On this episode of High Noon, Inez Stepman interviews Tony Kinnett, the Indianapolis teacher and curriculum coordinator behind a viral video explaining how critical race theory makes its way into public school lessons. Kinnett is one of the founders behind the heterodox teacher hub Chalkboard Review, as well as a guest columnist in a variety of outlets.
Kinnett debunks the post-Virginia election gaslighting about CRT not being part of what is taught in public schools, and blows the whistle on how districts get away with lying to parents about it. He also shares why he’s chosen to come forward like this, even though it may threaten his job.
“I want to encourage more teachers to speak out… it’s really the responsibility of the people who want a comfortable life to provide [the foundation] for a comfortable life. You can’t make the United States a better place by going and trying to live the same life that your parents had…. A lot of my family did not want me to do this at all… they wanted me to stay in Knightstown, Indiana, teach for 30 years, and keep my head in the sand, and then retire…
You can’t do that.
In this culture, anywhere, I don’t care what job you have, you are currently being told by large groups of people that you need to join with them or you need to have certain rights revoked, and freedoms and privileges revoked… You have to join in. You can no longer afford to be the person who doesn’t care about politics.”
TRANSCRIPT
Inez Stepman:
Welcome to High Noon, where we talk about controversial subjects with interesting people. And my guest today is Tony Kinnett, who definitely qualifies as interesting people. He is a science coordinator for Indianapolis public schools and he is also the founder of Chalkboard Review, which I highly recommend you checking out. It’s a website that publishes heterodox thoughts from teachers across the political spectrum. It’s meant to be a corrective to what often is like a sort of monocultural voice coming out of “the education establishment,” but it is not limited to those on the right. It is very ideologically heterodox.
And you might have also caught his columns in National Review, Daily Caller, Federalist, elsewhere, or you might have caught him on Tucker Carlson last week — I guess this is going to be released on Wednesday — so late last week, where he discussed a viral video of his, where he talked about whether or not critical race theory was being taught in public schools specifically in the schools that he has been working in, in Indianapolis. And we can assume that it’s not just in Indianapolis. But welcome, Tony. It’s so great to have you on High Noon.
Tony Kinnett:
Thank you very much for having me on.
Inez Stepman:
I really want to just start out by playing your viral video here. And it has had hundreds of thousands of views, I think, right, at this point. It has really, truly gone viral because I think you really connect to the gaslighting that is going on surrounding this topic, particularly post-Virginia election, about whether or not we are teaching critical race theory in public schools. So I’ll just knock that video out in the beginning, and then we can talk about it.
Tony Kinnett (video):
I’m the science coach and admin in the largest public school district in Indiana. I’m in dozens of classrooms a week. So I see exactly what we’re teaching our students. When we tell you that schools aren’t teaching critical race theory, that it’s nowhere in our standards, that’s misdirection. We don’t have the quotes and theories as state standards per se. We do have critical race theory in how we teach. We tell our teachers to treat students differently based on color. We tell our students that every problem is a result of white men and that everything Western civilization built is racist. Capitalism is a tool of white supremacy. Those are straight out of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s main points verbatim in Critical Race Theory: The Writings that Formed the Movement.
This is in math, history, science, English, the arts, and it’s not slowing down. If students of color have lower reading scores, it’s because of inequity. Therefore, we take from the white students and give to the “colored” students. That’s Richard Delgado straight out of CRT: An Introduction. All teaching is political with the reality and facts taking the back seat. That’s Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, who outlined how she saw critical race theory fleshed out in public schools in 1995. When schools tell you that we aren’t teaching critical race theory, it means one thing: “Go away and look into our affairs no further.” It isn’t about —
Inez Stepman:
I’ll just stop the video there. But it’s well worth listening to and viewing in full. First of all, let me just start with this personal question. You know? What made you decide to make this video? Because you’re sharing stuff about what’s being taught in your schools. You knew that this was going to be controversial, you were going to get backlash for it perhaps in your workplace. You know? Why did you decide to make this video?
Tony Kinnett:
I think it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back quite honestly. There had been several incidents in Indianapolis over the last couple of years that have been really frustrating — things that have certainly soured my opinion of the district. But I would have to say that one of the key things that really pushed me over the edge where I was like, “You know what? It’s finally time someone has to know about this,” is when our district sent out an email at the beginning of the year to principals. And then, it was forwarded to district central office staff, which I’m a part of, which said that if a parent asks if we’re teaching critical race theory, we say we’re not.
And I thought, “Well, okay. This sounds like kind of semantics, but alright. Maybe even though we’re teaching the essence of critical race theory, at least we’re not sitting around back here laughing about it.” And then, on October the 18th, we had Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings for district-wide professional development. And she was telling us all about how teaching is political and how racial equity means that you have to treat students differently based on their color in order to achieve success. And then, the racial equity PDs from the day literally talk about how critical race theory is good and how it’s essential that we use it in our district.
And I was like, “That’s a lot.” So I started pushing some of it out there. And then right after Glenn Youngkin’s election in Virginia, now the talking about point is that not only is critical race theory teaching history, which it’s not, not only is critical race theory not being taught in K-12 education, which it is, but now, critical race theory doesn’t even exist. It’s just a figment of our imaginations. And I was like, “No. From an administrator in public school, very, very incorrect. Here’s what someone who studied critical race theory for eight years actually can say about it.”
Inez Stepman:
Yeah. You know? One of the things that was most enraging that you say in your video and in some of your other Tweets and work is that literally you were instructed to tell parents that there was no critical race theory in the schools after everything that you just said, right? It was an active attempt to cover up what was infused into the curriculum. I mean, what are your relationships with parents? Have you personally had parents come to you and ask you, for example: What’s in the materials? Are you teaching critical race theory? And what, even prior to this, this edict that the school district kind of sent around to everybody, what were you telling them? How were you interacting with parents who were concerned about this?
Tony Kinnett:
So the few parents that I’ve interacted with…. At my level, I’m not speaking directly with a lot of parents. This was sent out to say if a parent talks to you, which they’re more likely going to talk to principals, then I normally wouldn’t be in the contact with a lot of parents. However, because I was put in charge of these science curriculum adoption, which was delayed last year and now we’re going through with, one of those tasks is speaking with parents about Indianapolis science curriculum and moving forward, maybe getting a parent on the adoption committee. And I have had a few parents ask us about certain aspects. And in every single situation, I have been very forthright and honest. Even though the district said, “Hey. Tell parents something different,” I’m not going to lie to a parent. That’s a big no-no.
Inez Stepman:
As both a teacher and a curriculum coordinator, let me ask you kind of a big-picture question. What do you think the relationship between parents and those that are teaching — so either educators or people in the district in a taxpayer-funded school — what do you think the relationship between those two groups of people who are so important in shaping a child’s life and learning and worldview ought to be? And then, what do you think are the major problems with that relationship today?
Tony Kinnett:
I would say that the central focus of any great teacher-parent relationship needs to be on close contact. I think that a great relationship in the education system consists of parents and teachers confiding in each other — confiding in each other about what’s going on in the school, confiding in each other about what’s going on with the kid, confiding in each other about what the teacher’s concerns are and what the parent’s concerns are. I mean, that’s certainly what my parent-teacher relationships were like, whether I was in mostly-white, rural Indiana, or very diverse inner-city Indianapolis or Milwaukee. And I think those relationships cannot be valued enough.
Realistically, I think that the teachers should be listening to what standards the parent wants to hold at home. And then, the parent should be listening when the teacher says, “Here’s how I try to accomplish what you’ve set forth in the home, and here’s when it works, and here’s when it didn’t work.” And realistically, it’s a lot harder for a student to play the teacher and the parent off of each other when the teacher and parent are speaking more. I think that it’s fallen apart in the United States because of kind of an apathy. For a long time, you didn’t really need to care about education.
Yeah. You could send your kid off to school and expect to get a pretty decent education. And so that kind of fell to the wayside. A lot of parents are busy. A lot of teachers are a little more closed off than perhaps they used to be. Of course, electronic communication while making things similar has also made people a little more distant, a little more chipped and clipped in their replies. I’d say it’s probably also been damaged a lot by the IEP and special education focus in education. A lot of parents get really protective once they learn that their children have some kind of specific disability. And then all of a sudden, everyone kind of becomes a foe in the room to be dealt with. So I think that those are kind of some of the key issues that have made things a bit sticky.
Inez Stepman:
I wanted to ask you then, if… Let’s say that we follow this more idealized version of the cooperation between parents and teachers. I mean, who ought to be in charge at the end of the day about what kids actually learn in a public school, in a taxpayer-funded school? Because we’ve seen articles, for example in the Washington Post, that have repeated what Terry McAuliffe said out loud during the Virginia gubernatorial debates: that, in fact, there isn’t a right for parents to control what their children are learning in a public school and that it’s really ought to be up to the “experts.” Right? That the teachers and the administrators are the ones who have experience in curriculum pedagogy and therefore they should be the ones deciding what children learn, even about sticky political or moral issues.
Tony Kinnett:
Well, at the end of the day, it’s the parent’s child. The parent should get to decide what the child is taught, when, how, and why. Now, the parent should have a certain sense of responsibility. There is no reason that a parent should be apathetic about their child’s education. There’s no reason a parent should be lax about how their child is growing because there is a lot of investment that goes into a kid and how that child is going to turn out. A lot more investment into rearing a child will yield, more likely than not, a more highly-functioning child, let’s say. You know? A better functioning adult in modern society and the economy.
As far as individuals saying that parents shouldn’t have a say in the classroom, I understand the argument that experts should be listened to. And the advice of experts should be taken. But at no point in time does the expert get to say, “Because I have a lot of knowledge in this, therefore I get to tell you what to do.” No. I go into the doctor’s office and the doctor offers advice, and then I can choose whether or not to take that advice. Now, there are cases where two different doctors are going to disagree with each other. And the doctor takes in as much information as they can. And then, when they give you that answer, you can choose to take it or not.
In education, it’s certainly not as rigorous as the medical field. And so when I hear what you are suggesting to me, all of the data that I’m taking in, I make a suggestion. And if you don’t like it, I don’t have ownership over your child. I’m a teacher. And especially, especially on the taxpayers’ dime. It’s your money and it’s your kid. And so, realistically, the parent is definitely at the top of the mountain when it comes to deciding what happens with children’s education.
Inez Stepman:
So this is not the first time you have kind of poked the bear, right? In your district, you had an incident a while back. And you tweeted about it a little bit and talked about it in other context. But could you recount for the listeners what happened to you when you did the extremely controversial thing? You tweeted out… You retweeted an obituary that was not wholly, wholly negative about Rush Limbaugh when he died. How did your school district and your fellow, I guess, your colleagues within the school district react to that? And just tell us a little bit about that story.
Tony Kinnett:
It was a dark and stormy night. Rush Limbaugh had passed away. And in that amount of time, I sent out a Tweet saying, really in essence, thankful for Rush Limbaugh and the work that he did for independent journalists of all kinds, left, right, and center. He made independent journalism a viable thing and he encouraged it. And that was what I was appreciative of because, in my hobby time outside of my work in education, I’m an education policy journalist. I spend a lot of time researching education policy and the impacts that it has on communities, individuals. And so I felt grateful.
I sent out that Tweet. A colleague of mine was very, very, very upset by that Tweet. He actually sent a couple of different emails to our Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Morgan, outlining all of these terrible things that I was. He said that I wanted ownership over his black body, he cited that I was like a scourge on the district, that I should be fired, that the person who hired me should be fired, and that I was just all of these horrible things one after the other, after the other.
And they pull me into this HR meeting because there are these complaints that are being made. And they bring me in, and the HR person is very quick to say, “This is not disciplinary. This is not disciplinary. But we just wanted to talk to you about some concerns that you might have had regarding this situation. And first of all, we want to make sure you know that what he did in reaching out to us, and in reaching out to you — because the individual also texted me — was very brave, it was very brave of him to reach out to you and air his concerns.” And I thought like, “He calls me all of those things and you’re calling him brave? What?” I couldn’t believe it. It was wild.
That was the first moment when I really knew how the cards were dealt in the district. They gave the official line, “We cannot police your Twitter.” And then, the Chief Academic Officer made this very clear. He was like, “But. But you do need to be aware that, as a leader in the district, people are looking at your Twitter. People are looking at what you’re saying. And your colleagues may not want to work with you based on the things that you’re saying on your Twitter.” And I thought, “Okay. Well, that’s not really my problem, is it?” And we ended the HR meeting and went on. And that was kind of the end of that incident. That was the first time that I realized kind of which side of the bread the butter was on.
Inez Stepman:
And there have been a couple times since then. Right? So what is your current kind of read on… Because one of the things I love about the way that you talk about this issue is that you highlight that it truly is, and I know this was Ibram Kendi’s favorite word, but systemic. Right?
Tony Kinnett:
Right.
Inez Stepman:
It’s a perspective that’s woven into. It’s not a matter of, as you say, just align in the curriculum. It’s a perspective that’s woven into schools of education, that’s woven into licensing, that’s woven into teacher training, right? But most of the people who work for the district, they have this perspective. And so there’s… I guess, what can somebody do, depending on… I guess I’m asking several different questions. You know? How do you, as a teacher, sort of push back against some of that, knowing that you’re inside that system and you’re always going to treated unfairly?
Tony Kinnett:
Well, the first thing would be… It’s very interesting that the Indianapolis public school system’s HR office, excuse me, Employee Relations office, they call it ER, treats me very differently than the other offices do because, from what I can tell, the Employee Relations office works very differently than the other offices do because they actually have to work within a legal framework. What the Racial Equity office is doing with its racial affinity groups that were reported on a while ago, and with regards to what the school district is doing as a whole in some of its strategic priorities may not be exactly legal. They’re certainly very morally questionable. But the HR office can’t come out and support that or you get into Title VI and Title VII violations.
And the HR office also can’t persecute or prosecute individuals specifically for disagreeing with the Racial Equity office and basically these school policies the school board passed. And so they kind of have to walk this tightrope and it’s so funny to watch. And I don’t mind saying that it’s funny to watch because, in this first HR meeting, Dr. Morgan would say something. And then, HR would immediately like walk back his statement. And then, Dr. Morgan would say something else. So I would say, “I’m a science teacher and as a scientist, I don’t believe in the concept of race. I believe in the concept of a human group that has slightly physiological differences that mean absolutely nothing. And that it’s culture, not color, that makes the difference.”
And he got offended by that and said, “Well, as a Black man, I’m very proud of who I am and my position.” And then, HR had to walk him back for disagreeing with me. It was quite humorous. So, throughout all of this, I guess I would say that kind of realizing where I could poke and where I couldn’t, and also I’m not just poking to poke. Although I know that the video looks like I’m just out for another 15 minutes of fame and I’m trying to get in front of everyone, I broke all of this data a month ago. Like, I broke all of this stuff that I talked about in the video a full month ago.
It’s just knowing that the HR team can’t tell me not to be active in politics, and they also can’t tell me not to share public information. So if all of this information on school servers is public, I’m free to talk about it. And if they want to fire me for political views, that would be a very awkward and very guilty thing to do. So it’s just kind of knowing what you can do, what you can’t do. And then, I will also say that I was blessed to have already written a lot of content at that point. And so it’s kind of hard to say, “You can’t be a conservative education policy journalist and work here,” when I’d already written a couple places and had done a lot of stuff in conservative politics.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah. Because we never hear this conversation with the advocacy on the left.
Tony Kinnett:
Oh yeah.
Inez Stepman:
We never hear that it’s inappropriate for teachers to engage in advocacy even outside of the classroom, which is what you are doing. Right?
Tony Kinnett:
Yeah.
Inez Stepman:
You are expressing your personal opinion, which you have a First Amendment right to do outside of the classroom, right? But for all of the parents, especially post- this election, in Virginia, it’s been nonstop since that election. It’s been nonstop gaslighting from a lot of folks in the media about the fact that, as you said, it went from critical race theory as a niche law school theory — it’s never been taught outside of law school — to it doesn’t even exist. Right?
Tony Kinnett:
Right.
Inez Stepman:
But the number. I’ve been shocked by the number of mainstream outlets or news anchors who have said flatly, without any attempt to weasel-word their way out of it, have said flatly, “Critical race theory is not taught in Virginia.” Right?
Tony Kinnett:
Yeah.
Inez Stepman:
When there are examples on the actual Board of Education and the Department of Education in Virginia talking about introducing a critical race theory lens. I mean, documents very similar to what you point to in your video about Indianapolis public schools which have the same dictate, “Tell parents this is not in our schools.”
Tony Kinnett:
Right.
Inez Stepman:
If you’re a parent and you feel completely maddened by this kind of switch to pretend that this isn’t happening, these things that you are observing in your child’s school aren’t happening, what is your advice for parents who are running into, let’s say, somebody who’s not so conscientious, and they are just saying what the district is telling them, which is “critical race theory is not in the schools.” I mean, what do you do if you hit that brick wall as a parent?
Tony Kinnett:
If you can, leave. That’s the best advice that I have at the moment. If you can’t leave because socio-economically you’re not in a position where you can afford to send your child somewhere else, which is understandable, or there aren’t any charter slots available, et cetera, then I would suggest that you go to the principal and echo your concerns. If the principal doesn’t care or gives you the soft-handed “There, there. It’s very important and the conservative media guy is just a big, wrong meanie,” then you go to the superintendent and echo those concerns.
Or in our case, you would go to the executive director of schools who’s like a mini superintendent. Then, you would go to the superintendent. Superintendent, they don’t care? Then, elect a better school board. Skip the going and preening in front of the school board step. It’s not going to do anything. I mean, it’s not actually going to change anybody’s minds. Go elect a better school board. And then, bring in a better superintendent. Get rid of the old one and bring in someone who’s going to keep the principals and the teachers accountable. Make sure they’re not wasting millions of dollars a year bringing in racial equity groups to fill your kids’ heads with a bunch of racial essentialist garbage and force your teachers to waste hours of their time preening and posturing over things that are not doing a thing for our students of color.
Inez Stepman:
So let’s talk policy then. So aside from… Because I sort of share your views. I mean, I think that it’s wonderful that so many parents are going out to the school boards, and I think that those confrontations are often really important in the school board elections in terms of providing evidence for where the school board actually stands —
Tony Kinnett:
Yeah. They can definitely have their place.
Inez Stepman:
Yeah. Let’s talk about policy other than electing a new school board because… And there’s policy that goes into that too. Like, I think a lot of people are not aware. I’m sure you’re super hyperaware of the fact that, in many states, school board elections are not aligned to statewide election, which means that the turnout can be 4%. Right? So these are not… There are some folks who are constantly talking about democratically accountable schools. 4% turnout is not democratically accountable in a lot of these cases.
But aside from electing a new school board, what are the policy levers that you think are the most important? What is the most important policy things that need to change that, say, a state legislature should look into? Or somebody, a parent who’s concerned that their voice is just going nowhere and in those school board confrontations, besides energetically opposing those school board members or maybe running themselves for that slot, what can they do when they talk to their state legislature, for example? What are the best policies to really take on the sort of systemic nature of this, the blob nature of this?
Tony Kinnett:
So I would say that three policies really come to mind. The first and foremost is going to be that schools need to be stripped of their monopoly rights, in which that I don’t believe that public schools should be the only place that you can send your tax dollars with your student. I do believe that you’re a taxpaying individual, so that you should be able to decide where your student goes. Now, in some states, that looks more like a voucher program. In some states, that’s more of an education savings account. There are many different ways and forms that school choice legislation can take. And I think that, by looking at your local state think tank, your policy institutes that are outlining why this is the best case for your state and contingent with your state’s constitution, is probably one of the most important policy moves that you can make and support.
Number two. I think the Goldwater Institute’s approach on school curricular transparency is an absolute home run, slam dunk of a policy at the district level, at the state level. To sum that up in, hopefully, an easy-to-use form, it is the idea that whatever your teacher uses that day in my class, if I’m going to show a video, if I’m going to post an article, a worksheet, whatever, it goes onto a Google doc; I just slap the link right onto the Google doc, put the worksheet right there. And then, that Google doc goes up on the district website so that any parent in the district can see exactly what I am using in my classroom. That way, concerned parents can see the physical material that is being taught and, most often, based on how the videos and how the articles and how all of that is shared with students, can get a little bit of a window into the lens with which that material is viewed. I think that giving parents that transparency is really going to do a lot in this.
And the last policy I would advocate for is licensure reform. There’s no reason that teachers should be expected to go to hundreds of hours’ worth of professional developments for racial equity and for all of the social, emotional garbage that isn’t really doing anything. Teachers can’t really stand it. They roll their eyes at most of it. And it’s not actually making our teachers better. I think that teacher licensing and professional development renewal, we should start looking at doing away with it as a whole.
Inez Stepman:
You know? Completely agree with you on the transparency thing. Our sister organization, Independent Women’s Voice, actually has a petition for transparency. And the amount of pushback is really, really… Just, like the line about, “Tell parents there’s no CRT in the schools,” that you observed, I mean, it’s so revealing —
Tony Kinnett:
Right.
Inez Stepman:
… how difficult it is to get a hold of what’s actually being taught. I mean, what do you think the impact of sort of Zoom school in the pandemic has had on all of this? Because, it seems to me, it’s one of the first times that parents directly could hear what their kids were learning in a lot of cases.
Tony Kinnett:
So when’s the last time that you checked the oil in your car?
Inez Stepman:
I don’t have a car anymore, but I was so bad at that when I did have.
Tony Kinnett:
Right. So the average American doesn’t usually check the oil in their car every week. They wait for the light to come on, and then they go and get it serviced. And that’s apathy. That’s not a bad apathy, but that’s apathy. I don’t have to worry about that. I don’t really care about it. Something else is taking care of it for me.
American education has become apathetic in the last decade, the last two decades. You could send your kid off to school, they would learn what they needed to. As long as they turned in their work, as long as you were kind of on your kid to pay attention and get good grades, most of the time, statistically, your kid would turn out pretty well. However, pandemic rolls around. And basically, the country as a collective was forced to open the hood and look at what was underneath. And we did not like what we saw.
And so I think one of the reason the reaction was so sharp is, honestly — and this is a couple of parents that told me this once, specifically from southern Illinois comes to mind — that they’re embarrassed that they didn’t know what was going on in the classroom. And I’m not saying it’s their fault. And I’m not saying that there are individuals here to blame for not paying attention. That’s not what I’m suggesting at all.
And in the same way that we don’t check our oil, and that’s not a bad thing, I am saying though that now that we’ve opened the hood, I think that we need to take a serious look. The pandemic was a great lever for that because the nation collectively looked under the hood of the classroom together. And what was seen was able to be easily spread and shared because we were all on our screens and on social media anyway. And so this reaction hit like a tidal wave. And of course, we’re still feeling the effects for it because, after you check under the hood of your car and something’s wrong, for the next couple of weeks, you’re going to be popping the hood every once in a while, just to make sure that everything’s running as it should, to look for additional problems.
Inez Stepman:
What has the reaction been? You tell me a little bit about the reaction from the district to some of the material that you’re putting out. But have you gotten any feedback from people who might otherwise stay quiet, like your fellow teachers or parents from your district? I mean, what has the feedback been to you actually kind of stepping into the arena and showcasing what, as you say, are public documents? Just things that, until now, when we weren’t checking under the hood, we weren’t looking at those kinds of documents that are posted to some small section of the district website. So what’s the reaction been to the materials that you’re posting from folks within the system who might have otherwise even not thought about it or from parents themselves?
Tony Kinnett:
So I have been reached out to by a few parents who are… They just told me, “Since we’ve seen the materials, we’re pulling our kid from the district. And we’re enrolling them in one of the local Catholic schools. We’re enrolling them in one of the private schools. We’re just getting them out of IPS.” Which, to me, that makes the whole thing worth it because these are parents that would have left if they were honest about it. And so they weren’t IPS’s to begin with. You know what I’m saying there?
Inez Stepman:
Right.
Tony Kinnett:
Like, I think that all of that is kind of justified in that sense. I have gotten some good responses and some very angry responses from teachers. A few teachers have reached out to me. I am up to 11 who have specifically stated that they’re really glad I’m doing this. They feel scared. There’s one teacher that tells a story that, after the November elections, a lot of people in her school were saying really, really dangerous and violent things about conservatives in general. And so she’s been really terrified really working where she is. She feels like she’s being watched.
And I hate that for anybody. So I’m very thankful to receive those comments. Although, it really weighs on me quite a bit with some of the content. A couple of administrators, which is kind of wild, have reached out to me, or their spouses have reached out to me and said, “Hey. I can’t legally come out and support you with this point, but I want you to know that I am on your side and I like what you’re doing.” That’s been pretty cool. One principal in specific, I had no idea. I would’ve never guessed in a million years. So that’s been cool.
A couple of teachers have been very angry. One guy messaged me on Facebook and he was very, very angry. He didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to yell. And he basically accused me of making everything up. And then I started sending him links, and he blocked me, which was pretty funny. And then, one teacher on Twitter, he went off on how he was ashamed to have taught with me. And he was just shame, shame, you know? Swinging the bell back and forth. So that’s kind of been the reaction as a whole.
Inez Stepman:
How do you think we can encourage more people to come forward within the education system and do what you’ve done? And I’m not sure I actually am as optimistic sort of as you are, but you oftentimes point to one 2017 survey that says that teachers are about a third — a third, a third just like the American public — a third consider themselves on the left, a third consider themselves moderate, a third consider themselves conservative.
So I guess, how do we get more teachers who do step forward, who do start fighting from within the system, and how do we help them? That’s one. And two, what can we do to encourage that all-important quality like in a broader sense, not just within the education system, but in our politics as a whole? I mean, it’s been a theme of this podcast that we simply have to get over that courage barrier, that people, that 65% of Americans who are self-censoring their political views are going to have to stop doing that, even at enormous cost.
So I guess one, are you right that there are a lot of, sort of, let’s not even say conservative, but teachers who do not want to teach this kind of radical curriculum? And how do we get them to step forward like you’ve done?
Tony Kinnett:
So I’ll answer your third question first, and then I’ll go back and work my way through the first two.
Inez Stepman:
I ask a lot of questions in a row in this podcast.
Tony Kinnett:
You know that’s why I like you, Inez.
Inez Stepman:
I tend to throw like 16 questions at people all at once.
Tony Kinnett:
I will answer as many of them as I can. And then, the ones that ADHD forgets, you can always throw at me later. So as far as your third question, which was on do I really believe that it’s a third, a third, a third in Indianapolis? No. That was a broad survey of kind of the entire country’s teachers, you know? Surveys do occasionally get things wrong. I mean, that’s statistics in nature, you know? You can’t actually accurately posit everything no matter how hard you try.
I will say that I believe, in Indianapolis, it’s probably about half of the teachers that are on the left. I’d say there’s a very small minority of conservatives. There’s a lot of teachers, though, that just want to come in and teach, and they want to leave. They are tired of all of the nonsense. They’re tired of the pageantry. I don’t think that a lot of them are malicious in their leftist beliefs. I’d say it’s more naïveté in cases that’s encouraged kind of by a collective. I would say to encourage teachers to speak out. I would say celebrate the work that they do when they actually come out. It starts with support.
So since I started writing in conservative education policy, I’ve received a ton of support from individuals in the group that have said, “We’re really proud of what you’re doing, what you and Buck are doing in the Chalkboard Review,” and so we try to pass that on to our teachers. When we have someone who writes for us, left, right, or center, we try to celebrate that. I mean, even if it’s a stinky article, I try to tell them that I enjoyed having them write for us and write for us again, and maybe we’ll have an editor work on some of their ideas and how it’s flowing. I want to encourage more teachers to speak out.
Knowing your policy and your rules and what they can and can’t fire you for are important. There are some in, for example, SERN who disagree with me on that. They’re like, “Well, you can be fired for anything. They can snap your fingers and you can dissolve in midair.” I don’t know if I’d quite agree with that. Especially with modern culture, it’s a lot less easy. As we’re finding out right now, up in Indianapolis, you can’t just flick your wrist and I just magically evaporate. It doesn’t quite work like that. There are consequences.
As for encouraging… So that’s your first question that you asked. As to the broader context of how do we as a society really start encouraging people to hold groups and individuals accountable to really combat that systemic organizational bias? I would suggest that it’s really the responsibility of the people who want a really comfortable life to provide for a comfortable life. You can’t make the United States a better place by going and trying to live the same life that your parents had. The United States is not the same place that it was in the 1950s, and ’60s, and ’70s, as it changed as time went on.
A lot of my family did not want me to do this at all. In fact, they bemoaned the fact that I was a conservative education policy journalist. And they wanted me to stay in Knightstown, Indiana, and teach for 30 years, and keep my head in the sand, and then retire. And they’re very open with me. I mean, they agree with me and they’re proud of me and the work that we’re doing, but that’s what they want me to do. You can’t do that. It’s this culture anywhere. I don’t care what job you have. You are currently being told by large groups of people that you need to join with them or you need to have certain rights revoked and freedoms and privileges revoked. And they’re very open in saying that. You have to join in. You can no longer afford to be the person who doesn’t care about politics.
And it’s weird to say that. I’m not trying encourage everyone to go pick up a torch, but you do have a responsibility now to be informed and to be able to hold your ground in a conversation.
Inez Stepman:
I really think I couldn’t have put that better myself. I don’t think anybody has put it better. I think it’s so critical. And I always feel bad in some sense talking about this because I know as much as we yak about privilege, I truly feel privileged in these conversations because I work for such a great employer, IWF. I am literally paid to say the things that I say —
Tony Kinnett:
I’m so jealous.
Inez Stepman:
— and to write the things that I write. And I realized that that is an enormous privilege in America, where the institutions really have been taken over by this very illiberal part of the left. I am totally honest and upfront with people when I say that you need to step forward. I understand what that means. It means you may lose your job. It means you may lose your ability to feed your family. And it’s really difficult for me to say… You know? I understand why people don’t do that, but the reality is that more people don’t do what you do. This train we’re on is not going to stop without enough people getting off of it and slamming on the brakes publicly. And so I really admire what you’ve done in that regard.
Let me ask you, just to kind of close out this conversation, what do you think the role of education should be at a time when we see the political tectonic plates, both of the Republican and Democratic party, but also the underlying movements of the left and right in America seem to be completely in motion and fluid in a way that they weren’t 10, 15 years ago? Where does the issue of education fit into the larger politics? We just saw it be, essentially, the number one factor in an election, which, as an education journalist, that usually does not happen. Where do you think that issue of education and pushing back against some of the extremes within education is going to align itself? And what is its role in our politics going to be going forward?
Tony Kinnett:
So a couple years ago, I was in the living room of my apartment, which actually, funny enough, is only a few miles from the house in which we’re currently in, and I was listening to some Ben Shapiro stuff because I was listening to him —
Inez Stepman:
[crosstalk 00:37:42]
Tony Kinnett:
… smacking down Thug Life videos and things that you watch every once in a while. Just kind of psych yourself up in the crazy world that we’re in. And it flipped to a discussion between Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson, and it was on philosophy. I had never really cared or studied about philosophy. I mean, I studied theology a little bit, and that was kind of like enough for me. And I had never really looked into a whole lot of the classical framework and why you learned in education and how it worked, and why we dig into politics as a virtuous thing and not something to argue about. And I stopped cleaning in my apartment. And I sat down on the couch. Which I like to clean. I’m one of those weirdos. I actually like to meticulously make sure that —
Inez Stepman:
I bet you check your oil too.
Tony Kinnett:
Yeah. Oh yeah. Apparently, yeah. That’s gotten a lot of mileage this last week. No pun intended.
So I ended up grabbing Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, and I find it interesting because I had never really cared about a lot of those things, but I had sat down, and I had listened to that. It was a three-hour conversation. And I sat there glued to the screen because it was interesting to hear people talk about it. And I felt a calling to dive into purpose and being. It changed how I taught. And I went to the classical learning test exam summit in Annapolis very recently, and I got to hear a lot of speakers wax eloquently on classical beauty and on things that I’ve always appreciated but didn’t know why. Like architecture. Like, I’ve always loved really beautiful old architecture. It’s an old joke with me that the thing I hated the most about the Reformation is that the Catholics got the good architecture in the divorce.
And I’ve really been astounded by those things, but I didn’t know why I liked them. And when I consider my theories on education, I think that I am starting to come around to the idea that what kids need right now is a return to understanding the classical theories and beauty and reason and understanding, and not trying so hard to be out in the front on like the progressive end of things that we end up ripping out the foundation by taking planks from the floor to build onto the roof, which is what we’ve really started doing in education.
I think that we really need to return to looking at beauty, at virtue, and through the classical stuff that Jeremy Wayne Tate and his crew are doing for sure. Split that down the middle and couple it with trades education. I mean, seriously. I think that taking a classical approach and gluing it to trades education with a little sprinkling of one-room schoolhouse-esque kind of free masonic apprentice and the master together mentorship encouragement is what I see that education should be at the moment. And that is subject to change because I’m still very young and don’t know everything.
Inez Stepman:
One of the sad things about getting older is that you still don’t know anything and that you lose confidence in the things that you thought you once knew. So in many ways, in terms of the feeling of knowing everything, you go backwards.
Tony Kinnett:
Good. I have something to look forward to.
Inez Stepman:
But thank you. Thank you so much for coming on High Noon. Anyone can find you over on Twitter at @TheTonus. T-O-N-U-S. And can find your columns again at National Review, Daily Caller, Federalist. But definitely check out Chalkboard Review for Tony’s columns as well as his colleague, Daniel Buck, his co-founder of the Chalkboard Review. And all of the heterodox teacher thoughts that they publish there on curriculum, on pedagogy, on politics, on just about everything. So it’s a real great website. I highly recommend that people check it out. And thank you to our listeners. High Noon with Inez Stepman is a production of the Independent Women’s Forum. As always, you can send comments and questions to [email protected]. Please help us out by hitting the subscribe button and leaving us a comment or review on Apple Podcast, Acast, Google Play, YouTube, or iwf.org. Be brave. We’ll see you next time on High Noon.