Local School Boards Go Pro-Family

Dr. Morse and Father Rob Jack discuss the pro-family wins from election 2022 and how those played out in local school board elections. 

Please note that transcripts are auto-generated and may contain errors.

11-17-22

Father Rob Jack: With us now is Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, and she heads the Ruth Institute, which is an interfaith, nonprofit organization helping defend the family and repair the damage of the sexual revolution. Her book is considered a primer on this whole stage situation called The Sexual State How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives. Thank you for being with us today, Dr. Morse.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse: I’m glad to be here. It’s good talking to you.

Fr. Jack: You know, you give me a sense, I hope, because you always see it as half full, where I see it as empty. And I and I’m grateful for that, because I’d said it’s very hard right now to to be hopeful with especially with what was just passed in the Senate, which I knew we were not going to talk about that today.

But there’s other things going on that you see hope, especially in Florida.

Dr. Morse: Well, yes. One of the interesting I guess you could say side note about Florida was the school board elections. And, you know, we you and I have talked on this program many times now about how people need to get involved in school board races and how important the local stuff really is. Well, it turns out that I think for the first time, Ron DeSantis endorsed candidates for local school board.

I don’t think this is the norm among candidates for governor, you know, endorsing school board candidates in big metropolitan areas or cities or so on. But he did, and most of his candidates won. I think it was like 24 out of 30 of the people that he endorsed actually won. So for a number of reasons, I think that’s very important, very good news.

And I think it should be encouragement for everybody listening that if you’re thinking about getting involved in local politics, the answer is yes. You should, you know, take this as encouragement. Yes, it can be done and it can be done by you.

Fr. Jack: Well, it is very important, Doctor, because, again, what’s clear is that oftentimes voters, when they vote, they vote by name. They don’t often know what these people believe. I mean, many of high school board local schools where they don’t put out a particular platform. Sometimes their credentials are where they they have degrees in education or they’ve been involved with the education lobby or whatever the case may be.

So they can say they’re considered so-called experts, but you don’t know what they actually believe. And oftentimes times even even the local papers in the local media don’t have what you would call a very detailed interview for them and says, well, what do you say about parental choice? What do you say about parental permission and the transgender issue?

What do you say about critical race theory? Be very direct in that ad, because most reporters don’t ask that to local school boards. And as a result, you kind of throw of the dice and then you don’t recognize until they’re in there what you really come up with.

Dr. Morse: That’s exactly right. And, you know, I remember noticing this back in the day when the Tea Party was a thing. My husband and I got a little bit involved with that. You know, in this is when we lived in San Diego. And I remember noticing that people on the what we might call the left, you know, people who are not the people I would ever vote for.

They cared about PTA. They cared not only about school boards and little cities. You know, whose mayor, the little citizens on the city council. They cared about the PTA. And she was like an emotional, you know, if they care, we better care. You know, if they’re in there, push promoting their agenda all the way down to these very localized elections.

Well, that means we need to care about it and be involved in it as well. And and I think that’s that continues to be true. And I hope that people will you know, we’ll take that to heart and see what’s going on out here.

Fr. Jack: Well, one of the basic principles of of Christian social teaching is subsidiarity, which is that situations need to be dealt with at the lowest possible level. And so if you’re seeking to begin a change in how people look at things, then of course, that’s why they will support liberal candidates and people that would support these agendas. And then they’ll wine them and dine them and get get them in there.

And as I said, we we don’t really think that local. And as and I think you’re right, everything is really local nowadays.

Dr. Morse: Right. Right. And certainly the things that matter the most to you, if you really think about it, the people who are educating your children, you know, the people who are deciding what kind of criminal activity is going to be prosecuted and what kind of criminal activity is going to be released. You know, that is happening, of course, at the local level.

And the people who are trying to undo the American system, they are very aware of that and they are very invested in it. And therefore, we need to be as well. So when you and I have been talking about this for a while, but I would just want to encourage people to to be aware of what’s going on out there and and see that what took place here in Florida in this particular set of local races.

DeSantis You know, it’s kind of a mixed blessing in a way, you know, for for the top guy in the state politics, for him to be looking around and saying, I like this guy. I like that guy. You know, it’s a little bit creepy. But on the other hand, it’s a very strong signal. It’s a very strong brand signal.

Right. That Governor DeSantis, who did all these good things like pester Disneyland, when Disneyland, you know, when Disney really needed to be pushed back against we trust to Santa. So we’re going to trust who he says we should vote for. The other thing that’s going on out there is that there are there are now several grassroots organizations that are training people to run for school board.

I think one of them is called Moms for Liberty. And then there’s another one called Parents Defending Education, I think is what these organizations are called. And I’m trying to get a little bit better acquainted with them so that I can introduce them more formally, you know, to those Twitter followers. But the point is that this is a group of people who at the nation national level are saying, hey, we’ve got to do something about this.

And if somebody has figured out how to win a school board election in Timbuktu, we got to translate that over to Peoria and Dubuque and Cincinnati so that people don’t have to relearn it every time, you know. So that’s a very also, in my opinion, a very healthy development.

Fr. Jack: Well, it is, because oftentimes in here in Ohio, I was listening to an interview today, the Ohio State School Board, of course, which oftentimes gives some type of oversight overseer ship to the local school boards. I mean, they’re very much they’ve made it known that they’re anti parent. They want parents out of the way, that they’re only one.

You know, what’s going on are the teachers and and I don’t know how that worked with the Florida State School Board and and what roles of accountability they have to each other. But it’s like you said, we have to get we have to know the people that we’re electing. We got to really start asking questions and not just assume, oh, they must be a nice guy.

No, we don’t assume that anymore.

Dr. Morse: Right, right, right, right. We don’t we don’t know that. And and, you know, let’s face it, it takes a lot of effort to figure out who’s who and what they stand for. And is this guy is this guy on the up and up or that conning you? You know, there are all sorts of problems like that which can really only be addressed at some point.

At some point, you’ve got to trust somebody, number one. And number two, at some point, you’ve got to get involved yourself. You’ve got to get your hands dirty and let’s point out another thing here. The what happened in Florida, DeSantis helped, you know, helped change school boards in some very big cities, including Miami. Okay. Which has been democratically dominated school board school districts for a while.

He even got you know, he even got his candidates, some of them to win there as well. But one thing your listeners need to understand is that no matter what happens at the state level, the Catholic schools are their own entity and have their own set of procedures and governance structures and so on and so forth. And you as a Catholic parent or grandparent or just a Catholic parishioner, you have every right to take an interest in what is going on at your parish school.

You have every right to ask questions about that school, and you have every right to get involved with policy making and so on and so forth. Okay. And the Catholic schools, as we’ve talked about before, in some cases, are every bit as bad, every bit as problematic. Let’s put it this way. There are many problems in the Catholic schools that look an awful lot like some of the problems in public schools.

Fr. Jack: Well, Catholic schools are about money and there are certain things that they can get. So, for instance, no money can go for religious things, but money can go for science things or history things. And if these books that all of a sudden the state’s recommending this book for this and and the people think, well, we want our kids to be as good as the public kids, which okay, fine.

Then all of a sudden you start seeing not much of a difference in the curriculum, especially with the whole Common Core stuff that many Catholic schools took on. I would like to I would like to promote the fact that I think every Catholic school we can find the bishop that to to support this. I would try to raise the money that every Catholic school and whatever dioceses the bishop headed would do a classical education and tell the government to go take a flying leap.

But, you know, people in Hell want ice water doesn’t mean they’re going to get it. But this is something that I think we really need to we really need to do this because the educational structure, as I said, it’s clear that one of the things that Catholic schools like from the government is their money and which was really our money.

But that’s neither here nor there. All right. But because that money always comes with strings and see this thing that people don’t understand. And so we want if we want to, again, change the change of the game, we’re going to have to change the rules.

Dr. Morse: Right. Right. And you’ve got to at some point, you’ve got to be willing to say, we’re not taking this money. You know, it’s more it’s more problem than it’s worth. That’s one solution. That’s one approach. But but there are problems that are unique to the Catholic schools, which we can talk about maybe when we get back on the break, because this needs to be talked about.

Fr. Jack: But that’s right. We’re talking with Dr. Jennifer Robert Morris of the Ruth Institute about the great success in Florida, about electing a lot of people to the school board that are seem to have the same kind of value structure as Governor DeSantis, especially regarding parental rights. Can you stay with us over the break, Dr. Morrison? We’ll come back.

Dr. Morse: Sounds good.

Fr. Jack: With us now is Dr. Jennifer Roback. Morse. And we’re continuing our discussion about the success that Florida had in terms of electing school board committee members. Our pro-family and pro parent to help counter the attacks of the educational establishment on our children. Thanks for staying with us, Dr. Morse.

Dr. Morse: Glad to do.

Fr. Jack: It. So what were you going to say?

Dr. Morse: So what I was going to say is that you and I are about the same age. If I’m not mistaken, we were born in the fifties, and when you and I went to Catholic school, the staffing was by sisters, nuns who did not earn very much money. And it was my case, our our parish school in Columbus, St Michael’s, in Columbus, Ohio, was completely paid for by the parish. There was no tuition. And the pastor made it a priority that every child in that parish, no matter how poor they were, could go to that school. And what happened after Vatican two? Of course, the sisters, the nuns collapsed. Right. You no longer have the cheap labor, the free labor.

So what that’s done is to turn the Catholic schools into basically private schools with crucifixes, you know, and and so the the kind of person the pressure is on the school to admit people who can pay. And I don’t say that’s the only thing they do. But of course, you know, in a neighborhood like ours, that is changes the dynamic quite a bit.

They’re no longer educating the children of working class people as much as they are educating the children of of professional class and college educated people. Is that the dynamic is very different, that group of people, as we’ve discussed before on this program. There is a there’s a tendency there’s a pressure on people to postpone childbearing in order to finish college and enter the professions.

And so what that means is that that group of people, the college educated, the professional class, are drawn systematically from the ranks of people who care more about their career than they do about their family. Now, I’m not going to say everybody I’m not going to say every time, of course, that would be true. But I think everybody recognizes the pattern that I’m talking about, the pressure that is on the schools.

And so the people who are more orthodox, the people I would call human of Catholics who aren’t afraid to have as many children as God wants them to have, even though you’re college like Amy Coney Barrett, you’re on the Supreme Court and you have seven children. You know, those people are the ones who need to be involved.

And it is going to take a conscious effort on their part to get involved and to kind of overcome these structural problems that I’m talking about. Because if you do nothing, the system is going to tend to choose people of the professional class who are going to want to go along with the system, the world, the system more than they’re going to want to go along with the faith.

And that, I think, is what’s going on in Catholic schools across the country.

Fr. Jack: Well, that and the fact that one of the worst things we can do, you know, when I was growing up, there was that phrase keeping up with the Joneses. And so we have to make ourselves as much like the public schools as as we can so that there will be no accept outs and we’ll be equals. And I don’t I never believe that.

And I believe it even less today that it’s important for us to stand out, not stand apart, but to stand out because we see the standing out already happens in terms of discipline and in terms of test scores. But we really need to stand out in terms of moral fiber and character. And that is not happening.

Dr. Morse: Right. I totally agree with what you’re saying there. Yes.

Fr. Jack: So in the midst of all this, Dr., what we see happening here again is the just the fact of the is the quintessential struggle ever. Is the church going to change the world or is the world going to change the church? And we know for the past 60 years the world’s been changing the church and to try to to change that.

One of the ways we can do it and this is why I’m always so pleased to talk with homeschooling parents, because they’re the only if they’re the only ones having kids in what they’re being taught, they’re learning. And living is going to be all is going to be laughed at, which is a helpful thing for us. But as you mentioned, you know, we have this essay, we’re celebrating the 8,000,000,000th birth, but we also have at the same time, a demographic winter.

Dr. Morse: Right. Right. Yeah. And let’s say let’s put yourself in the mind of one of these kind of radical gnostics who, who is all in for the sexual revolution. Do you think there are too many people in the world and you think that Christian sexual ethics is old and outdated? We need to get rid of it. Okay. So you’re dedicated to not having any children because you think that’s the moral thing to do.

So how are you going to affect the future? Does that mean those people are going to give up on the future? No, it does not mean they’re going to give up on the future. What it means is they’re going to compete very strongly to control your children because they aren’t having any children. And the only way they’re going to be in the future is if they can conscript your children so that you know yet another reason why people need to be extremely vigilant keep your kids home and those of you who have already raised your kids and that’s not your primary focus at this particular time of your life.

You need especially to get involved with your local schools. The grandmas and grandpas need to get that need, need to be involved and need to just just be part of this process because, because, because you have the time and the the the younger generation doesn’t necessarily. They’re in there in the middle of of the full-time hands on parenthood.

You know, that’s where they are. And so they can’t necessarily do it, but you can’t, you know, grandma, grandpa, you can do it. And if you’re retired, for goodness sake, use your skills, the skills that you had from the workforce, you know, get them out there and and bookshelf and get yourself involved.

Fr. Jack: Because with that, Dr. Morse, what we’re going to need, we’re have to rediscover respect for our elders and respect the wisdom and knowledge of the elderly, which, of course, is not being done in this culture because anything with the past, anything that we would see, this is the problem of the relativism and the anti-authoritarianism that that’s just been blooming in this country.

We question anything that smacks of tradition, anything that smacks of being integral to our human dignity, based on our nature and so, yeah, to have that respect, to listen is, is, is we got we got our work cut out for us as always.

Dr. Morse: That’s right. That’s right. But, you know, look, God put us in this time in place to deal with these problems. So whether it’s hard or not, that’s not the point. He wants us here. He wants us doing this. So. Okay. So I don’t know how this is going to work out, but. Okay, Lord.

Fr. Jack: Well, listen, if people want to subscribe to the this is newsletter or see your videos. Dr. J How can we get to them?

RuthInstitute.org will get you to every place you need to be.

Thank you very much for being with us today. Dr. Morse, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Thanks so much. Talk to you soon.

About the Ruth Institute

The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.

Jennifer Roback Morse has a Ph.D. in economics and has taught at Yale and George Mason University. She is the author of The Sexual State and Love and Economics – It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.

To schedule an interview with Dr. Morse, contact media@ruthinstitute.org.

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