Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Truth Exchange podcast, the unique program where we have conversations about worldview all through the lens of oneism and two ISM. This lens is based on Romans 1:25. We've exchanged the truth about God for the lie, worship and serve creation rather than the Creator who is blessed forevermore. I'm your host, Joshua Gilo and Mary, my partner in crime is back with us in the studio. Well, we have a special guest for the program on the program, Mr. Bob Weller, who is no guest to some of our, our friends at interview with Exchange. Many know Bob already through Mary Weller's writings. And Bob, you are married to Mary.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Thanks Joshua. Yes, I am married to Mary. It's quite an honor to be married to your co host and she's actually helped me quite a bit on the way oneism and two ism works in the public education system as well. So it's really helped me to provide discussions that typically are not held at a school board level.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: So this episode is going to be a on the floor behind the scenes episode where we want to talk with you, Bob, a little bit about because you are not a theologian in the professional sense, but you have, have made use of some of our resources. At least the one is an enthusiasm paradigm within the sphere that, that you're involved with or a sector of education.
So first let's, let's, let's do this. Let's talk about what it is that you do in the education sector and we'll, we'll build upon it from there.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: All right, thanks, Joshua. Well, about two and a half years ago, our neighbor up the street decided that she was not going to rerun for school board again.
So we started talking and it looked like something that I wanted to do for the community.
So in I guess it was the fall of 2022, we started doing door knocking and sending out postcards and I got elected to the Escondido Union High School Board in November of 2022. And I've been on the board for two and a half years. I'm up for re election next year in 2026.
Some people ask me about term limits. There are no term limits.
And so there's five members.
So all California school boards have five members to them and I am one of five this year. I happen to be the president of the board.
Ours sets up on a year by year round robin basis where so after three years I end up being the president. So I sit and as president you do not have any additional power over the rest of the Board like a strong mayor concept, or an executive like the president or governor. You do run meetings. So it gets a little complicated for a while just knowing Robert's rules of order, order of the agenda, and still trying to keep what you're trying to say regarding to the topic in mind. So it's a little stressful. But after six months of doing that, now I feel like I'm up to speed.
[00:03:25] Speaker C: He's become more Presbyterian because he had to learn how to be the president of the board than ever before.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: You know, there was a number of years ago, and I think it was actually Gavin Newsom who said this, and the phrase goes, as California goes, so goes the nation.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Well, I don't know if you were setting me up for the perfect segue, Joshua, but you have set me up for the perfect segue in the fact that basically being on the school board is very interesting. There's a document called the lcap. Lcap, it's an acronym because I live in the world of acronyms, probably as many as the military stands for Local Control Accountability Plan. And that plan designates, you know, different sections, you know, just what classes are going to be taught and all that. But effectively what it does is it drives the funding behind the scenes.
The ironic thing, and this is the thing, and yeah, we'll just get political in here, that the way Marxism is set up is it's opposite speak.
And so Local Control Accountability Plan has nothing to do with local control.
As a matter of fact, the board had some, you know, members on it that viewed society from a conservative perspective, but all their votes were basically just approving what the administration put together.
And we have the same exact problems, poor academics, lack of student achievement that any other district in the nation has.
And so we only have, where are we, 5,600 students, plus or minus maybe 5,900 somewhere in there, down from 9,000 a decade ago.
They often blame it. Well, people are leaving California. There's demographically less children being born, but technically most of the students have fled the California public school system to charter schools, to home schools, to private schools.
And so one of the things that's hard, and I'll go back to the LCAP here in a second, is really trying to have a factual conversation with the administration.
And I do get along with our superintendent, John Peterson. He really, he's a newer superintendent to us. He's been in the system 30 years, but he's been our superintendent about two and a half years now.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: And.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: But just having them see the reality of it, because I'm like, the reality of it is we're down 30% and we're going to be down another 25% in the next six years per the demographics. And I'm like, you know, they're like, well, all these other issues. And it's like, no, the issue is that we're doing a terrible job.
And so the lcap, the Local Control Accountability Plan, I really started pressing on it this year saying, wait, why are we only showing 2 to 3% achievement growth in all categories when our average 11th grade math score, based on California state tests, 18% of our students are at math grade level.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: That means 80% are not.
English is a little better. I think we're somewhere between 40 and 50% are at grade level.
And then. So what I run into is on this LCAP local control, which I'll talk a little bit more here in a second, is that they say, well, it's just a compliance document. You know, we just, we just need to turn it in with the 2 to 3% growth.
And. But then all of a sudden, every other document that I'm approving and seeing refers back to the lcap. And I'm like, wait a minute, here it is again in our master plan. LCAP's the number one goal. So anyway, I approved it, signed it off this year to get it off our desk, but I'm like, we need a big goal. I want 80% of the students at grade level in a decade.
And so what you find in California school boards is that everything comes down from the State assembly into the Department of California, Department of Education, and that's blended together with the California School Board association, one of the very finest Marxist organizations in the world.
And then they push down all these requirements on top of us that have nothing to do with math, English, science, history, you know, and so, yeah, so that's. I'll stop talking at that point for that.
[00:08:30] Speaker C: I think, like, two good examples of what Bob's talking about, too, with local control. The, the local control issue is that the board is held to it. Like they, they have to meet that to get their funding.
The. The students in our district. So I'll talk about our district specifically. The students in our district are failing at amazing rates. I think Bob didn't. Isn't there one of our schools? Only 8% of the students are at grade level. So 92% of the students, 92 out of every hundred, are not at grade level in math.
But what has gotten pushed down from the state this year? So the board's trying to deal with the fact that our kids can't do math. They're trying to deal with the fact that less than half of our kids can really read and write appropriately.
And what got pushed down from the state this year was ethnic studies.
And so by the year 2030, they have to have kids taking ethnic studies to graduate. So all of this time and energy is going into having teachers talk to kids about their race and about their socioeconomic status and about their oppression.
And we did. Bob started to see some of, like, the wording and ethnic studies curriculum that was coming down. And when we really dug into that, because he was. He's been paying attention to this from a very different angle, we realized it was truly a critical race theory Marxist curriculum that was being pressed down. But we're getting nothing from the state about math. We're getting nothing from the state about English.
It's all this kind of stuff. And one of the things that's on the slate for the state in California right now, in addition to this ethnic studies requirement, is that they are adding LGBTQ to the local control requirements. And so they're gonna have to be doing special stuff for LGBTQ students.
Doesn't have to do with math or reading.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Okay, so what I'm hearing then is rather than teaching things like phonics, how to read, grammar, language arts, math, science, where they've swapped it out for a different type of curriculum.
And so is that right?
[00:10:53] Speaker B: I mean, no, they're just. I was looking for an email regarding what Mary's just saying, but we still have all the mandatory classes. It's known as A through G. So there's a college path that the state of California mandates. And you need to have a certain amount of math, a certain amount of English, a certain amount of second language, certain amount of history, things like that. It's known as A through G.
And that gets you set up for a Cal School, University of California, or Cal State School. And so you have that. And then, oh, by the way, you need to now take this, and then you need to take another class. So then instead of, like, having kids have two math classes, one to bring them up to speed and one at their current grade level, they're having to take all these other classes. So getting in the weeds a little bit.
What we did is we made the ethnic studies super hyperlocal, and we blended it into an English class, 9th grade English.
And there's a rich culture, Hispanic culture, and diversity here in Escondido with, you know, the Spanish American wars, with Rancheros and so we rewrote it to be very much encompassing. Well, what is the cultural diversity here in Escondido locally, as opposed to things that honestly don't apply to us, that there are as many other cultures that we just don't see in Escondido. And so now we folded it into English so then they can read a few English books and write papers about a different culture. Our district is 88% Hispanic, so it's not like we're dealing with a 90%, you know, white district where maybe they've just never had that, you know, cultural influence that they need. But so instead of bringing in certain other topics that were just not going to help the kids, especially with using language like that. English is the language of the oppressor of capitalism. And, you know, well, other, you know, conservative language, we got rid of all that. And, and actually, Mary helped me a lot because when we were reading the, the.
The outline that the teachers had worked on for two years, you know, she was reading, it was. It was literal gibberish. And there was one word she said, two words, and she said, get the source documents. What were the source documents that they wrote? And if there's only one thing I have out of this broadcast for everybody that's listening on a school board is always ask for the source documents that are driving the. The curriculum. Because as soon as I asked for the source documents, you may keep this in the podcast, you may not, but there's a movie that I find amazing, which is Enemy of the State with Will Smith and Gene Hackman. And Will Smith is getting just buried by the intelligence community. And Gene Hackman comes along and starts throwing off his bugs and his clothes. And the guys, the bad guys are like, he's getting help, guys.
And when I went to the meeting and asked, I need the source documents, I could just fill the whole room, just freak out silently going, not the source documents.
And sure enough, we came across a book called Rethinking Ethnic Studies that went in and literally said in the introduction, english is the language of the oppressors and, and the colonizers and the patriarchy. That was the word I was looking for. And the capitalists. And even though some of us who speak Spanish on this, writing this book, that too is the language of the victors and the colonizers. And so I, I went to them, I said, I will read this in open open session if you don't take a stand on this. And of course, because honestly, they're afraid of everything.
You know, it's just really remarkable. They're afraid of any controversial topic coming out because then all the activists come out, and then the activists start calling us names and saying why we hate people.
And yet what's been really neat, and this comes down to absolute truth, is that I have always just gone to absolute truth when I talk about things.
And you, you, you can try to have an argument against absolute truth, but the facts and truth are facts and truth. And that has always helped serve me well.
So for now, that's. I'll leave it at that for that.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: So what are the challenges for Christian parents that are going to hear this podcast? And they have their child in a public school. Some may be here in the state of California, some may be in other states.
We have a very wide listenership. And so I'm sure some Christian parents may have heard this for the first time. Maybe they've been hearing about it and saying, yeah, that's just not my school.
What could they do?
Yeah, basically pull my kid out of the school system.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: No, no. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be sitting on a public school board if I didn't feel like this was.
This is a national emergency.
I don't know what the exact number is, but I want to say 90% of all kids are in the public system.
You know, it might be a little lower, but still the vast majority of kids are in the public system, and we need to speak truth in love in the public system. So two things for parents are this whatever bad thing you read about in the news in New York, Louisiana, Chicago, it's in your school system, end of story. It is.
It's.
Look, we live in a town of 200,000 people. Our high school district is 5,400 kids.
Everything you could imagine that you see in the paper is in my district.
So that's number one. It's already there. Don't think that it's not. And then number two is you must go to each teacher and go to your teacher and just chat with them and, and then ask them if they have a section of library books in their room that the kids can check out and look at those books. What is in those books? What are the title of those books? And I, I don't care if it's math or computer coding or things that you would think have nothing to do with theology, gender, racism.
You go look and see what books are in that classroom. So go to your teacher, your kids, teachers, they probably, you know, in high school have four or five teachers and know exactly. Walk around look what's in the classroom, you know, and you may find some teachers that are sticking to just curriculum, which is excellent, but for the most part they have been trained in teaching colleges over the last 20 years that have already been completely sold out to Marxist ideology.
And so, you know, the teachers, 99% of the, well, 99% of teachers in California, but probably a large majority of teachers in other school districts around the country have already been indoctrinated into the system. And so that's where you get things like, you know, your authentic self, know my journey, you know, very.
Help me with a good word for that, Mary.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: But it's like loaded, like kind of propagandistic or ideological terms. And I just, I just want to say too, I recently spoke, Joshua, I think we talked about this on, on another podcast, but I recently spoke in a very rural community in southern Illinois that was right up against Missouri. So just a very conservative kind of area, although St. Louis is not, but the suburbs around that area and in southern Illinois and very good school districts, you know, they're high achieving school districts. But I went in and started just looking up book titles of some of the books that I know of that are problematic. Problematic and that are often used in public schools to specifically communicate the trans message. And I found them in every, every surrounding district. I mean, there was not, I would do like a half hour driving radius from the place that I was speaking. And I found every single book available in children's libraries, available on the teen sections.
It's, it's everywhere. And, and the vehicle for some of this too is the National Education Association. And I mean, years ago, you and I sat down and went through the National Education Association's transgender policy documents that they then allocate out to the states. And then from the states through the teachers unions, they, they trickle down.
And I want to speak to what Bob is saying from a little bit of a different angle too, because we have a lot of listeners who, their kids are in homeschool, their kids are in private Christian school. And so I think a lot of people feel like, oh, well, it's not, it's not going to hit us there.
But we have found homeschool curriculum that is, you know, like widely used in a lot of places that actually has this information coming in because they're hiring educators out of the colleges who have been trained in this stuff then to go into curriculum development.
And so it, it infiltrates into homeschool circles that way.
We have multiple instances in charter schools that are classically based and largely conservative as far as the administration is concerned, where there are certain teachers who have come to come in and start like an art club or whatever, and it's turned out to actually be a front for a gsa.
And even if your kids are not in all of that, the entire surrounding community of kids are. And so you need to be concerned about it whether your kids are in there or not, because your kids are going to have to live with the kids who are being indoctrinated this way.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:21] Speaker C: So there's no, there's no instance, I think, where any of us can say, well, that's not my issue.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:29] Speaker C: It is absolutely our issue because it's the culture in which our kids are going to have to live. Yeah. No matter how we school them.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: And I, you know, I've been saying this for years on the podcast, Mary, and you've heard me say it. You better catechize your children otherwise the devil will. And yeah, the, you know, if parents weren't reset from COVID shutdowns, where parents had to take on educating for periods of time during the mandated shutdowns.
And I think that that alerted.
[00:22:07] Speaker C: A.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Good number of folks to some of the issues at hand and actually got them to be involved. And I think that's very helpful, Mary and Bob, that what you are alerting our listeners to is that just because you're in a Christian school or you're in pri, in some sort of private sector or you're doing it at home does not mean that you're safe from the dangers that could lurk into the curriculum. But also it doesn't mean that you're safe because your children eventually are going to go out into the big ocean.
[00:22:45] Speaker C: Right. You can't bubble wrap your kids.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: You know, it's really interesting of the way you say that, and I also want to come back to what parents should be aware of, but it's really interesting that you say that.
So public schools are, are uniquely required to provide special education for students with learning disabilities.
And one of the things that they try to do is put that student in the least restrictive classroom so that when that student with severe learning disabilities gets out into the world, that they will be able to be in the world working, even though they have, maybe they're at a, you know, the age, you know, they're living in an age of a 10 year old or a 12 year old, but they still want to put them in there. And it's interesting, I had not made this connection until you said this, Joshua, but that's what parents need to be doing. Parents need to not necessarily be protecting their kids in terms of putting up a total firewall to what's going on in public education. But. But they need to put them out there. And I'm not talking, you know, a first grader or a second grader, but as they, you know, get a middle school.
Excuse me, Middle school is where most of this is happening, but at the same time that they need to be put into real life situations and then come back and talk about it.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: And just because your kid may be doing okay doesn't mean that their entire family friend group is doing okay. So knowing what's in their chat groups, really what's on their device. Which brings me back to the whole book thing.
So one of the things that the left will always do. Oh, they're talking about these books that teachers have. They want to ban books. Well, I mean, some of the books are totally not appropriate. But here's the thing I have learned. If you go in to meet with your teacher, your students, your. Your student, your child's teacher, that the best way to handle it is like Forrest Gump going, huh, that's interesting. I didn't know that. You don't come in with, oh, this book is bad. Look at this and look at that. You're like, oh, what books are you teaching from? What books do they have access?
Asking the questions and then seeing what's there.
And if a book pops out to you go, oh, this is interesting. May I check this out for my child?
And then bring it home and read it and then call someone for help on how to digest it. Because if you just go in and go, this book is terrible. This and that. What ends up happening is what happened to me six months on the board when I find this book, Dear White People.
And I'm like, well, in one of the school libraries, I'm like, well, I'm white. Why don't I read it?
And it was written as a parody on how this black guy thinks white people think about black people.
And the last page of the book, which I will not repeat the joke, but it revolved around the N word and what people normally would say regarding the N word. And I brought it out and I said, have you seen this book? And nobody would look at it. They said it was totally esteemed.
So this is where it goes to.
[00:26:11] Speaker C: The person he first asked, actually blocked her face and said, you cannot make me look at it.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I won't look at that. I'm like, what?
I'm like you. Have you seen this joke? I won't look at it. So that's.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: So here's the question then, what happens when they, when parents face that dead end?
[00:26:27] Speaker B: So that there is no dead end. Because what happens is to just the last school board meeting of this last year, four black students, a Hispanic student and a couple black parents came before the board and was complaining about the principal at one of our schools not taking action against all the students using the N word.
Talk to their friends.
And I didn't stand up and go, told you so.
But now we're living with the consequences of what I had brought up two and a half years before. Even though they blew me out, the union wrote, you know, gave a seven and a half minute speech about how I was intimidating the librarian as opposed to what's looking at it. And the book is still there.
But now I'm sure they do have a conscience and they can see that, oh yeah, look at this. We now have a problem.
So it's important to like talk about the books and the problems that it is either creating or can create.
And so it's, it's, it's a challenge, you know, and hopefully you can work with the teacher directly or you can work with the board directly, but, you know, you can have a shouting match, school board meeting if you want, but typically it works better if you work with the school board member so they can try to make changes. And then if they won't, then, you know, you just make it public so that everybody knows. So the point of all that is that get to know the teacher, get to know the classroom, get to know the books and handle it very subtly to begin with, asking to read the book and things like that. Because if you just come at them and as a blast and all the activists come out and says you want to ban books, you're, you know, a racist, you're a radical Christian. And so handling it subtly, which then at some point during our conversation, Harry, your question to me was, you know, what is the situation with the last question about the oneism versus two ism? But I'll let you rephrase that question at the right time.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: Yeah, can I go ahead?
[00:28:49] Speaker C: Because some people might find it intimidating to go into the classrooms or to go into the schools and to ask the questions that Bob is suggesting that they ask or to look at the books that Bob is suggesting that they just pick up and, and take out. I mean, he has a capacity and a courage. I'm not just saying this because I'm his wife and I love him, which I am, and I do, but just from an objective, like from. From the perspective of someone who has been dealing with this for the last seven years.
He has a capacity to just kindly go in and in a non confrontational way, just ask questions. People sometimes think he's being confrontational because they have something to hide.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: They've never had the question asked. They, they, they're. They've just been going down this river at 10 knots with no pushback, no questions, no nothing.
[00:29:44] Speaker C: So it feels.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Passes it down. Stamp it. Yes. Put it into practice.
[00:29:50] Speaker C: Yeah. And. And we actually have a friend of ours who actually was dealing with Bob at the school district, who she. She's a friend now, but at the time when he first was elected, she said that she felt like he was coming in at every meeting and just shoving things in their faces, and he was just asking questions. And she told him later. But now I realize I just didn't want to see everything that had gotten rubber stamped. I just didn't want to see everything that had come in under our noses and we didn't recognize what it was. So it wasn't that he was being.
So. People won't always take the questions well. But I just wanted to recommend a resource, and it's called Take Back the Classroom.
And this is by Karen England's group. I can't remember the name of her.
Her nonprofit, but they have been cataloging specifically pornographic books. And I know that that sounds bizarre, but it's like both illustrated and written pornographic books that are in the public school libraries, and they have, through a series of, like, legal precedents that have been set and really looking at loophole holes in the law, have. Have found a way that they can provide complete copies in PDF form of these books in question. And I mean, they have, I want to say, over a thousand books that are accessible in the searchable database. You can go in, you can look by state, and then by city, and I think there might even be the granularity of some school districts, but you can look by city, and you can see the books that are available that are pornographic and not always lgbtq, because obviously pornography having to do with straight sex is also inappropriate. You know, it doesn't matter the age, but they do exist in these schools, and you can actually read for yourself what these books say. So that you're not just saying, well, I heard from a friend that, you know, this happens in this book. You actually have the proof. You can see with your own eyes what's going on. And you can see whether those books are available in your community. So, for instance, for Escondido, I think there are something like 25 of these books that break pornography laws. And so it's totally inappropriate that it's being provided to children because they wouldn't even be able to purchase the book or shouldn't be able to purchase the book unless they're 18.
But graphic, graphic sex scenes, pedophilia, all kinds of things.
And. And so that gives you some actual facts where you can go and you can start asking these questions, like Bob's saying. And if you're dealing with a school board and they are out there where you only have, say, one conservative member or there are no conservative members, I would say you should still politely go and approach your school board. But if you just, you know, get stonewalled, you can look for. For constitutional attorneys who will do work with you pro bono to try to address these things.
So there is always another way for you to go. There's never a roadblock. Now we have to listen to the Lord. Not all of us are called to do it the way that maybe Bob and I handle it.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:16] Speaker C: He and I handle things differently. But I do think.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: No, we don't.
[00:33:23] Speaker C: No. But I do think that we need to go before the Lord. And I. And I think this applies to. I mean, certainly it still even applies to me and to Bob, but to all of our listeners, to go before the Lord and to ask, like, am I.
Is it that I'm not called to speak out on these things, or is it that I'm scared?
[00:33:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:44] Speaker C: Is it that I'm not called to speak. Speak about these things? Or is it that I love my. My comfort and my reputation as not being one of the crazy Christians or whatever it is. Like, there are so many things that we say to ourselves that are actually idolatrous rather than. No, the Lord has me focused this way, and that's going to be the case. There may be a homeschool mom who the Lord's calling on her is to homeschool her kids. Well, and it's not to go talk to the school board, but there are other people out there where they know that they have an urge. They know that they have a small voice telling them that this is something that they need to go tackle, and they're not doing it because it seems scary. And I would say just go before the Lord, repent of that, and then ask for, like, the first small step that you can take to start ministering to your community. This way.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: Okay, so let's wrap this up and let's apply the worldview hermeneutic.
[00:34:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: When, when you reject the creator creation distinction of, or as we say, one ism or non binary, you then begin to eradicate those kind of distinctions that are also found in creation. So the male, female relationship breaks down certainly in the area of sex, I can imagine. Also then the, the structure of teacher and student also breaks down and almost to the point where education then becomes not something that is learned, that is passed on because that eradication of mother, father to child or teacher to student, there's that breakdown there. There isn't that that passing on of knowledge that needs to be attained. Whereas in a worldview that holds and upholds The Creator Creation Distinction 2 ISM or Binary Worldview, where God does communicate to us, he does speak to us, he give it, he's given us his word, a special revelation. He's also given us the revelation through creation.
And so we learn things like math and science and we create poetry by looking at the beauty of this created world.
How then is there other ways that we can see that worldview at play or the war between the two worldviews at play right now?
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Well, that's a pretty deep question.
So I'll take it from a little bit of a higher perspective on that, especially in California, that the view that there is any kind of God or creation or intelligent design is so wiped away, it's not even discussed. It's, it's, it's. Man is in charge and man writes all the rules and man has been working, man and woman, get, get that out correctly here, have been working for 20, 30 years to create a system in their image, in the school system, with their rules and their ideas.
And so the pressure to even talk about, and this podcast is helping me clarify some things, is that I want to almost begin from intelligent design.
Look at the beauty of your child.
Look at the complexity of just their physical bodies.
Look at the complexity of the way they're able to think and do things.
It is not possible. And there are many books written on that. Now, the God hypothesis is a really good one that's not written, you know, for Christians, but that it just says the world is too orderly, too complex to have just evolved from whatever evolution paradigm you want to come from to have the complexities we have now.
And I'm going to start using that saying, there is an intelligent Design here. Where did that come from?
And yeah, I mean, and it's initially not even from a religious perspective, but Just from a logical, questioning perspective. But right now, at least in California, anything like that is so far removed that it's not even discussed.
And it's like when I came on board, although I have many thoughts and ideas of, you know, God and creation and my faith, it just. You don't bring it up because you would be so labeled and castigated that any positive influence that you could have would be thrown out. And I have had positive influence, you know, in the, in, in the, some of the curriculum that's being picked, some of the things that we've kept out, you know, and some of the things I'm not talking about because I don't want to shine a light on specifically what we're doing behind the scenes.
But people can reach out to me directly or to Mary or you directly, and I can talk to them about that.
But it's now at the point, at least with our district and what an utter failure the state of California schools are that it's gotten to the point where it's good now we can have a conversation. It's like nothing's working.
What are we attempting to do here? And I can be like, well, what about if we introduce this piece of curriculum or keep this piece of curriculum out? And I mean, we've been going down this road, this train path of ship lane for 25, 30 years. You know, the supertanker. Now, using the ship analogy, I've, I actually can see it turning 2 degrees. I'm like, wow, we had some victories here, you know, and it all rolls back into, you know, our students happy at the school and learning and don't feel threatened.
Enough said.
[00:40:22] Speaker C: You, you actually keyed in on something really interesting, Lee, sweetheart, in that, like going all the way back to the witness of creation, the fact that the order and the design and the beauty and the sense of creation, then there, there is this opening to, to begin talking about the Creator in that place and also just authority. Because right now, so as, as Bob said, like they, it's completely man centered, it's completely secular, although the secularism immediately turns into just alternative religion. But what they're trying to do is strip all sense of authority of any kind of higher authority out of anything that we do.
So we can see it from the macro level, right? They do not know there is a God because they've suppressed it in their hearts. So they do not think that they have a higher authority to answer to. But they're literally training our children that way also. So like the big movements and every elementary school In Escondido has these five banners posted at the front of the school. Huge banners that you can read at street level when you're driving by.
Talking about like the five elements of what they want their students to be when they leave. And it's something about their like self sustaining learners there.
[00:41:48] Speaker B: There's this language because most third graders understand what that means.
[00:41:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: Like most adults that drive by have no idea what it means either.
[00:41:56] Speaker C: But what they're saying is that, oh, and it also says that their students know. So over at Conway School it says we are co pilots, not passengers. In other words, we're in control.
We students at the school, there are all these adults around us, but they are our partners as we direct our learning. Right. We are co pilots in this. So they're removing the idea of even like a teacher as an authority. They're removing the distinctions like male and female. Because little girls can do everything that little boys can, can do and, and they can do it just as bad. There's like this girl boss mentality. Like there's all this rag radical like equity and the way that they're teaching students to think about each other and the teachers over them, you know, they, there are the, there's project based learning where like everyone has an equally valid view. Well, what if one student has a correct answer and one student has an incorrect answer? Those are not equally valid viewpoints and the paths that they took to get there are not equally valid. One is superior and one is incorrect. But all of that, all of that is being removed. And I actually see some of those strains in homeschool curriculum too where it's the project based learning and the student led, you know, the student led classroom where the, the teacher is just a facilitator, not actually a teacher. She's just helping things move along smoothly as the students direct that learning. I mean all of these are 1 est ideas. And it's not that as parents and teachers we don't want to help our, our kids finally step into those roles, but it's by imparting our wisdom as authorities and helping direct their paths as best we can.
Because we, there is that authority structure.
But in the 1 est worldview, and we see this so clearly in education, like Bob said, all of that is being removed and our students are dying for it. You know, like they're just think of that.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: 18 There's a mental health crisis.
Yeah. They need hope.
[00:44:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: Let me just close by saying that's it for today. Thank you for joining us, Bob. And of course, Mary if you've enjoyed the this episode, be sure to subscribe, rate and review us on wherever you listen to your podcast. Next week we're going to have Pamela Frost on the podcast and we're going to be discussing Jesus Calling. So a big thank you again for joining us. Sure to also Follow us on trothechange.com as well as Facebook and X.
