Ep. 19 "Freeing Teachers from Usurping Unions" - Guest Rebecca Friedrichs

Melvin’s guest today is experienced educator Rebecca Friedrichs. In 2018, Rebecca helped fight and win a federal case which overturned laws forcing educators to join teachers’ unions. Since then, she has been a strong voice for teachers’ rights in the classroom, school options, and reversing the moral decline in America’s schools and culture. 

RESOURCES MENTIONED ON TODAY’S EPISODE:

• Check out Rebecca’s organization For Kids and Country here: https://www.forkidsandcountry.org/#none

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Transcript

ADAMS: I am Melvin Adams, you host for The State of Education. Thank you for joining us. Today in the studio, we have Rebeca Friedrichs . I first met Rebecca and her husband at a conference in Colorado last year. 

We connected quickly because we have similar interests in education, but also because we have sons with a shared name: Benjamin. [00:30] So Rebecca, welcome to The State of Education. 

FRIEDRICHS: Thanks so much, it’s great to be here, Melvin.

ADAMS: Well, you’ve served as a public school teacher in California for 28 years, so what do you think are some of the biggest challenges facing teachers today?

FRIEDRICHS: Teachers have massive challenges today. The problem is that the public school system has been completely corrupted by so called teacher unions and their special interest groups. [01:00]

And so instead of parents guiding the education of their children and working with teachers who would serve parents and children, we have all these special interest groups that have come in, they have undermined the teaching profession, they bully teachers, they claim to speak for teachers and they don’t, they literally undermined the curricula and the excellence in our schools, they’re damaging our children in so many ways—sexualizing them—and so teachers [01:30] are really in a very difficult time in America’s schools.

And on top of it, a lot of people think that teachers agree with this terrible stuff because our voices have been usurped by these unions. And so teachers have a rough time and I’m glad you’re helping to give them a voice today because there are many great teachers out there who really need support, who need to be heard and need to be understood. 

And they also need the help of our [02:00]communities to get these unions and special interest groups out of our schools, so that teachers can thrive again and  children can learn again. 

ADAMS: Boy, Rebecca, that is so true. We hear from teachers all the time—just trying to do their job and working hard and yet every time they turn around there’s some kind of thing that’s being pushed on them by some special mandate [02:30] or some special focus, some special holiday/month or something and it’s like you have to put these posters up in your classroom, you have to encourage this kind of behavior and so forth. 

It’s a special focus we’re having this month and the teacher says, “Wait a minute, I’m a math teacher, I don’t do those things and that’s not what I’m here to teach.” and yet they’re being pushed and forced by all these [02:30] special interest groups. It is such a huge problem in our schools today. 

FRIEDRICHS: Right, it is. And the reason I am constantly blowing the whistle about the so-called teacher unions is they’re the ones that opened the door to all the special interest groups. 

They literally infiltrated the teacher associations in the late 1800s, they got their strong hold in the 1960s and thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court and other things going on in our legislature, teachers were forced [03:30] to fund these unions for decades as a condition of employment. 

And they’re no longer forced to fund them, thanks to a lawsuit that myself and some other teachers brought and another lawsuit that came after ours. So they’ve been freed, but most of them don’t know they’re free. And those that do know they’re free, most of them, are too afraid to leave because they don’t have anyone else standing with them. 

So it’s so important that we educate people about what's really going on in the schools—that the children are victims and the teachers are victims. And there are some [04:00] activist teachers whose voices are really loud because they’re supported by the unions and special interest groups, but the real teachers are drowning and really struggling. 

Many of them have PTSD, many of them are leaving the profession early. I left early—I’d still be in the classroom, but it’s so corrupt. I decided to get out and fight it and give voice to teachers. So let’s help the teachers to restore—restore their profession and their autonomy and to protect the children. 

ADAMS: So Rebecca, thank you for bringing [04:30] up the lawsuit and victory. Can you go into that just a little bit further for those that maybe don’t know about that? Because some people may still feel that they have to be members of these unions. 

FRIEDRICHS: Yes, this is so important. So ten California teachers, myself included, brought a lawsuit against the National Education Association, the California Teacher Association, and our local unions. And our lawsuit had three goals: [05:00] end forced unionism for every government employee in the United States of America. 

And we wanted it to be that the union had to convince you that they were great so you would opt in, rather than being an automatic member and trying to figure out how to get out, and the third thing we wanted was paycheck protection because the government, actually the taxpayer, funds the collection of dues for unions through paycheck deductions and then the money’s just handed over to these private organizations who use the money to undermine the free republic, [05:30] undermine our virtue—most of the money goes to a far-Left radical political agenda that most teachers are against and most government employees are against. 

So that was our goal—was to bring those three changes. And our case was heard in 2016. And then another case was built on our case and was heard in 2018. What we ended up winning by June 2018 was every government employee [06:30] in the United States of America is no longer forced to fund a union.  

Now, they probably all still have a union in their shop, there’s still a union controlling things, but you don’t have to pay them anymore and most people have no idea they don’t have to pay them. We also won the opt in rather than the opt out. So if you’re a brand new employee, they’re going to try to bully you to try to get you to join, but you don’t have to. In the old days, you were just automatically in. 

So those were two things that have given a lot of power to employees. [06:30] But the problem is, most employees don’t know, or they're terrified. So that’s where all you come in. We ask people to get behind teachers and other government employees and stand with them—we call it “adopt a teacher” on the teacher end—stand with them, educate them on their rights, and then help them. 

We have an organization, that I’ll talk about later, called For Kids and Country and we have every single thing you need to help people get out of the unions. We walk them through the whole thing, legal help—everything. 

So we just need your help to educate them and help them [07:00] to realize that they’ve been liberated from forced unionism. Now, it is still our goal to get unions out completely because they are very destructive—not only to our schools but to our republic. 

For now, if we could get people to stop funding them we could really make a difference. These teachers unions alone collect billions, with a “b”, annually, tax-free. If you add up all the government unions, who knows, it could be tens of billions. It could be hundreds of billions. I don’t know, I’ve never been able to get into all their books. [07:30]

But it’s billions and billions of dollars collected tax free and used to destroy our republic, undermine families, harm children, so it’s really an important battle for us all to jump in and educate people that they don’t have to dun these unions anymore. 

ADAMS: Your experience as an educator caused you to start the organization that you now lead, For Kids and Country, right? So you kind of went into what you were doing, but specifically, [08:00] what is your organization's mission? And what support do you offer? 

FRIEDRICHS: Well, For Kids and Country’s mission is to unite, educate, engage, and empower parents, teachers, students, and any citizen in the fight to restore America’s schools and culture. That’s our mission. The way we do it is by helping them to awaken to that [08:30] and to stand together, reject unions, reject their agenda, their curricula and everything else and to take authority again. 

The unions work to divide parents and teachers—to make us hate each other. To divide the children, to divide the children from their parents. We need to fight to bring parents and teachers and kids all back together again. 

We also have a vision to restore our educational system [09:00] to the excellence, morality, and patriotism that was envisioned by our American founders. And the reason we have that vision is our American founders told us something: they told us the only way to keep a free republic is with a well educated and moral citizenry that can self-govern. 

So these unions and their friends, they really want to undermine our free republic. They want us to be a socialist, communist… whatever their vision is. And they’re literally, [09:30] on purpose, destroying the excellence in our schools. 

They really do not want our children to read well or know accurate history or to know accurate science—they’re literally undermining it and undermining their morals—teaching them that they don’t know their gender, that there really are not two genders. 

Or that their parents are old fashioned and they don’t have to listen to their parents—they can just sleep around with anybody. The unions are the ones pushing these things and this is to undermine their morals. [10:00] Because if you undermine the education, people can’t think for themselves, people don’t know much, they don’t know their history, and you undermine their morals—now you can control them. 

So that’s their goal. And this is very serious. If we want to restore our republic, if we want to restore our liberties, if we want to have the beautiful country we had before, we must fix our educational system and we must get the unions out. 

And then you also asked me about what kind of support we offer to people. Well, we understand [10:30] the plight of teachers and parents, being teachers and parents ourselves. And so what we’ve done is we have put together—I call it the five smooth stones to help take out Goliath in our schools. 

And those five stones are, number 1) we teach people, if they come to our website forkidsandcountry.org and just click on “join the movement”, they’ll come to this landing page. And on the landing page they’ll find these little buttons. Button number one, or “smooth stone” number one, is “Adopt a Teacher.” [11:00]

It takes you three minutes to learn how to put your arm around a teacher and educate them and support them. And we have all the things you need to educate them. We also have something called “Union Exit” where once the teacher’s educated they click on “Union Exit” (not only teachers but all government employees) They’ll see a map of the united states, they click on their state and they see every union in their state. 

They find their union, click on it and they can opt out of their union. If they have a problem, we partner with an organization that provides all for them. There’s even legal help if they have a problem or they get harassed. [11:30]

And we also have a button that says “school options” that helps parents to understand that you have many options, you don’t have to be stuck in a government-run public school nightmare. There’s so many options and so we offer those for teachers and parents. 

And then we also have ways of empowering people. We have a button where people can join like minded folks. We have grassroots groups all over the country, all 50 states, people can find a group in their state and join and get on the ground and go to school board meetings or do whatever you want to do to fight this on the ground. 

And then we also have a button that provides evidence [12:00] where teachers can actually see the kinds of business items that the teachers’ unions are passing, like Defund the Police, Abolish ICE, Keep Open Boarders and they’ll see the truth that these unions are not unions at all, they’re really this massive political action committee. 

And they’re using government employees—teachers especially—to push a political agenda. So once people know the truth, then they can find the empowerment and the courage to break free. [12:30] 

ADAMS: Wow, well that’s a lot of stuff you’re covering there and it’s exciting to me. All of the various folks that are rising up around education over the last few years just to… first of all the awareness of what’s been happening and developing literally for decades. 

And how radical, political forces have [13:00] very systematically, very intentionally, very slowly eaten up the influence, the power, the resources, in our whole education system. And like you said, it is corrupting and we’re not seeing improvements in our schools, everybody is seeing decline.

And there’s a reason for that and it definitely appears to be intentional. [13:30] And so you’re working hard on that from one perspective—I found it interesting, you know, you talk about your five smooth stones, we talk about the five big stones in education. 

And we really focus on leadership and legislation because leadership is about whose ideas, legislation is about whose decisions. And of course it includes all the things you talk about, [14:00] but our focus is more around school boards and content. But the five big stones are The Role of Instruction—all of the dynamic of that which directly engages with our teachers, with curriculum, with the content part. 

Look, most teachers have a heart for their kids. They’re there because they really want to invest in the next generations [14:30] and make strong, productive citizens and just really just love kids and want them to succeed. They find a passion, some discipline they like and are good at and they become an expert in, and it’s about passing that knowledge, that information on to them.

But not just that, it goes beyond that. It’s about instilling character and so many things. So the five big stones, the first one is Instruction, the second one is [15:00] The Role of Parents in Education. The third one is The Role of Government. 

It’s the government’s interest, but it’s important that government is part of that because of the whole structure, but it’s not in anybody’s best interest if that’s their only option, okay, government schools… The fourth one we have is The Role of Faith and Morality—that’s character and all the things that go with that. [15:30] 

And the last one is, we call it Facilities, but it really has to do with budget appropriations. So, are we spending our money in ways that really has positive impact on the kids? And as you’re talking about, tons of money gets spent on unions and on other kinds of things that really have nothing to do with our kids. 

And so those are some of the issues that we dig into [16:00] and it’s so exciting to work with and know of other organizations… and we share and collaborate together, we’re going to change what’s going on in education—we’re already starting to see changes just beginning. But there’s a lot of momentum going on right now and I just believe that good days are ahead. 

FRIEDRICHS: Well I have to agree with you. You know for so many years, we fought and fought and there were just a few of us on the ground. [16:30] And when the whole COVID nonsense hit and this whole government overreach, people started to see the truth. 

And the first thing I thought the first day the schools closed down, I said, “Thank you God for rescuing those children from those dangerous schools.” But I never dreamed that all of a sudden the parents would see what was going on with some of these activist teachers. 

Most teachers would never teach that stuff, but the activists do. And they’re dangerous. And thank God the parents saw it and the teachers are awakening. Since the unions won’t [17:00] defend them, they’re finally awakening to the fact that things are not good. 

So I do agree with you, I think there’s a lot of hope—especially because all kinds of people are finally stepping up and there’s new groups I learn about every single day—of grassroots parents and… Thank God that now people are awakening and now we can win. 

Now there’s way more of us than these special interest groups that have really run our schools into the ground and are bringing damage to our children and our teachers. So I’m really thankful [17:30] that more people are in the battle now. 

ADAMS: Absolutely. So what do you want to say to parents and legislators specifically on how… let’s put it this way: how can they—and maybe it’s just citizens period, let’s break it down into teachers and non teachers—what are some very practical things [18:00] that we can do to support our teachers?

FRIEDRICHS: Wow. Well I mentioned earlier, adopt every teacher you know. You know a teacher that’s a decent person, if that teacher’s in the public school system, especially (even a lot of the private schools are being infiltrated now too, but definitely the public schools) that teacher is probably alone, scared, trapped in a corrupt system. [18:30]

The system made sure that your medical, your retirement, and everything’s dependent on that job, so the teachers are afraid to leave the job. I mean, they’re feeling very alone and very frightened, so the first, most important thing you can do is put your arm around a teacher. You can go to forkidsandcountry.org, learn how to adopt a teacher—it’s easy. You educate them and you stand with them. 

I think in our current culture we have a lack of people standing together. And so people are alone [19:00] in things. Stand with teachers, that’s the best thing you can do. If you’re a legislator, help us to make unions illegal. 

If these government unions were illegal, if they didn’t have the right to control our schools, teachers wouldn’t be bullied, we wouldn’t have all these horrible curricula in our schools, it’s 100% the teachers unions and their special interest group pals—ACLU, Southern Poverty, and Planned Parenthood and all these groups that have no business in our schools—they're running our schools, they’re bullying our teachers, they’re abusing our kids. [19:30] 

So if we can stand with teachers against these unions—Legislators, if you can help us get these unions out, we can fix our schools overnight, in my opinion. So standing with teachers and empowering teachers. And parents, it’s your right, and responsibility given to you by God, to raise and educate your children. 

And these special interest groups really used a lot of propaganda, messaging with all of us [20:00] and telling us that parents are the experts, they can’t do it, the “experts” have to do it. I’m here to tell you, I taught for a long time, my husband taught for 42 years, most of the experts we met, they didn't have a clue. They didn’t know what they were talking about. 

They were people who were making money off of our public school system. Someone in the “special interest groups”, the unions, put them up on a pedestal and told them they were experts. They’re not experts. Parents are experts. There’s some great teachers out there who are experts. [20:30] And if we can stand together, we can restore this thing. 

One of the reasons we offer school options as part of our five smooth stones—and our five smooth stones, by the way, are to help defeat the Goliaths in our schools, so I love your five rocks too. They’re incredible and very important… 

The reason we offer school options is because we feel the public schools are on fire and the children and teachers are trapped inside. And while we’re trying to fix it, we need to get them out. [21:00] We can’t let them burn up while we’re trying to fix the problem. 

So we offer all these different options to people to help connect them with those options so that they can have a way to escape the nightmare while we fix it. But we also want them to be involved in helping us fix it. 

If we just run away and go protect our own child but we don’t get involved in the culture and help change the whole system, then the system's just going to keep disintegrating and pretty soon it’s going to reach your child, [21:30] even though you’re protecting your child, because the culture will be such a mess. Which we’re facing right now. So we all need to get involved. We all need to do our part. 

ADAMS: Absolutely. And I couldn’t agree more. I hear people say all the time, “I send my kids to public school to be a missionary.” Particularly faith-based people tend to say statements like that. Listen, I know enough [22:00] about missions and I know enough about children…that children are sponges, they aren’t really missionaries. 

And my statement is if you want to be a missionary, you go be a missionary. But if you take your kid there and you're overseeing and they’re learning everything with you, you’re setting the example for them. That’s one thing. 

But we feel, like you said, [22:30] that while the schools are burning down, there are better places—not always—but often, there are better places where they can be taken care of. But at the same time, when roughly between 8 and 9 out of every 10 children in America are in a government school… Look, we can’t abandon that space, because that space is continuing to indoctrinate [23:00] all these kids. 

And you might save your kids, but will they really be saved in the long run because the overall culture, the overall influence of that amount of students being indoctrinated and growing up with completely different values, completely different political ideas and, you know, it’s the culture too. [23:30] 

And when I say culture I’m not talking about faith-base. I’m talking about those core tennant things and principles that society and our nation has so long stood for. And I think those values that our founders gave us are worth preserving and protecting. Because they truly made this nation, they gave us those principles, those liberties, [24:00] those opportunities that have served generations, that have made us the strongest, most productive country in the world. 

And we want that for all of our future generations. So the involvement of parents is absolutely critical, absolutely critical. As a teacher myself, you have been a teacher, every teacher I speak to tells us that children do better [24:30] when their parents are actively involved with them in their education. 

FRIEDRICHS: Yes, yes. 

ADAMS: And so it’s not just about defending our kids against the flames and the fire, it’s about being involved in every area of our kids’s lives and including what they’re learning because that is so, so much an important part. As parents, we are the first educators [25:00] of our children And we should always have that role and shepherd in that way. 

FRIEDRICHS: All I can say to that is amen! You are exactly right, Melvin. I agree with you too about children being missionaries in the schools. They’re little children and they are part of the reason that these unions and their political activist—they’re marxist, socialist, [25:30] they have an atheistic agenda that they’re trying to push onto little children. 

Why do they choose to do it to children? Because children are an easy target. Because children believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, children believe in anything. 

So the people come to them, they’re preschoolers, they’re kindergarteners and they say to them, “There’s not two genders, there’s endless number of genders and you can change your gender everyday and your parents don’t understand this because they’re old fashioned.” 

Well that’s a direct attack not only on the parents, but on God, [26:00] and on science, so these people are teaching our children lies. And they are infusing our children, they are attacking their very identity, they’re attacking their families, they’re attacking their faith. 

And so why would we want to send our children into that battle ground? Now, I think the trickiest part for most parents—for example, I taught kindergarten. I taught kinder through fourth grade. The parents of my students knew that I loved their kids, that I would never teach them anything crazy. [26:30] You’re teaching great things. There’s a lot of great teachers.

And so sometimes parents get lulled to sleep because they think, “My child’s teacher seems really great.” The problem is the system is so corrupt, for example, even great teachers can’t control the discipline in their classroom anymore, thanks to the unions and the Obama Administration pushing these anti-discipline policies. 

So there are all kinds of problems and your child is eventually going to run into a very negative issue. [27:00] I know so many people whose children have lost their faith just from going to the local college. And it’s happening K12, so we just have to be so vigilant. 

We have to be, like you said, we have to direct the instruction of our children. And if we’re going to send our children to any school, we have to be very involved and make sure we understand what they’re reading. The Library association is a corrupted union and they’re bringing all of these [27:30] wicked books into the school libraries. So parents just have to be on guard and fully engaged.

ADAMS: Well that's interesting because our very next session we’re going to record when we’re done here is on that very topic of what’s going on in our libraries. And there are just so many angles that a lot of parents don’t even understand or know about. But they’re very real and they can [28:00] create immense harm on our children.  

But here’s the thing: what you’re trying to do, what we’re trying to do through Noah Webster Educational Foundation, it’s not about cursing the darkness. There’s a lot of darkness and we could cry “wolf” forever. But that’s not what’s needed. What’s needed are solutions, right?

What really works and how do we fix the problem. People want to fix the problems [28:30] and so I appreciate what you’re doing to help give insight and guidance so that local citizens can get involved where they are, get involved with their teachers, get involved with their school board members, get involved in strategic ways. 

We’re trying to do the very same thing, a little different focus but it’s about empowering the local communities where they can have resources [29:00] to bring about changes where they are. The knowledge, the power, to do that.  So thank you so much for your work. Before we go, give our audience your website again so that they can go check it out. 

FRIEDRICHS: Sure thing. It’s forkidsandcountry.org and we hope you’ll click on our “join the movement page” because you’ll find all you need there. 

ADAMS: Perfect, all spelled out. Forkidsandcountry.org. Rebecca, thank you for joining us [29:30]  today and thank you for all that you’re doing to reclaim America’s education and culture. 

FRIEDRICHS: Thank you, Melvin, it’s been a delight. Thank you for what you all are doing. So appreciate it. 

ADAMS: Thank you. If you enjoyed today’s episode of The State of Education, please hit that “like” button and subscribe. You may also feel free to share our podcast with your friends. We are able to share these podcasts because of generous support from our donors. [30:00] If you’d like to learn more about the work we are doing at Noah Webster Educational Foundation, please visit our website at noahwebstereducationalfoundation.org, that’s our blog site, or our main website is nwef.org.