Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 22, 2026
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Back to episode — Episode 1724 Scott Adams - Elon Musk Might Buy Twitter Today. And More

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. All I had was a really bad stomach ache that lasted 24 hours. Could be just stale. Yeah, maybe. Who knows. So I don't think—I think that there was something else going on. And two people had the same experience at the same time, so I doubt that both had exactly the same unusual experience. So anyway, there's not much to say about that because I don't have enough information about what it was th…

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looks like DeSantis is probably going to win. So that's how the system works.

All right. What percent of parents are completely useless? Good question. I will put that to the audience. What percentage of parents would you say are above the line of capable? Wherever above the line of capable. All right, so we're—this will be the capable number, not the incapable. How many are capable? Somebody's saying 75 percent of parents are capable, but others 30.

See, that probably informs your opinion of who should be in charge, right? If you thought only 25 percent of parents were even capable, you might lean toward well, let the school do it because you know you don't want to ruin 75 percent of kids. Yeah, and I guess we don't know. And everybody would have a different idea of what capable looks like, etc. But I'll tell you my observation is the school raises your kid no matter what.

So that I guess part of the reason that I'm a little less engaged in this topic is that if you've observed children at all, if they go to school, if they go to public school—because that's a separate option, right? You know, a lot of people would like to have the option of taking them to a private school or a different school. But if they go to public school, the school raises your kid. There's nothing you could do about it. And it's their friends who do it.

Do you know all that sexuality stuff that you want the parent to teach? It's coming from their friends. You know, the parents can try, "Hey, let me sit you down and tell you all about this LGBTQ stuff, kids, when you're old enough." By the time your parents sit you down and talk to you, the kids' friends have already completely indoctrinated them into whatever the hell they believe.

Now the good news is that the whole LGBTQ thing is very accepted in the younger generation. So it's almost a non-issue. It's more like a curiosity but it's not like a judgment sort of thing for them. Where'd they get that? Did they get that from the school? Did they get that from their parents? No, most parents don't say anything. Most schools don't say anything. Except I'll give you an example. When I went to school a million years ago, we had an art teacher who was, I'm going to say, obviously gay. Could I be wrong? Yeah, I suppose I could have been wrong. And everybody in the town could have been wrong. And that fine young man that he lived with could have been just a friend, maybe. I mean, but trust me on this. I had a gay art teacher.

Now this was way before wokeness. But I have to say it probably normalized it for me just by example. Just the fact that he existed and he wasn't fired for it. People made unkind remarks behind his back, of course, in those days. But I think it normalized it. So all you have to be—you have to be sort of humble about what a parent could even do to a kid because the kids are just seeing examples of stuff and talking to their friends. That's got to be 75 percent of it

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, plus genetics. If you take the kid's genetic propensities, their peer pressure, and just the stuff that they're observing on TV and everywhere else, that's 90 percent of their socialization. And the parents might be 10 percent about pick up, you know, clean your room and show up on time. That's about it. But despite the minimal impact that I think parents actually have on that specific kind of…

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