wanted to ask you a question, one question before we take off. And I'll put all of Rob's information up. It's OregonEd.info, okay? I was reading in the Epic Times the other day that they were studying the science of reading, and they found something very interesting that people who read a book

were much better able to comprehend and answer questions about the book, even though it was much harder to do the reading of the book, versus people who listen to an audio book, even though they enjoyed listening to it in an audio book. And does our public school curriculum kind of reflect that? You know, that attitude that you actually get more out of reading well? Well, this is a big issue right now because a big debate that's brewing is the introduction of ed tech, technology in classrooms, the use of Chromebooks, for example. And there is a big difference between picking up a physical book and reading it and listening to something or looking at it on the screen.

For one thing, it has to do with spatial memory. Our brains are designed to work in the real world. We pick up a book and our tactile handling of a book, are noticing where a passage is on a given page. That all has to do with spatial memory, which reinforces the learning process. So there's something to be said for using real books, something to be said for writing, using real writing as opposed to.

Studies show that writing something out is much, It's much easier to put into long-term memory if you write something than if you type it on a computer. So keyboard, screen, and audiobook nation is not necessarily working as well for the comprehensive. It's not. And again, this is a topic there. The data, so to speak, is really coming in on. There's strong arguments. And you're seeing now a movement of parents and teachers and educators around the country who are trying to get ed tech out of the classroom,

particularly in the younger grades. Now, Medford School District has gotten rid of the Chromebooks for kindergarten to the second grade, which is a great move. So, but expect, that's a whole topic that we can talk about. And maybe the next time we talk, we go into that, all right? Yes, great talking to you, Bill. Rob Schloffer, the Oregon Education Project, OregonEd.Info. Always a pleasure. Thanks, Bill.

We will check the latest for Fox News here in just a moment. And shifting gears, kind of a pallet cleanser. Nils Gravilius will join me. A fascinating character. He is a private detective in Los Angeles. And boy, does he have a lot to say on some of our most interesting criminal cases as of late? Some people are startled when I refer to...