Mr. Webb: 0:00

How can parents and educators counteract the narrative that often paints American history and values in a negative light? In a time of increasing polarization, how crucial is it to instill a sense of American pride and optimism in our children? How can we raise an optimistic American? 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 educators, parents and patriots like you, who believe in the importance of free speech, traditional values and education without indoctrination. Each week, we dive into 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 educator, parent or patriot. Together, we can teach the truth and preserve our values our values. In today's episode, we'll talk to an educator and author about an eight-part series she wrote called "How to Raise an Optimistic American. Now let's get started. Today, I'm excited to welcome a special guest to the conservative classroom, bonnie Snyder, a seasoned educator, author and co-founder of Terra Firma Teaching Alliance. Bonnie, thanks for joining us.

Bonnie Snyder: 1:48

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Mr. Webb: 1:51

To start with, could you tell us a little about yourself, your background and what exactly led you to co-found Terra Firma Teaching Alliance?

Bonnie Snyder: 2:02

Sure. Well, I was an English major at Harvard back in the 80s and I was an English teacher. I did alternate route certification. I thought I would become an English professor but I ran into a roadblock during a PhD known as deconstruction, postmodernism, post-structural basically literary theory, which had really taken over the humanities, and I was not interested in that. I didn't appreciate it. I didn't find it particularly worthwhile. So I dropped out of my English PhD program and I like to point out that I was fully funded, like I was being paid to go to school, and it was so bad that you couldn't pay me to do it and this made me very aware of sort of ideological capture within schools. So as time went on, I ended up earning a doctorate in higher ed administration, thinking that I would become a reformer in academia. But it's very difficult to get hired in that role in the modern academy if you are not on board with whatever you want to term you know, I guess woke is a term that gets used. That gets used Um. So I ended up being um.

Bonnie Snyder: 3:30

I ended up being a, an adjunct professor for a number of years, which really worked out pretty well, and then I founded the K-12 programming at the foundation for individual rights and education in Philadelphia.

Bonnie Snyder: 3:40

It's a national nonprofit that is dedicated to defending free speech, a nonpartisan nonprofit, and when I left FIRE, I worked a lot with teachers and a lot with parents, who were very frustrated with what's going on in the schools, and so the parent organizations are very well along. They're very organized, they have lots of members and there's a lot of passion there, and I realized that not all teachers are libs of TikTok for those who know that site and I really felt that it was time to try organizing the teachers, because there are a lot of really great teachers in our school who are also under duress and if they, you know, for each one of those that leaves the schools get that much worse. So, along with Paul Rossi, who's known for having left Grace Church School in Manhattan over indoctrination, he resigned, you know, as a matter of conscience. We formed Terra Firma Teaching Alliance to work with teachers who want to protect academic integrity, and our motto is pedagogy, not ideology.

Mr. Webb: 5:02

I love that I had Paul on the podcast a few weeks ago so folks can go check out episode 41 to hear his story and his side of what happened, and we didn't get that deep into Terra Firma Teaching Alliance, though it was mostly about his story. What exactly is Terra Firma Teaching Alliance?

Bonnie Snyder: 5:23

Well, Terra Firma is, I mean, I suppose you could think of it. It's a nonprofit and we focus on supporting, equipping and empowering teachers who are concerned about the direction that their schools are taking, about the direction that their schools are taking, or teachers who just want to preserve what's good that's going on in their schools so that their schools don't take a bad turn and go in a bad direction. And so we meet. Currently we meet twice weekly in the summer we back it to once a week and you know teachers are screened and so it is I don't want to use the term a safe space, but we're a very supportive, empowering, validating venue during which time teachers can share what's going on in their schools, trade ideas. We work on strategies to push back.

Bonnie Snyder: 6:25

Honestly, several of our teachers currently are involved in litigation against their schools. Some have already won litigation. We don't handle the litigation, but we just work with the teachers who are going through that process, who are going through that process, and so we have a lot of really principled, extremely intelligent teachers who have principled opposition to some of these newer ideologies that are being very hastily promoted eagerly and aggressively in their schools. And another thing that's really happening to teachers is that they're being subjected to some professional development that has become the subject of some of these lawsuits, just really dehumanizing and, frankly, you know, racist to the point that it violates civil rights laws, where they're targeted because of their race or because of, um you know, other attributes that are integral to their being that they can't control, and being asked to do things that they're unwilling to do. And, to you know, there are uh teachers who are being asked to keep secrets from parents and do things that violate their conscience. So, um so terra firma is uh our attempt to support and equip and empower those teachers.

Mr. Webb: 7:50

Yeah, all that that you mentioned, it seems, is only wrong if it's if it's in one direction.

Bonnie Snyder: 7:57

Yeah.

Mr. Webb: 7:58

That's, that's that's not right, Is it?

Bonnie Snyder: 8:02

Yeah, there seems to be a lack of um, a lack of the ability to look at things from multiple perspectives. That seems to be lacking. You know I call it circumspection. You know the ability to look all the way around a situation. It's actually. You know, I also am the author of Undoctrinee and the subtitle is how Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools. And you know this, this one sidedness. Really, developmentally, I was a guidance counselor as well. I didn't mention that. And developmentally, being able to look at things from one perspective only is not a sign of full maturity. You know, if you look at Piaget, egocentrism that's like I can only look at this from my perspective is a sign of pre-operational thinking, which is like pre-logical. And so one of the signs of full intellectual maturity is to be able to look at things from multiple perspectives, and we seem to have a failure of this among people who are leading several and many institutions in our country. So pretty concerning.

Mr. Webb: 9:15

Yes, it is. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned your book. I'll make sure and put a link in the show notes for folks that want to pick that up. And I'd actually like to talk about your book, maybe on a separate episode, but I want the listeners to know. What caused me to reach out to you, bonnie, was the Substack series that you just put out "ow to Raise an Optimistic American and when I saw that it was just at the perfect time, you know, I was thinking about some of these things and I thought, oh, this is good, I've got to have her on the podcast. So if you don't mind, let's switch gears and talk about that how to raise an optimistic American and optimistic is in parentheses. So where did you come up with that title?

Bonnie Snyder: 10:12

Yeah, I worked with a lot of teachers, as I said, when I was at FIRE Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and we talked a lot about we had a lot of complaints about what was being taught and we were just saying, well, don't teach this, well, don't teach that, or this is what I was hearing Don't teach this and don't teach that. And we were reacting very much to a lot of material curricular material that was coming in. Some of it was coming in from outside organizations and finding its way into the schools. Organizations like Black Lives Matter puts out curriculum or the 1619 Project that was a really big one it's in the Zen Education Project and some of these lessons were really raising eyebrows and raising concerns. And it's occurred to me that instead of complaining about curriculum that we don't like, we should focus on promoting. That's another sort of sub tagline at fire is to crowd out the bad with the good, because I feel like if you can't show up with something better than I, then complaining is pretty pointless. So I really, and we're also.

Bonnie Snyder: 11:17

When I worked in fire, there were so many problems with free speech, which is what fire deals with, and we, we were hearing arguments with free speech, which is what FIRE deals with, and we were hearing arguments against free speech that were frankly un-American. You know, like only some people have the right to express themselves, and your identity determines whether or not we should listen to you. And Greg Lukianoff, who's the CEO of FIRE, has written some excellent counter arguments. You know, we hear these arguments and then we would try to refute them, and first you have to intellectually figure it out. Where is this coming from? How does this, you know, where does this fall short? And so I was doing this process at the K-12 level, sort of trying to work out like what, like you want to, you want to give, you know, sort of the devil's advocate. You know, okay, let's give these counter arguments their due, but then let's make the opposing argument. And so I really sat down to make the opposing arguments and sort of defend the American way of life, and we would hear a lot that kids need to be taught civics. That was a big argument. Kids need to be taught civics, and I don't disagree with that. But how do you teach civics? And the argument would usually be you know, kids need to read the Constitution, and of course they do. But why? That was sort of the question I was asking myself. Why do they need to read the constitution? And I think the answer is so that they can understand and appreciate the American way of life.

Bonnie Snyder: 12:58

Several years ago I remember reading that England was having a lot of trouble integrating newcomers, integrating migrants, that they weren't really fitting in culturally, and they decided to redo their citizenship tests and I took a few of them to see if I could pass the English citizenship test test and so, along the same lines, like one of the things that was on the English citizenship tests was pointing out that it's very English to laugh at ourselves and a lot of migrants didn't get that. That was part of the cultural milieu, and so you had this friction happening in the culture and I think we're having some of this cultural friction. So you know, in terms of integrating newcomers to our culture, but also in terms of filling gaps among young people, that's why I felt compelled to write this. Initially I called it how to Raise an American and I could hear the objections and say well, just because you don't agree with capitalism doesn't mean you're American. So that's how come I added the word optimistic.

Mr. Webb: 14:19

I mean, you can raise a disgruntled American.

Bonnie Snyder: 14:21

you know, with Marxism, yes, we have a lot of those already, don't we Exactly? Because we have a lot of those already, don't we Exactly? So it's like, yeah, you can raise a person who's technically American, who believes in none of these things and seeks to undermine the pillars of American society, but I would prefer to raise an optimistic one.

Mr. Webb: 14:38

I think you started out with some misunderstandings that young Americans have about their country, so you want to talk about some of those and how do you address these?

Bonnie Snyder: 14:50

So one thing that I think we see in America today is that oftentimes immigrants outperform native born Americans. I think one of the reasons why that is so is because they are better able to perceive opportunities and the advantages of the American way of life than native born children. People are, and I think that's because they have experienced the antithesis. So if you've lived in a socialist country, you may be more equipped to recognize the opportunities provided by capitalism. I actually think that one of the most under taught and I include myself in this I was not taught about capitalism. I like to joke.

Bonnie Snyder: 15:42

I used to carry around a copy of the Communist Manifesto with me because when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, I was assigned the Communist Manifesto six different times in six different classes and I was not yeah, isn't that weird? And I was an English major. I was not, you know, studying politics or studying economics, and they have just found a way to weave it throughout the curriculum. It was, yeah, it was. It was just kept showing up in syllabi, syllabus after syllabus.

Bonnie Snyder: 16:15

So I think kids are getting marinated in this, and I think one of the reasons we do this is because we just assume it's like well, you know everybody, we we live in capitalism, so of course we know all about it, but unless you're explicitly taught about it. It's like a fish doesn't know water, because to appreciate it you'd have to be out of the bowl and then you would understand what water is. Or there's an old saying that you can't see the picture if you're inside the frame picture if you're inside the frame. So I'm trying to make explicit what seems to be invisible to us, so that we can understand these things and pass them on to our children. I think education is really the passing on of a way of life and I think we've dropped the ball and we need to pick that up post-haste.

Mr. Webb: 17:04

Yeah, and I think I said what are some common misunderstandings, but I think that maybe the way I should have phrased that is, what are some of the things that they take for granted, and I think you explained that.

Bonnie Snyder: 17:17

Or gaps in their knowledge gaps in their understanding.

Bonnie Snyder: 17:20

Yeah, because we, you know, I get really scared when I look at the legal system and people thinking, you know, this sort of ends justify the means approach to it and not, and this idea that different people should be treated differently within our education, I mean within our justice system. That's very scary to me. I mean, I think we've all seen the image of justices, blind, you know, with a blindfold across the eyes, and if we don't understand that and if we don't pass that along, then this undermines our trust in our judicial system. You know, certainly we've had a lot of distrust with the police. Um, and so, understanding the underpinnings, the philosophical underpinnings, and there's also logical underpinnings to why our justice system works the way that it does. And, as I put these, there's actually eight components or eight systems.

Bonnie Snyder: 18:26

I took a systems approach to this. There are eight systems that are are operating system to life and, um, I point out, you know it's, it's sort of like your phone there's, there's Apple or there's, or your computer there's Mac, and then there's what's the other one, dos, and then there's what's the other one, dos or there's. You know, like you can't run right, apple, iphone software on an android and yeah, there are other systems. There are other ways operating systems for organizing a society and many other cultures use them, and there are valid arguments for some other ways of living. But in America we have chosen, for important reasons, our operating systems and, to you know, we don't want to jettison them without fully understanding their value and why we think that they are preferable overall. They're not perfect, but we think that they bring more advantages than not, and all you have to do is look at people coming across the border to realize that you know these don't drive people away. They draw people in. Don't drive people away.

Mr. Webb: 19:42

They draw people in. That's exactly what I was thinking as you were saying. That is, yes, we. Our system has imperfections and it has a lot of things that are great, but every system does, and there's a reason that so many people want to immigrate to America. Yep, and a lot of the folks that say, oh, if Donald Trump is president, I'm leaving the country and not just him, but other things They'll say, well, if this happens, I'm just going to leave the country, but they never leave.

Bonnie Snyder: 20:18

That's the thing it's like okay and they almost always say I'm going to go to Canada. And I find that very interesting. They never say I'm going to go to Mexico.

Mr. Webb: 20:28

That's a good point.

Bonnie Snyder: 20:30

And incidentally, we have in Terra Firma several Canadians and they assure us that as bad as the situation in schools is in the US, it's much, much worse in Canada.

Mr. Webb: 20:42

That's sad. You mentioned I think you call it America's eight foundations and you go through in, as of this recording, four parts, one through. Four of your Substack series are available and you talk about each of America's eight foundations. Can you run through what those eight foundations are and then maybe we'll dig into the first one?

Bonnie Snyder: 21:13

Sure, absolutely. And I want to point something out too I came up with these on my own. I, you know, having done all, I had the advantage of working at FIRE and reading everything the great work that's been done there, and then pulling from my own background, and so on. And when I put this together, I attended the National Council for the Social Studies, which is that's a whole podcast in itself, if you want to see where some of these problems come from. No, no, no, it wasn't there.

Bonnie Snyder: 21:40

It was at a Christian homeschooling association that I ran into Larry Schweikart, who wrote A Patriot's History of the United States, and he is a, I believe, history professor in the Midwest, and or he was and he's still alive, but he's not a professor teaching right now. And he, he wrote a book called A Patriot's History of the United States and he has four of the eight systems that I have. So I felt really validated that we had agreement that far. And then I, you know, I had added, you know, a little bit on top of that. So, yeah, the eight systems that I came up with are first we have and, and what I'm still as I reread, reread these, um, these rely on one another, they are interwoven, you really can't separate them from one another, which is so. If one falls, it undermines the others. These are, you know, it's like a, it's like pillars, right, you take one down and the whole system tips.

Bonnie Snyder: 22:42

It's our political system. These are, first of all, these are rooted in Judeo-Christian values. You just really cannot separate it from understanding those roots and those that informed the Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment is what brought us our founding documents. So you know, these are the foundations on which this is built. So the first one is our political system. We live in a constitutional republic with transparent elections. There's confidential voting, majority rule and consent of the governed, you know, by the people, of the people, for the people. The second one is our economic system. We believe in free markets, voluntary exchange and competition capitalism, and it's backed up with the protection of private, individual property rights. So individualism is a big component of this, of all of them. Third is our culture. Our culture is grounded in enlightenment, individualism, which is built on the foundation of Judeo-Christian values. The fourth is our legal system. Our legal system is a system of individual justice with the presumption of innocence. We follow due process and rules of evidence, and it's built on the English legal tradition. Fifth is our method of advancement within our economic system, within our culture, that we are grounded in the Protestant work ethic and meritocracy, and that would be individual merit, not collective merit. Sixth would be our method of communicating with one another and figuring things out.

Bonnie Snyder: 24:29

Much like our economic system, we believe in free markets, free speech, open, voluntary exchange of thoughts and ideas in the marketplace of ideas. We believe in no compelled speech, no censorship, a logical reason, a logical reason. And then seventh is our mode of interacting with one another. We believe in equality. We believe live and let live, agreeing to disagree, and that you're free to disagree. We also um, I added the right to petition and peaceably assemble. And then our outlook on life. I guess this gets back to the title optimism. Well, first of all, self-reliance, which goes back to individualism, the American spirit, which is progress. Optimism, the American dream, the pursuit of happiness which is based in freedom and liberty. We are resistant to authoritarianism. We tend towards defiance and the assertion of our rights. And I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure you probably grew up like me. Whenever somebody would try to, you know, hold you back, you say hey, it's a free country, right?

Mr. Webb: 25:37

Right.

Bonnie Snyder: 25:40

So yeah, those are the eight systems. And then I say you know, if you're shocked or surprised by any of these, don't blame me. You might want to ask why there are these gaps in your understanding of how this country operates that kind of weaves through.

Mr. Webb: 25:58

Those is the role of Judeo-Christian values in shaping our culture. Why do you think so many young people don't understand that that's the kind of thinking our country was founded on.

Bonnie Snyder: 26:18

No, I think that's easy to answer. I think it was in the mid-60s that we took it out of the public schools and I think not the authority on this. But I do think there is a misunderstanding that the separation of church and state means that kids, you know you can teach about the Bible in school. You just can't compel belief in it. And I do think that there are certain very foundational. I think the ignorance of our Judeo-Christian values is probably behind most of our problems. Yeah, you know, and they're just, I don't know how you can. When I was an English major I don't know if this is still true, but when I was an English major at Harvard, I don't think it was required, but it was highly, highly recommended that you take the Bible, because their feeling was like you can't understand literature if you don't understand what all of these references are referring to.

Bonnie Snyder: 27:18

So if you can't understand the Tower of Babel or the fall right and the whole notion of individualism is wound up in the belief in salvation and that eventually you're going to stand you alone in front of your creator and have to give a full accounting of yourself, and have to give a full accounting of yourself, he's not going to look at you as a member of a collective. It's going to be. You know, each of us takes up our own cross and that is sort of the story of Western civilization.

Mr. Webb: 27:56

Well, let's talk about that for a minute. That was the fourth our legal system and that's the presumption of innocence, due process. And you mentioned in part four of your series about how if I do something wrong I have to answer for that. It's an individual thing. Yeah, have to answer for that. It's an individual thing, and my family and generations don't have to answer for the sins of their father, so to speak.

Bonnie Snyder: 28:29

Yeah, we don't believe in tribal guilt, we don't believe in inherited guilt. I mean, we have this thing called baptism that wipes away inherited guilt, right, and you just can't separate that from. I mean, you know, this idea that they're trying to promote of white guilt or white complicity, or my response to that has always been like I'm sorry, but I'm baptized, traumatized, so, and that's not to say that we don't all, that we're not all fallen right, and that we're not all sinners and that we can't all strive to do better, and that we're, we're all failing all the time and things that we've done and things that we failed to do right. But, um, we are not jailed and imprisoned and found legally guilty for crimes that we ourselves did not commit. That's a very foundational principle, and there are cultures like, I think, North Korea today.

Bonnie Snyder: 29:29

If someone in your family makes the government angry, the whole family can go to jail right Isn't that how it operates, right, yeah, so we take that for granted, but it could come for us if we are not understanding of how important it is to defend these concepts. But you know, certainly Judeo-Christian values underpin and have guided the development of our laws. But, you know, the concern is that more Marxist philosophy is perhaps coming into play. And you know group guilt and collective guilt and inherited guilt, and these are things that traditionally have not been part of Western jurisprudence, right, yeah, I learned a lot about this. Specifically, I would recommend greg lukianoff has a book called unlearning liberty and he talks about, you know, and it gets very much into logic and um, and then I would recommend jonathan rauch's book, kindly inquisitors and like how we know things.

Bonnie Snyder: 30:37

How do you know something is true? Um, and, and you know, and do people ever stand up and lie? Yeah, sometimes people lie, which is why you need, you know, trustworthy witnesses. And then it gets to the 12 commandments and you know why lying is wrong. And, um, and you put your hand on a Bible and or before you give a testimony, uh, and before you give a testimony, and if you don't have enough evidence, then you don't convict in the absence of evidence. And then that reminds me of the saying you know better to bet a hundred men should go free, guilty men should go free, then one innocent person should be convicted. These are very Western notions. I'm sure in some parts of the world they're like better to lock up 100 men who might be innocent in case one of them might be a problem, right, right.

Mr. Webb: 31:33

I told you before we started recording that I actually printed off your Substack series and I was going through it with a highlighter, because there's so much, there's just so much to get out of it. And one thing that I highlighted was the sentence our prosperity relies on having a strong, functioning legal system. And that really jumped out at me, because what we're seeing is cities, certain cities, are falling apart because they're I feel like they're they don't have a strong, functioning legal system. They're letting guilty people go free and then they're prosecuting maybe the wrong things. So I thought, wow, that's so true.

Bonnie Snyder: 32:21

Yeah, I mean watching. Watching a guilty person get away with it, um, when they are, when there is the evidence, is very damaging to, I think, the social fabric.

Mr. Webb: 32:36

And in a lot of these cities where they're just letting folks go free, they'll uh, they'll go out and commit another crime, you know you know, even just on the playground or in the classroom.

Bonnie Snyder: 32:48

If, if you know kids are cheating and they're getting A's and you're not cheating and you're coming up behind, that destroys your confidence in the education system. So it's, it's um.

Mr. Webb: 33:03

And that made me think of um socialism. It's like if a teacher said, okay, I'm going to at the end of the nine, at the end of the quarter, I'm just going to take the average of everyone's grades. Then the folks, the highest performing students, you know if the best they're going to get is, you know, instead of a 99 or 100 percent, the best they're going to get is like a 76 or 78 or whatever. They're going to stop performing or stop putting forth the effort to that level. And then the folks on the bottom they realize, hey, I can continue to do nothing, and now I'm going to get a better grade. So it's really bad for everybody.

Bonnie Snyder: 33:49

Yeah, the students with the A's need to contribute some of their GPA to the students who don't even show up for class, and that's one of the best ways to help kids understand it. Absolutely.

Mr. Webb: 34:01

It's a great thought experiment for them to, you know, to consider okay, how would I feel, especially if it's someone who is a high performing student? Say, well, how would you feel if? Well, that wouldn't be fair? Okay, well, that's socialism.

Bonnie Snyder: 34:18

And how all these things are intertwined. I'm reading this week that in the state of Washington they are no longer going to have a bar exam because not everyone passes the bar exam, so let's just not have it. So that brings in issues of meritocracy, which is one of the systems on which our country operates or has traditionally operated. And then it invokes our legal system, and you know how? Yeah. So the hard work, effort, meritocracy, achievement all of these things are undermined if there's no expectation that you have to pass a test to. And how is this going to work?

Mr. Webb: 35:06

We kind of switched gears over to the economic system, without meaning to, but that's another system that you talked about specifically about capitalism and free markets versus socialism.

Bonnie Snyder: 35:24

Yeah, and, and one of the weaker areas for me. But having done research on it, I learned a lot. And so we believe in free markets and the voluntary exchange. We don't have compelled or coerced exchanges, for example. I think we're seeing some of this not working with electric cars that you know, trying to tell us what kind of vehicles we want to drive, and it's really not, I think, going well.

Bonnie Snyder: 35:52

I read just this week that the CEO of Hertz had to step down because you know he's trying to get people to want things that the market you know the market is speaking and right now this isn't what they necessarily want, but you know I do. I would like to even do some more research on how capitalism my understanding is that Abraham Lincoln is involved here somewhere, and you know why America is so staunchly capitalistic but you know, from what I've researched, capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty and out of starvation and subsistence levels than any other system in the history of the world, and that's something really, really positive to celebrate and that controlled markets tend to not work very well. There's this presumption that you can know everything and, over and over and over, controlled and manipulated markets don't turn out positively for the population.

Mr. Webb: 37:03

Right, there's lots of good ideas behind. Well, not just that, but a lot of things that are pushed. I feel like the motivation behind it sometimes is good, but some things just fall apart when they're actually implemented.

Bonnie Snyder: 37:22

It sounds good. I think I read once that socialism is productive of nothing except for slogans, and I thought that was hilarious and it's like okay, kids, we're going to feast on a belly full of slogans tonight. You know these things sound good, but on closer examination to me, like Winston Churchill called socialism the gospel of envy, and I really think that one of the Ten Commandments and here we go back to our Judeo-Christian roots but is thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods. And I think if you boil Marxism down, you could boil it down to violating. I think that's the ninth commandment Thou shalt covet thy neighbor's goods.

Bonnie Snyder: 38:13

Like Marxists, keep track of what everyone else has, and what's yours is, I will have that, yeah. And then it becomes a zero sum game because everybody's just focused on what everyone else has and instead of you know like I, I just a lot of when I was writing this comes down to well, I guess our own slogans, and one of the sayings that I grew up with was mind your own business, and I think Marxism is all about minding every minding other people's business.

Mr. Webb: 38:41

I think we'd be better off if schools taught more of the Constitution. Going back to the founding documents, original sources, I guess I think we're getting away from that, and a lot of the things that we've talked about and what ties in here is like the Judeo-Christian values and that's what our country was founded on, and kids don't understand that. But if they go back and read some of the founding documents, I think it becomes clear. And then the political system. That was the first of the eight foundations that you mentioned and the first system that you talked about in your Substack series. So let's go back and touch on that just a little bit. And actually I think you even mentioned it. I'm looking at it right here now. You cannot properly understand our political system and our founding documents without understanding the enlightenment philosophy behind them, and you mentioned, I think, on more than one occasion about the Judeo-Christian values.

Bonnie Snyder: 39:48

Yeah, and this is where you know I had come up with this. But when I listened to Larry Schweikart with the Patriots History of the United States, he talks a lot about congregationalism. So if you want a deeper dive, I would recommend looking at. He calls them the four pillars of American exceptionalism and, like I said, I have eight, but four of them are the same. So it was like independently, we agree. And he says that the way in which the congregational churches were organized and these were the churches that came over at the founding um was bottom up by and that's, this is where the whole concept of of the people, by the people, for the people, came from.

Bonnie Snyder: 40:30

Um, and and yeah, and just, and this idea of being very skeptical, skeptical of autocratic authority, um, I mean this ties back to our system of figuring things out and also to our legal system. You know it's like well, how do you know something is true? Uh, well, because you have to prove it. Because you have to prove it, it's not because somebody says so, um, and who can prove it? Prove it? Well, anyone with evidence can prove it, because the evidence can speak for itself.

Bonnie Snyder: 41:05

And then you get into the whole idea of of logic and argument, um, which has been taken from our schools, and one of my pet peeves about academia is that a liberal arts degree at one time meant that you took logic, it it was logic, rhetoric and grammar right. And sometime around the 1950s they started pulling logic from a requirement for a liberal arts college degree. And man does it show. You know this, many years later, the pseudo arguments that you hear on television and in political debates are not of the caliber that you would have heard 75 years ago when people were more trained. Um, so yeah, and that gets back to the jonathan rouch kindly inquisitors.

Bonnie Snyder: 41:57

You know it's like who says well, anybody can say anyone with evidence, it's you know, and you know trust the science in all of this. Well, was the science performed correctly? Um, and are the scientists adhering to the principles of the scientific method and engaging in scientific rigor, or is it motivated reasoning? You, that undermines our trust in the science. And so, again, like we have systems of fact finding and truth finding that are also under threat right now.

Mr. Webb: 42:33

Right, let's talk about our culture. The third of the eight foundations is our culture, and one thing that I feel like is a thread in that is individualism. So how can that help us raise an optimistic American?

Bonnie Snyder: 42:49

Well, I mean individualism. Well, look, individualism is great and it carries with it responsibility. There are advantages to living in collectivistic societies. There are two types of societies in this world individualistic and collectivistic. America traditionally has been probably the most individualistic society in the world. Individualistic societies in the West more, and in the Western hemisphere and the Northern hemisphere, um, the collectivistic ones tend to be in the South and in the East.

Bonnie Snyder: 43:28

You know there are exceptions, but those exceptions often are driven by colonialism, right, so you tend to find individualism in the English speaking world, um, for a lot of historical reasons, um, so, yeah, I mean, in a collectivistic society you have to probably worry a little bit less about how you're going to get by, but you can't maybe aim as high, right? Um, because you're sort of tied to the group and you're just going to become the average of the group. And so in a collectivistic society, you know, there's a saying I think it's ironically an Australian saying you know to cut down the tall poppy if you stand out. But in America we traditionally have encouraged eccentrics and outstanding people, and so we wind up with unusual success stories like Elon Musk, right, and we tolerate that eccentricity and deviation from the norm, because a lot of times that's where huge success comes from and also huge failure, right, and that's the, that's the responsibility, um, so so, and, and then parts of our culture are socialized. You know things like social security, um, and how's that doing? But you know, it's good to, it's good to have a safety net, so we have made concessions to collectivism.

Bonnie Snyder: 45:02

I actually honestly think that one of the reasons but this has always been true um, our, every child is born into a socialist unit, and that's the family, or a marxist unit, because you know the, the, when there's a baby in the family, the family operates according to the principle, from each according to their what is it to each, according to their needs, from each according to their ability, because the baby contributes nothing right completely dependent on completely dependent and the system works to support the baby, but at some point we have to raise children, but but then it becomes overbearing, you know, and at a certain point you're like okay, mom, okay, let go of my hand, I want to ride my bike.

Bonnie Snyder: 45:50

You know, stop telling me what to do. And that is the human impulse. They say that freedom is like, know, this balloon that you can hold underwater for a little while, but eventually it's going to bubble up to the surface. But, um, yeah, I mean, some people are concerned that people are like to be dependent, and uh, but I don't think that it's good for the human spirit to remain dependent.

Mr. Webb: 46:15

I hadn't heard the the balloon under the water. I really like that. I've got to remember that.

Bonnie Snyder: 46:20

Yeah, I heard that somewhere. It's not mine.

Mr. Webb: 46:26

When this is recorded, only four the parts one through four have been released of your Substack series, but probably by the time it's released all eight will be out. Where can folks go to check out this Substack series and subscribe?

Bonnie Snyder: 46:47

Our Substack at Terra Firma is called the Ethical Educator. So I believe if you just type in the Ethical Educator Substack it should come right up and that's where you would subscribe. And you can subscribe for free or, if you have pity on us, you could be a paid subscriber.

Mr. Webb: 47:05

And I'll make sure and put a link to that in the show notes. I'm fairly new to sub stacks. I guess I'd heard that term, but up until about a year ago I really didn't know what it was.

Bonnie Snyder: 47:16

Yeah, I think it's just another term for a blog.

Mr. Webb: 47:20

Yeah, and once you get to looking into it it's kind of a nice rabbit hole to go down occasionally.

Bonnie Snyder: 47:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are a lot of really great thinkers who are succeeding on Substack and developing followings by promoting some really good material there.

Mr. Webb: 47:38

Substack and developing followings by promoting some really good material there. I usually end the episode with a key takeaway. So, bonnie, what's the one thing you want the listener to remember, if they don't remember anything else about this episode?

Bonnie Snyder: 47:50

I would finish with a defense of capitalism, because I think that that's what's taking the most hits among under-informed people, and I would say that, at its heart, capitalism is the solving of other people's problems, which is a wonderful thing. And the more problems of other people that you can solve, the more you can succeed and that's a win-win. So I can't think of anything more altruistic than that, than solving other people's problems. So if you want to be a big success in life, just look for other people's problems that you can help to solve, and if you can do that for many, many people, then you can be a huge success.

Bonnie Snyder: 48:36

In the USA and I can give you actually an example of that there's a museum. When I was a kid, we lived well, we lived in New Jersey. My dad used to tell me you know, there's a guy who lives near Philadelphia and he's really, really rich and he has one of the world's best art collections and if you write to him and he likes you, he's very eccentric. And if you write to him and he likes you, he's very eccentric. But if you write to him and he likes you, he might let you come see it Now. I never did that, but I just like this idea.

Bonnie Snyder: 49:06

Years after his death, his estate, these pieces of valuable art, were sort of not being well cared for, and he ended up going to a museum. It's called the Barnes Museum. You may have heard of it and if you go there you'll read his story, and his story of how he made his money is that he figured out how to prevent infant blindness, and so every baby and I seem to remember this when my children were born a lot of times when a baby is born, their eyes get infected during the birthing process, and I think it's silver. It's silver, maybe nitrate, I'm not exactly sure. I'm not a chemist, but he was, and so it's just this very simple thing.

Bonnie Snyder: 49:51

So the baby's born, boop, boop drop in each eye and millions and millions, I presume, of people have their eyesight because of that, and I would say that that man deserves every dollar that he got from that invention. So like. That's the positive side of capitalism is that those do well, who do well, and who do well for others can do well for themselves. And what is lost? Nothing? Nothing is lost, only prosperity and value added, only value added there.

Mr. Webb: 50:24

That's a great example and you've given us a lot to think about. I hope folks check out the Substack and check out Terra Firma Teaching Alliance. And is there anything else you want to plug or promote? This is your time.

Bonnie Snyder: 50:40

Just my book, "ndoctrinate how Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools. And what I did there is I pulled all of the research on like we've always. The temptation to indoctrinate kids is always present. It's like, oh look, I have all this power. These kids are right in front of me. Why don't I misuse that power to turn them into mini-me's? Well, the reason why you don't do that is because it's unethical. And the reason it's unethical is because it has all sorts of negative effects. So in Undoctrinate I explain the philosophical, the pedagogical, the ethical, the emotional, the developmental, the democratic, the legal, and I I didn't do it. I didn't go into the spiritual. But there's also spiritual reasons why you don't indoctrinate kids. So for anyone who thinks that's a good idea, this is the count I I provide with references, all of the reasons and the the um.

Bonnie Snyder: 51:36

You know, I bring the receipts on why this is the wrong way to approach education, especially in a free country where we're trying to raise adults who are capable of self-government.

Mr. Webb: 51:50

So folks should check that out. I'll definitely put a link in the show notes of that and like to have you back on to talk about your book.

Bonnie Snyder: 52:00

Yeah, I'd love to, and the other four operating systems which we'll get up on the sub stack too sweet, as they say in France.

Mr. Webb: 52:09

Well, thank you, Bonnie, so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure having you on the Conservative Classroom, and I know that our listeners appreciate your insights on all these many topics that we've talked about today. Thank you so much.

Bonnie Snyder: 52:22

My pleasure. Happy to be here today.

Mr. Webb: 52:27

That's it for today's episode of The Conservative Classroom. Thank you for tuning in. I 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. Give feedback on the podcast or suggest a topic by sending me an email at TheConservativeClassroom@gmail. com. We'd love to hear from you.

Mr. Webb: 53:06

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Mr. Webb: 53:46

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