Latest / Mom Wars / Betrayal

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Betrayal · Mom Wars

0:01
Speaker 1: From the front lines of the mom wars, here's Bethany
0:04
Speaker 1: Mandel and Cara Kennedy.
0:08
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of Your Favorite Podcast.
0:12
Speaker 2: I am your co-host, Bethany Mandel. Cara Kennedy is back actually,
0:17
Speaker 2: but she's in California this week doing something really crazy.
0:20
Speaker 2: So listen next week and we're going to talk about that.
0:22
Speaker 2: But I wanted to throw back to the Lady Brains
0:25
Speaker 2: days because that was everyone's favorite podcast until it was
0:29
Speaker 2: no longer. I am joined by my very dear friend,
0:33
Speaker 2: Mary Catherine Hamm. And we were having a conversation, multiple conversations,
0:38
Speaker 2: in fact, this week where I was just like, do
0:39
Speaker 2: you want to just do a podcast on this?
0:41
Speaker 3: Probably should.
0:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I want to talk at length about this
0:47
Speaker 2: piece that was in, was it New York Mag?
0:49
Speaker 3: Yes, New York Times Magazine.
0:53
Speaker 2: Nicole Hannah-Jones wrote a follow-up to a piece that she
0:57
Speaker 2: wrote 10 years ago. So 10 years ago, she wrote
0:59
Speaker 2: a piece where she said, I'm sending my child to
1:03
Speaker 2: a very substandard school because ideology. How did that turn out,
1:09
Speaker 2: Mary Catherine?
1:10
Speaker 3: It didn't turn out great. In fact, I have to
1:13
Speaker 3: note that her husband features in that first piece 10
1:16
Speaker 3: years ago saying, are you sure we should be experimenting
1:19
Speaker 3: with our child like this? Like, are we putting her
1:22
Speaker 3: at a disadvantage? Because we have this idealism and activism
1:26
Speaker 3: about public schools. And, you know, it's not fun to
1:30
Speaker 3: do an I told you so in this situation. But
1:32
Speaker 3: the husband definitely deserves one in this case. Because the
1:34
Speaker 3: answer is yes. They shouldn't have experimented with her. And
1:37
Speaker 3: they did put her at a disadvantage. And what gets
1:40
Speaker 3: me about it is that despite her activism and expertise,
1:45
Speaker 3: she gets paid $ 50, 000 a speech to talk about education.
1:49
Speaker 3: She seems to have been completely ignorant of what her
1:52
Speaker 3: child would be up against in this school, which blows
1:55
Speaker 3: my mind and is to me decisive that we should
1:58
Speaker 3: never listen to this person again about any of this.
2:00
Speaker 2: And she was ignorant of what she was putting her
2:03
Speaker 2: child in and then ignorant to what her child was experiencing.
2:08
Speaker 2: She was so disengaged and so absent. I always joke
2:13
Speaker 2: with you and pretty much all of my friends who
2:15
Speaker 2: send their kids to school that you two are homeschooling.
2:19
Speaker 2: Whether you signed up to be or not. I just
2:23
Speaker 2: do it once, whereas you do it all the time,
2:26
Speaker 2: but on someone else's terms. How much math are you doing,
2:29
Speaker 2: Mary Catherine?
2:30
Speaker 3: I'm doing quite a bit of math right now, yes.
2:32
Speaker 3: And yeah, we have this conversation all the time that
2:34
Speaker 3: I'm supplementing outside of school. Even with kids in a
2:37
Speaker 3: great school, you need to direct what they're doing. You
2:41
Speaker 3: need to have some idea of where they are in
2:44
Speaker 3: various subjects and where their skill level is And she
2:47
Speaker 3: seems to have bypassed that entirely until fourth grade and
2:51
Speaker 3: then again let it slip until the kid was 14.
2:54
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I have some conspiracy theories about why she
3:00
Speaker 2: wrote this piece because it didn't make sense. Like why
3:02
Speaker 2: she wrote this piece makes no sense to me. I
3:07
Speaker 2: have a sneaking suspicion and we may find out when
3:11
Speaker 2: the mother-daughter pair record a podcast later this week. I
3:17
Speaker 2: think that the daughter may have forced her mom's hand
3:19
Speaker 2: and then she's obviously very angry at her mother and
3:24
Speaker 2: justifiably so. And I suspect that the daughter read the
3:29
Speaker 2: first piece and said, mom, you did me dirty. Cause
3:33
Speaker 2: she knows she was done dirty. This, this daughter and
3:36
Speaker 2: you need to follow up. You need to tell everyone
3:39
Speaker 2: how it went in the comments to the piece and she's,
3:43
Speaker 2: Nicole is responding to people. And someone asked her, how
3:47
Speaker 2: does your daughter feel about how this piece turned out?
3:50
Speaker 2: And she replied, my daughter doesn't think I was hard
3:53
Speaker 2: enough on myself.
3:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, my theory was, and I like yours as well.
3:58
Speaker 3: My theory was someone was going to figure out that
4:01
Speaker 3: Nicole Hannah Jones's kid was in a school where that
4:05
Speaker 3: Nicole Hannah-Jones had opposed existing. Because what happens here is
4:08
Speaker 3: that this young woman, her daughter, comes to her, who
4:11
Speaker 3: I regret, by the way, that she's at the center
4:13
Speaker 3: of this, and I'm talking about her schooling, but her
4:14
Speaker 3: mom set this up. So her daughter comes to her
4:17
Speaker 3: at 14 and says, Mom, did you know that my
4:19
Speaker 3: school was this bad when you put me in it?
4:21
Speaker 3: Because now I'm discovering, in my quest to learn more
4:24
Speaker 3: and be challenged, that I could have been somewhere better,
4:28
Speaker 3: and I'd like to go somewhere better. So then she does.
4:31
Speaker 3: She goes to one of the high schools that is
4:33
Speaker 3: more predominantly white and Asian and is more academically rigorous.
4:37
Speaker 3: She struggles once she gets there because she was failed
4:39
Speaker 3: by her parents and her school at the lower level.
4:42
Speaker 3: But she's on a better path now. I think someone
4:45
Speaker 3: was going to know that her kid was in that
4:47
Speaker 3: school or had figured it out and was going to
4:51
Speaker 3: blow the lid off of that. So Nicole Hannah-Jones is like,
4:54
Speaker 3: let me contextualize this with a sort of you know,
4:58
Speaker 3: a little bit self-flagellating emotional parent parenting piece that does
5:03
Speaker 3: not address her professional failures at all. Yep.
5:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think you're, you're, I think your suspicion is
5:10
Speaker 2: probably correct. I, I always low key look forward to
5:16
Speaker 2: the future, like memoirs from people like this with the
5:20
Speaker 2: fear that maybe my kids are going to write one
5:22
Speaker 2: of their own. Did I tell you that here's, here's
5:25
Speaker 2: a funny story. One of my children, um, started trying
5:28
Speaker 2: to game out on ChatGBT what his memoir would look like.
5:32
Speaker 2: And it was a memoir hitting overprotective public figure parents
5:41
Speaker 2: who are helicopter parents because I'm too far up his butt, apparently.
5:47
Speaker 2: And he wants to blow the lid off of public
5:51
Speaker 2: figure parents. And I was like, of all things to
5:54
Speaker 2: call me, You knew that helicopter parent would be the
5:57
Speaker 2: one that hits.
5:57
Speaker 3: Me really hard. Yeah, that's, he was triggering you.
6:00
Speaker 2: And he didn't even know because he was just on
6:02
Speaker 2: his chat GBT and I was, I was monitoring it.
6:04
Speaker 3: Oh, that's so funny.
6:05
Speaker 2: Helicopter. Maybe he's wrong. Maybe it's not wrong.
6:08
Speaker 3: I mean, if you, if you mean, I mean, our philosophy,
6:11
Speaker 3: our shared philosophy is that you free range your kids
6:13
Speaker 3: in the physical world, not in the online world. So
6:16
Speaker 3: like that's, that may be what he means. Yeah.
6:20
Speaker 2: Well, I just, I make him do school all the time.
6:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I mean, I do that to my kid constantly.
6:25
Speaker 3: I'm not Nicole Hannah-Jones, so I do check in frequently
6:29
Speaker 3: on what they're doing. Yeah, this is, of course, the
6:33
Speaker 3: originator of the 1619 Project, which despite its many, many,
6:37
Speaker 3: many documented historical inaccuracies and biases, and its really shoddy
6:42
Speaker 3: nature as a product, has been shipped out to all
6:45
Speaker 3: sorts of public schools as curriculum. So this This woman,
6:48
Speaker 3: although she's writing a personal account that is painful and
6:51
Speaker 3: moving at times, reckoning with her daughter's anger. I appreciate
6:55
Speaker 3: that she did apologize to her daughter, but she sort
6:57
Speaker 3: of publicly apologizes to her daughter without addressing the influence
7:00
Speaker 3: she has had on anyone else. And her inability to
7:05
Speaker 3: understand the public school system. despite being an expert, which is,
7:09
Speaker 3: I think, a pattern we've seen over the past 10 years.
7:12
Speaker 4: Yeah.
7:13
Speaker 2: And what frustrated me was she didn't extrapolate her personal
7:16
Speaker 2: experience to the public school system as a whole. And
7:21
Speaker 2: so she was shocked to discover that there were teachers
7:24
Speaker 2: in her kids' public school who were treating it like
7:27
Speaker 2: an adult jobs program. I think maybe that happens in
7:32
Speaker 2: more than one school. And she never grapples with The
7:37
Speaker 2: fact that this is not an anomaly and behavior is
7:41
Speaker 2: an issue across the board. And she also takes no
7:45
Speaker 2: responsibility for her lack of parenting. I think this is
7:50
Speaker 2: a problem that a lot of parents of our generation
7:53
Speaker 2: have and mistake that they're making, that they think they
7:56
Speaker 2: can outsource their child eight hours a day and that
8:00
Speaker 2: it's wrapped up in a ball and done. And I
8:02
Speaker 2: think that that is not just academic, but also moral.
8:05
Speaker 2: When Carol and I were writing Stolen Youth, a theme
8:08
Speaker 2: came up again and again with parents whose kids had
8:11
Speaker 2: gone off the reservation in some way. They kind of
8:15
Speaker 2: figured that their moral.
8:18
Speaker 2: Compass would just translate to their child by osmosis.
8:22
Speaker 3: Yeah.
8:22
Speaker 2: And I think Hannah, Nicole, Joan, keep on calling her Hannah, Nicole, Nicole.
8:26
Speaker 4: Yeah.
8:27
Speaker 2: Nicole, I'm just going to call her Nicole. We're on
8:28
Speaker 2: a first name basis. Nicole thought that her intelligence would
8:33
Speaker 2: also translate by osmosis to her daughter. And no, it
8:37
Speaker 2: requires some work actually.
8:40
Speaker 3: She also thought that her prestige and expectations would, transfer
8:46
Speaker 3: onto the school somehow because you don't see in the
8:49
Speaker 3: piece her rallying other parents to make sure that things
8:53
Speaker 3: get changed you don't see her doing a lot other
8:56
Speaker 3: than sending an email every now and then which frankly
8:59
Speaker 3: compared to the public school parents i know in my
9:02
Speaker 3: neighborhood is less than they do on a regular basis
9:06
Speaker 3: to try to steer this awful ship that they're all
9:09
Speaker 3: on um that is failing them in many ways including
9:12
Speaker 3: mostly on the behavior front the behavior front that fight
9:15
Speaker 3: with the restorative justice requirements that Nicole Hannah-Jones favors that
9:21
Speaker 3: invert the morality of like who's bullying who and make
9:24
Speaker 3: the bullied sort of reconcile with the bully on a
9:27
Speaker 3: regular basis to as a ticket to be part of
9:30
Speaker 3: instructional time. Like you get instructional time taken from you
9:33
Speaker 3: to reconcile with the person hurting you. That's what that
9:38
Speaker 3: looks like. And so I have friends who do double
9:41
Speaker 3: what Nicole Hannah-Jones who has seemed to do for her kid. Oh,
9:45
Speaker 3: In this piece, it's, it should be shocking. But honestly,
9:49
Speaker 3: like having watched her over a couple of years, I'm
9:51
Speaker 3: not all that shocked. I went to these schools. So
9:56
Speaker 3: I have an emotional reaction to this. I went to
9:59
Speaker 3: I looked it up because I like to fact check myself.
10:02
Speaker 3: And my schools were 90 plus percent black from elementary
10:07
Speaker 3: school to through middle school. I was part of a,
10:11
Speaker 3: and this is what Nicole Hannah-Jones rightly addresses sometimes. We
10:14
Speaker 3: were the old segregated system. I was in the city schools,
10:17
Speaker 3: which had, emptied of white folks who went to the suburbs.
10:21
Speaker 3: And then the suburbs was the county system that was
10:24
Speaker 3: run in such a way that it disadvantaged the city
10:28
Speaker 3: schools and more tax money went to there. And there
10:31
Speaker 3: were all sorts of weird loopholes because in the beginning,
10:34
Speaker 3: folks didn't want to integrate. Like that's where it came from.
10:38
Speaker 3: I was in the black schools. They were really at
10:41
Speaker 3: that time, actually under-resourced. She lies about whether her kid's
10:44
Speaker 3: school was under-resourced. It was not. It was funded at
10:47
Speaker 3: 50K per student. My schools were not. Yeah. Now here's
10:51
Speaker 3: the thing. Being in those schools made me a school
10:54
Speaker 3: choice advocate by the time I was about eight years old.
10:57
Speaker 3: I looked around and I was just like, I don't
10:58
Speaker 3: think we're serving people here. I think there need to
11:01
Speaker 3: be other ways of doing this. I went to those
11:04
Speaker 3: schools because the only other option was private school. We
11:07
Speaker 3: could not afford it. And third, what did my parents
11:10
Speaker 3: do that Nicole Hannah-Jones did not? They supplemented my education constantly. Constantly.
11:26
Speaker 5: This week on Conservative Crossroads. Should Congress approve President Trump's
11:31
Speaker 5: $ 350 billion defense budget request through reconciliation without requiring any
11:37
Speaker 5: spending cuts to pay for it? Mackenzie Eaglin says yes.
11:41
Speaker 6: The global chessboard is terrifying. I've never actually been worried
11:47
Speaker 6: about so many things at once.
11:49
Speaker 3: So it's like, you're going to pay me a dollar
11:52
Speaker 3: today or you're going to pay me five tomorrow. It's an.
11:55
Speaker 6: No matter what, we're going to be paying this defense bill.
11:57
Speaker 6: So I'd rather get in front of it to the
11:59
Speaker 6: extent we can.
12:00
Speaker 5: Brittany Mandy says no.
12:02
Speaker 4: I think that we really have a unique moment in
12:07
Speaker 4: our fiscal stresses for the nation where we could not
12:10
Speaker 4: only fix part of the budget process, but fix defense
12:13
Speaker 4: spending at the same time.
12:15
Speaker 5: Defense spending hikes without pay-fors coming up on Conservative Crossroads.
12:21
Speaker 4: Ricochet.
12:23
Speaker 1: Join the conversation.
12:34
Speaker 2: I don't want to detract from this conversation because I
12:37
Speaker 2: could talk about it for an hour. But I saw
12:40
Speaker 2: an incredible statistic this week about Cambodia. I lived in
12:44
Speaker 2: Cambodia and taught there for a year. And I have
12:48
Speaker 2: always been fascinated by the impact of it wasn't technically
12:52
Speaker 2: a genocide, but the killing fields. Yeah. Like what that
12:56
Speaker 2: looks like in a generation or two. And the biggest
13:00
Speaker 2: thing was Pol Pot decided to target all of the
13:04
Speaker 2: most intelligent people in the country. He killed everyone who
13:07
Speaker 2: lived in the capital city. If you wore glasses, if
13:09
Speaker 2: you were part of the bourgeois, whatever you were done for.
13:13
Speaker 2: And so the result was like, what does a population
13:17
Speaker 2: look like two generations on when you've done that? And
13:20
Speaker 2: in my classroom of 25 kids, my top five kids
13:24
Speaker 2: all survived the genocide by lying. They were all, the
13:27
Speaker 2: parents were all intelligent. The parents were all committed and
13:31
Speaker 2: they were able to survive because they had family in
13:34
Speaker 2: this area. And so that was how they survived. And
13:38
Speaker 2: I was thinking about that with what you just said,
13:40
Speaker 2: that your parents were supplementing the heck out of it,
13:43
Speaker 2: because as much as I hate the education system in
13:47
Speaker 2: America and think it's failing kids, I think at the
13:51
Speaker 2: end of the day, the real bad guys, the real
13:54
Speaker 2: villains are parents. And this Nicole Hannah-Jones piece really got
14:00
Speaker 2: me angry because there's only so much a school can
14:04
Speaker 2: do if parents are not interested. And when you compare
14:10
Speaker 2: the first grade incoming class of kids who were read
14:14
Speaker 2: to and not put on a screen for 15 hours
14:18
Speaker 2: a day, It's I don't know. I don't know how
14:21
Speaker 2: you come back from that as a teacher. And so
14:23
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm disgusted with her on a lot of levels.
14:27
Speaker 2: I think on a public policy level. Yes. But ultimately,
14:31
Speaker 2: like as a mother, mother to mother, I'm disgusted that
14:34
Speaker 2: she did this to her child. She really did her dirty.
14:37
Speaker 3: Well, and she seems surprised that people are shocked she
14:40
Speaker 3: wasn't checking homework. Like, but that seems to be almost
14:45
Speaker 3: a universal response to her. It's like, wait, you didn't
14:48
Speaker 3: check any of this? Because it turned out her kid
14:51
Speaker 3: wasn't reading up to grade level. She was not even
14:54
Speaker 3: close to doing the math that she thought she was doing.
14:57
Speaker 3: And it wouldn't have taken a lot of checking to
14:59
Speaker 3: know that. No, it's, yes, it is on parents in
15:03
Speaker 3: some ways and also. When taxpayers are funding this school
15:07
Speaker 3: at 50K per student per year, it is fraudulent to
15:12
Speaker 3: create the product that they are creating. And part of
15:15
Speaker 3: it is actual fraud. Because what happens is, and this
15:19
Speaker 3: is partly Nicole Hannah-Jones letting her ideology trump the facts.
15:23
Speaker 3: She looked at her kids' grades and said, my kid's fine. Yeah.
15:29
Speaker 3: I think that a lot of parents could be forgiven
15:31
Speaker 3: that because they grew up in an age when grades
15:34
Speaker 3: did reflect what you were doing and knowing. It is
15:37
Speaker 3: important that we educate people that the grades are fake
15:41
Speaker 3: and the test scores are real. It's not the other
15:43
Speaker 3: way around. Nicole Hannah-Jones, because of her ideological priors, thinks
15:49
Speaker 3: the test scores are fake and the grades are real.
15:52
Speaker 4: Yeah.
15:53
Speaker 3: Because the test scores are, the tests are systemically racist
15:56
Speaker 3: and white supremacy and all the things. And so she
15:58
Speaker 3: can't listen to those. And her kid's just not great
16:02
Speaker 3: at taking tests. When in fact, the tests were the
16:05
Speaker 3: yellow and red flag you needed. That's the information you need.
16:09
Speaker 2: And what's interesting on that front is, I just saw
16:12
Speaker 2: an article, I was just trying to find it, where
16:14
Speaker 2: in schools where it's like 52K per student per year,
16:20
Speaker 2: and they're trying to close schools to consolidate schools. They're like, well,
16:24
Speaker 2: my kid's school is doing great. And the parents that
16:28
Speaker 2: they quoted, every single one of them said, my kid
16:30
Speaker 2: is getting A's.
16:31
Speaker 3: Look at all these A's.
16:32
Speaker 2: Therefore, my kid is being well served.
16:35
Speaker 3: And I think that's a scourge everywhere. You talk like
16:39
Speaker 3: elite Harvard. They're talking about stopping with the grade inflation.
16:44
Speaker 3: And the students are losing their minds. Yep.
16:48
Speaker 2: God forbid I actually work on this. It was funny
16:51
Speaker 2: because our older two kids are in a middle school co-op.
16:54
Speaker 2: And so they're being graded. And one of my kids,
16:59
Speaker 2: I get emails, which, by the way, in the age
17:01
Speaker 2: of GradeLink and all of these apps, there's no reason
17:05
Speaker 2: to not be engaged because you.
17:07
Speaker 3: Are getting all the information.
17:09
Speaker 2: And so I got an app notification that one of
17:12
Speaker 2: my kids didn't turn something in and got an F.
17:15
Speaker 2: And Seth was like, well, that seems kind of harsh.
17:18
Speaker 2: And I was like, I love it.
17:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, actually. So I have to, I have
17:22
Speaker 3: to reframe because I was always, I was a very
17:25
Speaker 3: goody goody student.
17:26
Speaker 2: Very, very.
17:27
Speaker 3: And some of my kids are, and some of my
17:29
Speaker 3: kids aren't. And like, there's different learning styles. Okay.
17:31
Speaker 2: Accepted.
17:32
Speaker 3: I have to reframe these things as thank goodness. The
17:37
Speaker 3: school is interested in grading my kids work and that
17:42
Speaker 3: I can flag it. And we can work on places
17:44
Speaker 3: where there are struggles because that in, in the case
17:48
Speaker 3: of her daughter, her, certainly on the grade front, they
17:51
Speaker 3: weren't attempting to help them at all. They weren't being honest.
17:55
Speaker 3: And that's the thing where so many places in this,
17:58
Speaker 3: by the way, Nicole Hannah-Jones says twice, once about her
18:02
Speaker 3: own daughter and once about another really smart African-American young
18:05
Speaker 3: lady who thought about testing into the testing schools, the
18:10
Speaker 3: screened schools in New York City. New York City has
18:12
Speaker 3: a bit of like a school choice kind of vibe
18:14
Speaker 3: where you can sort of test and do a better
18:17
Speaker 3: school and then get, take public transportation there, etc. And
18:22
Speaker 3: two times this one young lady tests into tries to
18:25
Speaker 3: test in and she asks.
18:26
Speaker 2: Her about it.
18:27
Speaker 3: And the young lady says, Oh, she just filled in
18:30
Speaker 3: all the circles without thinking about it. Because like, I
18:32
Speaker 3: go to a black school, they're not going to let
18:33
Speaker 3: me in. And Nicole Hannah Jones frames this as you see,
18:38
Speaker 3: she didn't want to be part of the setup that
18:40
Speaker 3: is these racist tests.
18:42
Speaker 2: And I'm like, no, no, no.
18:42
Speaker 3: The test is for you. The test is for a
18:45
Speaker 3: smart young lady who is at a school that wouldn't
18:48
Speaker 3: reflect this, but can succeed on the test. Her daughter,
18:52
Speaker 3: same thing. She says to her mom, when we go
18:56
Speaker 3: to this school, they never let anybody in from our school. Like,
18:58
Speaker 3: why would I take the test? I'll fail. Now she
19:01
Speaker 3: doesn't end up getting in via the test. But her
19:04
Speaker 3: mom accepts this as like a reasonable framing. Whereas I
19:08
Speaker 3: would be like, ma'am, go study for the test.
19:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
19:13
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the bigotry of low expectations that
19:17
Speaker 2: she's putting onto her daughter. And it's really unfair because
19:21
Speaker 2: she's like, one of the biggest pieces of advice that
19:25
Speaker 2: I give to people of middle schoolers is just, I
19:29
Speaker 2: don't accept the excuses. I don't accept, like, just do
19:33
Speaker 2: the thing. I don't care if you think it's hard.
19:34
Speaker 2: I don't care if you're struggling. And this is antithetical
19:39
Speaker 2: to all the gentle parenting mantras where we're like, oh, well,
19:42
Speaker 2: you have this going on, and this was like no
19:46
Speaker 2: I'm not accepting the excuses this is this is life
19:49
Speaker 2: and you have to figure out a way to work
19:51
Speaker 2: in in the parameters that you've been given right and
19:55
Speaker 2: no one said life was fair sorry.
19:56
Speaker 3: No well in practicing doing things that are hard is
20:00
Speaker 3: how you get better at doing things that are hard
20:02
Speaker 3: I and and As much as she does not enjoy it,
20:07
Speaker 3: by a third practice test I give my kid, she's
20:11
Speaker 3: better at the practice test. And it's more fun and
20:14
Speaker 3: less painful to do the practice test because she got
20:17
Speaker 3: better at it. So I don't know. This thing was
20:20
Speaker 3: just appalling in so many ways. And, you know, it
20:23
Speaker 3: will continue because she's going to do this interview with
20:26
Speaker 3: her daughter.
20:27
Speaker 4: Yeah.
20:28
Speaker 3: Part of which feels like a makeup call. Like now
20:30
Speaker 3: you're going to be a public figure because I... created
20:34
Speaker 3: this bad situation.
20:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that, that I'm really uncomfortable with. And I
20:39
Speaker 2: don't think enough people have talked about that aspect of
20:42
Speaker 2: it because I am uncomfortable talking about this child's academic.
20:48
Speaker 3: Yes. Failures.
20:50
Speaker 2: It's not, it's not right that I know about it.
20:52
Speaker 3: Yeah.
20:53
Speaker 2: And she has talked at length. It's not, she didn't
20:56
Speaker 2: just click a tweet and send it. Like there was
20:59
Speaker 2: a lot of thought that went into this. And I
21:02
Speaker 2: don't remember, she didn't mention her husband in the follow-up,
21:04
Speaker 2: did she?
21:06
Speaker 3: Not much. And it turns out he's, like, on the
21:08
Speaker 3: school board and doling out contracts. So, again, I'm not
21:12
Speaker 3: sure how these activists were not engaged with this at all.
21:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
21:16
Speaker 2: But to me, like, the thing that bothers me is
21:19
Speaker 2: the exposure that this child has gotten.
21:22
Speaker 4: Yes.
21:23
Speaker 2: Because when she's applying to college... I don't think I
21:29
Speaker 2: like that's going to be a hard application to get,
21:31
Speaker 2: I think, as like Princeton or Harvard or Yale, because,
21:34
Speaker 2: you know, she's going to apply to all of those schools.
21:36
Speaker 2: My instinct as an admissions counselor would be like, I'm
21:41
Speaker 2: going to say no, because I don't want to think
21:44
Speaker 2: piece written about us that is deeply unfair in five years.
21:49
Speaker 3: Yeah. See, I think she's an automatic in now.
21:54
Speaker 4: Really? Really.
21:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, a publicly exposed gigantic failure of your parents, not you,
22:01
Speaker 3: which makes you, you know, sort of part of the
22:04
Speaker 3: victim hierarchy. It's compelling. She's a big public figure. I
22:10
Speaker 3: think she's an automatic in now.
22:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I think that to me, and
22:15
Speaker 2: you know, they don't have people like me working in
22:17
Speaker 2: the admissions department.
22:17
Speaker 3: I was going to say, I don't think you're the mindset,
22:19
Speaker 3: but yes.
22:20
Speaker 2: No, but I would not want to... expose ourselves to
22:25
Speaker 2: that vulnerability because she's not fair. She's not like, she's
22:30
Speaker 2: very quick to throw out racism and that's about like you.
22:35
Speaker 2: There's very little to gain having her in the classroom,
22:38
Speaker 2: I think. And there's a lot to lose on an
22:41
Speaker 2: institutional reputational level. And to me, I'd be like, nope,
22:45
Speaker 2: don't want to take that risk.
22:46
Speaker 3: Yeah. I did see in a follow-up interview, she hasn't
22:49
Speaker 3: done many Nicole Hannah-Jones, but she did one where she
22:54
Speaker 3: said she took some accountability for having been nasty about
23:01
Speaker 3: choices that quote other black folks made. So, I mean,
23:05
Speaker 3: I would just like, you could apologize beyond just one race,
23:08
Speaker 3: but that was interesting to me because I think she's,
23:12
Speaker 3: she says she's been surprised by the backlash from black parents.
23:16
Speaker 3: And of course they're mad at her because when they
23:19
Speaker 3: make the decision to send their kid to to a
23:21
Speaker 3: higher level school because they want them there to get
23:23
Speaker 3: the best education. She calls them race traitors essentially in public.
23:28
Speaker 3: So why would you think they wouldn't be mad when
23:31
Speaker 3: it turns out you need to do the same thing
23:32
Speaker 3: for your kid?
23:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, you were right. And like she, she makes in
23:37
Speaker 2: one speech, the cost of the best private school in
23:42
Speaker 2: New York city is And if she had applied to
23:44
Speaker 2: these schools, the funny thing is, I think that she
23:47
Speaker 2: thought that her name would matter in this public school
23:50
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn, I think.
23:51
Speaker 4: Yes.
23:52
Speaker 2: They don't know who you are, girl. They don't care.
23:54
Speaker 3: They don't care.
23:55
Speaker 2: New York Times cachet. But if you had gone to Dalton,
23:59
Speaker 2: they would have been like, sign us up. We'll come ride, baby.
24:02
Speaker 4: Come on.
24:03
Speaker 3: I think actually her inability to get that school to
24:06
Speaker 3: do much of anything in addition to indicting her is
24:09
Speaker 3: also an illustration of just how insulated Dalton public school
24:14
Speaker 3: teachers and administrators are from any accountability. Because first of all,
24:20
Speaker 3: you'd think if they were accountable in any way, they
24:23
Speaker 3: might be a little scared. The New York Times writer
24:26
Speaker 3: is sending their kid here like, let's do the thing.
24:28
Speaker 3: Let's actually teach her math. They didn't do that. And
24:30
Speaker 3: the reason they don't do that is because the teachers
24:32
Speaker 3: unions protect the worst of the worst. The principal that
24:36
Speaker 3: she encountered the most problems with is now a literacy
24:38
Speaker 3: director for the Department of Education of New York City. Yep. Promoted. Promoted.
24:44
Speaker 3: And Nicole Hannah-Jones, due to her ideology, lets all of
24:48
Speaker 3: them off the hook in the piece. Yep. All of them.
24:51
Speaker 2: Yep.
24:52
Speaker 3: And it's underfunded, Mary Catherine. Hey, what can you do?
24:55
Speaker 2: Class size of nine at.
25:01
Speaker 1: $ 52, 000.
25:01
Speaker 3: Nine students per class. That's like, those are crazy numbers.
25:06
Speaker 4: Yeah.
25:06
Speaker 3: Yeah.
25:06
Speaker 4: Yeah.
25:07
Speaker 2: You have to be intentionally malicious in order to fail
25:12
Speaker 2: a classroom of nine children where you're making 52K per kid.
25:19
Speaker 3: Per kid.
25:20
Speaker 2: Per kid.
25:20
Speaker 3: And the teacher salaries were 100K plus at this school.
25:24
Speaker 3: So this is like years of insulation and lack of accountability.
25:30
Speaker 3: And she's hoist on her own petard, except what she
25:33
Speaker 3: did actually is hoist her kid on her own petard.
25:35
Speaker 3: Maude Marin, who is a New York City public school
25:38
Speaker 3: parent and worked for years against the kind of thing
25:40
Speaker 3: that Nicole Hannah-Jones was pushing to preserve these nice schools
25:44
Speaker 3: that her kid is going to now. She noted, you know,
25:47
Speaker 3: Nicole Hannah-Jones didn't go to a struggling community newspaper and
25:50
Speaker 3: write there, did she? No, she went to the New
25:53
Speaker 3: York Times because that's what was needed for her.
25:57
Speaker 2: And they weren't living in the projects. They were living
25:59
Speaker 2: in a brownstone. Like it never seems to translate to
26:04
Speaker 2: anything that impacts Nicole Hannah-John. She's not flying coach. She's
26:09
Speaker 2: not living in a falling down. It's the only person
26:13
Speaker 2: impacted is her child. And again, theoretically, it was the
26:17
Speaker 2: cost of one speech, but I don't think she would
26:19
Speaker 2: have had, if she had shopped for a private school
26:22
Speaker 2: in New York City, she would have gotten a free
26:24
Speaker 2: ride at one of them. Guarantee you. But she didn't.
26:27
Speaker 3: No, I agree with you. And this, this kid, the kid,
26:30
Speaker 3: by the way, just understands intuitively what all normal people understand,
26:36
Speaker 3: which is shouldn't you be trying to do your best
26:39
Speaker 3: by me? And she in fact says at one point,
26:43
Speaker 3: I just wish it's actually heartbreaking. I just wish that
26:46
Speaker 3: you cared a little like less about other people's kids
26:50
Speaker 3: and more about me is the paraphrase of it. And yeah, the,
26:55
Speaker 3: the abstract doesn't is not your kid. No.
27:08
Speaker 1: I'm Greg Karumbas. Join Jim Garrity of National Review and
27:11
Speaker 1: me each weekday for the Three Martini Lunch podcast. We'll
27:14
Speaker 1: give you the good, bad, and crazy news of the
27:16
Speaker 1: day and lots of laughs too. Find us right here
27:19
Speaker 1: on the Ricochet Audio Network at ricochet.com or wherever you
27:23
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.
27:34
Speaker 2: When I ran for school board here in Montgomery County,
27:37
Speaker 2: I got a lot of heat because I'm a homeschooler.
27:39
Speaker 2: And I basically said, I have privilege that I am
27:44
Speaker 2: able to homeschool. And I don't think that only privileged
27:48
Speaker 2: children in this county should have the benefit of an
27:51
Speaker 2: adequate education. But that's where we are right now here
27:53
Speaker 2: in Montgomery County. And someone asked me during like a
27:57
Speaker 2: debate or something, a candidate's forum, well, if you win,
28:00
Speaker 2: are you going to send your kids to public school?
28:01
Speaker 2: And I was like, The whole premise of why I'm
28:06
Speaker 2: running is because they're bad. If I am successful in
28:10
Speaker 2: turning the ship as one school board member of eight,
28:15
Speaker 2: I would consider it. But I'm one school, I'm one
28:19
Speaker 2: potential school board member of eight in a district that
28:22
Speaker 2: has really, really bad incentives in play right now. Why
28:26
Speaker 2: would you expect me to do dirty by my children
28:30
Speaker 2: to prove to a stranger that that I deserve a
28:34
Speaker 2: school board seat. My responsibility is to my children. My
28:38
Speaker 2: ultimate responsibility is to my children. And I could see
28:42
Speaker 2: the wheels turning where they were like, oh, I could
28:46
Speaker 2: see that. And it is wild to me that she
28:50
Speaker 2: thought that her ultimate, you know, accountability was owed to
28:56
Speaker 2: like New York Times readers than her kid.
29:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I know. And she also says in
29:03
Speaker 3: this one follow-up interview she's done, she says that she's
29:06
Speaker 3: been surprised and it's put in such a gross way.
29:09
Speaker 3: I don't know the exact quote. She's been surprised at
29:12
Speaker 3: how much of the black community has endorsed this type
29:15
Speaker 3: of individualism, which would cause them to fight for their
29:19
Speaker 3: children rather than a commitment to the community. Okay, first
29:22
Speaker 3: of all, you've now done it. You're doing the individualism.
29:25
Speaker 3: Your kid is in the school. Second of all, white
29:28
Speaker 3: parents and Asian parents do not think about the good
29:32
Speaker 3: of the white kids as a group when they're making
29:36
Speaker 3: educational decisions. I don't think about that. I think about
29:39
Speaker 3: what's best for my kid. It is not a group
29:41
Speaker 3: decision and it is not based on other people's decisions
29:45
Speaker 3: for their kids. And I think it's a bunch of
29:48
Speaker 3: individuals acting individually that has created a culture by which
29:54
Speaker 3: they end up in these places.
29:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.
29:56
Speaker 3: I just, I thought that was mind blowing. Like, no ma'am,
30:01
Speaker 3: of course they're individualists who want the best for the kids.
30:03
Speaker 3: So is your kid. Yeah. It's your kid. Yeah.
30:07
Speaker 2: No, I mean, it's, it's, it's completely contrary to everything
30:10
Speaker 2: evolutionary that is ingrained in us as mothers that we
30:14
Speaker 2: take care of our young, you know, you step in
30:16
Speaker 2: front of a truck to protect your child and she
30:19
Speaker 2: has betrayed her child by choosing like, what was the
30:26
Speaker 2: benefit here? Like that's the other sick part. It's not
30:29
Speaker 2: like she was cashing in again and again and again
30:32
Speaker 2: on this decision. She wrote one piece 10 years ago
30:34
Speaker 2: and then that was it. So what, what, what did
30:38
Speaker 2: she gain by disadvantaging her child to this degree? The
30:43
Speaker 2: opportunity to write a follow-up 10 years later.
30:45
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know. Nothing happened to the schools. I guess,
30:48
Speaker 3: I mean, for her, the answer is, she gets to
30:53
Speaker 3: triple down on all of her former ideas, which I
30:56
Speaker 3: don't understand because, you know, even the nice, the well-intentioned
31:01
Speaker 3: principal that she encounters, who is not the one who
31:03
Speaker 3: fails at every turn, but still fails by the way.
31:06
Speaker 3: She basically says like, you know, you know, Nicole, this is,
31:09
Speaker 3: as you know, this is what happens in a segregated system.
31:12
Speaker 3: And it's like, man, you have power. You have agency here.
31:15
Speaker 3: You could be teaching these children and you are not
31:18
Speaker 3: doing so. It's like, She says, it's very, very hard.
31:22
Speaker 3: There's no model out there for holding all of these
31:25
Speaker 3: complex truths all at once. We are working within the
31:28
Speaker 3: system that we know is not working while trying to
31:30
Speaker 3: create and reimagine a new system while working with young
31:33
Speaker 3: people who have all this potential, who've not been given
31:36
Speaker 3: the opportunities for that potential to thrive and be unleashed.
31:38
Speaker 3: And they understand all of it and they understand none
31:41
Speaker 3: of it all at once. That's all of it and
31:45
Speaker 3: none of it right there. That's made up. English that does,
31:49
Speaker 3: that doesn't mean anything. It's just an excuse. And Nicole
31:53
Speaker 3: Hannah Jones takes it and prints it in the New
31:55
Speaker 3: York times. Like that's revelatory in some way.
31:58
Speaker 2: Yeah. And, and they don't, the kids don't get it
32:01
Speaker 2: because it doesn't make sense that it's like the emperors
32:04
Speaker 2: have no clothes moment where the kid doesn't get it
32:07
Speaker 2: because it makes no sense. You sending your kid to
32:11
Speaker 2: this school, like you didn't improve anything. You didn't help anyone,
32:16
Speaker 2: but they, I don't know. You don't, you're not, no
32:20
Speaker 2: one is owed your child. And like, I guess that
32:24
Speaker 2: the school district made an extra 52K to have, you know,
32:29
Speaker 2: her head.
32:29
Speaker 3: I guess so.
32:30
Speaker 2: The mix. It's not, it's not it. So I am
32:37
Speaker 2: very curious to hear this interview that she does with
32:40
Speaker 2: her daughter. I want to hear how angry her daughter is.
32:44
Speaker 3: She sounds pretty angry.
32:45
Speaker 4: Yeah.
32:46
Speaker 3: And I also just, as a bare minimum, could we
32:50
Speaker 3: just say that when an education expert, quote unquote, falls
32:55
Speaker 3: on her face in this most sacred of duties due
32:58
Speaker 3: to her apparent utter ignorance and naivete about the system
33:02
Speaker 3: on which she has been trying to impose her will,
33:05
Speaker 3: we just don't listen to her anymore. Yeah. Stop listening
33:08
Speaker 3: to her. She shouldn't get 50K a speech about education
33:11
Speaker 3: because she doesn't know anything about it.
33:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.
33:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. I, I, I, in a normal world, that would
33:19
Speaker 2: be the case that New York times would sort of
33:22
Speaker 2: walk away slowly. But this is, I mean, this is
33:25
Speaker 2: the bigotry of low expectations. She has that job because
33:28
Speaker 2: it was a DEI thing. Like they were like, we
33:31
Speaker 2: want to have this like intellectual black woman, but she's
33:35
Speaker 2: not intellectual.
33:36
Speaker 3: Yeah. As your very funny husband said, she writes a
33:39
Speaker 3: column on the Jubilee year. Like she only does, she
33:43
Speaker 3: only does a column like once every six years or something. And,
33:48
Speaker 3: you know, they pay her God knows what. And all
33:50
Speaker 3: of her work in the past, much of her work
33:51
Speaker 3: in the past has been shoddy just on facts. And
33:55
Speaker 3: here we are. And we should not, our children should
33:57
Speaker 3: not be subject to her stupid educational fads and nonsense
34:02
Speaker 3: reasons that things aren't working. We should actually engage with
34:05
Speaker 3: what does work. By the way, when this principal says
34:07
Speaker 3: there's no model that works, there's a model that works.
34:09
Speaker 3: It's in Mississippi. It's in Louisiana. It's in Tennessee and Alabama.
34:13
Speaker 3: And those schools have poverty levels and minority concentrations that
34:18
Speaker 3: are at least what her school was, if not more.
34:20
Speaker 2: Yep.
34:21
Speaker 4: Yep.
34:22
Speaker 2: But they decided to focus on literacy. And I interviewed
34:26
Speaker 2: on the MomWars, actually, the superintendent of the city schools
34:29
Speaker 2: in Houston. And if I could boil that conversation down
34:34
Speaker 2: to one word, it was accountability. Everyone was held accountable. Students, teachers, administrators,
34:39
Speaker 2: bus drivers, teachers. Everyone was held accountable. And that has
34:43
Speaker 2: a way of raising the bar. And what's frustrating to
34:47
Speaker 2: me about this stuff is when you try to, like,
34:52
Speaker 2: improve a situation by pointing out the badness, you're accused
34:55
Speaker 2: of racism. But I care about the outcomes for these
35:00
Speaker 2: black and brown children a lot more than you do. Like,
35:02
Speaker 2: you want to make excuses. You want to point figures
35:05
Speaker 2: and say, like, that doesn't actually solve the problem here.
35:09
Speaker 2: But when you institute consequences and accountability and all of
35:13
Speaker 2: those things, it might not be fun, but it does
35:16
Speaker 2: help kids who are in desperate need of it. And
35:20
Speaker 2: I'm just, I am disgusted on a big picture level
35:25
Speaker 2: because of her impact on our country's curriculum and conversations
35:29
Speaker 2: about education. But I'm just, I want to know more
35:33
Speaker 2: about this child. Now I have this parasocial relationship with
35:36
Speaker 2: her child. I just wish her well because- It's not
35:40
Speaker 2: nice to have.
35:41
Speaker 3: I want to train her for this interview on like
35:43
Speaker 3: old Tim Russert tapes and be like, okay, so now
35:45
Speaker 3: you're going to play the clip of your mom and
35:47
Speaker 3: now you're going to throw it to her and make
35:49
Speaker 3: her answer for it. Also unmentioned in this piece from
35:53
Speaker 3: an educational expert is COVID closures and how that might've
35:56
Speaker 3: had any impact on the schools by exacerbating the problems
35:59
Speaker 3: that were already there. She doesn't want to do that
36:01
Speaker 3: because that violates her tribe and the teachers unions. And
36:03
Speaker 3: she doesn't want to talk about it, but it is
36:05
Speaker 3: the greatest broken promise ever. Like next to the fact
36:09
Speaker 3: that the public schools just don't teach kids anymore. COVID
36:12
Speaker 3: closures were the second biggest broken promise.
36:15
Speaker 2: That would have hit right when her kid was probably
36:17
Speaker 2: like second or third grade.
36:18
Speaker 3: Yep. Right in the middle of all this.
36:20
Speaker 2: Pretty big years.
36:21
Speaker 3: It's a big deal. And she doesn't want to address
36:24
Speaker 3: it because it would betray the tribe. Yep. And she's
36:28
Speaker 3: not into doing that. Her political tribe.
36:31
Speaker 4: Oy vey.
36:32
Speaker 2: Um, thank you so much for coming on and of course,
36:34
Speaker 2: decking this, what, what a better use of our time
36:37
Speaker 2: than to just talk on the phone about it at nauseam,
36:40
Speaker 2: which is what we did all week long.
36:41
Speaker 3: There was much less cussing. So way to go us.
36:44
Speaker 1: I know.
36:44
Speaker 2: I was thinking that actually today I have the E
36:46
Speaker 2: warning on this podcast and I don't want that there.
36:49
Speaker 4: Yeah.
36:50
Speaker 3: It's not explicit.
36:51
Speaker 4: Yeah.
36:52
Speaker 3: We're fine.
36:53
Speaker 2: For God's sake.
36:55
Speaker 3: We did.
36:56
Speaker 2: We did. Okay.
36:56
Speaker 3: Yeah.
36:58
Speaker 2: Where can folks find your podcasts?
37:01
Speaker 3: I'm at MKHammerOnX and you can follow on wherever you
37:04
Speaker 3: get podcasts, Getting Hammered or Normally, which I do with
37:06
Speaker 3: Carol Markowitz, your co-host, who, by the way, y'all's book
37:09
Speaker 3: did convince me that I wasn't active enough in making
37:13
Speaker 3: sure that my values were passed on because my parents
37:16
Speaker 3: were a little bit like, oh, we'll just, you know,
37:19
Speaker 3: get through this. And it turned out it worked for
37:22
Speaker 3: all of us. We're kind of, we're all in the
37:24
Speaker 3: same tent still. But I wanted to be a little
37:26
Speaker 3: more focused about it. Thanks to you guys.
37:28
Speaker 2: Well, thanks. Yeah, no, I mean, our parents' generation, there
37:31
Speaker 2: was a sense of morality that was instilled by osmosis
37:34
Speaker 2: in pop culture and in schools and all of those things.
37:37
Speaker 2: And that's not the case now.
37:38
Speaker 3: It's really not.
37:39
Speaker 4: No. All right.
37:40
Speaker 2: Thank you for joining me. Until next time, y'all. Saddle up.
37:43
Speaker 2: And don't forget to write us a review. It's been
37:45
Speaker 2: a while.
37:46
Speaker 1: Do that.
37:46
Speaker 4: Thanks. Bye. Ricochet!
37:57
Speaker 1: Join the conversation.