Latest / Normally / Normally Podcast: Trump, Education, and the Decline of Community

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Normally Podcast: Trump, Education, and the Decline of Community · Normally

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I'm back on normally. There's what normalist takes
0:08
Speaker 1: for when the news gets weird. I am Mary Caton and.
0:11
Speaker 2: I'm Carol mark Witz. How are you? Mary Catherine? What
0:14
Speaker 2: day is it?
0:16
Speaker 1: Who even knows? It feels late in the way it's insanct.
0:20
Speaker 1: I got my Dolly shirt on, so that's I love
0:22
Speaker 1: the Dolly today.
0:24
Speaker 2: Love it very cool. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not
0:27
Speaker 2: really sure what day it is. I don't know. Sometimes,
0:29
Speaker 2: like right before Thanksgiving, things start to move very quickly,
0:34
Speaker 2: and like the Christmas lights are up in our part
0:38
Speaker 2: of Florida and TJ Max is playing Christmas music, which
0:41
Speaker 2: makes me feel like it's post Thanksgiving. I'm very confused.
0:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know this is like a discussion everyone has.
0:48
Speaker 1: I am more of a wait till post Thanksgiving person
0:52
Speaker 1: for Christmas stuff because I feel like my days move
0:56
Speaker 1: fast enough as it is. Guys. I'm not sure that
0:58
Speaker 1: I need to speed this.
0:59
Speaker 2: Up, right, But I love like yesterday actually happened to
1:02
Speaker 2: be like a chilly day in Florida, so hearing it's
1:06
Speaker 2: beginning to look a lot like Christmas at my local
1:08
Speaker 2: TJ Max.
1:09
Speaker 1: When I was enjoyed that sixty five and everybody was freezing.
1:14
Speaker 2: Todath that was really cool. I couldn't watch my son's
1:19
Speaker 2: soccer last night.
1:20
Speaker 1: I was so cold.
1:20
Speaker 2: I had to go wait in the car.
1:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, I understand. Wow, wow, Yeah. So I'm holding off
1:26
Speaker 1: for a little while. Not on Christmas present buying. I
1:28
Speaker 1: actually did start that nice. So you're welcome, economy, right,
1:33
Speaker 1: But the decorating, I will hold off till a little
1:36
Speaker 1: at least I will start gathering a little bit before Thanksgiving,
1:40
Speaker 1: and I'll try to hold off until post Thanksgiving.
1:42
Speaker 2: I love it. Keep us posted. By the way, everybody,
1:46
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving is two weeks from tomorrow, two weeks today. If
1:49
Speaker 2: you're hearing it on Thursday, two weeks from today. Friends,
1:52
Speaker 2: get your turkey.
1:55
Speaker 1: It's happening too fast.
1:56
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, let's do it. Donald Trump, what is
2:00
Speaker 2: going on with him? Yeah? I don't know. He had
2:06
Speaker 2: an interview with Laura Ingram on Fox News. You would
2:10
Speaker 2: expect that interview to be fairly friendly. It got pretty contentious.
2:15
Speaker 2: And it's on the issue that you and I often
2:18
Speaker 2: say Donald Trump is a liberal on which is immigration,
2:22
Speaker 2: which is there's a lot of irony there. Right, He's
2:25
Speaker 2: the build a wall, make Mexico pay for it, mass deportations,
2:29
Speaker 2: all of that. But whenever he has the opportunity, he's like,
2:33
Speaker 2: let's let in a bunch of you know, Chinese college students,
2:37
Speaker 2: Let's do like three hundred thousand of them or things
2:39
Speaker 2: like that. And it is it's confusing, but that's that's
2:44
Speaker 2: our Donald Trump, and that's where we are. Let's play
2:46
Speaker 2: the clip from Laura's show and then discuss it.
2:49
Speaker 3: Republicans have to talk about it.
2:51
Speaker 4: And does that mean the H one B visa thing
2:53
Speaker 4: will not be a big priority for your administration because
2:56
Speaker 4: if you want to raise wages for American workers, you
2:58
Speaker 4: can't flood the country with with tens of thousands or hundreds.
3:01
Speaker 3: I agree, but we also do have to bring in
3:04
Speaker 3: talent when we.
3:05
Speaker 4: Country talent and I know you don't know, you don't
3:07
Speaker 4: we don't have talent.
3:09
Speaker 3: Now you don't have you don't have certain talents, and
3:11
Speaker 3: you have to people have to learn. You can't take
3:13
Speaker 3: people off an unimploiment like an unemployment line and say
3:17
Speaker 3: I'm going to put you into a factory who we're
3:19
Speaker 3: going to make missiles or I'm going to put w Do.
3:20
Speaker 1: We ever do it before?
3:22
Speaker 5: Well?
3:22
Speaker 3: And I I'll give you an example. In Georgia they
3:26
Speaker 3: raided because they wanted illegal immigrants. They had people from
3:31
Speaker 3: from South Korea that made batteries all their lives. You know,
3:34
Speaker 3: making batteries are very complicated. It's not an easy thing
3:37
Speaker 3: and very dangerous, a lot of explosions, a lot of problems.
3:40
Speaker 3: They had like five or six hundred people early stages
3:44
Speaker 3: to make batteries and to teach people how to do it. Well,
3:48
Speaker 3: they wanted them to get out of the country.
3:49
Speaker 2: You're going to need that lure.
3:50
Speaker 3: I mean, I know you and I disagree on this.
3:53
Speaker 3: You can't just say a country's coming in, going to
3:56
Speaker 3: invest ten billion dollars to build a plant and going
3:59
Speaker 3: to take people off an unemployment line who haven't worked
4:01
Speaker 3: in five years, and they're going to start making the missiles.
4:04
Speaker 3: It doesn't work that well.
4:06
Speaker 2: It doesn't work though americ Catherine.
4:08
Speaker 1: Well Trump has a way, despite being a like in
4:11
Speaker 1: some ways a phenomenal communicator, will stumble on phrases that
4:15
Speaker 1: are like oh no, sir, yes, like no, you don't
4:19
Speaker 1: have talent in this country. Yeah, he's not a thing. Yeah, yeah,
4:23
Speaker 1: what we're trying to say. It was extremely.
4:26
Speaker 2: Cringey and yet it's like, you know, he got defensive
4:29
Speaker 2: and he doesn't really mean that, but yes.
4:31
Speaker 5: It was.
4:31
Speaker 1: You know what it remind you know what it reminded
4:33
Speaker 1: me of. It's like when he gets in his tough
4:35
Speaker 1: love love vibe and some of that I like, because
4:38
Speaker 1: people do need to hear. As you and I agree,
4:41
Speaker 1: there are some very specialized things that you need folks
4:43
Speaker 1: for and sometimes they can come from other countries and
4:46
Speaker 1: that's fine. It reminded me of his tough love moment
4:49
Speaker 1: when he was like, you know, kids will just have
4:52
Speaker 1: two dolls instead of thirty dollars, and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
4:57
Speaker 1: we do not like that messaging in the United States
4:59
Speaker 1: of America, your adults. So now he's doing it, is
5:02
Speaker 1: doing it on the economy. And look, I think whether
5:04
Speaker 1: it's immigration or the economy in general, or affordability, if
5:09
Speaker 1: you sort of shush people about their very real concerns
5:12
Speaker 1: about their livelihoods and their affordability and their ability to
5:16
Speaker 1: shop and all of these things, you will get in
5:18
Speaker 1: trouble no matter what party you're in or how much
5:21
Speaker 1: they like you.
5:22
Speaker 4: Yeah.
5:22
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And look, the HB one thing like there is
5:26
Speaker 2: a moderate path here which is you need some number
5:31
Speaker 2: of specialized people on the HB one visa, you keep
5:34
Speaker 2: that number really small because Laura's right, we did used
5:39
Speaker 2: to do this somehow, right.
5:40
Speaker 1: We did. You would train people to do it for
5:43
Speaker 1: the jobs.
5:43
Speaker 2: Right, you kind of have to figure out how you
5:46
Speaker 2: make batteries or we do it. We actually did do it,
5:50
Speaker 2: and we should do it. And if we need some
5:53
Speaker 2: tiny number of specialized people in the meantime, that's fine.
5:57
Speaker 2: That's not what's going on here. There's been so many
5:59
Speaker 2: ours and so many people speaking out about HB one abuses.
6:03
Speaker 2: You and I covered it on previous episodes of the show.
6:07
Speaker 2: There is a lot of abuse of this program. It
6:09
Speaker 2: needs to be reformed. It cannot continue the way it is. Well.
6:14
Speaker 1: I think Trump is a person who if he were
6:17
Speaker 1: giving a consistent message about how he's vetting this system,
6:21
Speaker 1: how he's making sure it's working properly. But in this situation,
6:24
Speaker 1: he's specifically saying, no, we need these people, and then
6:28
Speaker 1: he goes on a little mini rant in there about
6:30
Speaker 1: the Hyundai plant. I just want to point out that
6:32
Speaker 1: when he says they went to go get these specialized
6:35
Speaker 1: workers that you need to make batteries, the they is
6:38
Speaker 1: ice under Donald Trump's administration. So if we indeed need
6:43
Speaker 1: those workers, many of which had short term visas, I
6:46
Speaker 1: don't know how many of them were actually in here
6:49
Speaker 1: illegally and how many had permits that I think the
6:52
Speaker 1: federal government said the permits weren't exactly correct for them
6:54
Speaker 1: to be here. Whatever it was, it disrupted that plant immensely.
7:00
Speaker 1: And again it was his immigration enforcement, right.
7:05
Speaker 2: He's really mad at the people who did this.
7:07
Speaker 1: To be consistent about it, so people can trust you
7:09
Speaker 1: to vet the system properly. And then, as you said,
7:12
Speaker 1: we're open to the idea that you do need some people,
7:15
Speaker 1: but that American companies shouldn't be faking like they're trying
7:18
Speaker 1: to hire Americans when they're really not doing that, which
7:21
Speaker 1: is some of what we've seen in the right.
7:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hate that people try to fit Donald Trump,
7:28
Speaker 2: you know, triangle into a round peg. He is who
7:32
Speaker 2: he is, and he says who he is. I don't
7:35
Speaker 2: think he ran as a different person. I think this
7:38
Speaker 2: is who he's been and you and I were calling
7:40
Speaker 2: him out in so many different ways. I mean, even
7:43
Speaker 2: just like the million dollar green card or any of
7:47
Speaker 2: these things, it's a very specific type of immigration argument
7:52
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump is making. I don't agree with it,
7:56
Speaker 2: but this is who he is. Because I see people
7:58
Speaker 2: on X being like, which are Stafford gave him this information?
8:01
Speaker 2: Is really misguided. Bro, It was no Staffer, this was
8:05
Speaker 2: Donald Trump being Donald Trump.
8:07
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I do think this is one of those
8:10
Speaker 1: issues where if you're concerned about losing the more isolationist
8:15
Speaker 1: America first wing of the party, if you're looking to
8:19
Speaker 1: speak to the young men in that segment about their
8:23
Speaker 1: future economically, this is ground on which you should tread carefully. Yeah,
8:29
Speaker 1: because those folks were looking to you to make their
8:32
Speaker 1: economic prospects better, and you have to explain to them
8:35
Speaker 1: that the H one B visas or the Chinese nationals
8:39
Speaker 1: will not be causing the problems they think they will cause.
8:43
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, But again they voted for him being this guy. Like,
8:48
Speaker 2: I don't think anything new has happened since his election.
8:51
Speaker 2: I think that this is who he is. He has
8:53
Speaker 2: this impulse of you know, I'll bring in it could
8:57
Speaker 2: be millions of people, but they'll be the best people.
8:59
Speaker 2: But we're like, but that would still harm the best
9:02
Speaker 2: people that we have here. It's sort of like he
9:05
Speaker 2: doesn't see the next thing that happens just over the horizon,
9:09
Speaker 2: what problems could happen with this?
9:11
Speaker 1: No, he is often the fastest path guy, Right, He's like,
9:16
Speaker 1: here's the fastest path. In the last week or two,
9:19
Speaker 1: the fastest path in his brain was my team gets
9:22
Speaker 1: rid of the filibuster. We get this thing done. Yep.
9:25
Speaker 1: That wasn't the correct path, but it could have been.
9:28
Speaker 1: It was the most efficient in Donald Trump's brain to
9:31
Speaker 1: solve the problem. Yeah, but it turned out like you
9:33
Speaker 1: don't need to do that, and you shouldn't do that.
9:35
Speaker 1: But he often will make that decision like this is
9:38
Speaker 1: the fastest path to getting these batteries made right.
9:41
Speaker 2: In other Donald Trump news, the headlines today are about
9:46
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's connection to Jeffrey Epstein. And yes, look, you
9:51
Speaker 2: know it's hard when you defend somebody in a story
9:55
Speaker 2: that's developing. But all of the evidence up until now
10:00
Speaker 2: do not have Donald Trump in any compromising positions with
10:04
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein, and the story today is no different. In fact,
10:08
Speaker 2: I think that it's just it's almost cowardly in how
10:13
Speaker 2: it's being presented, in how the left is making their
10:16
Speaker 2: case that Donald Trump had something to do with anything
10:18
Speaker 2: with Jeffrey Epstein here.
10:21
Speaker 1: But you know, these.
10:22
Speaker 2: Emails that were released do not show anything that the
10:26
Speaker 2: headlines promised to show. So it's an exchange between Michael Wolfe,
10:32
Speaker 2: who has written a Trump biography that had a lot
10:35
Speaker 2: of questionable parts in it that people call possibly made up,
10:40
Speaker 2: but he's considered largely a fabulous and let's just you know,
10:44
Speaker 2: say that. But so in this email, Michael Wolfe is
10:47
Speaker 2: emailing with Jeffrey Epstein and he says, I hear CNN
10:51
Speaker 2: planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you,
10:54
Speaker 2: either on air or in the scrum afterwards. So already
10:59
Speaker 2: he's got inside information from CNN, really shady stuff, like
11:03
Speaker 2: they're coordinating how to get Donald Trump.
11:05
Speaker 1: And this is destate on This is twenty sixteen, right.
11:09
Speaker 2: Twenty fifteen, December twenty fifteen. So Trump has, you know,
11:13
Speaker 2: just recently announced and he's running, and clearly they want
11:18
Speaker 2: to have just the final nail in the Trump campaign Coffin.
11:23
Speaker 2: They're trying to get him on this. And so Jeffrey
11:25
Speaker 2: Epstein responds, if we were able to craft an answer
11:28
Speaker 2: for him, what do you think it should be? Wolf responds,
11:31
Speaker 2: I think you should let him hang himself. If he
11:33
Speaker 2: says he hasn't been on the plane or to the house,
11:35
Speaker 2: then that gives you a valuable pr and political currency.
11:39
Speaker 2: You can hang him in a way that potentially generates
11:42
Speaker 2: a positive benefit for you, or if it really looks
11:45
Speaker 2: like he could win, you could save him generating a debt.
11:48
Speaker 2: Of course, it is possible that when asked, he'll say
11:51
Speaker 2: Jeffrey's a great guy and has gotten a raw deal
11:53
Speaker 2: and is a victim of political correctness, which is to
11:55
Speaker 2: be outlawed in a Trump regime. I mean, Trump pretty came.
12:00
Speaker 2: I don't think he says Jeffrey's a great guy, but
12:02
Speaker 2: I think he does say the raw deal part. Yea,
12:05
Speaker 2: So you know, Wolf kind of got that right. But
12:08
Speaker 2: this is a plan to get Donald Trump. So anybody
12:11
Speaker 2: reading this and telling me that this is some kind
12:14
Speaker 2: of smoking gun, didn't read this. That's just what I
12:17
Speaker 2: have to come up with here.
12:19
Speaker 1: Well, I look, this is one of the costs of
12:21
Speaker 1: having everyone lied systematically about Donald Trump or the entirety
12:28
Speaker 1: of his first term, and then afterwards many times about
12:31
Speaker 1: many things, is that I do have to evaluate all
12:33
Speaker 1: of these quite closely. And one of the things I
12:36
Speaker 1: wonder is if we had this information in twenty sixteen,
12:40
Speaker 1: or there's another email looks like dated a little bit
12:42
Speaker 1: somewhat earlier that's about him spending time at a at
12:47
Speaker 1: a house with a victim. Is what the claim is if.
12:50
Speaker 1: But my question is if we had all of these emails,
12:54
Speaker 1: and if Wolf in particular had these emails, or the
12:58
Speaker 1: Biden administration had these and all these people have been
13:02
Speaker 1: desirous to foil Trump from day one, why have we
13:07
Speaker 1: not seen them until now?
13:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, because there's nothing, there's no there There another email
13:12
Speaker 2: October twenty sixteen from Michael Wolf. There's an opportunity to
13:15
Speaker 2: come forward this week and talk about Trump in such
13:18
Speaker 2: a way that could garner you great sympathy and help
13:20
Speaker 2: finish him interested. I mean, this is the guy that
13:24
Speaker 2: they're turning to. This is the guy that they're saying
13:27
Speaker 2: they have some sort of smoking gun. It's just it's
13:31
Speaker 2: crazy to me, And you know, I also.
13:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, with this story, I never want to discount there
13:36
Speaker 1: were true victims here who are sometimes under they are
13:41
Speaker 1: still subject to NDA's many of them. We won't hear
13:44
Speaker 1: their full stories. They were abused by people. This is
13:47
Speaker 1: a real tragic story and I have been frustrated from
13:51
Speaker 1: day one that Epstein seems to have gotten a sweetheart
13:53
Speaker 1: deal and then he left this earth before all of
13:55
Speaker 1: this was adjudicated in a way that we felt like
13:57
Speaker 1: we had answers. It's always been strange, and as a result,
14:01
Speaker 1: I think there are people who didn't get justice. I agree. However,
14:06
Speaker 1: in this process, it does seem like a lot of
14:08
Speaker 1: people care about this case who never cared about it
14:10
Speaker 1: before and are bringing me things that if they were
14:14
Speaker 1: indeed as damning as they claim. Yeah, I think they
14:18
Speaker 1: would have used them in twenty ten, eleven, fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty,
14:23
Speaker 1: like what any of those time?
14:25
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Look, the question is do you want justice
14:28
Speaker 2: for the victims or do you want to get Donald Trump?
14:30
Speaker 2: And all of the people reporting on these bs emails
14:33
Speaker 2: today just want to get Donald Trump, Speaking of which
14:36
Speaker 2: our friend Brian Stelter he tweets Jeffrey Epstein mentioned Trump
14:41
Speaker 2: in private emails. Is the lead story across most major
14:44
Speaker 2: news websites this morning. Nothing on the Fox News page
14:47
Speaker 2: homepage yet though, and no mention on Fox News TV
14:50
Speaker 2: at either permise snapstream search. Fox should go ahead and
14:54
Speaker 2: mention it, because this is a nonsense story and they
14:57
Speaker 2: should shoot it down. And that's it. The fact that
15:01
Speaker 2: Brian Stelter's like box should be covering this nonsense story
15:05
Speaker 2: that we made up to hurt Trump is very Brian Stelter.
15:09
Speaker 1: Speaking of unreliable narrators, Brian Steltzer the other day wrote
15:13
Speaker 1: about this, We actually should put it on our list
15:15
Speaker 1: to talk about. There's this blockbuster BBC internal report about
15:19
Speaker 1: all the things it has done horribly wrong, including its
15:23
Speaker 1: pervasive bias on the Israel Gaza issue, and it edited
15:29
Speaker 1: in a documentary Trump to look as if he were saying,
15:32
Speaker 1: we shall go to the Capitol together and all fight
15:35
Speaker 1: like hell, which is not. It was all cobbled together
15:38
Speaker 1: in a way to make it seem like he had
15:39
Speaker 1: said something he hadn't said of It was very dishonest
15:42
Speaker 1: and several executives resigned over it. And I read Brian
15:46
Speaker 1: Stelter's story on it, and it was not until the
15:49
Speaker 1: first paragraph that I was informed of the bad edit
15:53
Speaker 1: that he referred to in the first two paragraphs that
15:55
Speaker 1: told me how dishonest the VBC had been, And instead
16:00
Speaker 1: I was learning a lot about how the BBC was
16:02
Speaker 1: overreacting because Trump threats.
16:05
Speaker 2: Right right I believe that.
16:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the head I just do their job correctly.
16:10
Speaker 2: Maybe I mean imagine that, but I think the headline
16:13
Speaker 2: or his tweet on it was like BBC in a
16:14
Speaker 2: vulnerable position, Like, yeah, they're in a vulnerable, vulnerable position
16:18
Speaker 2: because they are terrible at the job that the British
16:21
Speaker 2: public actually pays them to do. They are a publicly
16:25
Speaker 2: funded TV station, news station in Britain that lied to
16:32
Speaker 2: the British people, completely lied to them, and not just
16:35
Speaker 2: on one occasion, on many occasions. And so yeah, people
16:38
Speaker 2: resigned because they were liars and they allowed this to
16:40
Speaker 2: go on. Brian Stelter's like, I'm rettal concerned about that, lying, lying, lying,
16:45
Speaker 2: liar's news station.
16:48
Speaker 1: Just come on, man, yeah, no accountability zero.
16:53
Speaker 2: CNN would love to be BBC, you know, lying and
16:57
Speaker 2: being paid by the public.
16:59
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, they love my money. But nope, now
17:02
Speaker 1: that's going to happen in America.
17:03
Speaker 2: Yes, God bless the USA. We'll be right back with
17:07
Speaker 2: more on normally. We are back on normally where this
17:15
Speaker 2: has become our pet issue, I think, and I love
17:19
Speaker 2: that we keep covering it because the kids they can't
17:22
Speaker 2: read good.
17:23
Speaker 1: No, and they also can't do math, it turns.
17:25
Speaker 2: Out, yeah, yeah, no no math and no reading going
17:29
Speaker 2: on in our schools. It's a real problem. How big
17:32
Speaker 2: of a problem is it?
17:33
Speaker 1: Though?
17:33
Speaker 2: And this new report out of UC San Diego, It
17:37
Speaker 2: was highlighted for me on X by Steve McGuire. He
17:40
Speaker 2: is a Paul and Karen Leevy Fellow and Campus Freedom
17:43
Speaker 2: at Go ACTA. He says the number of entering students
17:48
Speaker 2: needing remedial math at UC San Diego has exploded from
17:52
Speaker 2: one in one hundred to one in eight. That is bananas.
17:58
Speaker 2: They had to create rights. They had to create a
18:00
Speaker 2: second remedial class covering elementary and middle school math skills
18:04
Speaker 2: in addition to the one covering gaps from high school.
18:07
Speaker 2: Read that again. They had to create a second remedial
18:10
Speaker 2: class at you see San Diego to cover skills that
18:15
Speaker 2: these kids didn't learn in elementary and middle school, in
18:19
Speaker 2: addition to the class they already had covering gaps from
18:22
Speaker 2: high school.
18:23
Speaker 1: These are people who have been accepted to a college. Yeah,
18:28
Speaker 1: they are attending a college. I want to note, look,
18:31
Speaker 1: I have one of my children in particular, really struggles
18:35
Speaker 1: with math, and we work together very very hard on it.
18:38
Speaker 1: And I was struck by the fact that they offer
18:40
Speaker 1: one of these They offer one of these problems that
18:47
Speaker 1: twenty five percent of a cohort they tested got wrong.
18:52
Speaker 1: This question is seven plus two equals blank plus six.
18:58
Speaker 1: That is terrifying, Terrinty five percent of the students missed
19:02
Speaker 1: this in the cohort they tested. In college, my daughter,
19:06
Speaker 1: who struggles with math and with whom I work closely
19:09
Speaker 1: on this would knock that out of the park, right,
19:14
Speaker 1: It is scary.
19:16
Speaker 2: It's scary. I mean, look, pandemic learning loss only explains
19:23
Speaker 2: some of this. The education system is failing, is it
19:26
Speaker 2: is failing on so many different levels. It's like, legitimately scary.
19:31
Speaker 2: And I just really don't know the example that you
19:35
Speaker 2: gave the seven plus two equals blank plus six. I mean.
19:40
Speaker 2: Tommy Schultz, he is the CEO of American Federation for Children.
19:45
Speaker 2: He points out that in one class, only eighty seven
19:48
Speaker 2: percent tested at a first grade math level. That means
19:51
Speaker 2: thirteen percent of kids going to college college and you
19:55
Speaker 2: see San Diego don't test at first grade math level
19:59
Speaker 2: and only nineteen percent nineteen percent, I means I'm not
20:03
Speaker 2: good at math, but eighty one percent do not test
20:06
Speaker 2: at eighth grade level. These numbers are absolutely bananas.
20:11
Speaker 1: No, it's so frightening. And the thing is, as you said,
20:13
Speaker 1: it's not just pandemic learning loss, although that is a
20:15
Speaker 1: huge hit. It is years of great inflation. Like honestly,
20:22
Speaker 1: much of the DEI problem so much college people, people
20:26
Speaker 1: being picked not for skills, standardized tests being foregone in
20:31
Speaker 1: order to get people into college. So you don't and
20:35
Speaker 1: just like general parents and teachers, I think, not having
20:38
Speaker 1: high expectations and instead papering it all over with fake grades.
20:44
Speaker 1: And when you paper it all over with fake grades,
20:48
Speaker 1: you will not learn things. Yeah, and like that, that's
20:52
Speaker 1: a lesson that's hard for everyone to learn. I mean there,
20:54
Speaker 1: I was not great at math. I struggled with it
20:57
Speaker 1: as the same girl, and you had to to push
21:01
Speaker 1: through and learn the skills. And when you push through
21:03
Speaker 1: and learn the skills, not only do you learn the skill,
21:06
Speaker 1: but you learn that you can learn things.
21:08
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. It gives you a sense of pride and
21:12
Speaker 2: the self esteem that they so claim to want the
21:14
Speaker 2: kids to have. To let them struggle and then succeed
21:18
Speaker 2: at something. It's not removing the struggle that brings that
21:22
Speaker 2: self esteem. Also about the DEI stuff. I maintain that
21:27
Speaker 2: pushing nonsense curriculums in schools in arkde through twelve schools,
21:32
Speaker 2: every minute that they spend on land acknowledgements and you know,
21:37
Speaker 2: pretending that boys can become girls and vice versa, is
21:41
Speaker 2: a minute that they're not spending on math and reading.
21:43
Speaker 2: That's why classical education has become so popular across America,
21:46
Speaker 2: because people are like, I want them to learn how
21:50
Speaker 2: to read and write and do math and not all
21:53
Speaker 2: this other stuff that you're pushing.
21:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny because public school teachers and school boards
21:59
Speaker 1: and union leaders will tell you all the time that
22:01
Speaker 1: public school teachers are overwhelmed, that they have a bandwidth
22:05
Speaker 1: issue there are so many children at so many levels,
22:07
Speaker 1: and some of that is certainly true. But then they'll
22:10
Speaker 1: also tell you that gender ideology instruction and social emotional
22:14
Speaker 1: learning takes nothing away from what they're doing with the
22:18
Speaker 1: reading and the math, which they're failing at in huge numbers.
22:22
Speaker 1: I want to say a word about the local Northern
22:24
Speaker 1: Virginia schools which are in this deep blue area and
22:28
Speaker 1: are were, before the pandemic, a real crown jewel of
22:32
Speaker 1: the state. When it came to public education in general,
22:35
Speaker 1: there were a lot of as some of the best
22:38
Speaker 1: in the country, but now not so much. And one
22:41
Speaker 1: of the things that the Virginia Department of Education did
22:43
Speaker 1: under Yunkin this year is bump up the state end
22:48
Speaker 1: of grade testing levels that would would be deemed proficient
22:52
Speaker 1: because they want to set high expectations. They want to
22:55
Speaker 1: chart accurately where students are. And my local school, of course,
23:01
Speaker 1: is like this is bad. They have full debate about
23:05
Speaker 1: how raising these expectations is bad because what they want
23:09
Speaker 1: to do is have the expectations lower and pretend like
23:13
Speaker 1: they're succeeding. That is their desire, stated desire in public
23:18
Speaker 1: at school board meetings, right, is that high expectations would
23:21
Speaker 1: tell the truth about what they're doing.
23:23
Speaker 5: And they don't like yeah, yeah, And I want to
23:26
Speaker 5: I want to note one guy in particular on our
23:28
Speaker 5: board who has this insane quote because they're they're complaining
23:33
Speaker 5: about a decline in student enrollment.
23:35
Speaker 1: Gee, what could have happened? I want that made the
23:39
Speaker 1: students leave because they don't get their money when they
23:41
Speaker 1: don't have enrollment. Yeah, and he says, I'll bet you
23:45
Speaker 1: dollars to donuts that any public school in our county
23:49
Speaker 1: will give a kid a better education than homeschooling or
23:51
Speaker 1: private school, regardless of the school or how qualified the
23:55
Speaker 1: students are that are teaching.
23:57
Speaker 4: Yeah.
23:58
Speaker 1: Sure, that is such an insane statement to make when
24:03
Speaker 1: you have in front of you the ways you're failing.
24:07
Speaker 1: But they want to project all of that on anyone
24:10
Speaker 1: who left the system to escape their incompetence.
24:15
Speaker 2: It's crazy because there are numbers on this kind of stuff,
24:18
Speaker 2: and it's not homeschooling kids showing up to college not
24:21
Speaker 2: knowing extremely basic math from first grade.
24:25
Speaker 1: We got a lot of work to do. The Mississippi
24:27
Speaker 1: miracle needs to move on to math, and we got
24:30
Speaker 1: to have it all over the country eventually because we
24:32
Speaker 1: are losing ground and the section connected to that H
24:36
Speaker 1: one B issue as well. Right right you are if
24:39
Speaker 1: you are sending people to college who can't do first
24:42
Speaker 1: grade math, yes, we are going to have a smaller
24:46
Speaker 1: pool coming out of those education systems that can do
24:48
Speaker 1: the things we need them to do. Period.
24:50
Speaker 2: Yeah absolutely, woof Yeah, all right, the kids they need
24:55
Speaker 2: to read good.
24:55
Speaker 1: That's it. We're putting our foot down on it.
24:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, we'll be right back with more on
25:01
Speaker 2: normally do we need a village to raise the children.
25:05
Speaker 1: Maybe all right, we are back on normally with a
25:11
Speaker 1: discussion of does it take a village. There's a piece
25:16
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic this week called the most useless piece
25:19
Speaker 1: of parenting advice, The problem with telling moms quote it
25:23
Speaker 1: takes a village. And it's a writer who complains that, like, look,
25:27
Speaker 1: she had some help here and there, but in fact,
25:29
Speaker 1: building a village is hard or nearly impossible for many
25:35
Speaker 1: women once they have kids. She says, not every mother
25:37
Speaker 1: is able to create a village of free or cheap
25:39
Speaker 1: helpers whom they already know. Times have changed since millennials
25:42
Speaker 1: were little and neighborhoods had lots of stay at home
25:45
Speaker 1: moms available to pitch in. For nearly seventy percent of
25:48
Speaker 1: kids under six, today, both parents work, compared with half
25:50
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five. Your friends with kids might not
25:53
Speaker 1: be able to do school pick up in an emergency
25:54
Speaker 1: because they too might be working. We just don't have
25:57
Speaker 1: as many people around, Elliott Haspell, a childcare researcher who
26:01
Speaker 1: has written for the Atlantic, told me there were just
26:02
Speaker 1: fewer people physically available to call. So she's saying, like, great,
26:09
Speaker 1: thanks for telling me to build a village. This feels
26:12
Speaker 1: like yet another thing on my to do list that
26:14
Speaker 1: I cannot do. And I'm just wondering what your take
26:17
Speaker 1: is on the village, Carol.
26:19
Speaker 2: So it's funny because I had a village. I have
26:22
Speaker 2: a village, but less of one in Florida, but I
26:25
Speaker 2: absolutely had the village in Brooklyn. My mom was super involved.
26:30
Speaker 2: My brother would literally pick up the kids from school
26:33
Speaker 2: several days a week before he had his own kids.
26:36
Speaker 2: My in laws were incredible and super involved. My sister
26:40
Speaker 2: in law, my husband's sister, also was super involved, and
26:44
Speaker 2: his brother as well. We had that, we had it,
26:47
Speaker 2: and we had it because we had family that lived
26:50
Speaker 2: close together and there were certain expectations. It also helped
26:53
Speaker 2: we had the only grandchildren at the time, right, But there, yeah,
26:57
Speaker 2: look in our culture, there are certain expectations. My mother
27:00
Speaker 2: and I never discussed it, but when I had my
27:03
Speaker 2: second child and she saw that I was drowning, she
27:06
Speaker 2: started coming to my house every day at six in
27:08
Speaker 2: the morning with no discussion. Now, the problem with the village,
27:12
Speaker 2: I mean, there's several problems with it. When my mother
27:16
Speaker 2: would give them Swedish fish in the middle of the
27:18
Speaker 2: day or chocolate or cookies. I could say, please, don't
27:21
Speaker 2: do that, and she could wave her hand at me, like,
27:23
Speaker 2: I'm going to do that anyway, because part of the
27:26
Speaker 2: thing of an unpaid village is you do things the
27:29
Speaker 2: way they want sometimes, so you have to give in
27:32
Speaker 2: a little bit. Otherwise you can. And she addresses this
27:35
Speaker 2: in the piece. She could say that you could.
27:38
Speaker 1: Buy a village.
27:39
Speaker 2: You know, I don't have a village, so I buy one,
27:41
Speaker 2: she writes. Some of these moms have nannies, house cleaners,
27:44
Speaker 2: dog walkers, and house managers that they have less expensive villagers.
27:47
Speaker 2: Various moms told me that the mc donald's drive through,
27:50
Speaker 2: Instacart and door dash, where their village paying people, is
27:53
Speaker 2: a remedy for not having a village, And indeed it's
27:55
Speaker 2: the one that I chose. But it's hardly a solution
27:57
Speaker 2: for everyone, or even for most people. But for me,
28:01
Speaker 2: I'd rather have my family than a nanny that I hire,
28:05
Speaker 2: and I know that that's not the case for a
28:07
Speaker 2: lot of people. I was willing to bend on the
28:10
Speaker 2: things that I don't like in order to have people
28:14
Speaker 2: that I you know, I'm related to be the caretakers
28:17
Speaker 2: of my children. And I say to my own kids.
28:19
Speaker 2: If you stay close to where I am, I promise
28:22
Speaker 2: to be there in the same capacity. I will be
28:25
Speaker 2: the person you can count on when you're you know,
28:28
Speaker 2: to pick up the kids from school, or to really
28:31
Speaker 2: show up at your house in the morning, get them
28:32
Speaker 2: off to school, all of it. I'll be there if
28:34
Speaker 2: you stay close to me.
28:36
Speaker 1: This piece sort of misses the trade off bit, and
28:39
Speaker 1: I do think that's what keeps a lot like. There's
28:41
Speaker 1: a geography problem where many young families don't work close
28:44
Speaker 1: to extended family anymore, and that's sort of the case
28:47
Speaker 1: with us. But we have two wonderful sets of grandparents
28:50
Speaker 1: who will travel here to hang out with our kids,
28:53
Speaker 1: sometimes for an overnight or a weekend, and that is wonderful.
28:57
Speaker 1: We also can go to them pretty easily, and they're
29:00
Speaker 1: fit and able to do that. You do give something
29:04
Speaker 1: in a village situation, right, if you have a mother
29:07
Speaker 1: in law who lives in your home, for instance, as
29:10
Speaker 1: one of my friends does, you're giving up some autonomy.
29:13
Speaker 1: You're giving up the ability to dictate everything that happens
29:16
Speaker 1: with your children. You're giving up some space, some you know,
29:19
Speaker 1: the privacy, all these things. I think that's sort of
29:22
Speaker 1: missed in these discussions, as is the idea that, like
29:26
Speaker 1: a lot of people are in a community, say you
29:28
Speaker 1: don't have your extended family around you, and your desire
29:31
Speaker 1: is that once you've had a baby, that immediately a
29:34
Speaker 1: village should show up for you, right right. And the
29:38
Speaker 1: thing is you got to work on that before you're
29:40
Speaker 1: in the moment. Yeah. So, for instance, I've fallen into
29:44
Speaker 1: this group of lovely military spouses, marine and army moms
29:48
Speaker 1: who live near me, and they are fantastic at actively
29:53
Speaker 1: creating community because they have to move around and create
29:57
Speaker 1: a community everywhere they go every two years. So when
30:01
Speaker 1: they land, they hit the ground running. They are in
30:05
Speaker 1: a church, they are in Scouts, they are in the school.
30:08
Speaker 1: And because I've fallen in with them, and because I
30:10
Speaker 1: think I had my own crisis in my own life
30:12
Speaker 1: where people really showed up for me, I have adopted
30:16
Speaker 1: better habits of when I know someone's in a place,
30:20
Speaker 1: let me be the person who takes the thing over.
30:23
Speaker 1: Let me be the person who says, let me grab
30:25
Speaker 1: your kids and take them to the park. Would that
30:27
Speaker 1: help you out? If you're not depositing in the.
30:30
Speaker 2: Bank, exactly, you really can't withdraw yeah, it's tough. I
30:35
Speaker 2: think it was Tim Carney. I didn't look this up,
30:37
Speaker 2: but I think it was Tim Karney, who actually talks
30:39
Speaker 2: about the village often. But he said, you know, if
30:42
Speaker 2: you are hoping for somebody to help you with childcare
30:45
Speaker 2: in your village, you're going to have to help like
30:47
Speaker 2: the old man on your street, move like you're gonna
30:50
Speaker 2: you know, you have to participate in the village. You
30:53
Speaker 2: can't just be like, all right, guys, I need child care.
30:56
Speaker 2: Who's in it?
30:57
Speaker 1: Of things that I need? And y'all just come to me?
31:00
Speaker 1: Now there are like I would say, in my crisis
31:03
Speaker 1: situation when my husband died in twenty fifteen, that was
31:05
Speaker 1: such a dire situation that a village kind of did
31:09
Speaker 1: form around me that was much bigger than the one
31:12
Speaker 1: that I had probably established before that. I also learned
31:16
Speaker 1: to ask for help and to accept help in different
31:20
Speaker 1: forms than I might otherwise have dictated, because I was
31:23
Speaker 1: placed where I needed that. And so I do think
31:26
Speaker 1: this piece and a lot of these pieces missed the
31:28
Speaker 1: part where you got to like do some of that right. Absolutely,
31:33
Speaker 1: And it is tough. You got a lot on your plate.
31:35
Speaker 1: But if it's also good for you to do this
31:38
Speaker 1: kind of thing. I would also like to note that
31:40
Speaker 1: this same author wrote a piece called how baby led
31:44
Speaker 1: weaning Ruined My Life, which you should not let any
31:48
Speaker 1: parenting philosophy ruin your life. And I would just say,
31:52
Speaker 1: maybe she has a tough time with these kinds of concepts.
31:56
Speaker 1: It is a puzzle in these modern times, but there
31:58
Speaker 1: are ways you can improve situation.
32:01
Speaker 2: Yes, you have to bend. I mean that's really that's
32:04
Speaker 2: where it comes down to. You have to bend to
32:07
Speaker 2: get all of these things that you hear about and
32:11
Speaker 2: keep seeing these pieces about people needing a village, build
32:15
Speaker 2: the village, build it.
32:16
Speaker 3: Well.
32:16
Speaker 1: One more thing that I would say, and I'm sure
32:19
Speaker 1: you have experience with this in your immigrant community. One
32:22
Speaker 1: of the things I think in the type of community
32:25
Speaker 1: that this author lives in, I think there's a lot
32:27
Speaker 1: of like apprehension about can I bring a lasagna to
32:30
Speaker 1: your door? Do you have eighteen dietary restrictions? Yeah, to
32:34
Speaker 1: some extent, you got to pushy your way right past
32:37
Speaker 1: the social boundaries and just do the thing. The mill
32:41
Speaker 1: spouse community is also Southern, which means we're like very
32:44
Speaker 1: natural going to take food to people.
32:47
Speaker 2: They sound awesome.
32:49
Speaker 1: They are truly awesome, and I actually ask them for
32:52
Speaker 1: some of their tips and those like the joining the church,
32:55
Speaker 1: having a Scout group.
32:58
Speaker 2: Forming community. Wow, who would have? Well?
33:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, also just diving in and I think that's part
33:04
Speaker 1: of it, like you have to just do the thing,
33:07
Speaker 1: even though you're busy, even though it's hard, even though
33:10
Speaker 1: it feels weird to show up on someone's doorstep, but
33:12
Speaker 1: you gotta do it.
33:13
Speaker 2: I'm going to start making lasagna as a showing up
33:15
Speaker 2: on doorsteps. I really am. I fool like that. I
33:18
Speaker 2: need to do a little better in Florida. I'm, you know, trying,
33:21
Speaker 2: but you need to try a little harder.
33:23
Speaker 1: Yep, I get it.
33:25
Speaker 5: Well.
33:25
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on Normally Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays,
33:28
Speaker 2: and you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. Get
33:32
Speaker 2: in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail dot com.
33:35
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and when things get weird, act normally