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April 30, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:41
738 Dr. Phil and the Teachers
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Good afternoon, everybody. It's Steph.
Hope you're doing well. Howdy!
It's 33 minutes after 5 p.m.
on the 30th of April 2007.
And I'd like to give you an example, if you wouldn't mind, if you'd be so very kind as to indulge me, I'd like to give you an example of What I mean when I say that we can only see the truth in the black outlines of falsehood in sort of the modern world.
Like, you can only see what is valuable or what is true by looking at the outlines of that which is obscured and hidden and, you know, kind of sort of basically lied about.
And conscious or not, I don't know, but I think that it's not as unconscious as I'd like to think.
And I'll give you an example of this.
And you can let me know what you think.
So I watched, Christine and I watched a Dr.
Phil the other day.
And it's old.
It was sort of sitting on my computer.
We tape it sort of every day, but I don't really watch them that often.
So we just sort of grabbed one and watched it.
And it was interesting.
He's got this guy, Dr.
Frank Lawless.
Who has got a book out called The IQ Advantage or something to do with how parents can help their children become better at school and the claim is sort of made and the example that was given in the show was that you know here We had some students who were getting D's and F's, and we worked with them for a pretty short amount of time.
I can't remember if it was a couple of weeks or a couple of months.
I think it was a couple of months to make the transition, but a couple of weeks to...
To work with the kids.
And what happened was these kids went from D's and F's to A's and B's.
D's and F's to A's and B's.
And so you think, well, that's good, right?
But what I think it helps us understand is how corrupt the violent nature of our society is and how violence just corrupts everything that it touches.
So I'd like you to sort of, we need to always continue to need to denormalize what happens in society, right?
So in some ways you sort of say, well, these guys came up with a really cool way to get kids to up their grades.
Yeah, it makes sense. They should publish it.
They should inform parents.
They should do this. They should do that.
They should figure out how to best get this information out to the public so that these kids can get better marks and turn their lives around and be successful and so on.
And that's entirely incorrect, I think.
I mean, it's entirely incorrect, and I'll tell you sort of why I think that, and then please, by all means, let me know if it makes any sense to you.
Let's say that you had some invention or some approach or some thing Which increased the productivity of a business or a product about 10 times.
So if you had a relatively inexpensive piece of software that made computers 10 times faster, you didn't have to put the CPU on absolute zero or anything like that, but just some sort of piece of software that That made computers run ten times faster.
Or if you had some innovation, as is sometimes sort of constraint theory in manufacturing, that could increase the productivity of a manufacturing plant ten times.
Data transfers ten times faster.
Small piece of software ten times the hard drive space, or something like that.
I think you get the general idea.
If you publicize this, What would the result of that be?
Would you not think that you would have your door beaten down and the clawed hands of greedy capitalists running through, coming through, splintering your door and coming through to get this amazing advance implemented, right? You simply would publicize this and people would be all over you.
I mean, they would sell you their kidney, they would give you their firstborn because a ten times productivity improvement is...
Amazing. I mean, that would be amazing.
I can, with a certain amount of relatively minor adjustments, I can help you sell that car for ten times less.
Or here's a negotiating tip or technique that will allow you to spend one-tenth what you're spending right now on everything you buy, let's just say.
Well, people would just go insane trying to get a hold of this, right?
So... When we, and the reason I use sort of 10 times, and it's not an absolute measure, of course, but I would say that going from an F, like even going from a D to a B is not just like too better.
Like it's considerably better. Going from a D to an A, going from an F to an A is, well, it's almost infinitely better.
It's from a fail to a pass.
So... What I'm sort of trying to say is that if this is true, and I have no reason to believe that it's not, and even if the claims are exaggerated, they did have a number of control groups.
I'm going to assume, and I haven't read the book, but I'm going to assume that this guy has some control group and some ways of figuring out that it's his program and not just the fact that someone's taking interest in these kids that's turning them around and so on.
Let's just assume that there's a program out there that's really relatively easy and cheap to implement.
I mean, the advice is things like chew gum, control your breathing, replace negative statements with positive statements within your own mind in a sort of very basic cognitive therapy model.
But there's some way to raise these children's marks in a pretty considerable manner in a very short and relatively inexpensive amount of time.
Well, I think it's absolutely fascinating that somebody would write a book And try and market that book to parents.
To parents.
To parents. Do you see just how hard it is to denormalize the absolute freakazoid black hole of hell that is the core of our society and sort of state-based and state-sanctioned violence?
Parents. They're trying to market this to parents.
Amazing. It's sort of like if they were doctors and had come up with a way to reduce the incidence of heart disease with some fairly complicated medical maneuver or procedure, that they had come up with a way to reduce the incidence of heart disease by 90%.
And they never presented it at a medical conference.
They put it on a popular show and tried to sell it Out of chapters or some other bookstore.
Wouldn't that be astounding?
If you had a way to reduce heart disease by 90%, wouldn't you just market the hell out of it?
First of all, you'd put it out at scientific conferences, medical conferences, you'd get it peer-reviewed and published and so on, and then you'd either start it yourself or you'd sell it to some company to make a fortune.
And heart disease is less important than a child's education.
So, without sort of any further ado, I'll just sort of jump into what is just so, so completely strange about this.
Well, first of all, let me talk about the hypocrisy.
Because, I mean, Dr.
Phil and this guy, they're just mutually congratulatory, mainstream-embedded alpha males all saying, oh, you're brilliant, no, you're brilliant, and this kind of stuff.
But the essential thing to understand is It's that they praise, and I've heard Dr.
Phil, praise public school teachers to the skies.
Praise public school teachers to the skies.
Oh, they're heroes, they're noble, they should get paid more.
You know, playing to a female audience pretty much demands that you praise public school teachers, A, because a lot of public school teachers are women, and B, because if you say that the public school system is sort of rank evil, then you kind of stress women out who use it to put their kids, you know, they use it to dump their kids, then you kind of stress women out who use it to put their kids, So if you talk negatively about the public school, you anger quite a lot of women, and some men as well, right?
It's a primarily female audience for Dr. Phil, so of course he's going to be praising the public school system to the skies, because otherwise, well, people aren't going to be pleased with him, right?
I mean, if you say that the public school system is child abuse, which it is in many more ways than even religion is, religion doesn't have you eight hours a day unless you're in some godforsaken Muslim country, or six hours a day with homework.
It is not universal, right?
You can choose not to go to church and the government won't throw you in jail, at least yet.
But you can't choose not to go to school, or you will.
I mean, look at that homeschooling and so on, for which you get no tax credits and tax breaks.
You have to fund it either way. So religion is still not inflicted in a core violent manner and does not have an exclusive monopoly over children, but the public school educational system does and you might as well beat the kid with a baseball bat physically as compared to what the public school system does to him mentally.
So this pair of mainstream embedded unimaginative slaves to the system dancing toadies to the system They praise public school teachers and then this guy has come up with this methodology for improving the marks of children.
Improving the marks of children significantly in a short amount of time with very little investment.
Parallel investment. I mean, that's an amazing thing that they've done.
And let's just accept that it's true and this and that, right?
Otherwise, they're even more corrupt than I would even, right?
Then it's total. I mean, if they're just making this stuff up, then they're ripping off parents.
And the parents will then feel inadequate for failing to achieve what is promised.
I mean, let's not even go there.
Let's assume that they're not that corrupt.
And that what they are offering is genuine and valid and real.
So a fundamental question.
Which nobody will ever ask, except me and you, perhaps, if you take this on.
Fundamental question is, like, if I'm in the audience, I'd be like, why are you talking to us?
Why are you talking to us?
We're not educators.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
How hard it is to denormalize what is going on in society and to look at it just in a basic, rational manner.
We're not teachers.
We're parents. We have teachers who teach our children.
So if you're saying, well, here's an educational theory and you should do this and get them to chew gum and here are breathing exercises and here's other ways of visualizing and here's all of these tics and trips and ways and things that you can do to make your child's grades better and here's how to increase their IQ and here's how to help them study.
It's not a thick book, but it's not simple, right?
What the hell are you talking to me for?
It's like you've discovered some magical surgical procedure and you're demonstrating it to a bunch of patients.
It's like, I'm not a goddamn surgeon.
Why are you showing me this?
That's the logical question.
That's the logical question.
And it's not asked.
Nobody ever says, why are you teaching us teaching techniques?
We're parents. We're parents.
When I go to the grocery store, I don't expect a lecture on how best to stock the shelves.
I just want to buy the groceries.
That's what we have experts for.
That's why we have teachers in an educational system, ostensibly.
So I would say, well, why would you tell us?
He's like, well, you guys are heavily involved in your children's education and you should take this on and this and that.
It's like, well, sure, but I'm going to assume that you've already talked to the public school teachers.
Do you see? Do you see just how horrible the violence is in our society and what it does to everyone?
If you have a miraculous and amazing breakthrough in teaching children, which raises their marks.
Parents don't give marks.
Teachers give marks. Parents don't educate their children in that way.
They're not academic educators.
That's what they're teachers for.
So if Dr. Phil is like, I love teachers, and everyone around is like, teachers in the public school system is essential and the best, then when you come up with a revolution that increases or improves the efficiency of teaching ten times, it gets an amazing increase in scores, 20%, 30%, 40%.
Why are you talking to the parents?
Do you see how the truth in society is only visible through the shadow of what is ignored and never spoken of?
So I would say to Dr. Phil, I assume that you've already got this through the school boards, because if you haven't got the public school system to take this on, because if you haven't got the public school system to take this on, then there's no point talking Thank you.
Thank you.
Or, if you are only going to talk to the parents, then you have to say, well, I'm telling you guys, because there's just no point talking to the public school administrators.
They don't care about educating your children.
In fact, they would block this with everything they've gotten.
But no, he wants to praise the teachers, and then when a great new educational breakthrough is achieved, he wants to tell the parents?
That's deranged! So I'd say, well, I've assumed that you've already gotten this approved and it's going into the public school system, right?
I mean, you're Dr. Phil. You can get a meeting with the educational minister like that.
You're Dr. Phil! You could get a meeting with George Bush, I bet.
You're Dr. Phil, dude!
So call the educational minister and say, dude, O-Rama.
I and my friend Dr.
Frank Lawless have come up with, or maybe the Frank guy did it, I don't know, come up with this amazing mechanism for accelerating and improving the scores of children.
And it's not expensive, it's quick, and the resulting improvements is staggering.
Staggering! Well, of course, if it works, and we would assume that it is, because it does work, because it's got a whole show on it and trying to sell the book, If it works, then whoever he talks to in the educational department is, by his own reckoning, all these people who are so interested in teaching the children, would view this as an unprecedented, amazing, and planet-shaking breakthrough.
Can you imagine being the president or the head of the education department, head of the Department of Public Education or whatever, And being in the driver's seat when the marks of children who were failing went to B's and A's.
Tens of millions of children across the United States.
Let's just talk about the U.S. What an unprecedented and astounding achievement that would be.
Who would not take that call?
I mean, wouldn't you love to be the chairman of the board or to be the chief executive officer at a time where you increase the productivity of your company ten times?
Would that not make you a business legend for all time?
And that's far less important than making children succeed in school, enabling them to succeed in school, to pass and succeed and get high grades where they would have otherwise barely passed or failed.
Amazing! Fantastic.
In the world of Dr. Phil, where public school teachers are wonderful and the public school system is essential and everyone's just obsessed with getting children to do better, why are you talking to parents?
Why? Because everybody knows.
Everybody knows exactly what the result would be.
If you went to the President and you said, Mr.
President, I've got you a great way to get these kids' scores up into the stratosphere.
He'd be like, well, that's interesting.
Leave it on my desk. And you'd call him back the next day and say, did you read it?
I haven't had time yet.
Okay, I'll call you tomorrow.
Call him the next day. Huh, not taking my call.
Just a voicemail. Interesting.
Well, I'll call him back. Because by God, when he gets this, he is going to just go nuts with happiness.
Because he's going to then be known, yeah, okay, he invaded Iraq and that was a cock-up.
But, by God, he rescued tens of millions of children from ignorance and poverty and welfare.
And low self-esteem and broken marriages.
Saved a whole generation of children from that fate.
And then he's going to go down, and history is the greatest president, and saved tens of millions.
So he's got to want to do it, because the public school system and the government, all they want to do is to educate the children, so...
Funny, he's not taking my call.
You know, he must have read it, and he's so excited that he's just gone right off to the Department of Education, and they're going to...
Because they did the whole Head Start program, right?
So... They're going to go, I mean, he must be off doing it, and I'll scan the paper and I'll look at what's coming on the Department of Education website and so on.
Aha! Nothing yet.
Wow. Not taking my calls.
I don't see any activity, right?
Everybody knows exactly what would happen if you tried to get the public school system to become more efficient.
You'd get a horse's head in your bed from the goddamn public school teachers' union.
I can't even fire...
Ask-grabbers from teaching.
The teachers' union, which survives on forced donations, if you made education that much more efficient, it would have to be faster.
If everyone's getting A's, you need to accelerate the curriculum.
So they slow the curriculum down by having all these kids fail.
It's just inevitable.
And so they need the kids to fail, the same way that unions don't want people to work very efficiently, because if you work very efficiently, then you need less union workers, fewer union workers.
And so the union then doesn't get the union dues.
People get laid off.
People get mad at their union.
Yeah, I lost my job. Like, just take it easy, man.
Slow down. Slowly down, man.
And the same is, of course, true in the public school system.
If everyone's getting A's, then you need to accelerate the curriculum.
If you can accelerate the curriculum, you can shave a year or two or three or five or probably ten off the frickin' brain-emptying gulags called the public schools at the moment.
That means you need four-fifths, three-fifths, two-fifths, one-quarter, the number of teachers.
"Huh, I wonder how the teachers will feel about that." So if you invent something which improves the quality of a product, and the product of the schools is ideally, or in the sort of fantasy world of virtue from violence, is high-scoring, well-educated, intelligent kids, right?
That's the product, right?
Wow, I found a way to speed that up and make it ten times better.
Not interested. Fuck you, get lost.
What happens if Dr.
Phil tries to take this to the government, to the state schools?
He is going to experience two things.
One fairly short and fairly inconsequential.
One Very long and very unpleasant.
Well, the first thing he's going to experience is the runaround.
He's going to waste his time. People are going to say, oh, that's interesting.
Leave it with us. Ah, it's Dr.
Phil. We owe him a phone call. Well, we're thinking of putting in a program in this school in the middle of nowhere, but it's taking a little while.
We'll have to get the materials together.
So he's basically going to beat his head against the wall of bureaucratic indifference and powerlessness, and he's never going to get to anyone who actually makes any decisions, because, of course, in the government, nobody makes the decisions.
The only people who make the decisions are the military and the police, and that's to take your money.
After that, nobody can be pinned down for anything.
So, the first thing he's going to experience is he's going to go in wild-eyed with enthusiasm about how everyone's just going to say, this is like the most amazing thing.
You have found a car that is going to run.
There's no competition, right?
You've got a monopoly. So, it's exactly the same as if you had invented a car that could run on one-tenth the gasoline.
Well, who wants that are the consumers, but only if they get a choice.
You take that to the gas companies, they'll be like, yeah, yeah, we'll take that on.
We'll figure that out, right?
Who holds back the electric car?
Who made Steve Guttenberg a star?
We did. So he's going to experience the runaround.
And he's going to say, well, I've got this thing.
It's proven. It turns kids' education on its head.
It makes it much faster. They do better.
Their whole lives will be changed.
Whole lives will be changed through this.
So I'm going to try and get it implemented in the public school system because I praise the public school system as being so fundamentally obsessed and only solely and totally interested in educating the children better and this and that.
Right! So he gets the runaround, and that's unpleasant, right?
That's unpleasant. Your enthusiasm begins to dim, and you begin to get bewildered and frustrated, and nobody's returning your calls, and everyone's giving you someone else's number, and, you know, they're circling the wagons, making sure that you don't get through.
And, of course, there's no way you can get through.
Why?
Because all rests on a gun.
So then what happens?
Well, then, he either gives up and says, well, I guess I just got a bad...
Instead of bureaucrats and so on, which is probably what he would do.
But if he kept going, why?
Because he cared about the children and believed in the virtue of the state system, then what would happen?
He would begin to realize that they did not want to improve the educational quality of what was being offered to the children.
In fact, it seemed fairly clear that they actually wanted the educational standards to decline, because that's what they've been doing for the past hundred years or so, right?
So then he would begin to—he's a smart fellow, right?
As he says, I've got more degrees than a thermometer.
He would say, gee, I wonder what's going on.
I totally believe that the government system is really, really interested in improving the education of the children.
I got this proven technique for improving the quality of education about 10 times.
That's significant. We're talking 2% improvement.
This is huge. This would be the most amazing coup for anybody in charge, anybody in a leadership position.
Fantastic. Couldn't be better. Couldn't have a bigger and better legacy.
They would out Lincoln Lincoln, if you're in the Lincoln cult.
But they don't want it.
And it's totally clear because I'm a psychologist and I know my psychiatrist, I guess.
I know passive aggression when I see it.
I know the runaround when I see it.
And he's Dr. Phil, right?
He confronts drug addicts.
He confronts molesters. He confronts abusers.
He would confront these bureaucrats because he's Dr.
Phil. And he damn well is looking out for the kids because he says every single show, this isn't about you or me.
This is about the children.
Okay, he doesn't quite growl it, but I think you know what I mean.
This is about the kids? Because it's all about the kids.
I want to help the kids. So he'd sit there.
He'd bring in his camera.
And he would sit down with these bureaucrats in this in-your-face Michael Moore fashion.
Oh, wait. He only does it to private companies.
Can't audit him because he's, you know, Mr.
Brave. He'd bring his cameras in.
He'd say, I'm sick and tired of you people giving me the runaround.
We're going to sit down and have a face-to-face.
I don't do a good Dr. Phil.
Sorry. Except for the forehead.
But he'd push because he's Dr.
Phil, right? So he doesn't take no for an answer.
He doesn't take the runaround for an answer.
He doesn't take defenses.
He'd push. He'd push and get through.
And he'd get through to the unions and he'd get through and say, what the hell is going on here?
Why are you giving me the runaround? Because he'd push.
He's Dr. Phil. He believes in the virtue of the system.
And he doesn't take no for an answer, right?
But he'll never, ever, ever, ever do that.
He'll never in a million years do that.
He'll talk to the parents.
About educational improvements, like their teachers.
Why? Because he knows that the whole system is corrupt and fetid and evil.
That's why he doesn't confront it.
He's a status slut.
This is notwithstanding the good work that he does with families.
Politically, he totally gets it.
How do we know that Dr.
Phil knows that the public school system is a stinking morass of child-sacrificing evil?
Because he talks about educational improvements to parents and never brings it up with the state.
Because he sells his book on educational improvements in the capitalist environment of a bookstore and online.
And I don't mind that he does that.
Hell, I'd do the same thing too.
I wouldn't take educational improvements and bring them to the government.
But I wouldn't say that the public school teachers and the whole system is wonderful, and then when I had something that would improve it in a magical and fundamental and powerful and life-changing way, veer away from giving it to them and go pick on the parents and you fix it.
You fix the educational system, parents!
It's delightful. It's just delightful how you have to grope and find the truth.
The gun is always in the shadow.
The gun is always in the shadow.
Now, when you have philosophy, you can shine a light and the gold of the gun gleams at you.
The gun is always in the shadow.
The gun is always under the table.
The gun is the invisible elephant that everybody walks around, to use a psychological metaphor.
You know that the elephant is there because people step around it and then say, there's no elephant.
Well, why are you stepping around it?
I'm not. Denial, denial, denial.
Okay, then walk through the middle of the room where the invisible elephant is.
No, I don't feel like it.
There's no need. There's no elephant.
It's no point. Why are you so obsessed with getting me to walk across the room?
You must be defensive about something.
This is the hell that we philosophers face when we point out the gun in the room.
Everybody says, there's no gun in the room.
There's no elephant in the room.
Well, why are you walking around the edge of the room with your ass on your back pressed to the wall?
I'm not. I just feel like it.
There's no elephant. What are you talking about?
Why are you obsessed with it? What does it matter to you?
There's no elephant. And then walk across the middle of the room.
Dr. Phil says, public school teachers are wonderful and the public school system is great, then go sell your goddamn educational improvements or give it away, since you don't need the money, to the state.
No. No, no, no.
I'm not going to do that. I'm going to talk to the parents.
I'm going to sell it through capitalism.
Public school system is wonderful.
I have this massive improvement in education, but I'm not going to bring it to them.
Oh, so the public school system is not wonderful.
No, it is. Oh, then you should bring this stuff to them.
No, I want to deal with the parents.
Why do you want to deal with the parents?
Well, they have strong influences over the children.
Yes, but they're not teachers. This is about educational improvements.
And they're not teachers. And then you'd get some long-winded theory about how education begins at home and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But it's all nonsense. This is all stuff that takes place in the classroom.
Why would you give parents the power to improve their children's education when it's the teachers who grade them?
And of course, all that's going to happen, all that would happen, Is if Dr.
Phil's, even if he was able to magically influence the parents to get the children's grades to increase or improve, all that would happen is that the tests would become tougher, or more obscure, or more difficult, or more contradictory, or the questions would become more ambiguous.
They all needed a large number of children to fail, so they'd get more funding, right?
The kids are all getting A's.
No funding. Something wrong.
As there would be in a private school that did that.
Everyone gets A's, really?
High quality education, really?
Lots of people got to fail.
There's a negative incentive to have everybody improve in the public school system.
Same way there's a negative incentive for the gas companies to fund research that cuts gas consumption.
Shooting themselves to the foot.
Why would they do that? There's only competition that does that.
Oh, it's too funny.
It's just too funny.
So I just sort of wanted to point out, and I think you generally get the idea, if not a little too specifically, sorry, repeated myself a bit, but I think you get the idea that we know that there's a gun in the room by how people act and by what they don't do, which is completely logical to do.
Big improvement in education?
Go talk to the teachers. No.
But they're wonderful, you say.
No. They are wonderful, but I'm not going to talk to them.
I'm going to talk to the parents. This is the cowardice.
This is the cowardice and the falsehood and the corruption that goes on when you have a gun in the room that everybody steps gingerly around and says that it's not there.
And you only see the gun with the horrible outlines that occur.
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