That that little theater is kind of sweet. It's like they do little I mean they do little plays. Not little, I mean they're actually regular, full sized people doing full size plays. But it's a little theater. Not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country, Mister Gerbatcheff, tear down this wall, read my lips. It's the Ricord Shape podcast with Peter Robinson. Oh nope, sorry, it's not
Stephen Hayward sitting and for Peter rob Long and New York. I'm James Lilex and we talked to Ian Rowe about affirmative action, the Supreme Court and what to do about our schools. So let's savosels a podcast. I was found, by my observation, in a much more secure place, and now the investigation has progressed, and so so they're saying the West Executive Inference. It is also next to West Executive Drive. That's where, for example, the
Vice President's vehicle is parked. Welcome everybody, Welcome to July. Well, come to Ricochet podcast number sixty nine. I'm James likes Minneapolis. Rob Long is in Gotham. We presume Stephen Heyward sitting in for Peter Robinson and Stephen where are you? I know that's a vital importance for everybody to have the theater of the mind of this show. You are where I am at my usual location on the central coast of California and wondering why Peter Robinson hasn't figured
out that they have telegraph service in Wyoming. Now, yes, we should be doing this show by telegraph with Peter. It would be great. And although we'd have to tell them to stop every every sentence or so, that would be kind of fun. A guy in a motorcycle, just women whizzing up to Peter's door every minute and a half For the next question, Well, gentlemen, it's been a big week fourth over, but the fourth delivered
something of a bombshell of firework. I'm sorry with this decision about the government and social media. Now we've all we all know what it is, right, I have this injunction and says that they can't put pressure lean on the social media companies to combat disinformation. And much of the disinformation that they were worried about, of course, turns out to be information, actual truth,
actual truth. My question is, because I brought this up to somebody who's a lawyer and who was completely uninterested in what actually had been what the result of this was. You know, our good friend friend of the show, doctor j was one of the right. It was one of the guys that said, we know what happened to him with a shadow banning and the rest of it. But the person who whom I was speaking saying, well,
what did the government do exactly? And I'm saying, well, you know, they coordinated, they strongly suggested, he said, But did they force them to do any of these things? You know? And you can say, well, you know, they don't have to force you necessarily, they
can just sort of strongly suggest and that's enough, or is it? I mean, is the fact that the government and the social media companies were colluding and the social media companies were doing the bidding of the government, Is that in itself something that the courts should look at if there is no specific leaning on them and making them do things. I'm just throwing this out Devil's advocate, right, and you guys are smarter, so go ahead and take it. Well, I you know, I think you got to crack down.
I'm really hard. You got to hit them really hard over the head. You got to like punish people, you got to fire people, You got to wrap some people in you know, tars and feathers and send them out into the town square. For two big reasons. One big reason is that they were wrong. That they were absolutely wrong. Half the disinformation they claimed disinformation about COVID was in fact not disinformation. It just was counter to what
they wanted you to know. And the second thing is is that because we have now entered this bizarre part of the culture where people are believed that they know exactly how you're going to react, that is that was the heart of
the COVID problem. Was that the government, all of the government, from the very top in the Oval Office, all the way you know, through Fallacy and burks, all the way into a lot of the states and the Public Health Administration bureaucracy, they thought, well, we can't tell you anything. We can't tell you the truth because you'll you'll draw the wrong conclusions.
And so this wasn't an attempt to um in their minds, this was not an attempt to control us the way we think of people controlling like animal farm. Right, They're trying to help us. They wanted to make it better for us. They were trying to make it us safer, and they thought we were too stupid to know how to do that ourselves. Right, And that is what that is why you really need to crack down hard on these people, not just because they were wrong, but because their impulse was wrong.
And you know, the truth is that you know, two, we've had two or three giant or maybe more giant policy disasters in the past twenty years. Right, probably more right. He had a war with Iraq. It was a foolish war. We had a financial collapse which was really created by the same kind of arrogance, and then we had COVID And I don't see anybody being taken out in the town square and fired Like I didn't see. I remember arguing somebody, some financier in two thousand and eight about you
know, the bailouts. Well, what do you want to do? You want to see people selling apples on the street, Like, yes, exactly, I want to see as Greenberg had a AIG and a bunch of other people selling apples on the street. I want them broke. What do you want to see? You want to see the full scale, complete top to bottom scouring of the FDA and the CDC and the NIH and and our and our system of funding laboratories. Yes, that's exactly what I want. I
want. I don't want anybody to go to jail. They didn't do anything illegal, but they were incompetent and they should be fired. And what do I what do I want? Do I want to what's your name Biden's first press secretary's name? Do I want her to be publicly shamed and vilified? Yes, that's exactly what I want. I want. I want an example to be made of people who made errors of this kind. Well, Stephen, back to my question, do you think that there was anything there was
a question? Was there? I mean, I agree with Rob, I agree completely, and I too would love to see these things happening. Although probably the fruit monopoly in New York is as such as it would be difficult for these people to find produce, So maybe letters or something that fell off the truck. But what do the government do exactly that that the courts have stand that the courts can step in here and say that they did something that
was against the law. Was what the government did against And again I'm Devil's advocating here. I'm not saying what they did was right, but was it against the law. Did they do anything, did they twist arms that they force people or was this sort of I mean, Twitter and Facebook were leaning into this in a lot of ways because they, like Rob said, shared the desire to do us, to do well for us, a tyranny for our own benefit. Yeah, look the James, the federal government, actually
state and local government do this too. They have long ago mastered the standard line of the organized crime syndicates. They say, nice little company you have here, shame if anything happened to it. And that's what went on here. I read the entire opinion. It's one hundred and fifty five pages, double space, and it's a district court opinion. So remember that at that
level of the legal process, the court is establishing facts. So over one hundred pages of this is a narrative of what happened and who said what, and it's absolutely devastating. And although there was no direct orders given or maybe one or two I'll give you, I'll give you one sentence in the opinion in a minute, were there was lots of what the judge characterized as blatant coercion, suggestions, threats, and intimidation about Gee, we might have to
revisit section to thirty, which gives the social media company's immunity. Uh. And so that you know, there's it's on page ninety seven. If anyone wants to look, here's one quote from a White House to one of those social media companies. Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately, Please remove this account immediately. That doesn't sound like a suggestion,
recommendation. Please could you review this? That sounds like a command. And so the legal point, when you finally get to the end of the opinion, turns on the government could only be justified in behaving this way if there was a demonstrable injury to the American public. But in fact, these people were telling the truth, right, and and so there there's the injunction against further communication. I agree with you. I agree this was this was wrong.
And I think the account that they were trying to get down was what was a parody account of Joe Biden's granddaughter or something like that one of them. Right, but but but but and again, I know I'm gonna be taking the wrong way. I'm not defending this in any way. It was possible for Twitter to say, here's a bag of sand and a hammer, this is not what we do exactly. They didn't, but it was possible
for them to say so. So at no point in this whole I mean, yes, you're precisely right when you say it's the old Luigi Ricatti and money Python saying nice army base you guy, um Michael Paylo my favorite. But but there, but they didn't walk in and pull plugs. They didn't walk in and tikti dikty tick hack, you know, right, but they did they didn't have to. But I'm just, I just I'm answering the question that my friend had about you know, why does this matter? You
know, what did they what it? Actually? Did they do? I don't know? Now do we do? We want the government to be able to go to Twitter and Facebook and say, hey, look we got an isis cell here. We want some access, we want you to throw I mean, we want that too. Well, the opinion specifically exempted legitimate national security concerns may and maybe it was foreign threats and foreign misinformation disinformation so forth,
So there is an exception carved out for national security. But I think but the point you make James is Worth reiterating they were pushing on an open door. I mean, one mild concern you can have as well if the government gets out all the wokey's at Twitter and YouTube. I mean, we're missing Peter today. But we saw his uncommon knowledge gets censored from YouTube. Probably the government did that. I think YouTube may have taken it upon themselves.
By the way, I mentioned one one little small victory and all this um gosh. A year and a half ago, John, you and I had Richard Epstein come to give a talk at Berkeley Law. He gave his and you know, he got off on the wrong foot on COVID the beginning and backtrack, but yeah, he gave his very strong attack on masking and all the other mistakes we made, and we always post these guest lectures on
YouTube. They took it down, and to their credit, the General Counsel's Office at UC Berkeley contacted YouTube and said, we're going to sue you because we're you know, we're a were public university. You are censoring a government institution. And they put it back up. But of course Berkeley, you see the University of California has to have to bring that kind of pressure on
YouTube. Take god, can I take another like a hundred thousand foot for you, even higher than fifty thousand of you is that we have entered up time in I think culture where everyone on both sides is terrified of telling their devoted audience the truth. Like you saw that in the Fox News emails. Oh my god, we can't tell our audience the truth that Trump lost. We have to lie to them and let them down easy. And you see that in all these emails with Twitter and Facebook, in all those places,
like well, we can't tell people what's really going on. A Fauci actually says it in his memoirs. We could. I couldn't tell you the truth about masks because you wouldn't be able to handle it. And there's this attitude and you can see it. You can see it in politics, you can see to meet in all these media consultants, this attitude that we have mastered
public opinion management. Oh, we've mastered it. And it is the one thing that these people are terrible at and they insist that they're good at it. The truth is that and that the sad part of it has happened to silic value because the beginning of the look Value, Vidom, all these social media networks. The idea was freedom, freedom, crowd the wisdom of crowds,
that a free exchange the good stuff will rise to the top. All that, all that was a complete I mean, there's an article of faith for people who started Twitter and Facebook and all those things with a freedom and it I mean, was it ten years? In ten years, they have also convinced themselves that they are capable of shaping and honing and managing public opinion.
And that is just dumb. You can't. Not only is it wrong and illegal and you shouldn't happen in immoral and not befitting sovereign citizens of a great republic. Not only is it insulting to those citizens, but it's also stupid. You can't do it. You cannot manage you are no one is smart enough. If they believe me, If if people knew how to shape public opinion, First of all, I would be a lot richer because every single one of my TV shows would have been a giant hit. But all
Holly would be much better. It's it's the thing that you can't do. And these arrogant, arrogant, bureaucratic fools believe that they can, and I, you know, it really is. I mean, I keep I mean, I'm not arguing for some kind of divine intervention here, but I keep thinking that the universe or God or whoever you believe in has been trying to send us a signal for twenty years, which is, stop trying to grow a brain, Stop trying to think you can figure over the app, stop
trying to control everybody, and we just are not listening. What is the point of going to all these elite institutions and getting a good degree, in going into government if you can't improve the world. Because that the whole model is based on the idea that a technocratic, enlightened delete will be able to
guide in shape society to our benefit. Now, in the early days of the Internet, you go back to you you know you're talking about Twitter, Rob, You go back to the very beginning, go back way when they plug. The first thing in the prevailing idea was that the Internet interpret censorship as damage and routes around it. That this whole, big, disvast, distributed network of information would I would inevitably self correct. And it did.
It did. We were able to get things out, and we were able to get different narratives out and we were able to stay free, which is kind of great and I like that. But now you're right, we have the people who want to shape and manage, but we have a good sign. As chaotic as Eon Musk's stewardships of Twitter may have may be to some
people, Frankly, I don't tell. I can't tell with the difference between what it was people, the ads are worse and some stuff is interesting, and it's still far better than any of the alternatives because it's a vivacious, kaleidoscopic conversation. We had this week the launch of Threads, which was the
meta version of this. So now we have about nineteen Twitter clones out there that you can spend your time on truth social which either you guys have been there, oh no, yeah, okay, Well I've been there and it's yeah okay, and I've been on Threads and Threads is absolutely nothing and it seems to be filled with Zuckerberg simps, which is really bizarre. I cannot cannot imagine wanting to be an orbiter for this barely humanoid creature, and it's
very boring. There's nothing going on there. Twitter remains this place where it's boisterous, and it is still what we need to get this stuff out. So I'm hopeful at the end of this, between this injunction and between the continued you know, calamitous slapping, throwing pots and pans and hammers mess that Twitter is, that we still are able to get our message out past these technocratic minders. But if we do, we have to freedom. The problem
with freedom is it's messy and ugly. Right, So all the people arguing that Twitter is, you know, free, they also have to contend with the fact that Twitter is at present a pornography delivery device. So you say that never pops up in my feet, I mean that's because you're not looking
for it. But if you look for it, it's there and it doesn't and and the and the and the user age for Twitter is thirteen so and twitters and a normal So you so that you either decide that Twitter needs to crack down on that as if it could it's a giant fire hose, or you need to say I have to be more careful about what I put inside my window to look at where I have to be careful about when my kids
are looking at um. But there's no there is there is no uh, there is no way to to thread the needle for freedom and free exchange of views without any kind of interference by government, which will eventually become coercient. It always does. And um, personal vigilance like personal and the irony for me is like the perfect example of this of why I will always vote for personal vigilance and people is that during COVID, it was the people predominantly who
were right. They they're intuition was correct, and they're you know, the administrative betters from the White House on down were wrong. And I mean, I'm not making an ad here for Rod de Santis, but you could if you like, you could say Brian Kemp of Georgia. Both of those governors chose a different path and they were both correct. Well, if I could wave a one to make the future better, it would be this. All the smartphones that we have would not be able to be used by somebody without
a retinal scan. The retinal scan would be tied to your birth certificate, and until you reach the age of eighteen, you would not be allowed to own a smartphone, and you'd be banned from social media entirely. It would do us all a world of good. But Rob's right, I mean, the government is still if you want to if you want a good, good, clean Internet, you're going to need the government. Unfortunately, as we've learned, well, you know, do you want the government looking at where
you went? Hard to keep track of the extent to which the government is sticking its nose in the business a big deck, right, You've seen it in the news, you hear it in your Twitter feed, you hear the complaints. The problem with big text not only do they attempt to censor you,
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here's the offer staring you're right in the table. Get your VPN now Express vpn dot com slash ricorje to get three months free Express vpn dot com slash Ricochet and we thank Express vpn for sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast, and now we welcome to the show. Ian Rowe, co founder of Vertex Partnership Academy, is a new network of character based international baccalaureate high schools in the Bronx he's a the co founder of the National Summer School Initiative and a senior
fellow at AIE and the author of Agency Welcome to the show. Hello, how are you good? How are you good? I hear conversations about pornography on the internet conversation earlier. Yeah, I hate to tell you that my beloved Internet is filled to the brim with smut. And you shared some sobering statistics. People are worried about the fallout from the Supreme Court decision on affirmative
action, race based affirmative action. And here's what you tweeted quote. If you are concerned that the decision to end race based affirmative action will result in less Black students in college, consider this. In twenty fifteen, eighteen percent of fourth grade black kids read at or above proficient defined by the National Assessment for Educational Programs aka the National Nations report Card. In twenty nineteen, only fifteen percent of that same cohort, now in eighth grade, read at or
above proficient levels. Now in twenty twenty three, it's very likely that less than twenty percent of that cohort of black high school seniors is reading at proficient levels. Truth is we have to confront is that stronger families and more school choice have to be part of the story so that our kids can compete on equal footing far before college applications are on the table. So is that going
to happen? I'm sorry to be the sobering one with actual data. I know that they're suar, you know, losing, you know, losing a gasket because race based affirmative action is no longer and for good reason, it's
unconstitutional. But we cannot afford to get distracted. You know. One other piece of information, one other data point is that the college board that administers the SAT exam each year publishes what the scores are across racial lines, and for typically elite school's, top tier colleges, you've got a score between the
fourteen hundred and sixteen hundred range to be really considered for admission. Right well, of the about approximately one hundred and seventy thousand black students that took the SAT in the year twenty twenty one, only one percent performed between the fourteen hundred and sixteen hundred range. That's part of the reality, that's part of the data that we have to confront. You know, I run schools. I run public charter schools in the heart of the South Bronx because I want
my students to know two hard things. These are almost all low income kids, almost black, you know, all black and Hispanic students. I want them to know that they can lead a self determined life and that they can overcome barriers that are going to be inevitable. But at the end of our education, we need to know where they need to know that they've earned it, that they can actually legitimate compete on an equal playing field. And the
distraction, well maybe the benefit actually of the decision confirmative action. It will put now in stark reality what is actually happening within our CA to twelve system. I'm a drob long thanks for joining us. I want to have about
the Vertex Partnership ademys in a minute. But something struck me about the coverage of the Supreme Court decision, which is that one of the things that people kept saying with a kind of a you know, subdued sneer, is you know that Clarence Thomas, he's one of the chief beneficiaries of affirmative action, and isn't that part of the problem is though whenever they want they can just
point to you and say, well, you didn't really qualify. Isn't that the heart of the problem with with the way the way the left treat s affirmative action? Oh yeah, I mean I I posted an additional tweet a couple of days ago. Now it's been viewed I think nearly one point two
million times that that said. You know, in the future, maybe the benefit of this Supreme Court decision that black kids accepted it to elite colleges will say thank you for actually make a decision that removes the perception that I was gained this position solely based on my skin color. It is interesting to note that former First Lady Michelle Obama, in response to the Supreme Court decision,
posted this about her own experience at Princeton University. This is what Michelle Obama said, quote, I sometimes wondered if people thought that I got there Princeton because of affirmative action. It was a shadow that students like me could not shake, whether those doubts came from the outside or inside our own minds end quote. That is part of the grinding self doubt that many black and other
minority students who were talented always carried. With them and carry with them because of the implementation of affirmative action and the perception that you're only there right because of your skin color. But before we get past this, because what I was, we talked about this little last week, but you weren't here for
that. But one of your thoughts, I was struck by the two kind of tent poles of the decision where their opinion written by Katangie Brown Jackson and they could and the opinion written by Clarence Thomas, like they live in two different worlds. They because I think they do, right, I think they Clarence Thomas, rural Georgia, single parent family, raised by his grandparents, didn't. I don't think he had indoor plumbing until he was at a certain
age, you know, disrespect to Katangie Brown Jackson. Two parent family. Father was a lawyer, mother was a probably school administratorum entirely different background. I mean, I mean not even close. I mean in a way, I sort of and I think Michelle Obama had kind of a similar upbring. And what I understand their argument is like, well, you know, a white kid with that background, that's every it's all Is it all likelihood that
the white kid working hard would also get to those colleges. That it doesn't seem like that was the race of deciding factor here. But what do you say to people who argue, Okay, well we have to have some kind of affirmative action, but it should be based on um. But well, I've long argued that adversity was the word, right, well, not adversity because because there actually now is a medical school, I believe that it's it's creating a diversity score and so now there's going to be a the you know,
the grievance Olympics. I said adversity. I think that was the term they used to No, no, no, no, there is a there actually is a methodology around adversity, which which I have issues with some reasons.
No, I have long argued that if you have to have affirmative action, it should be based on economic class and race, because I think most Americans would agree if you're from a low income background and you've achieved academically, if there is to be a leg up within the admissions process to elite schools, that I think most people would agree. Economics should be the barometer.
And you know, and if you actually look at the data from the Harvard case, nearly seventy percent of the black students that have been admitted under the affirmative action program. We're upper middle class kids, right, you know,
you know, oftentimes immigrants from West Africa and Nigerian and Caribbean. So even under the current administration of affirmative action, race based affirmative action, it has not been benefiting the people that I believe that most of us think should be benefiting from some kind of preference treatment, and that should be kids from low income backgrounds. Okay, So that that leaves been my next question, and I know Steve wants to jump in, So here's my just just one before
we keep go over we go to the actual the schools. Your argument seems to me to be we are focused on entirely the wrong thing. We're trying to fix the problem way too late. Back problem starts at K through twelveth K through six K through three whatever. It is even earlier if you talk about family structure. But ye, okay, yeah, why do we spend no time talking about that? I'm trying, Okay, no, affirmative Race
based affirmative action is what I call a back end band aid. You know the reason I run schools is that I want our students to know that they don't have to be dependent upon some kind of preferential treatment based on an immutable characteristic, in this case race. We have to have an educational system that is truly providing equality of opportunity in terms of a good education choices within your neighborhood, regardless of income level, regardless of rays, regardless of zip code.
That's where our attention needs to be focused. And again, maybe one benefit from the Supreme Court decision it puts that into stark reality. Yeah, Ian, it's Steve Heyward out in California, where, among other things, I'd like to say, I'm an inmate. And you see Berkeley, and you know the comment Rob brought up about people think Punch Thomas benefited from affirmative action. I believe he graduated sixth in his class of five hundred students at
Holy Cross, and yet we make the assumption about MRIs. Critics make that assumption about him just a quick story to cheer you up a little bit, but it shows the problem. One of the five best students I ever had was the black girl who got the only perfect one score on any of my exams. Ninety nine percent talently. L Sad came to me asking for a
recommendation for law school, which I was delighted to do. I asked her where do you think of applying and a straight age student, of course, needless to say, and she names a bunch of second tier law schools, good places. But I said, with your scores and grades and obvious abilities, you should be applying at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, etc. She's a soft spoken young lady, and she said, well, yeah, but I feel like I might only get in as an affirmative action admittance.
It broke my heart, right, And of course, you know what can I say? Accept? Oh, you must not think that I have seen your work. You can go toe to toe with the best of them. And by the way, the happy ending of the story is she did end up going to an ivy League school on a full right scholarship and did very very well. But that is the this is the message that gets sent.
By the way, this has becomes overpower. Okay. One of the things that Chief Justice Robert said in his majority opinion was, you know, Harvard could alleviate this difficulty they're having by simply getting larger. They've got all this money. The population of the country has expanded by one of one hundred million people since Baki and Harvard has not really changed in student body size or Yale or any of the others, and he set Harvard declines to do so.
The other thing they might do. In addition, if they don't want to for whatever reason, the other thing they could do is they could emulate what Hillsdale College has done and emilate you. In other words, they could create competition for Vertex Partnership academies. Hillsdale has their charter schools all over the country. Correct, how about the IVY Leagues? Do the IVY League academies around the country to try and recruit minorities qualify them for elite schools or any
schools for that matter. And they could raise a ton of money from the alumni to do that, and they decline to do that. Also, not to mention, they could use their endowments. So the reasons the reason I like the direction of that idea is that it's now getting to the heart of the issue, which is how do we improve the preparation of all students. Yeah, according to the Nation, the National Assessment for educational progress. Less than of all American kids are reading a grade level, so this is not
only an issue with black students. So a few days ago Roland Friar, Great Economists, actually had this idea. He proposed that all of the top tier schools, the ivs, the uncs of the world should use the power of their endowments and or raise additional money to launch upboards of a hundred public
charter schools in their localities. They could launch high schools and middle schools potentially serving cumulatively fifty thousand kids, low income kids from their localities to build a pipeline of talent either for their own colleges or universities or heaven forbid, they create a public good by just creating more talented kids. To me, that is a solid idea that is responsive to the data that I shared at the
beginning of this call, because that's where our attention should be. Not the virtue signaling in this back end band aid not checking the box because accepted a black Nigerian student who's had a phenomenalation, and now you say, well we're you know, we're doing right by black kids in this country. That's the hollow hypocritical, cynical virtue signaling that hurts the larger effort to create upward mobility for all students. So Ian, we have only mentioned you're a school initiative,
the Vertex Partnership Academies. Tell us a little bit more about this because I know nothing about it actually, and you know, what's your strategy, what are your keys to success? How does it work? What's the takeaways for us? Yeah, thank you for asking. So for a decade I ran public charter schools in the South Bronx and Lower East Side of Manhattan. These were elementary and middle school so they only went through eighth grade, and you know, we did a lot of phenomenal work, but at the end
of eighth grade, the question where do the kids go next? And in places like District twelve in the Bronx where we just launched Vertex Partnership Academies as a high school, only seven percent of kids that start ninth grade four years later graduate from high school ready for college. So think about that. That means ninety three percent of kids start ninth grade and either drop out or they actually do earn their high school diploma but still cannot do reading nor math without
remediation if they were to go to college. And so that's the context that exists in the Bronx in Brooklyn, in Chicago, in parts of Los Angeles, all over the country. Even if you have the benefit of a strong elementary and middle school education, there just aren't enough high quality high school options. So we endeavor to launch a new kind of high school virtues based So it's organized around the cardinal virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom.
At the end of your sophomore year of high school, you'll actually have a choice of pathways that you can choose a pathway that will lead you into a high performing university or college, or you can choose what we call the careers pathway, which means that you have the opportunity to still take academically rigorous classes and though time would be made that you could do an apprenticeship in your
junior and senior year of high school. So imagine if you had the opportunity to apprentice at a New York City based hospital where you could learn how to become a phlebotomist taking blood, or work in a computer science arena working at Amazon. So we're building those relationships now where a high school student could earn an industry credential with labor market value, meaning at the end of four years
of high school, they could get a job in a particular arena. Again, the other thing that this Supreme Court decision hopefully highlights is that maybe a college degree shouldn't be the only option considered at the end of four years of high school. So there's a lot of opportunity hopefully that this decision will shed line on. We've chosen to build an institution that we hope can grow into
a model for what the rest of the country can achieve. This row, it's a great guest who anticipates my next question and answers it and then sort of leaves me flapping my COM's wondering what to say. You're absolutely right as a question of whether or not everybody needs to go to college. In a perfect world, they spend their elementary years getting the basics, in the middle years being introduced to more substantial topics, and then the high school solidifies it
all, caps it off, and they're ready for the world. But we always assume that college is the next obvious step, and that anything below that is somehow demeaning or giving up on that one. Actually, you're right, phlebotomy, computer science, electrician, plumbing. These are virtuous professions that are
they're absolutely ness that are necessary. And do we have a cultural bias though that needs to be shaved away and massaged and deluded that unless you're going to college, you're really not successful, that that that we've given up on this generation of people because we're not sending them to college. I would almost look at declining college and romans among certain groups as signs that they've got it. They understand that this is just a lot of money for a credential. That
doesn't mean you're a smarter person, you're able to do these things. So how do we sort of work on that cultural shift without sounding like a bunch of you know, uh, you know, bloodyed philistines who don't care about book learning. No, no, it's it's a very good point, even
within our high school. So we just launched in twenty twenty two with freshmen, so ninth grade, and this upcoming year will be at ninth and tenth grade, So at the end of next year years when students will be choosing their pathway, either the diploma pathway or the careers pathway, and we're going to do a lot of work to ensure that all the students know that the choice that they're making is of equal stature. There is no stepchild relationship inside
careers. It's still a rigorous academic path, but it's just at the end of four years you'll have you'll be equipped with the credentials that could be very, very valuable. One thing that's interesting is that there's a good amount of
data. MDRC, a great research firm, did a study that shows that particularly for low income boys, those that leave high school into meaningful work over those course of those next few years, much lower interaction with the criminal justice system, much lower levels of non marital births, higher rates of actually if they go to college, higher rates of college completion. So there's actually some
value even if your goal ultimately is to get kids into college. Right working for a few years, coming out of high school with a meaningful industry credential, can you can have your cake and eat it too. And so so we very much believe that high school because this is not part of the general education reform discussion, but we think high school needs to be to become the place where we now have multiple pathways where college for all is not the default
pathway. Yeah. I don't know if you're familiar with the getting Rob Henderson, who's been writing about that. He grew up in California and sort of the Central Valley. I think as a foster kid or adopted something trouble trouble high school. Somebody said, well, you joined the Air Force, so
he said, I better do that. It's either that or jail. And then he eventually after the Air Force, think at twenty four, he became a freshman year and he writes really brilliantly about how how different his experience was
as a twenty four year old. Obviously that's pretty old to go to be at undergraduate, but he's he's convinced he got more out of it because he had more questions, and he had more experience, anymore discipline, and he got he got his money's worth out of that education, where I think a
lot of eighteen year nineteen year olds just don't get their money's worth. Yeah, And just as it relates to to boys in particular, there's a lot of, you know, emerging evidence that young men are having a different, different challenges in the matturation process and there's something to be said about high school being a place for more hands on learning, job engagement where you you know, and an apprenticeship you got to show up, you know, you have
to make icons to do things that enhanced responsibility and accountability. And so as we think about that aspect too, I think many advantages. And again, all of this is starting with the Affirmative Action court decision. My hope is that we don't obsess over again the back end band aid and think about what are the ways we need to acculturate all of our kids right in the pathways that can lead to a life of flourishing. And you're in the middle of
that right now. So I have two questions for you. A question, and then I have a request which you may not be able to answer. But here's my question. How much BS do you have put up with as a percentage during the day or during the week from the people in the education establishment or whatever you want to call it. Who are I mean, the polite way to put it is unsupportive, but I think probably the more honest way to put it with like would just like you to go away, to
shut up and go away. Yeah, yeah, there there are a few people who would like me not to put forth the argument, right, but you know what, I have a I have a here's the thing. When you hear data, for example, where only seven kids in this district in the Bronx graduate from high school ready for college, some people look at that and say, see, that's the proof of structural racism, structural barriers,
and it's an oppressive system and end of story. And so that's why we need things like reparations, or we need increased funding, or we need government intervention. And so I see that same disparity and share the concern that we should not live in America where the district in one of the poorest sections of our country, where only seven percent of kids are graduating from high school ready for college. So I try to find a common cause. We both deeply
care about that disparity. It's just that my prescription is different. Right, Well, then let's have more school choice, Let's have stronger families, Let's have ways in which young people can choose better educational environments so that they're not having to depend on this back end band, permative action, or any other of these interventions, which are by the way, proven over time not to be the vehicle to achieve the wide scale upward mobility that we all want.
So for all those people who don't like the arguments that I advanced, look, look, I'm with you on the issues, but let's talk about the solutions. Because Okay, so aren't working. So how long you've been running the schools? So since twenty ten, I've been running public charter schools. Okay, so that is Dauns twenty twenty three, that's K through twelve. You've you've seen You've seen K go to through twelve. Oh yeah, no,
I mean we have kids. You know, when I took over the network of schools I let in twenty ten, and that included kids who were already in sixth grade. So I've seen our students now graduate from college schools like Yale and you know, and you know Tough and Howard and you know, very inspiring. So here's what I'm gonna ask you. What's in the
past month. Say, I'm just gonna pick month. What's been the most inspiring thing that you've heard from a former student, or from a parent, or from somebody in your community that makes you remind you that you're on the right track. Wow? Um, well, uh let's see a few different things. Um, I told you it was going to be a little bit. Yeah. We we just finished the first year at Vertex Partnership Academies.
Was our inaugural class of ninth grade students, and um, we we we recently took a trip to Washington. We took a group of students to Washington. Actually, we took another group of our students to Annapolis to the US Nagorhood and in this case, it was almost all girls and they had an
opportunity to interact with the astronauts. It was it was a it was a convocation for the new incoming class of astronauts at NASSA, and the students talked about the fact that they had never ever envisioned a possibility like that for themselves, and yet they just said, wow, now that I've seen it, I'm like, wow, I met an astronaut, and this person who they were able to talk to about what their life was like when they were fourteen
years old, shared stories of the doubts that they had, the challenges that they had. And so for these students, these Vertex Partnership Academy students, when they talked about that, now it's almost it's it's like, um it, the success has been demystified for them, it's like a fail had been taken off. So that's certainly one of the most im I gonna share other stories too, but that's not that's just one. But I kind of want
to hear I mean for two reasons. One because I feel like I always get more inspired when I hear somebody doing great stuff and then there's a story behind it. But two because it's the fourth of July and this is a great patriotic story about how we can renew and refresh and and o country. And by the way, for what it's worth, when we designed Vertex,
we were thinking about these two pathways of university pathway or career pathway. As a result of the trip to Naval Academy and some work I had done with West Point years ago, we're going to have a third pathway and it's going to be military. We're going to want to and again of equal statue right
at the end of high school. We want our students to know that by the way, you can get a world class tuition free education, and institutions like West Points, like the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and we should be encouraging our kids to think about that as a as a way to serve their country with honor and dignity and respect. That's what we want to do, serving their country, honor, dignity, respect. These are words like across to vampire for some people. Oh my gosh, Roll, thank you for
joining us, Tod. Anybody want to learn a little bit more about this, of course, why don't you go to Amazon and pick up his book Agency Agencies. That's the word. Just google agency and RWE and you will find it. You'll read it and you'll learn and certain thank you for coming and best of luck. All right, that was great, thanks guys, Thanks you, Hane, And it is inspirational. I liked the idea that
you know, you don't have to go to college. And I say that as somebody who was more who was of course absolutely intent that my daughter has to go to college, right and a tremendous expense and all the rest of it. I'm glad she did. She's gainfully employed, and if she wasn't, oh lord. The only thing is is that she lives an expensive part of the country, really expensive, and it's got roommates and the rest of it and one dinky little air conditioner that tries to move the Corpora's East coast
air around. The good thing is, though, and it's a really good thing, is that she's got the bowling branch of sheets. Now it's summertime and it's hot, and you think, I mean, can you manage it? If you're just you know, some post college student can't aford anything better, Or you've got your first job and you're still using the finnel sheet, the fannel sheets that you had in the wintertime. No, no, no,
no no. So that's why you need well high quality things. And again when you're starting out, you need a high quality air condition a if you need a high quality bed to keep you RESTful, you need high quality items like a coffee maker so that you stay perky at your job. And as I mentioned, of course, high quality sheets. It's almost an investment. Really start investing in your best sleep with bowl and branch. They make only the sheets that gets softer with every wash, the only ones on the
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Ricochet. Exclusions do apply to see that side for details and we thank Boland Branch for sponsoring this the Ricochet podcast. Well Winston meets up good like a meetup should, as Jo went. You know what, when I was a kid and my my my, my uncle smoked Winston's. He was a Winston man, and I had had an aunt somewhere smoked Salem's. When I first realized there was actually a town named Winston Salem, I couldn't. I couldn't figure that out. It was like Lark, Marlborough or something like that,
or you know, Parliament of Kent. But I guess that's where the names came from. And you don't have to smoke to live there, and you certainly don't have to smoke to go to the meet up. But here's Rob Long to tell you all about it. Yeah, I'm sure I remember. Like my thing, my grandfather smoked Winston's and my grandmother smoked something and I can't remember. It was again a Silverton. Winston was a good cigarette. It was a silver hack. I remember. We had to go and I
had to get to find them all the time, try my cigarettes. Which she'd sit there in the morning and you know, eat her breakfast and make me breakfast when I was staying with them, and she'd smoke a cigarette and she did the New York Times cross root puzzle, which is kind of like what I do now every day. But I do still have a cigarette, all right. So speaking, that was my own memory. I'm in the
memory banks here, so sorry about that. Speaking of meetups, the great thing about being a member, Ricochet, aside from being part of the club online and being able to join conversations and start your own and just sort of generally shoot the breeze with like minded people, even if it's not about politics. Almost especially it's not about politics, I think Ricochet said, it's best we also meetups. We like to get together, and there are some meetups
coming up and we would like to join us. If you're a member, please show up. If you're not a member, please join Winston Salem next weekend July fourteenth through sixteenth, Portland, Oregon July eighteenth, so that's also next week. The German Fest meetup in Milwaukee at the end of July July twenty eighth to July thirty and in Cookville, Tennessee, Labor Day weekend. That's I think September first through fourth. All the details of these meetups are
on the site ricochet dot com. Please go and check them out if you want. We tend to meet up and for some reason these meetups don't work for you, the summer meetups. Here's what you do. You just put up a post and the member feed and say hey, how about a meet up here at this time, and people will show up because Ricochet members show up. That's the part of the fun of being in the club. I'm
going to try to ring something in New York in the autumn. I don't know quite yet when, but we'll have to do another New York meet up in the auto of The last New York meet up was so much fun.
Um So that's that is the full That's all the pitch I'm gonna give you if you don't think after we listened to Ian wrote to speak or last week, we have the best guests, We have the best conversations on the way of If you don't think that this for you, I don't know what to say except you're wrong, and join us anyway because we need the money. But please, whatever you do, come to Ricochet, check us out and see if it's for you, and please join because we would love to have
you brand. I'm wondering what the silver pack was. I know, remember I don't remember any silver cigarette with silver. Was it silva? I was thinking of silva things? Is possibly what it was with the silva thins um uh it? Well she was the ath all smokers, so it could have been. It could have been silver things. Was this the late sixties early seventies, Well it's the seventies, it's not yeah, yeah, I would say that, yeah, okay, could have been that could have been Benson
and Hedges. But the study event, the study, the study of cigarette packs is a fast anything for me, The graphic design, the history of it, oh yeah, the way that Lucky went to war, Lucky's gone to war, which actually find fasting the idea, you know, the idea that cigarette packs would rebrand themselves for the conflict, which, which you know, is the way of telling you how all in that thing was. Well, gentlemen, before we go, is there's something that has happened in the
last week? Did you absolutely have to get a few chests to talk about? If not, of course I can prompt you. But I can imagine that Stephen has let this week go by without something nettling you, getting under your epidermis, any gripe you want to you want to vent before we go, Well, the whole packet of cocaine found in the White House is really astounding getting attention. Yeah, where was it found? Now? Today?
I think it's moved to the attic of a big Bathroomison, Well, I think the last version I've heard, But you're right, it seems to change by the moment. It was found in the cubbies where you leave your cell phones and personal items if you're going to the situation room, which is a you know, a no cell phone zone in the White House messages by there. I've been there once twenty some years ago when Bush was president. And it's not an early open to the public. It does get a fair bit
of traffic. But the odd thing to me is this, I remember back in the Reagan years, and Rob may remember this. Reagan was so concerned about leaks that I think it was when McFarland was a National security advisor, they were going to do polygraph tests to find out who was leaking. That ended. I think drug test too. It was drug tests and polygraphs on leaks. And I think it was George Schultz put an end when he went into Reagan and said, the day you require a drug test for me or
any cabinet members is the day I resign. And then Reagan back down. And also so the point is is that they're saying, gosh, we may never know whose it is or how it got there. If I'm running a white house that had to be evacuated because of this because the old white powder problems from twenty years ago, I want to know who did it because there might be a real problem there. The fact that they're the immediate line is
gosh, we can't figure this out. You know are the FBI has been able to pinpoint people who are in the Capitol on January sixth from granny footage and you know this and that, and we can't figure out how this got in the White House. Uh, this is everybody logs into that part of the White House and put your names on. It's ridiculous. It's always it's
hunters. That's my point, right, yeah, right right. I mean I think the best thing to be in the White House right now is a coke addict as long as hunters around, because you can probably get away with murder. No, you can do whatever you want. You know, you can shoot up rowin there. I've got to be a hunter us. What's interesting to me, of course, is that the White House. I don't know right now what it is the past month or two six months, maybe
it has changed. But certainly if the first year the Biden administration, maybe in the first year to a half, there were extensive COVID protocols, like
the extensive ones. I mean they started obviously under under Trump, but I mean they continued under Biden, where you couldn't go into the overlaps, you can't go in the West Wing without being tested that day, that that minute, Like there were there were people would go I would have a meeting with the President, they would go and sit in a room and get a COVID
test. And then wait and then go in. So there there is definitely a testing regime, and there is it's it's they are perfectly willing to have an administrative state sort of like lockdown that that house, and that both the residential part and the office part. So it isn't as if, I mean, it isn't a loosey goosey place, right. So their inability to um identify the owner of this cocaine is an inability by choice. Put it that way, UM. In the same way of their inability to sort of fully
prosecute influenced battling UM in this administration is an inability by choice. It wasn't sobody suggesting at one point, oh, well it is located close to where the Vice president's car is part. Oh yes, we're going to try to pin some stuff on her man. Somebody said somebody gamed this out on Twitter and said, okay, well, what they're trying to do here is to get it is a pinned on the Kamala Harris. And then after it's been blamed on her, she resigns. Gavin Newsom is appointed as Vice president.
Joe Biden resigns for health reasons or demandia Gavin Newsom is the new president and runs as an incumbent and has all of the incumbent virtues in powers and strengths, and I'm thinking, well, that's absolutely ridiculous. Probably that's certainly Gavin Newsom's dream journal right there. That is exactly how he's like, I have to say, but somebody brought Gavin Newsom like, um, I think Gavin Newsom is. I don't know how to put this because I don't think he's
smart, but I think he's smart. I think what he's doing right now is really really smart. He is not running, but he's running, and he's just kind of doing this thing where you go, I'm available, I'm available. Hey, I'm looking at me. I'm available. He's staying in shape. You know, he's like he's like the boyfriend in waiting, you know, He's like, I'm not gonna let myself go. I'm not gonna
do any I'm just gonna stay in part of the fray. I'm gonna campaign against as if I'm campaigning, and I'm going to campaign relentlessly against the Republicans, which I think is a very very smart move. So I'm just surprised that a guy who's so dumb and has like is so unable to run California and it is so wrong about everything, is so smart about this, But I guess that defines a lot of politicians. The word that defines him is
inevitable. Well, I'm serious. Last inevitable candidate we had that she didn't do so good. Well. The other thing, the other word that applies to him is vain. Rob I I agree with you about it. He's being very shrewd in a certain way, but he's also very vain. But I am absolutely I have no knowledge of this from any sources, and I haven't really tried to find any, but I'm convinced that he has a campaign
in waiting ready to spin up to full speed in twenty four hours. Notice, ye you know, if Biden takes a tumble down the steps of Air Force one, it couldn't happen any moment now, right. I think I think that would finish him, or I think it is not impossible that what does the July come around October November? If Biden is still looking what am I say, Biden looking shaky, He's not gonna get any better. If he's looking even worse, I think there's a fifty fifty chance Newston decides to
run anyway. No, I think you're right. I think it's like the Spielberg version of War the World. There's a bunch of lighting boats and cylinders and drypods start to rise from the ground in every part of the country, more in sorrow than an anger. Right, that will be He'll run right exactly. Thank you's great American for his service. But we're taking the car keys away from Grandpa, picking the fallen mantle up and uh and kamala Harris. I'm sorry. It's a pity that you won't be able to join me
in the new effort, but something will be good. They don't like each other. I mean you ask anybody around the Beildy Bay area arrivals for a long time. So if there's no love loss there, well, I would love to see De Santis versus Florida versus Newsoman, because Florida versus California, each with their own Disney World place is a great lesson for us. It's
a it's a stark, it's a lustrative, it's revelatory. I want to have that, I really do, but I also want to do the thing here that we do sometimes Steven when Peter isn't here and that's we get out in an hour. Is that okay with everybody else? Yeah? Yeah? Can I just tell a Gavin Newsom story to get us out of funny little Gavenu story which may or may not be true? Too good a check, okay? So the story is always the rumor, is always this rumor.
The Gavin Newsom when he's mayor of San Francisco was having an affair with a woman who was at that point working at a fancy fish restaurant in the Financial District, and she was a hostess there, and the manager complained to the owner of the restaurant saying, look, people are just coming in right now and just sitting the bar because they want to check her out. They've heard
the rumor, they want to see her. And the owner of the restaurant's solution was, okay, fine, move her to two days and Wednesdays because those are slow nights for us. So if people want to come in this restaurant and sit at the bar and drink, I'd rather have him come on a Tuesday on a Wednesday, which are slow nights. Let's pick up our
Tuesday Wednesday and it totally worked. It totally totally worked. So there is one there's one economic effect of the Gavin Newsom administration that actually benefited working people all over everywhere, and that was his choice of girlfriend. So that's the story. I'm sticking with it. Well, keep that in your pocket so you can bring down the administration at the appropriate time. Yeah, right, thank our guest. Of course he can go buy his book agency. We'd
like to thank Bowland Brand. We'd like to thank Express VPN for joining us and for sponsoring us. We'd like to thank you if you're a Rocouchet member, and if you're not, would it kill you? Would it just kill you to pony up a little bit and find yourself on the side of the smartest and the sharpest and the best civil center right conversation you're gonna find on the internet. Yeah, you can go to Ricochet, you can read the
whole thing, you can get the podcast. But the member side is, you know, to where the fun happens, the hugging, the fighting, the shouting. It's family. We're all family anyway. It's been fun, Stephen, thank you and always a pleasure as it certainly is. And by the way, if you like Stephen, that's the reason to give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. I didn't mention that I should, and
I must. And if you like Rob, same thing, if you'll, if you like me, you know, whatever, reason give us each one point seven five stars and somehow that'll five. Yeah. Thanks. Will see you next week, maybe Stephen, see you next week, maybe Rob. I hope we'll see everyone though. In the comments at Ricochet, four point out next week, Happy fourth, Happy fourth. Yeah it's so late, but you know still, I said, the whole week is the fourth of
July. It's Independence Day week. I believe Ricochet. Join the conversation