On this episode of The Bespoke Parenting Podcast, Julie and Cathy discuss the latest parenting news, what’s going on with school choice in Wyoming, and why education desperately needs new and innovative ideas.
TRANSCRIPT
Julie Gunlock:
Hey, everyone. I’m Julie Gunlock, host of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. For those new to the program, this podcast is focused on how parents should custom tailor their parenting style to fit what’s best for their families, themselves, and, most importantly, their kids. Today we’re checking in with my good friend from Wyoming, Cathy Holman. Cathy began PrairieWifeinHeels.com in 2013 to spread her message of living life of grit, a life of grit and grace, which I love, and we’re going to keep repeating on this show. So Cathy, great to see you.
Cathy Holman:
Thank you for having me back. I’m so excited to chat with you today.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, I’m excited to talk to you. I have to say that I was kind of… I was running around a little busy this morning. I’m on day three of no washed hair and feeling a little crazed this morning, so I was glad my guest was you, because…
Cathy Holman:
Low key, low pressure.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s always an easy conversation. Low key, low pressure. How are you doing?
Cathy Holman:
I’m doing good. I’m sitting on a couch in Vegas in a hotel room. So that’s what I was going to say is low pressure for you. It’s Vegas, I don’t know when I washed my hair last.
Julie Gunlock:
I actually think I’m wearing [inaudible 00:01:39].
Cathy Holman:
Are my eyes puffy? I don’t know.
Julie Gunlock:
No, you look great. But I actually think I’m wearing my mascara from yesterday, so since I didn’t wash my face last night.
Cathy Holman:
You look fab.
Julie Gunlock:
Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. What are you doing in Vegas?
Cathy Holman:
My husband works for Caterpillar, so we’re here for the Conexpo, which is this huge, massive thing that happens every three years. Some people may frown at this phrase. I embrace it, I’m playing trophy wife, which means he goes and does whatever with his business folk during the day. I hang out by the pool and I just have to look pretty and be polite and come to dinner with everybody.
Julie Gunlock:
I am so jealous. I love [inaudible 00:02:15].
Cathy Holman:
It’s a sweet gig.
Julie Gunlock:
It is a sweet gig. It’s so funny, too, because that is one of those phrases that sort of people don’t… They’re like, oh, well, I don’t really mean it that way. I aspire to this. I aspire.
Cathy Holman:
It’s really not bad. It’s really not bad.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, good. Well, listen, I know we have some things to talk about, but it’s interesting, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about what’s going on in Wyoming. I hear something about the Wyoming Speaker, Albert Sommers, who… Am I wrong? He’s a Republican, right?
Cathy Holman:
Yep, he’s a Republican. He was born in Jackson, and I believe he’s out of Pinedale, which is a tiny little town.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s funny, because I think, certainly for me, I think of Wyoming, I always joke with you that I want to move to, and I truly do. It’s not a joke, I want to move to Wyoming, but we think of it as a very red area, very red state that would sort of obviously be in favor of a lot of things Republicans in other states are doing. And in regions like in Virginia, the Republicans are really fighting hard for things like protecting children against some of this gender ideology and also CRT in schools.
Also, school choice is really popular in Virginia with parents, particularly parents who went through the COVID stuff and are like, oh my god, get me out of here. But in Wyoming, you’ve got this very conservative state, and then you have the leader of the House who’s blocking bills on universal school choice, he’s doesn’t want… There’s a bill being proposed to ban gender ideology and CRT in schools for K through third-graders. He’s also blocking a bill that would ban sex changes on minors. Tell me about that, because you are listening to the, more likely the local news and the local politics, and I don’t get it. What’s going on?
Cathy Holman:
Let me lead by saying, I did some research on this, and, of course, I have my own perspective, so this is not black-and-white. First of all, yes, it is safe to say that Wyoming is conservative overall, that there’s lots of Republicans, but I think what we forget is there’s a spectrum within the Republican Party. For example, I grew up in Milwaukee, and I am a part of the Republican Party, but where I am as opposed to my husband, who’s a fifth generation Wyomingite, is going to look different. So I don’t want people to all of a sudden… Just remember that. You can be Republican and have different views along there. So just to address two things quickly, and then I would love to do a deep dive into the waiver thing in my notes here.
The reason why he said no to criminalizing doctors is he already supported the Chloe’s Law, and he felt like it was redundant for both of those. So that makes a lot of sense I think for a lot of people, because Chloe’s Law is what you are talking about, a way to protect kids until they’re 18. So he supported that. He felt like the other law was the same thing over and over.
Julie Gunlock:
Fair enough. Good.
Cathy Holman:
And then as far as not teaching gender identity to children, he had two thoughts about that. First of all, his statement was, “This isn’t happening in Wyoming, not an issue in Wyoming like it is in a lot of other states.” And I have to be honest, from what I’ve seen in talking to parents that have kids in public schools in other counties, this isn’t even an issue. This isn’t happening in Wyoming. This isn’t something that teachers are trying to do, trying to push for. So that was one of his comments.
Julie Gunlock:
Let me stop right there. Do you feel like in your experience, you were a teacher, because I’d love to do a little dive into this.
Cathy Holman:
I was a first-grade teacher.
Julie Gunlock:
See, this is interesting to me, because I do think that we see all this stuff on Libs of TikTok, we see all of this, it’s terrifying. Billboard Chris is another example of someone who really is good about documenting this stuff. But it is interesting, because I do wonder, is it happening everywhere? And you can kind of get that thought. Do you feel like the teacher industry in Wyoming, just for the sake of argument, let’s talk public schools for right now, and let me tell you, private schools can be just as bad on this stuff.
Cathy Holman:
I’ve had children, I’ve taught at public school. I’ve had children attend both private and public within Wyoming. So I would agree wholeheartedly with your statement.
Julie Gunlock:
I don’t want… but just for the sake of this conversation, because this is…
Cathy Holman:
Let’s do public.
Julie Gunlock:
Because this ban was banning public schools from engaging in this, right?
Cathy Holman:
Yes.
Julie Gunlock:
Because we don’t want to tell private schools what to do.
Cathy Holman:
Yes.
Julie Gunlock:
Do you feel like the teaching, the industry in Wyoming is more conservative?
Cathy Holman:
Yeah, I would say in general, because who are the people that are going to live and thrive in Wyoming? They’re going to naturally be people that are drawn to our lifestyle; who are the people that are going to become teachers? They’re going to be people whose dad was a ranch down the street and they’re still teaching in the same town. Now, I would say as with anything, you have people that move in. I’m raising my hand here, from the city or from a different state that have a different perspective. But if you can make it through February in Wyoming, you really want to be here. And chances are you’ve embraced that conservative lifestyle. And I am saying this, having had the worst winter since 1986 in Wyoming.
Julie Gunlock:
Really?
Cathy Holman:
Oh, girl. Yes. That’s a whole nother thing. That’s a whole nother thing.
Julie Gunlock:
Whole nother show.
Cathy Holman:
Yeah. Yeah. A whole nother show. Yes, generally, Wyoming is more conservative. I’ve said it a billion times, I’ll say it a billion more. Wyoming is what America was, and that isn’t always a bad thing. Is there room for change? Absolutely. But I can tell, and, again, I was a teacher over a decade ago, but I can tell you that we talked about every family looks different. That’s the end of the story. That’s all you have to do in first grade. You don’t have to get into the nitty-gritty of who sleeps in whose bed and things like that. You just say everyone’s family looks different. Boom. Because especially the school I taught at, was a low income Title 1 school, and we had kids that were living with grandparents and aunts and uncles. You don’t have to go into the nitty-gritty with the little kids.
Julie Gunlock:
Just to play devil’s advocate, I understand, believe me. Government should get out. So I get really nervous when government does anything. So I can understand this position from the leaders saying, “Hey look, this isn’t here. We don’t need this now.” But I will tell you from a Virginia standpoint, this wasn’t in Virginia until Northam. And so just a very quick story, Northam gets in. Northam is elected governor of Virginia. And he then, very quickly after his election, and we’re a single term-er state, so you can only do one term. Northam was embroiled in a scandal, because someone went back into his yearbooks from medical school and found that he had dressed up as a Klansman, white hood, the whole bit. And it was this yearbook, each student could select a few pictures. Now look, I think it’s horrible, but it was the 1970s, he was at a Halloween [inaudible 00:09:27].
Cathy Holman:
[inaudible 00:09:28] look through the perspective of history, the lens of history, not where we are now.
Julie Gunlock:
Look, I don’t understand anybody who dons a white hood and thinks that’s funny, but in the seventies, it was Virginia, whatever, he did this. He went to, I think, University of Virginia, and he was standing next to a person who was dressed in rags with blackface. So the whole thing was just like, ugh.
Cathy Holman:
Terrible.
Julie Gunlock:
Of course, there were calls for him to resign, and he didn’t. Instead, people cashed in a whole lot of favors, including people who wanted to place CRT in the classrooms. And in two years, the damage that Northam did putting in these insane liberals and radicals into the school system, we have CRT, we have gender studies… You will never find a book being assigned in the public schools in Virginia that wasn’t written post 2010. It’s been an enormous disappointment. And as result, [inaudible 00:10:26].
Cathy Holman:
Yeah, which is a loss. That’s a loss.
Julie Gunlock:
We have terrible learn… And then COVID happened right after that. So we have terrible learning loss. So the thing is now is that the new governor is trying to, the new Republican governor, Youngkin, is trying to walk that back. But the point is, oh my gosh, it is so hard. So what I’m trying to say here is it doesn’t take much to get this so deeply embedded in the culture and the school culture, that maybe this is preventative. Maybe do this stuff while you have the support and outlaw this stuff, and make sure this stuff is never going to come into your schools before it hits Wyoming. Because I feel like it is spreading.
Cathy Holman:
Well, the other comment that he had is, first he said he doesn’t believe this to be an issue right now, but he also said it should be local control. That’s why he didn’t. He felt like he needed to go to the communities, to the school boards. I hear you. I get it. This is all brand new territory for all of us. But that is what he said. And, again, I’m not saying like pro or con, I’m just throwing out there the information because, of course, I was tagged in dozens of posts and everyone’s like, “What’s happening to Wyoming?” Something, too, I just want people to remember in Wyoming, because we are such a rural and an agriculture-related state. I’m sorry.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s okay. It’s Vegas. I know what’s happening.
Cathy Holman:
Look, I’ve been staying hydrated, okay? Anyway, our legislation only meets for January and February, and we’re done.
Julie Gunlock:
Cathy, it’s so funny that you say this, because I worked on Capitol Hill, I’ve always worked in federal, on the federal level. Now, IWF launched this new group called IWN, it’s our membership organization. I’ve talked to you about this. I’m suddenly very involved. Plus, I host a radio show just like you have. You have to really know what is going on locally. This is so embarrassing. I’m not that young, right? I’m not…
Cathy Holman:
Look, you and I are the same. So, no, I think you’re very young.
Julie Gunlock:
How in the world have I taken this long to know that state legislative sessions are two months? I had no idea. And then it’s done. Same in Virginia. So I, like you, was really shocked at how quickly things go and how you really…
Cathy Holman:
Yeah, you have to do it and you have to be on it. I agree with you a hundred percent that parents that are concerned about this, it is your responsibility to be going to school board meetings, to be paying attention to what’s happening, and think about what they’re actually doing at these legislative sessions with your vote. That’s what we can do. I know there was a really big concern when CRT and everything first came up. And so guess what? I went to school boards, took a look at what’s going on in our kids’ community. Luckily, I have the ability to do that. I understand that can be overwhelming for a lot of working parents, or if you have a massive insane community, I can’t imagine what it’s like to try and go to a school board meeting in Washington DC. I’m sorry, the screen froze. No, I’m just kidding.
Julie Gunlock:
Tell me, though, let’s get a little bit into, the leader there is also banning… or he’s rather blocking some school choice in this initiative, universal school choice. This is classic let the dollars follow the family. Just to give you an idea, my son had a very, very hard time in our public school. Again, just to make this short, I did not realize how bad it was until COVID. So ignore that. But just the point is he’d had problems for years and years and years. When COVID happened and we pulled him out, and I think I’ve told this story on this podcast before, we had him assessed just for mathematics, just to see where he was.
He was really strong. We actually personally knew that he could… My son is a very big reader, and he’s always been; verbally, he’s very capable. He’s a good reader. So we weren’t really worried about that. Not so worried about science, but we really were worried about math. We had him tested. We pulled him out at the end of seventh grade, and he assessed as only being competent up to fifth, and not totally competent in fourth.
Cathy Holman:
Oh, two years behind his… That’s pretty hard.
Julie Gunlock:
That was an assessment of his… Because COVID happened in the spring. So he’d almost done seventh grade full, and he assessed, and I was so angry because guess what? He’d gotten A’s and B’s. He was a good student. But I had suspected. So the reason I tell that story is, guess what the public education up until seventh grade… Now he has an IEP because he has ADHD like a lot of kids, and he has a pretty severe case. So he gets funding for an IEP kid, which is this individualized education plan. So he gets more funding than the average. In Alexandria, Virginia, my other two children who do not have IEPs, got $18,000 per year in Alexandria, and an IEP kid, $36,000. That’s how much they spend per IEP kid, and 18,000. I then pulled my kid out. Up until seventh grade, he was barely up to fourth grade math, and they told me he was doing great.
Cathy Holman:
Just rolling through the system.
Julie Gunlock:
They kept pushing him through, and I’m so angry about that. So now I’ve pulled my child out, I homeschooled for 18 months, and then I have now put him in a very expensive private school. Do I get that 36,000? My son still has like IEP quality needs. What does that say? And the idea of my property taxes are still being collected to pay for that public school that failed my son. So why in the world does the leader, and, again, I’m not talking to him, I’m talking to you, but what was his… I do appreciate you giving the reasoning about there’s overlap and duplication in some of these proposals, and that’s important. What’s his position, and what is Wyoming voters’ position on school choice?
Cathy Holman:
Again, I can only speak for myself, for Wyoming voters, on school of choice, and I actually have a different opinion than a lot of people, so prepare yourself. First of all, what he said, again, I did some reading, is that he thinks it’s unconstitutional, and he wants to, if anything, put it more at that local level. Let the school board decide what they want to do, which actually is already what’s happening in Wyoming. For example, we live in a teeny tiny town. There is one school. So school choice doesn’t really make sense, and you would be surprised at… Well, you wouldn’t be, because you know Wyoming, but other than maybe four other cities, that’s pretty much the way that it is in the whole entire state, is that there’s one school that’s there, that’s where you go to. So school of choice, mm, and there’s already a system set up where if you want to go to the next town over because you’ve had a negative experience, it’s very easy to do that.
Not a lot of people take advantage of that. Some do, some don’t, that’s their decision. Again, it just goes through the school board. It’s fairly easy to do that if you want to. I grew up in Milwaukee, which is actually where, if I am correct in remembering my educational history, this all went down because of the notoriously terrible Milwaukee public school system. And I grew up on a tiny little suburb, but right on the edge of downtown, and on one side of me was super ultra-rich people, and then it was our teeny tiny little suburb. I grew up like Salvation Army clothes poor, no government assistance, but they probably could have if they wanted to. And then you have the inner city. So my parents spent the little money they had sending us to private school for the exact same reason that you’re sending your children to private school.
When it came time for high school, because of our location and access to the super ultra-rich high school, they let all of us kids go to public school. We had the waiver system, we had those kids coming in from inner city attending this high school. And I have no doubt that because of that system, generational poverty was broken, and some pretty amazing phenomenal things happened. I did not see a decline in behavior, or poor influence, or all these things that people are talking about from these larger cities doing that. That just wasn’t what I experienced. But again, this was in the nineties, so who knows what it’s like now. Saw right there exactly what you’re talking about, how valuable access to this and choice can be for these kids and for the community, because some of those kids got education and then went back and made change. That’s huge.
Now let’s go to Wyoming. When I was a public school teacher, I taught at a school that was literally in the middle of a trailer park. Lots of meth, lots of abuse, lots of multi-generational poverty, again, on a Wyoming level. So it’s not like people, it’s not like there’s guns or gangs or shootings or anything. So keep this in perspective, the worst part of Wyoming compared to the worst part of Chicago, absolutely nothing.
Julie Gunlock:
Totally different story, right.
Cathy Holman:
Okay. So as educators, what we did in this Title 1 school is our principal had us take classes where we could specifically recognize meth use, abuse, talk about breaking those socioeconomic cycles. So we were taught specifically how to work with these kids and where they were at to bring them up to where they needed to be. Because we were in this neighborhood, we knew them. In Casper, Wyoming, which is the big city near where I live, they have school choice. So you can pick whatever school you want. You don’t have to go to your neighborhood school. It’s a bigger city. I don’t even know how many schools there are. Let’s say there’s 12 elementary schools and maybe six middle schools, and there’s two high schools plus one more, the alternative high school. So that’s what we’re looking at.
They have the waiver system there. Each school is run differently. Some have a board of parents that decide, some have open classroom. I have seen firsthand how this has caused a breakdown in our community system, because kids are no longer going to school with their neighbors. They have no idea who their neighbors are anymore. They’re on the bus for an hour-and-a-half sometimes to get to the place where they need to be if their parents can’t drive them. And the bullying and the physical violence that occurs, because what’s going to happen when you have a bunch of kids on the end of the day on the bus for an hour-and-a-half has just escalated year after year.
I have parents who can’t even… There’s lots of instances where parents have their kids going to three different schools because they couldn’t get them into the same one, not because they chose to do it that way because of their child’s needs. I personally, we actually built our house across the county line specifically so I would not have to deal with the waiver system, because I do not think it benefits our community there.
Julie Gunlock:
But the parents could have chosen to go to the local public school, correct?
Cathy Holman:
You don’t get to pick. My understanding is you do not always get into your neighborhood school, and people are touring schools in April to get their kids, and you don’t have first choice because you live in the neighborhood. That’s my understanding. I could be wrong, but you don’t get to say, “I live in this neighborhood. I want my kid to go to this neighborhood school.” Okay. Because you live here, you get… I have friends that were driving 20 minutes when they had a school across the street because they couldn’t get their kid into it.
Julie Gunlock:
You say this is a waiver system.
Cathy Holman:
They just call it school of choice, where you can just pick what school you want to go to, you get on the wait list, you register your kid, and you say, “I want them to go to this school. This is my first choice.”
Julie Gunlock:
But the interesting thing though is, Cathy, is that do parents in this waiver system, and I’m really not familiar with Wyoming specific. I’m confused [inaudible 00:22:30].
Cathy Holman:
It would have to be this town specific, because that’s the thing. This isn’t statewide, this is just how this one city does it.
Julie Gunlock:
I’m a little bit confused about a situation where it sounds like people can choose to go to the public school or they can choose a variety of private schools?
Cathy Holman:
No, it’s all public schools that are run different ways.
Julie Gunlock:
Oh, okay.
Cathy Holman:
It’s all public schools. So you have those-
Julie Gunlock:
This does sound kind of different from what the proposal for true school choice, it doesn’t sound… They might use that sort of language, but what true school choice is, is giving the money to the families. That’s the only difference.
Cathy Holman:
Yes. That’s like what Milwaukee did so that they could pick them.
Julie Gunlock:
There will be a variety. So let’s take me, for instance. If the money goes to the family, goes back to me, and I get 36,000 … You know it would never be that much, right?
Cathy Holman:
A girl can dream.
Julie Gunlock:
You can dream. So let’s say maybe there isn’t special funding for IEP kids. Let’s just say every family gets 10,000 per kid, right? Because they’re not going to give you 18. So let’s say they give you $10,000 per kid. For me, I would be able to choose, okay, I’m going to send my kids to the public school and that costs $10,000. Or I could choose to go to the really fancy Episcopal private school where John McCain went and a bunch of rich families send their kids, and that’s $50,000 a year. And if I’m wealthy enough, I could use the 10,000 that I get in the school choice, plus makeup. But more than likely, okay, because that’s insane, but more than likely, as people would say, you know what, I have a special needs child, and there is a school… And there is a school close to my house that really caters to children on the spectrum, to children with severe learning needs.
My god, they have a ton of… They have a teacher, they have a lot of assistants in the classroom to help kids. And maybe that is 15,000. So I could use my 10,000 that was… That’s just yours that you paid into property taxes, et cetera. And then you supplement. To me, you could choose to use all of that money. So again, it’s just like public school, where you’re not out any money, or you can supplement that, but it is help for you if you have a special needs child. The interesting thing also in Wyoming, as you say, and I get this, because I grew up in rural Illinois, where you had one high school to go to.
Cathy Holman:
Yeah, like it is what it is.
Julie Gunlock:
I remember as a child, I remember we had these neighbors, and they were really odd. I always thought they were a little strange. And the kids were kind of to themselves, and they were always leaving super early because they had to drive 25 miles up the road to drop their kids off at the private school. They wanted their kids to go to a religious school. It’s so funny that my memory now, now I’m like, that would probably have been me. But if, let’s say every family was getting a check, to say you can use this however you want, I would think that there would be more innovation in Wy…
It sounds like a lot of things are working well in Wyoming, but I would think that you say, because there’s no other choices, I think about a family who lives in an area like my rural town in Illinois. I know that there were some special needs kids who really shouldn’t have been there, and they got terrible, they didn’t get a good education. And I think about if that had been set up in Illinois in my day, then there might have been maybe a small group of parents who hired a teacher, and they did a sort of homeschool pod-type thing. So I think one of the things that without school choice, it stunts innovation in education, and, again, makes people, when they have one choice, they have one choice. And even in towns where maybe this works and there’s one school to go to, and there’s no competition, I still think that if we did a California model, and in California if you homeschool… You homeschool, too, right?
Cathy Holman:
I do. In the summertime I make them, because I’m a nerd.
Julie Gunlock:
Oh, that’s so good.
Cathy Holman:
Because I used to be a teacher.
Julie Gunlock:
I homeschooled. I had to buy a curriculum. It was time out of my day. It was like I had to take time off of my work. And if I had gotten a portion of that, California does that, where you can set it, they will help defray the costs of the curriculum and some of the setup of your schoolroom in your house and stuff like that. So I do think there’s options here.
Cathy Holman:
Do you think that anyone’s going to… Okay, I’m listening to all the things you’re saying. I’m thinking about how Casper, that’s the big city I’m talking about that has school of choice that I just personally don’t like because of that breakdown in community. Especially because there’s not a huge variant, in my opinion. And also we have a neighbor who has a child who has very severe special needs, very severe. And our little town, that school was not a good fit for him. They just didn’t have the support he needed. So like I said, you can just fill out paperwork and send your kid to the next town over. So he just goes to the next town. So we have all sorts of fluidity and flexibility. And for homeschoolers in Wyoming, you can homeschool, but then if you want your kid to go take trig at the high school, no problem. Come take trig at the high school.
Julie Gunlock:
I think Wyoming sounds like it is on a good path already, because there are a lot of options.
Cathy Holman:
Yeah, and that’s what I feel like his point was.
Julie Gunlock:
But this is the thing. I feel like that what we hear in this narrative a lot of times is, everyone goes to the local high school. And then for people with severe problems, or for people with… There are people like my son, who are falling behind, who do not have severe problems. I always joke like, oh, he has ADHD like every other kid. But in my son’s case, it is a pretty serious case, and he really does need accommodations for that. But we are not talking about a child who’s non-verbal.
Cathy Holman:
Yeah, we’re talking about regular.
Julie Gunlock:
Or who has sight problems or hearing or self-harming.
Cathy Holman:
We already have that where you can change. My daughter, one of her best friends, they weren’t getting along socially at school, so they go to school in the next town over.
Julie Gunlock:
Sure.
Cathy Holman:
We have that in Wyoming. But how do you figure out what’s best? How do you figure out, is the waiver system with money best? Is it they can go where they want that’s best?
Julie Gunlock:
I do think that there are questions like that, but I always defer to, I think parents are best, and if they want that community cohesion that you’re talking about, which certainly is a very good thing to talk about, because if we break up. It’s funny, I live in a town that’s kind of like that. I don’t have the specific study in front of us, or in front of me, but… Us, like I have a person living inside [inaudible 00:29:20].
Cathy Holman:
[inaudible 00:29:20] I love it. You’re the [inaudible 00:29:22].
Julie Gunlock:
I don’t have it in front of me, but at one point, someone had done a study of Alexandria, Virginia, and per person, we have the most private schools in a small… Because Alexandria city itself, there’s Fairfax County that has a City of Alexandria, but it’s not part of the actual historic city. And it actually is a very small town. Again, we have the most per capita, or per mile, or whatever, private schools. So it’s funny, in my neighborhood, my son’s best friends, like his gang, his people, there’s only two of them that go to the same school. One goes to a school in DC, another one goes to the local school. So it’s very similar like that. And I see what you mean about it, because I don’t know the parents very well, there’s not school events that we [inaudible 00:30:13].
Cathy Holman:
They’re not even getting off the bus at the same time and walking home, so you just recognize them. You’re not there on the corner with the stroller waiting for them.
Julie Gunlock:
But this is the thing. I think in some ways when I look at education in America and the state of it and how we are just failing kids, I don’t know that that is something that’s necessarily so much of a… That should be so much of a barrier to… We desperately need innovation in education. We need competition in education.
Cathy Holman:
It’s been a fascinating perspective for us. We actually have a Spanish exchange student that’s living with us, because why not add one more kid when you have five? He already graduated University of Madrid. This is his gap year, and he’s hanging out and going as a senior to high school in our local small town community for his exchange. And he’s like, “Ugh, you guys are doing stuff we were doing in eighth grade.” And he is a senior, and he just continuously is like,
Julie Gunlock:
What’s going on?
Cathy Holman:
What is going on with your guys’ education system? And me, in case it’s not clear, I am super happy with the education my kids are getting. Where I feel like there’s gaps, I am the responsible person that fills it in, the things that-
Julie Gunlock:
Oh, we get it. You make them to go to school in summer. We get it.
Cathy Holman:
I am that mom. I’m like, you didn’t read Mark Twain? We’re reading Mark Twain. Let’s talk about it.
Julie Gunlock:
Cathy, it’s so interesting that you bring this up on Twitter. Something kind of, it didn’t go viral, but it was kind of a big tweet that was out there about, it might have been Princeton or Stan… Stanford is such a train wreck these days.
Cathy Holman:
Oh, my gosh, right?
Julie Gunlock:
Which is a whole nother show. Oh, my god. It was undergrad and like a sophomore literacy class. Some professor basically said that her students cannot get through “Scarlet Letter.” And they were having a really hard time. My kid’s reading that in ninth grade.
Cathy Holman:
Yeah, we read it when we were 13.
Julie Gunlock:
Yes, it was a little bit hard. I mean, my kid in seventh grade had to read Mark Twain’s, “Prince and the Pauper,” and oh my god, that’s in old English. And I was like, I had to read passages to him. I get it. But this is a college level course, and they’re reading “Scarlet Letter.” And you do wonder about… Meanwhile, TikTok’s taken off, and the Chinese know exactly how to make us…
Cathy Holman:
Oh, my gosh.
Julie Gunlock:
Look stupid.
Cathy Holman:
Maybe that’s what they need to do, is they need to do a TikTok. There’s Cliff Notes. So do TikTok version of the “Scarlet Letter.” You and I could make bank.
Julie Gunlock:
But it tells you so much at the current state of our education. And when I mentioned that, when my son was coming home with things, and tests where the test would say gender is a social construct. I mean this was way back in 2000 and what, 2019. And I was like, something’s going wrong here. What is happening? And I would write… And then the literature that would come home with him. And I’m like, “What are you reading? This is insane.” You’ve got Kendi and Bettina Love, and all these people on these recommendation lists for kids’ reading. And during the summer, my god, the recommended reading is even more woke. So I worry about this stuff, and I worry about how education is. The most serious [inaudible 00:33:48].
Cathy Holman:
You have to pay attention as a parent.
Julie Gunlock:
You do.
Cathy Holman:
I think that we got complacent before COVID. I think there was a big eye-opening. I think before COVID, we didn’t appreciate teachers in the way that they needed to be appreciated until all of a sudden you have all these parents stuck with their own children for hours and hours that have never spent. I’m serious. They’ve never spent that much time with their kids, ever. And then they’re like, “Oh.”
Julie Gunlock:
Something’s not right here.
Cathy Holman:
[inaudible 00:34:16] Maybe that teacher was right, and I shouldn’t have had her fired for saying Joey’s a little punk. But I think it also made us much more aware of the curriculum, because we were teaching it. Some parents had no concept about how math has changed over the last five years, even, forget about the last decade. So I think rather than feel defeated by this, rather than feel overwhelmed by this, we need to say, “Okay, we were too lackadaisical. We weren’t paying attention. Now is the time we need to pay attention. Let’s go read articles. Let’s educate ourselves.” And more importantly, don’t go on the attack at these school board meetings. Go with the concept of why you’re doing this. And then those people need to be listening to us that are paying their salaries and paying for this education through our taxes.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, it does sound like in Wyoming, the teachers are still paying attention, the school administrators, the school superintendents and school board members.
Cathy Holman:
I’m not saying it’s perfect.
Julie Gunlock:
Oh, no, no, no. But I do think there is this disconnect between if you live in… There are people who [inaudible 00:35:59], Karol Markowicz is a great example. She’s a New York City writer, and she loved New York. That was part of her narrative was how much she loves living in New York. She’s kind of make fun of the Park Slope moms. But this was kind of her thing, right? And New York was definitely part of her. And then she moved to Florida and she taught. Now it’s so interesting to see her writing about how different it is. And I feel a little bit in that same space, because I was part of a school district who truly does not care. The cruelty of the Alexandria school boards and there are women in-
Cathy Holman:
I’ve seen posts and articles, yeah.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s nuts. So then to experience what I’ve experienced now that I’ve gotten my kids in classical schools and the communication I get from teachers, it has been remarkable. But I do think it’s really important for us to put it in perspective and remember not all states are the same, not all parents are the same, not all conditions are the same.
Cathy Holman:
Yes. And private school is not always better. We pulled our kids from private school.
Julie Gunlock:
I also tend to think-
Cathy Holman:
I’m just saying, private school isn’t always better.
Julie Gunlock:
I tend to also… I think this is really what you’ve said here today is so important, because I have gotten so much… I’m so angry about what occurred in my own personal situation, that you say the name school board, and I immediately break out in hives. I am literally like “The enemy. The enemy, the enemy.”
Cathy Holman:
I hang out with them at football games and know all their kids.
Julie Gunlock:
So I think it is important that we realize that, again, not every location is the same, not every state is the same. I am really glad that Wyoming remains a place of being sensible and listening to people and listening to parents, because…
Cathy Holman:
In my experience, it is. It depends on who you ask. There’s other people that think we aren’t woke enough. I just feel like we can all, something you said earlier about seeing things on Twitter and TikTok, we can all get very easily overwhelmed with access to social media. I don’t think social media is the devil. It is how I have made my living. It is how I provide for my family. But that being said, you need to take a breath and look in your communities. You’re reading articles about gender this and that and the other thing.
Go hang out at your school, talk to your kids, talk to their teacher. Don’t just start going on rants and raves on Facebook. Go into your community. You’re feeling like no one cares anymore. There’s no volunteerism. When’s the last time you went and wandered around in your community? It’s easy to get defeated, I think, with all these big stories and all these things. My daughter, where she’s a female wrestler, it depends on where you look. You could hear tons of discouraging, terrible stories about what it’s like to be a female wrestler and wrestle boys. And that’s not the overall experience.
Julie Gunlock:
This is what you do, Cathy. This is what you do. I was just about to say, well, we’re going to conclude this one and you’ll be back in a couple weeks.
Cathy Holman:
I know [inaudible 00:38:56].
Julie Gunlock:
Now you opened it up, I’ll be like, “Female wrestler? Oh, my god.” I think we’ve nailed our next conversation.
Cathy Holman:
Yes, please.
Julie Gunlock:
Because I would like to- You cannot take the bait here. You cannot take the bait. But I would like to hear about what it is like to be a female who’s not pretending to be a male, who’s actually entering a rink with a male opponent, what that’s like. This is actually opposite of a male student identifying as a woman and then beating. This is actually a really interesting conversation we will have next time.
Cathy Holman:
Yes. I will [inaudible 00:39:29]. It’s really hard, though.
Julie Gunlock:
I’m sure. I’m sure. But you are going to be back. We are now doing a regular, I think…
Cathy Holman:
So excited.
Julie Gunlock:
I can’t remember. It’s like once a month or something, with Cathy.
Cathy Holman:
Whatever you want, girl. I’m there.
Julie Gunlock:
With Cathy. Cathy is just… It’s honestly, Cathy and I agree on a lot of stuff, but she’s a great counterweight to me. She lives in a different area of the country, and I tend to interview a lot of people who are sort of in these battles. And I think it’s great to have these very calming conversations with Cathy, but I also love how you do parent with grace and grit. And I think that’s just something our viewers want to listen to. So I love having you on. I’m so jealous that you’re in Vegas.
Cathy Holman:
Thanks for having me. It’s [inaudible 00:40:13].
Julie Gunlock:
What’s planned for today? More time at the pool?
Cathy Holman:
That’s all I’m going to do, girl. I have one article to write, and then I’m going to the pool to soak and tan before I go back to 10 feet of snow.
Julie Gunlock:
That’s awesome. All right. Well, Cathy, it is great to have you on, and we will talk next time.
Cathy Holman:
Thanks for having me.
Julie Gunlock:
Cathy will be back in a couple weeks, and we’ll have another great conversation with her. The Bespoke Parenting Podcast is a production of the Independent Women’s Forum. 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. Hang in there, parents. We’ll see you on the next Bespoke Parenting podcast.
