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98: Militarism, Baudrillard, Video Game Design, and the College Board
18 Plays3 years ago
In this podcast we've decided to experiment a bit with our programming. To be honest, right now there's a ton of burnout in the education world, from the pandemic to ongoing struggles of teacher power and support, and the culture war once again resurfacing in the classroom. As educators by day and nonprofit workers by night, we totally get that struggle.
Therefore, we're putting a slight pause on our typical interview format to try out something new. This frees us up from the workload of scheduling, researching, and working with guests. And, it opens up the door for us to produce more casual content. If you like the guest stuff, don't worry - we'll come back to that in early December! But...if you like the new stuff, please let us know.
In this podcast we're going to go through four parts:
- An update of what we're working on at HRP.
- Article shareouts that Nick and I have been interested in recently.
- Talking about what we're currently doing in our classrooms.
- A pop-quiz to see who exits this podcast alive (or something.)
And we discuss:
- Militarism and increased nationalism in the classroom.
- Simulation theory, Baudrillard, and fatal strategies.
- How video game design relates to classroom pedagogy.
- Celebrating Columbus Day (and the surrounding debate) and its context to nationalism.
- The corruption of large-scale nonprofits, including testing companies and public charter networks.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 98
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 98 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
00:00:07
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio and I'm joined by Nick Covington, a social studies instructor from Iowa.
00:00:15
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Sally Orm, Dan Kearney and Efrem Hussain.
00:00:23
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:25
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org or find us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
New Podcast Format Discussion
00:00:45
Speaker
In this podcast, we decided to experiment a bit with our programming.
00:00:49
Speaker
To be honest, right now, there's a ton of burnout in the education world from the pandemic to ongoing struggles of teacher power and support, and the culture war once again resurfacing in the classroom.
00:00:59
Speaker
As educators by day and nonprofit workers by night, we totally get that struggle.
00:01:04
Speaker
Therefore, we are putting a slight pause on our typical interview format to try out something new.
00:01:10
Speaker
That frees us up from the workload of scheduling, researching, and working with guests, and it opens up the door for us to produce more casual content.
00:01:17
Speaker
If you like the guest stuff, don't worry.
00:01:18
Speaker
We'll come back to that in early December.
00:01:20
Speaker
But if you like the new stuff, please let us know.
00:01:23
Speaker
Before I dive into the format for this, Nick, any thoughts for what we're about to do?
00:01:29
Speaker
No, I'm excited for this because it's just, it's kind of a take on what we're already doing.
00:01:33
Speaker
We're always reading.
00:01:34
Speaker
We're always looking for new things.
00:01:37
Speaker
This just kind of gives us a new, clever, creative, fun way to be able to talk about that in a really informal way.
00:01:43
Speaker
So I'm hoping listeners, you know, if you like this, let us know on the Twitter account.
00:01:48
Speaker
And we'll talk too about, I think we want to have the last segment of this, if this is ongoing, be more of a question and answer section too.
00:01:56
Speaker
So if you want to send us just anything that you want Chris and I to talk about, ed pedagogy, ed policy, or completely unrelated things,
00:02:07
Speaker
We'll kind of take those requests at the end as well, but I'm excited to do this.
00:02:11
Speaker
There it is.
00:02:12
Speaker
And we have this amazing soundboard.
00:02:15
Speaker
Oh, new content.
00:02:15
Speaker
That's pretty good.
00:02:18
Speaker
All right.
00:02:18
Speaker
So that was the transition sound.
Human Restoration Project Updates
00:02:20
Speaker
In this podcast, we're going to go through four things.
00:02:23
Speaker
First, we're just going to give an update on what we're doing in HRP, a brief update.
00:02:27
Speaker
Two, Nick and I have brought some articles that we're currently reading that we thought were interesting that we're going to talk about.
00:02:33
Speaker
Next, we're going to talk about what we're doing in our classroom, some interesting things.
00:02:37
Speaker
Then finally, a pop quiz to see who exits this podcast alive or something like that.
00:02:42
Speaker
I don't know.
00:02:42
Speaker
I didn't know what to write there, but I wrote something.
00:02:45
Speaker
Let's first start by talking about an update.
00:02:47
Speaker
What's going on at HRP, Nick?
00:02:50
Speaker
Man, what isn't going on?
00:02:51
Speaker
It's been a pretty awesome couple of days, to be honest with you.
00:02:54
Speaker
Friday morning, I had a meeting with a group out of Krakow, Poland called the Holistic Think Tank.
00:03:01
Speaker
And yeah, we're kind of looking forward to seeing how our work can complement each other and yeah, kind of build a partnership going forward.
00:03:10
Speaker
There's not a whole lot of other information we have on that right now other than
00:03:13
Speaker
that contact has kind of been made.
00:03:15
Speaker
Um, I have some really, uh, what serendipitous contacts to Poland.
00:03:20
Speaker
I studied there, um, for a semester way back in 2008 and I've kept in touch with, um,
00:03:26
Speaker
with a professor at the Yagilonian University there ever since.
00:03:30
Speaker
I mean, we've talked about life events and everything else for the last 10 years post-graduation.
00:03:37
Speaker
And it turns out she actually knows one of the lead researchers at the Holistic Think Tank.
00:03:42
Speaker
So she was the first person that I reached out to.
00:03:44
Speaker
We got a meeting set up and we were able to talk on Friday.
00:03:47
Speaker
So just one of those crazy things that was over a decade in the making, but could be really exciting for us.
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:53
Speaker
And as a reminder, if you know any grant opportunities, HRP is a nonprofit.
00:03:57
Speaker
We're always looking for folks that can help us out.
00:03:59
Speaker
That is one of our primary goals this year.
00:04:02
Speaker
And if you're wondering like, hey, HRP, what are you doing after the learning laws handbook?
00:04:07
Speaker
To be revealed very soon.
00:04:08
Speaker
We're putting together a bunch of folks, a bunch of different ideas together.
00:04:12
Speaker
It hasn't been board approved yet, so I don't want to share it.
00:04:14
Speaker
But there is a big, major announcement on the horizon.
00:04:19
Speaker
So look out for that.
00:04:20
Speaker
There is work being done.
00:04:25
Speaker
Somebody take the soundboard away.
00:04:28
Speaker
No one's going to, these are all going to get cut.
00:04:30
Speaker
Those are horrible.
00:04:32
Speaker
They're terrible.
00:04:32
Speaker
I can't find a good one.
00:04:34
Speaker
Like, they're all, like, zero star here.
00:04:38
Speaker
You're reading a magazine.
00:04:39
Speaker
You come across a full-page nude photo.
00:04:40
Speaker
All right.
00:04:41
Speaker
Let's not do that one.
00:04:42
Speaker
Let's run Blade Runner.
00:04:43
Speaker
I know.
00:04:44
Speaker
All right.
00:04:44
Speaker
Well, anyways, so that's just a little brief update.
00:04:48
Speaker
That's just a little brief update about what's going on at HRP.
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:54
Speaker
More to be said.
00:04:56
Speaker
So let's move into section two, Nick.
Current Read: Politics of Patriotism
00:04:58
Speaker
Article shareouts.
00:04:59
Speaker
What's something you're reading?
00:05:00
Speaker
What interests you?
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:02
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:02
Speaker
So this one, I don't want this to be like a downer, but it's like super serious.
00:05:07
Speaker
It'll be a definite tonal change, but it's actually Joel Westheimer's Pledging Allegiance, the Politics of Patriotism in America's Schools.
00:05:16
Speaker
And what's really nice about that is it's kind of an anthology.
00:05:19
Speaker
It just has
00:05:21
Speaker
over a dozen kind of small chapters, each one from a different author.
00:05:25
Speaker
But almost anybody, if you've been involved in education or you teach the social studies or anything like that, you'll recognize some of the names.
00:05:33
Speaker
I mean, the forward is by Howard Zinn.
00:05:36
Speaker
It has excerpts from Studs Terkel in there.
00:05:39
Speaker
It has a chapter from James W. Lowen.
00:05:42
Speaker
It's got Deborah Meyer.
00:05:43
Speaker
Gloria Ladson-Billings is in there.
00:05:45
Speaker
Diana Hess.
00:05:47
Speaker
I mean, I could literally just read off the back and you would know a dozen other people that are in there.
00:05:51
Speaker
So what I think has been really interesting about this read is how it kind of maps onto our current conversations about
00:05:59
Speaker
this issue of patriotism, except this book was written in 2007.
00:06:03
Speaker
So I'm kind of transported back to, you know, my own experiences then of post 9-11 in high school, you know, the ramp up in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, my experience in college as well, when this book would have come out in 2007.
00:06:19
Speaker
And so it's just been a really interesting read, kind of from that historiographical lens about what does it say about the context of
00:06:27
Speaker
in which it was written less so about the content that everybody's writing about, but how they're hammering those same points about how the Patriot Act, say, required schools to be the hosts for military recruiters in schools.
00:06:41
Speaker
And I guess I hadn't realized that.
00:06:44
Speaker
I'll pull up a couple of sections here and just quote them if that's cool.
00:06:47
Speaker
Just because it maps so perfectly onto the conversations we're having now.
00:06:51
Speaker
But
00:06:52
Speaker
The conversations in 2020 and 2021 have been about these divisive concepts, so-called critical race theory.
00:07:00
Speaker
Don't even get me started on that.
00:07:01
Speaker
But then every sort of culture war conflict that you were leading in with that's mapped onto this.
00:07:06
Speaker
But then I think, okay, what were those culture war conflicts 20 years ago?
00:07:10
Speaker
I mean, we just this year last month celebrated, celebrated, commemorated the 20th anniversary of 9-11.
00:07:18
Speaker
We ended a 20 year war in Afghanistan, the longest in American history.
00:07:22
Speaker
And so it's just, you know, what's that saying?
00:07:25
Speaker
History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
00:07:28
Speaker
And I'm picking up a lot of the rhyming scheme in this book.
00:07:30
Speaker
But
00:07:31
Speaker
You hear about teachers who are getting under the gun, getting fired, getting in trouble for teaching certain essays, you know, that dude that taught Ta-Nehisi Coates and was fired for maybe putting up some resistance to changing that in his curriculum.
00:07:45
Speaker
But hear this from Joel Westheimer.
00:07:47
Speaker
He says, in New Mexico, five teachers were recently suspended or disciplined for promoting discussion among students about the Iraq War.
00:07:55
Speaker
and for expressing among a range of views anti-war sentiments.
00:07:59
Speaker
One teacher refused to remove art posters created by students that reflected their views on the war and was suspended without pay.
00:08:05
Speaker
Alan Cooper, a teacher from Albuquerque, was suspended for refusing to remove student design posters that his principal labeled not sufficiently pro-war.
00:08:15
Speaker
Two other teachers, Rio Grande High School's Carmelita Roybal and
00:08:19
Speaker
And Albuquerque High School's Kentavish posted signs about the war, at least one of which opposed military action.
00:08:26
Speaker
And a teacher at Highland Hills School was placed on administrative leave because she refused to remove a flyer from her wall advertising a peace rally.
00:08:34
Speaker
Roybal and Tavish were suspended, and all of the teachers in these cases were docked two to four days' pay by the Albuquerque Public Schools.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yet, each of these schools posts military recruitment posters and photographs of soldiers in Iraq.
00:08:46
Speaker
So again, like you hear that rhyming scheme about the debates that we're having, I mean, in Iowa today about the Pledge of Allegiance, now that it's required in schools by state law, about the so-called divisive topics bills.
00:09:01
Speaker
And around the country, what we just heard out of Southlake about the administrator who was
00:09:06
Speaker
encouraging them to teach both sides of the Holocaust.
00:09:09
Speaker
And, and right.
00:09:11
Speaker
So you're thinking these were, these were educators in New Mexico nearly 20 years ago who were experiencing those exact same things.
00:09:18
Speaker
So I don't, I don't know.
00:09:19
Speaker
What are you thinking about that?
00:09:21
Speaker
It's just fascinating because especially in the education world, how often these exact same debates come up.
00:09:28
Speaker
Like we pick up a lot of books.
00:09:30
Speaker
I was reading, um,
00:09:32
Speaker
Gloria Ladson-Billingsworth from like the 90s and 80s.
00:09:35
Speaker
And it's not the same thing, but she's talking about homework policy, about standardized testing, about democratic classrooms.
00:09:42
Speaker
And you could just take the exact same quotes and put them into an article today and it would sound no different.
00:09:49
Speaker
Another really good example, the Neil Postman book, Charles Weygeier, the Teaching as a Subversive Activity.
00:09:55
Speaker
Great book.
00:09:55
Speaker
Was that like 1960s?
00:09:56
Speaker
50 years ago.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's the same exact stuff that comes up every single day.
00:10:02
Speaker
And the culture war is probably not going away anytime soon.
00:10:06
Speaker
It's just so interesting to see how it has been mapped onto these different things, right?
00:10:10
Speaker
You think about like the context of the Bush administration in the country as it was in that post 9-11 period.
00:10:16
Speaker
And then
00:10:17
Speaker
Flash forward to, you know, I think now is just a completely, again, not completely different, but the context is just so much more chaotic because at least with the Bush administration, there was sort of that unified theme, right?
00:10:31
Speaker
And that unification of at least one part of the country around that idea of war and patriotism and what that looked like.
00:10:41
Speaker
Now today, it's completely subverted by conspiracy theorists.
00:10:46
Speaker
And there's another bit of this too.
00:10:47
Speaker
Deborah Meyer's piece in here obviously is pretty great.
00:10:50
Speaker
I found myself underlining hers kind of more often than not just because of the...
00:10:55
Speaker
Of the implications, I think, for talking about it in the classroom, and she has a bit on here that reads, in the name of the war on terror or the war in Iraq, we have experienced the narrowing of our national understanding of patriotism.
00:11:09
Speaker
Is this version of education easier to sell at a time when school practices that draw from military models seem particularly relevant and easier to understand?
00:11:19
Speaker
And she says, probably, probably.
00:11:20
Speaker
The glamour of soldiery is creeping back into our culture, especially for young men, increasingly for young women, and above all for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, and it's bound to impact schooling.
00:11:33
Speaker
And she goes on to say, a little bit later in that section, because even as democracy is not inborn or natural, it is not unnatural either.
00:11:40
Speaker
It must be learned.
00:11:42
Speaker
So too, the forms of patriotism that are compatible with it must be learned as well.
00:11:47
Speaker
And like, those are just things that have resonated with me as I've been reading through the book in the last week and, and seeing, seeing as I have, you know, the return kind of of the, of this casual militarism into the culture.
00:12:01
Speaker
You know, you see what black rifle coffee kind of things you see a lot of like, like
00:12:08
Speaker
the Punisher logos on the back of trucks.
00:12:10
Speaker
And some of that stuff is just like creeping into the mainstream culture and has really taken, I think, taken for granted then what it means to be a patriot or to practice patriotism.
Simulation Theory in Education
00:12:22
Speaker
And I think too about my own experiences last year when the biggest part of the culture war issue started for me is when I was asking my kids this question of what does it mean to be an American?
00:12:35
Speaker
And we were exploring that through a variety of lenses that included white nationalism.
00:12:40
Speaker
Um, and that was back in March, uh, of this year and launched, you know, six months of, of strife and everything else too.
00:12:47
Speaker
So I don't know, it's just swirling around in my head about, um, again, the, the kinds of things that, that look similar, that really have never went away.
00:12:56
Speaker
Um, thinking about the ways in which they have changed and how we can, we can better, I don't know, do a better job in classrooms of, um,
00:13:04
Speaker
of having those conversations with kids and where they're happening.
00:13:08
Speaker
The militarism piece is especially interesting for the students we have in our classrooms today, because although America has essentially always been involved in foreign countries, pretty much since imperialism, these particular students have never been alive in a period that hasn't been the war on terror.
00:13:25
Speaker
So that book is written kind of as a counter narrative to that war on terror.
00:13:32
Speaker
But now it's a presumption.
00:13:34
Speaker
The students that have grown up just know that as their reality.
00:13:37
Speaker
So they are probably connotating that militarism.
00:13:41
Speaker
There has to be how it is.
00:13:43
Speaker
You know, this was written in 2007.
00:13:45
Speaker
Here we are 13 years later and this thing is wrapping up.
00:13:48
Speaker
Here's Deborah Meyer reflecting on
00:13:50
Speaker
you know, the consequences or the potential consequences then.
00:13:53
Speaker
But here we are now, we have to think, right, what are the consequences of 20 years of war on, you know, our mindset as far as education and what it means to be educated and preparedness and the cost of higher education and what it means for kids who do go on to get involved in the military, perhaps to pay for college, perhaps for other things too.
00:14:14
Speaker
And
00:14:15
Speaker
And I just don't think that that's, that's not a conversation that we have anymore, right?
00:14:19
Speaker
It was really salient 15 years ago, probably when this book was written, but now it's just, again, like, like so many things, it's just become part of the air that we breathe in schools, just becomes part of our habits and routines to have military recruiters in our buildings and to
00:14:36
Speaker
kind of take war for granted.
00:14:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:39
Speaker
And there has to be consequences.
00:14:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:41
Speaker
One more thing on that, that, I mean, it's been a conversation and we've been having it for so long, but with the increasing costs of college, how readily we accept the narrative and preach the narrative that, oh, military is an option where you don't have to pay for school.
00:14:57
Speaker
That's the incentive to go fighting in the military.
00:15:00
Speaker
Right.
00:15:00
Speaker
I mean, what you're saying is that because our education system has failed us, you should go risk your life potentially.
00:15:09
Speaker
You might die and fight in an occupation of a foreign country in order to go around that barrier.
00:15:16
Speaker
It's a very problematic way that we look at the future of education and what our young learners value, especially when we connect it to financial gain.
00:15:27
Speaker
I'm glad you brought this up because it connects a lot with the first article I wanted to share, which is actually a book.
00:15:34
Speaker
So I recently wrote, I guess, part three of this unpacking neoliberal schooling thing I've been doing, where I've just been kind of like looking at the connections between capitalist forces, marketing of educational resources, and folks who are just trying to make a buck off of public ed.
00:15:53
Speaker
It's kind of a fringe topic, but I came across this author, researcher, his name is Nicholas Stock, and he wrote an article that connected Mark Fisher, who wrote Capitalist Realism, and Education Theory.
00:16:10
Speaker
I'm not going to dive into that right now because it will take too long.
00:16:13
Speaker
But he pointed me over to a book called John Baudrillard and Radical Education Theory Turning Right to Go Left, which is by Kip Klein and Christopher Holland.
00:16:25
Speaker
So Baudrillard is the guy most people know as the basis of the matrix.
00:16:33
Speaker
He wrote all about simulation theory and about hyperreality and the blending of technology and the world around us.
00:16:41
Speaker
But the book dives into the fact that, one, if you've seen The Matrix, the depiction of The Matrix is not really what Bajrard's concept is.
00:16:50
Speaker
But also, how could educators use what he actually was saying in their practice?
00:16:56
Speaker
And now, I'm going to attempt to explain this.
00:16:57
Speaker
Please stop me if this does not make sense.
00:16:59
Speaker
Because this is the reason why I haven't done a book review in a while.
00:17:02
Speaker
Because I did this, and it drained everything from my brain.
00:17:05
Speaker
This book was only like 60 pages long.
00:17:07
Speaker
And it is like...
00:17:09
Speaker
deciphering paragraph by paragraph by what exactly are you talking about.
00:17:13
Speaker
It makes sense to me now.
00:17:14
Speaker
So Baudrillard has four orders of the simulation theory.
00:17:20
Speaker
First, there is where representation of the real is obvious.
00:17:26
Speaker
This is first order, where you know something is not real.
00:17:29
Speaker
You just engage in it.
00:17:30
Speaker
For example, if you go to a theater performance, you know you're at a theater performance.
00:17:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:17:34
Speaker
Um, the second order is where reality starts to blur.
00:17:39
Speaker
So maybe you're watching like the latest Marvel movie and you can't tell what is CG and what is like actually acted.
00:17:47
Speaker
And then like when you see what it actually is, it's like all green screens.
00:17:50
Speaker
That's second order.
00:17:51
Speaker
So like, you know, it isn't real, but it's hard to tell what is real and what isn't.
00:17:55
Speaker
Then the important part is the third order.
00:17:58
Speaker
So the third order is what Baudrillard calls hyper-reality.
00:18:03
Speaker
The best way to explain this is the authors talk about Disneyland's main street.
00:18:08
Speaker
So everyone knows like you go down the street and it's like hometown America and it's like this idealized, like perfect storefront, like cool restaurants, etc.
00:18:18
Speaker
And when we visit Disneyland and we tour Main Street, we engage with that as a real space, even though we know it's not real.
00:18:27
Speaker
But what makes it hyper real is that Main Streets now across the United States have gentrified their own Main Streets and replicated Disney's Main Street.
00:18:37
Speaker
So Disney has informed and changed our reality through a simulated experience.
00:18:43
Speaker
Now what we're idealizing, the thing that we think is really cool and this thing that we think way should be is based off of a historical knowledge.
00:18:52
Speaker
It's an idealized corporate interpretation of what it used to be.
00:18:56
Speaker
That's hyperreality, where it's like the simulation has replaced what exactly reality is.
00:19:02
Speaker
Wow.
00:19:03
Speaker
And then fourth order would be, this is the newest one.
00:19:07
Speaker
It's like the Disneyverse.
00:19:09
Speaker
So it's where you start taking all of these different things that inform how we live our entire lives.
00:19:17
Speaker
I think about like Disney princesses.
00:19:20
Speaker
So it's no longer that Disney creates the space that we visit and bring back with us, but that everything around us actually is our reality.
00:19:28
Speaker
It's described as life imitating
Embracing Chaos in Education
00:19:30
Speaker
art.
00:19:30
Speaker
So in the same way that like maybe politicians talk about the market.
00:19:34
Speaker
Well, what is the market?
00:19:35
Speaker
But yet it has so much power over our daily conversations.
00:19:40
Speaker
So this fourth order is where we're so surrounded by these ideas and it's so taking control of us that that's just the way it is.
00:19:50
Speaker
We're not imitating a specific simulation we visited.
00:19:53
Speaker
We are itself the simulation.
00:19:56
Speaker
Like everything has informed each other.
00:19:57
Speaker
Does that make sense?
00:19:59
Speaker
I think it does.
00:20:00
Speaker
And honestly, I don't know if that was intentional to like make a connection to that patriotism book or whatever.
00:20:06
Speaker
But like I'm thinking about that third order, especially when you were talking about the hyper reality and the ways that we change reality to maybe be more like the fiction or I guess or the simulation.
00:20:18
Speaker
How much is our current culture wars sort of the reflection of that reality?
00:20:25
Speaker
seemingly desire to have our reality match with what internet conspiracy theorists are living.
00:20:33
Speaker
I don't know if that's necessarily the intention, but it really comes down to a different interpretation of reality, not just necessarily terms like what it means to be a patriot, but
00:20:45
Speaker
In these COVID days, whether or not you believe that the virus is real, that it's worth taking mitigation to protect yourself from it, or whether you think the president's legitimate.
00:20:55
Speaker
I mean, I don't know how deep that rabbit hole goes, but it seems like there is an increasing...
00:21:00
Speaker
that hyper-reality is increasingly in conflict with the reality.
00:21:04
Speaker
And perhaps that's like at the center of where our political, cultural, whatever divisions are.
00:21:10
Speaker
Is that fair to say?
00:21:11
Speaker
I think so.
00:21:12
Speaker
Some people have persisted in the hyper-real and other people are looking at reality in its own terms.
00:21:17
Speaker
So what's interesting is that I think, but I'm pretty confident that Bajriar would say that everyone already lives in hyper-reality.
00:21:25
Speaker
So it's not that there is a group of folks who live in the hyper real and a group of folks who don't.
00:21:30
Speaker
It's almost like that group that you're talking about, these folks who no longer believe in science, that no longer go along with these things.
00:21:39
Speaker
They actually have moved into fourth order.
00:21:41
Speaker
It no longer matters what's real and what's not real.
00:21:45
Speaker
Hyper real is more like, I recognize this thing is happening, but I'm okay with it.
00:21:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:21:52
Speaker
I wanted to bring about this article and it connects to your, your patriotism stuff.
00:21:58
Speaker
Baudrillard's like final thing that he was talking about was this concept called fatal strategies.
00:22:03
Speaker
So this was before this was like a mainstream conversation.
00:22:06
Speaker
He spoke about this idea called post-truth.
00:22:09
Speaker
Basically, the truth does not matter.
00:22:11
Speaker
And he brought up this idea that we research and we research and we research, for example, on climate science, and we show it in different ways.
00:22:21
Speaker
We present all these different models of it.
00:22:23
Speaker
The problem isn't that the research doesn't exist or we don't have access to the information because we have more access now than we ever did to information.
00:22:30
Speaker
He argues that the problem is the truth doesn't matter at all.
00:22:33
Speaker
So people that have bought into that hyperreality and people that have moved into that fourth order, it doesn't matter for them before.
00:22:40
Speaker
It's just a larger growth of post-truth.
00:22:43
Speaker
Basically, the more you make the argument that this is the way things are and present that research, the more people dive into that simulation, the more they dive into their reality.
00:22:54
Speaker
And he basically talks about how exactly do you counteract that?
00:22:59
Speaker
How do you...
00:23:01
Speaker
Do something where you don't fight fire with fire.
00:23:05
Speaker
And he calls this concept fatal strategies.
00:23:08
Speaker
So listen to this quote.
00:23:10
Speaker
Let's see if you can make sense of it.
00:23:12
Speaker
So he says,
00:23:21
Speaker
We will seek what is more ugly than the ugly, the monstrous.
00:23:25
Speaker
We will not oppose the visible to the hidden.
00:23:28
Speaker
We will seek what is more hidden than hidden, the secret.
00:23:32
Speaker
Does that make sense?
00:23:33
Speaker
Do you understand what he's getting out there?
00:23:35
Speaker
If you repeat that to yourself in the mirror, do you get pulled out of the Matrix?
00:23:39
Speaker
Is that how...
00:23:41
Speaker
You'll wake up with Morpheus on the Nebuchadnezzar.
00:23:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:45
Speaker
So here's a better way to explain it.
00:23:47
Speaker
So even though the argument by the authors that the Matrix is a terrible representation, I do think there's a part of the Matrix that makes sense.
00:23:53
Speaker
So this will only make sense to Matrix fans.
00:23:55
Speaker
So bear with me.
00:23:56
Speaker
But there's a scene in the second Matrix about the architect.
00:23:59
Speaker
Right.
00:24:00
Speaker
You know, the architect, the dude.
00:24:01
Speaker
So it's iconic scene.
00:24:03
Speaker
He's sitting in the chair.
00:24:04
Speaker
There's all these images of Neo, the main character behind him.
00:24:08
Speaker
And the premise is that Neo is supposed to be the savior of the Matrix, this computer program that's been designed to keep humans subjugated.
00:24:16
Speaker
And the architect tells Neo basically, well, you're actually part of the code.
00:24:22
Speaker
Like you are intentionally programmed to act as the savior narrative to keep humans under control.
00:24:27
Speaker
It's a control for the control.
00:24:30
Speaker
And he offers Neo two choices, either to basically like let everyone die or to preserve the matrix.
00:24:37
Speaker
And the... Spoiler alert.
00:24:41
Speaker
The decision that Neo makes is not to take either path.
00:24:45
Speaker
He does both.
00:24:46
Speaker
That is the argument that Badriar makes surrounding Fatal Strategies.
00:24:50
Speaker
That the goal of...
00:24:53
Speaker
combating post-truth is not to present truth.
00:24:57
Speaker
The goal of combating post-truth is to present a different option, like an entirely different reality.
00:25:03
Speaker
It doesn't turn in any direction.
00:25:04
Speaker
It turns up.
00:25:06
Speaker
It's completely different.
00:25:08
Speaker
It makes me think, Bell Hooks, actually, and she talks about with her pedagogy of hope, she says,
00:25:15
Speaker
when we only name the problem when we stay stay compliant without a constructive focus or resolution we take hope away and this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism which then works to sustain dominator culture
00:25:32
Speaker
So where I'm getting at with this, and I don't want to spend too long on this article, is that it's all about kind of embracing the chaos of progressive education, where, because Bajriar also loves chaos theory, but it's all like...
00:25:47
Speaker
You just do the thing.
00:25:48
Speaker
Like stop trying to do research about it.
00:25:50
Speaker
Stop trying to combat these folks that no longer believe in it.
00:25:55
Speaker
You just do weird stuff.
00:25:56
Speaker
If you think it's going to work or even if you don't think it's going to work, it doesn't matter.
00:25:59
Speaker
You're breaking out of that rat race of like, can I do this?
00:26:04
Speaker
Can I do that?
00:26:04
Speaker
Should I research this?
00:26:05
Speaker
What things could support it?
00:26:06
Speaker
Could I defend myself doing it?
00:26:08
Speaker
You just shift it to just being, hey, I'm going to have this radical idea and I'm just going to do it.
00:26:12
Speaker
That's breaking out of the cycle.
00:26:13
Speaker
You're presenting an entirely different narrative instead of trying to fight back at all.
00:26:18
Speaker
It's really interesting stuff.
00:26:20
Speaker
You got to cue the, uh, the rage against the machine song that plays at the end of the, of the first, right?
00:26:25
Speaker
You're right.
00:26:26
Speaker
That's gotta be our transition to, to get to the next, to the next piece.
00:26:32
Speaker
I'm going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible.
00:26:46
Speaker
Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.
00:26:55
Speaker
That's such a good movie.
00:26:57
Speaker
I love The Matrix.
00:26:59
Speaker
That is so good.
00:27:00
Speaker
I saw that movie twice in theaters.
00:27:02
Speaker
I'm so excited for
Project-Based Learning with Video Games
00:27:03
Speaker
the next one.
00:27:03
Speaker
I even like the second and third one.
00:27:05
Speaker
I love The Matrix.
00:27:06
Speaker
So let's then shift into talking about our classrooms.
00:27:10
Speaker
What's going on in our classroom space?
00:27:12
Speaker
I can start this one if you want.
00:27:14
Speaker
I want to talk about what we're doing with PBL.
00:27:17
Speaker
So we're fortunate in the last couple of years, we've shifted to be a cohorted space.
00:27:21
Speaker
So I have a PBL period during the day, which does not necessarily have to connect to any standards whatsoever.
00:27:29
Speaker
The goal is that we make the project first and then connect it to everyone's standards, whoever can get involved with it.
00:27:35
Speaker
So we still do PBL in the class, but that's besides the point.
00:27:38
Speaker
Then during the PBL period, one of the options the students had that I am in charge of is creating a video game.
00:27:46
Speaker
Years back, five or six years ago, I did the same project, but it was a little bit more tailored.
00:27:52
Speaker
We did like this thing with veterans and actually talking about the same things we were just talking about earlier, like patriotism and what it means to be a veteran, that kind of thing.
00:28:00
Speaker
This time through, we're focused more on game theory and what does it mean to create a good game.
00:28:06
Speaker
So it's less topic based and more psychology based.
00:28:10
Speaker
And we've been using Will Wright's masterclass.
00:28:14
Speaker
But Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, has this amazing masterclass on the masterclass website where he talks about game theory.
00:28:19
Speaker
Kids are watching that.
00:28:21
Speaker
They're making their own art assets.
00:28:22
Speaker
They're making their own sound design.
00:28:24
Speaker
We're using RPG Maker, which is a good introduction to.
00:28:27
Speaker
And the English teacher is helping out with the writing elements.
00:28:30
Speaker
I'm obviously doing the designing things.
00:28:32
Speaker
I don't know.
00:28:32
Speaker
It's cool.
00:28:33
Speaker
The kids are super excited about it.
00:28:34
Speaker
We've had a long break because of parent-teacher conferences.
00:28:37
Speaker
And I got these Discord messages from kids asking me about, like, hey, what's my username and password into the account so I can work on this at home?
00:28:44
Speaker
They are very excited to work on.
00:28:46
Speaker
It's always cool when you can break kids up into small groups where they can just do something that's completely around their interests.
00:28:51
Speaker
Because I have about 25 kids in there and they are all obsessed with video games.
00:28:55
Speaker
That is so awesome.
00:28:56
Speaker
Dude, we've always talked too about writing that article about how does good video game design mimic good instructional design?
00:29:07
Speaker
um because if you think about the the best they don't even have to be open world games but like we've always talked about breath of the wild or maybe mario odyssey you know the games that just understand game design really well um that kind of structure and the way that it sort of it trains the player in in kind of the the skills and the attributes um and kind of the way that that world works without running through a tutorial right it
00:29:34
Speaker
it teaches you how to play the game through playing the game that not only sets up like an incentive structure for, for the player to then want to be able to use those skills in new and challenging ways and really like push the limits of that world, but then discover what else that world has to offer.
00:29:52
Speaker
And it was, it was kind of video games that, that,
00:29:56
Speaker
that had me thinking a lot about questioning my classroom practices back when I was kind of making the transition from, you know, what I, what I, I was a good educator when I first started too, I believe.
00:30:09
Speaker
It's just, I hadn't quite made the pedagogical leap maybe to some of the progressive, the progressive side.
00:30:16
Speaker
But it was because I would see the way that students would be involved in games, whether, whether it's like athletics or video games or anything else like that.
00:30:25
Speaker
And then just see, you know, why, why are they intrinsically motivated to want to do something that, that, that looks asinine, right.
00:30:33
Speaker
That looks ridiculous from the outside that gets no conceivable reward, you know, because the line is always kids only do stuff if they get a grade or, you know, um,
00:30:42
Speaker
They won't do it if there's not any points attached.
00:30:44
Speaker
Then you'd see them put hours into things that have no real connection to the outside world.
00:30:50
Speaker
But you just want to know, like, what's the next thing?
00:30:52
Speaker
How can I do this thing faster?
00:30:54
Speaker
How can I just get a little bit more points?
00:30:57
Speaker
Depending on whatever the game is, how can I beat that next level?
00:31:00
Speaker
And it's kind of about creating that structure that lets it do that.
00:31:05
Speaker
And I think there's a lot of progressive pedagogies and kind of structures and research theories that help support that now.
00:31:12
Speaker
But back then, it's just like, hey, what makes games great?
00:31:15
Speaker
How can I make my classroom more like that?
00:31:17
Speaker
So you're having kids just make that stuff.
00:31:19
Speaker
That's a really good point.
00:31:20
Speaker
And next week, we're talking about gameplay loops.
00:31:23
Speaker
And depending on the challenge of your game, how do you keep a player playing if your game is challenging?
00:31:31
Speaker
Like how do you make the lose state exciting?
00:31:34
Speaker
Because there's nothing worse than when you're playing a game and it's too hard and then you just quit and give up, which I think has a lot of pedagogical connections because in the best games, if it is incredibly challenging, like if it's designed to be that way, to get back into it is usually super fast.
00:31:51
Speaker
And I think about that in the classroom sense.
00:31:53
Speaker
Well, if you have a very challenging lesson or a very challenging unit,
00:31:57
Speaker
How do you have students get back into that lesson if they don't know what's going on?
00:32:01
Speaker
What is your failure state to ensure that they're not lost?
00:32:06
Speaker
Because if it sucks to get back into it, they're just going to stop playing.
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah, and if you make the consequences too high, then you're not going to want to continue because you would have lost whatever progress that you had just made.
00:32:17
Speaker
Think of the mechanics from old school games, some that really get criticized, like Resident Evil, the first Resident Evil games.
00:32:24
Speaker
You'd have to collect those ink ribbons, and then wherever you found it, you had to find a typewriter, and you had to make sure that you would save your ink ribbons because it could be the case that you could run out of saves and then be stuck in a position where you just have to...
00:32:39
Speaker
you know, basically start your game over.
00:32:41
Speaker
And a lot of old school games, that would be the case where you could get into a place where you could either just be stuck interminably dying over and over again or have no way out of the thing.
00:32:50
Speaker
And then what?
00:32:51
Speaker
That just discourages you from playing the game.
00:32:53
Speaker
So I think game designers have come a long way too in realizing that the things that
00:32:59
Speaker
used to punish the player for making mistakes, now rewarding them for exploration and to pushing those limits and making sure that they can get back on their feet with as little setback as possible and to be in the best position just to pick up the controller and want to keep going.
00:33:15
Speaker
And that's not to say, not to be exploitative, maybe gameplay loops is different from maybe dopamine hooks, where we think of the most addictive parts of mobile gaming, kind of the most damaging bits of that.
00:33:29
Speaker
That's not what we're talking about here.
00:33:30
Speaker
We're talking about things that can get you back into the learning faster.
00:33:35
Speaker
So how can we make our classroom structures look more like the best kind of video game design, right?
00:33:42
Speaker
How can we give kids the ability to be in the driver's seat of the decision-making process and kind of set expectations?
00:33:50
Speaker
what we might call kind of low floor, high ceiling play experiences within our classroom walls, right?
00:33:58
Speaker
How do kids know that when they can save their progress or what happens if they fail?
00:34:04
Speaker
And how can we just increase the amount of feedback that kids get that's useful for them to improve on the next thing right away instead of having to wait the next day or a week or a month to get that paperback or whatever.
00:34:17
Speaker
So I don't know, that's always a good conversation.
00:34:19
Speaker
One more thing about games.
00:34:20
Speaker
which is these three different types of win or lose states.
00:34:25
Speaker
So early retro games were designed not to be beaten.
00:34:29
Speaker
That was the whole reason why the lose state was so extreme.
00:34:33
Speaker
So when we're designing our class, we have to consider, is the class designed in a way...
00:34:38
Speaker
perhaps unintentionally that students are almost kind of ostracized for doing poorly.
00:34:45
Speaker
So if you don't do well, is your class designed in a way that's almost intentional that they are not going to do well and be able to catch back up?
00:34:52
Speaker
Like if there aren't those things there to make that possible,
00:34:56
Speaker
then it's sort of the design of the class because that's just what's going to happen.
00:35:02
Speaker
There's no way to get back on.
00:35:03
Speaker
In terms of the win state thing, though, to tease apart the exploitative version versus the good version, great games will do storylines, so the narrative of the lesson, discovering the next thing.
00:35:15
Speaker
Or maybe it's a point system that is no pressure.
00:35:19
Speaker
Most great point systems are not like you have to get a certain number of points or else you don't get to move on.
00:35:24
Speaker
The points are there to challenge yourself to do something different than everybody else.
00:35:28
Speaker
It's just for fun.
00:35:29
Speaker
It's just a low stress thing.
00:35:31
Speaker
Maybe it's a great game where it's just fun to play it.
00:35:34
Speaker
You don't care if you win or lose.
00:35:35
Speaker
It's just like, oh, this is cool.
00:35:36
Speaker
I enjoy this.
00:35:38
Speaker
Failure is not seen as a bad thing.
00:35:40
Speaker
It's just like part of the part of the thing.
00:35:43
Speaker
And then kind of separating that from the dopamine enhancer.
00:35:45
Speaker
Well, what's the end goal of those games?
00:35:47
Speaker
It's to make a lot of money.
00:35:49
Speaker
So if our goal is this extrinsic thing, getting someone to have their peas and carrots, which in our case is making as much money as possible, then I'm going to exploit that system so that it fits around what I want to earn at the end.
00:36:04
Speaker
So if we're teasing apart gamification, a lot of gamification strategies for classrooms, sadly, are very corporate in nature.
00:36:12
Speaker
They're all about like, well, how do we get kids to get good grades?
00:36:15
Speaker
So the design of the class is more, well, how do we get them to do all this dumb stuff?
00:36:19
Speaker
Well, we're going to gamify it and they'll get as high as scores as possible on the test.
00:36:23
Speaker
Versus gamification, that's just how do we design a learning experience that's fun and has good coming back states and kids enjoy the narrative of it and they're doing it because they think it's cool and it's exciting.
00:36:35
Speaker
Yeah, that latter state that you mentioned there too, maybe the more exploitative gamified version of that completely ignores too the willingness of students to enter into those spaces.
00:36:47
Speaker
You know, like, is it a game that kids would pick up voluntarily or is it just there kind of as an incentive structure?
00:36:54
Speaker
I think in terms of classroom, an incentive structure to get kids to comply.
00:36:58
Speaker
You know, is it just another extrinsic kind of behaviorist
00:37:02
Speaker
tool to manipulate kids, or does it help put them in the driver's seat of, you know, telling their learning narrative, you know, are they able to make choices about what they're doing next based on the feedback that they get?
00:37:13
Speaker
Are they able to apply what they're learning in, you know, new and novel ways that are interesting to them, you know, or again, is it just about, to your point, you know, getting them to do as much stuff as fast as possible,
00:37:27
Speaker
So that way they can get a good grade on the test and move on.
00:37:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's more of the mobile game.
00:37:31
Speaker
You know, that's the cookie clicker candy crush version, Mike, the micro transaction version of gamified classrooms instead of there's our next book, the Breath of the Wild.
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, there it is.
00:37:44
Speaker
Anyways, moving over to what's going on in your class, Nick.
Rethinking Historical Narratives and Grading
00:37:49
Speaker
Oh, man, nothing nearly as cool as yours.
00:37:51
Speaker
I'm kind of in a lull right now.
00:37:52
Speaker
I did all my cool stuff just within the last couple of weeks, right before the holiday, right, the indigenous people's holiday, as announced by the Biden administration.
00:38:02
Speaker
we actually did spend a week answering the question in class, should we continue to celebrate Columbus Day or does the holiday need to change?
00:38:10
Speaker
And I think it's a great way not just to seat and contextualize some of the content in my European history class about, right, that age of exploration and conquest and all of that stuff too, but also to reflect on...
00:38:25
Speaker
reflect on how we commemorate people, events, time periods in public spaces.
00:38:32
Speaker
So, so we looked at a lot of current events.
00:38:34
Speaker
I didn't know if you were aware of this, but in Mexico city, they actually voted to take down a statue of Columbus fairly recently.
00:38:42
Speaker
And then just in the last week, they replaced it with a statue of an indigenous girl or an indigenous woman.
00:38:49
Speaker
I'm not quite sure of the age.
00:38:50
Speaker
Um,
00:38:51
Speaker
But it's a really striking thing, right?
00:38:53
Speaker
Not just having Columbus replaced here with an indigenous person to kind of change that narrative, but again, to like put a female presence where once, you know, it was a very male-dominated space and just looking at how we commemorate those things.
00:39:07
Speaker
So we did a lot of learning around that.
00:39:09
Speaker
We did, we took a vote on like, yes, we should continue.
00:39:12
Speaker
No, we should change it at the beginning of the week.
00:39:15
Speaker
Then at the end of the week, we voted again after, you know, doing all the learning and context building.
00:39:19
Speaker
And we had a
00:39:20
Speaker
We had a really cool kind of, I don't, it's almost like a discussion board, except I did it on Jamboard because I didn't want to use, you know, I don't, I don't, I didn't have like a Reddit subreddit or a discord or anything else like that.
00:39:31
Speaker
So we kind of had a silent debate on the Jamboard, which that was, which was very productive.
00:39:38
Speaker
Kids asked a lot of great critical questions.
00:39:40
Speaker
They really did a good job engaging with each other.
00:39:43
Speaker
And at the end of the debate, they,
00:39:45
Speaker
More often than not, in each class, the side of change got more points at the end than it had at the beginning.
00:39:52
Speaker
And kind of the consensus was, in some way, shape or form to recognize an Indigenous Peoples Day, as we do in Iowa, by proclamation of our governor in 2018.
00:40:02
Speaker
Or to expand the notion of Columbus Day into be a more inclusive holiday for, say, explorers or discoveries.
00:40:09
Speaker
So that way you could incorporate, you know, you can incorporate the 20th century, you know, space race.
00:40:16
Speaker
People who have been lost or explorers who have been involved in that.
00:40:21
Speaker
It's a little bit more international because...
00:40:23
Speaker
Obviously, you know, space kind of is beyond any particular nationalistic context, or at least probably it should be.
00:40:29
Speaker
But also, right, you can throw in explorers in that time period from other nations as well.
00:40:37
Speaker
I mean, to get in there and hear kids just going over their notes that they've taken, using textbook resources, you know, Googling, like, what is a galley?
00:40:46
Speaker
You know, like, oh, what's a galley?
00:40:47
Speaker
And they'll be like typing up.
00:40:49
Speaker
They're like, oh, I don't think it's a galley because of this.
00:40:51
Speaker
Um, so I'm done just giving a test and having kids sit in silence and waiting for me to grade it.
00:40:56
Speaker
I mean, we turn that into an, an experience, a conversation, and I don't know, I don't know how the hell to grade it.
00:41:02
Speaker
I don't know how to grade anything in an AP class anymore, but, um, but we're learning.
00:41:07
Speaker
And I think that's, it'll be evident to anybody who comes into that space, you know, that we're, that, that kids are learning.
00:41:13
Speaker
We're talking about the content.
00:41:14
Speaker
I don't know what else you want from them, you know?
00:41:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:16
Speaker
Speaking of fatal strategies.
00:41:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:18
Speaker
One side might argue that we need to have a lot of rote memorization.
00:41:24
Speaker
Here's what you need to do and now take a test over it.
00:41:26
Speaker
One side might argue, hey, we need to focus on critical thinking skills.
00:41:29
Speaker
They make this cool rubric and then you get good points and you get bad points and you work to improve it.
00:41:35
Speaker
Maybe the fatal strategy is, well, why make anything great at all?
00:41:38
Speaker
Or why even have a performance at the end?
00:41:41
Speaker
Why not just do practice?
00:41:42
Speaker
I have a test.
00:41:43
Speaker
Even if you're going to have a test, why make it great?
00:41:45
Speaker
Just learn through it.
00:41:46
Speaker
It's just another assignment.
00:41:48
Speaker
Treat a quiz like, I don't know, watching a movie and answering questions about it.
00:41:53
Speaker
Just another thing that you could do.
00:41:55
Speaker
If kids want to do it, you can do it.
00:41:56
Speaker
That's it.
00:41:57
Speaker
Yep.
00:41:58
Speaker
And I think, you know, it's a great way then to just build, not just build up competence, but like the kind of collaborative learning community that you want kids to have.
00:42:10
Speaker
Because
00:42:10
Speaker
It just builds our collective capacity to do better together because the kid who doesn't know it on the test and then just sits there, right?
00:42:18
Speaker
And just, they're not experiencing growth and learning and understanding.
00:42:23
Speaker
They know that they are not going to do well.
00:42:25
Speaker
And then they just have to sit there and wait for the grade.
00:42:27
Speaker
And what?
00:42:28
Speaker
It just confirms what they, it confirms what they knew themselves about their lack of understanding in that moment.
00:42:36
Speaker
And what a waste of, what a waste of time that is, you know, the test.
00:42:41
Speaker
I'm so over the test.
00:42:43
Speaker
Let's get kids talking.
00:42:44
Speaker
Let's get them using their resources.
00:42:46
Speaker
Let's get them working together.
00:42:49
Speaker
That's called spaceship whoosh by.
00:42:52
Speaker
Anyways, there's no sound in space.
00:42:55
Speaker
There's no spaceship whoosh by.
00:42:57
Speaker
We're going by sci-fi rules, so it doesn't matter.
00:43:00
Speaker
Anyways, that builds us into the quiz.
00:43:05
Speaker
Uh-oh.
00:43:07
Speaker
So we were talking about, well, how do we design a, I don't know how much of this clip I can use.
00:43:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:14
Speaker
So the theme of our quiz today, and you can play along at
Quiz on Nonprofits in Education
00:43:20
Speaker
home.
00:43:20
Speaker
The theme is College Board is a nonprofit.
00:43:25
Speaker
And it's all related to nonprofits and education and making money and weird stuff surrounding that.
00:43:32
Speaker
So each of us have prepared three questions.
00:43:35
Speaker
We have decided that the loser gets kicked out of the airlock and that's how it ends.
00:43:39
Speaker
Kind of dark, but science fiction.
00:43:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:43
Speaker
Is there a better way to introduce that?
00:43:46
Speaker
I think that sounds good.
00:43:47
Speaker
Sounds good.
00:43:48
Speaker
So we'll take turns and we'll keep track.
00:43:51
Speaker
You can ask your question first, Nick.
00:43:54
Speaker
So as I, I recently had a conversation with Michael Crawford and Jane Shore, and I warned them that I'm addicted to context and this is no different.
00:44:03
Speaker
So while I believe, and I don't know the content of this, of Chris's questions, but
00:44:07
Speaker
Well, I believe he's going to talk about the College Board as their nonprofit organization.
00:44:12
Speaker
I could be wrong.
00:44:13
Speaker
I chose to go a different route.
00:44:15
Speaker
And I selected, I built my series of questions about a nonprofit educational organization you may have heard of called Teach for America.
00:44:24
Speaker
So if you don't know who they are, they were founded in 1990 by Wendy Kopp.
00:44:28
Speaker
She developed the idea in her senior thesis at Princeton in 1989.
00:44:32
Speaker
I had no idea Teach for America was that old, honestly.
00:44:35
Speaker
I had never heard about it until the early 2010s.
00:44:38
Speaker
So its original mission was to, and I'm quoting from their website here, generate a longer term leadership pipeline that advances the education movement, providing a source of talent for policy, advocacy, and politics,
00:44:50
Speaker
as well as quality schools and new entrepreneurial ventures.
00:44:54
Speaker
TFA claims on their website as well that they have over 58,000 alumni in over 50 regions around the country, more than 14,000 alumni teachers, over 1,000 school leaders, 600 school system leaders, 1,100 policy and advocacy leaders, more than 280 elected leaders, and 238 social entrepreneurs.
00:45:19
Speaker
And my first encounter with them, honestly, was during the Obama era, because I graduated into the Great Recession.
00:45:29
Speaker
And where I was living in Lincoln, Nebraska at the time, actually had a hiring freeze during that time.
00:45:34
Speaker
So they were not even hiring any new teachers, even though I was certified and newly out of college.
00:45:39
Speaker
So I actually got in touch with Teach for America and had a couple of phone interviews and conversations.
00:45:45
Speaker
And the conversation was about me working in the Kansas City area, since that was kind of the closest to me then.
00:45:53
Speaker
And the only reason that that went through is because my wife, or then my girlfriend, but it was now my wife, that's a happy ending.
00:46:02
Speaker
But she was gainfully employed and did not feel like giving up her job and moving to Kansas City.
00:46:07
Speaker
So yeah.
00:46:08
Speaker
So I instead found other unemployment or I did find unemployment, but I found employment as well.
00:46:17
Speaker
So so, yeah, we'll talk about the criticisms and things here, Chris.
00:46:20
Speaker
But these are set up as fact or fiction questions.
00:46:24
Speaker
So you need to figure out if this the statement that I'm going to read to you is is fact or fiction.
00:46:31
Speaker
OK, you're ready for question one.
00:46:32
Speaker
Yes.
00:46:34
Speaker
When public school districts hire teachers from Teach for America, they pay a greater upfront cost than if they hire traditional entry-level teachers.
00:46:41
Speaker
Oh, that's definitely false.
00:46:42
Speaker
I know that's a false.
00:46:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:46:45
Speaker
That's fiction.
00:46:47
Speaker
That is a fact.
00:46:48
Speaker
That's a fact.
00:46:49
Speaker
That is actually a fact.
00:46:50
Speaker
They pay more?
00:46:51
Speaker
Yes.
00:46:52
Speaker
I did not know that.
00:46:53
Speaker
I thought for sure they could pay less.
00:46:54
Speaker
Yes.
00:46:54
Speaker
Because you have to be certified.
00:46:57
Speaker
you do not have to be certified.
00:46:59
Speaker
The goal is that by the time that you finish your two-year contract, then you will be certified.
00:47:05
Speaker
That is interesting.
00:47:06
Speaker
So I actually got this, a little bit of this from a 2015 article from the American Prospect called The True Cost of Teach for America's Impact to Urban Schools.
00:47:15
Speaker
This is...
00:47:16
Speaker
This is it.
00:47:16
Speaker
So they said, when public school districts hire teachers from Teach for America, they pay a greater upfront cost than if they hire traditional entry-level teachers.
00:47:24
Speaker
This is because TFA charges finders fees for every core member they supply.
00:47:29
Speaker
This is such a trick question.
00:47:29
Speaker
Wait, wait, wait.
00:47:30
Speaker
But does the teacher make more money?
00:47:32
Speaker
Like their salary?
00:47:32
Speaker
The teacher doesn't.
00:47:33
Speaker
The district.
00:47:34
Speaker
I thought that's what we were asking.
00:47:36
Speaker
So district is a higher up.
00:47:37
Speaker
I think that's a trick question.
00:47:39
Speaker
So hear me out here.
00:47:40
Speaker
In addition to the salary and benefits, the school districts pay the teacher districts also must pay the net TFA typically between 2000 and $5,000 per core member per year.
00:47:49
Speaker
Um,
00:47:52
Speaker
So those finder finders fees are there.
00:47:54
Speaker
So for example, if one city has 200 core members, and the finders fee is $4200 for each teacher, then that costs a district an additional $1.7 million in fees to teach for America.
00:48:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:11
Speaker
And what's really interesting is I was reading another article about this, and they were talking about a TFA alum who actually loved the program, stayed in education, went to become a charter school leader later on.
00:48:26
Speaker
But then when he became an admin for the charter school network in Los Angeles that he was working for, and we'll talk about those charters.
00:48:33
Speaker
Right.
00:48:33
Speaker
But then he realized he wasn't interested in hiring Teach for America core members.
00:48:39
Speaker
Hmm.
00:48:40
Speaker
Because they didn't have the context.
00:48:42
Speaker
They didn't know, you know, the area, they were less experienced.
00:48:45
Speaker
And he said, I'll take that money and put that towards hiring teachers from the community that have more experience, or then take the resources and put that into professional development for training current staff.
00:48:59
Speaker
What an idea, huh?
00:49:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:01
Speaker
So, okay.
00:49:02
Speaker
So wait, nice.
00:49:03
Speaker
Really quick.
00:49:04
Speaker
I think, I think that it's interesting to note based about that is that I think it's worth mentioning the difference between an individual versus a systemic problem.
00:49:14
Speaker
Cause there are a lot of people that go through the TFA program that are great people that are trying to make a difference.
00:49:19
Speaker
The issue is, is how the large nonprofit scare quotes is using that as an exploitative measure to generate income quickly and easily.
00:49:31
Speaker
You'll probably get into who they're funded by in one of your later questions.
00:49:33
Speaker
But I think it's worth noting that like individuals acting within a system to try to do the best they can is not the same thing as a systemic problem that exists.
00:49:42
Speaker
In the exact same way that like
00:49:44
Speaker
I think McDonald's has incredibly unethical policies towards its workers, but I had a McDonald's coffee this morning.
00:49:50
Speaker
It doesn't make me a terrible person per se because it's the coffee shop that's available in my town.
00:49:56
Speaker
I guess I can buy and make my own coffee, but not all of us are perfect.
00:49:59
Speaker
So that's just how it is.
00:50:01
Speaker
That's the, that's the old, that's the meme that's like, oh, you're, you're critical of society and yet you participate in it.
00:50:08
Speaker
Curious.
00:50:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:09
Speaker
We all have to participate in those structures, even as we're fighting to change them.
00:50:13
Speaker
So my next question is about TFA retention and funding.
00:50:19
Speaker
So we'll get there.
00:50:20
Speaker
So listen carefully here.
00:50:21
Speaker
So let's look at the five year teacher retention rate, you know, so like kind of situate whatever you have for that in your mind.
00:50:27
Speaker
Yep.
00:50:27
Speaker
So the five-year teacher retention rate, so that's to say TFA teachers who keep teaching after five years, even if they're not in their initial placement school.
00:50:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:36
Speaker
The five-year teacher retention rate for TFA teachers is higher than compared to all new urban teachers.
00:50:43
Speaker
Fact or fiction?
00:50:46
Speaker
So in the back of my mind, I know I've read stories about, like horror stories about TFA.
00:50:52
Speaker
where like they're under supported, they don't have the right resources, they're typically placed in schools that are underserved and they don't get paid.
00:50:59
Speaker
Even though your previous question was a trick question, they do not get paid as much.
00:51:02
Speaker
Just like Teach for America makes more money.
00:51:04
Speaker
And I know they don't make a lot of money.
00:51:06
Speaker
I would imagine that their retention rate is lower.
00:51:10
Speaker
Okay.
00:51:10
Speaker
So then my statement would be fiction.
00:51:13
Speaker
Yes, fiction.
00:51:14
Speaker
Okay.
00:51:15
Speaker
All right.
00:51:15
Speaker
You are correct.
00:51:16
Speaker
That is fiction.
00:51:17
Speaker
So, nice.
00:51:20
Speaker
So you're one for two here, 50-50.
00:51:22
Speaker
Now, I did just post some tweets this morning because I was doing a little bit more research on this.
00:51:26
Speaker
TFA is very open on their own website about saying, like, you're not a Teach for America employee.
00:51:32
Speaker
You're going to get paid whatever salary and benefits teachers in those areas make or teachers at the charter school that we place you at make.
00:51:38
Speaker
you know, $33,000 to $58,000 or whatever the case is.
00:51:42
Speaker
Charter schools typically pay less than public schools do.
00:51:48
Speaker
But let's talk about this.
00:51:50
Speaker
So the truth behind this statement is that only about 25% of Teach for America teachers remain in teaching after five years, compared to about 50% of all new urban teachers.
00:52:02
Speaker
So that rate is brutally high regardless.
00:52:06
Speaker
All right.
00:52:07
Speaker
But it's about only half as much for Teach for America.
00:52:11
Speaker
But it's even worse by the fact that TFA gets paid for their contracts with districts who then, once those teachers leave, have to pay to hire and retain once the Teach for America teachers leave.
00:52:22
Speaker
So basically, yeah.
00:52:23
Speaker
And when they leave, they go on to other things.
00:52:27
Speaker
So I've got some more data for you.
00:52:28
Speaker
So here's a
00:52:29
Speaker
2008 Harvard study says that only 35, about 35% stay in teaching for more than four years.
00:52:38
Speaker
So that's to say after that, they go into other fields or they go on to policy and advocacy and lobbying or whatever the case might be.
00:52:47
Speaker
Yeah, so TFA's numbers are actually pretty good within the first couple of years.
00:52:53
Speaker
So about 60% of TFA teachers stay for a third year after their two-year tour is up, which I think that's pretty good.
00:53:01
Speaker
And about 85% of TFA recruits who keep teaching, they actually transfer out of their original placement school.
00:53:07
Speaker
So while they go in and they teach in underserved communities for lower pay,
00:53:14
Speaker
once those two-year contracts are up, they jump into probably wealthier, more suburban districts and things like that.
00:53:21
Speaker
Makes sense.
00:53:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:23
Speaker
Isn't that interesting?
00:53:25
Speaker
Last one.
00:53:26
Speaker
Is it possible this story is true?
00:53:27
Speaker
There you go.
00:53:29
Speaker
Fact or fiction, Chris?
00:53:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:31
Speaker
TFA reported nearly half a billion dollars in net assets in 2020.
00:53:36
Speaker
I feel like it's more fiction.
00:53:39
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:40
Speaker
Nope.
00:53:40
Speaker
That one is a fact.
00:53:41
Speaker
I'm surprised.
00:53:41
Speaker
That's it?
00:53:43
Speaker
That's it.
00:53:43
Speaker
I feel like they could do better.
00:53:45
Speaker
How much does the executive director make?
00:53:48
Speaker
About half a million dollars.
00:53:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:49
Speaker
That's what I figured.
00:53:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:52
Speaker
All right.
00:53:52
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:53:52
Speaker
So I was just looking at their... It never happened yet.
00:53:55
Speaker
I was looking at their 990s this morning.
00:53:56
Speaker
So according to their 2020 financial statement, TFA reported net assets of about $456 million.
00:54:03
Speaker
So, you know, what that means, the nonprofit world.
00:54:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:07
Speaker
So basically...
00:54:10
Speaker
Well, yeah.
00:54:11
Speaker
So that's if they sold off everything, right?
00:54:12
Speaker
That's like equity in a for-profit company, right?
00:54:16
Speaker
So, yeah, the reported total revenue was about $273 billion between 2019 and 2020.
00:54:22
Speaker
Now, the bomb I'm going to drop on this here, too, is that, in fact, the Walton family is the largest single donor to teach for America.
00:54:31
Speaker
Now, if you're not familiar with the Walton family, if you've ever shopped at Walmart, like we all have, you
00:54:38
Speaker
Right.
00:54:39
Speaker
That money has gone to the Walton family or, you know, a portion of that money has gone to the Walton family who founded Walmart.
00:54:45
Speaker
Right.
00:54:45
Speaker
Now, what's interesting is they announced in 2013 they were donating $20 million to Teach for America.
00:54:52
Speaker
What they didn't release with that grant proposal there was that they were actually going to end up paying $4,000 for teachers placed in traditional public schools, but $6,000 for every teacher placed in a charter school.
00:55:07
Speaker
Right.
00:55:07
Speaker
Directed at nine cities where charter schools were sprouting up, including New Orleans, Memphis, Tennessee, and Los Angeles.
00:55:14
Speaker
So, you know, famously, the Walmart employees are among the highest, the largest recipients of, you know, food benefits, SNAP benefits, Medicaid benefits, because they are famously underpaid by the company that employs them.
00:55:31
Speaker
And Walmart is very also infamously union busting as well.
00:55:34
Speaker
So not a surprise that they would fund charter schools that I found out this morning have a 7% unionization rate.
00:55:42
Speaker
So about 7% of charter schools are unionized.
00:55:45
Speaker
So there is a direct Walmart to the Walton family, to the Teach for America, to the Charter School Network pipeline right there for you, Chris.
00:55:53
Speaker
And all tax-free, nonetheless.
00:55:54
Speaker
Oh, and all tax-free.
00:55:56
Speaker
Yeah, they probably get a wonderful deduction for donating that $20,000.
00:55:59
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:56:01
Speaker
$20 million, right?
00:56:03
Speaker
So yeah, you were one for three.
00:56:05
Speaker
That seems like a number to beat.
Critique of Standardized Testing
00:56:07
Speaker
I think we're going to end up blowing you out the airlock.
00:56:08
Speaker
Oh, we'll see.
00:56:09
Speaker
We'll see how difficult these questions are.
00:56:11
Speaker
So I'm not going to lie.
00:56:12
Speaker
Mine have a little bit less context than yours.
00:56:16
Speaker
I'm addicted.
00:56:16
Speaker
Because originally this was, hey, Chris, we should do a lightning round at the end.
00:56:21
Speaker
Your definitions of lightning round are very different.
00:56:24
Speaker
Your lightning is like more of a slow roar.
00:56:27
Speaker
It's ball lightning.
00:56:28
Speaker
It just... So I'm going to attempt to add more context on the fly, which I have not written down.
00:56:35
Speaker
So this might come across as very sporadic.
00:56:38
Speaker
My theme is not as clear.
00:56:40
Speaker
Mine are kind of random.
00:56:41
Speaker
Two of them do relate.
00:56:44
Speaker
I have the same fact or fiction thing.
00:56:46
Speaker
So here's the context.
00:56:47
Speaker
We're going to start way back with Horace Mann.
00:56:51
Speaker
You know Horace Mann.
00:56:52
Speaker
The guy that he kind of has like a mythos surrounding him.
00:56:55
Speaker
He's known primarily as being the guy who went to Prussia and was logging how how organized the schools were.
00:57:03
Speaker
He came back to the United States.
00:57:05
Speaker
Critics would say that he is the founder of kind of the standardization movement.
00:57:10
Speaker
However, if you read his work, it's more centered on the growth of just public education.
00:57:17
Speaker
It's just the idea like we should have a free public education everywhere.
00:57:21
Speaker
And he was looking at from the lens of, well, how is that feasible?
00:57:25
Speaker
So I think it's fair.
00:57:26
Speaker
I think the criticism can be fair, but at the exact same time, it's kind of a product of the era.
00:57:31
Speaker
It was just like a planning thing.
00:57:32
Speaker
He was not interested in necessarily the long-term pedagogical outcomes of standardizing everything.
00:57:39
Speaker
Anyways, the organization ACT in 2019 generated $300 million a year on that leadership team.
00:57:49
Speaker
You'd actually find a really interesting position that's not listed on its website.
00:57:53
Speaker
They have all of their leadership team listed.
00:57:56
Speaker
But here's the fact or fiction.
00:57:58
Speaker
You'd also find the position of the Horace Mann Research Chair, which in 2019 was paid $429,000.
00:58:04
Speaker
I totally believe that.
00:58:05
Speaker
That's fact.
00:58:05
Speaker
That is fact.
00:58:14
Speaker
So if you were to do some research on this, if you were to go back into the 909 form for the nonprofit, you will find... The 990.
00:58:23
Speaker
The 990 form, right.
00:58:25
Speaker
You will find a gentleman, his name is Wayne Kamara, which sounds like a fantasy villain name.
00:58:32
Speaker
He also, previously, speaking of College Board, he was one of the head directors for the College Board at one point.
00:58:38
Speaker
His claim to fame is you'll find...
00:58:41
Speaker
But I can only find out two articles he's actually done.
00:58:43
Speaker
Two articles that prove that standardized testing is equitable.
00:58:48
Speaker
He previously was the senior researcher for ACT.
00:58:52
Speaker
He basically writes these really long, drawn-out articles.
00:58:55
Speaker
Actually, ACT is equitable because it gives marginalized students the tools to escape poverty, even though there is a plethora of evidence that says other... I mean, it is a pretty well-known fact that SAT and ACT tests mirror income brackets.
00:59:11
Speaker
So this whole concept is ridiculous.
00:59:14
Speaker
In 2019, I believe it's 2018 or 2019, he served on this, I don't know if this is a corruption thing, it's really weird.
00:59:22
Speaker
I used the Wayback Machine and I tried to find this position because I couldn't find it existing.
00:59:27
Speaker
It doesn't exist now and it didn't exist apparently in 2019, but he was getting paid for it.
00:59:31
Speaker
Almost half a million dollars to serve as the unknown Horace Mann Research Chair.
00:59:38
Speaker
There is a senior research chair position.
00:59:41
Speaker
So there's already a head of research.
00:59:43
Speaker
This is an additional position called the Horace Mann chair.
00:59:47
Speaker
So you're already being here.
00:59:49
Speaker
That one was so ridiculous.
00:59:50
Speaker
There was no way that was not true.
00:59:52
Speaker
So it's just also very funny, like Horace Mann research chair.
00:59:56
Speaker
Really, ACT?
00:59:57
Speaker
Like that's the name that you're going to evoke for your standardized testing company.
01:00:01
Speaker
What's that about?
01:00:02
Speaker
I don't know.
01:00:03
Speaker
Question two.
01:00:05
Speaker
Oh, wait.
01:00:05
Speaker
Here.
01:00:06
Speaker
I'll do a...
01:00:07
Speaker
Yes, it is.
01:00:08
Speaker
You're right.
01:00:10
Speaker
Okay, there's that.
01:00:12
Speaker
Here's question two.
01:00:13
Speaker
Okay.
01:00:14
Speaker
In a lawsuit settled in 2021, the University of California can no longer factor in ACT and SAT scores in their admissions.
01:00:25
Speaker
There was a case a group of high school students successfully sued the university because of their test optional policy.
01:00:32
Speaker
So UC went to be test optional, which means that you can either submit scores or not submit scores.
01:00:39
Speaker
And that's good on paper, but the problem is that if you don't submit scores, you are not on an even playing field with those that submit good scores.
01:00:47
Speaker
So you're better than those that do bad scores, but you're worse than those that submit good scores.
01:00:51
Speaker
And there was a group of high schoolers.
01:00:53
Speaker
One of them was like a great athlete, had a perfect GPA, who was a volunteer, was like an entrepreneur, like all these, like everything that you would want to see typically in a college-bound student.
01:01:05
Speaker
And they were denied because they are not good at taking standardized tests and their school just, it wasn't a big focus for them.
01:01:10
Speaker
So they sued the University of California.
01:01:14
Speaker
And as of May 2021, UC is not allowed to factor in at all.
01:01:21
Speaker
So as in test optional is actually not allowed.
01:01:24
Speaker
Is that factor fiction?
01:01:26
Speaker
Okay.
01:01:26
Speaker
So the question is whether...
01:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, whether they're test, it's not test optional, it's test blind.
01:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's just completely.
01:01:34
Speaker
Oh, test blind.
01:01:35
Speaker
Okay, that's the.
01:01:38
Speaker
As a result of students suing and winning.
01:01:43
Speaker
I want to say they're still test optional.
01:01:46
Speaker
The test blind thing, because I think they just most recently went test optional.
01:01:50
Speaker
The test blind seems like maybe a bridge too far, which maybe makes me think that that is fiction.
01:01:56
Speaker
So this is actually fact.
01:01:58
Speaker
What?
01:01:59
Speaker
A group of students really did band together, hire a lawyer.
01:02:03
Speaker
So here is a direct quote from one of the attorneys for the students.
01:02:08
Speaker
The region's stubborn insistence over generations upon usage of the ACT and SAT, despite indisputable evidence these exams only measured family wealth, cost hundreds of thousands of talented students of color a fair opportunity to, what was that, matriculate?
01:02:23
Speaker
Matriculate, graduate.
01:02:25
Speaker
Oh, I never used that word.
01:02:26
Speaker
Matriculate in their state's system of higher education.
01:02:29
Speaker
Here's the catch, though.
01:02:31
Speaker
Because there's always a catch.
01:02:32
Speaker
There's always a way to get around it.
01:02:33
Speaker
So as of 2022, 2023, it is test blind, but only for California students.
01:02:41
Speaker
So if you apply from a different state, it does matter still.
01:02:46
Speaker
And by 2025, UC is developing their own standardized tests that students will take in lieu of the ACT and SAT scores.
01:02:57
Speaker
As a way to get around this case, they basically said, hey, we're just going to make our own test that's better than the other tests.
01:03:05
Speaker
There's no information on this.
01:03:06
Speaker
I looked it up.
01:03:07
Speaker
No one said anything.
01:03:08
Speaker
Even this article says, like, no one knows exactly what this test is.
01:03:11
Speaker
They just said, hey, by 2025, this will be fixed because we're just going to make our own test.
01:03:15
Speaker
They've got a couple of years to figure it out.
01:03:17
Speaker
It's very interesting to me that if you want to talk about student voice, student activism, this group of kids actually did it.
01:03:23
Speaker
It's a real thing that happened.
01:03:25
Speaker
It's a piece of good news in the educational world.
01:03:27
Speaker
Okay, so it's like, let's imagine a world where they're going to have their own test.
01:03:31
Speaker
I like that option for states more than I do having the ACT as sort of like a national...
01:03:38
Speaker
It trickles down into what we're teaching in all of in classrooms, too, so kids can be successful on whatever standardized tests.
01:03:44
Speaker
I mean, I like the states maybe having more control over what that looks like as far as that goes compared to, you know, a national testing company like the College Board.
01:03:53
Speaker
having just that much more influence and control over that admissions process.
01:03:57
Speaker
Because that could be different for students in New York and California and Iowa and Ohio.
01:04:02
Speaker
My fear would be, though, if I were the billion-dollar, scare quotes, nonprofit college board, that I would just develop a state test in every state.
01:04:09
Speaker
Like, it would have to be, like, you would need, like, an oversight committee.
01:04:12
Speaker
Like, there would need to be a lot of things that I'm not doing.
01:04:15
Speaker
confident would actually occur.
01:04:17
Speaker
I don't know.
01:04:19
Speaker
I'm kind of in the mind that there shouldn't be the test at all.
01:04:21
Speaker
Because then what happens if you have a student who is already overworked and stressed that has to take a different test for every state that they have to apply to?
01:04:28
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:04:30
Speaker
Because like, to me, that's like, we have a lot of kids that go out of state.
01:04:33
Speaker
Does that mean that they had to have like Kentucky specific knowledge to go to school?
01:04:38
Speaker
Like, it's just like really weird.
01:04:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's okay.
01:04:41
Speaker
Scratch my idea.
01:04:42
Speaker
That's terrible.
01:04:42
Speaker
To me, it should be shifting to a system that doesn't value test data at all.
01:04:46
Speaker
Like if you can prove like through a portfolio, perhaps that you have done all these awesome things and someone has taught to review that thing like mastery transcript,
01:04:54
Speaker
Right.
01:04:54
Speaker
That to me just works a lot better because if these students can successfully band together and use an attorney and do all this work, they are more than ready to be college bound.
01:05:03
Speaker
I mean, it's fascinating that that question I had heard about this lawsuit, but I hadn't followed up with the with with how it ended.
01:05:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:09
Speaker
So I was like, oh, I remember this, but I don't I did.
01:05:12
Speaker
I didn't catch the tail end.
01:05:13
Speaker
So I mean, the senior.
01:05:15
Speaker
So the person that was kind of like in charge of this, I guess, like the high school senior that's in question had a three point five six GPA.
01:05:22
Speaker
three associates degrees from Los Angeles Southwest college, plethora of leadership positions, the community service activities.
01:05:31
Speaker
But he always bombed SAT practice tests because he had no money for breakfast.
01:05:36
Speaker
He was distracted by hunger.
01:05:38
Speaker
His mother only earned $23,000 a year.
01:05:41
Speaker
They couldn't afford test prep courses or tutoring or anything.
01:05:44
Speaker
So this, in spite of all of these amazing achievements, because the SAT wasn't a thing that could happen,
01:05:51
Speaker
they just automatically fail.
01:05:53
Speaker
What's so fast, if you want to juxtapose that back to question number one, you have this Horace Mann research head publishing articles for making $430,000 a year saying that, oh no, it's not discriminatory at all.
01:06:05
Speaker
It's actually a way to escape poverty.
01:06:06
Speaker
But really what it does is it acts as a barrier for those that don't have access to this because you can do awesome things in school or awesome things in general in your life, even outside of school that can prepare you for college.
01:06:17
Speaker
This article is really good.
01:06:19
Speaker
It even talks about like,
01:06:21
Speaker
Going back to Carl Brigham, the old school guy, where he talks about, quote unquote, the prowess of the Nordic race group.
01:06:30
Speaker
Oh, God.
01:06:30
Speaker
He was a eugenicist.
01:06:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:33
Speaker
Standardized testing is a farce.
01:06:35
Speaker
No, and I think, I know there's still one more question for me to redeem myself and to beat you on this, but what I think is so interesting is, right, the things that you described about this particular student, like the work ethic and
01:06:49
Speaker
Their ability to be successful on a college campus is self-evident from that description alone.
01:06:55
Speaker
What kind of information does a test score add that isn't already evident in the fact that this student has three associate's degrees?
01:07:02
Speaker
So like having put in the time and effort to master a set of skills around, I don't know what those are in, but around the subjects that they want to go into.
01:07:09
Speaker
Right.
01:07:11
Speaker
And then having those leadership roles, I mean, those are the kinds of kids, if I was, you know, if we were going to hire them to do work for us, that's what we would look at.
01:07:18
Speaker
We wouldn't look even probably at a GPA or an assessment score.
01:07:21
Speaker
So why do we think that college is somehow different than that either?
01:07:25
Speaker
Like, what employee would you hire based on an assessment score compared to the resume of experiences that they're going to have?
01:07:34
Speaker
And when I talk to my kids about that question, that's what I ask them.
01:07:37
Speaker
I say, if you had to give
01:07:40
Speaker
a resume, or if you had to talk about your experiences at Ankeny High School and you couldn't use an assessment score or a GPA, how would you do that?
01:07:47
Speaker
What would you be able to emphasize?
01:07:48
Speaker
What would you say, be able to say that you've accomplished in your time here?
01:07:51
Speaker
And a lot of them say, I couldn't do that, Mr. Covington.
01:07:54
Speaker
I say, that is a problem.
01:07:57
Speaker
So yeah, it's about kind of shifting that language, isn't it?
01:08:01
Speaker
Exactly.
01:08:01
Speaker
All right.
01:08:02
Speaker
That builds us into our final question.
01:08:03
Speaker
Redemption.
01:08:05
Speaker
Neither of us are going to release and we spend it still next time or I'm about to die.
01:08:09
Speaker
We'll find out.
01:08:10
Speaker
So final question here.
01:08:12
Speaker
All right.
01:08:13
Speaker
So fact or fiction, all of the following are true facts about the KIPP, otherwise known as Knowledge is Power Program, public charter school network, which I say in giant air quotes, a nonprofit organization.
KIPP Network and Charter School Issues
01:08:31
Speaker
All right, so before I even dive into this question, you and I, probably everyone listening is probably familiar that KIPP has had some serious corruption scandals.
01:08:41
Speaker
And it's not that public schools have not.
01:08:44
Speaker
There are certainly a lot of examples of public schools also having corruption scandals.
01:08:48
Speaker
KIPP seems to be very prone to it.
01:08:50
Speaker
And perhaps that deals maybe with some of their funding sources and ethics surrounding education in general.
01:08:56
Speaker
Okay, so the fact or fiction is all of these are true.
01:08:59
Speaker
All right.
01:09:00
Speaker
Okay.
01:09:00
Speaker
So there's five things.
01:09:03
Speaker
One, in one tax filing year, they spent over $1 million at Walt Disney World Swan and Resort.
01:09:12
Speaker
Two, they've redacted its amount it raises via U.S. government officials, of which one of their biggest investors was found out to be from the Robertson Foundation.
01:09:23
Speaker
That's led by a gentleman named Julian Robertson, who made his initial fortune by shorting subprime securities and credit default swaps.
01:09:33
Speaker
oh my god three they give more than one million dollars a year to a stats company that analyzes uh the work that they do and how successful they are named mathematica four the stats generated by that aforementioned company mathematica are heavily redacted and not shared publicly and finally
01:09:57
Speaker
Mathematica was founded by Princeton University professors in 1969 and has engaged in a variety of different topics, but they're most well known for being the leading developer of the state lottery system.
01:10:13
Speaker
Oh, great.
01:10:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:16
Speaker
Okay, so when you got to the Mathematica thing, I started to chuckle because I was like, that sounds too silly to be like the real one, right?
01:10:24
Speaker
Like in the realm of foolishly named education things, you know, I was like, that's got to be the Chris McNutt one.
01:10:32
Speaker
But the Disney one, I'm also suspicious of.
01:10:35
Speaker
But I also have the feeling that perhaps the absurdity of all of these is the point.
01:10:40
Speaker
Hmm.
01:10:41
Speaker
And so I want to say, get it queued up here.
01:10:44
Speaker
I want to say that this, all of those are true facts.
01:10:49
Speaker
Final answer.
01:10:50
Speaker
It's fact.
01:10:51
Speaker
You bet it is.
01:10:52
Speaker
It is fact.
01:10:54
Speaker
All of those things are actually true.
01:10:57
Speaker
This one, I actually started laughing when I got to the Mathematica thing because that sounds so absurd.
01:11:03
Speaker
So Mathematica, progress together, which is their subheader.
01:11:08
Speaker
Mathematica built on its initial study of KIPP middle schools with a five-year project designed to address the question of whether KIPP can maintain its effectiveness as the network grows.
01:11:19
Speaker
And they have like these evidence and insights from the project and like you could scroll through them.
01:11:24
Speaker
However, they've been asked at various points to share all of the findings of their studies and it's redacted.
01:11:31
Speaker
So like you might question, well, wait, I thought this was a public school.
01:11:35
Speaker
Like public schools have to publish all their data unless it deals with like, like FERPA stuff.
01:11:40
Speaker
The actual data, like your test scores, your report card information, all of that is complete public knowledge.
01:11:45
Speaker
You can look up everyone's employee status and how much they get paid because they're public.
01:11:49
Speaker
That's the whole point.
01:11:50
Speaker
It's also the point of nonprofits too.
01:11:52
Speaker
Nonprofits have to share, like you could look up and see that HRP makes no money.
01:11:55
Speaker
That's available online.
01:11:58
Speaker
You're completely able to do that.
01:12:00
Speaker
Somehow.
01:12:00
Speaker
I bet Chris would send it to you if you emailed him about it.
01:12:03
Speaker
If you want our 909 or 990 form, we'll send it to you.
01:12:06
Speaker
It's a postcard because it can fit on one line.
01:12:10
Speaker
But, uh,
01:12:12
Speaker
Basically, Mathematica seemingly, this is Chris op-ed hat, has been contracted at $1 million a year to paint success stories for the KIPP network because journalists and researchers have looked at KIPP and found some really disturbing stats surrounding, there's been so many different abuse scandals.
01:12:37
Speaker
The place is really messed up.
01:12:38
Speaker
There are a lot of serious problems with the KIPP network.
01:12:42
Speaker
But the mind-blowing thing to me, one, the whole Robertson Foundation thing, it was their primary funder, I believe, in 2016.
01:12:47
Speaker
I need to double-check that.
01:12:49
Speaker
But in one year, this Julian Robertson, I don't even know who that is.
01:12:53
Speaker
Apparently, he founded Tiger Management, I think that's what it's called.
01:12:57
Speaker
I'd never heard of the guy.
01:12:58
Speaker
All of his money comes from shorting subprime securities, like the loan crisis, like the housing crisis.
01:13:07
Speaker
Right.
01:13:07
Speaker
So he's one of the guys who crashed the economy.
01:13:10
Speaker
The aforementioned Great Recession that I almost had to go work for Teach for America for.
01:13:14
Speaker
It's almost like it's a big club and we're not in it.
01:13:18
Speaker
Like all these things seem seemingly related somehow.
01:13:20
Speaker
They do spend a ton of money at Walt Disney.
01:13:24
Speaker
That was a thing.
01:13:26
Speaker
Yeah, none of this is to say, because it kind of seems like we're picking on charters, that public schools are not without their own faults or that there aren't good charter schools out there.
01:13:35
Speaker
It's just...
01:13:37
Speaker
Man, the ecosystem for those schools and for those networks is so unaccountable very often, so shady and shadowed.
01:13:51
Speaker
But also, you know, we can also be critical of their goals and their means of acquiring them, of them.
01:13:58
Speaker
not of acquiring them, of pursuing their educational goals as well.
01:14:02
Speaker
Because if their goal, say, is test performance or college and career readiness or whatever they purport to do better than the public schools, those pedagogies often tend to be fairly carceral, fairly rote.
01:14:18
Speaker
And so it's really not surprising to me that their college admission rates are fairly low because in such a highly structured environment,
01:14:25
Speaker
Not just are kids going to be less likely to get into college, but we've talked so often ad nauseum about the things that cause kids to drop out of college more often than not is not like your academic background knowledge.
01:14:37
Speaker
I mean, yeah, if you don't know how to read, you're going to have a real tough time in college.
01:14:41
Speaker
But on the flip side of that, it costs a lot of money.
01:14:45
Speaker
you might be able to afford it for a semester or a year or two.
01:14:48
Speaker
But when you start to add up those costs, they build fairly quickly.
01:14:52
Speaker
If you have any circumstance in your life that's going to prevent you from attending contiguously for, say, four or five years, that's going to make it even more tricky for you to jump back into your studies.
01:15:08
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, those schools are...
01:15:12
Speaker
And they're not set up as like money laundering factories, but there is like this hidden network of dark.
01:15:20
Speaker
It's almost like dark money in politics, right, is what it is.
01:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, that is unaccountable.
01:15:25
Speaker
Yeah, the Waltons.
01:15:27
Speaker
The Robertsons or whatever, they get to donate vast amounts of money to charter school networks or to places like Teach for America that then go to the charter school networks.
01:15:37
Speaker
But then the people on the ground teaching in those schools, right, they make less money than people in public schools.
01:15:43
Speaker
They have less workplace democracy.
01:15:46
Speaker
They're often in worse positions.
01:15:48
Speaker
And then since that works not sustainable, often they leave and they go elsewhere.
01:15:54
Speaker
So it's not surprising that teachers leave TFA and go into other industries or that teachers don't stick around at charter schools very often.
01:16:03
Speaker
Now, obviously, there's exceptions.
01:16:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:05
Speaker
Yeah, they're not tools that are designed to be successful in the long term.
01:16:09
Speaker
They're responsible to a whole different set of incentives because they know that they might not exist in a year or two unless they can juke the stats.
01:16:17
Speaker
So now we get to blow you out of the airlock.
01:16:18
Speaker
Now we get to blow me out of the airlock.
01:16:21
Speaker
Cue the airlock sounds.
01:16:23
Speaker
There it is.
01:16:23
Speaker
No.
01:16:25
Speaker
There it is.
01:16:27
Speaker
That was not very convincing.
01:16:28
Speaker
Well, it'll be convincing once I edit it.
Reflections on New Podcast Format
01:16:30
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:16:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:31
Speaker
I'm going to, I'm going to make that work.
01:16:32
Speaker
You're going to fix it in post.
01:16:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:34
Speaker
It's going to be fixed in post.
01:16:34
Speaker
It's going to sound way better.
01:16:36
Speaker
So I guess, you know, if people have made it this far, if this is something, if this is something that has appealed to you, when we were thinking about this, it really is like, you know, we're all in the doldrums of deep October, kind of heading into a fall and winter, the season's changing and
01:16:57
Speaker
The workload is piling up.
01:16:59
Speaker
So we thought we would just take, well, I didn't expect it to be this long, but we just thought we would take an hour or so and just, you know, just have a loosely formatted conversation that maybe connects to some things that you might be doing or get you interested in doing some learning on your own, start you down some interesting paths in the work that you're
Community Engagement and Feedback
01:17:18
Speaker
doing.
01:17:18
Speaker
So it's just an extension of, like I said, the stuff that we already do on a weekly basis.
01:17:23
Speaker
Anyway, we're reading, we're talking, we're sharing articles and reading books too.
01:17:27
Speaker
So this is a little bit of a community connection into that, a relaxed fit HRP.
01:17:33
Speaker
So we want to for next time, if there is a next time, first and foremost, but if you want us to do this again, like let us know, or feel free to email or tweet at us at Humor is pro, you know,
01:17:47
Speaker
if this was garbage.
01:17:48
Speaker
And you're just like, don't ever do this again.
01:17:50
Speaker
We will take that with, you know, we will accept that fully.
01:17:53
Speaker
But if you want to hear it again, let us know.
01:17:55
Speaker
And also send us questions that you would like to hear us talk about or topics that you think, you know, if we did five minutes of research or maybe 50 minutes, we could have some kind of grasp on to give you some response to or point you in the direction of something too.
01:18:09
Speaker
So
01:18:10
Speaker
I don't know.
01:18:11
Speaker
Send us some emails or send us some tweets at HemRezPro.
01:18:15
Speaker
You know, you can follow me at CovingtonAHS and you can follow Chris at, or wait, at CovingtonEDU is where I am.
01:18:23
Speaker
Wow, I flashed back to 2019.
01:18:26
Speaker
Or Chris McNutt at McNuttEDU.
01:18:28
Speaker
So we've really made that pretty easy in the last couple of years.
01:18:31
Speaker
But other than that, you know, thanks for sticking around this long.
01:18:35
Speaker
And I guess I just have to run the organization now that we blew Chris out of the airlock.
01:18:40
Speaker
So we'll have to see next week what happens.
01:18:43
Speaker
But that was a lot of fun, Chris.
01:18:45
Speaker
I think I had a good time.
01:18:52
Speaker
wake up that's i i'm i am 1000 certain that that same matrix clip and that rage is the machine music is probably in some conspiracy theorist like q anon podcast you know like that's their intro oh for sure
01:19:11
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Project's podcast.
01:19:14
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
01:19:18
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.