Episode 90

Interview with Neil Erian on Progressive Education and School Shootings

Published on: 28th October, 2024

In episode 90 we talk with Neil Erian, a former math teacher who has discovered perhaps the true cause of school shootings; the schools themselves - specifically their curriculum. Don't miss this hard-hitting exposé on the massive failure of our government schools ("indoctrination centers")!

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Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services:

Episode 90 (43 minutes) was recorded at 2200 Central European Time, on October 18, 2024, with Ringr app. Martin did the editing and post-production with the podcast maker, Alitu. The transcript is generated by Alitu.

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This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

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Transcript
Blair:

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the latest episode of the Secular

Blair:

Foxhole podcast.

Blair:

Our guest today is Neil Aryan, currently an

Blair:

engineer in the aircraft industry, but once served as a teacher in the public school

Blair:

system.

Blair:

He has a serious warning for parents about our

Blair:

public, and he does have a serious warning that he's going to talk about today about our

Blair:

public school system.

Blair:

Neil, your article published in Capitalism

Blair:

magazine in April of this year is quite provocative, but if I may say, sadly true.

Blair:

You, you've issued a public service announcement.

Blair:

Go ahead and tell our audience what it is.

Neil:

Well, thank you for having me, Blair.

Neil:

I appreciate it.

Neil:

And Martin, I appreciate you being, being on your podcast.

Neil:

Basically, I call it a product safety alert.

Neil:

And basically the idea is that that's a term

Neil:

that comes from industry and I currently work in industry.

Neil:

And we issue these alerts if and when some, you know, our products become unsafe and we

Neil:

need to alert the public about them.

Neil:

So that's, and in this case, this alert is

Neil:

about education in the schools because I found that there's a link between educational

Neil:

practices and these school shootings that have been occurring.

Neil:

And I've written about that in my article.

Neil:

That's the, that's the subject matter of my

Neil:

article.

Blair:

I see.

Blair:

What is your educational background?

Neil:

Well, I am a Certified Teacher, grade 6 through 12 in Connecticut, as you mentioned,

Neil:

in math.

Neil:

And I did my teacher certification training at

Neil:

Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Neil:

And so I've taken all of the, the state required training courses to become a teacher

Neil:

in Connecticut and done my student teaching.

Neil:

And so I'm very intimately aware of what is

Neil:

going on in the schools.

Neil:

And really the classes that I took at

Neil:

Fairfield University really introduced me to the horror of progressive education.

Neil:

So this is something that's been on my mind for quite a while.

Neil:

I hadn't at the time made the connection between progressive education and school

Neil:

shootings, though.

Neil:

I, I, soon after I'd started to become

Neil:

suspicious about it because I was aware of school shooting Since Columbine, since 1999 on

Neil:

the Columbine attack in Colorado.

Neil:

But you know, this is really my, my background

Neil:

in as a certified teacher and just being introduced, like I said, to the horror of

Neil:

progressive education at Fairfield University really just was the impetus to, to trying to

Neil:

better understand this issue.

Blair:

In your article, I was again, I was shocked to see that there have been more than

Blair:

40 school shootings since Columbine.

Blair:

And I think there was prior one prior to that

Blair:

in Mississippi, I believe, also.

Blair:

Yes, that's a staggering number.

Neil:

Yes, I, I get that number from an online Database of school shooters.

Neil:

That is, that's been created by a psychologist named Peter Langman who has been researching

Neil:

and writing on this issue for decades.

Neil:

And we can certainly talk more about him.

Neil:

But he created an online database of school shootings.

Neil:

It's called school shooters.info and he basically the database for each school

Neil:

shooting that occurs.

Neil:

He's gathered all the relevant legal and

Neil:

personal documentation associated with the school shooting and his explicit purpose is to

Neil:

allow investigators from other fields to research into this issue.

Neil:

And so I have basically been using this database for years now.

Neil:

And this is where I, I get my numbers.

Neil:

And 40 is really, that's 40 random school

Neil:

shootings.

Neil:

That doesn't include the targeted schools, the

Neil:

targeted attacks.

Neil:

And there's actually, so there's actually more

Neil:

than 40.

Neil:

His database has I think over 150 school

Neil:

shootings in them and most of them have occurred since the late 1980s.

Blair:

Oh my goodness.

Blair:

Yes, yes.

Blair:

I've always thought I've held three men in our history up, up as destroyers if you will, of

Blair:

education.

Blair:

That's John Dewey, Horace Mann, and more

Blair:

recently Howard Zinn.

Blair:

I think all of these men can be considered

Blair:

progressive to the extreme.

Blair:

What do you think about those three?

Neil:

Well, I, I can speak mostly to John Dewey because I have studied him a little bit

Neil:

in school.

Neil:

I wouldn't say I'm an expert on him, but I did

Neil:

learn some interesting things specifically about him in doing my research regarding this

Neil:

issue.

Neil:

You know, as, as I say in my article that it's

Neil:

the progressives introduction of this learner centered education philosophy in the schools

Neil:

that I'm, I'm basically blaming for these, for these school shootings.

Neil:

And what's interesting is that the, these learner centered advocates, they basically

Neil:

praise John Dewey as an influence on them, but they do, they don't consider themselves

Neil:

strictly speaking Deweyites.

Neil:

And not only that, but they were around during

Neil:

the time of John Dewey and he repudiated them.

Neil:

He basically held that they did not understand

Neil:

his educational philosophy and he wanted to distance himself from them.

Neil:

And really they're much worse than John Dewey.

Neil:

John Dewey was not anti knowledge.

Neil:

He was pro knowledge.

Neil:

That what he was opposed to was the idea that

Neil:

learning should be an individual affair, that it should be that we're individuals and each

Neil:

going to learn on our own and acquire knowledge the traditional way that we

Neil:

typically do in school.

Neil:

But these so called learner centered

Neil:

advocates, they are anti knowledge.

Neil:

They are, they are complete subjectivists and

Neil:

they basically hold that, that there is no objective reality, that that knowledge is

Neil:

basically formed from one's own personal perspective, not from a grasp of objective

Neil:

facts.

Neil:

And Dewey basically rejected this.

Neil:

Not that he was an advocate of objective knowledge in the same in the way that we

Neil:

advocated in Objectivism, but he definitely was not anti knowledge.

Neil:

He just thought that the school serves a social purpose.

Neil:

And then knowledge is really formed in the context of social groups and learning

Neil:

communities, that kind, that kind of thing.

Neil:

And that's why we have this kind of thing in

Neil:

school where they're trying to promote group work and social cohesion, that kind of thing.

Neil:

But the learner centered advocates are not, strictly speaking, Deweyites, they're much

Neil:

worse.

Neil:

And Dewey repudiated them.

Blair:

All right, well, all right.

Neil:

But I would say one more thing that.

Blair:

Go ahead.

Neil:

That we shouldn't praise Dewey for repudiating them because his all embracing

Neil:

attack on traditional education and traditional instruction is what made these

Neil:

learner centered advocates possible and their influence in the first place.

Neil:

So it's, it's, it's great that Dewey, you rejected them, but it's kind of hard to reject

Neil:

something on principle for which you were the cause.

Neil:

So I want to be, I want to be careful here and not, you know, make it sound like Dewey's this

Neil:

great guy, you know, who did us all a great favor and tried to mitigate the learner

Neil:

centered types.

Blair:

Very good, very good then.

Blair:

But, and you also touched on, I guess, the,

Blair:

the difference between a teacher based instruction and learner based instruction.

Blair:

So the teacher based was the traditional way, is that correct?

Neil:

Yes, and it's, it's, it's based on the idea that there is a fixed body of knowledge

Neil:

to learn and that there are individuals who have mastered this knowledge in certain

Neil:

subjects, whether it's math or history or English art, and they have become master

Neil:

communicators of their subject.

Neil:

And they will then instruct students who are

Neil:

basically ignorant of these subjects and teach them in a classroom type, formal instruction

Neil:

environment.

Neil:

So it rejects this whole approach.

Neil:

This has been sort of the traditional approach, generally speaking, to education for

Neil:

centuries and it rejects this completely.

Neil:

And the learner centered education is not

Neil:

really a positive viewpoint.

Neil:

It doesn't offer really a positive program or

Neil:

curriculum of its own.

Neil:

It's more of an attack on the traditional

Neil:

school.

Neil:

And as I say in my article, it's basically

Neil:

rooted in the idea of subjectivism, that there, you know, there is no objective

Neil:

knowledge.

Neil:

There isn't any object out there about which

Neil:

to become educated.

Neil:

Knowledge is really just something that is

Neil:

based on my own personal perspective, not a grasp of facts and something that I learn

Neil:

Outside of me.

Blair:

I see.

Neil:

And then the question becomes how did this lead to school shootings?

Neil:

And the basic issue here is that this all embracing attack on traditional instruction

Neil:

has caused in my judgment, the intellectual and moral collapse of our schools.

Neil:

And our schools have basically lost all of their intellectual and moral authority.

Neil:

And this conflict between these two approaches to education is ongoing in the hallways of the

Neil:

public schools and classrooms today.

Neil:

And some of these kids are absorbing this

Neil:

conflict.

Neil:

They're absorbing the idea that there is that

Neil:

knowledge is subjective and that they're being imposed upon by these teachers and by their

Neil:

schools to learn knowledge that is biased and false.

Neil:

And in my article I basically say that these, that these school shooters are complaining

Neil:

that they're having to, you know, acquire knowledge or be in these schools that are

Neil:

imposing false knowledge on them and they're becoming radicalized against the schools.

Neil:

So what this learner centered philosophy is essentially doing is that it's turning

Neil:

students against their own schools.

Neil:

And some of these students have decided to

Neil:

attack the schools.

Martin:

Neely, is that like a cruel nihilism in action then, but really be forced to go out

Martin:

and shooting on your fellow students and teachers and others like a effect on that or

Martin:

result of this nihilistic ideas and education?

Neil:

It's definitely a nihilistic because if you reject knowledge that there's such a thing

Neil:

as objective knowledge and that means there aren't going to be any objective morals or

Neil:

values to pursue.

Neil:

And, and when you read some of the, the

Neil:

personal writings of these shooters, they just, they, they sound very nihilistic.

Neil:

They, they reject they.

Neil:

The institutions and knowledge of the world.

Neil:

This is particularly true of Eric Harris.

Neil:

I mean he's really the leading school shooter

Neil:

here and he is the one shooter that has been most influential on later shooters.

Neil:

You know, he, his, his influence and it's.

Neil:

And it, and it still goes on, you know, 25

Neil:

years after he attacked Columbine High School.

Blair:

Can you even.

Blair:

It may be distasteful, but could you read your

Blair:

excerpt from what Harris wrote? Would you read, consider reading that if you

Blair:

have it in front of you.

Neil:

Or I don't have in front of me, but I can pull it up if you just.

Neil:

I can.

Neil:

Let me just pull that up.

Martin:

As long as you.

Martin:

We don't have any so called explicit wordings

Martin:

because then we have to put the episode explicit.

Martin:

And then listeners in India, for example, can't listen to us.

Martin:

So.

Blair:

Oh yeah, we have to.

Blair:

You'll have to bleep out the swear words.

Neil:

Oh, I can, I can do that.

Neil:

That's that's not a problem.

Neil:

Let me just get to it here.

Neil:

I can just get to it under education.

Neil:

It's usually pretty easy to get to.

Neil:

Yeah, here it is.

Neil:

So you know, Harris actually has said a lot of interesting things that support my, my thesis.

Neil:

But the most interesting and the most direct is the quote that I have in my article.

Neil:

And, and here's what he says.

Neil:

So this is a quote from Harris.

Neil:

He goes.

Neil:

Ever wonder why we go to school besides

Neil:

getting a so called education? It's not too obvious to most of you, but for

Neil:

those who think a little more and deeper, you should realize it.

Neil:

It's society's way of turning all the young people into good little robots and factory

Neil:

workers.

Neil:

That's why we sit in desks in rows and go by

Neil:

bell schedules to get prepared for the real world.

Neil:

Because that's what it's like.

Neil:

Well, no it isn't.

Neil:

One thing that separates us from other animals is the fact that we can carry actual thoughts.

Neil:

So why don't we people go on day by day routine stuff.

Neil:

Why can't we learn in school how we want to? Why can't we sit on desks and on shelves and

Neil:

put our feet up and relax while we learn? Because that's not what the real world is

Neil:

like.

Neil:

Well, hey, there is no such thing as an actual

Neil:

real world.

Neil:

And that's the end of the quote.

Neil:

And you know the Eric Harris.

Neil:

Let me put it this way.

Neil:

Eric Harris could have taught my education classes at Fairfield University.

Neil:

Understands the, the progressive argument against traditional instruction as good or

Neil:

better than my own teachers.

Neil:

So you know, he, he had absorbed this idea and

Neil:

you know, this is a high school kid, he was very bright.

Neil:

But I highly doubt that he, he learned this on his own.

Neil:

I think what is happening in these schools is that there's this conflict between these two

Neil:

philosophies and these kids are at the center of this conflict.

Neil:

And some of them are absorbing the conflict that is going on in the schools today,

Neil:

including Harris here.

Martin:

Wow.

Blair:

Wow. Right after your quote there.

Blair:

You also mentioned.

Blair:

Let me just read this quick.

Blair:

Why would these students who demanded to learn

Blair:

on their own in their own way attack their schools rather than protest peacefully, drop

Blair:

out or enroll in private school? Why wouldn't they?

Neil:

Yeah, exactly.

Neil:

If you are opposed to your school that you

Neil:

would think that the most obvious and simplest thing to do would be to drop out or to demand

Neil:

that your parents put you in another school or to just get an education on your own and in.

Neil:

Traditionally this is what happened.

Neil:

Right.

Neil:

And it still happens.

Neil:

There's a huge dropout rate.

Neil:

Right.

Neil:

And that's probably a good thing.

Neil:

Why should students who do not feel that they are getting the value that they need from an

Neil:

education have to be for forced to sit through it for, you know, maybe they had to, they went

Neil:

to early grade school, dropped out by seventh or eighth grade.

Neil:

Why should they have to spend another four or five years at the end of middle school and

Neil:

high school and, and instead just go out into the world and get a job and learn on their

Neil:

own? And it's the most important question because,

Neil:

you know, this is the most obvious thing that you should do.

Neil:

But it's an interesting thing that this learner centered education, part of the

Neil:

impetus for this educational philosophy was to try to stem the dropout rate, to try to make

Neil:

schools and the curriculum more relevant to individual learners.

Neil:

That was, that was the ostensive purpose of this.

Neil:

We want to keep kids in school.

Neil:

And unfortunately what it did do is it didn't

Neil:

offer any positive approach to learning.

Neil:

All it is is this critique of the traditional

Neil:

school and it's a negative critique.

Neil:

And what you have is, it's the strangest

Neil:

thing.

Neil:

You've got these kids in these schools or this

Neil:

subset of the kids who might have dropped out, who instead linger about in schools.

Neil:

They reject the curriculum, they reject their teachings, but they're being promised that

Neil:

they can still get an education somehow and get this individualized learning.

Neil:

But the problem is our schools weren't designed for this.

Neil:

You know, we have a very, a very inflexible public school system.

Neil:

And teachers who have been trained to teach in a certain way, they've been trained for direct

Neil:

instruction.

Neil:

And the public school system that we have in

Neil:

this country was never designed to, to be able to cope with a new and radical model of

Neil:

education just suddenly introduced into it.

Neil:

And it's certainly not able to cope with a

Neil:

model of education that is based on subjectivism.

Neil:

I mean, teachers typically are trying to impart some sort of knowledge to their, to

Neil:

their kids.

Neil:

And now what they're being told is that they

Neil:

got to step back and let these kids somehow learn on their own.

Neil:

And you know, the teacher no longer has authority over their classrooms or even in the

Neil:

schools.

Neil:

And, and this is what has led to the moral

Neil:

collapse that I talk about, right?

Blair:

I think in America, America's history, originally and initially schools were private.

Blair:

I mean, you had the one room schoolhouse on the prairie and they taught from like

Blair:

kindergarten to sixth or seventh grade.

Blair:

But I guess the progressive era changed all

Blair:

that because again, even though the Founders, I also believe they advocated for or certainly

Blair:

were in favor of government education.

Blair:

It was because they were living in the fated

Blair:

emperors of the Enlightenment era and they wanted that to be spread.

Blair:

But I think that was a mistake.

Blair:

What do you think?

Neil:

Well, it was definitely, I think, a mistake to have this kind of mass produced

Neil:

public school system that doesn't do a very good job at educating kids.

Neil:

I mean, I went through the school system, I did all right.

Neil:

I got a decent math education.

Neil:

So I'm not, I'm not here to bash my teachers

Neil:

or really any teachers today even.

Blair:

Right.

Neil:

But this, this kind of, you know, one size in one curriculum fits all type approach

Neil:

to education.

Neil:

I don't think that's the, the optimum way to

Neil:

educate kids.

Neil:

But then again, it didn't, it never produced

Neil:

school shooters up until before the late 1980s, so at least it didn't do that.

Neil:

And, and my focus has basically been on what is it that changed in the schools that led to

Neil:

the emergence of this horror.

Neil:

And that's really been my focus before that.

Neil:

Yes, I mean, I think it was all kinds of reasons why you might educate your kid in some

Neil:

other way, homeschooling or a private school, any number of ways.

Neil:

So there are definitely problems with the school system.

Neil:

But I would say the solution to school shootings is not, you know, obviously you

Neil:

might consider taking your kids out of these schools, but you probably should have

Neil:

considered doing that even before the school shooting starts.

Neil:

So they were not, they weren't all that good before the school shootings.

Neil:

And now, and now you got to contend with this issue.

Blair:

So I hear you, I hear you.

Blair:

You mentioned a gentleman by the name of Dr.

Blair:

John Simmons.

Blair:

Can you elaborate what he initiated?

Neil:

Yeah, so I've done a great deal of research over the years on this.

Neil:

And John Simmons, it was a professor of English education at Florida State University.

Neil:

And I came across him very early in my research and I'd always, you know, he wrote an

Neil:

article in response to the Virginia tech attack in 2007 by the English student Sun Wei

Neil:

Joe.

Neil:

And his article is a direct response to that

Neil:

attack.

Neil:

And, and he's really, he's just a well

Neil:

regarded professor of English education.

Neil:

And I regard him as a hero and a wise man.

Neil:

I mean, first of all, he's a, he's a hero.

Neil:

He, he was, he did, he served in the military

Neil:

in the Korean War, but he also is a hero for writing the article that he did and basically

Neil:

coming out publicly saying that there is a problem with our educational practice because

Neil:

it, it's it's actually linked to this school shooting that that happened.

Neil:

And he's basically writing this article to warn his fellow practitioners.

Neil:

And the title of the article is Dealing with Troubled Writers, A Literacy Teacher's

Neil:

Dilemma.

Neil:

And it's not a very long article.

Neil:

It's only about four pages and you can read it in about half an hour.

Neil:

It's written in plain English, but in it, Professor Simmons reveals probably the most

Neil:

important fact about school shootings.

Neil:

And, and it's, it's kind of interesting.

Neil:

I, I haven't seen anyone in news reporting discuss this, but tells us the origin of these

Neil:

personal journals that are often found in the possession of these school shooters that

Neil:

they've been writing in.

Neil:

And he explains that the origin of the

Neil:

personal journals and of personal journal writing is in the English curriculum that

Neil:

began in the 1970s and was implemented in the public schools.

Neil:

And I know about these personal journals firsthand because I wrote in one in the 1980s

Neil:

in my American Literature class.

Neil:

We had these personal journals and they were

Neil:

the exact.

Neil:

It was part of this program where you would

Neil:

spend the first few minutes of class just writing down your personal thoughts in the

Neil:

journal and then the journals will go away and the teacher would then would start teaching

Neil:

the content of what they, what it is for the day.

Neil:

And for me it was American Literature class.

Neil:

So I have, you know, when I first started

Neil:

seeing or observing that, that these kids were, who were attacking the schools, that

Neil:

many of them, it's not all of them, but, but a good number enough for there to be a pattern

Neil:

that they were writing these disturbing thoughts in personal journals.

Neil:

I knew immediately where that came from because I experienced that in, in 11th grade.

Neil:

And, and, and this is like the most shocking fact that is re.

Neil:

That Professor Simmons reveals in his article.

Neil:

And it's, it's not really even the central

Neil:

focus of the article, but, but he reveals it and, and it's not by accident.

Neil:

It's, it's, it's the most important thing to understand about, about these attacks.

Neil:

We need, we need to understand where these personal journals come from, from educational

Neil:

practice.

Martin:

Okay, Neil, I will be the devil's advocate here.

Martin:

We talked in the green room about journaling and I think as an adult it's a positive thing

Martin:

if you do reflection, introspection, and learn from what you have gone through and reflect,

Martin:

for example, on what you're studying and so on.

Martin:

But is this more like so called random outbursts and anger and this hatred like some

Martin:

psychoanalysis in a way.

Martin:

And didn't they talk about this Journaling,

Martin:

why they did it and how did that come up?

Neil:

Yes, I agree with you.

Neil:

Journaling is a very positive thing.

Neil:

The problem is that this particular method of journaling that was encouraged for the kids

Neil:

was to basically have them turn inward and focus on their emotions at absent the external

Neil:

world, basically to, you know, have them indulge their emotions rather than talk about

Neil:

or, or journal about the things that you mentioned about their interactions with the

Neil:

world.

Martin:

And I think and don't, and don't link the like responses, the emotions to value

Martin:

judgment.

Martin:

They haven't come so far maybe.

Neil:

So they're basically encouraging the kids just to rant emotionally in these

Neil:

journals.

Neil:

And this is really not the purpose of a

Neil:

journal or a diary even typically when you have a journal or a diary, because I've given

Neil:

this some thought.

Neil:

This is a time for quiet reflection about

Neil:

what's going on with you and your life.

Neil:

It's not a time where you, where you would

Neil:

sort of rev yourself up into this angry friends Nikolistic frenzy.

Neil:

And, and you know, it's, it's very interesting.

Neil:

You may have heard of the, the University of Texas school shooter, Charles Whitman.

Neil:

He was, I think he, I think that attack on the University of Texas was in 1964.

Neil:

I can't remember exact date.

Neil:

But he, he went to the, the, the clock tower,

Neil:

up to the clock tower at the University of Texas and committed a school shooting.

Neil:

And this was a very, very angry man.

Neil:

He, he had all kinds of family abuse at home

Neil:

in his life, but he spent time writing in a diary and he actually used the diary the way a

Neil:

diary or a journal is intended to be used as a means, as a, for, for the purpose of quiet,

Neil:

calm reflection.

Neil:

And I've read a number of his diary entries

Neil:

and, and, and, and this angry man that would basically use this diary as a chance to calm

Neil:

himself down, it didn't work.

Neil:

I think in the end he would, you know, his

Neil:

anger overcame him and he, and he became a school shooter.

Neil:

But what's what, what these students are being encouraged is, is the exact opposite.

Neil:

In these personal journals that Professor Simmons talks about, they're being encouraged

Neil:

to indulge their emotions to, you know, to indulge their anger into, like you said, that

Neil:

engage in this stream of consciousness kind of thinking.

Neil:

And when you, if in these journal entries are, you can find them at schoolshooters.

Neil:

Dot info on Professor Dr. Langman's website and you read these journals and it's just

Neil:

incredibly disturbing.

Neil:

They're just very angry and, and they, they

Neil:

revel in their Anger and in their emotions.

Neil:

And this is, I don't think, the intent of

Neil:

journal writing.

Blair:

I, I, I agree, I agree.

Blair:

Now you, and just to follow up with that and

Blair:

maybe tie a bow on it, you called learner based instruction and the personal writing

Blair:

journal assignments the perfect storm.

Blair:

And I think your evidence is overwhelming.

Neil:

Yeah, it's shocking.

Neil:

It's like you've got these two educational

Neil:

practices that almost seemingly have nothing to do with one another.

Neil:

I mean, the implementation of personal writing assignments was in the 1970s and prior to the

Neil:

introduction of learner centered education in the schools.

Neil:

The kids were writing in these personal journals and there were, you know, we didn't

Neil:

hear about any school shootings.

Neil:

So although I think this personal journal

Neil:

writing method, which I, I, I say is basically based on a subjective method of writing, I

Neil:

think it's problematic.

Neil:

But it clearly didn't lead to school

Neil:

shootings.

Neil:

We didn't get that until the, the introduction

Neil:

of this learner centered educational philosophy.

Neil:

And what these two practices are, are basically doing.

Neil:

They, they, they reinforce one another.

Neil:

So you, you're, you're pitting the, the kids

Neil:

against their schools, against the school system in the name of, on the basis that the,

Neil:

that the knowledge that they're being given is, is biased and false.

Neil:

And at the same time you're telling them that, you know, you should have an individualized

Neil:

learning and hey, go write in this personal journal and, and tell us all your, you know,

Neil:

your, your deepest, darkest feelings and your anger.

Neil:

And they're going to talk about how angry they are about the system.

Neil:

And that's exactly what Harris did in his personal circle.

Neil:

So there's kind of a synergy between these two practices that wasn't intended, but they came

Neil:

together, I argue, in a perfect storm which led to these attacks.

Martin:

Is it like this project or test or what was it called, the Wave or something like

Martin:

that? It was turned into a movie about how the

Martin:

students became national socialists and doing all this scary stuff like in indoctrination

Martin:

and taking orders and then follow orders and then put their hatred against what

Martin:

individuals.

Neil:

I think what's happening is that they're being encouraged to embrace their emotions.

Neil:

They're being, and to do it.

Neil:

And the school is basically sanctioning this,

Neil:

I mean, it's sanctioning this embrace of emotionalism and it's doing it in a very, in

Neil:

an academic manner.

Neil:

By introducing this irrational personal

Neil:

writing method into the schools, you're essentially saying, look, I mean, this is,

Neil:

this is more real, more important than, you know, learning your math lessons or learning

Neil:

Something about history.

Neil:

And this is why, you know, you get these

Neil:

students who today who are basically, you know, they're very subjective and they're

Neil:

always talking about their feelings.

Neil:

And the academics are almost like an

Neil:

afterthought in these schools.

Neil:

It's really a shame.

Neil:

When I was in school, you know, everybody was focused on trying to learn something.

Neil:

They were trying to acquire some knowledge and skills, trying to, you know, prepare

Neil:

themselves for the future.

Neil:

Well, Harris basically understood what his

Neil:

future was going to be.

Neil:

It's not that he was.

Neil:

That he was just against his school.

Neil:

He was against the institutions and the kind

Neil:

of life that was awaiting him after graduating from.

Neil:

From school.

Neil:

He. He rejected all of it because the

Neil:

institutions of our.

Neil:

Of our country and.

Neil:

And of the Western world, they all rely on scientific knowledge or the idea that you must

Neil:

acquire this knowledge if you want to achieve goal X or value Y. And he didn't like that.

Neil:

That approach.

Neil:

He just wanted to have his own thoughts and,

Neil:

and basically live in accordance with, you know, whatever ideas he had.

Neil:

And he didn't want to live in a world where he had to, you know, acquire this objective

Neil:

knowledge and live in accordance with such knowledge.

Neil:

He rejected the whole thing, man.

Blair:

Well, after all this horror and more than likely more horrors to come, the

Blair:

government remains unaccountable.

Blair:

Why do you think that is?

Neil:

Why?

Blair:

That's a big answer or a big question, I guess.

Blair:

And we.

Blair:

We don't have two hours.

Neil:

No. Well, I would, I would simply.

Neil:

I would simply point to the fact that they

Neil:

have the power of coercion behind them and they don't have to be accountable.

Neil:

You know, if we had private education and where people have to pay, you know, education

Neil:

has to be paid for by the private citizens and teachers and schools have to earn a profit,

Neil:

well, they're going to be a lot more accountable to parents when things go wrong or

Neil:

when there's.

Neil:

When there are problems or criticisms and so

Neil:

on and so forth.

Neil:

But how do you hold accountable this massive,

Neil:

you know, system of government education? Where do you turn and you have this department

Neil:

of Education that I don't think anybody is able to communicate with or have any, you

Neil:

know, any influence over? We certainly didn't vote for it.

Blair:

No. No.

Neil:

And so it's not accountable.

Neil:

And because it's not accountable, these.

Neil:

Our education system and those who basically inevitably take charge of it are free to

Neil:

implement ideas that may be destructive.

Neil:

And those ideas don't ultimately get examined

Neil:

or rescinded.

Neil:

They just, they.

Neil:

They typically remain in place.

Neil:

So they have these.

Neil:

This personal journal writing that continues on.

Neil:

It's problematic to say the least.

Neil:

And then you have this learner centered

Neil:

education, which, which nobody's examining.

Neil:

Nothing is being examined.

Neil:

When you have, when you're, when, when your field experiences some kind of disaster, like

Neil:

if it's in the aircraft industry, like I talk in my article, or the building industry, the

Neil:

people who are involved in these industries who have the knowledge, they have to come and

Neil:

examine the problem, examine their own practices, and they are accountable.

Neil:

Where is the accountability of educators today?

Neil:

Where are the educators who are examining their practices and asking, why are all these

Neil:

attacks occurring in our schools? I mean, aren't they responsible?

Neil:

They don't, they don't even recognize that they have anything to do with it.

Neil:

And yet these attacks are all, are all being done by their students on their schools.

Neil:

It's not as if the students are going out and attacking McDonald's or some, you know, or

Neil:

some mall or something.

Neil:

They're attacking their own schools.

Martin:

Yeah. Is that what they call in the industry product escape?

Neil:

That's right.

Neil:

And the idea is that there is some flaw that's

Neil:

been introduced that's been into a product, it's been overlooked or that has escaped our

Neil:

design intent.

Neil:

Right.

Neil:

And because it's escaped our design intent, that product is now behaving in a way that we

Neil:

didn't expect and it could be very harmful to consumers.

Neil:

And when that happens, we got to stop everything and we got to say, look, there's a,

Neil:

there's a problem here.

Neil:

We got to examine this.

Neil:

We got to examine our own practices.

Neil:

Only the people working in that particular

Neil:

industry who make the product are the ones who are qualified to examine the problem with it

Neil:

because they're the ones with the specialized knowledge to be able to do so.

Neil:

You and I can't really examine these school shootings.

Neil:

We don't, we're not insiders.

Neil:

I mean, I am a little bit because I have my,

Neil:

my certification.

Neil:

But it's really the educators that need to

Neil:

come together as a profession and take a hard look at their own practices.

Neil:

And until they do that, these school shootings are not going to end well.

Blair:

Again, let me take issue with what you've just said, though, in a way not to.

Blair:

But the teachers and the administrators that we have now, they were, they were educated in

Blair:

the same flawed system.

Blair:

So they wouldn't know.

Blair:

Well, examine it.

Neil:

Well, that, that.

Neil:

Well, that there is.

Neil:

You're right.

Neil:

I mean, there's a good point here that first

Neil:

of all, we don't expect these kind of catastrophes to occur in the educational

Neil:

system.

Neil:

We don't expect this, you know, mass death.

Neil:

Right? I mean, that's.

Neil:

That's completely unprecedented, isn't it?

Blair:

Right.

Neil:

So. So everybody looks at this and like, well, the schools can't be involved.

Neil:

The.

Neil:

The.

Neil:

The.

Neil:

The shooters must be mentally ill.

Neil:

You know, that must be it.

Neil:

So what we've had for decades now are

Neil:

primarily psychologists who have been researching into this and writing on it.

Neil:

But.

Neil:

And that's great.

Neil:

But the problem is that has had the unfortunate effect of delaying the actual

Neil:

investigation that we need, which is the investigation of the schools.

Neil:

I. I do disagree in one sense.

Neil:

You know, everybody is capable of examining

Neil:

their own practices.

Neil:

Yeah, you can, and I'm steeped in my.

Neil:

In my aircraft practices and my knowledge of engineering.

Neil:

But I still know that, hey, you know, when something goes bad with the engines that we

Neil:

produce, it's on us to figure it out.

Neil:

It's not, you know, it's not somebody outside

Neil:

of our field who's responsible.

Neil:

It's almost certainly us.

Neil:

And we got to take a look at what we're doing.

Neil:

You know, teachers are.

Neil:

The educators are perfectly capable of doing this, too.

Neil:

And Professor John Simmons demonstrates that perfectly, what he did in writing that

Neil:

article.

Neil:

That is the exact right thing to do.

Neil:

This is how it works.

Neil:

You see, you make a connection between your

Neil:

practice and some negative thing that has happened, in this case, a school shooting, and

Neil:

you're like, wait a minute, we got practices here that are connected to what this kid did

Neil:

at Virginia Tech.

Neil:

And now I got to write, I got to warn my

Neil:

fellow practitioners that we got a problem here.

Neil:

And that's exactly what he did.

Neil:

That's exactly the right thing to do.

Neil:

And what should have happened is that should have generated a conversation between

Neil:

Professor Simmons and his fellow practitioners.

Neil:

And had it.

Neil:

Had this been done, right, it would have

Neil:

generated this conversation.

Neil:

It would have led to the profession, or at

Neil:

least the English profession, coming together as a profession, saying, look, we need.

Neil:

We need a deeper investigation here to try to understand if there.

Neil:

If there really is something here.

Neil:

And Professor Simmons would have been

Neil:

recruited to lead the investigation.

Neil:

But that is.

Neil:

That is how it works.

Neil:

But that is not what has happened.

Neil:

But that is what needs to happen if this is going to be resolved.

Martin:

And as an positive end note, Blair, we have had on our show guests talking about

Martin:

homeschooling and also private new colleges and others.

Martin:

So there are a bright side in the future here.

Martin:

Have any comment on that, Neil?

Martin:

Any positive signs for the future for.

Neil:

You mean for.

Neil:

For other forms of schooling?

Martin:

Yeah, and education in, in general.

Neil:

But I do, I do see positive signs.

Neil:

There's some.

Neil:

I, there's something on Twitter that I've seen some person in Austin, Texas, who is promoting

Neil:

a school model in which you can do all your learning in just like two hours a day.

Neil:

And I really love that idea.

Neil:

I mean, I think it's so this idea that you're

Neil:

in school for eight hours a day.

Neil:

I just, the more I learn about it and

Neil:

understand it, it just seems crazy to me.

Neil:

You can learn a lot with focused instruction

Neil:

on the things that you need to know within a couple of hours, and then the rest of the day

Neil:

is yours to learn other things in other ways.

Neil:

So, yeah, I do have a lot of confidence in the

Neil:

future.

Neil:

What I'm not confident about is dealing, is

Neil:

dealing with this problem, which is not being dealt with and still isn't.

Neil:

And we've got continued attacks.

Neil:

And this is, this has got to be dealt with.

Neil:

This, you know, the education system is still a monolith, and it's got to be dealt with.

Blair:

Well, I certainly agree with that.

Blair:

And if, maybe after the show, if you could

Blair:

remember that, the instigator, the author of that particular education idea, we'll put it

Blair:

in our notes.

Blair:

But I also want to mention, I think, the mess

Blair:

that was the COVID and all the lockdowns, I think that woke a lot of people up to some of

Blair:

the horrors of the education system, because the teachers unions got a lot of press and

Blair:

they were saying that your parents don't, the students don't belong to the parents, they

Blair:

belong to us, or terrible things like that.

Blair:

And because of that, I think homeschooling

Blair:

went up 25% across the country and relatively short time.

Blair:

Yeah, so that's, that's a positive trend.

Neil:

Definitely.

Blair:

You still have the.

Blair:

And even if some Trump or some future

Blair:

president decides, okay, we're going to shave off the Department of Education from the

Blair:

federal budget, that's okay.

Blair:

That's the first step of what are you going

Blair:

to, you know, what, what happens after that?

Neil:

So, yeah, I, I agree.

Neil:

I think, I think the, the unions and the

Neil:

schools did reveal themselves quite a bit in this covet debacle.

Neil:

And I think that did open a lot of people's eyes.

Neil:

You know, for whatever reason, they, they played, you know, their cards too openly.

Neil:

And, and a lot of people learn more about the way the education system works.

Neil:

I think that's a good thing.

Neil:

There's no transparency.

Neil:

You have to have transparency.

Neil:

And there's, I think, very little transparency

Neil:

in the way our educational system works and the.

Neil:

What goes on in our schools.

Neil:

I just, I. And what goes on in these teacher

Neil:

training schools, the one that I went to, it's, it's.

Neil:

It's completely irrational.

Blair:

And you're a parent yourself.

Blair:

Not that I want to.

Neil:

Yes.

Blair:

Yeah. So. So that's what you've done I think is a magnificent.

Blair:

You shine a light on a very serious issue and I think you've hopefully have opened a lot of

Blair:

eyes in the.

Blair:

As we publish this podcast and add our links

Blair:

to it, I hope a lot of people will be able to read this.

Blair:

Have you had any feedback other than us wanting to have you on the podcast?

Blair:

I mean I know this was earlier this year, but it's so still relatively new article.

Neil:

But it is and I want to thank you for your kind words about it.

Neil:

But I have not received that much feedback.

Neil:

But generally what I have received is a bit

Neil:

skeptical.

Neil:

But that's understandable.

Neil:

It's a radical thesis and I certainly expect that.

Neil:

And it really is just the tip of the iceberg in my opinion.

Neil:

If there was a proper investigation of the schools on this issue, it would unload a whole

Neil:

truckload of additional evidence supporting my thesis.

Neil:

I mean I'm very confident this is a high conviction thesis.

Neil:

I'm very confident in it despite you know, some of the skepticism that I've encountered.

Neil:

But, but no, I. Overall I have not received too much feedback.

Neil:

So I guess I need to get the word out and I do appreciate being on your podcast because I

Neil:

think that will help get the word out.

Neil:

So I think this was a great, a great time.

Martin:

Yeah. And when we spread the good word and we also welcoming constructive criticism

Martin:

and feedback from our listeners and also you could send them a booster gram so called.

Martin:

It's a digital telegram and send small donation or a big donation.

Martin:

For example we have one Blair what we like 221905 Satoshis.

Martin:

That's Rand's birthday number.

Martin:

And you could also stream satushis to us and

Martin:

then we could split here with our guests.

Martin:

So what's on your plan or mind or agenda in

Martin:

the near future, Neil, if you want to share that?

Neil:

Well, I do plan to write more articles.

Neil:

The.

Neil:

The article that I wrote and published is really a top level, very concise article that

Neil:

I and I intended it that way.

Neil:

I wanted to be able to you to be able to read

Neil:

it in one sitting and you know, relatively quickly.

Neil:

But I do intend on writing articles to additional articles to elaborate on some of

Neil:

the further.

Neil:

Elaborate on some of the aspects that I raise

Neil:

in that article.

Neil:

So that's what I see in my future.

Blair:

Outstanding.

Blair:

All right, well, we'll definitely have you

Blair:

back then.

Neil:

Well, thank you.

Blair:

Great.

Blair:

All right, ladies and gentlemen, our guest

Blair:

today has been Neil Arian, who issued a product safety alert on progressive education.

Blair:

Neil, thanks for manning the foxhole with us.

Neil:

Thank you.

Neil:

I enjoyed it.

Neil:

I appreciate being in the foxhole with you, and I would definitely love to come back.

Martin:

Thanks.

Blair:

All right.

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About the Podcast

The Secular Foxhole
Separation of Religion and State
As a freethinker, are you looking through binoculars out at the world in the safety of a foxhole? Get fuel for your soul and intellectual ammunition by listening to The Secular Foxhole podcast, in order to fight for the separation of religion and state.

Blair chose this name (The Secular Foxhole) to dispute the myth that there are no atheists in foxholes, but also as a place to share ideas and defend Free Speech. The co-hosts both advocate the separation of Church and State, but also Economics and State. In short, Liberalism, Individualism, and Capitalism.
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About your hosts

Blair Schofield

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I'm a 'lapsed' blogger who turned his blog into a podcast. Now the task is to keep both up to date! My co-host Martin Lindeskog and I have already celebrated our one year anniversary, with the podcast.

Martin Lindeskog

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Creator, ✍🏻 Tea Book Sketches. Indie Biz Philosopher ⚛️ & New Media 📲 Advisor, TeaParty.Media. Blogger since 2002 and podcaster🎙since 2006. First podcast: EGO NetCast. Latest podcast: Pluck the Day. Support 💲My Work and 🗽 Freedom of Expression: https://bio.link/lyceum