Happy School Choice Week.
Choice is a good thing, but
in much of America, students don’t much choice.
Kids are assigned schools by zip code,
and then many of those schools teach kids that
America is terrible and capitalism hurts people.
So I started a charity that offers teachers free videos
that introduce kids to free market ideas.
It should be in more classrooms,
just to spark more conversation.
These young people watched the videos in high school
because this teacher downloaded them from our
website and played them in class.
I want to just show us a brief clip.
They were amazing.
They really opened up my mind to think differently.
It changed the way that I viewed the world.
When I originally went to school,
it was all taught from one side.
This country is horrible because you are a minority,
you can’t make it.
It made me dislike the country initially.
Then he watched the videos.
This woman who came here from Greece says America
doesn’t pressure you to follow a kind of living.
People can express themselves
and be whatever they want to be.
America is a place where we get to write the script
of our own lives.
When these videos were shown to me.
I felt ashamed for what I initially believed.
Gabriel then enlisted in the National Guard.
I wanted to give back
to not only giving my family so much opportunity,
but also to protect, defend, and serve
the people in United States.
Diony Perez says our videos made him want
to take responsibility for himself.
We never really thought like this before,
you know, we're taught that the government is -
They're responsible for us and
we have to trust them in doing everything for us.
So he started his own business.
Welcome to Familia Motor Group.
I have an auto leasing company.
Receive your brand new vehicle at your doorsteps.
I definitely think the Stossel videos helped me
become more of an entrepreneur.
Just do the work be independent
don’t expect anyone to do anything for you
don’t expect any handouts.
Just get it done.
Good, market and - political - great.
Many students had never heard that
competition and markets can be useful.
I wasn't really exposed to any of those ideas.
I never saw it before.
I never heard about like this side of the story.
800 million people out of poverty in
South East Asia, because they implemented
a little bit of capitalism.
If I'm wrong about this what else am I wrong about?
The videos come with teacher’s guides,
full length classroom lessons with discussion
questions and writing assignments.
Even if people disagree with the video,
that's kind of good to talk about too.
After a year of watching the videos,
students tell us that certain ideas stuck with them.
One was -
Unintended consequences the government
will try to do things to make it
beneficial to the public.
But it turns out actually made things much worse.
For example:
He did a piece about minimum wage and how
increasing it would supposedly be better
for young working class people,
but it turned out the unintended consequences
were the minimum wage increase priced out
young people from getting jobs into the market.
Other students were surprised at how hard it is
to start a business in America.
Do you have a license?
Stossel goes over to Hong Kong
and he gets a license in just two hours.
Thank you, sir.
Rather than over here.
It takes months and even years.
I know the struggle that
my parents had to go through to open their business.
So that was kind of the turning point for me.
One particular video that really piqued my interest was
"The Evil Rich."
The top 1%!
People really think that the 1% is evil
because they make so much money.
But the video explains
the rich could only get rich by inventing better things.
Things we want.
If it wasn't for Steve Jobs, like creating,
these iPhones or creating like the Mac computers
or the Mac laptops,
our life would not be as easy as it is today.
This is one of the most incoherent things
about the regimes.
For example, this video called "Death by Socialism"
It contradicts all these beliefs
that how socialism is great and how it helps like the
poor and all that.
And it kind of showed us like,
Oh, it's not really that great.
After watching in class,
many students share what they learned.
I went to my mom I was like,
"Do you know
who's really paying for all this government stuff?"
Every time I talk to my friends then
we bring up anything about politics.
I bring up this new idea
that I learned on a Stossel video
and they'd be like, "Really?
Like I've never known that."
10 Million students now discuss these videos in class.
Like he said unintended consequences.
For example government, how they give people welfare.
Why video?
Isn’t a textbook enough?
A lot of people, well at least my age group,
they don't like to read and analyze.
They prefer to watch videos.
So now our charity helps explain free markets to
students who rarely hear about that in schools.
School choice doesn’t only mean where you go to school,
it also means what you get to learn.
And education choice doesn’t have to end with school.
Even now that I graduated high school,
I'm not watching Stossel in the Classroom there,
but I'm watching Stossel at home.
Get out of my life!