In a world where even the smallest disagreements can lead to arguments, violence, and even
death, two brothers tackle the difficult subjects.
So this is part two of our conversations about free speech and of course free speech
been a pretty broad topic.
There's lots of ways that can go.
Last week we focused on free speech at universities and this week we're going to take a
particular aspect of speech and looking at the banning of books and other content, media
in particular, that is happening in a lot of schools, very popular topic these days,
or I guess the action may be seems a little more, who knows if it is actually more popular,
maybe just getting more news right now, I don't really know.
I ran across a something that I feel like sort of sets the mood, maybe use this as the
starting point.
There was a Supreme Court case in 1982 and in the Supreme Court case they addressed,
they noted the special characteristics of the school library and this was around
the removal of books and there was the way that the majority ruled was, they mentioned
making it especially appropriate for the recognition of first amendment rights of students, including
the right to access information and ideas.
So many places you want to take this or anything you want to do?
I'm not really sure, I'm going to have my thoughts on it.
It was maybe you want to start out because it was your thoughts, you kind of set the stage for
this one, right?
Okay, yeah.
So the reason why it's been so much, or one of the reasons why it's been so much in the news lately
is because in Florida and Texas there's been a lot of book banning.
There's been a general movement of parents getting more involved in some of the activities
going on in the school systems, parents joining the boards and taking a more active role in some
of the activities of teachers in a course books and where what the their children have access
to both in the school classrooms and in the libraries.
The reason why it initially caught my attention, I sent you the message that I was interested
in, it was because there was a bit of controversy in Florida around a Disney movie called Ruby
Bridges, which was about the segregation or the desegregation of some of the schools in the
Arkansas little rock school system.
And I believe the girl, one of the girls name was Ruby Bridges, which was named the title.
And a notice went out to the parents that this movie was being shown, one of the classes,
a parent, the parents were given the choice of allowing their children not to go and attend
the school and that day.
One parent decided that her she didn't want her child to see that moving.
And after the movie aired, went and complained anyway, even though her child had not seen it,
because she was concerned that children might believe white people are racist.
That was the just of what it was that she was saying.
And I feel like this gets to the heart of the concept, which is access to information and the
other side of it, parents having say in what their children are being taught and what their
children are being exposed to.
Yeah, I think that's probably an accurate depiction.
Do you think Ryan that there should be any control for talking about a brand?
Any control or I guess, it's interesting how it's framed, well, a banning of books.
But really, when you have a library with children, do you think that we should just put the
same books in a children's library as we do in a adult library, correct?
Absolutely, correct.
Obviously, a course to that is going to be, well, I mean, I guess all of it is as an appropriate
for children.
Yes, we'd say, okay, if it's appropriate.
And both from the perspective of, well, with the children even understand it, we're
not going to give them, you know, college level math or something, they're not going to be interested
in certain things.
They can't read certain books.
You know, elementary school kids probably are going to be as interested in, you know, I mean,
even something like 18th century, 19th century British literature or something like that.
So the first aspect would be, well, let's try to put stuff in there that they're going
to understand.
It's going to be interesting to them.
It's going to be a little bit more difficult and the great brain than, you know, ancient or Victorian
literature or whatever, you know, I guess we're going to try to keep cater to them that way.
But also, and I think we can both agree on that.
And I would also say, well, to some degree, we should be protecting them from certain things.
Would you agree with that?
Yes, you know, you don't want to expose, let's say, an eight-year-old to graphic imagery of
concentration camps of the bodies piled up in the concentration camps.
There's things, one of the cuts that comes up as age appropriate.
And I see you want to say something, so you go ahead.
Well, or pornography.
Sure.
There's all sorts of things.
And we can call that banning books, or we can say, well, we should be thinking at least about
our audience.
Yes.
I mean, even if you talked about a public library where we all go, you can call it banning books,
but maybe we'd at least be well marks certain sections that we don't want, like, graphic
in, you know, covers of books or something.
And we want to be somewhat controlled even at a public library, but certainly at an elementary school.
So I think sometimes there's this, you know, if you're on the right, you're calling everything
that they're doing racist and bigoted or pornographic, and if you're on the left, then you're
saying, well, they're banning books.
Well, we're all banning books.
I mean, if you want to take it in the broadest sense of the word, in the sense that we are trying
to figure out what's going to work best for those kids.
So I don't have a problem with thinking about this at least.
And certainly, I think parents should be involved because, you know, these parents are, you
know, they're the parents.
They have responsibility for these kids.
So I do definitely think they should be involved.
And it is surprising to me that there is some pushback.
There was a voted California recently, that school board said, yeah, we're not.
There's certain information that they want to withhold from parents.
Both about curricula and also certain things that their kids are doing.
And I think that's where we have these issues.
You know, on the one side, you know, there's probably, you know, there's probably problems with
what both sides are doing.
And there's probably more than just two sides.
But it's very reasonable, I think, that people are getting engaged in this and more so than
the past because it seems like now, like we just said, well, for, you know, almost like,
well, for some reason, parents are getting more involved in these school boards and trying
to figure out what the curriculum is.
Well, I think it's because, you know, the curriculum curriculum are changing.
Now maybe there were times like, what's the movie, foot loose, you know, where parents got
two upset about Slaur House five or, you know, some other books.
But now, I mean, so parents have always been upset or wanting to, you know, put the blinders
on or something.
But we should have these conversations.
Like, would you agree with that?
That we should be having these conversations, thinking about these things?
Yes.
But, and I think that you're right, I think that there's been a general move away from interaction,
that parents have sort of taken a step back from the, what's going on in the schools and
haven't really known this going on.
And then there's been this, this mad rush back saying, let's been, what's been happening behind
our backs, we need to go and fix all this.
And California is often brought up as an example of, you know, the extreme activities on
the left.
And, you know, some of the stuff that comes out justifiably so, you know, they've had some
pretty extreme examples of things that they've done, you know, like wanting to take away the names
of some of the, the schools, the Abraham Lincoln Elementary and the George Washington Middle
School, you know, something along those lines, presidents that most people would say have
a pretty followed place in our nation's history.
And San Francisco is decided that these guys are, you know, their views at the time were
inappropriate compared to the perspective that we have now.
So yeah, I think that it's good that people are having the conversations.
And, you know, when you talked about the public libraries, libraries, that we do have sections
for, you know, the different age groups, different material, different content.
And I don't care what age you are.
I don't think anybody's going to go into a public library and expect to see a hustler magazine.
You know, they're certain content that you just won't find at the library.
And no one would be upset by that, at least I don't think anybody would be upset by the very
few people.
I'm very, very few people.
There we go.
Thank you.
I don't want to jump to too many conclusions.
So yes, most people would agree that there's certain content that shouldn't be there.
And again, it comes back to age appropriate.
Now, age appropriate, maybe that's where people have a little bit of an issue because
different people are having a different idea of what age appropriate actually is.
Like a fourth grader seeing this movie about the reintegration or integration of the public
school systems in Little Rock.
I don't know what age they actually were.
They said it was, I thought it was around fourth grade, I could be wrong.
The fact that that was, they didn't want their child to be exposed to it for some reason.
And this is where people have a disagreement about what is age appropriate.
The mother had one idea assuming it was an age appropriate issue.
Maybe it was just the racetrack.
I don't know.
But the school district felt that that population and most of the parents that were sent the
notice felt that the movie was age appropriate for the students that were being given the
opportunity to watch it.
Yeah, I mean, it's a tough.
We talk about this race stuff, but I think the greater issue that I'm seeing that people are
worried about is sexuality, transgender issues and things like that.
And because I read a little bit about that, the movie, the Ruby bridges or whatever.
And the parent, I haven't seen the film.
I don't know too much about it.
But they didn't want her child to watch the film.
She alleged that the movie's use of racial slurs and depiction of racially motivated violence could
teach white people to hate black people.
Now I have no idea.
I have heard that there are some, I mean, it is true.
But I don't know anything about this film.
So it could be way off base.
But there are, for example, the 1619 project.
And a lot of you, which was a project that the near times put out, I'm talking about what
they said were the true origins of our country.
And many people talked about, well, this liked it because they said it maligned some of our
founding fathers and painted them in this horrible light.
And made people feel like, you know, that America itself was a flawed place.
It needed to be torn down.
So it's not just that people are saying, hey, I don't want to see anything about racism, but
they're worried about how it's presented.
And I think there's some justification there.
We should at least be thinking about that.
For example, if the 1619 project doesn't do a good job in somebody's opinion of actually presenting
the facts and showing people what actually happened, it could really color people's
opinion of their fellow Americans, of white people, of black people, of the founding fathers,
a lot of different.
So yeah, I do think they're a little bit worried about what these kids are being shown because
if it's all from one perspective, then that could be dangerous for their children.
And they have every right to go in and start talking about these things.
For sure.
No, I think these are good conversations to have.
I'm just a little bit baffled that someone would watch a movie about the reintegration of
a public school system and worrying that someone might come away from watching this movie,
a white person might come away from watching this movie and thinking, oh, I don't like black people.
Or I'm now less inclined to like a black person because if you watch anything from that
ear or anything about those types of situations, they don't really promote.
They don't glorify the white racists in those movies.
They kind of paint them as, as, not a lot of say demonic, but definitely as the villains
and the films and it's not often that you'd have like a middle school or a elementary school
saying, yeah, I want to go and be like the bad guy in that film that I saw.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I mean, have you seen the film?
No.
Yeah, so I don't really know.
It sounds like you're right.
I don't have any concern with showing kids, I think we need to learn that history.
We need to learn about the mistakes that were made in the 50s and 60s and ever since
the founding of the country, we need to learn about the concentration camps.
But we need to be somewhat careful about how it's presented.
But yeah, I definitely think we need to learn about it.
I don't know exactly what this one promoted, but yeah, it sounds like it should be fine.
So I don't think we have much to argue about this one, except that we haven't seen it,
so we can't really argue about how bad good or bad it is.
It sounds like it would be fine.
To go back to the idea of some of the books that are being then, you're right that a lot
of the issues often tend to be around LGBT, Q, plus those types of topics.
But then there's a bunch of others.
There was one of the books that they're trying to ban in Texas when Wilmer Rudolph played
basketball, which is an illustrated children's book touching on the racism that Olympian will
merute off experience growing up in Tennessee in the 1940s.
And the parent wanted it removed because it opines prejudice based on race.
Another apparently the kite runner is a book that a fair number of parents are wanting to
have vans.
It's not at the top of the list, but it's not buried at the bottom either.
That's an interesting one because it's not a picture book.
It's not a book that's really, the style and the content is not really for young children.
And I read the book years ago, I could imagine maybe high schoolers reading it.
I can't imagine anyone younger than a high school even being interested or if it was put in front
of them being able to really slog their way through it because it isn't a style or a subject
matter that would be interesting.
But parents are wanting it removed.
So they're really wanting it removed.
I would imagine from high school libraries, which to me is a little interesting.
Yeah, I think you could probably find examples of just like you could when you watched
foot lose of examples of parents that are trying to ban too many books.
Yeah, that one I think would be fine.
I guess the other concern is, you know, the only thing I could imagine that people were upset
with kite runner was that it paints maybe certain cultures, maybe Muslim cultures with
many kind of plant marriages or the marriages where they're not really by choice.
And so that girl was forced to marry somebody that was much older than her that she didn't
really, that she didn't really, it wasn't attracted to, it didn't love.
And so you would hope that when they talk about those things, especially if it's young
and pressure, it will be a good idea.
Well, there's some examples where it works really well.
I have a friend from Sri Lanka and he, his wife or his parents, it was kind of a, what do
you call that Brian?
Not a big church.
A voice marriage?
No, I can't remember the word, but his parents were heavily involved and they wasn't that
they chose a girl and then said you have to marry her, they would find, so they're saying
there's different levels of it.
Sometimes it's the parents just make the decisions.
In this case, for example, his parents would say, hey, we think there's this girl, we like
their family, we like her, we want you to meet her, they would get together and he'd be like
not interested and she could do the same thing.
Well, when the finally they found somebody that he liked and that liked him, that's when they
got married.
So it was organized and orchestrated by the parents, but there was a lot of choice.
So there should be some talk to those kids like, hey, it's not always like, it's not
like if you live in Afghanistan, I think that's where Kite Renner took place.
You're going to be forced in your young girl, you're going to marry someone who's going to
be forced into it.
There's probably more to it and anyway, as long as there's, you just worry about how it's presented,
how many books these kids get and is it slanted in one direction that kind of makes them
changes their worldview in a way that doesn't give them the chance to really see the
big picture.
You're right, you're right.
This is one of the advantages to having these these books addressed within a class is that there
is almost always a discussion that happens around it.
Now, you're certain you do have to hope to agree that the teachers are going to bring these
subjects up because if they don't, it's up to the students are bringing up, or else it doesn't
actually happen.
So yes, there is concern.
And the other concern you would have is that someone saying, well, if the topics are not brought
up, then the children might come away with a misconception, therefore I don't want the books addressed
at all, which of course, then the children are going to have a very limited experience.
Because let's be honest, most people's knowledge about if we use the kite runners,
an example, their knowledge of Afghanistan is as a warfront.
And so then the kite runner gives a much deeper personal example of some of the people that
live there, and so there is a real down value to having that sort of exposure.
And so all this sort of comes down to the tug of war between the parents and the school system,
the teachers, the administrator.
And both people we would like to hope have the children's best interests at heart and how
that manifest is going to be in conflict sometimes.
Definitely, I live in Oregon now, and a friend of mine who lives near Portland, he had a
nine-year-old daughter, and they had a section that was coming up where they were going to
be talking about sexualality.
And he asked to see the curriculum, and they're like, well, we can't send it to you.
He's like, why not?
Just email it to me so I can look at, nope, we can't do that.
It's copyright all this stuff.
He couldn't look at it.
So then he had to go down there and he had to be on site, at least they would let him look at it,
which was great.
But he started reading through it, and he's got all these questions because they're talking
about a child's sexuality.
The children's sexuality, what they're, you may feel that you're not the right year, the
wrong gender.
You've been misgendered.
Like things like that, they're talking about in this curriculum.
And he's like, so that is very concerning to people.
Like, hey, I don't need you to talk with my kids about that, and start leading them down
up half.
These are impressionable kids.
And then you start to try to talk about it, but you can't, they're only give you so much information.
And they won't tell you who's making the decisions about what the curriculum is or how you
go about changing it.
These people feel pretty powerless in the curriculum that's being set.
It's very hard.
You have to go down after work.
It's very hard to get in and even look at the curriculum.
And you have to read through all of it yourself.
And then you don't have any input if you really disagree with the way that it's presented.
That part of it is what is more concerning, I think, to most people.
I think if you tell most people, well, listen, if we all looked at that movie about Ruby
Bridges and it's teaching the kids about the things that, you know, these heroes that in
the 1950s and 60s fought for civil rights, of course, or most everybody's going to like,
yep, okay, that's fine.
Let the kids see that as long as they're old enough.
But it's these other issues that I think are more the reason why you said, I take a little
bit of issue when you said earlier that parents for a long time kind of took a step back.
And now they're realizing, oh, we shouldn't have.
I don't think they really took a step back.
I think they were all along.
Nobody was really too concerned about this.
But now there's some stuff coming in that is really different before I could be wrong.
But my, my take on this is for a long time, yeah, there were some parents that were like,
hey, I don't want you to want to read a hook thin because they use the N word, or I don't want
you to, you know, read slaughterhouse five because it has some sex under something like that.
That was the extent of it.
But now people are getting pretty worried about a lot of transgender ideology and a different
way of looking at the racial history of our country, meaning there's an idea that white
people are evil and that they're inherently racist.
And that's what kind of thing that people are pushing back against.
And the reason that many people are now getting more involved in the decisions that these schools
are making.
Yeah, there is, I think there is a lot of that.
But I don't think it's isolated to that sort of thing.
There was an organization called Penn and I can't remember what it stands for.
But it follows some of the, no, I agree, Brian.
You don't have to prove it to me.
I agree, it's not, it's not just that.
I'm just saying you're seeing more of it because of those big issues.
Sure, just like always, and footloos, they were worried about slaughterhouse five.
I mean, for years, people have been worried about things like hook thin or what's
something that you're seeing.
Dr. Suze.
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that people have been worried about.
JD sounds or the catcher in the right people didn't like that one because of some of the
topics that it touched upon and that it kind of dealt with suicide and things like that
and sexualities.
So people were worried about it.
So I think this has always been an issue and it always will be.
But I think you're seeing much more involvement in the alarm now from much more, many more people,
not because we're still talking about the catcher in the right and hook thin, but because
we brought in these other issues that we're talking about.
There's okay, so let's take an example that most people would agree on.
If a parent came in and said, I don't like the fact that you're teaching my child in an integrated
classroom.
I want my child to be segregated only to talk with white people.
No one's going to say, well, we should really give this some consideration or look into the
possibilities because he is a parent.
And so there's people, a picture, a good point.
Very few people.
Well said.
And so there are certain situations when most people would say the parent may have a perspective,
but it doesn't matter because the child is heard in the process.
And this is what it really comes down to is that the parent and the school, the administration
the teachers all have the child's best interest at heart.
And if you're going to, from the schools perspective, if you're going to restrict and limit
that child exposure to experiences to information other than what they find and they're small
little in-cylinder community, that child will be impacted in the negative way.
And the parents looking at it saying, I don't want my child exposed to things that fall outside
of our belief system or that they're not ready for an emotional level at an age level.
So there's things that I don't want you that you're fully pushing on my child.
In this case, like the sexuality, in the case you talked about with your friend, from both
sides, they're doing it with the best of intention.
They just disagree on what the outcome should be.
And so then when you have an integrated versus a segregated classroom, most people would agree
with what the outcome is on this situation with the exposure to a young child about things
that may be there, not the information that receiving at home, that's with the disagreement.
I think is there not receiving at all?
Well, that child is not going to be taught about, you know, that you're the gender you
identify with and the inside may not reflect the biology on the outside.
Maybe maybe not.
Why would you say that?
Because he was bothered by it.
But maybe he just doesn't want somebody talking about those things or maybe he thinks it's too
soon or maybe he thinks that he that they're not presenting it in an open and unbiased way.
I want the chance as a parent to present it in an open and unbiased way.
You know, and I think I think Brian the other issue that we should talk about is what makes this
difficult is also, and I know you're going to kind of, this is maybe you're just going
to disagree with this.
But also, it's the fact that many of these people don't have a choice.
Like if you don't like what your school is doing because of the way our public school system
is set up, you can't move them someplace else.
Right.
So whether it's because you disagree with the way that they're presenting, you know, sex
ed or whether they're just poor teachers, if you don't have a lot of money, it's the poor
people that are suffering here because wealthy people can put their kids in a private school or
get some tutors or homeschool or do whatever they want.
If you're a single parent or you're both parents work, you can't homeschool and you can't
get your kids to a charter school, maybe if you're poor and you don't have time to drive them
around, these people are really locked in and I think it's really unfair.
So you're going to say, well, we're going to teach in whatever we think is right and
you can't be a part of it and you have to bring them here.
And we're going to, you know, it's almost like they're taking control from the parents of
raising their own kids, which to some degree, you know, you know, they're obviously, we don't
want kids to just be held at home and never get any education, but it is amazing that
we give them so little, so little choice and so few options.
Yeah. And first of all, let me say that I think that the situation you described about the
school being reluctant to give information to the parent, that seems we happen a little more
lately and I do feel, I do find that a little bothersome, a little concerning, you know,
that on the one hand you want that you have the teachers saying, we need the parents to be
more involved because that we can't do it all just here in the school, we need the
parents to be helping at home, but then when the parents try and get involved in certain areas,
like, well, well, no, you don't want, we can't tell you about that stuff. So, you know,
I recognize that these might be difficult uncomfortable conversations, but I think that the
parent should be involved and the parents should have a saying how things go. And also, everyone,
it's helpful to recognize that everyone has the best intention, whether the parent
looking at the school system teaching their child information that they don't feel the child
and ready for or the administration looking at the parents resistance to what is being taught
and recognizing that the parent also is thinking about the best interest of their child. It's
just they have different solutions to the problem.
Yeah, I would say Brian, you know, we talk about the difference between years past and, well,
oh my gosh, parents are all of the time just getting involved. Well, it's because a lot of these
issues did not come up back then. I mean, sure, some of them did, but a lot of this stuff,
I mean, transgender ideology, LGBT, Q stuff, it was like, it kind of told you what was going
on in sex, like, this is how you have it, but it wasn't, now it feels like there's almost
like social justice warriors in classrooms or people that are really pushing in ideology,
so it seems to me and you correct me if you feel, or you tell me if you feel differently. In the old
days it was like, well, what I do outside of the classroom as a teacher, I'm not going to, you
know, I'll just try to present everything and not try to sway people. It seems now like there's
an intent both in school, not a cross-the-bull in for sure. There's plenty of them that
are still doing it the way that they always have. But there's more of an intent to sway
children think as opposed to just presenting information. And I realize that's very difficult. I mean,
man, just if you present some information, it feels like you may be swaying that, like what
information do you present, you've only got so much time with these kids, like it's a little bit
difficult, but it does seem like now there's more delving into these topics and talking about a lot
more, you know, I mean, talking to kids about their sexuality when they're nine years old,
I don't believe that happened back when we were growing up. But maybe that was just a school I went to.
Maybe I'm not remembering. I think I would remember that because that would have freaked me out as a nine
year old, you know? It seems like there's a lot more of this going on and a much younger age than
ever before. Well, there is talks at different ages and at all that different ages, it's different
details. You know, when we got the sex that I got it in school anyway, I got it in the eighth grade.
And it was pretty graphic. It was pretty specific. I remember walking out feeling a little shell-shocked.
Not a little TSD. But when I've run across somebody's talks about what's happening in the school
systems at young ages, they're addressing it, but not with the detail, not with the specificity,
not with genitalia, for example, specifically. And so they're trying to keep it appropriate for the ages.
Now, in your friend's situation, clearly he feels whatever the, at least the way you're
you're describing. And he feels like the content that they're giving his child is not age appropriate.
He feels like it should be happening a little bit later. And the whole LGBT thing, that is new,
that is something that we weren't, wasn't coming into our schools. But when we were going through
the school system, there was a lot of talk about a lot of people and I think they still are
arguing, there should be no sex at in schools at all because if they just abstain, then they don't have
to worry about it. If they just wait till marriage, then there's not an issue. So you can learn it all
when you're on your wedding night. I don't think that's what people for about this. There are some
in some places that don't want sex at all in the school system. And that was great. Right. But
I think it's a bit reductionist to say, everybody who's concerned with sex at in schools is saying
it because of the fear of it on their wedding night. No, no, no, it's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying
is the arguments that the arguments have evolved. But there were still arguments that were happening
when we were in the school system. When we were in the school system, they were arguing about the
LGBT issue because that wasn't addressed at all. That was something you kept in the closet.
That's where, of course, the phrase come from. Now the issue has evolved because the conversation,
there are still small communities are looking at it from an abstention point of view, but it's also
gotten bigger than that. Yeah, but I mean, once again, the way you're talking about the argument in the past,
it's very reductionist the way you talk about it. People are saying, I guess the problem that some people
have with sex at right or wrong, and I'm not, I don't agree with this necessarily, is the idea that,
hey, well, you're just going to talk about it as if it's a four-gone conclusion that these kids are
going to have sex. Why not? Some people are just saying, why not include in that the idea of that
stension. Some people do, and you can talk about it, but people are poo poo, and I don't know, the kids are
all having sex. That's naive. You shouldn't talk about that. They start to get concerned with, well,
this, and if you present things with your worldview of the fact that there's only one way to look at it,
you have to use condoms and you have to use birth control because everybody's having sex,
that's encouraging these kids to have sex in a younger age. There's just some back and forth about
the way it's presented. And listen, if you're going to be skewing it and presenting it in the way that you want,
maybe we shouldn't do it at all. Maybe you can let us have either some saying it or just let us do it.
So I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but I think it's a reductionist to make them
often out as these naive people that are saying, well, we shouldn't have sex at, because my kids are
going to learn about it on their wedding night when they have sex for the first time. That's not what
most of these people are saying that have concerns with the way that sex was taught 30 years ago
on the way that it's taught today. No, it's not most people that think that way. At the same time,
when you present it, it's all just in where, though, when we're talking about the book bannings,
there has been 1,648 titles that have been banned. Now, you think about all the books that are out there,
that's a pretty small list. So clearly, it's not a huge number of books that are being banned.
It's a very small segment. And so this is one of the problems that we had with the news in general.
The news that people are talking about, no one is going up there and saying, well, we've had
no book bannings at our school district today, moving on to the other news. Now, we only hear about the news
that is actually getting people's attention. And so what is getting people's attention is the
books that are being banned and in the districts where that's happening. It can skew the impression.
And just like the talks about extension when we were young, the talks about the LGBT issues,
now at this end of this time, the talks about the book bannings, they're not as common as prevalent
as some might believe they actually are. We are running low on time, and I don't want to cut you off.
So if there's anything that you want to say to wrap this up, go ahead and bring it in now.
Yeah, yeah, I think it's been a good talk. I think there's been some things that we more
things that we agreed on than I thought we would. But I guess my thinking on it is parents should be
a huge part of this. And I really wish that parents had more both a bigger say in this. It was more
democratic because I don't know a better way to do it. You know, you kind of have to go with majority rule.
You're going to have people that disagree on when kids should start hearing about this stuff when they
shouldn't. And so yeah, you should let the parents in the school districts have some say in this and
allow them some control. And be kind about it. Like some of these people in places in Portland are
afraid to even talk about it because they'll be vilified if they disagree and be called bigitz or something else.
And but I I wish too that parents had more choice because yeah, if you just like the way the school is
handling it, go someplace else. Teach them at home. I think that is perfectly allowable. And to say that
the school is the only place where these kids are going to learn about sexuality is absurd. Of course,
parents are still going to talk about it some won't. But then they're going to be on the real world.
They're going to hear about this stuff. They can they've got the internet. They can figure this stuff out.
We don't need teachers to teach everything to our children because our otherwise our children are just
going to be walking around like conservative, you know, fundamentalist Christian zombies or something.
There's a lot of information out there. And so we should be very careful about how we
how we handle this in the school systems. And we should give people more options so they can seek
someplace else to get there to take their kids. Yeah, I do agree that we should be having more
conversations about this. I feel like that in general are willingness to have difficult conversations,
has been has been diminishing. And I feel like the the people on the other side,
it's gotten really aggressive and how people talk about them. I heard someone talk on the left saying
they won't, they won't, you know, they're not going to be tolerant of fascists. And their fascist
comment was basically anyone to the right of center. You know, and so there's a general and
it goes the other way as well. You know, there's a general unwillingness to talk and to walk away unhappy with
the outcome. That's the other issue is that once we're unhappy we feel like, you know, we need to go fight,
you know, with something bigger, a bigger stick. And that's unfortunate. So anyway,
next week it's kind of a variation on theme. We're going to talk about the section 230. Is that the one,
the the internet, the responsibility of some of the social media and media companies and who who's
responsible for the content that comes up there. Okay. Cool. Thanks, hon. Yeah, good talk. Yeah,
have a great night. Okay, right. We hope you learned something in this episode of Brother Vs. Brother,
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