Thank you for joining us on The State of Education with Melvin Adams. Today, Melvin interviews Andrew Glover, a parent advocating for change after discovering objectionable moral content in his kid’s public school curriculum. Andrew shares challenging experiences at school board meetings along with encouragement for parents seeking to get involved.
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Thank you for joining us on The State of Education with Melvin Adams. Today, Melvin interviews Andrew Glover, a parent advocating for change after discovering objectionable moral content in his kid’s public school curriculum. Andrew shares challenging experiences at school board meetings along with encouragement for parents seeking to get involved.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:
GET CONNECTED WITH NWEF
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nwef.org/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NWEF_org
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nwef_org/
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtdHayyOqPftVoiGEqxYdsg
To hear more from NWEF, subscribe to our other podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1898310
– WHAT IS THE NOAH WEBSTER EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION? –
Noah Webster Educational Foundation collaborates with individuals and organizations to tell the story of America’s education and culture; discover foundational principles that improve it; and advance practice and policy to change it.
Website: https://www.nwef.org
Reach out: info@nwef.org
ADAMS: Welcome to the State of Education with Melvin Adams. I am Melvin Adams, your host. My guest today is Andrew Glover, a parent from Lynchburg, Virginia.
At Noah Webster Education Foundation, we believe that parents are the first educators and should always have the primary influence on the education of their children. So we’re always happy to talk to parents who have something to share. Andrew, welcome [00:30] to the show today.
GLOVER: Thank you for having me.
ADAMS: Well let’s just jump right in here. First of all, please share a little bit about yourself and why, as a parent, you’ve chosen to attend school board meetings and make your voice bread.
GLOVER: Yeah, absolutely. So, I have three boys. An 8 year old, 9 year old, and a 16 month old. My journey into the administrative, school board end of things started right around the time that COVID hit. [01:00]
I saw when they shut down schools—at the time my two oldest boys were attending an elementary school in the system—and they weren’t doing anything. The take-home material that they had sent was not being graded, it was haphazard, and it was a mess.
And I initially went to the school board trying to get them to move and be like, “Okay, we need something different than just coloring sheets” which is what it felt like at times. [01:30] And so I went to the school board and I was given three minutes and that was it.
And they didn't say anything else, they didn’t acknowledge the problems, they didn’t offer any solutions, no response. And so I went back to them again like, “Okay, we need to work on opening schools. What’s the plan to get us to where we can have a safe school environment so we can send our students who are at home filling out sheets that you’re not even grading—how do we get them back in the schools?” [02:00]
I was given another three minutes. Not a word from them. And so it went on like that and finally I said enough is enough. And so I got a group of parents who were having very similar problems together and we went as a group! And again, no change from the school board.
So it initially started as let’s get schools open then transferred the following year to okay now—because that was 2020, [02:30] then 2021 comes—the school is still shut down at the beginning of the 2021 school year, you’re still working remotely, it was slightly better.
But then I started seeing what’s in the curriculum. And so our group got together and started addressing the things that we were finding in the curriculum that were just wrong. And so it just escalated and now we’ve got a group of 400 parents that advocate for our kids in the school system here.
ADAMS: Wow. That's excellent. I think we [03:00] have a video clip of you addressing the school board, let’s take a look at that.
GLOVER: Alright!
VIDEO VOICEOVER: Our next speaker will be Mr. Andrew Glover who is going to talk to us about school policy and curriculum, representing conservative parents of Lynchburg. Welcome, Mr. Glover.
GLOVER: Thank you. Good evening, Lynchburg City School Board, my name is Andrew Glover and tonight I represent the conservative parents of [03:30] Lynchburg—a group that has grown to almost 400 concerned parents, caregivers, and teachers in Lynchburg City.
First off, I want to acknowledge that today was the first time that students have been able to be mask-free in schools. I am excited that teachers and students got to see their children’s faces for the first time in two years.
It saddens me that it took the entire state legislature, and the governor [04:00] to compel you to support parents. One area that is still of concern that is still out of compliance is in regard to the nature of divisive materials still being taught and/or paid for by Lynchburg City Schools.
Which is a direct violation of executive order number 1, recently substantiated by the rescinding of the ed-equity program by the Department of Education. Despite clear direction [04:30] that you were given by law and by policy, LCS is still seeking to spend an additional 26,000 dollars to pay the University of Lynchburg to teach these types of topics.
For instance, in a textbook for LCS course number 36339AD, the textbook reads, “The ideology of meritocracy, equal opportunity, and individualism that we describe above, play a powerful role [05:00] in denying and insisting that society is just.”
That author later states, “White identity is inherently racist. White people do not exist outside of a system of white supremacy.” Now unfortunately, our concerns are beyond just this one class.
But even in foundational classes, like freshman literature, where just last month multiple classes were assigned to read, discuss and report on a book [05:30] that promotes anti-police views, as well as perpetuate the message that racism is everywhere and that white people are responsible for fixing this problem.
Your desire to push this divisive narrative is evidently so powerful that you are ok with using a book—despite it’s substantially inappropriate language, which includes 46 uses of a derivative of [bleep], [bleep], and [bleep], and the literally substantive [06:00] of [continues bleeping].
UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Mr. Glover—
GLOVER: …37 times.
UNKNOWN: Mr. Glover, we will not use…
GLOVER: I can keep on going! And this is in the book! And if I can’t say this in a school board meeting, they shouldn’t be reading it in the book. I’ll go on.
UNKNOWN: [muffled, “waiting for closing statement”]
GLOVER: This is in a book that is being used in a freshman literature class. It’s no wonder you’re seeing behavior issues in class if this type of literature is being [06:30] held up as a standard bearer for LCS.
Several months ago, our group shared a list of books that we were concerned about. In total, that book list had 127 books and to date we have not heard back from one of you regarding that list. It is this type of leadership from you that is contributing to the reason why half of our students are still below grade level.
Later tonight, you will look at mid-year academic reviews for the LCS school system. [07:00] On the surface, elementary schools saw fantastic progress compared to the last update we received in August. However, 49% of third graders, 63% of fourth graders, and 68% of fifth graders are still showing below grade level.
More concerning is the trend in high school, which indicates that our high school students are losing ground, not gaining it back. At the beginning of the year, 41% of high schoolers were behind in reading and now that number’s grown to 46. [07:30]
And Board Docs did not provide that information for math and I hope that the school board member will ask for the math information. Finally, I would be remiss not to mention the overall concern regarding the recent bullying behaviors and attacks that are escalating in schools.
I share the concerns of many that have already spoken as well as as press conference from a group that we’re not related to but share 3 or 4 other specific instances of bullying [08:00] and attacks and stuff. We need to know that our children are safe when we send them to our school.
So to end, I’d like to quote that book that I spoke of earlier. “When I tell you you all” and I quote “Strap on a pair and get [bleep] together” page 76. Which will require you to stop fighting parents and start working with us. Thank you. That’s in your textbooks! [08:30]
UNKNOWN: Mr. Glover, thank you. And I must state to any speaker who approaches the Lynchburg City School Board going forward, that in terms of literary dialogue, that if [unintelligible—08:44], there will be no tolerance for profanity or vulgar language shared during the public comments section.
ADAMS: [09:00] Thank you for becoming engaged and for going and speaking to your school board about your concerns and also to rally other parents who could come and speak and really address these issues because of their concern for their children.
That’s so important and we’re seeing more and more of that across the country. And certainly we support that as long as it’s respectfully, which it seemed that you were doing—so thank you for that. [09:30]
Let’s dig in just a little bit… you were talking about some of the books and some of the curriculum. That certainly has made a lot of news across the country with the stuff that people are realizing is in the curriculum of our schools and our students are seeing this sometimes very very young.
So here’s the question. What is your take on, let’s say, book banning or restricting certain books in our public schools [10:00] and libraries?
GLOVER: I think we need to be careful on what it is that we’re defining. We’re talking about banning books from the public education system and from public schools. These are students—they’re minors, they’re youth—we’re not talking about restricting free speech, trying to burn books or prevent them from ever coming to market or any of that.
We’re talking about controlling what it is that our children have access to. [10:30] And just because something is in a book does not mean that that book is right and it does not mean that the theory that is presented in that book is right.
And just because someone took the time to write it down on paper does not mean that that theory is therefore validated or that we as a society have to validate that theory. There’s a lot of bad theories out there and I’m sorry, we do need to be in control of what it is that we’re exposing our children to and doing it in a thoughtful and methodical and right way. [11:00]
ADAMS: So you said a thoughtful and methodical and right way to do that. What are some of the ideas you have?
GLOVER: I’m a Christian, so everything that I do, I do through my worldview as a Christian. And the Bible is very clear throughout the entire scripture that we’re called to take our thoughts captive. Is that where our thoughts are, where our energy is, that’s what ends up [11:30] expelling out of us and that’s what we end up becoming.
And so the very first thing we need to do is we need to just be ok with saying, “No. These certain things are not acceptable even in tiny small amounts.” So the book I was talking about in that video—it was actually referencing two separate books: one was a Critical Race Theory book by Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility.
The premise of [12:00] all whites, by the nature of your skin color, makes you racist or not racist because you’re black or white. Why are we even entertaining that? Why? Just because the book may have other good thoughts or ideas about the nuances of racism, doesn’t mean we need to validate the author or let that little bit creep in and take a foothold in our education system. [12:30]
So that’s really the first way to be thoughtful is to kinda take control of what it is that we’re ingesting. You know, we’re seeing a lot in Disney right now. My wife and I are currently having discussion on whether we cancel Disney, do we stop paying for our Disney+ subscription?
And we’re having very serious thoughts about that the majority of what it is that they’re presenting is right or wrong, it’s the fact [13:00] that little by little, those little pieces are taking bigger steps. So let’s just take control of our thoughts right now.
I think the next thing is just not normalizing bad behavior. And a lot of these books—because they want to push an agenda, they normalize bad behavior. So the second book that I quote from is a book called All American Boys and it pushes the idea that police are bad. It’s got major anti-police views, [13:30] it pushes the fact that racism is white people’s fault and it’s white people’s responsibility to fix it.
And so those are the two prevailing theories that the public education system, supported by a lot of institutions, is wanting to push. And as a result, they do so at the expense of other bad behavior. That book normalizes underage drinking, that book has massive amounts of profanity, and you normalize this behavior to where [14:00] you have a freshman book—these kids are just out of middle school, they’re younger kids.
You’re not talking a senior or a highschooler, you’re talking a freshman highschooler and you’re telling them this is the behavior we expect… this book normalizes bad behavior. Well, now no wonder we’re having bad behavior in schools when we’re holding up books that literally have hundreds and hundreds of instances of bad behavior.
ADAMS: Yeah. Well I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ve often [14:30] said we are what we think and we typically think as we are taught. And what you just said is a classic example of that. We’re taught certain things, we read certain things, Whatever goes in gets processed and it just starts to come out, as you said. And boy that’s so true.
And that is why it matters [15:00] what our kids are taught. There is just no question about that. You mentioned that you’re a Christian. Not everybody in the system would profess that.
GLOVER: Sure.
ADAMS: So how do you propose navigating reading material that reflects positions of various faith communities?
GLOVER: I think that this gets into a question of morality, largely. So our morals are essentially our guiding beliefs [15:30] and standards of the way that we live our lives and that’s the definition of morals. Everyone, regardless of whether they’re a Christian or not—they can be agnostic, they can be atheist—they are all guided by a set of morals.
And our morals can only come from one of three locations. They can come from ourselves, in which case whatever I decide is morally ok is ok and similarly is not. But that means that basically anything I want. If I decide, personally, that murder is okay, [16:00] then murder is okay under that instance. So that can’t be.
So the second place is that society can set morals. And I think a lot of people can land on this concept that they’re not related with a religious text. And society, by the laws that we set says that these things are permissible and that these things are not. But the problem with society setting morals is that society is oftentimes wrong. [16:30]
It falls victim to group-think. You look at the atrocities of World War II where German society at the time said it’s okay to kill this whole classification of individuals, in this case the Jewish. And the society deemed that okay within the German society.
And so our society can’t be that set of morals either. And so ultimately, you can continue to exist as society is—and therefore society would be the school board [17:00] and the school board gets to decide these things—or you can go back to the basics of the morals need to unchanging, which requires the religious text, which in this case for my belief system, that’s the Bible.
What you’ll find is that the Bible, the Quran—all of the other religious texts—they all have basically the same moral principles. There are some deviations but 90% of your moral principles are the same regardless of what the religion is. [17:30]
And being careful of what you ingest and training your children up in the way they should go is universal across all religions.
ADAMS: Yeah, I think that’s a good point. It is true that almost all the world religions have very common, core sets of moral values. You know, like you said, there are some variances of, really, more pertaining to [18:00] certainly the character and nature of God and how that reflects on our personal identity and how we see ourselves and how we see the world.
But in general, in our relationship to ourselves and to others around us—that communal fiber that kinda creates that social moral structure [18:30]—we will find that almost all world religions are very, very close there.
GLOVER: Yeah.
ADAMS: So I think that’s an important point to make and if it passes muster in the major religions, you’re saying then that you’re okay with that?
GLOVER: I’m going to be okay with it just because I’m a firm believer. I think there’s just resident in other places to support that outside of my own belief systems. [19:00] I just have a problem with society saying well I choose to believe this is correct or I choose to believe this is wrong.
Because society shifts back and forth so much that your morals change and morality and change and therefore what is determined as right and wrong can change and I just don’t think that right or wrong can be changed at all.
ADAMS: Right. I think you hit on an important point here. There is a difference between a person’s personal—we may call them convictions, [19:30] or their standards of morality. That varies widely. Versus what are considered universal standards of moral behavior, which are much more defined.
Alright, so as a parent, what do you think constitutes good reading material for school libraries and why?
GLOVER: I think that you need to get to [20:00] what is the intent of that reading material first off. What is it that we’re doing? That’s the first barrier. Are we promoting something that is generally, positively good?
So are we promoting critical thinking? Are we promoting mathematics skills or English-Literature skills? Are we promoting [20:30] being a good citizen? So that’s your first level: is the overall intent of the book positive?
There are some books that just don’t even hit that basic thing. There’s a lot them that I’m thinking…like Gender Queer or Lawn Boy or some of these other ones that I would just say the intent is specifically to promote immoral or bad things that we just don’t need to address in a school setting.
They’re personal [21:00] choices and things that should be controlled by the family and by the parents and that shouldn’t be coming from the public education system. So why are those in our public schools to begin with?
A parent needs to be addressed and a parent needs to be invested in the children’s lives. You don't want to—and unfortunately you see it a lot, the school is not the parent. We are the parents and we need to be the ones responsible for some of these gray area matters, especially [21:30] when it comes to sex, when it comes to certain cases of racism and responsibilities therein of.
There are just certain things that are the responsibility of parents and not the responsibility of the school. So what is the intent of that book? Is it to replace the parents or is it to continue teaching reading, writing, arithmetic? So that’s your first thing.
I think that the second thing is how is the material presented? [22:00] Is it presented in a way that tells and outlines a good story? We can tell moral and good stories without normalizing bad behavior. There are always, always, always alternatives to telling moral stories.
And telling things one way and be able to get a point across without bringing in bad behavior. I’ll use an example. One of my absolute favorite book series [22:30] is a book series called Jumper by Steven Gould. It’s about a—and I don’t know if you’ve read it, it’s a novel about this guy who, in high school, learns that he can teleport.
And the way that he learns that he can teleport is through escaping an abusive relationship within his family. So his father regularly beats him, is regularly abusive to him. And the way that, early on, [23:00] that’s presented is kinda just yes, there’s abuse.
It reinforces that the abuse is bad and generally does an okay job explaining that. But then later on, under this new discovery of his, the main character, Davie, essentially has an attempted rape.
And this one chapter in this whole book that introduces the series is completely unnecessary to the story. [23:30] And it’s like why is this in there? Yes, it reinforces the contempt that trauma is what caused him to escape and in escaping that’s where your teleportation comes in here. But you’ve already established that. What was the point of this whole section?
It was just unnecessary. And so it’s like, how can I recommend something as something that’s my favorite series when it has something that is unnecessary and is, unfortunately, really graphic? [24:00]And makes it to where I can’t recommend that book until you’re old enough, and I would say an adult—even though this is targeted towards preteens.
ADAMS: You know, I would argue that, you know… first let me say that I agree with your premise there and your recommendations. But I would argue that the whole matter of whether or not books are (or anything beyond that even) appropriate [24:30] in our schools really goes back to what is the purpose of education? What is education? What is its purpose? What are the purposes of our schools?
If we go back to the founding father of American education who was Noah Webster, who this organization is named after. I mean, in his dictionary, the definition that he had for education was this: “to bring up, as of a child, instruction, [25:00] formation of manners.
“Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manner and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations.
“To give children a good education in manners, arts, and sciences, is important. To give them a religious education [25:30] is indispensable, and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.”
So first of all from that I think we see that his idea was that the first responsibility of parents and guardians to do the educating. But he also showed that he basically broke down what the real purpose of education was.
And that is to impart [26:00] knowledge, to develop character, and to equip students for a useful place in society. Thoughts on that?
GLOVER: Yeah, I think that that’s a really solid definition and so one of my concerns is that—and this goes back to the discussion that we had on morality—is that who determines what character is worth developing? And that’s where parents need to be involved in the school system [26:30] and understanding that there are alternatives to the public education system.
First off, it’s that we do have alternative education, you’re not just stuck in the public school. Now there’s certainly parents who don’t have a choice: single income families, non-nuclear families, low-income families, they're just stuck in the system.
But just because they’re stuck in the system doesn’t mean they can’t attend school boards, be active in the schools. But then there’s others: [27:00] there’s homeschoolers, there’s private schoolers, there’s online schools, there’s hybrids where it’s a combination of a private and a homeschool, that’s becoming really popular recently.
And it’s just being involved and, as a parent, making sure your children have access to the positive character that you want developed in your children. And you’re not going to be able to do that if you’re not involved in whatever schooling system you choose to be in. [27:30]
ADAMS: So here’s a question for you. Maybe a couple of them here together. So as a parent activist (I’m going to call you that, that’s how you might be viewed) what resources and support do you wish you had? And where should a parent begin if they are frustrated by their school and their school’s curriculum and they want to get involved? [28:00]
GLOVER: Yeah, so lemme start with the second part of that and then we’ll back up. If anybody wants to get involved, understand that it is a marathon, not a sprint.
ADAMS: Right.
GLOVER: Showing up at a single school board meeting or showing up at a single event is not getting involved. Getting involved means showing up at your parent-teacher conference, sending weekly emails to your teachers, saying how [28:30] can I help my student?
Showing activity outside of the school board room so that you have a relationship with that teacher and the teacher knows, hey, I want to be your partner in this because my child’s education is important.
From there, it is absolutely instrumental to be present at the school board meeting so that when you raise a concern the school board doesn’t ignore you. Early on, without a group it just felt like we’re just being ignored. So get involved. [29:00]
And here in the local, central Virginia region, we have fantastic groups. We have the one that I lead in Lynchburg, there’s a different group in Bedford, there’s a different group in Amherst, there’s a different group in Appomattox, Campbell also has a new one.
Get involved in one of those groups because you’re going to be able to keep eyes on a lot more things, you can delegate certain tasks. We have one parent in our group that’s solely focused on tracking books. We have another [29:30] parent that was tracking the mask updates on the legislative level.
We had another that was just all these different issues—there’s just too many to approach on your own. So by getting involved in a group and bringing others into this or by joining a group you can watch these things and also invest into it as saying these are things that we need to really come together and be vocal at the school board meetings on.
So you can show that you’re not just talking and parroting some news line [30:00] but what you’re saying is based on information that you’re seeing truly in the schools versus what you’re just hearing about on the news. So that’s where I would say that’s how parents get involved and unfortunately, it’s a full time job. But so is parenting, but it’s the most important job you’re going to have.
In terms of resources, there’s certain things I wish that…. [30:30] I struggled with at first that I wish I had more help on. Things like understanding Robert’s Rules of order so that I understood what was and wasn’t permissible in a school system.
Very early on, the school board using procedural grounds were essentially bullying people and preventing people from speaking, using just obscure things. So understanding the importance of [31:00] looking through the established rules and policies and understanding and identifying these are where I’m allowed to speak, here’s where I’m not, here’s the important things, how to read an agenda.
And it’s kinda just the training of the understanding of how a school board meeting happens. So I, luckily, came into it with previous exposure to parliamentary rules and stuff like that so I didn’t come out of it from the cold, but I think a lot of parents really are and so that would be one really helpful thing. [31:30]
Because school board meetings are boring. 95% of school board meetings are absurdly boring. But that 5% you’ve got to stick through because that 5% matters. Being able to be on top of your game and have centralized resources for the agenda so that you understand what it is the school board is going to be talking about so that you can approach your school board members ahead of that agenda and be able to advocate [32:00] before you even say your first word.
If you haven’t talked to a school board member before that meeting, you’ve already lost. So having a resource to be able to identify when are the meetings, across the board because every county is different. Kinda learning the rules and the way to go about it has been a learning experience.
ADAMS: Well that’s excellent. [32:30] Andrew, thank you for joining us today, it’s been very insightful what you’ve shared with us and I’m sure many of our listeners are going to listen closely and they’re going to have some takeaways that they're going to take and apply in their own circumstances. Thank you, we appreciate you being with us today.
GLOVER: Thank you so much.
ADAMS: Now to our listeners, if you found encouragement or insight in today's episode of The State of Education, please hit that like button [33:00] and subscribe. We look forward to sharing more quality content thanks to generous support from our donors.