Basic Ed: Recent Episodes
Edward Jack Thompson
Education in America is in crisis. This Basic Education Series podcast discusses what's wrong with the educational system and how to create a renaissance in education.
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We are not getting healthier, we are getting sicker. American children are predicted to not outlive their parents for the first time in history.
(Transcript for Who is Destroying the Health of our Youth? available below.)
Making Sense and Knowing Numbers are available in paperback and digital formats at most major outlets. Learn More
Transcript:
Here we go. Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children -Malcolm X
Hello again. Ed Thompson here, and I hope this podcast finds you doing well. This is Buried Lede #24, entitled, Who is Destroying the Health of our Youth?
When RFK jr joined the Trump campaign and the MAGA movement he coined the phrase MAHA, Make America Healthy Again, and focused attention on an epidemic of major proportions here in America. Despite the advances in medicine and availability of treatments, despite the superior basic infrastructures that provide sanitation and drinking water for the vast majority, America has a decidedly unhealthy population. Poor health is epidemic.
COVID-19 exposed how low the baseline health is in America. During the pandemic nearly all the COVID-19 deaths were the elderly with age and disease weakened immune systems, or younger people with multiple co-morbidities including asthma, diabetes, and obesity. The fact is, people with disease or compromised immune systems are always vulnerable. What is alarming is that currently this group represents nearly 40 percent of the American population. That would be more than 140 million Americans.
Despite having the most advanced heath care system in the world, the US had the worst results from COVID-19. Despite spending the most money on health and medicine, the US has the least healthy population in the developed world. These two facts are not independent.
As a nation, we are not getting healthier, we are getting sicker. The worst of this tragedy is happening to our youth. The next generation of American children is predicted to not outlive their parents for the first time in history. The young generation is fatter, sicker, and have more fertility problems than any previous generation. Autism has gone from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 20 and is still rising fast. According to the American Cancer society, cancer diagnoses are spiking among the young as never before seen.
The buried lede is that we are actively destroying the health of our youth. It is certainly time to MAHA: Make America Healthy Again.
Because it didn’t stop the disease or transmission, and because the 25 and under demographic was in near zero danger from COVID-19, the COVID-19 vax was unnecessary for most young people. Yet, we have and continue to jab our youth as young as six months old repeatedly. Babies have gone into shock after COVID-19 shots, children and young adults have had severe cardiac events, and aggressive cancers rarely seen in the younger population have spiked. And still we jab.
And it’s not just the COVID-19 vax. The general vaccine schedule for children includes two vaccines at birth, eight at two months, four months, and six months, ten more at twelve months, and four more at fifteen and eighteen months of age. Twenty-seven shots before the age of two. There is a lineup required to get into kindergarten, and more throughout school. By the time they exit high school American children have had forty or more shots of eighteen different vaccines.
More children every year are put on strong, mind-altering medications. Over six million kids are now taking one or more of ADHD, Antidepressant, Antipsychotic, Mood Stabilizer, Anticonvulsive, Anti-Anxiety or Sleep-inducing medications. These are the broad categories. A short list you have probably seen in ads includes Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, Prozac, Zoloft, Cymbalta, Elavil, Haldol, Abilify, Lithium, Xanax, Ambien and Lexapro. There are hundreds of drugs to choose from, with more created every year. Black box warnings on these heavy drugs are so numerous they require a separate large insert. While these drugs are supposed to be improving mental health, the rate of children and adolescents committing suicides and homicides has been steadily climbing as well. Doesn’t anyone care?
All these supposedly healthful medications are coming from Big Pharma companies that have been fined over 123 billion dollars since 2000 for false or deceptive practices, fraud, or for selling poorly tested drugs that turn out to be either directly harmful or highly additive and ripe for abuse. Big Pharma is destroying the health of our kids. This happens because Big Pharma has captured the agencies tasked with overseeing and approving the drugs. The FDA and NIH are so deep in bed with BigPharma that they are virtually indistinguishable, with personnel revolving back and forth. Big Pharma money finances much of the testing and oversight activities, a clear conflict of interest.
The food industry isn’t much better. Unless you live on a farm or grow your own food, you don’t stand a chance. Our grocery chains put empty-calorie processed foods on prominent display where kids can demand them from frazzled mothers. A recent Northeastern University study found that 70% of all the food products in a typical grocery store are ultra-processed with low nutritive value and artificial chemical additives. Europe outright bans ingredients that BigAgro in America prevents from even being put on food package labels. Is it any wonder we have unhealthy overweight kids?
Hormones in meat and dairy products disrupt the endocrine system and accelerate or delay puberty, wreaking havoc on our youth. Toxins like pesticides and chemical food additives contribute to declining health. Over 72% of kids under eighteen are either overweight or out of shape or both. The age-standardized prevalence of overweight or obesity in 2021 among children and young adolescents was 36.2% in males and 37.2% in females. Among older adolescents, the prevalence in males and females was 46.7% and 50.8%, respectively. And it only gets worse with age.
Do we fix or eliminate destructive food products and enhance nutrition, or expand physical exercise programs our children desperately need? No. The solution offered follows the medico-pharmaceutical profit model of only treating symptoms. Ozempic, a diabetes drug that alters hormone levels and intentionally disrupts the glandular system, was discovered to have a side effect of weight loss. Naturally, it is exploding as a quick fix for fat kids and fat adults who do not have diabetes. This has not been properly studied in long term, double-blind trials, but the already known potential side effects include thyroid tumors, pancreatitis, loss of vision, hypoglycemia, gallbladder issues, and kidney failure. Does that sound like making America healthy?
The toughest thing to confront is evil. Our medical establishment, Big Pharma and the government agencies that are supposed to improve and protect our health are instead destroying health. Doesn’t get much more evil than that.
And that’s the buried lede.
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Rooting out DEI requires more than a key word search. DEI is buried deep into educational, corporate and government material and culture.
(Transcript for DEI Goes Underground available below.)
Making Sense and Knowing Numbers are available in paperback and digital formats at most major outlets. Learn More
Transcript:
To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe. – Marilyn vos Savant
Hello again. Ed Thompson here, and I hope this podcast finds you doing well. This is Buried Lede #23, entitled, DEI Goes Underground.
While we can breathe a sigh of relief in seeing the president commit to getting DEI out of government agencies like education and the military, actually getting this pernicious, destructive ideology rooted out is not as easy as signing an executive order.
Springing from the Marxist doctrines of oppression versus oppressed, DEI came out of the gate with the deceptive name Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. After all, who wouldn’t want Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? Like so many Marxist Utopian ideas, that sounds good on paper but translates in practice to the worst of oppressions. Having segregated graduations or classes is divisive not inclusive. Telling children of color they are victims and white children they are racist oppressors is not diversity it is division. There is even an attempt to use supposed cultural norms to excuse poor academic achievement or behavior. The implication is that holding certain groups to the same standards as others would somehow be racist, when the complete opposite is true. DEI is not what it seems.
Currently, it may not be acceptable to label programs with titles like DEI enforcement or DEI implementation, but the left in America have become master craftsmen in their cunning and willingness to twist and bend words to their Orwellian liking. I call it lying, but let’s be generous and say their euphemisms abound. To make matters worse, they are now papering DEI over with terminology that lends itself to reasonable justification by the not quite bright.
One example in the Florida education system is The Leader in Me book, published by Franklin Covey, and used in Pinellas and other FL counties. While the initial stated lofty goals might sound like it is academically oriented, on page 13 is this line, “Greatness is not seen as affirming a high position or accomplishing a heroic feat, but as having strong character and unique talents which may or may not include the ability to read, write, or use a calculator.” That belies any pretense of actual education. Elsewhere in the program, the dedication to DEI is explicitly laid out, but you wouldn’t know that without thoroughly examining the materials.
In the case of the University of Central Florida, the school’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion was simply renamed the Office of Access and Community Engagement. UCF kept Andrea Guzman, Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, by changing her title to fit the new, rebranded office. At Florida State University, the most recent Fall 2024 “Professional Drag Show” event was renamed “Owl Manor” to circumvent the law.
The left would compare their subterfuge to the underground railroad of the pre-Civil War era helping slaves escape from oppression. I say it’s more like the Nazi trains carrying unsuspecting Jews and other disfavored people to “new and better” camps with freshly installed shower facilities.
Right or wrong, the psychs who run the DEI program of Marxist ideology will not give up easily. For that reason, it takes more than looking for a few key words to alert you to the DEI presence in educational, corporate or government material and practice. DEI swept into education with no opposition, including weaving its way into the school texts themselves. Corporations were shamed into opening their HR departments to the so-called ‘experts’ who proceeded to enforce DEI and anti-racism indoctrination as requirement for employment. The Biden administration went flat out ramming DEI and anti-racism into every federal agency, including the military. The military recruitment numbers immediately tanked and have only begun to recover after Trump issued a no-DEI executive order since taking back the White House.
So how do we eradicate the anti-American and divisive DEI and anti-racism that has worked its way into every corner of society? The starting point for each one of us is to stand up and call out DEI for being unworkable and destructive. Like most bad ideas, DEI can only persist when no one dares speak out against it. The time to speak is now.
At the local level it takes talking out loud and challenging those who refuse to end DEI programs in school or at work. When someone says diversity is our strength, you say no, it is competence and unity that are our strengths. When they tell you it isn’t fair that outcomes are different, you say people are different and forcing equal outcomes despite those differences in intelligence, competence and work ethic is what would be unfair. When they say being inclusive means having to favor one group over another, you say, no, that is bias and exclusion at its worst.
As for what to look for, the best way is to assess material by looking at it through the lens of what we should have as ideals. Is everyone treated fairly, is everyone given an equal opportunity, and is everyone expected to perform to the same standard to get any anticipated reward.
A key with educational material is to roll up your sleeves and look for slanted ideas and unnecessary indoctrination that has been injected. Don’t buy lofty generalities or the outright lies denying that DEI or CRT is being used. You must follow the wisdom of look don’t listen, and read for yourself. Truth is always the great leveler, which should be the goal of any educational information. If we are teaching people how to think, and not what to think, everybody wins. This was once the goal of education that made great civilizations great.
Looking at the entertainment industry, we see the abusive use of DEI. Trying to diversify World War II American soldiers who were largely white men into other races and women wouldn’t make any more sense than doing a story about a Congolese tribal war by including whites and Asians or depicting Henry the VIII or Thomas Jefferson as Asian women. Hollywood insists on going further. Instead of simply including a diversity of characters where appropriate, they make DEI the plot, with characters lecturing the audience with words or deeds to prove the DEI or CRT premises and shove them down the audience’s throat.
You can make the straight people all stupid and mean, and the gays all noble and fair but that doesn’t make it any more true than making all blacks violent and dumb and all whites decent and smart, or all men brutal and all women caring. One key to spotting DEI at work is the generalizing of any group as good or bad. Group bias runs heavy throughout DEI, CRT, anti-racism and other Marxist or totalitarian ideologies. Pitting one group against another is the totalitarian way to power.
A major flaw in DEI is viewpoint discrimination. For example, BLM, Black Lives Matter, is considered a valid and desirable viewpoint while ALM, All Lives Matter, is characterized as racist and wrong. When you find censorship and invalidation of viewpoints, you may have found DEI at work.
There is good reason why the simple yet powerful themes laid down in America’s founding documents, like the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, are popular with all people. The idea that individuals have natural rights and freedoms and that those apply to everyone with equal measure, have resonated many times around the world. The truth is undeniable.
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Once education included free will and the spiritual nature of man. An individual, taught how to think rationally, could make rational choices.
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Originally published as an article on World Net Daily:
The Tower of Psycho-babble in Education by Ed Thompson
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May your home know joy and every room ring with laughter.
For more poetry, short stories and novels by Jack Thompson, visit Crackerjack Bookstore.
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Once you compromise your integrity it becomes easy to be transformed by whatever environment the overlords manufacture, whether real or imagined.
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The Newsela educational program slides in on the innocence of youth and brings bias and indoctrination in through the back door.
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Science was once a world of rigorous research, a place where heated debate was normal, and where any idea had to stand on its merits. And now?
They are taught that hard work, competition, and excellence are tools of the oppressors to keep them down. They are taught to feel entitled.
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When the lack of intelligence makes the slow climb to the top of our institutions and our government it is time to sit up and take notice.
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What started 50 years ago with homophobia, now includes Islamophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, fatphobia and whorephobia. All require treatment.
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Words do matter. In a reasoning civilization, so do their definitions. Words are preferable to the pointing and grunting of the distant past.
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The scourge of modern mental health treatment is mind-altering drugs. Just a little pill, that’s all. What harm could that do? A lot, actually.
The visionary, the artist, the revolutionary. These are the civilization creators. Every generation has them and they all start out as children.
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Name one good reason why you would send potentially harmful electric voltage through a child’s brain. Bet you can’t. So leave them kids alone.
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US suicides are at an all time high. What you can be sure of is that the supposed authorities on the mind are wrong about the cause and the cure.
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The pen is mightier than the sword. We spend trillions on the finest swords money can buy. The pen is mightier than the sword? How can that be?
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I want the truth. You can’t handle the truth. So says the movie A Few Good Men. But how does one determine fact from fiction, truth from lies?
The woke left’s butchering of language would make Alice in Wonderland proud. Left is right, up is down and right is wrong. Don’t be fooled.
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It is tragically sinister to take advantage of the innocence and wonder of youth for such a corrupt purpose.
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With all the current craziness it’s easy to lose sight of the true focus of education. What is the method to the madness we call going to school?
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Why do some desperately seek a cure for childhood? I say, we don’t need no thought control. Leave them kids alone.
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Accent on disability. Why are the so-called educational experts obsessed with giving our children disability? Shouldn’t the accent be on Ability?
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What will happen if we inject all our children with an experimental mRNA, gene-manipulating shot? We just don’t know. (related links on my site)
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You need to ask yourself: Is this life-affirming, life-saving medical care or the mutilation and torture of our children? Well, which is it?
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Will our children drag the heavy chains of poisonous ideology into their future or dance in the open space of freedom? It’s up to you.
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Without grammar, communication is reduced to shouting out the names of things. Sound familiar? Is that where we are heading?
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Death by a thousand cuts. Why does critical race theory, anti-racism, drag queen story time and gender fluidity get a free pass into our schools?
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Neuromyths: Why is there still so much we don’t understand about the mind?
References for this episode can be found on my site: https://basiceducationseries.com/mythology-of-the-mind-references/
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Words are powerful. Used for good, words are uplifting and freeing. When used for evil, words are a black magic of destruction.
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Question: When everyone is equally dumb, does anyone really win? Answer: Winning is racist.
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Education can be a force for good or for evil. Why has education lost its way?
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How does a respected and accomplished doctor become an evil and dangerous quack? He disagrees with reigning government propaganda.
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There has been much hysteria in the news over a Florida education bill which opponents have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
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In journalism “burying the lede” means hiding the main or most important point among distracting details.
Here’s the transcript of this episode:
I’m Ed Thompson and I’m happy to be here talking to you on May 16, 2022.
This is the first of my Buried Lede podcasts which are intended to be a quick look at specific current events relating to education. It’s for those times when I just can’t let it go.
I read an article about parents in small town USA – actually it was Wentzville, Missouri, but it could have been any small city or town in America. The parents there were upset about the assignment content used in a high school government class. The question presented to students was as follows:
“Teresa has heard in the news about the fatal shootings of unarmed African American men by police officers but does not think it is necessarily due to racism. Teresa is MOST likely a:”
The choices were, “Democrat, black woman, Republican, Democrat-leaning woman.” According to the online exercise, the correct answer is Republican.
The parents contacted lawmakers and district officials believing the question was framed with a political agenda in mind. They also believe it’s divisive and not instructional.
Ya think? Talk about loaded. At the very least, it’s an obvious, ideological slant intended to paint Republicans as racists.
But here’s the insidious buried lede. The very question itself assumes as fact that police killing unarmed black men is a major problem and an epidemic in America.
Is that a valid assumption? The facts don’t support that at all. Statistics from our own government law enforcement agencies show quite the opposite. First, the actual number of incidents is very small, especially compared to the number of violent encounters police deal with each year. The police actually show incredible restraint when it comes to shooting anyone. And the true data shows that proportionally blacks are less likely to be shot by police than whites.
And that doesn’t even touch on the fact that 99 percent of black homicides are committed by other private citizens.
There IS a problem. Homicide is the number one cause of death for young black men. There is a horrible, unacceptable epidemic of shootings, but it is not being done by the police.
So, the idea that police are racist and out murdering unarmed black men is provably and decidedly false.
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This is the first in a series of podcasts on education that will complement the books in the Basic Education Series that I’m also creating.
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