Mr. Webb: 0:00

Do you ever wish we could go back to teaching with curriculum that has no political agenda? Do you feel that teachers should have a greater voice in shaping education? Could the secret to securing America's future lie in going back to its founding principles and values? Welcome to The Conservative Classroom, where we're teaching the truth and preserving our values. I'm your host, Mr. Webb, and I'm glad you're here.

Mr. Webb: 0:33

This podcast is a haven for conservative teachers and patriots like you, who believe in the importance of free speech, traditional values and education without indoctrination. Each week, we dive into the issues that are plaguing our education system and keeping you up at night. In each episode, we offer common sense ideas to improve education in our classrooms and communities. You may feel like you're the last conservative educator or parent, but I want you to know that you are not alone. By the way, if you like what you hear today, please share this podcast with a like-minded patriot. Together, we can teach the truth and preserve our values. In today's episode, we're chatting with Beanie Geoghegan from Freedom in Education, about reshaping our school curriculums and her mission to bring core values back into the classroom. Now let's get started. Today, I'm excited to welcome a special guest to the conservative classroom Beanie Geogheganoh. Beanie is manager of content and solutions and co-founder of Freedom in Education, and she's here to discuss the role of core values in shaping our education system. Beanie, thank you for joining us Absolutely.

Beanie Geoghegan: 2:02

Thank you so much for having me.

Mr. Webb: 2:05

It's good to I've kind of talked to you online and that sort of thing. It's good to, I guess, meet you in person, even though we're not really in person.

Beanie Geoghegan: 2:13

Right, so virtual introductions, exactly.

Mr. Webb: 2:17

So, to start, can you tell us a little about yourself, your background and what led you to Freedom in Education?

Beanie Geoghegan: 2:25

Sure. So I am a certified school teacher. I have my K-5 and K-12, well, k-5 Elementary Education and K-12 Special Education degree. I have taught in public schools and private schools. I have four children, so when the second child came along, I stayed home with my children to raise them and then went back into the classroom as a substitute teacher almost daily, volunteer PTA president, you know pretty much. My husband finally said you're there so often, just go ahead and work there. And so that's what I did.

Beanie Geoghegan: 3:00

And then, as my kids got older, you sort of start changing. You know what you're seeing and what's happening. And then, when we went virtual, I got a very clear picture of what was happening inside my children's classrooms. Of course, education has always been key in our household. We have always had a heavy focus on that, and the teacher has always been right. And then when we went virtual, things changed a little bit.

Beanie Geoghegan: 3:25

So, and when I was seeing what my children were learning and were not learning, when we were virtual for almost two years it was 18 months, I guess that's when I found an organization that was in the was exposing the problems in education, and so that was. I got involved with them and for about three years I was involved with that organization that primarily was in the. It was a grassroots organization just trying to expose and educate people about the problems happening in the classroom, and then, about February of last year, I kind of I guess I hit a wall. You could say that I got tired of walking into rooms and telling parents and community members about all of the problems. Talking to teachers, I would get private messages from teachers about all of the problems and of course they were always anonymous because they couldn't reveal what they were sharing.

Beanie Geoghegan: 4:20

And I said you know, there's got to be some solutions to this. And so I sort of pulled back and just started doing a deep dive into looking at the most pressing problems and finding solutions to those problems, and that brought about freedom and education where, while we will still continue to expose some of the issues, because we need to make sure that people are aware of the urgency for this we really want people to also know that there are a lot of solutions out there that already exist and that there are people who are working on solutions to that don't exist yet but that will be soon coming, and so we want to be a catalyst for that and just promote those types of solutions.

Mr. Webb: 5:00

So freedom and education. You expose issues and provide solutions. Is that what I'm hearing?

Beanie Geoghegan: 5:07

Yes, and a lot of the issues are already being exposed. There are some other really great organizations out there that we're collaborating with that are exposing. We're very thankful for Moms for Liberty and for some of the other grassroots organizations that are still very, very much in the business of exposing. That is necessary for people to truly understand why we need to be seeking solutions. But we really want to focus mostly on the solutions, because what we found is you can't really dive deep into the problems and the solutions. It's sort of you just don't have that bandwidth as a grassroots organization. You just simply don't. And so what we're really focusing on is thank you for exposing the problems. We're going to bring a solution to the table to match that problem.

Mr. Webb: 5:50

So, with your background in education and in founding freedom and education, what are some of the most pressing issues in Education right now?

Beanie Geoghegan: 6:08

So if that's not easy to say, but we had to narrow it down, we basically have three initiatives that are our main focus. So we have broken down into enhancing education, educational freedom and equipping parents, and so under enhancing education, that's where we talk about restoring quality curriculum, improving standards. One of the big problems I hear from teachers is that they're expected to teach certain things but they aren't really given a solid curriculum to teach. And you know they're running themselves on teacher pay, teacher at 11 o'clock at night before the lesson is supposed to be taught, and that's just not. You shouldn't expect teachers to do everything that they're doing and write the lessons or come up with the lessons and that kind of thing. And we need some solid curriculum across the board. And it's out there and that's a big business. So we are working to vet quality curriculum because just because it's curriculum and just because it's promoted by an educational publisher, that doesn't make it quality. And so what I've been doing that's what makes me the manager of content and solutions is I've just been really scouring the content of these different curriculums that are offered and saying, you know, this one we kind of do the good better best. So there is no perfect curriculum out there. It's not going to please everybody, but there is good, better, best, and we should only be offering students the best, and so that's what we'll have on our website is a curriculum portal where we will have listed the best that we have found and hopefully that's a continuing, continuously growing portal that we can add things to, but teachers and parents, homeschool leaders or whatever can go there and find curriculum that they can trust, that has been vetted through us and so, working on that, improving standards one of the key areas that we think will absolutely change the landscape of this next generation is restoring authentic civics curriculum in two schools across the country, and we have partnered with the Civics Alliance that has written a beautiful set of standards, the American Birthright Standards. If you're not familiar with them, I highly recommend you read them. They are soul-nourishing standards. They are wonderful to read. Lots of primary source documents, lots of content. Where many of the standards in states today focus really heavily on skills, these standards focus on the content. They don't tell teachers how to teach it, they just say this is the content that students need to know as they move through K through 12. So we are partnering with them and they have done the heavy lifting of writing those standards and we want to be the catalyst to promote them and to get them adopted in states across the country. If not those particular standards, then standards that are really based on what they have already written, because they really are brilliant. So we're working with them on that.

Beanie Geoghegan: 8:56

Obviously, you have to be aware everybody has to be aware of the book wars that are out there and the horrible books, and my partner here in Kentucky she has been working over the last couple of years and really exposing the yucky books, and I'm grateful for her and for her perseverance in that. That is an area that I didn't really want to get involved with because I know there's thousands of wonderful books out there, and so I thought you know what we need to be promoting those beautiful books, those books that really promote virtue and underscore the values and principles of our country, the books that will nourish our children's hearts and minds, and those are the books we need to be promoting. And so that's what right now, actually the month through the month of October we started it the week before what is being called the Band Book Week, band Book Week, but we're going through the month of October and we have the Good Book Challenge, where we're encouraging parents and community members to look at our lists that we've created. We've posted them on our website. Purchase those books and take them into your class, your you know child's classroom or your library. If there are teachers or librarians who are already highlighting and encouraging those books, send us your pictures with Surround it. We want to promote that, we want to celebrate that. We'll make you famous on our social media and our website.

Beanie Geoghegan: 10:14

We really want to celebrate the teachers and librarians out there that are doing the good stuff and we want to help them to do that by bringing those books in, because what I have noticed I know because I've been the recipient of the books that have been removed from libraries media centers is what they're called now and a lot of them are the classics, a lot of them are the ones that are on these lists and those need to be brought back in in great volumes and they need to be, you know, put in front of these kids so that they can see that there's really good quality stuff out there to read. That's what I use in my school If anyone ever gives me, you know, some of them with these more contemporary young adult graphic novels and stuff. I will take those to the half price bookstore and we'll purchase the children's illustrated classics for my kids because that's what they love to read. I have one little girl finish little women today, and this is a very urban inner city low income school and this is what they love, and so that's what we really need to be encouraging and celebrating. Again. We have to expose, we have to eradicate the sexually explicit and pornographic stuff that's in the classroom, but we've got to shine a light on the good stuff and on the good books.

Beanie Geoghegan: 11:20

I heard a quote yesterday I think it was yesterday that he said he was a classical educator, sort of accidentally. But he said you can't expect people to read the great books if they're not reading the good books, and so that's sort of the segue into that. That you know, once they get into the upper high school, post secondary education level, then they should be reading play dough and things like that. But first let's start with you know, old yellow, let's just, you know, or the Hobbit, or you know let's. Let's get those things in there as well. So so that's under enhancing education. That's a really big bucket and there's a lot more on their website is chock full of all of our things that we'll do there. But and then for educational freedom, we just believe that every family, regardless of income or address, should be able to choose the best learning environment for their child, and the reality is that most will still choose public school, which is great, and that's why we think it's important to restore authentic quality education there. But we also know that there's a lot of other options. You know private school, prokio school, micro schools, home schools.

Beanie Geoghegan: 12:26

People have gotten very creative over the last three years, and so we want to support good legislation for school choice and we want to make sure that parents who want to pull their kids out of public school know that, what the options are. And we want to help teachers who are maybe ready to leave the public school, you know, get something else started, because I've talked to a lot of teachers who love teaching. I mean, I know I'm like I don't think I'll ever stop teaching. I just love to teach in some form or fashion, and so we want to make sure that we're giving them sort of a blueprint on how to do that and not just saying, yeah, just leave the public school. No, here's, here's a blueprint for it and actually here's some people who have done it and done it successfully. You could talk to them and connect with them and find out how that works and then equipping parents.

Beanie Geoghegan: 13:10

We just want to raise the IQ for parents who want to go in and talk to teachers or administrators or school board members, whatever it is. I think some of them feel a little uncertain about their knowledge, especially when you start using, you know, educational terms that are used in, in in that industry or whatever, and we want to just let them know that. You know you don't have to be a genius to talk about this stuff. This is your kid. You know what your kid needs, you know what your kid deserves and you should be able to advocate for your child and not get not feel inferior in any way because you don't speak the lingo. And so we're going to be equipping parents to go in and advocate for their child because really, truly, they are the best advocates for their children.

Mr. Webb: 13:58

Yeah, and I love what you said about kind of parents feeling left out because of the lingo. Teachers are, and I'm speaking as a teacher. Teachers are one of the worst groups about like using their own language and acronyms and I have meetings before meetings and PDs and people start using acronyms. And you know I'm a teacher for a living and I'm looking around like am I the only one that doesn't know what this means?

Beanie Geoghegan: 14:30

You know and I'm a teacher, I can't imagine what it's like for parents.

Beanie Geoghegan: 14:34

Yeah, and in special education it's even worse. It's they're all three letter, three letter acronyms, and I thought I'll never get all these three letter acronyms Right. I mean you just, and in fact even when I started we started talking about because one of our goals is to offer really useful and practical PDs. As for teachers, that would count toward their credit. And when I said something about that, somebody said what's a PD? I'm like, I'm sorry, I, you know. I assume that everybody knows what that is, but they don't. And that's where we just don't want parents to feel like they can't go and advocate for their child. And that doesn't mean going and yelling down with school board members, it doesn't mean, you know, harassing teachers, that kind of thing. It just means you know, look, I know that this is what my child needs right now and he or she is not getting it for whatever reason. What can we do? How can we work together to make that happen?

Mr. Webb: 15:27

I want to go back to something you mentioned a minute ago and see what your take is on this. Why do you think we have got away from reading the classics? They're classics for a reason. Why did we get away from that?

Beanie Geoghegan: 15:42

Well, I think there's a couple of reasons. One is that, you know, we have a literacy crisis in our country right now, and those classics are a bit more challenging to read. They require background knowledge that many children don't come to school with, and that is one of the things that we're pushing is a very knowledge rich curriculum that is in there that will close that gap. And so, for instance, not to be too far off the path that I was reading, doing history with my students and again these are sort of inner city kids, low income we were talking about the discovery of silk in China and then, as a follow up quiz, the question was what kind of fabric was discovered in China? And my student who could have a discussion with me about that did not know the answer to that and I said what thing about it? I mean, what kind of fabric did we talk about? He didn't know the word fabric. He was 13 years old, didn't know the word fabric. But what you have to understand is that when we sit around the dinner table and we talk to our kids, or we're going through the grocery store and we're talking to you know our kids about different things, that's not necessarily happening in every home, and so that's where schools need to close that gap to be able to. Because again we're going back to classics, where we're talking about things that maybe aren't very common in in everyday language but but should still sort of be taught to kids. So I was reading the Gingerbread man and the story of Jemima Puttleduck with my student today and there were things in there that you know. They talked about Jemima going into the wood. Well, it's going into the forest, right, but but we, we don't say that anymore, we don't say into the woods. So I think part of it is just the inability for them to read those books and really understand and comprehend them, and that's where we need to close knowledge gaps. So if we can have knowledge rich curriculum, that will sort of bring everybody up to speed. The more you know, the more you can learn about what you know. So you'll be able to read those classics a little bit. I'm not saying they're still going to be easy, they're not but they are beautiful and, and my, my kids, they're also reading the classic. We need to poo stuff and a lot of that stuff is very unfamiliar to them, but that's how we bring that knowledge gap up. You know, we, we talk about the things that are unfamiliar to them. So there's that. So there's, there's just that, that lack of core knowledge that was maybe once there and would make the classics easier to understand.

Beanie Geoghegan: 18:13

There's also this movement in the ELA department of schools, and I know this because my children have had some very passionate English teachers who were much more passionate about being activists, social activists, than they were about actually teaching anything about English, and I mean, I have firsthand experience on many, many years with that and that's very unfortunate. Now I will also say that my daughter right now has an English teacher. They're reading Beowulf and it's wonderful and there's, you know so. So there's, there's good stuff out there too. But there is this if you look at the, the objective behind teaching English, it's not necessarily to to latest foundation of classical literature, so much as to train activists and into social justice. We only have that, the culturally relevant English or you know literature that they have to have there. So if, if the characters in the book don't look like them or live like them, then how in the world will children engage with them, which is just a farce.

Beanie Geoghegan: 19:29

I have one of my students down there. I was just telling you about it today, that he we started reading the Hobbit last year, the Hobbit which none of us can really relate to a Hobbit right, well, I can kind of, but none of us really can relate to a Hobbit. But this, this child, definitely cannot relate to a Hobbit. There's nothing in this book that is relevant to his life in any way, shape or form, and it's his favorite book and he's sad because we never finished it and so his reward for doing something that he needs to do anyhow is 15 to 20 minutes of day, one on one with an adult, reading the Hobbit. So that is not a culturally relevant book for him. It is not a contemporary book for him. The language is hard, the words are hard, and yet he loves it.

Beanie Geoghegan: 20:09

One of my kids all time favorite books, one of my students all time favorite books here at the school, is the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Again, definitely not culturally relevant to them, different time period, different country, different, different everything, and yet they will tell you that that is probably by far their favorite book that they've read with me in the three years that I've been volunteering there. So the idea that if a student can't relate to the characters, then they can't get anything out of the book is is a lie, it's a false narrative, but it is what has driven so much of the selections that have come down the line, and it's very unfortunate because they're being robbed of just absolutely beautiful stories that you know. Some of them challenge their thoughts and their ideas and their opinions, and that's okay. Some of them sort of, you know, just build them up and build up that virtue in them that schools really should be forming and shaping. I don't know if I answered your question. No, that's great.

Mr. Webb: 21:22

It's making me think of so many things that I want to talk about, so I might have to scale that back a little bit. Have you read, and if you haven't, I highly recommend it. Daniel Bucks. What is Wrong with Our Schools?

Beanie Geoghegan: 21:36

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Mr. Webb: 21:37

He talks about you had mentioned, like teachers being activists, and he talks about how some teachers are activists and, instead of teaching the things students will need in life, they're just trying to teach the next generation of activists.

Beanie Geoghegan: 21:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's. I'm also currently reading and I'm hoping to do my own podcast at some point on the seven myths about education which is I graduated from college. I graduated from college in 1997. And so this book basically debunks everything that I was taught in college about education. And it's fantastic and I think that you know I laugh.

Beanie Geoghegan: 22:19

I was around a bunch of educational forum people last week and I told them I said I've basically been a student of yours for the last three years because I've learned a lot from Daniel Buck, I've learned a lot from some of these other folks out there that I thought things were a certain way and they weren't. And I mean, I have to tell you, when I graduated I was a very progressive teacher. I, you know, I dove in head first and bought all of the myths, hook line and sinker, and and then you go out and you actually get into a classroom and you see what is effective and what isn't effective. And at some point you have to sort of put on the brakes and say, because I was educated in a very traditional manner, not classically educated, but traditionally educated and and so I know what works and what doesn't, and I think that it's.

Beanie Geoghegan: 23:06

It's a fool's game to think that some of these hokey trends would actually catch on. But you know Ian Rowe is another one that if you have not read his book agency, he talks a lot about equipping students with agency rather than training activists. And and he's very big on virtue. He runs the Vertex Academy, is in the Bronx and you know these are inner city kids who come from rough situations but but because of the discipline and the culture of the school they're going to go on to do great things. They'll probably be teaching in the next classical schools, you know, as they grow up and graduate. I hope they will anyhow.

Mr. Webb: 23:45

Right. Well, I didn't mean to veer us off the path. Yes, exactly you guys are doing their freedom in education. But this kind of ties in with what we were just talking about. How does freedom and education address the challenge of I think it might be worded on your website something like or I saw this somewhere political ideologies or in social justice agendas. So how does freedom and education address political ideologies and social justice, social justice agendas that are creeping into curriculum?

Beanie Geoghegan: 24:28

So that's where we we set out to find curriculum that has no agenda. So we look when we look at the curriculum. We look at it and say is this being, is this being delivered? Is through a particular worldview, or is this just there to present information? Core knowledge is one that we do endorse and we do promote. It is. It's not right, it's not left, it's centrist, it's it's knowledge.

Beanie Geoghegan: 24:54

Now, you can't do anything about the person in the room who's leading the class. If he or she chooses to be an agent of change and training activists, then you know when, when he or she closes the door, then I suppose you know you really can't do anything about that until we change the licensure, which is also part of our plan. So, but what we want to find is curriculum that really can't be twisted about and in the so the American birthright standards does have curriculum to go along with that. There's the core knowledge, does go along with it. Hillsdale, which I know is going to rub some people the wrong way, but their civics curriculum does go along with that as well. It's social studies in civics, but so there is curriculum that goes along with it. But we are. There's also a group of teachers who are working to write lesson plans and curriculum framework to go really and truly alongside the American birthright standards, and those would be free lesson plans that the teachers could get and follow. So so you have to just search and find that you know. I know that I was looking at the LA curriculum. That was a really hard one to find any that we could promote or endorse. Core knowledge is is good, but I was looking at one that was being promoted by the initiative and they list Paula Freer as an honorary board member and 100% support his philosophy, and I'm thinking, wow, this is you can meet when this comes into the classroom.

Beanie Geoghegan: 26:21

It's coming into the classroom with an agenda and it's not necessarily just to teach kids about quality literature, and so I know that Daniel book one of the things he talks about too is removing textbooks is like get textbooks at, bring books back and let's, let's be reading books in English class, let's, let's not focus so much on the textbooks or the supplemental materials. Same with history, civics, geography, so let's read primary source documents, let's look at maps and atlases. I always, whenever I'm teaching history, have my kids open their atlas to wherever it is that we're talking about, and I want them to know where in the world it is we're talking about in relation to where they are in the world and they came to me most of them didn't even know. You know countries and continents and things like that. So so you really have to dive deep into the curriculum. You have to dive deep into the purpose of it and is there an agenda behind it? Because sometimes that's masked. It looks really good on the surface.

Beanie Geoghegan: 27:23

I know that my district adopted EL education and everybody's very excited about it because there's phonics and there's knowledge-rich curriculum and that kind of thing. You get to a certain point in that where there is actually a certain worldview that's presented. You're in a public school where you're going to have a diverse population of kids that come from families with a variety of values. I think that it's not fair. It's not right to present one side and not the other or anything like that. So let's just present the curriculum Really. The best way that you can do that is through good quality books. So that's for that.

Beanie Geoghegan: 28:09

Then science is a whole nother ball game, because the science curriculum has been hijacked again by the skills base rather than the content. So we are working on that. That's a long-term goal for us to do a set of standards like the American Birthright Standards to do that with science. But that's still in the early stages of that. Because I adopt those standards then the curriculum will follow hopefully.

Beanie Geoghegan: 28:37

If it's more content-based and not so much skill-based, then hopefully you can weed out some of that. But again you have to also change the teacher licensure path because if teachers are going through four years of that indoctrination in the university where very little of their classwork is on the content they'll be teaching and a lot on the psychology of teaching, then you've got a whole nother issue coming out of, and I know that again from first-year experience. So we want to make sure that teachers can get a four-year degree in biology or history or English, which are all much harder degrees than education. I hate to say that but I know because I got an education degree and all of those degrees are much harder to get than education degrees. If they get those and then get their masters in teaching, whatever, then they would be less indoctrinated and better equipped to go and effectively teach the content that they need to teach to their students.

Mr. Webb: 29:39

I like how you said a minute ago that one of your goals in that is to find curriculum that has no agenda. So I just want to point out you are not saying we're going to get rid of this leftist agenda by pushing this conservative agenda, but you're looking for curriculum that has no agenda. I see that over and over with conservatives and I haven't asked you if you're a conservative or not, but, speaking as a conservative teacher and in my conversation with other conservative teachers, all the conservative teachers I know feel like we should keep politics and our views on things out of the classroom. Then you've got the left that is actively trying to push agendas in the classroom. So you're saying that you're trying to find curriculum that has no agenda that solidified my theory of it.

Beanie Geoghegan: 30:42

Education should be teaching children how to think, not what to think. If you're teaching your students what to think, then you're not being a good teacher. There's just no way around that. My students will often ask me I've been there three years. We've been there through a lot of different issues here, locally in our city. My students will ask what do I think about this or what do I think about that? I will tell them it doesn't matter what I think about it. Here's the information you formulate what you think about it. It doesn't matter what I think about it. Then get mad. Come on, is beanie, just tell us what it's. It doesn't matter what I think about this. What you need to know what you think about it. I tell them. I said if you think differently than I do about it, that's fine, but you need to be prepared to tell why you think that. I've always said that with my own children too. I said if you grow up and have completely different views than me, that's fine, but you need to be able to tell me why you believe that and be able to defend that.

Beanie Geoghegan: 31:41

One of the things that we want to bring back into high schools, and if there's any high school teachers out there who are interested that are interested in this. We have great logic curriculum. It's traditional logic. It would be a year-long elective. Electives are fairly easy to bring into schools, and teaching these kids to listen to and read information and discern fact from fiction and then to be able to articulate their thoughts and opinions in a way that is calm and respectful and effective. That's what this traditional logic curriculum will do. Martin Cawthorne wrote it and he's here in Louisville, kentucky, and it's offered through Memorial Press. It's very easy to teach. When I was talking to him about it and he said this isn't something that's going to require 10 hours of professional development to teach it. The teachers can basically watch my video and go through the books before they do it. I would encourage them to look through it over the summer and then maybe a couple of weeks ahead of each lesson, just review what they did and they can teach it.

Beanie Geoghegan: 32:45

But we've got to get these kids thinking logically again. Really, if you think about it, logic and college, but you apply logic to every aspect of your life, not just school, not just work, but home, life, marriage, family, just all these decisions. You're applying this traditional logic where you're thinking about what makes sense and what sounds true and is that a fallacy? And you start pointing these things out. We're looking for high school teachers across the country who are interested in bringing this logic into their classrooms as an elective next year. I know my high school that's very near me that my kids graduated from and my husband I graduated from. They had a law class. That's an elective. And then I know my kids also took AP psychology. I'm thinking, oh man, students would benefit so much more from a traditional logic course than they would AP psychology or law, as much as my kids enjoy their AP psychology class. But you'll apply logic much more than any part of the school.

Mr. Webb: 33:47

I wonder if logical fallacies is part of that curriculum.

Beanie Geoghegan: 33:53

Yes, it absolutely is. It takes you through all of them. It's a very Probably, when you're done teaching the class or taking the classes, every conversation you have, then you'll be breaking it down. Wait a minute, what fallacy did I just say?

Mr. Webb: 34:12

Exactly. I feel like it's one of those things when you learn, you start seeing it everywhere.

Beanie Geoghegan: 34:17

Yes.

Mr. Webb: 34:18

And I catch myself doing things and I can't maybe remember exactly what the name of this logical fallacy is, but I know what it is and I catch myself doing it and, speaking with other people, I'm like oh well, that's such and such. I was wondering because I think you're right. I think that's much more of a life skill that they could use than some of the other things that they learn.

Beanie Geoghegan: 34:47

Yes, One of my students was reading. There's a really great book out there for intermediate grades, maybe middle school. It's called the Fallacy Detective and it's got this dog on the front with his little magnifying glass and it basically takes you through the different fallacies, and one of my students was reading that he's a 10th grader, I think now, and he would come out from reading it and just Miss Beanie, look at this, I've seen them. And so he was doing that. He was able to spot the fallacies when people were. I mean, all you have to do is go on Twitter and you have a field day with it, right? It's just great.

Mr. Webb: 35:23

It's funny that you mentioned that, because I have gotten trouble on Not really gotten trouble, but I've got some folks heated up because their argument was just horrible. It was like so full of hose, it was like a piece of Swiss cheese, right, and one particular time, and it was exactly what I told you a minute ago. I remember the logical fallacy. I couldn't think of the name of it. So I'm like, oh, I can't think of it. So I went and looked it up and then I came back. I'm like, well, it seems like maybe you're guilty of the such and such fallacy.

Mr. Webb: 36:00

And they didn't like that very much. And I wasn't trying to be, you know, a smart alec, but I was just. I was coming at them with facts and they were coming at me with just whatever emotional thing they decided to spew out of their mouth.

Beanie Geoghegan: 36:19

Yeah, and Thomas Sowell has a lot to say about that. But that is one thing that our schools have started to do is, rather than teaching our students to use logic and reason and facts to make decisions, they're teaching them to make decisions based on their emotions and feelings, and it's a very dangerous way to go through life and really an sort of ineffective way to go through life. And so, you know, just the more we can bring in facts, content, logic, reasoning, again, teaching students how to think, not what to think, then they will actually be better equipped not to be 21st century workers, because I'm not about, you know, our factories turning out workers, but I want students who can graduate to lead fulfilling lives that are purposeful and meaningful and that they're content, you know, in that.

Mr. Webb: 37:12

So Is that part of the cultivating virtue that seems to be so central to freedom of education?

Beanie Geoghegan: 37:20

Yes or freedom in education.

Mr. Webb: 37:22

I'm sorry, I said that wrong.

Beanie Geoghegan: 37:25

Yeah, yes, we very much believe that. Well, one of the areas that was of great concern to us was the social emotional learning curriculum, the programs that are out there. It was originally brought in probably when I started teaching as character education or values education. It has sort of morphed into the social emotional learning thing. But then, but what? We came to the conclusion that we really don't have the shared set of values in America that we once had to be able to go into a public school with this diverse population and teach quote unquote values. And so what we decided was what we really actually need to be promoting is virtues cultivation, things like honesty, courage, prudence, temperance. Those are things that are timeless, they're universal, and what parent is going to be upset when you're teaching your child about honesty and courage? And you know that I guess there's maybe a few out there. But some of the topics that are taught in social emotional learning, which was sold as values education, are things that would really be concerning to some families. And you know there's this big.

Beanie Geoghegan: 38:33

There was a big movement about tolerance. I remember when that came on the scene. Tolerance is not a virtue, it's a. It's a lovely word and when people say it. You sort of shirk in, you know, speaking out against that, but it's like it's. Tolerance is not a virtue, and, and there's, there are other virtues that would motivate students to be kind to other students that are different than them, but that's not necessarily the word for that.

Beanie Geoghegan: 39:01

So so we have found a couple of virtues programs out there that we're promoting and what we long term goal. We see creating our own virtues cultivation program, because we sort of have this notion, that of what it should look like and how it should be delivered in a school, in a way that is unifying rather than very divisive, which a lot of the social, emotional learning stuff is is very divisive, and it's also become sort of a pseudo psychology type thing. They're asking teachers now to be, you know, group therapists in the classroom. In addition to everything else you have to do as a teacher, you also now have to be a mental health practitioner inside the classroom, and one, it's too much for teachers and two, it's dangerous. That's, you're kind of getting into an area that shouldn't be. You don't ever want anybody making you know medical diagnoses or or even assuming anything like that without the proper training.

Mr. Webb: 39:58

So so your organization stresses the importance of content transparency. How do schools and educational institutions maintain that transparency, and what exactly would that look like?

Beanie Geoghegan: 40:17

Well, when I was a teacher, I had to write my lesson plans, and when I was full-time classroom teacher had to write my lesson plans and have them on my principal's desk every Friday before I left for the week, for the weekend. Now it's online, so I don't really see any problem with hosting those lesson plans on a teacher website or you know something, a school website. My lesson plans had to include. I had some pretty strict principles, which I loved. My lesson plans had to include the books I was reading, the videos I was showing. We didn't use apps at the time, but it would have like any computer games or anything like that that I was incorporating into my lessons. I had to include all of that stuff. And so when I say that and I automatically get teachers come back at me and say, oh, that would be so much work for me, but you're writing the lesson plans anyhow and you know what books you're using, you know what apps you're using. I mean you know what computer programs you're using. You just you just jot it down in your in your notes. I mean it's you know, and for me I would never get all my lessons done in the week. I would have this beautiful lesson plans written out and, you know, would never finish. You know half of what I had planned to do, so you just reboot it for the next week and like, okay, we didn't get to that, we're gonna redo it again next week and and that's okay. So that's what I envision it.

Beanie Geoghegan: 41:45

Now, I don't know that any parents are gonna get on the website and look at the lesson plans, but they should be able to At the very least. When parents ask to know what is being taught, they should be given access to what is being taught. When we asked to see what the training looks like for EL education and the lesson plans for EL education, we were told that we could not see them because of copyright issues. So you're going to teach something to our children that we're not allowed to see beforehand. Same thing with the surveys. We're not allowed to see the surveys because copyright issues. Well, you're asking children questions, very personal questions, for things that we're not allowed to see.

Mr. Webb: 42:34

You know there's it doesn't make sense. It's just a big red flag, isn't it?

Beanie Geoghegan: 42:39

It absolutely is, and I think that they could alleviate a little bit of that tension between schools and parents if they would stop that, because if you tell me I can't see something, I immediately, like you said, immediately, red flags go up like whoa, what, why? Why can't I see anything? I mean, I as a mom, I was at my kids school, like I said, probably three or four days out of the week I was in. I wasn't even in their classrooms. Most of the time I was usually in other people's classrooms helping with other students that needed more help, and there was nothing I couldn't see. There was no lesson I could walk in on, and you know that somebody was going to close their door and say, oh, you can't come in right now. There was, there was nothing like that when I was a teacher. Never my door was open. I regularly had parent volunteers come in there. There was no.

Beanie Geoghegan: 43:28

Why has that changed all of the sudden? Why are there things that can be taught in the classrooms now that they are hesitant to share with parents? That, yeah, red flag all over, and so that just needs to change. And and we are just again promoting curriculum, most of the curriculum that we have on our curriculum portal or will have on our curriculum portal you can get free lessons of, our free samples of and you can actually download it for free and you know and see it. So it's not even a matter of copyright. It's like here we'll show you what a lesson looks like, we'll show you what the content is, and there's nothing that we're afraid to show you. And you know well, some parents still be bothered by the content maybe, but that's a conversation that you get to have with parents and that's that's just what happens when you're you're dealing with the children of other people's. You know other people's children, you have to answer to them. Sometimes it's frustrating, I know I've been there. So not just frustrating, but but you owe that to them, I think.

Mr. Webb: 44:36

Right, and there's a push in some quite frankly liberal areas to not just not give parents information when they ask for it, but to actively hide things from parents. If that's not a red flag, I don't know what it is. I wanted to make sure and ask you about something before we wrap things up here in a few minutes, and it's something I saw on your website and that's the teacher coalition. That sounds supportive.

Beanie Geoghegan: 45:12

Yes.

Mr. Webb: 45:13

So can you tell us about the teacher initiative or teacher coalition?

Beanie Geoghegan: 45:17

Absolutely. We're very excited about that, and so kind of the way I think about it is you would never think about improving healthcare without consulting doctors, right? So how in the world can you improve education without involving teachers in this? Teachers have got to be part of solutions and in my interactions with my friends who are still public school teachers, they're very frustrated because they see the problems firsthand. They want to be a part of the solution, but they don't know how. They know that they can't just, you know, stand up in a staff meeting and, you know, air their grievances. That's not gonna work, will make them very popular in the building. So instead, what we want to be able to do is sort of walk alongside them and say, here's a solution that you can walk into your administrator or that you can present to your colleagues and say, hey, how about if we, you know, look into adopting this curriculum? Or how about if we check out this behavior system here? Or hey, I'd really like to teach logic when anybody else be interested in in doing something like that. And so, rather than and this is what we want to be that way with parents as well let's not go in and be abrasive every time we want to make changes, let's go in and say here's a problem and here's a solution that I'm bringing to the table rather than just sort of shouting out the problems. But but yeah, we know that there are teachers who are very frustrated with a lot of the things that are going on.

Beanie Geoghegan: 46:42

One of our big things is moving teachers out of the unions. That if they're ready to go but they don't really know how to go, we're gonna offer some. In fact, we've got a virtual conference coming up for teachers here very soon that will sort of instruct them. Here's some other options. If you're worried about liability, here's some options for you. If you don't really know how to get out of your union, we'll sort of walk you through that. We also want teachers to know what the benefits of school choice are for them, because I think a lot of times when they hear school choice they think, oh, you're just trying to destroy public schools and it's like, well, actually we're not, because that would be very dangerous to do. But but what? The freedom in education provides families with that freedom. But it also provides teachers with freedom, and so we want to make sure that we're really clear on how school choice would actually help teachers in the in the long run as well.

Beanie Geoghegan: 47:35

But we want them to come help us, like help us revise standards we have here in Kentucky they're getting ready to revise the physical education and the health education standards. Those are so, so important. Comprehensive sex ed will be wrapped into health education. If there are not people they're paying attention to that, so we need teachers to step up and do that. Conservative teachers who don't believe that it's the role of the government to teach children about really intimate details, about sexuality and then. So we need teachers do that.

Beanie Geoghegan: 48:08

We want teachers to come on board and help us write lesson plans to go along with these American birthright standards. And, when the time comes, the science fact. I already have a couple of teachers, science teachers who are helping to explore the science standards, and so I think, kind of giving them some ownership into this, that that you know, yeah, you're, you're there in the trenches, but guess what? You can actually make a huge difference there and and we want to support you in that and you don't have to be the person who's, you know, going in saying let's burn it all down but let's build it up. Let's build it up and build something really good with it, and and so there's also going to be a teacher tip line that can be anonymous. If teachers want it to be anonymous, they can. You know. If there's an issue that's happening, they can phone in and leave a voicemail and either leave their name or not leave their name, and and we'll, you know, tackle that as much as we can. We do have connections with some legal representation. If anything like that does happen, we can do that.

Beanie Geoghegan: 49:04

And then there's also we was sort of run create this community where teachers can sort of be a sounding board for each other, because we don't necessarily want it to just be a gripe fest.

Beanie Geoghegan: 49:12

We want it to be a place where teachers can share the problems and then say, okay, how do we move forward with the solution? Does anybody have a solution for this? And notice on the, the Facebook page just earlier today, somebody was saying, okay, what's the alternative to PTAs? It's like, okay, well, it's PTO. You know, you just switched, and so that's what we want it to be. Is that a teacher says you know, I got this, was presented to me, that I'm supposed to teach, and another teacher comes in and says yeah, that was presented to me too, and I said I'm not gonna do that, but I'll do this. And as we really wanted to be a place where they can come together and share solutions and that we can be a resource for them as well and and maybe a voice for them if they are feeling silenced which I know many of the teachers in my district feel very silenced and very ignored, we want to be able to to be a voice for them.

Mr. Webb: 49:57

Well, I have. I've learned a lot today and I definitely want to dig deeper into freedom and education. It sounds like you have a lot of interesting things going on. Yes, the tip line before this leaves my feeble brain. What types of things might a teacher call in on the tip line?

Beanie Geoghegan: 50:20

Oh, they may call in something like behavior out of control, and you know like this is happening repeatedly in my school. I had a teacher call me last year I think it was the beginning of last year where she was a first grade teacher. A student pulled another student's pants down and licked the student's rear end and nothing was happened. The student was returned to the classroom and you know, and I was like, oh, I don't even know what to do with that, and so it just. But it was, this student was a repeated behavior problem and just sort of going through the process of what to do about, about students like this that it's a first grade, it's a child, it's a young child, and so dealing with it from that perspective too, how do we get this child the help that he needs? But also there's 24 other students in the room and a teacher you know who's dealing with this kind of thing. So things like that.

Beanie Geoghegan: 51:14

But also things like my administrator is coming to me saying XYZ, this is not okay, but I don't know how to speak out against this or my district is telling us that we have to do this, that or the other, and I think that that violates my, my freedom of speech rights, and I don't want to do that. They can't compel me to say that. And then we would sort of proceed for them ahead, which which I have I've gone to. We have some civil liberty lawyers that we talked to and I've I've gone to the lawyers and talked to them about it, and sometimes they'll say, yeah, it sounds like a violation, and if they're wanting to bring a lawsuit, they could understand what that means when you bring a lawsuit. And then other times they'll say it's wrong, but it's not really a violation of their rights.

Beanie Geoghegan: 51:55

And so I think, sometimes just teachers, knowing that they have someone they can come to and ask those questions of are my rights being violated or is my administration just being, you know, unjust or cruel or or whatever, and and those kinds of things too. So, and and you know, if the teachers ever want to share curriculum that they're being asked to teach that goes against their beliefs or values or or just what they know to be right and wrong, they can share those things with us as well, and then we can sort of amplify them and and bring attention to it, without disclosing who or where necessarily it was, you know, being presented kind of like a very minor lives of TikTok, how she she really gets those stories out there but she doesn't ever really disclose who presented that information to her. She just gets the information out and people can do with it whatever they want.

Mr. Webb: 52:48

My thoughts are going in so many directions.

Beanie Geoghegan: 52:49

There's so many things I want to talk about, so.

Mr. Webb: 52:52

I definitely want to have you back on. I could make a list right now. That's probably what I should do after the interviews make a list of things that we could talk about in the future, but as far as this episode goes, I usually end each episode with a key way. So what's the one thing you want the listener to remember, if they don't remember anything else about this episode?

Beanie Geoghegan: 53:15

Well, I want them to remember our website, freedomandedorg, and I also want them to remember and keep in mind and be encouraged by the fact that, for all of the problems that you see presented to you on social media and even in your day to day life, there are so many solutions out there. There are so many people and organizations working on solutions, creating solutions and promoting those solutions. And just don't be discouraged. I know sometimes it can seem really dark Trust me, we've been there but there just are so many beautiful solutions being created every single day and it's really neat to think that sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you start working your way back up to get that. So just don't be discouraged. Whether you're a teacher, administrator, parent or even student there are some students who are frustrated. To don't be discouraged that there are solutions out there. We just need to promote them. We need to get them out in front of the people who can adopt them and put them in place.

Beanie Geoghegan: 54:14

And also want to give a little plug for our Good Book Challenge, which is our campaign for this month. We started it at the end of September, but it'll run through October and we did that on purpose, because the first week in October has been labeled Band Book Week, which we know is not a real thing in America. So what we want to do is give parents and community members an opportunity to purchase the Good Books that we have listed on our website and we have more lists on our website as well. Get those into classrooms and libraries and then let's take pictures of the teachers and the librarians who are promoting these books and encouraging their students to read these books. Let's get their picture out there, let's make them famous for doing the good stuff and let's get these books back into the spotlight again, shine a light on the good, the true and the beautiful. That's what we want to do and form and shape these students so that they can flourish as human beings.

Mr. Webb: 55:14

And for the Good Book Challenge they should go to the Freedom and Ed website.

Beanie Geoghegan: 55:19

They can go to the Freedom and Ed website and under solutions there is actually a link to Good Books and it will take you down to a Good Book Challenge form to actually fill it out. You sort of tell us how you're going to participate in the Good Book Challenge and it gives you an opportunity to communicate with us in that way so that we can celebrate your story and your experience with that and just know that people are participating. Because I think that you know, I've always said courage is contagious and I think that this little bit takes a little bit of courage to step up and be part of the solution too. And so when people see other people being part of the solution, they'll want to be a part of the solution as well, and that's what we want to just see this grow and grow and grow.

Mr. Webb: 56:03

And I will make sure and put a link to FreedomandEdorg. And as we wrap the conversation up, beanie, can you share with us, in addition to Freedom and Education, share your social media, if you would like, any projects you have going on? Basically, this is your time to plug or promote anything you want to.

Beanie Geoghegan: 56:26

Yeah, sure, well, we are on every. We are on YouTube, rumble, facebook, twitter, truth, social, instagram. You know FreedomandEd we also have a Spanish coalition that is one of our co-founders is 100% Hispanic, and so everything we do in English she does in Spanish and she's really reaching out to the Spanish community. So if you have anybody that speaks Spanish, they don't necessarily have to be Hispanic, but if they speak Spanish, everything we do there. So we have an English Twitter and a Spanish Twitter, but it's we try to keep it pretty much the same, and so, yeah, we're on all the social medias. Our Facebook page we're real proud of it's pretty, pretty detailed, pretty thorough and comprehensive. But you know you can find me personally on Twitter at beanie0597,. But I encourage you more to go to FreedomandEd and you'll find more there, probably.

Mr. Webb: 57:24

So, but yeah, and I'll put links to all of that in the show notes as well, so that will make it super easy. If anyone's interested, just go to the show notes and all the links will be there. So thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure on my end to have you on the conservative classroom and I know our listeners appreciate your insights and what you guys are doing, and I'm sure they're going to check out freedom and education. Thank you so much.

Beanie Geoghegan: 57:58

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you for being in the classroom and for being a voice for the conservative educators who are looking to restore authentic education in this country.

Mr. Webb: 58:10

Thank you, we are not alone.

Beanie Geoghegan: 58:12

That's one thing we are not we are not.

Mr. Webb: 58:15

Thank you so much.

Beanie Geoghegan: 58:17

Absolutely.

Mr. Webb: 58:23

That's it for today's episode of The Conservative Classroom. Thank you for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed it and learned something. If you liked what you heard, please don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Most importantly, share this podcast with a like-minded educator, parent or patriot. You can also connect with us on social media and share your thoughts on today's topic. We'd love to hear from you.

Mr. Webb: 58:51

If you want to teach the truth and preserve our values, consider showing support for The Conservative Classroom and your fellow conservative teachers by showing off some conservative swag. Visit our merch store by clicking the link in the show notes. In addition to clothing and coffee mugs with our logo, name and slogan, we also have items with our colors and schoolhouse logo only. We know it's hard to be openly conservative in some school districts, but your silent show of support may help you find other conservatives in your community. In other words, you might not be comfortable wearing a shirt that says The Conservative Classroom logo on it, but if you wear one that has a low-key logo on it, you won't be pushing your politics on your liberal friends or your students, but you might just discover another closet conservative. Even if you don't, you'll know that you are quietly supporting the values best for your kids, your school and your community.

Mr. Webb: 59:54

Find more ways to support the podcast at TheConservativeClassroom. com. That's TheConservativeClassroom. com. Until next time. This is Mr. Webb, reminding you that you are not alone. See you next time on The Conservative Classroom. Teaching the truth. Preserving our values.