Latest / Strictly Education / Nikole Hannah-Jones Ruins Black Kids’ Lives… Even Her Own Daughter’s

Transcript

Nikole Hannah-Jones Ruins Black Kids’ Lives… Even Her Own Daughter’s · Strictly Education

0:00
SPEAKER_07: The anti-racist campaign to transform schools has contributed to every single thing she has encountered in her public school journey.
0:09
SPEAKER_07: Hannah Jones made those schools what they are, and then she dares to be upset because she's had a taste of what she's done to other people's children.
0:31
SPEAKER_07: Today I want to talk about how anti-racist activists ruin the lives of poor children.
0:36
SPEAKER_07: In somewhere like New York, we're talking about black poor children in particular.
0:41
SPEAKER_07: So the reason this is relevant is because of an article written by Nicole Hannah-Jones last weekend.
0:47
SPEAKER_07: If you don't know who she is, Nicole Hannah-Jones is the African-American New York Times journalist who created the 1619 Project.
0:54
SPEAKER_07: The 1619 Project was a campaign to say that the founding date of America should not be understood as 1776 and the Declaration of Independence.
1:05
SPEAKER_07: It should instead be 1619, the year that a slave ship first landed in Virginia.
1:10
SPEAKER_07: This is how it was covered at the time.
1:58
SPEAKER_07: All parents, what do you think they had to do?
2:00
SPEAKER_07: That's right, change.
2:02
SPEAKER_07: And everything needed to change because Nicole Hannah-Jones wanted us to listen to a collection of anti-racist authors who tell us that slavery and racism are what defines America.
2:14
SPEAKER_07: This project made Nicole Hannah-Jones, the author, pretty famous.
2:18
SPEAKER_07: There was a 1619 documentary, there was a 1619 book, she won a Pulitzer Prize.
2:25
SPEAKER_07: There was an entire 1619 school curriculum developed off the back of this.
2:30
SPEAKER_07: We had headlines like this: Your story is in the textbooks.
2:36
SPEAKER_07: Buffalo schools adopt the 1619 project.
2:40
SPEAKER_07: Her own book boasts that schools in every state changed because of her.
2:45
SPEAKER_07: You had a lot of lesson plans based on sections from that book.
2:49
SPEAKER_07: Here's an example of one activity.
2:51
SPEAKER_07: There's a quote from Hannah Jones, which I presume the children are meant to annotate.
2:56
SPEAKER_07: Our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written.
3:01
SPEAKER_07: Black Americans fought to make them true.
3:04
SPEAKER_07: Without this struggle, America would have no democracy at all.
3:07
SPEAKER_07: And you can see that the students have drawn a black fist next to the word fought, and the word yes next to the word false, and written she's smart next to Hannah Jones' name.
3:17
SPEAKER_07: I can't, for the life of me, understand how this helps educate kids, black or otherwise, but we can come back to that later.
3:24
SPEAKER_07: The reason that Nicole Hannah-Jones is in the news is because of an article she wrote about her daughter.
3:29
SPEAKER_07: About 10 years ago, Hannah Jones had written about her choice of school for her daughter, poor in a city, mostly black.
3:37
SPEAKER_07: And she wrote this whole article about how this was a great moral act.
3:41
SPEAKER_07: And in her doing this, she was helping black families everywhere.
3:46
SPEAKER_07: She was saying, if rich, successful people like me, her, send my children to a bad school, then click, it'll become a good school for all those other families.
3:57
SPEAKER_07: And now, ten years later, she's saying that her daughter is angry at her.
4:01
SPEAKER_07: And her daughter is angry because she feels she received a terrible education.
4:06
SPEAKER_07: Now, I think this story is really interesting because it reveals a bunch of ways that rich, anti-racist public voices don't understand schools or culture, or frankly, anything.
4:17
SPEAKER_07: The irony in this whole story is that Hannah Jones is now writing about how outraged she is at the chaos in the education system.
4:24
SPEAKER_07: But she hasn't realized that she's one of the people who created it.
4:29
SPEAKER_07: So, what was wrong with her daughter's school?
4:31
SPEAKER_07: Well, the thing is, Hannah Jones actually made a mini documentary all about her choice of school for her daughter ten years ago.
4:38
SPEAKER_07: Here it is.
4:51
SPEAKER_06: And I think that that's the most important thing that I can give her while also trying to even the playing field a bit for the kids in the school whose parents work hard every day, but they work jobs that they don't have status.
5:04
SPEAKER_06: They don't have access to power.
5:05
SPEAKER_06: They can't write a 10,000-word piece in the New York Times magazine about their experience.
5:10
SPEAKER_06: But I can do that.
5:11
SPEAKER_06: And my presence in the school changes the status for the children or two.
5:16
SPEAKER_07: Just so we're clear, she's saying that the school will be lifted up somehow because of her greatness and her connections.
5:24
SPEAKER_07: Silly me.
5:25
SPEAKER_07: I thought that what made a school good was excellent teaching and strong discipline, not the number of bankers the parents have in their social circles.
5:34
SPEAKER_07: So Hannah Jones wrote about her daughter's experiences in that school.
5:38
SPEAKER_07: The headline from last weekend reads, In fighting for every black child, did I betray my own?
5:45
SPEAKER_07: Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.
5:48
SPEAKER_07: So Hannah Jones starts by writing, We thought by sending Naya to a mostly low-income and black school we could help improve it for all the children there.
5:58
SPEAKER_07: Yes, I see.
5:59
SPEAKER_07: So let her greatness beam all over the school.
6:04
SPEAKER_07: Hannah Jones assumes that because she's rich, she's better than those black families.
6:09
SPEAKER_07: She goes on mentioning her husband.
6:11
SPEAKER_07: I believe Farage and I could bring some of that power with us.
6:16
SPEAKER_07: We had connections and time and status.
6:19
SPEAKER_07: We believe strongly that if families like ours went into schools like this one, it would challenge other families to do the same.
6:26
SPEAKER_07: So her theory is that if rich people like her put their children into poor schools, other rich families will feel inspired, and then the great unwashed of poor children will be cleansed by the arrival of the families who, in her own words, can write checks that exceed the PTA budget.
6:47
unknown: I mean, who says that?
6:49
SPEAKER_07: Then, to her surprise, it didn't work out that way.
6:52
SPEAKER_07: Towards the end of first grade, Naya started sometimes saying she didn't like her school and complaining how chaotic it was at lunch.
6:59
SPEAKER_07: I decided to visit during the lunch period and was shocked by what I saw.
7:03
SPEAKER_07: So the very same person who was confident she could reframe all American identity is shocked by our schools, she explains.
7:12
SPEAKER_07: Children were running wild, chasing, hitting, and pushing each other, while the teachers' aides and cafeteria workers stood by, looking bored.
7:20
SPEAKER_07: She goes on.
7:21
SPEAKER_07: Several times I had to instruct children to stop striking each other and to sit down.
7:25
SPEAKER_07: At one point, physically pulling two boys apart.
7:28
SPEAKER_07: Her daughter told her, it's always like this.
7:31
SPEAKER_07: And that's why I don't want to go to this school.
7:34
SPEAKER_07: So, for those of you who have never seen a school like this, it's pretty common on both sides of the Atlantic.
7:39
SPEAKER_07: Here's an example.
7:40
SPEAKER_07: Madness.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: In Modesto schools, teachers say classrooms are being turned upside down with some students destroying supplies.
7:48
SPEAKER_08: What MS they say a lack of consequences is even making things worse.
7:52
SPEAKER_08: Just following the basic rules, they were out the window.
7:55
SPEAKER_07: Who would have thought it?
7:56
SPEAKER_07: You have a lack of consequences and no real behavior policy.
7:59
SPEAKER_07: Combine that with some kind of progressive curriculum inspired by the 1619 project, maybe.
8:06
SPEAKER_07: And mysteriously, children don't enjoy school.
8:09
SPEAKER_07: Now, some of you might think that's all bloody obvious, but not Nicole Hannah Jones.
8:15
SPEAKER_07: She was shocked.
8:17
SPEAKER_07: Funny that.
8:25
SPEAKER_07: She writes about the callous disregard of the adults.
8:30
SPEAKER_07: I mean, who the hell does this woman think she is?
8:33
SPEAKER_07: I headed straight to the principal's office.
8:35
SPEAKER_07: I sent a lengthy email about what I witnessed and demanded the unsafe lunchroom conditions be addressed.
8:41
SPEAKER_07: Well, thank goodness the Messiah has arrived at public school number 307 to save those poor black children.
8:49
SPEAKER_07: Hannah Jones's lengthy email should finally fix things for them.
8:54
SPEAKER_07: She then noticed that all the other middle-class families were pulling their children out of the school.
8:58
SPEAKER_07: However, she decided that they were going to quote, stay and be a thorn in the principal's side.
9:07
SPEAKER_07: How charming, how helpful, how utterly obnoxious.
9:13
SPEAKER_07: Oddly, though, it turns out that her child, rather than lifting up all the other children, simply wasn't learning much.
9:21
SPEAKER_07: Naya's teachers told us that she was not performing on grade level in any of her academic subjects and that her assessment given at the start of the school year had shown she was not a proficient reader.
9:34
SPEAKER_07: Now I have no Pulitzer Prize for journalism, but it would seem to me that if children are pushing and biting each other, it's possible that the children might not learn as much.
9:44
SPEAKER_07: It's even possible that rich kids who beam their greatness will also fall behind.
9:49
SPEAKER_07: Is that not obvious?
9:51
SPEAKER_07: Apparently not.
9:52
SPEAKER_07: Hannah Jones concludes: it has to be that the teachers don't care enough.
9:57
SPEAKER_07: Our child was suffering, but all these children were, they were languishing in classrooms with educators who did not take their academic potential seriously and largely refused to teach.
10:12
SPEAKER_07: Okay, so this is very interesting.
10:15
SPEAKER_07: Why might the teachers be struggling to teach?
10:18
SPEAKER_07: Hannah Jones doesn't really have much of an answer except that there aren't enough wealthy families or resources.
10:25
SPEAKER_07: That must explain everything.
10:27
SPEAKER_07: So after elementary school, her child then goes to middle school.
10:31
SPEAKER_07: Hannah Jones explains that the school does Black History Month, Spirit Weeks, a Food Justice Club, and that the school has liberal progressive values for its mostly black students.
10:45
SPEAKER_07: It doesn't set any homework and doesn't really have a system of punishments.
10:50
SPEAKER_07: Punishments risk alienating vulnerable minority pupils, of course.
10:55
SPEAKER_07: This sounds like utopia for an anti-racist progressive, like Hannah Jones.
11:01
SPEAKER_07: But dear listener, all did not go to plan.
11:05
SPEAKER_07: She explains.
11:07
SPEAKER_07: But before long, Naya started coming home with familiar complaints.
11:11
SPEAKER_07: She'd bemoan how the less experienced teachers struggled to manage their classrooms and would expend so much attention on the small number of kids acting out.
11:22
SPEAKER_07: There were occasionally fights in the hallway.
11:25
SPEAKER_07: Now be aware, Hannah Jones is clear that it is wrong to remove children from the classroom for bad behavior because, quote, it deprives them of precious learning time.
11:37
SPEAKER_07: But she's now upset because it turns out that if you can never tell off or remove violent or badly behaved pupils, your own child can't learn so well.
11:47
SPEAKER_07: She notes that the school ended up ignoring her daughter.
11:51
SPEAKER_07: They instead prioritized trying to calm down the worst-behaved pupils.
11:55
SPEAKER_07: So then for high school, Hannah Jones let her daughter choose her own school.
12:00
SPEAKER_07: Where did the girl want to go?
12:02
SPEAKER_07: Her top schools were heavily white, located in wealthy, gentrified neighborhoods.
12:09
SPEAKER_07: But it turns out, when she finally got to that white wealthy school, she was behind and then struggled to catch up with the other pupils.
12:17
SPEAKER_07: What a mystery.
12:19
SPEAKER_07: Now at 16, her daughter is angry at Hannah Jones.
12:23
SPEAKER_07: So you had the money to send me to one of the best schools and and you chose not to?
12:29
SPEAKER_07: Because other kids are disadvantaged.
12:31
SPEAKER_07: You didn't want to put me in a great school?
12:35
SPEAKER_07: And Hannah Jones explains to her daughter that she sacrificed her education because of her own radical, progressive, anti-racist politics.
12:45
SPEAKER_07: Okay, so where to begin?
12:48
SPEAKER_07: I want to start with the first and most obvious point.
12:52
SPEAKER_07: Hannah Jones has written extensively about inner city communities for one of the most high-profile magazines in the world.
12:59
SPEAKER_07: And what this shows me is that she has absolutely no idea what's going on in those communities.
13:05
SPEAKER_07: I've spent quite a lot of time in and around inner-city communities, both in the UK and the US, and specifically in New York.
13:13
SPEAKER_07: But you don't need to be an expert to know that there are pretty big problems in the inner city.
13:19
SPEAKER_07: Everyone knows to some extent how teenagers and non-selective high schools behave because they encounter these kids outside of school.
13:27
SPEAKER_07: Here's one example.
13:28
SPEAKER_10: Mayhem at the Queen Center Mall today, police say fights broke out when roughly 1,000 students showed up after a half day of school.
13:37
SPEAKER_10: At least one person was beaten and robbed.
13:39
SPEAKER_10: CBS2's Valerie Castro reports.
13:56
SPEAKER_07: Okay, so just think about it for a minute.
13:58
SPEAKER_07: All that kicking, rioting, stealing, stamping, all of those behaviors that you see there, those kids behave like that inside their schools.
14:08
SPEAKER_07: That tells you how naive Nicole Hannah Jones actually is.
14:12
SPEAKER_07: She's imagining that if her middle class daughter is at that sort of school, other kids will simply become like her.
14:19
SPEAKER_07: Hannah Jones quite clearly has no respect for how hard it is for teachers.
14:24
SPEAKER_07: You can't read very well?
14:26
SPEAKER_07: Huh?
14:27
SPEAKER_07: There's a middle class girl in my class.
14:29
SPEAKER_07: Problem solved.
14:30
SPEAKER_07: The school is in total chaos?
14:32
SPEAKER_07: Huh, not a problem.
14:34
SPEAKER_07: Everyone will behave now that there's a member of the middle class here.
14:38
SPEAKER_07: Remember, her daughter was five years old.
14:43
SPEAKER_07: She's expecting a five-year-old to transform the school's culture.
14:48
SPEAKER_06: Let's listen to her here.
14:50
SPEAKER_06: A New York Times reporter in a high poverty school f ⁇ ing changes the school, right?
14:54
SPEAKER_06: Like there's certain things that just are not gonna happen in that school.
14:59
SPEAKER_06: I can go to that school and say there's a problem and it gets fixed immediately.
15:03
SPEAKER_07: Honestly, honestly, a New York Times reporter effing changes the skull.
15:10
SPEAKER_07: I say there's a problem and it gets fixed immediately.
15:14
SPEAKER_07: I mean the arrogance is staggering.
15:17
SPEAKER_07: She thinks it's so simple.
15:18
SPEAKER_07: Click your rich fingers and all problems disappear.
15:21
SPEAKER_07: Her contempt for the profession is genuinely awful.
15:25
SPEAKER_07: In the article, her assumption is that there are two reasons that schools are failing: there's racism and there's money.
15:32
SPEAKER_07: Now, looking at the two blacker and poorer schools that her daughter went to, they both appear to be extremely well funded by the government.
15:40
SPEAKER_07: For a start, public spending on schools in the US has never been so high.
15:45
SPEAKER_07: On top of that, the education board that spent the most is, well, you guessed it, New York City.
15:52
SPEAKER_07: In fact, spending on education in New York is nearly three times higher than in Arizona or Mississippi, even though Mississippi has plenty of poverty and is currently climbing the literacy tables.
16:04
SPEAKER_07: So what about the schools Hannah Jones sent her daughter to?
16:09
SPEAKER_07: Well, when you look into how much is spent on the school she's writing about, it's quite eye-watering.
16:15
SPEAKER_07: For the first school, it's over$50,000 per pupil per year.
16:21
SPEAKER_07: For the second school, it was again pretty high.
16:24
SPEAKER_07: $32,000 per pupil per year.
16:28
SPEAKER_07: That means that her daughter was going to schools that spent more per pupil than almost any school in history.
16:35
SPEAKER_07: Could it be that something other than money explains what's going on in those classrooms?
16:40
SPEAKER_07: Now, someone might say that's how much you have to spend on schools in the inner city, but that's not true.
16:46
SPEAKER_07: For a start, my inner city school, we get less than a quarter of that sort of money.
16:51
SPEAKER_07: The truth is that the single biggest problem in New York public schools is that they listen to people like Nicole Hannah Jones.
17:00
SPEAKER_07: One of the reasons my school works on less money than that one is that I don't listen to her.
17:06
SPEAKER_07: Does she know what you have to do to make an inner city school work?
17:10
SPEAKER_07: Where the norm is to fight or shout or attack each other?
17:14
SPEAKER_07: I can tell you what you have to do.
17:16
SPEAKER_07: You have to have consequences for children's actions, and you have to punish some children.
17:19
SPEAKER_07: And if some of them threaten teachers or other children with violence, you have to suspend them.
17:25
SPEAKER_07: Otherwise, they'll ruin the lives of all those children.
17:28
SPEAKER_07: They'll also ruin the lives of the teachers and turn them into the people Hannah Jones saw.
17:34
SPEAKER_07: People who were just trying to survive the day.
17:37
SPEAKER_07: You're gonna have to do the opposite of what people like Nicole Hannah-Jones have demanded.
17:42
SPEAKER_07: You'll also have to accept they'll call you racist for trying to do the right thing.
17:48
SPEAKER_07: Why?
17:49
SPEAKER_07: Because of Nicole Hannah-Jones.
17:52
SPEAKER_07: Why are our teachers in minority areas so terrified of disciplining children?
17:57
SPEAKER_07: Because they'll be accused of racism.
18:00
SPEAKER_07: One of the authors included in Nicole Hannah-Jones' book, making her hugely rich and influential, is Abram X.
18:07
SPEAKER_07: Kendi.
18:08
SPEAKER_07: The demand from people like Hannah Jones and Kendi is that we should teach all children to identify white supremacy in the adults around them, including their teachers.
18:20
SPEAKER_07: Here's one best-selling example.
18:22
SPEAKER_07: I even have a copy here for you.
18:24
SPEAKER_07: Anti-racist baby.
18:26
SPEAKER_07: And I'm gonna read some of it to you.
18:29
SPEAKER_07: This is a book written for babies and toddlers.
18:33
SPEAKER_07: Lovely colors, lovely pictures.
18:35
SPEAKER_07: Let's read a bit, shall we?
18:38
SPEAKER_07: Okay.
18:40
SPEAKER_07: Babies are taught to be racist or anti-racist.
18:44
SPEAKER_07: There's no neutrality.
18:47
SPEAKER_07: Take these nine steps to make equity a reality.
18:53
SPEAKER_07: Can you imagine reading this to your toddler?
18:57
SPEAKER_07: Use your words to talk about race.
19:00
SPEAKER_07: No one will see racism if we only stay silent.
19:04
SPEAKER_07: If we don't name racism, it won't stop being so violent.
19:09
SPEAKER_07: Can you imagine reading this to your children at night?
19:14
SPEAKER_07: Now, look here.
19:15
SPEAKER_07: It shows babies pointing out racism because they've been trained to see it.
19:20
SPEAKER_07: They're told society is white supremacist, and so they need to challenge the world around them.
19:28
SPEAKER_07: Okay, so can someone tell me what this means for a white teacher who tries to correct an ethnic minority child?
19:37
SPEAKER_07: A child raised with anti-racist baby has been taught to challenge policies.
19:44
SPEAKER_07: Should that include homework or detention or being made to sit still or look at the teacher?
19:50
SPEAKER_07: Well, plenty of people do call those racist now.
19:54
SPEAKER_07: Because of people like Nicole, Hannah Jones.
19:58
SPEAKER_07: Does she have any idea what this means in practice?
20:01
SPEAKER_07: I can help her out.
20:02
SPEAKER_07: Teachers no longer correct the kids.
20:04
SPEAKER_07: It's too risky.
20:05
SPEAKER_07: In her article, what's her complaint that the teachers don't seem to step in and intervene?
20:10
SPEAKER_07: How dare she?
20:11
SPEAKER_07: I mean, honestly, the hypocrisy makes me sick.
20:14
SPEAKER_07: Here's what Hannah Jones, in one of her own speeches, said to school children.
20:19
SPEAKER_07: We have a society where race plays such a major role in our educational system.
20:24
SPEAKER_07: We know that black and Latino students disproportionately face discipline, even when they're behaving the same way as white students.
20:33
SPEAKER_07: So she's literally told to black children your white teacher might be racist when she tells you off.
20:39
SPEAKER_07: She mentions in her article that she had to physically intervene to split up a fight.
20:45
SPEAKER_07: Does she realize that if a white teacher did that and was accused of racism, they could lose their job, can't pay for their bills, can't provide for their families?
20:55
SPEAKER_07: I mean, that's why they don't get involved, Nicole.
20:58
SPEAKER_07: It's because you ordered them not to.
21:02
SPEAKER_07: Now, her next complaint is that many of the teachers are low quality in her daughter's public school.
21:08
SPEAKER_07: Again, the reasons for this lie closer to home than she might like to admit.
21:12
SPEAKER_07: New York is full of liberal and often very left-wing people like Nicole Hannah-Jones.
21:18
SPEAKER_07: This means that teaching unions are much stronger and have a lot of power.
21:23
SPEAKER_07: One way that unions have protected bad staff in schools is by making sure that it's very difficult to ever fire public school teachers, no matter how bad they are.
21:33
SPEAKER_07: What this means is in public schools in New York, the teachers that schools don't want get moved around to other schools.
21:40
SPEAKER_07: People call this the Dance of the Lemons.
21:44
SPEAKER_07: So where do they end up?
21:46
SPEAKER_07: Well, they go to the schools with the poorer kids.
21:49
SPEAKER_07: Now, people like Nicole Hannah Jones don't write about that because it involves criticizing the self interest of the left.
21:56
SPEAKER_07: She doesn't want to criticize the teaching unions being the Socialist that she is.
22:01
SPEAKER_07: The anti-racist campaign to transform schools, of which she's one of the most significant campaigners, has contributed to every single thing she has encountered in her public school journey.
22:14
SPEAKER_07: She's made the system.
22:15
SPEAKER_07: Hannah Jones made those schools what they are.
22:18
SPEAKER_07: And then she dares to be upset because she's had a taste of what she's done to other people's children.
22:26
SPEAKER_07: Let's go through a list of what anti-racists have campaigned for and what she complains about.
22:31
SPEAKER_07: On student behavior, she notices that there is no hierarchy, there is no respect for adults, there are no consequences for poor behavior.
22:41
SPEAKER_07: Right, so that's exactly what anti-racist educators have been saying we need to do.
22:46
SPEAKER_08: Here's an example.
22:47
SPEAKER_08: It's called restorative discipline.
22:49
SPEAKER_08: The idea is to use relationships to deal with the root issues behind bad behavior at school instead of sending students home.
22:56
SPEAKER_08: For instance, I talked with a teacher who allows students to write down anything they want her to know each day.
23:02
SPEAKER_08: If a student starts acting up, she can go to those notes to find out what may be bothering them before determining if a student needs disciplining.
23:23
SPEAKER_07: So get rid of the punishment, that's what they're saying.
23:25
SPEAKER_07: Bring in restorative approaches where children can explain their feelings.
23:30
SPEAKER_07: So why should we do this?
23:32
SPEAKER_07: It helps end racial biases because punishments can affect minority children and therefore, in anti-racist thinking, be a form of racism.
23:42
SPEAKER_07: Here's two teachers discussing how our mindset needs to shift.
23:46
SPEAKER_09: So, in so, for the example in the classroom where maybe you maybe you're realizing that you need to approach your students more as a partner.
23:53
SPEAKER_09: But in doing so, you're gonna have to undo some harm that may have been caused.
23:57
SPEAKER_09: You're gonna have to rebuild some trust.
23:59
SPEAKER_09: You're going to see the pushback and the behavior before you see the reward, because their behavior is their way of communicating an unmet need.
24:07
SPEAKER_09: And that's my job as your educator to make sure your needs are met.
24:10
SPEAKER_09: Tell me what I need to do.
24:12
SPEAKER_09: That's how you level that playing field and that hierarchy in your classroom.
24:17
SPEAKER_07: Accept the behavior as an expression of unmet need.
24:20
SPEAKER_07: That's exactly what the teachers in her daughter's school are doing.
24:23
SPEAKER_07: They're accepting the behaviors rather than punishing.
24:26
SPEAKER_07: What's her next complaint?
24:27
SPEAKER_07: That in her child's middle school, the naughtyest pupils seem to get the most attention.
24:32
SPEAKER_07: Well, of course they did.
24:34
SPEAKER_07: If you aren't going to discipline pupils, then you need to focus all your efforts on containing the most challenging kids.
24:43
SPEAKER_07: This is obvious to literally anyone, not distracted by whatever fancy parties New York Times journalists go to.
24:50
SPEAKER_07: Let's go back to what Hannah Jones' daughter noticed.
24:54
SPEAKER_07: Her teachers often rewarded the problem students for doing the littlest things right.
24:59
SPEAKER_07: Meanwhile, the students who always did what they were supposed to went unrecognized.
25:04
SPEAKER_07: What her daughter hasn't realized is that one of the architects of this school system are people like her mother.
25:13
SPEAKER_07: Even the title of the article, In Fighting for Every Black Child, I Betrayed My Own.
25:20
SPEAKER_07: Now, Nicole, you betrayed everyone's children.
25:23
SPEAKER_07: Then you got upset when you realized it affected your child, too.
25:27
SPEAKER_07: Most parents with kids in those public schools, they don't have Hannah Jones' influence.
25:32
SPEAKER_07: She's right there.
25:33
SPEAKER_07: But so many kids have to suffer in schools that are far worse than the one in this story, thanks to the campaigning of Nicole Hannah Jones.
25:45
SPEAKER_07: Lots of schools have listened to her demands for a move away from punishment, which is racist, apparently, towards restorative justice.
25:53
SPEAKER_07: We've already said that restorative justice has been introduced in lots of places, including Houston.
26:00
SPEAKER_07: So, what happened to Houston a few years later?
26:03
SPEAKER_07: One in three teachers have quit.
26:05
SPEAKER_07: Let's listen as to why.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: Teachers and school staff in the Houston area are facing a rise in student attacks, and not just a small one.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: KPRC2 dug into the records from 25 school districts and found a jump of more than 8% last school year from the previous year.
26:21
SPEAKER_05: And we're talking about serious injuries, bruises, cuts, even broken bones, affecting not just teachers, but everyone who plays a part in your child's education.
26:30
SPEAKER_05: Our Zach Lajway has the story of a local teacher who's been through it and is calling for bigger changes to keep our school safe.
26:41
SPEAKER_03: He said, I'm going to kill you.
26:43
SPEAKER_02: This teacher, who we'll call Joe, taught middle school in Houston Independent School District for more than five years.
26:50
SPEAKER_02: Life for Joe changed last October when he became one of the many educators injured by a student in Texas each year.
26:58
SPEAKER_02: Physically assaulting me.
26:59
SPEAKER_03: Physically assaulted me, jumped on my back and started punching me.
27:02
SPEAKER_03: Joe says he wasn't prepared for this kind of violence.
27:05
SPEAKER_03: I did what I thought was necessary to make myself safe, as well as all the students around me.
27:12
SPEAKER_07: Jumped on his back, broken bones, telling you to F off.
27:16
SPEAKER_07: And what are our anti-racist elites telling us?
27:19
SPEAKER_07: Well, punishment is racist, accept the behavior.
27:22
SPEAKER_07: And so you end up with schools exactly like the one both that poor teacher and Hannah Jones' daughter describes.
27:28
SPEAKER_07: Did behavior problems exist before?
27:30
SPEAKER_07: Yes.
27:31
SPEAKER_07: But it's now worse because of people like Nicole Hannah Jones.
27:35
SPEAKER_07: She says she was outraged by the behavior in her daughter's school.
27:40
SPEAKER_07: So, Nicole, if you're watching, you made that happen.
27:44
SPEAKER_07: The teachers she's judging who don't intervene, they are the ones who haven't quit.
27:49
SPEAKER_07: They're the ones putting up with the beatings in part because of her.
27:53
SPEAKER_07: Now let's take her next complaint.
27:55
SPEAKER_07: Her daughter does not appear to have had a rigorous grounding in the basics of maths and English.
28:00
SPEAKER_07: Okay, just so we know, the work of Hannah Jones and other writers like her inspired a lot of school boards to adopt anti-racism charters.
28:09
SPEAKER_07: This means considering ways in which individual subjects were white supremacists.
28:15
SPEAKER_07: So in California, for example, in the published A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.
28:26
SPEAKER_07: So one of the ways white supremacy crept into maths, they said, was that there was a disproportionate focus on getting the right answer.
28:37
SPEAKER_07: Yes, you heard that right.
28:40
SPEAKER_07: The idea was that because white and Asian children appeared to be doing better at maths, it had to be the case that something in our maths culture was racist.
28:50
SPEAKER_07: It isn't that we need to improve schools in poorer areas where black and brown children mostly live.
28:55
SPEAKER_07: We need to change maths.
28:57
SPEAKER_07: That means not placing such an emphasis on getting it right.
29:01
SPEAKER_07: In fact, maybe maths in general is racist.
29:05
SPEAKER_07: Here's one academic inspired by anti-racism like the 1619 project.
29:11
SPEAKER_12: Humans were like, hey, here's a stick, here's another.
29:14
SPEAKER_12: That was not racist.
29:16
SPEAKER_12: We're on the same page with that.
29:18
SPEAKER_12: Okay.
29:18
SPEAKER_12: One plus one equals two?
29:19
SPEAKER_12: Yes.
29:20
SPEAKER_12: Okay.
29:21
SPEAKER_12: Humans have then used math and numbers and statistics in all sorts of ways, from counting black and brown bodies as they made them property and brought them over to these lands to much more recently scholars who said that white people were more intelligent than people of color.
29:36
SPEAKER_12: That's called scientific racism, the use of statistics and tools to construct the idea.
29:43
SPEAKER_04: Just because people with slavery, does it make counting racist?
29:50
SPEAKER_04: You understand?
29:50
SPEAKER_04: Something could be related to each other, but not a causation.
29:55
SPEAKER_04: You understand what I mean?
29:57
SPEAKER_07: Do you understand what statistics is?
30:00
SPEAKER_07: Okay, so you need to understand.
30:02
SPEAKER_07: That kind of academic is the type who trains our teachers and tells them that sort of thing.
30:08
SPEAKER_07: What do you think our teachers now do when they notice a black child's grammar isn't so good?
30:13
SPEAKER_07: Will they correct them?
30:15
SPEAKER_07: Or view street language as an equal form of communication?
30:19
SPEAKER_07: Tell them not to worry in maths about getting the right answer, perhaps?
30:23
SPEAKER_07: White guilt, which is created by Hannah Jones, means instead of that woman helping black and brown children to read, she's focusing instead on this insane, patronizing garbage.
30:34
SPEAKER_07: Do you know who that hurts?
30:35
SPEAKER_07: Black kids.
30:37
SPEAKER_07: Nicole Hannah Jones's next complaint is that no one gave her daughter a clear and honest assessment of how she's doing in school.
30:44
SPEAKER_07: She's saying, why hasn't she been pushed to high standards?
30:48
SPEAKER_07: Why haven't there been clear and regular tests so that we can all know her progress?
30:53
SPEAKER_07: Well, then again, I don't know.
30:55
SPEAKER_07: I seem to remember reading somewhere that testing and exams are a little bit racist.
31:00
SPEAKER_07: Not long after the 1619 project launched, there were lots of headlines from teaching unions like this: The racist beginnings of standardized testing.
31:13
SPEAKER_07: And in fact, lots of schools try not to rely on regular tests anymore because it causes stress or anxiety for the pupils.
31:21
SPEAKER_07: And if that anxiety happens to be experienced by pupils from minority backgrounds, that would, by anti-racist logic, be discriminatory.
31:30
SPEAKER_07: The only reason that Hannah Jones is noticing our problem here is that she's seeing that it's hurting her own daughter.
31:38
SPEAKER_07: My final point on what this whole thing reveals is the utter snobbery and contempt that Hannah Jones has for ordinary teachers.
31:47
SPEAKER_07: Let's just walk through all the ways she shows disdain for people who are actually on the ground day in, day out, getting sworn at, punched, kicked, and spat on.
31:58
SPEAKER_07: First, she argues that the education system and therefore by implication, a lot of its teachers are racist.
32:04
SPEAKER_07: Then she argues that schools that actually do try to stop bad behavior might be racist too, and has actually told children to look out for this.
32:13
SPEAKER_07: Then she insults those teachers by saying openly that simply by having her child being in the building, her power will make the school better.
32:24
SPEAKER_07: She then demeans the teachers for not intervening on behavior, even though she regards those interventions as racist.
32:32
SPEAKER_07: But what's worse is that when all of these awful things come home to roost and have undermined her own daughter, just look at what she does to the principal of the middle school.
32:44
SPEAKER_07: First, she demands to see the principal to tell her that the standards don't seem good enough.
32:49
SPEAKER_07: This poor principal is bending over backwards, trying to please Hannah Jones.
32:55
SPEAKER_07: She's done her special Black History Month and taken the kids to Hamilton and told Nicole Hannah-Jones just how anti-racist she is.
33:04
SPEAKER_07: She's followed the exact behavior policies Nicole Hannah-Jones wants.
33:09
SPEAKER_07: Hannah Jones then arranges a meeting where her daughter then tells the principal that naughty children, well, they seem to get too much attention, the very thing she has created.
33:22
SPEAKER_07: This principal, who is trying her best to please the great Nicole Hannah-Jones, then apologizes to the girl and to her mother, begging for forgiveness.
33:33
SPEAKER_07: The principal then immediately comes up with an award ceremony to keep Hannah Jones on side, giving her daughter a prize.
33:40
SPEAKER_07: She's saying, Look, look, look, I'll do whatever you say.
33:44
SPEAKER_07: But that still isn't good enough.
33:46
SPEAKER_07: When Hannah Jones's daughter goes off to the more affluent white high school, she's so vindictive that she actually records her daughter complaining again about her middle school.
33:57
SPEAKER_07: She then goes to see the principal of the old middle school, and she plays this horrible recording to her about how awful the school is.
34:06
SPEAKER_07: And this same principal, you know, who who tried so hard to please them.
34:11
SPEAKER_07: And this is what Hannah Jones writes.
34:13
SPEAKER_07: As I stopped playing the recording, Paige, the principal, sat still, tears welling in her eyes, her face beginning to flush.
34:25
SPEAKER_07: Let's get this straight.
34:26
SPEAKER_07: Nicole Hannah Jones demanded that schools be anti-racist and progressive.
34:30
SPEAKER_07: She then gets exactly what she asked for.
34:33
SPEAKER_07: Her guilty white principal, desperate to appease her, is then left saying, Did I do enough?
34:39
SPEAKER_07: Am I a decent white person now?
34:41
SPEAKER_07: Hannah Jones then humiliates the principal by blaming her for an educational culture she herself created, and then tells all in an article, basically blaming the teachers whose lives she has made completely impossible.
34:57
SPEAKER_07: Has this woman any idea how hard it is to get up every morning, go into school, get sworn at and punched and accused by parents constantly?
35:08
SPEAKER_07: Then pick yourself up and go again the next day and keep going, getting accused of racism by people like Nicole Hannah-Jones, who will be earning 10 times the salaries of these teachers.
35:20
SPEAKER_07: Does she know how hard it is to keep going, to keep fighting?
35:23
SPEAKER_07: Does she have any idea?
35:25
SPEAKER_07: And the sad fact is that because of people like her, for any of those school leaders who by some miracle manage to do right by their children, they have to go to war and accept that they'll be hated by a whole load of people.
35:39
SPEAKER_07: They need to be strict, even though the boundaries those inner city children need will be seen as racist.
35:44
SPEAKER_07: They need to have those high standards, knowing that they'll be accused again and again because elites have told everyone that those standards are racist.
35:54
SPEAKER_07: And then Hannah Jones has the audacity to say that she fought for every black child.
36:00
SPEAKER_07: I've been doing this for nearly 30 years in the exact communities that Hannah Jones claims to try to help.
36:07
SPEAKER_07: I know what it takes to get those kids to match or exceed privileged children.
36:12
SPEAKER_07: Do you know what makes the fight in the inner city a hundred times harder?
36:17
SPEAKER_07: People like Nicole Hannah Jones.
36:19
SPEAKER_07: You didn't fight for every black child.
36:22
SPEAKER_07: Your ideology attacks every black child and it keeps them poor, often for their entire lives.
36:28
SPEAKER_07: How dare you stand there posing in your fancy house with your fancy artwork, talking about your money and your connections and saying that your presence alone will simply change those schools?
36:40
SPEAKER_07: How dare you undermine every teacher of ethnic minority kids while getting rich from peddling total lies about an education system which, by your own admission, you seem to know vanishingly little.
36:53
SPEAKER_07: Every ordinary black family who just wants their little boy or girl to have a rigorous education, they are the ones you betrayed, just so we're clear.
37:03
SPEAKER_07: All the teachers slaving away all hours trying to make it work while you swan around giving your speeches, they are the ones you betrayed.
37:12
SPEAKER_07: You are the problem, and you only care about this now, because for once this crap that you peddle has come back to touch your family.
37:23
SPEAKER_07: Well, look, you know, I I don't want any kid to struggle in school, so I feel for the girl.
37:28
SPEAKER_07: But let's be grown up about how we got here.
37:31
SPEAKER_07: We got here because you got us here, Nicole.
37:35
SPEAKER_07: Black children, frankly, all children, deserve better.
37:39
SPEAKER_07: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we are all for and what strictly education is all about.
37:50
SPEAKER_07: Right, so I have something to tell you, which is that um I've got a book coming out in November.
37:56
SPEAKER_07: And um, look, I've got uh the cover here.
37:59
SPEAKER_07: It's called Diversity is not our strength.
38:02
SPEAKER_07: And I know some of you might think, what?
38:04
SPEAKER_07: How can she say that?
38:05
SPEAKER_07: Well, the subtitle is How Left and Right Broke Multiculturalism and How to Fix It.
38:11
SPEAKER_07: I think I do a pretty good job of criticizing both the left and the right on this.
38:15
SPEAKER_07: Uh so uh, well, you'll just have to wait and see.
38:18
SPEAKER_07: As I say, it comes out in November, and maybe a couple of future uh strictly episodes, I'll talk a little bit about what has inspired me to write this.
38:26
SPEAKER_07: So now I get to answer a few questions from all of you.
38:29
SPEAKER_07: If you have a question that you'd like answered, put it in the comments below.
38:32
SPEAKER_07: And of course, listen, we need to subscribe to the channel.
38:36
SPEAKER_07: Too many people watch this and don't subscribe.
38:38
SPEAKER_07: Subscribe to the channel.
38:39
SPEAKER_07: And um, you can find me on X as ever uh at miss underscore Snuffy.
38:46
SPEAKER_07: So now, question number one.
38:48
SPEAKER_07: Uh Sasha B.
38:49
SPEAKER_07: Kitty asks, first, hello, I have subscribed recently.
38:53
SPEAKER_07: Hooray, Sasha, subscribe! That's what everybody needs to do.
38:56
SPEAKER_07: And I love your videos.
38:58
SPEAKER_07: Uh, they get me through cleaning the house.
39:01
SPEAKER_07: Well, I'm glad Sasha to be helping with the cleaning.
39:04
SPEAKER_07: My child is nowhere near school age yet, but when the time comes, we'll be moving to a foreign country.
39:09
SPEAKER_07: And it scares me to think how much a school can shape my kid.
39:13
SPEAKER_07: Do you have any tips or a list of what questions I should ask the schools when choosing what will be best for my child?
39:19
SPEAKER_07: What should I look for as good signs for or red flags?
39:22
SPEAKER_07: Well, great questions.
39:23
SPEAKER_07: So, look, Sasha, I don't know where you're going.
39:26
SPEAKER_07: Now, if you're going to a Western country, um, that's where you need to really look out for the sort of stuff that Nicole Hannah Jones is pushing.
39:35
SPEAKER_07: Nicole Hannah-Jones in the 1619 project really has created a culture, I'd say across the Western world, which has uh affected our schools in a really horrible way, that's made them very anti-racist and very woke.
39:50
SPEAKER_07: So look out for the the key signs for that.
39:54
SPEAKER_07: Um, now, in addition to that, look out for poor behavior.
39:57
SPEAKER_07: I always say look at the kids leaving the school at the end of the school day when they're arriving in the morning and then when they're on the buses and so on and see what they're like.
40:05
SPEAKER_07: And if you think they're well behaved, then that will give you some good insight.
40:09
SPEAKER_07: Definitely go and visit the school, see if you can get into the school during the school day and walk by lessons.
40:14
SPEAKER_07: When you look at the lessons, look to see the kids.
40:17
SPEAKER_07: Are they sitting up?
40:17
SPEAKER_07: Are they listening?
40:18
SPEAKER_07: Are they participating?
40:19
SPEAKER_07: Are they asleep on the tables?
40:20
SPEAKER_07: I mean, what's going on?
40:22
SPEAKER_07: Um, you know, schools that care about things like uniform, they care about the small details, uh, that often makes a difference.
40:30
SPEAKER_07: Um, sometimes people like to choose religious schools.
40:33
SPEAKER_07: Often they can be more traditional.
40:34
SPEAKER_07: And talk to the kids.
40:36
SPEAKER_07: You know, if they are coming out of the school at the end of the day, ask them what they think.
40:39
SPEAKER_07: You know, good luck.
40:41
SPEAKER_07: Okay, Rodrigo from Brazil asked, how do you engage with indoctrinated teachers and ensure that the facts are taught?
40:47
SPEAKER_07: For instance, as you mentioned already, the different alternatives uh to teach who was Churchill.
40:52
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I once said about how you could teach Churchill differently.
40:55
SPEAKER_07: Um, you could teach him as a really bad racist man, or you could teach him as a complex man.
41:00
SPEAKER_07: Um now, you you gotta think about the resources.
41:05
SPEAKER_07: So, one way in which uh Hannah Jones has uh really affected uh the teaching in our schools across the Western world is that the curricula that's now written, the textbooks and the booklets and so on that people produce are tinged or or immersed in this anti-racist culture.
41:24
SPEAKER_07: Uh so we've actually just written our own stuff here at Michaela because we have to, because we don't want to touch the stuff from outside, because actually I just think it's all quite poisonous.
41:33
SPEAKER_07: So ideally, you you you sort of rewrite the the resources that your your teachers are going to use, and that means all of the teachers sort of coming together and trying to do it.
41:43
SPEAKER_07: But I mean, I know it's hard.
41:45
SPEAKER_07: Like it's hard.
41:46
SPEAKER_07: I I'm not suggesting it's easy.
41:48
SPEAKER_07: KickX Academy asks, I'm a 57-year-old martial arts school teacher.
41:54
SPEAKER_07: I run a school in Gloucester and I use martial arts to teach personal development.
41:58
SPEAKER_07: Your approach is a breath of fresh air.
42:01
SPEAKER_07: Well, really, a tornado.
42:04
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I'm a bit of a tornado sometimes.
42:06
SPEAKER_07: So, quick question.
42:07
SPEAKER_07: Who was Michaela to you?
42:09
SPEAKER_07: You showed her she seemed like a great lady.
42:12
SPEAKER_07: She was.
42:13
SPEAKER_07: She was great.
42:15
SPEAKER_07: Um she was.
42:17
SPEAKER_07: She was a colleague of mine.
42:19
SPEAKER_07: Um, I worked in South London with her for many years, uh, seven years.
42:23
SPEAKER_07: Uh, she was my second in charge of our languages department, and um, she was originally from St.
42:28
SPEAKER_07: Lucia.
42:29
SPEAKER_07: So she had sort of old school Caribbean values, and um, she expected a lot from the kids.
42:34
SPEAKER_07: And the kids loved being in her classroom because she was super strict.
42:39
SPEAKER_07: Um, they learned loads from her, and um, she would always sort of get annoyed with the fact that the younger teachers coming into the profession were, you know, too relaxed and were wouldn't hold the standards high enough, and then she'd try and get others to to just hold their standards higher.
42:56
SPEAKER_07: And every every day at 5:30, her partner would come honk, honk the horn outside, and she would be grabbing all our things, and she'd say, I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go, he's gonna kill me.
43:10
SPEAKER_07: She was great.
43:11
SPEAKER_07: She was great.
43:12
SPEAKER_07: There's a picture of her, there's a photograph of her up in our in our um lobby downstairs um where guests come in.
43:19
SPEAKER_07: Kick X, you'd be very welcome to come and visit us sometime, and um, you can see her, and I'll have a chat when you come.
43:26
SPEAKER_07: Okay, so that's all we've got time for today.
43:29
SPEAKER_07: I've got a school to run, you've got things to do.
43:32
SPEAKER_07: Until next time with Strictly Education, hold the line, strength and honor.
43:36
SPEAKER_07: Thanks for dropping by.