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Crash Course Social Studies Education w/ Raoul Meyer
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If you’ve taught or attended a high school course in the last decade, you’ve probably watched a Crash Course video. Their dozens of playlists on topics from Biology and Environmental Science to Economics and World History hold hundreds of videos and have collected over 2 billion views. Maybe even just hearing the title conjured John Green’s urgent cadence and the characteristic cartoon aesthetic in your mind, or the show’s outro, if you couldn’t hit the pause button fast enough, where John thanks the producer, the graphics team, and mentions, “The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer…”
Today, Mister Meyer not only continues to teach, but earlier this year reached out to me about a new film project he’s working on with his brother Luke, scheduled for 2026 release, tentatively titled THE TEACHERS PROJECT. It’s described as “a compelling, character-driven journey into the lives of American educators as they navigate the intensifying culture war that has enveloped the nation’s schools since 2020. As political battles over sanctioned ideas, books, and lesson plans range from national headlines to local school boards, the film reveals the devastating consequences of this chaos and conflict for teachers, students, communities, and the future of American education.”
And Raoul joins me to talk about Crash Course, the state of history teaching and the often untold stories of teachers wrestling with all of it.
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Transcript
The Role of Emotions in Teaching History
00:00:00
Speaker
teaching history, you're going to say some things that some people aren't going to like. It's like definitional. And in fact, when I was like, when I started teaching, This has been the biggest change.
00:00:10
Speaker
I was like, if I'm not making you upset, I'm not doing this right. right History should make you angry or it should make you cry and to get you to go change it, to recognize the injustice in the world and to go out and figure out something you can do. And then it should give you the tools, like the models of people who've done it and the understanding of the procedures that need to be changed. like That's what social studies is teaching was to me.
00:00:40
Speaker
And now it's like when states like Texas are saying you cannot teach active civics, you can't have a class where you write your local representative.
Introduction to the Human Restoration Project Podcast
00:00:57
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Human Restoration Project Podcast. My name is Nick Covington. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are John O'Brien, Jennifer Mann, and Janet Clark.
00:01:10
Speaker
Thank you so much for your support. We're proud to have hosted hundreds of hours of incredible ad-free conversations over the years. So if you haven't yet, consider liking and leaving a review in your podcast app to help us reach more listeners.
00:01:23
Speaker
And of course, you can learn more about Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, and connect with us everywhere on social media.
00:01:35
Speaker
If you've taught or attended a high school history course in the last decade, you've probably watched a crash course video. Their dozens of playlists on topics from biology and environmental science to economics and world history hold hundreds of videos and have collected over 2 billion views.
00:01:55
Speaker
Maybe even just hearing the title conjures John Green's urgent cadence and the characteristic cartoon aesthetic in your mind. Or the show's outro if you couldn't hit the pause button quite fast enough where John thanks the producer, of the graphics team, and mentions... and The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer, and
Exploring 'The Teacher's Project' Film
00:02:14
Speaker
me.
00:02:14
Speaker
Today, Mr. Meyer not only continues to teach, but earlier this year reached out to me about a new film project he's working on with his brother Luke, scheduled for 2026 release, tentatively titled The Teacher's Project.
00:02:27
Speaker
It's described as a compelling, character-driven journey into the lives of American educators as they navigate the intensifying culture war that has enveloped the nation's schools since 2020.
00:02:39
Speaker
As political battles over sanctioned ideas, books, and lesson plans range from national headlines to local school boards, the film reveals the devastating consequences of this chaos and conflict for teachers, students, communities, and the future of American education.
00:02:56
Speaker
And Raul joins me to talk about Crash Course, the state of history teaching today, and the often untold stories of teachers wrestling with all of this.
Raoul Meyer's Teaching Journey
00:03:05
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining me today, Raul.
00:03:08
Speaker
Lovely to be hearing it. Lovely to be here. Nice to see you. I'm always curious just about how teachers got to be teachers. And of course, I was just looking through the Indian Springs school page in Alabama there, which boasts about having John as its most famous alum, but also specifically mentions that it was, quote, founded with roots in the progressive educational philosophies of John Dewey, who inspired our motto of learning through living.
00:03:36
Speaker
And I was really curious if that described you as a young teacher when you were there in the early 90s. Did you join because of that mission? Or is that something maybe you picked up a little bit later? That's a great question.
00:03:47
Speaker
Did I join because of the mission? Honestly, was 1993. joined because they hired me. and um yep and like i don't know Most people probably don't remember how grim the job market was when I graduated from college in 1992, 1993. mean, there are echoes of it today, so maybe they will they will have ah have a sense. But um yeah, I sent out something like 100 resumes, and this is when you back when you had to do it by mail.
00:04:17
Speaker
And yeah. I got three news and one job. And that was the job that I took. Um, and it was at Indian Springs school school down in Alabama for the life of me. I would have never thought I would have been in Alabama, but, um, as for why, why teaching, I think it was but because I kept, just kept getting drawn back to education in general. When I was in college, uh,
00:04:47
Speaker
I took pretty much the best class I ever took in
Influential Educational Philosophies and Challenges
00:04:50
Speaker
college. The formative class was Ted Sizer's going to high school in America. which was, i mean, formative in so, so many ways, but primarily in how it was taught and what we had to do is completely group project led class.
00:05:10
Speaker
Kids were kids. Sure, we were kids. Students were split up into groups of five or so. And our goal prior semester was to design a new high school, soup to nuts.
00:05:24
Speaker
And this is the kind of class that for lot of students was so all encompassing that like they would drop other classes or or change the grading structure for other classes so they could spend more time on it.
00:05:40
Speaker
For us, it was a little easier because I took the class with two of my housemates so we could talk about things like over breakfast and over dinner. And it was great.
00:05:52
Speaker
Interestingly enough, This is like a weird little aside, but in my sort of cohort of friends at college, two people became the leaders of teachers unions in two of the two of America's largest cities.
00:06:13
Speaker
um And I think at least one of them, probably both of them took Ted Sizer's class. So, and I also then, my last class that i ever took in college was educational philosophy. And that's where I was introduced to John Dewey. So I read experience in education. i read, i mean, I read and wrote a paper, probably terrible paper about Rousseau and Emile. And I read, which like Emile papers probably would like to revisit it because I think there's like a weird parallel between his version of the one-to-one tutor living in the wilderness and not having any social interaction and what we see with students today, either online and especially now with this new these new plans to replace teachers with chatbots um it for individualized instruction.
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, and so i was always really interested in education, but because I majored in something really, really impractical, the paths towards like public school teacher certification were sort of closed for me.
00:07:18
Speaker
Because of where I went to college, not only did I major in something impractical, because there were no distribution requirements or any other requirements. I didn't have much of the what you would need to become a state certified and in and almost any state, which was pretty frustrating to to me. you know If I'd majored in history or English, I would have been okay. But I majored in classics because I liked history, English, and language.
00:07:46
Speaker
And like unless I wanted to be a Latin teacher, and even then, there's Not a huge market for Latin teachers and not a lot of places where you can be certified as a Latin teacher. Not a lot of states.
00:07:58
Speaker
That's interesting that it pigeonholes you just toward the language and not necessarily towards the history and humanities aspect of it. do would Would that pathway be open to you, do you think, today for to you as like a classics public school teacher or for people doing that today? I think in New York there is a Latin certification. okay which would kind of be fun if I were to want to go back to the classroom right now, just because I did teach Latin. um And like my wife was a Latin teacher. And so like we used to have these huge arguments in my house about like the utility of teaching Latin.
00:08:37
Speaker
And I was always on the anti side, like, well, i do that. there's so much But now um you know I'm old and it's not that I'm stodgy or anything, but I can actually see the value of process that goes into learning Latin because it's really stripped down almost mechanical process of categorizing and memorizing very easily memorizable chunks and rules.
00:09:03
Speaker
There's a Latin has a lot in common with math and actually a lot in common with the really real minutes of computer programming. um And so like, and We'll get to this later about the perils of teaching now. Most parents and administrators don't really care about Latin, so that's kind nice. was going to that would be a tough sell, I think, right? Oh, let's make room in the schedule. Let's dedicate staff, class time, curriculum money to Latin as opposed to, say, a programming language or STEM course or something today. Yeah. I mean, I think that's sort of short-sighted because
00:09:44
Speaker
for a number of reasons. like Latin is a really good foundational thing to learn. I taught it in seventh and eighth grade, which I think is actually the perfect place to teach it, to teach introductory Latin. I wouldn't be so so interested in teaching the higher level stuff because like there's only a few things in Latin that are that were originally written in Latin that I would like actively want to go back and read these days.
00:10:07
Speaker
I'm so curious, not to derail the utility of Latin, Raul, but I've got to know, because you mentioned Ted Sizer's, the course and the challenge to, you know, soup to nuts, reimagine what school looks like.
00:10:21
Speaker
what What did you come up with? What did your housemates come up with? What was your vision for a reimagined education? you know It's hard to remember everything. think it was very modular, right, in terms
Reimagining Education Through Modularity
00:10:34
Speaker
of the The schedule, I think there was a degree of like, you know, Ted Sizer stole Mies van der Rohe's motto, which Mies probably stole from someone else, if less is more.
00:10:47
Speaker
And so we had like fewer classes per day, maybe like three It might have been more like a cholera college sort of model where you would do a few things for a short period time, then you move on, do another few things, except for language classes. We did include language classes and had them go all the way through like because of the daily practice aspect of it.
00:11:11
Speaker
We wanted it to be fun right and somewhat student-driven. i mean, it's it's interesting. The last school that I worked at, was somewhat similar to this school in that structure, except that was a as an Episcopal school. It was very, it was values driven, which I really appreciated because I had gone to Quaker school.
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah, I love Quaker school. At the high school that I went to, i taught there for nine years. So I really appreciate so much about what what Quaker schools can do. And they don't have to be religiously, like the the the settling down and the Forcing is the wrong word. Allowing people to sit with their thoughts.
00:11:56
Speaker
um for 20 to 25 minutes twice a week or if you're in middle school for like 10 minutes a day, 8 10 minutes a day, was really calming. And you know my school, that school has turned out a lot of really interesting people over the years who if you were to ask them I would say probably would attribute some of their their success and their worldview to that school.
00:12:21
Speaker
Also it being at the time, certainly when I went there and even large extent when I taught there, it was very much a like social justice focused school.
00:12:33
Speaker
given that given like It was you know was anti-racist before that was a word. It was obviously pacifist, like anti-war. all like And what was drilled into us is like sort of a radical equality.
00:12:51
Speaker
Like and we used to joke that the, the, uh, on our sports teams, the most Quaker thing to do would be to tie. That'd be great. And not have a shootout, not have any overtime, just, Hey, shake hands. Good game. Nice game.
00:13:06
Speaker
Did well. So, I mean, what I'm hearing you say is that, um, today the Quakers would be called woke. Um, if they, Oh, hell yeah. I mean, they are, right. They're, um was i I was just reading that they're bringing they're among the religion religious groups bringing lawsuits against various aspects of the Trump administration. So, yeah, and they were great. I mean, i mean and i can go in very many directions. This is probably why either people loved or hated my classes.
00:13:38
Speaker
this all sort of leads up, I guess there's, there's like a fork in the road in your professional life that I'm assuming like starts with crash course, this
The Genesis and Impact of Crash Course
00:13:48
Speaker
collaboration with John Green, a former student of yours. How did that even begin? in I guess when y'all started that, did you have any idea that it would become like a household name? It's essentially like a de facto national curriculum, you know, did you have any sense of that at the time? No.
00:14:06
Speaker
No, we i mean, it's it's hard to, it's a little hard to think back, right? It's almost, it's going to be 15 years ago that we started next year um with a phone call, or maybe it was an email, probably phone call John made to me.
00:14:22
Speaker
i was, i had, i was back in the classroom. i had taught at my, and didn't need strings for two years. I taught at my high school for nine years. i left, I left my school, went to law school.
00:14:36
Speaker
um thinking I would do educational policy, realize miss the classroom too, too much, And so I was teaching it at another school and John called me up and he's like, hey, I've got this idea for doing like, ah you know, a video cast series about history.
00:14:57
Speaker
My brother Hank was doing biology because Hank was an environmental science person. Would you like would you help me out with it? Like maybe give me some talking points. And I'm like, sure. What do you you know? What do you want? and he's like, well,
00:15:10
Speaker
We think we're going to start with world history. We want it to be kind of keyed to the AP, and this was the old AP, which is why if you watch the first series, it does go from agricultural revolution to post-industrial revolution.
00:15:23
Speaker
which was great from my perspective. And actually, like I missed that old AP class, which I was teaching at the time. you know It gave me a reason to read a lot of history and a lot of prehistory and and anthropology that I wouldn't normally read.
00:15:37
Speaker
So was like, sure, yeah, I can i can figure it out. I can design, the you know I can parcel out the lessons for you and give you some talking points. And after like the first set of talking points, he was like, you know what?
00:15:50
Speaker
could you just like write scripts for me? and I'm like, OK, like how long is like, oh, it should only be about like no one's going to watch a long video on YouTube. So like you got to got to keep it under 10 minutes. Like, all right. So what's that? Fifteen hundred words or something? It's like and more or less.
00:16:10
Speaker
And so I started writing them. And, you know, the first year it was really it was totally DIY. And I miss that aesthetic so much. I miss Danica's chalk drawings. And it really has like a public service television, you know, kind of thing. It just it'd be ah public access, rather television, like it'd be on at eight o'clock in the morning or something on PBS. And it was great. like It was so much fun.
00:16:36
Speaker
They were filming in like a warehouse with an alt backdrop. I went to film with them one day. So like there is an episode for the people who really are Crash Course heads. I'm in one of the episodes and reading the credits.
00:16:51
Speaker
And I can't which one, but it's season one. So so for people listening, they have to go back through and skim through every single episode just to contribute the watch time to the channel. i think it's in the thirty s maybe. so i don't want to make you do all that.
00:17:04
Speaker
So, yeah, and it was super fun and it was way more successful than we thought it would be. And so John's like, yeah, can you do another one? Can you do U.S. history? And I did U.S. history next.
00:17:16
Speaker
And that's the one that has been the most, most influential, the most important. And I still think it holds up really well. like And it was, you know, my idea in in creating that course was like, I teach US history, I've taught, I teach AP US history, or I did.
00:17:36
Speaker
Like, let's make videos that we can, you know, if you watch them and you pay attention to them, you don't actually have to read the textbook. That was my goal. Right. So that teachers could do other things with their class time or with their assigned readings.
00:17:53
Speaker
you know And I think that's where the mystery document came in. Right. And I was like, let's do let's do something like that. And then I did the they asked me to do the government one.
00:18:04
Speaker
didn't narrate. And then I did another series of world history, world history two, which is kind of like, that one is like, what's Raul interested in?
00:18:16
Speaker
Like what books are, he what books is he reading right now? And so it's largely like your sort of ideas of books. Like there's a, One of my favorite ones, I think, is very heavily based on Mike Davis's late Victorian holocausts, which is about famines and droughts.
00:18:35
Speaker
um And that one, I love that one. That was the only season where they made me rewrite one. What was what was the catch there? It was an episode around the the book, which last year, the year before, the Nobel Prize in Economics, the Why Nations Fail book.
00:18:57
Speaker
And I hate that book because it's bad history. It's bad world history. And it it it's sort of like purports to be encompassing world history. And it's not um like it doesn't.
00:19:12
Speaker
It doesn't give China or India their due at all. um Your script was taking it to task. Yes. My script was like really critical. Yeah. Basically, it was like this book is garbage um as history and they're like, you can't.
00:19:28
Speaker
No one's going to write an editorial about why this book sucks as a crash course. Yes, I can't do that. They wouldn't let me do that. And so dang it. It's it. I mean, i think it's still offers a critique of that book, but it's much more measured and than my original script.
00:19:46
Speaker
I don't know if that was a big transition point for you. I don't know if you had been like a script writer in your life before then and just kind of dove into this. But now, I mean, you've kind of straddled that line parallel as a classroom teacher and sort of engaging in this public history project together. What do you think has been, i don't know, the biggest change in how you've seen that work over the course of your career?
00:20:11
Speaker
You know, I did it for about six years. And There was one year one year where I did it full time, but I was also in graduate school again, graduate school far too many times.
00:20:27
Speaker
And I was working on a curriculum piece to it, but Crash Course had shifted a little bit. It had become a lot bigger. than that original DIY. And there's a lot more editorial content.
00:20:41
Speaker
And one of the things about it is as successful as it's been, other than the ad revenue, it really hasn't monetized. Right. And that was from the from the get go.
00:20:52
Speaker
John and Hank were like, we're not charging for this. We're not going to make money off this, which is great. Right. It was free. It's been free forever. but it also ended up sort of limiting what we could do as ancillary materials. There were like licensing issues and partnerships.
00:21:11
Speaker
and i I still like that DIY thing. like As a teacher, i was constantly making my own materials for students and for myself. and so and like i mean I think there's an enormous degree of hubris involved in that, but like I think I make good good educational products for my for my students. I know and know they work for my students, but I don't know how widespread they would be.
00:21:39
Speaker
But in terms of the far-reaching aspect of it, I'm really glad one of, if not the most commonly used classroom materials for teaching US history. The AHA did that study two years ago now.
00:21:56
Speaker
And like, it was gratifying. It was humbling to see that we're right up there. And that was, you know, the goal, right? More than the textbook. That was the, that was the plan.
00:22:08
Speaker
Like all history education, like I said, it's 15 years old. It really is updating. i think that'd be a lot harder now. The economic pressures, the pressures of censorship would really imitate against the needed updates in terms of just how much history has changed and how much we talk about history has changed.
00:22:33
Speaker
you know There should be mini series talking about why the 1776 project is problematic. right and talking about some you know There are concerns about the 1619 project, but like putting it in its context to re refocus or to generate conversation about what US history has been, especially for students.
00:23:03
Speaker
was is necessary. and I think it will be really hard. I mean, I know it would be really hard. right There are states that deliberately outlaw any discussion of the 1619 Project, but like what are you going do? how like Even if you put it in a series of videos, if you ask the students to show it to watch it, first of all, they're going to be watching me at home, then their parents are going what is this trash that you're... the What is this indoctrination that you're your teacher is assigning for you to do for homework?
00:23:31
Speaker
So... Like, I think it would be really hard to to do it now. I mean, I'm glad that they got Clint Smith to do the African-American history one. I'm glad they got the Native American history one.
00:23:44
Speaker
And I'm super glad that they have reached out to, like, not having a white guy, even if that white guy is John Green, talking about, like, doing the history in it things. The thing that I'm, like...
00:23:59
Speaker
I don't know whether I'm like horrified or gratified by is I think that with Crash Course, we created a language for teaching history online.
00:24:14
Speaker
Like when I watch other videos, I hear myself, I hear my writing, I hear John. And I think It's um the mode I would call it because i just read Willing Warriors, a new book about the culture wars in education. It's OK.
00:24:34
Speaker
But what it talks about is a mode of argument called that they call expose. And I think we were sort of expose light when I was writing. And I'm like, I assume, you know, some of this.
00:24:46
Speaker
right? You probably have a master narrative of American history because if you're taking AP history, you will have taken history. in New York, US history is seventh grade, eighth grade, and like state history, fourth grade.
00:25:00
Speaker
So you will have had a lot of this stuff already, but maybe you didn't like you've heard A, but what about A prime and A double prime?
00:25:11
Speaker
I'm not even going like, what about B and n right? And i think that some like I think that's good, right? That was the plan, or at least that's how I planned it.
00:25:22
Speaker
but It's become a sort of trope like, but did you know this that and the other thing? And some of that is necessary.
00:25:34
Speaker
Some of that is really important. But anytime something becomes trope like that, you need more variety, right? Like you need to be able to engage people differently.
00:25:46
Speaker
Yeah, maybe that's an artifact of you guys started making Crash Course in sort of ah at the start of the golden age of social media, the peak starting in like 2012 through 2015 and all of that. And I think now attention economy, trends, the that ecosystem has really dominated so much that it's had a huge impact on the forms and the types of content that are there. So yeah, if if you try to do it today, it might look...
00:26:14
Speaker
a little bit different as a result and maybe not be frankly as good or relevant or or timeless, I suppose, right? What content on TikTok or Instagram is going to be around 10 years from now that will sort of have the lasting impact that Crash Course has had? I think think that form and the platform really matters a lot.
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that the widespread availability in free, like you're not having to pay for it. Like when in the first few years, I would read the comments, i would I would engage with people about the comments. I would take the criticism like, yeah, you know, this maybe I could have been clear about that.
00:26:52
Speaker
A lot of the criticism is sort of like typical web criticism. Yes, but you didn't talk about this. they're Correct, I didn't talk about that. Yeah, there's another video about that, actually.
00:27:06
Speaker
It is so interesting to think about the scope of kind of the conversation so far, beginning in the 1990s and then the environment of that decade, up into the 2010s, and now thinking today, you just returned from the National Council for the Teaching of Social Studies ah conference in D.C.,
00:27:28
Speaker
And their theme was because democracy depends on it, their number one featured speaker is like no less than Supreme Court Justice Gatangi Brown Jackson, which I thought um ah absolute wild um get
The Role of Democracy and Education
00:27:42
Speaker
for this conference. Right. But really um putting the urgency and the seriousness at the forefront. So we were messaging around a little bit, trying to schedule this and just gauging the vibes of things, too. And I'm wondering,
00:27:55
Speaker
You know, where were you at as you headed to D.C. for that conference? What did you find when you got there? Well, I mean, I went I went last year and I went this year. And, you know, last year it was.
00:28:09
Speaker
Right after Trump's reelection and everyone was like, oh, hmm, what's this going to look like? How are we going to do this? And now we've been, know, social teachers have been at it a year.
00:28:24
Speaker
Seen. Like. but Actually, it's not that the gag orders have come in since Trump, right, because they they were already there. They are sort of foundational for the second second administration come in.
00:28:40
Speaker
But the chilling effect that is a big feature of our film It's really pervasive. And i one of the sessions I went to was co-hosted by the NCSS, the head of the NCSS and head AHA.
00:28:57
Speaker
it's like, how are we teaching in these perilous times? And the, I mean, of the people who spoke the universal, understanding of these times is that teachers are really scary.
00:29:10
Speaker
Social studies teachers. They're really scared and they don't know what to teach. there They try to stick to the standards and hope that the standards will insulate them from criticism.
00:29:26
Speaker
But there's so many extra pressures on them that just didn't exist. How have you either ah heard from people or seen or experienced yourself like those pressures? What are teachers doing in response to that chilling effect or self-censorship? Or how do you see that manifesting?
00:29:46
Speaker
It sort of depends on where you're staging your career and where you were teaching. But, you know, even, you know, you'd think if you were in the bluest of blue states, it would you would feel a little bit more secure.
00:29:59
Speaker
But because of social media, because of very Because of the efforts of... I don't even can't say whom, even if I knew. Because it's sort of this amorphous, semi-organized, online universe.
00:30:21
Speaker
That will pick up a any story that seems to fit their narrative of these woke teachers are...
00:30:34
Speaker
destroying America and like turning our kids trans and making them hate the United States, it will get picked up, right? It's like the New York postification. I'm in New York and like any time a teacher does anything that smacks of you know, classical liberalism.
00:31:01
Speaker
It's like, can you believe this teacher did this, that, and the other thing? And like some people make careers out of it. Like they're, you know, they go from, they go from complaining about such and such a school, especially in New York, it's private schools because of the post just loves to tear down really super rich liberals.
00:31:21
Speaker
So teaching history, you're going to say some things that some people aren't going to like. It's like definitional. And in fact, when I was like, when I started teaching, This has been the biggest change.
00:31:32
Speaker
I was like, if I'm not making you upset, I'm not doing this right. History should make you angry or it should make you cry and to get you to go change it, to recognize the injustice in the world and to go out and figure out something you can do. And then it should give you the tools, like the models of people who've done it and the understanding of the procedures that need to be changed. like That's what social studies is teaching was to me.
00:32:02
Speaker
And now it's like when states like Texas are saying you cannot teach active civics, you can't have a class where you write your local representative.
00:32:15
Speaker
That's like a staple government class activity, right? I think like my colleague right across the wall, you know, when I was teaching, ran that every semester with his government class,
Controversies in Civics Education
00:32:25
Speaker
right?
00:32:25
Speaker
No issues, Democrats, Republicans, independents alike, just engage in action civics. Texas outlawed it, made it illegal. Right. So if you're a teacher, right, you know, long career teachers, they like, they figure out what works and they try to keep doing it, tweaking it a little. And if they've totally given up on that, you know, trying to take away things like that, tell you what you can and can't teach.
00:32:53
Speaker
And, or as many of these laws as the courts in many these states have shown, like these laws are overbroad and they're, Deliberately, I mean, I wouldn't say they're deliberately overbroad.
00:33:05
Speaker
I think they're deliberately based on, most of them are based on ah an executive order from 2020 that is ah you know a political document.
00:33:18
Speaker
And actually he refers to government contracting, not to education. But like, it's vague enough that you don't know what to do. You're like, and especially the key part is that you can't teach anything that, I'm going paraphrase, but that makes people feel bad.
00:33:35
Speaker
And like, people are going to feel bad. People are going to, and people are going to feel bad because of what you're teaching, because of their understanding or misunderstanding of what you're teaching, right?
00:33:46
Speaker
Because of something a classmate said that they didn't like. And the teacher didn't respond in a way that they feel that they feel is like affirming to their belief system.
00:34:02
Speaker
and And that didn't used to be that did not used to be a concern as much of a concern at the NCSS conference. Like that was prevalent when you would talk to teachers, but not so much in like, you know, I think everyone is like everywhere is just terrified of AI. And so there's a lot of discussion about, well, how are we going to how are we going to deal with this with AI?
00:34:27
Speaker
And my answer, because I'm old school like that, maybe this is me being classics teacher, is, hey, books are great. They're a technology that's lasted for a really long time. you know You don't have to worry about your electricity or your internet connection or Cloudflare going down if you just crack open your book. and My kids go to public school and they you know even their English books, like they still have you know library-bound classroom copies of English books that they have to turn in when they finish them.
00:34:55
Speaker
the end of the year names on the little roster at the front exactly i mean they don't have to they don't have to cover them with with the grocery bag like i did but yeah um which i was talking about this with someone i actually missed that because it was a a visceral expression of shared resources and and of continuity, right? There was something about looking in the front of the book and seeing who had had it.
00:35:23
Speaker
And if it was like your friend's older brother, like four years ago, now, nowadays you'd say, oh it's not the most up-to-date information. And you know, it's terrible. And if you're still using textbooks from 25 years ago, it is terrible.
00:35:38
Speaker
But if you're cycling them out every, you know, five years, at least in history, right? You're probably gonna, you know, you'll get new scholarship and you'll have this thing, this object that you can look at. And the teachers will be also a little more sympathetic about what they're what they're going to assign because personal experience like teaching,
00:36:06
Speaker
Social so and I only would talk social studies and this is again, my Latin is so great. Latin doesn't expand. It just stays. There's new Latin textbooks, but there's there's a bonus for teaching a dead language. Oh yeah. It's great. No new words.
00:36:23
Speaker
So thinking about like those barriers that teachers have, in my experience talking with teachers, the self-censorship is huge. They just say, well, I'm not gonna do this this year. Not because a directive or an order or the principal said that they couldn't, just they know that there's like an ambient you know level of fear. They don't wanna rock the boat. They don't wanna make waves or anything else. So I'm not gonna do X, Y, or Z. um And I wonder like getting...
00:36:50
Speaker
towards action or i guess towards something. What are teachers filling in the gap with understanding that the theme was because democracy depends on it and knowing the importance of this and trying to get there.
00:37:03
Speaker
What have teachers identified as like the gap between because democracy depends on it and also my employment might depend on me leaving this excerpt out and teaching a different thing instead.
00:37:16
Speaker
mean, I think this particular school year, it's really hard. And like NCSS was one of the conferences I've gone to. I'm probably going to go to the civics one in Philly in March as well. And I went to civics day or constitution day in DC in September.
00:37:34
Speaker
And there's institutional responses, which are overall very cautious and perhaps rightly so, right? People don't actually know.
00:37:45
Speaker
what the administration is going to do. And right now, they're not exactly sure how the changes to the Department of Education and the funding systems are gonna impact what they're doing in their class. And so they don't really wanna rock the boat in that you know no one wants to be the teacher who is blamed for not getting the grant, even though the grants have dried up, right, as you will know.
00:38:13
Speaker
or losing an established grant because of something controversial. And, you know, someone, for lack of a better word, like snitched to somebody at the DOE and they just flipped a switch, right? Like that's a reality. I mean, the DOE does have a snitch line. Yeah, yeah. I know what else to call it. You know, there's this vigilantism. You know, you don't know who you're going to get on the wrong side of that.
00:38:38
Speaker
has access to somebody in power who apparently has the power to do those things now. Whereas before I feel like, you know, administrators or they were in the institutional response was to run interference for teachers, right? And to say like, well, we support our teachers as long as they can say they're teaching curriculum materials, they're teaching standards, they're teaching this, they're not going completely off the rails.
00:39:02
Speaker
The institutional response was support. And now I feel like it's risk aversion. You know, it's I'd rather cut ties with this longtime teacher if it means not being called to task by the state or the federal government or online mobs, you know?
00:39:20
Speaker
and think that's exactly right. i And it's been trending that way for a while. You know, if I want to get on my, like Marxist soapbox, I would say that, you know, get on it. We made, we made this devil's bargain where we decided to treat every decision like a consumer decision.
00:39:42
Speaker
And where we would turn over a lot of power to.
00:39:48
Speaker
Corporations like even like the people who produce educational materials, the people like who grade educational materials, ah you know, college board, et cetera. And, you know, it's largely corporations who are influencing the standards that are written and the books that people can read and what they what they can use as the United States has.
00:40:10
Speaker
decided that like we should the richest of the rich to me to have incredible decision making power over our lives and livelihoods um we're gonna be like people in in like management positions are going to be increasingly feeling the pressure and the their goal being well i just don't want to piss off the wrong person so like you said they're not protecting teachers It's all part and parcel. It's all connected to the well-known concerted efforts to undermine unions.
00:40:47
Speaker
you know That was an interesting piece in terms of because democracy depends on it. And when I was, I was very fortunate in my, oddly enough, my private school where I worked, we had an individual school-based union, which had procedures that would protect you.
00:41:08
Speaker
Increasingly, the person that a that you are likely to come into contact with who is in a union, right? Unless it's like in a really negative outcome, like the police, when police unions are their own thing, but is a teacher, right?
00:41:27
Speaker
And so, yeah, destroy the teacher teams. This is ah a well-documented plan, right? And like my my thing, because I'm a loudmouth, I raised my hand in in that session and i'm like, hey, AHA, here's what you can do to fix this.
00:41:45
Speaker
You can throw your muscle behind labor history and make sure it gets taught. And this was, I saw you responded to my Blue Sky comment about what's being taught on the AP because the AP is kind of the de facto US history curriculum for the United States. I'm just as curious about that answer as you are. For for context, Raul just asked on Blue Sky if anybody had done an analysis of the themes or the content basically of what's been tested on the AP test for the last however many years to see those trends. So yeah, I'm curious about that too and And the reason I ask is because when I taught it and when I was one of the periods of time that got the had the most like percentage time, like your questions are going to be on this topic was the New Deal period, Progressive Era and New Deal.
00:42:37
Speaker
Oh, 100 percent. Right. And now that's that's now one period of time in the AP periodizations, 1890 to 19. good periodization, but it's only 10 to 17% of the tests, just like, and which is just like every other period, except for like, you know, the 1492 to 1607, right? or to the present, which is another So maybe it's interesting. It's weighted more just by like trying to give each period equal weight or equal time as opposed to really weighting them based on like importance, ah impact, right? How they change the trajectory of like American government and and history, you know?
00:43:24
Speaker
Yeah, but de facto what that ends up doing and this, here's here's my, like I'm not a conspiracy theorist definition. inclination But here is my my conspiracy theory, which I think is true.
00:43:37
Speaker
And in seeing the materials that are available out for teachers is that American history, particularly American government, is heavily weighted towards the early republic constitutional period.
00:43:51
Speaker
Right. And that's, you know, we got this new American Revolution documentary. And like from the documentary space where I'm working now, everyone's like, I guess I have to watch it. It's a new ken's burn thing Ken Burns thing. I don't want to watch it, but i guess I have to.
00:44:07
Speaker
You know, that that heroic, geographic version version of American history. But, you know, if you focus intently on the Constitution and the constitutional period,
00:44:22
Speaker
Right. And the Bill of Rights, which I don't know if you saw this, but you know, the Trump Bibles. Sure, sure. Right. Branded the Trump branded there.
00:44:36
Speaker
What's his name? Lee Greenwood branded like Lee Greenwood. That's right. Yes. Right. So in the back of the Bibles, in the back of each of these Bibles, because I've seen a couple from from being in Oklahoma um where they gave them to the AP government teachers.
00:44:52
Speaker
In the back, it has appendices and one is the Declaration of Independence and then a list of the signers of Declaration of Independence. So you can like know the names of the white man who wrote this and then, you know, reproduction of the lyrics to God bless the god bless the USA. So that's good. A founding document. a founding document right there. It's like Declaration of Independence, God bless the USA.
00:45:18
Speaker
And then the Constitution, right? The United States Constitution. Okay. Except two things. One, nothing to indicate the aspects of the have been superseded by later amendments. So nothing that like, not like italics or strikethrough or different font to say the three-fifths compromise isn't still valid, right?
00:45:42
Speaker
Nothing to to point out that the 12th Amendment has superseded the Electoral College in Article 2. That's not there. But this is the worst part. It gives you the Constitution and then it starts with the amendments and it stops at 10. It's
00:46:00
Speaker
like this is the Constitution. This is this is like an originalist version of the Constitution. These are the but what was written when the framers were alive. This is clearly what they thought.
00:46:11
Speaker
This is what they wanted in the Constitution. Do you think that's an intentional choice? Like in the in the biblical context to make a an analogy to 10 commandments, like these are things handed down from on high, not the other subsequent ones that helped clarify and you know iterate on the democratic project that we all share together. No, these were the things that the founders imbued with holy vision, right, gave forth to this Christian nation.
00:46:41
Speaker
I mean, I think that there's that Christian nationalist aspect of it, but from a practical social studies aspect of it. Sure. If you couple that with the focus on that period of time, right?
00:46:54
Speaker
What you get is a version of the Constitution that suggests subtly or not subtly that anything written after 1789 1791 isn't the real constitution right and that like or you know that's the basis of sort of clarence thomas originalism which is somewhat ridiculous very ridiculous but you know if you If that's what you teach and that's what everyone understands to be the Constitution, then it becomes much easier to undermine the 14th Amendment because it wasn't written at that time. It wasn't written by the framers. It wasn't handed down by God.
00:47:35
Speaker
Right? And, you know, if you're focusing, you know, I used to do probably three weeks on the Constitution through constitutional period and like to make sure everyone knew it and like to understand the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment and how they all worked. And that was where I'd work in, you know, later Supreme Court cases and things like that.
00:47:55
Speaker
But if you're it's and it's the same thing with the Supreme Court cases that you have to know. Right. You know, if you're not learning about Wong Kim Mark, or you're certainly not learning about like my favorite subb Supreme Court case, which is San Antonio versus Rodriguez, right?
00:48:15
Speaker
We're like, no, education is not really a right. So forget it. You're only getting part of the picture, right? Like you're not getting the cases that establish minimum wage. You're not getting to get back to my my concern.
00:48:29
Speaker
Think about social studies. Unlike, you know, algebra, which doesn't change or Latin. There's constantly more. And there's more because time passes.
00:48:41
Speaker
But there's also more because historians get more sophisticated and they argue and they write new things and they're better able to find information that they overlooked, that were, you know, that other historians overlooked.
00:48:54
Speaker
So there's just more. But there's not a longer school year. There's no, you stuck with 24 hours in a day. You gotta to make decisions what you're gonna emphasize.
00:49:04
Speaker
And I didn't feel at NCSS that we were really wrestling with that because of that fear. you cut you know And because institutions and their corporate connections, they're like, oh, you know ah we got us do we got we gotta to make sure that we can sell our products or we got to make sure that like the they'll pass the muster for those states, the state textbook commissions. right We can't have can't have prostitutes in Texas. That would be bad.
00:49:33
Speaker
Yeah. Pearson's still got to sell textbooks or whatever, right? like Exactly. Right. And they're still competing, cetera, et cetera. And like, this is another thing. You know, I've i've started teaching teaching social studies 32 years ago.
00:49:50
Speaker
Right. And like it was just at the very beginning of the world history, like the the shift from Western world history. My first job, I was hired to teach Western Civ.
00:50:03
Speaker
And then in the summer, And there are only three people in the department. The guy who's head of the department is like, yeah, we really I'm reading a lot of about this world history stuff. We really need to get more into it. You do it.
00:50:15
Speaker
So I had to revamp the second year. I'm doing all world history, like the first half, right? Up to 1450 or whatever it was. which Which honestly, very ironic considering your background in the classics. You were teed up to teach Western Civ, man. And they pulled the rug and said, no, here you go. Here's the right move. i'm not I'm not defending. I'd say it's the right move. But oh, that really undermines your expertise there.
00:50:36
Speaker
Right? like I'm like, all right, I'm reach some Confucius now. I'm going to dig into the Romina. I'm going to look at the Octoprachastas. I'm going to do all this stuff. I'm going to teach a lot more about Islam than I than i had been.
00:50:50
Speaker
and i was ah I loved it. and Then there was like this internet boom because I went back to my first graduate degree was in communications technology and education. It was 1995, 1996. nineteen ninety five nineteen eighty six The promise of the internet to change education was so in the air, like teachers are going to be creating stuff that's really meaningful. And there's going to be all these simulations and active learning things that you're going to do.
00:51:16
Speaker
and then, and there, and money that was being like federal money, state money that was being filtered into creating resources that teachers could use.
Evolving History Education and Interdisciplinary Approaches
00:51:28
Speaker
Right. Especially in terms of finding, you know, primary source documents that you could easily edit for your students, like for your student level, for what you were teaching for the lesson you were trying to do. And I did that all the time.
00:51:42
Speaker
And then like. Last year i was teaching. I was teaching world history, I was teaching a lot things. And some of those, i like went back like through my many years in digital notes and also through websites that I remember, and they're just gone. like Those materials aren't there anymore because the money, like we thought, oh, once you put it up, it's there forever. But like the money to actually keep hosting these things and updating them and making sure going links work and making sure they're compliant with new browsers, that wasn't there. And so these things are gone.
00:52:16
Speaker
And it's sort of it's sort of a sad, I mean, it's related to Crash Course. To me, it was like the era of like the information that you need to be this like tinkering DIY social studies teacher and your ability to find it because search engines are broken and the you know the information is gone.
00:52:43
Speaker
It's, you know, so what I end up doing, know, when I'm teaching is I go to my books of primary sources and I type them out myself and I edit them away and it takes forever.
00:52:55
Speaker
But, you know, i have these weird, you know, not weird, esoteric Chinese sources from the Sun dynasty that no one else is bothering to teach. I'm like, you know, I got to teach Middle Ages. I'm not going to do it just in Europe.
00:53:10
Speaker
There really is an interesting, i don't know if it would be ironic, but right here, you know you are someone who participated in a really, a movement to make online education right more accessible to people, of course, in the video format. And right now here, talking about like this sort of return to analog, I think it's really mirrored a lot of other teachers that I've talked to who you know got Google certified, um had had really early on in their career leaned into a lot of technologies and now have sort of returned.
00:53:43
Speaker
Maybe they're still engaged in you know progressive pedagogies and stuff, but have really turned to community and analog and things as way to, don't know, preserve technology. ah call it the magic or whatever. It's the eo esoteric thing that you were just talking about, right? there's There's a secret sauce that happens just when you get people together talking about cool stuff. And sometimes we just put too many barriers in the way of that. And and maybe there's there's a return to something like that happening now.
00:54:12
Speaker
I always consider myself a social studies teacher, but i was usually the departments. There's something lost when you're not doing history the way it was done historically.
00:54:24
Speaker
You know, when you're not thinking what when you're not thinking about, well, right, I have this idea. What kind of information would I need to support or refute this idea?
00:54:39
Speaker
Where should I look? Right. Where have people looked in the past? What would what would be helpful to me? And like now we have all sorts of excellent new stuff that we never would have had before. Right.
00:54:54
Speaker
Like, um you know, when I teach ancient history and I like teaching ancient history because I like the foundational stuff, like there's bioarchaeology now that didn't exist. When I started teaching, like you, you just couldn't look at the DNA evidence from ancient teeth and figure out what people ate.
00:55:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Which is so cool. that you can really get expand that interdisciplinary scope. I think that honestly has been a real power. I think of technology and the internet as a connector to help bring those perspectives and those disciplinary, or that disciplinary work that might otherwise might just be hidden in its own little niche or in its own little academic, you know, ah tower that's not accessible. And you can bring that into a history classroom to say, Hey, here's someone who's done a really cool thing in cultural anthropology that normally you might not touch on, but you can reach out to that person as an expert or their articles and artifacts and their communication and bring that stuff into your classroom, you know, virtually have them zoom in or, you know, share things online, I think has been really powerful.
00:56:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's and that stuff is is really powerful. And it's really great. But it's all more work. right? Yes. Like the technology has definitely created more work, right?
00:56:18
Speaker
For everyone involved. Like when i started teaching and I'm, I'm reading papers that are written by hand and deciphering kids handwriting. Um, like that would put a limit on how much they would write, how much I could read, how many of those I would assign.
00:56:36
Speaker
Right. Last year, it's like, produce, produce, produce, produce reduce because these machines do make it easier to produce. and That means students are producing in all their classes all the time, everything.
00:56:49
Speaker
The temptation to use AI tools is too great. Then in addition to my being a like lesson planner and evaluator, now I'm an AI cop as well.
00:57:02
Speaker
Yeah, deputized. like i don't want to be an AI cop. Like I didn't want to be a plagiarism cop when, you know, in the good old days when copy things offline. Right.
00:57:14
Speaker
I hated that that aspect of my work. Right. But it was it was and it was something that was on top of everything else I was trying to do. Now there's you know thousands of emails and you're working your workday. mean, people would always say, oh, you're so lucky you're done at 3.30. I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm working till nine o'clock at night.
00:57:35
Speaker
Kids are emailing me at 10. I'm working every day, Saturday, Sunday. My 14 year old, my 17 year old is the most like dedicated, disciplined person on earth. So she's in bed by 930.
00:57:51
Speaker
But my 14 year old is like doing her homework on her computer because that's how she's supposed to do it. Every night. And it's like, OK, go on the distraction machine and try to get your computer, get your homework done.
00:58:04
Speaker
yeah speak aspects of the teaching profession generally, but especially social studies where, and this is this is sort of the crux, which ties everything together, right especially you know NCSS, they weren't talking about this as much as I would wanted to.
00:58:22
Speaker
Our film, we when we talk with social studies teachers, it's like, We have learned and the standards have and the materials have vision of American history and government and how it works.
00:58:36
Speaker
And now you look outside your window or you look on your phone because who, who looks outside windows and, and what the national government is doing in most cases contradicts what it is in your materials to teach.
00:58:53
Speaker
And, you know, you're in a you're in a bind because you want to teach in social studies students to understand the world that they live in. And you go to history to understand how we got here to a certain degree, although some history isn't really helpful in that at all.
00:59:11
Speaker
um But you know the Constitution says this, and the other things, checks and balances, federalism, oh separation of powers. You know, this is how the Supreme Court works. They give decisions, right? it's They're considered. They give legal reasoning. You teach the kids to read the legal reasoning. And now you have shadow docket decisions which contradict previous precedents or the idea of precedent altogether that undermine checks and balances, undermine separation of powers, undermine federalism.
00:59:41
Speaker
Right. And. You were supposed to teach. What are you supposed to teach the kids? Like the textbook version of how America is supposed to work.
00:59:54
Speaker
Or the version on their phone, which says, oh yeah, due process. What's that? Right. You can ship immigrants wherever you want.
01:00:06
Speaker
Right. like you And then you have to go back like, well, what's deportation? Well, deportation is sending a person who doesn't have protected status or legal status back to their home country. Well, then why are they deporting Kilmar? Why are they deporting him to where was it?
01:00:21
Speaker
Tunisia? Uganda? That's not deportation. A third country. Yeah. Right. That's yeah. That's third country rendition, right? That's extreme rendition. Like we used to do.
01:00:33
Speaker
i mean, like we did during the early golden age of the global war on terror. Right. We'll just put you in a hole somewhere in Guantanamo was a black site somewhere. Right. And then, so then you have to teach about that.
01:00:49
Speaker
We talked to teachers in, social studies teachers in Oklahoma, right? That's where I saw the Bible. That's where I found out about the Bible and I saw it. Which I was gonna mention this at the time, this is a complete offshoot. I hope it doesn't derail anything, but I went to that website and there are currently 12 different editions of that Bible that range from $65 to a signed edition, which is $1,000. But in between there's the camo edition ah There's the First Lady edition, the Vice President edition.
01:01:23
Speaker
um There's the Pink and Gold edition. There's just there's all kinds of branded ah Bibles that you can get on GodBlessTheUSABible.com. not but Not a podcast sponsor, but I just wanted to throw that out there.
01:01:37
Speaker
The Oklahoma ones that they got are the like pretty so like embossed fake leather. and so like We talked to this social studies teacher, and he's like,
01:01:49
Speaker
He's teaching APGov. He's like, well, I don't really have to worry about things like this. And like when the new social studies standards, which thankfully the Supreme Court of Oklahoma have ah overturned or stayed.
01:02:01
Speaker
Well, they haven't overturned them, actually. But like, so they can't go into effect. The ones that said, you know, you have to teach that the election results of the 2020 election were controversial.
01:02:15
Speaker
Like that was in the Oklahoma state standards. And you had to mention the biblical foundations of the United States and like, I think it was 40 different places.
01:02:29
Speaker
um And the teacher we talked to in Oklahoma was like, i don't really have to worry. teaching AP government, that's not in the AP standards. And honestly, I'm not, I don't think my US history teaching friends are worried about it either because who gets to 2020 in the course of a US history class?
01:02:46
Speaker
But that was in the standards. And this is another aspect for being a social studies teacher. Like you're trying to follow the standards, you're trying to follow standards.
01:02:57
Speaker
You get new standards like they come out. They approved them in February. They came out in August when you're trying to plan your lessons.
01:03:08
Speaker
And then the Supreme Court stays them in October. Like, what am I supposed to teach? Oh, yeah. You're trapped in the middle of this political tug of war. Especially since right there's so little teaching of how state and local government works in social studies.
01:03:25
Speaker
And it's perfect. like you could You could design government class or state and local government unit around what you're supposed to teach in that unit, right? What the standards are, where they come from, who who approves them, how the money is, everything.
01:03:44
Speaker
um But there's that's not done. that's no That's probably if you were to do it, Johnny would come home and complain to his dad, we learned about the, why'd you vote against the bond issue?
01:03:56
Speaker
learned about bond issues in class today and we want more, you know, we want a new gym floor and why'd you vote against it? ah kind of What kind of communist stuff are you bringing home?
01:04:07
Speaker
Sounds like a gateway to action civics, which we know is, is remote in Texas. So we can't do that. As I mentioned in the intro, the teacher's project is your upcoming documentary film. That's the working title. It's going to have a different title when it comes out, but thank you.
01:04:23
Speaker
Yeah, but it's a collaboration. I love this idea. It's a a family project with your, with your brother, Luke. I just tell the listeners what that's about and why did you guys decide to tackle this together now So my brother and I have been looking for like a documentary project to work on for a while. He's he's a career documentary filmmaker. He's been doing it since like his first big documentary. It's 20 years old this year. It's amazing. You should go see it. It's about live action role players in Baltimore in 2005.
01:04:55
Speaker
It's called Darkon. It's amazing. It's so good. And I'm learning a lot about the film industry, which right now is a nightmare as well. So my brother and I are looking at for things to do. you know, he's interested. We have kids the same age.
01:05:12
Speaker
Our dad was a teacher for a very short period of time, um like for three years before I was born. Luke's mom, we had different mothers. She was a teacher.
01:05:24
Speaker
She's actually my teacher. She was my kindergarten teacher. Weird, but OK. Small world. Yeah, it's very small. New York is the world's largest small town. It's crazy. Yeah.
01:05:37
Speaker
So we were, he's like, you know, you're a social studies teacher. You have been a social studies teacher. You know, what are what are you hearing about these teachers who are like being persecuted, losing their jobs and like, what's behind it?
01:05:55
Speaker
What's, what's going on? What's behind it? I'm like, you know, i don't know that much about it, but it's something, you know, i want to look into. Right. And this is, You know, we started the initial like researching process in 2023. So Biden, Biden administration, which is interesting because a lot of the really, that right a lot of the attacks on teachers did not begin in the first Trump administration. They began in the Biden administration.
01:06:23
Speaker
And as a history teacher, like I'm big into dates and I'm like, God, I know your dates. It's very important to put things in in sequence. You know this started because of COVID, because like that's where Moms for Liberty started in Florida because the parents were upset about their kids in school and what they were seeing in their classes.
01:06:43
Speaker
Then, so that's, you know, March 2020. Summer 2020 is George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests and a racial reckoning that had begun prior, right? People had, you know,
01:06:58
Speaker
especially in New York City, like there was a whole movement in private schools, which that ended up getting picked up by the post about like the experience of black students in these fancy private schools.
01:07:10
Speaker
um And the schools were like, yeah, this is bad. We got do something. So you're getting DEI training. You're getting like curriculum review, like necessary curriculum review. I'll be honest. i was like, why are you bothering me about this? Like I've been doing this for years, right?
01:07:27
Speaker
Like, Like I said, my social studies teacher, I'm very proud of this. My 11th grade U.S. history teacher. was in 11th grade in 1987 because I'm 1987 was the year that the first series of Eyes on the Prize aired on PBS. 1987.
01:07:46
Speaker
Right. So good. And like sight unseen, my social studies teacher is like, I've heard about this. He may have seen some screeners or something like got to watch this. This is your homework.
01:07:58
Speaker
Right. This is your homework. And like my social teacher, he was he was he's a mild man. I can make a shout out. Charlie Blank. Amazing. i love him.
01:08:10
Speaker
Perhaps not the best teacher I ever had. Definitely the best like man I know, like in terms of models of affirmative, appropriate masculinity, just the greatest man.
01:08:24
Speaker
And like so mild mannered, never tooted his own horn. found out because I went back to work with him later. He graduated college 63 and then he went to go teach.
01:08:36
Speaker
At Tuskegee. Oh, really? In Alabama in 1963. OK, right. And like he never would talk about it It's not a thing he brought up, but like he he got his Ph.D. in reconstruction history. Like his he's like, my claim to fame is that I am footnoted in Foner's original reconstruction book.
01:08:58
Speaker
That is a claim to fame. It's legit. It is. And like, he was amazing. and in these sorts of like very, very quiet, subtle ways, like anti-racist teacher. And he's like, he was one of the first people's like, there's always this there's always a press for us to teach ah African-American history. But I don't want to do it because African-American history is American history. It's the same.
01:09:20
Speaker
It's all the same stuff. um And you got to include it. like you can't you can't You can't separate it out as a thing you just need to do. So anyway, so that's been my approach always like in teaching history, especially teaching American history. right like American history is women's history. It's workers' history. It's a history of immigrants. It's like it's not just the you know industrialists and the politicians.
01:09:47
Speaker
So there's that, but there's also like what's work, you know, what does a work life look like for everybody? That's what's going on. That's when you bring in labor history. like This works. This work is terrible. Why is it terrible? Oh, because. Well, let's do something about it. Right.
01:10:05
Speaker
And so i but and i was always teaching like that, but that's always been my like. This sort of a touchstone of my teaching. And so when the racial reckoning happened, I'm like,
01:10:18
Speaker
Actually, i've you know I've toned down my anti-racist teaching because like, you know i don't know if you ever saw, it was a exhibit and it was a book of lynching postcards.
01:10:33
Speaker
there was exit That was on display at the New York Historical Society in the early 2000s. And I was like, okay, here's an assignment, kids. Go look at it. Now, I probably wouldn't do that today, right? Because I know I get in a lot of trouble.
01:10:48
Speaker
And that was a thing that sort of struck me. It's like, we're we're more cognitively, but wed be you know we've been we've been doing this work for a long time. just to zoom in a little bit, because so many of our political battles are fought on like the abstract, but along the way, we've been talking about all these really um intimate personal stories that have impacted teachers, students, schools, classroom practices.
01:11:17
Speaker
And and i I feel like Overall, the culture war is sort of this death by a thousand cuts and ah maybe a thousand untold stories where this student is not getting the enriched or appropriate or the proper education that they could have under different circumstances because their teachers are acting accordingly or, right, things things are responding to it. But what do you think...
01:11:39
Speaker
in the conversations you've had, what is like the most human story that you think is missing from these national conversations that you're trying to capture in the tentatively titled teachers project?
01:11:52
Speaker
The most human story for, of teachers, and we really are focusing on teachers yeah is that so much of the work is the decisions that happen outside of the classroom.
01:12:05
Speaker
The decisions in the classroom, there's 10,000 of them in every 40 minute period. Right. And any one of them can go wrong. But then there's a hundred thousand decisions that go from, you know, what am I going to assign? When am I going to assign it? How, like, how am going to follow up with the student?
01:12:22
Speaker
Great. And like, what sort of grace am I going to give this student? Because like we, we're shooting with teachers in Chicago and it's like, kids don't come to school because they're afraid to leave the house.
01:12:40
Speaker
want to get picked up by ICE, right? And that is not something that teachers had to deal with 10 years ago, but now teachers do. One of our teachers we're working with, like she had to get power of attorney in case some of her students' parents were picked up and detained, like so that she could take care of these kids whose parents were taken away.
01:13:05
Speaker
Right, made orphans by the state, you know? That is not something that like a teacher is trained to do, right? Is prepared to do. And then on top of it, you could get in trouble for doing it.
01:13:18
Speaker
One of the teachers that we work with in Chicago, one of their students did get picked up by ICE. He thankfully was released. But like that goes through the school like wildfire.
01:13:30
Speaker
like Everyone hears. right Did you hear so-and-so? like Ice came and took him away. we don't know what's going to happen. And then your your whole school day is gone. right If you're trying to like you know you you're like you're trying to be like Ben Stein and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and like it's it's hopeless. So you as a teacher have to meet the kids where they are.
01:13:52
Speaker
But if you're like in one of these states, now this Chicago, doesn't have a divisive concepts law, but if you're in Tennessee, like what do you do? you know And one of the people we work with, he is pretty well known for losing his job in Tennessee after teaching about January 6th.
01:14:15
Speaker
And he was he was teaching a class, contemporary issues. Like what are you gonna do? For a while there, that was the most contemporary issue, you know? Yeah. On December 17th, right?
01:14:31
Speaker
Or January 17th. It's like he's teaching about it right after Martin Luther King Day. Oh, yeah. And then he loses his job. And he's been fighting to get his job back. So this was, he lost his job. like he got I think he got to finish up the year 2021.
01:14:44
Speaker
twenty twenty one But it's 2026. The school where he worked has been consolidated with another school in that time period. I think people think of the educational, I don't know what to call it, like a coup almost, right? You you think, oh, this culture war is going to be fought, right? it like ah Like the Revolutionary War was, you know, you're going to have these armies battling over each other and someone's going to come out victorious or the state's just going to come in here and um bully things around and change it through policy. But I think really...
01:15:18
Speaker
What you're getting at here is the fact that this this is all going to happen behind the scenes and you might not even know that ah know about a story that has impacted a school district, a state somewhere else um until much further after the fact. By then, the whole system has responded to it. So if that guy got his job back, is he going to be able to go back and teach January 6th in his contemporary issues class?
01:15:43
Speaker
Probably not, right? i don't i don't I think by then that change has solidified. And I think that's really how the systemic change that we're seeing in education is happening in a thousand little stories, not you know these big, massive movements.
01:15:59
Speaker
And that's right. There's like, initially there was, when we were looking at the, there is a sort of like, who's behind the curtain yeah here? But our film isn't an expose like that.
01:16:11
Speaker
but We're not investigative journalists. Like, you know, I could tell you some people who I'm pretty sure are committed to this, but like, that's not what we're talking about. Because like you said, if there's a war, if this is a war and it has an end, a lot of the people in our film, the World War One veterans, right? They're like the shell shock victims. Right.
01:16:38
Speaker
who like they're going to be doing their best. They are trying their best to to teach in these trying circumstances. But you don't really know the teachers that we talked to. They've been made examples of and they say like they made an example of me to keep everyone else quiet.
01:16:56
Speaker
Right. Because you hear right. Like in whatever you're in, like. I heard about this teacher in the county lost his job because he had the kids read ton Aussie coats. And so I'm not going to do that.
01:17:11
Speaker
You know, there's tons of these stories. There's a book of these stories called trouble in censorville. Some of the people that we talked to her in that book, but some of the people we talked to are just like, you know, we, we talked to them and like, oh you should talk to this guy. And then talk to that guy. God, you should talk to these people and talk to that people. It's hard making films.
01:17:31
Speaker
about schools generally because one, often you're dealing with kids. And so the release of the legal releases of kids is hard, but we're all over the country and we're trying to show that it's not just one school over the course of the year.
01:17:49
Speaker
It's multiple schools. It's different age growth groups. It's different, somewhat different subject matters as teachers who've lost their jobs, as teachers who work are still teaching. It's a lot of different stories interwoven, but um the broad theme is like teaching is really hard.
01:18:08
Speaker
It has become much, much harder since COVID for a host of reasons, like some of which has to do with, you know, right-wing political actors, that they were going that they were going to use schools, you know, Steve Bannon said it on his podcast, like we're gonna win the school board elections and that's how we're gonna get, you know, the state house elections.
01:18:29
Speaker
And they did in you know, 2021, 2022. And then they lost the next round of school board elections because like the champions of these movements tend to be very shrill and make other people look, they look a little unhinged when they're out there.
01:18:47
Speaker
So they might serve their single term and, you know, get that that need met in the moment. But then the next time they're the community has an opportunity to vote there. The shrill people are gone because they've alienated everybody else.
01:19:02
Speaker
But the damage is done. Yeah. Right. Like our teachers, a lot of they're like the, you know, they're the roadkill that has gone through like, and they're still like trying to live their lives with this extra burden.
01:19:17
Speaker
We, we have this idealized view of teachers that You know, they go in, they love their subject matter and they love their kids and they go in and they teach their subject matter. And, you know, then they grade some papers and it's the end of the year.
01:19:32
Speaker
You know, there's a graduation speech where one student's like, so and so really got to me. And it's, you know, tears and and joy. but like. The school year is full of so many. Tragic.
01:19:47
Speaker
tragic events, right? Like, you know, if you know, it's the funny thing about John Green, right? If you read his first book, Looking for Alaska, about a student who died at the school that happened in my second year teaching.
01:20:06
Speaker
And that was not something I was prepared for. It's not something I'd read about in any books about teaching or like any ed classes. And it's it's weeks and it's going to come back again and again. And that balancing of trying to keep things routine and trying to keep things normal for kids, but also acknowledging that something terrible has happened, right? That's what, like COVID threw that balance out of whack.
Post-COVID Educational Challenges
01:20:37
Speaker
And some teachers, like like trying to figure out where you're going to be, like recognizing that like you have a bunch of kids it's not just that they were learning online and not being with their friends which is terrible it's it like in new york where i was like relatives friends teachers 70 new york city teachers died or new york city doe employees out of the 70 000 people we can't just pretend that this is normal we can't just go back and say well
01:21:11
Speaker
Now, today we're going to talk about the tariff of abominations and how terrible it was. Boy, those people in South Carolina were sure pissed off. ah It's like the kids are like, why are you doing this? It's like, you know, I don't care.
01:21:25
Speaker
There's never been like a national reckoning with that collective shared trauma experience, the grief, the loss, the And we think about it like a million Americans died more and more are still dying. And we've never had, you know, a commemoration of this pandemic, right, that we lived through, just like we would study, you know, a flu pandemic 100 years ago, or we would commemorate September 11th, 20 years after the fact, right? Here's a something that...
01:21:57
Speaker
Again, this the scale is enormous in terms of its first-hand impact, its second-hand impact, and we've just tried to memory hole it and move on. And we know from psychology and everything else how that just doesn't work, right? the Those chickens are going to come home to roost somewhere if you don't address that trauma, that grief, that loss in a really constructive way. And I think you're right to say that you know teaching and education has really been hit hard by that because There were, I think, both the cynical forces who tried to take advantage of that for short-term, long-term political benefit or to elevate their own profiles or whatever in a movement. But then also like parents and people, they were looking for an outlet for all of this awful stuff that had been happening. And I think schools were really salient and teachers were really salient, you know, like outlet for that at at that time. i Certainly saw it in my community and community. practice and as we were being, you know, pulled around and trapped in the middle of all of that. And ultimately, you know, my own career and the classroom cut short by a lot of the same phenomenon that we've been talking about here.
01:23:06
Speaker
And I'm wondering, since I don't know, ah this part of the conversation feels really hard, right, to think here we are, it's winter, it's December 2025.
01:23:17
Speaker
But we're headed into a new year, you know, I think, We have turned the corner perhaps on some positive national trends. I don't know if you have an idea of where you think in the trajectory of this we're headed or what's your message for classroom teachers about what they could or should do um if they're in places that are trapped in these situations.
01:23:42
Speaker
That's a good question. And like like I said earlier, I vacillate between like really despairing and really hopeful. But I think on the on the national and the local front, I think the fact...
01:23:55
Speaker
I think the tide has turned in terms of local school boards, in terms of local state and local laws.
01:24:07
Speaker
It's really important to be up to date on what is happening in your state, because like when Florida passes a don't say gay law, that gets a ton of attention.
01:24:19
Speaker
Right. When Florida settles the lawsuit, which allows you to say pretty much whatever you want in class. Right. That doesn't get the attention.
01:24:30
Speaker
Right. So like, yeah, you have to be and this is probably easier for social studies teachers because like you're used to looking at the social studies rules and understand hopefully understanding how how the government works.
01:24:44
Speaker
But like like i was saying earlier, you know, the government's way more complicated than what we teach our kids. And so you have to like. be more attentive to, you know, like I said, in Oklahoma, they, when you hear about the standards, you don't really hear that much about the Supreme court striking them down.
01:25:03
Speaker
Right. You hear about the teacher that gets fired. You don't hear as much about the teacher who like they try to fire them, but the administrative procedure and the union protections actually work.
Social Media and Educational Policy
01:25:16
Speaker
And you know You hear about the Moms for Liberty winning the winning their elections and going to school boards and like yelling about whatever books they're yelling about because people yelling at books get make viral videos. You don't hear about the school board like and we're voting on the budget like we have to do. And, you know, we're we're actually going to add new specialists and we're going to you know spend a little more money on mental health counselors for a lot of our kids.
01:25:49
Speaker
The thing that I have the hardest, the hardest like time getting a handle on is the special ed stuff because I with the destruction of the of the Department of Education, I'm really, really worried about that. Like I like the The initial thought about moving all special ed funding to HHS under RFK Jr. seemed like a nightmare, like people like a person who doesn't believe in students with disabilities like or thinks that their disabilities are their own some you know personal moral failing.
01:26:21
Speaker
Especially like someone who's related to Ted Kennedy who helped push through the Americans with Disabilities Act. like It's nuts. but I think there are broad trends that are hopeful.
01:26:33
Speaker
What I would say is the the story that gets a lot of attention isn't the whole story, right? Like for every teacher who gets fired for mouthing off or for like publicly criticizing the school, there's a hundred who don't, right?
01:26:52
Speaker
There's a hundred for whom the system works, right? You know, who like their union reps get in there and they protect them and or and like we'll see or the state legislature gets in and it's like yeah we're gonna change these rules around what this means the thing that makes me like less hopeful is that for some reason like and on the state level i don't and I don't know why because it's an enormous waste of taxpayer money like the states keep appealing the decisions that go against them
01:27:29
Speaker
right It's like, just you know you lost. Cut your loss. Let the teacher back in the classroom. like the The courts decided that they didn't do anything wrong. that's the That's the thing that I'm most like sad about. right as ah As a citizen, as an American citizen, like as someone who used to teach economics, like don't I'm not a huge efficiency person, but man...
01:27:52
Speaker
you know I went to law school, lawsuits are expensive. like Why are you subjecting yourself to this? That's why Trump threatens them all the time. yeah right I don't quite get that. But i think I think it is going to get better because like you know this is one of America's greatest flaws in this case is, and you just mentioned it, but in this case it can be a virtue, is our remarkably short attention span.
Outrage Cycles and Institutional Control
01:28:18
Speaker
right Like Gore Vidal said, we live in the United States of amnesia. No one remembers anything that happened a week ago. Yeah, for better or worse, I suppose, right? Like if something is on the front page of the New York Post one day, there's going to be a new thing the next, you know, like this too shall pass sort of thing.
01:28:36
Speaker
And like you have, you know, as a history teacher, you have some evidence of this, right? Like Ralph Northam in Virginia. remember like they they found pictures of him in college in blackface. And like there were three days of him being like, what are you going to do Ralph? And he's like, i'm not going to do anything. And then a week later, he's to know he's like, because I'm governor and I'm only governor for whatever a year, right?
01:28:57
Speaker
In Virginia, let me get back to do my job. And most people are like, all right, well, let him do his job. Yeah, wild, just wild. so So for better or worse, I mean, holding ah powerful people to account, um you know, means that we can't let some things just pass unaddressed, but at the same time, the outrage machine that tries to roll people up into, you know, these cycles. Fortunately, if they're going to exist, at least these cycles might be short lived. And i guess the i wonder if at a certain point we'll hit hit a critical mass where there's there have been so many people and institutions who have been targets of this that, you know, they're more than not. And maybe we can have some solidarity there and just begin to push back to say, like, you know, we're going to
01:29:52
Speaker
take back our institutions from, i don't know, people who aren't in it for the right reasons. You know, they're in it for clicks or views or something else as opposed to, you know, these value driven, purpose driven, legally driven ah institutions that we have some sort of obligation to maintain beyond 24 hour news cycle.
Teacher Resilience and Advocacy
01:30:12
Speaker
um Maybe there there is some hope that um people of people are just getting tired and worn out um and want to I don't know if it's returned to a state of normal, but just something where these constant stories aren't the focus of our national attention for so long.
01:30:29
Speaker
And I think, I mean, if ah if you're if I think you're right, i think that will happen. But I think one of the one of the stories, it it isn't told maybe with as much attention.
01:30:41
Speaker
emphasis as I would like is that teachers, you know, most people say psychologically, one of my best friends, psychologists is like, if you're you know anxious about the world, like the best thing you can do is do something that connects you. And teachers do that every day. Like everything they're doing is doing something right.
01:31:03
Speaker
And to remember that, that as hard as it is, you are doing something. Now, an interesting thing that sort of come out of this film and something I remember, like from teaching civil rights for a long time is like most people, the people who are able to bring about the change are the most desperate.
01:31:25
Speaker
The people with very little to lose. Like I taught, like I taught in Alabama and I've done civil rights tours like since in Alabama and there ever in Alabama.
01:31:37
Speaker
there yeah There are like these pocket museums about the foot soldiers in Birmingham in 63. And there's one, there's a safe house museum in Greensboro, Alabama.
01:31:51
Speaker
It's like a house where ba where the when the Klan was trying to kill him in 1968. It's just someone's house. They've turned it into museum. but je And they have mugshots of of you know people who were arrested in Birmingham in 63. And they're all kids.
01:32:06
Speaker
They're all teenagers. And the reason why is because they had nothing to lose. Like if you're a bus driver in Birmingham, you're not gonna go out and protest because you you will lose your job.
01:32:19
Speaker
But like if you're in a Birmingham segregated school, what have you got to lose to go out and try to change it? um And that's a powerful thing to remember. And like so many of the schools,
01:32:34
Speaker
The more off the radar your school is, the safer you are. It's an irony. It's like you have to protect the students, the most, you know, the students who are in the most precarious living situation from the most marginalized groups.
01:32:48
Speaker
right Because they're likely to be victimized. But if you're teaching in that kind of school, you're probably safer than if you're teaching in a school like like Thomas Jefferson High School in in Alexandria, Virginia, right where the school is under investigation from the Justice Department because it's because there's too much DEI.
01:33:10
Speaker
One of our teachers, he's in a school, 100% black school, 100% black district in Oklahoma City. And like, he doesn't, no one's noah hassling him.
01:33:23
Speaker
Because like the state doesn't really care that much about his kids. the kids that he's teaching. Now he still has to protect them from violence and protect them from, you know, like all the depredations that they are going to experience as teens in like on the fringes of Oklahoma city, right? That doesn't make his job any, it doesn't make like he has other things he has to be concerned with that. Like I didn't have to be concerned with when I was teaching in my, you know, Tony private schools in new York city, but yeah,
01:33:55
Speaker
There is some like leeway there. As long as you're following the standards, you've got to be up to date on your standards. You've got to be up to date on your rules of professional conduct. you It helps to have unions that have the money to fight for you in court.
01:34:12
Speaker
That helps a lot. The through line role that I was thinking about here is like taking an inventory of, you know, your own professional capital, right? And personal capital and see how you can leverage that in if if it's just closing the door and leveraging that in your classroom to be the best thing that you can for kids and not let those, you know, outside forces, know,
01:34:37
Speaker
take advantage of, you know, what you're doing there, then fine. If it's, if, you know, you're, you're a big tall white guy or whatever, and you can go take a public stand and speak at the school board, maybe you should do that because, you know, you're going to be less likely to be targeted by, by these different groups or organizations or whatever. So find, find a niche, find those places where you can either make room for other teachers to do work behind closed doors or to be a public face or to get involved, like you said, with some sort of movement at the local and state level that is trying to um take a stand, do the right thing to teach good, true, whole history.
Connecting and Future Projects
01:35:20
Speaker
I think there's a lot of different avenues there. And I and i wonder too, Raul, if there's a place where
01:35:26
Speaker
So absent crash course to find, you know, your scripts from the 20 teens, is there a place where you'd prefer people either who want to find out about um the upcoming film project or connect to any writings that you might have or other musings on social studies, teaching and other topics? Is there a one stop shop for Meyer?
01:35:46
Speaker
So the easiest way is to like hit me up on Blue Sky because I'm on there far too often and I'm like, I'm guilty. Happy liquid. I'm happy to give teachers stuff like that. I've made keep an eye out for Luke and Raul Myers title to be determined movie on on teachers.
01:36:06
Speaker
Our hope is we have a like a really multi-layered rollout plan. But one of the things that we would like to do with this film is Because it has social status components, but also has teacher components, we'd like to show it in universities. We'd like to show it at teachers, particularly for teachers training.
01:36:25
Speaker
part This isn't usually a part of teacher training, but we'd also like to like have PTAs show it as for fundraisers. like you know For a nominal licensing fee, you can show the film as your fundraiser.
01:36:37
Speaker
And fingers crossed, if everything goes according to plan, we're going to do probably a limited theatrical release in the fall. We want this film to be done by fall 2026 so that it can be part of the conversation for the midterms. Like it is a there is this aspect to it.
01:36:56
Speaker
Fingers crossed we're going to take it on the road. to various places that we, you know, my brother and I will do talk backs if it we're, we're gonna almost definitely go to the various places that we filmed so we can have the people who are in the film talk about their experience. Cause people, you know, teachers like to talk, as you can tell, i've been um we've been on for like a couple hours, like teachers love talking. It's true. I could tell that you missed the classroom.
01:37:22
Speaker
So, I mean, like I miss the classroom. I miss the the give and take with students. don't miss faculty meetings. I don't miss learning management systems.
01:37:34
Speaker
I don't miss assigning grades to papers. I actually kind of do miss reading them. I liked that. Yeah, that back and forth.
01:37:45
Speaker
What I miss least is like my department chair or supervisor saying, can we talk like getting that email? You know that email like.
01:37:57
Speaker
We need to touch base. Can you come and see me in my office this afternoon? like, it's never good. supervisor is never like, I just want to come in and say, I heard you had a great class today. Yeah, exactly. was amazing. The kids were all talking about it.
01:38:10
Speaker
Never happens. I don't, so I don't miss that. Yeah. That lingering doubt. Well, so it it was never a doubt. Like your supervisor never wants to talk to about something good.
01:38:20
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Well, i just mean like what like what is it? Because, yeah, it's going back to the last flu worst. Yeah. It's like what was it an email? Was it something I did or didn't do? Was it something a student said or did? Was it something I like what going through your Rolodex of of anxiety? At least that's what it was for me. um Yeah, it's horrible.
01:38:40
Speaker
Raul, this time was magical and I so appreciate you spending it with me. sorry you're going have there so much to edit. I was just going to say, you've given me eight hours in Adobe Audition next week to get this thing out, but it's all good. I'm really sorry. No, I've got it more or less down to like a science at this point, but i thank you so much, man.
01:39:02
Speaker
It was great talking with you, Nick. Thank you for inviting me on. Thank you.
Conclusion and Gratitude
01:39:08
Speaker
Thank you again and for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change.
01:39:15
Speaker
If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player. Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
01:39:26
Speaker
Thank you.