Sticking to the FACTS

Welcome to Family Policy Matters, an engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, this is John Rustin, President of NC Family, and we're grateful to have you with us for this week's program.

It's our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged, and inspired by what you hear on Family Policy Matters and that you will feel better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. And now here is our host of Family Policy Matters, Tracey Devette Griggs. Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. An issue that's gotten quite a bit of attention lately is an effort by our new Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson. According to the Lieutenant Governor's website, Robinson has launched a task force to support parents, teachers, and students who are, quote, Carolina's future by exposing indoctrination in the classroom and ensuring that our students are taught how to think, not what to think, end quote. Well, we're excited to welcome Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson to the show today to discuss his new FACTS task force. Mark Robinson, welcome to Family Policy Matters.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Also joining us today is NC Families President John Rustin. Hello, John.

Hey, Tracey. Great to be with you. All right, well, folks, we are being treated to the opportunity to listen in on a conversation between these two men on this new task force and what that might mean for our families and communities. Today, we really want to kind of focus in specifically on the area of education and your role as a member of the State Board of Education. So, Lieutenant Governor, as we start, what is your overall impression of education here in North Carolina now that you have a somewhat new role and perspective as Lieutenant Governor? Well, first, let me say that I believe that North Carolina has some absolutely fantastic teachers. We have some of the best teachers in the country right here in North Carolina. We have some of the best education systems in the country. We have teachers that are dedicated to their job and dedicated to the mission thereof. I want to say that first and foremost because I've met many of them while I've been serving as Lieutenant Governor and when running for Lieutenant Governor. And so I feel that in general, our education system here in North Carolina is on firm footing, has been, I think, since 2010, when Republicans took over the legislature and made education a priority, start giving our teachers raises and things like that.

Because of that nature. But I do think there are a lot of things that we need to work on in the education system. And one of them is the thing that we were just talking about. Unfortunately, there are people who are in the classroom who feel the need to share information that does not need to be shared. And for some things on our students that shouldn't be, they shouldn't be forcing them. Now, the FACTS task force and FACTS is an acronym that stands for fairness and accountability in the classroom for teachers and students. So the FACTS task force that you have created has a very specific purpose.

Talk about that a little bit. What prompted you to create this task force? Well, you know, for years, I've known that this indoctrination existed in the classroom. I knew when my children were in school, I saw examples of it then. But I didn't realize how widespread it was until I became a candidate for Lieutenant Governor. Once I became a candidate, everywhere we went, we found while we were traveling the state, we heard about these things. As Lieutenant Governor, we continue to, of course, to hear about them. And then I began to see some of it up close and personal when I attended my first school board meeting and got an inside look at some of the things and agendas that are being pushed at the state level. And so it is a very dismay into me that these things are going on. And again, we hear about it all the time.

And everybody talks about it all the time. The problem is, it didn't seem that anyone was really making a move to do anything about it. And that is why we started this task force.

A place where they could bring their complaints and not just have them heard, but actually figure out a way to do something about this. This is a problem, not just in North Carolina. It is a problem all across the country. And it's not just about indoctrination in the classroom. It's also about bias in the classroom and about bias at our schools where conservative voices, Christian voices are being pushed out of the conversation are not being allowed to be part of the conversation.

And we have got to change that. We have got to make sure that everybody in the classroom has a voice and that everybody in the classroom is being treated fairly. I know in this country, we've always tried to do that. And we need to do it in education as well. So that's the purpose of the task force. Well, you have been such a great leader and an outspoken leader in this realm.

And we're so grateful for that. I know a lot of these issues really came to light not terribly long ago when the State Board of Education was considering some new standards for the social studies curriculum. in North Carolina. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Well, yes. The standards for those who may not understand how the system works, the state school board creates a set of standards. The standards state what students should know at the end of each grade level. And then DPI takes those standards and uses those standards to create primary sources for teachers to use in order to carry out their curriculums at the classroom level. The standards that we had originally, and I had seen them before I became a school board member, very good standards. You know, they were very straight to the point. Anyone who read them could understand them.

There was really no question about them. Some folks objected to those standards for some reason and demanded that some of this so-called social justice language be placed into it. And, you know, reading over those standards, they read like, I think one school board member described them as, if they were going to give them a title, would be called 10 Reasons Why America is a Bad Place.

I mean, really divisive language saying that America is systematically racist, which is just not true. We were diametrically opposed with the language, the substance, and the tone in those standards. And we stood up against them.

Now, those standards were passed. And they're going to be used in our school system, but that was not the end of the fight. We're going to continue to try to pull education back away from these. And let me be honest with you, right now we have a lot of people on the left, on the hard left, who are using our education system, basically as their own personal playground, to push their own personal agendas.

And we're going to continue to fight to wrestle that away from them and get education back to a place where it should be. So what kind of response have you received since you created this task force? I remember that we were actually doing a story on it to alert people to it, and the website was down. And the mainstream media came out and said, well, maybe he's giving it second thoughts.

Our understanding was that there was so much traffic on the website that it had to be taken down in order to kind of reinforce it so that it could handle a higher level of traffic. What have you seen in relation to the development of this task force, and as folks across the state have learned more about it? The information is coming in fast and furious.

The help is coming in fast and furious. People are calling from all across the state, really calling from all across the country, asking what they can do to help in this effort. As a matter of fact, it is bigger than we ever expected, and we are steadily moving forward collecting the information. From that point, once we've collected the information, we will sit down, we'll categorize it, we'll look over it, and we'll highlight the things that we feel like we need to highlight. And then we'll take the next step in presenting the information to the necessary parties. And we don't really know what that's going to look like yet because we have not decided. We've got a lot of options on what we can do.

And so once we get this information collected and get it organized, we're going to take it to the appropriate entity that we feel like this is appropriate, we're going to present it, and then we're going to move forward with trying to build some solutions. And I truly believe that we are going to have to solve this issue. If we do not, I believe that there's going to be a mass exodus from public education in this nation.

I really do. Parents are no longer going to teach their children at home how to be good Christians, how to be good patriots, good Americans, and then have them sent off to school to be basically programmed to be socialists. They're not going to do it anymore. And the public education system in this country has done wonders for the fabric of our society. We need to allow it to continue to do that. But the only way we can do that is if the public education system is about the business of education. We cannot continue to allow this indoctrination to rule over our public schools.

We've got to stop it. I couldn't agree more. Now, Lieutenant Governor, some may think that concerns about indoctrination and discrimination and harassment only apply to students or may only apply to students, but administrators and teachers and other school personnel can face these same challenges, can't they?

Absolutely. We have examples of students. We have examples of teachers that would make your toes curl. We have examples of school board members, administrators, all who have been victims of either bias or being forced to sit in trainings where they're told that they're racist and have to go along with it. This is happening across the board in education to parents, teachers, and students and administrators. But one of the things that I think can really help, I think that we could see a lot of change in our school systems across this state, across this country, if parents get involved at the local level. Go to the school board meetings, find out who your representatives are, find out about the decisions they're making, find out what they're pushing, what their support, and if you are diametrically opposed to it, push back. You have the opportunity as a citizen of your municipality to have your voice heard, make your voice heard, get involved at the local level.

A lot of this stuff is getting by because, unfortunately, it's being done while parents are at work or while parents are at home busy with their lives. And these bureaucrats, they're meeting without any backlash from the parents or the citizens. The citizens got to start coming to these meetings and making their voice heard. And I think if they do that, if we start doing that on a massive scale and making these folks realize that they have somebody they have to answer to, I think we'll see a lot of change. Plus, you know, quite honestly, I think folks need to start looking at running for some of these positions.

And we need to start making sure that we have some conservative voices on these boards so that we can have some pushback. Well, and I think parents often underestimate significantly the impact that they can have if they come together, if they organize as groups, as you're saying, in the local communities and they get engaged. But they've got to be informed. They've got to know who their city council members are, who their local board of education members are, who their county commissioners are. Not only their state legislators and members of Congress and the governor and lieutenant governor for that matter, but parents really can have a significant impact.

But they've got to be engaged. And that's one of the things we agree so much about. Lieutenant Governor Robinson, you came into this role in the middle of a global pandemic. And we've seen a lot of interesting and unique circumstances and ways of dispensing education and instruction in our state over the past year. What are some of the positive lessons or developments that you have seen in the educational arena in North Carolina during this past year? I think one of the positive things that I've seen is just how much students enjoy going to school. I mean, we see students eager to get back to school. You know, we have this prevailing thought that students hate school. You know, it's just a thing in pop culture where they say students hate school. They hate teachers.

That is not the case. These students really love school. They want to go to school. They want to enjoy their classes, go to class. And, you know, when they want to be around their friends and they want to you know, they want to sit in class and learn their lessons and all those good things. And that's one of the good things that we've seen.

Another thing that we've seen too is this. People are willing to stand up and fight for their schools. We have people all across this state who are committed, heavily committed, not just to the things that I'm talking about here about this indoctrination, but are committed to making sure that our kids get back into the classroom.

They're fighting for it every day. So I think overall that's probably the two things that I've seen most positive during this pandemic is how much we've seen that kids love school and want to go back to school and how determined parents are to make sure that this doesn't happen to their students and to their schools again. Well, that's really encouraging. Tracy, I know that we're just about out of time. So I'm going to throw things back to you now. But Lieutenant Governor, I want to just thank you so much for your time and for your insights in this conversation today. It's really helpful and we're grateful for your perspective. So I would assume that people can just keep an eye on a website, possibly just keep up with what your task force is doing?

Absolutely. They can keep up with our Facebook page. They can keep up with our website, the lieutenant governor's website.

All right. And that is ltgov.nc.gov backslash facts. Well, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, thank you so much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters.

You've been listening to Family Policy Matters. We hope you enjoyed the program and plan to tune in again next week. To listen to the show online and to learn more about NC Families work to inform, encourage and inspire families across North Carolina, go to our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. Thanks again for listening and may God bless you and your family. Thank you.