Building on the American Heritage Series - Changing a State and a Generation

What if the textbook your child reads in fifth grade quietly rewires how they’ll vote at forty-five? We pull back the curtain on who actually shapes classroom content, why two states can steer a national market, and how a long game—not a last-minute lobby—decides what millions of students learn about America, free enterprise, and the Constitution.

We walk you through the real mechanics of education: state boards setting standards, publishers investing millions, and the ripple effects that follow. Texas and California educate a quarter of the nation’s students, so their standards become the template for everyone else. When California’s budgets and regulations stalled new adoptions, Texas became the main driver. Inside that vacuum, a fierce fight unfolded over what history should emphasize: group identity and constant critique, or a balanced story that includes failures, celebrates individual achievement, and teaches why free markets lifted more people out of poverty than any command economy ever did.

Here’s the part most people miss: votes on standards are won years before the meeting starts. We share the 15-year strategy that flipped a state board from losing 1–14 to winning 10–5, and how that shift restored heroes like Nathan Hale and General Patton, kept Christmas alongside other holidays, and required teaching free enterprise. The takeaway is practical and urgent. If you want better outcomes, go upstream: recruit candidates for school boards and state boards, show up with quality civics materials for Constitution Day and Freedom Week, and use your taxpayer standing to review what gets taught. Homeschool and private school families still have skin in the game—88 percent of future leaders come through public schools.

Chapters

• 0:00 Framing Faith, Politics, And Education
• 0:42 Who Sets Classroom Philosophy
• 2:36 Content Versus Process In Textbooks
• 3:40 Texas And California’s Outsized Influence
• 6:30 California Constraints And Publisher Retreat
• 8:16 Inside Texas Standards: Process And Players
• 10:14 Fighting Deconstructionism In History Standards
• 12:33 Protests Over Exceptionalism And Free Markets
• 14:38 The 15-Year Strategy To Flip The Board
• 17:12 Long-Term Impact On Future Leaders
• 18:26 Patriot Academy Invitation
• 19:06 How Other States Can Engage
• 21:06 Beyond History: Science And Health Standards
• 22:40 Should We Leave Education To Experts
• 24:20 Why Stay Involved When Results Lag

Transcript

Rick Green

You found your way to the intersection of faith and politics. Wallbuilders live with David barton and rick green. Also found online at wallbuilders.com and wallbuilders.show also on facebook you can follow us there as well and comment on the shows as you get a chance to listen to them. In fact if you have a show or a topic you would like us to cover, you can email us at radio@wallbuilders.com and we also encourage you to let your local radio station know if you would like to hear us locally if we are not on a local station there. If you’re not familiar with which stations we are on, go check us out at wallbuilderslive.com. so here we go with listening to Building the American Heritage Series with David Barton.

So David, we know that the philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government of the next. 

David Barton

And by the way, that is a great point, Jesus said the same thing in Luke 6:40. Every student, when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. There is also an old axiom in early America where Benjamin Franklin says bent the twigs so rose the tree. You know if you take a little sapling and pull it over here, it’s going to lean to the left or lean to the right or whatever so it becomes very important. 

Rick Green

But who decides what the philosophy taught in the classroom is going to be?

David Barton

The way that is decided, there are actually several things involved. You have the local level education, you have state madidates saying every state has a state board of education or some type of state education agency. And then you have the federal stuff where the federal government says here is what you are going to do. Here is the law that we passed on education. Here is what you have to do. So every time you look at education, you are really having to look at multi tiered type of strategy. In addition to laws and address strategy, you also have laws you need to be concerned about because if you have really good laws in education and really bad textbooks, you are going to have trouble. 

Rick Green

So even if they have a good process for how the classroom will work, how the school system is going to work, if you are putting bad textbooks with bad information, or lacking good information, you are still going to get bad results. 

David Barton

One of the reasons the national textbooks that we use, a lot of states now mandate by state law that you have to teach the benefits of the free market system.

Rick Green

Because you want the young people coming out of the classroom 

David Barton

Who understand. That’s right. 

Rick Green

Free market, not communism. Not socialism, you want free enterprise.

David Barton

One of the big national textbooks that was used met the mandate and said well we are teaching the benefits and they went through and taught the benefits but at the end they said, but by the way, history has proven unequivocally that the best form of economics and government is communism. 

Rick Green

This was an American textbook?

David Barton

An American textbook! Yeah, this was just a matter of a few years ago. So they met the state law but the content was terrible, you know so you can get the right kind of law and that’s where textbooks become so very important. A lot of national attention has put focus on this in a lot of recent months in the last few years on Texas because Texas really has an influence on driving the standards of the nation. And you say, that’s just Texas, that’s one of 50 states. And no, it’s really not. When Texas comes out with standards it actually effects the entire nation. Texas and California, the two states have 26% of the nation’s public-school students. 

Rick Green

Just between those two states. 

David Barton

Two states have ¼ of the nation’s public-school students so when either one of those states write standards that’s what publishers publish to. Because in the case of history we write standards in textbooks in history. It is going to take a publisher about 20 million dollars to create the textbooks that go from k-12. They are going to invest 10 to 20 million dollars to write that. 

Rick Green

They don’t want to do that for every state. 

David Barton

How are they going to get the money back? They got to get their money back. So if Kansas creates standards, there’s not enough kids in Kansas to buy enough textbooks to pay back the 20 million dollars so they write their textbooks to match either California of Texas standards because there are not enough kids in those states that they will recover another 20 million dollars.  So what happens is, they will write to Texas of California standard or Louisiana. They will say, well Louisiana has standards and they will say, well lets put two pages in on Louisiana. But it is still the core on what either Texas or California gave them 

Rick Green

So what we do in Texas or what they do in California is not going to affect just those kids. Those textbooks are going to go 

David Barton

That’s right. It is even different from that now because California is so bankrupt. They are so under economically they haven’t been able to purchase textbooks. 

Rick Green [00:03:54] So they're not going through that process of rewriting and buying new text. 

David Barton [00:03:56] They go through, but they can't do it. So publishers do not want to publish for California. And by the way, the politics is so goofy in California. I was appointed in California to do their standards. And so they have so many commissions and everyone erects its own standards. And one of the things in California is they they use what's called the tri-division of history. In other words, in elementary school, we're going to study from pre-Columbus all the way up to the Stamp Act, 1765. In junior high, we're going to study from the Stamp Act all the way through Reconstruction. So that's 1765 all the way through 1877, 1876. And then in high school, we're going to study from Reconstruction to the current time. So what happens is they have standards that says if you violate any of that tri-division, you'll lose your funding for your textbooks. So if over here, when I'm talking about Columbus, I also talk about President Reagan or President Carter or President Clinton or President Bush, we're going to lose the funding for so publishers won't do that. But they also have a civil rights commission. And the Civil Rights Commission has created a regulation that says every single textbook has to address Martin Luther King. Now wait a minute. If I address Martin Luther King back here in the American Revolution, textbook publishers are they don't even want to go into California anymore because there's so many conflicting government regulations that you could put twenty million out to invest in a textbook and you can find out you violated regulations. 

Rick Green [00:05:10] So that makes Texas the main game then, yes. 

David Barton [00:05:12] What happens in Texas is what will go everywhere in the nation in the way of textbooks. The legislature creates the the rules, and then there's the elected state board of education that comes up with all these standards. So that's the decision makers. That's the decision. There's 15 elected members for the state of Texas. Each elected member of the State Board of Education has a district twice the size of a congressional district. Texas has 32 U.S. Congressmen of only 15 state boards, so that's a big district. You're talking about a million and a half people in each state board of education. That's who they elect one person from that million and a half to go represent them on the state board. The state board gets there and says, okay, we're writing standards this year on science. We're writing standards on health or whatever. Well, it was the cycle to do to do history. And so the 15 members on the State Board of Education get to elect experts to come in. And those experts say, here's what you should look at in your standards, here's what you should include, here's what needs to be there. And I was chosen as one of those six experts. Now, when we got there and looked at the standards, the standards were really, really ugly. They reflected what we call deconstructionism and post-structuralism. Everything that's ever gone wrong with America was in those standards. So focusing on all the negative. Anything that went right? No, no, no, no right. And we didn't talk about individual achievements. We had to talk only about group achievements. You can't talk about what great Americans have done. You have to talk about what blacks did or what gays did or what whites did or what Hispanics did or what Indian can't look at any. You gotta do everything in a group. We gotta divide the state in all of these different groups. We said no. And we went through and in the standards, you have examples you pull out for heroes to say here's what we should be teaching, and you have different holidays that you teach about and celebrate. Well, in the standards, they took Christmas out. They're not going to talk about Christmas and the history standard. Wait a minute, 72% of the nation it claims to be Christian, and 93% of the nation say they celebrate Christmas, and we're not going to talk about it, but they put the holiday diwali in. That's a Hindu holiday somewhere. I don't even know what that is. Exactly. But that's what we're going to teach our kids is Diwali, but we're not going to talk about Christmas. And by the way, while we're at it, we're going to take Davy Crockett out of the textbooks, we're going to take Nathan Hill out of the textbooks, we're going to take General George S. Patton out of the textbooks, we're taking Albert Einstein out of the textbook. 

Rick Green [00:07:18] These are some of the greatest heroes in American History.

David Barton [00:07:21] Greatest individuals with great achievements. We're taking them out of the textbooks. We don't teach our kids about that. We took the liberty bell out of the textbooks because we they said that that's an inappropriate symbol for elementary kids to have a liberty bell. Really? So this is the philosophy we're dealing with. So we go in and we just gut it. We say, no, no, no. We're not doing post structuralism. We're Americans. We're not groups. And we're not doing deconstruction. No, we're going to talk about the negative things that happened. We're going to talk about the good things that happened too. And we're going to put a lot of positive heroes out there. And you'll find that so often. 

Rick Green [00:07:51] What kind of response did you get when you began to bring the rest of that history in? 

David Barton [00:07:54] Well we insisted that we're going to teach American exceptionalism. We're going to teach in in the classroom that America is a great nation. And you don't have to go around the world apologizing for America. Yeah, we've done things wrong, but we've done a lot of things right. Yeah. We had protests at the state capitol saying, Oh, you can't teach America. You know who led the protest? University professors. University professors who were so into deconstruction said, you can't do that. We also said, we're going to teach the free market system because that's what's brought more prosperity in America than anything else. It works in every nation where it's been tried. If you have a command economy where the government regulates it, it always leads to less prosperity. So we said we're going to teach free markets. We had protests at the state capitalist. And you can't teach the free market system. 

Rick Green [00:08:33] You're talking about teaching some of the greatest things about America. 

David Barton [00:08:36] Professors leading the protests. Oh yeah. Pro protesting this stuff. So as it turns out, we completely redid the standards and we got it all done. We got it all passed. 

Rick Green [00:08:46] So over the objections of all these protesters, you've still got the fifteen board voted on. 

David Barton [00:08:51] Only 15 people get to vote on what's in the standards. And those 15 people, we won the votes 10 to 5. Now, what's key is, yeah, we had standards. It didn't matter if we had good standards unless you have people there to vote on them. And you see, this is the real story of what happened with the Texas history books, is you have to back up 15 years. Fifteen years ago on that state board of education, when we had votes like on history, we would lose the votes 1 to 14. Only one person wanted to teach patriotism and good things. 14, oh no, can't do that. We were losing everything 1 to 14. Well now, 15 years later, we're winning at 10 to 5. What happened? We said, we've got to start replacing them with somebody who has a pro-American, pro-God, God, somebody that doesn't think Christmas needs to come out of the textbooks. 

Rick Green [00:09:37] Isn't there a even a a strategy here from the too often we want to just show up and and say, okay, we've got good stuff. We're gonna lobby the members and so they'll do the right thing. No, it's not enough. So you had to back up fifteen years from the state of the state. 

David Barton [00:09:49] We've been working on this process for 15 years. And see, the interesting thing, nobody ever thought about the State Board of Education 15 years ago. Yeah. You know, to win a congressional race takes $2.2 million. Well, the State Board of Education race is twice the size of a congressional district. But they were so unnoticed that you could win a race with $5,000. So you you look at places in in elections, you think, I don't even know who the state who cares what the state board is. All I care is who the president is. No, president is not the one who created the history standards that will now go across the nation. 

Rick Green [00:10:19] Oh. 

Rick Green [00:10:20] From the local school board that's going to implement a lot of these things. 

David Barton [00:10:22] You betcha. The local school board has a lot of control over the textbooks that go in, the philosophy that goes in, what's going to happen. 

Rick Green [00:10:28] And that's usually a hundred votes, two hundred votes. 

Rick Green [00:10:30] That's right. Those are throwaway races in most people's mind. Those are some of the most important races. So if you want to w turn a state in a direction, and in this case the state is turning the nation in a direction, you don't just sh suddenly show up. You have to start fifteen years ago recruiting the right people for office, working for them, raising money for the right people. And then now fifteen years later when you need them. There they are.

Rick Green [00:10:50]  Now some people may think, oh well, now that's just too much work, fifteen years. I think this is very positive because what you're telling me, David, is it's not just the president that changes things. Sometimes people think I can't make a difference because I can't impact a presidential election. Folks, a school board election's a couple hundred votes. 

David Barton [00:11:04] You betcha. 

Rick Green [00:11:04] The state board of education these are places we truly can make a huge difference on the future of our country if we're just 

Rick Green [00:11:10] We sometimes show up and demand change. Here's an axiom that I've learned all my years in politics you want to elect people, you don't have to lobby. If I call my U.S. Senator and say, hey, you need to vote for traditional marriage. Don't vote for homo. I've already lost, I've already lost the battle. I should have elected somebody who knew that traditional marriage needed to be. Backing up again in the process. Backing up. If I got to lobby them to do the right thing, we're already on the wrong side. And if I have to lobby my state board of education members, hey, vote to put patriotism in the textbooks, I've already lost the battle. They should say, are you kidding? Take patriotism. Take Christmas out of the textbooks? There's no way we're gonna. That's the kind of people I'm wanting there. That meant I had to go recruit them 15 years ago. And then I had to get people to work with them and work for them. And I had to get them elected, and they had to sit on the board for eight years before we came to the history. Because I was appointed in 1992 to deal with Texas history standards. Well, here it is 18 years later, I'm back on the board again. It's been 18 years since we did this. Yes, it has been. And we had guys sitting on the board for all those years, and they're here for such a time as this. Oh wow. You know, so you can't just show up and say, suddenly we're gonna take it over. Yeah. And here, here's the results. This is what we've been working for 15 years. These are the standards that will change the nation. 

Rick Green [00:12:19] And and all of that time, fifteen years of work, now these standards, we will begin to see those changes. The textbooks will start coming out, the kids will be raising that. That's right. So you're not only fifteen years of doing that, but now in fifteen or twenty, thirty years ago. 

Rick Green [00:12:30] Go back to the quote you started with Abraham Lincoln, the philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation would be the philosophy of government in the next. We now have a positive philosophy of American government, limited government, constitutional government, that we're not a democracy, we are a republic, all these constitutional things that's going to be started teaching in the kids right now. Now, they got to go through 12 years of school, they're going to have to get out, they'll go through college, whatever. It may be 20 years before they're our leaders, but guess what kind of philosophy they're going to have when they become our leaders 20 years from now? The philosophy of the school room in one generation is the philosophy of government in next. And that's what we have to understand. If we're going to preserve the things that have made American accessible, has caused us to be a unique people, we've got to understand it and preserve it. And that means a long term view of what's going on. 

Rick Green [00:14:12]  So, David, if if all these other states are adopting what Texas did, can the folks at home that are in states outside of Texas do anything about 

David Barton [00:14:26] Absolutely. As a matter of fact, a lot of states have seen what Texas done and say, hey, we want to do some of that too. Because in some states, you don't necessarily, you're not guaranteed to get these good textbooks. What'll happen is the way it process works, in Texas, these publishers are gonna have to come back and say, hey, we met all your standards in textbooks, and then we say, okay, we'll buy your textbooks. Well, if you go to New Mexico, they don't have that setting. Any textbook you want to use of any philosophy you can use. I think they have 3,900 approved textbooks for the so every state is different. So you're gonna, just because Texas came up with good standards, doesn't mean that's gonna show up in the classroom everywhere. All the states are gonna have to go say, hey, we we want these textbooks, which means they're gonna have to be looked at and reviewed and gone over. And in the same way, there's a lot of things that states can do to help reinforce this. I mean, one of the things, when you were in the state legislature, you passed a 1776 law which says, hey, you've got to take a week every year in school to celebrate liberty. 

Rick Green [00:15:15] But not everybody's doing it. 

David Barton [00:15:16] No, but see, you gotta study, and in that week you've got to study the Declaration and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and how they've been applied, and you know, it's great stuff. That's a simple law that can be passed in other states. So let's say you're in New Mexico, where that you don't get a choice of textbooks the same way, and you're gonna get some crummy textbooks. Hey, just get your get your legislature, work on getting the legislature to pass that celebrate liberty law. 

David Barton [00:15:36] I think thirteen or fourteen states have done it now. So it's a good project, people are going to do that. And even if your states passed it, you can still go to your local school board and say, make sure you're implementing this. So there's something we can all do. 

David Barton [00:15:51] the federal law requires that every public  school teach on September the 17, teach the Constitution on Constitution Day. Hey, go find the good curriculum and tell the school, hey, here's the curriculum, don't use this, and and by the way, I'm gonna go to some car dealerships and some business. We're gonna raise the money to get the the kids this curriculum to school. I mean help help the school district out. There's a lot of things you can do either in creating policies or by the way, get elected to the local school board, then you do get to help select what textbooks are gonna end up in the classroom, even though they don't have the same adoption process that a state like Texas would have. So 

David Barton [00:16:15] Now you this is gonna happen again in ten years, right? 

David Barton [00:16:17] Well, not only will it happen in 10 years, but in the meantime, there's a lot of other courses that come up. I mean, they're they're gonna have to do science. Do I care about the standards and science? You bet I care about the standards and science. Is it gonna be completely secular? Are we gonna look at possibilities that might be intelligent design, which is what 84% of the nation believes? And then the standards are gonna come up in the health textbooks. Do I care whether we promote abortion or promote absence? You bet I care. So even though it may be 15 years before we get back to the history standards again, in the meantime, there are important decisions being made every single year on some aspect of the classroom. And again, the philosophy of the schoolman in one generation, philosophy of government the next, the way they view their own creation and science, the way they view their sexuality and whether God gave them a body or whether there's something they can destroy with abortion, any of that stuff I care about. And so that's why we've got to be involved in this. Doesn't matter whether, I mean, this is public schools, but do I care that every kid in the nation get good information? You bet. They may not be all Christian schooled or homeschooled or parochial schooled, but I want every kid in the nation to have the right information about American founding and American history. And that's why we stay involved for the long haul. It's history this year, there'll be something else next year, and it's gonna be just as important. 

David Barton [00:17:24] Okay, David, let's get our first question on education in textbooks. 

David Barton [00:17:26] Sounds good. 

Speaker [00:17:28] Shouldn't we leave education to the experts? 

Rick Green [00:17:33] Well, so why should I or any of our listeners be involved if we're not experts on education? 

Rick Green [00:17:39] Let's go for definitions here. I've got a car that's not working. I take it to the car repair place, the particular brand that it is, the manufacturer, and they work on it a week and can't get it working. I bring it back home. My next door neighbor says, well, I used to work on cars. Let me see what I can do. I've always tinkered with cars. He comes over and gets it working. Who's the expert? Experts should be judged not by the title, but by the fruit that's produced. 

Rick Green [00:18:04] What are the results? 

David Barton [00:18:04] What are the results? What are the results? Now, you have a number of different forms of education across the United States right now. You have public schools, you have parochial schools, you have private schools, you have home schools, you have charter schools, all these different things. Let's just take homeschools for a minute because that is the fastest growing form of education right now. It's one of many forms of education. But one thing that is irrefutable is that homeschool kids average two to four grade levels higher on academic tests than their public school counterparts. 

Rick Green [00:18:31] So the results are quite different. 

David Barton [00:18:34] The problem with homeschools is only nine to eleven percent of homeschool parents are certified teachers. So we're talking 90% of these teachers teaching these kids are not certified, they're not experts. 

Rick Green [00:18:47] Yeah. 

David Barton [00:18:47] I bet they're getting two to four grade levels higher in knowledge. So leave education to the experts. That's not looking real good. We've had it in the hands of experts now for 30 to 40 years in international competitions on science and math. The United States regularly comes in last, next to last, or in the bottom one third consistently. Experts aren't doing it. Get away from the names and titles, go back to what works, go back to the results, get the right content, get the right style and format, get the right philosophy of education, it'll make all the difference. 

Rick Green [00:19:15] Okay, let's go for another question from the audience

Speaker [00:19:18] I've tried voting and even volunteering, but it did make a difference. Why should I put forth the effort if I don't see results? 

Rick Green [00:19:24] Some people feel that way after an election. If they maybe they did volunteer, or maybe they got out there and got involved, but their candidate didn't win, or their candidate won and they didn't get the results. Why stay involved? 

David Barton [00:19:33] There's actually two aspects of that question. One is duty. You stay involved because it's the right thing to do. You don't stay involved because you get the right results. You stay involved because that's what you're supposed to do, and that is the right thing. Jesus, Matthew 25, doesn't say, well done, good and successful servant. He says well done, good and faithful servant. Faithfulness or doing one's duty or hanging in there and doing the right thing, however long it takes, that's that's what you have to do. Now the problem we've had, particularly with with God-fearing people getting involved in politics is we get involved and we'll find a great candidate, get behind the candidate, we'll we'll go out there and work a tells off for that candidate, and that candidate won't get elected, and so we pick up our ball and go home. I tried and it didn't work. On the other hand, we'll get out there and find a good candidate, get behind that candidate, work a tells off for that candidate, the candidate gets elected, and then we pick up our ball and go home. 

Rick Green [00:20:19] We still go home no matter what. 

David Barton [00:20:20] We don't have a sense of duty. We don't stay involved in this stuff. You have to stay involved in this stuff until you win. Galatians 6:9 says you will reap a harvest in due season if you do not faint. So the key is you don't get involved just for one size. An election is not an event. We look at an election as if it's an event. It's not, it's a process. 

Rick Green [00:20:37] So it's just one step

David Barton [00:20:38] That's one. As long as I'm alive, I I have a duty to be involved and I don't care what happens in one election, two or three or four, I've got a whole lifetime of elections that I've got to work with. So that's the one aspect. It is don't judge it by short term. 

Rick Green [00:20:50] And isn't it true we hear that phrase, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. 

David Barton [00:20:55] And it's like Christianity too. I'm a Christian, I don't have to worry about living like Christian. No, no, you do. You've got a duty to live like a Christian the rest of your life. You made a commitment here, but that's not an event, it's a process. You have to live out that life of a Christian for the rest of your life. Same with the citizen. But there's another aspect of that too. A lot of times we get involved in elections and we really do not have very good choices in our candidates. We're making a choice between the bad and the worse

David Barton [00:21:19] A lot of people will say, I'm not gonna vote 'cause I don't want to vote for the lesser of two evils. 

David Barton [00:21:22] That's right. There's the old cowboy axiom, me being cowboy and ranching and whatever, is you always drink on the upstream side of the horses. You know, you you go upstream. If you've got bad candidates, you need to go upstream. You need to go start recruiting some candidates and get them in the process so that they'll flow downstream so that instead of having a choice between the bad and the worse, you get a choice between the good and the better and see, this is the problem with with candidates, is if you wait for somebody to step forward and say, I'm your candidate, elect me, you usually don't get very good results. 

Rick Green [00:21:49] Yeah, they're self promoting though. It's just all about ego at that point. 

David Barton [00:21:52] The the guys who want to get involved in politics often because they want the money or the fame or the name or the power or the perks. No, no, no. You you gotta go recruit people to be in office and say, you've listened you've got to be on the school board. Hey, we gotta have you on the public utility district. See, we need to recruit better candidates and get them coming down the pipeline so that one of them says, well, you know, I've been city council and I've been mayor and I've been state rep, I'm gonna run for U.S. Senator now. We've already got somebody good coming. Yeah. If you wait to see who shows up, you got trouble. And so part of it is if you're not liking the results you get, you need to crawl back upstream, get further up the river, start recruiting good candidates so that when they float downstream you're gonna have something good to deal with. 

Rick Green [00:22:28] Do do the best you can today, but work hard to get better candidates for tomorrow. And earlier in the program you were talking about how long it took to get the results in Texas on the textbook impacted everybody. That wasn't a one year election cycle. It was not a one year election cycle. You gotta have a long term vision. Okay, time for one more question today, David. 

Speaker [00:22:42] Most families in my church either homeschool or go to private school. Why should we even bother with the public school textbook process? 

Rick Green [00:22:49] I've actually got this question a few times out there challenging people to get involved in school board elections. I say, well, my kid doesn't go to the public school. Why does that matter to me? 

David Barton [00:22:56] Let me throw something out. President of the United States, is he homeschooled or not? Oh, I think he's a public school graduate. How about U.S. Senators? I can't think of a homeschooled U.S. Senator. How about the judges on the Supreme Court? Can't think of any homeschooled. See, the people who rule over us are not homeschooled. That's because 88% of all the nation's students go through a public school. I don't care who rules over me. I want them having the right history and right knowledge. Because if you get a bad view of history, you're going to get bad public policy. If you think America is a really crummy nation that we got to go around the world apologizing for it, guess what kind of policy I'm going to get from that kind of a person? So I don't care whether you're homeschooled, I don't care whether you're a Christian school, parochial school, public school, charter school, I don't care what it is. You need good history because you may be my leader. 

Rick Green [00:23:38] So if if even if your kids are homeschooled or you're going to private school, parochial school, if 80, 85, 88% of the kids that are in education are in public schools, we need to be focusing on that. They're gonna produce a lot of our leaps. That's exactly right. 

David Barton [00:23:51] You do not live in a world where only homeschool people surround you or only Christian school people surround you. You want everybody to have the right information. 

Rick Green [00:23:58] This may sound selfish, David, but we're also paying for that public education. I want to get the best return on my investment and have a good product there, whether my kids are going to that particular school or not. You may be retired and we don't have kids at home anymore. You're still paying for it. 

David Barton [00:24:10] And that's exactly right. And see, this is one of the things that's well I'll leave my kids in in public school because I want to be able to change the system. Hey, your kids will never change the system. If you pay taxes, you have every right to get in that system. Your kids can be somewhere else and some other things. But if you pay taxes, you got the right to make every school board meeting to leverage every one of those guys to talk to every teacher. Well, I can't go see the curriculum because I don't have a kid in public school. Yes, you can. As long as you're paying taxes.that's called taxpayer standing. As long as you are paying taxes you have every right to participate in that system as though you have 55 of your kids in there.   I mean, it it doesn't matter. So for people who say, Man, I want my kids to be missionaries, your kids will never be those kids cannot change policies in public schools. It takes adults to do that. That's why you get people recruited to run for office and school board or for state board of education or anything else. But just because your kids are in some other form of education, don't you dare think about going and hiding from those eighty-eight percent that need good policies. 

Rick Green [00:25:01] I was just thinking of a good action step too. You mentioned in another program, the Constitution Day, and something like 85% or so of the schools are not doing that, and yet it's the federal law that they should do it. In Texas and a lot of other states, we've got the Celebrate Freedom Week where they're supposed to study the Declaration of the Constitution, but a lot of schools aren't doing it. Hey, there's a great thing for you to go to your school board to say, hey, you guys need to be teaching the Constitution of the Declaration It's the law. 

David Barton [00:25:21] By federal statistics, 90% of public schools do not celebrate Constitution Day on the way that the law demands they do it, and that is study the Constitution that day. So if you're a taxpayer, you need to walk right in and say, hey, federal law, you guys want to be in trouble? Let's not do that. Let's just follow the law. Let's teach the kids about the Constitution on September the 17th. There's so many laws that are out there that are so good. You got a school that says, hey, I don't want the Bible here. I'm sorry. Doesn't matter what you want. We've got Supreme Court decisions. We've got unanimous decisions from the Supreme Court, even the liberals in the court saying you can have Bible clubs in public schools, evangelism clubs in public schools, you can have all these kinds of clubs and schools. We got groups like National Council and Bible curriculum and public schools that'll get you credit courses studying the Bible in public school. I didn't know we could do that. 

Rick Green [00:26:02] So that's another good answer. You could be the one that makes that happen. 

David Barton [00:26:06] You don't have to have a kid in public schools to get that course in the schools. And so that's that's something we need to be concerned with every kid in America, getting the right information historically, everything else. And we can't just sit over here in our lifeboat and watch everything else sink on the Titanic. We've got to do everything we can to get everybody in a position where they've got good information, sound information, regardless of what form of education they're using. 

David Barton [00:26:29] Thanks for listening today, folks. Many of you have the DVD set of the American Heritage Series. You could get the sequel, which is Building on the American Heritage Series. A lot of new material, some fantastic programs you wanna you wanna have in your library. You can get it at our website today at wallbuilders.com.