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On this episode of The Jeff Crilley Show, Jeff sits down with longtime friend Bob Hopkins, a retired university professor and lifelong philanthropist, to discuss the state of education and the growing impact of artificial intelligence in the classroom. Bob shares his unconventional journey from avoiding the Vietnam War to launching a philanthropy magazine and later teaching at major universities, where he witnessed firsthand the erosion of critical thinking....
Jeff Crilley is a former news reporter, who spent more than 25 years in newsrooms across the country. He’s an Emmy Award winning journalist, who decided to make the jump from news in 2008, when he founded his own PR Firm, Real News Public Relations.
Today, the firm has more than 100 clients, and Jeff continues to tell the stories of interesting people he meets along the way.
These are those stories.
Coming up next on the Jeff Crilley Show, you're gonna meet the great Bob Hopkins. He's a reoccurring guest here. He's a retired university professor recently, a philanthropist, and we're gonna be talking about education and the dangers of AI and what it means to critical thinking in the classroom next. Many are predicting that the worst is yet to come, which is unfortunate, said one person here. Until now, they've enjoyed the reputation of being the nation's icebox. Watch a burglar in his home this morning by webcam. As a journalist of over twenty five years, stories are what make my world turn. Reporting live from The Dallas Newsroom tonight, Jeff Crilley, Fox four news. But in 2008, I took the jump from my familiar life and started a PR firm from my home. We're talking about anyone with a camcorder like the one I'm using becomes a television network. We started slowly growing the company, and we now have over a 100 clients. And we've branched into the world of live digital broadcasting. I now own eight different TV studios and have a huge team, and the stories that I now get to share are sometimes the most important of my life. Life has a funny way of coming around full circle. This is The Jeff Crilley Show. Well, I've known my next guest for a quarter century. When I was out promoting my book, he was the publisher of this very popular national magazine called Philanthropy, And we're gonna talk more about that in a minute. But Bob Hopkins is on the show today. He's gonna be talking about his teaching career, his philanthropy, documentary that you were featured in, and more. Bob, thanks for coming back on the show. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for allowing me. Well, you're you're a very kind person, and I met a lot of people along this journey, but you probably have the kindest heart of anybody I've ever met. Oh my goodness. You don't have a mean bone in your body. Before we get into education, let's talk about your your, your career because it spans decades and decades. You've done so many things. What are some of your, proudest accomplishments? Well, I have had a long life as you can see, and it's getting longer. And hopefully, it'll be some more time. I didn't start out in education and didn't want me to go in education. I was at Kansas University and, was to get ready to graduate and immediately go to Vietnam. That was the plan. Wow. And I come from military background, my parents, and wanted me to go to college and and and then go to the service like they did. Mhmm. And I didn't want to. I was a chicken. That was not gonna be my path. And in order to not go to Vietnam, I had to go to be a farmer or an educator. Wow. And I didn't know anything about farming. And so I knew didn't know anything about education either. But I thought, you know, education would be good to keep me out of Vietnam. So I did. Yes. And then they said, okay, education no longer is gonna keep you out of Vietnam. Go to Vietnam next one. Well, what can keep me up? A master's degree. So I got a master's degree in speech at Kansas State University. So Kansas University, Kansas State University. So I was qualified to be a teacher. But I didn't wanna go into teaching because they only made $5,000 a year. Can you believe $5,000 a year? But that was back in 1997 or something like that. Well, things haven't gotten a lot better for teachers. Yes. 5,000 is not very good, but No. 50,000 isn't very good either, and that's what the present are. But anyway so I didn't go into education. I instead went into philanthropy. Mhmm. And I started a magazine called philanthropy in Texas. Let's hold up a couple of these covers because the late great Chuck Norris who just passed was featured along with his beautiful family. What are some other Well, Gordon and Bob Schlegel Yeah. Were here. Scott Murray is the one who kinda helped me start this magazine. He was on the front cover of the second one. And then Jackie Joyner Kersey Wow. Is when when my last ones because it ended up being the FIC magazine. But then 2008 happened, and I had to close this. And so what am I gonna do? Well, somebody said, can you teach? And I said, yes. I can. And so I got a call. Well, you brought some other, you you've written a couple of books. Tell us about philanthropy understood. Okay. Philanthropy understood is my latest one. It just came off the press, and it's it's for sale, obviously, because all the money though is going to scholarships for students. So it is a philanthropy book. It's about people who do things in Dallas and around the world. There's 13 pages on Uganda because I went to Uganda for a month and did community service. Yes. And I've been to China Thailand and Nepal and all those kinds of places. But it's also a lot of Dallas sites in the book. There's a 100 people and it's their stories. It's not my stories only. Yes. Their stories and how I affiliated or supported what they did and I just admired them so much. And this is your first book? My first book was my first idea, and I wasn't gonna do another book. But I kept thinking of all the other people that didn't get in this book need to be in the second book. And then, you know, I'm a mover and a shaker, which means I can't sit still. I'm attention deficit. So I've gotta go go go go. Mhmm. And so I've been around the world, I have lots of stories. Well, these are very nice coffee table books, great gifts to give, during the holidays for sure. You were the feature of a a documentary called The Mighty 80. We're gonna put this on the screen, and I want you to narrate this for us. What was The Mighty 80 about? Okay. Well, Norman Robin, who's the person who is in charge of filming, was from Bangladesh. I went to Bangladesh, met his wife, and she said my husband's a filmmaker and we got and he thought that my age, being over 80 and also being a mover and a shaker in philanthropy is something unique that he thought. So anyway, I said, sure. Come to Dallas and see me. And so he did. And so he did a movie, and it's, now showing in film festivals around the country. Alright. Do you still shave in the car? You know what? I just noticed that you should have shaved a little bit better over here. I thought that was really cute. But the answer is sometimes. Sometimes. Alright. You have an amazing videographer that you partnered with and he put together a little video for us. And before we roll this, I want you to set this up. So PAVE. Tell us about PAVE. Okay. PAVE is philanthropy and volunteerism and entrepreneurship or education and a pave. We have t shirts that say pave on them. And and on the back says, I am a philanthropist. It's teaching children about giving. Mhmm. What I have learned is being an executive director of a nonprofit organization, you have all these people coming on your board directors. They have not a clue Yes. What they're supposed to do when they get to be on the nonprofit because nobody teaches them. There's no courses on how to be a great philanthropist or a board member of a nonprofit organization. Yes. Consequently, 40 percent of nonprofits fail every year because they don't have anybody running them who are educated. Wow. So I thought instead of worrying about adults, they're so hard to teach anyway. Why not go to children? And in this in in one of this little thing, think, where a little girl says, if you teach a child to do anything under the age of 12, you will have that person forever. Mhmm. So I thought, okay. Let's start high school. And then we did junior high and then finally did grade school. We think fourth and fifth grade is the perfect place to start something like this because they're smart enough. They understand everything. They're not dumb. They get it. All you have to do is give them emotional excitement about doing something, and they're gonna go do it. Beautiful. In fact, kids would come home and parents would say, what did you do to my kid? They don't wanna watch TV anymore. They don't wanna get the computer anymore. They wanna go plant flowers across the street or whatever. So beautiful. And so then the parents wanna get involved too. And they because it gets them out of the house. And I had parents come to me and say, this is the best thing that you've ever done for my child because it's affected the whole family. Wow. So anyway, it is so good that we're trying to get it everywhere and including Dallas Independent School District. And I'm already starting doing that and working with a woman by the name of Gigi Gartner whose Louise was her mother, their philanthropist in Dallas, they started one called common sense. So they raised the money and I teach the attitude. Wow. So we put paved and common sense together. And then you get people and there's an article in the book about two little girls who were in my classes, and they started paper for water, have raised $5,000,000 for running 70 water wells in 17 different countries around the world. Wow. So inspiring. Let's go ahead and run that clip. If you think philanthropy is just about fundraising concerts or rich people with lots of money, think it again. Philanthropy is a state of mind, and anyone can do it. But especially kids. Like us. Hey, Philanthropy and volunteerism in education. Paper's a course that we start at second grade all the way up to college. It's an eight week program. We actually bring speakers in and talk, but the first thing we ask them to do is learn how to shake hands with people in the eye. Kids sometimes who had no success at all, never were patted on the back, never were said thank you to, came back with trash. Whoever had the biggest bag full of trash got pizza. This pizza is awesome. They got to celebrate. Then they got to walk across the stage, and teachers would come up to me and say, what did you do to Ralph? How come he's walking so proudly? How come he doesn't come into the classroom and knock books out of the hands of girls anymore? I have learned is that the college students who teach the elementary kids then go home and teach their parents. So we're teaching three generations at the same time a different kind of behavior of living in America. So beautiful. I I do think you've cracked the code on what it takes to engage young people. Talk a little bit more about PAVE. Okay. Well, first of all, educators don't know anything about PAVE. They didn't know anything about philanthropy. In fact, when I was at UTA, my boss called me in and said, I go to your class and I ask your students what are you learning? And they're saying, we're learning philanthropy. Why are you teaching philanthropy? Stop the syllabus. And I said, do you know what philanthropy is? And he says, no. He's from Ecuador. He's now the chairman of the department and he doesn't know the word philanthropy. And I say it's love, love of mankind. Mhmm. And he goes, oh, really? I had no idea. Well, I get that over and over and over again. Why are you doing that? In fact, even when I went to DISD and I said I wanna put this PAVE program in your classes, the man who was in charge said, you know what? We just got noticed that our scores are really low and we need to focus on science and math. So anything to do with love or commitment or volunteerism, we just can't do because we don't have time to do it. And I said, you know what? If you had put this course in your program, it'll change the attitudes, behaviors of the kids and they will automatically score higher because of their behavior and their thinking about what they're doing instead of saying I don't care. Yes. So we have seen kids be changed totally and change their families totally because of this and done well better in school. Well, Bob, let's bridge into AI because it's pervasive. It's across everything that we do, and I get emails from people that I can tell were written by AI. Are are we are we getting dumber? Yes. We are. And, unfortunately, Dallas and Texas are examples of dumber. Because you know where we should be? Number one or number two or number three in the nation in abilities to academically think, we aren't. We're way down. We're like number 25 or 26 in The States as far as abilities to think. In fact, they're saying because of everybody moving to Dallas and moving to Texas because of the land and bringing these companies in, who is going to be able to have the information and the knowledge to work in those companies are gonna have to bring them in from out of state. Yes. So anyway, yeah, it's a challenge and it's a problem. And I'm trying to get this course in there to increase the attitude of the behavior of the kids so that they can score better on their test tax test. Well, even you as a professor, you were noticing that students were sending you AI generated content. Yeah. Back to the AI, and that's what how we first started here. You were talking about AI on a panel that I was talking about. And I approached you and I said, you know what? It's not all positive. It's negative in the classroom. You know, we're supposed to be critical thinking, and that's what it does say in our syllabus that we're supposed to do. I was supposed to throw something at you, and you're supposed to think about it and then come up with a solution and a problem. You don't have to do that anymore. You just put in this information and it comes back to you and it's already thought it through for you and you don't have to do that. Yes. So when I was teaching at UNT Mhmm. And just right after the state legislature decided we weren't gonna have abortion anymore in Texas, I said to my students, what do you think about this? What's your opinion? Silence. Wow. Why silence? You guys are teenagers. You should be concerned about this issue. And the answer was, not by just one person, but everybody agreed, Bob, we can't express our opinion here because the university is afraid that it might be against what their philosophy is. Mhmm. So therefore, we cannot critically think about topics that have social implications. Yes. And isn't that what college should be about? Yes. Where students are thinking about who am I supposed to be when I grew up, but you can't even talk about that anymore? Well and we're seeing across the board enrollment at major universities is down. So what's happening, Bob? Are we failing our young people? Well, I don't even wanna get into the to politics necessarily about that, but the international students can't come here anymore or they don't come here anymore. So therefore, UNT, for instance, has gotten rid of all adjunct professors. And I just found out yesterday, after you read the newspaper, it says that they're getting rid of a lot of majors and they're combining, majors because of the fact they don't have the students anymore to be involved in this. And I think it's the graduate programs that are mainly affected, there. But also I know that there's a lot of students who just aren't going to school anymore. And the reason is partially because they're afraid to because they're of a different nationality maybe or their parents were of addition different nationality. And I'm hearing that schools are vacant and parents do not come to PTA anymore. They don't come to open house anymore because they're afraid what might happen in the classroom if they happen to go. And there's a a big push right now towards blue collar jobs. I'm seeing all these stories about young people who are skipping college and becoming a plumber, and within a few years Right. They're making a $100,000. You know, I saw that today as a matter of fact. People say, what's wrong with going into these specialties? And you know what? I don't think there's anything wrong with going into a specialty, whether it's air conditioning or whether it's auto automotive or whatever it is, as long as they're getting education. And they complete something, so they're certified in doing something. So I'm encouraging kids, if you don't wanna go to college, then do this. But you know what? There's just so much about college to go to Yes. That is so special in developing the person that you really wanna be, plus meeting your new friends and meeting new new people like that. And while these specialties are great, there's nothing wrong with colleges. And, unfortunately, they're feeling the brunt of lack of enrollment right now. Amen. Okay. So how do we turn it around? Well, we put PAVE into the classroom to get people understanding about what else is going on in the world. This is on pet peeve of mine as well. I don't have my PhD, but I have a master's degree. I can't teach a lot of classes because I don't have a PhD. 95% of the PhDs have never worked in the field that they taught. Wow. So either teaching things out of a book, but they're not teaching from experiences. Yes. So I asked teachers, what have experience do you have with this topic? Have you ever been in the business sector? No. I've always taught. Mhmm. So you don't know anything. Right? Yes. And I've in fact, I tell my my boss, I'm gonna take my students out. We're gonna go to such and such place and we're gonna get some information so they can see exactly what things are working in the nonprofit sector. For instance, the Dallas Museum of Biblical Art, I take my students to every semester. Nice. Why would you do that, they say? And you can't do it because it's religious. That you can't bring religion in the classroom. I said, no. It's not religious. It's everything and everybody Yeah. And it needs to be done. So anyway, and this is a good good thing was told me that I got a 84 instead of a 95 in my evaluation because I said, why why why? And I said, look what I do. I bring people in and I take my students out. Yes. And they said, that is an important. Students buy, when they come to college, a desk and a chair. They don't buy going out and getting speakers to come in. Mhmm. What can I say in return? I said nothing. I just realized this is this is too far of a steep hill that I have to climb in order to convince whatever. So anyway, when I left that university to go to Mexico to be a, a faculty member in an institution there teaching social responsibility, he said to me, you finally get to teach something that you want, social responsibility, which means it's really not acceptable in a class with an academic that might be speech or science or something else. You're not supposed to be teaching those kinds of things. I think that's the problem. I think we need to do something in Texas about that topic. We're way down on the totem pole as far as quality education is concerned in Texas, and nobody's saying anything about it. You know, legislature doesn't even give them a salary that would attract people who are really of ill that have an ability. Instead, they go into something else like automotive which pays more than a teacher or electrician which pays more than a teacher. So why not go into those kinds of things instead of going into education? And, you know, I'd heard this too. We get all of these companies coming because we have so much land here, but we're gonna educate children who are not gonna be able to fulfill the job Mhmm. Vacancies because they're not qualified. Yeah. So we're gonna have to bring people from out of state in order to make that gap really significant change. Bob, we've got about two or three minutes left. So this is Bob's soapbox. You can talk about whatever you wanna talk about. What are some final thoughts? What do you wanna leave the audience with? Well, number one, I want you to get involved. Philanthropy, everybody needs a cause, and everybody needs to do something. Everybody sees a problem every day. And my question to you is, why don't you do something about it? Yes. And so do something. Think about it. Pay attention and respond instead of walking by the problem and continue going by. If you walk by it the first time and it's still there the second time, do something about it. If you can, if you can't change your tire, then don't do it. But if you can pick up the trash, then pick up the trash or help a little lady across the street or you see something. And I see something every day that I can correct. Sometimes I can correct it and sometimes I can't. And I think people don't know that they can make a difference. They don't know they can be a change maker. Yes. And truly they do. And I always say, you know what? Some people make things happen. Some think people watch things happen. And some people say, what happened? And too many people are saying, what happened? Yes. Bob, what a great way to end this segment. Thank you so much for coming back and sharing your heart and your wisdom with us. We're gonna end with his website, which is philanthropyunited.org. The great Bob Hopkins, thanks for coming back on the show. Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate That's it a it for now. We'll see you next time.