442 Full Disclosure Part 1: Teachers
A teacher finally tells his students the truth...
Oct. 2, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:43
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| Alright, people. Alright. | |
| Good morning. Good morning, everybody. | |
| Now settle down. Settle down, everybody. | |
| Especially those trouble-making kids in the back. | |
| I know who your names are. | |
| I've got them written down in my book. | |
| It's time for us to get our learning on. | |
| Everybody settle down. | |
| Settle down. Settle down. | |
| Stop staring out the window. | |
| Get in your seats, people. | |
| Stop throwing things. | |
| Settle down! | |
| I will call the principal. | |
| I will call the principal. | |
| There will be detentions for everybody. | |
| I will hand them out without compunction. | |
| Alright. Now, I am your teacher for this first day of school. | |
| You are now in grade 10. | |
| You are now 16 years old, ladies and gentlemen, and I can use that term without saying boys and girls with good conscience. | |
| Now that you have reached the exalted age of 16, I am compelled by what I consider to be an egregious law to declare to you a full disclosure of About the school system under which you have been laboring to learn and under which I can tell you we have been laboring to teach you for this past decade or so. | |
| Maybe 11 years for some, maybe 12 or 13 for some of those of you in the back. | |
| Now, before I go on to the statement, settle down, people! | |
| I can see the notes being passed. | |
| I'm not blind up here. | |
| Now, before I go on to the actual statement, I have to give you a little bit of a history about what it is that I'm going to talk to you about. | |
| And tell you that this is the result of an exploited and unforeseen loophole in the honesty in advertising laws, in the truth in advertising laws, | |
| wherein organizations that can impart information, especially to children, Are required to provide a full disclosure, including all conflicts of interest. | |
| So, for instance, some of you settle down. | |
| Some of you may have noticed that in your morning... | |
| Maybe you're too old for cartoons, but in your morning shows, or the commercials that you watch that the serial manufacturers must tell you now... | |
| That Fruit Loops will not make you into an Olympic athlete, despite the fact that they have an Olympic athlete telling you how wonderful Fruit Loops is. | |
| And you may have noticed that in your Gap ads, there is a small print along the bottom of your television set that says, buying cockies will not turn you into a supermodel breakdancer, or even allow you to do swing, or jazz, or the mamba. | |
| There are a number of refinements in the communication of information to children that has now been handed down. | |
| Don't even ask me how this occurred politically. | |
| I'm not even going to try and guess. | |
| I consider this to be silly. | |
| We are not serial manufacturers nor the manufacturers of low-cut clothing. | |
| Yes, yes, Vanessa, I can see. | |
| But nonetheless, it has fallen unto us to have to tell you a statement of full disclosure about your public school system. | |
| Yes, I know it's not boring, it's not that interesting, but if you people can't settle down, I can drop this and we can go back to calculus. | |
| Or perhaps you'd like to have another reading, another compulsory reading of another fine Canadian novel. | |
| Perhaps The Stone Angel. | |
| Trust me, you'll love it. It's about an 80-year-old woman. | |
| And nothing happens. | |
| So, I'm not going to read this out. | |
| I know what it's all about. | |
| I know the major points. | |
| We've been quizzed on it. And I am simply going to talk to you about a full disclosure, including conflict of interest, about your public school education. | |
| And you are going to find this shocking, perhaps a little interesting. | |
| And this isn't going to make things easy for me. | |
| But when the union and the government say jump, you say how high? | |
| So, here it is. | |
| Number one. | |
| For your entire school education up to now, you have been told... | |
| That hitting people and threatening people is wrong, but in the case of full disclosure, just as the serial commercials are aimed at you, and the pills for other functions are aimed at your father, | |
| and the pills for depression are aimed at your mother, and have to say, side effects may include, I've become one of those guys now, Just as you have been told that hitting is wrong, that violence is bad, and all of this sort of stuff, you are now old enough to understand that the public school system as a whole is founded on force, | |
| is founded on coercion, in so far as your parents must pay my salary, Obviously worth it. | |
| Your parents must pay my salary. | |
| If they do not pay my salary, then they will be thrown in jail. | |
| I'm not even allowed or supposed to comment too much on this, or I'm not really allowed to comment on it at all. | |
| But we'll be launching straight into a very lengthy discussion of the voluntary nature of democracy right after this. | |
| This is just what a whole bunch of libertarians and anarchists I've been able to force through the courts, pretty much catching us all napping because we didn't think it was ever going to make it. | |
| But in the goodly state of New Hampshire, wherein we reside, there seems to be quite a cluster of libertarians, and it's squeaked through, and until we can get the legislature back, this is what we're stuck with. | |
| So if, and they're quite explicit in this full disclosure here, if your parents don't pay the salary of the person who's talking about this to you, then you, your parents, will get a letter to pay their property taxes, just like all of us. And they will get a letter, and if they don't respond to that letter, they will get another letter, and then they will get a court date. | |
| And if they don't show up for court at some point, the police, with guns they say, I have to say, the police, with guns, will go to your parents' house and will drag them off to jail and shoot your parents' Resist. | |
| They will be shot. | |
| I know, I know, it's like watching Big Bird pull out an Uzi, but this is what it is that I have to read to you, so yes, titter, titter, all you like, but you will sit still, especially those of you in the back. | |
| Probably libertarians, too. | |
| Those of you in the back, sit, sit, settle, settle, settle! | |
| I'll take away that cell phone, I will! | |
| I'll die a long distance and leave it right here on the table. | |
| We all want to know the time in Japan. | |
| So, the whole time that you have been told by your teachers, like me, to not hit people, to not use force, it's important for you to know, under this new and rather silly law of full disclosure, | |
| that Our system is based on coercion, that you're here by force, and your parents must pay for my salary, and the salary of the principal, and the janitor, and the union reps. | |
| Yes, I have to say that. | |
| And... So, that's full disclosure. | |
| I'm supposed to say that we have been teaching a rule that we do not ourselves follow, but I can't quite bring myself to do that. | |
| If y'all feel like reporting me, then meet me after class and we'll talk about this some more, you people in the back with your beady staring eyes. | |
| So, that's sort of one aspect. | |
| Now, the other aspect of full disclosure, like, apparently, when you do a drug study that is paid for by the manufacturer of the drug, it could be said that your findings may be biased, and so that law now applies to public school teachers, and I am compelled to tell you that I work for the government. | |
| I know that this is a big shock to some of you who haven't been paying attention for the past decade or so, but I do, in fact, work for the government. | |
| I am paid by the tax dollars that are forcibly extracted from your parents. | |
| And so... | |
| What else do I have to say? | |
| And so... And so when it comes to teaching you about society, I am not going to be overly critical of the government. | |
| And those of you who've heard me talk about George Bush will know that I have not been uncritical of the government. | |
| No. People in the back, this is not a time for questions. | |
| I'm not going to have any questions about what about being against a different... | |
| Being against one politician doesn't mean being against the government. | |
| That's not part of what it is I have to say on reading this document or going over this document with you. | |
| So, no. There will be no questions this morning. | |
| And stop chewing your hair. | |
| So... Now you've made me lose my place. | |
| So... Oh yeah, okay, so... | |
| So when teaching you about history and about politics and this and that and the other, that it's important to understand that I, as somebody who works for the government and is paid by the government, that it's possible that I might be able Or I might have a tendency to being more pro-government and less pro-free market, | |
| whatever that is, and therefore it's something to be taken with a grain of salt. | |
| And so just to understand that as a government employee who is paid by the government and paid by taxation, that I might be pro-government, I might be pro-taxation. | |
| Yes, I do like having roads, it's true. | |
| Nail me up if you like. | |
| And so that's just, as I talk about politics, it's something I'm supposed to tell you and so you're supposed to understand. | |
| Now, another conflict of interest that I don't talk about so much is that You, when you receive information from me about things like unions and so on, | |
| that I have to tell you that I'm part of a very large and very well politically connected union, and that this might have some bias in the way that I talk about how workers are treated under the free market or under capitalism. | |
| It also might have a bias about my telling the tale of the Industrial Revolution, that joyful, sooty, child-laboring time. | |
| And so it might be the case that I might not be objective because I am protected by and paid by a very large, very powerful, very politically connected union, and therefore my relationship, the communication that I have with you about the relationship of workers to employees is maybe, I don't know, I'm supposed to say sub-optimal, like you people know what that means. | |
| Okay, maybe one of you in the back. | |
| But, yeah, it might not be perfectly objective, and it's up to you to look up the information and find it yourself. | |
| Not at class, not on your cell phone, Natasha. | |
| No, no, no. Put that thing away. | |
| I know you've got the coolest new ringtone. | |
| Now, another statement of conflict of interest that I have to impart to you lovely little people is that... | |
| You are never to be told beforehand about any of this, right? | |
| You are never to be told about this before you get to grade 10, because we wouldn't want to hurt your tender little minds. | |
| And so there has been a fairly... | |
| You know, I'm supposed to say active, I just can't bring myself to do it. | |
| It just doesn't make any sense. | |
| There has been a process, or it could have been said, that you as children have not been taught about this sort of thing, and that it's sort of been kept from you, or whatever. I mean, I don't think that's the case. | |
| I mean, we've also kept calculus and the stone angel from you, and there's been good reasons for that, too. | |
| So, I'm supposed to tell you that there's this possible process of disinformation and so on, so on, so. | |
| Now, another thing that I'm supposed to tell you about is that... | |
| You are, as funsy little children, supposed to understand that we tell you, we teachers, we tell you not to be rowdy, to sort of sit still and to listen to us. | |
| And I'm supposed to play you some videotapes of teachers at a march and at a union rally demanding this and demanding that, but sadly our VCR is broken, probably because your parents aren't paying enough taxes. | |
| Or because of this war in Iraq. | |
| And so I am sadly unable to play you these videotapes, but I can describe it to you in the following ways. | |
| There are people who are very passionate about their rights and about getting what is promised and what is due to them. | |
| And if that is a crime, count me guilty as one of those people. | |
| But just because we tell you to not be rowdy and we can order you to sit down and be quiet and we don't follow the same behavior when it comes to our lives... | |
| I don't see that as being a big hypocrisy, but, you know, this is what these crazy libertarian nutjobs got through a sleeping legislature for a very brief amount of time, so I am compelled to tell you all about this sort of stuff. | |
| Alright, now I'm supposed to open up the floor to questions in the back. | |
| I mean, there may be questions in the front, like, can you help me fix my ringtone, but in the back, alright, anybody, anybody who's got any questions? | |
| Yes, okay, Lester in the back. | |
| Sorry? No, this doesn't mean that what we're doing is hypocritical. | |
| No, of course not. | |
| No, of course not. Drug companies, however nefarious they may be, sorry, however bad they may be for the people in the front, Just because they read off these statements doesn't mean that they're bad or hypocritical or anything like that. | |
| So no, it doesn't mean that we're hypocritical at all. | |
| It just means that we're supposed to tell you about the process by which we get funded and to point out areas where an irresponsible teacher, of which I can't even think of any, might slant the information Okay, let me put it this way. You remember the debates that we had a couple of weeks ago? | |
| Alright, come on, focus people, this is important! | |
| You remember the debate we had a couple of weeks ago about Fox News? | |
| Remember Fox News, Rupert Murdoch's little propaganda station? | |
| Well, it's important to understand That Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party. | |
| NSO is relentlessly pro-war, is relentlessly pro-Bush, is relentlessly anti-environment, anti-multicultural, anti-diversity, anti- they're homophobic, they're sexist. | |
| And it's just important to understand that. | |
| They have an agenda which they put forward. | |
| Yes, question in the back. | |
| No, I don't have an agenda that I put forward. | |
| Yes, I have occasionally made comments that I'm not pro-Bush. | |
| That is not an agenda. | |
| What? It's different. | |
| It's different to be relentlessly pro-Bush and pro-war And presenting it as objective news is very different from teaching you simple facts of history and once in a while putting in comments about El Presidente. | |
| What? Yes, you can turn off Fox News, and that's exactly the discussion that we had here in the classroom a few weeks ago. | |
| That it's important to understand that advertisers and people like Fox News, and we did have that little chat about this supposed liberal bias in the media, which I'm sure about three of you understood about 10% of, but... | |
| Yes, it's important to understand that advertisers have an agenda and that they're trying to get you to buy their product. | |
| And it's important to understand that Fox News is selling a kind of entertainment in the guise of news that is simply designed to appeal to people's prejudices. | |
| My agenda? What? | |
| No. No, this is what's important to understand. | |
| When I teach you about history, I'm not teaching you anything that is based on an agenda. | |
| I mean, are you going to tell me that the Civil War didn't occur? | |
| Sorry? War of Northern Aggression? | |
| Now that's propaganda. | |
| Please. Where are you from, Tennessee? | |
| And... what? | |
| Started by Lincoln to get taxes from the South that wanted to secede? | |
| I'm not even going to talk about the potential pro-slavery implications of that remark. | |
| We're not here to teach propaganda. | |
| We're here to teach you the facts. | |
| What? | |
| Depression? | |
| The Great Depression not caused by government, as I said? | |
| Sorry, the Great Depression not caused by capitalism, as I said? | |
| Well, look, you can find on the nook and crannies of the internet just about every conceivable theory in the world, and the whole point of this school is to teach you skepticism. | |
| Now stop asking questions about that kind of stuff. | |
| I want you to ask me questions about all of the other stuff that I've been talking about. | |
| I'm not, lest we're going to get into another one of your interminable debates about what you read in Hayek, or what you read in Rothbard, or some damn thing to do with Austria. | |
| I'm trying to teach you skepticism, so stop asking me questions about that. | |
| Now... Sorry? | |
| Yes, I know. I can turn Fox News off. | |
| I fully understand that. I don't know what the relevance of that is. | |
| Turn me off? | |
| Turn me off?! | |
| Okay, 45 minutes detention, young man, and you will be writing out 150 times, I will not disrespect my teacher for no reason. | |
| What? No. | |
| Oh, that's terrible! | |
| No. Really? | |
| That's been reported? Wow. | |
| Sorry, for those of you in the front who were busy with their bangs... | |
| Somebody in the back has just mentioned to me that there is a school, and I use that term entirely sarcastically, there is a school, and doubtless it's somewhere in the Midwest, where children are locked in a room for about six or seven hours a day, | |
| And they watch nothing but Fox News, and that is considered to be their education. | |
| But how is this paid for? | |
| What? Oh my... | |
| God, really? | |
| Oh, that's terrible. | |
| So apparently... | |
| This is amazing. | |
| Apparently, Fox News has hired a whole bunch of people to go and forcibly extract money from the local residents to pay for this school where they subject these children to relentless propaganda. | |
| The children are forced to be there. | |
| The parents are forced to... Hey, wait a minute. | |
| Wait a minute. | |
| Okay. You have one week detention. | |
| You are suspended for two days. | |
| And you are not allowed to talk for the next month in this class. | |
| I will not have you coming to me with these disrespectful pseudo-analogies about what public school system is all about and how, ooh, you can't criticize Fox because you too have an agenda. | |
| That is nonsense. That is agitation. | |
| What, did you get that from Fox News? | |
| Did you? Huh? Now, there are to be no more questions about this issue. | |
| This is not something I agree with. | |
| This is something that I'm sort of forced to read to you. | |
| I don't like it any more than you do. | |
| I certainly don't appreciate all of these little comments coming back about I'm some sort of propaganda machine. | |
| What? Yeah, fine. | |
| You want to have private schools? | |
| You want to have the complete atomization of everything that is core and central and agreed upon about our society? | |
| Fine. What? | |
| No, it's not optional. | |
| No, you can't choose whether or not to pay my salary. | |
| Of course not! It's public school. | |
| Why? If you're not sending your kids to school. | |
| Oh, homeschooling. Absolutely, yes. | |
| It's very important to learn nothing in the world except fundamentalist Christianity and anarchism. | |
| Yes, absolutely. That's a wonderful way to build a society up. | |
| Yes, I have no problem with that. | |
| Oh, homeschooling. Best thing ever. | |
| Oh, perfectly able. | |
| You're perfectly able to keep the quality standards high and to make sure that people are learning the correct things. | |
| What? Yes, I did say correct things. | |
| I'm not talking about that George Bush is the second coming. | |
| I'm talking about 2 plus 2 is 4. | |
| Yes, of course there's a lot of political instruction. | |
| Of course there's a lot of history. | |
| And there's some economics. | |
| I mean, we have to teach you people a little bit about democracy, of course. | |
| Is that biased? | |
| Is it biased to say that, say, democracy is a pretty good system, that voting is important, that participation is important? | |
| I don't think that that's anything that any sane human being would have any particular problem with. | |
| So no, I don't think that that's propaganda. | |
| No, homeschooling children must have their parents pay for my salary, regardless of whether or not their children show up to school. | |
| Why? | |
| Because public schools need their funding in order to provide quality education to children everywhere. | |
| it. | |
| You can't get quality education in homeschooling. | |
| You're just going to get a bunch of opinions. | |
| Am I more objective than parents? | |
| Look, there's a reason why parents don't want their kids to come to public schools. | |
| There's a reason. And that reason is that they want to teach their children things which are generally not accepted in society, right? | |
| So they want to teach their children that, you know, Jesus bakes their daily bread or, yes, okay, I apologize. | |
| I know I'm not supposed to talk negatively about anyone's religion. | |
| But they're being taught things that aren't standard to society, so that's why they're stuck at home, and that does not absolve their parents of the social responsibility to pay for the education of the children. | |
| Yes, it is a social responsibility. | |
| I know you guys don't like hearing about the responsibility word, especially you people in the back, but it's important. | |
| There are responsibilities in society. | |
| What is my responsibility? | |
| My responsibility is to teach the children to the best of my ability to be critical thinkers and to learn about the world. | |
| What? Is that only my responsibility? | |
| No, it's all teachers' responsibility. | |
| What? Is it a human responsibility? | |
| I don't even know what that means. Is that a human responsibility? | |
| Does everyone... | |
| Oh, does everyone have the responsibility to teach children? | |
| Yeah, of course, everybody has the responsibility to teach children. | |
| It's not just me, and it's not even just teachers. | |
| Everybody has a responsibility to teach children. | |
| Oh, I see. So you think that that covers homeschooling as well, and that I'm saying that I have a responsibility. | |
| Oh, I see, that I get paid for my responsibility and get two months off in the summer and professional development days and so on. | |
| I get paid for my responsibilities, but other people have to pay for my responsibilities. | |
| Look, this is all getting too confusing. | |
| I can certainly see that the people in the front are almost nodding off and I can't blame them. | |
| So let's not start debating all of the philosophical esoterics of modern society. | |
| Let's instead just look at the fact that I have completed my process of full disclosure, that I have gone through all of this stuff. | |
| So if your parents quiz you, and if your parents are certain types of people, I'm sure that they will. | |
| If your parents quiz you about this kind of stuff, that you have a, you know, I've gone through this all, and you all can understand it, and it makes sense, and you can repeat it, and heaven forbid I don't want to be teaching the test, but if it is the case that you are quizzed on this, | |
| that you can answer these questions to some degree of accuracy, to the degree that your hormone-soaked brains can actually retain information, So let's just say that this morning's discussion of full disclosure is now complete, |
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