It has been a crusade of conservatives since 1980 to eliminate the Department of Education. Trump will do it. It's amazing. But this leaves a massive void...and an opportunity for us to reclaim the education (literally "bringing up") of our children.
Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here. Very excited about the news that Donald Trump may sign this executive order ending the Department of Education. This is from the Wall Street Journal. They got a little preview of it.
It commands the new education secretary, who was just confirmed like two days ago, Linda McMahon, to quote, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the education department based on the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law. The experiment of controlling American education through federal programs and dollars and the unaccountable bureaucrats these programs and dollars support has failed our children, our teachers and our families. Beautiful.
I love it so much. Get it done. And you're like, oh, but what about this? The Office of Civil Rights would move to the Justice Department. All the student loan stuff, which really should just go away entirely, would move over to the Treasury Department.
Everyone always brings up, what about funding for special needs students? We'll figure it out. We actually had a special needs teacher call in the other day who said, the money makes it way worse, actually, because of all the strings attached. We'll figure out all the things that are important, but we've got to get rid of this thing once and for all.
Now, very excited about it. Maybe the thing in my early radio career I talked about more than anything at all was getting rid of the Department of Education. So I'm all in. And I don't want to come in too early with this because I don't want to take away from the celebration.
We should celebrate when it goes away. But the truth is, as much as I want it to go away, that alone is not going to reform education. We are so far away from where we need to be. It will take a massive movement. There are schools where no one can read, not a single kid can read, none of them, no kids.
We get rid of the Department of Education, those kids won't magically want to read a book. They won't magically be able to read a book, but they won't even want to. And their parents won't magically be like, oh, my kids should now read the Odyssey. That's not even anywhere near anyone's frame of reference. We're so far away from where we used to be and where we need to be. So what does this movement look like? I wish I could solve it right
here in just a few minutes. But I do want to play this and I think this will be helpful as we start rebuilding. Something we talk about a lot on this show. I might play these clips on SiriusXM. I'm not sure if we'll get to it. So if we do, then you get a little preview of what's to come. This is an interview with Jordan Peterson.
He is interviewing the headmaster of a school in England called the Michaela School. And this woman is known as the toughest headmaster in all of England. And she challenged, and it's all, it's not the tough, it's all basic stuff.
She was on the forefront of no phones in the classroom. It's about discipline and respecting your teachers. It's like basic stuff. But she challenged in this interview something I've heard for a very long time. And I accept that it is true because it sounds nice. And there's so many of those things like,
beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Oh, I can say that. Or, um, uh, what's the other one? The ends justify the means. Right? It just kind of rolls off the tongue.
And then you think about it, you're like, well hold on, wait a second. No, beauty's definitely not in the eye of the beholder. That's garbage. And the ends do not justify the means, actually. But you see how these things just sort of
enter into our mind and they sound nice. And here's another one of them. And when I heard her say this, I realized how wrong I was. You've heard this before. I've said this before.
And I'm going to say it now, and you're going to get a little mad at me when I tell you it's not true, and that's okay, I had to go through the process too. The expression is, don't teach kids what to think, teach them, yes, very good, how to think.
Hmm, profound.
I heard that maybe a decade ago for the first time. I actually just heard someone say it last week. I think we were talking to a congressman on the radio who said it just last week. We don't need to teach kids what to think. We need to teach them how to think. And now to that I say no.
We need to teach kids what to think. Because if we don't, someone who hates us will. Give you a sidebar, and I'll prove it, just one quick sidebar. I was talking to John Carney, the Breitbart business editor today, about tariffs.
And I ended the conversation with, well, John, who are you and who's the president to be telling companies who they should trade with and who they should do business with and what the prices of things should be and all this other stuff.
And he gave a good rebuttal to it. And then he ended with, well here's another one Slater, either we set our trade policy or Beijing does. Like if we take this hands-off like oh you know it's not appropriate for American government to do whatever then all right Beijing sets it. Either Trump sets it or President Xi sets our trade policy. Who would you rather be setting our trade policy? Similar thing here, either we tell our kids what to think,
or the world does. And the world hates you. Okay, two clips I want to play. Here's the first from Catherine Berbolcing. So what that is, is the standard discussion
between knowledge and skills. Should we teach them knowledge, or should we teach them skills? How to think is a skill, and it can only be done within a particular domain. So I don't know how to think about cars. You told me, you put a car in front of me and said create a different kind of car, Catherine. Be creative, think outside the box. I wouldn't
know what to do because I don't know anything about cars. But if you tell me to turn education on its head, I've done things very differently. Why? Because I know education inside out. The only way you can think in a creative manner or think outside the box and have independent thoughts about anything is to know it really well. And so that means children at school level need to be taught loads of knowledge. So when you all say things like we need to teach them how to think,
I disagree with you. When I say we need to teach them what to think, what I mean by that is we need to give them knowledge about the world wars, about slavery, about colonialism, about all of these ideas that if they don't have historical knowledge, they're unable to make a judgment that is well informed and that isn't just going to go down an ideological route. You know, all children are communists, okay? They're all communists. When you talk to them, they're all communists because when they hear about communism, they go, you mean everybody is going to have equality? You mean everybody's
we're going to share and then, you know, everybody poor and rich doesn't happen anymore. Everybody's just the same. That's lovely. And the reason why children are all communists is because they're naive, they're vulnerable and it sounds nice to them and so that's what they go for. They don't have enough knowledge or enough wisdom to be able to make correct decisions. That's why for instance we ban alcohol, we ban cigarettes, I believe we should ban smartphones, we ban sex, we ban marriage, we ban
driving, there are all kinds of things that we ban from children. And the thing about the libertarian right, while I myself believe in freedom and I believe in freedom of speech and all of that, when it comes to children, I don't believe in any of it. I believe that children need their freedoms restricted so that later in life they can be truly free.
And when I say their freedoms need to be restricted, that doesn't mean that they're unhappy. You saw at my school just how happy they were.
Let me ask you.
Stop there for a second. I love this idea. Today, we let our kids be free when they're kids, but if they don't learn the virtues and self-control and things that are necessary to learn, then they turn into slaves when they're older. Slaves to their passions. Slaves to their ignorance. Slaves to a cult. Slaves to lies.
But if you fill your kids with truth when they're young, then they have the tools necessary to be truly free when they're adults. It's beautiful. I play one more clip of hers here.
Then that we give them knowledge and if some of you are saying what we need to do is teach them how to think, it means they're not taught anything because that skill cannot be taught in isolation and schools try to do that in isolation. They try to teach skills. What they ought to be doing is teaching knowledge. And if they don't teach them knowledge, children are leaving school not knowing very much. And if they don't know very much, like I said, they're all communists. Like I said, they're always going to take the side of the underdog. And I'm not saying that that's necessarily
wrong, but it's wrong if you don't have the knowledge and information that could make you see why always taking the side of the underdog is not necessarily the right option. And that it's complex. And that wouldn't it be nice, perhaps, I mean I don't even necessarily agree that it would be nice for everything to be equal, but let's imagine they think, wouldn't it be nice, that actually the reality of communism isn't that. And that they need more information before they can make a properly informed decision. Now that should be the job of schools. At the moment it is immersing them in ideology, but the biggest problem is, for me, is those on the right, who I very much agree with, they don't realize that they're giving a backdoor,
they're leaving the backdoor open to progressivism to take over the culture. And the tyrannical culture of the left has taken over our schools because the right keeps arguing for this freedom for children to have and we're arguing for children to be able to think what they want and do what they want. Children shouldn't be allowed to do that. Now look, when you were at our school you didn't see them unhappy. You saw them playing in the yard. You saw them, they play basketball, they play, you know, a football table, you know, and we don't have a big
yard, we don't have any grass or any trees, you know, we are an inner city school with not many resources, but what we've got, the children have fun and they love it. They love it because they are secure in the knowledge that we love them and we are teaching them knowledge that makes them feel really smart, clever, successful, and then eventually they can come up with their own ideas. But they cannot come up with their own ideas isolated away from knowledge.
That knowledge is absolutely crucial. But the right never talk about the importance of knowledge and they never talk about the importance of schools. Because people don't realize that schools have all of our children. They are the future. And the reason why our universities are so messed up, it's not just because the universities
are telling them the wrong things. It's because they've already been brainwashed and stole. And so when they arrive at university, they're just sitting ducks.
Oh gosh, there's so much more there.
I could go on about education. I'll save that for the radio. Let's pivot to the Bible. True story, this morning, wake up, wake up around 4.10, and I get up and I make my way to the couch and start reading the Bible.
As soon as I sat down on my spot on the couch, the corner, a section, I'll sit right there in the corner, you know what I mean? As soon as I sat down, the TV came on. Like, what? We almost never watch TV.
We have a, we splurged on the frame TV, the Samsung frame TV. It's awesome because when it's off, which it is 99.9% of the time, you could put beautiful artwork up on the wall. It's really good. I'd recommend the splurge. And it came on automatically.
And I don't know where the clicker is. I haven't seen the clicker in weeks. I have no idea where the clicker is. I didn't sit on it. I don't know where this thing is. And it popped up, it was like NBC News Now.
We don't have cable, so it's like some free NBC News thing or something. And I have no idea how to turn this off. So I'm like, alright, well, I'm comfortable. Maybe when the wife gets up she'll know where the clicker is. I don't know.
So I sat there and I started reading the Bible with the TV on in front of me, but like up a little bit. So I couldn't see it, but I could see the light. And I was just reading, and just the light from the screen was so obnoxious. It was just this bombardment.
It was like I was in a, I was gonna say a disco club. That's what I was really gonna say, a disco club. It was like I was in a club, just the lights flashing, like the constant frame changing every split second, like a strobe light. It was like a salt to my senses.
I couldn't imagine what it'd be like with the sound on.
I grew up, we grew up in a house with the TV on
all the time. We'd have the Today Show on all morning long, I just can't imagine having the TV on in the background. Anyway. So I just thought of this TV being on all the time, this morning.
And as I'm reading, I've literally read 1 Corinthians. And it says, do not be deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits. Awake to righteousness and do not sin, for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame. The preceding part of what Paul was talking about was all about the resurrection.
And Paul was asking the people in Corinth, where are you guys getting your bad ideas about the resurrection? And they were either getting it from the Jews who didn't believe in the resurrection or pagan Greeks who didn't believe in it. Either way, stop hanging around with these people. Stop being influenced by them. Evil company corrupts good habits. And we know this from Romans 12 too.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. We are way, I, so conformed to this world all the time. We need to do a full audit of all of our inputs, everything that comes into our home, everything that comes in through our headphones, everything that enters into our kids souls. A full audit because evil company corrupts good habits. Now what's interesting also in this first Corinthians line is it's in quotes. Paul says, do not be deceived, quote, evil company corrupts good habits. I wonder where the Old
Testament, like where does it say that in the Old Testament? Like did Moses say that? Who wrote that first? Is it a psalm? Like who wrote that? Nope. It's actually from a play written by an ancient Greek writer named Menander and it just became a popular expression in Greece that's an amazing like the here's the Bible here's Paul in the Bible quoting some pagan secular source but he got it right it's true pagans stumble across truth I suppose from time to time evil company corrupts good habits.
What do we do with this? Get new habits, get new company, awake to righteousness, do not sin, for some do not have the knowledge of God. Yet we surround ourselves and we allow these people to get into your kids' souls.
And a lot of it's through, it's bombarded everywhere. But a lot of it is through your kid's school. We do have knowledge of God, but then we send our kids off to be with people who don't. Evil company corrupts good habits. We have knowledge of God, we have to be different.
And part of that is protecting our kids, and this is a very controversial thing to say now, but part of that is telling our kids what to think. And I know there's resistance to that. No, you have to teach them how to think. Sure, yes, that will come. If we don't tell our kids what to think,
someone who hates us will. Getting rid of the Department of Education is great. It is just the beginning. We need to now reclaim education. The word education literally means to bring up and to bring forth. How could we ever do that if we don't tell young people what to think? What is good? What is beautiful?
What is true? Mike Slater dot locals dot com transcript What is true? Mike Slater dot locals dot com transcript commercial free on the website Mike Slater dot locals dot com
