 Thank you very much everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. I am very proud of my association with the Future of Freedom Foundation, very proud that they published my book and Bumper, you know when I talk about the book I very often say we. I don't mean that in any sort of editorial sense or royal sense. Bumper really was a partner in this project. He conceived it. He brought it to me. He was a great source of sustenance and provided that tonic a writer always needs because any writer will know there's always a period where the results are less than tangible and Bumper was always asking me where the book is and I always said it's in my head and he had a way of encouraging me to get it from from my head onto paper or onto the word processor and it wouldn't as I say in my own acknowledgments in the beginning of the book but for him the book would not have come into being. Now I've been trying to think of a really succinct way of illustrating the poor quality of education in this country and and I think I've come up with a way to do it. I was thinking about this whole morning. It seems to me that let me just pose a question. How come there seems to be a direct correlation between the amount of education a person has in the United States and its inability to understand the words the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. I mean in the great heartland where there's not a lot of fancy PhDs and postdoctorals and people understand that the right of the people means the right of the people if I can make a radical leap here and to keep and bear arms means to keep and bear arms and it seems like as you get more education especially in the Northeast part of the country. For some reason those words turn into the states have the right to have national guard units. I don't there's something lost there but I don't know how that happens. Now I wanted to start off with the two quotations. The first one goes this way. The popular erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence and so to make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth the aim of public education is not to spread that in the enlightenment at all. It is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level to breed a standard citizenry to put down dissent and originality. Now this is not something said offhand at a cocktail party by Bumper Hornberger recently. He could he could have but it didn't. This was in fact was spoken in the 1920s written in the 1920s by H. L. Menken great I think forefather of ours here and I bring this quotation to your attention just to let you know that the things we complain about regarding the government schools is nothing terribly new. It's not something that began in the 60s or 70s but something Menken saw back in the 20s and the 30s. Now the next quotation is another little quiz. It's who said this and those of you who know the answer don't shout it out and give it away to the people that maybe have not come in contact with this quotation before. I will give you a hint again it's not Bumper Hornberger although again he could have said this. It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy. A bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve. It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy. Well that was not spoken by anybody who has ever called himself a libertarian or a classical liberal or a market liberal or even a friend of liberty. Those words are spoken by Albert Schanker president of the American Federation of Teachers. The amazing thing is in the next sentence I don't know what the next sentence was exactly but I know for one thing he didn't advocate separation of school and state although you'd think how could you possibly say something anything other than that after you've said this. I mean this is an amazing insight. He knows much more than he realizes he knows which relates to a point I'm going to make about knowledge in a moment. Well I think it's safe to say that dissatisfaction with the government schools. I may slip once and I'll call them public schools forgive me for that. As far as I know all schools are public. I mean they draw their students from the public from society. It's like a restaurant as public and somehow we've this word has gotten twisted over the years to mean government so I might slip but I mean government if I say public schools. Dissatisfaction with those schools. It's funny they're neither public nor not schools. We're well we're always right. We're well as right. But dissatisfaction with whatever they are is at an all time high. Complaints are everywhere ubiquitous. They're in the papers on TV and radio news all the time. Symptoms of this are the bitter fights that are occurring in school districts all over the country where people are irate parents don't like what children are being taught and and cultural things that are now part of the curriculum whether it's condoms whether it's a prayer or whatever it is. Bitter fights are going on where people are pitted against each other in a very unfortunate way. Scores of course fall or best stagnate. Colleges and corporations are engaged in remedial putting on remedial courses to the to an extent they've never had to do that before and companies have to basically teach new recruits how to read because they can't read in the recent reports in the paper of a few weeks ago about reading proficiency very low. There was a study out of Senator Ted Kennedy's office a few years ago showing that while the literacy rate in Massachusetts around the time of the study was said to be about 91 percent that's probably overstating it they can they conceded in their study that in 1830 before the republic schools the literacy rate was 98 percent so seems like a downhill. I wouldn't call that progress and of course we've also defined literacy down we've had to we've had to introduce the term functional illiteracy used to mean literacy meant you could read. Now people can read but of course they can't function by way of the written word so we've needed a new term you know reading used to mean you also understood now reading means you can pronounce the words doesn't necessarily mean you understand so now so to remedy that we've needed functional literacy you see how we're always you know there's always this back and filling you notice what's going on did you read the other day two weeks ago the story in the Washington Post about a district of Columbia girl who scored 1600 perfect score on the SATs a week later there's a story about how the SATs the SAT now adds a hundred points to everybody's score and you can get four wrong and still have a perfect score and they were every year they redefine they add points so that the average will always be 500 so now you can't tell from year to year what the heck's going on you know how you compare it could mean anything so someone who has you know a relatively low score and someone who has a perfect score could actually end up in the same quintile means they're all constantly covering up what's what's really going on but I don't think it's working I think people are understanding this well what's the problem the problem is government okay you all knew that you need to come here to hear me hear me say that did you but that is the problem and I'll spell out a few reasons why it is the problem and when you think about a government school I owe this point to Marshall Fritz who's doing great work on the separation of school and state government is government schools were really the first welfare program in the United States you think about it predates social security predates you know sort of what we think of as welfare but it was supposed to be free a free universal service to everybody given that everybody means tested right every everybody got it and of course the outcome has been just what we would expect from a from a government provided service mediocre one-size-fits-all deterioration all those things that we come to associate with government for very good reason look at the promises that were made when when free universal education what used to be called the common school in the 19th century was first being talked about it promised first of all a literate public law abiding young people instilling a national culture all kinds of good things instead what we've gotten is like I told you illiteracy a growing underclass lawlessness among this underclass and a continuing cultural bokenization I mean their whole promise was to bring a national culture and instead what we're getting is this fragmentation where everybody's fighting everybody else over group rights you know national rights within within the country and it's it's done the exact exact opposite of what of what they promised on the other hand I'll argue a little later that in fact the schools at one other level the schools are actually working they're actually doing what they what they promised which was to to aside from the underclass which has which they basically have written off they've the schools are fairly good turning out fairly compliant taxpayers quiescent taxpayers who who listen to the government which prompted another thought and I think my talk actually builds on gyms in some in some ways because I think what happens is it occurred to me as he was speaking that Waco and Ruby Ridge and some of these other examples are what are what you get when public schooling doesn't take okay you see what I mean the children of Waco weren't going to public schools I assume I guess they were homeschooled at the Davidian place and I imagine the rainy weaver's kids didn't go to public school so if if this is what happens when kids escape the public schools or if they go and it doesn't take we end up with a confrontation because the point of the schools is to turn out good citizens who don't question the government I mean that's that's basically what it comes down to sure they needed to be able to read and then they're not very good at that because they want to be able to staff industry and the military the civil service so they need people who can read so they want some things that do they want you to be able to do some arithmetic but what they really want is a good quiet rank and file of citizenry who will pay the proper homage to government and the way to see this is in the way history is taught you ever notice how in the history lessons that you learn in school it's always private activity that's still causing great damage and destruction and government on the white stallion riding to the rescue and saving us what the industrial revolution we needed to be safe from that by enlightened government okay the robber barons at the turn of the century monopolizing everything ravaging the consumer ravaging workers the trust busters had the ride to the rescue on the white steed and save us capitalism gave us the depression Franklin Roosevelt on the white steed or as munkin called them Roosevelt the second rides on the white steed again saves us time after time the wars are interpreted that way World War two what was World War two it's the last thing they have these days the status it's the card they have to play every time now they saved us from Hitler okay you could say what you want about government but we saved you from Hitler and they're gonna just play this until from time immemorial and you know forever they're gonna be saying this because it's like the last thing they have now people are seeing through so much of it that's why the celebration over the 50th anniversary was played up so much so much that you know Clinton does an obscene thing like go to Moscow to celebrate the end of World War two we saved Poland from Hitler so we could deliver it to Stalin okay that's what we celebrate all right figured out went out when you figure that went out tell me because I can't figure it out what the schools have been and what they had to be from the beginning government schools is the laboratory for the social engineers okay that's what they are what else could they be I mean look at it and I don't even need to ascribe bad motives here okay that's not the point assume good mode assume they're benevolent people they think they're actually doing good for people that may not be true in every case but I'm willing to accept that for the sake of argument if you were a part of the let's call the ruling elite okay this this in any society political society a smaller group emerges that sees themselves as the as the benevolent governors okay so if you're in that position and you build and you believe what you're doing is good for the nation this is important for the nation and for the society you're gonna want to set up a system to train the younger generation to properly respect this system and to to do that you need to also justify the past to the younger generation after all younger generations are come up questioning that's the nature of the younger generation and so you need to put them through you'll want to put them through a mill so that their rebelliousness and rambunctiousness can be properly molded so that they have the proper respect toward the ruling elite and I think this is this will happen in a democracy as well as in an authoritarian or you know autocracy I don't think it matters it's what Walter Lippmann called in the 1920s the manufacture of consent okay no matter how good well-meaning this this group of governors are they're gonna feel that they need to manufacture consent they need to support they do it things won't go very smoothly if there's constantly dissent if people are constantly pointing a finger at the government saying this is not good this is not good you're you know you're bothering us you're violating our freedom I mean you can't it's hard it's too disruptive you need basically people nodding their head saying yes you know whatever you say and it's good if you can get them young it's you don't want to wait until it's too it's too late you get them young how do you get them young you get them into school government schools early and not only you okay yes you teach them to read you teach them to write arithmetic but you teach them social studies and a view of history that is most conducive to this purpose it's a form of social engineering again even if you don't assume any bad nefarious motives okay I think that's really a secondary consideration so that's how schools have always been used if you go back to Sparta where I really I guess you find the first public school system that's exactly what it was to do it was to staff the military this was a militaristic authoritarian society and it was to make sure there wasn't any widespread dissent you see it next in Germany with when Luther sets up schools in the 16th century in a couple of the states and cities of Germany again it's to impose a rigid dogmatic view Lutheranism and no heresy is allowed he says he will brook no dissent the thing you don't argue with heretics they should be dismissed unheard as he put it John Calvin does the same thing in Geneva Frederick William does it in Prussia in 1717 again this is a very authoritarian environment Frederick William used to beat his subjects yelling why don't you love me okay this is the guy that gives us the first modern public school system and this is what teachers and administrators do metaphorically not all of them there are good teachers out there and I don't mean to say all everybody who teaches in the public school other couple people here teaches in the public schools are bad people and again you can separate this from from motive it's a systemic thing that's where we really want to get out of systemic in Prussia in the early 19th century Germany suffers a terrible defeat at the hands of Napoleon and it's a devastating it's a devastating has a devastating psychological effect on the German nation especially the German government and they they reinforce their public school system as a way of coming back from this defeat instilling a new sense of patriotism and again the whole point is to instill a particular mindset in young people again it's a lab it was always been a laboratory for social engineers now Richard Ebeling covered some of my ground in his talk because he talked about how American intellectuals studied Bismarck's welfare state brought the ideas back the various programs back actually a little earlier than that in the 1830s a group of intellectuals led by Horace Mann of Massachusetts the first commissioner of education of Massachusetts goes to visit the public school system study the public school system in Germany and they bring a blueprint back in order to get it adopted by the states the various states of in the United States luckily the Constitution was still seen as a document that more or less meant what it said back then and it was there was widespread belief that the federal government did not have a role in education of course the Constitution does not give any role to the federal government in I should call it the national government in in education and so Mann was operating in that milieu and so the common school movement had to operate at the state level they didn't have the federal level available at that time I'm sure to their dismay it would have made their work much easier instead it took about 50 60 years for them to get every state in the union to adopt government schools but the point is they brought the Prussian system over they tried their goal was to instill a national culture again to interfere with the spontaneity of culture and society when it's left alone when people will free those things spontaneously develop they didn't like the spontaneous development they didn't they weren't they didn't like that it was uncertain the direction was uncertain the speed of development was uncertain they wanted to drive it steer it and drive it they also brought over some very particular aspects of government education which still are with us today in government schools and I even have of course been adopted long ago by private schools because it became it became part of the idea of school those things included isolating students from normal life okay instant the institutionalization of young people that's what school is it takes them out of normal life and puts them in a very artificial environment they're sitting around with people only of their own age where else in life does that occur okay do we only have people of one age in here it's ridiculous we wouldn't organize a conference of just people of one age okay only 5th graders can come to this it doesn't it doesn't make sense it's not it's stifling the fragmentation of subjects was another thing that the Prussian system did fragmenting subjects and then teaching it in sort of 45 minute blocks of time so and then when the that period's over bell rings do something else no matter how much you're interested in the thing you were doing sorry Bell rang now we're doing this but I want to do this sorry the bell rang we're doing this now it's like Pavlov right thing okay I go from math to English this is all innovated innovation from the public school system of Prussia the fragmentation of subjects the isolation of students the the instillate instilling in children the importance of obedience and memorization so much was a was memorization not so much understanding but drill drill drill drill memorize and finally and these are identified by the way by John Taylor Gatto a great commentator on schools New York City New York State teacher of the year in 1990 turned around in accepting the award at the state Senate and Albany renounces schools caused impression authoritarian institutions and the last the last element he identified as part of the Prussian system was teaching children not not so much outright not using these words but just it's just implicit it's by almost by osmosis that the true parent of the child is what the state the state and this ties into my next point I was amazed in researching this book I mean I knew and something I didn't mention I should mention first part of this idea of creating the national culture was the fear of immigrants because at this time you had Catholic immigrants Irish Catholic immigrants coming in and there was a great fear that this was going to be disruptive they weren't enlightened like the the Protestants were and the whole idea was to as they put it Christianize the Catholics the textbooks the textbooks were openly anti-Catholic they use terms like popery okay that's not a compliment okay they use terms like deceitful Catholics that's not a compliment the Catholics at this time begin to set up their own school systems guess why they feel a bit alienated by the system and they riot in New York and Philadelphia when they make a mistake here they try to get public money government money for their systems they say hey we have to pay taxes for your system we should we should get some of that money and when the when the rulers said no the officers said no they there was actually some riots so they're upset about this but then but but protecting us from the Catholics was not the only reason they wanted to set up the common school they were open and Richard mentioned this they weren't just anti-Catholic they were anti-parent and not just Catholic parents there was this fear that the parents were sort of the old school they were lost that was the lost generation we couldn't do much with them but we could certainly mold the children but we needed to do one thing we had to get the children away from the parents as much as possible now maybe the tenor of American society being somewhat still quite libertarian and proudly rambunctious and because the revolution was not long before would not have put up with boarding school for all kids in other words state schools that actually took the kids 24 hours a day okay parents I'm sure would not have stood for that so they did the next best thing they set up school systems which were designed to get the kids away from the parents as much as possible and let me read some quotations I just want to document what their attitude was and this goes back well before man it goes back to the very early national period there's a signer of the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush who is a in my view one of the real bad guys in this area he's also considered the father of American psychiatry if you want to read his views on psychiatry see the books of Dr. Thomas Zaz okay Benjamin Rush is the one who discovered the disease that makes black people black okay gives you an idea what thought about that but here's what he had to say about here's what he had to say about education and parents and families and all this society owes a great deal of its order and happiness to the deficiencies of parental government being supplied by those habits of obedience and subordination which are contracted at schools it's he writes it in a sort of convoluted way but his point is the parents are deficient and this is the schools the state schools that save the children from that this is this quote is almost chilling let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself but that he is public property let him this is this guy signed the Declaration of Independence let him be taught to love his family but let him be taught at the same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his country requires it in 1816 archibald Murphy a founder of the North Carolina public schools by the way the the this is this is early experiment in public schools the south then I think gets rid of them they don't come back again until the progressive era but 1816 where there's some local public schools archibald Murphy in these schools the precept of morality and religion should be inculcated in habits of subordination and obedience be formed their parents know not how to instruct them the state in the warmth of her affection and solicitude for their welfare must take charge of the you're not taking this seriously must take charge of those children and place them in school where their minds can be enlightened in their hearts trained to virtue Calvin Stowe a 19th century educationist if a if a regard to the public safety makes it right for a government to compel the citizens to do military duty when the country is invaded the same reason authorizes the government to compel them to provide for the education of their children for no foes are so much to be dreaded as ignorance and vice these if they stay with the parents are gonna learn vice they're gonna have to drink they're gonna they may even learn to gamble a man has no more right to endanger the state by throwing upon it a family of ignorant and vicious children then he has to give admission to the spies of an invading army if he is unwilling to educate his children the state should assist him if if unwilling it should compel him Horace man he is my favorite Horace man Horace man who said children are wax he we we who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause they're very blunt this was in the days before public relations okay public relations is a science quote science or craft or art that comes in at the progressive era they need to clean up the rhetoric people didn't like this kind of talk your children are wax and let us get here's my favorite where is it I have it here the school's task is to gather little little plastic lumps of human dough from the private households and shape them on the social kneading board you see in it the progressive area is an extremely important turning point in the country as Richard pointed out and one reason it is another let me put a slightly different angle on it totally consistent with what he says just a slightly different gloss it was the era of deference to experts things that people had capably handled in their private lives teaching their children morality teaching them to read and write all this stuff totally within the scope of any reasonably you know intelligent person nor biologically normal person suddenly became something that you couldn't understand you needed to have a PhD another import from Germany there were no PhDs before they they learned about them in Germany you needed to be an expert you couldn't educate your kids at home anymore education is something that's much it's beyond the scope of someone who doesn't have special training and once you understand this you can understand a lot that's happened in education since then the whole education industry education bureaucracy is an attempt to mystify this mystify something that was it within people's grasp you know for centuries but all of a sudden now it's too complicated for you so who makes all the big decisions about your child's education these days the government does they tell they tell you what school the kid goes to okay you could buy a house in a particular area saying I kind of like that school and the day after that they could change the lines right districts can redraw the lines and you're out of luck who who decides what's the what the curriculum is you don't oh sure you can go to a meeting and shout at a board meeting or you could say I'm gonna try to get you guys voted out of office great there's a there's a lot of accountability a lot of power to the individual go out and vote out a school board you know if you don't like the shoes the shoe store down the sold you down the street and even if you want let's say won't give you your money back you don't have to go get 51% of the community to vote the guy out of his store do you just say I'm not coming here anymore that's it that's the last penny you get from me that not with schools with schools you got to get you got to go out and you got to raise money and you got to have a campaign to try to vote out you know John John Doe well not John Doe he's on he's on the lam somewhere but see with so so right you can go in you could shout you can complain but who gets to make the decision the government people do even if even if they're elected see it doesn't matter that they're elected doesn't matter what their their intentions are again they may be again well-intentioned people it's systemic besides those boards are the captive of the professional edge of Karats anyway the superintendent who's from out of this industry the teachers union and all that even the PTA is a cat basically a captive of the teachers union so even if the schools did not have this bad Genesis you know having it's beginning in authoritarian Russia of Prussia you can and Sparta there are serious problems with the idea anyway let's say they were homegrown let's say it was a hundred percent American made idea okay nobody studied any other country that's not the end of the story because as we know from the Austrian commentary on the problems the innate problem of socialism government schools as Shankar said and this is why I mentioned that about Shankar he knows more than he realized he knows there's a systemic ignorance in government education system for the same reason that that a socialism can't work the same kind of denial of knowledge that occurs in socialism occurs in on a smaller scale in a government school system because the point is again as Richard pointed out the market the discovery process teaches us things that we wouldn't learn otherwise the free functioning of the price system through that through the rivalry we learn things we can't know otherwise the same thing is true of education the best ideas about education I mean we know a lot of things about education already I mean there's very successful homeschooling families all over the country somebody knows something about how to nurture the curia natural curiosity of children but there may be there's still things to learn you can never say we know everything there is to know about a subject the way you get that is by many people trying many things at the same time without having to get somebody's permission but if the school district is the one in charge of the curriculum and if they can make sure most kids go there because you got to pay your taxes even if you use privates if you go to private school the the district has a monopoly or is claiming a monopoly on wisdom they're claiming to know what how good schools should be run because they get to say what gets into the system and what doesn't get into the system now they may say oh no we don't think we have monopoly on wisdom we're willing to listen to new ideas bring forth your ideas we don't claim to know everything we want to hear from people but that's it that's not that's a ruse because guess who gets to pick which idea that's brought before them gets chosen and which gets rejected the same people who are claiming they don't have a monopoly on wisdom in other words they are claiming a monopoly on wisdom they're claiming them to they they know what a good idea is when they see it and so they should be the ones to say which gets tried and which doesn't get tried instead of just letting people going out and trying them and seeing how other potential clients parents children respond whether they want to accept them whether they want to give them a try and of course in a market the moment they decide they don't like the idea they take their business somewhere else that's what we don't get and so there's a systemic ignorance in government education and I think there's a sweet justice in that that government education is systemically ignorant systemically stupid there's nothing I could do about it it's like trying to make a square you know into a circle you can't do it because it's bureaucracy government is bureaucracy that's how bureaucracy deliver services it's got captive money it's got captive clients and so it doesn't need it doesn't have the discovery process and it doesn't need to be responsive what we need is entrepreneurship that's the discovery procedure Kersner draws a distinction between the open-ended universe and the closed-ended universe the closed-ended universe where world describes really how the government schools operate the decision-makers really know everything there is to know now it's just a matter of calculating what's the best alternative to choose but they see all the alternatives in front of them they just now need to do some calculations on the machine and then they choose the right one but that's not the way the world works because the world is open-ended we don't see all the alternatives immediately there is what Kersner calls the possibility of utter surprise okay it's not just there's not something it's not just that you don't know things and you know what you're ignorant of may give an example I mean I'm ignorant of the population of Tanzania but I know I'm ignorant of it and I know where to find the day I the day it's worth the cost to me to find that information if I need to know for some reason I know I'll do it and I know how to find that out I go to the library or something I'll call the embassy of Tanzania okay but there's some things not only am I ignorant of I'm ignorant of the fact that I'm ignorant of it okay for instance if I can't give you an example I can give you a hypothetical example if I never heard of Tanzania I did I wouldn't know I was ignorant of the population of Tanzania okay there's a hypothetical example okay that is it's the utter ignorance which makes possible utter surprise and discovery and that's why we need entrepreneurship if it was if the only ignorance was so-called rational ignorance in other words you know what you don't know and could find it out the day it's worthwhile to you then the world would be very different but in a world of utter ignorance and the possibility of utter of surprise and discovery you need if we were to do well for ourselves if we were to prosper we need entrepreneurship that's what entrepreneurship does it's people out there looking for this utter surprise and discovery and what motivates them of course is the prospect of profit and we need that in education we don't have that in education because the government dominates it so much I want to leave time for comments and questions so I'm going to conclude first of all in one note you know for years and years and years censories in Europe was torn by religious warfare vicious wars not always open warfare but then persecution all kinds of things then someone got a bright idea I think it first maybe germinates in Holland let's take religion out of politics out of the political sphere let's stop fighting think of how rich we could be if we just stop fighting about this you go to your church or synagogue or mosque or whatever it is and I'll go to mine and it's like live and live and I don't care and you don't care but meanwhile let's produce and make money let's separate church and state and you know they tried that and Holland start to get rich and England saw that and they and they even though they maintain the state church they pretty much took it out of the public realm I mean in jam as the industrial revolution comes along they don't jam religion down people's throats and they start to get rich and then the US formalizes it in the First Amendment and and of course we see then the greatest production of wealth ever the reason we called the book separate in school and state is because we wanted to draw the parallel between education and religion they're very closely related education deals with people's deepest views of the world and their values so does religion there's a great overlap there and the threat of forcing your religion on someone else is very similar to the threat of forcing your religious your education views on somebody else and the way you take the bitterness and ranker out of this is to stop threatening forcing your ideas about education on somebody else but when in their government schools that's what it means if you go and fight at a school district meeting everybody knows that if my side loses their side's gonna force something on my kids and so it's very very bitter and disruptive and divisive we need to take that out of the public realm the government realm for the same reason we took religion out of the government realm and let there be social peace over this I want to close with a quotation from a great man who I urge you to read Richard Mitchell oh otherwise known as the underground grammar in it is only from a special point of view that education is a failure as to its own purposes it is an unqualified success one of its purposes is to serve as a massive tax-supported job program for legions of not especially able or talented people as social programs go it's a good one the pay isn't high but the risk is low the standards are lenient entry is easy and job security is still pretty good in fact the system is perfect except for one little detail we must find a way to get the children out of it thank you