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Brian Huskie Biography

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“It was my assumption that skilled teachers spent their days imparting important and meaningful knowledge to eager students. I also believed, as many of you do, that I didn’t remember or wasn’t good at the things we learned in high school because I didn’t pay close enough attention or didn’t work hard enough.”

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“Maybe you’ve noticed what I’ve noticed, and thought it strange, or dismissed it as youthful foolishness or that you were missing some critical piece of information that would reveal itself with age and wisdom – that is: every single teacher believes feverishly in the importance of the content of their class, and furthermore, believes that their assessment of you in their class is a direct measure of your capacity for future success, while simultaneously not having a clue as to the content of virtually any other discipline in the school. They will boldly state things like, That’s math, I’m an English teacher or That’s literature, I’m a biology teacher, practically admitting out loud that nothing learned in school is important (except, of course, the course they are teaching).”

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“How many of us have read history, and shook our heads and puffed our chest, and said, “If I were alive during that period, I would never have done those things to those people!” Yet here we are, doing those things to those people.”

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“Know what you’re working toward and eliminate debt, so that if you change your mind later it doesn’t kill you to know you have a hundred thousand dollar biology degree hanging in the kitchen of the tapas restaurant you just opened.”

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“A teenager’s nature is not laziness, their preferred state is not ignorance, and it is not necessary for extrinsic motivation to be delivered by trained professionals in order to prevent them from bareknuckle boxing under a bridge in exchange for drugs and money.”

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“I tend to agree with Robert Frost when he says, 'Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.' By this definition, I don’t think anyone can claim that we are successfully educating this next generation.”

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“If a law violates a person’s liberty, is it not our duty to disobey? Is it not your ethical responsibility to act? Did you not join this profession to help and serve kids?”

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“And there you sit, atop the smoking mountain of rubble that was once your home, covered in gray dust, cradling the mangled corpse of your little girl in your arms, looking south to a Mexican people who, in solidarity with you, have stopped riding Uber.”

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“It’s good and just that you practice on teachers and school principals, because one day you are going to have to live in a world of lawmakers and tax collectors, and you should have some sense of how to use your freedom of speech to claim control over your life.”

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“We smashed their schools, burned them, and shot people based on the time of night they were outside. They dressed up like our allies and blew themselves up, when they weren’t murdering the families of our actual allies and throwing their headless bodies into the Tigris. Write a five paragraph essay on that. Make sure each paragraph has a topic sentence.”

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“Being lawful and following the rules means allowing their reality to become your reality, and their reality includes you pledging your allegiance to their republic before you’re old enough know what the words “allegiance” or “republic” mean.”

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“This guy tried to kill me, he’s out there, and I’m going to blow his f***ng head off.' Nothing happened for a few weeks, then we went to Kuwait, then we went home to New York, and I was in a bunch of undergraduate English classes within thirty days of landing at Fort Drum.”

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“You would think that after fifteen years of war on terror, waged by a country with nuclear submarines, all terror on earth would be destroyed. I’m shocked that nary a nightmare has made it out alive. Yet somehow, killing the shit out of people – thousands and thousands of people – doesn’t make the living not scared. What you do wind up with are millions of refugees and armies of genocidal fanatics.”

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“Compulsion – nonconsensual education – requires violence; it requires complete control over what students put into their brain, the people they are exposed to, the places they are authorized to be, and oftentimes, with free lunch programs, what food goes into their body. Compulsory systems are resentful of families who do not enforce homework or dress code policies; are reluctant to allow parents into its buildings except once or twice a year on special “open house” days; and fear parents who choose to homeschool.”

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“School vision statements often read something like, “We believe all kids can learn” or “life-long learners” or something silly like that. What an absurd thing to put in writing! “We, at Grassy Hill Elementary, believe all Kindergarteners can get taller” or “We, the Prospect Junior High cafeteria staff, believe that all kids can and will eat food.”

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“Our freedom of speech is not some cute, optional, anachronistic thing that you write about on a short answer quiz about school uniforms or some such silliness. Your freedom to assemble (e.g., Junto), to create and distribute content, and to express yourself (e.g., to ask a Klan member Why do you hate me when you don’t know me?), and to be able to do so without fear of violence or censorship (which are essentially the same thing), is absolutely fundamental to a free and just society.”

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