Robert Pandecio is Senior Fellow at American Enterprise Institute and author of How the Other Half Learns.

For many years, he's been at the center of education policy relative to charter schools,

teacher training, curriculum, other matters. Two recent commentaries of his, one on a curriculum

initiative in Texas, the other on how ideology ends up in public schools, both timely topics,

might interest our listeners. And those are

sort of the basis of our discussion, but we may, we may bring in other issues as well.

Welcome, Robert. How are you, Professor Barreline?

We've known each other a long time. Now, the first piece is entitled On Curriculum and Literacy, Texas Gets It. What was the

issue there? What was Texas doing? What was what interested me in what Texas has done,

I guess, you know, I'm determined to be the skunk at every picnic these days, and I was interested in the coverage of, you know, the new Texas curriculum that they outlined.

Look, you and I are both, I think, unapologetic fans of E.D. Hershey's core knowledge curriculum and just his general views that mature literacy is a function of vocabulary and

background knowledge. So, you know, I looked at the Texas curriculum, this new OER curriculum,

open educational resource. I thought, hey, this is pretty good. This is, you know, this is language

rich. This is knowledge rich. And I was a bit surprised to see that's not how it

played in the media. It was, oh my goodness, Texas is trying to force Bible stories down

the throats of young children. Well, you know, invoking Hirsch again, you know, and you

know, I've forgotten more about this, Mark, than I've ever known.

You know, part of the mental furniture that that literate people have is a breadth of, you know,

historical, artistic, literary allusions, including, yes, Bible illusions. You know, it's, you know,

our language is just sloppy with, with illusions, idioms, etc.

You know, think of all the biblical references that people just drop it to their conversation, you know, about 30 pieces of silver hanging on a cross, prodigal son, good Samaritan, on and on and on.

I mean, they are legion.

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