cameo. ♪♪ mark: hello america i am mark levin, it's a great honor to have doctor thomas sowell on the program a man i have followed my entire career actually as a teenager. you had an enormous influence on me and some other people. welcome we appreciate you being here, particularly in these times, first of all you have written a fabulous book, very

relevant to what is going on today. "charter schools and their enemd their enemies". were going to spend some significant time but before we do i know that the people who watch this program are very curious on your take of events that are taking place, the way that the nation's direction what's going on in our inner cities and so forth what is your general take. >> i must say in regard to this i was no pessimistic enough thinking things that would degenerate to a point from where they are now, adult human beings talking about getting rid of the police, talking about reducing the number of police and resources put in police work at a time when murder rates have been skyrocketing more than what they were a year ago in 2019.

i never dreamed we would come to this point i it's such utter madness and what is frightening is how many people responsible are caving in for every demand that is made, repeating any kind of nonsense that they're supposed to repeat. i do believe that we may well reach a point of no return. i hope of course that will never happen but there is such a thing a point of no return. the roman empire became many problems and long history but eventually it reached a point where he simply could no longer continue on and much of that was from in barbarian attacking from outside. mark: you make a great point.

i seen in 1819 a letter back and forth between jon adams and thomas jefferson, jefferson says i have been thinking about rome and i've been thinking about america and he said the romans could never come up with any kind of government to save itself or save its people because the people lost their virtue. he said whether cicero or kato or the others, he said but the united states is different. i'm here to tell you doctor soul, it is our virtual and what we see in the streets right now i don't think we can describe it as virtue, word more and academia and what we see on media and the democrats and so forth, there is no kind of government that can protect us from ourselves, isn't that correct? >> absolutely i just read the wall street journal some people who conducted a study and defended themselves against

critics until heather macdonald quoted the study and then they said she misused it and they did not say how she misused it. there are so many people who are caving in, at one time i was proud of chicago how they handled themselves back in the 1960s when so many others major universities were caving in to all other demands. but within the past year the university of chicago has suddenly decided they will do away with requiring sat and admission test for admission. all that means, they want to be able to mix-and-match people in the demographic appearances without the academic situations and that is no benefit who are admitted without the same qualifications of other students. i saw this back in the 1960s. i learned half the black

students were on academic probation, i immediately went to the administration building to look at the test scores of the black students entered.the average black student of cornell at the time was that the 75th percentile, means they're not nearly qualified they were better than three quarters of all american students who took that test, why were they having academic problems. because of the cornell liberal arts college at that time the average student was at the 99th percentile, those black students would've been so much better off somewhere else where the workers taught at a pace and a manner that was something that they could easily handle. and graduate and be on the dean's list but they split them with the top 1%, the amount of reading you had to do at cornell at that time, the amount of math, all of that went into make it harder for them to learn

things that they easily could've learned at some other university. mark: you hear this phrase systemic racism, systemic oppression, you hear it on our college campuses, you hear from very wealthy and fabulously famous sports stars, you hear from media types, first of all what does that mean and whatever it means, is it true? >> it really has no meaning that can be specified and tested in the way of one test hypotheses. it does remind me of a propaganda tactic of jos enter joseph in the age of the not these people will bullet under believe any lie long enough and loud enough and that's what were getting. i do not think even the people who use it have any clear idea of what they're saying they are privileged to serve by having other people cave in.

mark: doctor sowell, i notice most people who use that phrase don't live in the communities that they claim to be supporting and defending. some of them have left those communities never to return except on thanksgiving to hand out turkeys. others throw their money into these for the school or so forth, they don't live there or send their kids to school there, they live among the systemically racist i suppose. isn't this part of the problem with the marxist left, the absolute hypocrites. they claim they want equality for all, they claim the withering away of the state, the please department, reimagine law enforcement so forth and so on, yet every time you look at a marxist state it's in a authoritarian centralized lockdown police state. >> absolutely and trying to get away from social is different they create their own knowledge

who have their own stores that they shop in, their own makeup facilities their own everything. mark: you have written this fantastic book "charter schools in their enemies" which is the kind of books that you write, the kind of thinking you have had your entire life when i used to watch you on firing arm with bill buckley and freedman and others, it is this, you believe in liberty, you believe in competition, you believe in choice, you believe in ideas, you don't believe in physical impediments weathered skin or religion or whatever it is, you believe the american dream and you view charter schools as part of the potential for liberating our inner cities for getting poor kids educated and i want to get into that in more detail but why is this so hard to do in our inner cities to give mostly minority kids and their parents

opportunities to go to schools other than the government building happens to be right down the block. >> it's because you have a powerful invested interest in the public treasury additional public school system as it is. charter schools are the greatest threat to that. i was frankly surprised at the magnitude of the difference between being educated and charter schools and those who are being educated in traditional public schools in the very same neighborhood and in the very same building. i have a huge amount in the book based on that particular situation, cases where the charter school in the traditional public school of the neighborhood are in the very same building and they have some of the very same grades. so you can compare how the

third-graders in one school against the third-graders and the other, both of them in 90 plus% minority students, both of them from low-income families and all of that. when i did that i found the mathematics, something like the fact 10% of the children educated in the traditional public schools in the building past the mathematics steps compared to 60% of the charter schools in the very same building, i did not expect that level of disparity but there it was for more than 100 schools that i looked at in new york contain more than 23000 students. mark: when we return doctor sowell i want to ask you why charter schools are so successful when it comes to their students. in government run public schools

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mark: welcome back doctor thomas sowell your excellent book "charter schools in their enemies". why are charter schools, and really nongovernment schools much more successful than the government schools. the government schools get a ton of money and attention for the political elites and all the support they could possibly need in my opinion. whereas charter schools another's they're like the stepchild if you will. >> the out rate on the constraint the public schools are really a world of their own unlike most other institutions whether sports or medical institutions or churches, automobile dealerships or whatever. they can only survive an institution to the extent they can attract the clientele, traditional public schools do not have a problem.

attendance laws automatically supply them with the call i entail whether the clientele wants to be there or not. and during each school its own monopoly in own geographic area means they do not have to compete among themselves. and it's enormously important because you and me are so fallible, if you into a people from comparing the price of law you will get a lot of wrong things done and in particular you will get institutions being run for the benefit of those who run the institutions rather than the clientele that they're supposed to be designed for to help. in the case of the charter schools is like so many other businesses and institutions. no one is assigned to go to a charter school because of attendance laws their students are all volunteered, or their parents have volunteered them.

so the charter school must produce what will keep the students coming in or they will go out of business. and given those conditions you attract an entirely different kind of person. in the traditional public schools the teachers are practically impossible to fire noble hotter how bad they are. in the charter schools if the teachers can't teach the kids nobody cares how many degrees they have or any of that stuff. mark: there is enormous institutional opposition to charter schools to competition. it comes i guess from the teachers union which is enormously powerful which is a campaign funding source for local state and federal democrats. so they basically collude i take it to prevent the option of charter schools and other options are being available

particularly in the inner cities. and the parents in the inner cities what would they like to do with they like to send their kids to charter schools? >> there are 50000 students in traditional public schools but on waiting list to get into charter schools. if those 50000 students were able to transfer if they want to and each child in new york city, the state spends more than $20000 a year on them so to do the arithmetic that comes out to more than $1 billion a year that would move from the traditional public school to the charter school if the students were able to transfer so obviously job number one for the teachers union and for the additional of the public school is to present those students from transferring even though they have a legal right, one of the ways is to

have a fixed number of charter schools set up beyond which they cannot go so you're in a situation last year where the federal government gave the success academy charter schools more than $9 million and ordinarily they will have to expand into other buildings and so on. but because there against an arbitrary number they cannot do much among the other ways in many cities especially where the population has gone down over years their rving get schools that have been vacant for years in the local authority prevent the charter schools from using those banquette buildings. if they have more classrooms they would be able to take students up there waiting list and more important to them the money would move to the charter schools. mark: this is incredible, they

call this a civil rights issue, school choice he's been talking about this for a long time and made efforts to expand it and they funded efforts to expand it through grants and so forth. then you have the democrat party that is absolutely against this, yet barack obama the first african-american president and what's one of the first things he does he puts the kibosh on school choice, he opposes school choice. is this a civil rights issue or are the democrats going to get away with the constant monopoly control over school system? >> it depends just recently joe biden says two of the teachers unions when he becomes president teachers will be the number one priority in the schools which is an extraordinary statement when you think about it. children are supposed to be the number one priority, if you have situations where the main thing teachers have a tenure on their

job and there's all kinds of horror stories that could be told, they have no incentive, they get paid regardless of whether students learn or not. in the charter schools particularly the successful ones teachers who get good results from the students move up and the ones who do not move out. mark: do you think, i'm not generally a fan of antitrust laws but do you think they should be applied to public-sector unions. i'm thinking they should if they're going to be applied throughout our society on the business and corporate side of things if one toaster company wants to buy one toaster company has to be reviewed by the antitrust division and when it comes to the teaching of her children we have an ironfisted control over the school systems and i'm not sure how else we can break through, as you quote biden, the teachers union has

the run of the place. >> unfortunately i'm not legal to argue, but some years ago i believe there was a law made a century or more ago that said the restraint of trade, that way is not going to go but if they would just make the charter schools have equal treatment when there are students you provide classrooms for them. in new york city for example and just recent years showed that there's 212 public schools that are half empty in the charter school people are having a terrible time getting into those places because all kinds of roadblocks are being put up.

in some parts of the countries in preschool houses been demolished to make sure charter schools cannot get in there. mark: there needs to bring a liberty agenda, some kind of agenda into the inner cities that are controlled by these parties and by these forces for half a century and you're right about the antitrust laws unions were specifically exempted but i think they have to update them to reality to what is going on in this country today. when we return, isn't it true doctor sowell that we also have towns and states passing legislation to make it more and more difficult as a fundamental and legal matter to have competition of charter schools. we'll be right back.

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>> live from "america's news headquarters" i'm jon scott,

churches in california open their doors to parishioners today the state was forced to revise its guidelines after supreme court ruling lifted a ban on indoor services. governor gavin newsom has said the restriction had been in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus. the golden state governor is in the midst of a recall effort organizers who write empty to remove newsom from office say they have nearly reached the 1.5 million signatures required to place a recall proposal on the ballot. and it looks like students in the nation's third-largest school district will soon be back at school, the city of chicago coming to a tentative agreement with the teachers union mary lori life lit made the announcement earlier today. i am jon scott now back to "life liberty and levin".

mark: the effects of mass in social studies on the community and you see that and the consequent is over the last century, it is getting worse, it is not getting better and he had an informants influence as you know, my question to you as charter schools versus government or public schools, are charter schools more focused on getting kids to learn the base gets in literature in mathematics and science as opposed to the public schools that are into the social activism stuff? >> yes, in fact that's one of the things that the critics complain about, and california there are charter school laws last year that forced the

charter schools to essentially carry indoctrination courses and the content of those courses were satisfied. in california in recent years they have already mandated that the charter schools call secondary education with what is really simply indoctrination of what is thought to be the best or more advanced attitude and this is to be taught at an early age in ways that are absolutely grotesque. mark: how about patriotism, bike patriotism i mean a sick allegiance to the country. everybody does not have to agree on everything, everybody knows history is full of positives and negatives, i get the sense in the last several months and a lot of the audience does to that a lot of the hostility toward the country and the founders and

the founding documents and so forth that the breeding grounds for this is in public education. >> absolutely. if you are serious about mathematics, the english language, science and things like that you really cannot squander the time of schoolchildren on these other adventures indoctrination, almost regardless of what the indoctrination is especially from kids with low-income areas where the parents might not have as much education as other people and other parts of society, these students need a real grounding in many of these charter schools that's what they get. and also they have to have behavioral, we cannot teach them in the schools, california last year they passed incredible laws

to specify that those in the early grades cannot be suspended for disrupting classes for the activities of the schools. what you are saying your license and troublemaking. and the reason i believe so is simply this is one of many ways charter schools can be kept from the company so much better than the traditional public school, it would be a lot harder to raise the traditional public schools up to the level of charter schools but it's a lot easier to bring the charter schools down to a level. mark: let me ask you a broader question, it seems when we were raising our kids to, you have to look at the textbooks that are kids have you better look at the lesson plan and question them about what they're learning in the classroom when they go to these public schools as parents not just funding and funding the increases for teachers and god

knows what else goes on in these public classrooms. in other words parent means to be active, activist on behalf of the school system but on behalf of their children and find out what the world is going on in these classrooms and make noise when they find out the kids are being brainwashed. i do not see enough of that, do you? >> no, i think competition would take care of a lot of that. among the things that parents who send their kids to charter schools are saying, first of all the kids are safer there, physically safer and they learn good behavior and so on. you have to have all of those things. that would take care of themselves, most of the parents will move their kids where that is the real problem they will move their kids out of the traditional public schools which is why there's so many devious ways that will keep those kids

from being able to transfer. mark: i think there needs to be a total of rethinking of public education and one of the areas he pointed out as competition, charter schools and other types of schools, private schools, parochial schools, boundary systems, whatever you can put into the system that gives children opportunities and kids opportunities. but the whole notion that you hear all the time the teachers aren't paid enough and the school district does not have enough, we need to build new schools, everybody buys in because they think that will improve quality of education. maybe it's time for people and communities to say no, we demand choices, we demand alternatives and otherwise we believe you want to defund the cops, how about we start defunding the school systems in less than responsive to us, what do you think about that? >> advocates a good idea but we don't have to worry about that for example, the public does not have to worry about what their

supermarket does or what that supermarket does. they go to the supermarket that satisfies them. to find the quality has kept up this by the competition but the teachers and the institutions are so protected from any competition this is why they can get away with running the institution for their benefit rather from the benefit of their students. mark: when we return i want to ask you this question were talking mostly about the inter-cities and mostly about minority students not exclusively but mostly. as a continued opposition to allowing freedom of choice to go to better schools and get a better education with a safer environment, is becoming a matter of bigotry, i'm just curious to know what do you think about that. ♪

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mark: welcome back a fabulous new book "charter schools and their enemies" and the great doctor thomas sowell, you might say well i don't have kids in school anymore, unfocused on this, this is the key, educating our children is the key what their learning, how their learning, where their learning is the key every parent and grandparent noses to be the case unless we fix this and unless we take an effort to reform this as a nation, the same thing will happen and it will get worse and worse from generation to generation which leads me too my question doctor sowell, generation to generation the same thing over and over again big government schools, centralization, the democrat

party in bed with the unions the unions feeding the democrat party and vice a versa in order to break this. most of what were talking about is happening in cities and most of what were talking about an inner cities, poor areas, majority, minority areas, can we call this bigotry? >> i don't think it's ideological as it is self interest, some of the officials who tried to block and have succeeded in blocking charter schools from using vacant buildings that have been vacant for years, i have said we cannot be helping out competition. so you put the people who are in charge of the system in charge of making rules for charter schools and they make such rules as will prevent those students from being able to get into the charter schools. there is focus in the argument if it ain't broke, don't fix it, the model for charter schools if

it ain't broke then break it because otherwise this is huge. mark: you think this would be tolerated another communities, poor communities people cannot leave in many cases there in mobile because of financial reasons and other reasons and in other parts of the country people get up and leave or pick their home based on the school system and so forth this is why i raise this issue i watch the head of the afc, joe biden he's become left wing, white guy, i see nancy pelosi and schumer and all these people and then i see a leftist who are also black who are part of the collusion with the union but still if there is quote unquote systemic racism it seems that we agree that is nonsense but when you look at the inner cities, something systemic is going on maybe it's not in their best interest but

applicable to mostly one group of people particularly black people. >> wherever the family signs up if you look at private schools the parents know the traditional public school snow that, there will be some quality level being maintained in those communities precisely because there is always the implicit threat that they're going to lose students which means they will lose money and they will lose jobs. so the circumstances are different and it's one of the reasons they are fighting so much from parochial schools and governments are for it it's not so much about religion it's about the fact that the traditional catholic school has blown up tuition so people moderate income can afford

sacrifice to send their kids there. that produces competition and what they don't want above all else is competition. mark: isn't this what we see really across-the-board or almost across the board with the left whether it is healthcare or no competition, whether it's activity or schooling and no competition even when you get to universities and colleges which there is obviously thousands they demand adherence to ideology and adherence to a set of standards and free speech, freedom of association depending on who's doing the speaking and the associating is supported or opposed isn't this a problem across-the-board when it comes to the left. >> absolutely in my career i have seen a develop, when i was

teaching at cornell in 1965 we had people of all kinds just in the economic department. when i left there there was an orthodoxy that was put in there and if you did not agree with it you are just out of luck in terms of your career, i saw my wonderful young woman courageous who stood up with the standards of academic standards and behavioral standards, they not only fired her, they made it impossible for her to get another job anywhere else. mark: this is happening in an extreme way as a result of antifa, the black lives matter and across their culture and across our society. we'll be right back.

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mark: welcome back were talking about the future of american education in this fabulous new book by doctor sowell "charter schools in their enemies". doctor sowell what are the dangers charter schools face as we go ahead. >> all across the country there are attempts to force charter schools to follow a rule that will make it difficult if not possible for them to maintain the quality they already have. i mentioned the california where you cannot suspend students for one temper being expelled but in new york for example i was painfully surprised with the

charter schools which are the largest chain of charter schools in the country and have gotten rid which says be nice, pay attention and so forth and that's considered politically incorrect because it's a gas of the problem of minority students is not systemic racism and things like that so over the past year or so they have been talking more and more in the language of the political left they have fine schools in most cases but how long can i continue they don't understand that's dangerous when you allow internal changes in external obstacles to pileup, that means even though charter schools may survive in institutions they may

not survive as excellent institutions which is what matters for the kids. something similar happened very, very different reason to a black high school in washington, for more than 70 years had outstanding educational outcomes and they changed one thing they changed it to becoming a neighborhood school rather than a school from the state. and just that one fact caused them in a short period of time to go to a school where 81% this is an all-black school, 81% of the students went on to college which at that time in 1953 was higher percentage for any of the black on white in the city of washington, just by 1960 only 20% was going on to college. and today one of the worst high schools.

it's not a matter of charter schools surviving is institutions. it is educational quality surviving that is what the charter schools are undermining. mark: it's never surprising me the level of deviousness on the left and the bureaucracy because what you're describing their is destroying these institutions from within, if you cannot beat them then devour them. and you are right that's very sinister and it's a big problem. i want to thank you for writing this magnificent book, "charter schools and their enemies" and i want to encourage the audience to get a copy whether you have kids or live in inner cities were not. this lays out the case. i want to thank you for a career that is influenced so many of us in the cause of liberty. i would not be doing what i am today in part if it was not for watching you and reading your books and all the things that you've done for this country, i

want to thank you, doctor thomas sowell. >> thank you very much. >> take care of yourself. we'll be rightoo back. me right . with service i could trust. right, girl? >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪

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>> welcome back, you know it is, mazes me when i stand back and watch what goes on in this country. we'll have debates for days and days over the president's tax returns which are meaningless to majority of american people. only to the democrats and media who want to use them to club him over the head, we see other debates about what needed in inner-cities and systemic racism, and we hear lebron james comment comment on it and hollywood actors and don lemon and media types who know nothing about it. if is true. we have core education.

learning. and history. and the things that are needed to get along in society and assimilate to the culture, what to we have? a democrat party, national education association, american federation for teachers, this conglomerate of a monopoly. that controls our cities and all education but particular the cities, where many are too poor, they are stuck, they are told you are going to that government facility down the street, whether or not our kid is threatened or whether it safe or whether they are getting educated, whether or not you like it in america. what we need is a liberty agenda. what we need is a constitutional agenda. we need a true two party system in our inner-cities, we need cops to protect our people, and capitalism to create we'll, we need all things that exist in the rest of the country that are

applied tonier city that are run by the democrats and their surrogates. i'll see you next time on "life, liberty and levin." steve: welcome to next revolution, i am steve hilton, home of popular pro american. this week, a team from the w.h.o. did finally visit the wuhan institute of virology. to map out of pandemic origin, and the nih response to our special investigation in a moment. but first, an absolutely incredible corruption story that amazingly has gotten barely any attention, december 10 we learned that department of justice was running a federal