Digital Social Hour - The Truth Schools Don't Want You to Know: Parental Rights at Risk | Sarah Perry DSH #835

Starting point is 00:00:00 Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League. Yard after yard, down after down, the sportsbook, born in Vegas, gives you the chance to take action to the end zone and celebrate every highlight reel play. And as an official sportsbook partner of the NFL, BetMGM is the best place to fuel your football fandom on every game day. With a variety of exciting features, BetMGM offers you plenty of seamless ways to jump straight onto the gridiron and to embrace peak sports action. Ready for another season of gridiron glory? What are you waiting for? Get off the bench, into the huddle, and head for the end zone all season long.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. There's been a huge agenda push for all of this sort of sexually graphic and gender critical

Starting point is 00:01:09 instruction. Literally kindergarten, suddenly having to decide between are my parents right on whether I'm a boy or a girl, or is my teacher right on whether I'm a boy or a girl. So here I am a mom of three, like the hair on the back of my neck goes up. Suddenly went, oh my gosh gosh we have a serious problem all right guys here with sarah partial perry thanks for coming on today hey thanks for having me yeah we're at the heritage foundation in dc yep first time here and it's been a blast for me good good i'm glad i mean the energy here in dcC., I think is unmatched. You know, I think people who are cultural elites know what they think is going on in D.C. and then

Starting point is 00:01:50 people in Central America think they know what's going on in D.C. But when you're actually here, you realize the energy of how much transpires here and how much what happens here affects the rest of the country. So I really do love working here. Absolutely. Hate the traffic, but do love working here. Yeah, I felt that energy immediately, especially when I walked into Heritage. Everyone's doing big things over here. Yeah, I love it. I think this is really a moment for the entire conservative movement to kind of coalesce around the same ideas that we've been pushing for years, really since the Reagan era.

Starting point is 00:02:20 And we've just gotten to a point where we finally gotten about 120, 130 conservative organizations to buy into the exact same vision for economic prosperity and the flourishing of the American family and strong national defense, just solid ideas that have always worked for conservatism and ideas that are ultimately going to, I believe, ensure the future flourishing of America. And those are ideas that shouldn't be controversial. But I think right now, this political moment, they suddenly are. They are, especially your ideas on parenting, which shouldn't be controversial. Butate and they characterized far right school board candidates as suddenly deciding that they were going to sort of take back public education. Well, I have news for you. Public education was always ours. Right.

Starting point is 00:03:14 Taxpayers pay for public schools. Most parents can't afford to send their kids to private or parochial schools. And that's because, especially for me, my kids had to go to public school for the majority of their educations because my son has an IEP and my other son has a 504. So those special education services are only provided in a public school format. But our taxpayer dollars pay for essentially all of the education that transpires in the public space. And they also pay for the Department of Education salaries, which, by the way, Department of Education is the biggest funded, the most bloated of all the federal agencies, more than $111 billion a year.

Starting point is 00:03:58 So we know education should be local. Unfortunately, right now, we have a lot of big government, especially so in D.C. The administrative state has kind of taken off running. And I think we at Heritage, including some other conservative organizations, are really keen to return the power of self-governance to the states and the people. And that's honestly what the founders wanted in the first place. Absolutely. So do you feel like these principals and teachers are overpaid, underpaid, or at the right level? So I think at this point, until we see turning around of some of our math and English literacy scores, and generally our national average right now runs 30% for math and English literacy.

Starting point is 00:04:42 That puts us in about the middle of the pack for all developed nations in the world. For $111 billion a year, that is entirely unexcusable. So I honestly believe until we see teachers producing students who can read on grade level, who can perform math on grade level, no salaries need to be adjusted. Because right now, one of our biggest problems is that we've got the unions involved in creating political agendas, but not creating future learning successful individuals. They don't care about reading and math literacy. They care about woke progressive agendas. And that's a major problem. It is. Wow, I didn't realize our academic scores were so low in comparison to other countries. Really, really low. And I think

Starting point is 00:05:28 it's a disappointment for me as somebody who served in the Federal Department of Education. You know, when I was in the last administration, I was a senior attorney at the Office for Civil Rights. We really tried to do everything we could to make sure that we divested public education of all of these super progressive ideals because they are not doing anything to enhance the reading and the math literacy and the learning capabilities in any of the social sciences or math or... Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGMm an official sportsbook partner of the national football league yard after yard down after down the sportsbook born in vegas gives you the chance to take action to the end zone and celebrate every highlight reel play and as an official

Starting point is 00:06:17 sportsbook partner of the nfl bet mgm is the best place to fuel your football fandom on every game day with a variety of exciting features, BetMGM offers you plenty of seamless ways to jump straight onto the gridiron and to embrace peak sports action. Ready for another season of gridiron glory? What are you waiting for? Get off the bench, into the huddle, and head for the end zone all season long. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem?

Starting point is 00:06:47 For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Scientific research. What they're doing is they're creating future Marxist workers. And this is assembly line education, right? We get them through K through 12, where the teachers unions are involved. And then we get them into higher education, where all of academia has been taken over by the far left. And then we get them into graduate school and the, for example, American Bar Association's beholden to the left. So even when I was in law school 26 years ago, we were already hearing things about critical race theory. Focus on the education. All of the scores will increase. A rising tide just lifts all boats. But we're not paying attention to that right now. That's why I think these school board candidate races are so important. And of course, you know, Slate categorizes that as far right MAGA adjunct props. But in reality, these

Starting point is 00:07:50 are just parents who want better education for their kids. Absolutely. So that being said, what topics do you think schools should keep and what do you think they should get rid of? So I got to tell you, they're not doing anyone any good when we go into these extensive diversity experiences, right? There's been a huge agenda push for LGBTQIA++, give it your acronym, for all of this sort of sexually graphic and gender critical instruction that has kids in literally kindergarten suddenly having to decide between, are my parents right on whether I'm a boy or a girl? Or is my teacher right on whether I'm a boy or a girl? And in fact, a federal court just determined that these poor six and seven-year-olds who were literally being instructed by a teacher, now we're talking kindergarten and first grade,

Starting point is 00:08:42 being instructed by a teacher, that sometimes your parents and the doctor are wrong when you're born and you're not actually what you think you are. So here I am a mom of three, like the hair on the back of my neck goes up. And I automatically think, wait a minute, not only is that a violation of parental rights, you're automatically dumbing down these kids. When you can be talking about instructional fundamentals, whether it's colors or shapes or reading, you're instead focusing on sexually explicit and gender critical studies. What is that doing to enhance the level of education in America? And the answer is nothing. But this is a nod to the teachers union. And unfortunately, the fact that we're seeing people who go into the teaching profession

Starting point is 00:09:30 more and more affiliate with left-wing interests. I think that's a disservice to American education. Absolutely. I'm glad they didn't teach that when I was in school. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. And I think it's something that's relatively new. Listen, COVID does something very uniquely beneficial. And I won't say there was much beneficial about COVID. But when we had kids coming home to essentially attend online classes, and I was holding down a full time job and overseeing three kids on their computers. One, it did not work for the other two, it did work for. But

Starting point is 00:10:06 here's what we did learn. I think some of the parents who were not clued in to what was going on in public education suddenly went, oh, my gosh, we have a serious problem because we were hearing discussions of critical race theory. We were hearing discussions about gender identity. And we're thinking these kids are not on grade level. In fact, my son, who was online educated for the better part of a year and a half, we had him assessed before he went into his freshman year of high school. And they said, he is not only one year behind, he is two years behind. Yeah. And we say you should keep him back and homeschool him until he gets up on grade level.

Starting point is 00:10:46 That is how bad the loss was just in my family. or history, or science, or math, those things become preeminent. And the kids are no longer being judged on their ability to reproduce information, to think critically. Instead, they're being judged on how closely they align with liberal agitprops. That, to me, was, I think, a real eye-opening moment. And public schools, for the most part, criticize critical thinking. So if you do critical think, they'll put you in detention or punish you with grades.

Starting point is 00:11:29 Listen, we had a federal appellate court, the First Circuit Appellate Court, just ruled against a young man, a middle school student, who wore a T-shirt that said, there are only two genders. And his school expelled him for wearing a t-shirt stating a biological fact. Now I can send you all the way back to West Virginia versus Barnett in the 60s

Starting point is 00:11:54 and during the Vietnam War there was a group of kids who were in a high school who wanted to protest the war. They wore black armbands. Nothing else symbolized. They spoke nothing, but it was a form of symbolic speech. And the Supreme Court said, listen, they don't shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door. But this kid, Liam, who was living up in New England, was just ruled against by a federal appellate circuit who said, sorry, that's a disruptive T-shirt. He didn't say anything, but the T-shirt was considered disruptive. And I think some of the Supreme Court justices from the 60s would be rolling over in their graves. That's crazy. So it's even penetrated the courts at the highest level. Oh, 100%. In fact, one of the few courts, we see a couple of appellate courts

Starting point is 00:12:41 that are really good, that have sort of towed the line on what the Constitution says, on what the plain text of federal statutes say. And thank God, the Supreme Court, I mean, they're willing to say, listen, this is going to be an uncomfortable decision, but we're going to hold fast to the text of the law. We're not going to read into it our political agendas or our ideological agendas. And we're going to make sure that we don't create new law whole cloth. That's not our job. That's the job of Congress. It's not our job to make law. It's our job to interpret and apply law. And that's it. So I think I've been really and I think we're going to we're going to see more of that this season. But I've been really gratified by so far what the Supreme Court has been willing to stand firm on.

Starting point is 00:13:29 That's good, at least. Has anyone at your kids schools tried to change their gender? Oh, multiple, multiple kids. Let me tell you. Yeah. So we live we actually live in Baltimore County. So I've got about an hour, 15 hour and 30 minute drive. So we actually moved into that area because Baltimore County public schools were considered blue ribbon schools under George W. Bush. And these were the highest performing schools in the country. Great. Right. So you move in, you buy a house, you think I'm sending my kid to a public school, but it's a blue ribbon school. During the pandemic, the COVID pandemic, Daryl Williams, who was our superintendent of schools, his oversight of all Baltimore County public schools, not only were we the last to open after COVID in the entire state, so almost full two years before we opened, but we were actually

Starting point is 00:14:22 one of the greatest learning losses in the state when you compared population per population. And that's when I went, that's it. My kids are out of public school. Can't do it anymore. But part of that was this contagion. And listen, Abigail Schreier, who's a great journalist, writes for the Wall Street Journal, wrote a book called Irreversible Damage, The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. For some reason, that particular contingent, age 12 to about age 17 in high school, middle school and high school, has now expressed in record numbers this soaring increase in biological girls who identify as biological boys. She writes about, and I've spoken about this a little bit, the fact that these aren't organic

Starting point is 00:15:14 increases. They are actually completely manufactured. It's social media, it's cultural elites, it's what their friends are doing, it's what social media influencers are doing. And suddenly, because they don't want to be different, if a gym teacher or a best friend expresses sudden sort of gender dysphoria and says, you know what, I thought I was a girl, but really, I feel most at home being a boy. God bless these young girls. And listen, I am parenting a child through these teenage years. It's not easy, but it's exploded all around my kids. And thank God they understand right is right and wrong is wrong. And biology matters. They have enough accuracy in their scientific interpretations to recognize that you can't change your chromosomes, but it's taken off all around them

Starting point is 00:16:06 before I pulled them out. Finally, we were hearing reports of students identifying as furries, identifying as animals, right? I mean, these are the conversations I'm having. Like if you had said to me 25, 26 years ago, do you think you're going to use your law degree to talk about furries and transgender boys and girls bathroom?

Starting point is 00:16:26 I would say absolutely not. Here are the conversations I'm having. We had heard reports that there were now litter boxes in both boys and girls bathrooms. And I went, that's it. I'm out. I'm entirely out. So we pulled the kids out. I'm really grateful that we can send them to private schools.

Starting point is 00:16:43 My son is now in college. He is a marine biology major at LSU. So that's really great. But I have to tell you, I'm hoping and praying that public education is not completely lost to us. But there are times, and I think I don't know if we can salvage it unless another administration absolutely smashes all of the woke indoctrination and goes back to the basics. Yeah, I hope we can because private school is unaffordable for most families. Yeah, it really is. And that's, you know, that's a whole separate discussion. I mean, we know now that all colleges are making money hand over fist. And we've got on the other side of the equation,

Starting point is 00:17:21 the president and his vice president excusing millions and millions of dollars of loans. So people like me who paid off six figures in loans for graduate school are suddenly going, wait a minute. Now what you're doing is you're excusing loans of these young people who are going to be foisted on to the previous generation because we're going to have to pay for it. So I'm looking at my son right now. I have paid. I'm now paying for 90% of his college education. He's paying for 10% because the federal government has put limits on what college students can now borrow. So it's a completely different landscape. Crazy. We'll end off with this. We're going to send this next question to Trump's team. We're going to compile all this. If you could talk with Trump right now and ask him anything or tell him

Starting point is 00:18:03 anything, what would you say? Oh, how much do you value girls and women in education? And I know that he has made specific remarks about ending the participation of biological males in women's sports. And that is a great start. But it's got to be in every aspect of American education. Girls have come too far. They have worked too hard. It's been 52 years of progress. It is what made possible my graduate degree. It's what is making possible my daughter's college volleyball scholarship at a D2 school. How much do you value women, Mr. President? You have been great on the sports issue. It's got to follow through with all of education because these are women who care very much about the future of our country. I love that. Thanks for coming on, Sarah. Hey, thanks so much for having me. See you guys.

Digital Social Hour - The Truth Schools Don't Want You to Know: Parental Rights at Risk | Sarah Perry DSH #835

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.