758: KIDS FIRST- Designing an Education System That WORKS 🏫

Brian Nichols  
Back to School back to school. Yeah, we're gonna talk about that instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Billy Madison, why not? Hey there, Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show. Thank you for joining us on of course, for their fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host joining us live from our B and C Studios here in lovely Eastern Indiana and it is back to school season, which means we have to talk all things, alternatives to the public schooling system to help me do that. Returning to the show, John England. Welcome back to The Brian Nichols Show.

John England  
Thanks for having me on, Brian. It's always a pleasure.

Brian Nichols  
John, great to have you back on the show. Looking forward to today's conversation. Now he was back in March, we had you here on the program. I think Episode Seven, no seven, somewhere in there ballpark. But for the folks who maybe missed you back then because hey, truth be told over the past few months, we've been blown up especially over on YouTube, surprisingly, even though we are we're not monetized, or there abouts a conversation for a different day. So John, do us a favor, reintroduce yourself here to the folks who are joining us for the first time that program but also for the the older listeners here in the audience.

John England  
Yeah, John England. I'm the Education Policy Analyst at the Libertas Institute. I'm a 14 year veteran of the public schools teaching both in the elementary system and being a principal in the elementary system. And yeah, that's my background.

Brian Nichols  
Easy enough. Awesome, man. Well, let's dig into today's topic of conversation. That is Yes. Back to school. Yes, there's Billy Madison. So perfectly. Yeah. So. So let's go through and outline I guess for today, parents who they're like, You know what, maybe I don't want to send my kid back to not just school, but specifically, the government school, the public school, they want to look at other options. So John, let's set the stage here. For the parents out there who maybe are a little lost in terms of what actually are options that are available for them? Let's start from the beginning. Where should they start looking? And what are some of the questions they should be frankly, asking?

John England  
Yeah, and I think if you look at the news a little bit, you can see that so the AAP had an article that came out just this last week talking about chronic absenteeism, and how millions and millions of kids have missed weeks of school. In my local news center here, we had an article talking about how kids are anxious about going back to school. And so obviously, the kids want something different. And they have so many different options available to them. So one of the things that you should do very first thing as a parent is think about what are your values? What do you want, from your, your education for your children? Do you want a religious education? Do you want something that teaches free market principles? Do you want to be heavily involved in their education? Are you looking to outsource as much of it as possible? Those are the types of things you need to really be thinking about as a parent, in order to really understand like, what your options are, and then you can begin looking for those options beyond that,

Brian Nichols  
John, so when we're going through, and we're talking about public school, versus maybe not necessarily private school, let's start start with homeschool. Right hear homeschools and option brought up first, as an alternative. It's the easiest one, I think, for some parents to go ahead and be like, yeah, that's go that route. But then I hear one of the main concerns slash objections I hear raised, the socialization aspect, well, your kids aren't going to be able to engage in society like they're supposed to. Some of us say, Well, yeah, that's the point. But besides that conversation for the parents who actually take that concern, as an actual legitimate concern, what would be your your response to them?

John England  
You know, that's a really interesting argument. And I kind of laugh at a little bit because as a former public school teacher, I actually thought a lot about them, like, oh, yeah, the kids need to come, they need to be socialized. And then a couple years ago, we started homeschooling our kids. And during that time, like, I realized my kids are way more social now than they were before. They're always heading out to like, go play with friends, they can do it in natural times. It's like, hey, it's lunchtime. I'm gonna go grab Johnny down the street, who's also homeschooling, and I can do it that way. And so they're involved in all kinds of like groups and like my kids do a community theater and they make friends there. There are all kinds of socialization options, and I gotta be honest, most homeschool parents when they hear that they're just kind of roll their eyes a little bit and just realize like, that's not really socialization. What it is is something different that happens in school because really, kids I only get a few minutes each day to actually be social the rest of time. They're sitting in class. And they're being taught by the teacher usually in lecture form. So socialization is not something I worry about. Because you can go on you can find things and it's changing, homeschool is changing. There's so many people that it used to be you did it on your own, you did it in isolation. But there's so many people that are like doing coops, micro schools is a new thing. It's kind of this formalized step up from homeschooling. And so there are so many just new options out there that you don't even need to worry about the social aspect, because the kids, they find ways to be social anyway.

Brian Nichols  
John, when, when I hear the concerns raised by parents about this, it seems like a lot of it just because of their own personal experience, right. And this is kind of one of the things we talked about during the show, versus other political shows is more of we're kind of sneaking in from a sales perspective, right? And we're trying to help overcome objections that are embraced by the status quo. And you hear this in any organization, the most dangerous words aren't well, we've always done things this way. And you see a lot of parents still in that same mentality. And there are those though, who I think especially after 2020, when all of a sudden all the kids were sent home, and they were now accessing school through their laptops, but mom and dad were sitting in the corner doing their zoom meetings, as, as well as the kid sitting in the kitchen doing their Zoom meeting. So all of a sudden, in between dad's meetings, he's hearing the stuff that the teacher is teaching in school and goes, what my kids learning what, what 17 just said red flag raise, and that all of a sudden started this, I'd say snowball, more or less down the proverbial mountain towards getting more and more folks abandoning this government schooling system. Now, homeschool is one option. Private schools charter schools, I hear that raise up as well. Talk to us about the pros and cons of private versus charter schools when you're comparing it to the public school government school system.

John England  
Yeah, and it's really a continuum, I would say. So on one side, you have the traditional public school compulsory, you have to be there, you're there five days a week, from eight to three, usually, maybe it's 730 to 230, or nine to four, something like that, but right in the middle of the day, and you have to be there five days a week, right. On the other hand, we already talked about homeschool, that's completely parent controlled. And you do it on your schedule. There's groups in something like Detroit, a group called engaged Detroit, where they're helping each other homeschool in low income, and single parent homes. So they can do it at night when the parents are home. Or they can do it during the day if the parents work a night shift. All of that is possible in both of those spectrums. But there are a range in between. So you have you already mentioned the traditional public school, then you have a charter school, these are still public schools, but they have a little bit more autonomy than they than the public schools do. Because they have their own board. The principal isn't just middle management, then you're the director of the school and they can make decisions to change it for the better if they want to private schools, even more freedom going there. You can include religious texts, you can include all kinds of different topics that the parents want taught to their children. Beyond that, you start getting into things like a hybrid school or micro schools. These are a little bit more formalized. Maybe you only go three days a week, like my kids do. And one of the microscopes that they're attending, maybe they're going four days a week, or they're going half day, and they're doing online in the afternoon, so many different options and a range of how much involvement you want as a parent, and how much you want to offload to the school system.

Brian Nichols  
Three days a week, four days a week, John, be careful the truancy police coming after you How can that be? Right? And I guess this just kind of maybe speaks to the inefficiencies in the government slash public schooling system. I keep on emphasizing that because public schools are nothing more than government schools if we're going to be honest. But like when we go to the actual government, public school systems, this seems to again be kind of a recurring theme. No.

John England  
Yeah, it does seem to be this recurring theme. How can they learn in such a short amount of time? Well, we do it when my wife and I were very surprised, hey, we could get school done in the morning every time and we could we could then turn around and we can we can do fun things in the afternoon. Maybe we go on a field trip. Maybe we go explore a new hike around here we have beautiful mountains. All these things that are possible when you choose to not go into the conformity that is the public system.

Brian Nichols  
How now for the parents. Maybe we're like this sounds great, John, like a wonderful, you're able to homeschool your kids. But like How about for your average mom who's like I have to work four jobs or three jobs in order to make things work in financial world. How do you I guess get that person on board to see the benefit of taking a step away? From and I don't want to maybe label our our teachers in the government schools as you know, what well compensated babysitters, but in many cases, that's kind of their role, especially for the younger grades. So I mean, I guess talk to me about that concern and what you're, you're kind of overcoming that objection would look like.

John England  
Yeah. And education innovators are out there. And they're, they're addressing this problem specifically, right? That is a real concern. There are those times I grew up in a low income home, my mom worked, we were a single family home, and she couldn't stay home and make sure I wasn't out, you know, vandalizing something. So I had to go to a school I had to in order to make sure that I was not causing trouble, right. And so some parents do need that. But there are options out there that are flexible. There's an amazing model in Atlanta, called moonrise that he calls it a cold learning space, and parents who maybe they can homeschool one or two days a week. And then he takes on the rest of it. And it can be this daycare system, where they're allowed to explore, or maybe it's a little bit more formalized, he has classes that the kids can choose to attend or not attend while they're there. And they can drop off as early as I think six or 7am. And they can pick up as late as 830 or 9pm. It's on some instances. And so he's providing this amazing system for those parents specifically. He's making it this drop off, hey, I want to be able to work at this time I work from home, I need my kids out of the house because they're loud, right? Kids get loud. I'm sure you know, that is a new dad now. And and but they're meeting those needs are so many education entrepreneurs, and honestly, most of them are former teachers. They're leaving the system because they don't want to be in the bureaucracy. They had these dreams of what they wanted school to look like. And then they got into public schools. And they realize, hey, the system doesn't let me reach that amazing dream of helping all these kids.

Brian Nichols  
Babies kids, yes, they are very loud at all hours of the day, all hours night, all hours of the afternoon. Yes. So on and so forth. I say that as someone who has a four and a half going on five month old daughter, so I'm right there. Yeah, John. The kids are loud. Indeed. Now let's go through and kind of look at as you're looking at, like micro school, I've heard this idea raised up a couple times here on the podcast, I think we had was it? Oh, my goodness, Carrie, was it Kerry

John England  
MacDonald. She's across the nation.

Brian Nichols  
Yeah, she was on the show. That's right. And we were digging through it in detail. And it's really interesting to hear how micro schools really have taken off especially. And to your point you raised up here earlier from those teachers who left the public schools they and Cordy Angeles, he's in the shower, and he raises this up, and he's mentioned this, he goes around and helps pass school choice at a state level. How in many cases, not only with the competition raised by having now an option in the private sector does, you see the option giving more of a salary increase for your teachers, but then by that very competition actually helps increase the salaries of the public school teacher. So it's a win win across all boards, competition raises all boats. So then I guess, then it goes to my like, Well, why is there opposition to this? And the main reason, I don't want to maybe necessarily put my opposition in one bucket, but it seems to be and John's would tell me if I'm wrong, or if I'm off base here, but they don't like the idea of competition in this education space, not only from a maintaining the what's considered like, you know, acceptable thought, but also from a maintaining the control of this monopoly, right, it

John England  
would want to give up that power. No one would, right? And no one would want to give up that power. And so you have things like the teachers unions, you have the school boards, associations, you have the superintendents associations, yeah, all these groups who are there to maintain the status quo. Why? Because the truth is, is like 80 to 90% of students still use public schools. That's just the truth, and it all comes down to dollars. They want the dollars and if kids aren't in the school, then you don't get the dollars. And that is the real thing, but a teacher in Utah, we spend about $10,000 per student every year. So as a teacher, think about that the average class size is 20 students, if I have actually that average cost lens is much higher than that. 20 students would be a dream for any teacher in the public system. They would love that 20 students at $10,000 That's $200,000 a year that they could be making, but instead If they're making, you know, 5060, maybe 70,000 If they're towards the end of their career, and it's that they're not making that, all that's going to bureaucracy, it's going to overhead costs. It's going to all these different things, and then you're turning around and they're having to ask the parents, hey, can you like go buy some glue sticks, router, glue sticks, can you go buy some scissors? We're running out of scissors, because the schools are wasting the money. There's all kinds of waste that happens in any government system. I'm not. I'm not saying it's just the schools. I mean, that was in the military, there was waste in the military, too. It just happens in any government system use, there's no incentive to be efficient with the materials that you have. In fact, that was Mises had a quote I saw the other day, he said, only the government could take a valuable commodity, commodity like paper and ruin it by adding ink. Yeah, just like the government is they just take whatever it is, and they make it as efficient and efficient as they can.

Brian Nichols  
John, we're getting ready to go towards final thoughts. But before we get there, we gotta go ahead and pay the bills. And today we're paying the bills with our own shop, which means not only do have folks go ahead and get to get some awesome, awesome libertarian swag, but they're actually directly supporting the program in helping support independent libertarian business. Today, I'm rocking my freedom is science shirt. And you can get that over on our shop at Brian Nichols show.com forward slash shop or just head to our homepage, hit the home homepage there at Brian Nichols show. You can hit the shot button right there at the top, it'll redirect you to our proud partner at proud libertarian where you can find Yes, this shirt but we have so many other shirts there. Like our liberty legend shirt, we have our Klaus Schwab. Now that's what I call tyranny shirt. I'm rocking art now. Good ideas don't require force snapback, we have hoodies, we have bumper stickers, all that and more but do yourself a favor when you head over to the shop use code TBS at checkout The Brian Nichols Show T BNS for 15%. off your order. So one more time, Brian Nichols show.com forward slash shop now let's go to the final thoughts here. John, I'll kick things off if you're cool that and I guess this just speaks to why I think we've seen such a schism take place over the past three years beyond COVID. Right. Like I see a lot of the COVID stuff kind of expose beyond the there the you know, the relationships that were destroyed over like the folks who jumped on board with the COVID Medical bandwagon narrative versus the folks who were like, um, what, hold up timeout? Can we slow down? And then they're like, No, take this now, this thing that I'm not gonna say, I'm gonna get banned on YouTube. So I'm actually enjoying our views right now. But like, that was the conversation, right? It wasn't a matter of like having a respectful dialogue. And then that transcended into other areas as we started to have kind of more eyes into areas that maybe traditionally we weren't really focused on. Because all sudden, we were all stuck in our homes for months not being allowed to go outside and go partake, you know, set spend time in the beach, which by the way, the gaslighting of folks who were like, nobody ever locked anybody down. I'm like, there are pictures of police officers arresting a dude at the beach, who was by himself. But that happened, stop pretending it didn't just own it. But I know, people don't want to talk about that. And yet, and yet, we're at a point right now and 2023, as we head towards 2024, John and audience where I think this is, this is going to be hopefully, like kind of the the actual moment we stepped forward. And I'm hoping it comes through with some type of political, political consequence at the voting booth. And I'm hoping we look at the school conversation. And the parents who, frankly, were mobilized over the past three years, as one of the main reasons that this becomes not just an issue that we're winning at a state level becomes a national conversation that we can't win, not saying that the government from a national level should take over education God no, that's why we want to abolish the Department of Education, but rather that this becomes a winning talking point. It's something that Republican, Libertarian, conservative voters, independent voters, moderate voters will rally around the idea of school choice, the idea of educational independence and educational freedom. I rambled, I said a lot, John, that's my final thoughts. What do you have for us?

John England  
I would just say this, if you are a parent, and you're looking at your child's education, and it doesn't match the greatness and potential that you know, they have, because you know your children better than anybody else. It's not matching that potential and greatness that you have for your child that you know, they have them find something else. There is something out there that will match. What you see in your child has written an article the day mother had on has a son with autism. She chose a school that specializes in autism, and he's thriving. He's thriving, and you can do that To for your children. Same thing for teachers. If the bureaucracy of the public system isn't matching what you want it as a teacher, you can start your own classroom. And you can make it work. Parents want it. There is a demand right now the education system is in a state of disruption. And now is the time to capitalize on that. If you have any entrepreneurial spirit as a teacher,

Brian Nichols  
John England, the organization is the lob bear tiss Institute where can folks go ahead and find you they want to go ahead and continue the conversation?

John England  
Yep, you can find me at the Libertas Institute Libertas stop word, or you can find me on Twitter I am unfortunately way too. I'm on Twitter way too often. But you can find me at Jay England 1226 That's my handle there on on the whole Twitter or x or whatever it's called. Now I don't know. I can't even retweet something I have to repost it now. I don't know. It's

Brian Nichols  
weird. Feel very, very.

John England  
Business. He can do what he wants. But you know, it's weird.

Brian Nichols  
It feels so corporate like tweeting was unique tweeting was fun tweeting was like its own thing. And now you're just reposting? It's like what are we read it like I just feel feels kind of like this has been done before. And I'm hoping he doesn't go down that path. But it looks like he is actually doing some interesting things like trying to bring video content to the platform, which by the way talk about a segue is where you can go ahead and find the entirety of today's episode. Yes, we air the entire episode video format on X on twitter.com. So if you want to go ahead and check that out, well go ahead and find me at be Nichols liberty. I will be tweeting out this episode but I'll also be tagging John there as well. And also if you want to go ahead and follow the video version on your more I guess traditional platforms like YouTube, but also rumble and by the way, Ben swans independent media entity sovereign s o v r e n, we can go ahead and check us out over there but if you are over on YouTube, do me a favor hit that like button that actually helps the algos Believe it or not like a lot and then also hit that little subscribe button and notification bell soon was a single time we go live and by the way, we are a podcast. That's right. So whether it's YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever it is you get your podcasts from, hit subscribe to The Brian Nichols Show, but also download all unplayed episodes, we have over 758 other episodes here of the program, one of them featuring John and also with that we have quite literally hundreds of guests here in the program, who I guarantee from episode one to Episode whatever one we have today will leave you educated, enlightened and informed. But folks, that's all we have for you. With that being said, Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for John England. We'll see you next time.

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