Last week was the one year anniversary of the Brearley letter that turned me into an accidental activist for education reform and thrust me into the culture war against wokism and critical race theory. It is hard to believe a year has gone by! A quick thank you to everyone who has reached out over the past year with support and encouragement. We are all in this fight together, and for our children, and for our country, we have no choice but to win it.
I hope to have the chance soon to write a piece reflecting on the past year and what I have learned. In the meantime, however, I want to share with you the last few episodes of my podcast, Take Back Our Schools, with my new co-host, Beth Feeley. Beth and I have had some really enlightening conversations on how parents and concerned citizens can push back on toxic ideologies and fix our nation’s schools.
Please have a listen and let me know what you think. The podcast is also available on all major podcast outlets, including Apple, Google, Spotify and Stitcher. I hope you enjoy them.
The Culture War is also a Constitutional War
On this episode of Take Back Our Schools, Beth and I talk to Kim Hermann, one of the country’s leading attorneys in the war against woke education. Kim is General Counsel at Southeastern Legal Foundation, one of the nation’s oldest conservative public interest law firms. In addition to representing clients, Kim testifies before state legislatures, has drafted several pieces of model legislation, and regularly publishes legal articles. Her work and that of Southeastern Legal Foundation is regularly covered by national media.
On the podcast, Kim discusses some of the cases she is litigating around civil liberties in the classroom. She talks about some of the civil rights protections that parents, teachers and children have in our education system. We discuss issues of free speech, compelled speech and curriculum transparency, and Kim shares her advice to parents about what makes a good legal case and other avenues parents have to fight back against politicized curriculum.
A Conversation With Bob Woodson
On this episode of Take Back Our Schools, my new co-host Beth Feeley and I welcome Robert Woodson Sr. to the podcast. Bob is the Founder and President of the Woodson Center, 1776 Unites and Voices of Black Mothers United. He is an influential leader on issues of poverty alleviation and empowering disadvantaged communities to become agents of their own uplift. Bob is also a frequent advisor to local, state and federal government officials as well as business and philanthropic organizations.
Bob discusses his experience in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and shares his views on how and why the movement went wrong. Bob talks about what led him to start the Woodson Center and illustrates the work his organization is doing to improve the lives of low income families in impoverished neighborhoods. He discusses what led him to launch the 1776 Unites curriculum as a counter to the New York Times‘ “1619 Project.” Finally, we discuss Bob’s disappointment with the divisive presidency of Barack Obama.
Fighting the Good Fight
On this special episode of Take Back Our Schools, I speak to former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, president of Young America’s Foundation, and former Wall Street Journal reporter and parent activist extraordinaire Asra Nomani. The podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at the headquarters of the Young America’s Foundation in Northern Virginia. The three of us discussed battling a formidable collection of foes in the quest to right the ship: school boards, teacher unions, accreditation organizations and state legislatures.
I hope you enjoy these episodes of Take Back Our Schools. As always, please share any ideas or suggestions, including for podcast guests. You can contact me through the website: speakupforeducation.org or email me at andrew@speakupforeducation.org. I am also on Twitter @AndrewGutmann.
Thank goodness America has smart, skilled, liberty minded people to help the rest of us see what is happening "behind the curtain" in schools-public and private. I'm a grandmother who is concerned for my young grandchild and how she might be persuaded to think in a particular way. It's important that we remember what the founders wanted America to be, and take it back, if not only for us, for the rest of this world. We must all be informed and get involved. M.Myers