Latest / UK Column Radio / Jerm Warfare — Debbie DeGroff on the Dangers of Modern Children's Books

Transcript

Jerm Warfare — Debbie DeGroff on the Dangers of Modern Children's Books · UK Column Radio

0:34
None. This is a very dark topic, isn't
0:39
it? Yes, it yes, it certainly can
0:43
be. It certainly can be.
0:45
And when I was trying to readjust our links, you know
0:50
that we're broken since you, you know, had gone from TNT.
0:55
I kept trying to Google your name and my name to see if I
0:58
could come up with the links. And I found out all kinds of
1:01
interesting things about you and I.
1:04
And let's see, I'm a former public school teacher, which I'm
1:09
not. And the name of my book is very
1:13
different. And you're a provocateur.
1:16
Oh, OK, well, I'll, I'll take it.
1:21
But OK. So Debbie, what is what is your
1:23
background? My background is unjust.
1:27
I'm I'm just a mom who always loved reading.
1:31
My parents lived near a or worked, had a business near a
1:34
library when I was growing up and I would go and I would read
1:38
and read, read and read and read.
1:40
And so most of the children's books that were common back then
1:45
and before then I was familiar with.
1:47
So when my oldest child learned to read when he was 5.
1:51
This has been about 40 years now.
1:54
I started taking him to the library and I started taking
1:57
home all of the new books with the shiny covers, not thinking
2:02
anything about it, just trying to find things for him to read.
2:05
And I noticed that there was quite a transition from the
2:09
books that I had read as a child.
2:11
So I have, I was born wondering why instead of why.
2:16
And so I started asking all those questions and it's just
2:20
kept me going for all of these years wondering how they do this
2:24
to kids, why they do this to kids.
2:28
And I'm just still doing it, Jeremy and.
2:31
So, OK, all right, so, so the short story is you have
2:36
discovered over the last few decades that what kids are
2:40
reading now, they really should not be reading.
2:46
Well, I mean, that's that's probably over overly simplistic.
2:50
OK, but there's an agenda. You know, when I first started,
2:55
you saw maybe New Age things coming in and occultic things
3:00
and a lot of sexuality in the 70s.
3:03
And then, you know, I still run into parents after all of these
3:08
years that don't even know that D AM N is in a book.
3:11
OK. And I know we've talked about
3:13
this before. I have one Simon and Schuster
3:17
Children's Publishing division young adult book that has 13138
3:21
F words, 900 and some other very cutting swear words.
3:29
And I tell everybody, yes, and I tell everybody those 2000 words
3:35
in that book are the nicest part of the book.
3:38
So you can use your imagination from there.
3:41
I don't think we'll get into those descriptions today, but
3:46
this is standard fare for kids books.
3:48
So what I've just said to you, I've I've just talked about
3:51
deviant sexual practices and profanity, but those aren't the
3:57
only issues. See, parents automatically
4:01
assume that if you could remove all the sex and the profanity,
4:06
that everything would be pure and holy.
4:09
But that's not it. You can go back to board books.
4:12
You have a baby now. You know what a board book is,
4:15
right? OK, and it starts in boards
4:19
books. Now, the indoctrination.
4:22
But the indoctrination is twofold.
4:24
It's not just starting to plant ideas in your infants and
4:29
toddlers. It also influences the adult
4:32
who's reading the book, you know, And I, I want to stop
4:37
before we really get into this. And I want to, I want to bring
4:39
up one thing that really, really, I think a, a point that
4:43
needs to be made. You know, I know that your
4:46
listeners come from all different points of view, but I
4:50
think we can agree on one thing. And that is if, you know, I
4:56
don't know who your politicians are, but let's let's just talk
4:59
about in America, OK, If you let's go back to Biden and let's
5:04
say that there was a a new book on Biden that came out.
5:10
Well, if you are favorable to Biden, you might think it's a
5:14
great book. If somebody is opposed to
5:18
Biden's practices, then there might be very much against that
5:24
book, right? And if you had them both on your
5:27
program, they would be arguing it.
5:29
Is that right? Would anybody say, would they
5:34
anybody write into your show and say, Jeremy, this is censorship?
5:39
Nobody would call that censorship.
5:41
You're having an argument of two different sides and two
5:44
different opinions. The only place that is ever used
5:49
is if you bring up a children's book.
5:51
And if you bring up a children's book automatically, at least
5:55
here in America, you're a censor, you're a bigot, you're a
5:58
fascist, you're a Nazi. You're, you know, I mean, the
6:02
list goes on and on and on forever.
6:05
And that's how they try to get you not to be able to discuss
6:11
and talk about what is actually in children's books.
6:15
What is in children's books? OK, well I don't think I want to
6:23
get into the actual descriptions of the sexuality.
6:28
You can't even imagine they have a thing now that everything has
6:33
to be an authentic voice. OK, so if I am a transgender, I
6:41
can write a book about a transgender child, but if you're
6:44
not a transgender, you're not an authentic voice.
6:47
Right. So you so so so.
6:49
You can't write a a book about gay people unless you're gay.
6:54
Well, that's what they're trying to get to because whatever you
6:56
write, they'll say, well, Jeremy's not authentic, OK.
7:00
And one of the things that I brought up in my book was
7:05
Charles Dickens. You know, when he wrote about
7:08
Little Nell in the Old Curiosity shop, there were, you know, it
7:12
came out in segments in the paper.
7:15
There were people lined up at the Wharf in New York City
7:20
waiting for the addition to see whether little Dale lived or
7:24
died. She was a 14 year old girl.
7:29
And you had that much traction. Dickens was not an authentic
7:33
voice. He was not a 14 year old girl.
7:37
It was. He was a great writer, OK.
7:43
And it doesn't. If you're an authentic voice, it
7:46
doesn't mean you're going to be able to convey what Dickens
7:51
conveyed in that story and many other authors before him.
7:58
But that was long time ago. Well, that was a long time ago.
8:02
But today, let's say you're the you're a Dickens.
8:07
You wouldn't be qualified. You wouldn't.
8:09
The publisher wouldn't take you if you were writing a book on a
8:13
transgender child or this or that, you know, or the other
8:16
thing, whatever the issue is, because you're not authentic.
8:20
Right, which is where the agenda is.
8:22
That's where the agenda is, yes. Yes.
8:24
And so it becomes, I mean, it just becomes silly, you know,
8:30
then you have to be the right colour of transgender to write
8:33
this one or, you know, I mean, it it it just never ends.
8:38
And so where are we going with this?
8:41
So you want to ask? OK, what is really going on?
8:45
Well, some of the issues that I want to bring up before I get
8:47
into books for your child. OK.
8:50
Is audio sex for kids? Does that sound sexy?
8:58
Did you say audio sex? I did.
9:01
I did. I was waiting to see your
9:02
expression. Yes.
9:04
OK. Because many of these books, you
9:09
would actually expect to find those books in the backroom of
9:13
an adult bookstore. I mean, the type of scenes and
9:17
things that are going on in young adult books, right?
9:22
OK. But now in the United States
9:26
anyway, in our public libraries, they're digital libraries also.
9:31
And so right here from home, I can enter my library card number
9:36
and all kinds of books will come up that are available to me.
9:40
All I have to do is enter my card number and they will pop up
9:44
on my screen. But they're not just ebooks.
9:48
Many of these are audio ebooks. Now I thought, you know, just
9:56
like when you're driving down the car, driving down the
9:58
highway and you're listening to an audiobook because you've got
10:01
a long drive and you know, when you want to learn about
10:03
something, OK, in those audiobooks, I was naive after
10:08
probably 30 some years to sit there and think that all of the,
10:13
the pervasive profanity, I thought maybe it wouldn't be in
10:18
there. So I took Nick and Nora's
10:21
Infinite Playlist by David Levithan and Rachel Cohen
10:25
because I knew it had, I think it had a little less than 300 F
10:30
words in it, but one page alone had 26 F words.
10:34
So I downloaded the Oh yeah, yeah, that's, that's, I mean,
10:39
you can't write, you can't write a kids book without the F this
10:42
and the F that left the other thing.
10:44
But anyway, So what I did was I downloaded from the library the
10:49
audio ebook and I went, you know, I forwarded it to where I
10:55
knew it had the 26 words. Oh, my goodness.
10:58
And yes, they're spoken with great emphasis.
11:02
OK, once that dawned on me that the F words were spoken, I
11:09
realized the sex scenes are spoken too.
11:14
Now, do you know how many men are steeped in porn and they
11:19
call and pay for phone sex? Well, what these kids, all they
11:24
have to do is to download that. And I mean, we're talking sick
11:29
stuff, OK? All they have to do is backward
11:32
and forward and backward and forward.
11:34
And they could listen to it 20 times in a row if they wanted
11:37
to. Debbie, just hang on, hang on,
11:40
hang on, hang on. What age group are we talking
11:42
about here? OK, well, these are young adult
11:47
books. I can't tell you.
11:50
Yeah, these are young adult books, but I don't, I can't tell
11:54
you that the five year old, Yeah, I mean I doubt a 5 year
11:59
olds going to do this, but I can't tell you that they
12:01
couldn't push the same button on the library card and download
12:05
the same book instantly. You know, I've never seen a
12:09
check on it that ever asked me my age.
12:13
OK, and your young adult is typically 9th through 12th
12:18
grade. However, then after we cover
12:22
this one, we could go into adult books for teens if there isn't
12:27
enough deviancy and young adult books.
12:32
The American Library Association has an Alex Award and they will
12:36
take an adult book and they will deem it that it would appeal to
12:42
12 to 18 year olds. And I tell you what, some of
12:47
those are not very, very pure. I have a whole chapter on that
12:51
in my book, you know, just just exposing what's in those books.
12:56
So your question, you know, the question is why?
13:01
Why? Why do you do this?
13:05
Just for just for a bit of context, what were kids reading
13:10
100 years ago? OK, that's a good question that
13:15
I do deal with. They were reading basically
13:20
classics. OK, so you might have been
13:23
reading Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson.
13:25
You might have been reading Sir Walter Scott at the latter part
13:29
of the 1800s, beginning in 1900s, they would have began
13:32
writing Twain, they would have read Thackery, Dickens, you
13:36
know, those were the books they were reading.
13:39
So in fact, when this, when the serial books came into being, a
13:46
lot of librarians wouldn't even put such as a Nancy Drew book on
13:50
the shelf, OK. And not because there was, not
13:55
because Nancy was promiscuous, not because they had bad
13:58
language, but because the reading levels were so much
14:02
lower than what the kids were capable of and what they were
14:07
reading. So see the Edward Stratumer
14:11
Company, the Syndicate, they're the ones he originally did the
14:15
Rover Boys in 1885. And then eventually that series
14:18
sold 5 million copies. So you'll come out with one book
14:22
in the next book in the next book, just like Nancy Drew and
14:25
Hardy Boys, which he created. Those do started Nancy Drew
14:28
about 1927, Bobbsey Twins about 1904.
14:33
But see, these were far beneath what these kids were capable of
14:37
reading. So I'm not sitting here saying,
14:40
oh, you should never let your kids read those.
14:43
You know, I'm not saying that at all.
14:45
I'm just saying that you need to make sure that you are pushing
14:50
them, that they do not stay at that level.
14:53
It seems to me that they're, they're creating a situation
14:57
where your kids are staying at a very, very low reading level.
15:00
See, they, you know, they quit teaching them phonics years ago.
15:03
Now they're starting to bring it back some, you know, but they
15:08
did that on purpose to dumb the kids down.
15:11
Are you familiar with Accelerated Reader in South
15:14
Africa? Because it is in many, many
15:16
countries. I've heard of it, yes.
15:19
OK, this is where they level, like they might tell you, you
15:23
know, you're on a fourth grade, third month reading level, OK.
15:28
And so I've tracked this since 2013 and what I do is I take 9th
15:34
to 12th grade interest levels because they separate those.
15:38
There's an interest level and a reading level, so I take 9th to
15:43
12th grade interest level, English only, fiction only, and
15:51
I every year I find how many books are written for them on a
15:55
first grade reading level all the way through 12th.
15:59
It has never increased. Since 2013, there's only been
16:04
124 books that are written on a 9th to 12th grade reading level
16:10
included on their site. OK, only 124, and in fact 79%
16:20
are fifth grade and below. OK, if the reading levels really
16:26
meant something. Which says what to us.
16:32
Well, that's a low reading level.
16:33
I mean, if if you have to read, OK, let's say OK, wait.
16:39
Wait, wait, wait, let me make sure I'm following.
16:41
OK, so when you say low reading level, you're saying that like
16:44
for example the sentences of very simplistic and basic when
16:49
they could be more sophisticated and and slightly more complex.
16:53
OK, I'll give you an illustration.
16:56
OK, I took the New York Times bestselling list because some of
17:02
those eventually appear on Accelerated Reader because I
17:06
wanted to compare apples with apples.
17:09
And so I did 18 books yesterday just because they were the ones
17:13
that I could find on there. The highest one, these are the
17:17
books that everyday people read, you know, the Colleen Hoover and
17:21
the Rebecca Yaros and John Grisham and those type of
17:26
people. OK, the highest one that I
17:29
found, not to say that there's not some that are higher, most
17:33
of them were on a fifth grade level, but there was one that
17:36
was a 7.6, I think 7.6. So anyway, I went to the middle
17:44
grade interest level and looked up 7th grade, 7th month, you
17:50
know, a month harder than that. I looked up 7th, 7th month, 8th
17:55
month, and 9th month. We're talking Black Beauty,
17:59
Little Women Through the Looking Glass, 5 Little Peppers and how
18:05
they grew. Now, would you expect those to
18:08
be adult books or you may be unfamiliar with, you know, 5
18:12
little Peppers or something and you know where you live.
18:16
But these were basic books that we read when we were 10.
18:21
Today we get Run Sally, run. Yes.
18:25
Well, it's it's more complicated than that.
18:27
Even the books that the adults are reading, you see adults
18:30
reading one book after another. But what kind of a level is it?
18:36
And. And now you're saying that
18:38
that's deliberate? Well, yes, yes, by 1930, OK, See
18:45
behind me this bookshelf, there's a huge bookshelf back
18:49
there, OK? And I've got hundreds of readers
18:52
from the 1800s up to about 1960, OK, in the 1800s, these books
19:01
were not word guessing. They had to actually learn to
19:05
read phonetically, OK. And then they, they turned it.
19:11
The progressives knew they were trying to dumb the kids down.
19:16
They didn't want the type of government that we had.
19:19
And so they started introducing the word guessing, which is your
19:23
run, Sally run. They started teaching them by
19:27
word shapes. I have books from the 50s where
19:31
they've the workbooks where they have shapes.
19:34
If you were writing Mom, you would have a tall box and two
19:39
short boxes and this is how they would learn Mom.
19:45
I have three gin readers from the 50s and the first reader has
19:51
2022 words in it. One of the first words is
19:54
airplane. By book three, you learn the
19:57
word up. So do you want to sit there and
20:02
think about that tonight? Is that reading or is that
20:05
memorizing words? Rudolf Flesh wrote the book in
20:09
1955, Why Johnny Can't Read and What You Can Do About It, and he
20:14
exposed that widespread. You know, when you're teaching a
20:19
child the word fish, do you show him the picture over and over
20:22
and over and over and over and have him trace the letters until
20:25
he finally gets it? Or do you teach him the sounds
20:28
of the word fish and teach him to blend it together?
20:32
There's a difference. The huge difference, OK, And
20:36
somebody you need to look up, Sam Blumenfeld is dead now, but
20:41
there's still a lot of things online and I think his book is
20:45
free online about the new illiterates that would for
20:48
anybody interested in that, that would be a wonderful thing to
20:52
do. So anyway, you're limiting the
20:54
child's information, OK? They can't read what they could
21:00
read. So even your colleges texts,
21:03
many of them would be dumbed down now also.
21:06
This is what you categorize as controlled vocabulary.
21:10
Yes, yeah, absolutely. It's a controlled vocabulary.
21:14
Now, if you go back to people here in the United States would
21:17
be familiar with the Boxcar Children because they grew up
21:20
with those. And Gertrude Chandler Warner
21:22
only wrote the 1st 19. The others were written after
21:26
after she died. I have two of the books that are
21:29
old that, you know, original ones, maybe not original, but
21:33
first printings. And they tell you flat out in
21:36
there that they're using a controlled vocabulary.
21:39
If you look at Doctor Seuss's book, if you look at the Cat in
21:43
the Hat, it tells you right in the very back of the book, they
21:46
have a, the 1957 version. They have a picture of the cat.
21:51
And in his hat, he tells you that he was given the 223 words
21:56
of the basal reader. And that's what he had to use to
22:00
write the book. It was to make the kids familiar
22:02
and to recognize those words. But in 1980 or 81, he did an
22:07
interview with Arizona magazine where he flat out told them that
22:11
it was. The worst thing that ever
22:12
happened in this country is when they flip from teaching reading
22:16
to using Chinese pictographs. That's what he called it.
22:20
Doctor Seuss. Yeah, Peter Gazelle.
22:24
He, he he is one of my favorite book authors of all time.
22:29
I've got his entire collection. Yeah.
22:31
And I love his artwork and I love I love his rhyming, but
22:34
it's so sad what you're telling me.
22:37
It took him nine months to write The Cat in the Hat.
22:39
He was. So, I mean, he was really upset
22:42
doing this because he had to use these 223 words of the Basil
22:45
Reader. That's why he drank so much.
22:48
Should. Come up with the title.
22:49
Pardon me. Yeah, that's why he probably
22:51
drank so much. Maybe so that would have driven
22:55
me to drink, and I don't drink. You've spoken also about
23:05
inconsistency between profanity and vulgarity.
23:10
Is that correct? Yes.
23:14
What do you mean? Yeah, I mean, they, they, they
23:17
overlap some, but when the book I was telling you about that had
23:22
13138 F words and 900 and some of the other ones, the other
23:27
ones were very, very serious things for me to call you OK?
23:32
They they weren't your standard cuss words usually.
23:36
Which is vulgarity. And they were very vulgar
23:39
because the book was very, very vulgar.
23:42
You know, it used to be when the sexuality came in, there would
23:48
be, you know, they always go by your emotions.
23:51
So they would have your two, your little boy and your girl,
23:55
and they would fall in love and you'd have this emotional story,
23:59
OK. And then they would have regular
24:02
sex. Now that's not even a focus part
24:06
of the story. You could be working in an
24:10
animal shelter, OK. And all of a sudden, I mean, it
24:15
isn't even part of a continuity of the story, but all of a
24:19
sudden there's a cute girl working there too that day.
24:21
So you all go in the bathroom and it'll give the details of
24:24
how you did it, OK. And you come out and the story
24:27
just goes on. And that's the you never hear
24:29
about that girl again. You see, it's just, I don't
24:35
know, the kids are just being bombarded with it.
24:39
And to add to what you're saying, you actually sometimes
24:43
don't think about books. The first thing that comes to
24:47
mind is, I don't know, Cartoon Network.
24:49
Absolutely. Absolutely.
24:51
But let let's flip down to the younger kids.
24:54
I think, you know, the sex and the profanity, It's obvious.
24:58
OK, But when you get to the little children, how do you
25:02
indoctrinate them? And I, I brought one thing
25:05
today. OK, I don't know if you read my
25:08
new article that I just posted. I just posted an article the
25:13
night before last and it's on my website, my websites, what's
25:17
inside childrensbooks.com. OK.
25:20
And I wrote about 1 little 32 page picture book, OK, and this
25:26
is for three to six year olds and it's mommy's going to March.
25:33
Those children did not know what they're doing.
25:36
They are not social justice activists or warriors.
25:40
You know, they were going, maybe their mom didn't have a
25:42
babysitter, so they were going with them to March and one of
25:46
them thought they were going to get hot dogs.
25:48
One of them thought it was going to be abandoned parade.
25:50
They did not understand. But we're using these children.
25:54
So there are whole curriculums today that are teaching children
26:02
how to use emotional words to get their way.
26:06
Now, if your child was taught that, if your child was in a
26:11
public school and taught that day after day after day, it's
26:15
not just preparing him to be a social activist, I guarantee you
26:20
he would be using those same tactics on you and your wife.
26:25
OK, so why do they manipulate children to come to a a certain
26:31
conclusion and how do they do it?
26:34
The first way is, you know, through their pictures or their
26:37
stories, they bond with the protagonist.
26:41
The main thing is all of the facts are omitted, but the thing
26:47
you have to observe as a parent is what is their take away?
26:53
If these aren't the ideas that you're trying to instill in your
26:57
child, why are they developing these takeaways from reading
27:03
these books? And it's the same type of
27:05
takeaways. Now one of the things that I
27:07
want to show you and is can you see this picture?
27:13
Yes. OK, well, they try to make it
27:19
out like this girl is a young girl.
27:23
And it says on here that so instead of carrying books to
27:28
school, many girls carry sewing machines to work.
27:32
Clara becomes a garment worker. This was about the 1909
27:36
Shirtwaist Makers factory strike.
27:39
The strike in 1909, right? So did you see the picture of
27:44
her carrying the sewing machine? You want to see the sewing
27:46
machine? It's about 35 lbs.
27:55
OK, OK, it didn't happen in a garment factory and I sew all
28:04
the time. OK, but in a sewing factory,
28:07
even back then, they had industrial machines.
28:12
Mind you, if the kids had one of these, if the poor immigrant
28:16
workers had one, they would have been sewing at home.
28:20
And I don't want to go into this whole thing.
28:21
There were, but there were industrial machines.
28:24
They couldn't, you couldn't have 300 workers come dump all of
28:28
those lids, OK, set up their machines because you weren't so
28:32
much as allowed to take a needle home, let alone the thread.
28:36
So you would have to take all the thread off of your bobbin
28:39
every single night, and you'd have to rewind it every morning
28:43
on one of these machines if they had one, which they did not.
28:47
But why did they do that? Because this book tries to make
28:52
the kids think that all of these were young girls.
28:56
The book is about Clara Lewick. She was real.
29:00
She was real, OK. She had revolutionary ideas when
29:04
she came to this country at the age of 17, and she was in her
29:07
early 20s when all these things took place.
29:11
But when you look at this book, you assume that all of these
29:15
were young, young girls. And the thing that they say they
29:18
should have been in school, well, maybe they should have.
29:21
But most kids in 1909 didn't go past eighth grade, you see.
29:26
But they omit all of these things, trying to bring an end
29:30
take away to these kids. Another thing that's in here is
29:34
they went on strike and so the police arrested her 17 times and
29:39
broke six of her ribs. Now this book is for 4 to 8 year
29:44
olds. Do you want to read that to your
29:45
son when he's four and tell him about the police broke sick of
29:49
his ribs? What kind of a children's editor
29:52
would let something like that pass unless that was part of the
29:59
message that you wanted to send? Because there's numerous books
30:03
on police brutality for kids. I did whole articles on that. 20
30:08
years ago, all the teens were reading Harry Potter.
30:12
Yes. I've never read Harry Potter and
30:19
I've never watched the movie. I haven't read Harry Potter
30:21
either. And you want to know why?
30:23
Because there's zillion books out there, and everybody and
30:28
their brother has their opinion on Harry Potter.
30:31
OK? So everybody has written
30:33
everything. I do not need to take my time to
30:37
be reading all the Harry Potter so that we can, you know, have a
30:41
conversation on it because you could find 100 people, you know,
30:45
to do just that. Now, you know, I mean, from what
30:49
I have read and what I have heard, it is not something that
30:52
I would let my kids read, OK or my grandkids because I get to
30:58
choose that. I remember that whole 50 Shades
31:00
of Grey thing came out and that was for adults.
31:03
Yes, yes, and that's pedophilia really.
31:08
I mean the people that have analyzed that there is, you
31:12
know, the the girl was younger than, you know, people like to
31:16
talk about. But yes, the kids were reading
31:18
that also. And you know, but I will tell
31:24
you, Jeremy, in the young adult realm they are.
31:28
So I'm just going to say terrible because it's my
31:33
opinion. You know, somebody else thinks
31:34
they're wonderful. Fine, Obviously there are people
31:37
that think they're wonderful because do you know who one of
31:39
the major audiences is of young adult books?
31:45
That's a women, 30s, forties, 50s that read those books.
31:53
Then you have, I mean, you can you can specialize or emphasize
31:56
and in any part of this that you want, you have books that are
32:00
just teacher child sex and they'll go into great detail.
32:07
So maybe the end result is maybe it shouldn't have happened, but
32:12
it's a step by step playbook of actually how to even groom the
32:15
child if you're a teacher. Things that you wouldn't even
32:19
think about. It's like, oh, that's how you do
32:21
it. This is what you learn in kids
32:24
books. So what is the role of the
32:26
teacher? OK, let's say when I was in
32:32
school long, long time ago, if we had to read a very long time
32:38
ago, you know, I've been married forever, OK?
32:41
If you had to read a book, let's say you were going to read
32:44
Huckleberry Finn. OK, Everybody had in the class
32:48
had to read Huckleberry Fit. We were supposed to go down to
32:53
the local bookstore and buy it, and they had very cheap copies.
32:57
I remember paperbacks, and of course $0.45 was worth a lot
33:00
more than, but they were cheap additions, you know, smaller
33:04
print, thinner pages and all of that.
33:07
If somebody couldn't afford one, it never came up.
33:11
It was just people who had left books years before or whatever.
33:14
Every child got the book and they read the same book.
33:19
That rarely happens anymore. And where we have, you know, we
33:24
wouldn't have a very long period of time to read one book before
33:27
we were in the next book. And today, if they read anything
33:31
at all, it might be the whole year.
33:34
OK. And so anyway, what they do now
33:38
is Accelerated Reader allows you, as the teacher, say you
33:42
have over 100 students between your seven or eight classes
33:45
today, right? So you're going to assign maybe
33:49
a genre, maybe you'll say missed.
33:52
You know, I want everybody to read a mystery, I want everybody
33:55
to read a biography, or I want, you know, whatever.
33:58
And so the kids will go to the Accelerated Reader because
34:00
they're tests, right? Online, there's multiple choice
34:04
questions. So they will read a book.
34:08
The teacher is not familiar with the book.
34:12
She doesn't have to write questions for it.
34:14
She doesn't have to write discussion questions for it.
34:16
She doesn't have to write a test for it, an objective or a
34:21
subjective. They might do a book report, but
34:25
you could get up there and say anything.
34:27
And if I hadn't read the book, I don't know if that's in the book
34:29
at all, right? And so then they take the little
34:32
test and the grade goes exactly to the teacher.
34:35
What did she have to know or do? Nothing.
34:38
So if you read the books that I was talking about, say, with all
34:42
the profanity and the things like that, she wouldn't know
34:46
that. So there's nothing going to be
34:48
discussed if you have an issue. And this is my problem.
34:52
Every time you come up with something that somebody in your
34:56
audience might say is controversial, if you bring it
35:01
up, they'll say, well, these things need to be discussed.
35:06
OK, well, maybe so. I don't disagree with that.
35:08
But who in the world is discussing it with them?
35:10
And does it matter whom it is you see?
35:17
Do you do you really trust what your kids would get?
35:21
I've, I've even collected a lot of the discussion questions at
35:25
the end of some of these books and Oh my goodness, just the
35:28
discussions, questions themselves could lead the kids
35:32
in a direction you would never want them to go.
35:34
So my thing is not sitting here and everybody calling me every
35:39
week and saying, well, is this a good book?
35:40
Is this a bad book? I don't do that.
35:43
I did a whole chapter in my book addressing why I don't do that.
35:48
My direction is that as a parent, you need to be looking
35:53
at what your children are reading.
35:55
You need to just open the cover, not look at, you know, open the
35:58
book, not just look at that cutesy cover.
36:01
They might have a girl and a boy going at it on the cover and,
36:06
you know, you know, who's going to buy that one?
36:08
They might have the same book and have a girl with her dog in
36:11
her bedroom and the next one. And who's going to buy that same
36:14
copy for their grandkids? You see, we're we're screwed if
36:21
you don't look. And I'm tired of the people
36:24
where there needs to be a law. Well, there's already a zillion
36:28
laws that you've probably already broken 10 of them before
36:30
breakfast. OK, you know, how many laws do
36:34
we want? When does it become my
36:36
responsibility to go make a law to protect your children instead
36:41
of your responsibility as a parent to guide that children
36:45
and the way that you want that child to go?
36:49
And does it matter or is it just a free for all?
36:53
Yeah, so basically just open the book before you let your child
36:58
read it. And Jeremy, this is it.
37:01
This is not a condescending thing at all.
37:04
Because we, you know, I've done this for so long and I can still
37:08
miss lots of stuff. And I try to go through books
37:12
very, very, very carefully, but you can take a lot of these
37:16
books are on YouTube and you can listen to these picture books
37:20
being read right on YouTube. And if you're not careful and
37:25
don't ask yourself the right questions, you're going to kind
37:29
of go along with some of this too, until you step back and
37:33
think about it. And another thing I try to get
37:37
parents to do is try to forget everything.
37:41
You know, OK, if you're reading, say it's a little kids book and
37:44
it has a political issue in it, forget what your stance is on
37:49
that. Try to look at it as the five
37:53
year old or whatever the target age is.
37:56
OK, Forget what you know. And at the end of the after you
38:00
read the story, I want you to ask yourself, OK, what do I
38:04
think now? Because this becomes part of
38:08
your worldview now, you can go back and you can read the book
38:12
with the eyes of the knowledge that you do have, OK.
38:17
But first you have to realize that your child at five years
38:20
old's take away is not the same. And I'm going to give you an
38:23
illustration. You might laugh at this, but I
38:26
have a very, very young granddaughter, and her mommy was
38:32
teaching her about States and countries, and she's very young,
38:36
OK. And she was trying to explain to
38:39
her that Hawaii and Alaska aren't attached, but we own it,
38:44
too. So do you know what her
38:46
perception was? Oh, Mama owns those two, you
38:51
know, not understanding what Alaska and Hawaii are.
38:54
Oh, those are mammals, too, you know?
38:57
And you see, sometimes we have to stop and realize kids are
39:02
kids. Let's let them be kids.
39:04
They don't know what we know. They don't think what we think.
39:08
And they're very, very easily manipulated and LED, you know,
39:13
let's go. A board book.
39:16
They have board books about famous people.
39:19
So. OK, so there's one about Ruth
39:21
Bader Ginsburg. Love her or hate her, this is a
39:25
board book for infants. You know they chew on them,
39:28
right? You're infants and toddlers.
39:30
OK, so how many words are in a little tiny board book?
39:36
You open it up and there's a spread and it says Ruth, the two
39:42
page spread. Ruth is strong.
39:46
OK, What? What does that?
39:48
What do you learn about Ruth from that?
39:51
And she's holding up the Supreme Court building, but it's leaning
39:56
to the left. If you look at the picture, it
39:59
is leaning to the left. OK, But see why?
40:04
Ask yourself, is that what you want to read to your son right
40:08
now? I mean, what's he going to grasp
40:10
from that? Whether you love her or you
40:12
don't? Why?
40:16
Why? Why aren't you reading Pat the
40:18
Bunny or something? Yeah, so I mean, what you're
40:21
saying, Debbie, is that propaganda and ideology have
40:28
taken control of kids books. Yes, and it's in an emotional
40:35
level. I'm, I'm reading one right now
40:38
that's a, that's a middle grade book and it's over 400 pages,
40:42
but you've got 1 chapter by the Jewish boy and 1 chapter by the
40:46
the Muslim girl. OK.
40:49
And you can imagine the, the, I mean, and so much propaganda and
40:56
nobody wants to address what is true and what isn't true.
41:00
Some of these things are facts, some of these aren't and it
41:06
makes a difference because your children are assuming it's all
41:10
fact and this becomes part of their worldview.
41:14
I listened to a couple weeks ago, you know how you have the
41:18
little, the journalists that go to all the rallies and they
41:22
interview people and they went to a pro Palestinian rally and
41:28
there was a lesbian there. And he was asking her, you know,
41:33
why she was there and she was talking about what she was
41:35
supporting, you know, all of this.
41:38
And he said, well, what do you think about October 7th?
41:41
She never heard of it. OK.
41:46
All I'm saying to you is whatever your perspective,
41:49
whatever your viewpoint, it isn't fair to omit all of the
41:55
facts and then expect to have legitimate conclusions.
42:00
And even if you go into go back into Roald Dahl, OK, it's
42:04
British, he talks about a nappy. OK, so now there was the big
42:09
hullabaloo about that a couple of years ago, You know, of
42:12
changing all of that when we read classics.
42:15
You didn't change. If you didn't understand what
42:18
something was in that time period, for heaven's sakes, you
42:20
looked it up. I was talking to somebody about
42:23
the World Trade Center 911 and I wrote, so I wrote it down, but I
42:29
spelt it. So I so South Africa comes from
42:32
the Commonwealth. So we've got a British, British
42:35
way of spelling. So I spelled centre, CENTRE.
42:39
And this person said that's a typo.
42:41
You must spell it CENTER. And I said, but hold on.
42:47
Understand that, Yeah. And I mean, it's it's obvious
42:51
that different parts of the world spell differently, the
42:53
same, the same word. Understood that when we were
42:57
when we were very young, one of the first words we probably
43:01
would have understood would have been color.
43:04
You know where? You are.
43:06
And, and we are not, and I mean, and you understood that there
43:09
were those those differences. But I, but I do want to make one
43:13
point today. One of the main things that you
43:16
hear is, well, Jeremy, this is my truth, you know.
43:22
Yes, I've heard that. Well, how many are there?
43:25
No, I want to punch. I want to punch the wall.
43:29
You know, and if, if, if, if everybody has their own truth
43:34
and they're all opposing to each other, then what we've just said
43:38
is there is no truth, you see, And it, it just gets tiresome.
43:45
Facts don't matter anymore. These kids are channelled into
43:50
an emotional level and you could spend the rest of your life
43:54
making one page of facts to teach somebody on something and
43:59
you can show them all of that and they're they're going to
44:02
tell you, well, that's not what I believe.
44:06
The underlying theme of what you're telling me is that kids
44:13
have become in many ways ill or less literate, and that's by
44:18
design. And not just that, they are
44:21
being fed from a young age through books, certain
44:30
ideological and emotional perspectives on things right
44:35
under our noses. Yes, but it isn't.
44:39
But it isn't just the books. I don't ever want it want to act
44:42
like, you know, books are the end all of everything.
44:44
The same messages that are in the books are in your Cartoon
44:47
Network, they're in the curricula, it's school, they're
44:50
in your social media, they're in the movies, the videos, the
44:53
DVD's, you know, the the whole bit.
44:56
It's just reinforced. It's, it's systematic.
44:59
It's line upon line, precept upon precept, you know, and we,
45:05
we have to, we have to watch, you know, you have, you know who
45:10
Harari is. You know who who was one?
45:13
You're talking about Todd? Yeah, Yuval from the World
45:16
Economic Forum. Yes, Yeah.
45:18
OK. Well, you know, he writes kids
45:20
books now. OK, I'm sorry.
45:26
You know, I did. I did like 3 interviews on on
45:29
that. You know, the first book, I mean
45:31
you, you can't imagine and it's a series of four.
45:35
The third one will be coming out in March and I have read the
45:39
first two. They're called Unstoppable Us.
45:42
So OK, we're going to go back to omission.
45:46
OK, you read those little books. Then ask yourself what's your
45:51
child's take away? Now I want you to go and read
45:54
some of his adult works and then you're going to realize for the
45:59
first time what was omitted. What was he not telling the
46:03
children to get them to that point?
46:05
Is he he, you know, he doesn't talk about the useless eaters
46:08
and what are we going to decide to do with them?
46:11
Are we going to annihilate them? Are we going to entertain them?
46:13
Are we going to drug them? He doesn't say those things in
46:16
the kids books. So what does he say?
46:26
What does he say? He says that we were channeled
46:29
our whole life because of through stories.
46:32
OK, So he makes a he makes a mockery of God.
46:37
You know, he teaches them about corporations.
46:39
You know, you get to the end all that, you know, kids are going
46:43
to have to, you know, rise up and they're going to have to do
46:45
this and that and we're going to have to disregard everything
46:48
that we have ever learned. But his story, he says it's over
46:53
and over and over. His story is a true one.
46:57
OK? So he's presenting this story.
47:01
I mean, it's over 100 pages, 200 pages, something like that, OK.
47:05
And he emphasizes all the way through it that what he is
47:08
saying is a true story, you know?
47:12
And of course, nothing that Harare believes is in that book.
47:16
I mean, the stuff that he's proclaiming to Klaus Schwab or
47:21
any of these other people that doesn't show up.
47:23
Linda Sarsour, OK, she wrote an adult book, OK, about the
47:28
Women's March and the whole bit. But Simon and Schuster, they
47:32
have an imprint of Muslim character books called Salaam
47:37
Reads, and they took that book and modified it down to a
47:43
child's books for, I think it's kids, maybe 8:00 to 12:00.
47:48
Well, there's a great deal if you read both of them.
47:51
There's a lot omitted. Does it matter if I'm a trans
47:55
child and I decide, oh, mommy, you know, I'm really a boy and
48:00
I, I need to have hormone blockers right now.
48:03
OK, So the whole book will say how desperate I am and how
48:06
people were making fun of me. And I've always known that I was
48:09
a boy or whatever and net and finally my dad will give in and
48:14
he'll allow me to go in to get the the hormone blockers.
48:17
Not once in that book does it ever tell you that there might
48:22
be a problem later from taking those.
48:26
See, all of that is omitted to get you a miss, you know, by
48:30
omission to get you to the point of yes, of course, this is what
48:34
we have to do. And then they always use the
48:36
line. Would you rather have a dead
48:39
daughter or a live son? That's what they always do with
48:44
the parents and it's in every book.
48:46
It seems obvious to me that this is all feeding the transhumanist
48:51
agenda. Yes, yes, absolutely.
48:55
You have the little books for toddlers that you are, you know
49:00
you're a, a, a boy, a girl or a neither.
49:06
You know you have all of these non binary books you're not
49:10
allowed to say. Now they stopped this being
49:13
bisexual because if you're bisexual you just said there was
49:17
2 genders so now you have to be pansexual.
49:24
You're thinking about that one, aren't you?
49:26
Yes, and I've seen some of these books.
49:29
I've seen some of these books and and it blows my mind.
49:33
So, OK, so which? Which?
49:34
Which then brings me to the next question, and that is, as a
49:37
parent, what must I be aware of? What must I be doing?
49:44
Well, you need to be reading some of these.
49:47
You know, take whatever the age group your child is, just go
49:53
online and find out maybe the top ten, top ten recommended and
50:00
you read them, you read them. OK, you read them first.
50:04
Maybe you'll like some of them. Maybe you'll start seeing the
50:08
patterns because the books that are being pushed are typically
50:13
the ones that are promoting the agenda.
50:15
You know another thing, when we were a kid and you read a book,
50:20
your mom might have read that same book.
50:23
You know, your grandmother might have read that same book.
50:27
Now it's they published so many books that you might have a book
50:32
on the shelf for a year or two. It's gone and replaced with
50:36
seven. You know, worse than worse than
50:39
that, when the books just come and go, you're dumping all this
50:42
money into the libraries and those books are just being
50:44
dumped. Nobody even wants to read them
50:49
actually. I mean, they're they're just so
50:51
redundant on the message. If you sit there and you
50:54
complain about the books that have overtly homosexual sex in
51:00
them, then people will say you're a homophobe.
51:04
But the same people would be objecting if it was
51:06
heterosexual, you know, Is that what you need in kids books?
51:12
And it's such a low reading level.
51:16
You can't go to college texts and read those.
51:20
If I read this happened to me years and years ago, I would, I
51:24
would read maybe 30 juvenile books in a month.
51:27
I mean, in a week, OK, because they don't take very long at
51:30
all, a juvenile book. And so I would read those.
51:34
And after you've read so many of them or the young adult books
51:38
and you try to focus, like I, I'm a Dickens fan, you try to
51:42
focus on it. You'll find you're reading the
51:43
same sentence four times before you retrain your mind that you
51:48
have to pay attention to what you're reading.
51:52
Your words matter. So from tonight I think I'm
51:58
going to start reading Lord of the Rings to my child.
52:03
Well, I don't think that they're going to understand a lot of
52:06
that. I think.
52:06
I think that there's still a lot of children's classics that that
52:11
your. Child.
52:12
Really. Excited about?
52:14
OK, but I mean. But, but, but you can you, you
52:19
can't. When the child is just a little
52:21
bit older, you start reading them older material because you
52:27
define things. You know, if you even take
52:30
Little House on the Prairie, there's a lot of things that
52:32
they don't understand in there and you explain it to them.
52:35
It's a bonding time with your child.
52:38
And Bible stories. Actually vocabulary?
52:42
Pardon me. And Bible stories they have.
52:45
They have a moral. Yes, yes, but I don't look at
52:50
them as stories. No, but you know what I mean.
52:53
Yeah. I do know what you mean.
52:56
I know what you mean and you know what I mean.
53:00
So. So the moral of the story is, go
53:02
through everything first. Yes, and that's not easy to do.
53:08
But if your children are young, you have an advantage.
53:12
You know, I suggest to young parents, go to a library and sit
53:17
down. Just give yourself two hours one
53:19
day. Go to the picture book section
53:22
and just pull out everything that seems cute to you.
53:25
They take about 5 minutes to read.
53:27
Sit down. And if you really, really like
53:31
1, OK, write down the name and buy it yourself and start
53:35
creating your library. But you've got time to start
53:39
then buying the next level, the juvenile books.
53:42
You've got time to start reading those and you need to do that.
53:47
It takes a lot of time, but do you want me telling your
53:51
children what they can read and what they can't read?
53:53
Or do you want to do it as a parent?
53:55
You see, So the ball is in the parents court.
54:00
Yes, Which then leads me to asking about schools.
54:04
I mean, public schools have become sort of propaganda camps.
54:09
They always work. And I said I don't know why
54:11
anybody's in there trying to fix them.
54:13
They're not broken. They're not broken.
54:15
They've done exactly what they set out to do, Yeah.
54:20
Yeah, that's a good point. For real?
54:22
Yeah. And So what are you going to fix
54:26
you? See Private and Homeschooling
54:28
then. Yes, really.
54:32
You know, and there's a difference.
54:33
You know, homeschooling, it takes a lot of discipline, takes
54:39
a lot of discipline. And you know, and it's not easy
54:43
and you have to sacrifice other things to be able to do that and
54:48
to keep up and to guide them where you want them to go.
54:52
But do you want them to be indoctrinated?
54:56
You know, if if I take your little boy and I have him in
55:00
school and I go 2 + 2 is three, 2 + 2 is three, 2 + 2 is three,
55:03
2 + 2 is 3, you know, and I do this all week.
55:06
And then finally you have him at home and he's telling you 2 + 2
55:09
is 3. Now you have to sit there and
55:12
try to undo that. How many hours is it going to
55:14
take you to undo it? You know, So you know, it's,
55:20
it's a matter of what you want for your child as as a parent.
55:25
If you want them to be the global citizen that they're
55:28
trying to develop, send them in there because they're going to
55:31
fit right in. If you don't, you've got to make
55:37
some other decisions. All right, Debbie, how can my
55:41
audience follow your work? I know that your book is
55:43
currently out of print. Yes, yes.
55:47
But they can go to my website. I have gone through where I
55:53
haven't posted for a long time, but I did post the other night.
55:56
It's taken a long time with this adjustment moving, but go to my
56:00
website. Just reading a lot of the
56:03
articles will just give them an idea of what is out there and
56:07
what they need to look for. That's the that's the important
56:10
thing. There's always going to be the
56:12
next book that's worse than than that one and that's not my game
56:16
to sit here and find the next one that's worse than this one.
56:19
It's to find the patterns of how they are doing this to their
56:23
their children and more importantly, what are they
56:26
doing? Where are they leading them?
56:28
If all of these books force your child to end up at the same
56:33
place, we have a problem. What's your website again?
56:40
What's inside childrensbooks.com?
56:44
What's inside childrensbooks.com?
56:47
Well, on that note, Deborah de Groff, thank you for joining me
56:50
in the trenches. Well thank you for having me, I
56:54
always enjoy being on with you because it's more like 2 friends
56:56
having a conversation.