Season 8, Episode Twelve June 16, 2024

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This is the Listening Tube.

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Hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Subscribe today. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. On this episode, we'll hear about losing your head, religion and sex, and how President Nixon ended up on both sides of the law. Plus, we'll hear from a man about the realities of critical race theory.

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But

Not the Headlines

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first, not the headlines.

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There was a time when our vision of what the future would look like was very fantasy-like. People back in the 1960s and 70s envisioned flying cars and picture phones and space age clothing that made us all look like the guys from Devo. So far, we don't yet have flying cars going to and fro above our heads. We have the picture phones, but most of us would rather text for some reason. And let's face it, nobody wants to be seen most of the time anyway, especially since we don't yet have that space age clothing that people in the 60s promised us we'd have by now. I mean, other than Debo. Perhaps it's because for most of us, clothing has to be functional, not just fashionable. You can dress like Debo all you want, but it's not going to give you any sort of an advantage or make your life any easier. But that may be coming to an end. For thousands of years, mankind has woven raw materials into usable fabric. Myriad ways have been developed and perfected to knit and knot and intertwine threads of string, yarn, and plant material to provide tools and clothing, blankets and sacks of all sorts for carrying and storage. Like animal skins, what we wear is created using methods that have a history going back millennia. It's literally where the surname weaver came from. That's how far back it goes. For a long time we thought we knew everything we thought we could know about weaving. The only thing we could do to improve upon the process was to find ways to mass produce the process using machinery. That has led to acres wide factory floors in China creating textiles for export around the world. How much bigger can it get? Is there no other way to improve upon the textile process? Perhaps there is. And a team of physicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology did the math. Anyone who's ever crocheted or knitted or macromade can tell you there are certain stitches for different objectives. The thickness of the yarn and the circumference of the loop provide desired properties. Those techniques and properties have been handed down through generations of weavers and carpet makers and fabric makers by oral history and apprenticeships, then in printed form and ultimately to the internet. But nobody did the math until now. A story from Gatech.edu says that by understanding the math, we can expand knitting's application into a variety of fields beyond clothing. Understanding the mechanics behind knitting and the materials we create is crucial to developing techniques that engineers can use with predictable results. The story says that a skill like knitting, which has been historically dismissed as unskilled labor or women's work, can be more complex and more rewarding than working with other materials like rubber and metal. Its flexibility is a big advantage. Even though the yarn itself may not have elastic properties, when you knit something with it, you can create elastic properties and even control the degree of elasticity. Having such control over the elasticity of a woven product can lead to what the story calls cutting-edge interactive technologies like soft robotics, wearables, and haptics. The soft robotics might include more human-like features on machines. At the microscopic level, we could even give machines fingerprints to help them grip and identify them by the wear patterns unique to them. Wearables isn't a surprise, as that's what we've been doing for thousands of years. But certainly, what we wear might finally look like the space age clothing the 1960s imagined us wearing. But it will also be functional. As for haptics, well, I don't even know what that is. I'm going to look that up.

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He's gonna look it up. He's really gonna do it.

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A story in Business Insider says haptics are any type of technology that give you a tactile response, such as vibrations or motors. Something you can feel. For example, I had no idea why I could feel it when I played pinball on my phone, especially when the ball's bouncing around in the pop bumpers. Boing, boing, boing, boing. I can feel it in my fingers, but I know there isn't a real ball bouncing around in there. That would make my phone a lot heavier. Turns out it's haptics. I won't try to tell you how they work since I just learned uh what it's called, but haptics is something this new way of looking at knitting is supposed to improve upon. So while a talent that you may have last seen performed by your grandmother or great-grandmother, or even great-great grandmother, may have found a new way of improving our lives through the three ways we just mentioned, I have an idea for an application of this new technology. Ever since people started getting killed by foul balls at Major League Baseball games, every stadium in America has a net that surrounds the infield along the front row of the seats to prevent a foul ball from entering the stands while still at a high rate of speed. I hate it. If I sit too close, my eyes get all googly. Even if I sit back farther, it's like I'm watching the game through a screen door. Now, you might be thinking, but Bob, why don't you just sit in the outfield bleachers? And yes, we could, but my wife and I like to sit behind home plate, or along the first or third baseline. Anyway, my point is that perhaps this new technology could be put to work to make some type of netting that is virtually see-through, but with a tensile strength and elasticity to keep the spectators from getting bumped. Then we will truly be in the space age that was predicted back in the 1960s. Even George Jetson would be impressed.

Let's Go Back

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Let's go back through the listening tube for this week in history.

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This week in 1939 was the last public guillotining in France. Eugene Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the Saint Pierre Prison. If I were sentenced to death, I would like to go by guillotine. I wonder how long I could keep talking after my head came off. Because you know I'd be thinking about it as it happened. If you could grab my head quickly and supply it with some air, I bet I could get out a sentence or two. Speaking of a sentence or two, it was this week in nineteen forty that Winston Churchill delivered his famous finest hour speech. This is a great example of how tragedy plus time equals comedy. When this speech was delivered, World War II was less than a year old, and Churchill had only been British Prime Minister for about a month. But he gave a series of speeches, this one among them, that would keep the citizens enthused and hopeful. Thirty-five years later, the famous line would be used in a dog food commercial.

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Tastes great. What does it look like? Lots of flavor for a wee bit of money. This is dog food's finest hour.

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It makes me very to one in Abington School District versus Shemp against allowing the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools. I began kindergarten in 1967. We didn't think too much about God in kindergarten. But once grade school started, we were given the option to join a prayer group that would bus students to a neutral building about once a week, and that's where kids were allowed to pray and talk about what was in the Bible. Back then, there was still a lot of division even among Christian religions. So if you were a Roman Catholic, your parents might not let you get on the prayer bus since it was led by a Protestant preacher. I don't remember when the prayer buses ended, where I grew up, but I don't remember seeing them after fourth grade. Today, sixty years later, schools have different problems. A high school student in Massachusetts lost a court case recently that kept in place a ruling preventing him from wearing a t-shirt that says there are only two genders. It was his response to the school's pride day when gay pride flags were hung in every classroom. The school told him he can't wear the t-shirt, and a federal appeals court agreed. The school argued that the shirt negates the existence of bi and trans people. The organization that brought the lawsuit on behalf of the student claims the school can't stop you from making a statement with which it disagrees, especially since the school openly supported the opposing viewpoint. This disagreement, I believe, is far from being decided. The dress code at the school prohibits clothing that targets groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or any other classification. Well, that's a pretty broad list. It does say gender identity in there, but it also says any other classification. So if a kid wears a t-shirt that says people can't be cats, does that break the rules? It is a fact that people cannot be cats, but there are people who identify as cats. Does the school side with the science that differentiates between Homo sapien and feline? Or does the school stick up for the little girl who only wants to answer meow when the teacher asks a question? This week in nineteen seventy one, President Richard Nixon declares his war on drugs. The Age of Aquarius was over. Fresh faced kids who went to Vietnam were coming back addicted to a variety of substances, and the beatniks of the late 60s were still partying out west. Some say it had to be done because the country needed to clean up its act. Others saw it as an intrusion into their personal lives. Speaking of Nixon and intrusions, it was this week, one year later, in 1972, five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee located in the Watergate Hotel. The subsequent cover up led to the resignation of President Nixon. Sometimes the cover-up is worse than the original crime, and this may have been one of those cases. The investigation led to a daily drama played out on live television, a type of programming the world had not seen before. This was a soap opera come to life, and it affected the entire country. In addition to the five men who did the break-in, two other men were also indicted E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. My baby sister, whose name is similar to G. Gordon Liddy's, was enthralled by the televised trial. They kept saying his name on television, and she thought they were talking about her. She was less than a year old at the time. I'll bet if you hypnotize her, she could tell you all about the Watergate hearings.

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The listening tube will return at the speed of sound.

Dr. George Maurer

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Contact the listening tube by calling 570-601-1101 or email thelistening tube at outlook.com.

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My guest this week is a doctor of education who's written a book for parents of school age children about critical race theory. It's called Critical Race Theory in Your School How to Fight Back. Three years of research went into the book. Some claim critical race theory is widely misunderstood and used as a blanket catchphrase for anything that connects education with black culture. Dr. George Maurer's research reveals the reality of critical race theory. He walked me through it. There are probably a lot of people who don't know what critical race theory is, and the name doesn't seem to be very descriptive. So can you just kind of in an in a nutshell give us an idea of what it is you're talking about?

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Sure. Critical race theory. Um, and you know, I think part of the game that they play is they don't really want you to know what critical race theory is. But the official definition of critical race theory is the Marxist ideology of oppressor versus oppressed conflict. So when Karl Marx created Marxism, him and uh Engels, they created uh conflict between the rich and the poor. You know, you divide and conquer kind of a thing. And there was a thing, a legal, a legal aspect to the whole thing called critical theory. They came out of the Frankfurt school back in Germany, way back when. And so critical race theory is simply the Marxist divide and conquer strategy, but using race instead of class. What they do is they they relentlessly focus on only the worst, our worst moments in history without giving due credit to all of the progress that we've made over the last 75 years. In a similar manner, you know, a classic Marxist looks at someone who has a little bit of wealth, a little prestige, and they never give any credit to that person for having earned those things. They obviously took advantage of someone, they stole something from someone, they took more than their fair share. Well, critical race theory is sort of that same thought process. As a white person, I am inherently racist, society is inherently racist, and that will never change. And the real crime in all of this thought is number one, you're telling children of color who may be living in difficult circumstances that the entire society is working against them and they have no shot. And what this does is it leads to a hopelessness among our most at-risk children. And even worse, ethnic studies, according to Stanford Research, ethnic studies in its true form shows a lot of promise in closing what they call the achievement gap. And in school, the achievement gap is white and Asian students tend to perform better than African American students, uh, Hispanic American students, indigenous students. And so critical race theorists see it as a race-based gap. But more recent research says that it's probably closer tied to class, parental involvement, other things, not race. Ethnic studies is the positive, healthy exploration of one's culture, leading to self-understanding, self-confidence, all the things that we need, or everyone needs to be successful in life. Critical race theory is hijacking these ethnic studies classes, the classes that could help these most at-risk students, and they're doing it for their own selfish political purposes.

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If you had to give critical race theory a scientific name, or even just a more accurate name, what might that be?

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Uh, racism. There's just no other way to say it. Critical race theorists and anti-racists are very similar. Uh, they pretend to work against racism, but they're actually using racism for their own purposes. And in fact, anti-racist and critical race theorists say some of the most racist things I've ever heard in my entire life. Quite simply, they're the most racist people in the entire world.

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Is there any benefit to being taught critical race theory? Does any benefit vary by age or environment?

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Well, it benefits them. And the people they claim to help are their biggest victims. See, critical race theorists at their core are Marxists. And since the 1800s, Marxists have had one goal: take out capitalism, take out Western civilization, and install a one-world Marxist government. They're pretty dedicated to this. And so they will continue to work at it, and they are the only ones who benefit. They say they're here to help the lower classes, you know, have a more fair shot at life. But when you look at places like Venezuela, they were one of the most successful and wealthy nations in South America, in this hemisphere. And then they went Marxist, then they went commie. And a couple of years later, people were, you know, killing and eating their own pets just to survive. So, you know, the people that Marxists and critical race theorists pretend to help are their worst victims. They benefit from it, but the the children of color that they're they're they say that they're gonna get life and they're gonna make it fair for them and this and that, they just make it worse. So, where is critical race theory being taught? Well, it's being taught across the country. K through 12. That's one of their talking points. That one of them is they don't teach critical race theory in K through 12. My book proves otherwise. And the other thing they say is, you know, people who are criticized critical race theory, they don't even understand it. And and I and I've had that happen to me a couple of times too, but they didn't know who with whom they were speaking. Uh, I've been researching this this subject for three years, so I know exactly what I'm talking about. But it is it's taught across the country. I have dedicated chapters, one to North Carolina, one to Tennessee, and one to California. There's it's it's happening a lot out here in California. Um, but it's it's happening across the country. And so uh California just installed something called the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, mandatory with the class of 2030, but already implemented. Implemented in many school systems across the state. Of course, the standard uh claim from the state of California is that the ethnic studies model curriculum does not contain critical race theory. And I went through the research for this book and for my doctoral degree for my capstone project, which I needed to get my degree. I went through the first 600 pages of that model curriculum. And I did not find the words critical race theory in those 600 pages, but I found the principles embedded throughout. It was on page one. Page one. And and how you how you what what you do is you look for certain keywords okay oppression, marginalization, systemic racism, social justice. When you see words like that, that is critical race theory. And again, critical race theory tells students that we are inherently racist. If you have white skin, you're inherently racist. And there's nothing you can do about it. You're just racist, and you will never not be racist. Just get over it. You know, and again, they're telling these students of color the system is designed to keep them down. And and no one's ever had explained this to me. How do you take a book, the same book, by the way, one book that is designed to enlighten, teach white students and Asian students, but that same book is designed to keep students of color down. And that's one of the claims of critical race theorists. You know, and when you look into the subject, it just doesn't make sense. But it's going on everywhere. It's going on everywhere. My my first chapter is called, Yes, they're lying to you for very good reason. And they are lying to you. And you need to know how to recognize those lies. And that's what my book is designed to do: Critical Race Theory in Your School, How to Fight Back. And it's designed to help parents work through all the gobbledygook because when you do research, the first 50 or 60 you know hits that you get back from Google are going to tell you that critical race theory is the most awesome thing in the whole world. It's fantastic. You're gonna love it. Wrong. Absolutely wrong. And so I cut through the muck for parents. You can read my book, you can get the truth about it, but you can also recognize it when they're trying to cover it up and trying to not let you know they're teaching it to your children.

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What you're basically telling me is that uh critical race theory is being taught in our schools, but it's being disguised as something else. So absolutely in what would I would I expect to find this in social studies class or English class or where where might it show up?

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Well, they say um that they're just trying to teach real history. Um so it does happen a lot in history classes and social studies, but the ultimate goal is to have it infiltrate every single class your child takes. In California, uh, and I used California a lot just because it's out here and they're more open about it than you would believe. You know, uh, well, they're lying out here too. So, but they've created something out here called equity math, and equity math is critical race theory math. And basically, about 1,200 STEM professors, these core classes that our children are drastically behind on on the world stage. And so when this equity math started coming out, these 1200 professors got together and wrote a letter to the state saying, hey, we don't like this math because what you are creating here is a brave, mathless future for our math students. And so, in order to include these social justice lessons in math, you have to stop teaching math. And so they're not getting the basics that they should be getting in in geometry and algebra and trigonometry. Instead, they're learning social justice. And, you know, and in North Carolina, there was something called the Facts Task Force, Lieutenant Governor Mark Wilson, uh, Mark Robinson, I'm sorry, who is running for governor right now. Uh, while he was running for lieutenant governor, heard a lot of complaints about parents. Hey, they're teaching this weird stuff to my kids. And and so they created this website where parents could go and they could um, you know, and they could say, hey, this was my experience. This is what I've seen. And before the election, they had about 500 uh uh entries. And at the time I was writing my book, there was about 800. And one of the one of the complaints was from uh a parent whose child was in dance, and this dance teacher would take away from dance lessons by teaching things, the racism behind blackface in early Hollywood, things of that nature. And so, and okay, you know, I mean, fine. You know, for first of all, it needs to be age appropriate. Secondly, okay, but you know, if you want to teach that, it's got to be in a class, the the correct class for that kind of thing, you know. But when a child joins a dance class and they're expecting to learn about dance, but they're not doing any dancing today because the teacher is talking about blackface from 100 years ago in Hollywood and just how racist it all was. And and that is the experience that you get. Their goal is not only to infiltrate every class your child learns, their goal is also to influence parents, to get parents under the influence and under and believing this stuff as well. And they're targeting parents and the community at large. So they're again, these are very dedicated people. They've been working on this for a long time, and don't expect them to go away anytime soon.

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There are obviously, from what you're telling me, there are a lot of parents who are aware of critical race theory and that it's going on in their schools. But obviously, there are probably a lot of parents who don't, or just they're not interested in their children's education as much as some other parents might be. So is it the parents' disinterest or is it the state's enthusiasm that's to blame for the spread of CRT?

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Well, a little of both. You know, parents, you know, some parents are very involved with their children, but some parents, like my mom, for example, putting food on the table every month was a struggle, you know. And a lot of these parents, they were in survival mode, you know, and their main goal is just to keep a roof over your head, just to keep food in your belly. And when you're in that survival mode, it's tough to get to the next level and spend time with education. But you know, but the other thing is you hear a lot of parents, my kids in fifth grade, I can't even help them with this math anymore. That's part of it as well. But the school, the school system is very, very dedicated to this. Uh, it has infiltrated the National Education Association, the largest, uh, the largest teachers union in the country, American Federation of Teachers, I mean, you name it, the largest publishers of educational materials in the country. I mean, they're all on board with this. All of them. And that's the thing that you need to that you need to realize. Uh, at the very, you know, they they claim that, you know, the parents who are against CRT, they claim they're the ones who are well connected and well funded and all of these things. But there is a a toolkit that it was created by NYU University, New York University. And they provide this toolkit to activists who work to support critical race theory in schools. They have partnered with the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, more corporations than you know, than you can name. They are getting millions of dollars in support. Yet they claim, you know, they claim, oh, we are grassroots, we're just people just trying to do the right thing. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are the ones who are well connected. Uh, the Secretary Cardona from the secretary from the education department, he's on board with all of this stuff. And it's parents like you and me. We're the ones who are the grassroots people, we're the ones who are trying to stand up for our children. Everything they try to tell you about critical race theory, the opposite is the truth.

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What do the unions have to gain from it?

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Well, the unions are full of dedicated leftists, and so they see it, uh, I would imagine, as their ultimate goal of taking down capitalism, taking down freedom and liberty. I forget the exact year, it was 2021, 2020, something along those lines. During the NEA's annual conference, they created a budget and they dedicated time to the president of the NEA to support critical race theory. It was called New Business Item 39. Okay. You know, and again, you know, why why why new business item 39? Why don't you just call it what it is? You know, support for critical race theory. So uh, but anyway, they created a budget and dedicated time to supporting critical race theory. During her speeches, she would say, you know, critical race theory is great, it's awesome. You know, we're telling the real truth, et cetera, et cetera. At the same time, the American Federation of Teachers, who were at the same exact conference, their president was saying, critical race theory is not taught in K through 12. Anybody who says differently is imagining things and is a liar. So, and again, the contradictions go on and on and on. So, what is it? Is critical race theory an appropriate way to teach history to our children? Or is critical race theory not taught in our schools at all? Which one? You know, they you know, they weren't even smart enough to get their messaging squared away. So, but they are on board with this completely uh, you know, have no question about it. They are completely on board.

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You had indicated earlier that you wrote your book as a way to help parents recognize critical race theory when it's not being called critical race theory. But is it better to fight it or is it better to teach the children to recognize it? If it's made out to be an ideological fight, there will probably never be a winner one way or the other. But if it's made out to be a fight between right and wrong, then we only need to teach people to recognize it for what it is. Would that hold up to its own criticism?

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If a parent recognizes CRT and in their child's lessons, and one of the things you can do is you can go online to the course descriptions.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

No, no, but I'm asking, should shouldn't we be teaching the children to recognize it?

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Yes, yes, we should. Absolutely. And a lot of kids do. Uh, I've I've done I had I was with a homeschool group last week, and that was one of the things that we did. We talked to kids and we helped explain CRT to them. So, yes, absolutely. And and I also, if I if I heard correctly of something in there, what do you do about it? Should the students fight back? Should the parents fight back? I would say yeah, but if the schools are completely dedicated to making you do this, it would not be wrong to teach your your children to just write the paper they want to hear and hand it in and move on. But ensure you're not getting involved. There was one parent who went to the teacher, then he went to the principal, then he went to the school board. I mean, he was going up, and each time he was told, nope, it's mandatory, nothing we can do about it. Mandatory. And so he finally got to all the way to the top. And he said, Okay, show me where it's written that my child has to attend this class. Oh, it's oh, it's all online. Just look on it's and it wasn't there. There was not a policy. They were they were just lying to him about it. And so he eventually won, but it took a lot of effort to get there. Not everybody's as dedicated, not everybody has the time to do those things, you know, in in a completely frustrating situation. You can work against CRT, but in the meantime, maybe just have your child write the papers that the teacher wants to hear, let them get the grade and move on. I have created a Facebook page called, and and I like my titles to be right out there. I mean, no, no cute titles here. Uh, my title, the title of my Facebook page is Critical Race Theory in Your School: How to Fight Back by Dr. George Maurer. And what I have done with this Facebook page, I have made it a one-stop shop for all things critical race theory. So if you want to keep up on the latest events for critical race theory across the country, uh, please consider liking and following my page and uh say hello. Uh, engage. You know, if you want to talk about it, please do so. Even if you want to do it through Messenger, because you're gonna get called a racist. I mean, it's gonna happen. I've been called a racist more times than I can count, especially since I've started writing this book. So if you don't have the thick skin for it, I get it. And I'm not gonna criticize you. I I'm not gonna, you know, I get it. I understand. But if you have any questions, don't be afraid to reach out to me through private, to the private messenger on Facebook.

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If you'd like to read Dr. Maur's book, Critical Race Theory in Your School, How to Fight Back, you can find it online wherever you buy books. Follow the Facebook page of the same name. Thanks to Dr. Maurer for spending his time with us. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Subscribe today. I'm your host, Al Woodley, for the little and infinite.