Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E40: The Future of Education is Classical with Dr. Kevin Roberts

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E40: The Future of Education is Classical with Dr. Kevin Roberts · The Lila Rose Show

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  And I know that this will sound really extreme and, and sound
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  like hyperbole. There's not a single College of
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  education that should exist today.
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  Understanding the complementarity of masculinity
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  and femininity, we have to get back to that.
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  In our lifetimes, we will secure the greatest, most noble aspect
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  of the American promise, which is that every child, when he or
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  she comes out of the womb, is going to have the best education
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  anyone in the world has ever had, even if they're in a poor
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  family. Doctor Kevin Roberts, President
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  of the Heritage Foundation, thank you so much for joining
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  the podcast today. Lila, it's a privilege.
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  There's a lot to talk about. Heritage is a huge organization.
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  I think it's the premier conservative organization in the
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  country. A lot of people say that you
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  have to account for my bias. I think so.
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  I think you're right, actually, I'm, I'm with you on that.
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  And it's led by someone who's got an incredible background.
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  So let's start with you. I actually got to hear you speak
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  on classical education last night, which was fascinating to
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  support Camino schools of all boy, all girls school here in
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  Southern California. But you have a deep, deep trench
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  in education as well as public policy.
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  So give us a little backup. I do you know, as as you learned
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  last night, my big passion is classical education and for so
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  many years I told people I do education for a living, but
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  politics is my real passion. And so last night was was great.
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  Just a brief few seconds on that to be able to understand people
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  appreciate the Heritage Foundation and the credibility
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  that we offer any effort like the Camino schools, which of
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  course is totally independent of heritage as it should be.
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  And yet to be able to also talk about the the years that I spent
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  in classical education, founding AK through 12 school, running a
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  classical college, Wyoming Catholic.
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  It's our passion and and my wife and I are in year 11 of
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  homeschooling our kids a world, you know very well.
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  And it's a classical Catholic curriculum.
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  And, and there are other ways you can educate people, but
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  there's nothing as good as classical education.
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  So how did someone with all of that background, PhD in history,
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  then you go on and you're leading multiple different
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  educational institutions, a college, I think a high school
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  at one point. And now you're in Washington,
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  DC, leading arguably the biggest and top conservative think tank
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  in the world. What?
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  Tell me more about that trajectory.
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  Well, the short answer is the Holy Spirit, and I really do
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  mean that. The second part of that answer
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  is just about my own personality.
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  I'm just an extremely curious a person about about things about
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  knowledge. And so, you know, I was the
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  nerdy second or third grader who read when we were able to go to
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  the library, when you could read well enough to do this.
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  Everyone else was getting fiction books.
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  I read all the biographies of Abraham Lincoln and I read all
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  the biographies of other presidents and Civil War
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  generals. And, and so I, I decided from
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  moment one of, of being in college all the way through
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  getting my doctorate that I loved American history.
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  And when you love American history, then you have to, I
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  think you have to love or you have to want to love the
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  founding of America. And once you start studying the
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  founding of America, you get into philosophy, you get into
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  the history of religion, why we would even have this principle
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  of religious liberty. All of that to say, you end up
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  being conversant, although not an expert in many things.
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  And that has served me really well.
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  And, and being someone who also as part of my formation, has
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  deep gratitude to the formerly called Boy Scouts of America,
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  where I we're no longer involved for obvious reasons.
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  But for me, it was very important growing up to learn
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  about leadership and coupling that with faith, with a deep
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  love for history. It's presented me a lot of
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  opportunities and it is a great privilege to have done all of
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  those things, including being president of Heritage.
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  It's awesome. And the the study of history, I
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  think it's a forgotten, forgotten art.
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  Today we don't even know how to understand history.
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  Not a lot of people spend time studying it.
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  It was my major. I'm not a PhD, It was my major
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  at UCLA. And that means different things,
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  but I chose it for similar reasons you were describing.
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  You get a piece of politics, you get philosophy, you get
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  literature, you get these different elements and you blend
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  it together to tell the story of what's happening in humanity
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  and, and what is human nature and.
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  You know where to look. Yeah.
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  I mean, people ask me all the time whether it's my own kids,
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  you know, who are in that season of life trying to figure out
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  what to major in a college or students along the years who
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  say, what should I major in that's major in history.
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  If you don't know major in history, it doesn't mean you're
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  going to be a professional historian, although I would say
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  that's a a very noble profession, especially right
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  now. But even if you don't, it
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  teaches you the skills to to figure out where the answer is
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  and and ultimately to the heart of your question, Lila, that's
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  what we're missing. It's just that curiosity to go
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  seek the answer and the ultimate answer, which is capital T
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  truth. Yes, Capital T truth today there
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  we are plagued with my truth. We don't really care about the
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  capital T It's all about our own subjective experiences which
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  matter or our experiences matter, but they don't dictate
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  morality or reality. But then in addition, we, I
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  think we don't respect tradition, we don't respect
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  history as a society. And so we're always constantly
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  innovating into ourselves, into problems.
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  A lot of the time. I mean, some innovation's
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  obviously fantastic, but when you innovate timeless truths
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  into lies, you get you get some issues.
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  Yeah, and, and, and not to go all academic with, with the
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  response, because what you're saying is relevant to everyone
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  in our practical everyday lives. But what has happened,
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  especially in the last 20 years, in spite of all the good things
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  that technology and innovation offer, is that we become very
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  atomized. And when we become atomized, the
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  symptoms of that are loneliness, as we know some from some really
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  thoughtful sociologist on both the political left and the
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  political right. This is bipartisan concern.
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  But the other thing, this is the key point is that we we also
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  just believe that we're an end unto ourselves.
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  So in other words, if you're not spending a lot of time in
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  community A a, a grave complaint that I hear, especially from
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  young men and by young men, I'm not just talking about
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  teenagers, but men in their 20s and early 30s.
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  It's extremely dangerous for them and for civil society.
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  That's not to say it isn't a problem for women, but it's
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  decidedly profound problem for young American men right now,
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  and we have to fix it. How do we fix that?
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  We fix it #1 by recognizing that masculinity, properly ordered,
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  is a great value to society, and it's a great value for both men
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  and women. And I can say that as a, as a
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  brother of two sisters and a father of three daughters, this
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  is really, really important. And thankfully, to inject some
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  optimism, I think we've, we've turned the corner, we've seen
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  the absurdity of what the radical left has done in
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  portraying any virtuous, noble manly man as being somehow
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  toxic. It, it couldn't be farther from
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  the truth. But also as, as I know you not
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  only know, but you, you yourself personify the compliment,
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  understanding the complementarity of masculinity
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  and femininity. We have to get back to that.
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  That's so far upstream from, say, the, the transgender agenda
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  debate that we're having right now.
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  But the the other thing we have to do is although it was
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  perfectly right to create, for example, equal settings for
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  collegiate sports for women, that it was also right to
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  encourage women to go into college.
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  Now about 60% of college freshmen or women, I'm very
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  happy for them. That goes without saying.
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  But I'm not happy for the young men who have been discouraged
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  from going from really powerful but subtle signals that they're
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  somehow less important than women.
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  We've overcorrected in the early days because of really noble
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  intentions. But I I try to avoid impugning
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  motives. But having fought the radical
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  left my entire career, starting in higher Ed and now of course,
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  in in the imperial city of DC, their aims are really bad.
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  They're evil, and they're particularly focused on men.
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  So as leading as the leader of Heritage Foundation, which is
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  setting the North Star for public policy in the
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  conservative movement, what does that look like?
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  Are there public policy solutions to the crisis of
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  masculinity today? And, and, and it's femininity
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  too. I mean, obviously, like, say
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  they complement each other and there's major issues in both
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  feminism and the reaction of men and ISM.
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  I don't know if you've heard that one, but you know, the
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  hatred of each other and the competitiveness with each other
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  instead of let's complement each other.
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  And then like you said, you know, now it's like if you're a
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  man, you, you're, you're a step back that from a woman, you're
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  treated differently because you, because of your sexist sexism,
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  reverse sexism when it comes to college applications, college
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  admissions, or even getting certain kinds of jobs today.
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  So what does that look like? Is there a solution to public
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  policy? Perhaps it's the answer is yes.
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  Perhaps the historian in me always wants to move
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  chronologically or at least as I see chronology.
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  And so it means that we have to be willing to fight the what I
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  call the knife fights in front of us.
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  And sometimes they do feel like knife fights.
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  So the the best example of that right now in state legislatures,
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  in county Commission meetings, in Congress is pushing back the
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  rotten fruit of the transgender agenda.
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  And, and so that's, that's a tactical knife fight.
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  Obviously more than that for people who are bearing that
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  cross or families who are bearing that cross.
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  But we're, we're beginning to prevail on that.
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  And so when we get to next year, when we get to 2024, we get to
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  2025. Not that everything's about
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  campaigns and elections. It's vital that anyone who
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  presents themselves for whatever office as a common sense person
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  or a conservative candidate, they have to be willing to
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  convey that they're going to fight on that issue.
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  But this is the point. That's, that's, that's small
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  ball, believe it or not, that small ball, because the, the
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  bigger question is how do we restore this fundamentally true
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  understanding about masculinity and femininity?
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  So the to your question, what are the other policy provisions
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  that we need to be looking at? Most of them are in education.
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  I mean, some of them are in the Department of Justice, but most
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  of them are in education. I I happen to see or believe
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  that 80 or 90% of the change that we need to effect in the
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  United States can be done with our education policy.
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  Wow. That's that's big.
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  Yeah, and both K through 12 and and higher Ed and and another
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  time we can talk about details, but for heritage to come full
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  circle in this response, that's where we're focused when it
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  comes to combating the the efforts against masculinity.
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  OK, so this is there's a lot there that's so interesting and
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  important because everyone knows education is broken.
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  Even people with their kids in public school, many of them are
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  unsatisfied. There's they've seen what
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  happened during the pandemic. There's like, was this really
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  what my kids are going? Is this how really how teachers
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  think treat my kids or how they think about my kids?
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  And you know, I think homeschoolers have increased by,
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  I don't know if the number, I don't know if.
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  Someone has doubled in the last six years.
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  Yes, it's about 6% of the school age population.
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  It's incredible. So, and these are people not
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  just on the right, but people on the left.
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  There's people from all parts of the political spectrum who are
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  now homeschooling their kids. I think classical schools have
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  also doubled. In the last 10 years.
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  Incredible. So you're saying that from a
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  public policy perspective, fixing education is crucial to
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  all the culture, some of these key cultures?
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  Completely. I mean it, it reminds me of of
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  the, I think the first media interview I did when I was
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  appointed president of Heritage 18 months ago.
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  And they said, what's your, what are your top three priorities?
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  Education, education, education. And wonderful interviewer
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  chuckled and she asked the follow up question.
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  But really, I mean that I guess so I guess so no one's
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  complained yet. I guess it's a target rich
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  environment. But to the to your to your
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  question, this is where we not only learned how to read, write,
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  have some competency in all of the subjects, but what's
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  forgotten by too many Americans and and what our our government
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  funded school system does not do anymore is the most important
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  thing that education should be, which is the formation of the
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  human person. Now, obviously in a pluralistic
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  society, which the United States has been, we do have to have
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  some care about not having an established religion.
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  This very serious Catholic understands that.
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  In fact, Catholics, the United States would understand that the
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  best because we've been victims over over many decades of this
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  kind of thing. But the point is that even there
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  you can, you can teach classical virtues.
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  You can cite pre Christian leaders like Aristotle from whom
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  we get a lot of our understanding of virtue, but
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  then the next thing is these government funded schools used
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  to transmit those values from one generation to the next and
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  that's not happening anymore. In fact, we now know explicitly
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  as a result of the COVID lockdowns that as some of these
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  conservative governors and and local officials were pressing on
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  the teacher unions and the superintendents, the the
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  ultimate aim of some of these folks, which is that they're
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  their children, not ours. You want to get a formerly
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  apolitical parent upset someone who really doesn't care about
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  politics? Do they just want their kids to
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  be educated? Well, tell them that.
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  And so it's a bad news, good news kind of thing.
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  The bad news part is obvious, but the good news to sum up here
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  is that if we can harness that energy beyond this year, beyond
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  the presidential election cycle, these are important
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  considerations. If we can harness this energy
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  for the 20 twenties, I think we're going to, on New Year's
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  Eve 2029, look back and say the twenty 20s is the decade that we
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  took our schools back. I love that.
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  Well, they say Glenn Youngkin, you know, the governor of
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  Virginia won in a hotly contested race when a Democrat
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  used to be the governor because of education, because of
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  parental rights and parents saying, and this isn't enough is
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  enough. I, I'm not going to, I'm not
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  going to have my, my role as the leader here and the values I
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  care about. And these aren't just like
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  hardcore right values. These are values about decency
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  and honesty and, and just, you know, family, pro family, pro
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  mom, pro dad, pro kids values that unfortunately are just
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  being forgotten or cast aside. Well.
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  They are. And I, I actually think Governor
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  Younkin is the, the, the best example of this.
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  But, and because he's, he's running this campaign, he knew
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  that that was an issue, but he didn't fully appreciate as, as
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  none of us did, I think how powerful, how potent that
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  parental rights issue was in Virginia.
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  And, and just for people who are unfamiliar with the state in the
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  northern sliver of Virginia, which is so unlike the rest of
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  the state, it's parents in those places who 80% of whom are going
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  to vote for his opponent who are expressing this concern.
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  And it's in the middle of a debate when, when then candidate
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  Yonkin's opponent says something really dumb about the kids being
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  ours, you know, the states, not yours.
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  And Governor Yonkin, whom I've gotten to know pretty well, is
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  great guy. And as a Virginia now say, a
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  great governor, he knew what had happened and he seized on it.
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  The best part of that story is that not only did he use it as a
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  great campaign weapon, if you will, he's delivered on that.
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  And he spent a lot of political capital on it.
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  And I'm really optimistic. I'm not just cautiously
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  optimistic, Lila. I'm really optimistic that
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  examples like that have have really been a shot in the arm
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  for other governors and other elected officials around the
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  country who up to that point have been pretty tentative.
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  Well, you know, the whole idea of these are our children,
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  right? I mean, does the state really
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  know your child and love your child the way that you do?
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  And certainly they're not responsible for your child the
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  way that you are, but the state pretends.
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  I mean, here in California, there's a legislation that is
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  maybe going to make it, you know, make it to the governor's
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  desk and he would sign it because Gavin Newsom, Governor
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  Newsom is insane. I mean, truly, I think I've.
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  Noticed that. He's just, he's unhinged.
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  I mean, he's unhinged for abortion.
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  He's unhinged for, you know, radical gender ideology.
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  But this legislation would basically accuse a parent or a
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  parent can be liable for child abuse and lose custody of their
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  child. If they're not, the legislation
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  is very vague. They're not affirming of the
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  child's gender. Now, what that could mean is you
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  have some radical teacher ideologue, there's many of them
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  in the public school who, you know, sees a gender confused or
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  just a gender exploring, you know, a kid who's just like, you
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  know, exploring or maybe they're having issues at home.
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  They have they're on the autism spectrum because a lot of those
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  kids have questions with about their identity and they seize on
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  them. They make them their project.
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  They're this kid is trans and if the parent doesn't get in line
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  with that, because they can keep that a secret from the parents.
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  And they're already doing that in schools throughout the
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  country, public schools. And so now if the parent dares
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  to say no, my child is my child and we're going to get, you
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  know, better health care for them, not just trans them, put
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  them on hormone blockers and mutilate them.
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  You can literally be jailed, not for transing the child, not for
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  indoctrinating them in gender ideology and then blocking their
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  natural, you know, puberty cycle with hormones.
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  You can be jailed for the opposite of standing against
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  that as their own parent. It's terrifying.
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  It is. And and this is not hyperbole,
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  what you just said is real. And the likelihood of that
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  happening, the likelihood of that bill advancing through your
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  Assembly and the likelihood of your governor signing that are
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  really high or is really high. Is it going to wake up finally
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  the silent majority of liberals and conservatives?
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  Because the, the point that the, the, the broader kind of
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  political point that you're making there, I think is really,
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  really important for people to understand 8085, maybe even 90%
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  of Americans would disagree with that and so disagree with with
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  Governor Newsom's position. And and so you think about the
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  Younkin example, you think about Governor DeSantis, you think
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  about Governor Abbott, a whole bunch of really great governors
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  who've up to that point have been a little tentative on this
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  issue. They don't, they know that they
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  can't be because they have wind in their sails.
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  They have the American people behind them.
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  And so it will be terrible and draconian and evil for the
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  families in California who have to suffer through that.
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  The the good news, the the light at the end of the tunnel, if in
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  fact that's the tunnel that's built, is that that will be
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  struck down and by the by the Supreme Court.
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  Fantastic. Yeah.
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  And so final point is you. We're staying in California,
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  Kevin. Yeah, I know.
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  It's like potential martyrs. I understand.
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  But the point is, we've got to, as a, as a movement, tap into
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  that angst and turn it into a desire to reorder American
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  schools, to upend the California Assembly, to prevent Gavin
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  Newsom in particular from having any future stops in his
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  political career. Music to my ears.
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  Let's start with, let's start with I love it.
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  Thank you for not giving up on us.
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  Let's start with the first thing that you just said.
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  As you were closing out that great statement, you were saying
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  it starts with changing the landscape of education, changing
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  our school system. And you know, one of the things
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  you were speaking about last night, which I was so interested
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  in, and I love that heritage. It is.
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  I mean, you're an educational organization, but education for
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  changing public policy for education is key.
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  This idea that classical education is not some like
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  weirdo alternative thing that some people, you know, get all
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  excited about, but it was education for centuries until
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  basically last hundred 150 years of modern, whatever we want to
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  call it, education post industrial revolution education.
• 19:16
  I mean, I there's different interesting theories.
• 19:18
  I'm sure you have them on this, but tell it to educate me and
• 19:22
  our listeners, many of them who are maybe interested in this
• 19:25
  already, or maybe they're not, they're not as well versed yet.
• 19:28
  What is classical education and why is it so important?
• 19:32
  I'll answer your question directly and then tell you a
• 19:34
  little bit about the history. So the classical education is,
• 19:38
  is an educational approach that focuses on truth, which people
• 19:42
  might say, well, that's what all education is.
• 19:44
  Well, unfortunately not anymore. And the way it does that is to
• 19:47
  go through a very disciplined series of, of, of studies of
• 19:52
  subjects in the early grades called the, the Trivium and, and
• 19:55
  for people who think Latin words are scary, stay with me.
• 19:58
  Trivium is just learning phonics, learning how to spell,
• 20:01
  learning the logical order of words, and then reading good
• 20:04
  fiction, reading good nonfiction, of course, learning
• 20:07
  math and science. And then I'll just say for
• 20:09
  members of the audience who might be scientists,
• 20:11
  mathematicians, STEM people, classical education is a great
• 20:15
  it is the greatest foundation to STEM education and and.
• 20:19
  As a result of classical education, people will read the
• 20:22
  Great Books, as they're called. They will be Students will be
• 20:25
  part of what we call the great Conversation, Capital G, capital
• 20:28
  C, because it's a conversation that men and women for millennia
• 20:32
  now have been having about what is the meaning of God?
• 20:36
  Who is God for someone who isn't religious?
• 20:40
  What's the meaning of the human person?
• 20:42
  What's the relationship between the human person and the state?
• 20:45
  I mean, very relevant to the conversation we're having here.
• 20:48
  What's my relationship as, as a human to the, to the to nature
• 20:52
  and, and other obviously very relevant questions.
• 20:54
  This is the point that when you see students in a classical
• 20:59
  school and they get to these pivotal grades like 5th grade or
• 21:03
  8th grade or obviously 12th grade, they're students who know
• 21:07
  how to think. They're students who, and this
• 21:10
  is coming from this, this educator, me, they do the most
• 21:14
  important educational skill that only a few percentage points of
• 21:19
  Americans understand, that's synthesizing information.
• 21:23
  And so if you can synthesize information, this is the last
• 21:26
  point about the definition of classical schools.
• 21:28
  If you can synthesize information, then you have a
• 21:31
  natural skepticism toward the atomization of society because
• 21:35
  you know, properly ordered, in truth, in goodness and in
• 21:40
  beauty, in spite of all of mankind's imperfections as
• 21:43
  humans, that you can synthesize this into a meaning.
• 21:47
  And when we have a unified meaning and we understand that,
• 21:50
  at least understand aspects of it, we also tend to be very
• 21:54
  joyful. And so anyone who after that
• 21:56
  definition is still a skeptic of classical education should just
• 21:59
  visit one visit a classical school, Protestant school,
• 22:02
  Catholic, plenty non sectarian classical schools.
• 22:05
  There are many flavors of how you can do this.
• 22:08
  But all of that to say it also used to be called education
• 22:11
  until the 20th century. And for anyone who still isn't
• 22:14
  convinced, then I, the, the, the onus is on you to prove to me
• 22:18
  that since the 1970s, when we've spent $11 trillion on schools,
• 22:24
  noble intentions, we, we ought to educate everyone in the
• 22:26
  United States. We spent $11 trillion on it.
• 22:29
  And for every demographic group in this country, attainment and
• 22:33
  mathematics and the sciences and reading and history have gone
• 22:37
  down. And we're now barely in the top
• 22:40
  75 in the world in educational attainment.
• 22:43
  Tell me that it isn't time for a revival in classical education.
• 22:47
  But the good news, Lila, to sum up here, is that parents are
• 22:51
  ahead of the policy makers and they've been walking, they've
• 22:53
  been voting with their feet, starting homeschool classical
• 22:56
  co-ops, starting classical schools of all stripes.
• 22:59
  And the good news is that the great news is we're living
• 23:03
  through the revival and in our lifetimes, we're going to see
• 23:06
  it. And in our children's lifetimes,
• 23:08
  by the time they're sitting here doing what you and I are doing,
• 23:11
  perhaps when they talk about education, it's going to be
• 23:15
  classical. I love that.
• 23:16
  Well, and I'm so blessed because I was homeschool classical with
• 23:19
  classical education and my parents started a classical
• 23:22
  Academy. At your talk last night, there
• 23:24
  was a friend of mine and he kind of was joking, half serious,
• 23:27
  though, you know, he's, I don't know, in his 30s.
• 23:29
  I wish I want to be classically, you know, can I go to, can I go
• 23:32
  to classical school? You know, how do I do this as an
• 23:35
  adult? If I may the the the greatest
• 23:37
  request that parents of kids in classical schools have is teach
• 23:40
  me this. Right, because it's, it's
• 23:42
  learning how to think. As you said, I think so much of
• 23:45
  educate modern education today is giving inputs and, and quite
• 23:49
  frankly, amoral or even sometimes immoral inputs,
• 23:53
  meaning there's ideologies that are just being stuffed on kids,
• 23:56
  pushed on kids. And instead of teaching the
• 23:59
  child to understand, like you say, truth and to seek truth and
• 24:02
  understand logic, how how logic works, how rhetoric works,
• 24:05
  they're just being given stuff to regurgitate then.
• 24:09
  And that's all of the testing process.
• 24:10
  It's like regurgitate the answer here.
• 24:13
  And, and many of the facts that they're giving or the inputs are
• 24:16
  being given are not, are not true or they're not, you know,
• 24:19
  they're out of context. And, and you have just the
• 24:22
  crisis of today, the numbers you were sharing.
• 24:24
  People are not well educated today.
• 24:25
  They're, they struggle. And, and I think the, this, the,
• 24:28
  the chokehold that leftism has today.
• 24:31
  What's the relationship between that and the breakdown in
• 24:34
  education? It's a, it's a huge relationship
• 24:38
  in fact. And I'll, I'll make this
• 24:40
  succinct, although we could spend just an hour on, on just
• 24:43
  this. Starting in the late 1800s,
• 24:46
  philosophers like Dewey and James were trying to turn
• 24:50
  education into something that was not about unified truth.
• 24:54
  It was not about classical education, but about, in their
• 24:57
  words, preparing the students to join the workforce, which is not
• 25:02
  a bad thing. I mean, just to tell you as as
• 25:04
  as a parent of, of kids going into the workforce, I want them
• 25:08
  to be in the workforce. But that's not the aim of
• 25:10
  education. It is, it ought to be a really
• 25:12
  good by product of a great education, which is someone who
• 25:16
  knows how to think. They know truth.
• 25:17
  They treat people well, they know virtue.
• 25:20
  James and Dewey hated that. James and Dewey's students
• 25:23
  became professors in the 1940s and 50s.
• 25:26
  Why did they hate that, by the way?
• 25:27
  They they hated that because they thanks for that question.
• 25:30
  They hated that because ultimately they saw the state as
• 25:33
  needing to be in control of what was being taught.
• 25:36
  And it was also they needed to people to feel particular at the
• 25:39
  time economic roles, right? That's exactly.
• 25:41
  Right. And but the thing with economic
• 25:42
  roles is those have changed Yeah, every decade economic
• 25:45
  roles change. And of course they do work out
• 25:47
  in the because of technologies and and also just global
• 25:50
  development. So, so you're, you're you're.
• 25:53
  You're spot. On the the the training the
• 25:55
  worker of a decade ago using the same mechanism.
• 25:58
  Today, the workers look different.
• 26:00
  Yeah, and they need to. But the biggest thing a worker
• 26:02
  needs, if you're working as a human being, is you need
• 26:04
  formation. You need to know how to think.
• 26:06
  You need integrity. You need virtues.
• 26:09
  And you, and you know this from your leadership experience with
• 26:11
  your organization, people running for profit businesses
• 26:15
  know this. It, it doesn't matter what the
• 26:17
  education of your top employee candidate has, you are going to
• 26:21
  take him or her and you're going to put them into your company's
• 26:25
  or your organization's professional development
• 26:27
  program, right? Because there's something that
• 26:29
  the great thing about the modern workforce is there's something
• 26:32
  unique to each corporation, to each organization, right?
• 26:36
  And, and, and so no amount of Graduate School can prepare
• 26:39
  someone fully for that. It's, it really underscores the
• 26:41
  point that you're making. All that to say, then,
• 26:44
  therefore, how about we just give every student the best
• 26:48
  base, the best foundation of education that we can, and then
• 26:51
  let the specialization come or the time that they're in the
• 26:56
  workforce. Right.
• 26:57
  And so I interrupted you earlier though you were saying.
• 26:59
  And then Dewey, they're basically their students, went
• 27:02
  off to indoctrinate a whole new. Yeah, I think the key point to
• 27:06
  to conclude there is that William James and Dewey's
• 27:10
  students became the founders of the colleges of education.
• 27:14
  And I know that this will sound really extreme and and sound
• 27:18
  like hyperbole. There's not a single College of
• 27:20
  education that should exist today.
• 27:23
  Not a single one. They're they have the the least
• 27:28
  prepared students. I'm a fifth generation educator
• 27:31
  so I can say this. They have the least prepared
• 27:33
  students. They have the worst professors
• 27:35
  who should never have gotten a graduate degree, probably not a
• 27:38
  bachelor's. They are anti American.
• 27:41
  They're anti humored. In college, yes.
• 27:43
  My high school education, homeschool, classical education
• 27:46
  was harder and better than college.
• 27:49
  Yeah, that's. My UCLA.
• 27:51
  There are people, people listening to this conversation,
• 27:54
  watching this conversation, they themselves or their children or
• 27:57
  their grandchildren are nodding their heads because it's true.
• 28:00
  And so public policy of the next 10 years needs to reflect.
• 28:03
  That what does that look like? Yeah.
• 28:04
  Oh, it's it's so easy, Lila. All we've got to do is eliminate
• 28:08
  the US Department of Education. It's a waste of money with with
• 28:11
  a bunch of bureaucrats who hate America.
• 28:14
  And if anyone thinks that the president of the Heritage
• 28:16
  Foundation is just using that as kind of sloganeering, no, we
• 28:19
  have the plan. I mean what?
• 28:20
  We replace it with though there's nothing.
• 28:22
  Nothing, nothing, nothing. No, you, you, just you, you take
• 28:24
  that investment. Let's just give what's.
• 28:27
  The budget do. You it's over.
• 28:29
  Well, it's, it's several $100 billion a year.
• 28:32
  And that's crazy. Yeah, it's it's what?
• 28:34
  Do they do with that money? This this this is this is
• 28:36
  insanity. They have 32 sub agencies in the
• 28:41
  Department of Education that do the same thing and we haven't
• 28:44
  even gotten into how they are also responsible for the student
• 28:47
  loan mess that we have created. It's both the Republican and
• 28:50
  Democrat problem. I'll add that's a bipartisan
• 28:52
  critique. Everyone knows that's broken.
• 28:55
  But to to answer your question, you give it to the States and
• 28:58
  will there be some states that do a better job than others?
• 29:00
  Yes, that's happening now, but you give it to the states,
• 29:03
  they're closer to the people. For anyone who would say, Kevin,
• 29:07
  it sounds like you're just really trying to undermine
• 29:09
  public education. I've only gone to public
• 29:12
  schools. I'm grateful to the for the
• 29:13
  public education that I got. And because of that, I, I want
• 29:17
  to see it be much better. And we, we have to do that
• 29:20
  because the note most noble aspect in America itself and
• 29:25
  noble ideal is that in this pluralistic society, we all
• 29:29
  operate with the assumption that everyone has the equal
• 29:31
  opportunity to the best education in the history of the
• 29:34
  world. And it is a travesty.
• 29:37
  It is unjust. It is evil that we're not only
• 29:40
  not doing that, we're spending trillions of dollars telling
• 29:44
  people we're doing it and kids are suffering.
• 29:46
  So if we put that money into giving kids in the inner city
• 29:50
  the opportunity for a classical education and all the beautiful
• 29:56
  blessings that come with that, you know, the formation and the
• 29:59
  how to think and how to learn and how to grow, what would what
• 30:03
  would the country look like? It would be in a generation.
• 30:06
  It would be a different country. Wow.
• 30:08
  Because if you took that money and you said to.
• 30:11
  Hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, it's it in the billions.
• 30:14
  Yeah, it's the the annual budget is probably 70 billion, 70
• 30:17
  billion. Dollars.
• 30:18
  Yeah, and this is just the federal.
• 30:19
  That's just the federal. Level Federal agency.
• 30:21
  Yeah. I mean, obviously every state is
• 30:23
  receiving some of that money, but then they're they're adding
• 30:25
  on top of that a place like California, Texas or Florida,
• 30:28
  NY, spending billions on top of that.
• 30:30
  But if you take some portion of that money and you just tell the
• 30:34
  American people, we're going to guarantee all of you with kids,
• 30:37
  60 million school aged Americans, that you can send
• 30:41
  your child to the school of your choice.
• 30:43
  Every dollar we're investing in education will follow the
• 30:46
  student. Guess what happens?
• 30:48
  The American people will tell you the kind of schools they
• 30:50
  want. The American people, the radical
• 30:52
  left thinks, are too dumb to make up their minds on this
• 30:56
  because they want to control them.
• 30:57
  We happen to believe that the greatest part of America is her
• 31:01
  people. And her people of all skin
• 31:04
  colors, ethnic backgrounds, languages, geographical
• 31:08
  locations will tell you we want an education that treats my
• 31:11
  child well or a school that treats my child well.
• 31:14
  Most importantly, forms them, prepares them, teaches them the
• 31:17
  subjects that they need. And most Americans still will
• 31:20
  say, I want my child in the school that teaches a love for
• 31:25
  America. Not that it's perfect, it's not,
• 31:28
  but it is the last best hope for humankind.
• 31:31
  And I just believe, Lila, that we're we've had so many
• 31:35
  successes at the state level for universal school choice this
• 31:38
  year. I see in Northern Virginia,
• 31:41
  where we now live, parents who are definitely politically left
• 31:45
  of center, fed up that if we can have leaders of both parties
• 31:50
  rise to the occasion that in our lifetimes we will secure.
• 31:56
  Secure the greatest, most noble aspect of the American promise,
• 32:00
  which is that every child, when he or she comes out of the womb,
• 32:03
  is going to have the best education anyone in the world
• 32:05
  has ever had, even if they're in a poor family.
• 32:09
  And that's the that is the criticism, right?
• 32:12
  From people who hate school choice, they say, you know, I
• 32:15
  think the well-intentioned ones, maybe they misunderstand.
• 32:17
  They say, well, this is going to disadvantage children who are
• 32:20
  already disadvantaged because they're not going to have access
• 32:23
  to the same schools that may be more upper class or kids who are
• 32:27
  better off. So you economically will have
• 32:29
  debunk that for us. Best way I can debunk that is to
• 32:33
  rely on one of my colleagues at Heritage, Doctor Jay Green,
• 32:35
  who's the foremost researcher on that question.
• 32:38
  And look, I, I lead a think tank and so I'm you have to account
• 32:41
  for my bias. Yeah, ideologically, but we deal
• 32:44
  with the facts. There have been 72 studies in
• 32:47
  the last 15 years or so of what happens to the public schools
• 32:52
  where there is school choice in the area. 72 studies, 71 of
• 32:57
  those studies resoundingly show that those students in the
• 33:01
  public schools where their school choice and going to other
• 33:04
  schools, the public schools improve.
• 33:06
  It's the nature of competition. What about that other study?
• 33:09
  It's just mixed results. And so I don't know about you,
• 33:13
  but there aren't too many decisions in life, too many
• 33:15
  research questions in life that are that profound.
• 33:17
  And, and, and the great thing is Jay and and other people in the
• 33:21
  school choice movement have been so persuasive on this that we
• 33:25
  have more than 10 states in in this year, in 2023 that have
• 33:29
  passed massive school choice bills.
• 33:31
  I believe the state of Texas later this year in a special
• 33:34
  session will do the same. And, and, and then we'll be
• 33:37
  sprung and eventually, believe it or not, Lila, in places like
• 33:41
  New York and California, we're going to get it done because the
• 33:44
  people will demand it. I love that.
• 33:46
  Yeah, I'll be first in line. As you should be.
• 33:49
  So you said you said, you know, when every child is out of the
• 33:53
  womb, they will have the best education and and make America
• 33:56
  the premier place to educate a child, which it is not today.
• 34:00
  The far from incredible amounts of money we're spending on it
• 34:02
  and our wealth and our privilege here.
• 34:05
  Our kids are suffering. Like you said, they're not even
• 34:07
  competing with many countries. And you know, there's kids in
• 34:10
  this country. I think there was a what's the
• 34:11
  statistic or are there statistics you have about
• 34:14
  competency in math? I mean, there's certain I've
• 34:17
  heard some horrifying numbers. Yeah, so, and, and you know
• 34:20
  where we do these checks, the national, the NAEP, NAEP test,
• 34:25
  we do these standardized tests, 4th graders and 8th graders,
• 34:29
  left and right. People believe that that these
• 34:32
  these statistics are good. The the competency of 4th
• 34:35
  graders and 8th graders in the United States and math in
• 34:37
  particular, is not just below 50%, it's below 40%.
• 34:41
  And so often, or at least in my career, as I've been trying to
• 34:45
  persuade people of classical education, the most thoughtful
• 34:47
  questions that are are skeptical questions have come from people
• 34:51
  who love math and sciences. And they think, you know,
• 34:55
  inaccurately, that classical education is not good for math
• 34:58
  and sciences. And then they see that, and then
• 35:00
  they see the standardized test results of kids, children from
• 35:04
  wealthy families, children from poorer families doing really
• 35:07
  well, and they start to become convinced.
• 35:10
  Well, I think there's, you're learning how to think in with
• 35:13
  classical education, but there's also a sense of really focusing
• 35:16
  on the individual child to understand how they're learning.
• 35:20
  And I think that's also missing in a lot of school today,
• 35:24
  especially in public school. But the, you know, once they're
• 35:26
  out of the womb, they're getting the best education.
• 35:29
  You know, obviously, you know, I lead live action.
• 35:30
  We're fighting for the child in the womb because they're being
• 35:33
  savaged. I mean, there are 2500 abortions
• 35:35
  every single day. What's Heritage's take on that?
• 35:39
  And what are the solutions to stop this bloodshed?
• 35:41
  I mean, it is the leading cause of death in the world is
• 35:44
  abortion. First of all, thank you for your
• 35:46
  leadership and witness on that issue.
• 35:48
  It is, it's my personal top issue for for many years and we
• 35:54
  can't even talk about education policy really without first
• 35:57
  acknowledging we have to fix the the problem of, of abortion.
• 36:00
  Heritage's position is because we, with all of our policy
• 36:04
  questions, we start with the ideal.
• 36:05
  So our ideal and education, for example, is every dollar follows
• 36:08
  every child. Heritage's position, to be very
• 36:11
  blunt, is that there are no abortions in this country,
• 36:13
  period, full stop. And we're going to get there.
• 36:16
  But as you know better than anyone, while that is a
• 36:19
  political and policy question, even even more than that, it's a
• 36:23
  social and cultural question. And so simultaneously to being
• 36:27
  very courageous on federal law, we do believe to be very clear,
• 36:32
  there is a federal position on this.
• 36:35
  There is a federal position on this.
• 36:38
  Republican leaders, leaders today to say now that Roe is
• 36:42
  overturned, the federal government has no role to play.
• 36:45
  And it's like you have a constitutional right to life.
• 36:48
  This isn't like states get to decide whether you live or die
• 36:51
  and you're a innocent child. The state doesn't have the right
• 36:54
  to do that. So the federal government has a
• 36:56
  role to play, especially when you have states who are
• 36:58
  violating fundamental constitutional rights, like here
• 37:00
  in California. That's exactly right.
• 37:03
  And, and so there has to be federal action, there needs to
• 37:06
  be state action, there even needs to be local action.
• 37:09
  Unfortunately, this is the fight of our lifetime.
• 37:12
  I mean, Dobbs obviously was a great gift.
• 37:14
  It was the answer to prayer and, and obviously a lot of
• 37:16
  sacrifice. And unfortunately, 55,000,000
• 37:19
  lives lost. Imagine if that hadn't been the
• 37:22
  case, the how much easier it would be to answer these policy
• 37:26
  questions, how much easier it would be to talk about
• 37:29
  masculinity and femininity, How many more families would be
• 37:32
  intact. And, and the, and the good news
• 37:35
  is that I think in a generation or so, we're going to get there.
• 37:40
  But that's that doesn't mean that we need to go into our
• 37:43
  elected officials need to go into the Lex next election cycle
• 37:46
  and say we're not going to talk about it.
• 37:48
  The reason we got our clocks cleaned, those of us who are
• 37:51
  conservatives in the midterms, one of the reasons is because we
• 37:54
  ran away from that victory. It is actually not, I'm not
• 37:57
  going to be polite and say lack of courage.
• 37:59
  I'm going to say an enormous amount of cowardice and just on
• 38:03
  this issue. Blindness, I call it
• 38:05
  foolishness. It's one thing to be a coward.
• 38:08
  It's another thing to just be dumb about.
• 38:09
  You know, it's just like you could have won.
• 38:12
  I mean, you saw Governor DeSantis, Governor Abbott, some
• 38:14
  of these amazing governors just win.
• 38:16
  I mean, DeSantis in a landslide. And then he just passed the
• 38:19
  heartbeat law, which, you know, a lot of Republicans right now
• 38:22
  are so scared of. And it's like you're protecting
• 38:25
  a baby when their heart's beating.
• 38:26
  Why are we even debating this? And.
• 38:28
  And, and you know this well, you'll do such a great job at
• 38:30
  live action. It's, it's a matter of language,
• 38:32
  right? And so I've I've reminded some
• 38:34
  skeptics, including some some friends in Congress that you
• 38:38
  look at, at any poll that polls, do you want to ban abortion
• 38:42
  starting at six weeks? A majority of respondents say
• 38:47
  no, but if you ask this same group of respondents, do you
• 38:50
  want to ban abortion at heartbeat?
• 38:52
  Overwhelmingly yes. Because there have been decades
• 38:56
  of dehumanization of the six week old baby so that when an
• 39:00
  average American here in six week old or six week pregnancy,
• 39:04
  they don't say baby, of course. They just say pregnancy.
• 39:06
  You know, what's in the what, what does a pregnancy involve a
• 39:08
  mother and a child, right. But they think, oh, it's six
• 39:12
  weeks. That can't even be a human yet.
• 39:13
  You know, there's, there's all the the mindlessness right of
• 39:16
  today, the misinformation about embryonic development.
• 39:19
  But you say, well, the heart's beating 3 1/2 weeks from
• 39:22
  fertilization around, you know, 5 weeks gestation.
• 39:26
  OK, now that we're talking about a human being, clearly humans
• 39:28
  have hearts. You know, this is a this is a
• 39:30
  life. It's just it, it's a it's a
• 39:31
  reframing of the issue that, for example, Governor DeSantis knew
• 39:35
  well. So when he was advocating for
• 39:37
  this wonderful legislation, he's talking about the babies,
• 39:39
  talking about the heartbeat. Even Americans left of center
• 39:42
  who generally are pro abortion have a real hard time.
• 39:47
  They most of them get queasy about this as they should,
• 39:49
  right. And so your point, my point,
• 39:51
  Heritage's point to come back to your question is focus on that.
• 39:55
  Let's go get the wins we can, But we're not going to sit back
• 39:59
  and applaud ourselves for having done this, pat ourselves in the
• 40:02
  back. We're going to keep working
• 40:03
  until literally there's not a single abortion.
• 40:05
  Yes, Amen. A couple more questions.
• 40:07
  I know we've got a wrap here in a minute.
• 40:09
  What does the side of making America a better place for
• 40:13
  families look like? I mean, part of your work on
• 40:16
  education is crucial. I mean, what is the biggest
• 40:18
  concern of a parent besides roof over their head, food on the
• 40:21
  table? It's how do I educate my child
• 40:23
  right? Ending abortion, stopping the
• 40:25
  killing is, is key. But what does it look like,
• 40:27
  especially for families that may be struggling or parents that,
• 40:30
  you know, one of the reasons we have abortion, 86% of abortions
• 40:33
  are done for single women are unmarried women.
• 40:37
  So these are women who are just struggling.
• 40:39
  They're like, I can't how can I raise a child?
• 40:41
  What do I do? I do.
• 40:42
  What are some of the public policy answers to make America a
• 40:45
  friendlier place to raise a family to be a parent?
• 40:48
  I think that's the, along with education and what we do with
• 40:52
  abortion in particular, it's, it's the third of the three most
• 40:55
  policy issues in the United States.
• 40:57
  And so every six months, I, I give my policy colleagues,
• 41:00
  scholars and heritage a charge and on a, on a big research
• 41:05
  paper, the, the one most recently that they concluded
• 41:07
  and, and really did well was on China, which is kind of related
• 41:10
  to this actually. But their current charge right
• 41:12
  now, and this is led by Roger Severino, head of our domestic
• 41:14
  policy is he's excellent. He is excellent, great pro-life
• 41:18
  warrior, great man is what do we do about family policy?
• 41:23
  And so our scholars have traveled the world, They've gone
• 41:25
  to Singapore, they've gone to Israel.
• 41:26
  Several of us were in Hungary recently getting some data on
• 41:31
  three countries that have a family policy.
• 41:33
  And so some of these, some of these answers are low, what I
• 41:36
  would call low hanging fruit. They're they're in tax policy.
• 41:39
  There are penalties, tax penalties to being married.
• 41:43
  There are in some programs disincentives to having
• 41:46
  children, including when you're married.
• 41:49
  We have to fix that. These these should be easy
• 41:51
  things once conservatives control both chambers of
• 41:53
  Congress and there's a president who understands this.
• 41:56
  But beyond that is the real question.
• 41:58
  And so the key, key point I would home in on Lila is that in
• 42:01
  Hungary, for example, they've invested seriously in family
• 42:06
  policy. Two things have happened the
• 42:09
  that the marriage rate is up and the fertility rate is up, the
• 42:12
  birth rate is up. But the other thing that's
• 42:15
  happened to the heart of your question is that the abortion
• 42:17
  rate among married women has dropped by half in less than a
• 42:21
  decade. Amazing.
• 42:22
  What we would therefore speculate will happen, and where
• 42:25
  our researchers will be paying attention to this over the next
• 42:28
  five years, is that you'll see a decline in the abortion rate
• 42:31
  itself. And so there's a lesson there.
• 42:33
  Every country is different, Hungary smaller by for sure than
• 42:36
  the United States from Israel. The lesson from Singapore, very,
• 42:39
  very free market kind of place. And we are, we will be putting
• 42:43
  together a legislative package that we will ask anyone who
• 42:46
  wants to be president of the United States, but especially on
• 42:49
  the conservative side to support.
• 42:51
  Because ultimately to sum up here, all of the all of the
• 42:54
  questions, education policy, what we do about China, all
• 42:58
  these other pressing questions are moot if we're not getting
• 43:01
  married and not having kids. It's so true.
• 43:03
  What's the future? Without marriage and kids, we
• 43:05
  don't have a civilization anymore.
• 43:07
  But if we're not prioritizing children and marriage in our
• 43:12
  public policy, in our culture, in our daily lives, each of us,
• 43:16
  what are where how are we ever going to rebuild?
• 43:19
  Yeah. And solve that And and and I'm I
• 43:21
  mean, this will sound. Like I'm kind of self
• 43:23
  congratulating the Heritage Foundation about this.
• 43:25
  I'm not. It's actually lamenting.
• 43:28
  I think we're the only big think tank headquartered in DC on the
• 43:33
  political right that's talking about this.
• 43:35
  There are some smaller groups that are that are awesome, don't
• 43:38
  get me wrong, but we're, we're beginning to see a change in the
• 43:41
  narrative on this such that the current issue of the Economist,
• 43:45
  as we, we sit here and have this conversation for the, the the
• 43:48
  cover story is about the birth rate crisis.
• 43:51
  Well, even Elon Musk, you know, complaining about it.
• 43:53
  On Twitter regularly, but is a solution to the fact that we are
• 43:57
  not replacing ourselves as a population and the economic and
• 43:59
  social ramifications are terrible for us is the solution.
• 44:03
  You know the Elon Musk route, which is I think he's going
• 44:05
  around and having tons of different things with different.
• 44:07
  I would advise against that. Right so so but.
• 44:09
  That can't be right because. There's brokenness and there's,
• 44:12
  you know, the psychological and societal impacts of that, which,
• 44:15
  you know, I'm sure, I know Heritage is researching.
• 44:17
  We could get into another time. But marriage and family, Yeah.
• 44:21
  It's the, it's the success sequence.
• 44:23
  Yeah. OK, so last question, I know and
• 44:25
  we've got a. Wrap here.
• 44:26
  This has been excellent. All right, a decade out.
• 44:29
  Let's give it a decade. What are the shifts that are
• 44:33
  going to happen in our culture and politics because of the work
• 44:38
  we're doing and we're going to get, we're going to be doubling
• 44:40
  down on and because of the work of Heritage.
• 44:42
  Thank you. And and because of your work.
• 44:44
  And the work of people who are, who are in the audience and
• 44:46
  supporting your work. So it's 2033 first and foremost.
• 44:49
  We will see in an increase 2034230 give me 11.
• 44:54
  Years. Oh man.
• 44:54
  Well, it might be. Dangerous.
• 44:55
  OK, so New Year's Day 2034. Good, good.
• 44:59
  I hope you do. This is how we operated here,
• 45:01
  heritage as we say, what do we want to accomplish in five
• 45:03
  years, 10 years? So first and foremost, the the
• 45:07
  marriage rate will be up, the divorce rate will be down, the
• 45:10
  birth rate will be up. If, if we are able to implement
• 45:13
  so-called family policy in 2025, you ought to start seeing this
• 45:17
  long term kind of policy. You ought to start seeing the
• 45:20
  fruits of that. Abortion rate is down in
• 45:22
  education, every state or almost every state, it might take 15
• 45:26
  years. In California, we'll have
• 45:27
  universal school choice. There will be no U.S.
• 45:30
  Department of Education, which I know sounds a little mechanical
• 45:33
  relative to these big social and cultural questions, but it
• 45:35
  matters because that is hundreds of that.
• 45:37
  Is billions of dollars of a certain quite frankly, woke
• 45:41
  ideology that's also not even successful at being woke, I
• 45:45
  would argue. So they're just, they can't even
• 45:46
  implement that well, but they're stalling.
• 45:48
  Progress. And that that's you're not this
• 45:50
  is not punitive what you're describing.
• 45:52
  They're they're in the way of real progress we can make in
• 45:54
  education. Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 45:56
  And and let's just posit. On that point that in 1979
• 45:59
  President Carter was was well-intentioned with this, he
• 46:02
  may have been for as as much as I know it's outdated.
• 46:07
  So it's time to move on. And then beyond that, states
• 46:11
  will have continued to exert their their authority properly.
• 46:15
  I mean, we, we believe in federalism.
• 46:16
  There's a role for the federal government.
• 46:18
  But by that I mean that the states are doing more in
• 46:21
  education. States can pass family policy
• 46:24
  that there's nothing preventing in the Constitution, state
• 46:27
  legislature from saying we want the birth rate in Texas or in
• 46:30
  California to be higher. We want the marriage rate to be
• 46:32
  higher. Heritage is working with with
• 46:34
  states on that. But the final thing I would say
• 46:36
  is the most important that every American who wakes up in 2034
• 46:42
  understands three things. The first is that the American
• 46:46
  dream is alive and well. The second is that part of that
• 46:50
  is they have self governance. That's why we do what we do.
• 46:54
  And the third is however they understand it in their religion,
• 46:57
  giving full respect to our our pluralism.
• 47:00
  They understand that there is a higher power, what you and I
• 47:02
  call God, and that this great country 260 years into its
• 47:07
  existence at that point is not only not weaker, but it's
• 47:11
  actually stronger because of its understanding of that and the
• 47:15
  dignity of every human person on the planet.
• 47:21
  Any public policy goals that fall short of those being the
• 47:24
  aims are a waste of time and money.
• 47:27
  Awesome. Thank you.
• 47:28
  Kevin, you're excited to see Heritage continue to grow.
• 47:32
  I think you said you've increased in what is that
• 47:35
  15,000,000 in just the last 18 months?
• 47:37
  Yeah, You know, we're, we're pretty ambitious at Heritage.
• 47:39
  Good. Good hire, good hire, but it's.
• 47:41
  It's a team effort, truly. OK.
• 47:43
  I have one one quick last question.
• 47:44
  Actually, because I can't leave, have you leave without me asking
• 47:47
  this for my benefit. You lead.
• 47:50
  I don't know how many people are and staff at Heritage 300, some
• 47:53
  OK, you're 100 million. Dollar a year organization.
• 47:56
  What any tips on leadership? How do you lead an organization
• 48:00
  that's that consequential in what you're doing and that big,
• 48:03
  I mean, you're, you're a a very large, not-for-profit, a very
• 48:06
  large organization. Yeah.
• 48:07
  What what I've learned and I've made.
• 48:09
  Plenty of mistakes and make plenty of mistakes.
• 48:11
  And to that point, first and foremost is you recruit and, and
• 48:15
  sustain the development of your your leadership team.
• 48:19
  Good men and women who not only in their own right are great,
• 48:22
  but they're also complimentary to you.
• 48:24
  So I was just coming over here from a a weekly meeting with my
• 48:27
  executive team. And I hired them in part because
• 48:30
  they can check me. They can they can fill the gaps
• 48:32
  that I have. They willing to tolerate me.
• 48:34
  So there's a certain humility we have to have.
• 48:37
  But the second is we ought not be humble as leaders when it
• 48:41
  comes to articulating the vision.
• 48:44
  So the Holy Spirit calls us to found things as he has with you.
• 48:48
  He calls us to lead long existing organizations, as he
• 48:52
  did with me. And we ought to be humble, but
• 48:55
  we ought to be really bold when it comes to articulating vision,
• 48:59
  articulating strategy. Leaders lead.
• 49:04
  And one of the problems we have in this country is that too few
• 49:07
  leaders want to do that. The fear of vision.
• 49:11
  Yeah. Because it's the fear of
• 49:12
  failure, ultimately. And we shouldn't fear failure.
• 49:16
  Amen. I love that.
• 49:17
  Thank you. Kevin, thanks, Lila.
• 49:19
  Thanks. I really appreciate it.