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31 August, 2023

The Economic Benefits of School Choice

It’s back to school this week for Florida students and many others across the country.

The first days and weeks of a new school year are always filled with anticipation, adjustments, transitions, and growth for parents and students. Yet, this school year’s “firsts” for an expanding pool of families also includes the first time that their children will have the resources and freedom to enroll in the school of their choice.

The short- and long-term consequences of these new opportunities for school choice aren’t just experienced within the four walls of a home or school building, or by the families now empowered to pursue them. The impact of education choice stretches across communities and economies, helping to unleash prosperity and growth that benefits everyone.

Since 2021, eight states have passed universal or near-universal school choice programs, affecting over 13 million students nationwide—a growth of over 4 million in just two years.

Florida’s universal choice program was passed by the Florida Legislature on March 23 and took effect July 1, making this back-to-school week the first experience for many parents newly eligible to draw down approximately $8,000 per year to spend toward their children’s educations.

To provide families an opportunity to pay for education costs ranging from tuition to school supplies, the legislation creates education savings accounts that may be used toward private school tuition, tutoring, or anything else under the approved legislative umbrella.

With no restriction on families that may participate, certain areas become more populated than others, shepherding an influx of economic vitality. With school choice comes increased competition, encouraging businesses—especially small business entrepreneurs and real estate investors—to transform their development and growth strategies to cater to emerging markets, as families relocate to take advantage of expanded educational options.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Homes.com introduced “School Scores” to its website, which allows potential buyers to access a school-ranking system based on letter grades ranging from A+ to D, calculated by state testing performance data available from public schools.

Indeed, businesses likewise consider tax rates, inflation, and supply and demand in deciding where to set up shop. They also consider access to high-performing schools for their employees, who place a high value on working close to quality schools for their children to attend.

Florida’s universal choice program has certainly set the national standard for how to respect families’ individual decisions about the schooling best for their children. But it’s also a model for other states looking to experience the economic boom that comes with incentivizing more people to “follow the money.”

Why does the economy benefit from school choice? Bartley Danielsen, associate professor of finance and real estate at North Carolina State University, emphasizes that school choice fosters communitywide economic prosperity.

This allows families to remain in their dwellings, rather than feeling led to switch neighborhoods based on school districts. In turn, real estate becomes equally coveted across regions where school choice is implemented.

Virginia is an apt case study. As a state that offers little parent choice in education outside the public system, the Old Dominion has experienced rapid outward migration since the onset of COVID-19, which saw some schools there getting national attention for infamous mask mandates and increasingly progressive curriculum.

From fall 2019 to fall 2021, public schools in Virginia saw a collective loss of over 46,000 students. On the list of states with greatest population decline, Virginia is now tenth—joining the likes of California, New York, and much of the Northeast, all of which offer little to no educational options outside their public systems.

Meanwhile, Virginia’s neighbors of West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina are all net positive for migration, as are the other proximal Southern states of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida—with Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida being significantly so.

A feather in the cap of these rapidly growing states is the existence of steadily expanding school choice programs.

Beyond benefiting states’ economic livelihood, taxpayers across the states are also seeing savings as a result of these expanding programs. Out of 52 analyses on the fiscal impact of private school choice programs, 47 were found to generate overall savings for taxpayers. Another study in 2018 found that school choice programs generated $12.4 to $28.3 billion in tax savings.

Expanding education choice options as widely as possible isn’t just good for the students who enroll in the programs. These programs encourage economic growth and competition between states looking to attract and retain small businesses, job growth, stable families, and thriving communities.

This year is just the beginning of realizing the potential—not just in our kids, but in our policy solutions.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/25/the-economic-benefits-of-school-choice/ ?

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Commie Chic Invades American Grade Schools

Every day, my son, who is in seventh grade, sees a quotation from Angela Davis painted on his school’s wall: “Radical simply means grasping things at the root.” (The line actually comes from Karl Marx.) Four years ago, during Black History Month, a poster of Davis beamed down from the wall of his public elementary school in Brooklyn.

I eagerly praise my son’s charter school to other parents. It’s full of dedicated teachers who urge their students to debate politics and history with an open mind. So I wrote to the administration, proposing that they should balance the school’s homage to Davis with a quotation from Andrei Sakharov or Natan Sharansky, who fought to free the millions of Soviet bloc citizens that Davis wanted to keep locked up. After all, I reasoned, some of the school’s families are themselves refugees from communist tyrannies. My suggestion was met with silence.

Davis, who is now euphemistically celebrated as an “activist,” was in fact a loyal apparatchik who served working-class betrayers, some of whom were murderous bureaucrats, and others outright maniacs who defy any normative political description. Among the objects of her adoration were dullards like the East German leader Erich Honecker and the stupefied (and stupefying) Soviet Communist Party Chairman Leonid Brezhnev, as well as the Reverend Jim Jones. Before the grotesque mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, Davis broadcast a worshipful speech about Jones to the imprisoned Black women who were murdered by his cult.

There’s hardly a more famous American communist than Davis, who twice ran for vice president on the CP ticket and stayed true to the party until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. For decades, she tirelessly defended the brutalities of the elderly white men who ran the Eastern bloc. Now entering old age herself, Davis has escaped her rightful place doing penance at a memorial to victims of Stalinist tyranny to become a beacon for American millennials who make Soviet-style Black History Month posters. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has named Davis her “idol.” Omar, like rest of her Squad, is cut from Davis’ pattern: Spurning the legions of African American women who stood up for freedom, she instead celebrates a dedicated lifelong bootlicker of communist-bloc tyrants. What redeems Davis, in the eyes of Omar and her fellow progressives, is apparently the fact that she was put on trial for supplying guns to the Black Panthers who murdered hostages during a 1970 shootout.

My son’s school is not the only one with an enthusiasm for Davis. In 2021, City Journal reported on an elementary school in Philadelphia that led fifth graders in a simulated Black Power rally in which they shouted “Free Angela!,” a reference to Davis’ incarceration on murder and conspiracy charges, and adorned the walls of the school with murals of Davis and Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton. Last year, a high school in Rockland County, New York, invited Davis to speak on campus (the speech was canceled due to parental outrage). And the website of the National Women’s History Museum offers a lesson plan—Common Core compliant!—on Davis’ thought, which promises to help students “better make sense of the struggles of women and historically marginalized communities.”

Praise for communists like Davis is a sign of the times. After all, the argument goes, they fought for the oppressed and against the evils of capitalism. A colleague who teaches Russian history tells me that in each class a handful of his students announce that they are communists. The students come equipped with handy rationalizations to explain away monstrous Soviet crimes. They argue, for instance, that Stalin was needed to defeat Hitler; if there had been no Stalin, many more Jews would have died in the Holocaust, so the numbers of Stalin’s dead are outweighed by the people Hitler would have killed.

It’s not just the left that makes excuses for the Soviet regime’s crimes. President Trump claimed that Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979 “because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there.” Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB man, models himself after the Soviet rulers in his paranoid wish to silence dissent, his reliance on political assassination, and his use of military force to establish regional dominance, so it’s no surprise that he sees the communist era as a pinnacle of Russian glory. The official Chinese line on Mao is that he was a great leader who made some errors. No Chinese citizen will dare to discuss Mao’s more striking errors, like the 20 million-plus killed by famine during the Great Leap Forward.

The state of Virginia also officially discourages teaching about the criminal behavior of communist regimes. In February the Virginia Senate’s Democrats killed a Republican-sponsored bill that would have required public schools to teach students about the victims of communism. Public school teachers in Virginia are already required to cover slavery and the Holocaust. So why not communism? Because, a representative of the Virginia teachers union explained, “There is a strong association between communism and Asians,” and so studying communism could lead to anti-Asian hate.

Idiots will attack anyone for any reason—a fact to live with. But the Virginia teachers union explanation is plainly bunk. It seems exceedingly unlikely that high school students, after learning about the many millions of Chinese peasants sacrificed at Mao’s whim, would pin the blame for the dictator’s atrocities on the Chinese American kid sitting next to them in class—perhaps a descendent of one of Mao’s victims.

The reality of course is that the Virginia teachers union is loath to desecrate the memories of their own communist poster boy and poster girl heroes. The real reason for failing to include communism in a history curriculum, one suspects, is that it reflects so poorly on the American left, which has so often made common cause with tyrants so long as they were anti-American, while blaming the right for all forms of “oppression.” If “right-wingers” are all racists and fascists, then it follows that communists were the good guys—even when they were committing mass murder.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/communist-chic-american-grade-schools-angela-davis

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Colorado School Board Hands Victory to Child Sporting a Gadsden Flag on Backpack

A Colorado Springs school board walked back a decision from a school administrator that a student could not display a Gadsden flag on his backpack.

The update came after video of the administrator telling the boy’s mother that her son could not return to class with the Gadsden flag patch on the bag went viral. Even Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, weighed in.

"The reason we do not want the flag displayed is due to its origins with slavery and the slave trade," Beth Danjuma, assistant principal of the junior high building at The Vanguard School, is recorded saying.

The boy’s mother informs her that the flag was a symbol used during the Revolutionary War and did not promote slavery, but to no avail.

“I am here to enforce the policy that was provided, by the district, and definitely, you have every right to not agree to it,” Danjuma responds.

With the incident thrust into the national spotlight, however, the school’s board of directors called an emergency meeting and reversed course.

“From Vanguard’s founding we have proudly supported our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the ordered liberty that all Americans have enjoyed for almost 250 years. The Vanguard School recognizes the historical significance of the Gadsden flag and its place in history. This incident is an occasion for us to reaffirm our deep commitment to a classical education in support of these American principles,” the board told Vanguard families in an email.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/08/30/school-board-votes-gadsden-flag-allowed-for-boy-n2627730?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&recip=6139244

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30 August, 2023

California AG Sues School District to Stop Policy That Informs Parents of Student Gender Transitions

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Monday against the Chino Valley Unified School District for approving a policy that requires school officials to inform parents if their child wants to change their gender.

The district’s board of education approved the policy in July after many parents weighed in, some in favor and some against, but the district was slapped with a subpoena after Bonta opened a civil rights investigation in August, according to a press release.

Bonta took the investigation a step further by filing a lawsuit, arguing that his office’s “message” was “loud and clear,” according to a statement in a press release.

“Every student has the right to learn and thrive in a school environment that promotes safety, privacy, and inclusivity—regardless of their gender identity,” Bonta said. “We’re in court challenging Chino Valley Unified’s forced outing policy for wrongfully and unconstitutionally discriminating against and violating the privacy rights of LGBTQ+ students. The forced outing policy wrongfully endangers the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of non-conforming students who lack an accepting environment in the classroom and at home.”

In addition to informing parents about name and pronoun changes, the policy requires that the school informs them if their child is “accessing sex-segregated school programs and activities” or using bathrooms that don’t match their biological sex, according to the rule. The lawsuit, however, claims that the district “singled out” transgender and “gender nonconforming” students through the policy’s “discriminatory treatment.”

A district spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation that they were complying with the subpoena request but had not had the “opportunity to examine the lawsuit.”

“At this time, the District is working with its legal counsel to review the lawsuit and its contents,” the spokesperson said. “Prior to the filing, District personnel had been working with complete transparency in providing Attorney General Bonta’s office with requested documents and records. Superintendent [Norm] Enfield spoke with the [Department of Justice’s] legal counsel weekly to confirm the District was providing requested files, which had changed several times from the original subpoena.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/28/california-ag-sues-school-district-to-stop-policy-that-informs-parents-of-student-gender-transitions

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The Ne Plus Ultra of Collegiate Wokeness

Observers of the American collegiate scene are likely well aware of the academic jihad against University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax and the disgraceful shouting down of federal judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford, led by a woke DEI apparatchik. But in terms of outrageous violations of American norms of academic conduct, due process, and civility, nothing compares with the treatment of Professor Scott Gerber of Ohio Northern University (ONU).

Unlike elite coastal schools like Penn or Stanford, ONU is a Midwestern private school of so-so reputation, not on lists of the 10 best colleges in Ohio, much less the nation. The university is located in the sleepy town of Ada, an hour’s drive from any metropolis, whose 2021 estimated population of 5,256 was lower than in 1970. Its greatest claim to fame is possibly not ONU but the fact that it is the home of the manufacturer of NFL footballs.

Professor Gerber teaches in the ONU law school. U.S. News ranks ONU in the bottom one-third of Ohio’s law schools and as 146th best in the nation (Stanford is #1, Penn #4). The program is a back-up choice for students unable to get into Ohio State, Case Western Reserve, or the University of Cincinnati. It has almost nothing to brag about.

But there is one important legal scholar on the ONU law faculty—Gerber—and he is also a fine teacher. His book First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas is a highly praised assessment of an important Supreme Court justice. He has authored eight other books and has given presentations at such prestigious institutions as Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia.

I talked to three law-school-professor friends of mine (all at schools ranked higher than ONU): All said that Professor Gerber is light-years ahead of anyone else at ONU Law in terms of scholarly reputation. He is also a rather popular professor whose classes are usually filled. As one student said, “He makes class fun by creating a comforting atmosphere that I haven’t felt in most classes.” Gerber is conservative, which led another student to note, “It’s refreshing to not have to listen to left views the whole time like almost every other class.”

Nevertheless, ONU is desperately trying to fire Gerber, although it hasn’t said why with any degree of clarity.

Gerber brought this matter to national attention in a May 9 op-ed in the The Wall Street Journal, “DEI Brings Kafka to My Law School.” As Gerber recounts, “Around 1 p.m on Friday, April 14, Ohio Northern University campus security officers entered my classroom with my students present and escorted me to the dean’s office. Armed town police followed me down the hall. My students appeared shocked and frightened. I know I was.”

Gerber was not given any concrete reasons after being told that he was being banned from campus, other than his lack of “collegiality.” He was directed to sign a separation agreement.

Gerber’s ordeal led me to comment, also in the The Wall Street Journal, that “if we fired every instructor for lack of perceived ‘collegiality,’ we would have a national crisis from academic villages depopulated of their faculty.” Furthermore, by disrupting classes during an academic term, ONU appears to have shown callous disregard for its own students.

The most likely real reason ONU wants Gerber gone is that he is not “woke.” He has publicly said the university’s call for diversity does not mention intellectual or viewpoint diversity, and indeed Gerber has been told viewpoint diversity is not an objective at ONU.

Gerber believes students should hear alternative perspectives on issues of the day and then reach some conclusion—that ONU should be a marketplace of ideas rather than a monopolistic mouthpiece for a single perspective on issues, be they diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) obsessions or other, more substantive matters. It’s also worth noting that Gerber is on the Ohio advisory council of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

ONU law school’s dean told Gerber to get lost, without any hearing, any due process, any opportunity to appear before an impartial panel, etc. That’s certainly in violation of ONU’s established procedures for evaluating tenured faculty alleged to have engaged in misconduct, and probably also the law. In legal wrangling since then, the Hardin County Common Pleas Court has had to constrain ONU at least temporarily from carrying out its plans.

The story is long and sordid, but the latest major act came when a student (!) informed Gerber that his constitutional law course for this fall would not be taught by him. The administration didn’t even have the decency to tell Gerber directly that he’s been stripped of courses he’s taught for years.

Dozens of noted legal scholars, such as Randall Kennedy, professor of law at Harvard, have protested this whole affair for its contempt for due process and the free expression of ideas, the heart of what universities are all about. Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, has been eloquent in his multiple cris de coeur on Gerber’s behalf.

Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, has likewise very articulately protested this outrage, as has the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has similarly been appalled and has appealed multiple times to ONU president Melissa Baumann.

The tale is not over. There are apparently at least intermittent legal conversations going on between attorneys for Gerber and ONU, and the local court is still involved in the matter.

Universities increasingly suppress professors who dare to question woke ideology. But lots of questions nag me: Where is the ONU Board of Trustees? Why are they, the governing body, on the sidelines of an issue of this importance? Don’t they (and the university’s president) care that this crusade against a fine professor will cost both money and reputation? Why would the police from the town get involved (on the wrong side) in a private matter not involving a crime?

I used to think the biggest problem in American higher education was its grotesque inefficiency and the accompanying high costs to both students and taxpayers. Now I realize that something critical is more important: Universities increasingly suppress professors, students, and campus guests who dare question the woke ideology that has become so dominant on most American campuses.

In the wake of falling enrollments and declining public support, you would think that colleges would shape up. However, the “creative destruction” that motivates American capitalist enterprises to be efficient and innovative, constantly reinventing themselves, is largely absent on college campuses, as they are protected financially by vast government subsidies. As enrollments decline and public support weakens, hopefully the sad era of Woke Supremacy on campus is beginning to wind down. I hope it will save Scott Gerber.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14652&omhide=true&trk=rm

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Australia: Schools force Anglican backdown on statement opposing same-sex marriage

Principals at Sydney’s Anglican schools will no longer be forced to sign a document affirming they believe marriage should only be between a man and a woman under a new proposal by the church that is set to abolish the controversial requirement.

In a draft policy statement, the Anglican Diocese of Sydney says incoming school heads must instead show they are of Christian faith and character, be actively involved in a Bible-based church and sign “a personal commitment to organisational faithfulness”.

The plan to scrap the clause opposing gay marriage – which was inserted into a general statement of faith in 2019 – comes after the matter sparked an outpouring of anger and frustration among Anglican school leaders and provoked intense backlash from parents.

The review of the rule forms part of a major governance overhaul of all Sydney Anglican diocese-run organisations, including more than 30 schools across the state.

In a report to be presented at its Synod next month, the diocese says the marriage clause has become a lightning rod for concerns about how the church imposes rules on schools.

“Feedback has focused on the relational difficulties it has created in school contexts ... with communities and alumni who are deeply influenced by a modern culture hostile to traditional Christian beliefs and practices,” the report says.

“This may create a barrier for the recruitment of governors and leaders, who, while personally agreeing with the statement, may face sanctions from their employer or be prevented from taking up these voluntary roles.”

The conservative Sydney diocese oversees a number of high-fee Sydney schools, including Shore, King’s, Barker College, Abbotsleigh, Trinity Grammar and St Catherine’s. Their councils are made up of volunteers, and are dominated by representatives of the diocese.

The extra clause, which surprised principals and councils when it was added by the Sydney diocese in 2019, said: “faith produces obedience in accordance with God’s word, including sexual faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman, and abstinence in all other circumstances”. New school heads and board members were forced to sign the statement as a condition of their employment.

Last year, parents at Australia’s oldest private girls’ school, St Catherine’s, lobbied its council to scrap the rule after it was revealed that its next principal could only accept the job if they agreed to the terms. Former Abbotsleigh head Judith Poole was brought out of retirement to serve as interim principal at the $40,000-a-year school until the end of 2024.

A similar backlash followed at Illawarra Grammar, where frustrated parents took the matter to its school council to raise their concerns the edict fails to “align with the values of mainstream Australia”. Parents at both schools say the communities were not consulted on the statement.

This month, Illawarra Grammar appointed a new principal, Julie Greenhalgh, who had recently retired after 16 years as head of inner west private girls’ school Meriden. In a letter to parents, the school said Greenhalgh was originally a member of the selection panel for the role but stepped down from the panel so that she could apply for the head position.

The school had previously told parents that more than 220 “educational leaders” had expressed interest in the principal role.

A spokesman for the Sydney diocese said while it had received feedback on the clause, it had “already been discussing ways in which the policy could be improved”.

“The review of the governance policy is ongoing. A school’s executive leadership will need to be Christian in faith and character, following the teachings of Jesus and beliefs and tenets of the diocese, but the commitment they make will be a commitment to organisational faithfulness,” he said.

School board members appointed by the diocese, and new principals, must be of “Christian faith and character” and “attend regularly and be actively involved in a Bible-based Christian church”.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/nsw/schools-force-anglican-backdown-on-statement-opposing-same-sex-marriage-20230821-p5dy4t.html

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29 August, 2023

UK: What went wrong at the Open University?

The Open University is a cherished British institution. The sociologist Michael Young, who went on to become a Labour peer, conceived this ‘university of the air’ as a force which would democratise university education, bringing learning to the masses via lectures broadcast by the BBC at the crack of dawn.

One can only imagine how horrified Young would have been to learn that the beloved OU, which has given second chances to so many students, is currently facing three legal challenges from staff and students who say they have been discriminated against because they dared to express the ‘gender critical’ view that sex matters.

When EDI departments take control, it means that nonsense is imposed from on high, and it is the same nonsense for everyone

Professor Jo Phoenix’s case will go to the Employment Tribunal in October. As a criminologist, she has spoken critically on issues such as male offenders being housed in the female prison estate. Her claim centres on the harassment that she says she faced from OU colleagues as a result. (An OU spokesperson says, ‘The Open University is an environment where an academic can express a view freely, and others can choose to disagree. That is the nature of academic debate and holds true, even for the most polarising of topics.’) Tucker is a PhD student who also says that she has been bullied and harassed at the OU because of her gender critical views.

The most recent and perhaps the most shocking case is that of Almut Gadow, who was sacked from her role teaching criminal law at the OU after she challenged new requirements to teach gender identity theory as an uncontested truth. Gadow is being supported by the Free Speech Union, whose founder and director is Michael Young’s son Toby.

If Gadow is successful, her case will exemplify the way in which university curricula are being ‘liberated’ from academic control by EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) departments. Gadow says that the OU EDI department demanded that all curricula should be revised in line with the tenets of a set of theories which are often termed ‘Critical Social Justice’, which includes intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, decoloniality, Education for Sustainable Development, Queer Theory, and gender identity theory. Crucially, Gadow claims EDI wanted these ideas to be taught not as theories, but as uncontested facts. The law course that Gadow taught on, she says, was redesigned around a ‘core theme’ of ‘liberating the curriculum’.

According to Gadow’s statement, tutors were told to teach about gender identity, insisting that gender identity should trump sex in criminal contexts, for example leading to the demand that pronouns should be identity-based, implying that a female rape victim should be obliged to call her rapist ‘she’ if the perpetrator claimed to identify as a woman.

Gadow’s claim also touches on the potential intellectualisation of paedophilia. Gadow says in her Crowdfunder statement: ‘It had become apparent to me that some [curriculum liberators] treated ‘minor attraction’ (i.e. paedophilia) as part of the “diverse sexualities and gender identities” Open University law teaching now seeks to “centre”.’

This may seem astonishing, but Queer Theory is identified with the intellectualisation of paedophilia. A search of the OU library catalogue for ‘minor attraction’ returns 273 hits. The first of these is ‘Minor Attraction: A Queer Criminological Issue’, published in 2017. This paper uses a ‘queer criminology’ framework to question the stigmatisation of paedophiles:

‘There exists evidence that minor attraction is a sexual orientation, and the parallels between the treatment of MAPs [Minor-Attracted Persons] and LGBT populations are striking. Employing queer criminology’s use of deconstructionist techniques, we address the current state of criminology and criminal justice, which sees MAPs as a suspect population warranting formal control’.

In an ideologically monolithic climate, Gadow’s crime was essentially asking awkward questions in an online forum for law tutors after being told it was not the correct forum for that type of discussion. She says she was accused of insubordination and of violating the OU’s transgender inclusion policy. She was told that her persistent critical comments amounted to bullying and harassment, and was sacked for gross misconduct.

The OU contest Gadow’s account, saying: ‘Given these ongoing legal proceedings, we do not intend to comment further at this time, save to say that we strongly dispute the account which we understand Almut Gadow to have given to the media about the circumstances of, and reasons for, her dismissal; the university’s criminal law curriculum and modules; and its equality, diversity and inclusion policies.’

Academic freedom does not only apply to research, it is also central to what makes university teaching different from school teaching. Scholars have traditionally designed their own courses. Some of these courses may have been bad or even nonsensical, but their content was not mandated by management. When EDI departments take control, it means that nonsense is imposed from on high, and it is the same nonsense for everyone.

Gadow’s case shines a light on current restrictions on academic freedom regarding the curriculum and teaching. The academic freedom to teach, and even to ask questions about the curriculum, is increasingly being restricted by EDI encroachment into what would once have been seen as academic, scientific and scholarly prerogatives. Gadow’s case may be extreme, but it reflects a wider trend, reflected for example in QAA curriculum benchmarks adopting ‘Critical Social Justice’ theories across curricula, even in mathematics.

University managers often say that EDI must be ‘at the heart of everything we do’. This is reflected for example in recent proposals to centre EDI in the next Research Excellence Framework (REF). At first glance, ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ may seem as unobjectionable as motherhood and apple pie. But Almut Gadow’s case shows that we need to look again. The Open University once championed real equality, diversity and inclusion by encouraging people from all walks of life to pursue education. These values could not be more different from the narrowly ideological agenda that Almut Gadow has so bravely challenged.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/what-went-wrong-at-the-open-university/

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‘Not Indoctrination’: Judge Rejects Maryland Parents’ Plea to Restore Opt-Out for LGBTQ Books

A U.S. District Court judge denied Maryland parents’ request Thursday for an order allowing them to opt their children out of instruction using LGBTQ “Pride Storybooks.”

Atheist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other parents demanded the right to opt out of an LGBTQ book curriculum for pre-K through fifth grades in Montgomery County Public Schools, a Maryland school district just outside the nation’s capital.

Although Maryland law requires schools to allow parents to opt their children out of “all sexuality instruction” and to provide advance notice for such lessons, the new policy, adopted in March, excluded any opt-out right.

The parents sued, requesting a preliminary injunction to force the Montgomery County school system to restore the opt-out provision until the court fully resolves the case. Classes resume next Monday, so parents had hoped to secure the injunction before that date.

District Judge Deborah Boardman rejected the parents’ motion Thursday, ruling that they “have not shown that [the school district’s] use of the storybooks crosses the line from permissible influence to potentially impermissible indoctrination.”

Boardman, an appointee of President Joe Biden, ruled that Montgomery County Public Schools had not violated parents’ right to free exercise of religion under the First Amendment because, under the policy, “teachers will occasionally read one of the handful of books, lead discussions and ask questions about the characters, and respond to questions and comments in ways that encourage tolerance for different views and lifestyles.”

“That is not indoctrination,” the judge wrote.

Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, the religious liberty law firm that represents the Montgomery County parents, condemned the judge’s ruling.

“The court’s decision is an assault on children’s right to be guided by their parents on complex and sensitive issues regarding human sexuality,” Baxter told The Daily Signal in a written statement Thursday. “The school board should let kids be kids and let parents decide how and when to best educate their own children consistent with their religious beliefs.”

The school district’s refusal to grant an opt-out right brought together parents from various faith traditions, including atheism, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Ethiopian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism, Protestantism, and Roman Catholicism. Becket says it represents hundreds of parents through the local organization Kids First.

The parents sued the school board May 23, specifically demanding the right to opt their kids out of the LGBTQ storybooks.

“These books are in fact teaching explicit sexual orientation and gender identity issues as early as pre-k,” Will Haun, senior counsel at Becket Law, told The Daily Signal earlier this month. The associated reading instructions, he said, “require teachers to make dismissive statements about a student’s religious beliefs, to shame children who disagree, and to teach as facts things that some would not agree are facts.”

The Pride Storybooks include selections such as “My Rainbow,” which tells the story of a mother who creates a rainbow-colored wig for a child the book presents as transgender. “Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope” recounts the tale of a biological girl who identifies as a boy and who struggles to convince the world that she is male. “Prince & Knight” and “Love, Violet” tell same-sex romance stories.

During a Montgomery County school board meeting, board member Lynne Harris said, “Because saying that a kindergartener can’t be present when you read a book about a rainbow unicorn because it offends your religious rights or your family values or your core beliefs is just telling that kid, ‘Here’s another reason to hate another person.'”

Harris also insisted that “transgender, LGBTQ individuals are not an ideology, they’re a reality.”

In her ruling, Boardman said the Montgomery County school board’s refusal to allow kids to opt out of such instruction did not represent a violation of parents’ religious freedom to educate their children according to their spiritual duty, because the policy doesn’t forbid parents from instructing their children on these issues after school.

Boardman also cited the school board’s reasons for refusing the opt-out measure: too many students would opt out; teachers would have to track a large number of opt-out requests; and allowing those requests would stigmatize LGBTQ students.

“The school board was concerned that permitting some students to leave the classroom whenever books featuring LGBTQ characters were used would expose students who believe the books represent
them and their families to social stigma and isolation,” Boardman wrote. “The school board believed that would defeat its ‘efforts to ensure a classroom environment that is safe and conducive to learning for all students’ and would risk putting MCPS out of compliance with state and federal nondiscrimination laws.”

Boardman ruled that “every court that has addressed the question has concluded that the mere exposure in public school to ideas that contradict religious beliefs does not burden the religious exercise of students or parents.”

The judge did not note critics’ concerns that transgender ideology, by celebrating individuals who claim they were “born in the wrong body,” creates an incentive for children to adopt a gender identity opposite their biological sex, an identity that encourages the use of experimental medical interventions.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/24/assault-childrens-rights-court-rejects-maryland-parents-plea-restore-opt-out-lgbtq-books/

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Australia: Old-school teaching styles make struggling students successful

Seated in rows, the young students at St Vincent’s Primary School are watching their teacher, all eyes on the prize of learning something new. “A verb is a doing and action word,” the teacher says, and the entire class chimes in repetition before each child turns to repeat the words to a classmate. Every student writes a verb on a small whiteboard to show the teacher, who calls on them at random to describe a verb.

“It does sound old school,” says Monique Egan, acting principal of the Canberra Catholic school. “But there’s no doubt it helps children focus. There’s less opportunity for kids to hide and not engage. There are no long teacher explanations – students have to listen, and they’re responding, thinking, doing, making, showing and writing. I’ve never seen the school do this well.”

St Vincent’s school has embraced a teaching method known as direct or explicit instruction, derided for decades as “drill and kill”. It involves teaching children to read by phonics, sounding out words instead of memorising or guessing words from pictures. Homework is minimal but students are encouraged to read books at home and recite their times tables, the foundation of mathematics.

The method is gaining momentum as it dawns on schooling systems that quality teaching may be the solution to Australia’s ever-declining educational outcomes. Progressive ideology, the inquiry-based learning that sets tasks for students to discover facts and skills using their own initiative, has failed a generation of the most vulnerable children who stand to gain the most from a sound education.

St Vincent’s Primary School is part of the nation’s biggest experiment in using explicit instruction to lift student results.

It is one of 56 schools in the Catholic Education Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, whose director Ross Fox has transformed teaching styles through a program called Catalyst.

No longer do children sit around tables where they must bend their necks to see the teacher, and are easily distracted by a cheeky classmate pulling a face or snapping a pencil. Now they sit in rows, with plenty of space for teachers to walk and check on progress. Any children struggling with their schoolwork are placed upfront, and taken out for small-group remedial instruction if they fall behind.

Based on the scientific concept of cognitive load, lessons are delivered with clear instructions from the teacher and constant questioning of students to test their understanding. Concepts are repeated and practised, then reviewed regularly, to help children remember. Teaching materials are shown on smartboards, stripped of any distracting animations that stop kids concentrating.

Catholic Education has spent $3000 to $4000 training each teacher in the explicit instruction methods, including phonics, that universities failed to teach them in a four-year degree.

Lessons are far from dull because teachers don’t drone on at the front of the classroom but keep kids constantly involved.

“There’s so much repetition, but the skill of the teachers is to make that repetition enjoyable in an engaging lesson,” Fox says. “There’s a benefit to sitting in rows and facing the teacher because attention during that precious instructional time is so important. If you want a child to learn new knowledge, the most effective way is to tell them clearly and precisely what you want them to learn.”

The improvements are eye-opening. An Equity Economics analysis shows that in reading, 42 per cent of year 3 students in Catholic schools in Canberra and Goulburn were behind kids in similar schools across Australia in 2019. Last year, just three years after Catalyst transformed classrooms, only 4 per cent of year 3s were underperforming.

Inspired by this success, Catholic schools in Tasmania and Melbourne also are adopting the Catalyst model, the brainchild of Knowledge Society chief executive Elena Douglas, a self-described evangelist of explicit instruction.

“There are 9500 schools in Australia and 6500 are primary schools – every single one of them has to be changed,” she tells Inquirer. “We are getting close to influence over 1000. Once every state has 50 or so schools doing it there will be a systemic effect, and it is looking likely that Catholic systems will be the vector (for change). The first step is to teach the teachers.”

Shocking results from this year’s national literacy and numeracy tests reveal how children are falling off the escalator of education. One in 10 students is defined as requiring additional support to catch up with classmates. One in four students is described as developing their skills – a polite way of saying they have failed to meet the minimum standards set in NAPLAN.

All up, one in three students is below the benchmark set by the nation’s education ministers. Half the nation’s students fall into the strong category, meaning they meet the standards, but only one in six students exceeds them. Boys are likelier than girls to need support. First Nations students underperform at three times the rate of their classmates and a quarter of children require remedial support if their own parents had dropped out of high school.

What has gone wrong? Taxpayers have poured $662bn into schools since Labor prime minister Julia Gillard faced down education unions by mandating the national testing of every student in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Apart from a slight lift in literacy standards in years 3 and 5 following the uptake of phonics-based reading instruction in more schools in recent years, the results remain dire. Australian students are now more likely to fail than to excel in the basics of reading, writing, mathematics, spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds – First Nations students, kids in regional and remote areas, those with unemployed or poorly educated parent – have fallen behind the furthest. If NAPLAN results are extrapolated across all four million school students, 1.3 million children are failing to meet minimum standards for the basic subjects of English and maths.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has declared the results “make it blisteringly clear that we need serious reform in education”. As he prepares to broker a long-term funding deal with the states and territories next year, Clare has insisted the federal government will no longer write blank cheques. In December, education ministers will consider a review of key targets and specific reforms to be tied to spending on schools, after a review headed by Australian Education Research Organisation chairwoman Lisa O’Brien, a former chief executive of The Smith Family educational charity.

Catch-up tutoring for struggling students – individually or in small groups – is emerging as Clare’s favoured solution to help school strugglers. The minister has seen small group tutoring succeed at Chullora Public School in his western Sydney electorate of Blaxland.

“If you fall behind in third grade, it’s very hard to catch up by the time you’re in year 9,” he said this week, citing an AERO study that tracked the performance of 185,000 students across seven years of NAPLAN testing and found only one in five managed to catch up in high school. “If you take them out of the class – one teacher, a couple of kids – they can learn as much in 18 weeks as you would normally expect to learn in 12 months.” Clare provided federal funding to central Australian schools this year to pay for phonics-based reading instruction and catch-up tutoring for some of the nation’s most disadvantaged children.

Catching up is essential, but so is turning off the pipeline of failure by stopping kids from falling behind in the first place. Educational success begins at home. Children who don’t attend preschool or whose parents spend more on beer than on food – let alone books – are starting from behind. Kids are less likely to learn if their families are blighted by domestic violence, disability, homelessness, addiction or mental illness. Children can’t choose their parents and have no control over the choices of adults. Society and schools mustn’t blame the victims of disadvantage and dysfunction.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/oldschool-teaching-styles-make-struggling-students-successful/news-story/71783a92179bbf99cb2890efbab75b5d

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28 August, 2023

In Woke Wars, Faith-Based Virginia Schools See Enrollment Jump

Schools rooted in a biblical worldview are seeing increased enrollment in Virginia, while public schools are faltering.

According to a recent report, Catholic schools in Northern Virginia have seen a 10% increase in enrollment since 2019.

The Catholic Diocese of Arlington covers the entirety of Northern Virginia, including Loudoun County, which has been at the heart of the controversy over gender ideology in schools. The diocese is home to 50 schools, ranging from pre-K through high school. Collectively, these schools have 18,488 students this year, a jump of nearly 2,000 since the fall of 2019.

Arlington’s bishop, Michael Burbidge, told The Washington Stand, “One reason for this change is, parents value the underlying philosophy of Catholic education, that parents are the first and primary educators of their children and that schoolteachers and administrators are there to support them in that journey.”

He continued, “[P]arents recognize that young people hear so many untruths and falsehoods in our world today. Thus, they look to enroll their children in schools that, in addition to excellence in education, assist them with the spiritual formation of their children, and teach them the truth in love.”

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at the Family Research Council, further pointed to school closures as a key issue for parents.

“Catholic schools were among the first to reopen for in-person learning,” she told The Washington Stand. “Parents remember this well—Catholic or not. One of the reasons for the election of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) was disappointment over school closures in progressive counties that were too long and COVID protocols that were onerous and unsupported by research or even ‘the science.’”

“The debate over gender identity in Loudoun County added insult and very real injury,” she added. “The Arlington Diocese has been faithful to [the Catholic Church’s] teachings on sex and gender, so parents feel their children will be safe from queer-theory indoctrination, in addition to knowing the schools can be relied on.”

Since 2020, the Loudoun County Public Schools board has been a hotbed of controversy surrounding gender-ideology policies in schools.

Leesburg Elementary School gym teacher Tanner Cross was suspended in 2020 after citing his Christian faith and complaining to the school board of a policy requiring teachers to refer to students by “preferred” pronouns differing from students’ biological sexes.

West Point High School teacher Peter Vlaming was fired later that year, also for refusing to use a transgender-identifying student’s “preferred” pronouns. Another teacher was barred from including a Bible verse in her email signature.

The Loudoun County Public Schools board also ordered teachers to keep students’ gender transitions and “preferred” pronouns a secret from students’ parents and stocked school library shelves with LGBTQ+ propaganda and pornographic materials.

Other teachers complained of hostile and toxic working environments created by school board policies on gender ideology, critical race theory, and COVID-19, including threats to fire teachers for not wearing face masks.

Outrage against the Loudoun County Public Schools board culminated after the board attempted to cover up the rape and sexual assault of female students by another student.

In May 2021, a male student identifying as “gender fluid” sodomized a 12-year-old girl in the women’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School. School authorities reported the incident to the local authorities, resulting in criminal charges. The perpetrator was transferred to Broad Run High School in the same school district.

Shortly afterward, the Loudoun County Public Schools board voted to approve a new policy allowing students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that do not correspond to their biological sexes.

When confronted by the Stone Bridge victim’s father, who argued such a policy would only allow further sexual assaults, the school board told him there were no records of a sexual assault.

In October 2021, the same “gender fluid” male student sexually assaulted another female student at Broad Run High School. A state grand jury later declared that the Loudoun County Public Schools board “failed at every juncture” in protecting the two female students from rape and sexual assault, and Superintendent Scott Ziegler was indicted for covering up the rape and the sexual assault, even keeping the information from the school board.

Earlier this year, Youngkin mandated students use the bathrooms and play on the sports teams that correspond to their biological sexes and ordered teachers to inform parents of students’ gender transitions or “preferred” pronouns.

“This is about doing what’s best for the child,” he explained.

Loudoun County is just one example of gender ideology dominating school districts. Kilgannon commented, “The demand for alternatives to public school shows that parents want the best for their children, and they are increasingly skeptical that public schools are up to the task.”

Catholic schools aren’t the only evidence of this trend. Other biblically rooted schools in the area have also seen increased interest and enrollment.

Cornerstone Christian Academy in Middleburg, Virginia, opened its doors on Tuesday, welcoming 545 K-8 students, with plans to add high school grades every year, according to Cornerstone Chapel Senior Pastor Gary Hamrick. The faith- and family-oriented school received a reported 2,000 admissions inquiries the week the church’s plans were announced to the public.

According to its website, Cornerstone Christian Academy focuses on “instilling a Biblical worldview [in students] and forging a culture of excellence grounded in the Truth of God’s Word.”

Kilgannon stressed the importance of such educational institutions and the importance of maintaining the values they teach.

We need to pray that all faith-based schools remain true to their doctrines and values, while expanding in an effort to meet the needs of the community. Our faith-based schools must not turn into church-subsidized, cheaper-option progressive private schools. This is an opportunity to teach and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not conform to the whims of a world gone mad.

The increased enrollment in faith-based schools comes as nearby public schools see decreased enrollment. Between the fall of 2019 and spring of 2023, enrollment in Fairfax County Public Schools, the largest school district in the state, dropped by nearly 10,000 students.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/24/in-woke-wars-faith-based-virginia-schools-see-enrollment-jump

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Climate Brainwashing the kids

Hammering K-12 school children nonstop about the dangers of climate change in every class, even math, art and gym, is child abuse.

Barely one-third of fourth graders can read or do math at grade level, according to the latest national scores, but climate activists are demanding kids hear about global warming in every class. New Jersey mandates it, and now Connecticut is following suit as the school year opens. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams is requiring every public school participate in Climate Action Day.

The climate push is nakedly political, spearheaded in New Jersey by the governor's wife, first lady Tammy Murphy, a founding member of Al Gore's Climate Reality Project. Lessons link urban heat islands to tree placement inequities, redlining and racism.

New York City holds out activist Greta Thunberg as a climate hero and role model, telling kids to "get involved in the global student climate action movement" and "get to know community leaders and register to vote." Everything short of pre-enrolling kindergarteners in the Democratic Party. Parents should be outraged.

Climate change is the Left's religion. The messaging is as heavy-handed as catechism in a religious school.

It's also scary. Children are being told that global warming is killing their favorite animals. At Slackwood Elementary School in New Jersey, first graders are taught that transportation, heating, and raising livestock are "making Earth feel unwell."

The reality is that these children are too young to comprehend the trade-offs of moving to zero carbon immediately. A first grader doesn't know Mommy can't afford an electric vehicle -- average price $53,000.

Children should be taught about the wonders of nature, learning to identify mammals, reptiles, fish and birds, oceans, plants and deserts. They are too young to address the ethical and economic implications of eliminating fossil fuels.

First graders don't understand the impact on their family's budget when the Con Ed bill doubles to pay for the shift to wind and solar, which New Yorkers are warned will happen here.

The U.S. has already reduced emissions of the six most common pollutants by 78% since 1970, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But try explaining that to a first grader who doesn't know percentages and has no frame of reference for comparing the U.S. record with, say, the soaring pollution rates in China and India.

These issues are appropriate for high school students, and they should be presented as controversies -- with all viewpoints included.

Climate education advocates say they're just teaching "facts" everyone agrees on. Don't buy it.

The scientific community is divided about the urgency of eliminating fossil fuels. A poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University of 400 geologists, climatologists, meteorologists and other scientists found that 41% do not believe global warming will cause "significant harm" during our lifetimes.

A majority of scientists also disagree with the claim kids hear from teachers that we're facing a significant increase in severe weather like hurricanes and tornadoes.

Eliminating fossil fuels on the radical Left's green timetable will clobber ordinary people: costing jobs, raising living costs and weakening America's position in the world. Yet climate change educators oppose any discussion of the cost of getting to zero.

California, New York and Oregon are currently considering mimicking New Jersey's "every class is a climate class" curriculum. But some states are resisting.

Texas state education authorities are urging districts to present the pros and cons of fossil fuels and avoid textbooks that present only one side. That's smart, considering how many moms and dads there earn a living in carbon-related industries.

In Ohio, Republican state lawmakers want to require publicly funded colleges to present all viewpoints on climate change, "encourag(ing) students to reach their own conclusions," and not to "inculcate any social, political, or religious point of view."

Good luck enforcing that on college campuses. But it should be the rule in every public school.

Parents: Stand up to the indoctrinators. Ramming the same scary message into your child's head over and over again in class after class is brainwashing.

We live in America, not China.

https://townhall.com/columnists/betsymccaughey/2023/08/23/climate-brainwashing-n2627376

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In Australian universities there is no room for dissenting views on Indigenous issues

JAMES ALLAN

Some readers may harbour a sneaking suspicion that Australia’s universities have a serious problem with collapsing viewpoint diversity among their professors and lecturers, to the extent that whole departments on campus have become conservative-free zones. They also may suspect that many university students, as well as academics, self-censor and keep their dissenting views to themselves. Spoiler alert: these suspicions are well founded.

Let me use the upcoming constitutional referendum on the voice to illustrate. Recent polls show the No side has a considerable lead. I mention these polls of the wider public’s view simply to contrast it with the very different world on our campuses. Many Australian universities officially have come out in favour of the Yes side and have done so despite the two main political parties taking opposite sides in the referendum – thereby making this a party-political matter and so the taking of sides by any publicly funded university, in part, a choosing by them and their governing boards between the political positioning of the two main parties. The University of NSW even has lit up one of its main buildings with a big “Yes”, emblematically transmogrifying the institution’s name into “UNYesW”.

It’s bad enough when big corporations use shareholder money to support one side in this referendum (virtually always the Yes side, and to the tune of tens of millions of dollars), and likewise when charities do so (arguably calling into serious question whether they are straying outside their charitable purposes, and also huge amounts of money virtually all to the pro side). But when taxpayer-funded universities use your tax dollars to take a side on a crucial constitutional referendum issue that splits the country, well, that’s even worse. It’s not just a form of virtue signalling with other people’s money; it comes close to being an improper use of taxpayer money.

Now, truth be told, some of our universities have opted not to support the Yes side. They’ve opted to stay officially neutral. Needless to say, neutrality is the best we can hope for. You see, I don’t know of a single Australian university, not one, that has come out for No. And this despite plenty of our tertiary institutions breaking cover to support the Yes side. Heck, it’s despite the majority of polled voters being against this proposal.

Now move down to a more granular level, to what things are like on campus. As a longtime out-of-the-closet political conservative (and cards on the table here, an outspoken No proponent from day one), I get a fair few people calling me to tell me what things are like on campuses around the country. Get this: most universities seem to have decided to put on “information sessions” about the voice.

I do not know of a single university that is putting on one of these events where there are the same number of No speakers as those for Yes on these panels. By contrast, I do know of a good few where every single speaker is (or, if you look up the resume, sure seems likely to be) a Yes speaker.

Let that sink in for a moment. It’s wall-to-wall supporters of the voice supposedly giving students some sort of balanced information about the voice. It would be laughable, if it weren’t. And if you query this you get this sort of basic answer: “We’ve briefed one of the speakers to give the No side.” Got that? Because the great free-speech philosopher John Stuart Mill is rolling in his grave.

No one can seriously believe that a person strongly committed to one side of a highly contentious and moralised issue can do even a half-decent job of giving the other side’s case.

Moreover, when a university purports to be giving a disinterested information session to faculty and students where the views expressed cover the whole range of outlooks from A all the way still to A (“Getting to Yes”, as it were), students and faculty notice. Many will say nothing; they’ll self-censor; they’ll think about what is most prudential given the upcoming promotion application or essay to hand in. And they’ll keep shtum.

I’m going to be blunt. Today’s universities are not overly congenial places for those with conservative political views. There are myriad studies out of the US and Britain showing that viewpoint diversity is collapsing on university campuses – because maybe, for a start, those with right-of-centre views would prefer we flew just the national flag, that there be some respite from the incessant acknowledgments of country, and to see the paring back of the diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy that forces everything to be seen through the prism of identity politics.

US author Jonathan Haidt, himself of the centre-left, details this loss of diverging outlooks on campus chapter and verse, and greatly laments it. Because universities aren’t meant to be factories of monolithic orthodoxy and groupthink. But more and more that is exactly what we’re seeing. If you doubt me, maybe because your memory of university life goes back three decades or more, go and find out how your old university is handling the voice referendum issue. And realise just how much of the Yes case is being run by employees of universities (second spoiler alert: nearly all of it).

Of course, when the progressive-left orthodoxies become held by the preponderance of academics and near-on all the senior managers, that also affects free speech on campus. You won’t see it by looking at university codes of conduct, policies, statutory frameworks and the like. The collapse of viewpoint diversity works more indirectly and insidiously. Many dissenters and apostates from the university orthodoxy (students included) learn to self-censor, to keep quiet, to ride out the one-sided indoctrination sessions (aka, on occasion, voice “information sessions”). Or they quit and do something else. In the context of institutions supposedly dedicated to the free flow and competition of ideas it’s a sad state of affairs.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/on-campus-there-is-no-room-for-dissenting-views-on-indigenous-voice-to-parliament/news-story/1d233a3b76c95e319cd436a4337217fc

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27 August, 2023

Law School Administrators Huddle To Circumvent Affirmative Action Ban

Top law school administrators are brainstorming ways to circumvent the Supreme Court's ban on race-based admissions, advising schools not to create a "record" of "discriminatory intent" and warning that socioeconomic preferences will result in too many white and Asian students being admitted.

That advice, dispensed at a legal conference in July, came from UC Berkeley Law School dean Erwin Chemerinsky and University of Michigan general counsel Timothy Lynch. Hosted by the American Association of Law Schools, the event focused on how institutions could use race-neutral means to achieve diversity.

When attendees questioned the legality of such methods, arguing that they could be struck down because of their race-conscious motive, Lynch stressed the need for plausible deniability.

"You should be aware right now of the record you're creating," Lynch told the conference, which was ostensibly devoted to helping schools comply with the Supreme Court's decision. "What are your faculty saying in emails? What are they saying in public?"

Plaintiffs often look for evidence of "discriminatory intent," Lynch explained, noting that the Supreme Court explicitly forbade backdoor racial preferences in its ruling. The "key question," he said, is "what can you say right now is the race-neutral explanation for doing it, and how do you avoid having your faculty colleagues muddy the record?"

"Great point," replied Chemerinsky, who moderated the conference. The Berkeley Law dean had been caught on tape a few days earlier, in June, describing how his school gets around California's ban on affirmative action in faculty hiring, joking with students that "if ever I'm deposed, I'm going to deny I said this to you."

In another exchange, Lynch warned that socioeconomic preferences were no substitute for racial ones—and appeared to suggest that class-based admissions help too many white and Asian students.

It "doesn't do the trick demographically," he said, because in states like Michigan, "there are many more people who are not underrepresented who are low-income."

Lawyers who reviewed footage of the conference said it could form part of the very "record" Lynch warned against creating, exposing schools to legal liability and giving plaintiffs ample ammo for a lawsuit.

"If these people were ever sued for race discrimination, this video would be exhibit A to the jury," said Samantha Harris, an attorney who specializes in education law. "Even if the speakers could articulate a non-discriminatory reason for their policies, the video calls into question their sincerity."

Lynch's statement about socioeconomics was a red flag, said Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego who sits on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, which litigates reverse discrimination cases.

"What's the old definition of a gaffe? Saying exactly what you mean," Morenoff said. "It's like they're trying to assure they'll lose the eventual litigation."

Reached for comment, Chemerinsky said the exchanges had been taken out of context.

"The assumption of the conference—and of Mr. Lynch's remarks and mine—was that schools will comply in good faith with the Court's ruling," Chemerinsky said. Addressing the video from June, Chemerinsky added that Berkeley "does not consider race in any of its hiring and admissions decisions."

https://freebeacon.com/campus/law-school-administrators-huddle-to-circumvent-affirmative-action-ban

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After Years in the Wilderness, Conservative Christian Education Is Being Born Again Post-Pandemic

Arcadia Christian Academy, which opened in Arizona on Aug. 8, is one of dozens of Christian micro-schools popping up across the country, offering a hybrid in-class and at-home education to keep costs down and the odds of survival up in an increasingly competitive K-12 sector. What’s more, many long-established Christian schools are growing their enrollment after years of stagnation.

The recent post-pandemic rebound in Christian education, prompted by parental anger over public school shutdowns and the expansion of school choice programs, comes after a prolonged period of plunging enrollment and shutdowns since the mid-2000s. Behind that decline were dismay over unaccredited schools and an emphasis on preaching the gospel over teaching rigorous courses, according to interviews with Christian school leaders, parents, and national associations, as well as religious education scholars and consultants.

They tell the story now of a Christian school movement with about 700,000 students in 8,000 schools that’s striving to leave behind its reclusive evangelical roots and reinvent itself for today, with STEM programs, AP classes, and classical “great books” curriculums.

The revamp, demanded by millennial parents and embraced by leaders of accreditation associations, is propelled by a combination of push-and-pull forces.

The push started with COVID. Public schools lost an estimated 1.2 million students during the pandemic. Upset over the long-term closure of classrooms, some parents also objected to what they observed their kids being taught during remote learning at home: Schools with a progressive tilt were teaching that gender is a fluid concept and that America is an inherently racist nation.

Evangelical schools have taken in a fair share of these public school refugees by appealing to the conservative views of parents. In their statements of faith, schools not only stress classic doctrine, such as the Bible as the word of God and the second coming of Jesus Christ. The statements also include the conservative Christian take on hot-button issues, such as it’s a sin to deny one’s biological sex.

“Alarmed that schools are embracing gender neutral ideology?” Arizona’s Dream City Christian School asks parents rhetorically on its homepage.

The pull factor – a major expansion of school choice programs – is now adding to the appeal of Christian schools. In addition to programs in 32 states that mostly provide taxpayer funding for the private education of low-income and special needs kids, eight states recently approved universal laws that make all students eligible for scholarships, regardless of family wealth. At Christian schools, these state-funded scholarships typically cover most if not all tuition, providing a powerful incentive for families that’s boosting enrollment.

But after the growth spurt, scholars and school leaders are asking a big question: Does it have legs or will it soon burn out?

New-wave Christian schooling faces plenty of headwinds. There’s competition for students from well-established Catholic schools, which have a superior academic track record, as well as rapidly expanding charter networks and homeschooling, says David Sikkink, a prominent scholar of religious education at Notre Dame. And there are the old-guard fundamentalist schools that resist accreditation and refuse to accept school-choice funding.

“Are Christian schools going to retain those parents who came at the end of COVID and continue to grow?” says Vance Nichols, head of Alta Loma Christian School in southern California. “That’s the question of the moment.”

In Florida and Arizona, the answer to that question seems to be yes, thanks to new universal choice laws.

By removing income and other restrictions on receiving school choice funding, the universal laws have expanded the eligibility pool nationwide by about 4 million students, bringing the total to more than 13 million, according to the advocacy group EdChoice.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/08/17/after_years_in_the_wilderness_conservative_christian_education_is_being_born_again_post-pandemic_973263.html?mc_cid=edb267c223&mc_eid=012a6b3e32

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Destructive Leftist influence on Australian education

One in three Australian school children, according to the latest Naplan results, are falling well behind in literacy and numeracy. A cynic might be tempted to compare that number with the approximately one in three Australians who voted for Labor at the last election. For sure, it’s a facetious comparison, but, alas, not an inaccurate one. There is no question that now, fifty years on from the Whitlam government and its disastrous experiments in corrupting young peoples’ minds with socialist claptrap, we can safely conclude that the modern Australian left has wilfully damaged the intellectual development of two generations of Australian children.

That is not to say there aren’t any bright kids out there. There most certainly are. Australian ingenuity, resilience, optimism, determination, entrepreneurialism and go-getter qualities still thrive amongst many of our great youth. But they have been egregiously betrayed by an academic system that has starved them of the great minds and works that should be their birthright. Denied them the critical thinking and academic robustness that is essential to living a positive and productive, not to mention an intellectually fulfilling, life.

Even those kids who do thrive academically and achieve good results have been seriously damaged thanks to a shockingly low standard of education built largely upon leftist ideology and Labor/Greens dogma. Gay propaganda fills the walls, anti-white racist theories abound and our extraordinary academic traditions are wilfully ignored. Only this week we learned of a school in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire where pre-school kids are forced to write essays apologising for British colonialism. This is intellectual child abuse; Marxism’s ‘long march’ at its most pernicious.

As with everything the left touches, and pours money into, the results are invariably the same: failure. So more money is poured in. And the failures continue to mount.

The reason is simple. The entire modern leftist approach of ‘we know what is best for you’ is wrong. They don’t know and never did know. Individuals must be free to make mistakes, be free to bounce back, be free to explore unorthodox ideas, be free to challenge and be free to dream of a better way. Sadly, the entrepreneurial flame of so many of our youth is now being wasted in the dead ends of eco-alarmism and woke ideology. Schools and universities teach unrelenting propaganda and ‘consensus’ rather than the free thinking that is critical to genuine progress and insight.

Bedwetters of the Liberal party fool themselves that the ‘times have changed’ and that in order to attract younger ‘more progressive’ voters the right needs to adopt left-leaning policies and priorities. The opposite is true. Having marinated in a sludge of toxic environmentalism and grievance politics throughout their entire childhood, what young intellectually-deprived minds desperately require is alternative stimulation, not more of the same.

For sure, many kids will lazily hang on to the dreary, soul-sapping self-loathing of wokeness, complete with its climate doom-mongering and sinister Malthusian ideology. But exposed to the tantalising and forbidden spark of an alternative, positive, optimistic, freedom-loving, modern conservatism, many young minds are capable of being inspired. Having spent most of their childhoods being brainwashed into believing there is no future worth striving for because the planet is doomed to disappear in an imaginary climate inferno sometime in the next (5? 12? 20? 50? It keeps changing) years, and having been convinced that their ancestors were either blood-thirsty racists or imprisoned slaves, it must surely be wonderfully refreshing to hear the alternative conservative perspective: climate change is at best a hoax, at worst a manageable phenomenon, we are not doomed, we have all the available technology already to hand to reduce emissions to zero if we are so inclined, not that we necessarily need to, and our ancestors, black and white, were extraordinarily gifted and caring people, many of whom gave up their own lives to ensure we get to enjoy the nourishing fruits of our culture and our history.

Indeed, what is needed from the Liberal leadership is not more pandering to the left, but quite the opposite: a determination to vociferously and energetically oppose the left’s fraudulent agenda wherever and whenever it pops its ugly head up.

Youth and rebelliousness have always gone hand in hand. The cunning trick of the modern left has been, through our education system, to convince these adolescents that ‘climate activism’ and ‘being an ally to LGBTQ+’ or ‘supporting the Voice’ is somehow a rebellious action. It is not. It is as mainstream and as boringly unimaginative as you can possibly get. These gullible kids have been hoodwinked into supporting the big, pampered, all-powerful, elitist and monied end of town.

During the late 1970s, the rebellious rock ’n’ roll culture had itself become bloated, pampered, self-indulgent and lazy, unrecognisable to the original rebels of the early 1960s. Appalled that these cocaine-addled, squillionaire LA rock stars somehow represented them, angry kids found their own way to rebel, as punks.

The only credible radicalism and anti-authoritarianism on offer to today’s youth is to oppose woke intolerance and the left’s brainwashing and racist grievance ideology. Call it ‘punk conservatism’ if you will.

Let’s hope the indomitable Aussie spirit can once again rise to defeat the freedom-hating socialists ruining our children’s future prospects and prosperity.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/intellectual-child-abuse/

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25 August, 2023

On-Campus DEI Bureaucrats Already Ditching New Loyalty Oaths

Will the last diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrat to leave their office on campus please turn out the lights?

On college grounds today, so-called DEI departments are withering as whistleblowers reveal that the offices have promoted racial prejudice and operated with little transparency—and no measurable results—for years.

School officials and lawmakers in states such as Florida, Texas, and Arizona are closing such departments or ceasing universitywide policies that supported them, and so far, DEI administrators have failed to find support for their discriminatory activities.

Various projects are underway to protect individuals from the racial bias of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

In Arizona, the Goldwater Institute released a scathing report earlier this year documenting that up to 80% of faculty job listings at Arizona public universities required applicants to submit a “diversity statement” (sometimes called “loyalty oaths”) as part of their employment application.

In a formal statement Tuesday, Goldwater said such loyalty oaths “are increasingly used across academia as a political screening test to enforce intellectual and political conformity in support of left-wing concepts aligned with critical race theory (CRT).”

College administrators reject job applications if they don’t include statements conforming to the prevailing woke orthodoxy, according to Goldwater’s report. This process is not unique to Arizona: An investigation by the Reason Foundation found that 75% of applications to join the faculty of the University of California system were rejected in this way.

Arizona public university officials had used the same methods, but Goldwater noted, but lately new job listings from Arizona State University are missing a requirement to complete a diversity statement.

And last month, Arizona State University officials announced that employees “are not forced to sign diversity statements.” Personnel at Arizona’s public universities seem to be quietly erasing DEI’s footprint.

In Texas, the changes have been more noticeable. State lawmakers adopted a proposal in June to prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion operations on the campuses of public colleges and universities.

Leaders at one state school didn’t waste any time: Last week, University of North Texas announced the dissolution of its DEI office, saying the vice president in charge of it would retire.

In Florida, after Gov. Ron DeSantis replaced board members at the New College of Florida, the new appointees immediately shuttered the school’s DEI department. DeSantis, a Republican, then signed a proposal prohibiting DEI departments at state universities from using public funds, signaling the end of the offices at most schools.

Lawmakers in South Carolina and Arkansas also considered proposals to abolish offices for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, renamed the state’s DEI office, replacing “equity” with “opportunity,” warning that DEI has “gone off the rails.”

Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs attract critics on both sides of the political spectrum. Research has found that DEI training is ineffective at changing individual opinions; reports in mainstream publications ask whether such training is doing more harm than good.

In the corporate world, businesses are trimming their DEI staff. Some anticipate that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling against racial preferences in college admissions means that when employees find the same prejudice in corporate DEI programs, they could file lawsuits—or worse.

The Free Press reported that a successful educator took his own life after a DEI “trainer” excoriated him during a session. His crime? Saying that Canada actually is a pretty just society, despite the trainer’s claims that Canada is “a bastion of white supremacy and colonialism.”

The educator had questioned the DEI gospel, and for the next two years he faced ridicule. He was shamed and abandoned, ultimately losing all hope.

State and federal officials have policy ideas at their disposal to protect students and educators from the racial discrimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

Lawmakers should forbid DEI departments on college campuses from using taxpayer money and expedite their closing. These departments have not demonstrated their effectiveness, yet employ dozens. Some public universities have over a hundred DEI employees.

State policymakers should ban public university administrators from requiring job applicants to complete “loyalty oaths.”

Students and employees are exposing DEI’s biased activities on campus and in the workplace, and lawmakers should close these offices. Americans value diverse opinions—all of them, not just woke ideas.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/09/on-campus-dei-bureaucrats-already-ditching-new-loyalty-oaths

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School District Allowed to Keep Child Gender Transitions From Parents, Court Rules

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that a Maryland school district can continue to keep students’ gender transitions from their parents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit dismissed a coalition of parents’ lawsuit against Montgomery County Public Schools alleging that the district’s gender support plan, which allows students to change their gender without their parents’ permission, infringes on parental rights.

The court ruled that because none of the parents had children who were transgender or were utilizing a gender support plan, there was no harm that allows the court to act, documents show.

“We agree with the analysis of the dissenting judge that parents have a right to complain about this school policy because it allows the school to keep secret from parents how it is treating their child at school and that such policies violate parental rights,” Frederick Claybrook Jr., the attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Parents do not have to wait until they find out that damage has been done in secret before they may complain. Moreover, the policy just by being in place affects family dynamics, as the dissenting judge pointed out. We are actively considering next steps in the legal process.”

Montgomery County Public Schools’ gender support plan was adopted during the 2020-2021 school year to help students “feel comfortable expressing their gender identity,” according to the Monday opinion. The gender support plan allows students to record their change in name and pronouns while also detailing which bathrooms and locker rooms the student will correspond with their gender identity.

“MCPS [Montgomery County Public Schools] was successful in the challenge against our Gender Identity Guidelines,” a district spokesperson told the DCNF. “The appellate court returned the case to the district court and directed that it be dismissed. The case is resolved for now. MCPS supports the determination by the court.”

At least 350 students within the district have filled out a gender support plan over the past three years to change their gender at school, The Washington Post reported. The school district said they were not trying to keep student gender transitions from parents but if the student wanted privacy, “then we honor and respect that.”

“That does not mean their objections are invalid,” Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. said in his opinion. “In fact, they may be quite persuasive. But, by failing to show any injury to themselves, the parents’ opposition … reflects a policy disagreement. And policy disagreements should be addressed to elected policymakers at the ballot box, not to unelected judges in the courthouse.”

Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Greek Orthodox Christian parents sued Montgomery County Public Schools in May after the school board alerted parents that it would no longer be notifying families of gender identity lessons and that parents would be unable to opt their children out of such lessons.

The parents allege that the school district’s policy that prohibits them from opting their child out of LGBTQ lessons violates their religious beliefs and their ability to raise their kids.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/15/school-district-allowed-to-keep-child-gender-transitions-from-parents-court-rules

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Is Anyone Vetting Teachers?

If you've been paying attention for at least five minutes to the overall tone of today's society, you may have noticed that fundamental morality and a basic sense of right and wrong have been on a rapid decline.

Among the many questionable positions that directionless people have adopted as rational is that of abandoning our responsibility to protect children and their innocence. Some folks see no reason to shield kids from people who would inappropriately break boundaries with them or intentionally cause emotional and/or physical harm.

Yet somehow, perhaps in the name of "progressivism," there are individuals and groups that view protection of the innocent as oppressive and outdated. As articulated within gender ideology and queer theory, any boundaries regarding the interactions between adults and children are a social construct that unnecessarily oppress children. The protocols that most of society have acknowledged as imperative for the safekeeping of the most vulnerable are believed by these activists to be doing more harm than good.

On the list of safety procedures being abandoned by today's "progressive" movement is the vetting process by school administrators of the individuals they hire for the specific responsibility of teaching children, as well as guiding their academic success and social development.

A glaring example of this abdication of responsibility by administrative staff came to light when Homer Community Consolidated School District was put on blast by the infamous X (Twitter) account Libs of TikTok. It was revealed that the district had hired an elementary teacher who had publicly posted about a personal battle with psychosis and mania, which sometimes led to episodes of violence and harm.

This person ranted: "I am NOT my disease. I am ME! And I know ME! And I LOVE ME!" That was directly above an image depicting symbols that would indicate a predilection for satanism.

Just a few days following the public exposure by Libs of TikTok, a vote was conducted during a school board meeting for the district, and the individual was fired.

The questions that need to be answered are as follows: Why was this person hired in the first place? Had widespread attention not been shone on this person's deeply concerning social media posts, where parents were able to demand the removal of this teacher and force the school board to respond? How long would these students be under this person's care? And what would the consequences have been?

It is understandable that not every potential negative scenario can be considered and planned for in the hiring process. However, in the age of oversharing and the addiction to validation in the form of social media "likes" and followers, there is a lot that can be easily discovered with a simple sweep of Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok that could expose these crucial red flags that there is no excuse to miss.

Teachers have become more brazen in vocalizing their contempt for parents, laws, and boundaries. They are not shy when it comes to creating videos in which they demonstrate their intention to break any rules that might stop them from indoctrinating children into their brand of activism, regardless of what parents want. And they often find it amusing to add a dance or costume to their message, as if to let parents know that they are not concerned about any potential backlash.

Another post on the Libs of TikTok account showed a librarian of a Tulsa Oklahoma Elementary School dancing toward the camera with the message, "POV: teachers in your state are dropping like flies but you are still just not quite finished pushing your woke agenda at the public school."

Hopefully, a vote on the fate of her job will be carried out soon, and the appropriate determination will be made.

These are just the incidents that have been exposed, but this is happening in every school district in the country to some extent.

Schools are abandoning parents, and if we are not the ones demanding and enforcing a vetting process for those who spend hours every day with our children, it looks like no one will.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/99879-is-anyone-vetting-teachers-2023-08-23

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24 August, 2023

Combatting Academic Hucksters in the Sciences

I can see the temptation to this. I got a whole lot of papers published precisely because I had ideas new to the discipline. My conclusions tended in a conservative direction so were generally unpopular but the fact that I had something new to say got them published. So in the absence of new confirmable ideas, it must be tempting to make stuff up

If recent reports are to be believed, academic crimes are on the rise. In a world with shrinking enrollments and many underemployed professionals with PhDs, the temptations to cheat and lie to get published are intense. We are in an academic world in which an article in the Journal of Last Resort is often, somewhat sadly in my judgment, worth more than a slew of teaching awards and a devoted following of students.

A recent (July 18) article in Nature by Richard Van Noorden suggests that some observers believe “at least one-quarter of clinical trials might be problematic or even entirely made up.” Writing in the Guardian on Aug. 6, Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus argue, “There’s far more scientific fraud than anyone wants to admit” and add that “the academic world still seems determined to look the other way.”

My own analysis of the “success rate” for grant applications to the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation is consistent with this: for every grant application accepted, typically two to four others are rejected. For some scientists, rejection literally means job loss or, minimally, a significant income reduction.

This issue received new levels of prominence recently, leading to the resignation of the president of Stanford University. Long-time president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, himself a prominent research scientist, resigned after an outside review of his work concluded that it did not meet standards of “scientific rigor and process” and he failed to correct the record when notified of the problems.

The problem extends far beyond the hard sciences. I think of my own decades as a researcher in economics and some of the issues associated with asserting that some relationship is a “truth” or “economic law” that others can replicate and ultimately teach both students and the broader public. In the hard sciences, strict laboratory controls make it possible to rather precisely replicate the work of other researchers, but in the social sciences, which operate outside a controlled laboratory environment, many things are constantly changing, making “proving” a relationship difficult if not impossible.

From my own research, I see how easy it is for researchers trying to proclaim a novel idea worthy of publication or promoting a congenial ideological position to be manipulating the results. Let me give a hypothetical but quite plausible example.

Suppose I believe that lowering state and local income taxes increases the rate of economic growth, measured by changing personal income per capita. Suppose I gather some different data sets and use econometric testing of 25 models. Some of the models include some seven to eight additional variables besides the income tax measure of special interest (e.g., spending on education, the number of heating degree days in a year, or the proportion of the population working in manufacturing). Some of the models use time series data (looking at data relationships over time), others use cross-sectional data (comparing different states within one geographic area, such as the United States, or even different nations).

Suppose I get 24 sets of results showing the expected negative relationship between income tax burden and economic growth, but one that shows a positive relationship, however statistically significant, at only a 90 percent level of confidence. Suppose 16 of the 24 expected negative relations are believable with a 99 percent level of confidence, five with a 95 percent level of confidence, two with only a 90 percent level of confidence, and one with only a 75 percent level of confidence (meaning there is a 25 percent probability the observed positive relationship does not exist). What do I report to the reading public?

What I typically would do is report several (possibly all) of the results, typically summarizing the 25 regressions by saying that “the predominance of evidence suggests there is a negative relationship between income taxes and economic growth.” Another researcher much more ideologically hostile to that finding might conclude “the evidence is decidedly mixed on the tax-growth relationship.” And some pro-tax highly progressive researcher might even claim, based on one study, that “results show that higher taxes actually increase growth,” ignoring both the low level of confidence in that result and, more importantly, the other 24 tests contradicting this conclusion. That novel result actually might also have a higher probability of journal acceptance because it contradicts most other studies, making it provocative. Moreover, it reaches a progressive policy conclusion that most academics would like. In other words, outside the laboratory sciences, the interpretation of results is highly manipulable.

As standards of morality and a respect for the rule of law decline generally, so too they apparently decline in academia. It is very sad to say, but I would be very suspicious about buying a used car from many academics these days.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14645&omhide=true&trk=title

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New Data: High School Boys Twice as Likely to Identify as Conservative as Liberal

According to a large survey of high school graduates, the share of young men identifying as conservative is rapidly increasing compared to previous decades. The left loves to trumpet their successes with “the youth vote”, but the reality is there is a growing gender gap that will have broad-reaching political implications for decades to come.

New research from the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey of 12th grade high school students shows just how vast the gender partisan gap has grown among young men and women.

The survey reveals data going back as far as 1975 tracking the political ideology of young men and women entering the voter pool, and the results are startling. Since approximately 2010, the share of young men identifying as conservative has skyrocketed, while the share identifying as liberal has dropped to the lowest point on record.

Today, young men are twice as likely to identify as conservative, with about a quarter of male 12th graders saying they are conservative or very conservative, while a mere 13% say they are liberal or very liberal.

This marks a notable transformation in the political perspectives of boys. While the share of boys identifying as liberal has been mostly declining since the 1970’s, there was a brief spike in liberal identity among young men in 2010 under President Obama and in 2016 just as Trump took office, but otherwise young men identifying as liberal has steadily fallen.

For young women, an opposite scenario has played out, with 12th grade women reaching the highest proportion of self-identified liberals on record in 2020, and that number declining incrementally in 2022.

The survey shows the share of 12th-grade girls who identify as liberal rose 11-percentage points from 19% in 2012 to 30% in 2022. The share of young women who identify as conservative sat at just 11% in the 2022 survey, down ever so slightly from 2020. The data shows the peak of young women identifying as conservative occurred in 2005 under George W. Bush and has been dwindling since then.

However, the largest group of high school boys and girls declined to share their political views, something that is not surprising in the age of censorship and cancel culture.

Regardless of those unwilling to share or unsure of their political views, there is a growing gender gap among young people that does not appear to be declining.

Gallup Polling reveals that 44% of women aged eighteen to twenty-nine now align themselves with liberal views, marking the highest figure in twenty years.

In contrast, only a quarter of young men between eighteen and twenty-nine embrace a liberal identity. The proportion of young men identifying as liberal has experienced fluctuations over the past 25 years, showing an overall decline. Meanwhile, the percentage of young women identifying as liberal has consistently risen.

Data from a 2022 Meredith College poll also reveals that while Gen Z may embrace more liberal viewpoints on issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ issues, young men exhibit notably less liberal perspectives compared to women. While nearly half of Gen Z wants to expand abortion access, this stance is predominantly driven by young women. In contrast, Gen Z men are less inclined to support such an expansion.

The Meredith College findings also reveal that a considerable portion of Gen Z men adhere to traditional notions of gender roles. More than 40% of young men expressed a preference for a male political leader, compared to 35% of Gen Z women favoring a female political leader. Among all age groups, Gen Z men exhibited the highest preference for a male political leader. Professor David McLennan, who directed the Meredith poll, noted:

“The results from our work suggest there is a strong conservative element within Gen Z on policy issues…a shift to more traditional views among the male population.”

Democrats lost four points with voters under thirty between 2018 and 2022, so their edge is declining. However, the gender gap is an important variable to watch in the next presidential election, considering President Biden has been struggling with young voters overall. Recent NYT/Siena polling shows Biden’s lead over Trump has shrunk 14-percentage points compared to his lead in 2020 exit polls, indicating Biden will have an uphill battle recouping young voters. If the growing body of research on gender and ideology is any indication, Biden will struggle most with young men.

https://dailytorch.com/2023/08/new-data-high-school-boys-twice-as-likely-to-identify-as-conservative-as-liberal/

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Australia: Teacher made to apologise for giving child ‘improvement strategies’ (!!)

A teacher who had recently started at a new school was asked to give one student some improvement strategies. The child went home and complained. The principal asked that teacher to apologise to the parents for making that student feel “stressed”.

Australia’s classrooms are ranked among the worst in the world when it comes to discipline and the responsibility for that should not fall solely on teachers, education experts have told a federal senate inquiry into disruptive classrooms.

The story of the teacher asked to apologise was recounted to the inquiry by Dr Paul Kidson, senior lecturer in educational leadership at the Australian Catholic University, who said parents and students had too often been given a free pass in the schooling system.

“There is no likelihood that there is going to be significant improvement in the achievement of a community where that behaviour is characterised as normal,” he said

Kidson said a combination of poorer mental health of students, a nationwide teacher shortage and schools’ inability to give high-need students adequate support meant behaviour had become a “wicked problem”.

However, he said there had also been an increase in the “overmedicalising of the normal human condition”. Last year there was a 30 per cent jump in prescriptions for drugs used to treat anxiety in children, the biggest annual increase seen in a decade.

‘[Young people] will expect things just to go their way. And if it doesn’t go their way, somebody else is to blame.’

“Facing academic challenges, an increasing number of students are claiming anxiety disorders or trauma in ways that minimise the seriousness of clinical, medical or psychological conditions experienced, sadly, by too many,” he said.

“That suggests to me that we are not building the resilience for a number of young people and, when they move into more independence, they will expect things just to go their way. And if it doesn’t go their way, somebody else is to blame.”

An OECD report earlier this year said the disciplinary climate in Australia was among the least favourable compared to other member nations while Australian teachers felt less capable when it came to dealing with disruptive students.

Literacy instruction provider Multilit chief executive Robyn Wheldall said simply creating engaging lessons would not resolve behaviour problems. The physical environment of the classroom had an effect on behaviour: she said arranging desks so students faced one another in small groups in primary school might seem to create a “nice” collaborative environment but was not always conducive to learning.

“If you wanted someone to do something social, like have a dinner party, you would sit around a table and chat. But if you’re in a classroom and you want kids to pay attention to you, the teacher, first of all, you don’t want half of them with their backs to you,” she said.

Her research had shown that teachers gave positive feedback when it came to a student’s academic progress – they are three times more approving rather than disapproving of students’ progress with schoolwork– but that ratio was reversed when it came to behaviour.

“They are more than three times disapproving of social behaviour than of approving. That means the teacher is talking a lot about, ‘Don’t do that, sit down, concentrate, don’t disturb’. All of these things are not going to change the world in terms of disruption or violence, but they create interruptions to what the teacher is trying to do and disturb other kids,” she said.

Ensuring teachers provide specific praise for behaviour like they did academic work coupled with the creation of consistent disciplinary environments within schools and educating teaching graduates at university about behaviour management could counter disruption in classrooms.

“There is a wealth of evidence from research and practice that we can draw on to bring about positive changes in classrooms, with relatively simple but effective methods,” she said.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/teacher-made-to-apologise-for-giving-child-improvement-strategies-20230815-p5dwqa.html

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23 August, 2023

School district’s new ‘equitable grading’ practices won’t penalize late work or issue zeros, even for cheating

A Portland, Oregon, school district recently issued new “equitable grading” practices that will require teachers to accept late work without penalty and refrain from giving students zeros, even if they are caught cheating, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

A new district handout titled “Portland Public Schools Equitable Grading Practices Summary” highlights the district’s “rationale” for implementing a so-called “equitable” approach to grading students’ class performance.

“Historical data shows that there are racial disparities in our pass/fail rate in multiple subjects in both middle grades and high school,” the district’s handout stated. “During the pandemic we adjusted our grading to accommodate for some of the inequities in access to curriculum and instruction. This caused many teachers to begin the journey towards equitable grading but has led to a mosaic of grading practices across schools and across the district that is confusing to students and families. We need to organize and consolidate our efforts towards common policies to more consistently and better support students and families with equitable grading.”

The district explained that its new grading practices would be based on Joe Feldman’s book, “Grading for Equity,” which provides a framework based on three pillars — “accurate, bias-resistant, and motivational.”

The PPS handout described the equitable grading practices as “accurate” because they are “based on calculations that are mathematically sound.” Those practices include never giving students a grade of zero. Instead, teachers are told to “provide a minimum grade greater than or equal to 50% for work that does not meet expectations, is incomplete, or is missing.” This guideline also applies to students caught cheating.

Educators are also asked to abandon a 0-100 grading scale and replace it with a 0-4 scale, which it stated is “more mathematically accurate.” Students’ grades will be weighted against their most recent performance instead of assessed over the entire semester.

To combat educators’ “implicit bias,” homework will not be graded. Teachers cannot penalize late work or provide extra credit. Students will be allowed the opportunity to retake tests and redo assignments. “Non-academic factors,” including attendance, performance, effort, attitude, and behavior, will also not be included in students’ grades.

The new guidelines are expected to be implemented districtwide by 2025.

Parents Defending Education’s outreach director Erika Sanzi told the Washington Free Beacon that the district’s framework would harm students. “These equitable grading policies, however well intended, are a disaster for the students who struggle most and for the students who need accelerated coursework,” Sanzi said.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/school-districts-new-equitable-grading-practices-wont-penalize-late-work-or-issue-zeros-even-for-cheating

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A Catholic school district in Massachusetts has ruled that its 5,000 students must use the names and pronouns they used at birth, in the latest clash between the church and radical gender ideology.

The ruling from the Diocese of Worcester and approved by Bishop Robert McManus is set to affect 21 schools in and around the central Massachusetts city and start when students got back to class for the fall semester.

Under the new guidelines, students must conduct themselves in a manner 'consistent with their biological sex,' including the bathrooms they use and the sports teams on which they compete.

David Perda, superintendent of Catholic Schools for the diocese, said some schools already had rules in place but that 'individual situations' had 'underscored a need for a single policy which clearly states church teaching.'

Whether students can change their name or identity in class has become a hot-button issue dividing progressives and conservatives. Massachusetts and other left-leaning states have been much more tolerant of gender fluidity.

Under the new guidelines, which were released on August 15, any bullying, harassment or violence directed against students because of their sex, sexual orientation or gender identify will 'not be tolerated.'

But, they continue, a student's biological sex takes precedence over any chosen identify.

That covers 'school athletics; school-sponsored dances; dress and uniform policies; the use of changing facilities, showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms, titles, names, and pronouns; and official school documents.'

For names and pronouns, there may be 'rare exceptions only on a limited, case-by-case basis,' to be decided by a school's principal.

The rules also call for 'modesty in language, appearance, dress, and behavior,' and also prohibit expressions of same-sex attraction that cause 'confusion or distraction' at school.

The policy is linked to Pope Francis, who has spoken repeatedly about the dangers of new-wave gender ideology and how it blurs the distinction between men and women.

It refers to statements from the pontiff that we should not 'accept ideologies that attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality.'

The pope has also said children who identify as trans should be helped to 'accept their own body as it was created.'

'We must always respect the sacred dignity of each individual person, but that does not mean the church must accept the confused notions of secular gender ideology,' says the statement from the diocese.

The policy comes as the Roman Catholic Church's stance on rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) has left some onlookers confused.

Pope Francis has said both that homosexuality is 'not a crime' but that also it is a 'sin.'

LGBT groups in Worcester have criticized the bishop's move.

Joshua Croke, who heads the nonprofit Love Your Labels, called it 'harmful' by encouraging students to 'stay in the closet' and feel ashamed.

Croke told The New York Times that he has a 'a long history of anti-LGBTQ. practices and positions.'

Last year, Bishop McManus courted controversy when he ordered a mostly black Catholic middle school in Worcester to take down its Black Lives Matter and Pride flags.

When the school refused, Bishop McManus declared that the school was no longer Catholic.

The row in Massachusetts comes ahead of the start of another school year in which teachers, parents, and students must navigate gender, identity, and sexuality at schools on the front lines of America's culture wars between liberals and conservatives.

Kansas, North Dakota and Wyoming have passed new laws that prevent transgender girls from playing on girls teams at their K-12 schools.

A Missouri law takes effect at the end of this month, bringing the number of states with restrictions to 23.

North Carolina could enact a ban later this month, and Ohio could follow in the fall.

A few laws, including ones in Arizona and West Virginia, are on hold because of federal lawsuits.

They're part of a larger wave of legislation across the US to limit transgender rights amid fears of rising numbers of young people, especially girls, coming out as trans, some of them opting for cross-sex hormones and even surgeries.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12429023/Catholic-schools-Massachusetts-order-5-000-students-use-names-pronouns-washrooms-biological-sex-heating-churchs-gender-row.html

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Australia's schools are failing – this is why

Kevin Donnelly

The news earlier this year that the Labor government in Victoria will use schools to promote a ‘Yes’ case for the Voice to Parliament should not surprise. Neither should it surprise that some Australian school students, instead of saluting the Australian flag and taking the oath of allegiance, are told to memorise the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

There is nothing new or unusual about schools being used as vehicles to indoctrinate students with neo-Marxist-inspired cultural-left ideology. It’s been happening over the last 30 to 40 years. As I wrote in Why our schools are failing (2004), instead of viewing education as something objective and impartial, Australian schools have been pressured to adopt ‘an ideologically driven approach that defines education as an instrument to radically change society and turn students into politically correct, new-age warriors’.

While the expression ‘the long march through the institutions’ has become clichéd, it does not alter the fact the phrase, attributed to the German student radical Rudi Dutschke and before him to the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, very much describes what has occurred in education since the late 1970s.

At a Fabian Society meeting held in Melbourne in 1983, Joan Kirner, who later became Victoria’s Minister for Education and then Premier, argued education had to be reshaped as ‘part of the socialist struggle for equality, participation, and social change, rather than an instrument of the capitalist system’. In the same speech, Kirner argued schools must be used as ‘a catalyst for system change rather than the legitimisation of system maintenance’.

Kirner’s socialist beliefs explain her mantra of ‘equality of outcomes’ instead of ‘equality of opportunity’ and her campaign to replace the then Higher School Certificate with the Victorian Certificate of Education. Given its academic focus and competitive end-of-year examinations where students are ranked in terms of performance, Kirner argued the HSC unfairly favoured privileged students attending wealthy non-government schools.

The Australian Education Union (previously named the Australian Teachers Federation) has, over the last 40 years, argued that Australian society is riven with inequality and injustice and that teachers, in the words of a teacher training resource popular at the time, must decide whose side they are on.

The union’s 1985 curriculum policy paper condemns Australian society for its ‘pronounced inequality in the distribution of social, economic, cultural and political resources and power between social groups, which restricts the life development of many’. Teachers were told the purpose of education was to reveal to students ‘the role of the economy, the sexual division of labour, the dominant culture and the education system in reproducing inequality’.

In order to improve equity and overcome disadvantage, the Australian Education Union has consistently spoken against Year 12 certificates, standardised tests like the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), and what is described as the competitive, academic curriculum. This curriculum is apparently guilty of reinforcing capitalist hierarchies and disadvantaging at-risk, low socio-economic status (SES) students.

The Union’s 1998 curriculum policy paper states:

‘Reliance on competition is a primary cause of inequalities of educational outcome because students from certain social groups are advantaged by competitive selection methods. Competitive selection also sets students against each other rather than encouraging co-operative learning methods.’

Once again, the primary target are Catholic and Independent schools that generally achieve the strongest academic results as measured by the Year 12 Australian Tertiary Entrance Rank (ATAR).

Other examples illustrating the wider cultural-left’s ideology and opposition to the belief education should be impartial and unbiased include denouncing the Howard government’s involvement in the Iraqi war and suggesting students are entitled to strike in protest; arguing it’s okay for students to wag school to attend climate change demonstrations; telling teachers they must embrace a neo-Marxist inspired LGBTQ+ agenda, and arguing non-government schools should not be funded.

Given the AEU’s history of cultural-left activism, it should not surprise that the teacher union is a strong supporter of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. In its submission to the ‘Indigenous Voice Co-Design process’ the union argues:

‘The AEU strongly supports The Uluru Statement and Voice. Treaty. Truth. Specifically, the AEU wishes to emphasise the importance of Truth-telling in schools through and in the curriculum and in the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.’

As I detail in the chapter on school education in Cancel Culture And The Left’s Long March, subject associations have also been instrumental in radically reshaping the curriculum and what happens in the classroom. Some of these groups also oppose standardised tests like NAPLAN (in relation to literacy) on the basis such tests stifle creativity by privileging correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and standardised English instead of the language students bring to the classroom.

Drawing on the work of the Brazilian Marxist educator Paulo Freire, who toured Australia in 1974, and the concept of critical literacy, one teaching association argues that the purpose of teaching English is to liberate and empower students by enabling them to critique texts and to discover how language is employed to reinforce what Louis Althusser terms capitalist society’s ideological state apparatus.

In an editorial in the 2004 edition of English in Australia published by the AATE, it is argued that the re-election of the Howard-led government demonstrated teachers had failed to properly teach critical literacy and, as a result, they had to redouble their efforts as so many young people had voted the wrong way. ‘What does it mean for us and our ability to create a questioning, critical generation that those who brought us balaclava-clad security guards, Alsatians, and Patrick’s Stevedoring could declare themselves the representatives of the workers and be supported by the electorate?’

Critical literacy and a rainbow alliance of cultural-left theories including postmodernism, deconstructionism, radical feminist gender, and post-colonial theories have also had a profound impact on how literature is taught in the English classroom. Australia contains teaching associations that condemn the concept of a literary canon involving those enduring works that are well crafted and have something profound to say about the human condition. Instead of acknowledging the moral, emotional, and aesthetic value of literature students are made to deconstruct texts in terms of power relationships and how the voices of marginalised groups, including women, people of colour, and LGBQ+ people, are ignored and silenced.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/our-schools-are-failing-this-is-why/

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21 August, 2023

Ending medical-school affirmative action will be a plus for patients

Yes, indeed. I have seen mention of blacks refusing to see black doctors in public hospitals because they don't trust "black" qualifications. Embarrassing! But who can blame them?

The US Supreme Court effectively prohibited university admissions officers from giving preferential treatment to applicants based on their race this summer.

Many medical-school leaders decried the high court’s ruling, claiming the ban will lead to less diversity within their student bodies, a less diverse crop of physicians and worse outcomes for minority patients.

But it’s not clear diversity within the physician workforce improves patient outcomes — which ought to be the primary objective of medical education.

In fact, there’s evidence affirmative-action policies can harm patients as well as aspiring doctors themselves.

It’s an article of faith among affirmative action’s defenders that a more diverse physician workforce benefits patients.

In her dissent from the majority’s ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that affirmative action helps increase “the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds” who become doctors, which in turn “improves ‘healthcare access and health outcomes in medically underserved communities.’”

The Association of American Medical Colleges echoed Sotomayor, saying it was “deeply disappointed” in the majority’s ruling, which “demonstrates a lack of understanding of the critical benefits of racial and ethnic diversity.”

“This decision will hasten the deaths of Black people in this country and we already die prematurely,” Advancing Health Equity founder and physician Uché Blackstock blasted.

They’re referring in part to a handful of studies showing black Americans post better health outcomes when treated by black doctors.

But researcher Ian Kingsbury recently examined those studies’ methodologies and concluded that “systematic reviews” have “found ‘no relationship’ or ‘mixed results’ between race/ethnicity and quality of communication and ‘inconclusive’ evidence for patient outcomes.”

Admissions officers’ obsessive focus on race often causes them to ignore applicants’ academic and clinical aptitude — with dire consequences for the applicants themselves and ultimately the patients they treat.

Affirmative-action policies seek to give underrepresented groups a leg up in the admissions process. By design, that means admitting applicants who likely would have been rejected based on their test scores and grade-point averages alone.

From 2013 to 2016, 56% of black applicants and 31% of Hispanic applicants with below-average Medical College Admission Test scores and undergraduate GPAs were admitted to medical school, compared with just 8% of white applicants and 6% of Asian applicants with similar scores and GPAs.

It has been exhaustively documented that undergraduate “GPAs and MCAT total scores are strong predictors of academic performance in medical school through graduation,” as one study from the Association of American Medical Colleges itself put it.

In other words, affirmative action might help underqualified applicants get into med school. But it won’t necessarily keep them there.

Black medical school students drop out, citing academic problems, at a rate 10 times higher than white students.

It’s cruel — not compassionate — to admit students who aren’t qualified for the intellectual rigors of medical school.

It sets them up for failure, saddles them with debt they could have avoided and wastes resources that could have gone towards training qualified applicants who will actually practice medicine.

Worst of all, admitting underqualified students ultimately hurts patients.

“MCAT scores are predictive of student performance” on both Step 1 and Step 2 of the US Medical Licensing Examination, concluded one 2016 study.

Those licensing exams, in turn, are indicative of students’ skill at treating patients during their clinical rotations.

“USMLE scores have a positive linear association with clinical performance as a medical student,” noted a 2019 study, “even after correcting for gender, institution, and test-taking ability.”

The relationship holds after students graduate, complete residencies and become practicing physicians.

A 2014 study of US-licensed doctors who trained overseas found that “after adjustment for severity of illness, physician characteristics, and hospital characteristics, performance on Step 2” had “a statistically significant inverse relationship with mortality. Each additional point on the examination was associated with a 0.2% decrease in mortality.”

The purpose of medical school is not to maximize diversity.

It’s to transform America’s best and brightest students into the most competent physicians possible, no matter their race, gender or any other demographic consideration.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/17/ending-medical-school-affirmative-action-will-be-a-plus-for-patients/

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College has become a government-subsidized rip-off. It’s good that fewer people go

JOHN STOSSEL

It’s August. Many young people head off to college. This year, fortunately, fewer will go.

I say “fortunately” because college is now an overpriced scam.

Overpriced, because normal incentives to be frugal and make smart judgements about who should go to college were thrown out when the federal government took over granting student loans.

Why?

Because our government basically vomits money at everyone who applies.

If private lenders gave out the loans, they’d look at whether they were likely to be paid back. They’d ask questions like: “What will you study? You really think majoring in dance will lead to a job that will pay you enough to allow you to pay us back?”

Government rarely asks these questions. Bureaucrats throw money at students. Many don’t benefit. Many shouldn’t even be going to college. Today, nearly half of the students given loans don’t graduate even after six years.

Many feel like failures.

College is good for people who want to be college professors or who major in fields like engineering and computer science that might lead to good jobs. But that’s not most people. Government loans encourage everyone to go to college, even if they’re not very interested in academics.

Government’s handouts also invite colleges to keep raising tuition. Over the past 50 years, college cost rose at four times the rate of inflation. Four times!

Years ago, I reported how colleges were suddenly wasting money on luxuries like fancy gyms and even day spas. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that it’s gotten worse: The University of Oklahoma bought a monastery in Italy for study abroad students! The University of Kentucky built a theater where students play video games.

“Why not raise tuition?” asks the typical college president. “Uncle Sam pays the bill!”

When I went to Princeton, tuition was $2,000. Now its $60,000.

Colleges have little incentive to cut costs or innovate. Princeton still “teaches” by having professors lecture. Super boring. I slept through many.

Although today, I guess I should thank Princeton because its tedious lectures inspired me to try to find better ways to present information. That made me successful on TV.

Today, student loan borrowers owe tens of thousands of dollars. Last year, the president announced he would cancel up to $20,000 of that debt per person.

Indebted students loved that! A group named the Student Debt Crisis Center called that “a major win for many.”

But it would be a major loss for many more! Canceling debt is unfair to the people who work hard and pay off their debts.

Fortunately, Biden’s plan was struck down by the Supreme Court, which said only Congress has the right to cancel student debt. Congress didn’t.

Now Biden’s trying again. The administration announced they will forgive debt for anyone who’s been making payments for more than 20 years. That’s better, but still bad. Maybe courts will stop this handout, too.

College students take on loans and spend decades in debt because they believe they must get a degree to be hired. But that’s no longer true. IBM, Accenture, Dell, Bank of America, Google and other big companies, recognizing the uselessness of many undergraduate degrees, recently dropped college-degree requirements. So have state governments in Maryland, Utah, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Alaska, North Carolina, New Jersey and Virginia.

Good jobs in the trades, like welding and plumbing, don’t require a college degree. Trade school programs often take less than two years and cost much less than college.

To have a good life or get a good job, you don’t need fancy dining halls, video game auditoriums or a college degree.

College has become a government-subsidized rip-off. It’s good that fewer people go.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/99724-college-rip-off-2023-08-16

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One State Will Not Allow Credit for Controversial AP African American Studies Course

Earlier this year, Townhall covered how the College Board announced it would revise its Advanced Placement African American studies course following criticism from 2024 presidential candidate and Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration.

Since he assumed office, DeSantis has said that he would not allow public schools to offer the course over its “woke” and “radical” indoctrination concepts. This week, another state announced that it would scrap credit altogether for the course.

The Arkansas Education Department removed course credit for an Advanced Placement African American Studies course, according to multiple reports. This occurred just before the start of the 2023-2024 school year. The course will not be eligible for early college credit, Kimberly Mundell, the department’s communications director, confirmed to NBC News.

"The department encourages the teaching of all American history and supports rigorous courses not based on opinions or indoctrination," Mundell said in a statement.

In March, GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed the LEARNS Act. One of the components of the law banned teaching on “gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual reproduction” before fifth grade. In addition, the legislation banned lessons that would “indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as Critical Race Theory,” according to ABC News.

Reportedly, Mundell told local outlet KHBS-TV that the class was being piloted at some schools and still undergoing major revisions.

“Arkansas law contains provisions regarding prohibited topics,” she reportedly said. “Without clarity, we cannot approve a pilot that may unintentionally put a teacher at risk of violating Arkansas law.”

According to The New York Times, students at Central High School in Little Rock had already enrolled in the course before it was revealed that they would not receive early college credit for it. They were also told that the course “may not meet graduation requirements.”

The class reportedly first emerged in the state in February, one month before Sanders signed the LEARNS Act.

Last month, in Florida, the board of education approved new standards for how black history would be taught in schools, which Townhall covered. The updated standards advise schools to teach that enslaved people in the United States “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit” and teach that there were “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans,” according to The Washington Post.

“In Florida we are taking a stand against the state-sanctioned racism that is critical race theory,” DeSantis said in a statement in December. “We won’t allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other. We also have a responsibility to ensure that parents have the means to vindicate their rights when it comes to enforcing state standards. Finally, we must protect Florida workers against the hostile work environment that is created when large corporations force their employees to endure CRT-inspired ‘training’ and indoctrination.”

https://townhall.com//tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/08/15/one-state-is-removing-course-credit-for-ap-african-american-history-n2627045

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20 August, 2023

‘It’s Almost Everywhere,’ Scholar Says of China’s Infiltration of America’s K-12 Schools

China’s infiltration of American K-12 schools is “almost everywhere,” according to Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars.

“That is, in every state that we’ve looked at, we have found instances of it, but I would say it’s concentrated in the feeder schools to elite education, which means mostly West Coast and East Coast, but not exclusively those,” Wood says.

“The effort here is, China’s not just spreading around its resources promiscuously across the land. It’s looking for places where buying influence will yield results in the long term,” he adds. “So, it’s widespread, but much more prevalent here on the East Coast and California.”

In April, The Heritage Foundation awarded the National Association of Scholars its Innovation Prize, which “is intended to spark creative disruption in the conservative movement as we strive to ensure the future of American self-governance.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Wood joins today’s episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss some of the concerns surrounding the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in our education system and some of the other work the National Association of Scholars has been doing in addition to digging into China’s infiltration of and influence in K-12 schools.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/15/its-almost-everywhere-scholar-says-chinas-infiltration-americas-k-12-schools

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Back to What Type of School?

As millions of children return to public school, it's a good idea to again examine what they are being taught and what is being left out. It also offers an annual opportunity for parents to ask if their kids are being educated or indoctrinated.

At the recent convention of the National Education Association in Orlando, Florida, reports told of delegates waving rainbow signs proclaiming: "freedom to teach" and "freedom to learn." The demonstrators oppose parental concerns over what they regard as pornography in certain books, an opposition that has tarred them as "book banners." Peculiar how it's "academic freedom" to introduce books that promote behavior and ideas many parents oppose, but "censorship" to object to them.

The NEA adopted two amendments supporting "reproductive rights" for women. "Forced motherhood is female enslavement" read a second amendment. This is appropriate for prepubescent children, or students of any age? The delegates continue to favor the LGBTQ-plus agenda, which professes to advocate for sexual and gender equality under the law. They also approved a measure supporting "asylum for all."

How is any of this preparing children to compete with China and other nations in math, reading, and science?

It is not. The New York Times reported last October: "U.S. students in most states and across almost all demographic groups have experienced troubling setbacks in both math and reading. ... In math, the results were especially devastating, representing the steepest declines ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the nation's report card, which tests a broad sampling of fourth and eighth graders and dates to the early 1990s."

It hasn't always been this way. Joel Belz, a columnist for World magazine, recalled in 2006 a 1924 education pamphlet designed to prepare eighth graders for high school. It had the lengthy title "Stephenson's Iowa State Eighth Grade Examination Question Book." Belz thinks most high school seniors today would find the questions challenging.

They include arithmetic: "A wall 77 feet long, 6 1/2 feet high, and 14 inches thick is built of bricks costing $9 per M. What was the entire cost of the bricks if 22 bricks were sufficient to make a cubic foot of wall?"

Grammar: "Define five of the following terms: antecedent, tense, object, conjugation, auxiliary verb, expletive, reflexive pronoun."

Civil government: "Name three township, three county, and three state officers and state what office each person holds..."

I'm betting not many students today could name their members of Congress, much less local officials.

Other categories were geography, physiology ("beginning with food in the mouth, trace the course of digestion, naming the juices with which the food is mixed and the results. What is the reason that spitting on the street is dangerous to the health of a community?"), history, music, and reading. These were supported by a daily salute to the American flag and other expressions of patriotism.

Who decided these subjects and practices were unnecessary to a well-rounded education and equipping children to become good citizens and lead prosperous and healthy lives? Is it the teacher's unions and other activists who see schools not as places for educating the next generation, but as indoctrination centers for their secular-progressive worldview?

Some parents have begun moving away from public schools. Increasing numbers are homeschooling their children or taking advantage of school choice programs.

For the rest, get them out now while you are still able to save their minds, spirits and the country.

https://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2023/08/17/back-to-what-type-of-school-n2627127

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Law lecturer sacked after 'objecting to curriculum that indoctrinated students in gender identity theory' at Open University

A law lecturer has claimed she was let go from the Open University after raising concerns about teaching gender identity theory. Almut Gadow, 43, says that she questioned curriculum requirements including teaching diverse gender identities and encouraging students to use offenders' preferred pronouns.

She maintains that her role was 'to present facts' and says that she was sacked for questioning the need to 'indoctrinate students in gender identity theory' after changes were made to the curriculum in the 2021/22 academic year.

Gadow stressed the perceived importance of not allowing offenders 'to dictate the language of his case in a way which masks relevant facts', adding that she felt the new requirements 'distorted equality law and normalised child sexual exploitation'.

But the professor said she was told her forum posts on gender identity were deemed 'serious insubordination' and that persistent comments on identity, paedophilia and sex offending were judged 'serious bullying and harassment'.

Gadow was ultimately let go from the institution in November for gross misconduct after 'almost ten years' with the institution, and now seeks to raise funds to support a legal battle.

Writing on a fundraising page, Gadow said: 'When I raised these questions, in an online forum for law tutors to discuss what they teach, management had no answers. 'Months later, they were cited as reasons for my dismissal.

'Managers spuriously alleged that my 'unreasonable questions' had created an environment which 'isn't inclusive, trans-friendly or respectful', thus violating the transgender staff policy and codes of conduct.

'In fact, I had broken no lawful rule by probing the academic soundness of what I was expected to teach.'

She claims that 'some treated 'minor attraction' as part of the 'diverse sexualities and gender identities' Open University law teaching now seeks to 'centre'', alleging that the criminal law module featured an assignment in which students had to discuss a relationship between an adult and a minor.

She said that describing the child and adult as each other's 'boyfriends' would yield marks, and that students would lose marks for considering 'whether the adult was grooming the child or committing a sexual offence'.

When she asked for clarification, she says her appeals were 'described as further misconduct'.

On CrowdJustice, the lecturer has so far raised £16,690 of £70,000 in a campaign to support an employment tribunal claim against the university.

£70,000, she says, will cover the cost of the preliminary hearing, disclosure of documents and preparation of a trial bundle.

She alleged that she has 'been unfairly dismissed, harassed, and discriminated against because I reject gender ideology and believe in academic freedom.

'My case raises complex points of human rights, academic freedom, free expression and equality law.'

Gadow plans to argue that 'valuing academic freedom is, in itself, a protected belief under the Equality Act' - the central piece of legislation legally protecting people from discrimination in the workplace and wider society.

Writing on her fundraising page, she said: 'I see free speech as a distinguishing feature between democracy and totalitarianism, not a battleground between left and right.

'My family has seen both German dictatorships, the fascist and the socialist, right and left, suppress speech and purge academia of dissent and dissenters.

'I hope my daughter can one day go to a university that does not eliminate wrongthink(ers).'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12422831/Law-lecturer-claims-sacked-Open-University-questioning-gender-identity-curriculum-requirements-felt-normalised-child-sexual-exploitation.html

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18 August, 2023

The worrisome popularity of sociology in British High Schools

I taught sociology for a number of years in a major university and can say that it is as bad as Rod Liddle (below) says it is

It was bleak despair once again when I read that sociology is shooting up the A-level list, along with its ESN older sister, psychology. These are the two subjects da kidz want to study these days, both shooting up the list of preferences. Psychology is now the second most popular subject (largely for the dweebs who can’t cope with a proper science) and sociology is up from ninth to fifth.

In a sense, we should probably be glad that this mangled subject (Latin prefix, Greek suffix – that alone should give you a clue as to the depths of its idiocy) is proving popular with the young social justice warriors. It might keep them away from proper subjects, such as history and geography. In the past 30 years both of those disciplines have simply become yet another branch of resentment studies – in a sense a mere adjunct to sociology. They have become about real, exaggerated or imagined oppression and little else. Perhaps now, with the radicals turning to sociology, both subjects might be reclaimed.

Sociology is tendentious, half-baked, spuriously scientific, politically biased and – frankly – of no use to man or beast. I should know; I studied it at the London School of Economics and Political Science back in the early 1980s and it was as stupid then as it is now. Much like the altar at which it worships, Marxism, it is a creature of the 19th century and the desperate wish firstly to provide a ‘holistic’ view of everything and secondly to replace religious faith with science. Auguste Comte coined the word ‘sociology’ in between doing much better things with his life. Like Marx and almost every other philosopher of the 19th century, Comte was a social evolutionist: mankind develops in pre-ordained stages. That is the first flaw of the discipline – it doesn’t.

The accusations of political bias are furiously contested by those within the discipline, largely, I suspect, because they know they are true. When I studied the subject the most right-wing sociologist on the curriculum was the American Talcott Parsons, who described himself as a ‘Stevenson Democrat’ (after Adlai) and was suspected by J. Edgar Hoover of being the leader of a ring of communists at Harvard University. The rest of the stuff was pretty much down-the-line Marxism: conflict and oppression. It is remarkable how this subject still clings to the tenets of an ideology which since 1989 has been a byword for catastrophic economic failure and tyranny. But then so do the leaders of Black Lives Matter, who when railing against the concept of the ‘white saviour’ make an exception for good ol’ Karl.

The extent of that bias within the subject? A study by Jose Duarte suggested that 58 to 66 per cent of ‘social scientists’ were liberal (in the US meaning of the term) and only 5 to 8 per cent conservative. But social scientists presumably included economists, where the inherent bias is far less pronounced. A better indication might come from a study by Jon Shields of the Claremont McKenna College in California, which suggested that 12 out of a total of 6,000 sociologists were what one might call conservative.

The impulse within the discipline is always to concentrate on conflict, be it class-based or gender-based or the consequence of racial difference. There is no room for nuance: it is all a Manichaean divide between the oppressor and the oppressed. Anything which might mitigate social divides is dismissed as chimeric, much as Marx once dismissed patriotism, say, or religious faith as deluding. And when equality is reached within one or another sphere, sociology moves the goal posts to demand ever more radical forms of ‘equality’.

Well, if the kids want to spend £40,000 immersed in this liberal fantasy, it’s their call. Although what they will do with their degrees at the end is a moot point.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/the-great-sociology-con

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NYC charter schools enroll wave of kids from migrant families: ‘We want to help’

New York City charter schools have enrolled a wave of children from asylum-seeking families that have recently arrived in the five boroughs in an effort to help address the ongoing migrant crisis.

Democracy Prep, one of the city’s largest charter school networks with 14 schools in The Bronx and Harlem, has begun taking in arrivals in at least three schools that currently have no waiting lists — including Harlem Prep Middle School, Harlem Prep HS and Democracy Prep Endurance HS.

Other charter schools that have enrolled migrant kids include Family Life Academy in The Bronx, Voice Charter School in Long Island City, Growing up Green in LIC and Jamaica and Hebrew Language Academy in Brooklyn and Staten Island, charter school sector sources said.

There have been 19,000 children enrolled in city shelters since July 2022, and Mayor Eric Adams’ office said most of them are migrant kids.

“We’ve already enrolled 40 [migrant students] across our middle schools and high schools concentrated on the east side of Harlem,” said Democracy Prep regional Superintendent Emmanuel George.

“Since the surge has happened, we want to help. We want to bring kids into our doors.”

“We are a community charter school, you’ve got to serve. You’ve got to act,” George said.

Charter schools with waiting lists of students from prior random lottery drawings are forbidden from enrolling migrants or other students. But schools are permitted to enroll children in cases where there is no backlog.

“Some [grades] have waiting lists and some don’t. “People can apply, they can get in,” George said.

“We want to abide by the state lottery rules but at the same time the wait list will not be a barrier for us in schools where we are still seeking enrollment. If there are migrants entering into our communities, we want to make sure enrollment is not a barrier.”

He said enrollment officers distributed applications in English, Spanish and French to parents of kids in migrant shelters.

“We had people who can speak the language,” George said.

There are 274 charter schools in the city serving 142,500 students. Charter schools are publicly funded, but privately managed and mostly non-union schools that operate independently from the city Department of Education. Many have a longer school day and school year and outperform their neighboring traditional public schools, test data and studies show.

Like traditional public schools, charters have seen a decline in enrollment with a decline in the city’s student-age population. The city’s public school enrollment has plummeted from 1.1 million students a decade ago to under 900,000.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/17/nyc-charter-schools-enroll-wave-of-kids-from-migrant-families-we-want-to-help/

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Trustees for the New College of Florida have voted to end a 28-year-old gender studies program

Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist and Manhattan Institute scholar appointed to New College’s board of trustees by Gov. Ron DeSantis, introduced the motion to direct the school’s president to eliminate the gender studies program.

The board voted 7-3 in favor of the motion at a meeting Thursday.

Rufo said during the meeting that the gender studies program is “wildly contradictory” to the board’s mission to advance a classical liberal arts education at the Sarasota college, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

“Removal of gender studies as an area of concentration at New College is fully in accord with its strategic mission to be the state of Florida’s liberal arts honors college,” board member Matthew Spalding, a Hillsdale College professor and dean, told The Daily Signal.

“Not only does gender studies fall well outside this focus, but its ideologically driven and tendentious character render it more a movement of cultural politics than an academic discipline,” Spalding added. “Any substantial topic taken up in gender studies may be found thoroughly treated in the ordinary academic disciplines such as history, psychology, or biology.”

Spalding previously oversaw programs on American principles and political thought at The Heritage Foundation, parent organization of The Daily Signal.

The New School’s board voted in February to eliminate its diversity, equity, and inclusion office in February, which some observers call a testament to the school’s rapid return to focusing on a classical liberal arts education.

The New College of Florida’s gender studies program, established in 1995, included courses such as Women’s and Feminist Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Queer and Trans Studies, and Masculinity Studies.

The gender studies program “intersects with interdisciplinary fields including Cultural, Ethnic, and Africana Studies,” according to a school webpage about it.

DeSantis, a Republican candidate for the presidency, has touted the New College as a way to advance conservative principles and in January named six conservatives to the school’s 12-member board of trustees.

The governor has said he aims to shape the state’s only liberal arts school to become an example of a traditional, conservative education.

Disgruntled students protested Rufo’s visit to New College in May, and one allegedly spat on the trustee. The student was charged with battery, a first-degree misdemeanor, but on Thursday came to an agreement with the school in which she will withdraw from the school and won’t be prosecuted.

Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz said that he hopes the new direction will transform the New College of Florida into a sort of “Hillsdale of the South.”

Hillsdale College, in Michigan, is a celebrated liberal arts college with a conservative approach.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/11/new-college-of-florida-trustees-vote-to-end-gender-studies

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17 August, 2023

Ruling Against Middle Schooler Punished for Wearing ‘There Are Only 2 Genders’ T-Shirt to Be Appealed

The Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a “notice of appeal” after a federal district court in Massachusetts ruled that a middle school in Middleborough, Massachusetts, has the right to prohibit a student from wearing a “There are only two genders” T-shirt to school.

“We look forward to showing the court how this isn’t just about a T-shirt,” Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel Logan Spena told The Daily Signal of its Aug. 4 appeal. “This is about a public school telling a middle-schooler that he isn’t allowed to express a view that differs from the school’s radical gender-identity ideology.”

By appealing the district court’s initial ruling, ADF hopes to prohibit Nichols Middle School from denying Liam Morrison, 12, who will be an eighth grader this fall, his right to wear a shirt that expresses his beliefs.

While the middle school promotes and lets their students wear attire that promotes Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ groups, and others, it would not let Morrison wear a shirt that says “There are only two genders” or “There are *censored* genders” to school.

“Public school officials can’t force Liam to remove a shirt that states his position when the school lets every other student wear clothing that speaks on the same issue,” Spena said.

Currently, the middle school has a speech policy, according to the complaint, that says “clothing must not state, imply, or depict hate speech or imagery that target groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or any other classification.”

The school’s dress code policy adds that “other apparel that the administration determines to be unacceptable to our community standards will not be allowed.”

When ADF attorneys asked for clarification, schools Superintendent Carolyn Lyons reaffirmed the school’s policy and said that it “has, and will continue to, prohibit the wearing of a T-shirt by [Morrison] or anyone else which is likely to be considered discriminatory, harassing and/or bullying to others, including those who are gender nonconforming by suggesting that their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression does not exist or is invalid,” the legal group’s complaint says.

As a result, “the schools’ speech policy unconstitutionally censors certain student expressions merely because school officials deem a student’s expression ‘offensive’ to others,” while also giving the school “unbridled, overbroad discretion to choose what is acceptable for student expression,” Spena explained.

When the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hears Morrison’s case, it will have the opportunity to uphold the First Amendment of the Constitution and follow Supreme Court precedents by correcting the district court’s decision, which disregarded both, the ADF says.

“Our Constitution protects the right of all Americans, including students, to speak messages that are consistent with what they believe,” Spena told The Daily Signal. “Students don’t forfeit their free speech when they walk into the school building.”

But that’s exactly what happened to Morrison when he wore a shirt that said “There are only two genders” to school. Morrison was brought to the principal’s office and told to take off the shirt or go home. He chose to go home, but a few days later wore a shirt that said “There are *censored* genders.”

Morrison was again sent to the principal’s office, but rather than miss another day of class, he changed his shirt.

The school claimed students had said the shirt made them feel uncomfortable, the complaint says, adding that no one cared whether Morrison felt uncomfortable with the transgender and LGBTQ signs throughout the school that contradicted his beliefs.

“If the court of appeals corrects the district court’s ruling, and we believe that it will,” Spena said, then Morrison will be allowed to wear his “There are only two genders” shirt to school as the case progresses.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/08/ruling-against-middle-schooler-punished-wearing-there-are-only-two-genders-t-shirt-be-appealed/

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Our academics are attacking the whole concept of knowledge

The first problem about decolonisation is the word itself. Colonisation is the process of establishing control over a foreign territory and its indigenous inhabitants, by settlement, conquest or political manipulation. But decolonisation? It has come to mean much more than the reversal of that process. Today, it refers to an altogether wider agenda, whose central objective is to discredit or downgrade the cultural achievements of the West. Objective truth and empirical investigation are mere western constructs. They are optional ideas which need have no weight beyond the western societies which invented them. But the West has imposed them on the rest of the world by a process akin to the colonial conquests of the past four centuries.

In New Zealand, this attitude to truth has led to a revised school syllabus in which Maori folk beliefs about the world are to be treated as if they were just as valid as the body of empirical knowledge that is called science everywhere else. However, we do not need to go to New Zealand to see intellectual decolonisation in action. University faculties in Britain are all expected to publish ‘decolonisation statements’ filled with guilt and angst about the western origin of so much modern knowledge.

Oxford University’s Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division may seem an unpromising candidate for decolonisation, but its decolonisation statement attacks the whole concept of knowledge. ‘As we work towards greater inclusion’, it declares, ‘we need to have a broader understanding of what constitutes scientific knowledge.’ Among other things, this is said to involve ‘challenging western-centric ideas of “objectivity”, “expertise” and “merit” ’, and ‘removing structural hierarchies that privilege certain knowledge and certain peoples over others’. The instinct behind statements like these is not scholarly or scientific. It is political. It devalues knowledge by redefining it, as a way of protesting against the endemic sense of racial superiority which is said to characterise British society.

Doug Stokes is based at the University of Exeter, an institution whose history department proclaims on its website that ‘the very ways we are conditioned to look at and think about the past are often derived from imperialist and racialised schools of thought’. His new book, Against Decolonisation, is a powerful protest against this kind of stale cliché.

Stokes challenges the dominant cultural and political narrative which portrays Britain as endemically racist. Racial prejudice is too natural to human beings to be eliminated entirely, but statistical studies suggest that by most measures Britain is one of the least racist societies in Europe. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Mayor of London all come from minority ethnic groups. British universities, including the most selective, have a student population in which ethnic minorities are well represented at every level of academic attainment.

Stokes digs deeper into the figures, to show that ‘ethnic minorities’ is too large and varied a category to serve as a useful instrument of analysis. There are significant differences between racial groups. And all of them do significantly better than the category that persistently loses out on university education, namely poor white males.

These points have been made before, notably in the March 2021 report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. The report concluded that economic geography, socio-economic background and family values were far more significant determinants of outcomes than racism. As it pointed out, the life chances of the child of a Harrow-raised British Indian accountant were very different from those of the child of a Bradford-raised British Pakistani taxi driver. Both of them had better prospects than ‘low income white boys, especially those from former industrial and coastal towns’. The Commission’s report was received with howls of outrage by those who felt that they were being deprived of their victimhood. But the objectors rarely engaged with the detailed supporting data on which it was based.

Although the points which Stokes makes are not new, they have rarely been made with such verve and force as they are in this succinct demolition of modern decolonisation theory. He is particularly critical of the reports of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which he accuses of dodgy statistical analysis, and Universities UK, the representative body of vice-chancellors, which has uncritically imposed a decolonisation agenda on the whole university sector.

How did we come to this pass? Stokes argues that the narrative of embedded (‘institutional’) racism in western societies was adopted to fill the intellectual gap left by the decline of Marxism. Cultural control replaced class oppression as the mechanism by which the capitalist West was said to maintain its dominant role in the world. The chief prophets of this doctrine were the French postmodernist philosopher Michel Foucault, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, and the Palestinian-American historian Edward Said. Foucault taught that the structures of power determine what is generally perceived to be true. What we think we know is actually no more than an artificial consensus created by our invisible control over schools, universities, publishers and museums and other cultural institutions in our own interest. It followed that to change the world, it was necessary to take control of those institutions and impose a new intellectual consensus. Said took this idea further. The notion of the inherent superiority of western science and culture, he argued, was a new form of colonialism. It enabled the West to maintain its dominance long after it had shed its colonies. Yet western ideas, western science and western history had no objective claim to authority. They were simply the products of western power structures.

These ideas have never had much traction in France, the land of their birth. But they have taken root in Britain and America in the minds of many who have never read Foucault or Said. In Britain, race theorists such as Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham University, have argued that the claims made for western culture are a form of racial prejudice. They are an assertion of the inherent superiority of whites over people of colour which is hardwired throughout British society. This kind of thinking, says Stokes, is what lies behind the obsession with race that is currently transforming British universities.

The problem about postmodernist theories is the same as the problem about other forms of determinism. They underestimate the originality of the human mind. They also ignore the universality of abstract ideas. The fact that Aristotle or Einstein first articulated an idea does not make it a ‘western’ idea. If some statement about the world is true in New Zealand or Africa, it must be equally true in Britain or America, or it is not true at all.

However, the main objection to decolonisation is not that it is false but that it is narrow-minded, obsessive and intolerant. People will continue to disagree about the prevalence and the origin of racial prejudice. Error and discord are inevitable hazards of the free market in ideas. But the decolonisers are not just trying to defend their views. They are seeking to upend the free market in ideas by imposing them. This is a natural consequence of their approach to intellectual inquiry. For those who believe that knowledge and truth are mere social constructs there is no point in debate. Alternative visions of the world are just the product of social conditioning. Social change and suppression of dissent are the only answers. Schools and universities must be the battlegrounds. Hence the obligatory decolonisation statements, the imposition of a highly controversial agenda on the syllabus, the no-platforming of opponents and the real fears of so many academics that if they step out of line their careers will be blighted.

These are symptoms of the narrowing of our intellectual world, even in the citadels of the mind which should be its foremost defenders. Perhaps books like this one will encourage more academics to summon up the courage to resist the bullying and to challenge the new conformity. Not everyone will agree with them. But everyone who truly cares about truth will welcome the opening up of a debate which the universities have largely foreclosed.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/the-new-orthodoxy

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‘M’ is for Marxism: schools get an ‘F’ for fail

Senator Ralph Babet

Australian schools are failing our children. Instead of teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, schools have become centres for brainwashing. From kindergarten up, children are not being educated they are being indoctrinated with the toxic lies of identity politics, Critical Race Theory, and climate alarmism.

This is due to the long march of cultural Marxists through our institutions. Unable to bring about a communist revolution in the West, cultural Marxists have slowly gained control of our universities including the teaching faculties. They have written textbooks, converted teachers, and now they are reaping the fruits of their labour with educators throughout Australia brainwashing their students.

But it’s not just our schools that are suffering. University-educated students with their neo-Marxist values make their way into the media, into the professions, and the human resource departments of corporations. Everywhere you look our institutions – the ABC, the big sporting organisations, big businesses, libraries, museums, and art galleries – are all marching to the beat of the same drum.

This is a disaster for our society. Our schools are no longer places where young Australians acquire the skills to become productive members of society and critical thinkers, they are taught to feel guilty and to be ashamed of our country.

Students are taught that Australia is a racist, sexist, white supremacist nation. They do not learn about the great achievements of Western Civilisation. Instead, they are taught that the economic, social, and environmental practices of the West are destroying life on Earth.

It’s no wonder that young Australians are so pessimistic about the future after 13 years of relentless negativity in schools.

Some are suffering from a brand new psychological disorder called ‘eco-anxiety’.

Some don’t want to have children because they believe that the world is such a terrible place.

Some are driven to drop out and start taking drugs.

Some succumb to deaths of despair.

A call is made to the Kids Helpline every 80 seconds in Australia, equating to a devastating 330,000 cries for help from children around the country every year.

Yet despite the obvious demand, most of these calls are not answered due to a lack of funding.

It’s a dire situation, according to mental health experts. Of the 328,424 young people who tried to contact the Kids Helpline in 2022, only 145,000 were connected to a counsellor. That’s just two calls connected out of every five that are received.

This is truly a tragedy. We have to stop the barrage of lies and negativity that are poisoning young people’s minds. More than one hundred thousand people choose to migrate to Australia every year because it is a beacon of freedom, democracy, and economic opportunity in a world where far too many people face poverty and oppression.

Is it any wonder that homeschooling is booming in Australia? It’s not just because of Covid. School lockdowns were an eye-opener for a lot of parents.

Supervising their children at home, parents became aware of some of the toxic or time-wasting content in the school curriculum.

As a result, registrations for home education took off in 2020.

There was a 20 per cent increase in NSW and Victoria and a 26 per cent increase in Queensland compared with the previous year.

But the trend has been on the rise in every state and territory over the last decade.

In 2011, just over 9,000 children were being educated at home. Ten years later, in 2021 there were 26,000 children registered for home education.

Young Australians need an education system that fills them with pride in this country and gives them the skills to thrive in modern Australia. It’s time that people with conservative family values demanded better in all walks of life, starting with our schools.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/m-is-for-marxism-schools-get-an-f-for-fail/

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16 August, 2023

Colleges Spending, Students Paying

Since 2002, most colleges and universities across the U.S. have had an exponential increase in tuition prices. According to a Wall Street Journal report of 50 flagship schools — the oldest public university in each state — the median price increase over the course of 20 years for students is 64%. Only the cost of healthcare and gas have risen more than tuition rates. Forbes points out that between 1980 and 2020, there was a 169% increase in tuition costs.

The question is: Why are most higher-education institutions putting the onus on students to foot the ever-growing bill? Aren’t most of them getting funding from the federal government?

The answer is yes … and no. According to the Journal: “Three-fourths of states did cut their support, undermining a longstanding principle that schools educated the populace with government backing. But universities generally didn’t tighten their belts as a result. Rather, they raised prices far beyond what was needed to fill the hole.”

Apparently, the people who are supposed to be the best and the brightest running our universities are clueless as to how budgeting and money work. It’s either that, or they — like the federal government — are practitioners of modern monetary theory. The average school over the course of the past 20 years increased its spending by 34%.

The majority of schools are investing their money into illustrious sports programs, additional (and arguably unnecessary) admin and staff, and offering state-of-the-art facilities to attract the wealthiest students. It is the rare school that has been savvy and caring enough to try to keep prices low for its students. Idaho is one of the exceptions. Purdue is another.

Parents, and eventually students (because few low- to middle-income students can afford not to take student loans), continue to take on years and years of debt, all to pay for the feckless spending of their alma maters.

Many are still beholden to companies that won’t hire people who don’t have a college degree. For others, it’s a matter of family legacy or the pride of being the first college graduate that drives them into this debt. Still for others, it’s just the next expected step in the plan they have for their lives. Very few students at 18 years of age go to college with a specific vocational purpose like lawyer, doctor, or scientist. These young adults end up wasting precious dollars and years trying to “figure out what they want to do.”

And because they are only 18, they have very little understanding of what that amount of debt does to future credit scores and budgeting. Many are so ill-equipped to face the loan payments that they end up continuing to get higher and higher degrees, all to forestall their eventual massive bill payments. CNBC points out that while tuition costs have gone up 169% since the 1980s, income for young workers has increased only 19%.

It is truly a scandal how much these universities are asking students to pay to attend.

There have been some positives, however. Many universities are starting to cull their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) dead-weight hires from the payroll. Others are attempting to keep their enrollment about the same as pre-COVID pandemic. And people like Dr. Jordan Peterson are developing affordable online schools.

Most, however, are spending more than they earn — and doing so with little public accountability and with little regard for the plight of the students they are wantonly impoverishing

https://patriotpost.us/articles/99605-colleges-spending-students-paying-2023-08-14

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The Decline of a NYC Christian College Reflects Western Civilizational Decay

Earlier this month the King’s College in New York City announced it was canceling classes for the fall semester, laying off most of its faculty and staff, and struggling to recover its recently revoked academic accreditation. The fate of Manhattan’s most prominent Christian Evangelical college — a school rooted in the political and literary canon of Western civilization — is uncertain.

Nevertheless, the decline of the King’s College is bound up not only with the ills of higher education, but also with the deeper cultural crisis affecting America and the West.

Having served as a professor of history at King’s for more than a decade, I am aware of the college’s challenges and self-inflicted wounds. But if the college fails, its failure cannot be blamed exclusively on the impact of Covid-19, rising crime rates, declining enrollment, or tangle-footed leadership. Something much deeper, and more debilitating, is at work: a collective indifference about the remarkable inheritance of our Judeo-Christian civilization and our moral obligation to preserve it for each generation.

On the political and cultural Left, this indifference often amounts to contempt. Western civilization, we are told, is a conceit. Our traditional beliefs and institutions are merely a social construction: tools of the oppressor against the oppressed. The United States, as the lead country in the West, is the embodiment of all its failings.Thus, courses on Western civilization have virtually disappeared in higher education, and the history of the United States is retold as a tale of unremitting racism and exploitation.

Not Just the Left

It is not only the radical Left, however, that ignores our inheritance in the ideals and institutions of the West.Today there are voices on the political and religious Right that seem unaware of this legacy and its impact on the American political order. National conservatives, among others, portray the liberal tradition — from John Locke to James Madison — as morally toxic. In doing so, they fail to grasp how Christian ideas about freedom, forgiveness, charity, equality, and justice were able to permeate our culture — and how easily these ideas become corrupted or discarded.

Ironically, both the progressive Left and the new Right fail to comprehend the crucial educational task of transmission. As the American Founders put it in the Northwest Ordinance (1787): “Religion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

This helps to explain the plight of the King’s College. Its students tend to be risk-takers, and the setting of New York City separates the wheat from the chaff pretty quickly. Since its move to Manhattan in 1999, the college has sent its graduates into the fields of law, journalism, finance, business, education, and the arts. Many have gone to top-tier graduate and professional schools, such as Harvard, Yale, New York University, Columbia, Northwestern, and the University of Chicago. They are some of the most entrepreneurial, mission-oriented young people you will meet. And their sense of vocation, refined in the crucible of New York City, is nurtured in an academic environment where the cultivation of the mind — alongside the cultivation of Christian character — is taken seriously.

Thus the question, Where are the conservative and Christian foundations and philanthropists who understand the critical role of education in cultural renewal? Where are they investing their treasures? More and more of it is going into political campaigns: The idolization of politics now cuts across partisan lines.

Where are the Resources?

In the 2020 presidential election, for example, conservative and Republican donors gave the Trump campaign a staggering $1.96 billion — and to what effect? Just 1 percent of that amount — nearly $20 million — would reopen and reinvigorate the King’s College overnight. Ten percent, roughly $200 million, could create a flagship Christian research institution with state-of-the-art facilities in New York City. It would establish a beachhead of intellectual and spiritual sanity in one of the most strategic cultural centers in the world.

Often it requires the perspective of those deprived of the achievements of our liberal democratic tradition to appreciate its unrivaled importance to human flourishing. Yeonmi Park, who escaped from North Korea at the age of 13, describes her bizarre experience after arriving in the United States and moving to New York City. In an essay for the Free Press, she explains that she wanted to free herself of the mental outlook of the typical North Korean — the habit of not being able to think for herself. But she found that the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, and her education at Columbia were of no help to her.

Why? Because of the drumbeat of self-loathing that she encountered in the liberal media and in her circle of progressive friends. She identified the Western canon as her lifeline:

It wasn’t the education I received at Columbia, or following the American press, that helped me. I was reading old books… . I started to believe, as I still do now, that the only way to think for yourself is to ignore the mainstream media, and largely forget the daily news cycle, and connect instead with the great minds of the past, who know all of our problems better than we do ourselves. There is a reason why the great books of Western civilization are all banned in dictatorships.

Park is talking about the humanities: the disciplines of history, literature, politics, philosophy, economics, the arts, and religion. These subjects once formed the lifeblood of our greatest academic institutions. They were the safe harbor where the most important questions could be asked and debated: questions about justice and virtue, about politics and the good society, and about the meaning and purpose of our mortal lives. It is through the study of the humanities that the collective wisdom of the West in grappling with those questions is transmitted.

Loss of Appreciation for the Humanities

This has been the mission of the King’s College, in a city that seems increasingly cut off from the spiritual inheritance of our Judeo-Christian civilization. The school has been sustained financially by a relatively small group of generous donors. Its struggles reflect the fact that too many conservatives are as detached from the value of its educational purpose as is the woke Left. With a handful of wonderful exceptions, we cannot depend on the current leadership in the conservative Christian community to appreciate the depth of the problem.

More than 40 years ago, Charles Malik, the Lebanese diplomat and an Arab Christian, saw it clearly. He issued a challenge to Evangelicals during a speech at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. “If Christians do not care for the intellectual health of their own children and for the fate of their own civilization,” he asked, “a health and fate so inextricably bound up with the state of the mind and the spirit in the universities, who is going to care?”

Caring About the Christian University is Caring About Young People

To care about the Christian university is to care about our young people — which requires a supreme commitment to caring about the future. Historically, this was the motive force behind the transformation of the Greco-Roman world by the teachings of Jesus and his disciples. Tom Holland, a classical historian and the author of Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, has acknowledged his own surprise at “what it was that made Christianity so subversive and disruptive” of the ethical norms and assumptions of classical culture. “So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilization,” he writes,“that it has come to be hidden from view.”

There are in the West today powerful forces dedicated to keeping Christianity’s impact hidden in the shadows. But the Christian academy, like no other institution, can chase away the shadows with Light: the light of young minds illuminated by Truths that have built and sustained our civilization over the centuries.

A civilization that does not care very much about these things gets exactly what it deserves.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/99636 ?

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What if there’s a simple way to close the gap?

It is one of the ironies of life that those whe need high quality education the least are also the ones most likely to get it. Private schools undoubtedly help kids to learn and develop more effectively than do government schools. Yet the kids in private schools usually come from wealthy homes where talent is passed on both genetically and via a more learning-oriented environment

So it is a rather obvious idea to turn that on its head and give a quality education for the bottom rather than the top end of the social scale. And the example below would seemto have reaped rich rewards from that approach. It is likely however that the kids selected to benefit from the program were a carefully selected bunch and you can always get better reults from selective admissions. The success of the strategy might in other words be limitred to a small subset of poor students who were capable of using expanded opportunities. Poor students can in some cases be quite bright. I was one myself

Andrew Penfold’s ears pricked up last week when he heard federal Education Minister Jason Clare observing young Indigenous men are more likely to go to jail than university.

Clare said university costs taxpayers about $11,000 per year on average, per student. Jail costs taxpayers $148,000 per prisoner, per year. For juvenile justice, it‘s $1 million a year, per kid.

Penfold got out his calculator.

To send an Indigenous child to one of the nation’s most prestigious schools costs his Australian Indigenous Education Foundation approximately $150,000.

That’s for six years – the entirety of high school.

And the 1200 students who’ve won an AIEF scholarship over the organisation’s 15-year history have an average 90 per cent school completion rate. This year it’s 93 per cent, with 50 bright young things to be celebrated at a graduation celebration on Monday night.

“Every single kid who goes to school, completes Year 12 and goes on to do something productive with their life, they then become an incredible role model in their family. And each time you change your family one by one, you change your whole community. The ripple effect of that is you actually are changing the country,” Penfold says.

That brings Penfold – who has a gift for making big things seem simple – to some intimidating numbers.

The Closing The Gap targets for education are that by 2031, 96 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people should have completed Year 12, and 70 per cent should have a tertiary qualification.

“We know from evidence that where Indigenous people are well-educated, including university and 12 completion, there really is no gap,” says Penfold, who with his wife Michelle quit a finance career in the late 2000s to devote himself to Indigenous education.

But, he says, “there needs to be an upstream supply”.

“If you don‘t have more kids completing year 12, you’re not going to be having the kids to go to university. Some years ago I saw some data that said to achieve the Year 12 Closing The Gap target only involves educating to Year 12 an additional 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids.

“So when you move away from talking in percentages and start talking about the number of students, it actually feels quite achievable. Of course we (AIEF) can’t do 10,000 on our own. But collectively there’s enough organisations out there that have got the track record to demonstrate that if there was further investment given, they would be able to close that gap.

“And literally the only thing holding that back is the funding.”

Indigenous graduates are now working as police officers, teachers, lawyers, doctors and academics.

And, like Brianna Dennis, community leaders. Now 36, Dennis left Walgett, in NSW’s central west, in 1999 for St Scholastica’s in Sydney‘s Glebe.

“I was really, really excited, actually, for this new opportunity. I was only 11 years old.

“If I’d stayed back home – our family really struggled. I was lucky enough to grow up in a loving home. But the exposure from the educational opportunities presented to me have been critical.”

Dennis went to university and travelled the world after school – and was the first in her family to buy a home. She now lives in Dubbo as the district manager for MacKillop Family Service.

Dennis takes immense pride in seeing opportunity light up her girls Orani, eight and Nhalara, three.

“Both my daughters participate in gymnastics, something I always wanted to do as a child but didn’t have the opportunity locally, plus my family wouldn’t have been able to afford it. I am glad my children get to experience what I never could.”

Dennis knows sometimes parents are reluctant to let children leave home, for fear they may never return, but firmly believes connection to country cannot be extinguished.

“These educational opportunities are not something for communities to fear.

“Some kids will go away and then come back, and some will stay home and take other opportunities. And both are now enriching community life – in their own ways.”

Kodie Mason is one AIEF grad who has come home.

After St Vincent’s College in Sydney’s Potts Point, and a degree at UNSW, Mason is back in the vibrant Dharawal community around La Perouse, on Botany Bay’s northern edge.

She has started her own business, Malima, teaching traditional weaving techniques passed down in her family’s direct descent from the Dharawal people who first came into contact with the Endeavour‘s crew.

Through her community work, Mason was invited to write the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry for her distant great-grandmother Biyarung ‘Biddy’ Giles, an expert fisherwoman and hunter who also founded her own business.

“She had a couple of boats, she was running fishing and hunting tours around Botany Bay, having her own business at a time when Aboriginal people were thought incapable.

“So looking at my life – I’ve got my own business, practising my culture, and sharing my knowledge.”

Between these two lives, two centuries apart, came the NSW Aborigines Protection Act, which allowed wholesale child removal and the dislocation of communities from traditional lands.

“We still feel those impacts today,” Mason says. “So to be able to go out and get a great education, and finish high school, go to university; I just feel so privileged.”

Mason is excited about the possibility of an Indigenous voice to parliament, and recently got to meet Anthony Albanese at the Garma festival in Arnhem Land.

“Our grandparents and great-grandparents; they’ve all been fighting to have a say in what happens and how they’re treated. I definitely think it will make a huge impact in Aboriginal communities across Australia, and we’ll start to see more positive outcomes for our people.”

If Andrew Penfold is the father of AIEF, Paul Hough is its godfather. The Marist brother was strongly influenced by Shirley ‘Mum Shirl’ Smith, the famous Redfern matriarch and prisoner advocate who raised scores of children in her own home, and reconciliation activist and priest Ted Kennedy.

In the 1970s Kennedy asked Hough to come and work with him in Redfern. “I remember one night Father Ted looked across the table at me and said: ‘Why don’t you give all that (teaching) stuff away and come and work with us?’ “And I said ‘Ted, I appreciate your confidence but as Marists, we do it through education.”

That remark rang through Hough’s career for the next five decades as he pioneered Indigenous education programs from St Augustine’s in Cairns to St Gregory’s in Campbelltown.

He was leading St Joseph’s in Sydney’s Hunters Hill in the 2000s when Andrew Penfold, a Joey’s old boy, approached him with the wild idea to give up his job and volunteer at St Joseph’s in a bid to grow Indigenous enrolment.

“He came up with the idea of setting up a fund which would be $8 million,” Hough says. “We thought that was probably the last we’d see of him for a while. Anyway, he came back in about 15 months’ time and said: ‘Guess what? I’ve got it.’ He went straight to the big end of town. “He’s got the business brain, and he’s got the head that knows how to work it.”

Penfold is confident AIEF, which presently takes 350 students per annum, could grow to take 1000 a year on its present model of seeking Government funding which is matched dollar-for-dollar by fundraising.

Penfold is unashamedly “interested in scale”. “It’s not because we are trying to be famous,“ Penfold says. The more students we have, the more impact we make on changing the country.“

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/closing-the-gap-maybe-its-not-as-hard-as-we-think/news-story/39eecbfdaf5cc06651608f052f681b27

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15 August, 2023

Parents Could Face Jail Time for Sending 2 Emails School Staff Don’t Like: Critics Sound Alarm on California Bill

California already has undermined the rights of parents from out of state when it comes to experimental transgender “health care,” but the Legislature also is considering a bill that would criminalize causing “substantial disorder” at school board meetings—an attempt to “chill parents from speaking out,” critics warn.

SB 596, which the California State Senate passed in May, 30-8, would expand state law that bars adults from subjecting “a school employee to harassment.”

The bill, now making its way to the floor of the lower chamber, the California State Assembly, would expand the definition of “school employee” to cover any employee or official of a school district, charter school, and county or state education board or office.

The bill also would outlaw, as a misdemeanor, actions that cause “substantial disorder” at a school board meeting.

The law proposed in the Golden State doesn’t define “substantial disorder,” and its definition of “harassment” leaves broad room for interpretation. Under the proposal, Californians who violate the provision face a fine of $500 to $1,000, a year in county jail, or both. A second offense would mean mandatory jail time and could involve another fine; a third offense would mean more jail time and perhaps a third fine.

“It’s clear they’re trying to chill parents from speaking out,” Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told The Daily Signal on Wednesday. (The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundation’s news outlet.)

“I find it curious that there’s no definition of ‘substantial’ or ‘disruption’ within the proposed text,” Perry said. “Considering that these are essential terms for the bill, it’s likely that if passed, the law would fall under a vagueness challenge.”

Parents “have a right to express themselves under the protections of the First Amendment,” she noted. “Ordinary limitations on certain speech—making a true threat of violence, for example—already apply within the context of the First Amendment, making the criminal penalty here unnecessary, legally suspect, and ideologically driven.”

“California Democrats want to increase the presence of minors’ activism while working to chill the free speech of rightfully concerned parents and taxpayers,” Kelly Schenkoske, a California mother who homeschools her two children in conjunction with a public charter school program, told The Daily Signal.

“Instead of focusing on solutions for a state riddled with low academic achievement, a drug crisis, homelessness, rising taxes, human trafficking, water storage issues, and fire prevention, this Democrat-controlled Legislature continues to propose their aggressive, anti-family, legislative pet projects,” Schenkoske added. “Their work over the years to erode parental involvement and rights has been noticed by parents who will stand courageously to speak for the protection of their children and for a better education.”

Jim Manley, state legal policy deputy director at the Pacific Legal Institute, told The Daily Signal that the state government has the prerogative to make laws regarding school board meetings, but the vagueness of the text might encourage school employees and prosecutors to chill parents’ rights to speak freely.

“The idea that the government is trying to regulate conduct at school board meetings is pretty normal,” Manley said. “What sends up potential red flags is some of the language in this bill.”

SB 596 defines “harassment” as “a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person that seriously alarms, torments, or terrorizes the person, and that serves no legitimate person.” The bill defines “course of conduct” as “a pattern of conduct composed of two or more acts occurring over a period of time, however short, evidencing a continuity of purpose.”

A parent or other critic “saying two things that the school official finds harassing could be enough to qualify there,” Manley said. “An email that simply torments would count as harassment under this standard.”

The lawyer noted that “to torment” merely means “to cause mental suffering.”

“If you send two emails that cause a school board official to mentally suffer, technically you fall under this definition,” Manley said.

The bill “could be interpreted in a way that chills people’s ability to communicate with elected officials,” he said.

Manley also noted that the bill includes an exemption for “any otherwise lawful employee concerted activity, including, but not limited to, picketing and the distribution of handbills.”

“Parents showing up to hand out literature would not be exempt” under the proposed law, the lawyer said. “Given how broadly this expands the coverage of the crime, I’d like to see the exemption be similarly broad. As written now, it only applies to employees who are picketing.”

Matt McReynolds, deputy chief counsel at the Pacific Justice Institute, echoed these concerns.

“I would certainly agree that SB 596 targets conservative parents who have been energized and re-engaging at the school board level,” McReynolds told The Daily Signal.

“It’s not just speaking at school board meetings; this would criminalize sending emails that seriously annoy or alarm school employees,” he said. “Note, too, the double standards, beginning with the exception in the legislation for labor union activity such as picketing.”

McReynolds also said the “larger context” of the bill is “revealing.”

“In nearly all other areas, our state leaders are stressing decriminalization and have released thousands of dangerous offenders back into our communities,” he said. “The rhetoric about mass incarceration and overcriminalization goes out the window when they’re going after their political enemies. And in the school setting itself, our legislators are moving to reduce the ability of teachers and administrators to punish kids for defiance, disruption, and disorder. The hypocrisy is unmistakable.”

McReynolds also mentioned AB 1078, which passed the California State Assembly in May. That bill, which aims to boost instructional materials regarding diversity by circumventing parents, threatens “to reduce parents’ influence at the school board level,” McReynolds argued,

State Sen. Anthony J. Portantino, the Democrat who sponsored SB 596, didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on the bill.

The bill comes amid new California laws prioritizing children’s stated gender identity over parental rights.

Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed into law SB 107, a bill to turn California into a “sanctuary state” for “gender-affirming care.” The measure, which took effect in January, gives California courts the ability to award custody of a child if someone removes that child from his or her parents in another state to obtain such “care” over the parents’ disagreement.

In June, a California state senator told parents to flee the state as the Senate debated a bill that would subject parents who refuse to “affirm” their children’s “gender transitions” to child abuse charges.

“In the past when we’ve had these discussions and I’ve seen parental rights atrophied, I’ve encouraged people to keep fighting,” state Sen. Scott Wilk, a Republican, said. “I’ve changed my mind on that.”

“If you love your children, you need to flee California. You need to flee,” Wilk urged.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/10/trying-chill-parents-california-bill-would-criminalize-sparking-substantial-disorder-school-board-meetings

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State Schools Chief Seeks Answers on District’s Reported Ties to Chinese Government

Parents Defending Education’s new report, “Little Red Classrooms,” offers some worrisome information about China’s reach in U.S. K-12 schools through so-called Confucius Classrooms.

The report notes that Parents Defending Education “uncovered contracts that show Confucius Classrooms, or other Chinese government-backed programming, are still in operation” in a number of schools throughout the U.S., including Tulsa Public Schools in Oklahoma.

“On July 11, 2022, the Tulsa Public Schools board of education approved entering into an agreement with the Confucius Classroom Coordination Offices, which [operate] out of the International Leadership of Texas Global nonprofit,” the report says. “The Chinese International Education Foundation would cover the cost of the program. Carver Middle School offers students a ‘Confucius Connection’ through its ‘Global Awareness’ programming.”

Ryan Walters, Oklahoma state superintendent of public instruction, says, “What we did is, we—immediately upon finding this out—we have required the district to turn over any contracts, any curriculum, anything that’s been handed out through this course.”

“So, we are actively compiling that from the district right now to do a deep dive into, ‘Hey, what was the Chinese government trying to get in this classroom? What were the teachers discussing in these classes?’” Walters says, adding:

So that’s what we’ve required of the district right now. So, we are going to be looking for that information to have a better understanding of what was being funneled into these classrooms.

Walters joins today’s episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the Parents Defending Education report, whether he has spoken with any teachers, parents, or students at Tulsa’s Carver Middle School, and Tulsa Public Schools’ response to his Twitter video, “China will not be allowed in Oklahoma schools.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/08/state-schools-chief-seeks-answers-on-districts-reported-ties-to-chinese-government

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Texas elementary school fires black teacher after numerous racist tweets against white people go viral

A teacher at an elementary school in Texas was fired after several racist, anti-white messages on social media were picked up by conservatives and went viral.

Danielle Allen taught first grade at a Thompson Elementary School in the Mesquite Independent School District near Dallas when she posted the missives against white people on social media.

Allen referred to herself as a "black supremacist" and posted a message implying that she wanted to have her sister's boyfriend killed because he was white. “I promise I’ll help you hide the body. Bring all 4 of your guns," she said in one message.

In a video she posted later, Allen then smiled as she promised to do everything in her power to break up the biracial relationship.

“Why shouldn’t I hate white people?” she said in another post. "I enjoy being racist! I'm never changing!" read another message.

On Monday, she claimed that she had talked to school administrators about the controversy and that they had reassured her that her job was safe.

On Tuesday, the school posted a message saying that Allen was no longer employed at the school and was not "eligible" for rehire.

“Nevertheless, the highly offensive statements posted to her X account do not reflect the values and standards of Mesquite ISD, and the district condemns them in the strongest terms," they added.

Allen has since deleted her social media account and has been removed from the staff directory of the school.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/mesquite-teacher-racist-white-tweets

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7 August, 2023

Dishonesty expert accused of fraud sues Harvard and watchdog site for $275 million over their ‘appalling’ bias and ‘utter disregard for evidence’

Accusing a dishonesty expert of dishonesty would appear to be an intrinsically ambitious enerprise. And when all those who know her work support her,the enterprise becomes very ambitious indeed. I suspect that her investigations into dishonety have got under some people's skin and they hitting back at her

A star behavioral scientist accused of publishing fraudulent research has sued Harvard University and online academic watchdog site Data Colada for defamation and gender discrimination. Francesca Gino, a high-profile expert in dishonesty who has published two books and is a regular speaker at corporate events, on Wednesday sued her employer, Harvard, and Data Colada, after they had launched two separate investigations into her alleged fraud. Data Colada ultimately claimed it had found at least four academic papers in which Gino almost certainly forged data, while Harvard put Gino on leave in June without releasing the findings of its investigation.

Gino’s 255-page complaint, filed at the Massachusetts District Court, asserts that she never fabricated data and accuses Harvard and some of the professors who run Data Colada—Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson, and Joseph Simmons—of damaging her reputation and career through false allegations.

“Harvard’s complete and utter disregard for evidence, due process and confidentiality should frighten all academic researchers,” Andrew T. Miltenberg, Gino’s attorney, wrote in a statement. “The University’s lack of integrity in its review process stripped Prof. Gino of her rights, career and reputation – and failed miserably with respect to gender equity. The bias and uneven application of oversight in this case is appalling.”

Harvard declined Fortune's request for comment. Simonsohn, Nelson, and Simmons did not immediately respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.

The lawsuit accuses Srikant Datar, dean of Harvard Business School, of negotiating a backchannel agreement with Data Colada and investigating Gino more harshly than male colleagues. The negotiation resulted in Data Colada holding publication of its four-part exposé about Gino during Harvard’s internal investigation.

The complaint also said the forensics firm that Harvard hired to investigate Gino, Maidstone Consulting Group, produced faulty reports based off of data that was “not confirmed to be raw data,” and thus should not be used as evidence of fraud. The suit goes on to say that all six collaborators and two research assistants interviewed by Harvard’s investigation committee corroborated Gino’s account of their research and supported her innocence.

Gino is seeking damages of at least $25 million from the three professors behind Data Colada and Harvard.

“Prof. Gino’s career and life have been shattered without any proof she did anything wrong,” Frances Frei, a professor of technology and operations management at Harvard, wrote in a statement supporting Gino that was released simultaneously with the lawsuit. “I’m honestly shocked. As a fellow professor and researcher, it’s disturbing and frankly terrifying. And if this can happen to her, it can happen to anyone.”

Dishonesty expert accused of fraud sues Harvard and watchdog site for $275 million over their ‘appalling’ bias and ‘utter disregard for evidence’

https://fortune.com/2023/08/02/harvard-dishonesty-professor-lawsuit-fraud-defamation-bias/

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Parents Challenge LGBTQ Book Policy That Requires Teachers ‘To Shame Children’ for Religious Faith

Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, Latter-day Saint, Protestant, Ethiopian Orthodox, atheist, and agnostic parents are taking a Maryland school board to court Wednesday, Aug. 9, for denying them the right to opt out of the school’s LGBTQ book curriculum.

“These books are in fact teaching explicit sexual orientation and gender identity issues as early as pre-k,” Will Haun, senior counsel at Becket Law, told The Daily Signal in a Thursday interview. The associated reading instructions “require teachers to make dismissive statements about a student’s religious beliefs, to shame children who disagree, and to teach as facts things that some would not agree are facts.”

“This is not a challenge to get the pride books out of the curriculum,” Haun, whose firm represents hundreds of families and the organization Kids First, clarified. “This is about restoring the right to opt out.”

In late March, the Montgomery County Board of Education told parents it was introducing LGBTQ-themed books into its pre-k through eighth-grade curriculum.

Parents did not object to this until the school board announced that it would deny parents the right to opt out, according to Becket.

Despite their various faith backgrounds, hundreds of parents formed a “united front on the fact that parents get to guide their children’s religious upbringing, that parents are the first teachers on a child’s own self-understanding,” Haun explained.

Consequently, on May 23, Muslim, Christian, and atheist parents sued the school board for denying them the right to opt out of reading books that directly contradict their religious beliefs.

For example, “Love, Violet,” one of the mandated “pride” books aimed at kindergarteners through fifth graders, gives romantic details about girls falling in love with other girls.

Denying parents the right to opt out of such instructional material goes directly against the school board’s policy, state law, and the Constitution, Haun argued.

“Montgomery County public schools allow for religious-based opt outs for everything under the sun, from Halloween parties to music class, to Valentine’s Day,” Haun said. “Maryland law requires opt outs and advance notice for all sexuality instruction.”

Not just the state law but also the “free exercise of religion, protected in the Constitution, requires, among other things, that policies be neutral and general toward religion,” Haun told The Daily Signal.

“All of this gives the court strong reason … to uphold the parents’ rights to direct their children’s religious upbringing and also acknowledge that this policy is neither neutral nor general toward religion.”

The judge in the hearing Wednesday will consider a preliminary injunction, halting the district’s policy prohibiting the opt out until the court can resolve the lawsuit as a whole.

Haun told The Daily Signal that the plaintiffs hope to have “an early ruling to put the opt-out policy back into place” right before school starts on Aug. 28.

Before the hearing, the parents will hold a rally hosted by the organization Kids First, a group of parents and teachers who joined together to fight for the right to opt out in Montgomery County Public Schools.

Haun told The Daily Signal that Becket is representing hundreds of parents through Kids First. He expects a large turnout at the rally, since thousands came to a rally in June to protest at a school board meeting.

Despite parents of multiple faith backgrounds coming together to fight for their constitutional right to opt out, MCPS still refuses to respect these parents’ religious beliefs.

“Those on the school board have a completely uniform view,” Haun explained. “It raises a question of who’s really respecting the diversity of Montgomery County.”

These parents remain undaunted because they understand that the material being taught to their children “goes to the core of not only the child’s religious foundation but to the child’s self-understanding,” the lawyer added.

“One thing that has so moved me as a husband and a father myself is that these parents, they don’t have any agenda besides sticking up for their kids,” Haun told The Daily Signal. “These are their children. They get one shot to raise them well, and they want to hand down their faith to their kids.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/04/see-you-court-parents-challenge-lgbtq-book-policy-requires-teachers-shame-children-religious-faith

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Australia's woke-ready students: Affirmative action dressed up as higher education reform

Education Minister Jason Clare began well earlier this year when he made it compulsory for universities when training teachers to teach reading, writing and mathematics using evidence-based practices.

However, his foray into the teaching wars has, unsurprisingly, culminated in a series of policies focused on improving equity while seriously compromising academic standards. Worse still, the federal government has turned its back on racial equality by implementing recommendations designed to usher in a new age of identity politics at our universities.

As part of the higher education shake-up, all academically qualified indigenous students will be guaranteed a Commonwealth-funded place at university and the 50 per cent pass rule for students to continue to receive funding will be abolished.

The Minister for Education claims this is ‘not about lowering standards’. However, continuing to fund students who fail more than half their courses will, by definition, do exactly that. Needless to say, the Minister provided no evidence to back up his statement. While nine Australian universities are among the top 100 globally, the Productivity Commission’s five-year inquiry found highly variable and poor-quality teaching was failing students who entered the workplace unequipped to meet real world demands.

Academic standards in Australian universities are already in crisis. Students finish their degrees woke-ready rather than work-ready. Yet the federal government’s response to the interim review into higher education does nothing to arrest this decline. In fact, the removal of the 50 per cent pass rule will further exacerbate falling standards by transferring responsibility for student performance from the student to the university.

The Minister for Education stated, ‘Instead of forcing them to quit, we should be helping them to pass,’ adding that universities will be required ‘to improve support to students who need it and to report on the outcomes for the student following that intervention’. This effectively relieves the student of any obligation to take personal responsibility for their performance.

Under the guise of helping disadvantaged students, the government is now throwing money at universities. While such largesse may benefit minority groups, it ultimately betrays the interests of hardworking Australians who must fund the exercise but derive no benefit from it.

The core purpose of a university is to impart knowledge and to hone the mind through the development, consideration and the contest of ideas. A tertiary education means nothing if universities discourage debate and intellectual challenge. And suppressing freedom of thought has a knock-on effect; the contest of ideas is not only the essence of university life, but the essence of a flourishing liberal democracy.

Instead of pursuing academic excellence and free speech, the federal government seems committed to making our universities a further arm of Australia’s already extensive social welfare program.

While there is merit in implementing policies to help disadvantaged groups and reduce poverty, this should not be done at the expense of tertiary education standards. Perhaps there are far greater returns for governments to be found in funding programs that encourage school attendance rather than boosting university enrolments. Without a secondary education, disadvantaged students will never attain a university qualification.

Embracing affirmative action in university admissions undermines the principle of equality of opportunity. This was the finding of the US Supreme Court which declared in June that race-based preferencing in admissions violated the constitution. US Chief Justice John Roberts said universities had ‘concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.’

Australia is running in the opposite direction, moving to permanently embed identity politics in our university admissions processes.

There is already a widespread and growing tendency for Australian universities to adopt formal ideological positions, contributing to a culture of censorship on campus. Every Australian university has signed up to one or more policies or strategic commitments which pledge their institution to woke ideologies. These generally fall into three categories: indigenous issues, gender inequality, and sustainability. The rise of the ‘social justice university’ signals a new focus on activism over education.

The University Accord reforms as they stand will entrench these woke priorities while exacerbating the fundamental failure of our academic institutions to be places of open learning and intellectual freedom.

Worryingly, the interim review will do nothing to address the erosion of free speech on campus. Forthcoming IPA research shows 90 per cent of Australian universities have policies that are hostile to free speech. The total hostility score across all institutions, as measured by the number and severity of university policies which are hostile to free speech, increased by 117 per cent between 2016 and 2023.

Previous IPA research has shown that the culture of censorship on campus has already been advanced by university policies that purport to protect free speech on campus. In 2020, the federal government introduced a new requirement forcing universities to develop free speech policies based on the French Model Code – a template written by former Australian chief justice Robert French. However, analysis shows only a third adopted the six essential pro-free speech criteria.

A case in point is Newcastle University’s Code for the Protection of Freedom and Academic Freedom, which states, ‘The principles outlined in this Code do not have overriding legal status nor overriding status to the University’s institutional values or strategic commitments.’ Newcastle University’s Strategic Plan 2020-2025 outlines ‘equity’ and ‘sustainability’ as key values, meaning the university could arguably prohibit speech in opposition to the proposed Voice to parliament or views not aligned with the zeitgeist on climate change.

According to Jonathan Haidt, professor of psychology at New York University, a social justice institution cannot also protect free speech. By promoting one side of an issue, universities attach a value judgment to it and suggest it is the superior position to hold. This closes debate and crushes viewpoint diversity.

Affirmative action is antithetical to the principles of individual liberty, equal opportunity and the pursuit of academic excellence – all cornerstones of strong democracies. Excellence in education and equity-based policies are mutually exclusive goals. Pursuing one will always come at the expense of the other.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/clares-woke-ready-students/ ?

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6 August, 2023

State GOP Devises Plan to Limit Influence of ‘Woke’ Teachers Unions

The Alabama Republican Party is on the verge of prohibiting some GOP candidates from accepting campaign donations from the Alabama Education Association, the predominant teachers union in the state.

Alabama GOP Chairman John Wahl announced the proposal ahead of Saturday’s vote by the state party’s executive committee. If approved, candidates running for the Alabama Board of Education, local school boards, and county school superintendent positions would be barred from taking the union’s money.

“So many of our parents and local teachers want to see change in our education system, but how can we expect our superintendents and school board members to stand up against teaching these woke concepts if they are afraid of the money and financial power coming from liberal unions responsible for pushing this type of curriculum?” Wahl said in a statement, adding:

It’s a blatant conflict of interest, and something that needs to be addressed. Our elected school representatives must be responsible to Alabama parents, not special-interest groups.

Under his leadership, Wahl has advocated for school choice in Alabama—an idea strongly opposed by teachers unions, including the National Education Association and its state affiliate.

Despite its conservative political makeup, Alabama ranks No. 27 for school choice on The Heritage Foundation’s Education Freedom Report Card. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

A poll commissioned by the Alabama Republican Party earlier this year put support for school choice at 57% among registered voters. It surveyed 1,610 voters on a question related to the state Legislature’s consideration of school choice legislation.

Even though school choice is popular with voters, the legislation made little headway among lawmakers. In its June 9 newsletter, the Alabama Education Association claimed credit: “AEA worked tirelessly to defeat this legislation,” the organization told its members, 1819 News reported.

Heritage’s Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy, said teachers unions have long dominated K-12 education with membership rates hovering around 70% (compared with about 10% among all American workers).

“More school choice potentially means fewer union members, something this special-interest group sees as an existential threat,” Burke said. “This is a dues revenue source the unions will not cede willingly, so they’ll continue to fight education choice even though it can be a life-changing benefit for children.”

Aside from his concerns about a conflict of interest, Wahl said, he’s also “committed to protecting our children from indoctrination in the classroom.” He cited the National Education Association as a purveyor of “transgender and woke policies.”

“Parents should decide what their children learn about divisive concepts, not education unions that have lost touch with the values of the American people,” Wahl said.

The proposed change comes despite the Alabama Education Association’s heavy involvement in state Republican politics. According to the Alabama Daily News, the union was the No. 1 donor to GOP candidates in the 2022 election cycle with $2.9 million going to legislative races. Upward of 70% of the money went to Republicans, according to the union’s own estimates. That’s a sharp contrast to other states and nationally.

“Teachers unions have steadily amped up their political involvement,” according to OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics. “From 2004 to 2016, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $32 million—an all-time high. Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving Democrats at least 94% of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990, where our data begins.”

The Alabama union’s executive director, Amy Marlowe, claimed the GOP party chairman was making “irresponsible” and “false accusations” about the organization.

“Our voluntary membership comprises almost 90,000 Alabamians, with 72% identifying as conservative Republican voters,” Marlowe said in response to Wahl’s proposal. “AEA prioritizes all education employees working to teach children in Alabama’s local schools. Our focus is on education with no partisan perspective or fringe ideologies.”

Wahl isn’t backing down, even as the union mounts its own offensive ahead of Saturday’s vote.

“If they are serious about supporting Alabama values, they are free to disassociate from the NEA at any time,” Wahl told Yellowhammer News.

Wahl’s proposal would not apply to Republican candidates running for the state Legislature or governor.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/03/alabama-gop-proposes-ban-teachers-union-donations-partys-candidates

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College Board is ‘playing games’ by falsely claiming Florida law bans psychology courses, says state’s Department of Education

The Florida Department of Education accused the College Board of “playing games” by incorrectly claiming that state law banned Advanced Placement Psychology courses in schools.

According to the College Board, Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, misleadingly referred to by leftists as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, makes it illegal to teach AP Psychology. It claimed the act “effectively banned” the courses.

The law restricts classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity but allows exceptions for state-required academic standards and reproductive health classes.

The College Board explained that the AP Psychology courses require students to “describe how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development.”

“We are sad to have learned that today the Florida Department of Education has effectively banned AP Psychology in the state by instructing Florida superintendents that teaching foundational content on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal under state law,” the College Board said in a statement on Thursday.

The College Board, which oversees Advanced Placement courses and the SAT test, announced in June that it would not modify any material to comply with the Parental Rights in Education Act because it could cause colleges to reject the credits. On Thursday, it doubled down on its policy.

“To be clear, any AP Psychology course taught in Florida will violate either Florida law or college requirements. Therefore, we advise Florida districts not to offer AP Psychology until Florida reverses their decision and allows parents and students to choose to take the full course,” the College Board stated.

The AP Psychology Development Committee that designed the course supported the College Board’s decision.

“As a committee, we affirm that gender and sexual orientation are essential, longstanding, and foundational topics in the study of psychology,” the committee stated in part.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/college-board-is-playing-games-by-falsely-claiming-florida-law-bans-psychology-courses-says-states-department-of-education

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The battle for the minds of our children is difficult, but it is far from lost

We’ve all heard of the New York Times’s 1619 Project, the subsequent book, and the curriculum spreading throughout our schools. And we know the project is rife with errors, exaggerations, and outrageous claims that portray America’s founding as fraudulent and inherently racist.

There have long been political leaders, academics, writers, and social theorists peddling ideas (or should we say ideology) as part of a movement to delegitimize the principles and institutions that our country is founded upon while trying to teach young people that everything they’ve learned about America is a lie.

Fortunately, people are finally starting to take note and reconnect with the miracle of 1776 that sparked a wave of freedom and prosperity that we all enjoy today.

Back in 2020, President Donald Trump’s administration set up the 1776 Commission on Patriotic Education, partially in response to the deadly, violent, and destructive Black Lives Matter riots that swept across the country earlier that year. The commission also sought to address leftist education programs in K-12 schools, including 1619, until President Joe Biden terminated the project via executive order.

Fortunately, that doesn’t mean the battle for our kids’ minds is lost. For example, Hillsdale College in Michigan continues moving forward with its objective of teaching about the ideals and triumphs of America’s great founding by offering a wide range of courses for students and the public far beyond its own humble campus.

Hillsdale has launched the 1776 Curriculum to bring this education to students in elementary through high school. This didn’t start as a knee-jerk reaction to woke history, though. Far from it. Hillsdale’s The Collegian notes that the groundwork for the curriculum took place more than 40 years ago.

The program is now being embraced and implemented in schools around the country. And the Leftmedia is taking note.

“Amid national battles over what children should learn in public schools,” reports NBC News, “Hillsdale is working to export this vision by setting up charter schools in over a dozen states and publicizing its 1776 Curriculum, which emphasizes American exceptionalism. The college says over 8,400 administrators and teachers have downloaded the curriculum, and a growing number of state and local policymakers are also seeking Hillsdale’s guidance.”

The 1776 Curriculum covers the period from Colonial America through the modern era and does not mandate the teaching of American history in any particular way — unlike the 1619 Project, which forces teachers to frame all lessons and activities around radical race-based theories. 1776 does not overlook America’s mistakes and failures, but those subjects are not taught through an ideological prism. Instead, students learn how the principles of our nation served as a catalyst to overcome these obstacles.

Indeed, the statement in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” obliterated the centuries-old assumption that our rights can only be parceled out by a monarch or other authoritarian ruler. This new belief enabled progress toward making the Declaration’s ideas a reality for millions.

How anyone could oppose such an idea seems unfathomable, especially now that we have nearly two and a half centuries of proof that it works in powerful ways.

But the Marxists and socialists who contributed to the 1619 Project do oppose the words in the Declaration because their vision for humanity requires subservience to a powerful elite, submission to tyranny, and a surrender of individual rights. Then, and only then, will they be able to build a “new” society that takes us back into the oppressive past.

If they think America’s founding documents and history left out some groups of people, imagine if those groups didn’t have these rights to hold onto during the darkest times in our history. Indeed, the ideas of 1776 are what make America an exceptional nation.

In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”

Even King knew that the words and principles of our founding in 1776 challenged all of us, empowered all of us, to work toward making them a reality for all people. And thanks to the 1776 Curriculum, students across America will soon be learning real American history again.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/99407 ?

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3 August, 2023

Sydney teacher found to have racially vilified Indian student

This report rather grieves me. I have been to India 3 times and have always admired Indian people for their patience and good nature amid adversity. And a very important person in my life at the moment is of wholly Indian descent. I admire her greatly. See her below:




The Department of Education has been ordered to make an official apology to a former Cronulla High School student after a teacher allegedly described Indian people as “Uber drivers and Deliveroo people” during a Year 12 business studies class.

The teacher – James Anderson – played an educational YouTube video for the class entitled Elements Of Marketing which featured a presenter of Indian descent.

During the video, Anderson is alleged to have mocked the presenter before saying “all Indians are Uber drivers and Deliveroo people, and their service is bad”.

The incident, which happened on March 3, 2021, was complained about by a student who was of Indian descent.

The student and her parents met with the principal following the incident, but filed a complaint with NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal after being unsatisfied with the school’s response.

“As the video was playing, I saw Mr Anderson, while smiling, glance at me a few times and continue to mockingly giggle at the lady and her accent,” the student said during her evidence at the tribunal.

“During the playing of the video which ran for over twenty minutes, I recall a girl in the class asking for the video to be turned off a few times ... but Mr Anderson did not do so.

“I was distressed and uncomfortable that Mr Anderson was looking at me during the video and mocked the Indian presenter, knowing that I am of Indian race. It was embarrassing and hurtful.”

During his evidence, Anderson denied mocking the presenter, but admitted he said something to the effect of: “Don’t assume because she is Indian that she is an Uber driver or works at 7-Eleven”, before complaining about the quality of service provided by Uber and food delivery providers.

He admitted his statements were “inappropriate” and “racial in nature”.

“At the time there was nothing in the nature of any reactions by the students in the class that day to cause me to think that one or more of the students was upset,” he told the tribunal.

On Tuesday, the Tribunal handed down its decision finding the student’s complaint of racial vilification substantiated.

The Tribunal ordered the Department of Education – the first respondent in the case – to issue the student with a written apology which acknowledged the Tribunal’s findings of racial vilification and the harm caused to her.

The teacher remains at the school but received a disciplinary warning and training.

In a statement provided to the Herald, a spokesman for the Department of Education commended other students in the class who spoke up during the incident.

“We reject all forms of racism and are committed to the elimination of racial discrimination in NSW public schools,” he said.

“The matter was reported to the Professional and Ethical Standards Directorate in 2021 and appropriate action was taken.”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/sydney-teacher-found-to-have-racially-vilified-indian-student-20230802-p5dtc7.html

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A Back-to-School Warning

Parents of children going back to school — be warned! Your kids will continue to learn Marxist theories, hyper-sexualization, anti-American propaganda, social justice advocacy, and that capitalism and America are racist. They will be taught to hate themselves, others, and their country.

You would think that with all the legislation passed around the country to curtail these insidious pedagogies, parents could be more assured that teachers would get back to academics. Unfortunately, there is an abundance of evidence that teachers and administrators are admitting they will continue to indoctrinate children by finding ways to get around the new laws.

In fact, when the battle over critical race theory emerged two years ago, over 5000 teachers across the country signed a pledge initiated by the Zinn Education Project saying, “We, the undersigned educators, refuse to lie to young people about U.S. history and current events — regardless of the law.” Accompanying The Zinn Education Project pledge is a statement that reads, “The major institutions and systems of our country are deeply infected with anti-Blackness and its intersection with other forms of oppression. To not acknowledge this and help students understand the roots of U.S. racism is to deceive them.” The Zinn Education Project provides training and materials to schools based on the approach to history highlighted in Howard Zinn’s controversial book A People’s History of the United States. In 2019, Dr. Mary Grabar published a book titled Debunking Howard Zinn wherein she identifies Zinn as a communist and provides evidence to expose the lies in his rewrite of American history.

Another example of school officials evading the law is found in a South Carolina law prohibiting the use of State funds to teach tenets of critical race theory. Many South Carolina school districts skirted the law by using federal COVID relief money to continue implementing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Social Emotional Learning, which are all conduits for Marxist critical theories.

Other tried and true ways to equivocate the law are also being implemented. Just as nearly every state in the nation rebranded their Common Core standards a decade ago to sidestep push-back from lawmakers and parents, an Idaho principal and district instructional coach said they would merely rebrand Social Emotional Learning as “behavior adaptations,” and “mental health curriculum.”

Moreover, many districts around the country are doubling down on grooming children into believing they are a gender contrary to their biological sex. Fargo Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Rupak Gandhi brazenly said he will not “openly out any student because of one law.” It appears school officials will not only continue to influence children to reconsider their biological sex, but they will continue to do it behind the backs of parents.

There is a ray of hope in California’s Chino Valley Unified School District where parents recently applauded the removal of California School Superintendent Tony Thurmond from its school board meeting. Thurmond spoke in opposition to a proposed local school district policy “to require teachers to notify parents of students that identify as transgender.” Even in very liberal California, parents object to indoctrination and local districts are stepping up to regain control of their classrooms despite pressure from State government to push their anti-parent policies.

Parents, as well as every freedom-loving American, need to be aware of what is happening in government schools with their tax dollars. Parents should start by watching the groundbreaking documentary Truth & Lies in American Education to become fully informed of the array of dangerous philosophies children are taught. Then they can connect with others in their community to fight this battle for the minds of children. It ultimately is a battle of good versus evil.

A parents’ first line of defense should be to protect their children. The toxic agenda in government schools is tantamount to child abuse. Once children are safe, we must work together to protect our countries’ freedom. If we don’t stop the indoctrination of children, we will lose our very freedom. As Abraham Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the school room for one generation is the philosophy of the government of the next.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/sherifew/2023/07/30/a-back-to-school-warning-n2626343

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Proficiency in Math and Reading in Middle-School Students Continues to Drop, National Test Results Show

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has ended, some worry the accelerated academic decline it seems to have started is only getting worse.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test for the 2022–23 school year indicates that 13-year-olds are poorer at reading and mathematics than during the 2019–20 school year.

The average reading score fell from 260 points to 256 points out of a possible 500. That meant the average dropped from a score of 52 percent to 51.2 percent.

The average math score went from 280 to 271. That means it declined from a score of 56 percent on the test to an average score of 54.2 percent, an NAEP analysis of test results shows.

These falls wipe out decades of educational improvement, putting reading scores one point above 1971 scores of 255 points and math scores five points above 1971's scores of 266, according to the survey.

Matthew Lynch, founder of The Edvocate, told The Epoch Times that the pandemic likely caused these decreased scores. The Edvocate calls for change in education policies in the hopes of improving quality.

"For many students, they were not exposed to quality curriculum and instruction" during the pandemic when schools mostly were closed, Mr. Lynch said. "Most of the education that they received was via distance learning."

And that was largely ineffective, he added.

Though scores have fallen faster since the pandemic began, educational scores have slowly been dropping since 2012, national test scores show.

"The 'green shoots' of academic recovery that we had hoped to see have not materialized, as we continue to see worrisome signs about student achievement and well-being more than two years after most students returned for in-person learning," said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Educational Statistics, in a written statement.

This decline probably is a result of the widespread use of Common Core curriculum implemented in 2010, said Alex Nester, political director for Parents Defending Education.

Common Core is a set of education standards developed in 2010 by the National Governors Association. The federal government encouraged states to adopt the standards by offering grants.

Common Core has been largely unpopular among parents, many of whom claim it dumbs down standards, uses a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching, and gives the federal government too much power over instruction.

Originally, 45 states adopted Common Core standards. Four since have abandoned them.

"I remember going to school and learning we had to know our math facts," Ms. Nester told The Epoch Times. "You would do the flashcards, and you just had to—from sight—know those facts."

But Common Core emphasizes a "skill-set focus" that doesn't encourage the memorization of facts, she said.

This new emphasis has resulted in students learning less, Ms. Nester said.

In addition, increasing a classroom focus on radical gender ideology and racial issues in schools has taken time away from math and reading instruction, Ms. Nester said.

"You either spend that time in the classroom learning, or you don't," she said.

Students will only get back on track if the billions of dollars schools receive go toward good education programs, Ms. Nester said.

Student Slump

The decline in test scores hit all students, but it hit struggling students hardest, the survey results show.

Those in the Top 10 percentile saw average declines of three points in reading and seven points in math on the test.

Students scoring in the lowest 10 percent lost an average of seven points in reading and 15 in math.

"It's no coincidence that the lower-performing students tended to do the worst [during distance learning] because they needed the most help," Mr. Lynch said. "They're the ones that benefit the most from structured curriculum and instruction."

Boys and girls of all races and in all regions experienced some decline in reading and math scores, the study shows.

The least-impacted region was the South, with only a two-point drop in reading and a seven-point drop in math on the tests since 2020.

More Education Dollars

At the same time, funding for public schools has increased.

In 2019, America spent an average of $13,187 on education per public school child, according to the latest U.S. Census figures. Some areas of the country spent far less on each student, others spent far more.

Teacher salaries, benefits, and other daily expenses made up 86 percent of the expenditure, Census figures show.

But little of this money likely goes to increasing teacher salaries, Mr. Lynch said.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has promised $800 million in teacher raises. This amount will raise the starting salary for teachers by $7,000.

Although some other states have given teachers raises, the average teacher has received only a little more pay than they have in the past, Mr. Lynch said.

"I don't see it reflecting in salaries for teachers," he said.

In the 2021-2022 school year, teachers brought home $2,179 less yearly than they did a decade ago, considering adjustments for inflation, according to the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union.

Low teacher salaries, technically in decline due to inflation, make it difficult to attract talent to the profession, Mr. Lynch said.

Because of a shortage of math teachers, he said, "it is extremely hard for a lot of districts to even find quality math teachers."

Good Teachers Mean Good Schools
At the same time, teaching standards have eroded to the point that many people see school as a "babysitting service," Mr. Lynch said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/proficiency-in-math-and-reading-in-middle-school-students-continues-to-drop-national-test-results-show-5437905?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=top-news-18

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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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