CTP (S4EAugSpeical3) The Education Accountability Collapse

CTP (S4EAugSpeical3) The Education Accountability Collapse
We dig into why American public education keeps lowering standards while claiming success (and all the stats prove failure), and how those choices show up as illiteracy, weak math skills, and burned out teachers. We also argue that money and slogans cannot replace discipline, honest grading, and parents taking responsibility at home. 
• Brian Wetzel’s background and what he learned traveling to meet teachers and administrators 
• Grade inflation policies that remove deadlines and consequences 
• Big city school spending versus students performing at grade level 
• Social and emotional learning competing with core academics and creeping into math 
• Why basic arithmetic and practical skills still matter for adult life 
• Concerns about explicit sexual material in school settings and what gets removed instead 
• Why more funding is not the fix and how incentives shape behavior 
• School choice and vouchers as pressure to improve 
• Classroom behavior, admin support, and why teachers are leaving 
• Lowering teacher certification standards as a symptom not a solution 
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A Short Story: A Lasting Legacy? book Trailer

Transcript

Opening And Name Spelling Tangent

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Hello, welcome to another episode of Institutionalist Podcast. I am your host, Josephine Leonard. That's L-E-N-A-R-D at the French. Thank you for tuning in. As Brandon used to say on his show, let's get on with the show. Joining me today to talk education or the lack thereof these days in our schools in the United States, especially, but seemingly all Western culture, is Brian Wetzel. Welcome to the show, Brian. Thanks for having me. I'm honored. Yeah. Well, the first obvious question, and those viewing behind the scenes video will see your name on the bottom of the display. Why should anyone want to listen to someone about reading, writing, grammar, and spelling, especially, whose parents couldn't spell Brian properly?

SPEAKER_01 1:23

No. Well, let me ask you this. If you spell Ryan, do you spell it with an I? You do not. So that's an I.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Well, my other joke I was contemplating, we couldn't get the A Ryan. We got the B Ryan.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Nah. No, the B Ryan is the A Ryan. I promise.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

And for those listening on audio or reading in the transcript, which is probably already incorrectly spelled his name, it is B-R-Y-A-N-W-E-T-V-E-L.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

When I drop my clips in sometimes to AI sites where they break it up into smaller versions, and it has the transcript of what's going on, it always spells it with an I. Drives me nuts.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Hey, and my audience is probably screaming at their smartphone or their laptop saying, You don't got any room to talk. You don't know how to spell Leonard. My last name looks French. It's not Lenard, it's Leonard, but with no O in it.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

So Yeah, I was going through the drive-thru at Chick-fil-A the other day, and a lady said to me, What's can I have a name for the order? I said, Brian. She's like, Is that with a Y or an I? And I said, Does it really matter as long as you say it right? I'll come running for the food. I'm not going to be standing there going, is it an I or why?

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Yeah. That's good. But yeah, I hear you. I uh I used to use converter.app to transcribe all my shows. And and I've I've tried many of them. All of them screw up names all the time.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

So they do. They at least get the rest of the grammar right, but uh they're not great with names. And names are very subjective anyway, um, depending on where you're from and where your parents were from. And I have some friends who have some really goofy spellings. When you hear them say their name, it sounds normal. And then you're like, oh. Like I didn't, I I've been an employer, small business employer for a long time. I think I've had seven or eight different Haleys with different spellings. I didn't know there were that many spellings for Haley. But apparently there is. There's Y's and L's and E's and Y's, and there's A L E where it goes on and on.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

There's the uh right, all potentially influenced by Haley's comment, but the how bad can we screw up the spelling challenge?

SPEAKER_06 4:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

We got little unique, right? Everybody's special and unique, and yes, to a degree we are. We're all individuals, but right. Oh, my special child's gonna have a special spelling for their name kind of thing, but yeah, that wasn't why my parents did it.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

But some people nowadays do. I just had this conversation with my wife the other day. She was going over some of the names that are in school now. She's like, I don't know where those came from.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

And we're already off the rails. That's not of course what we're here to talk about. But yeah, educate well, let's before we where were you born and raised, where are you now, places you've been in between that are of significance, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Well, I was born in

Brian Wetzel Background And Travel

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Stuttgart, Germany. My father was in the service at the time, and we moved the both my parents were from Pennsylvania, the Johnstown area. And I was there. We moved, we came home when I was almost a year old and lived in Pennsylvania for about six months, and then my job got my dad got a job in uh Georgia, Atlanta, Georgia. And then after high school, I wanted to get out of Georgia for some reason because when you're kids, you think there's more out there than where you are.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Grass is always greener somewhere else. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

I moved to New York. I worked for several large corporations who sent me around. I lived in Las Vegas for a year, I lived in Los Angeles for a couple years, and then ironically, I got a job with an RD lab that was located in Georgia. So I ended up moving back and I've just sort of been here wheel you back in.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

I've traveled a lot though. I've been in every state in nine countries, maybe. Um, so I've been in I've been all over, and it's a good thing to travel because you get a better sense of how lucky you are when where you are right now. I promise you.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

And that's part of the problem with our schools. Our spoiled, entitled, uneducated brats here in this nation. Uh, but the way my ADHD O C D brain works now, I'm gonna have the uh uh Johnny Cash, I've been everywhere, man, song in my head.

SPEAKER_06 6:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

But yes, education, go on a rant.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Well, education is very much off the rails right now. I would say so. For the background, I I started uh an education resource company with uh two friends. Um we created 1,500 educational videos all with teachers. You can get them now for free on YouTube on Scoobs

Education Company Insights From Teachers

SPEAKER_01 7:18

S-K-U-B-E-S-E-E-D on YouTube. And you can go on there and watch all the videos. We also had created about 1,700 um assessments that went along with them, and we were a site that was functional for quite a while, and then we went into selling and the site to somebody else who ended up going bankrupt, so all of the assets came back to us. But the big thing is that during the six, seven years that I was by the way, I need to give background. My wife's a public school teacher, she's going her 23rd year, but uh I had kids in the system also. During the six or seven years that I we were doing the company, I traveled all around the country, I met with thousands of teachers, uh administrators. I did speeches at all of the big events for state schools, um principal meetings, you name it. And when I first started, I thought, you know, when I get a peek behind the curtain, this will all start to make sense. And actually, it made less sense. Um it was more confusing. There's a lot of non-common sense decision making that continues to go on. And I started to realize been particularly from state to state, uh just some of the the and it depends on where you're coming from on this, but like in California, you can't fail. They won't let you get below a C, even if you don't turn in your work. They also give you the entire school year to turn in your work, which some academics somewhere at a college level wrote a report or some study saying that this would allow kids to not feel so rushed and they would do it. But predictably, what teachers in California told me was that all the kids wait till the end of the year to try and get it done and they can't get it all done. And so they're just failing worse. And you're not holding people to doing something. Whenever your teacher tells you something's due on Friday, that's similar to when your boss says, I need this report on my desk by this time. You that's the way the world works. Um I have a small business, we're not that corporate at all, but I still need things done when they need to be done. I don't tell people, hey, I need this stuff all put away in this back room cleaned out, sometime between now and next January. Um, but that's kind of how it's functioning. There's other I'll give you a good example of that too. I know a teacher here in Georgia who received a child who they transferred from California, and this is an elementary school age. The report in her file from California said she was killing it. She was doing great. Couldn't have been doing better. Well, she's in third grade when she arrived here, she can't read or write. And um one of the so every every school system has procedures and rules that can't be broken, policies. One of those is that you can't hold a kid back or send them back an age if unless you can see in their file that there's an issue. Well, because the California file showed that they were not having an issue. So now you have a third-grade teacher who has one child who is so far behind the rest of the class, holds up everybody else, holds up everybody else, and she is struggling because and and having breakdowns every day because she's yeah doesn't understand any of it.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

And whereas an assessment test, an assessment test would have shown, oh, this person clearly isn't ready.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

They yeah, yes, and the prevailing thought, I guess, on that side of the issue is that they don't want to hurt kids' feelings or they don't want to bingo. They don't want them to feel bad, but guess what? You're they're gonna feel bad at some point because you're just you're sending them down a hill on a car with no brakes, they're gonna hit a wall at some point or a rock, and it's going to be harsh instead of just working on the problem, whether there's a city or whatever it is, let's face it right now and get it over with. And that's uh those kind of failures drive me nuts. Also, and there was a you know, you know that in a lot of the inner city, like Chicago inner cities, and this report just came out of 255 schools there, 75% of them aren't even 70% full, but they're still receiving millions of dollars. They're spending $93,000 per student in Chicago City Schools, and they have that they they'll graduate most of the kids this year or last year, with only 6% of them at grade level math and reading and writing. But then they'll brag that 88% of their students graduated. I'm like, but these things you can't square these. This doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

Devil's in the details. Yeah, I call it today's a steam over substance problem. Very much so.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Really if we don't tell them there's a problem, they may not notice it. Yes, they will. Yeah, it'll come out at some point, there'll be and it'll hurt worse because they won't know how to deal with it.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

Exactly. They'll be really dumb, but they'll feel real great about how dumb they are.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Yes, yes. So in that same school uh district, too, you

Grade Inflation And Endless Extensions

SPEAKER_01 14:01

know, one of the things that should be alarming to people is that you're graduating kids who are never going to be able to make it in life higher than a blue-collar job at a fast food restaurant. Because how can you get out of school and not know how to look? I don't think that I advocate that when you get into high school, you shouldn't have to take trig and calculus and all these things. It should end at probably algebra, things that you might use uh in a year. I mean, we elementary school math is definitely necessary because we use that.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Unless you're going for a STEM degree, right? Yes, uh, that's your area.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

If you love like my I have my dad was a CPA, he loved math. I hated math, which by the way made great, great arguments during math homework because he understood it and I didn't, and he couldn't understand why I just couldn't understand it. And I like it.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

How can you be my boy and not understand math, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Um but that also highlights an issue that some people have a math brain, some people love math. I'll tell you a funny story, too. My son was really good in math, and he really hated high school, didn't try very hard, but he did great math. One day I said to him, So what do you want to do? You you should maybe be an engineer or something real good with math, you should do something with math. And he said to me, Dad, just because I'm good at math doesn't mean I like math. And I said, Uh, okay, well, that's I can't argue at that point. Yeah. Um, but anyway, back to Chicago City Schools, you're just setting them up for for long-term failure. And I don't understand like the people the powers to be say they're trying to help kids, but this doesn't may add up. It's almost like you're keep you're keeping them uneducated on purpose. I don't when people have that that that theory I always I used to think that's nuts, but sometimes when I hear like Baltimore City Schools, they'll only graduate about 16% of their students at grade level math and reading and writing. Um and it's not that they don't know how to teach. Now I will say this one of the other big problems is that a lot of blue I hate dividing things among politics, but uh you know, I'll have debate all you want. I don't hate anybody for believing what they believe. In blue cities, in particular in some in many blue states, deep ones, deep blue the they will they prioritize teaching what they call SEL social and emotional learning over math, reading, writing, the things that we need to get out in life and get and be functional. Be teach teaching someone how to be nice, I'd really let that be left up to the parents. Parents be left up if you go to church, you know, whatever it is, but that should be left to the home. The fact that you're taking up precious time in school, and is you're taking away, and by the way, they've started to insert it in in some really deep, I heard some really disturbing things. Um, one of the there's uh a professor who just who's a math professor who just left college who's been raising the alarm about this for on his name's Dr. James Lindsay. He has an example, and I've heard similar ones that where they're inserting social and emotional learning into math now, and you'd be like, How's that possible? Well, let me tell you. Well, I are I had a debate with someone about that, and I've destroyed them because math comes from the Middle East, it comes from China, it comes from Europeans also added to math that we use today was is collectively even African countries in Egypt and areas, they developed math, and then other countries added to it, and that there's there's no way to make that claim. Anyway, so in a social to if you want to put in social emotional learning in the math, so here's a good example. Let's say you do a word problem, the math teacher says, uh, Johnny and uh Susie are in, they're gonna go to a park, uh an amusement park with their parents. The amusement park is this far away, they're driving this speed, um, they've already driven this far. How much farther and how much longer is it gonna take to get there? Sounds like a simple word problem. But what happens is now the teacher gets to insert. Now, how many of you have been to an amusement park? And so only half. They say, Well, don't you think that's terrible that your parents get to choose? Maybe someone other than your parents should get to choose whether you get to go to an amusement park. And then should you be driving a minivan because of climate change? And and by the way, why does it have to be Susie's uh father and mother? Could it be a father and father, and a mother and a mother? Yeah, or and so

Chicago Numbers And The Accountability Gap

SPEAKER_01 19:16

now the math, you you're like, Wait, was this a math question, or is this another question?

SPEAKER_02 19:21

No, it's a social engineer. You said so many things, I want to make a couple points. I I love math. Uh, I joke in my books, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:31

So you're one of those weirdos.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Yes, exactly. I I joke in my books. Uh I I hope my writing style doesn't throw you too much and bruise the adage how much I love math over English in school. But yeah, I wanted to be an accountant. And I got but I got the calculus, and I'm like, there are no calculus problems in regular math accounting. I don't need this animal here, right? I don't care how this basic analysis or not. Like, hurry, I'm sorry, I'm out of you, used to work for AMW that I would do. Couldn't you do basic math? I mean, oh you know, it comes to five dollars even, and I'm handing you a ten dollar bill. Yeah, still needs a calculator for the change.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

So there was a there used to be a Kroger not far from me, and for about a year they did an experiment with what they called change maker registers. Now, when I tell you the how this was supposed to work, you're gonna go, oh, I can already see why this lasted a year. They had three registers that they were trying out. This was they were trying this out so they could see if they could bring it out nationally. The way to move the line faster was that the the checker would scan everything, then cat zero out the the cash register, and then give the receipt to a person at the other end, and that person at the other end would take the payment. And if it and there was no register down there, so when they got cash, they had to do the math in their head. So that the registers kept coming up uh uh short or over. Uh-huh. Because the and I was like, they came up over. That means that the the customers couldn't do the math either. Right. Someone got shorted and didn't even notice it.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

You don't even really have to do the math, you can count it back a five dollars and fifty-five cents. A nickel make sixty four times make six, four more dollars in a ten that you gave me. It's just simple, common sense stuff. If we teach basic math rather than comic core idiocy math, and as you said, the NEL idiocy and I could also coin in my books, my constitutionalist education series. We're peddling the new honors radicalism, bronch, and uh racism through CRT, all this social emotional learning garbage rather than reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and I joke virology and science because the kids are too stupid to not know an hour doesn't belong in those two.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Well, on the ranch, in my book, I have pictures uh of pictures that were found in elementary school books all over the country. And when people see I can imagine who, by the way, are would argue initially that we shouldn't be banning books. I'm like, Well, take a look at these pictures and tell me what you think. And they go, Those weren't in an and I say, No, they're like, You mean high school? I'm like, that's the elementary school.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

Yeah, not prudes either.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

It doesn't belong in a high school library.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Book either. I agree. But yeah, exact I've got a number called the liberty beacon, you know, uh peddling porn to children in our grade schools, those not destined to already be murdered in the womb before they even get out to be indoctrinated. But yeah, exactly. Let kids be kids. They don't need this adult thought garbage in their brains in grade school. And as you said, you know, it's on the news all the time. Someone someone's kicked out of the school board or city council meeting comes, they're reading the runch that's in the book in the grade school. Well, that's not appropriate for the school board or the city council. Then why the hell is it in a six-year-old's book?

SPEAKER_01 24:04

All right. I'll tell you an interesting story about that. So I had found a I was doing research for my book, and it was on the pictures I was talking about. So I thought there's a lot of scientists or researchers in psychology out there who have written over the years the dangers of introducing porn or even um racy like Playboy or whatever to somebody too young and what it does to them down the line.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

I even contend they shouldn't Colleen Hoover softcore romance novel is porn in my mind, doesn't belong in grade schools. You know, if they want to go to the library in high school and check it out of the library, but it can't be required reading. What happened to to kill a mockingbird to teach about the idiocy?

SPEAKER_01 24:58

I have a little thing in there about my book.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Yeah, Martin Luther King Jr. Content of Character. That's about that. But no, we can't have them read that. We gotta peddle the CRT garbage.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

So in Seattle, Washington State schools, there was a group that tried to get that have successfully gotten to kill a mockingbird taken out of the schools. Now, when I first read the headline, I thought there's no way that's a because the message is positive. I would think that they would lean into it. But what they said was that they don't want people know uh thinking that a white person has to come along and save them. And I thought in a time when the black people didn't have rights, you needed somebody to stand up and be that champion.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

You should be celebrating that, not that's also part of our history that isn't being taught. It's a history lesson as well as a they love social engineering. It's a social engineering book in a way, too. Hip art history. Now you mentioned your book. Wait a minute.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

So, real quickly, so the when I was looking for researchers who had studied the what introducing porn too early to children would do, I found a doctor, I think he was in uh Wisconsin, psychologist who had done many research projects. So I asked him, we do an interview. We do the interview, and when he realized what I was talking about, he said, I don't want you to use my name, and I don't want you to use this interview in my book, in the book. I said, Well, why not? He said, Because pictures in elementary school aren't necessarily porn. I said, I said, sir, I got pictures of dildos being inserted in people. I have people having uh anal sex from elementary. I said, Are you telling me? He said, Listen, this is a subject that will get me banned from my college. I you cannot do it. He wouldn't give me permission.

SPEAKER_06 27:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

And all of the things I was talking about was to kill a mockingbird. I can't remember her name, but one of the most famous um black

SEL And Social Engineering In Class

SPEAKER_01 27:53

sports reporters from the 60s and 70s said in a speech that the if that what made uh Jackie Robinson's uh his career what helped that along was the fact that Pee-wee Reese and several other white players embraced him in front of the crowds. And that that made it okay, and that was needed because otherwise it would have been a longer battle, and she was chastised for that comment. And I thought, but that's a factual statement. If I if I was in the middle of Zimbabwe, I would be in danger of being something happening to me. I would need somebody there to say, no, I approve. Somebody important enough to say I approve. Leave him alone. But that's those comments.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Yeah, well, brought up right. It's never a two-way street. Now you mentioned the book, let's give the title.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Oh, it's the real problems destroying education in America. And then the subtitle to it is in We're All to Blame. Because it's a time, it's a tug of war of like 10 different factions, all wanting their place. But I will say this this is the one thing I start the book off with is that if you think I'm going to tell you that it needs more money, you can fold the book up now because that's not the case.

The Book Claim We Are All To Blame

SPEAKER_01 29:25

I make I can make I make a completely solid argument. I actually interviewed a couple Harvard researchers, lady out of Stanford, and there's anecdotal information if you know what Title I money is. Title I money goes to poor schools, and yet those schools almost never come off of Title I.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

Right, right. It's all money laundering. Yeah, and the more and more we spend, the worse and worse the education levels fall.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

So it's well, that's not an issue of the every dollar made education better. Every time they added more money, we should see the results tick up.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

But we're seeing the opposite always happens, yes.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Yeah. So that uh that's the first chapter is let's just get this out of the way. Is that money? If you think money is going to solve education, it would already be solved.

SPEAKER_02 30:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Um, almost a quarter of most state budgets is education. Some of them have more than that. In California, it's more.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Then it's usually the argument, well, you just don't you just want to go back to the community school teacher that doesn't get any money.

SPEAKER_06 30:36

No, we want to my wife is a teacher.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

Yeah, we want good teachers to be paid well, bad teachers to be fired.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Yeah, that'll never happen. Um because it's like it's like most industries, they protect each other, and nobody wants to be the one to do that. I will say this though. Um whenever I get into a debate, and I had one not long ago, over vouchers or school choice, all these people say, well, it's school choice and vouchers just taking money away from the local public school. And I say to them, Yes, you know what? I I think that public schools are are necessary, they should be better. And I said, if you don't want

School Choice And Do Better Argument

SPEAKER_01 31:19

them to leave the school, do better. Just do better. That's all anyone's asking. Nobody wants to drive the kid. They would rather put them on the bus. Nobody wants to drive their child out of the way. It takes extra time every day to have to go and pick them up. The only reason they do that is because they feel like that's the only choice they have. Just do better. The problem is that they're it's always about money. There, you're defunding the local public school. Well, guess what? You might, and I've heard there's a I can't remember this lady's name. She's it's been a while since I read the research, but she's out of Stanford and she studied this for a long time. One of the things she said was that some a lot of public schools are overpopulated. If you diminished the uh population by 20%, you might get better education out of that because now there's more individualized all of our classes. The second problem that uh that people seem to think they're always like, well, it's the teacher. I got news for you. Where the child goes home to every night has a bigger impact on what the kid does.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

You have to be the first educator.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

You can't go home to a house where parents are doing drugs, one of them's in jail, they don't know if they're gonna get fed. They don't there's it's an uneasy, unsecure

Parenting Discipline And Classroom Behavior

SPEAKER_01 32:44

life. Doing homework is not in their peripheral, it's just not. And that's why I often tell people that a more stable home and a parent who stays on top. I never what we used to punish our kids if if they got a zero on a project or homework, whatever. Because I'd always tell them, look, I wasn't a great student. If you get a bad grade, we can work with that. We can we can get better.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

But zero at the end of the state.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

But just not doing it is not an option. I used to I'll tell you a funny story about that. I coached about baseball for 16 seasons. In there when my son was younger, probably 11, 12. I would, if he got a zero, he had to run the field for uh five laps for every zero. And some of the parents said, Hey, can can we get in on that? I said, Yeah, if you if you come here and

Real World Math And Common Sense

SPEAKER_01 33:39

say he didn't do this, I want him to run the laps, he will run the laps before we he gets to start practice. Well, the city sent me a letter saying I can't desist right, yeah. And I said, But I have permission from the parents. They said you can't do that. I said, Well, okay, you know what? I'm still doing it with my own child. It's my child, I'm the coach, I can do, I can handle this however I want. And I had to go to the parents, and then the parents were like, Well, who ratted us out? I'm like, I don't know, but we should find out somewhat up here in the in the stands. Um, or maybe another, maybe another team. I don't know, but uh it was working, it always worked. When I was a kid, I'll tell you a funny story too. When I was in high school, I I was privileged in a way. I went to a country school, it was great high school. We had a lot of award-winning coaches who not only coached football and baseball and track and basketball, but they were also really good. Um, you know, the debate teacher was the basketball coach. They're map, one of my math teachers was the football coach, well, a football coach, one of them. And they kept all of the us boys in line. If the math teacher called down to the head coach and said he was acting like a jackass today in class, you did not want to get to football practice because it was going to be brutal for you. And you'd be called out and you'd have to run. I had to do in in come call his name out, Coach Connolly's class, he taught math. And I was being a jackass, it was talking, I didn't hand in my homework. He made me do carpet drills, which are where you jog in place, you hit the ground, and you pop back up, you jog in place, you hit they call them up and downs now. I don't know why, but we used to call them grass drills. He even called them carpet drills. I had to do those beside his desk while he's teaching on the board. Okay, I never forgot that. And I also turned in my homework after that. I because you have to keep you have to have some leverage in school, and they just have taken that away from the teachers.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

If you're spare the rod, spoil the child, which does not mean beat your children. That's not what it means.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Right. You don't have to be cruel, you just have to make a statement. And I, you know, most teachers, this is another thing. When I serve I surveyed almost uh 269 teachers why they were leaving the profession. Pay was number three, not number one. It was behavior and stress. And those were op it was one and two, very close. Um most of the stress is from behavior, and what they'll tell you is that the administration doesn't support them anymore. And um my wife can tell you the same story she's had to other teachers. I've heard teachers where they send them down to the classroom for inner disrupting class and they get sent back 15 minutes later. He said he's fine, said he won't do it again. And they'll say, Well, that child gets even though it's his 15th time, he won't do it again.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Yes, because they don't want to deal with the parents. But here's the thing they'll argue that that child still deserves an education. It's like, yeah, and so do the other 20 kids in class who he's now distraught.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

The others don't deserve to be deprived.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Yeah. And so I know a teacher who a child threw something, hit her, broke, fractured her wrist. He was back in class two days later in her class. That is not the way to keep teachers, and that's why we're losing good teachers. That is why there's almost a hundred thousand openings right now for teachers, and they're saying in the next five years it'll be 200,000. Um nobody's going into the profession. I called Kennesaw State, where they have a teaching program that's big around Georgia and the southeast. They don't have any full classes for early childhood education. People have gotten the word there's no support. Um it's it's just and there's a lot of stress now. They have put

Adult Content And School Book Battles

SPEAKER_01 37:54

a lot more. My wife has been teaching for 23 years, she'll tell you what she has to do. She will go in at you know, she'll be there till five easily, but which is not a big deal, it's a job. But the questi the thing is, is that there's more on her to do every day than there ever was. Um they just keep piling more and more on, and then to make matters worse, if you're in the school where they're doing SEL, you're now having to throw that into the middle of all of your regular teaching. And it's just it's just too much. It's amazing how many teachers I interviewed were on pr anti-anxiety medicine. And that's a sad statement to that profession.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

Back to what you were saying, uh, a lot of people don't want the ones who want to do something or try are resisted from being able to do anything, and those go alongs to get alongside a big problem, as you said, don't want to do anything. Well, again, to back to your point, too. Point the finger. Remember, three of your own fingers are pointing back at you, kind of thing. I also did a song just the other day. I'm gonna tack it on the end of this episode. Evil prevail. The only thing necessary, evil prevail, good peoples do nothing. Your silence isn't violence, but it's complicity.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

Yeah. There's many philosophers who have made statements similar to that it's not the person who committed, it's not the the person who commits the crime is not the only one who is who is guilty. It's the people who stood by and did nothing. And you know, the tea when I say we're we're losing good teachers, in most states, you have to get your teaching degree, then you have to do what's called toss, you have to work for free in a classroom for a year, why uh shadowing another teacher, you have to student teach. And then you have to take uh there's two of them. There's the praxis, and there's another one, I can't remember what's called, that's to get your teaching certification. I mean, in other words, like the bar, but for teachers. In New Jersey, they were so short of teachers, they've gotten rid of the certification test, and now as long as you have an eight, you had an eight hundred on your SAT,

Teacher Burnout And Lowering Standards

SPEAKER_01 40:20

you can become a teacher. You haven't been to school to be a teacher, you haven't proven you can teach, but they need them so bad. And here's the when I talk about the lack of common sense, so the reason teachers are leaving the profession in New Jersey also is that the stress and all the things I mentioned, well what do you think's gonna happen to these new teachers that come in with less experience? The stress is gonna get them, and then what are you gonna do? You're gonna take people and give them early release from from prison if they go and teach school. You you haven't reduced the problem. All you've done is put a big thing.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Yes. But you put a band-aid on a bigger problem, and it's the the scab's gonna pull off when you pull the band-aid up. You haven't done anything to fix the real issues, and they won't fix it because most governors and politicians and local school boards they see optics before they see anything else.

SPEAKER_02 41:22

I'm gonna mention another song I did recently, Tough Love Gospel. And indeed, one of the lines in it, you put a band aid on a bullet wound. Right. If I take the thorns out of the Bible story, it's a different story. You've got to teach the tough love part of the Bible the show tries to do. There's the the there's, yeah, there's the encouragement and the whole, but there's also the uh you've gotta do better. We expect you to do better part. So I'm gonna attack tough love on the end of this too. But whoa, time has flown, of course. Um do you have a website? Now you mentioned scobies.ed, s-c-o-subs, yep.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

Um, yes, if you go to uh brian thomaswetzel.com, br y B-R-Y, A-N-T-H

Where To Find Brian Online

SPEAKER_01 42:24

uh, T-H-O-M-A-S-W-E-T-Z-E-L dot com. It was a site that was actually put up by uh my daughter, and then I just sort of started adding pages to it, but it's got all the links to everywhere that I'm present. And I'll respond. I have a lot of people that send me questions, I have a lot of teachers that send me, they want to tell me their stories like they have nowhere else to vent. And I love those stories. I should I told my wife one day, I may put all of these stories in one book. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:57

But like Dragnet, the names have been changed to protect the innocent, right?

SPEAKER_01 43:03

If you can call it, they're not all innocent. The teachers in most cases are innocent. I always tell people don't get mad at the teacher. They're they're the worker bees at the bottom that are being driven by now. That's not true. There are some activist teachers out there who enjoy let's be fair here, honest about it. Overall, and I honestly didn't interview any teachers in really heavily union states, but overall, most of the teachers I talked to said they were uneasy having politics or sex or social stuff introduced. They didn't feel it was their place. And I'll tell you a funny story about that before we go. It's a short story. My when my wife started school this year, you know, all the to the parents come the week, the couple days before school starts to meet the teacher. She more than ever, these last two years have gotten people saying, whispering to her, now you're not going to be teaching. And she's like, No, not where we are. That that's not going on. Um, but that's how much that people fear, and that's also leading to more people exiting and doing school choice or homeschool. Do better. You won't have people leaving your school.

SPEAKER_02 44:13

Exactly. That competition generally, generally breeds everybody to be better. There are always some try to cut corners and cheat and to get ahead and whatnot. But yes, competition, but they fear competition, they want to just be able to coast and do what they're doing. The administrations again, they want them trapped in the zip code indoctrination factory. No options, no choices.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

Well, what people don't realize is they get paid what's called by daily average attendance. So when attendance is not there, they're getting less money to the county. And so I had to that affects the people at the top who are getting the big salaries more than it affects the teachers. Yep. And they don't like that. Nope. They just want you to keep coming so they can keep getting the state and federal money.

SPEAKER_02 45:12

Yep. Whereas now, as we've both said, if they were forced to do better by competition alone, they wouldn't be losing the students.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

No, they wouldn't.

SPEAKER_02 45:26

But they can't grasp that. Or it's all about optimistics. They don't care to grasp it. Communistic force is easier for them if they can get the government to use the bearable gun to make you do something that benefits them at the top, not the kids.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

That's basically my substack argument.

SPEAKER_04 48:10

Good folks say for a saving grave. A ship has sailed, they say, on a trouble. But what do you do today with nowhere to hide? Questions I've been asking in all my writings.

Song Evil Prevails When Good Sleeps

SPEAKER_04 48:37

Watch your move. Just what about is it you're willing to try to do? Evil prevails when good just sleeps, lights sometimes fail while the darkness creeps. Why are you doing now? Tell me, tell me, how will you take a bride? For all to see The news it screams, a broken sound, lost in badgerings on high low ground. They say it's all lost, cause a losing fight. But what about your applause? Oh, what is right? Only thing it takes for shadow to prevail is a crowd of quiet hearts. Scroll inside, then turn away. This world is torn apart. We just watch it fade on this fallen ground. We're standing still afraid to wait. So what are you doing? What are you doing now? To help the light, help the light, help the light, break through the doubt. Are you just awaiting? For someone else to move Or will you stand, will you stand, will you stand and be the proof? Tell me what you do And What are you doing? Good folks in a quiet room, hands clean, eyes closed, say someday I'll make a change. Someday never shows every hurry overpass, cuts a deeper line, everything's enough to be out the dark line. So what are you doing? What are you doing now? Help the light, help the light, help the light, break through the doubt. Are you just awaiting? Stop the move Or will you stand, will you stand, will you stand and be the proof? Tell me what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? It's a hard, hard question. Looking back at you, yeah, in the mirror, in the silence. You already know it's true. If you're breathing, you're required to answer with your life. Every minute that you're given takes ain' all sweet songs by the fire, warm hands, soft words, pretty choirs.

SPEAKER_05 53:38

If I cut out the thongs from the story, I'd be dressing up a gravest glory. This is tough love gospel. Not just camp fashion. If I sand down the edges, I turn truth into a lie, reality or delusion. I can't serve

Song Tough Love Gospel

SPEAKER_05 54:04

both sides. I'm not here just for the choir. I'm here where the hurt hearts hide. Yeah. Some pages bleed red in the margins. Hard lines, hard calls, hard bargains. If I skip over stones for your comfort, then your house gets washed in the flood water. This is tough, love gospel. Not just camp, fire, shine, by sand down the edges. I turn truth into a lie. Reality or delusion. I can't serve both sides. I'm not here just for the choir. I'm here where the hurt hearts hide. Oh do you want a dream or do you want a mirror? Do you want a dark or do you want it clearer? If the truth cuts deep, let it cut through. Feel better small that heel than a sweet lie in your ear. This ain't cotton candy truth. Ain't a campfire, sing a long rhyme. You can't sell sweet dreams while the house burns behind. If it never cuts deep, it will sugar all along. If you skip the hard pages, you just rewrote the song. This is tough love gospel. Not rainbows on a wire. If you had the hard words, you're just fanning the fire. I won't preach delusion. Just to make it sound lighter. If I only threw the choir, I'm a singer, not a fighter. You can hum all the feel-good lines while your neighbor breaks inside. Quote hope like a slogan and look away from the crime. But a bandage on a bullet woo is a pretty little lie. If the truth never offends us, do we ever even try? This is tough love. If you hide the hardware, you'll just stand in the fire. I won't preach delusion just to make it sound lighter. If I only sue the choir, I'm a singer, not a fighter. I'd rather lose that crowd and sell them painted grace. I'd rather stand alone and smile and dodge the way. Don't ask for easy combs, then curse the honest cause. Love that's never warns you. I won't preach delusion. Just to make it sound lighter. If I only sued the choir, I'm a singer, not a fighter. Oh, if I dress up the danger, I'm a liar.

unknown 57:39

Not a rush.

SPEAKER_05 57:42

Tough love. The Bible isn't just rainbows and lollipops. Singing combire around the campfire. You cannot ignore the harsh reality drops. The pedal such makes you a liar.

SPEAKER_03 58:02

Speaking not just to the choir. This, that, and in all things transpire.

SPEAKER_00 58:22

Life can be like an amusement ride, but not always amusing. Roller coasters, the life kind. Now available on Amazon.

SPEAKER_05 58:50

T T T L D R R R Yeah. Yeah. Scrolling fast, attention gone to seconds flat. TikTok brain, Twitter span can't handle that headline screen. But the truth is buried deep, 10 paragraphs down where the lazy never reached. They say TLDR, like it's some kind of flex. Too stupid to read, too lazy to check. Details matter, context matter, specs don't lie. But you rather stay ignorant. Wonder why. TLDR, too long didn't read.

TLDR Culture And Final Call

SPEAKER_05 59:19

You skip the truth and swallow this thin they feed. TLDR, too lazy to see. Now you're lost in delusion. But that's on you, not me. I ain't here to be the choir. I'm here with a lazy heart, setting shit on fire. Details matter, context matters, history too. If you gloss over it all, that's on yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. I coined it myself. Twitter, TikTok, attention span. Now even I catch myself saying, Damn, this is long, man. But I push through, cause I know the devil's in the details. You skip them and you end up believing all the fake headlines. I'm sorting chapters in my books. Cut the story link, cause 99% won't read if it ain't short and clean. Even wrote a whole CCP episode back in December 2025. Called it DLDR. And here we are, still barely alive. DLDR, too. Long didn't read. You skip the truth, the squad of the spinning feet. DLDR. Too lazy to see. Now you're lost in delusion. But that's on you, not me. I ain't here to fool either choir. I'm here with a lazy heart, fucking shit on fire. Details matter, context matters, legality, too. If you gloss over the TOS language, that's um whoop, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Mass holds. Mass hose, masses of the asses, clueless and proud. Falling for the dumb and down, screaming loud. Fake news, very sacks, ten paragraphs deep. While you're swiping up, thinking you're in form with your receipt. You want the bullet points a 50-second clip. But reality don't come inconvenient little scripts. Just for verify, Reagan try to teach, but you rather stay dumb than practice what you preach. The same hate, this is tough, love, straight, no tracer. I made the song to be the mirror, not the eraser. Even this episode, I kept short on purpose. So you have no excuse, but still some won't surface details. Matter of fact, matter, context, size and tight. Some at your own risk. Stay lost in the night. From software, from the border fight to welfare lies. If you won't read the fine, bring, enjoy the surprise. You skip the truth and swallowed every lot they feed. T L D R too lazy to see reality over delusion. That's the key. I hear just for the cry. I'm here with a hurt in the lazy eye. Every single line, if you won't read or listen, stay fine. TLDR. Too long didn't read. But the song's over now. Still too long for some of y'all. I bet. CTP, this Number 2025. TLDR episode. Called it first. That was the song. Cause the crisis only got worse. And like clickbait everywhere, tune outlies. Observe. Take the time. Absurd. Choose reality over delusion. Details matter. Read the damn thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:21

Like and subscribe to Christitutionalist Politics Podcast and share episodes. We need your help. Thank you for having tuned into another Christitutionalist podcast show. I really appreciate that you stop by. Again, please like, share, subscribe. We need you to help spread the Christitutionalist movement. Thank you again. Take care. God bless. Love you all.