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EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVE
Quis magistros ipsos docebit? . |
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25 April, 2024
Parents Question Why Virginia High School Staging Drag Musical, Brunch
Rather sickening
A high school theater troupe is staging the risque musical “Kinky Boots” just outside the nation’s capital “in collaboration” with a leading Virginia school system’s “Pride” programs, prompting concern and questions from some parents.
The Beyond the Page Theatre Company at West Potomac High School in Alexandria, Virginia, will perform “Kinky Boots” eight times between Thursday and May 4, according to emails obtained by The Daily Signal.
A “drag brunch” and a “talk back” session on the need for more “LGBTQ+ plays/musicals” are scheduled in connection with the production, spurring concern among parents.
In a letter Tuesday to the high school’s principal, parents wrote that “it is our belief that such content does not belong on school property, especially when it involves minors.”
The 2013 Broadway musical “Kinky Boots” tells the story of a struggling shoe factory owner who partners with a local drag queen to save the factory by dressing all of the male employees in drag for a show.
An email from the West Potomac Theatre Boosters does warn that the musical, a collaboration between pop singer Cyndi Lauper and actor-playwright Harvey Fierstein, “contains strong language and mature content.”
The eight performances of “Kinky Boots” aren’t the only planned events. A “Talkback [sic] with FCPS Pride”—or Fairfax County Public Schools Pride—is scheduled Saturday to “explore the significance of producing LGBTQ+ plays/musicals, delve into drag history, and explore ways to support the LGBTQ+ community.”
And on May 4, a “drag brunch” will be held before the 1 p.m. show, featuring “some of D.C.’s most fabulous performers: Dixie Crystal, Pirouette, and Orpheus Rose.”
Fairfax County Public Schools serves just under 180,000 students in northeastern Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.
Some local parents are outraged by the staging of “Kinky Boots” at a high school and voiced “strong objection” to both the content of the musical and the associated events in a letter Wednesday to Jessica Statz, principal of West Potomac High School, which includes grades 9 through 12. They wrote:
We understand that artistic expression comes in various forms, but we must tactfully express our view that ‘drag’ is not merely an art form but often associated with adult entertainment and, in some contexts, sex work.
Therefore, it is our belief that such content does not belong on school property, especially when it involves minors.
Some Fairfax County parents also asked that Statz clarify any minimum age to attend the musical and associated events; requirements for parental accompaniment and parental notice; and the educational value and financial cost of the musical.
Some parents also want to know whether Fairfax County Public Schools has completed background checks of the drag performers. The school system’s policy requires background checks for adult volunteers who are in contact with children.
Fairfax County Public Schools, West Potomac High School, and Statz did not respond to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment before time of publication.
Shelly Arnoldi, one of the parents who signed the letter of protest to the principal, described the production of “Kinky Boots” and the associated events as “glamorizing sex work.”
Drag shows, in which men wear women’s makeup and clothing (often lingerie) and sing or dance in a sexually provocative manner, have been a form of adult-oriented entertainment as long as it has existed.
In 2015 in San Francisco, however, many LGBTQ+ activist groups began arguing that drag is an essential part of “expression.” Those first readers at “drag queen story hours” claimed they wanted to make reading to children less “heteronormative.”
The encouragement of inherently sexual drag shows open to minors by LGBTQ+ activist groups has stirred national outrage and condemnation, especially after incidents in which performers behaved sexually in front of or directly to underage children.
In 2022, a drag queen gyrated next to a small girl while singing derogatory, sexual lyrics at a drag event for “all ages” in Texas. Also that year, a nearly naked drag queen at an “all ages” drag brunch in Miami paraded a young girl around a restaurant full of cheering patrons.
And last year, a North Carolina community college increased the age requirement for attending drag shows after a drag queen straddled a minor at a campus event.
A Wisconsin drag queen, a member of the anti-Catholic group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, was arrested in February and charged with four counts of exploiting a child and four counts of possessing child pornography.
“Drag by definition is sexual,” Arnoldi, one of the parents protesting the production, told The Daily Signal. “They wouldn’t do a show on a girl being a stripper—that wouldn’t be appropriate either.”
Opposing the staging of “Kinky Boots” at a high school “isn’t about being gay or straight,” she said. “This is about normalizing the sex business to minors.”
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'Grading for Equity': Promoting Students by Banning Grades of Zero and Leaving No Class Cut-Ups Behind
Joe Feldman has faced many tough crowds in the course of successfully selling his “Grading for Equity” program to school districts across the nation. During the consultant’s presentations, teachers concerned that his approach lowers standards have rolled their eyes, questioned his understanding of students, and worse.
Despite the frequent resistance from teachers, dozens of districts from California to Massachusetts are giving the consultant’s ambitious project a shot. As schools face a series of crises, including a spike in chronic absenteeism and sharp academic decline, grading for equity offers a path to better grades and higher graduation rates. Its practices include the removal of behavior in calculating grades, the end of penalties for late assignments, allowing students to retake exams, and a ban on zeros as the lowest mark.
Since the pandemic, districts have been lowering standards by making grading more lenient to help struggling students, according to several studies. But Feldman insists that his sweeping overhaul isn’t part of that controversial trend. He says the practices he promotes are a matter of fairness and accuracy in an educational system that’s stacked against blacks, Latinos and other disadvantaged students.
Grading for equity, however, stirs enough dissent among teachers and parents that some districts have dropped the difficult revamp in mid-stream. They say Feldman’s reforms are a form of leniency that brings out the worst in some students, hurting the very kids he wants to help.
“What’s most troubling are the practices that lower expectations, like giving a 50 percent grade instead of a zero even when a student doesn't attempt the assignment,” said Meredith Coffey, a former teacher and now a researcher at Thomas B. Fordham Institute who co-wrote a report on grading for equity. “If students know that they could do nothing and get 50 percent, why would they work hard? Many would do nothing.”
In some districts, grading for equity is part of the controversial agenda that’s taken hold in urban areas and seeks to wash away perceived “systemic racism” in classrooms in the wake of the George Floyd murder in 2020. In Fairfax County, a district that’s embraced grading for equity, leaders have also pushed “anti-racist” education for students and paid author and crusader Ibram X. Kendi $20,000 to give a one-hour Zoom presentation, telling staff that anti-racism means working to achieve equitable outcomes.
Like critical race theory, cops in schools, and transgender bathrooms, grading for equity is galvanizing divisions in the cultural conflict over public education. Progressives support it as a path to closing the stubborn achievement gap between rich and poor students while conservatives fear it further undermines high expectations that encourage all students to strive to improve.
A savvy promoter, Feldman frequently posts on X, expressing his excitement to schools and conference organizers who tap his expertise. He likes to plug his book, too. “Grading for Equity,” with a second edition in 2023, has sold 175,000 copies, a top-five bestseller from publisher Corwin.
Grading for equity, a term coined by Feldman, isn’t a fringe movement. Some districts adopted pieces of the program before the pandemic undermined the ability of many students to keep up academically. Since then, many more districts have embraced it.
Last year, with Feldman’s help, Boston Public Schools approved a shift to equity grading. In Oregon, Portland Public Schools is making plans to implement similar grading reforms by 2025, and thousands of New York City and Los Angeles teachers have been trained in equitable grading practices. Smaller districts in California, Nevada, New York, and other states have also adopted the program.
Zenaida Perez says half of the teachers in her Fairfax district, the largest in Virginia, oppose grading for equity but are afraid to speak up because they fear retaliation. “At least 30 percent of my students definitely make less effort,” said Perez, who has taught in the district for 16 years. “Sometimes they do not come to school and I still must give them a 50%. That is absolutely ridiculous.”
In some ways, Feldman’s biggest roadblock are the students, who like all humans procrastinate if given the chance. DePaul University psychologist Joe Ferrari, who has written extensively about the condition, says 20% of people are chronic procrastinators. If schools remove deadlines with penalties, he says most students would likely also delay and delay doing their work. “People will always gravitate to the easiest path,” he said. “Humans seek pleasure and avoid pain.”
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Antisemitic Protests on College Campuses Represent ‘Anti-Western and Anti-American Movement,’ Professor Says
Pro-Palestine protests on the campuses of some of America’s most elite colleges have resulted in hundreds of arrests and led Columbia University in New York to move classes online for the remainder of the semester.
The pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, Yale, and New York University aren’t just representative of an “antisemitic movement,” but a “fundamentally an anti-Western and anti-American movement,” Bill Jacobson says.
Jacobson, a Cornell University law professor and the founder of Legal Insurrection and the Equal Protection Project, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain who or what is driving the antisemitism on America’s college campuses.
Jacobson points to the activist organization National Students for Justice in Palestine as the organizing force behind the current protests.
“They are an organization I have followed and written about for well over a decade,” Jacobson says of the pro-Palestine group. “They support terrorists. They honor people like Rasmea Odeh, who killed two Jewish students in Jerusalem.”
Jacobson points to the ideology of critical race theory, which has spread across college campuses, for this rise in antisemitism. The related push for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI, is fundamentally anti-colonialism, Jacobson says, explaining that Israel is viewed by antisemites as “colonial occupiers.”
The anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment likely will continue on college campuses, he says, because “unless you are going to change the faculty at these schools, unless you are going to change the fundamental ideologies which drive them, removing students from the courtyard isn’t going to change a thing.”
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24 April, 2024
New Zealand’s conservative education revolution
In New Zealand, one of the most exciting education reforms in the world is quietly getting underway. Erica Stanford, the country’s new Education Minister, is on a mission to overhaul the education system from top to bottom – and she is leaving no stone unturned.
Stanford, a rising star in Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s cabinet, has hit the ground running since taking office in late 2023. In just a few short months, she has announced a suite of reforms that promise to fundamentally reshape the way New Zealand children are taught.
At the heart of Stanford’s agenda is a return to knowledge-rich curricula and explicit instruction in foundational skills. It is a decisive break from the child-centred, competency-based approach that has dominated New Zealand classrooms for decades.
Under the reforms, primary schools will be required to dedicate an average of one hour each per day to reading, writing and maths. While it is doubtful that the requirement will be rigorously enforced, it sends a strong signal that the Minister is serious about improvement in these crucial skills. Not that an hour for each of these core subjects should be too hard a challenge for schools.
Mobile phones will be banned during school hours to minimise distractions. Schools will be required to assess student progress in core subjects twice per year and to report the results to parents. And the curriculum will be reviewed to specify in detail the knowledge students must master at each year level.
Now, one might say that these policy measures are hardly rocket science. In a way, one could rather describe them as common sense or a “back to basics” approach. But it is precisely that which makes Stanford’s policies so revolutionary. For decades, the education establishment has not focussed sufficiently on the basics, nor even displayed common sense.
Perhaps Stanford’s most consequential change is a requirement for all primary schools to use a “structured literacy” approach to teaching reading. Structured literacy systematically and explicitly teaches children the key components of reading, including phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
The structured literacy mandate marks a seismic shift for New Zealand education. For years, the prevailing approach has been based on “whole language” theory, which assumes children learn to read naturally through exposure to books. Phonics and other foundational skills have often taken a backseat.
The results have been disastrous. New Zealand’s literacy rates have declined steadily over recent decades. On international assessments like PIRLS, the country now ranks well below other advanced nations. A shocking two-thirds of students failed the writing component of a recent pilot assessment for NCEA, the national assessment system.
Stanford is determined to reverse this trend. Her structured literacy push is backed by a mountain of evidence from cognitive science and reading research. Study after study has shown that explicit, systematic instruction in phonics and other key skills is the most effective way to teach reading – especially for students who struggle.
Crucially, Stanford is putting serious resources behind the reforms. Schools will receive extensive training and support to implement structured literacy in the classroom. Teachers will learn the science of reading and how to use direct instruction techniques.
It is a comprehensive, evidence-based approach that has few parallels in the world. If implemented well, it could transform the literacy landscape in New Zealand and provide a model for other countries to follow.
But Stanford’s ambitions extend beyond reading. Across the board, she is working to re-orient New Zealand education towards a knowledge-rich curriculum that specifies the content students must learn in each subject, at each grade level.
The curriculum reforms mark a rejection of the “21st century skills” philosophy that has long dominated New Zealand education. For years, the emphasis has been on generic competencies like “critical thinking” and “problem solving” rather than mastery of subject knowledge. Traditional academic disciplines have often been sidelined in favour of “project-based learning” and “student-led inquiry”.
Stanford argues this approach has badly shortchanged New Zealand children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. On that, she can point to a wealth of research showing that knowledge is the key to reading comprehension, critical thinking, and academic success. Students need a broad base of background knowledge to engage with complex texts and ideas.
By contrast, the skills-focused approach has often left students with significant gaps in their knowledge. Many arrive at university lacking even basic facts about history, science, and literature. Even worse, many lack basic writing skills, having made it through school never having written more than a paragraph at a time. The consequences are particularly acute for disadvantaged students, who are less likely to acquire academic knowledge or literacy at home.
Stanford’s solution is to create a sequenced, content-rich curriculum that builds knowledge systematically over time. The goal is to ensure all students, regardless of background, have access to the key facts, ideas and concepts that underpin each subject.
Of course, there will be resistance from some quarters of the education establishment, particularly those wedded to child-centred, inquiry-based approaches.
But cognitive research backs Stanford’s approach. It has consistently shown that explicit instruction, regular practice, and a strong foundation of background knowledge are essential for learning. Students do not acquire skills like critical thinking in a vacuum; they need a rich base of content knowledge to draw upon.
Stanford also has the strong backing of Prime Minister Luxon. Education reform was a central plank of the National Party’s successful 2023 election campaign. Luxon has staked his government’s credibility on lifting academic achievement and closing equity gaps.
As Stanford presses ahead with her reforms, there will undoubtedly be bumps along the way. But if she succeeds, the impact will be profound, and not just for New Zealand’s students.
New Zealand could provide powerful proof that a knowledge-rich curriculum and explicit instruction work. In a global education landscape still largely dominated by skills-based, constructivist thinking, Stanford’s agenda would offer a compelling counter-narrative.
Other countries will be watching New Zealand closely in the years ahead. If Stanford can demonstrate that a knowledge-rich curriculum, coupled with explicit, research-based instructional methods, can lift achievement at scale, it could have far-reaching implications for education policy around the world.
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Yale Student Stabbed at Pro-Hamas Demonstration Describes How the Campus Is a Terror Snake Pit
There’s that saying: history repeats itself. And then, some liberals have zero grasp of this topic, which is why we’re seeing a nationwide Charlottesville-like protest but without the tiki torches. It’s not white supremacist agitators either—it’s young people. The alt-right yelled, “Jews will not replace us.” These leftist clowns chant “Long live the Intifada,” and other war cries that directly call for the destruction of Israel. It all means the same: kill all the Jews. The keffiyeh has replaced the swastika.
The Ivy League is reverting to its antisemitic roots. At Yale, these pro-terrorist thugs established an encampment this month, went on a hunger strike, and have now assaulted Jewish students. They’ve been captured trying to stop Jewish students from entering certain buildings. Sahar Tartak was stabbed in the eye, and there is significant doubt that she will get justice for being victimized simply for existing (via The Free Press):
I was stabbed in the eye last night on Yale University’s campus because I am a Jew.
I wish I could say I was surprised, but since October 7, Yale has refused to take action against students glorifying violence, chanting “resistance is justified,” “celebrat[ing] the resistance’s success,” and fundraising for “Palestinian anarchist fighters” on the frontlines of the “resistance.” In more recent days, the school has allowed students to run roughshod over their most basic policies against postering, time and place restrictions, disorderly conduct, respect for university property, and the rights of others, not to mention stalking and harassment.
Yesterday, I paid the price for their inaction.
[…]
By April 20, the students’ encampment had grown to roughly forty tents, sleeping bags, umbrellas, and a stereo. On Saturday night, a student in a Class of 2026 group chat encouraged Yalies to come and show their support for Yalies4Palestine. As a student journalist for the Yale Free Press, I went to check it out. Other reporters from the Yale Daily News were already on the scene.
I should say here that I am a visibly observant Jew who wears a large Star of David around my neck and dresses modestly. I went over with my friend Netanel Crispe, who is also identifiably Jewish because of his beard, black hat, and tzitzit.
When we approached the anti-Israel protest accompanying the tent encampment to document the demonstration, we were quickly walled off by demonstration organizers and attendees who stood in a line in front of us. No one else documenting the event was blockaded this way.
[…]
They pointed their middle fingers at me and yelled “Free Palestine,” and the taunting continued until a six-foot-something male protester holding a Palestinian flag waved the flag in my face and then stabbed me with it in my left eye.
My assailant was masked and wearing a keffiyeh, concealing his identity. He also wore glasses and a black jacket. I started to yell and chase after him, but the wall of students continued to block me as I screamed. Next, I went to the Yale police, but they offered little in the way of assistance. They told me that their orders came from administrators who weren’t present at the demonstration, and that there were only seven officers to handle a crowd of about 500. So I was checked out by an ambulance EMT, who recommended I go to the hospital.
The midnight demonstration, the encampment, the violence, all of it violates Yale policy. Some of it, like my assault, also violates state and federal law. Yet nothing meaningful seems to happen in response. Given Yale’s permissiveness, I had the sinking feeling that someone would get hurt. I just didn’t expect it to be me.
It’s a damning and unnerving account of how it’s open season on Jewish students at Yale. And if that wasn’t eerie enough, Tartak said this assault reminded her of how her mother was persecuted for being Jewish in Iran, being subjected to rocks that left her with a scar on one eyelid that remains visible to this day.
Why are college presidents and administrators endorsing these attacks? Why are they allowing the inmates to run the asylum? Is it fear, or do they agree with the vicious antisemitism and anti-Israel advocacy that’s veered into calls for genocide against Jewish people?
The signs that things could go off the rails at Yale were seen last year, too.
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Columbia University protests: students face ‘gut-wrenching’ abuse
It’s 8850km from Jerusalem to the grounds of Columbia University in New York, so Shoshana Aufzien hoped that when she left her home in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks, she would find some measure of peace.
Yet Aufzien, 17, who is set to attend Barnard, a liberal arts college for women attached to the Ivy League university, is starting to think twice.
For more than a week Columbia, which is one of the finest schools in the country, with alumni including Barack Obama, has become the leading battleground for a clash of cultures that has consumed campuses across America.
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters have been occupying the centre of the campus and refusing to budge. This has led to increasingly ill-tempered clashes with pro-Israel demonstrators and the police.
Aufzien said she decided to join the protests this week in support of Israel. She recalled waking up on the morning of the October 7 Hamas attacks to the “sound of sirens” before rushing to the bomb shelter where she spent the rest of the day, terrified.
“I’m a proud Jew,” she said. “I saw the pain and suffering of Israelis and to see self-proclaimed activists on campus [spreading] anti-Semitic rhetoric is gut-wrenching.”
Others, like Shai Davidai, assistant professor at the Columbia Business School, say the university has done little to protect Jewish students and teachers. At a protest this week he said he had been denied access to his workplace and that his staff pass had been deactivated.
The university has been approached for comment.
“They’re not letting me, a Jewish professor at Columbia, inside the main campus,” Davidai told a crowd of supporters and journalists at the university’s gates. “They’re willing to use Jewish brains but they don’t want to let Jewish people in.”
NYU Heightens Security Amid Slew of Protests
With armed police stationed at every corner and drones buzzing overhead, the increasingly tense environment has pitted friends against each other and divided colleagues.
One student at Barnard College said she had been called “disgusting” and “a terrorist” for wearing a keffiyeh, the distinctive traditional scarf that has become a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinians. She declined to share her name for fear of reprisal.
“[A woman] took photos of me and told me that she would send them to the university to get me expelled,” she said.
Pro-Palestinian activists argue they are peacefully protesting against the war in Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 34,000 people, according to the Hamas-run authorities. They say that the arrest of students violates their right to protest and insist that any anti-Semitic attack against fellow students are by an extremist minority and not representative.
Over the past week the unrest has spread quickly to other renowned universities and now threatens to derail plans for graduation ceremonies.
On Monday riot police swooped in to arrest more than 150 pro-Palestine protesters at New York University, and 60 people were arrested at Yale University.
Columbia University has announced that it would switch to hybrid learning for the rest of the term, so that students do not need to attend classes on campus.
Sadie, a political science major at Barnard, described the past week as the most chaotic of her four years at the university. The senior student, who did not share her last name, said she felt especially threatened by non-students with extremist beliefs who had hijacked what had been mostly peaceful protests.
“I have [felt unsafe]. Obviously the heavy police presence is a factor. Since entry to campus is so controlled, it’s really hard to feel comfortable,” she said, moments before an altercation broke out between a man blaming Israel for the September 11 attacks and a Pro-Israel individual threatening physical violence.
Student activists began occupying large parts of Columbia’s campus when Minouche Shafik, its president, was called to Congress to testify about how the university was addressing concerns about anti-Semitism and the perceived failure to protect students.
The former president of the London School of Economics and former vice-president of the World Bank failed to assuage the fears of Jewish students and faculty and faces growing calls to resign, as her counterparts at Harvard and Pennsylvania University have done.
She also provoked the anger of students and faculty after she called in the police to forcibly remove the tents last week, prompting clashes and leading to arrests.
Over the weekend 54 Columbia Law School professors sent a letter to the university’s leadership condemning the decision.
The chaos on campus has caught the attention of President Biden and Donald Trump, his probable rival in November’s election.
“I condemn the anti-Semitic protests,” Biden told reporters on Monday. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday as he entered a court in Manhattan for the second day of his hush-money trial, Trump labelled the protests “a disgrace” and “Biden’s fault”.
Despite fees of about $US90,000 ($140,000), Emily, a 19-year-old student, would rather stay at home.
“It just becomes unimaginably worse every single day,” she said. “I go to bed every night thinking, ‘How could this possibly get any worse?’ and then I wake up to that unimaginable reality.”
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23 April, 2024
Florida’s New ‘History of Communism’ Law Is a Model All States Should Follow
By Christopher Talgo
When it comes to sensible education policy, Florida has been at the vanguard in recent years. From the Parental Rights in Education Act to universal school choice legislation, Florida lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis clearly understand that prudent education reforms are sorely needed.
On April 17, DeSantis signed SB 1264, which will reinforce Florida’s education standards by requiring that students learn about “the dangers and evils of Communism.”
According to DeSantis, “We will not allow our students to live in ignorance, nor be indoctrinated by Communist apologists in schools. To the contrary, we will ensure students in Florida are taught the truth about the evils and dangers of Communism.”
“I know firsthand the evils that Communism brings, and I am proud to stand by Governor DeSantis as he signs this legislation to ensure Florida remains the bastion of freedom,” added Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz.
Like Diaz, I have firsthand experience, at least when it comes to educating students about the history and ideology of communism. For several years, I was a public high school social studies teacher, first in Illinois and then in South Carolina. I specialized in three subjects: U.S. history, world history, and American government, all of which touch upon the subject of socialism/communism in one form or another.
I completed my student teaching program at a very prominent public high school in the northern suburbs of Chicago, where I shadowed and eventually taught a semester of world history and U.S. history. I must say I was totally dumbfounded when I observed my “master teacher” give presentations on anything related to socialism/communism.
In short, he consistently went out of his way to whitewash the horrors of socialist regimes, from the Soviet Union to Cuba to China. He always framed socialism as morally superior to free-market capitalism. And he regularly echoed that the reason these socialist nations failed or didn’t deliver fully on their promises of utopian egalitarianism was due to meddling from the West.
I know it is difficult to believe, but my “master teacher” at this nationally recognized high school was far from the only social studies teacher with socialist leanings. In fact, it was the norm throughout the entire social studies department.
After I finished my student teaching program, I moved to South Carolina, with the hopes that a conservative state would have a less “socialist-friendly” teaching environment. Boy, was I wrong.
To my astonishment, after landing a full-time teaching position at a public high school outside Hilton Head, things were just as bad.
Like my experience at the aforementioned Chicagoland high school, the social studies department at my new school in South Carolina was chock-full of socialist sympathizers.
I spent five years teaching U.S. history, world history, and American government at this school, during which I chronically witnessed what I can only describe as “socialist indoctrination” from most of my colleagues. In many cases, blatantly pro-socialist ideology was being masqueraded as “giving both sides.” To my chagrin, this became nauseating after several years.
Such is why I decided to retire from the teaching profession and dedicate my life to speaking the truth about public policy in general, and socialism, in particular.
Many years later, I am a research fellow with The Heartland Institute’s Socialism Research Center (SRC), which is “devoted to informing the world about the dangers, including the moral dangers, associated with socialism, communism, and other forms of collectivism.”
The reason I bring this up is because the SRC has just published a book, Socialism at a Glance, which offers a concise history of socialism including an analysis of socialist ideology and The Communist Manifesto.
As a former teacher, I am well aware that there remains a giant void in accurate teaching materials on the subject of socialism. Socialism at a Glance was designed to fill that void, to serve as a resource for anyone interested in learning the unvarnished truth about socialism.
Now, back to the new Florida law. In a nutshell, the new law is designed to beef up the “existing Communist history standards with instruction on the history of Communism in the United States and the tactics of Communist movements,” “promote the importance of economic and individual freedoms as a means to advance human progress,” and prepare “students to withstand indoctrination on Communism at colleges and universities.”
Those are all noble endeavors, not to mention completely necessary, and should serve as the bedrock for socialism teaching standards in all 50 states.
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Largest Christian University in America Gets Fined $37 Million. Coincidence or Targeted Attack?
A dust storm of political madness is brewing in Phoenix as Grand Canyon University faces the continued threats of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
Christians have watched as the Biden administration attacks biblical views left and right, with a particularly vehement disregard for the sanctity of life and marriage. As such, it can’t be too surprising that Cardona, a part of this leftist administration, has vowed to shut down America’s largest Christian university.
In late October, Grand Canyon University was hit with “a $37.7 million fine brought by the federal government over allegations that it lied to students about the cost of its programs,” The Associated Press reported—an accusation that GCU President Brian Mueller described as “ridiculous.”
Around the same time, Liberty University, America’s second-largest Christian university, also was fined $37 million “over alleged underreporting of crimes.”
Grand Canyon University appealed its fine in November even though a hearing is not expected until January 2025. But the question Mueller has is one of integrity. Is this genuine consideration for the well-being of students, or is this a targeted attack against religious institutions?
“It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the two largest Christian universities in the country, this one and Liberty University, are both being fined almost the identical amount at almost the identical time?” GCU’s president speculated in a speech. “Now is there a cause and effect there? I don’t know. But it’s a fact.”
The House Appropriations Committee held a hearing early this month about the Biden administration’s decision to “crack down on GCU and other universities like it.”
During the proceedings, Cardona and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., made their disapproval of Grand Canyon University and similar universities obvious. “[W]e are cracking down not only to shut them down, but to send a message to not prey on students,” Cardona said.
Supporters of GCU agree that the fine seems unprecedented and motivated by ideological bias. American Principles Project Policy Director Jon Schweppe said: “The federal government’s education agenda is punishing schools that do not conform to their progressive ideology. It’s time we take a stand against this egregious abuse of power.”
Another conservative think tank, the Goldwater Institute, sued the Education Department for “refusing to turn over” public documents “that explain why” the agency fined GCU. The goal of the lawsuit is to unmask the reason behind the fine.
“With its motto of ‘private, Christian, affordable’ and its track record of graduating students into high-demand and high-paying jobs, GCU is a success story by any metric. And it stands apart from universities across the country that are facing declining enrollment, that are indoctrinating students with radical politics, and that are under attack for failing to defend the First Amendment,” the Goldwater Institute wrote. “So then why are the feds targeting GCU, a popular university that seems to be doing everything right? That’s exactly what we’re going to find out.”
Although immense uncertainty still surrounds this case, Grand Canyon University’s president took the time to share with The Washington Stand how his staff, faculty, and students are faring and how believers everywhere can help.
Mueller emphasized that GCU has faced various issues over the years. But despite the government’s action, he said he wanted people to know that “interestingly enough … it has had zero impact on anything that we’re doing.”
He continued: “The enrollments are just continuing to grow … [and] the morale is very high in terms of our faculty and staff. The campus is extremely vibrant. I mean, the students absolutely love this place. They’re extremely loyal to [the school] and so we just keep marching through it.”
And although the fine that Grand Canyon University was dealt by the Education Department is “a problem,” Mueller said, he is thankful that GCU remains optimistic.
Christian “mission, not politics, is our motivation and it is our hope,” he told The Washington Stand. As a university, Mueller explained, GCU exists to “pour into” the community around it.
“[O]ur reach into the neighborhood and caring for disadvantaged populations has been a way to live out our faith” in a way “that has risen above … political divide,” Mueller said. Ultimately, with support from “both sides of the aisle” in Arizona, he noted, “all the issues we have are with a very small number of people in Washington D.C.”
“We encourage people to be involved politically and vote,” Mueller said, adding: “But our faith will stand above the politics always, and our politics will never become our religion.”
Because, for “many people in our country today, their politics have become their religion, and that’s when things … go really bad in our society,” he said.
Mueller pointed out that Grand Canyon University is “trying to be an example of a Christian community that can rise above those things and focus on helping people” through service, as Scripture calls believers to do.
Mueller concluded with a request for prayer as the university works through these troubling times, and for “the hearts of certain people in Washington, D.C. to be softened.” He added that “it’s hard to make progress and resolve differences when people just … don’t want to talk to each other.”
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Teachers’ group to focus on Palestine on Australian war memorial Day
This is a lot of nonsense. The charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba and related action was against the army of the Ottoman Turks, not Palestinians. It was incidentally the last successful cavalry charge in history so is well worth remembering as an achievement of Australian troops. And there is no doubt that charging into the guns of 1,000 Turkish riflemen in an entrenched position was heroic, if heroism matters any more
A pro-Palestine teachers group has excoriated the Anzac legacy just two days before Australia commemorates its military history.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the Teachers and School Staff for Palestine group called for the Anzac legend to be “dismantled” and linked a slaughter committed by World War One Anzac troops to the current war against Gaza.
Secondary schoolteacher Lucy Honan said it was important for students to understand Australia’s role in the Middle Eastern conflict.
“It is so important that students know that the Anzacs left a long and violent historical imprint in Palestine and in Sarafand al-’Amar in particular,” Ms Honan said.
“The British created a prison camp for Palestinian activists at Sarafand al-’Amar.
“The residents fled or were evacuated in the 1948 Nakba, and the site then became one of Israel’s largest military bases.
“This is a legacy to dismantle, not to glorify.”
The group has developed an educational resource for classrooms, aiming to redress current Anzac narratives and “enable rigorous, critical and empowering education”.
Primary schoolteacher Bill Abrahams said it was important to use objective teaching resources rather than relying on information from parties with vested interests in Israeli weaponry.
“Rather than depending on teaching resources published by the Australian War Memorial — which is funded in part by weapons companies implicated in the genocide in Gaza, like Boeing, Thales and Northrupp Grumman — we will use resources that help us and our students reflect critically on Australia’s military involvement in Palestine,” he said.
Teachers have been encouraged to foreground the massacre of as many as 137 people in the Palestinian village, Sarafand al-’Amar, committed by ANZACs in 1918.
The booklet is a 40-page resource featuring explanations about how Anzac Day relates to Palestine, the British Mandate, the Sarafand al-’Amar massacre, the 1948 Nakba, and many primary and secondary historical sources.
The group has connections within hundreds of schools around Australia.
Secondary schoolteacher Pippa Tandy, a member of TSSP, said the booklet was in line with curriculum requirements and was age-adaptable for different grades.
“People talk about Anzac Day as being about Australian identity, but a lot of people are feeling that we want an identity arising out of truth and honesty, rather than lies and obfuscation,” Ms Tandy said.
“We actually find by looking at the curriculum, looking at the outcomes we’re supposed to be achieving in school, we’re finding that talking about Palestine is actually not something we should be prevented from doing.
“It’s quite legitimate to talk about Palestine in the classroom.
“Obviously, we’re not promoting a particular point of view, but we are committed to the idea that there is no neutrality in genocide.”
She said while it was possible there could be backlash from parents, criticism had always been outweighed by support.
“If parents raise issues with us, we talk to them – and that’s the only way through,” she said. “Ultimately, by informing students about this piece of history, all we’re doing is educating them.”
An RSL Australia spokesman said the matter was “more for education authorities” but emphasised the importance of commemorating the lives of veterans.
“Whatever the political, constitutional and international treaty obligations prevailing at the time (WWI), the RSL’s role is to represent our veterans and remember and honour their service, commitment and bravery, and encourage all Australians to do the same,” they said.
“We do this continually, but particularly on Anzac Day, Remembrance Day and on other key commemoration dates.”
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22 April, 2024
USC cancels speech by Crazy Rich Asians director amid uproar over barring of pro-Palestinian valedictorian
The University of Southern California has scrapped commencement speeches by Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M Chu and other honorees amid an uproar over the cancellation of a graduation speech by pro-Palestinian valedictorian Asna Tabassum.
On Friday (19 April), USC announced the decision in a letter posted to the university’s website.
That update came as a follow-up to an announcement earlier in the week calling off Ms Tabassum’s speech over a growing furore relating to the war in Gaza that had drawn in “many voices outside of USC” and had “escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption”.
“We cannot ignore the fact that similar risks have led to harassment and even violence at other campuses,” the statement continued. “As always, and particularly when tensions are running so high across the world, we must prioritize the safety of our community.”
Friday’s letter states that “given the highly publicized circumstances surrounding our main-stage commencement program” it was decided to “release our outside speakers and honorees from attending this year’s ceremony”.
It continued: “We’ve been talking to this exceptional group and hope to confer these honorary degrees at a future commencement or other academic ceremonies.”
Chu, a USC alumnus, was scheduled to deliver the school’s commencement speech at the main ceremony on 10 May in front of approximately 65,000 attendees.
In addition to Crazy Rich Asians, Chu has directed and produced a wide range of movies, notably In the Heights and the highly anticipated movie adaptation of the musical Wicked.
Also scheduled to attend and receive honorary degrees were tennis legend Billie Jean King, National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, and National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt.
King will still give the keynote speech at a separate ceremony for the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, The Los Angeles Times reports.
Ms Tabassum, a fourth-year biomedical engineering student from Chino Hills, California, was set to give a speech at the ceremony on 10 May.
Valedictorian is the academic title conferred upon the highest-ranked student among those graduating from an educational institution, typically based on the highest grade point average.
As well as her stellar academic record, Ms Tabassum was noted for having engaged in multiple community outreach and non-profit organisations during her time at USC, including helping to send medical supplies to Turkey, Syria and Ukraine.
In her social media bio, she also includes a link to a pro-Palestinian website. She describes herself as a first-generation South Asian-American Muslim.
USC stressed in its decision to call off Ms Tabassum’s speech: “To be clear: this decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech. There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period.”
USC’s decision has been met with outrage from advocacy groups, including CAIR Greater Los Angeles, which said it “empowers voices of hate” and violated the university’s obligation to protect its students
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‘That Is Not a Religion’: DeSantis Bars Satanists From Florida School Chaplaincy Program
The Sunshine State is now welcoming chaplains into public schools, but Satanists need not apply.
On Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a bill into law allowing chaplains to volunteer to offer counseling at public and charter schools. However, the Catholic governor warned that Satanists would not be accepted into the program, as some Christian and conservative groups had feared.
“Now some have said if you do a school chaplain program that somehow you’re going to have Satanists running around in all our schools,” DeSantis said in a press conference. “We’re not playing those games in Florida. That is not a religion. That is not qualifying to be able to participate in this. We’re going to be using common sense when it comes to this, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
The Florida Senate version of the bill was approved in February and the House version was approved early last month. The legislation’s text states, “Each school district or charter school may adopt a policy to authorize volunteer school chaplains to provide supports, services, and programs to students as assigned by the district school board or charter school governing board.”
The new law requires volunteer chaplains to pass a background check and would require school administrators to publicize each volunteer chaplain’s religious affiliation and obtain parental consent before a student begins counseling.
“Any opportunity that exists for ministers or chaplains in the public sector must not discriminate based on religious affiliation,” said The Satanic Temple’s “Director of Ministry” Penemue Grigori in February. “Our ministers look forward to participating in opportunities to do good in the community, including the opportunities created by this bill, right alongside the clergy of other religions.”
Ryan Jayne of the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Action Fund added, “I think there is a 100% chance you see satanic chaplains, and also of course other religious minorities that the majority-Christian population might not be a fan of. The Satanic Temple is a church, whether people like it or not.”
“It is wonderful to have such a strong statement denying the legitimacy of Satanism as a religion or church from Governor DeSantis. But I worry that appeals to common sense will not hold in the most ideological school systems, even in Florida,” Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for education studies, commented to The Washington Stand. “Regardless, this is an important step in acknowledging the role that faith plays in our lives and how important it is that the big questions students have about morality, life and death, and God’s plan for their lives are best answered by a parent or priest, pastor, or chaplain.”
DeSantis has criticized Satanism in the past, arguing that it is not a religion. In December, after military veteran and outspoken Christian Michael Cassidy toppled and beheaded a Baphomet idol erected in the Iowa State Capitol Building by The Satanic Temple, the Florida governor declared, “Satan has no place in our society and should not be recognized as a ‘religion’ by the federal government. … Good prevails over evil—that’s the American spirit.”
On its website, The Satanic Temple responds to the question “Do you worship Satan?” The organization states, “No, nor do we believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural.” The Satanic Temple adds, “Satan is a symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority, forever defending personal sovereignty even in the face of insurmountable odds. … Our metaphoric representation is the literary Satan best exemplified by Milton and the Romantic Satanists from Blake to Shelley to Anatole France.”
Now that it has been signed by DeSantis, Florida’s new law goes into effect on July 1.
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In maths, truth and knowledge can’t be mere matters of opinion
From an analytical philosophy viewpoint, mathematics is a set of conventions with useful properties. If you break those conventions, you destroy its usefulness
In universities across the world, humanities departments have, over time, come to reject the notion that there is such a thing as objective truth.
This nihilistic outlook was originally promoted by a small group of academics in the mid-20th century, but is now the dominant philosophy in a range of disciplines from literary criticism to gender and cultural studies. And while the doctrine has quietly swallowed the humanities, many thought it would never infiltrate the hard sciences. If one is engineering a bridge, for example, it would be reckless to reject the objective truth of gravity. If one is studying mathematics it would be foolish to deny that 2 + 2 = 4.
Yet the notion that postmodernism would stop at the walls of the hard sciences looks naive in retrospect. In recent years, efforts to “decolonise” the sciences have been successful in New Zealand with Maori “ways of knowing” to be taught alongside chemistry, physics and biology in science classrooms. Commenting on the New Zealand policy, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has described it as “pernicious nonsense”.
To understand Dawkins’ ire, it’s worth digging a little deeper into what “decolonising science” actually means. It is an outgrowth of a larger push to “decolonise knowledge” inside the universities. Academics leading this movement explicitly reject the notion there are objective facts that can be discovered via rational or scientific inquiry.
And, rather than being a method to discover how the world works, such theorists argue Western science has been used as a tool to subjugate others. Efforts to “decolonise” science are therefore efforts to undo this subjugation, by bringing into the fold other “ways of knowing” that exist outside scientific methodology. These might include local knowledge about land management, religious knowledge about cosmology, or traditional ways of healing.
Writing in The Conversation, academic Alex Broadbent, of the University of Johannesburg, argues: “There is African belief, and European belief, and your belief, and mine – but none of us have the right to assert that something is true, is a fact, or works, contrary to anyone else’s belief.”
But if we are to treat this claim seriously it takes us to some interesting destinations. It would mean ignoring modern medicine in favour of traditional healing practices when treating cancer or heart disease. It would mean denying the laws of physics that allow planes to fly safely, based on myths about human flight. And it would mean disregarding engineering standards for building safe bridges, roads and buildings, because such standards derive from colonial methods.
Of course, this would be highly impractical. In the real world, we do not recognise the opinions of flat-earthers are equal to those of astronauts, or the knowledge of a psychic is equivalent to an oncologist. We recognise that while everyone is deserving of respect and dignity, not all opinions – or indeed “ways of knowing” – are equal in standing. But recognising the validity of science does not mean we cannot respect or study Indigenous culture. A deeper understanding of non-Western cultures is important – and we have an entire academic discipline devoted to just that. Anthropology exists to study the practices, cosmologies and knowledge systems of Indigenous populations.
Yet decolonial thinkers will argue that by isolating the study of Indigenous ways of knowing the anthropology department is itself a form of oppression.
From their perspective, knowledge grounded in spirituality and folklore should not be seen as mere cultural artefacts, but as being equal to physics, chemistry and biology. Decolonial activists reject the hierarchy that places scientific rationality above superstition and intuition.
Australia is not immune to this line of thinking, and neither are the hard sciences at our most prestigious institutions. The Australian National University’s Mathematical Sciences Institute this month released a press statement about a special topics course in Indigenous mathematics. Course convener Rowena Ball is quoted as saying “Indigenous and First Nations peoples around the world are standing up and saying: ‘Our knowledge is just as good as anybody else’s − why can’t we teach it to our children in our schools, and in our own way?’.” The press release also states that “Numbers and arithmetic and accounting often are of secondary importance in Indigenous mathematics”.
What are some forms of Indigenous mathematics? The example given by Ball is directions in smoke signalling. “One interesting example that we are currently investigating is the use of chiral symmetry to engineer a long-distance smoke signalling technology in real time,” she says. Theory and mathematics in Mithaka society were systematised and taught intergenerationally. You don’t just somehow pop up and suddenly start a chiral signalling technology. It has been taught and developed and practised by many people through the generations.”
Commenting on her assertion that smoke signalling is a sophisticated form of mathematics, Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago, said bluntly: “I don’t find this at all convincing … patterns of smoke, like drumbeats, is a kind of language, and how to make the patterns and get them understood correctly is based on trial and error. Where does the math come in?”
In establishing a special topics course for Indigenous mathematics, the ANU is trying to serve two masters. On the one hand, universities such as ANU want to portray themselves as vanguards of social justice, in an attempt to attract students and placate activist staff. Yet on the other hand, these same institutions seek to justify collecting public funding and student fees on the premise that they provide a rigorous and substantive education.
But herein lies the irony – by indulging the decolonial activist agenda that rejects the existence of objective truths or a hierarchy of knowledge, universities undermine the very premise on which society deems them worthy of public funding. If we accept the decolonial notion that no form of knowledge can be deemed superior to any other, then what exactly are students paying for? What specialised skills or benefits do university graduates gain that non-graduates lack?
The contradiction is that the university as an institution exists solely because certain forms of systematised knowledge were historically elevated above others and deemed worthy of dedicated study, preservation and expansion. So why should the public continue to fund these multibillion-dollar organisations if the knowledge they offer is just as valid as any other “way of knowing”?
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21 April, 2024
Majority of Catholic Women’s Colleges Enroll Men Who Identify As Trans Women
A majority of the Catholic women’s colleges in the United States allow men who identify as transgender women to enroll, according to a new report—despite church teaching on gender and sex.
The National Catholic Register reported on Friday that of the three dozen women’s colleges throughout the country, most are now admitting men. The publication notes that there are eight Catholic women’s colleges, all founded by Catholic female religious orders, and each of those colleges has an independent board of trustees that oversees them.
Five of the eight women’s colleges explicitly state on their websites that they allow men who identify as women to enroll in their institutions, according to the National Catholic Register. According to a pro-transgender organization, Campus Pride, two more of the colleges also allow trans-identifying students to enroll.
“We have a twofold identity crisis—both among young people captured by gender ideology, and among Catholic colleges that defy the Church and reject the Catholic teaching that is foundational to authentic Catholic education,” Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, told the National Catholic Register.
Some of those colleges go so far as to claim that their pro-transgender policies are inspired by Catholic teaching—although Pope Francis himself has explicitly rejected gender ideology. And only one of the bishops in the dioceses where these schools are located told NCR that his diocese is taking action on the policies.
1. Alverno College
At Alverno College in Milwaukee, for example, the college claims on its website: “In the Catholic tradition of caring and respect for each human person, we support students on their journey of self-discovery and recognize that gender identity may change over time.”
“Alverno has put guidelines and services in place to support transgender students as integral members of our diverse campus community. Specifically, Alverno College admits students who consistently live and identify as women,” the Alverno website states. “In addition, continuing students whose gender identity changes after admission are encouraged to persist through graduation, experiencing the personal and academic support each student deserves from an Alverno education.”
2. Mount Mary University
Mount Mary University, which is also in Milwaukee, similarly describes itself as a “Catholic university that believes and acts in accordance to the tradition of caring, respect, and educational access.” The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“As such, MMU strives to create an environment that is inclusive of all gender identities and intersectionality,” the Mount Mary University website explains. “At the undergraduate level, all individuals who identify as women (including cisgender and transgender women), intersex individuals who do not identify as male, and nonbinary individuals are eligible for admission to MMU.”
3. Mount Saint Mary’s University
Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles states that “any student who was born female or who identifies as female is eligible for admission to our traditional undergraduate women’s university.” The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
4. St. Catherine University
St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, “admits students of all genders and gender identities to the College for Adults and the Graduate College and admits all students who identify as women to the College for Women.” The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
5. College of Saint Benedict
College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, admits “applicants who were assigned female at birth, as well as those who were assigned male or female at birth but now consistently live and identify as female, transgender, gender fluid or nonbinary.” The college did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
6. Trinity Washington University
Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., reportedly allows men who identify as women to enroll, according to Campus Pride, an LGBTQ organization tracking women’s colleges’ admissions policies. The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
7. The College of Saint Mary
The College of Saint Mary in Omaha, Nebraska, is similarly reported to allow men who identify as women to enroll, according to Campus Pride. The college did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
8. Saint Mary’s College
The Daily Signal reported in November that Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, would allow men who identify as women to enroll at the college in the fall of 2024. That news was first reported by the Notre Dame student newspaper, The Observer.
In December, the college announced it was backtracking on that decision.
President Katie Conboy claimed in an email at the time the initial decision was viewed as a “reflection of our College’s commitment to live our Catholic values as a loving and just community”—but said that it is “increasingly clear” that “the position we took is not shared by all members of our community.”
The college did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Department of Education’s New Title IX Rule Just as Bad as Expected
The Department of Education just released its long-delayed Title IX rule—a rewrite of the 50 year-old civil rights law so vast that it promises to turn Title IX’s guarantee of sex equality in education completely upside down.
Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is all of a single sentence. It simply bars sex discrimination in any federally funded education program. It does not matter how much federal funding a school or institution of higher education receives. And it does not matter whether such funding from the federal government is direct or indirect. So yes, even the vast majority of private schools must comply with the rule.
But this simple longstanding prohibition on sex discrimination has been manipulated by the Biden administration to both undermine constitutional freedoms—like the freedom of speech—and erase the very women that Title IX was enacted to protect.
The Department of Education has unilaterally expanded the prohibition against discrimination based on “sex” to include a prohibition against discrimination based on: “sex stereotypes, sex-related characteristics (including intersex traits), pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
Under the Biden administration’s sweeping new Title IX rule, any K–12 school or institution of higher education that receives any federal funding would have to open girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, housing accommodations, sports teams, and any other sex-separated educational program or offering to biological boys who claim to “identify” as girls. Similarly, boys’ facilities would have to be accessible to biological girls who “identify” as boys.
And the law’s decimation of equality doesn’t stop there. The regulations also eliminate due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct (like the right to call witnesses, introduce evidence, or be represented by counsel during an investigation), and violates the First Amendment to the Constitution by forcing teachers and fellow students to use of a student’s “preferred pronouns.”
The regulations also require K-12 schools to accept a child’s gender identity regardless of biological sex without providing any notice to, much less seeking the approval of, the child’s parents.
And while the Education Department has punted, at least for the moment, on its second Title IX rule—one that applies only to athletics—the Biden administration’s representation that sports are not included in today’s rule is a complete head fake. By expanding the definition of “sex” to include “gender identity” and applying the rule to all “extracurricular activities,” male and female athletic teams will be a thing of the past. Indeed, the word “athletics” appears in the new rule at least 31 times.
Furthermore, the Department of Education’s reading of Title IX lacks any support in the text of the title, its implementing regulations, and the law’s congressional history.
Congress had a chance in 1987 to amend the Title IX “sex” definition to include “gender identity,” when it amended Title IX under the Civil Rights Restoration Act. But it did not.
Executive agencies are empowered only to promulgate “rules” or “regulations” that implement or interpret laws passed by Congress—not to create completely new laws.
Apparently, the Department of Education has forgotten that.
Now the question isn’t if legal challenges will follow, but how fast they’ll come.
The Independent Women’s Law Center has already indicated it is readying a lawsuit against the Department of Education. Others are likely to follow. Let’s hope so.
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Australian schools have been ordered to use this teaching method. Will staff comply?
This should be a non-issue. A good teacher will do both things: Get the kids thinking first then tell them what they need to know
Last month, every public school teacher across the state was told they would be getting some training.
On their first day back from the autumn holidays, a professional learning session would cover explicit teaching.
For some veteran educators, it meant revisiting what they had known for decades and covered in teachers’ college. For their younger colleagues, explicit teaching – where students are given clear, step-by-step instructions – represents the industrial-era model of schooling their university lecturers taught them to fear.
Explicit teaching typically involves telling students sitting in rows the steps required to perform a skill or task at the start of the lesson before allowing them to practice it. In contrast, inquiry learning means confronting students with a problem and asking them to try and work out the answers for themselves, similar to how a scientist might. Advocates say inquiry-based learning fosters more in-depth understanding and deep thinking. Explicit teaching adherents believe inquiry learning is ineffective, wastes time and unnecessarily confuses students.
While schools in NSW over the past two decades have adopted inquiry-based learning, conservative voices in the education sector have been increasingly agitating for the use of explicit teaching.
Backed by academics who had studied the science of learning, The Australian Education Research Organisation reviewed more than 328 studies and found explicit instruction was an effective teaching practice across a variety of contexts for different subgroups of students.
In the wake of that evidence, the NSW Department of Education told staff this month that teachers would be supported “to ensure explicit teaching strategies are embedded in every classroom”.
“Explicit teaching is effective when learning is new or complex because it is responsive to how the brain processes, stores and retrieves information,” an email sent earlier this month said.
At a recent meeting in Sydney’s CBD at the headquarters of the conservative think tank, The Centre for Independent Studies, University of Texas education researcher Sarah Powell gave a talk alongside Australian maths teacher Toni Hatten-Roberts. Both are explicit teaching proponents and believe students should rote learn certain facts, such as multiplication tables, in primary school.
Powell said when schools prioritised inquiry-based learning, they missed out on opportunities for children to learn their times tables.
“It ends up a lot of the time related to socioeconomic status – parents who have the time and the knowledge and the wherewithal are practising their [multiplication] facts, they’re doing flashcards, they’re singing the songs, and they’re doing this in the car as they go to soccer practice,” she said.
“There are other parents who don’t have the time. They’re working two shifts at the hospital and they maybe don’t even know that they should be practising [times tables] in the home. It ends up being the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”
Like the decades-long reading wars or the maths wars that have gripped US educators, the debate between explicit and inquiry learning has morphed into a kind of culture war in Australia, where academics’ views are pitted against right-wing think tanks.
While those who adhere to the inquiry ideology believe more in-depth learning happens when students work things out for themselves, those who see the value in explicit teaching believe students must have the ability to perform mathematical calculations using well-rehearsed procedures quickly and accurately.
Students should also be able to recall some facts, like times tables, to the point of automaticity. Doing so, they say, provides a strong foundation for higher-level mathematics skills needed for problem-solving, reasoning, and critical thinking, as well as real-world problem-solving.
In response to the department’s explicit teaching focus, university academics across the country rose into action to criticise it for overemphasising explicit instruction. They described it as unproven by research while undermining teachers’ professional authority.
Western Sydney University senior lecturer Dr Lynde Tan acknowledged a variety of skills could be taught and improved through explicit teaching, but research found the method was laden with inherent risks and required precautions.
The teaching style behind the state’s top-performing schools
“These risks include: students’ over-reliance on the teacher as the knowledge provider inhibits self-directed learning, which is a key 21st-century skill in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world. The rigidity inherent in explicit teaching prioritises recall of facts and rote learning over critical thinking,” she said.
Associate Professor Jorge Knijnik said the edict undermined teachers’ professional autonomy. He said explicit teaching, which was centred around the teacher who does most of the talking, could complement more contemporary approaches to maximise learning.
NSW Mathematical Association president Katherin Cartwright told the Herald that explicit teaching and inquiry-based learning were not mutually exclusive.
“It is not free-for-all when you see inquiry-based learning. It is a joy to see kids understand how something works and why it works,” she said.
“Death by PowerPoint seems to be returning. Now all these teachers are making PowerPoints for every single lesson. You might get immediate results on tests, but it is not giving them deep knowledge and skills in how to reason.”
But Dr Greg Ashman, a maths teacher, author and long-time proponent of explicit teaching said occasionally explaining a concept or skill to students was not the same as using explicit instruction in every lesson.
“As long as I have been arguing about explicit teaching versus inquiry learning, I have had people respond that their version of inquiry learning includes a lot of explicit instruction. What they mean is that they occasionally explain things to students,” he said.
“However, that’s quite different to a systematic approach where all concepts are explained, and all procedures demonstrated before students are asked to use these concepts and procedures. That’s what I mean by explicit teaching.
“I honestly have no idea how NSW is going to train all its teachers in explicit teaching in a day, especially given the entrenched inquiry ideology.”
The push towards explicit teaching is part of the NSW Department of Education’s plan for public education, which has a focus on reducing gaps in student outcomes, due to structural inequities.
NSW Teachers Federation deputy president Amber Flohm said explicit teaching was a valuable methodology but cautioned against making it mandatory.
“Explicit teaching must not be mandated. Ultimately, teachers will adapt and adopt when explicit teaching is critical, but there are other times when students demonstrate understanding of a concept, the teacher should be able to use their judgment.”
The Herald asked the department how it planned to monitor whether teachers were actually using explicit teaching in light of opposition from proponents of other methods. A spokesman did not directly answer that question, but said it could survey students and parents to ask them about their experiences of explicit teaching.
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18 April, 2024
Muslim student loses bid to take part in prayer rituals at ‘Britain’s strictest school’
A headteacher famous for her strict discipline has hailed a landmark High Court ruling which backed the school’s right to ban prayer rituals in the playground.
Katharine Birbalsingh, head of Michaela Community School in Brent, north London, said the outcome was a “victory for all schools” after a judge rejected a Muslim’s pupil claim that the policy interfered with her rights to religious freedom.
The pupil, who cannot be named, had claimed that the policy is discriminatory and “uniquely” affects her faith due to its ritualised nature.
But in an 83-page written ruling on Tuesday after a two-day hearing in January, Mr Justice Linden dismissed the pupil’s arguments and backed the school, which had argued its policy was justified after it faced death and bomb threats linked to religious observance on site.
Ms Birbalsingh, a former government social mobility tsar who co-founded the non-faith secondary state school with former home secretary Suella Braverman, said: “A school should be free to do what is right for the pupils it serves. The court’s decision is therefore a victory for all schools.
“Schools should not be forced by one child and her mother to change its approach simply because they have decided they don’t like something at the school,” she added.
The case will be seen as upholding the right of non-religious schools to make their own decision about whether to set aside time and space for pupils to pray.
Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said the ruling in the case, which was estimated to cost the taxpayer at least £500,000, should give all school leaders confidence in making the right decision for their school.
Secular campaigners, meanwhile, said the ruling serves as a reminder that claims of religious freedom “do not trump all other considerations”.
The head also suggested that the child’s mother had helped write the statements, even though the woman allegedly intends to send her second child to Michaela as well.
“The judge is clear that the child’s statements were not written by her alone,” said Ms Birbalsingh. “Indeed this mum intends to send her second child to Michaela, starting in September. At the same time, this mum has sent a letter to our lawyers suggesting that she may take us to court yet again over another issue at the school she doesn’t like, presumably once again at the taxpayer’s expense.”
The pupil who brought the legal challenge said in a statement provided by law firm Simpson Millar: “I am obviously very disappointed that the judge did not agree with me,” she said. “As is set out in the judgement, I do not agree that it would be too hard for the school to accommodate pupils who wished to pray in the lunch break.
“Even though I lost, I still feel that I did the right thing in seeking to challenge the ban. I tried my best and was true to myself and my religion.”
The pupil’s mother said she was “profoundly dismayed by the case’s outcome”, claiming that the “case was rooted in the understanding that prayer isn’t just a desirable act for us, it’s an essential element that shapes our lives as Muslims.”
“In our faith, prayer holds undeniable importance, guiding us through each challenge with strength and faith,” she said.
In another statement, headteacher Ms Birbalsingh claimed that Muslim pupils last year had been put under pressure “to pray, to drop out of the choir, to wear a hijab” while teachers faced abuse and intimidation. She said there had been a false narrative peddled that Muslims were the oppressed minority at the school.
“In 2014, 30 per cent of our intake was Muslim. It is now 50 per cent. We are oversubscribed. If our families did not like the school, they would not repeatedly choose to send their children to Michaela,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The pupil argued that the policy – which forbids her from praying for around five minutes at lunch time, on dates when faith rules required it, but not during lessons – was “the kind of discrimination which makes religious minorities feel alienated from society”.
The pupil’s lawyers previously said the “prayer ban” unlawfully breached her right to religious freedom, adding that it made her feel “like somebody saying they don’t feel like I properly belong here”. The court was told the pupil, referred to only as TTT, is making only a “modest” request to be allowed to pray at lunchtime.
The student also challenged allegedly unfair decisions to temporarily suspend her from school.
Mr Justice Linden, who heard the case at the High Court in London in January, said there was a “a rational connection between the aim of promoting the team ethos of the school, inclusivity, social cohesion etc and the prayer ritual policy”.
He said: “The disadvantage to Muslim pupils at the school caused by the prayer ritual policy is in my view outweighed by the aims which it seeks to promote in the interests of the school community as a whole, including Muslim pupils.”
He also upheld the student's challenge to a decision to temporarily exclude her from the school.
Ms Braverman said: “Michaela has always been a school which prioritises high achievement. And I know how hard Katharine [Birbalsingh] has worked to make it a success right from the early days when I was involved in helping to set up the school as chairman of governors.
“This is a victory for the children and their parents who want them to live happy and fulfilled lives.”
Dan Rosenberg, a lawyer at Simpson Millar, which represented the pupil, said the judge had noted the case raised “issues of genuine public interest in circumstances where the school’s approach has come into conflict with the religious perspective of an important section of society”.
“If a school wishes to uphold a secular ethos, it should be entitled to do so,” said Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society. “Schools should be environments where everyone feels welcomed and valued, but that doesn’t mean students have untrammelled religious freedom.
“Where the manifestation of religion is deemed divisive or disruptive, a balance must be struck. We’re pleased the school’s actions have been vindicated.”
The school’s lawyers had claimed that the governors and headteacher at the school of some 700 pupils, about half of whom are Muslim, had “a margin of latitude, discretion or judgement” over its policies.
The court was told that Ms Birbalsingh first introduced the policy in March last year, with it being backed by the governing body in May – allegedly “on the basis of misinformation and errors”.
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Bill Gates' money behind 'perverse' curriculum teaching math instruction is 'White supremacy'
Billionaire Bill Gates has invested billions of dollars in education over the years, notably bolstering far-left ideas, including assertions that mathematics instruction is "White supremacy" and children are born sexual.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a curriculum called "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction," which is run by The Education Trust-West. The organization listed the Gates Foundation under its acknowledgment section for the curriculum on their website stating, "We also wish to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their generous financial support of this project."
The curriculum from The Education Trust-West titled "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction" offers tips and tricks to educators to turn mathematicians in K-12 schools into "antiracist math educators"
It also offered "Exercises for educators to reflect on their own biases to transform their instructional practice."
Teachers have a central role in "deconstructing racism in mathematics" and "dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by making visible the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math," the group states.
Parents Defending Education's Nicole Neily told Fox News Digital that Gates' funding the math equity programs is "perverse," especially given the success he derived from proficiency in the subject.
"It's awful. I mean, [the part where it says] showing your answer in math class is White supremacy culture. I have to take a step back and think – the people who are teaching this, is that what they're teaching their own children? I have to think not," she said.
About 40% of Gates' K-12 education budget goes into math, according to Education Week. In 2022, the Gates Foundation announced over $1 billion in funds for math education.
In addition to funding math education initiatives, the Gates Foundation also provides funds for social and emotional learning (SEL), a billion-dollar industry in K-12 education which claims to develop students' self-awareness, self-control and interpersonal skills.
According to the Gates Foundation website, it provided $500,000 in November 2020 for a curriculum developed at Yale University, called RULER, with lessons probing into the student's emotions, personal relationships, traumas, beliefs and psychological triggers. The stated purpose of the grant was "to support the growth of RULER in the 2020-21 school year."
One section of the curriculum focused on teaching students to recognize societal norms and rules, and how those can be defied: "Make sure to explain that even though we call these patterns 'rules,' we do not need to follow them."
The curriculum encouraged kids to "see red" on their "mood meters," to be enraged by social justice issues and said educators should bring inflammatory images into the classroom to cultivate the rage among their students. It further asked teachers to "nudge" children into feelings of anger by using emotionally-charged imagery.
"[E]mploy strategies to nudge your students towards feeling red when you are preparing to discuss topics such as injustice. To shift your students into the red, consider showing them controversial photographs or news headlines, or consider prompting them with a thought-provoking topic where they are required to choose a side," the materials said.
Parents raised concerns the Gates-funded curriculum was turning kids into raging social justice activists through emotional manipulation. Neily said it was "like psychological experimentation on kids."
"Where is the evidence for this, right, that putting children into a state of emotional distress can make them learn better. I think it's sick that they're doing this to little kids," she told Fox News Digital.
The Gates Foundation has also funded $80 million to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) – a separate entity from the U.S. nonprofit – which wields significant influence on global sex education. The NGO comprises 120 independent organizations in over 146 countries and has received – including its European network.
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Columbia University President Says Calling for Annihilation of Jews Violates School’s Code of Conduct
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik said in a congressional hearing on April 17 that calling for the annihilation of Jews violates the Ivy League school’s code of conduct, as she came under fire over the university’s response to growing on-campus anti-Semitism since Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In the attack, Hamas killed and raped Israelis and took Israeli hostages, resulting in the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
At the House Education and Workforce Committee hearing, in response to the question by Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) of whether “calling for the genocide of Jews violates Columbia’s code of conduct,” Ms. Shafik—along with Columbia Law School professor David Schizer and Board of Trustees Co-Chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman—said, “Yes, it does.”
This was in contrast to a hearing held by that committee on Dec. 6, 2023, when then-University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill, then-Harvard President Claudine Gay, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth refused to unequivocally say that calling for the genocide of Jews is harassment or bullying, instead saying the issue is a “context-dependent decision.”
The question—whether calling for the genocide of Jews is harassment or bullying—came from House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).
On April 16, Ms. Bonamici was one of 44 lawmakers to vote against a House resolution stating that the Palestinian rallying cry of “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” is anti-Semitic and condemnable.
That slogan is a call for ”the eradication of the State of Israel, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea“ that ”seeks to deny Jewish people the right to self-determination and calls for the removal of the Jewish people from their ancestral homeland,” the resolution stated.
However, despite saying that calling for the genocide of Jews is harassment, Ms. Shafik sidestepped when asked whether mobs of people shouting “from the river to the sea” or “long live the Intifada” are being anti-Semitic. She said that she finds those phrases to be “upsetting” and that “it’s a difficult issue.”
Incidents at the 270-year-old university have included an unauthorized protest on April 4 of pro-Palestine students with signs bearing messages such as “Globalize the Intifada”—a reference to the periods of Palestinian terrorism against Israel during 1987–1993 and 2000–2005. Jewish students have complained of anti-Semitic graffiti and anti-Jewish verbal and physical abuse.
Other signs on campus have included the messages “Zionist Donors and Trustees Hands Off Our University” and “Zionism is Terrorism.”
The university suspended four pro-Palestine students for putting forth an unauthorized anti-Israel event in March titled “Resistance 101” that Ms. Shafik called “an abhorrent breach” of the university’s values. However, those students were still allowed to attend the April 4 demonstration.
A pro-Israel student was suspended after spraying “fart spray” toward pro-Palestine demonstrators. He has since sued the school.
Two Columbia professors—Joseph Massad, chair of the school’s Academic Review Committee, and Katherine Franke—are under investigation by the university, while Mohamed Abdou will no longer be a faculty member there, Ms. Shafik said. However, members of the House committee blasted the university over what they called its insufficient response to anti-Semitism.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) gave the university a “D” when it came to dealing with hatred toward Jews and Israel. Columbia has a history of anti-Semitism, including faculty members such as the late Edward Said.
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17 April, 2024
Veteran Teacher: Here’s What’s Wrong with Traditional Schooling
For 19 years, I was a master of time. Down to the minute, I controlled time for others and used it to meet my and others’ ends, irrespective of the desires of those in front of me. In short, I was a public-school teacher, and controlling time was my talent. Although I and other adults often talked about helping students reach their potential and grow as learners, what we really did each day was control their time and force upon them ideas and subjects in which most of them had little to no interest.
What if there were a better way? A way to help each student learn the way he or she learns best, develop autonomy, explore passions, and take control of his or her own time? Thankfully, that way does exist in the form of alternative schools and learning programs that continue to increase in number each day.
For example, I remember Adam*, a bright and motivated senior with a passion for business. However, Adam felt pressured to attend college even though he felt no real drive to do so. He dutifully attended his classes and earned high grades, but he shared with me towards the end of the school year that he felt like college would be a waste of time and money. What he truly wanted was to enter the business world and gain experience, not sit in an intro to astronomy class to pad the college’s bottom line. What if Adam had known about Praxis, the college alternative that helps students develop professional skills and work alongside a mentor for a full year? Might such a program have been a better fit for someone like Adam than the one-size-fits-none college curriculum?
I also remember Bailey, a shy freshman who only sporadically turned in work but who often participated in our in-class discussions, especially those about contentious issues. One day after class, I asked her about her incomplete work, and she told me that everything she enjoyed was outside school and that she felt she wasn’t “good at school.” What if Bailey had known about North Star: Self-Directed Learning for Teens, an unschool that builds personalized curricula around students’ interests and strengths and eschews grades in favor of learning? Might she have felt differently about her days and about learning?
Finally, I remember Celine, an outspoken junior whose inquisitive mind often led to numerous questions each class period but also to a dissatisfaction with the perceived “mindlessness” and passivity of school. Celine’s parents had even considered homeschooling, but her father told me they were afraid to “mess things up.” What if Celine and her parents had known about Brooklyn Apple Academy, a “home for homeschoolers” that offers part-time classes, field trips, and camps, including a program called “The Works” in which students investigate the functioning of the city’s infrastructure? Might Celine have been more active in and excited about learning, and might her parents have felt more confident homeschooling knowing that they weren’t going at it alone?
The above examples are just three among hundreds I can recall from my work controlling students’ time, and I’m sure you are familiar with thousands more that all tell us the same thing: coercive schooling does not work and harms far more than it helps. However, what if children and their parents had alternatives to such a baneful system, and what if these alternatives were voluntary and focused on students’ actual needs and interests? Luckily for us, these alternatives are here, and more are opening each day. As a repentant master of others’ time, I implore you: seek out these alternatives and leave behind government schools’ coercion and disinterest. Children deserve nothing less.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/04/16/veteran-teacher-traditional-schooling/ ?
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Education Department’s Incompetence on Student Aid Hurts Millions
Millions of students each year rely on student loans and grants to afford the rising cost of college. This year, that’s about 17 million Americans.
They fill out the Federal Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA. But this year, the U.S. Department of Education is very far behind in processing the forms, and it has committed many major errors.
As a result, most colleges have no idea how much financial aid their students and applicants will get. The students don’t know either.
That’s no exaggeration. FAFSA forms from high school seniors are down about 27%, or about half a million students. It’s unclear whether those students will keep trying or will give up on college.
Some colleges might go under because of the drop in enrollment, with colleges losing not only tuition, but also income from room and board.
Meanwhile, only 7 million FAFSA forms have been transmitted to colleges, but 15% to 30% of them have errors, depending on which recent report one reads.
Observers who have a low opinion of government competence and capacities need to look even lower.
The litany of errors and the timeline of sheer incompetence provided in recent congressional testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee is jaw-dropping. Anyone interested in how we got here, and where to place the blame, should read this damning testimony.
All the while, as these financial aid experts note, the Department of Education has provided incomplete and contradictory information day by day, hiding bad news under false headlines of making progress.
A common deadline for students to accept their financial-aid packages and commit to enrollment is May 1. Colleges all over are extending their deadlines. But that’s not enough.
One college president told me:
It’s an actual disaster. And I’m worried it will have a large negative impact for our state. We can’t get our ISIRs [Institutional Student Information Records regarding financial aid eligibility], even for continuing students.
We can’t process summer awards. We can’t even see if new students have submitted their FAFSA for the fall to know if we’ll need additional documents for verification. … It will keep us from being able to award state aid because it’s contingent on federal aid.
The origin of these problems was a law with good intentions. The FAFSA form was long, and then-Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. (a former secretary of education), pushed successfully for simplification back in December 2020. It was something of a departing gift to the outgoing senator. But to get it done required a $1.6 billion payout to Historically Black Colleges and Universities—unmerited loan forgiveness to historically black colleges and universities under the HBCU Capital Financing Program.
The Department of Education had years to prepare for the simplified FAFSA. Instead, it launched its own unlawful, unjust, unpopular, expensive, and often regressive schemes for student loan debt transfers from borrowers to taxpayers.
If the Department of Education had prioritized the FAFSA rollout, more students would be seeing more financial aid. Instead, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s legacy will be one of a failed agenda that kept losing in court on the one hand and reduced college access on the other.
After the devastating testimony in the subcommittee, Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., remarked, “This sure doesn’t make arguing to keep the Department of Education any easier.” Quite right.
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Australia: Queensland Backtracks on Homeschool Curriculum Mandate
Under proposed education reforms in Queensland, home-schooled children will not have to follow the national curriculum but will instead have their progress checked by a new government advisory group.
Currently, there is no set homeschooling curriculum, but parents or caregivers are required to develop an educational program based on the eight core learning set out in the Australian National Curriculum, which includes English, maths, science, humanities and social science, arts, technology, physical education, and language learning.
In March, the government attempted to mandate the curriculum via a Queensland parliamentary committee tasked with drafting the Education General Provisions Amendment (EGPA) Bill, which proposed changes to homeschooling.
However, after consultation with education stakeholders, doubts were cast over whether such a mandate would alienate the stay-at-home students and their families.
As a result, Education Minister Di Farmer has announced that a new Home School Advisory Group will be established.
The government said it respects the right of parents to home-school, but the advisory group will check on whether children are receiving comparable learning.
“I will also be establishing a Home Education Advisory Group to consider in detail how we ensure children being homeschooled are receiving the high-quality education,” Ms. Farmer said.
“Additionally, a review will commence into the role of the Home Education Unit to how best it can help not only better regulate, but provide important support to families who choose to home school.
“All Queensland children are entitled to be safe wherever they live and learn and as a former child safety minister, I understand too well that this is not always the case.”
Homeschooling in Australia has been steadily growing in popularity as an alternative to traditional schooling, initially taking hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of children now staying home from the traditional classroom surged by nearly 300 percent in 2023.
Families choose homeschooling for a variety of reasons, including a desire for more flexibility in their children’s education, dissatisfaction with the schooling system, or a wish to provide a tailored education that meets their child’s individual needs.
Proponents of the method say one of the key benefits of homeschooling is the ability to customise the educational experience to suit the child’s learning style, interests, and pace.
Homeschooled children often have more freedom to explore subjects in depth and pursue areas of passion. Additionally, homeschooling can provide a more flexible schedule, allowing for travel, family commitments, or other activities.
Critics of homeschooling often point towards potential issues with a lack of social interaction with children the same age, hampering adult development, and failing to maintain a consistent schedule required when entering the workforce.
Response to the Homeschool Changes
Free2Homeschool campaign manager Patricia Fitzgerald, who is hosting a “peaceful picnic” at Parliament House in Brisbane to celebrate the withdrawal of the national curriculum, said parents and caregivers should be kept in the loop.
“Queensland Home Educators want to ensure they are recognised, supported and are consulted appropriately so that any legislation reflects the actual needs of home education in the community,” Ms. Fitzgerald said.
Shadow education minister Christian Rowan saw the backdown as a failure for Labor.
“Labor has descended into a government in chaos and crisis which utterly failed to consult and listen to Queenslanders on this issue and now has been forced to abandon its reckless plans,” Mr. Rowan said on April 15.
Queensland Premier Steven Miles disagreed with Mr. Rowan’s sentiment.
“I have always said I will listen to Queenslanders and act when I need to, which is why I worked with Minister Farmer to ensure we heard the concerns of teachers.”
“I look forward to seeing updated consultation proceed,” he said
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/queensland-backtracks-on-homeschool-curriculum-mandate-5630088
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16 April, 2024
Fentanyl Is Killing Our Students: Here’s How Students Are Fighting Back
Ten years ago, I had never heard the word “fentanyl.” Now, every sorority and fraternity on my college campus is equipped with Naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, a lifesaving medication used to treat opioid overdoses.
The fentanyl crisis is acutely felt on college campuses. Oftentimes, college students will take a pill that they thought was Xanax or Ritalin and end up dead.
According to federal data, the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 45 is fentanyl overdose.
In the last three years alone, examples include three students at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill dying from fentanyl poisoning, and two students at Ohio State University died within a week of each other from fentanyl.
Having seen the horrors of fentanyl nationwide, and particularly in the state of Arizona (where more than five people a day die due to opioid overdoses, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services), students at the University of Arizona are leading the way in increasing access to Narcan, fentanyl test strips, and other overdose prevention measures.
On the University of Arizona’s campus, the presidents of 13 sororities and 18 fraternities have access to Narcan.
“As a chapter of over 425 members, 96 of which live in our chapter facility, it was crucial for us to have those options available,” Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority President Sasha Sanderson told me in an interview. “Having access to Narcan and fentanyl test strips in the house gives me peace of mind.”
The University of Arizona’s student-run emergency medical services team has increased access to Narcan on campus by providing a “Narcan locator” on the university website. The locator shows a map of the surrounding community and pins Narcan distribution sites. The website also provides information about Narcan training and distribution on campus.
The medical services team has collaborated with Greek-life organizations and is now turning its sights toward dormitory buildings to ensure more students have access to the lifesaving effects of Narcan.
“As with any safety issue, knowledge is important. We try and maximize the awareness of the dangers of opioids. The state of Arizona has a law which permits EMS/police agencies to leave behind prepackaged intranasal naloxone,” said the team’s public information officer, Tamra Ingersoll.
“We have worked with Greek Life, and as our partnership continues to evolve with Counter Narcotics Alliance (CNA), we will be working with Resident Life [on-campus housing] to ensure that Naloxone is available among the first aid items in student living areas,” she said.
Fentanyl is one of the most common drugs involved in overdose deaths because of its highly potent nature.
“Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Because the nature of a drug deal is illegal, drug dealers don’t have to provide ingredient lists, meaning that they can lace drugs with fentanyl unbeknownst to the user. Dealers are incentivized to use fentanyl as a filler because it is faster and cheaper to produce than other drugs.
It is nearly impossible to tell if a drug has been laced with fentanyl before use. And drug dealers will taint anything from counterfeit prescription medicines that they sell online to stronger substances like cocaine. It only takes 2 milligrams of fentanyl, which is the equivalent of about 10-15 grains of salt, to kill someone.
It’s crucial to understand that fentanyl deaths aren’t just affecting long-term drug users. They also affect college students who take a pill that they thought was safe and end up dead. College kids have always made mistakes, but nowadays, a mistake could cost them their lives.
While student-led efforts to prevent fentanyl overdoses are noble, experts suggest we would be better off stopping the flow of fentanyl into the country to begin with. That starts with sealing the border.
“Fentanyl is infiltrating our borders and killing our citizens. We must take both national and international action,” wrote Heritage Foundation legal expert Hans von Spakovsky.
Fentanyl is smuggled into the country through legal and illegal ports of entry, highlighting a serious security issue for the U.S.
In 2023, over 27,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized at legal ports of entry along the southern border. However, the majority of fentanyl is smuggled between ports of entry—meaning there is no way to know how much fentanyl is in the U.S.
In the same way the Biden administration could stop the flow of illegal migrants across the border, it could also stop much of the flow of fentanyl into the country.
Defending our border and stopping the flow of fentanyl is critical if we want to protect American college students.
I hope that in the next 10 years, we can return to a time when “fentanyl” wasn’t in my regular vocabulary.
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I Go to College in DC. Why Is It So Unsafe Here?
The words every parent dreads when a child goes off to college: “Mom, Dad. My school is on lockdown for an active shooter.” I’ve told my parents this twice now.
Violence has become a regular occurrence in my three years at The Catholic University of America, acronymized as CUA.
Last week, CUA issued a shelter-in-place order because a 14-year-old was shot and killed at the campus Metro station. The arrested suspect was 17.
A social studies teacher was mugged, shot, and killed on my campus last July. A large blood stain was left where he died for days afterward, a friend who was on campus at the time said.
CUA locked down last April because of a “swatting” scam. This is where a bad actor makes a fake 911 call claiming an active shooter was on campus. Thus, police SWAT teams are called and respond despite no actual threat.
I was in class at the time; classmates volunteered to sit in front of the doors to block them. I am grateful that it was a false alarm.
Last May, in the neighborhood adjacent to campus, a man confessed to killing and beheading a handyman.
In freshman year, I saw gang violence firsthand. Waiting for a Metro train at the campus station, I saw two men beating each other until one jumped on a train. The other’s face was dripping in blood from what seemed like a broken nose. He called someone on a cell phone and screamed about needing a ski mask so people wouldn’t recognize him.
The Catholic University of America sends alerts to the student body whenever a crime is reported in the area surrounding campus. To the credit of CUA, it updates students as much as possible. That said, I see that muggings, carjackings, shootings, and other violent crimes occur mere blocks away from my dorm almost weekly.
My school is in Washington, D.C. In a city with such strict gun laws, you would expect safer streets. You can’t open carry a firearm in the District of Columbia; the city requires universal background checks and bans “assault weapons.”
The elected government of the nation’s capital doesn’t support the “castle doctrine” of a person’s right to defend his own home. In D.C., there is a “duty to retreat.”
If the city’s gun laws are working, how is it that I have had to hide twice because of active shooters?
Crime in the District has been on the rise. I wrote about it last year for my school newspaper. Violent crime jumped 23% from February 2022 to February 2023. Assaults, muggings, and carjackings have gone up.
The increase in carjackings last year prompted D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, to give out steering-wheel locks.
Leftist billionaire financier George Soros is known for trying to transform America’s criminal justice system by contributing big money to the campaigns of soft-on-crime candidates for district attorney across the country. Once elected, these liberal DAs have trumped the efforts of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI.
However, such efforts come at a serious cost to students like me. Our safety is the price for their progressive policies.
Violent criminals across the country are receiving reduced sentences if convicted or aren’t being charged at all.
Recently it was discovered that major cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles failed to submit crime data to the FBI.
An op-ed published in the Washington Examiner and co-written by former Assistant FBI Director Mark Morgan contends that the FBI erred in counting violent crimes: The bureau claims that crime in major cities has gone down, when in fact it has gone up over the past five years. (Morgan, acting chief of U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the Trump administration, is now a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, parent organization of The Daily Signal.)
An organization cited in the op-ed, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which collects police data, says homicides in major cities have gone up 23%. The Council on Criminal Justice, a similar organization, estimates that homicide is up 18% and violent crime in general is up 8%.
Matthew Graves, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, also serves as the local prosecutor in the nation’s capital. An appointee of President Joe Biden, Graves is embroiled in a case stemming from the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, that has caused scandal and division throughout the country.
Am I supposed to trust that Graves will be tough on crime when it opposes his woke ideals? Am I supposed to trust that he will keep me safe?
Right now, thousands of parents are preparing their children for college, buying mattress toppers, laptops, and red solo cups. However, the reality is that many students, especially females, also will purchase personal alarms and pepper spray.
Why is this our reality? It is mostly our own fault.
We choose our leaders. The government enforces the law only through the consent of the governed. This is good news, though; the political reality is in our hands. We need to call out lawmakers who are soft on crime, take civic action, and stop sitting passively while students of any age are forced to face the underbelly of our nation’s cities.
Only when we stand up against the woke mob will our cities become safer.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/12/i-go-to-college-in-dc-why-is-it-so-unsafe-here/
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Education hiring continues regardless of the number of students
New data for the 2022-2023 academic year paints a disturbing picture. While students are slowly trickling back into public schools post-COVID-19, the same cannot be said for staffing. The National Center for Education Statistics revealed an increase of 173,000 students in public schools, yet during the same period, a staggering 159,000 employees were hired, including 15,000 additional teachers.
Researcher Chad Aldeman provides specific examples of hiring trends in various districts across the country. He explains that about one-third of these districts added teachers while serving fewer students. For instance, Philadelphia lost nearly 16,000 students but employed 200 more teachers, dropping its student-to-teacher ratio from about 17:1 to under 15:1.
About a quarter of all districts followed the path of California’s Capistrano Unified School District, which lowered its teaching force over time, but not as fast as it lost students. Capistrano suffered a 22% decline in student enrollment but reduced its teaching staff by just 7%.
Another group of districts grew student enrollments, but their teacher count has risen even faster. The Katy Independent School District, near Houston, added 4,299 students last year, a gain of 4.9%. At the same time, it hired 366 teachers, a 6% gain. Over the period, its student body increased by 22% while its teacher count grew by 29%.
But as Aldeman notes, the future is murky, “As districts spend down the last of their federal ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief ) dollars, they may have to lay off staff or close under-enrolled buildings.”
If teachers must be laid off, the typical union contract stipulates that it must be done by seniority or the “last in, first out” (LIFO) regimen. This industrial style of dealing with a teacher overage is typified by Michigan’s Ann Arbor Public Schools system, where the teacher union contract states that after considering years of experience with the district, if two teachers have equal seniority,the last several digits of a teacher’s Social Security number would be the tiebreaker for a layoff.
Also, a study from Stanford U. found that only 13% to 16% of the teachers laid off in a seniority-based system would also be cut under a system based on teacher effectiveness.
Then, there is the problem of “under-enrolled” schools, for which Chicago is the poster child. At this time, one-third of Chicago’s 473 public schools (CPS) are at less than 50% capacity. Considering that just 20% of 3rd through 8th graders in the Windy City are proficient in reading and only 15% are proficient in math, this is hardly surprising. Also, in 30 Chicago public schools, no student can read at grade level.
Egregiously, the city’s Douglass High School, with only 34 students enrolled, is slated to receive $34 million for renovations.
Why not have these kids go somewhere else? As Ted Dabrowski of Wirepoints maintains, “Already families have abandoned these schools. The question for CPS is, ‘Why are you keeping empty, failing schools open?’ Shut them and use the money elsewhere or give the money back to the taxpayers.”
It’s noteworthy that if one is an equity-driven fanatic, anti-shutdown doggedness does not apply to all schools.
https://heartland.org/opinion/featherbed-ed/
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15 April, 2024
Now Glasgow University's new rector brands the UK part of an 'axis of genocide'
The new rector of Glasgow University claimed the UK is part of an ‘axis of genocide’ in a speech marking his appointment, the Mail can reveal.
Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British-Palestinian medic, was elected with 80 per cent of the student vote.
The surgeon sparked fury after claiming last week the university ‘colludes in the murder of innocent civilians’ because it has shares in arms firms that supply Israel.
He also quoted ‘immortal [IRA hunger striker] Bobby Sands’. Now it has emerged Dr Abu-Sittah, 55, used the same speech, published in full online at the weekend, to condemn the UK for its role in an ‘axis of genocide’ in Gaza.
We can also reveal the university authorities looked at concerns about him before he was elected but found there was no reason to prevent him from standing.
Jewish campaigners had highlighted a video which showed him weeping over the death of Maher Al-Yamani, a co-founder of the proscribed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is accused of participating in the October 7 massacre in Israel.
In an email to the campaigners on March 28, principal Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli said the university was bound by regulations which limited the actions it could take.
Tory MSP Annie Wells said: ‘I am deeply concerned with the language used by the new Glasgow University rector. Many people will rightfully be outraged at his glorification of convicted terrorists and eulogy of an anti-Semitic terrorist leader.’
In his speech, Dr Abu-Sittah said the ‘genocidal project is like an iceberg of which Israel is only the tip.
‘The rest of the iceberg is made up of an axis of genocide. This axis of genocide is the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Canada and France… countries that have supported Israel with arms and continue to support the genocide with arms.’
In response to the claims against him, Dr Abu-Sittah insisted he ‘vehemently opposes terrorism’.
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Nebraska lawmakers pass bill that would allow smaller school districts to arm staff members
Students in some of Nebraska's smallest school districts could soon be protected by armed staff, thanks to one of over 100 bills passed by the state legislature last week.
The provision that would allow such staff to carry firearms in schools and at school-related events originally included all districts across the Cornhusker State, but now applies only to those with under 5,000 residents after opposition from some areas of the state led lawmakers to compromise.
"It doesn't apply to all the schools. This was designed for the rural schools where they didn't have a resource officer or law enforcement wasn't readily available," state Sen. Tom Brewer, who introduced the measure, said, according to a local report.
State Sen. Tom Brewer said the bill to arm staff members or to enable districts to employ other armed security aims to help rural districts. (iStock)
The measure would enable schools to either hire security or elect a specific member of the school to carry a weapon.
"It can be anyone from the superintendent to the janitor," Brewer continued, according to the report. Regardless of the choice, those who are armed must undergo training.
Some fear that, without the imminent presence of someone capable of confronting a school shooter in the event of an emergency, law enforcement could otherwise be 15 minutes – or further – away from these rural districts.
It's among several GOP-led states' efforts to protect or expand gun rights or firearm safety instruction to protect students and staff, including two measures in Tennessee, one in Iowa and another in New Hampshire.
Despite opposition from some who speculate the expansion of gun rights and access could hinder rather than help safety efforts, these measures have charged ahead.
In Omaha, Superintendent Matthew Ray said he could understand why Nebraska's measure could apply to less populated school districts with fewer resources, but failed to see its need in his own district.
According to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, at least 32 states allow teachers or school staff to be armed at school, including several states neighboring Nebraska.
Brewer's proposed measure was passed as part of Legislative Bill 1329, an education package that passed 40-0 on the next-to-last day of the legislative session last week.
It now awaits Republican Gov. Jim Pillen's signature.
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Fighting Antisemitism in American Public Schools: A Losing Battle
Is it wrong to have a “hijab-wearing day” in an American public school at this point in time, asking students to wear a hijab, the conventional head covering worn by Muslim women?
A Hijab Day “event” was recently hosted by the Muslim Student Association (MSA) in a Montgomery County (Md.) public school. Surprisingly, I found Hijab Day on the Northwood High School calendar, along with Spirit Day, Twin Day and Spring Break. If this was intended to be a lighthearted, fun event, it totally missed the mark, at least for the Jewish students.
Hijab Day was not created to acquaint people with Muslim culture, as the MSA claimed. Perhaps, if it had been, there would have been food, singing and other festivities. Unfortunately, Hijab Day was another thinly veiled (pun intended) ploy to show and garner support for Hamas during the Israel-Hamas War.
The MSA claimed the hijab is not a religious symbol, but, in fact, it is. The mandate to wear a hijab is one of the fundamental religious practices of Islam. In this country, we abide by the separation of church and state, as established by the First Amendment, which is why, for example, our children do not recite prayers in school.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “Since the 1960s, the federal courts have made it crystal clear that officially sponsored prayer and proselytizing is not acceptable in the school environment .….
When public school officials disregard the US Constitution’s mandate of religious neutrality, they not only violate students’ rights to remain free from government-imposed religious viewpoints, but also usurp their parents’ rights to decide and direct the religious upbringing of their children.”
As far as I am concerned, just like the all-day silent protest that Muslim students held at my children’s school (where Muslim kids sat in class all day, but did not speak), Hijab Day was inappropriate and, for the Jewish students, a form of intimidation and harassment.
Supporters of Hijab Day say it had nothing to do with the Israel-Hamas war. If so, then why did the MSA call the event Hijab Nova on its publicity poster? The Nova Music Festival in the Negev Desert was one of the sites of Hamas’ brutal attacks on October 7th 2023—the attacks which incited the war.
The members of the MSA said they simply liked the word “nova.” Were they being disingenuous or deliberately offensive? I imagine that the music festival was named Nova because it was outdoors, under the sky. What does nova have to do with wearing a hijab? (The all-day affair on school grounds reminds me of the time I was approached in my college dining hall by a religious group seeking to recruit me. Inappropriate!)
Nobody is denying anyone the right to wear a hijab. As a Jew, I am not knocking modesty or Muslim beliefs, but Jewish people don’t go around asking non-Jews to don a tallit (prayer shawl). Especially now that Israel and Hamas are at war, asking all the students to wear a hijab is an anti-Zionist, antisemitic statement in support of the Hamas terrorists. The MSA may as well have waved the Palestinian flag.
Further disappointing to me was that school staff participated—they donned hijabs and took photos of each other. This is another example of school staff making poor decisions that can influence our children. Would Mormon parents want their children to put on a hijab, take a photograph and post it on social media knowing that some people might misinterpret the photograph as meaning that these kids don’t respect their own religion and support the Palestinian cause?
Do we want our children to go along mindlessly with what someone else tells them to do? Isn’t the idea of education to raise children who become independent thinkers and not mindless followers? The Nazi regime started with many people blindly following Hitler without thinking for themselves.
Unfortunately, it appears as if the Montgomery Public School System, once considered to be a top school system in this country, is now a bastion of unchecked antisemitism. Though in the scheme of things Hijab Day may be one of the milder antisemitic infractions, once again, the MSA managed to trample on the rights of non-Muslim students to attend school in a safe, unintimidating environment. Allowing Hijab Day is yet another example of the school administrators’ insensitivity.
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14 April, 2024
Biden wipes away another $11b in student debt
US President Joe Biden has cancelled $US7.4 billion ($11.4 billion) in student loan debt as he tries to shore up support with young voters who are disproportionately affected by soaring education costs, but who may be drifting away over his policy on Israel and the war in the Gaza Strip.
The latest round of relief is part of a strategy by the White House to take smaller, targeted actions for certain subsets of borrowers after the Supreme Court struck down a far more ambitious plan to wipe out $US400 billion in debt last year.
Biden said this week that he would make another attempt at large-scale debt forgiveness for about 30 million people, despite Republican opposition and legal challenges. But in the meantime, he has been chipping away at student debt by fixing and streamlining existing programs that have been plagued by bureaucratic and other problems for years.
Saturday’s announcement was the latest such move, affecting about 277,000 people. White House officials said those borrowers would be notified by email.
More than 200,000 of those who qualified had borrowed relatively small amounts originally – $US12,000 or less – and have been making payments through the administration’s income-driven repayment plan, known as SAVE.
Others who will see relief include teachers, librarians, academics and public safety workers who have been making student loan payments for 10 years under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Another 65,000 borrowers enrolled in other income-driven repayment plans will receive adjustments reducing their debt, said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
So far, the Biden administration has forgiven $US153 billion in debt for 4.3 million borrowers.
“We’ve approved help for roughly 1 out of 10 of the 43 million Americans who have federal student loans,” Cardona told reporters.
Republicans in Congress characterise student debt relief as unfair to borrowers who struggled to pay off their student debt without assistance.
“You’re incentivising people to not pay back student loans, and at the same time penalising and forcing people who did to subsidise those who didn’t,” Republican congressman John Moolenaar, said during a hearing this week, in which Cardona testified about the Education Department’s budget request for next year.
“I don’t see it as unfair. I see it as, we’re fixing something that’s broken,” Cardona said. “We have better repayment plans now so we don’t have to be in the business of forgiving loans in the future.”
On Monday, Biden outlined a new attempt to wipe out student loan debt on a larger scale, beyond the scope of the programs he has been relying on so far.
The new plan would reduce the amount that 25 million borrowers still owe on their undergraduate and graduate loans. It would wipe away the entire amount for more than 4 million Americans. Altogether, White House officials said, 10 million borrowers would see debt relief of $US5000 or more.
That plan must undergo a public comment period that stretches through the northern summer. It also must survive legal challenges.
The original plan relied on a law called the HEROES Act, which the administration argued allowed the government to waive student debt during a national emergency like the COVID pandemic. The Supreme Court disagreed.
Biden administration officials said because the new approach is based on a different law – the Higher Education Act – it is more likely to survive the expected challenges.
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A fifth grader from Washington State who wanted to start an interfaith prayer club at school because 'she felt alone' is speaking out after her request was denied
More hate. The hatred of Christians is almost an illness on the Left
Laura Toney, who is 11 and attends Creekside Elementary School in Sammamish, east of Seattle, had hoped to start the on-campus club to bring together students of different faith backgrounds to 'serve their community'.
But her pitch to start such a club was rejected despite a Pride Club being approved only weeks earlier.
'I wanted to start it because I felt kind of alone in the classroom and at school and so I realized I had some friends and I knew some other people that felt the same way and so I talked to them and I was just like you know what it would be a great idea to make a club where people could come together and do good in the community,' Laura told Fox News.
The school is now being accused of violating the young student's First Amendment's religious freedom protections by denying her request.
'I think that this is something that I am very passionate about. I wouldn't be here if I didn't really want to make this happen, if I didn't think that it would be a great opportunity for everyone,' Laura added.
Creekside already allows more than a dozen other 'non-religious clubs' to meet including a Pride Club, which is a 'safe space' for educating students and staff on 'LGBTQIA+ history and people,' according to the school's website.
Principal Amy Allison also allows a Green Team, focused on making the school 'more sustainable'. A Marimba Club, Chess Club and Student Council are all among other secular groups currently permitted.
Laura's mother, Kayla Toney, is associate counsel at First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit Christian conservative legal organization which often litigates in First Amendment cases on religion.
'The first amendment is clear, the free speech clause and the free exercise clause both protect Laura's ability to pray, to speak about her faith, to gather with other religious students and the law is clear,' Kayla Toney said during the same Fox interview.
'If the school allows at least one non-curricular club, no matter what the club is about, it has to allow a religious club and it's actually viewpoint discrimination to deny a religious club just because it's religious.'
Kayla Toney has put her beliefs down in a detailed letter, writing to the Issaquah School District on behalf of First Liberty Institute.
She wrote: 'Denying the formation of a religious student club while allowing other clubs violates the Constitution. School officials at Creekside Elementary are engaged in religious discrimination against an eleven-year-old girl who simply wants to pray, feel support from other religious friends, and do community service.'
When Laura and her mom met with Principal Allison in February, it was claimed all the funding for school clubs had already been allocated back in October, yet the pair allege how a Pride Club was launched just weeks before the meeting took place.
A spokesperson for the school has explained the prayer club's funding shortfall.
'Once the school year begins, the building budget is set and additional clubs are usually not added until the following school year,' the school stated, but Kayla does not buy the school's reasoning.
'She [Laura] even offered to do fundraisers if necessary. The Pride club again had started just a week before and another club is due to start pretty soon as well. So that excuse definitely did not make sense,' Kayla explained.
'The supreme court made it very clear that the First Amendment protects students and employees freedom and ability to live out their faith publicly, to pray, to exercise their faith. It's not something we have to hide as Americans because we have this strong protection of the first amendment.'
Kayla Toney states that the request to start a prayer club should be permitted no later than April 29, 2024.
'If we do not hear from you and receive those assurances by that time, we will proceed as our clients direct, likely pursuing all available legal remedies,' a letter to the principal concludes.
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Australian students choose arts [humanities] degrees in droves despite huge rise in fees under Morrison government
I took an Arts degree and enjoyed it but whether the taxpayer should be funding it is another question
Owen Magee knew how high his student loan would be if he enrolled in an arts degree – he saw the headlines in 2020, when he was still in early adolescence.
But measures introduced by the former Morrison government that doubled the price of some degrees to incentivise students into other courses didn’t dissuade him, nor did recent cost-of-living increases.
“I decided I’d prefer doing something I’m interested in,” the 18-year-old says of his decision to study a media and arts degree at the University of New South Wales.
“A lot of young people are moving away from conventional ideas of education and the workforce to pursuing things we genuinely enjoy in life.
“We know what’s best for us – we’re willing to stand up and say ‘this is our future, we’re not going to allow our lives to be dictated’.”
Data provided to Guardian Australia shows Magee is not alone. Students are flocking to arts degrees in record numbers despite a 113% rise in student contributions for communications, humanities and society and culture degrees, implemented as part of the widely condemned Job-ready Graduates (JRG) scheme.
It’s equivalent to $16,323 a year, or about $50,000 for a three-year degree.
Despite the spike, Australia’s largest universities including UNSW, the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney and Monash have all experienced a jump in applications for arts degrees, leading to higher enrolments.
At the University of Melbourne, demand for its Bachelor of Arts degree is higher in 2024 than any time in the past five years.
It’s had a 14% surge in the number of first preferences for the bachelor program since 2022, while enrolments have also jumped since 2021, rising from 1,597 to 1,641 this year.
Monash University has seen first preferences for arts degrees rise by 11% since 2021. Enrolments jumped almost 2% this year, at the same rate as the University of Sydney, which has consistently grown its arts enrolments since the JRG reforms were introduced.
Prof Claire Annesley, dean of arts, design and architecture at UNSW, says there has been a “massive swell” of students choosing degrees in her faculty.
First preferences for arts degrees surged by 14% at UNSW this year, while the student course load was also up.
“I think they can see the future better than we can,” she says. “This generation of young people will be creating jobs you and I can’t imagine – and industry knows that as well.”
The latest graduate outcomes survey reported the largest increase in employment rates in the field of humanities (up from 81.7% in 2021 to 86.6% in 2022).
Median graduate salaries also jumped, sitting at $66,700 compared with sciences and mathematics at $66,000 and business and management $65,000.
In the unknown future of AI, Annesley says humanities offer skillsets that can’t be replaced by emerging technology. Complex societal problems – from the climate emergency to the pandemic – need effective communicators and policymakers.
“AI can reproduce what we already know, but creativity is an innately human skill,” she says.
“Right now we’re penalising people we need to be part of the business of innovation and core solutions. There’s an urgency here.”
The CEO of Universities Australia, Luke Sheehy, says JRG “failed” to encourage students into certain disciplines and instead shifted additional costs on to students and universities.
According to the University Admissions Centre (UAC), which manages applications for New South Wales universities, 21% of first preferences were directed to society and culture degrees in the most recent intake, with roughly the same number of offers provided.
The most popular courses were a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Double Law at UNSW.
The figures are nearly identical to 2021. Yet in the same period, first preferences to health, historically the most popular study area, have reduced (28% to 25%), as year 12 applicants have turned to arts degrees in higher numbers.
“We’ve already called and will continue to call on government to prioritise student support measures in the forthcoming budget,” he says.
The Universities Accord final report recommended JRG needed “urgent remediation”, adding it had “significantly and unfairly increased what students repay”.
The education minister, Jason Clare, told Guardian Australia the government would respond to the recommendations in the accord “shortly”.
But to Magee, the further into his course he gets, the more concerned about his economic future he becomes.
“Down the road, my student debt will take a lot of my income … it worries me,” he says.
“The government should be encouraging students to find paths they enjoy, not restricting it.”
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11 April, 2024
It’s time to end Albany’s destructive micromanagement of NYC schools
A year after being tasked with studying the effectiveness of mayoral control of New York City’s public-school system, the State Education Department delivered a 300-page report undermining it — and so leaving no one accountable for school-system failure.
Plus, SED’s $250,000 study calls for setting up a commission to look for more ways to mess things up.
The Legislature’s leaders rejected Gov. Hochul’s push to renew mayoral control in negotiations for the state budget, when she has maximum leverage to resist watering it down, as they did two years ago by reducing how much of the Panel for Educational Policy Adams appoints.
Here’s hoping Gov. Kathy Hochul doesn’t cave in budget talks
And they clearly hope to undermine it some more this year — because they’re in the pocket of the teachers unions, which strongly prefer a system prone to behind-the-scenes manipulation, like the old Board of Education.
Note that it’s the Legislature (mainly Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie) that chooses the state Board of Regents, who govern SED: So, in sniping at mayoral control, SED simply did what its masters wanted.
Notably, the report mainly cites the input of “activist” parents who mainly parrot city United Federation of Teachers talking points.
When city parents rallied to retain Gifted & Talented programs and protect high-performing schools, the UFT and its pawns worked to undermine them.
The SED report is just another play in the sordid Albany game of rewarding special interests while spreading out the blame so voters can’t hold anyone accountable — in this case, to impose that same dark design on the city Department of Education.
Taxpayers, parents and students be damned.
Kudos to Assembly Education Committee Chairman Michael Benedetto (D-Bronx) for opposing this drive, saying, “We should keep what we have and hold someone accountable and that would be the mayor.”
Every other school system in the state has a settled system of governance; only New York City is subjected to this periodic micromanagement (mismanagement, actually) from Albany.
This obscene, venal farce must end: Mayoral control should be made permanent.
https://nypost.com/2024/04/10/opinion/end-albanys-destructive-micromanagement-of-nyc-schools/
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Education Eclipsed: Unnecessary School Closures Breed Anxious Children
A total eclipse crossed the country this week in a display of natural wonder. Rather than seize the opportunity for an engaging science lesson, hundreds of school districts with several hundred thousand students decided to close for the day, many citing safety concerns that students might accidentally look at the eclipse without proper eye protection.
Even worse than failing to teach students about science, the decision to close schools for the eclipse teaches students to have irrational fears about their safety. If we want to understand why young people are experiencing alarming levels of anxiety and having difficulty developing into capable adults, all we have to do is look at examples like the excess cautiousness exhibited by schools regarding the eclipse.
To put in perspective how irrational it is for schools to close during the eclipse out of safety concerns, let’s review how incredibly unlikely it is that the eclipse would harm anyone. It is true that people should wear protective eyeglasses when looking directly at the sun during an eclipse. But the instances in which people stare at the sun without protection and cause permanent and serious damage to their eyes are so rare that they almost round down to zero.
In 1999, a total solar eclipse crossed the southern part of England, a country with 99 million people. An article in the British Journal of Medicine reports that a total of 14 people experienced any eye injuries from that event, and those were mostly minor and temporary.
In fact, an earlier study of an eclipse in Turkey found that the handful of injuries were so ephemeral that only “10% of those with damage had permanent visual loss to the extent that they were not able to read a car number [license] plate at 25 yards.”
The only serious injury documented from the England eclipse occurred after someone “looked at the sun for around 20 minutes without protection.”
If schools were unable to distribute the protective eyewear that was widely available and avoid having students stare at the sun without that protection for 20 minutes, they would be so lacking in behavioral control that they should be permanently closed, rather than just close for that day.
It’s worth noting that students could also damage their eyes if they stab them repeatedly with pencils. Presumably, schools have sufficient behavioral control to avoid closing over concerns about pencil-induced blindness.
Despite the fact that the threat posed by the eclipse to student health is about as remote as that posed by pencils, hundreds of school districts across the country decided to close for safety reasons.
In Arkansas alone, 104 school districts with 163,954 students, or about 35% of all students in the state, closed for the eclipse. In the state of New York, more than 200 school districts closed. In Ohio, the number of school districts that closed also exceeded 100, including schools in Cleveland, the state’s second-most populous city. Another 100 school districts closed in Texas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Even in Louisiana, which was not in the path of the total eclipse, there were still school districts that closed, “with many citing safety concerns.”
People sometimes say, “You can’t be too careful,” but the truth is you can be. Excessive cautiousness promotes a fragility among young people that hinders their ability to develop as capable adults. As both Jonathan Haidt and Abigail Shrier have documented in their recent books, crippling fear of the broader world is making it less likely that young people physically gather and socialize, driving them into dangerously isolated and distorted virtual lives.
Excessive anxiety is making it less likely for young people to get driver’s licenses, less likely to date, and ultimately less likely to form new families with their own children.
We can’t lay blame for all of this on the decision of more than 500 school districts this week to close for the eclipse. But we can see these closures as an indication of how public schools are failing our children by modeling excessive and irrational concerns about safety. It’s this same excessive and irrational caution that led so many schools to close for long stretches of the COVID-19 pandemic, with disastrous consequences for both academic and social development.
During both the eclipse and COVID-19, public schools made decisions for the convenience of the adults who work in them without concern for their students or families. Handing out protective eyewear, walking outside to look at the eclipse, and having to remind students to be sure to use the glasses can seem like a hassle to unmotivated teachers and administrators. They similarly hate going on field trips to visit historical sites or cultural institutions. As they see it, things could only go wrong if they leave the safe confines of the classroom.
But most families do not want their children raised by schools surrounded by virtual bubble wrap. They want their children to develop into capable and independent adults.
If we want to prevent the next generation from becoming paralyzed with anxiety and irrational concerns for safety, we need to shift power from excessively cautious and unmotivated public schools to parents. When parents can choose their schools, they will find those that balance safety and exploration in a way that suits the needs of their own children and not those of the adults who work in schools.
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Ohio college students fear for safety, launch system to alert crime off campus
Students at the University of Cincinnati have banded together to create the Cincy Crime Stoppers Instagram page to alert students about incidents around campus.
A description for the Cincy Crime Stoppers says the page is for "Bearcats who live off-campus and have been a victim of a crime" to "send in anonymous tips to help keep" the "community safe."
"We're a group of student[s] … who have all been victims of different things while we're students at UC," said Hailey Smith, a criminal justice student in her junior year and representative for the page. "We noticed that there needed to be some sort of outlet for students to be more aware of what's happening around the campus."
Smith added that the students who created the page — who have fallen victim to various crimes from armed robberies to break-ins, felt a need for more alerts about crime near campus. Cincy Crime Stoppers aims to do that by sending real-time alerts to followers.
A description for the Cincy Crime Stoppers page says it is for "Bearcats who live off-campus and have been a victim of a crime" to "send in anonymous tips to help keep" the "community safe." (Michael Hickey)
"Cars on our street get broken into at least a couple times every month," Smith said.
The UC junior is passionate about crime prevention and reduction and hopes the Cincy Crime Stoppers page has a positive impact on the community, even on a small scale. She and other students feel the university can be "vague" in crime alerts sent out to students.
Cincy Crime Stoppers aims to not only give students more information about crime near campus but also help law enforcement get more tips.
University of Cincinnati students have launched a crime alert page called Cincy Crime Stoppers. (Instagram)
"We want to get confirmed information before we send it out, of course, and we also want to put out … the most important stuff, but also this stuff that … is unreported by UC," she said.
Most recently, students are mourning the death of Benjamin Addison, a 21-year-old UC student who was fatally shot in the early morning hours of March 30 while he was trying to stop a car theft. Police named a 17-year-old suspect in connection with Addison's death.
Addison's father said in a Facebook post that two people were trying to break into the 21-year-old's Hyundai. Prosecutors are asking for the teen suspect's case to be transferred to adult court while the suspect's attorney is pushing for his release, according to FOX 19 Cincinnati.
"He was the light of my life and truly my best friend. He was such an amazing young man and I [don't] know if I will ever get over this pain. Please pray for me and my family," Joe Addison wrote.
UC has not released any kind of public statement acknowledging Addison's death, and Smith said students feel as if they've been left in the dark. The university did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Fox News Digital.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/ohio-college-students-fear-safety-launch-system-alert-crime-off-campus
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10 April, 2024
Public school students in this state could soon be required to take gun safety courses
The Tennessee state legislature passed a bill, which is now headed to the governor's desk, requiring public schools to teach "age-appropriate and grade-appropriate" gun safety courses to students starting next year.
"We see this proposed legislation as a critical step in averting firearm related accidents while fostering greater awareness and responsibility among gun owners," the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Chris Todd, a Republican, said in a February hearing.
The Tennessee Senate passed HB 2882 in a 24-3 vote on Thursday after the bill made its way through the House in February. If signed by Gov. Bill Lee, the courses will begin in the 2025-2026 school year.
The gun safety classes would be taught primarily through videos and online resources and would teach things like firearm storage, school safety, and how to avoid getting hurt if a student finds a gun and to immediately notify an adult if a gun is found. The bill stipulates the lessons will "not include the use or presence of live ammunition, live fire, or live firearms."
"This curriculum would be developed to instruct children on how to properly stay away from a firearm if they happen to see a firearm, and what to do as far as reporting if they find a firearm," Republican Sen. Paul Bailey said during Thursday's session.
Bill Lee visits a Tennessee classroom
The Tennessee Senate passed HB 2882 in a 24-3 vote on Thursday after the bill made its way through the House in February. It now heads to Gov. Bill Lee's desk. (Office of the Governor of Tennessee)
The bill requires that lessons be "viewpoint neutral on political topics, such as gun rights, gun violence, and the Second Amendment."
Senate Republicans voted against an amendment that would have allowed parents to opt children out of the training.
Proponents of the legislation compared it to other mandatory safety training concepts like fire drills. But opponents say it does not adequately address the root cause of school shootings.
"Children are already bearing an incredible brunt of the escalation that we’ve seen in gun violence – that is widely reported in our own state government’s data. Data demonstrates that children are increasingly likely to become victims of firearms in homicides, suicides, gun violence, accidental deaths," Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Democrat, said on Thursday. "But rather than deal with the fact that there are firearms that are negligently and recklessly left somewhere by adults, we’re trying to teach children how to deal with that negligence."
If passed, the Tennessee Department of Education, the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency will determine the curriculum parameters, including ages and grade levels, for the lessons.
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These States Are Pushing Back Against Biden's 'Brazen' New Student Debt Scheme
President Joe Biden again thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court this week when he announced another "plan" to reallocate as much as $475 billion in student debt from borrowers to the rest of the country's taxpaying citizens — and he again faces a federal lawsuit over his unconstitutional abuse of executive power to achieve what Congress won't approve.
Led by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a coalition of seven states — Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma — filed their suit against Biden's latest attempt to buy votes via phony and unlawful promises of loan "forgiveness."
"With the stroke of his pen, Joe Biden is attempting to saddle working Missourians with a half trillion dollars in college debt," Bailey said in a statement provided to Townhall. "The United States Constitution makes clear that the President lacks the authority to unilaterally ‘cancel’ student loan debt for millions of Americans without express permission from Congress."
"The President does not get to thwart the Constitution when it suits his political agenda," Bailey emphasized. "I’m filing suit to halt his brazen attempt to curry favor with some citizens by forcing others to shoulder their debts. The Constitution will continue to mean something as long as I’m Attorney General."
The state attorneys general argue in their fresh challenge to Biden's runaway abuse of power that the Supreme Court has already "declared that the President cannot 'unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy'" while President Biden "is at it again, even bragging that 'the Supreme Court blocked it. They blocked it. But that didn't stop me.'"
Yet again, the President is unilaterally trying to impose an extraordinarily expensive and controversial policy that he could not get through Congress. This latest attempt to sidestep the Constitution is only the most recent instance in a long but troubling pattern of the President relying on innocuous language from decades-old statutes to impose drastic, costly policy changes on the American people without their consent.
As Katie reported on Monday, the Biden administration announced it would pursue loan "cancellation" (read: reallocation to American taxpayers) for a total of 30 million student loan borrowers. This sort of action, of course, even former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the president lacked the authority to take. What's more, the Supreme Court already ruled that Biden did not have the authority to buy votes by pretending to erase (the debt is still there!) balances for millions of Americans ahead of November's election.
Yet, almost giddily, Biden's Education Secretary Miguel Cardona "bragged about finding ways around the June 2023 Supreme Court ruling that declared Biden doesn't have the legal authority to reallocate debt," as Katie noted. "When the Supreme Court struck down the President’s boldest student debt relief plan, within hours, we said, 'We won’t be deterred,'" Cardona said. "We announced a new rulemaking process designed to provide borrowers relief under the Higher Education Act."
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Australia: Stark new figures showing Qld’s loss of teachers outstripping recruitment
The elephant in the room is the chaotic state of many classrooms -- with little or no effective discipline. So what is our genius government about to do? Make discipline even harder. No wonder teachers are giving up where they can
Queensland’s loss of teachers and teacher aides is outstripping the recruitment of new staff by 50 per cent, new figures reveal.
In response to a Sunday Mail report on a record exodus of educators from the state department, government frontbencher Meaghan Scanlon said that to date, the state government had hired more than 5900 new teachers and 2300 new teacher aides.
“The retention rate of teachers and of all teacher aides is around 95 per cent,” she said.
While the government was on track to meet its four-year teacher recruitment target, the new figures revealed a worsening resignation rate over four years.
Teacher and teacher aide resignations increased by more than 60 per cent from 2020-23.
Teacher resignations have spiked 54 per cent since 2020, with more than 2600 state school teachers ditching the profession last year, compared with about 1600 three years prior.
The number of teacher aides quitting is even more stark, with 1142 resignations last year compared with just 637 in 2020.
In total, 8646 teachers and 3729 teacher aides quit from state schools in four years.
This overshadowed the state government being on track to fulfil its 2020 promise to hire more than 6100 new teachers and 1100 new teacher aides by the end of this year.
Ms Scanlon said: “There’s a whole range of factors at the moment that are pushing people from all different industries to look at other types of jobs that are available.
“We also know there are teacher aides who are actually getting qualifications to basically become teachers as well.
“We are trying to attract our key workers to regional Queensland and there are a whole range of incentives out there.”
Education Minister Di Farmer said earlier there were various reasons why teaching staff resign including transitioning to a departmental role, returning to study, or family commitments.
“Queensland’s universities continue to deliver a pipeline of new teachers and help teacher aides transition to Registered Teacher positions,” a spokesman for Ms Farmer’s office said.
“We will continue to monitor trends in resignations within the Department of Education to ensure support services and training opportunities are fit for purpose.”
It comes as tensions remain high over the proposed amendments to the state’s Education Act, which were introduced last month, including changes to suspensions and exclusions.
They would see new appeal rights for students who had accumulated 11 days of short suspensions within a year.
They would also require student support plans for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, students with a disability, and Prep students who were suspended or excluded.
The powerful Queensland Teachers Union said its members were appalled.
“The Bill fails to contribute to the good order and management of state schools because it undermines the professional decision-making powers of school principals and will exacerbate excessive workload pressures on school leaders,” the QTU submission said.
Teachers’ Professional Association of Queensland state secretary Edward Schuller said it would take decisions away from school leaders and give the power to bureaucrats.
“Beyond a basic question of functionality, the attempt to introduce a Department of Education managed appeals process is a slap in the face to principals and their schooling communities, and serves to worsen the issue of student discipline,” TPAQ’s submission said.
Ms Scanlon said the government had listened to the QTU and other organisations and taken on board the feedback from the parliamentary committee hearings.
“Of course, we’ll take on board any of (the parliamentary committee’s) recommendations, our principals’ powers in regards to suspensions haven’t changed,” she said.
“I think everyone expects that it’s reasonable that we ensure that young people who are facing suspensions get the support they need, but it’s important that we also support our teachers.
“We have increased some funding and started to do dedicated programs, particularly for young people who have seen a number of suspensions.
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9 April, 2024
US colleges impose new limits on transgender athletes
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, the governing body for small US colleges, has announced a policy that effectively bans transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
In a move that was approved by a 20-0 vote of its council of presidents, the NAIA ruled athletes will only be allowed to compete in women’s sports if they were assigned the female gender at birth.
Transgender athletes may still participate in college sport, but only in male categories.
A student who has begun hormone therapy may participate in activities such as workouts, practices and team activities, but not in inter-scholastic competition.
The NAIA oversees about 83,000 athletes in 249 mostly small colleges across the US.
The ruling is believed to be the first of its kind in college sport, but it does not affect the more high-profile National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which oversees student athletics across 1100 schools and about 500,000 student athletes.
“We know there are a lot of different opinions out there,” NAIA president Jim Carr told CBS Sports.
“For us, we believed our first responsibility was to create fairness and competition in the NAIA … we also think it aligns with the reasons Title IX was created. You’re allowed to have separate but equal opportunities for women to compete.”
The NAIA issued a statement after the decision: “With the exception of competitive (cheerleading) and competitive dance, the NAIA created separate categories for male and female participants,” it read.
“Each NAIA sport includes some combination of strength, speed and stamina, providing competitive advantages for male student-athletes. As a result, the NAIA policy for transgender student-athletes applies to all sports except for competitive cheer and competitive dance, which are open to all students.”
The Washington Post reported that the NAIA ban has sparked “concerns” that the NCAA might follow suit.
In March, a more than a dozen current and former college athletes filed a federal lawsuit against the NCAA, accusing the sports governing body for more than 500,000 athletes of violating their rights by allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports.
The issue rose to prominence in 2022 when Penn University swimmer Lia Thomas became the only openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I championship.
That year, Thomas won the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4min33.24sec, beating out Olympic silver medallist Emma Weyant by 1.75 seconds.
Thomas had previously competed for the university as Will Thomas for three years and was ranked No.462 in the NCAA.
Title IX gives women athletes the right to equal opportunity in sports in educational institutions that receive federal government funding.
The Biden administration had planned to overhaul the legislation but has so far stalled on finalising laws that would provide stronger support for transgender and non-binary students, as well as victims of sexual assault.
Former president Donald Trump has promised to ban trans women from women’s sports if re-elected.
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Public Schools Are Fully Funded Already
Teachers unions and politicians frequently say that public schools need to be “fully funded.” Some politicians even run on the campaign promise of working hard to fully fund schools. Truthfully, no one knows what that means, and a price tag is never given when asked how much it will take to fully fund schools.
In 2020 and 2021, the federal government provided about $190.5 billion toward the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) to allegedly make schools better and safer during the pandemic. One must wonder: How were the ESSER funds spent nationwide?
Many schools used their ESSER funds to hire more administrators and learning specialists, as well as create or expand tutoring and social and emotional learning programs.
Why does this matter? ESSER funds are not recurring funds from the federal government. They have an expiration date. This means that school districts nationwide spent the funds on recurring initiatives and salaries, knowing they have an expiration date. This results in school districts needing to either cut or fit their new recurring expenses into an already inflated budget.
This raises another question: What budgets do school districts already have?
The Baltimore school district’s budget for 2025 has been approved for $2.58 billion. This is the same district where zero students at 13 high schools tested proficient on state math exams, as Fox 5 News reported.
In 2023, Nashville’s school district had a budget of $1.2 billion, according to News Channel 5. In that same year, only 34% of students tested proficient in math, and 36% of students tested proficient in English Language Arts assessments.
Aside from a school district’s regular budget, many districts also have foundations, whereby they take monetary donations to get more funding for their schools. School districts also often apply for grants, which give them even more money to fund their schools.
As ESSER funds for school districts expire, teachers unions and politicians are about to cry out that we must “fully fund” schools.
I would argue that schools are fully funded and have been for quite some time. What has been missing is transparency and accountability in how school districts use the funds they are given.
School districts spend millions on contracts with social and emotional learning providers while students continue to graduate with low proficiency in reading and math. Central offices are bloated with unnecessary administrative positions that do not produce positive results.
Memphis public schools recently announced their new superintendent’s salary starts at $325,000. This is the same school district where only 22% of students can read and write proficiently, and only 13% of students can do math proficiently.
According to ZipRecruiter, the average salary for a Chief Equity Officer is $151,203. Most school districts employ a Chief Equity Officer.
Parents and community members have the power to hold their local school district accountable for how funds are spent. Reading school budgets can be confusing and boring, but it must be done when school districts continue to ask for more money each year.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/105696-public-schools-are-fully-funded-already-2024-04-04
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This Is How Much New Student Debt Biden Just Reallocated
In defiance of the Supreme Court and in an effort to buy votes in November, President Joe Biden announced yet another round of student loan debt reallocation Monday.
"To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has taken historic action to approve debt cancellation for 4 million borrowers, helping these borrowers get more breathing room in their daily lives, access economic mobility, buy homes, start businesses, and pursue their dreams," the White House touted in a statement. "Today, President Biden is announcing his Administration’s new plans that, if finalized as proposed, would provide debt relief to over 30 million borrowers when combined with actions the Administration has taken over the last four years."
During a call with reporters, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona bragged about finding ways around the June 2023 Supreme Court ruling that declared Biden doesn't have the legal authority to reallocate debt.
"When the Supreme Court struck down the President’s boldest student debt relief plan, within hours, we said, 'We won’t be deterred,'" Cardona said. "We announced a new rulemaking process designed to provide borrowers relief under the Higher Education Act."
Meanwhile, the cost of college continues to skyrocket as a result of government intervention, lack of incentives to lower tuition costs and federal bailouts.
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8 April, 2024
Anxious generation don’t know how risk can lead to reward
CLAIRE LEHMANN
As a teenager, few experiences for me matched the thrill of crowd-surfing. In the year 2000, I attended my first big festival and remember floating above a sea of people in a ritual of hedonistic camaraderie.
Although it was not hard for a 15-year-old girl to be lofted into the air, the real challenge lay in braving the moshpit below. It was a churning sea of people that could easily leave one bruised and battered. But emerging from this chaos was always a badge of honour – the physical gauntlet had been conquered.
That secular rite of passage, however, only exists in distant memory. In the early 2000s, there were no phones and no selfies. We were a generation who lived viscerally in the moment, not for virtual approval. I share this story because this activity – crowd-surfing – no longer exists, as far as I can tell. It is not permitted at most concerts today for safety reasons. Not only that, but the large music festivals of my youth are also going extinct.
The Big Day Out was cancelled in 2014, and this year’s Splendour in the Grass has been dumped, partially due to poor ticket sales. A lack of interest from Generation Z means the tribal gatherings of my youth are becoming far less frequent.
And although I am not yet 40, I am starting to look back on my own adolescence with a sense of wistfulness.I understand the thrills I experienced probably won’t be available to my own kids.
Wholesale changes to childhood and adolescence extend far beyond crowd-surfing at music festivals, however.
Jonathan Haidt’s fourth book, The Anxious Generation, has changed the conversation about phones, social media and young people in a way that may prove permanent. And it only hit the shelves a few weeks ago.
His book shows that young girls in particular have been hit by a tidal wave of mental illness since 2010, across the Anglosphere countries including Australia.
He argues that there is no other plausible explanation for this tidal wave of depression and anxiety than the ubiquitous uptake of the smartphone. Today, the average teenager spends more than seven hours, or 43 per cent of their waking hours, on their devices. And when they are not on their devices, they are worried about what’s going on online. Their agitated minds are elsewhere.
As an elder millennial (born between 1981 and 1995), I experienced a childhood free from phones and social media. We had a computer but it didn’t do much, and the internet was painfully slow. By the time I had my first smartphone I already had a degree.
Every one of us who came of age before the advent of phones and social media underwent formative brain development unmarred by attention-hijacking technologies. This is important.
It’s one thing for adults to become addicted to a substance or product, and another thing for children to become addicted before their adult brains have had a chance to form.
Yet Haidt’s book addresses more than just phones. It also explores the culture of “safetyism” and its impact on child development. Since the 1980s, parents, teachers, and other adults have increasingly attempted to insulate youth from risk, depriving kids of essential experiences for proper maturation. Let me explain.
Imagine a young child’s development like that of a tree. As a tree grows, strong winds buffet its trunk and branches. This causes the tree to produce what is called “stress wood” at its base. Stress wood fortifies the tree’s core, allowing it to remain upright and sturdy as it reaches greater heights. The more intense the winds, the more stress wood develops, resulting in a stronger, more resilient tree. Trees with stronger bases live longer and grow taller.
When we protect our children from wind – that is, when we protect them from the real world – we prevent them from developing their own stress wood. In our context, we don’t literally grow extra layers of bark, but we develop an internal confidence that we can look after ourselves, solve our own problems, and go through the world as agents of our own destiny.
That doesn’t mean children need to be thrown into situations that resemble the Hunger Games or be sent down into the coalmines of yesteryear. However, just as athletes must find the right balance between too little training and overtraining, there exists an ideal middle ground when it comes to childhood stress levels.
For the post-1995 generation, we seem to have created a toxic blend of too much stress in the virtual world, and too little stress in the real world in the form of physical and psychological risk-taking. And the result is a generation suffering anxiety and depression at record levels.
The solution is not just to take away the phones – although that would be a good start. It’s to reintroduce risky play as an important part of early life.
I believe my own lived experience – crowd-surfing, moshpits, and all – made me comfortable with taking productive risks as an adult. I married at 27, had my first child at 28, and started a successful business at 31. Would I have followed that agentic trajectory if, at the age of 15, I was addicted to consuming TikToks in my bedroom? It’s doubtful.
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Students Deserve to Know the Truth About Socialism
For the past few decades, American students have been taught a whitewashed version of socialism. Such is why nearly half of young Americans have a “positive” view of socialism and 70 percent of Millennials are “somewhat or extremely likely to vote for a socialist candidate.”
This is a dire threat to the future of the United States considering this cohort will soon become the political, business, and societal leaders of this nation, not to mention the largest voting bloc for years to come.
The reason that most young Americans have a distorted view of socialism is because the public school system has been derelict in its duty of properly educating students about the truth regarding socialism. Trust me, as a former public high school social studies teacher who taught in Illinois and South Carolina for many years in the mid-2010s, I have seen first-hand how biased and inaccurate the teaching of socialism has become in classrooms throughout the country.
In general, the vast majority of my former teaching colleagues both in Illinois and South Carolina harbored a positive disposition towards socialism. As far as I could tell, most of them were inundated with socialist rhetoric while they attended teacher college programs. Although most Americans are probably unaware, the overwhelming majority of higher education courses and programs designed for teachers are full of socialist propaganda.
This was definitely the case for me. While pursuing my master’s degree in secondary education at a teacher college in the Chicagoland area, I was absolutely shocked at the amount of socialist ideology espoused. I was not alone in this concern. In truth, several of my fellow future teachers were also appalled at the blatant socialist indoctrination. However, like me, they were afraid to speak out lest they incur the wrath of the socialist professor who ultimately determined whether or not we graduated.
The reason I bring this all up is because there is a giant void in classroom materials and resources that present socialism in an honest light. In fact, most of the teachers I worked with while designing curricula for U.S. history, world history, and American government relied on the pseudo-textbook by avowed socialist Howard Zinn titled, A Young People’s History of the United States.
To fill this void, I present Socialism At A Glance, a new book by The Heartland Institute’s Socialism Research Center. This book, co-written by yours truly and Jack McPherrin, provides a broad overview of socialism. Specifically, Socialism At A Glance examines the origins of socialist philosophy, which dates back to ancient times; covers the relationship between socialism and human nature; analyzes The Communist Manifesto; discusses the rise of “democratic socialism” in the late 20th century; and takes readers on an epic journey through socialist regimes beginning with the Soviet Union—the first and longest experiment with socialism on a grand scale. Readers will also learn what daily life is like under a variety of socialist governments, from Nazi Germany to modern-day China.
Our objective in writing this book is to present the truth about socialism, which is why we rely upon original sources including speeches by prominent socialist leaders and various policy documents produced by these governments that explicitly outline the absence of freedom and private property rights that has been part and parcel to practically every socialist government that has existed to this day.
For too long, millions of students in America have been brainwashed into believing that socialism is a preferable way of organizing society and distributing resources. But, as history shows, this is not true. In fact, history shows that socialism, even when implemented with the best of intentions, inevitably devolves into political persecution, abject poverty, mass murder, and general misery.
In late 1945, after World War II had ended and socialist Nazi Germany was defeated, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stated, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Three years later, while appearing before the House of Commons, Churchill stated, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
If we learned anything from the socialist experiments of the 20th century, it is that socialism has failed to deliver the utopian dreams promised by socialist leaders again and again. Given this track record of failure and wretchedness, we must ensure that socialism does not undergo a renaissance in the 21st century. To prevent this from occurring, it is absolutely necessary that we ensure that future generations of Americans receive a sound education concerning socialism. Do not rely upon the public schools to deliver this message, take it upon yourself to educate your friends and family members about the full truth and nothing but the truth when it comes to socialism.
https://heartland.org/opinion/students-deserve-to-know-the-truth-about-socialism/
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Rutgers, Johns Hopkins End COVID Vaccine Mandates
Two big East Coast universities just ended their COVID-19 vaccine mandates for students and employees.
Rutgers University in New Jersey and Johns Hopkins University in Maryland both dropped the requirement this week. Their decisions came after a March report by The College Fix listed the schools and more than 40 others that still mandated vaccines.
“As of April 1, 2024, Rutgers no longer requires students, faculty, staff, and university affiliates to be immunized against the COVID-19 virus,” the university website states.
Rutgers also welcomes individuals to wear face coverings, but it does not require them, according to its website.
Lucia Sinatra, co-founder of No College Mandates, which tracks COVID-19 vaccine requirements on campuses, expressed surprise at the news.
The Defender reports:
Sinatra, who has been actively advocating for the removal of college vaccine mandates, was taken aback by Rutgers’ sudden change in policy.
“We had no warning whatsoever,” said Sinatra, who stayed in regular contact with the university. “In fact, we just kept hearing, ‘This COVID-19 mandate is never going to go away.’” […]
“From what I’m hearing from parents, from the noise that we’re making on social media, there are families that are completely taking these colleges off their list because these mandates were in place for so long,” she said.
Political pressure also may have been a factor in the decision.
In early March, New Jersey Sen. Declan O’Scanlon said the fact that Rutgers still had the mandate was “absurd and irrational.” The Republican lawmaker advocated for cutting off the university’s funding if it did not change.
Meanwhile, Johns Hopkins also ended its mandate on April 1. The requirement is gone for most students, faculty, and staff, but there are exceptions for individuals in the schools of medicine and nursing, according to the university website.
The university also still “strongly recommends that all students, staff, and faculty” be vaccinated for the virus.
“COVID-19 remains a serious illness, and we must continue to be diligent to prevent the spread of the virus,” it states. “…Those who are up to date with COVID-19 vaccines have lower risk of severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19 than those who are unvaccinated or have received only the primary series.”
In early March, the Centers for Disease Control loosened protocols for the virus. The CDC now recommends a 24-hour isolation period for those who test positive for COVID-19, down from five days.
Others, including Harvard University, Montclair State University in New Jersey, Santa Clara University in California, and St. Mary’s College of California, also ended their COVID vaccine mandates after the CDC announcement.
Last summer, nearly 100 schools still required COVID-19 vaccines, The Fix reported at the time.
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/04/rutgers-johns-hopkins-end-covid-vaccine-mandates/
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7 April, 2024
To restore educational excellence, end the government’s monopoly on schools
America’s public schools took shape in the early 19th century.
Advocates believed universal education was best achieved through a unitary system of publicly funded, state-operated schools.
They saw these schools performing three critical missions: providing an academically superior education, promoting national solidarity and instilling strong moral values.
How are public schools doing in achieving these original goals?
At times over the past 200 years, some schools have performed admirably.
But in recent decades, despite the infusion of ever-increasing resources, the quality of public education has clearly fallen.
To start, the declining academic quality is a national scandal.
Students’ dismal math and reading scores are the lowest in decades — and the situation becomes even bleaker when scores are compared internationally.
American students have not scored at or above the international average in mathematics in two decades.
Countries like China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea have consistently earned the highest math scores.
Our nation’s prosperity and security depend on continued technological leadership, but America’s mediocre educational performance in international rankings signals decline.
When an international assessment was administered in 2018, China earned the top score; the United States ranked 38th.
America’s reading and science scores remain far below China’s first-place scores.
And private-school students — Catholic-school students, in particular — typically score higher on national assessments than public-school students.
In New York, charter-school students are achieving substantially higher proficiency rates than their counterparts in traditional public schools.
Public schools are also failing in their second mission.
Instead of promoting unity by forging common bonds, they’re doing the exact opposite.
Increasingly, schools are adopting curricula and espousing ideologies, like critical race theory, designed to teach students they are divided by unbridgeable differences.
Shared cultural identity, trust between peers and faith in individual effort crumble when students are taught America is evil, white people are inherently privileged and racist and disparate outcomes are caused by systemic racism.
Perversely, state schools indoctrinate students with ideologies that challenge the very legitimacy of our nation — explicitly attacking and undermining our Founding Fathers, documents and principles.
Public schools are no longer the institutions we can trust to forge an unum out of the pluribus.
By contrast, studies show America’s private and religious schools more effectively instill political tolerance, encourage civic participation, teach civic skills and foster patriotism in students.
Indeed, parochial schools have an enviable record of integrating wave after wave of new immigrants into American society — a legacy they still embody today.
Finally, how are public schools doing in fostering moral values?
Early public-education advocates believed moral instruction is central to education — and they were right.
Education requires not only teaching technical skills; it demands cultivating moral values.
But the idea a government institution can perform this moral function was doomed to fail in a country destined to become as diverse as ours.
To be a moral teacher, the state must decide what values it will teach.
Yet all values come from an underlying belief system — in America it has been Judeo-Christianity — that explains what it means to be “good.”
Inevitably, then, any government school seeking to teach morality will take positions on matters of religious belief.
But it violates the Constitution for the government to promote a particular religious viewpoint or usurp parents’ right to determine their children’s religious formation.
Up until the 1960s, public schools finessed this problem by explicitly embracing America’s Judeo-Christian heritage: Curricula incorporated a general form of Christianity into the classroom; the Bible was read; Christian prayers were said at school.
These moral values aligned with the traditional religious beliefs of Americans, the vast majority self-identified Christians.
But this changed in the 1960s as religious diversity increased and the Supreme Court demanded schools be strictly “neutral” on religious matters.
That spurred aggressive efforts to secularize public schools by purging all vestiges of traditional religion.
This left a moral void, and when Christianity was dispatched from the classroom, a new belief system took its place.
By the time President Barack Obama took office, progressives had substituted an alternative, secular belief system that justified the values they wanted to teach.
Today, public schools indoctrinate students in radical ideologies — like CRT and transgenderism — that are, at bottom, ersatz religions contrary to traditional religious beliefs.
More and more, government-run schools have become cockpits for a vicious, winner-take-all culture war.
The first step toward achieving educational excellence is to eliminate the monopoly government-run schools have over publicly supported primary and secondary education.
Parents have paramount authority over their children’s moral upbringing and should be able to choose any academically qualified school that best suits their children’s needs.
As in many other Western countries, as long as children are receiving the approved secular curriculum, they should not be denied support simply because their parents have chosen to obtain that education through a religiously affiliated school.
Voucher programs that allow for school choice will reinvigorate education and encourage innovation to serve diverse students’ needs and desires.
School choice puts purchasing power into the hands of parents so they can escape failing schools and obtain quality education for their children.
Our children — and America’s future — deserve better
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School Busing of a Different Sort: Nonprofit Takes Students to Off-Campus Bible Studies
Once a week, an estimated 30,000 students across the country are picked up by what’s called “a big, red LifeWise bus” and leave public school grounds for a Bible lesson at a local church or other religious institution.
It might surprise some, but it’s entirely legal in the United States, says LifeWise Academy founder and CEO Joel Penton.
LifeWise was created in 2019, after Penton saw a local program like it in his hometown of Ayersville, Ohio. Students would briefly leave their public school classrooms for Bible lessons at a local church or other religious facility, and then return to school to continue their reading, writing, and arithmetic lessons.
Currently, LifeWise Academy serves 323 schools in 12 states, and about 30,000 K-12 students, Penton said in a recent phone interview.
The nonprofit’s CEO addressed an area of confusion for many parents, who are uncertain when offered the option of midday Bible lessons for their children. Parents often assume that the government has full control over their child’s school day.
“I know what people are feeling,” Penton said. “They’re feeling that the school owns that time—the state owns the time of 8 a.m. [to] 3 p.m., or whatever the school day is, and that’s just not true.”
That understanding of parents’ rights regarding their children’s school time was legally validated by the Supreme Court in a 1952 case, Zorach v. Clauson, he said. The case permitted New York City students to leave their classrooms for religious instruction.
Penton says that ruling allows any parent to let their child receive Bible lessons through his program and not violate the First Amendment’s establishment-of-religion clause.
Another issue Penton says that LifeWise critics raise is a misunderstanding of the separation of church and state. The separation concept is not actually in the Constitution, but it’s often still cited when referencing issues involving religion and public schools.
Ironically, Penton insists that LifeWise is the epitome of church and state separation. “Kids are quite literally separated from the state school,” he explained.
The LifeWise founder has taken some heat from leftists for his Bible program. He says critics are “few and far between … but tend to be loud.”
An NBC News report on Tuesday focused on how the organization occasionally offers “ice cream or popcorn parties” to encourage students to attend its lessons. That, NBC suggested, was a ploy to attract secular students who otherwise might not attend. It was the second of three reports NBC aired on the religious group.
Left-leaning sister network MSNBC ran a follow-up report on Wednesday, with host Alex Wagner claiming that LifeWise is “currently influencing the minds of public-school kids in progressive cities like Columbus [Ohio].”
That 10-minute segment, which included a rebroadcast of part of the previous NBC report about LifeWise, suggested that teaching students about the Bible could be indirectly affecting elections in “blue island cities” in red states.
In a video posted on X (formerly Twitter), Penton said that NBC “admitted that the program is very successful, that it’s growing rapidly.” He added that LifeWise is good for schools, too, noting that post-COVID-19, “chronic absenteeism” remained a big problem nationwide, but when LifeWise participates in the school day, absenteeism goes down.
Penton cites an independent study in October from the Thomas P. Miller & Associates consulting firm, which found that when LifeWise programs are in place, there is a “statistically strong” increase in student attendance. LifeWise programs are said to even have a similar positive impact with respect to disciplinary issues, which decrease at participating schools.
LifeWise almost always can persuade schools to permit its program, Penton said. “Ninety-three percent of the time the school says, ‘Yes, let’s do this.’”
The nonprofit founder says that LifeWise serves students in 12 states, from kindergarten through 12th grade. Some 250 of the programs serve elementary schools, a majority of the total.
There’s no charge for participation in LifeWise, Penton said, for either school systems or the student participants.
“We want to make the Bible available to all of them [students]. And that’s what we’ve been trying to build, a plug-and-play program any community can implement,” Penton said. Forthcoming programs include schools in Washington state and even California, in a Los Angeles County school.
He said he hopes to have LifeWise operating in at least 20 states and 500 schools by this fall.
To start a LifeWise Academy program, would-be participants can go to LifeWise’s website and start an online petition. Once there are more than 50 signatories from an area, LifeWise will aid local community members in the process of scouting a location and getting permission from the local school board.
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‘Inclusive’ Sex Education Puts Kids at Risk
As suicide rates, sexual assaults, mass depression, and anxiety grip America’s youth, the Biden administration, state legislatures, and public school districts have begun usurping science education with “transgender and gender-nonconforming” curriculum.
Students in over a dozen states no longer have access to biologically based sex education; that’s been replaced by liberal laws and policies requiring classrooms to exchange biologically proven facts with pseudo-scientific advocacy of gender fluidity.
Despite the claims of the U.S. Department of Education, no quantitative studies show gender transition or “gender nonconformity” is a healthy or normal part of human development.
These child-targeted policy prescriptions are often sweetened artificially by using comfortable terminology, such as “comprehensive,” “inclusive,” and “gender affirming” to paint those who disagree with the unscientific, immoral content aimed at minors as bigoted and heartless.
If parents respond negatively to the content of these postmodern sex-education revisions, news outlets (which may claim to be unbiased) use those gaslighting terms in their coverage of the outrage.
This effectively gatekeeps any debate about negative consequences by portraying dissidents as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. After all, what kind of monster wouldn’t be inclusive and affirming?
The most recent and flagrant example of this has been seen in Arizona’s Flagstaff Unified School District. Local parents obtained a video of school district staff discussing changes to the sex-ed curriculum that included removing the boy/girl binary.
When parents shared their concerns at the next school board meeting, board President Christine Fredericks responded: “I will never apologize for being inclusive.”
So far, liberals’ strategy of dismissing any commonsense concerns with moral scolding straight out of a 1990s anti-bullying commercial has been effective. Parents who expressed concern about teenage boys pretending to be girls to gain access to girls’ locker rooms were disregarded as backward, uninformed, and unfeeling.
When tragedy struck, in part due to these policies and worldviews—as in the sexual assault by a “gender-nonconforming” boy in a girls’ restroom of Virginia’s Loudoun County Public Schools—parents were scolded again and charged with being bigoted opportunists.
Similarly, after the shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, in which a transgender assailant slaughtered three 9-year-old students and three staff members at the private Christian school, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded by suggesting that “transphobia” was the true danger.
An LGBTQ+ activist organization called The Trevor Project has intimated repeatedly that the near 40% suicide rate for transgender individuals isn’t due to mental illness and toxic prescriptions. Instead, it’s the result of “bullying,” which also has been redefined to mean “anyone who doesn’t passionately support the child’s transition.”
The assertion has been echoed consistently without question by federally funded media outlets such as PBS.
This quantitatively unverified accusation is a key rationale from the Left in why updating sex education curriculum is essential for them. After all, the point of sex ed is to answer students’ questions concerning physiological and reproductive development.
These answers in biology-based sex education clearly differentiate men and women, not just in external sexual organs but in development rate, hormone production and balance, and higher susceptibility to certain diseases and conditions.
A postmodern, “inclusive” approach as outlined by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, teachers unions, and massive grants from the Biden administration removes that differentiation altogether.
Separating sex and gender as physicality and mentality, therefore disconnecting behavior from sex by suggesting that your sex comprises your organs whereas your gender is all in your mind, is heinously distant from reality. Naturally produced hormones based on sex govern anatomical systems, behavior, immune response, and reproduction.
The additional foolishness of encouraging minors that changing external appendages somehow certifies a gender change only adds insult to the injury of what was historically a scientifically sound subject.
Although biological sex education warned boys and girls of their higher likelihood of developing cancerous tumors in certain sex-specific organs and advised them to watch for signs at different ages, the new “gender affirming” sex ed does nothing to warn students about the carcinogenic danger of “hormonal treatments” in gender transitions.
The human endocrine system is incredibly fragile; tampering with it can be perilous. Women who seek hormonal treatment for menopause are required to be warned that doing so quadruples their risk of developing cancer. Although the same hormones are injected in transgender treatments, no such carcinogen warning is required or offered in any current “gender affirming” sex-ed curriculum.
The lack of patients’ mental health improvement and increasingly higher rates of detransition and regret aren’t mentioned either.
None of the biology, anatomy, and physiology, or developmental psychology texts from which I’ve taught have ever provided a shred of evidence justifying the omission or twisting of critical information when instructing students.
At that point, you’re no longer a teacher, you’re a sleazy salesman for a pyramid scheme.
The misnamed “sex education” that the Department of Education describes as “safe and supported” is in reality temporal, shallow, and dangerous. As other nations ban transgender experiments on minors, President Joe Biden’s administration has put American children in danger via woke dictate, bastardizing health education into its antithesis.
Sex education in the U.S. is quickly becoming a sick joke, and permanent damage to American children is the punchline.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/05/inclusive-sex-education-is-a-mockery-of-biology/
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4 April, 2024
UCLA medical school's 'structural racism' class featured 'quite disturbing' prayer to pagan god
Another episode in the relentless Leftist attempt to make mainstream people feel uncomfortable about who and what they are. They hate what they call "complacency" -- when people feel pleased and comfortable to be part of something successful and flourishing. When crowds proudly chant "USA, USA" that is anathema to them. It's "structural racism", apparently. Very twisted
A mandatory "structural racism" class at The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA led a prayer to Mother Earth, which disturbed some who attended the lecture.
The UCLA Jewish Faculty Resilience Group spoke to numerous witnesses from the lecture and penned a letter to the administration Friday, calling for an "urgent and thorough external review" of its curriculum to put an end to "political indoctrination."
"We write to bring to your attention disturbing events that unfolded two days ago on the UCLA campus… based on the first-hand eyewitness reports presented to us by multiple first-year students," the letter, signed by Professors Kira Stein and Elina Veytsman from the medical center as well as David Mimmer from the law school, said.
The letter went on to describe that an invited speaker "instructed students to touch the floor, 'mama earth with a fist' while she made a 'non-secular' prayer to ‘mama earth’ and our ‘ancestors,'" the letter said.
The end of the class featured an additional prayer to the pagan deity, this time asking them to stand up. According to the faculty's letter, the speaker "instructed students to get out of their seats and stand upright with her for a closing prayer, once again to ‘mama earth’ and the ‘ancestors.’ Of those gathered, a handful of students who were visibly uncomfortable declined to participate, remaining seated throughout."
A witness of the event who spoke to Fox News Digital on the condition of anonymity described experiencing intense feelings about the "idolatry." "I was very deeply offended and disgusted," the witness said.
"She starts with like ‘Thank you, Creator. Thank you for this day of life.’ And then she starts praying to like the spirits mom and stuff," the witness said. "It was crazy."
The witness went on to say the speaker asked the class to get on to the floor to participate in the prayer.
"It's quite disturbing but also hilarious, actually," the witness said.
The witness – who has monotheistic religious beliefs – said the presentation to "pagan gods" made for an uncomfortable situation.
"I think even probably all students who stood up there [during the prayer], a good number felt unsettled regardless of your religious persuasion," the witness said. "I think a lot of students have the sense that this is weird or out of place."
UCLA began implementing a new curriculum called HEALS in 2020. The entire first year of medical school has a particular focus on "Structural Racism and Health Equity." The curriculum was "redesigned" "to empower students to become physicians committed to… advocac[y] and humanistic care."
"Diversity isn't a buzzword. It’s a requirement to treat our communities with clinical excellence. Our community is made up of talented leaders who care deeply and work to impact the world for good. We have a collective commitment to combat structural racism. That commitment spans healthcare, education, and our society at large," UCLA says about the equity classes.
The invited speaker also chanted for Palestinians, the UCLA letter alleged, sparking accusations of antisemitism from the professors.
Elan Carr, the former Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism under the Trump administration, responded to the incident. He called the class "indoctrination."
"Many universities have become intolerable places for Jews," he said on X, referring to the pro-Palestinian element of the presentation. "Here is yet one more example of the vile, poisonous indoctrination to which students are forced to submit, this time at UCLA Medical School."
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Seattle Public Schools shuts down gifted and talented program for being oversaturated with white and Asian students
More Seattle craziness
Seattle Public Schools is dismantling its gifted and talented program, which administrators argued was oversaturated with white and Asian students, in favor of a more “inclusive, equitable and culturally sensitive” program.
The district began phasing out its Highly Capable Cohort schools and classrooms for advanced students in the 2021-22 school year due to racial inequities, the school district notes.
It will now completely cease to exist by the 2027-28 school year, with a new enrichment-for-all model available in every school by the 2024-25 school year.
“The program is not going away, it’s getting better,” school officials said on the district website. “It will be more inclusive, equitable and culturally sensitive.
“In particular, students who have been historically excluded will now have the same opportunities for services as every other student and get the support and enrichment they need to grow.”
The enrichment program currently only allows students who placed in the top 2 percentile on standardized exams would be placed in the Highly Capable Cohort to receive enriched learning.
The students would then be sorted into one of three elementary schools, five middle schools and three high schools.
But in 2020, the Seattle school board voted to terminate the program, after a 2018 survey found that the students in the Highly Capable Cohort were 13% multiracial, 11.8% Asian, 3.7% Hispanic and just 1.6% black. Nearly 70% of the students were white.
“Numbers would suggest that within our city … predominantly white children are more gifted than other cultures and races, and we know that is absolutely not true,” Kari Hanson, the district’s director of student support services, told Parent Map at the time.
Under the new program, dubbed the Highly Capable Neighborhood School Model, teachers will be required to come up with individualized learning programs for all 20 to 30 of their students — a task they argue they do not have the time and resources for as the district faces a $104 million budget deficit, according to the Seattle Times.
The district said it is working to provide teachers with curriculum and instruction on how to make it work, but an estimate from 2020 suggested an enrichment-for-all program would cost the district $1.1 million over the first three years.
One teacher said she worries it will become more difficult under the new program to teach math to students with a range of abilities, and that the whole-classroom approach won’t properly prepare students for Advanced Placement math and science courses.
Parents also expressed their concerns that the new model could lead to children getting overlooked.
“It seems to me that kids on maybe both extremes are going to be underserved,” Erika Ruberry told the Seattle Times.
Karen Stukovsky, who has three children in the gifted program, added that each teacher “can only do so much differentiation.
“You have some kids who can barely read and some kids who are reading ‘Harry Potter’ in the first grade or kindergarten,” she said.
“How are you going to not only get those kids up to grade level, and also challenge those kids who are already easy above grade level?”
Some parents of black students in the program even argued against ending it.
“My request is that you please consider the disservice you would be doing to the minorities that are already in the HCC program,” one father said at the school board meeting to approve the new program in 2020, according to The Stranger.
“The program does more for black children, particularly black boys, than it does for their peers.”
But then-school board vice president Chandra Hampson shot back: “This is a pretty masterful job at tokenizing a really small community of color within the existing cohort.”
Over the past few years, though, more and more minority students have joined the ranks of the Highly Capable Cohort.
In the 2022 – 23 school year, 52% of the students were white, 16% were Asian and 3.4% were black, according to the Seattle Times.
Supporters of the new program say it will create a stronger sense of community because all of the students are from the same geographic area.
“They bring their home experience and their culture, and that is really unique,” View Ridge Elementary School Principal Rina Geoghagan told the Seattle Times.
“Is it going to be perfect? No. But any time there is a change, it’s not perfec
https://nypost.com/2024/04/03/us-news/seattle-public-schools-shuts-down-gifted-and-talented-program/
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Australian School Principals Report Record Near 50 Percent Jump in Student Attacks
Australian school principals are experiencing a record-high surge in physical attacks from students, driving many perilously close to the brink of self-harm.
A survey conducted by the Australian Catholic University (ACU) of 2,300 school principals found 48.2 percent experienced physical violence in 2023, up 76.5 percent from 2011.
Students perpetrated almost all (96.3 percent) of the attacks, followed by parents (65.6 percent).
“It is deeply concerning that offensive behaviour towards school leaders and teachers persist and appears to be on the rise,” ACU co-lead investigator Professor Herb Marsh said.
Nearly all principals who were attacked (42.6 percent) triggered a “red flag” email, indicating they were at risk of self-harm, occupational health issues, or a significant impact on their quality of life.
One in five school leaders reported moderate to severe depression, particularly among early career leaders, with others facing risks of serious mental health issues such as anxiety, burnout, stress, and sleep problems.
Growing Teacher Shortage
Around 60 percent of those with six to ten years of experience want to exit the profession, and experienced school leaders with over 15 years of experience are at the forefront of the impending departure.
“Assuming only half of those who agreed or strongly agreed to quit acted on this response, there would be an exodus of more than 500 school leaders—the data strongly suggests this would be experienced school leaders,” Ms. Marsh said.
The upcoming departure would add to the existing shortage of teachers nationwide.
Education Minister Jason Clare recently mentioned that while there are around 300,000 teachers currently working in our schools, there are an additional 100,000 registered teachers with qualifications who have chosen not to teach but maintain their registration.
Urgent Call for Action
Despite challenges, the survey revealed that some school leaders still exhibit strong dedication, commitment, and commendable resilience.
Their grit was independent of state education department policies or other regulatory body policies, indicating that these entities’ formal policies or guidelines failed to aid their ability to cope.
Paul Kidson, ACU investigator, and former principal, called on education ministers to urgently take collective action to address the significant threats facing principals.
“We’ve had a national spotlight on teacher education and workloads, disruptions in the classroom, campaigns to boost the profession’s status, and a continued focus on students’ mental health and academic outcomes—all noble and necessary,” Mr. Kidson said.
However, he said, “Principals are being asked to do more with less.”
“It’s been over a decade since the Gonski Review, and we still do not have full funding based on student needs. It is naïve to think this does not translate into the increasing stress among school leaders today,” he explained.
The Australian government commissioned the Gonski Review in 2010 to comprehensively review school funding in the country.
Businessman David Gonski led the review to address inequalities in school funding.
The review’s final report, released in 2011, recommended reforms to improve the quality and equity of education across the country.
A new funding model was proposed called the “Gonski model,” which advocated for needs-based funding to ensure that all students, regardless of their socio-economic background, receive the support they need to succeed in school.
However, leading school wellbeing expert Associate Professor Theresa Dicke said there is an urgency for education ministers to make a priority of responding to the data in this report.
She proposed a national summit to coordinate strategies and resources, warning that failure to address these issues could lead to a mass exodus of school leaders.
“Many of them will act on their intention to leave and it will make achieving important policy initiatives very unlikely,” she said.
Since 2011, this survey has aimed to understand and support the health and well-being of school leaders by providing personalised reports based on data collected from a large sample of participants.
This year’s report categorises data by different career stages and represents nearly a quarter of all Australian school leaders.
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3 April, 2024
Charlie and the Social Justice Factory: Is Harvard right to teach chocolate is racist?
Amazing. The guy must be nuts. A spoof?
If you’re white and you buy your children chocolate eggs to eat this Easter, aren’t you training them to become infant white supremacists? This question is so incredibly stupid that it could only be posed by someone with a PhD.
Sad to say, even chocolate has now been tarred with the brush of “white supremacism” – at least according to the Harvard African and African-American Studies (AAAS) module E119, “Chocolate, Culture and the Politics of Food”. This subject at Harvard Extension School, a continuing education division at the University, now appears to have been discontinued. But its legacy lives on in high-school lesson plans.
Looking up the course’s content online, it would appear to be entirely free of any known nutrients, intellectually speaking. Particularly notable is the warning to students with chocolate allergies that the course does involve eating chocolate, especially in “Unit 4: Eating Chocolate”.
As useful as a chocolate teapot
How can chocolate be racist? You would have to ask Carla D. Martin, PhD, the designer of the course in question, founder of the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute, which bills itself as “a scholar-led research organisation that seeks to reduce information asymmetry in the cacao and chocolate value chain.” What does this actually mean? Having spent some time looking through their extensive website, I’m none the wiser.
I suppose this is why I never managed to get into Harvard.
A “social anthropologist with interdisciplinary interests that include history, agronomy, ethnomusicology, linguistics” and saying silly things about chocolate, which she does at length on her Bittersweet Notes blog, Martin is an academic specialising in the vital field of chocolate politics.
Operating both as an “open enrolment class” for info-hungry members of the general public, and as a module for full-time students, her E119 course would set scholars back between $1,250 and $2,200 in course fees.
That’s an awful lot of chocolate coins to spend. Nonetheless, Martin says, the module proved highly popular, as “the course does not involve any traditional written papers or exams”, and instead allowed students to pass simply by turning up, taking part in quizzes, talking about chocolate with “a phenomenal team of graduate student teaching fellows … [with] expertise in Haitian Vodou, the American prison system [hopefully not actual convicted criminals?], the history of Islam, and medieval European food culture” and then producing blog posts and a “multimedia presentation”, involving things like drawing posters or imaginary new anti-racist advertising campaigns for chocolate bars.
What, precisely, would you be getting for your money? Well, if you head over to a special website, Chocolate Class, you can find numerous blog posts and multimedia presentations from Professor Martin’s students.
One essay, “European Appropriation of Chocolate“, condemns “Christopher Columbus, the founder of chocolate”. The Aztecs used cacao beans in their religious ceremonies and white men appropriated this ancient foodstuff for their own nefarious colonial ends. It is “only those with power who get to write history” and this fact applied to chocolate as much as to everything else.
Another student organised a chocolate-tasting for fellow students and asked them to criticise brands upon weird identitarian lines, as shown by his or her valuable account, “Exploring Cultural Appropriation Through a Chocolate Tasting”, which features sentences like the following: “When prompted to comment on the fact that the Spicy Mayans [brand of] chocolates were not, in fact, made by Mayans, a chorus of ‘UGH!’ ensued.” How could they have been made by the Mayans? Their civilisation has been extinct for centuries. It’s like complaining Arctic Roll isn’t made by actual Eskimos.
Another blog post, “Misogynoir and Cocoa Throughout History”, uses the ultra-obscure 1976 comment of a random magazine editor that the black supermodel Iman resembled “a white woman dipped in chocolate” to condemn white Western capitalism wholesale on the grounds that “This association of a person with an edible object further solidifies the idea that black people are false commodities.” Meaning what, exactly? Another post, “The Consumption of Black Bodies as Chocolate“, explains:
“When we look at the history of chocolate production, we are looking at a history of African slave labor. Between 10 and 15 million slaves were stolen from Africa and brought to work in various farms and plantations that manufactured cacao … and sugar … [This] has led to the fetishization and fantasy of black bodies as representing the products that they create …
In a sense, the black body has been so ‘delicious’ for whiteness to consume that it has become a deeply embedded aspect of our culture, because its consumption has been associated with the sweetness of sugar and chocolate and not the bitter truth of slave labor … Look at … the hyper-policing, monitoring, and brutalization of black youth by police. These are all current manifestations of the notion that black bodies are meant to be owned, controlled, exploited, and consumed, just like the association between chocolate and blackness … Black people are not made of chocolate, but chocolate is made of black people, in the sense that it has been historically created through their oppression and forced labor.”
According to the student, there is a tradition in Belgium of selling severed chocolate hands, which represent the right hands of Congolese slaves chopped off by their Belgian colonial overlords in the late 1800s. Horrific, if true … but it isn’t. The Belgians did chop off black slaves’ hands, but the link with the cookies is an urban myth. They actually nod back to a legend about the founding of Antwerp.
Chocolate spread of discord
Possibly the most interesting item on the website is a lesson plan for high school students. This aims to help children “to understand race and racism through the lens of chocolate”.
But how?
There is a disease called “colourblind racism”, which seeks to treat people of all skin-colours just the same, but this is wrong. People are not all the same, white people are all evil, and black and brown people are all brilliant, without any single exceptions, not even Idi Amin or Emperor Bokassa. Thank God, therefore, that Carla D. Martin discovered “how chocolate can be used as a salient pedagogical tool for constructing anti-racist knowledge not only at the university level, but for all learners, especially those who are white and middle-class.”
The best way to do this, apparently, is to make children spend THREE WHOLE DAYS watching racially “offensive” clips from one of the film versions of Roald Dahl’s classic kids’ novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, before asking them, “Who Is Willy, Really? The Racist Origins of the Chocolate Factory”.
Slaves to their own appetites
Willy is really just an avatar of Nazi death-camp doctor Josef Mengele: “he also performed unethical experiments on them at his own leisure, such as turning them into blueberries. This treatment reflects the real violent ways that enslaved Black and Brown people have been treated by Europeans and the United States in the production of chocolate both historically and even in many ways in today’s world.”
Even worse is the way Herr Wonka transported his Oompa-slaves across to his English factory/death-camp in the first place. According to Dahl’s original account, the imperialist fiend “shipped them over here, every man, woman, and child in the Oompa-Loompa tribe. It was easy. I smuggled them over in large packing cases with holes in them, and they all got here safely.” Supposedly, this reflected the way real black slaves were once transported across to America during the days of the Middle Passage. Granted, this stuff may seem unlikely to the likes of you or me – but it must be true. After all, it’s being taught at Harvard, the world’s most prestigious university.
Do you think teachers waste their time delivering pathetic nonsense like this in China? Possibly not, but, the Harvard-born lesson plans reassure readers, once the children have learned to condemn Willy Wonka as a neo-Nazi, they will go out and begin “creating a community action project to address an issue of racial inequality in their community in partnership with a local chocolate shop/producer”, thereby remaking their society into one every bit as Communistic in its nature as President Xi’s own currently is.
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Arkansas Announces Major Expansion of School Choice Options for Children of Veterans...
Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas announced Monday that the state Department of Education was expanding its education savings program to include veteran and first responder families.
The Arkansas Education Freedom Account program, which was launched in 2023, helps fund families who wish to send their children to private schools or homeschool them and previously included “Homeless students, current or former foster care students, students with disabilities” and “first-time kindergarteners.” For the 2024-2025 school year, “veterans, military reserve members, first responders, law enforcement officers and students from D-rated schools will now be eligible, according to a press release.
“I’m a mom of three, so I know that every child in our state learns a little bit differently. Education Freedom Accounts recognize that parents’ choice, not random geography, should be the primary determining factor in where a child goes to school,” Sanders said at an event at Harvest Time Academy in Fort Smith, according to the press release. “I’m proud that we are prioritizing Arkansas’ heroes and their families in this year’s expansion.”
The department started accepting applications on Monday for the upcoming school year, and families can receive up to $6,856 per savings account, according to the press release. Over 5,000 students enrolled in the program during the 2023-2024 school year and over 100 schools also participated.
“We are pleased to extend EFA program eligibility to these additional categories of students,” Jacob Oliva, secretary for the Arkansas Department of Education, said in the press release. “For most parents, public schools will be the first and best choice for their child, but a one-size-fits-all approach does not meet the needs of all students and families. Parents want and deserve options. The EFA program provides that, and now additional children will be eligible for those opportunities.”
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Female teachers reveal how Andrew Tate has infiltrated the minds of young boys in Australian schools and is driving a culture of 'sexism': 'I don't feel safe anymore'
In physics we see many equal and opposite reactions and there is often something similar in sociology. The pervasive feminist claim that masculinity is "toxic" is undoubtedly in part behind the popularity of Tate among young males -- an understandable reaction by them to feminist poison
Female teachers have spoken out about how young boys are being influenced by controversial social media star Andrew Tate.
The self-proclaimed champion of 'misogyny' and 'toxic masculinity' presents himself as an advocate for a self-reliant, 'alpha' mindset to his legions of followers.
He is currently facing criminal charges in Romania, including organised crime, human trafficking and rape - but the ex-kickboxer turned influencer remains hugely popular across the globe.
Now, teachers in Australia are concerned about the growing number of young men idolising him.
Grace (not her real name) told the ABC's 7.30 program on Tuesday that she heard one of her students at the Sunshine Coast school where she was teaching in 2022 speaking about how much they 'love' Tate.
'I had just said, "Look, I don't want to hear that name in this classroom". I could see some of the girls rolling their eyes and sighing,' she said.
Although there were only a handful of boys who were fans of the British-American TikToker, Grace said it set a 'disturbing tone' for the class.
'Most of what was happening in my experience was of a sexual nature,' she said.
'Students making moaning noises in my classes, asking me inappropriate questions, asking personal questions about my age or my appearance.'
Grace was instructed to use 'teaching techniques' to quell the behaviour but was ultimately unable to control them and decided to quit her career.
'It's very disappointing that I don't really feel safe in a classroom anymore,' she said.
'Even though I want to be there to stand up for the young girls… my mental health was suffering.'
Dozens of other teachers across the country have suffered similar experiences.
Researchers from Monash University interviewed female teachers about the impact of Tate in Australian classrooms and found that he was 'showing up' everywhere from rural towns to metropolitan schools.
The study, which included 30 female teachers, found 'widespread experience of sexual harassment, sexism, and misogyny perpetrated by boys towards women teachers, and the ominous presence of Andrew Tate shaping their behaviour'.
'The consistency is one of the most extraordinary things about what we found in this study,' Stephanie Wescott, one of authors of the report said.
'What they were telling us is that Andrew Tate was showing up in their classroom in a range of ways.'
Tate has nearly 9million followers on X, and was the fourth-most-searched topic in Google Australia's news category last year.
According to Jaidyn Davis, 21, he is most popular among men in their teens and early 20's because of the way he talks about men and women.
Mr Davis and many other young men who follow Tate online said they see nothing wrong with the influencer's core ideology because he's trying to convey the idea that 'guys' should be masculine.
Ethan Slater, 25, agreed, saying Tate resonates with younger men because that's what they aspire to become.
He went on to explain that he believes Tate's views are often taken out of context.
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2 April, 2024
Bizarre moment Rutgers gender study professor tells seminar that it's 'homophobic and violent' to flag how badly LGBT people are treated in Gaza
A Rutgers University professor told a seminar discussing the Israel-Hamas conflict that it is 'violent' and 'homophobic' to raise the issue of how LGBT people are treated in Gaza.
Maya Mikdashi, associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at New Jersey's State University, told students earlier this month that she has been approached by people at pro-Palestine protests who tell her that she would be treated horribly by Hamas.
'So I've been at protests where I'm then told "don't you know what Hamas would do to you, if you were in Palestine",' she said.
'We have to start naming this as homophobic. You cannot rehearse violence to queer people. It's violent.
The event, entitled 'Palestine is a Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle', took place on March 20 and was co-hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago's Nadine Naber.
'If you were to say you were experiencing sexism in the SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] they would say "there goes those Palestinian's again, silencing women in their communities",' Naber told attendees.
'So no one is going to say it. And if you do say it [others] will say you're a "traitor and collaborating with Zionism".'
Naber also argued that rape had been well-documented in the founding of Israel.
Reading from text she said, 'indeed the practices of rape and sexual assault that have been well-documented during the founding of Israel and continued today are not an exception or a secondary impact of colonial violence.
'[They] are part of the settler, colonial white supremacist logics and practices of Israel that conflate colonized women with the land and nature and assume that therefore to dominate the land necessitates dominating Palestinian women's bodies and their reproductive capacities from 1948 until today,' she explained.
Speaking more on why the event focuses on queer people within the Palestinian movement, Naber said: 'We're going to need our organizing to center queer and trans people not only because they are especially vulnerable to colonial violence and the racism and the doxxing, but they also embody exceptionally nuanced wisdom about Zionism because they are living it in all its complexity.'
Queers for Palestine' events and marches, which have proliferated across the US since the start of the war, have been criticized as a misguided show of support for a regime that does not support gay rights.
The Islamic Middle Eastern state follows sharia law, and as noted by Amnesty International, it is not safe for the queer community.
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Why Is Marxism—But Not Madison—Being Taught at Montpelier?
James Madison is the Father of our Constitution, and the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at Madison’s Montpelier provides educational programming for teachers, law enforcement officers, and others.
That seems appropriate. After all, not only did Madison—our country’s fourth president—help draft the Constitution, but he also served as a key delegate at the Constitutional Convention, authored the Bill of Rights, and urged ratification of the Constitution through his practical and philosophical arguments in The Federalist Papers.
But these accomplishments are, at best, downplayed at his historic home. Montpelier has no exhibits dedicated to Madison and his contributions.
Worse still, Montpelier is equipping educators to teach Marxist-based theories to elementary, middle, and high school students. And the programs doing this are, in part, funded by the state of Virginia.
Issues surrounding policing and prosecution could be fair game for seminars at Montpelier. The Fourth Amendment protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” The Fifth Amendment, among other protections, guarantees that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The Sixth Amendment guarantees the “right to a speedy and public trial” by an “impartial jury” and the ability to confront those testifying against you. And the Eighth Amendment protects against excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments.
Madison drafted all of those.
Yet next week’s “Educator Seminar: Policing and Public Safety” will instead focus on the “history of policing, civil rights, and Constitutional change in African American contexts for the purpose of providing educators with key strategies and historical tools to teach topics in black history about law enforcement, social justice, and the Constitution.”
It will “help teachers be more inspired to teach hard histories that invite students in their classrooms to imagine equitable possibilities for promoting public safety for all.” And it will explore “why community approaches to public safety surfaced to counteract police violence and discrimination within the criminal legal system leading up to today’s age of mass incarceration.”
There’s a lot to unpack in those statements, but underlying all of them is the belief that our criminal justice system is systemically racist and that, as a result, we lock up too many people—particularly too many young black men.
But that’s not true. Our criminal justice system isn’t systemically racist, and mass incarceration is a myth.
If someone commits the crime, they should do the time. And it’s a sad fact that a disproportionate number of young black men commit violent crimes in the United States and often victimize other young black men in the process.
But these aren’t the only terms that stand out. Of particular note in the description are the phrases “equitable” and “hard history.” Equity is about equality of outcomes, not opportunity. And “teaching hard history” is a mantra of the radical Southern Poverty Law Center, which often labels those it disagrees with as “hate groups.”
In fact, the SPLC’s “teaching hard history” curriculum and initiatives are not simply about discussing slavery’s role in American history. Like “The 1619 Project” and other critical race theory programs, they place slavery as the central animating force in America’s Founding. The preface of the curriculum states that “Some say slavery was our country’s original sin, but it is much more than that. Slavery is our country’s origin.”
This curriculum is also about forming students into activists. For example, it notes that those in K-2 should “examine how power is gained” and be able to “contrast equity and equality, identifying current problems where there is a need to fight for equity.”
This overlap is no coincidence. Hasan Kwame Jeffries, the host of the SPLC’s “Teaching Hard History” podcast as well as an author of the curriculum standards quoted above, also serves as the chairman of the board at Montpelier, which is the historic home’s governing body. (Currently, no Madison scholars are on the board.)
Jeffries—the brother of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.—helped develop and appears in a video in Montpelier’s basement featuring encounters with police officers and protesters carrying signs that read “Stop police brutality,” “I can’t breathe,” and “Black Lives Matter.”
Per the Montpelier website, “[f]rom mass incarceration, to the achievement gap, to housing discrimination, and the vicious cycle of poverty, violence, and lack of opportunity throughout America’s inner cities, the legacies of 200 years of African American bondage are still with us.”
It’s sad that Montpelier has chosen to focus on a Marxist-motivated movement fueled by critical race theory, instead of on the many astounding achievements of the home’s former owner and the Father of our Constitution, James Madison.
It’s a disservice to the public, teachers, and students
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/28/why-is-marxism-not-madison-being-taught-montpelier/
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Colorado Liberals Chip Away at School Choice
Liberal Democrats introduced a bill to tighten the state’s grip on charter schools in Colorado.
House Bill 1363 would tighten regulations on Colorado’s 260 charter schools bringing rules in line with public schools, The Colorado Sun reports.
The bill would allow school districts to limit the number of charter schools allowed to operate in the state. Public school districts would have the authority to limit their existence. Any district that is losing students would have the right to eliminate the competition presented by charter schools.
School boards would also have the power to refuse to renew an existing charter school. Even if a school has been operating for years, they can be denied renewal at the discretion of the school board. Appeal options are limited.
HB 1363 would also require charter schools to pay rent to use public school facilities. Under current Colorado law, charter schools are allowed to use facilities owned by the public school district and fees cannot exceed $12 per year. The proposed bill would eliminate the $12 cap.
Advocates for the bill say it will provide more transparency. Charter schools will be required to post any laws and policies they are exempt from in an accessible and understandable manner.
Opponents to the bill say that they will lose the autonomy and independence that have made charter schools successful.
Under HB 1363 charter schools would lose freedom to make decisions such as hiring and firing of teachers, The Federalist reports. It would eliminate waivers that currently allow charter schools to choose curricula and study materials.
Under the new law, all decisions will be made by Colorado State Board of Education, which is dominated by Democrats.
“The sponsors’ intent is clear: to end Colorado’s longstanding, highly successful charter school movement,” write Rob Moulton and Tim Hannan for The Federalist. “Effectively every line in the 55-page bill represents a full frontal assault on charters and the hundreds of thousands of families they serve across Colorado.”
Colorado is already facing declining enrollment in seven out of ten of the largest school districts. If this bill passes, those districts immediately have the authority to deny a request to open a new charter school or reject an existing school charter renewal.
“Declining enrollment suggests more choice and innovation, not less, would be a strategy worth pursuing,” Moulton and Hannan write. “The sponsors clearly disagree, preferring to add an extra padlock to the chains holding families in their traditional public schools.”
Charter schools are very popular in the state of Colorado, Fox 13 reports. They continue to grow, but this bill would make expansion of charters far more difficult.
The office of the Governor, Jared Polis (D), provided a statement expressing his opposition to the proposed bill.
“Colorado is a national leader in education access, innovation, and choice,” the statement reads. “Public charter schools are a popular option in Colorado, serving around 15 percent of our school-aged children. This bill would weaken, rather than strengthen, school choice in Colorado and the Governor strongly opposes it.”
The bill’s sponsors say they want to require charter schools to be transparent with the state and the public, KOAA reports. They would like to track enrollment, teacher retention, and finances for the schools.
They would have the right to require that charter schools submit their expenses and report revenue. Any school that does not submit the required reporting could have their charter revoked.
The Colorado League of Charter Schools says that the freedom from reporting requirements and the ability to choose learning materials is key to the success of Colorado’s charter schools.
“Our current public education system is ill-equipped to consistently provide high-quality options to all learners because of its top-down, overly static, overly bureaucratic approach,” the organization’s website states. “What we need instead is a bottom-up approach that empowers educators, families and communities and allows for new ideas in the public education space.”
“Autonomy and accountability lie at the heart of what makes charter schools successful. Without school-level control over such key factors as staffing, budget, and educational program, charter schools would not have the tools necessary to innovate and be responsive to their students and families in the way their communities need.”
Democrats control both houses in the legislature and the Governor is a Democrat but, on this bill, there is not uniform support from Democrats. It is expected to be reviewed in committee in April.
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/04/colorado-liberals-chip-away-at-school-choice/
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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1 April, 2024
Higher Ed’s DEI Plagiarism Dilemma
Academic culture is facing a crisis of its own making.
The now myriad plagiarism and other scandals rocking the ivory tower increasingly are being waved away by left-wing media. But this growing phenomenon represents an existential crisis for institutions that have long coasted on flimsy claims to their exalted position in our society.
Following the January resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay, who a month earlier had had a disastrous performance before a House committee hearing on antisemitism, several other professors and diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators have been hit with serious accusations of plagiarism.
The latest is influential Harvard sociology assistant professor Christina J. Cross, whose writing on families and race have appeared in The New York Times. She’s been accused of lifting huge sections of uncited work and claiming it as her own—among other, smaller infractions.
The Left’s message on these scandals—copied and pasted, it seems—is that plagiarism has been “weaponized” by the Right.
“As the culture wars lurch on, the Right has found a perfect weapon with which to hit the university—taken straight from the academy’s arsenal itself: claims of plagiarism,” wrote the editorial board of The Harvard Crimson in February.
Yes, how dare those mean conservatives use basic academic standards against academics for the purpose of the “culture war,” which our unbiased and totally meritocratic universities surely never engage in.
Defenders of the academy have also gone with the old standby of crying “racism.”
Tiresome, but all very predictable.
I will have to concede one thing, though: In a certain sense, plagiarism has been “weaponized,” by the Right, which holds no power in academia outside of a handful of small, isolated bastions. This method of criticism has only become possible because higher education has made itself so open to attack.
To use a historical comparison, the peoples conquered by Islam in the days after the rise of Muhammad were typically preyed upon and powerless. What those living under dhimmitude had was the Quran. Their only protection came from pointing out the violations of faith by their new rulers. That forced a choice on their Muslim overlords: Weaken their rule or weaken their faith, which was ultimately tied to their power and status.
That’s the dilemma facing academia.
While universities don’t punish leftist students for shutting down politically incorrect speakers and other kinds of illiberal conduct, they still—for now, at least—make an attempt to punish those who have violated their most basic standards.
Here’s a question, though: Would plagiarism and other kinds of scandals have been such a problem if our elite institutions weren’t filled with so many superfluous, underwhelming hacks?
That may sound mean, but it’s impossible not to notice that the quality of our most elite schools—and of the people who staff them—is quickly dropping.
Stories about left-wing insanity on college campuses became run-of-the-mill generations ago. But now, something new is happening.
Now, many Americans, even ones who placed a huge amount of faith in higher education despite its flaws, are coming to see that they aren’t even providing the most fundamental service they—at least in theory—promise to provide; namely, an elite education delivered by scholars in pursuit of the truth.
With the costly, borg-like takeover of DEI initiatives that have bled into all disciplines, it’s become obvious to all who are not wholly blinded to reality that higher education now places more emphasis on ideology and identity politics than teaching and scholarship.
In the end, those who hired and appointed the DEI administrators and “anti-racism” swamis like Ibram X. Kendi didn’t expect them to produce high-quality research. No, they are there to demonstrate institutional commitment to leftist beliefs. Nothing else has mattered, and now the original product that allowed them to amass such power is slipping away.
Consider this: Harvard University’s history department finally brought back an introductory history course after going nearly 20 years without one. The previous yearlong survey course was dropped in 2006 for being too “Eurocentric,” according to The Harvard Crimson.
A description of the class makes it sound more like an NPR podcast than a high-minded instruction at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. It’s apparently been designed to teach “empathy,” and according to one of the professors, “on Wednesdays, they will ‘riff’ on recent headlines for a portion of the lecture.”
I only wonder what famed Harvard alum John Quincy Adams would think about this kind of coursework. In his day, its students used to be required to know Latin and have a deep understanding of the classics before they attended the school.
Now, they don’t even require courses in Latin or Greek to complete a degree in the classics.
The dirty open secret is that higher ed has abandoned its role of providing trustworthy research and transmission of Western ideas to new generations. It is increasingly an environment more committed to enforcing extremely narrow left-wing ideology and ensuring that all other governmental, political, and civic institutions throughout the West maintain the same level of ideological gatekeeping.
Legacy admissions may be on the decline, but they are being replaced by new, smugger so-called meritocratic pseudo-elites who lecture America about all its problematic history while making excuses for genuine evil in the here and now.
As the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel starkly revealed, these institutions hardly have claims to moral authority. Hating the West and excusing savagery are just part of the overall package.
While the power that elite academic institutions have in Western societies is immense—perhaps greater than it has ever been—they nevertheless have a collective weakness.
These schools are ultimately dependent on the support, both social and material, of the rest of society. They’ve operated for decades with nearly a blank check of private and public funding. And higher education has run up a massive bill on their graduates, too, that they expect taxpayers to pay.
Let me ask: Would you rather pay for your groceries with money to spare or ensure that a Starbucks employee with pronouns on his or her name tag can get his psychology degree paid for? Exactly.
The goodwill from times past is long gone. In its place is well-earned doubt and hostility.
Higher education is now left with a choice: Abandon the path of DEI and ruthless ideological enforcement in a return to genuine merit or double down on them with the fading support from the rest of society.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/28/higher-eds-dilemma-punish-plagiarism-stick-dei/
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Mississippi Schools Push Radical Ideology, Often in Secret. A Parental Bill of Rights Would Remedy That
Some school officials in Mississippi seem determined to keep parents out of their child’s education. But state lawmakers have a chance to join about two dozen other states that have prevented that from happening.
Mississippi legislators are considering a proposal that would create a parental bill of rights, reinforcing parents’ authority even when a child is on school grounds.
The proposal is simple, but powerful: Public employees, such as teachers and school administrators, cannot substantially burden a parent’s right to direct a child’s upbringing and health care.
What does this look like in practice?
When children start the school year, moms and dads typically have to sign forms stating a child’s allergies, directing the school to administer painkillers if a child is injured at recess, and consenting to basic medical treatment if a child is in need.
In today’s upside-down culture, however, school officials are allowing minor-age children to “change” their name and whether they want to be addressed as a boy or girl, regardless of his or her sex, while at school.
In some states, teachers do not have to tell parents that a child is making these choices during the school day.
What results is “social affirmation,” in which adults tell a child that yes, the child was born in the wrong body and should act as if they are someone they are not. That can foster a child’s desire to seek medical interventions, such as puberty blockers and hormone treatments and perhaps even surgeries that will damage their reproductive organs.
An exaggeration? Whistleblowers have exposed centers such as the St. Louis Children’s Hospital for prescribing children as young as 11 to take puberty-blocking drugs.
The results were horrific in some cases: Young women would return to the hospital bleeding through their clothes because testosterone treatments thin the vaginal wall, and the wall can then tear open. Some males experienced liver toxicity after taking drugs to make them appear more feminine.
Researchers continue to raise alarms as they find an overlap between mental illness or special needs such as autism and claims of sexual confusion among youth.
In the U.K., England’s National Health Service has recommended that doctors not encourage young people to assume a different “gender” because autism and anxiety and depression were often found in children expressing confusion over their sex. And research finds that this confusion resolves on its own as children progress into adulthood in 80% to 95% of cases, which means watchful waiting is far healthier for children than social affirmation.
Yet some Mississippi educators are still pushing the dangerous “gender” agenda.
Parents Defending Education, an advocacy organization, uncovered that a school in Jackson received a grant to promote gender ideology. Oxford School District officials surveyed students and asked children if they identified as queer or “trans.” In Tupelo, teachers were trained to allow students to change their name and pronouns. Educators were instructed to call the child by his or her given name and pronouns when talking to parents unless the child gave a teacher permission to tell parents that the child had assumed a different gender—a secretive technique that hides information from families.
When a child is confused about their sex, social affirmation can have lasting consequences. Some medical treatments are irreversible and can lead to sterility and other complications.
For at least these reasons, school personnel should not be allowed to keep parents in the dark about what is happening to their young children in the classroom.
State legislators can help. For more than a decade, state lawmakers around the country have been adopting parental bills of rights similar to the proposal before Mississippi lawmakers. Legislators should state plainly that parents are a child’s primary caregivers and that public officials cannot burden, or obstruct, a parent’s role.
Teachers have a responsibility to report abuse or neglect, but that does not mean educators should accept a child’s self-diagnosis that he or she needs drugs to alter their body chemistry.
The reports from Jackson, Tupelo, and elsewhere demonstrate why Americans are increasingly skeptical about K-12 education.
Mississippi officials should increase academic transparency and strengthen parental rights, restoring a civic value in short supply today between local communities and their schools—specifically, public trust.
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Top Journalism School Mandating Diversity Course to Earn Degree
Mandatory wokeness has crept into one of the top journalism schools in the United States.
The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is requiring students to complete the course Diversity and Civility at Cronkite (DCC) in order to earn their bachelor’s degree in journalism.
The course, which also applies to students studying sports journalism and digital media, redefines such traditional phrases as “America is a melting pot” as race-based microaggressions and teaches future journalists to avoid assuming “unearned benefits” that come with “heterosexual privileges.”
Examples of outdated heterosexual privileges given in the curriculum include excluding biological males who identified as female from traditional sex-segregated places like women’s locker rooms and women’s prisons.
“To object to a man using a women’s bathroom is an example of discrimination against transgender individuals,” reads a chapter in the course entitled “Sexuality and Gender Identity.”
Also part of the seven-unit course is required reading material entitled “A Guide to Gender Identity Terms.”
“You should offer your own pronouns first and then ask for the other person’s pronouns,” the reading material states. “While it can be awkward at first, it can quickly become routine.”
The course also teaches students to view statements like “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” as a microaggression that translates into “People of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race,” and “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough,” as implying that “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder.”
In response to inquiries from The Epoch Times, the state-run college described the mandatory course as “an entry-level course intended to bring thoughtful, open-minded discourse to issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, income, geography and other aspects of personal identities.”
“The goal of the course is to help students appreciate people’s differences and to channel disagreements toward civil discussion,” the college said in a statement. “With that view, students should be better able to approach reporting and communications projects with a multicultural perspective and inspire mutual respect among students from various backgrounds and beliefs while at the university, and beyond.”
Opt-Out Possible
A spokesperson for the Walter Cronkite School, which is part of Arizona State University (ASU) also told The Epoch Times that students may opt out of specific discussions by sending their professor a private email requesting to do so.
Timothy Minella, Senior Constitutionalism Fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy told The Epoch Times that the required journalism course is especially disturbing because it is being mandated by a public, taxpayer funded college.
“Students who decide to major in these subjects are not necessarily signing up to be progressive activists,” he said. “A public university that should be serving the entire public, not just the liberal slice of it, needs to return to its core mission of education, not indoctrination.”
Mr. Minella, who recently wrote a critical analysis of the course after obtaining student assignments and teacher syllabuses through a public records request, said he was especially shocked by an assignment for students contemplating a career in public relations.
The assignment, as shown by records obtained by Mr. Minella, was based on an NPR interview with Demi Lovato, a pop star who has changed her gender identity multiple times.
It asks students: “Imagine you’re working at a PR firm and you have a client whose first album is about to drop. Your client’s gender identity is nonbinary and they use they/them pronouns. They have a massive press tour planned. How do you prepare journalists to talk with your client?”
Mr. Minella said the designers of the course “seemingly attempted to include every aspect of leftist identity politics” they could think up.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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