 this video. This is going to be fun. This is going to be fun. All right. I mean, just look at this guy. I mean, it's going to be fun, right? I mean, is this bro culture? You can have to tell me if this is actually bro culture, or this is just woke culture of this is just, you know, I whenever I see these videos, I think, oh no, they're kidding. This is a satire. This is a satire of the position, right? And so let's listen, right? Oh, I need headphones because I need to hear this too. All right. So the so the issue here is grading. Should kids be graded in school? Okay, before I do this, eight more people like the show. We got it. We got to get eight more people to like the show. So we go over 100 because it's really it's pretty pathetic. We've only got 90 so far. Unless you hate the show and you don't like the show and you don't want to give it a thumbs up, then I understand. But if you if you kind of like it, you enjoy it. There's some fun. There's some interesting stuff here. Then please just press that like button. Thumbs up. It's so easy. You can do it on your phone. You can do it wherever you're watching this right now. Please do it. The value of doing these live is that I can bug you and get those numbers up because it helps the algorithm. It helps the algorithm. No, I'm not torturing you. You're torturing me. If you guys click the frigging button, then I wouldn't have to bug you about it. Just do it. Like that's the Nike ad. Just do it. Oh, there we go. One thumbs down, two thumbs down. You see they're coming out of the woodwork. That's good. All right. We crossed 100. Thank you. Oh, the thumbs down went away. Switch to a thumbs up. Come on. All right. I love it when people click the wrong button. Here we go. This is who is this guy? Ryan Hibbs. It's got grading as capitalist conditioning. 46,000 views. And by the way, just so you know, just so you don't think I've got this thing about thumbs up. 9.2 thousand thumbs up. 258 thumbs down. So one thing you can do is you can find this video and go give it a thumbs down. This is grading as capitalist conditioning. Don't even watch it. Just give it a thumbs down. That way it doesn't get the count, right? So 46,000 views, 9,000 plus likes. And this is the world in which we live, my friends. Oops, it's muted. That's not good. Let's rewind, unmute. Go. Hello, Internet. Today we're talking about the way that our education system is shaped to help students internalize capitalist ideology. Imagine if that were true. Imagine an educational system that actually allowed people to internalize capitalism. Whoa, what a wonderful world we would live in. How do you internalize capitalism? You'd have to think it through. You'd have to create certain habits that associated with capitalism. Specifically, I want to talk about the practice of grading. Grading teaches students that people are unequal and Yeah. Grading teaches students that people are unequal. I mean, this is where I thought it was a parody. Because and I've only, we've only done 15 seconds and I'm already going at it. They're unequal. You're unequal in your work ethic. You're unequal in your skill and ability. You're unequal in your intelligence. People are hate to tell you this people. You're not equal. And no matter what you do, you'll never be equal. I'll say this again. The only place in which equality matters is equality of freedom, equality of rights, equality before the law. Any other equality is bogus fantasy for the Borg not for human beings. Just look around any room. Look at this guy. He's not equal. He's different than everybody else. Maybe he's a math whiz. I don't know. But he's, he does prettier videos than me. We're not equal in video making. Here's the better. Not equal. Can be objectively, quantitatively ranked. I wonder if you can quantitatively rank people's ability in addition and subtraction. I think you quantitatively rank people. Yeah. Some people get all the answers right. Some people get 50% of the answers right. That's pretty objective. It corresponds to reality. Now if you think two plus two equals five, you've got a problem. But no math, for example, now it's difficult to be objective about every subject. But that's the job of the teacher to be as objective as you can be to test on what you've actually taught and to try to create tests that are interesting and reflective of actual knowledge. Now it's true. And we'll get to this. Testing is awful mostly teachers are awful mostly. The the guidance they get from the union from the teacher board from the federal government for the state government is awful. So educational system is awful, which is the same basic principle that capitalism is built on. Yes. And I do think a good educational system now we have a lousy one. But to the extent that we actually graded people properly encourage them to think for themselves, graded them on their creativity and creativity in reality and creativity of fantasy. We we and we graded them we taught them how to think and then we told them that they're not equal and and that they should respect their grade and respect where they are able and respect themselves and work hard and try hard. But they're not never going to be equal no matter what they do. Then yeah, we would have a much better world. We would not have people like this guy. And we would probably have a much freer, much more capitalist world. The problem is educational system sucks at doing exactly that. We grade arbitrarily we grad grade just because we have to grade and we don't teach. And we still need don't teach how to think. I mean, he gives some really good example of this. In this video, I'm going to explore the ways that our education system lays the groundwork for capitalism through grading and hopefully present a persuasive argument for abolishing grading as a whole. Before I get into my arguments as a whole, he's not saying about bad grading, I don't know, standardized test grading or some other form of grading. He's saying, abolish grading, all the way, all great, they shouldn't be grading. Because it teaches people that they're not equal. I just want to take a second and hold some space for anyone who feels dismayed at the idea of abolishing grading. Okay, I need some space. I need some quite because you know, I need my teddy bear. I'm really losing it. I've got this I've got this, you know, I just be triggered. This is my progression. I blame him for my progressing me. If this is you, I imagine you'd probably like to feel recognized for all the hard work that you've put into getting the grades you've gotten. It's not just hard work. It's a hard work show I want to be recognized for the hard work. I also be want to recognize for my ability. Whatever that abilities come from. I want to be recognized for my intelligence. I want to be recognized for my talents. I want to be recognized for my hard work and all of those things. And that's the world in which we live. That's justice, by the way, grading properly done is justice. We'll talk about justice in a future show. It's about treating people the way they deserve. Somebody who aces the test does not deserve the same grade as somebody who completely screws up on the test. And yeah, I want to acknowledge that work. I'm guessing it was probably exhausting. My goal is not to deny your achievements, but to see if we can acknowledge achievements in an inclusive way that doesn't elevate anyone over anyone else. Let's let's let's get rid of the word inclusive. Can we just get rid of that word? It's just it's grading now. It's getting so absurd and it's so he is so condescending. Oh, yeah, I know you did a lot of hard work. And but I want you to be inclusive and share with those people didn't do the hard work. And we can find a way to recognize you in a different way other than grading. So don't feel too bad, because we're going to be in part one is grading necessary. Why do we grade? Sit with that question for a moment. Now, you might be thinking, if we didn't grade, then students wouldn't do anything. And yeah, I would agree. Under our current system, if you give an assignment that isn't graded, students probably aren't going to do it. Why not? Well, because they've got other work to do that is being graded, and they don't want to spend their precious free time working on something that they've been implicitly told by the system isn't important. That isn't students being lazy. It's them understanding how the system they exist within works and using their energy efficiently within that system. Really? Is that what it is? So if you're not working hard, if you're not exerting, if you're not paying attention, if you're not getting this is, this is a, this is working within the system. This is being efficient. Where does this where does even get off saying that? I mean, it's, it is, it is an absurd way of looking at the world. Some people work hard. Some people make an effort. And some people don't. And yes, they make an effort partially because they know they're going to be graded on that effort. So incentives work. Incentives do result positive incentives that result in people doing more work negative incentives do result have results as well. So you can construct incentives. But this idea that grading and again, there's stupid grading, there's too much grading, there's this irrational grading, I'm talking about proper grading is there to reflect the fact that you did hard work, that you know the material, that you're on the right path, that you're closer to the truth. And for those who haven't, that either didn't do the work, or you're not close to truth, or you just don't know the material for whatever reason, you don't know it. How can that be wrong? How can it be wrong to give people information about their level of knowledge? And yet, the thing that's wrong about it, the essential thing that's wrong about it is what he said right in the beginning, it's that it doesn't treat people as equals. And that's what offends him. Because equality is the new religion. One of the issues that I didn't have time to address on the on the on this show that I did on television is this idea of racial equality, economic equality, racial economic equality, the wealth gap, the inequality. I mean, why is equality the standard? I understand that there's frustration that certain groups have not done as well economically. And we should look and see if there's discrimination, if there's something in the structure, something in the laws as they was in the past that holds them back. And maybe there is and I think there is licensing laws, minimum wages and a bunch of other things hold people back. But it cannot be that the goal is equality. Equality as I've explained many, many times is death. Equality is destruction. Equality is the Khmer Rouge what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia. Equality is shopping down the part the tall puppies. It's getting rid of the able or telling the able tone it down. Don't do so well in math. And you think if we don't grade, that makes us equal? No. It just makes some people think they know stuff that they don't know. It makes them not get objective, important information that they need about their own knowledge about their own ability at their own qualifications. Do we honestly think that if we collectively stopped grading students would just come to school and do nothing all day? Not necessarily. They could sit around and sing kumbaya. They could maybe even study. My guess is that some of the better students would really study hard no matter what happened. But some people are motivated by the grades and the grades provide them with insight, input into getting better. And some kids would absolutely do nothing. I mean, our behaviors are shaped by our environments. Really not by ourselves by environments. You know, this goes back to and I keep coming back to this because I think it's a powerful tool. It goes back to this idea of who so that if we just create the right environment, we get rid of all the civilizing factors like grading, then people are good. People are wonderful. There's no crime. That's why if we get rid of the police crime would drop. If we get rid of grading, students would excel. These people have no concept of human nature. They have no concept of what it actually does. It takes to succeed. And of course, they have no concept of free will. And the fact that we're not just products of the environment, that we have different choices. And as a consequence of making different choices, we will do different things. We will achieve different things. I was in a theater group in high school and I worked hard at that even though I wasn't being graded on it. I worked hard because I cared about the stuff that I was learning. I wanted to contribute to the group's success. And I don't know, it just kind of was what you did. It was the norm. Oh, so you're just following the norm. That's why he invested a lot in theater. I think it was because the theater was a value to him. He made a choice. But if he done some other club that he hated, would he have invested the same amount of time, same amount of effort because it was the norm? No. Not even a collectivist like him would do it because it was the norm. Theater was something he loved and enjoyed and he invested it. There could have been a chess club where he wouldn't have because it didn't interest him. So students will come to school and they'll go, I like math. I'll invest in that. I don't like English. Don't like history. Don't like any of the other stuff. I'm not going to invest in that. There's no grading anyway. They're going to pass me anyway. Everybody gets an A. What difference does it make? I mean, this idea that if we just take away the institutions, if we just take away the grading, we're all going to be happy, go lucky, positive, productive, rational people who go out and do the things because we know it's good for us long term is just bogus. And it's not because I have a negative view of human nature. It's because I have a realistic view of what children who are not fully rational, who don't have a fully developed frontal cortex, they don't know anything. They don't know what's important and what's not. They don't know what they should study and what they shouldn't. They need guidance. That's a wall of adults is to provide that guidance. And grading is one way in which we provide that input. It's not to be old and all, but it's one way in which you do it. From this example, we can see that external rewards are not the only way to motivate students. Nobody's ever said that the only way just one of the ways grading is just one way. It's not the only way shouldn't be the only way. And that's a problem in our educational system today that in many schools, it probably has become the only way. And in that sense, yeah, we should probably test less standardized like tests. Okay, let's talk about testing less. It's like police. I believe in police reform. I believe in abolishing them. No, that's insane. I believe in grade reform. They believe in abolishing grading. No, that's insane. No, and any any successful company knows that. So again, this is the Marxism, the Richard, Richard Wolff. I mean, he gets this whole thesis from Richard Wolff. Richard Wolff, I guess, wrote a paper way back about grading as being degrading. And this whole thing about employees, who who exactly only uses salary to motivate employees? I mean, no successful company does. There are lots of ways in which we try to motivate employees in every company. Another answer to the question of why do we grade is to provide students with feedback on their work. Yeah. And yeah, some form of feedback is necessary, more on that later. But the problem comes when grades are treated as an objective measure of the quality of students work. But in some places, it clearly isn't if you're good teacher, it clearly is when a system that claims to be objective consistently ranks the accomplishments of some groups of people above others, like as can be seen in the case of the racial achievement gap. The message that that sends is that some people are just naturally better than others. But some people are naturally better than others. And the only reason you're bringing, why are you bringing race into this? What is race had to do with this? And if there's an achievement bank gap, it's between individuals who happen maybe to be of a particular race or another. And maybe the racial achievement gap has more to do with the quality of education they're getting, which is lousy in the city is because it's government schools. And if you got rid of those government schools, by the way, in a private school market, if you want to start a school with no grading, I'm sure there are private schools with no grading. I think University of California, Santa Cruz for years, maybe still had no grading. Fine. In a competitive market. Let's see if that produces the best results. But first, let's get rid of those government schools so we can actually elevate the quality of education that kids get, including the education kids get in the inner city or particular the quality of education they get in the inner city because in the inner city, they're not even getting an education. What the government does to them is criminal in terms of the pseudo education they get. It's more like holding pens than it is like a school. And that's where you get that achievement gap. So yeah, let's bring some competition in. And if you don't believe me, consider the fact that the creator of the SAT test, Carl Brigham, was an outspoken eugenicist and thought that we needed to stop immigration in order to prevent the deterioration of American intelligence. Now there's so many logical fallacies there. I mean, okay, he was a racist, he developed a test. Does that make all tests racist? Really? I mean, where do these guys come off thinking that they're making rational arguments by giving you one example? And not linking it to the quality of the test at all? In practice, grading ends up being highly subjective. Who gets to design the curriculum grading experts rubrics and make judgment calls on open ended questions are all very important. Experts are supposed to be objective. Many of them are suspect. Okay, so under our current system, who does get that power? Well, teachers, administrators, government officials and rich people. Well, that's a problem. Because administrators, government officials, and rich people for that matter shouldn't have a say in this. And suddenly rich people, I mean, sorry, government officials and administrators should have any say in this. Rich people, they want to send their kids to private school and they want to influence the private school fine. But the problem is we're not testing based on expertise. We're not giving teachers power. We're not giving teachers the freedom to design objective curriculum and objective teaching and testing methodologies. We're bringing it off in the top down based on government officials. Now he does one of these whispering things again here. That last one seems out of place. I'd encourage you to look at how much influence Betsy DeVos had over our education system even before she became Secretary of Education. Spoiler alert. She spent tens of millions of dollars trying to dismantle the institution of public education and replace it with for profit schools. I wish that were right. But even if that is true, how much influence has she had? Very little because as far as I know, government schools are still around. None have been dismantled as an institution certainly hasn't been dismantled. And we're not seeing a massive renaissance of private schools. Maybe in the background that would be wonderful if that were happening. But I don't see where Betsy DeVos might have tried to have influence, but where she actually had influence. I wish. The people who are deciding what standard students will be graded against are largely old, white, middle or upper class, neurotypical, able-bodied. Neurotypical. Is that a new one for me? I don't know if it's a new one for you guys. What is neurotypical? Neurotypical. I don't know what that is. Anyway, it turns out that if you're an expert, you're probably older, why race comes up again? I don't know. I don't know. I guess if people from other races designed the test, there would be different tests, but race is everywhere and sexual orientation is everywhere. As if, if you're gay, the test is going to be different. I guess the math is different or the history is different. And if you're, if you, if you train or one of the other 92 sexes, who knows what kind of test you would come up with. So I guess basically what he's signaling here is that truth depends on your age, your race, your gender. Now, there are a lot of bad teachers. There's a lot of bad stuff being taught. And certainly I'm against bureaucracies dictating testing and all of that. But this collectivism, you know, before he said your, your shape by your environment, now he suggested your shape by your genes, or some combination of the two. But the one thing he's not is shaped by your own choices or shaped by reality, by truth. There's no truth seeking. There's no reason. There's no rationality. It's, it's, I mean, this left is sick. It's a sick mentality. And cisgender. So the, you know, if you're cisgender, then you're going to do math differently than, than I guess one of the other genders, whatever the hell that is. So gay people do math differently than straight people. They do history differently. I mean, again, you're either seeking the truth or you're not seeking the truth. That's the only standard. You're either being objective or you're not being objective. That's the only standard. But that's what they don't believe in. Except they believe in what they call their truth. They believe that they're objective. He believes that grading is bad. Absolutely. That's not subjective. That's not up to interpretation. I mean, that's right. The, the, the everybody else is true. Everybody else cannot be rational, cannot be truth seeking, cannot be right. But they can by denying all that. Things they decide are important for students to be graded on often have very little overlap with their lives. They're not supposed to have overlap with your life. The whole point of education is to teach you things that allow you to shape your life in the future. You don't teach down. You teach up. It's not about what they come into circumstances. It's about educating, teaching, knowledge that will be incredibly valuable for their future. And that's what you're testing on. That's what you're teaching to. Like the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell became a meme because it was a shared experience of how disconnected what we learned in schools is from the realities of our daily lives. Seriously? Biology is disconnected from the reality of our daily lives as we have to evaluate something like COVID as we have to evaluate vaccines as individuals we get bombarded with data about the world. Shouldn't we know something? Something about biology? Yeah, I can't say right now what I'm going to do with it. And if you don't know biology, if you don't present biology to students, if you don't teach them biology, those who are really passionate about it, how they're going to discover their passion. So we should teach them only what's relevant to their current life and their current circumstances, their current position, and how do you get people to improve themselves? How do you get people to better themselves? How do you get people to rise from where they are today? We need to radically broaden our definition of learning. Take, for instance, how we're taught to express our thoughts through essays in school. Forcing everyone to write an essay and then grading those essays based on how well they conform to traditional grammar structures is telling kids that some ways of expressing oneself are more legitimate and valuable than others. Yes, they are. Notice he uses complete sentences. His grammar is pretty good. As a consequence of him using complete sentences and having good grammar, we actually understand what he's saying. Isn't that amazing? That's the beauty of grammar. It's the beauty of using concepts that you define, using grammatical principles that help convey information in a structured logical way so that your audience, the people you're trying to communicate with, know what you're saying. And you want to teach people not to do that. And then when they can't form a sentence, when they can't communicate their ideas and therefore cannot get a job or get a very low paying job where they don't need to communicate ideas, then you're shocked by the difference in wages, by the inequality, inequality you create by pandering to the complete subjectivism of the idea that you can communicate any way you want. Everything's equal. There's no better, there's no worse way of communicating. You can just grunt, you can be, you can just be an animal and just grunt. That's okay. No, grammar is important. Traditional grammar evolve to where it is today because it optimizes communication, it optimizes ability to understand one another. What a concept. All right, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see, okay. Not only does that end up disproportionately harming marginalized students, but by forcing everyone into a certain mold, it rubs us all of our individuality and creativity. No, it's not individuality and creativity to express yourself in a way that does not communicate what you're trying to express. That's just training people to be bad communicators, and they will suffer the consequence of that throughout their life, their career, whatever they choose to do with their lives. The class that I learned most from in high school was an English class where my teacher showed me that alternative ways of expressing oneself were valid. We had a project where we had to do some kind of presentation or artwork to represent where we feel most relaxed or our free and easy space. I ended up making a video about how my free and easy space is inside my brain because I don't have to think in words and I can just kind of bounce rapidly from thought to thought. I don't even know what to say about that. You know, we're just going to bounce rapidly from thought to thought, not engage, you know, God forbid you study logic or actually think about thinking. That's all that would be, I mean, that would prevent you from bouncing those thoughts about. I mean, it's ludicrous. There's not, there's no meaning here. There's no substance to what he's saying. Yes, you had fun as a kid doing whatever you felt like doing, but you learned nothing. Even though you claim you might have learned something about yourself, you learned nothing. And that was a really authentic form of learning. I learned a lot about myself through that project and every work of art and presentation that students shared cultivated a mutual understanding of one another that I found far more valuable to my life than whatever random essay I had to write. And that teacher really de-emphasized grading for that assignment. It seems like that teacher had a profound influence on this kid and he's still suffering the consequences to this day. I think basically everyone got an A. I know I personally cared a lot less about my grade for that project than I did the feelings of exploration, community and self-expression it provided me with. Emotion. Part two. Hello internet. Today we're talking about... That's enough. That's enough. That's enough. I can't take any more of this. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought. All right. Before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it. But at least the people who are liking it, you know, I want to see... I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this, and you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. But if you like it, don't just sit there, help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share, and you can support the show at yourunbrookshow.com slash support on Patreon or Subscribestar or locals, and show your support for the work, for the value, hopefully you're receiving from this. 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