00:00:00.000class is in session hey everybody and welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session and today guys
00:00:09.440class actually is going to be in session because i'm going to talk about education i have to i have
00:00:15.200to i've i've spent a lot of time listening to different ministers of education or governors
00:00:23.040of florida or political pundits of every stripe talk about how we need to get back to basics in
00:00:30.400education and i need you to understand what that's code for and how ridiculous they sound okay the
00:00:41.280notion that we have to go back to some sort of pre-existing educational model is actually
00:00:50.480counterintuitive to education. Don't think about it for a second. That's like saying, you know what,
00:00:57.160I really liked healthcare and the way that we did medicine in the 1950s. Forget everything
00:01:04.380we've learned after that. Let's go back to that. It doesn't even make sense. It also doesn't even
00:01:10.240make sense to go back to the way that we distributed and executed healthcare back in the day. Why?
00:01:16.340Because there's a whole bunch of new technology. There's a whole bunch of new diseases. There's
00:01:20.440a whole bunch of new treatments. So why on earth do we ever think that we can go back to something
00:01:28.060else and back to basics? Two things. There's an assumption that kids aren't learning the basics,
00:01:36.660which is asinine. There's also this ridiculous assumption that the way we did it is somehow0.94
00:01:44.440inherently better. The way that school was, was better. I'm 48 years old. So I'm going to talk
00:01:49.940about my generation because I feel as though most people who are talking like this are
00:01:56.260from my generation, maybe a little bit older, but for the most part, let's say they're between
00:02:00.520their 40s and 50s going off about how education used to be. And listen, I did well in my educational
00:02:10.700career. So do I feel comfortable with the way it used to be? Sure. But do I think kids
00:02:15.520today are smarter? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Do I think education today takes more innovation,
00:02:22.880takes more intelligence, takes more creativity, must take a more holistic viewpoint where we
00:02:30.380have to completely and utterly redesign education in order to meet current issues and trends and
00:02:38.040realities of today? Absolutely. You want to know why they don't want to do it? Money. Want to know
00:02:42.700why they want to go back to basics? Money. They want to pretend as though we had it right, what,
00:02:48.76040 years ago? And 40 years ago, when we could jam 30 kids in a classroom and ignore all different
00:02:56.520learning abilities, let those kids just leave school altogether and just funnel through with
00:03:03.060whatever the standard stereotypical student look like, and then that's it. Is that what we're doing
00:03:08.900here? Because every time I check for people who have genius ideas, who transform the world,
00:03:16.580who reshape the globe, who are doing all these amazing things, you want to know what their
00:03:20.440commonality is? They left the educational system. Why? They didn't do well. Why? Because that system
00:03:28.120is built for standard. It is not built to sort of mutate or change or accelerate or take in
00:03:37.660new information because it's so slowly moving. And in somewhere like Ontario, and this is
00:03:43.700different than parts of the United States, but somewhere like Ontario, it takes a big,
00:03:48.920big chunk of provincial money to do so. And that's the argument right there. And I'm going
00:03:56.600to talk about Stephen Lecce because he won't shut up about back to basics. And I'm going to use Ron
00:04:00.440DeSantis because he does the same thing. But let me be very clear. They are doing it to save
00:04:07.920money. It is about a bottom line. It is not about better educating our kids. It is not about making
00:04:15.160them aware and empowered and capable of future. I don't know. Look, why they're doing that? Well,
00:04:22.400I assume they think by the time that generation rolls through, they'll be long but gone. But this
00:04:26.880a really good political chip to play. And it's going to save money, which is going to get them
00:04:33.200reelected within their sort of allotted terms in office. All right, let's just start with some
00:04:39.020back to basics. All right, I've divided it up into a few different categories. So we can talk about
00:04:43.520what this actually means back to basics. And most people say stupid things like we should get back0.99
00:04:49.700to reading, writing, and arithmetic. And let me be very, very clear. That inherently is code1.00
00:04:56.700as an anti-race, anti-LGBTQ plus curriculum, anti-inclusivity curriculum, anti-diversity
00:05:09.120curriculum, anti-woke curriculum, this word that it means amazing, inclusive, intelligent things,
00:05:16.440and the right has somehow shaped it. So they're all little minions think that they're following
00:05:20.800some sort of grand gesture of attacking the woke. And that actually makes sense. It actually makes
00:05:26.160you less intelligent. It's making you more ignorant. It's making you less educated and1.00
00:05:32.840less capable. And the people that are following this mentality, I feel bad for. Some days I look
00:05:39.720at them and go, dude, wow, you've really been sold a line of garbage, haven't you? And you're0.99
00:05:46.440just going to run with it because that pundit is making you feel good about you and you have
00:05:52.800no forethought whatsoever. So let's go through some of the things. Math. Let's talk about math
00:05:56.840for a second. This is a touchy subject, right? Everybody, well, first of all, most people hate
00:06:03.920math anyways, but you know what people really hate? New math. And I'm not even going to pretend
00:06:10.780understand the intricacies of the new math and the way that they teach it. I'm going to give you
00:06:17.680kind of a methodology so you can understand this. Because a big, big issue is the fact that
00:06:24.640people who are parents of students in schools today, they don't understand the new math. So
00:06:31.200When the kid comes home with new math because they're not funding schools enough in order to have teachers there, in order to have extra help there, in order to actually do it properly, they're coming home with new math and their parents are looking at it and going, this is garbage.
00:07:00.320They can't come to me and talk about new math. You know what I don't do? I don't say it's garbage because I don't get it. Right. I don't say it's useless because I haven't taken the time or I don't have necessarily the capacity, which could be probable, to understand why it has value.
00:07:18.260Let me try to explain it in a way. When we were kids, again, 48, we were taught, or I was taught
00:07:25.580math, and kids that were good at math, not great at math. Kids who were great at math understood
00:07:31.260math. People who were horrible at math just dropped out, never to be seen of again. And then there was
00:07:36.380us. Us that sat between, let's say, the 60 to 85%, like that math mark grade, right?
00:07:47.880And what we were taught is very, very simple. You memorize. You memorize your times tables,
00:07:54.640you memorize equations, you memorize certain types of problem sets in order to correctly
00:08:00.260apply the right formula in the right order. That's what my generation did, for the most part.
00:08:06.380that's what teachers taught us you memorize timetables now there is an inherent value
00:08:12.300in memorizing times tables i get it but rather than saying memorize times tables what new math
00:08:18.380is trying to do is trying to get you to understand the theory and the spatial intelligence behind
00:08:26.060that memorization right if you can make somebody understand something they don't need to memorize
00:08:32.940it because they get its foundational realities. And I know you guys all have seen clips of this
00:08:37.280because everybody's watched TikTok, who has gone on YouTube, who has done whatever,
00:08:41.620has seen like 15 second videos where individuals solve math equations in like 13 different ways.
00:08:49.000And we're all like, why are you doing that? It takes longer. I'll tell you why they're doing it.
00:08:52.940Because it shows a different relationship between numbers and between sequential orders and through
00:09:00.220problem sets that all of us don't get. We just don't understand because we were taught to
00:09:08.460memorize. Now, here's the problem. Getting kids to understand math, getting kids to understand
00:09:15.580sort of conceptually and spatially and theoretically, that's a much bigger mountain
00:09:21.900to climb. And I'm going to say something else. I don't know how much of the teaching force right
00:09:26.800now is built to teach it well. I don't know. I know some great math teachers who do a beautiful
00:09:32.680job. I know some math teachers who are like, no, it's garbage. I'm going to teach the way I've0.98
00:09:35.920always taught. Listen, I think when we make these big shifts, we have to assume there's going to be
00:09:44.600lag time. We have to assume that new strategies, that new theories, that new ways of understanding
00:09:51.160and teaching have relevance. Let's assume that they all get in the right hand, have relevance,
00:09:56.680but it's going to take a minute for teachers and for parents and for everybody to catch up.
00:10:04.080And it feels like it's taken a lifetime. I'm going to argue because especially placed in
00:10:09.100the United States, but also Ontario, we haven't invested enough money in re-educating, in
00:10:16.340redesigning, in hiring teachers and re-educating teachers that have been in the profession a long
00:10:23.040time in order to do that job well. The ideas of new math are amazing. It is, to us, complexed,
00:10:33.580right? But to little kids who are doing little trees of mathematical origins, I mean, to them,
00:10:39.020it makes perfect sense. And kids at younger ages can learn more things. But if we want that program
00:10:45.380to work we need to invest more money and rather than invest more money rather than allow our kids
00:10:51.140to get better at math rather than allow them to understand it rather than hire i'm gonna go you
00:10:57.700one step further math teachers specifically in elementary school where that is their speciality
00:11:05.220where that is the only thing they live breathe and practice is mathematics we don't do that
00:11:11.380We have the same teacher teaching every, you know, you teach history, you teach English,
00:11:16.340then you do a little bit of math, you send them away for music, whatever.
00:11:20.280That's where we start, but that's going to cost more money.
00:11:23.460So guess what governments want to do?0.55
00:11:25.000They want to negate it altogether.1.00
00:12:33.440right? We need to start looking at different ways of getting back to math. We don't want,
00:12:38.720back to basics is like the most, and not even to mention that there's new mathematical formula,
00:12:45.160that there's new conceptual analysis, that there's new theories, that there's all new stuff.
00:12:50.180Math always has new stuff. That's the point of math. Get smarter. Science. Back to basics.
00:12:59.040science has never been more true than it is today and tomorrow it'll be more true than it is
00:13:04.640everybody gets that right because science isn't about and i know please you're going to go off
00:13:11.580on some tangent about pharmaceutical science look i'm not talking about business i am talking about
00:13:16.100science okay i'm not talking about the application of science and and the reason why that gets skewed
00:13:22.960is because of money so that's a capitalism problem that's not a science problem scientists are
00:13:27.660interested in finding out patterns, in hypothesizing, who plan experiments, continuing the experiment,
00:13:35.440replicating the experiment to see what the end result is to get closer to the truth.
00:13:39.780That's what science is. Back to basics? You want to go back to less truth? Less scientific model?
00:13:48.800You want to go back to when we didn't have discoveries, i.e. Pluto wasn't planet?
00:13:54.040What back to basics do we want to go to? Again, I point to the only thing they want to go back to basics about is making the curriculum dumbed down, is making it more streamlined and specific in order to make sure our students are being successful.
00:14:18.240but let me be very clear we're not giving them better tools we're not giving them
00:14:22.740better strategies we're not giving them better teaching techniques we're lowering
00:14:26.160the bar so when we ask them to learn less their marks get higher and our
00:14:34.560governments and our agencies can pop their color and say see who thinks this
00:14:43.800is a good idea and again i go back to parents look our kids should be smarter than us
00:14:51.560if our kids aren't smarter than us we haven't done our job period if our kids don't question
00:14:58.920new things if our kids aren't critical if our kids don't want change we have dropped the ball
00:15:05.560and society will come to a grinding pathetic halt we want innovation we want critical analysis
00:15:13.800We want change. We just don't want to pay for it. And when I say we, I do mean the government and citizens, because we're electing the governments who make these asinine promises and then in their whole spiel say, and I'm going to lower your taxes. Right?
00:15:33.360Because by the way, these same governments disempower teachers, call them glorified babysitters, tell them, tell the world that they don't need the education they got. And they're suddenly, you know, they're trying to transform your child and socialize them completely again. No, no, no, no, no.
00:15:52.540Make no mistake, education is about opening perspective, not narrowing view.
00:15:57.820And the only people that don't want an open perspective are the people at home who want the narrow view.
00:16:03.580So when we talk about those individuals, we are not talking about teachers on the whole.
00:16:09.540Could there be bad teachers? Of course there could be. Of course there could be.
00:16:14.880But the bad teachers are the ones standing in front of the classrooms telling their kids not to challenge them,
00:16:19.380Not to look in different textbooks. Not to critically analyze their information or perspective. Not to correct them when they make a mistake. Those are the teachers. Right there. History. Guys, listen. What I don't understand, I'm a history teacher, okay?
00:16:38.700So like, since I was in school, there has been what? 30 years of history. So we just keep tacking that on the back end. So today, my students need to know 30 more years of history to be considered educated in that field.
00:17:43.160The way we used to talk about history, and again, I've been teaching for 20 years in history, okay?
00:17:49.420The stuff that was excluded 20 years ago, that was still history of the era, i.e. in Ontario, in Canada, the history of the indigenous population, the history of residential schools, the history of our cultural genocide, all of that, right?
00:18:06.280All of those pieces wiped out. They weren't in the history books. Teachers didn't teach them. They weren't even a part of sort of an overall cultural awareness, except for in the indigenous communities. Why is that? Well, I'll tell you why. Because we had an illusion, a pretense of objectivity back then. We didn't have the internet.
00:18:30.660and i know it's hard to imagine a world without the internet so if you're you know under 40 please
00:18:36.780roll with me for a second but we didn't have the internet so if we didn't have the internet the
00:18:41.720textbook your teacher gave you and the 50 000 books in the library that was it now that seems
00:18:50.180as though it's more significant truth doesn't it well if it made it in a book well if it made in a
00:18:57.860book. Obviously, a bunch of people said it was okay to make, they verified it, they justified it,
00:19:02.380and they put it in a book. So it makes it more true. Number one, absolute garbage.
00:19:09.220We know very, very clearly, and everybody admits it openly with their chest puff. They just say0.99
00:19:14.800it's the best way to study history, that victors write history books. So in that case, it's always
00:19:20.060from their perspective. So we've only ever learned, and we all recognize this. This isn't debate.
00:19:26.360We've only ever learned what the victors have to say.
00:19:36.200And you want to talk about censorship?
00:19:39.060Major publishing houses and curriculum creators are the foundations of censorship realities
00:19:48.840that are so incredibly imbued, that are so incredibly ingrained in our society,
00:19:54.320we actually think they're objective truths. People talk about censorship on social media
00:20:01.640platforms. Guys, the amount of voices today, right now, we have more access to information
00:20:09.140and opinions than we've ever had in the history of the world. Of the world. You might not like
00:20:15.840them, and some of them might get kicked off for hateful speech and all of those kinds of things,
00:20:20.660but we have a more, a broader breadth of actual opinion that the world gets to see and engage in.
00:20:30.860Think about it. Before, you had to what? Own a paper? You think Hertz and Pulitzer cared about
00:20:39.000adequately surveying the population? You think they cared about selling papers?
00:20:44.780news agencies if you wanted to get on a news agency and say what you thought they had to
00:20:52.340deem you credible an organization of such narrow scope and such narrow population had to deem
00:20:59.320your views credible now you can build any social media account and if you resonate with people
00:21:06.200you'll get popular right now could they take it away sure so is that a possibility absolutely but
00:21:14.380still, right now, there is less censorship than there's ever been. And I'm going to go you one
00:21:19.640step further, because here's the really scary part about history before now. The exclusion
00:21:25.980of all of the minority perspectives, African Americans, immigrant populations, the LGBTQ
00:21:34.040community, we have a whole host of individuals, women, that were completely and utterly wiped
00:21:42.520out of history completely do we want to go back then i think i think the people that say back to
00:21:51.800basics want to honest to god what do you think ron de santis is trying to do by saying ridiculous
00:22:00.200things about slavery and skill set acquirement he's trying to go we know the last people that
00:22:07.580said that? Well, they were around about, ooh, I don't know, 1700s, who said it's good for them.
00:22:16.680That's the back to basics he's talking about. He wants to eradicate all of the voices and all of
00:22:24.120the minorities who have now gained the capacity, the right, the voice to speak on themselves,0.97
00:22:32.060their history, and their identities. He wants all that eradicated because that doesn't count,0.99
00:22:36.900because somehow that's not an objective truth.
00:22:39.600Meanwhile, he's relying, relying on the fact that people just don't want to learn it
00:22:47.780because it makes them uncomfortable.0.95
00:22:50.460And therefore, when he says garbage like back to basics,0.93
00:22:54.060it gives the illusion of actual some semblance of objectivity.0.63
00:22:59.440When the scariest thing history has ever done, by far, is pretended as though,
00:23:04.780is giving us the pretense when you study Canadian history out of your 400 page textbook,
00:23:11.120you have all the information, all the relevant information. So you go about your life with your
00:23:16.380chest puffed. It's rhyming off when, I don't know, Johnny McDonald was prime minister. And you think
00:23:22.280you know something. You think you have it on lock because in grade 10, your government said that was
00:23:28.060all the vital information you needed to know. And we want to go back to that. What? The only
00:23:34.720reason anybody wants to go back to less information to less education is to control the population
00:23:41.000and spend less doing it's absolute garbage they they like the power structure that existed then
00:23:47.780they want those stories to be dominant they want that literature to be seen as the only objective
00:23:54.960literature because everybody else who has spoken since has countered that literature has countered0.72
00:24:02.940that objective pretense of reality my god they want to go back to a time where women were property
00:24:13.420slaves obviously property kids were prop nobody had voices except for who
00:24:21.020white christian straight rich men that's the only objective truth just saying that out loud0.89
00:24:33.340should make everybody lose their mind english back to basics these are the same people that
00:24:43.240fight about things like ebonics right and different dialects of the language emerging
00:24:47.360Why do you think we don't speak like they do in England? You soft celery. By the way, I call a lot of people potatoes. And there was this big argument on my Twitter page about calling people, don't insult the potato, but calling them a piece of soft celery is actually a much greater insult because it has inherently no value and no enjoyment whatsoever.
00:25:11.560So there we go. Soft celery. That's what I'm doing. Because the English language, just like everything else, is in a constant state of flux, transformation, evolution. Every language does. I listened to a TikTok over a three-minute period, and they showed how the English language became the English language.
00:25:33.780that's how it happens new words get admitted new forms of grammar get introduced different
00:25:44.200sort of vernacular and cliche and tropes get that's that's what happens and we're trying to
00:25:50.400put the brakes on all over the place why because the power structure that used to be able to
00:25:55.800dominate and create it no longer gets to be that dominant that's why they hate ebonics so much
00:26:03.060that's why they hate it that's why they want to destroy it now do we only want to read Shakespeare
00:26:12.500forever guys like I I don't dislike Shakespeare I think it's amazing I think archetypally you
00:26:19.360see the foundations of a lot of major stories I think it's a great thing to learn I question all
00:26:25.100the time whether he did it because I think that's a funny conversation and that could be studied what
00:26:30.320a brilliant way to sort of attack the common ideas of the day and who got to control information
00:26:36.160and who got to take credit for information and different forms of literature and what that said
00:26:43.960about the time. And there's this whole conversation about how many men actually wrote Shakespeare. I
00:26:49.060like the theory that it was his sister, literally and metaphorically. The fact that women had no1.00
00:26:58.260right to write. So what did they do? Well, they wrote under pen names as men. Do I think we1.00
00:27:03.160figured some of them out now? Sure. Do I think we figured them all out? No. And, and how many
00:27:08.920brilliant writers did we exclude altogether? The Bronte sisters broke through. What if there1.00
00:27:16.440was somebody better than the Bronte sisters? Took away their pen, smacked them in the head with the0.99
00:27:22.860book. Study Shakespeare, but let's not pretend as though he is, even if it was just him, the be-all
00:27:31.840and end-all of all literature ever created. Do we really think that in the last 500 years
00:27:40.860we couldn't do better? Or have we created an idea that we can't do better? Have we created
00:27:52.760this ridiculous notion that what was done then is the best. Why would what was done then be the
00:27:59.020best? We knew less. We knew less about other cultures. We knew less about other people. We
00:28:05.860understood less about humanity. We understood less about math and science. We understood less
00:28:10.500about architecture. We understood less about psychology and sociology and anthropology.
00:28:16.420Why on God's green earth do we think he had it on lock? Asinine. Absolutely asinine. The only reason is giving, again, constructing an illusion that that old white British dude had it on lock.0.99
00:28:37.740there is the pinnacle of intelligence. There is the pinnacle of literary access. There is the0.63
00:28:44.040pinnacle of the person that we should be studying and ingraining and transforming. And I'm just
00:28:50.660saying, I like them. Great. But maybe, just maybe, 500 years have seen other literary geniuses that
00:29:01.460we should be starting to take into some sort of serious account. It's absolutely asinine.0.98
00:29:08.160It's absolutely asinine that we think in that day and age, we had it on lock and today we don't.0.93
00:29:14.280Why? Why? Back to basics. And here's the big problem. I think the back to basics is trying
00:29:25.060to do, and again, I'm going to go right to the beginning of this entire podcast. It's trying to
00:29:29.500us to do it cheaper and quicker that's the goal that's the goal of educational institutions
00:29:38.140especially those funded by the government cheaper and quicker more kids in a classroom
00:29:44.540how do we jam 30 40 kids in a classroom like we used to do in the good old days
00:29:50.380please note the sarcasm in my voice how do we jam that many kids in the classroom how do we make
00:29:55.020sure they get good marks how do we make sure that they pass how do we give the pretense the illusion
00:30:00.380that they're actually doing better than they work because we all know marks by the way grades are0.96
00:30:05.660a complete and utter subjective reality anybody that tells you different is full of crap of course
00:30:11.820it's subjective of course it is it isn't if you simplify education right because if you simplify
00:30:23.180education but i'm going to tell you why that's a problem is if you simplify education if i tell
00:30:27.100my history students you got a name you you i'm going to give you 50 you know historical figures
00:30:33.42050 dates 50 events and you have to explain them all in five mark questions and and what
00:30:39.980there's there's clear answers that i've given you and if you hit all the points cool you get the
00:30:44.380marks that's it and then i and then i have a ranking of my students a couple problems with
00:30:49.180that. Number one, I've simplified education. I've made them less intelligent because nowhere along
00:30:54.560the way did I start questioning, critiquing. Did they start looking at other perspectives?
00:31:00.200Did they look at the why of history, not just the what? Because the what doesn't matter without the
00:31:05.440why. Memorizing the what, the date, the person, the blah, blah, blah, absolutely has no relevance
00:31:12.340whatsoever. You might as well just burn those history books as they're doing down south of0.86
00:31:17.460border in some states and then i'm going to say this even if that was all the information let's
00:31:25.780pretend let's pretend i could i i had some ability to get at the most vital pieces of historical
00:31:32.660data and i sat my kids down and i drilled it into their head and then i made them recount it
00:31:38.340and regurgitate it on a on a test with pen in hand now where am i what am i losing because
00:31:46.740i'm still trying to gauge which kid gets it the most but then we have this entire other body of
00:31:55.460information which says not any every individual can sit down and memorize and write down and
00:32:04.340comprehend in that same way because if you made them write it down they might get 50
00:32:10.420percent if you let them say it they get a hundred so what am i trying to test there am i trying to
00:32:17.220test their intelligence am i trying to test their capacity to hold information and if i'm trying to
00:32:23.940test that then the methodology of me getting that information how i'm going to get it out of the
00:32:29.780student shouldn't matter but it does right and why does it matter well why does it matter is quite
00:32:36.500simple right why does it matter is glaringly simple about how we simplify and streamline
00:32:49.060that process to make it give the illusion of objectivity when in actuality i'm not really
00:32:57.300just testing history i'm testing kids who are really good at the structure i've given them
00:33:03.540to test history. And some of you might say, well, who cares? The kids back in our day,
00:33:09.260you know what? The kids back in our day dropped out. The kids back in our day went and did
00:33:16.020something else. Meanwhile, could you possibly imagine, just like all these other geniuses
00:33:24.440that drop out of school altogether, if we would have shifted the way in which, the structure in
00:33:29.300which we applied this information to our students, we would have kept those geniuses?
00:33:35.640We, maybe just a handful, we would have kept students who had a completely different perspective
00:33:42.420on how to look at things, rather than, just like I did, sit down, be quiet, memorize, regurgitate,
00:33:49.480move on. That is not education. I repeat, if we are not questioning, criticizing,
00:33:59.300applying. That is not education. That is memorization. It is a waste. And that is what
00:34:04.800back to the basics means. But man, was it easy to apply a standardized test over here and IQ test
00:34:13.080over here and aptitude test. You didn't get grade nine math. So we put you in another math or we
00:34:19.940let you drop math because obviously it's just not good at it. What an easy, functionally pathetic,0.99
00:34:28.340but an easy cheap way to apply education what an easy cheap way to give the illusion0.74
00:34:39.800that education is happening and that was for a time guys where the jobs were completely
00:34:47.080different because i haven't even talked about the most important part back to basics in this era
00:34:55.900of computers. Everybody who's my age, who you're 48 and up, you took grade nine typing
00:35:05.900in Ontario anyway. That was it. I remember vague notions of like, you should take some binary in
00:35:13.040this computer class where it was like green computer screens and it looked awful and I
00:35:17.860didn't want anything to do with it. And I just avoided it like the plague. Of course I did.