Grew Up in Romanian Communism- Now Warning About School Indoctrination

Hi, everyone. Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. And we have a guest today that I want to introduce to you, who's a part of an organization called Protect Our Kids Now.

And he lives in a, I don't know if I should call it a country or a state. It's a state technically, but it's almost like going to a different country. I can say that being from there originally, but George is from California.

So, George, actually, you're on the highway right now as we're doing this. And I probably should call you Pastor, Pastor George Roska. Thank you for joining me and being willing to talk about your organization and also just a little bit of the experience that you have growing up in Romanian communism and seeing what's happening in the United States.

John, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to talk to you about this topic. It's very near and dear to my heart. And so I'm glad we're able to have this conversation. Now, you're a pastor, George.

You pastor at Agape Church in Yorba Linda, California. Of course, you're also on the board for this organization, Protect Our Kids Now. You're part of a podcast and a radio show called Say What if people want to look that up on iTunes or YouTube.

So you got a lot going on and obviously having a family as well. Why put some so much time into what's really most people would consider something extra. This isn't your everyday job, but you're passionate about protecting children in the state of California.

Why He Started Protect Our Kids Now

What is your concern? What do you see going on? And why are you committed to stopping the threat that you're seeing? Yeah. So John, about four years ago now, my wife ended up sending me a article about a national sex ed sit out day.

And I was born in Romania, came here at an early age public school system. And I was like, shocked. Why do we need a national sex ed sit out day? Like what in the world's going on? Because I'm not that old.

I could still remember what happened in public school and junior high and high school and what they taught us. And so I started reading through that article and I'm like, okay, something must have drastically changed since I graduated high school.

And so I started digging and I spent about three weeks every night after I put my kids to bed. And that was the same at that time we had just had our third child. So I have four kids, but our third child is a girl.

And that just changed my perspective completely on life, because I started thinking, okay, I could raise up tough boys and make sure they get by in life. But how am I ever going to allow a little girl to enter into this world and to deal with the craziness of what I was reading that was taking place in our public schools?

And so I said, you know what, I have to do something about it. And it's just been a fire that's been burning inside me ever since then. And that's what led me to start attending school board meetings.

I've met with other like-minded parents who are figuring this stuff out on their own as well. And we started looking for organizations that were dealing with this topic, and we couldn't find any. So I said, you know what, I'm just going to have to start something on my own.

And so together with a now good friend of mine, Mark Schneider, we ended up co-founding this organization called Protect Our Kids Now. And we have been going up and down the state of California, speaking to live audiences, doing conferences in churches.

But we've also been going out of state. And a lot of the material that parents would find on our website is actually applicable throughout the country, and especially in very liberal states. So that's just a quick intro on what got me started.

The Triple Threat: Sex and Gender Theory, CRT, and Social Emotional Learning

Yeah, so you saw these issues, I mean, you live in California, so I'm sure it's in some ways worse there than it is in, say, somewhere like Oklahoma. But you're watching the sexualization, normalizing these perversions in as young as grammar school and even below that sometimes.

And so you want to do something about it. Are you seeing people rally to your side as they wake up? I mean, what's your assessment of temperature as far as the support for your position on this, standing against it, that is?

Sure. So what was very interesting is early on, at least when I started, I just started to focus on California first. At that time, there were 6 .2 million kids in the public school system, according to the State Department of Education's website.

And so I started scratching my head and I'm like, how do you inform the parents of 6 .2 million children? That's a lot of people you have to talk to, and the channels by which you got to reach out to all of them.

And so we started online, we started on Facebook, on social media channels in person. And one of the things that quickly realized was we need to disseminate the message to parents because everybody's so busy, you can't say, hey, I need three hours of your time to tell you what's wrong with public schools.

It has to be very short, concise, and to the point. So we developed the message, which we call the triple threat. And that triple threat is number one, sex and gender theory, which expresses itself in public schools via comprehensive sexuality education.

Number two is critical race theory, which expresses itself in schools through things like ethnic studies and culturally appropriate history, or they have all of these nice, very deceiving terminology, so that way you don't detect the evil behind it.

And the third threat is social emotional learning, which comes in the form of, well, we got to celebrate our differences, we got to appreciate and value others for who they are, regardless of their gender, or blah, blah, blah.

And so we disseminated that message to these three, which we call the triple threat. And as we were going out and giving this short message, it was resonating very quickly with parents. And we started to see parents have just these aha moments.

And we said, okay, can you please help us spread this message everywhere else? And so they're like, well, can you please give us some material so we can disseminate this information everywhere else? And so one of the things that we've been doing is we've been creating these short PragerU style videos that are professionally done, animated in nature.

And so in 10 minutes or less, you could watch our triple threat video, which we now have in multiple languages. We have it in five languages right now on our website. We're working on three more languages.

But parents are able to grasp it very quickly. And to get now to the answer of your question, how has it resonated? Well, in California alone, we've had over 300 ,000 students leave the public school system in the last three years.

Wow. That that's a shocking number. Because four years ago, we were scratching our heads on how do we get parents to take their kids out? And, you know, we're not the only organization now that's doing a lot of work in this space.

But I would say that we're one of the first ones. And we're probably one of the only ones that have this kind of, you know, sophisticated website and messaging and material develop. And so I think that, you know, the parental revolution that we've been able to start, you know, in California, it's making its way throughout the country.

I've helped parents form similar organizations in other states, such as Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Washington, Arizona. Over the last four years, I've not only been doing work and with with POK here, but we've been all across the country helping parents who have been reaching out to us because they've either seen one of our videos.

They've heard one of our podcasts. They've heard our radio shows. And we're we're more than happy to help them. Yeah. Wow. That's great. So they homeschooling that is that where you think most of these people, these parents are turning to when they pull their kids out, homeschooling or private schooling.

And one of the other things that we've been helping churches do is helping them actually start private schools on church campuses because you have all of these this brick and mortar facility that's underutilized throughout the week.

And so over the last school year, we've helped three churches start private schools. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty that's amazing. And I mean, this is California, but there are other states doing similar things.

I know Moms for Liberty is doing similar things. I mean, anyone can really get involved in this, right? Correct. Yeah. I mean, Moms for Liberty, there's another group called Moms for America. There are like no left turn in education, parents rights in education, purple for parents.

So there are there are many groups out there that are starting and have been doing some really good work over the last two to three years. And each one with a slightly different emphasis. But all of us have the end goal with the message of get your children out now of the public school system, because the public school system is is irredeemable.

Public School Irredeemability and the Rise of School Exit

Yeah, I think a lot of people are coming to that conclusion. I mean, my parents are kind of they came to that conclusion when I was young in the in the school system that we had in upstate New York. But it's I know it's different everywhere else in the country.

Each region is different. But it's hard to it's hard. It's getting harder and harder to conceive of, even in some of these red states, public school system being OK, because the teachers coming in that are getting jobs are thoroughly indoctrinated.

I mean, just about. I mean, you have to go through this whole indoctrination process to exit a teacher's college. And I mean, it's in the heartland that they're having even some of these like library where they call that the transgender library story hour and stuff like that.

I mean, it's getting into places I just never thought it would really get. But but it is. And so, you know, what you're doing is so important, I think. And I hope other people can get involved in that kind of thing.

Why don't we shift it a little? If you don't mind, we can come back to to this. But you grew up in Romania or at least you were born there. And did that contribute to your concern for what you're seeing?

I mean, did you see parallels between the communism that was there in Romania and then what you're seeing in California? But most definitely. And, you know, John, my first experience with this kind of parallelism between communism and what I've seen in California actually came in in high school.

And I had this experience where my in twelfth grade, my English teacher in my English class was telling us to read a certain book after I read the first chapter and seeing that it was very pornographic in nature.

I showed it to my dad and my dad was like, oh, my goodness. I mean, you know, communism was bad, but they never even forced us to read this kind of filth. And that's when I really started talking to my parents about this.

I'm the eighth of 12 children in my family. And I came to the United States with my entire family. My parents brought us over at a young age. But my older siblings, you know, my my older siblings, they got to experience the school system in Romania under communism.

And government schools are the only kind of schools allowed under communism. And when I look at the push by the teachers unions here in America to basically outlaw any kind of school choice, private schooling, homeschooling, even charter schools, which are, you know, quasi public schools, they're completely against all of that.

They just want government run schools led by their union. I that that is pure Marxism, you know. And what what parents here don't realize is that, you know, once you get to that point. The party line is the only thing that gets taught.

And you look at the evil teachers union in America. What party do they support? Yeah, not just the Democrat Party. They support the the ultra leftist communist part of the Democrat Party. So when I started to dig into the teachers union and get a better understanding of what they're all about, going on their website, reading their new business items.

In fact, they just had a couple weeks ago, their national conference and out of the, you know, the 110 business items that they were passing, and only four had anything remotely to do with education. Everything else was, you know, woke social justice driven ideological nonsense.

Marxism, Teachers Unions, and the Capture of Education

Really? Yeah. You know, you said there's three areas that you focus on sex, gender theory, CRT and social emotional learning. And I, you know, paralleling that with Romanian or Soviet style communism, which I would imagine that sex and gender theory weren't really something the communists taught that I mean, they there was a feminism undercurrent, right?

But you didn't experience that stuff. Like you're saying your father was surprised when he saw the kinds of things you had to read here. And I wouldn't think the social emotional learning thing would be part of it.

So what's the is CRT kind of that as a substitute kind of Marxist derived ideology? Is that kind of the the only piece of the pie? Or are these other things? I mean, like, what's the parallel between the education systems?

All right, so so number one parallel is that the way you want to try and change a nation is by capturing education first. And in fact, I believe it was in 1963, here in America, where the Communist Manifesto was recorded in the congressional files.

And one of the items written in in the Communist Manifesto was to take a hold of the public schools and of the teachers unions, which they've done so brilliantly, you know, not necessarily the way that communists have done it in Romania, which was just by brute force, and a complete totalitarian regime.

But you do it by, you know, infiltrating and understanding the rules of the game, right? So the rules of the game, and how the teachers unions work, is you've got to get involved in your local teachers union, get involved and become like a state delegate, then as the state delegate, you get to, you know, have a vote in what business items get passed or don't pass.

Well, who has time for all of that? I mean, look at teachers, right? Most of them will say they're they're overworked. You know, they also have to spend time with their own families, the vast majority of teachers are women, right?

So they're moms, more than likely who are who want to come home and take care of their own children. Who out of the women in the teachers industry has time to do all of this extracurricular stuff, right?

Right. Well, you have to be some type of an activist, right? Who doesn't necessarily have a family to take care of. And you look at the type of activists that we are seeing today, they're usually from the LGBTQ world.

And usually that side of the population is probably not married, and they don't have kids. And there's just so deeply entrenched in that. So that's number one. Number two, is I think Americans need to understand that the worldview that underpins the driving force of this movement is Marxism.

And critical theory is just a derivation of Marxism as it's applied to all aspects of life. You know, Marxism in the East was always applied to the socioeconomic system. It wasn't necessarily applied to everything else.

But instead of just looking at, you know, bourgeoisie versus proletariat, the rich class versus the poor class, in critical theory, you take Marxism to the nth degree. And now every slice of reality, be it gender, be it sex, be it race, you know, be it age, automatically has an oppressed or an oppressed category to it.

And so that's what I'm seeing here. As opposed to Romania, from the traditional Marxism was on class. Here, it's beyond all of that. It's not just class. Because in terms of class, they always refer it to as, you know, underserved or underprivileged communities.

And how are those defined? Well, they're usually defined by, you know, how much money they're making, their income level per year. But now that's being transferred to what happened in America in the 60s, which was the sexual revolution, which was really a Marxist revolution, as it is applied to human sexuality, and then to race under critical race theory.

So that's the parallels that I draw here, is that it's no longer just class, but now it's everything else. And so social emotional learning, that's social programming. You're trying to teach that this worldview and its set of values, and how they are applied to every aspect of life.

And so that's what really social emotional learning does. And when you look at how social emotional learning, it's making its way into the public school system, it's starting through a program called multiple tiers of support, it's called MTSS, meaning that a child who needs to be socially emotionally learning and progressing, you know, needs to have these set of values.

So if they do not value and celebrate somebody else's differences, well, then we need to get little Johnny some extra support, we need to get the school site counselor to come in and help him understand that, you know, that's very hateful, and that's not inclusive and tolerant.

And so, you know, that's how it's done today under communism, they, the teacher, you know, itself was, you know, purporting those values, and driving them home on a daily basis. So the very direct programming that happened in communist run schools in Romania, is actually happening right now, at a softer level, through this one to punch of the teacher sees the child's behavior, recommends them for, you know, to see the school counselor.

And then from there, they get additional support to know how to become a better person in their community by being more inclusive. So it's not the same kind of it's, it sounds to me like it might have been more negative motivation in Romania, or more of a direct kind of harsher, clamping down on someone who has independent thoughts.

But here, it's, it's more of this mechanism that they put you through. And so you go through a process where they're still, it's more, I guess, it's portraying itself as more positive. So they're going to help you reach that next level of inclusivity and kindness, but their version of kindness, of course, is acceptance of perversion.

And, and so, yeah, so it's interesting, it seems to me like the common thread is that it's the difference is actually communism in Romania was a lot more honest, there was an a lot more simple. Whereas here, it seems like it's so complex with the various degrees and versions of oppression that exist.

And the it's like a complicated map for especially a young child on how you're supposed to treat all these various aggrieved, grieving or aggrieved groups, like, because the rules probably are just much longer to memorize.

And so that's interesting to me, I, I just don't know that we've ever gone through anything quite like this in world history before. Obviously, you know, ideas, there's nothing new under the sun, and history rhymes and ideas come back up again.

But to have these three things, the sex, gender theory, CRT, social, social and emotional learning, all together, in such a multi multicultural, multi religious, multi ethnic society. And it's just, it's overwhelming, to be honest, it's just, it's just a lot.

And it, it would seem to me like it would get in the way of education. Because you're spending your time now. I mean, I don't know if you have percentages on this, but I mean, our children in California, I mean, how much of their day is spent learning this garbage, and instead of actually learning math, science, you know, history, things that will actually really help them think critically, I would say that, you know, if we just use the barometer of okay, you have a nine month school year calendar year, right?

I would say easily between one to two months of that, if you add up the time, would easily be on just all the social justice, wokeness stuff. And especially when you get into the junior high and high school, because that's where they get, you know, mandatory, you know, two weeks of the sex ed.

You know, once in junior high and once in high school, at least here in California. Plus, they have social emotional learning that is sprinkled throughout, you know, throughout every curricula. You have woke math now.

In California, we have ethnic studies. You have the, actually, over a decade ago, California passed the Fair Education Act, which is, you know, bringing in figures and recognizing figures from the LGBT community.

So even in history now, you have to rewrite history, not based on, you know, the amazing accomplishments that these people had, or, you know, the good, bad, and the ugly right of history. Now you have to also spend time, which means taking away time from other more important things on, you know, recognizing somebody like Gavin Newsom, because as the mayor of the city of San Francisco, he was the first one to allow for, you know, gays and lesbians to get married in his city.

So it's constantly chipping away from what education should be about, and what I can only conclude is indoctrination. Yeah. Well, yeah, and history's a, it's a hard, but it's not a hard science. It's, it's, there's, there is a element of objectivity and subjectivity where we don't always have the complete facts from the past.

We're trying to recreate from what we can find in primary sources. But when you, when you teach that to kids, we, I think we see this in the Old Testament too, there is a social responsibility there. There is a conferring of identity of this is who you are, and that should make you take pride and responsibility and have a sense of obligation.

So there's a, there's a civic duty that comes from a proper study of history, as well as learning moral lessons from the past and what people have done right and wrong. And so the emphasis of history in the United States, at least, has been somewhat influenced by Christianity in the way that we look at the record of the past and see God's hand in it.

There's a little bit of a providential element to it, but there's, there's, there's also, I think, a recognition of there is, there are, there's capital T truth. There, there are things that actually happened, and we don't go to some, you know, the thing today I keep hearing in, on the college level, at least as memory studies, if you go to some kind of an aggrieved group and find out what they think happened in the past, and then you, you actually change the record and you, or you change what's emphasized based upon that.

So the significance changes to, I mean, like what you just said, now, you know, the first mayor to allow gay weddings, that's like this huge, significant thing that needs to be taught because it imparts values to children.

And so, you know, if it's one to two months of a year, I'd almost wonder if it's more than that, because in so many of these classes, it's so integrated, you know, you're going to history class, but how much of it is actually subversively social justice driven.

And, and woke math, what's woke math? That, that's intrigues me a little bit. How do you make math woke? Well, that, so that's what we're going through right now in California, where the, the state department of education is putting together a new framework on, on how mathematics should be taught.

And the first place where they are making math woke is in all of the word problems. So instead of, you know, Johnny has three apples and five oranges and, you know, what does that equal in terms of total fruits?

It's going to be, you know, switched up to, to include some kind of, you know, LGBTQ sex and gender theory example in there. So it'll be like, well, you know, Jane is a lesbian and she has, you know, three friends.

And, you know, two of her friends are gender non-conforming. So these math problems, these word problems now just get inundated with woke jargon. Ah, so they're, that's interesting. So they're, they're teaching social values by using those as the example for addition, subtraction, these other things.

So, wow. So, so parents are seeing this, kids are coming home with homework. They're, they're wondering what in the world's going on and, and they're pulling their kids out. And what do you think is going to happen long-term?

Do you think, do you think it's, this is going to increase? Do you think it'll taper off? Do you think, I mean, the government's going to come in and force like they did in Eastern block countries, children to go back to some kind of a government run education system so that there's more uniformity because too many people are leaving.

What's your prediction? So I'll answer it two ways. Number one, I'll give you the official state of California response, because they over the last year, our superintendent ended up having a task force that looked into this and they concluded that over the next decade, another half a million kids are going to leave California's public school system.

Wow. So they see this as not a, a reversing trend. It's going to continue. I see it over the next 10 years as a doubling of what they predicted. Our goal in 2018, when we first started looking at this and informing parents was to get a million out of those 6 .2 million kids out of the public school system in the next, you know, decade.

So by 2028, and we're, we're working hard at it. You know, nationwide, the number is a million when you add up all 50 states. And that was recently published. I believe it came out in in May or June, those numbers came out.

But I think what we need to do, because the, the teacher's union is going to be fighting back tooth and nail. So just an FYI for parents to understand how much the teacher's union love you. They love you because they're your children are dollar signs to them.

In the state of California, every child is $1 ,500, $15 ,000 per school year. And every, and every teacher that's teaching means $1 ,300 per year going out of the teacher's salary mandatorily into the teacher's union's coffins into their coffers.

I call them coffins. Nothing good comes out of it. Just deadly things come out of it. So in California, we have about 325 ,000 teachers in the teacher's union, multiply that by 1 ,300, you get about $400 million every year that this organization is using to punch parents back in the gut.

So if you're losing 300 ,000 children, so let's say 100 ,000 per year, and that's $15 ,000 per child per school year, that means you need less teachers. So average class size is about 30. So now you're losing, you know, 3 ,000 you know, teachers times 1 ,300.

So now you're losing millions of dollars every year that doesn't go into the teacher's union. And so they recognize that they see that and so they're fighting tooth and nail to limit school choice to limit new charter schools from starting.

They're trying to make all of these rules and regulations. And in California, the teacher's union is the most powerful union, biggest, most well-funded union. They have all of the Democrats in their back pocket.

There's a super majority of Democrats in both our state assembly and state Senate and the governor's a Democrat. So they could literally pass whatever law they want. So we have to, really our only hope in California is to vote with our feet.

And that's really two ways, either get out of California or just get your child out of the school system to bring the education system to basically to bankruptcy. Because at some point in time, you just can't continue funding the public school system.

It's going to collapse economically. And at that point, you know, either some other form of school choice comes in because they might say, well, look, we just can't continue funding this, or we can only fund this at a level.

And then the teacher's union is going to throw up a fit. And then, you know, really, you know, parents can kind of arm wrestle here and pass some kind of a school choice initiative where instead of those $15 ,000 per year going to the public school system, they can follow the child.

And the parents can decide, you know, whatever private school or charter school or homeschool that they can use that money towards. Gotcha. Yeah, wow. So number one, obviously, if you're in California, take your kids out of public school.

Homeschooling, Private Schools, and the Future of School Choice

Number two, maybe consider moving if that's not an option or if it's just, you know, if you're afraid that in the future that the legislature is going to pass something mandating public school or one thing I didn't ask you is about standards, because I'm sure if you're homeschooled, you do have to pass certain standards, depending on the state.

I mean, California, do you have to like, are there, do you see a problem with the standards that even exist for homeschoolers where they have to maybe, are there moral compromises embedded in that or woke things that hurdles that must be jumped over yet for parents?

As of right now, my understanding is no. However, on the charter school side, usually what ends up happening is when a new legislation passes, it applies to public schools. What we're seeing now is that they are passing legislation to take the filth from public schools and also apply it to charter schools.

So for example, in 2015, the California Healthy Youth Act, which is comprehensive sexuality education, which mandated CSE, that was passed, but it was only applicable to public schools. Well, in 2018, they came back three years later and they passed the same law and they just amended it to apply to charter schools as well.

What they saw was this exodus of people from public to charters, charters continued growing. And so they're like, oh, well, we're just going to mandate it on charters as well. They haven't done that yet for private schools and for homeschools.

But I do think that they're coming after that next and especially private schools when it comes to things like vaccinations right now, they are wanting to mandate, for example, the COVID vaccine for both public charter and private schools.

Wow. So the state of California is really pushing those boundaries and parents need to wake up and fight. Wow. That's interesting because the virus, so as you're talking about the COVID, I see now I'm catching myself because YouTube has certain rules.

So the COVID treatment, even in the stage we're at now where things in most other states, things have opened up, they are not enforcing, at least even in New York where I am, strictly these treatments.

But in California, they're still ramping it up. That's amazing. Some school districts have put mask mandates back in right now in just the last couple of weeks. Really? Wow. Well, man, I appreciate what you're doing.

How to Learn More About Protect Our Kids Now

So where can people go then to find out more about what you're doing? ProtectOurKidsNow? ProtectOurKidsNow .org. Parents, I spent weeks and weeks researching these topics and there really wasn't helpful organizations four years ago to help me get to speed.

If you go on our website and just check out the tabs that we have on the top right, within hours, you'll be very well educated on what's going on with all the documentation that you need. One of the first places I recommend for you to go is to our videos tab.

We have our triple threat video, which is about 10 minutes long. We have it currently in English, Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, and Romanian. We're working on Arabic, Vietnamese, and Russian. And then for each of the three triple threats, we have a separate video.

So for the sex and gender theory, comprehensive sexuality education, we have a video on that. For critical race theory, we have a video on that. And we also have a separate video for what is social emotional learning.

And multiple other videos that you'll see there. They're very informative, PragerU style in that 10 minute length. So it's easy to also share. The next place I would go is either on our brochures tab.

You can download brochures for free, share them with other parents. And then we also have a pastor's page. And we created a pastor's page on our website because we've gone in and spoken to so many churches and pastors are very busy.

So what we did is we took the most important things from our website and we curated a page where they can just click on that page. You can't even scroll up and down on that page because what you just see on that one screen, that's all you need to look at.

And it's just four short videos and two resources, one a brochure and the other a pamphlet on how to start some form of alternative schooling, be it homeschooling, co-op, homeschool co-ops, private schooling on your church campus.

And then all of that is going to lead you to our other sources of information. You can go to our YouTube channel and then you can find us on Spotify and or iTunes with our Say What podcast. Awesome. All right.

Well, Pastor Roscoe, thanks for your time and for just keeping, you know, fighting the fight there and keep it up. And I hope that you'll get some volunteers maybe out of maybe even this podcast that some people will hear what you're saying and think, man, I got to join this fight.

And so anyway, God bless you. Thank you so much, John. God bless you.