Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, serving here with David and Tim Barton. You can learn more about us at wallbuilders.com. That's wallbuilders.com. Or you can listen to some archives of the radio program at wallbuilders.show. Very easy to scroll through the archives the last few weeks there at wallbuilders.show. But if you want to get some of the last few weeks there at wallbuilders.show, but if you want to get some of the great resources we have at wallbuilders.com, check that out today.

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All right, guys, we've got a lot of questions coming in from the audience. Folks, you can send those in to radio@ wallbuilders.com. Radio@ wallbuilders.com. And Linda's first up her question says. She said I want to tell you how much I appreciate what you share. I have learned so much from listening and reading your material. How would you define civics and quote politics, political, and is there any difference between them? I am anxious to hear you guys define this, because I've caught myself lately. I've been saying you know, at Patriot Academy and Wallbuilders, we're training people to be the Navy SEALs of civics, and so I know what that conjures up in people's minds, like this tip of the spear. These are the best of the best. These are the people that really know how to do civics, but I never defined civics for them, so I'm anxious to know how you guys define it.

David Barton

I can take a kind of vote here. I think I'm probably the only one of the three of us that actually attended school where we had genuine civics courses and we were tested on civics courses, as opposed to civics being part of government and other things. Did you guys have standalone civics courses?

Tim Barton

Now, my teachers didn't value that as much yeah, exactly now.

David Barton

Wait a minute Tim I know your teachers and um I think David and Cheryl, I wasn't gonna say any names I was not. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna name names just because I was homeschooled 

Rick Green

what my client meant to say is I had social studies, but that's pretty broad, that's like a broad word, right. So we call it social studies, but that's pretty broad, that's like a broad word. So we call it social studies, but that's a broad term right.

David Barton

It went from civics to government to social studies, and it was a digression. It was a regression across all that 

Rick Green

you see how young I am.

I just want to point that out. I was on the last end of that. I wasn't on the first end. I wasn't on the civics or government.

Tim Barton

I actually think it was social studies, because when I was even teaching early kind of 2000s into 2010, we had government and we had history. Social studies is what I had when I was in school in the 80s and 90s. So I think government came after social studies. But I mean, we definitely we had a government course that I was required to take. Uh, my, my teachers were very hard, very disciplined, uh, and actually they they even made me use old textbooks at times, these really old books from the 1800s, and so I'm pretty sure also, I did have a civics course, or at least a civics book that I did read and we did some questions afterwards.

Rick Green

your civics course was standing in the middle of independence hall at probably nine years old. Your civics course was at the battlefield right.

I mean, you guys traveled the when you 

Tim Barton

It was us capitol is like okay, now let's walk to the house and talk about what they do. Okay, let's walk to the senate and, standing in the Senate chamber, let's talk about what they do. I mean, there's no doubt it was a live, hands-on civics, but when I was teaching in again early 2000s to kind of 2010,. Civics was not a curriculum that was offered. It was not really much in the textbook, so not a normal thing. Dad, coming back to your point is that this is not something that is common. I think maybe common vernacular, but not a common understanding of what that really is.

David Barton

So let me kind of lay out what I think the difference is what I've seen historically, what we used to do when you talk about civics. That is the structural side, that is the process side. Here's how the process works. Here's how you do a bill. Here's how you introduce a bill. Here's how committees work. Here's what you can do to override a veto. You get the whole process.

And so what you're doing is you're learning all the rules of the game. You're not necessarily on the field participating, but you're learning baseball, basketball, whatever. You're learning all the rules of the game. You're not necessarily on the field participating, You're learning the rules of the game and how the rules are applied and how to play the game. And I don't say play the game in the sense that politics is a game. That's not what I'm saying. You just learn the rules, and whether it's horse or whether it's race cars or anything else, you learn the rules. And so civics used to be the structural side. It did not have value of being for or against bills. It just told you how everything worked. And the system works the same for everybody that gets involved in it. So, whether you're a progressive or whether you're a hyper conservative, whether you're a libertarian, it did not matter. Here's how the process works.

Tim Barton

So a little bit like in meetings, where you might follow, like Robert's, rules of orders right. Right. It's just the process of how you conduct a meeting, right? If you've been to a business meeting, you've been to a board meeting. There's different processes for how the meeting functions. It doesn't tell you what to do in the meeting. It doesn't tell you how to vote on issues related to whatever might come up in the meeting, in the board meeting, what it is. But it's a process by which you can, or how you conduct that meeting.

Rick Green

And it might even be like the other day when we had the guest on about the three branches, four branches, five branches. Remember how we joked about that the other day. This would be structure. It would be. You know what are the branches of government, what are the roles that we have in government?

David Barton

But the other side that goes with this is civics used to involve what is a citizen's duty, what is a citizen's responsibility. This is what every citizen is to do. You get involved locally. You vote in every election. You get informed voting, you go investigate every candidate and find out where they stand on issues. So it was not only the process, it was a citizen's duty. Now, it didn't tell you the specifics of whether you're pro-life or pro-abortion. It didn't tell you any of that. It said here's your duty as a citizen and you have to be involved. For this republic to be healthy, you have to be an involved citizen, and here's how you get involved and here's the rules. Here's how the competition operates, here's how the game on the field is going to go. That would be civics.

Then, when you moved over into the area of politics and political, that's when you start pushing the various values and agendas that you have. You're for the Republican platform, you're for the Democrat platform, you're libertarian. Whatever it is, we're going to have a debate on whether the capital gains tax should be 3%, 5%, 7%. That's politics and that's more of the policy stuff is the specific agendas that you're pursuing. So that's the way it used to be and we used to spend a whole lot of time on process. We don't do that much anymore. We get involved on our agendas, whether it's Black Lives Matter, antifa or anything else. We have an agenda we're pursuing and a lot of people don't even know how to use the process anymore.

So I go back to 1 Timothy 2.5, that you can't be crowned unless you run according to the rules, what the scripture says. You can't win a political fight unless you know what the rules are and you can play according to the rules. So everybody has to learn those rules and that's civics. And I really do, and I've said this on several occasions over recent years. I really wish we were back teaching civics again, because people don't know how the process works. Therefore, they get overwhelmed by it and they get discouraged from even getting into it because they don't know how it works. And I can't learn this stuff and it's so confusing. It's not confusing when you learn it the right way, and so that's the way I would make the distinction. Guys, what do you think?

Rick Green

And David, I think that's so important too, what you're saying about, you know, even having a love of the process and knowing the process, because we see right now the chaos where the law is not followed, there's no respect for law, there's no respect for order, there's no, you know, when you don't teach that, hey, there's a way to do these things, and when you do these things with the rules, everybody gets a chance to play, everybody gets a chance to have a voice, everybody gets a chance to participate by the rules and it prevents that chaos.

I will say this is one of the things I love about how we do Patriot Academy, because I watch these kids come through Patriot Academy and leave with a confidence, because we immerse them into the process.

They have to learn the rules, they have to learn how to make the motions, how to pass the bills out, not just argue for the policy or the politics side of it, but actually do the process right so that they respect each other in the process. And if we did more of that, it's kind of the William Wilberforce thing, of the great call to restore manners, restore really a politeness and a moral respect for each other. I would love to see more of that taught with the civic side and I was trying to remember that movie where that teacher went into an inner city that was just a mess and chaos and he got them doing debate, 

Tim Barton

Stand By Me?

Rick Green

No, I was thinking of the one like they went and did debate or something. Thinking of the one like they went and did debate or something he got them to do, like some really hard um uh, electives, and the pride that it brought to those kids to know the rules and play by the rules and be successful at it.

Man, we need more of that all over the culture

David Barton

 Let me jump in on there for a second Rick, too, because the rules, they, they really don't change significantly over time. Parliamentary procedures remain basically the same. Back when Thomas Jefferson was vice president of the United States, we only had our second president, John Adams. Well, the vice president presides over the Senate, Thomas Jefferson at that time he wrote the rules of the Senate and 16 of those rules are still being used in the Senate today. So those rules have not changed in 200 plus years, 220 years. Essentially, those rules don't change. The Senate has used those for 220 years Now. Agendas are different, but learning the process is so key, so important, and it's something everybody needs to do.

Tim Barton

And dad. Just for those that might be critical and go wait a second. They've changed rules. Yes, they've changed some rules, but by and large the overarching rules of the Senate have not changed is the point is because the rules as originated were not done specifically to help things go in the founding era. It was done more for the process of how things are done and we've seen the Senate at times change some of the rules in a way that might favor a party in charge in that moment, et cetera. But again going back to generally speaking, the vast majority of the rules we see in operation of the Senate are the rules the way it was set up from the beginning, because from the beginning they weren't set up in a way to help one side win. It was set up in a way to help the process happen in spite of who was in charge.

Rick Green

All right, guys. Linda had a second question. She's on a school board and she said as a newly elected school board director, I'd like to know how best to craft policy that ensures our American liberties and protects our children from evil of the day bathroom policies, facility use policies, satan clubs, political groups, public comment policy. She's basically asking maybe for some ideas, because it's whack-a-mole right now, guys.

There's so many battles she could take on as a local school board member.

David Barton

 So, looking at what Linda's got here, if she's a newly elected school board director and she can have influence over the direction and the philosophy of the school, and depending on the system, some school board directors presidents can have more influence than others. It depends on the state, what the law allows, but nonetheless, one of the things I would say for absolutely sure is you have to make sure that you do everything you can to teach principles rather than just content. There are principles that do not change you need to know. For example, in science you got to know the principles of gravity, the principles of thermodynamics. You have to know the timeless principles and then you can do all the other stuff around it, because you can never violate the principles. And in the case of, for example, where we are in America, George Washington said that the principles that produce our political prosperity are religion and morality. So whatever you can do to promote the principles of religion and morality, that's going to help the entire system, because there's principles on which everything else is built. As a result of Supreme Court decisions over the last two to three to four years, if you're in a public school man, you can do so much more now than we've been able to do in 50, 60 years, and so promote the principles of religion and morality. Promote principles that are timeless and are not based on politics or how old you are or the era in which you live or what kind of technology you have.

I would also say you want to do everything you can to promote core basic skills. I mean things like reading and STEM and classics rather than climate change and gender, and you know the way we handle pronouns, anything you can do to get back to core content hardcore content in the sense that you know learning the math skills, learning the reading skills. You know we've taught before how high illiteracy is in America right now. You've got, approximately over the last 15 years, about 19% of high school graduates can't read their own diploma. They're functionally illiterate. That's not a good situation, because now they have to rely on what others tell them. So you want to teach them to think so everywhere you can go to principles like religion and morality. I think that's really important.

I think that you also want to get as many vested placeholders as you can in there. Work with the community, work with the religious leaders in the community, work with the business leaders in the community, work with the veterans and the military folks, start building broad coalitions. What happens too often the school boards is you get active as they show up time after time after time and you're not really getting the sense of the community. You're not doing things that represent the broad views and the diversity that's in the community. So, being able to create committees, if you want, or at least relationships with people out of various different fields, if all you get is the input of educators, you're going to have a twisted view on what life looks like. If all you get is the influence of activists, you're going to have a twisted view. You want to go out and find the people that don't always get involved and get them and say I need your opinion on this, what do you think? What would you do? How would you handle this? Those are all things, those broad coalitions of support. I think that's really important.

And the final thing I would throw in is go with the proven, not the experimental, just because it's new stuff and, by the way, I'm old enough to have been through a whole lot of stuff. There was outcome-based education. There was GOALS 2000. There was Common Core. About every 12 to 15 years we have a fundamental philosophical change in the philosophy of education and they all have not worked. What works is the core basics. So don't get intrigued with all these new advocates. And all the educational experts say this. Go back to the proven stuff that has stood the test of time over centuries, literally over millennial. Those would be the things I would push you towards as core principles, like religion, morality, core basic skills, not attitude stuff, but training skills, not attitudes. Get a coalition of people involved that represent a bunch of diverse viewpoints and go with the proven stuff, not the experimental stuff. That's what I would recommend as you approach your policies.

Rick Green

All right, we're going to take a quick break. We've got more questions coming from the audience. When we return, you're listening to Wall Builders on Foundations of Freedom Thursday.

Break

Rick Green

We're back on WallBuilders. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Thanks for staying with us. Chad Thomas has the next question. He said how do the founders intend to fund schools originally? How do states without property tax or real estate tax fund their schools? Do you have a study showing what happened to public schools financially in states which switched to school choice? All great questions, Chad. We might need four programs to do all three of these, but you guys might have some quick answers to those.

Tim Barton

Well, I think it's interesting going back, I think, to the 1647 Old Deluder-Satan Law I think they coded the 1650s were first printed. If you go back and look at some of the early laws that were passed, they actually did require a tax of individuals in the town to help fund what was going on, but there was some leniency even in some of that tax where the individuals were responsible to pay the teacher but it wasn't an institution and sometimes paying the teacher, again, historically, going back and looking, sometimes they would pay the teacher with a container of milk from their milking cow, with some chickens and helping bring sustenance. And so it really is such a different perspective than what the modern approach has been with property taxes and different things. So I don't actually know all the details of some of when that changed and what it looked like, but certainly early on it was a lot different than what it's become now.

David Barton

Yeah, early on, it was definitely. And I would say. The second part of the question is how do states without property and real estate taxes fund their public schools? It's the same way that states without property and real estate taxes fund their highway programs, fund their electricity or anything. They take general taxes and they generally do it through sales taxes or they do it through all sorts of other taxes like licensing fees and regulation fees and registration fees, but they have a certain amount of income that comes into the state. It's not necessarily property taxes in those states, but that means that instead of having property taxes, they may have instead of like Texas I think we're what is it eight and one-eighth percent sales tax in Texas, along with our property tax, they may have a 9% or 10% or 11% sales tax to create more money. So they won't have the property tax that creates money, but they will still get that same amount of money in. They'll just do it through other taxes. And so in that situation, what they do is they put all the money in the bucket and they say, okay, we need $1.2 billion for schools this year, we need $1.1 billion for highways and transportation, we need $1.3 billion for social services and hospitals. So they're going to come up with it.

They're going to find a way to tax and property taxes is not necessarily the way a lot of states do it. That is the way that Texas does it, and we're trying to get away from property taxes, because if you have property taxes, the government can take your property away. If you don't pay the tax which means you don't own the property the government owns the property. You're leasing it from the government for a tax, which is a crazy way to do it. So what happens in these other states is you don't necessarily know how much education tax you're paying. It's just part of the whole bit there, and sometimes it's really good to know the amount of taxes you pay, because you say, hey, we're not getting our money on education. We need to drop that tax until we get better results. The final question is is there a study showing what happened to public schools financially in states which switched to school choice?

And the answer is yes. So far, 32 states have some degree of school choice and in that degree of school choice, the spending on education has dropped in those states, because the most expensive forms of education tend to be public education.

You're having to pay not only for all the facilities. For example, in Texas, if they go to school choice at $10,000 per student for all school choice, they're going to save billions because as you get into homeschool,  as you get into private schools, you're not having to pay for all the structural stuff and the massive football fields and the band programs and all the other peripheries that are out there that are not core part of education. So the prices tend to go down, but significantly in all 32 states there have been an increase in educational achievement scores. Scores go up, prices go down and so those 32 states, some of them have full educational choice. I think Arkansas is one, Florida is one. Some of them have educational scholarship choices, smaller, limited programs, but in all 32 states it's had positive results.

Tim Barton

I would also add to that we definitely see a lot of pushback from people that have heard some negative thoughts. Right, because anything the government funds, the government controls, is the idea that some people would say, and it's not necessarily the case. But certainly I understand the sentiment, I understand the concern, the fear, the frustration, but you do see a lot of very imperfect examples where people try to say why this is dangerous and they might. I saw one recently on a social media platform where people were talking about how bad school choice is and they said, well, right, imagine if there was a golf course and it was free to the public and they were offering free golf lessons for anybody that wants to learn to play golf better. And some people said, well, I would rather do it over here, this private course, and I want to pay for the private course and I want to pay for a different instructor, but I want somebody else to pay that bill for me. They said that's a school voucher program.

And I thought that there's so many flaws of this example. Right, the idea that this golf course was free, that these lessons were free, no, you're already paying for that. Your tax dollars would in this example. Right, your tax dollars are paying for the golf course, your tax dollars are paying for the golf instructions because this is not free. Public school is not free, which is again the parallel in this. And so all you're saying is, hey, the money that would have gone for this golf course the money of mine that you're taking intaxes, that would have gone for these quote unquote free lessons. I would rather just keep that money and I would rather use the money you're taking from me anyway and I'd rather reallocate it somewhere else, maybe at a different golf course where I'm getting taught by a different instructor.

This is much more of the idea behind the school choice to voucher program. It's not saying that you're taking away somebody else's money. It's saying, no, the money that's already allocated for this for these individual families. The money should follow the student. If the student wants to go somewhere else, it should go there. And obviously there's so much more we could talk about. We've talked a lot more about this in other programs, but we see a lot of imperfect examples and fear mongering. That just doesn't line up with what the examples are that we have seen in other states that have tried this. The states have tried this. They're not having the issues that some of the anti-school choice crowd are promoting is always going to happen with school choice. That's just not what we've seen in the other states at this point. 

David Barton

You know George Mason, who is a founding father. He's one of the guys who outframed the Constitution. He's called the father of Bill of Rights. He said the only way you can preserve liberty is, he said, by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. You have to keep going back to the principles, and one of the principles that you cannot violate is the monopolies are bad when you do not have competition, and the Bible it got so many examples of competition. When you do not have competition, you have monopolies. That is always bad. And so for people who say well, we're afraid that the government might get involved in Christian schools if they get government money, what you want to do is break up the monopoly system. You don't have to take the money if you don't want to, but you should support breaking up a monopoly every chance you get. And if that means let's get all private schools, all Christian schools, all schools, give them all a place at the table, that breaks up the monopoly and gives you competition, which gives you greater freedom. That's a recurring fundamental principle you have to go back to. If you think that schools are going to control you if you take their money, don't take their money, but don't stop the competition from happening. Don't support a monopoly just because you're afraid they might get involved with you if you take the money, leave the money behind, but get the competition going. That's a core value you have to support.

Rick Green

Yeah, don't stop the overall positive effects of competition on the entire system. When you empower people to make the decisions and have that competition, it's good for everyone. All right guys? Out of time for today? More questions next week. Folks, send them in to radio@wallbuilderscom. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show on Foundations of Freedom Thursday.