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31 July, 2022

Florida Education ‘Top Gun’ Tells Schools to Ignore Federal Guidelines on Gender Identity

Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. told schools to “ignore federal guidelines aimed at preventing discrimination against students based on gender identity, saying they would “vastly expand the application” of Title IX.

In a July 27 letter to superintendents, school boards, private schools, and charter schools, Diaz advised that guidance documents from the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Agriculture “are not binding law” and asked school officials to “refuse to change their practices.”

The letter accused the federal government of trying to “impose sexual ideology on Florida schools” that would create a risk to the “health, safety, and welfare of Florida students.”

“The Department will do everything in its power to protect the well being of all Florida students,” Diaz said in his letter. “And to vindicate the right of all parents to know what takes place in their child’s classroom.”

The guidelines from the federal government extend protections under the law to include schools’ “obligations not to discriminate based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

In June, Miguel Cardona, U.S. Department of Education Secretary explained in a news release that the guidelines will “ensure all our nation’s students—no matter where they live, who they are or whom they love—can learn, grow, and thrive in school.”

More than 50 years ago, Title IX was enacted to prohibit gender-based discrimination in educational institutions. In June, the U.S. Department of Education released a proposal that stated it would “provide greater clarity regarding the scope” of sexual discrimination. The U.S. Department of Agriculture became involved through the school-lunch programs in May when it was announced that it would begin interpreting Title IX to “include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

In his letter, Diaz warned schools against making certain accommodations for transgender students who “identify” as the sex opposite of which they were biologically assigned, especially when it comes to bathroom accommodations.

“Specifically, for example, nothing in these guidance documents requires you to give biological males who identify as female access to female bathrooms, locker rooms, or dorms; to assign biological males who identify as female to female rooms on school field trips; or to allow biological males who identify as female to compete on female sports teams,” Diaz wrote.

In 2021, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law legislation barring transgender female athletes from competing on high-school girls’ and college sports teams. In April, the governor signed a bill that restricts instruction concerning gender identity and sexual orientation to children in lower grades. Dubbed by critics as the “don’t say gay” bill, it has been challenged in federal court and is still pending.

At a July 27 press conference, the governor took aim at schools that push “woke gender ideology.”

The governor, during the press event, suggested that school systems in other cities and states are included in their instruction suggestions that would encourage students to question their genders.

“Basically, this will be for elementary school kids where they’re instructed to tell them, ‘Well, you may have been a boy, that may have been what you said, but maybe you’re really a girl—that’s wrong,’” DeSantis said of the schools promoting “woke gender ideology.”

He said that Florida has “laid down a marker” to ensure that it’s “not something that gained a foothold here in the state of Florida.”

“The kids are off limits,” he said at the Tampa press conference.

Diaz’s letter told school administrators that the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services was “communicating with schools” and “suggesting they should comply with the U.S. Department of Agriculture guidance.”

He advised schools to ignore what he called “any suggestions” from the state agriculture department that schools display a poster themed “And Justice for All” that would indicate participation in the federal program.

The federal agriculture agency described the posters as a “primary method utilized to inform customers of their rights that displays information relevant” to federally assisted programs.

Diaz’s letter prompted Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democratic gubernatorial hopeful, to hold a press conference on July 29 to address the assertions in Diaz’s letter, as well as to accuse the governor of “creating a fictitious culture war.”

“Manny Diaz and the Department of Education have no oversight over the National School Lunch Program,” she said at her press conference on July 29. “This has nothing to do with bathrooms or locker rooms like Commissioner Diaz has suggested.”

Fried said the governor needs to prioritize the people of the state instead of creating another “manufactured crisis,” because he is “running for president.”

The education commissioner, she said, should focus on the task of “focusing on his job” and addressing the teacher shortage instead of “being Ron’s errand boy.”

The federal school food nutrition program has specific rules and regulations before funds are dispersed to the state, she explained.

“The department, as well as all of our schools, need to be in compliance,” Fried said. “Commissioner Diaz has overstepped his role—he has no oversight when it comes to our feeding programs in the state of Florida—when it comes to our school nutrition program.”

Neither the U.S. Department of Education nor the U.S. Department of Agriculture responded before press time, but the spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education said the Biden administration was responsible for attempting to hold federal programs “hostage.”

“President Biden is attempting to force his radical agenda on Florida schools by holding hostage programs our students need,” Alex Lanfranconi, Director of Communications for the Florida Department of Education told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “Our schools have NO obligation to follow this federal guidance and will not be threatened into submission.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/florida-education-top-gun-tells-schools-to-ignore-federal-guidelines-on-gender-identity_4631090.html

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Push for Community Schools Focused on ‘Equity’ Raises Red Flags, Say Critics

A global push to provide students with much more than just education under the banner of “community schools” has left many parents wondering what the program is all about, who’s behind it, and why its agenda is centered around the leftist concept of “equity.”

A full-service community school strives to “meet the social, emotional, physical and mental health, and academic needs of students,” according to the U.S. Department of Education.

It’s “the next generation of coordinated school health,” says the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the country, in response to a model for these schools developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and an organization once called the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development that now goes by ASCD.

The CDC calls them “healthy schools” and has developed a 10-part framework for addressing all aspects of a child’s health on campus called the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model.

But community schools don’t only address students’ health. The NEA describes a community school as “a network of partnerships offering services that remove barriers to learning, like trauma, hunger, homelessness and the myriad of other problems faced by families living in poverty.”

On the NEA’s website, Cindy Long recounts an example in Las Cruces, New Mexico that offered mental health services to a 13-year-old boy who witnessed the murder of his uncle, then days later lost his father to suicide.

“[T]he full-time community school coordinator spent hours researching and applying for a grant to pay for his father’s and uncle’s funerals, a time-consuming effort that would be impossible for staff at a regular public school to handle on top of regular workloads,” wrote Long.

She also discusses schools that offer food banks, family computer rooms, donated clothing, on-site laundry facilities, medical and dental care, and more.

Long said the hope is that these services can be expanded to address “the needs of a student’s siblings, parents, grandparents, and neighbors. The idea is that lifting up a student isn’t possible unless her community is lifted up, too.”

However, some parents and community members disagree with schools taking on these far-reaching responsibilities.

Taking on ‘the Role of the Parent’

Kelly Schenkoske, a California parent who has extensively researched community schools and hosts a podcast called “A Time to Stand,” told The Epoch Times the CDC and ASCD are working together “to turn every school into a community school,” and that while the schools may sound wonderful, there are legitimate concerns.

“The schools are trying to take on the role of the parent and remove the parent from their relationship with the child. This is a complete obstruction and an assault on the family,” said Schenkoske, who homeschools her two children. “For me, the biggest concern with all of this is having the school be the nucleus of every community and handing over more control to the government and all of these ‘experts’ who are going to invade the home and tell families how to parent.”

Schenkoske became especially concerned when she learned the California Teachers Association (CTA), one of the largest teachers unions in the state, and the NEA have fully backed the WSCC model and that state educators recently held a conference in Los Angeles where they discussed community schools and multiple plans centered around equity, she said.

The United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization, most U.S. states, teachers and many non-government organizations also support the push for community schools.

California has already invested $4.1 billion in the Community Schools Partnership Program, including about $649 million in grants to 268 school districts across the state. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) received more than $44 million.

The state program offers various grants to partners ranging from $100,000 to $2 million, and the U.S. Department of Education is also offering grants through its Full-Service Community Schools (FSCS) program.

CTA Vice President David Goldberg did not respond to inquiries, but he said at a virtual press conference on June 6 the teachers union is “all in” for community schools.

He applauded the state’s “deeper investment” in the community schools model, stating that “academic learning does not exist separately from social emotional learning.”

Echoing California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent assertion that democracy itself is under attack in the United States, Goldberg touted the community schools model as a way of “developing democratic processes” to include the voices of parents, students, educators, and administrators at the table.

California Models

Former teacher Ingrid Villeda said she left her position at the 93rd Street Academy in south Los Angeles to become the community school coordinator at the elementary school. She told The Epoch Times that most of the new funding will go to pay salaries for the next five years for community school coordinators, parent representatives, and employees with the Healthy Start program, another initiative that was designed to increase the health of women and children.

Community schools differ from other schools because they get input from “community stakeholders,” Villeda said.

“Traditionally, a principal arrives at a school, and it’s their vision that is rolled out, and when those principals change or go to other schools, the school goes through this trajectory of change until another leader comes in, and then it stabilizes again,” she said. “With community schools, and all stakeholders having a voice, you create a vision that includes everyone, so it’s not dependent on me or the principal, but on our needs … and the vision is there for the long term.”

Villeda has worked with the community to provide free vision and dental screenings for children. Out of 925 students at the school, 350 were able to get free eyeglasses, she said.

In LAUSD, some high schools have health centers on campus. Her school has a partnership with nearby Fremont High School which is equipped with a full-service health center.

“So usually, if parents tell me they need to take their kid to the doctor … we call directly and we actually make an appointment for them, and show them how to get there,” Villeda said.

Currently, there are about 30 community schools operating in Los Angeles and six in San Diego with plans to convert 10 additional schools this year and more in the future, according to Villeda.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/push-for-community-schools-focused-on-equity-raises-red-flags-say-critics_4626822.html

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Crazy primary curriculum in Australia

Stressed school principals are demanding changes to the new national curriculum, warning it is “impossible to teach” and can be nonsensical to students.

Blasting education bureaucrats for imposing “cruel’’ workloads, the Australian Primary Principals Association has blamed a confusing curriculum, red tape and “micromanagement’’ for driving teachers out of the profession.

“The current primary and early childhood curriculum is too crowded (and) impossible to teach if taken literally,’’ APPA has told the Productivity Commission review of the national school reform agreement.

“We call for rethink of the primary and early childhood curriculum (to create) a curriculum which is coherent and makes sense to teachers and students.

“Where is the space for play, for wonder?’’

Criticism of the curriculum, which was updated in April after a two-year review, comes as federal Education Minister Jason Clare prepares to meet his state and territory colleagues next month to troubleshoot the teacher shortage.

APPA said principals and teachers felt “confined by a morass of measurement which kills initiative and creativity’’.

“In recent years, the intensification of the workload for principals has been cruel,’’ it states in its submission to the Productivity Commission review.

“When the bureaucracy is organised in silos, each of which transmits their edicts to schools without the crucial test of practicality, this adds to the intensification of work.’’

APPA said education departments were “constantly measuring … in the hope that results come from increased micromanagement’’.

“Instead of creating flourishing organisations, this results in mediocrity, in a measurement-induced mire as schools struggle to respond,’’ it said.

APPA president Malcolm Elliott said literacy and numeracy must remain the “the foundation stones of learning’’.

But Mr Elliot described the revised curriculum – which had its content cut by 20 per cent in April – as a “millstone around people’s necks’’.

He said teachers were disappointed that former Coalition education minister Dan Tehan’s pledge to “take a chainsaw to the curriculum’’ had failed to make it much simpler.

“It’s a huge document and teachers are overburdened,’’ he told The Weekend Australian.

“The volume of the documentation is less, but the workload has been little reduced, if at all.

“It has to be cut back considerably and expressed much more simply in ways that everyone can understand and follow and implement.’’

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority did not consult directly with APPA in revising the curriculum, but met regularly with the National Peak Parents and Principals Forum, of which APPA is a member.

ACARA chief executive David de Carvalho said the new curriculum had involved “extensive consultation and input from subject, curriculum and teacher experts, including primary teachers and experts’’.

“The primary years’ content was reviewed through two dedicated primary reference groups,’’ he said.

“In addition, 47 volunteer primary schools and their teachers tested the updated primary curriculum … to ensure it was user-friendly for generalist primary teachers.

“During the project, primary teachers said the new curriculum was more manageable and they particularly liked the separation of the Foundation year (kindy or prep) and appreciated the focused time to plan and develop a deep understanding of learning areas across Foundation to year 6.’’

The ninth version of the curriculum – the first update in six years – appears to be clearer than the previous version.

For example, the previous year 8 syllabus required students to “recognise that vocabulary choices contribute to the specificity, abstraction and style of texts”.

In the current version, they must “identify and use vocab­ulary typical of academic texts”.

The ACARA website describes the new curriculum as “three-dimensional; it includes learning areas, general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities’’, with an “inline glossary with in-built definitions’’.

Mr Elliott warned that Australia’s teacher shortage was at crisis point, with a relief teacher in regional NSW having to teach five combined classes this week.

“In some schools in NSW, positions have been left unfilled for longer than a year because they’re unable to find people to take up those roles,’’ he told The Weekend Australian.

“Schools in NSW that would usually be regarded as very highly desirable are unable to fill positions because teachers can’t afford to live within commuting distance – they can’t find anything to rent and they can’t afford to buy.’’

Mr Elliott said some states had underestimated the teacher shortage because out-of-date teacher registration lists included those who had retired or died.

He said APPA’s survey of 2590 principals last year, conducted by the Australian Catholic University, found that half worked at least 56 hours a week, with a quarter working at least 61 hours a week during school term, and work during school holidays averaging 21 hours a week.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/school-principals-blame-cruel-workloads-for-teacher-exodus/news-story/0b649385ed30ac6277a58e483727469f

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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)

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29 July, 2022

At This Manhattan Middle School School, Sixth-Graders Are Asked To Surveil Friends and Family for ‘Microaggressions’

A New York City public school encouraged students as young as 10 years old to keep a list of all the "microaggressions" they witnessed, both at school and in their own families, according to materials from the school’s curriculum reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The same students were also asked to list their gender identity—"cisgender," "nonbinary," or "trans"—as well as their sexual orientation on a graded worksheet.

The sixth-grade humanities curriculum from Lower Manhattan Community Middle School, where just 31 percent of students are white, required students to read Tiffany Jewell’s This Book Is Anti-Racist, one of only five books assigned for the 2021-2022 year. The book contains 20 lessons on "how to wake up, take action, and do the work"—including the work of confronting the police, which Jewell suggests white students can do without ending up "in jail or harmed."

"If you are a Black, Brown, or Indigenous Person of the Global Majority, you will need to decide how each outcome could end for you," Jewell writes in a chapter called "Choosing My Path." "White people, this is not something you need to do because you are at the center of the system."

From Tiffany Jewell's ‘This Book Is Anti-Racist'

The book also asks students to surveil their friends and family for racist behavior. "Grab your notebook," one "activity" instructs readers. "Look and listen for the microaggressions around you. Write them down and note your observations." Another activity asks students how "folx" in their families "resisted" or "contributed to racism," defined as the "systemic misuse and abuse of power by institutions."

The curriculum, which went into effect August 2021, came as parents across New York City were mobilizing against critical race theory in public schools—and as education officials across the country were denying that there was any such thing.

"Critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools," Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, asserted in July 2021. Parents "are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history."

One month earlier, New York Regents chancellor Lester Young stated that critical race theory "is not our theory of action" and assured parents that "we are not preparing young people to be activists."

Jewell’s book belies that assurance. "We will work together, in solidarity, to disrupt racism and become anti-racist accomplices," the preface reads. "There are many moments to pause in this book so you can check in with yourself and grow into your activism."

The curriculum could spell legal trouble for the school, which is already under investigation for separating seventh and eight-graders into racial affinity groups. That practice prompted a civil rights complaint in December from the watchdog group Parents Defending Education; on July 13, the Department of Education announced it would investigate the middle school over the complaint.

"It’s astonishing that administrators at Lower Manhattan Community seem determined to create a racially hostile educational environment on top of the civil rights investigation that was just opened," said Nicole Neily, the president of Parents Defending Education. "Parents who were once proud of the school’s academic performance compared to other New York City public schools are now concerned—justifiably so—about the school’s increasing fixation on race."

Those concerns come amid steep enrollment declines—and budget cuts—in New York City’s public schools. With enrollment down 8 percent since 2020, schools have lost $215 million in funding this year alone, forcing widespread layoffs and larger class sizes.

Divisive curricula like the one at Lower Manhattan Community School have exacerbated that exodus. One parent told the Free Beacon that their child would not be returning to the middle school this fall on account of an assignment that required sixth-graders to disclose their "social identities"—including their sexual orientation—on a worksheet. Though students did not have to "write something for every category," instructors collected the worksheet for a grade.

Such lessons aren’t the product of a few school administrators run amok but reflect the race-conscious worldview of the New York City Department of Education. In June 2020, then-executive superintendent of Manhattan public schools Marisol Rosales hosted a panel on dismantling "systemic racism in our schools," which held up Lower Manhattan Community School’s "mission statement on race" as a model for the entire school system.

"To undo the legacy of racism and oppression in this country that impacts our school community," the mission statement reads, Lower Manhattan Community Schools works to instill "anti-racist beliefs and practices."

The school’s sixth-grade humanities curriculum is a microcosm of what that education looks like in practice. Three of its five units concern "identity," with Jewell’s book listed as a "key text" for unit one. The "social identities" worksheet was part of a broader lesson on "the dominant culture," which consists of "people who are white, middle class, Christian and cisgender."

Whoever does not fit into this "box," Jewell writes, is "part of what’s called the ‘subordinate culture.’" Her description of that culture is exhaustive, albeit studded with solecisms: "Folx included in the ‘subordinate culture,’ include Black, Brown, indegenous People of Color of the Global Majority, queer, transgender, and nonbinary folx, and cisgender women, youth, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, and non-Christian folx, neurodiverse folx, folx living with disabilities, those living in poverty, and more."

"The people who want to talk about racism all the time are the racists," said Maud Maron, who served as an elected representative for parents in the district where Lower Manhattan Community School is located. "The people who suffer are the kids who get cheated out of a wholesome school experience and hours of learning that should be focused on academics instead of race indoctrination."

Lower Manhattan Community School did not respond to a request for comment.

The focus on race extended to the seventh-grade social studies curriculum—ostensibly devoted to early American history—which used "anti-racist" guru Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning as its main textbook, according to a syllabus for the 2021-2022 school year reviewed by the Free Beacon.

These curricula do not seem to have soothed racial tensions at Lower Manhattan Community School, which is 41 percent Asian, 15 percent Hispanic, and 7 percent black.

A group of parents and administrators in April began planning a "restorative justice circle" to address alleged incidents of racism that had taken place over the school year, according to emails reviewed by the Free Beacon. The incidents included a black student calling a South Asian student "Indian Boy," an Asian student touching a black student’s hair, and a "rumor" that a white student "used the N-word."

The school eventually canceled the circle after a parent objected that it would "violate students’ privacy" and "possibly put current students at risk"—and after parents started to litigate the incidents over email, replicating the racial catfighting that had consumed the classroom.

https://freebeacon.com/campus/at-this-manhattan-middle-school-school-sixth-graders-are-asked-to-surveil-friends-and-family-for-microaggressions/

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Critical Race Theory taught to future military leaders at U.S. military academies

United States military service academies have taught or introduced some form of critical race theory or "anti-racism" training on future military leaders, according to CriticalRace.org, which monitors CRT curricula and training in higher education. 

CriticalRace.org had previously examined CRT curricula and training in higher education, elite private schools and medical schools. The project from Legal Insurrection Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to campus free speech and academic freedom, has since expanded its database to include military academies. 

"The good news is that CRT and related ideologies have not yet captured the military service academies the way they have overrun higher ed, professional schools, and increasingly K-12. The bad news is that these ideologies have established a beachhead at the military service academies and are likely to expand as part of a more general military wokeness campaign from the top down," Legal Insurrection founder William A. Jacobson told Fox News Digital. 

Jacobson, a clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School, founded CriticalRace.org’s extensive database. The group’s latest venture explored the United States Air Force Academy, United States Coast Guard Academy, United States Naval Academy, United States Merchant Marine Academy and the United States Military Academy at West Point. 

"The purpose of the military service academies is to educate and train our future military leaders. The public has a strong interest in what happens there. Whether these students will graduate with the skills and motivation needed to defend the nation is a matter of national interest and security," Jacobson said. "The military leadership needs to consider whether training military officers in ideologies that separate Americans by race and other group characteristics, and that incessantly demonize the United States as systemically evil, serves a valid military or national security purpose."

CriticalRace.org found that all five federal service academies have some form of critical race, anti-racism, or related objectives, which sometimes fall under the umbrella of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion goals. 

For example, the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs requires a course on "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Students," according to the database. "This course includes a video on the subject of Black Lives Matter," CriticalRace.org wrote. 

Four of the academies were found to offer materials by authors Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi, whose books explicitly call for discrimination, according to Jacobson. 

Residents of Loudoun County, Virginia, helped make critical race theory a national conversation in 2021. 

Residents of Loudoun County, Virginia, helped make critical race theory a national conversation in 2021.  (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)

All five academies also have offered voluntary CRT-related trainings or activities to their students, faculty and staff, while two have mandatory trainings for faculty and staff, according to CriticalRace.org. 

"Do we really want our future military officers to view themselves and the troops they will command through an obsessive racial lens? Is military cohesion and effectiveness improved by putting people into racial and ethnic boxes? These are questions the military leadership will need to consider as it evaluates whether and how far it takes the teaching of CRT and related ideologies as part of a military service academy education," Jacobson said. "Because the education of military officers is so important to our nation, public and political scrutiny is justified."

https://www.foxnews.com/media/critical-race-theory-taught-future-military-leaders-us-military-academies-according-new-study

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The truth about trans teaching in schools

The LGBT advocacy group Stonewall has come in for criticism over recent months with many big name organisations – including the BBC and the cabinet office – withdrawing from its diversity champions programme. Yet rather than toning down its controversial claims and divisive rhetoric, the charity insists on doubling down. It now seems to have children firmly in its sights.

‘Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity,’ Stonewall recently declared. ‘Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender. LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people!’.

Following a huge backlash to that tweet, Stonewall clarified that it does not ‘actively work on nursery education’. Indeed, Stonewall goes so far as to claim that ‘young children should be able to play, explore and learn about who they are, and the world around them, without having adults’ ideas imposed upon them.’ If only.

Today, from the tiniest village primary to large academy trusts, schools teach about sexuality, relationships and gender identity. They have written policies on gender identity or transgender pupils. Most are identikit statements, but the practices they engender should concern us all.

From early in childhood, children are encouraged to think about gender as something quite distinct from biology. Shropshire Council’s Family Information Service advises parents and teachers alike that: ‘While biological sex and gender identity are the same for most people, this is not the case for everyone.’

When gender is separated from biology, it cannot be assumed. The onus is on everyone to work out what their gender is and then declare it to a receptive world. Schools and local councils are on hand to guide children through this complicated process.

In Scotland, the ‘Gender Friendly Nurseries’ initiative trains staff to use gender neutral activities and toys. Course material informs nursery-workers that ‘the pressure children and young people experience to conform to binary gender definitions affects all children.’ Before they even start school, four year-olds in Brighton were once asked to choose whether they are a boy, a girl or something else.

St Leonard’s RC primary school in Sunderland informs parents that ‘gender identity is often complex and there is a spectrum of gender which is wider than just boy/man or girl/woman.’ The Castleman Academy Trust, a small group of first and middle schools in Dorset notes: ‘The culture in the UK could be described as ‘binary’…Some will be aware that their gender feelings and expressions do not match the expectations of society, whilst others will not have ‘worked it out’.’ Meanwhile, Havering Safeguarding Board tells primary school teachers: ‘Remember that a pupil who identifies as a trans girl but was born a genetic male, is not a ‘boy dressed as a girl’, but is a girl who outwardly at this point resembles a boy.’

Talk of gender being on a ‘spectrum’ suggests there are degrees of masculinity and femininity, and that whether you are male or female depends upon where on the sliding-scale you situate yourself. This is scientifically nonsensical and highly contested.

Once, progressive teachers encouraged girls to aspire to become doctors and not just nurses; or they made it clear that boys could play with dolls. The same teachers are now likely to tell children that if they like dressing up then they might be a girl; or if they prefer getting dirty in the sand pit then they could be a boy. This is a huge leap backwards for sexual equality.

At Pikes Lane primary school, in Bolton, teachers are told to: ‘Avoid where possible gender segregated activities and where this cannot be avoided, allow the child to access the activity that corresponds to their gender identity.’ We are back to the days of woodwork for boys and cookery for girls, only now children must first choose which category they fall into.

Personal, Social, Health Education (PSHE) lessons are the key site for promoting gender ideology in schools. Glebe primary school in Hillingdon provides a list of key words that Year Four children will cover in their Health and Wellbeing Module. It includes: gender, gender identity, sexuality, (lesbian, gay, cisgender, transgender, sexual orientation, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, gender expression, biological sex, intersex, non-binary, gender fluid, pronouns, transition, gender dysphoria, questioning and queer). Remember: Year Four children are just eight years old. Why must an eight-year-old know the difference between bisexual and pansexual? Wouldn’t their time be better spent learning their times tables or becoming engrossed in a story?

But such classes, it seems, are endemic. Benhurst primary school in Havering expects Year Six children to ‘know about gender identities and have an awareness of transgender issues’. This includes understanding ‘the difference between being transgender and transvestite’. At age ten.

The promotion of gender ideology is not restricted to the PSHE curriculum but is built into the core values of many schools. Castleman Academy Trust states that, ‘wherever possible, individuals should be given opportunities to say how they identify or describe themselves. This is called ‘self-identified gender’.’

Children are rightly taught about people who are different from themselves. They also need to be tolerant and respectful of other people. Yet it seems unlikely that children are also being encouraged to question the emerging gender ideology orthodoxy.

What is being taught in schools is, inevitably, hard to work out. But what we do know is that some schools now seek outside help when it comes to supporting trans kids. St James’ primary school in Leyland promises to ‘engage with any local transgender groups’ in order to ‘ensure access to information is available for transgender pupils and their parents/guardians.’ Is this really what parents want? Teachers in Bolton seeking ‘resources and further support’ when it comes to trans guidance are pointed in the direction of Mermaids, a charity that supports transgender children. Is this really the best place to look?

At all stages of schooling, teaching about gender is presented as promoting tolerance, diversity and inclusion. But this masks the fact that a highly political agenda is being promoted to a captive audience. Children are being indoctrinated into a one-sided and controversial view of gender when they are too young to challenge what they are hearing and lack the capacity simply to walk away.

Children who go along with what they are taught and decide that they have indeed been born in the wrong body find themselves feted. They are celebrated as brave victims and noble revolutionaries. This is a high pedestal from which to fall if a child comes to change their perception of their gender identity.

Sometimes, too, parents can be left in the dark. Cornerstone Academy Trust, a small group of primary schools in Devon, is not alone in stating that ‘school staff should not disclose information that may reveal a child or young person’s transgender status or gender non-conforming presentation to others, including parents/carers and other members of the school community unless legally required to do so or because the child orparent/carer has given permission for them to do so.’

It’s terrible to think that parents will be kept abreast with how their son or daughter is getting on in their school report, but not always be told that they’re transgender.

Schools nowadays are even offering guidance on situations where trans pupils might bind their chests. Pikes Lane primary school advises: ‘If a pupil is binding their chest, they should be monitored carefully during particularly physical activities and in hot weather. There is a chance that the binding could cause discomfort or even impair breathing. Short breaks from activity could be offered discretely.’

Upper Wharfedale, a secondary school in North Yorkshire, goes even further in its advice about binding. ‘It might make certain PE lessons difficult for them to participate in and could sometimes lead to breathing difficulties, skeletal problems, and fainting,’ the school notes, but nonetheless it is ‘very important to their psychological and emotional wellbeing.’

This is a shocking statement: even though children may suffer physical harm from wearing a chest binder this, we are told, needs to be balanced against their mental health. This truly beggars belief.

Parents have rightly raised concerns about their children being indoctrinated into questioning their gender identity while at school. One mother is currently embroiled in a dispute with Haberdashers’ Hatcham College in south-east London after her request to view handouts and lesson plans relating to teaching about race and gender was rejected. Staff declared the materials to be ‘commercially sensitive’.

More here:

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/the-truth-about-trans-teaching-in-schools/

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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)

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28 July, 2022

Leftist University Students Fought to Cancel Pro-Life Speaker, Plan Completely Backfires on Them

Left-wing students at the University of Michigan Medical School attempted to make a woke statement on Sunday in a thankfully failed effort to cancel a pro-life physician who was asked to deliver the keynote address at a ceremony for the school’s medical students.

Ahead of the address Dr. Kristin Collier, an assistant professor of medicine at UMMS, a group of over 300 students, alumni and physicians attempted to get her barred from the White Coat Ceremony, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

The doctor’s speech was not expected to focus on abortion, but the anti-free speech students and faculty wanted to make her appearance impossible, according to Fox News.

The leftist attempt to quash free speech, though, was actually rebuffed by school administrators, and Collier spoke during Sunday’s event, anyway.

After the school’s decision to refuse to cancel Collier for the White Coat Ceremony, dozens of anti-free speech students decided to walk out during her address.

The White Coat Ceremony is a milestone in the academic career of potential medical professionals.

Video of the walkout earned more than 700,000 likes on Twitter.

Despite the handwringing by the leftists, Collier did not bring up abortion in her speech, but at one point she did make might be considered an allusion to the incidents of the previous weeks.

“I want to acknowledge the deep wounds our community has suffered over the past several weeks,” Collier said, perhaps in reference to the cancellation attempt, or even the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

She went on to add, “We have a great deal of work to do for healing to occur,” Fox reported. “And I hope that for today, for this time, we can focus on what matters most: Coming together to support our newly accepted students and their families with the goal of welcoming them into one of the greatest vocations that exist on this earth.”

At the ceremony were 168 new medical students, according to Fox.

Many leftists students, though, did not want to hear from Collier. In their petition, they claimed that the Dr. would perpetuate “a pattern of disregarding an[d] actively silencing the voice of students and members of our community,” according to The Washington Free Beacon.

The woke students went on to blame Collier for “the expansion of [the university’s] police force in the 1990s” and the “delayed reporting of a child pornography scandal at UM Hospital under the past and interim President Mary Sue Coleman,” the newspaper reported.

Still, the effort to cancel Collier came as a surprise to some students and alumni. Replying to the petition, which was organized by the group Medical Students for Choice, according to the Free Beacon, faculty member Dr. William Chavey ridiculed its claims.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/leftist-university-students-fought-cancel-pro-life-speaker-plan-completely-6bed8ec6c23532f964400caf5c21036bbackfires

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School Meals Bill Serves Up 2 Unappetizing Helpings of Left’s Agenda

The House Committee on Education and Labor is expected this week to consider legislation known as the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act.

HR 8450 is a far-left wish list, seeking to expand welfare for all through universal free school meals and trying to use the school meals programs as a pretext to push far-left environmental, labor, and social justice policies.

There are many egregious provisions in the legislation, but here are two of the worst:

1) Welfare for all: The legislation is a blatant attempt to expand welfare for everyone, including the wealthy. In the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, a controversial provision was included known as the Community Eligibility Provision. 

If 40% of students within a school or school district are deemed to be from “low income” households, then all of the kids within the school or school district can receive free meals. 

The Obama administration’s Department of Agriculture then improperly expanded that provision to allow a subset of schools within a school district to be grouped together to trigger free meals.  

Therefore, it’s possible for a school with a significant low-income population to be grouped with a school with not a single low-income student, and both schools could provide free meals to every student within those schools, regardless of income. 

For years, critics of the Community Eligibility Provision rightly claimed that it was just a scheme to create universal free school meals. Now, there’s no pretense otherwise.

The proposed legislation would reduce the already low 40% threshold number to just 25% and create a statewide Community Eligibility Provision.

The Community Eligibility Provision was purportedly a means to ensure that children who are eligible to receive free meals do in fact receive those meals. Supposedly, it wasn’t intended to be a scheme simply to provide free meals to everyone and create universal free school meals. But that’s what the provision already does to a significant extent, and this proposed bill would take a huge step in making universal free school meals a reality.

2) Far-left values: As mentioned, the school meals program is being used as a pretext to push unrelated left-wing ideological objectives, with children as pawns in this “game.”

Title VI of the bill has two provisions that are especially alarming. Section 601 is titled “values-aligned procurement.” Currently, under existing law, the Agriculture Department is supposed to encourage the purchase of locally grown and locally raised, unprocessed agricultural products. The bill would change that procurement policy to integrate “values” that would encourage the purchase of such products that are produced:

in an environmentally sustainable manner.

by a certified organic farm or ranch.

by a farm with employees who, as permitted by law, are represented by a collective-bargaining agreement or a memorandum of understanding.

by a farm participating in a worker justice certification program.

by a farm participating in an independent animal-welfare certification program.

Clearly, “values” simply mean those consistent with left-wing environmental, labor, and/or social justice agendas, among other things. Another provision under Title VI of the bill, Section 604, would create a “pilot program” for schools to create 100% plant-based food options.

That pilot program would likely be the start of a permanent one. It’s a dietary experiment on kids. School meals are supposed to be based on the federal meals standards, which are required to be consistent with the federal Dietary Guidelines, but this provision would ignore that. 

As an aside, Congress should move away from the prescriptive federal standards and instead allow the food provided at local schools to be determined by parents and local communities. 

But that’s not what’s happening here with the plant-based diet experiment. Congress would be promoting a specific diet it favors for ideological objectives. This isn’t unlike the environmental extremists who have been trying to change the Dietary Guidelines so that nutrition is based on environmental concerns as much as the dietary needs of humans.

In general, this proposed legislation would turn a means-tested welfare program into one that doesn’t even bother to look at means (i.e., need). It uses a program designed to help children as a way to push unrelated ideological objectives.

The bill is also a slap in the face of American farmers and ranchers, and littered with policies that reflect a rejection of American agricultural practices, from how crops are grown to how animals are treated.

It’s yet another extremist effort to use federal policy to promote an anti-meat agenda, including by trying to indoctrinate kids into being anti-meat and to eat accordingly.

Congress does need to make changes to school meals. But it needs to make changes that help the children the programs are intended to serve, not the extremists who want to use school meals for their own ends.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/26/school-meals-bill-serves-up-2-unappetizing-helpings-of-lefts-agenda

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Australia: Desperately short of qualified staff, childcare centres ask to bend the rules

<i>The requirement that child care staff must be university-educated is a nonsense.  How many mothers have relevant degrees? Some training would probably help but a tech college certificate in the subject should suffice.  The shortage of staff is a government-created one</i>

The latest data reveals that 8.1 per cent of childcare providers operated with a staffing waiver in the first quarter of 2022.  They could not meet the legal requirement for suitably qualified early childhood teachers on staff.  

The staff shortage is likely to get worse and could undermine the Albanese government’s promise to lower childcare costs.

More childcare centres are operating without enough qualified early childhood teachers because of a worsening staff shortage that could undermine the federal government’s pledge to make childcare more affordable.

The latest data from the national early childhood education regulator reveals that 8.1 per cent of childcare providers operated with a staffing waiver in the first quarter of 2022 because they could not meet the legal requirement for suitably qualified early childhood teachers on staff. Four years ago, the figure was 3.9 per cent.

A further 3.1 per cent of service providers received a waiver because the physical environment of their centre was not up to standard. Four years ago, that was 2.3 per cent.

Long day care centres, preschools and kindergartens are required by law to have a certain number of qualified early childhood teachers, based on the number of children being educated or cared for.

Centres that cannot meet this staffing obligation need a waiver from the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority.

Jobs data indicates the shortage is likely to get worse, and could affect the sector’s ability to deliver on the Albanese government’s promise to lower childcare costs, which is, in turn, expected to increase demand.

National Skills Commission data also shows that in May, the number of vacancies in early childhood education and care hit a record 6648 positions. The figure has more than doubled in the past three years.

John Cherry, head of advocacy at Goodstart, Australia’s largest not-for-profit early learning provider, said pandemic border closures had deprived the sector of a pipeline of qualified staff from overseas. Most Australian states were also failing to invest enough in building a domestic qualified early learning workforce, he said.

“More services have been struggling with some of the requirements to have a certain percentage of your educators with a diploma qualification because there’s just not enough educators out there,” Cherry said.

He said attrition was also a serious problem for the sector, with many qualified early childhood educators moving on to better paid careers elsewhere.

“The award rate for a teacher in early childhood is $10,000 to $20,000 less than the award rate for a teacher in the government school sector,” Cherry said. “So when you look at those numbers, you rapidly realise why we keep losing people – our rates of pay just aren’t where they need to be.”

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said finding enough early childhood educators to meet demand was a big challenge.

“We have a shortage of early childhood education and care workers now and this is expected to get bigger,” he said.

Clare said the Albanese government’s fee-free TAFE and additional university places would help to train more early childhood education and care workers.

Early childhood educators are planning to strike on September 7, highlighting low pay and poor conditions. Hundreds of centres around Australia are expected to have to close on that day.

Laureate Professor Marilyn Fleer, the foundation chair of Early Childhood Education and Development at Monash University, said qualified early childhood educators helped to set children up for a better start to school.

“There is such long-standing evidence that shows there is a qualitative difference in how a university-qualified early childhood educator interacts with children,” she said.

https://www.smh.com.au/education/desperately-short-of-qualified-staff-childcare-centres-ask-to-bend-the-rules-20220726-p5b4j3.html

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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)

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27 July, 2022

Biden is considering extending student loan payment freeze for several months and forgiving $10,000 per borrower

President Biden is considering extending a Covid-19-induced pause on student loan payments yet again and the federal government has in recent weeks told student loan servicers not to contact borrowers about making payments again one month ahead of the moratorium's deadline. 

The president is also still considering forgiving up to $10,000 in student loan debt per borrower.

The current moratorium is expected to end Aug. 31 and Biden could extend it through the end of 2022 or until next summer as the president seeks to appeal to young voters ahead of the midterm elections. 

Debt forgiveness may follow the extension, though the president has not reached a final decision, according to Bloomberg. Biden has been under intense pressure from progressives to do forgive as much as $50,000 in student debt and it's unclear if forgiving $10,000 will soften their cries. 

'Today is good day to cancel student debt,' Rep. Ilhan Omar wrote on Twitter Tuesday. 

Critics have said that student loan forgiveness would disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and for that the Biden administration plans to cap eligibility somewhere between a salary of $125,000 and $150,000. 

Biden has neared a decision on student loan forgiveness three times over the last several months but backed away each time, one Democrat close to the White House told Bloomberg. At a time of 9.1 percent 40-year-high inflation, aides worry about giving Republicans another opportunity to say they are adding fuel to the fire. 

But the Education Department has been telling student loan servicers not to give borrowers the required advanced notice that their payments will kick in ahead of the Aug. 31 moratorium deadline, Scott Buchanan, the executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, told the Wall Street Journal. 'Maybe the department expects that the White House will yet again kick the can down the road.'

Biden told reporters last week that another extension was indeed on the table. 

Federal student loan payments have not been required in over two years, first put on pause in March 2020. The freeze has been extended six times since then, twice under former President Trump and four times under Biden. 

And while Biden has not come to a decision on a mass student loan forgiveness plan, his Education Department has implemented smaller plans to forgive the debts of those who were defrauded by schools or borrowers and those who work in public service. So far under Biden around $26 billion has been forgiven from hundreds of thousands of borrowers. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11051335/Biden-considering-extending-student-loan-payment-freeze-forgiving-10-000-borrower.html

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The Sexual Experiment at the Ivy Leagues

Until very recently, most people were unaware that asserting that only women can menstruate and become pregnant could be controversial, or that pronouns could be incendiary. Yet today, gender ideology dominates the news cycle. Netflix employees protested Dave Chappelle’s comedy special with “transphobic” jokes. Avid Harry Potter fans boycotted J. K. Rowling’s work because of her supposedly “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” views. It’s not merely a culture war. The State Department recognized International Pronouns Day. Recently, President Biden signed an executive order to “advance LGBTQI+ equality,” which in part promotes “expanded access to gender-affirming care,” even for minors.

How did such radical social change happen so quickly? As incubators of gender fundamentalists, universities are equipping students with ever-expanding terminology for sexual orientation and encouraging activism without cultivating a sense of intellectual humility. Graduates become the directors of corporations, editors of newspapers, and staffers to politicians, thus occupying powerful positions that shape American culture. To help readers understand the college-campus dynamics, National Review compiled academic coursework, extracurricular programming, and institutional resources related to gender and sexual ethics at the eight Ivy League institutions, which serve as exemplars of higher education and train the country’s future elites.

Brown University

Brown’s Pembroke Center houses various academic initiatives, including the gender- and sexuality-studies department, which offers an undergraduate major. In April, the Pembroke Center hosted Tufts University professor Kareem Khubchandani, who responds to “any pronouns” and performs as the drag queen “LaWhore Vagistan,” a pun on Lahore, Pakistan, and a nod to Khubchandani’s research on South Asia.

At Brown, one also finds the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender, whose mission is “to engage the campus community through a feminist praxis of activism and academics.” The center’s FAQ page includes: “I don’t identify as a woman. Is the Sarah Doyle Center for me?” The center responds in the affirmative: “Yes! The Sarah Doyle Center welcomes people regardless of gender identity, presentation, or sexuality.”

Brown recently offered the course Pornography. The “course agreement” subsection of the syllabus clarifies that “this course will involve our viewing and discussing sexually explicit material” and that, by enrolling, students consent that “I have read the syllabus for Philosophy 1576, Pornography, and understand that the course will include both discussion of and viewings of sexually explicit material (i.e., pornography).” Students would be expected to “practice analyzing pornographic media” and “to watch one film per week, privately”; in addition, the syllabus notes, “every other week we’ll devote a class to discussing two films.” Upcoming Brown courses include Queer Dance, Black Queer Life, and Latinx Social Movement History.

Brown University affirms that it is “committed to supporting trans students, staff and faculty and the LGBTQ Center is here to help provide our campus community with information, education, support and resources.” The LGBTQ Center’s recent programming included a voguing workshop and a “Disability & Sex” series, which consisted of “discussion covering pleasure for non-normative bodies & sex toy accessibility.” The center shares various infographics on social media, such as endorsements of phrases like “people with penises” and “people who menstruate.”

Columbia University

Upcoming Columbia courses in women’s and gender studies include Indigenous Feminisms, Decolonization and Feminist Critique, Practicing Intersectionality, Abolitionist Feminism, and Theorizing Activism.

 

In 1889, Columbia University refused to admit women and founded the affiliate women’s-only school Barnard College, whose mission was and remains “to provide generations of promising, high-achieving young women with an outstanding liberal arts education in a community where women lead.” In 2016, Barnard began accepting “applicants who consistently live and identify as women, regardless of the gender assigned to them at birth,” specifying that “the applicant must identify herself as a woman and her application materials must support this self-identification.” This policy disqualifies applicants who are female but identify as male, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming.

The Columbia “identity-based group” Conversio Virium is described as “the oldest university student-run BDSM education group in the United States.” The club stresses that one of its “community pillars” is to honor preferred pronouns, including “xe.” The club says it is welcoming and emphasizes the need for respect: “Sometimes people have kinks that you do not personally share, and that is okay—please don’t disrespect people based on their kink.” Previous events include “Rough Sex for Nice Folks” and “Discreet Public Erotic Role Play: How to Do It Safely and Get Away With It.” Participants in the 2018 “YesFest: Beat-a-Bear Workshop” event “practice[d] negotiation, spanking, and usage of other impact-play implements.”

Cornell University

The program in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Cornell “offers students the opportunity to study a wide range of fields from the perspectives of feminist and LGBT critical analysis, in a global context and with the purpose of promoting social justice.” All undergraduates pursuing the major or minor in the department must fulfill a course in each of the three distribution areas: “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies (LGBT); the study of intersectionality; and geopolitics and transnationality.” One upcoming course is Nightlife, which focuses on “queer communities of color”; students “interrogate the ways in which nightlife demonstrates the queer world-making potential that exists beyond the normative 9-5 capitalist model of production.” Additional upcoming courses include Beyoncé Nation: The Remix and Queer Time and the Senses. Undergraduate students can also minor in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies.

Cornell’s Women’s Resource Center (WRC) supports “women-identified students” and “strives to be a welcoming space for people of all genders and identities.” The center “especially encourage[s] women of color, Black feminists/womanists, queer and trans folks, and people with disabilities” to be involved. In 2019, a WRC post said, “We recognize trans women as the women that they are,” emphasizing that “the Women’s Resource Center is a safe space on campus for members of the trans community and has an array of resources for members.”

In 2020, the WRC posted a statement: “We are angry, frustrated, and shaken by Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Those among us who are women and gender marginalized; black and brown; queer, trans, and gender non-confirming, immigrants; have mental health challenges or are of varying abilities; and, and, and . . . we are anxious and scared and angry.” The accompanying photo shows both Justice Barrett and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with the quote “expand the court” attributed to AOC. The WRC has shown a different attitude toward other female justices. In April 2022, it posted a photo of Ketanji Brown Jackson with the celebratory “CONFIRMED!!” In 2021, the WRC featured Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the “Woman of the Week.”

The WRC annually hosted the event “I Love Female Orgasm” and encouraged people “to come learn about everything from multiple orgasms to that mysterious G-spot.” The advertisement affirms that “all genders” are welcome, “whether you want to learn how to have your first orgasm, how to have better ones, or how to help your girlfriend.” The 2021 event “Sex in the Dark” was a “lights-off virtual event” that allowed attendees to stay anonymous and have their “deepest, darkest questions” answered by “professional sexperts.” In 2022, the WRC sponsored “Decolonizing the Body” and explained that, “when we look at menstruation through the lens of our current colonial, capitalist society, we often see pain, shame, discomfort, & disposability.”

Dartmouth College

Dartmouth’s Center for Professional Development lists resources for “womxn students.” Upcoming courses offered by the program in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies include Social Justice & the City; Radical Sexuality: Of Color, Wildness, and Fabulosity; and Sex, Celibacy & the Problem of Purity. Previous courses include #BlackLivesMatter, Black Consciousness & Black Feminisms, and Queer Popular Culture. The department sponsored the lecture “I Was a Queer Child and So Were You: Kissing, Queer Children, and Structural Change.” Other events hosted by the university include “Decolonization in the 21st Century,” “Decolonizing Environmental Politics,” and “Gender Equality in the Arctic.”

The religion department hosted the drag show “Dragmouth” with the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, which describes itself as dedicated to “the values, needs, strengths, and practices of marginalized communities” and lists “intersectionality” as a core value. The office also hosted “Transform,” a drag show that “actively disrupts the cultural gender policing, cissexism, and heterosexism on campus.”

Harvard University

Harvard offers both major and minor undergraduate degrees in studies of women, gender, and sexuality. Spring 2022 courses included Leaning In, Hooking Up: Visions of Feminism and Femininity in the 21st Century, and Indigenous Feminisms: Environmental Justice and Resistance. The spring 2021 course Topics in Advanced Performance Theory: Gender and Sexuality addressed “racialized and gendered structures of feeling; queer transnational social histories; technosexuality and mutation; and minor keys of Black unruliness and fugitivity.”

Like Brown University, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics hosted the Tufts professor who performs as “LaWhore Vagistan,” dubbed “everyone’s favorite academic South Asian drag queen auntie.” The professor regards his “greatest accomplishment” as “teaching a semester-long undergraduate course called ‘Critical Drag’ that birthed 21 new baby drag artists.” In courses, he “brings the nightclub to the classroom and vice-versa by teaching critical race, postcolonial, and gender theories through lip sync and lecture.”

The Harvard College Women’s Center addresses the question “What’s with the ‘e’ in Women’s Center?” The center explains its decision to refrain from the word “womxn” but affirms that “we emphatically welcome people of all genders and no gender into our space and invite you as collaborators in our work towards gender equity.”

The Women’s Center offers a land acknowledgment: “We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory, and honor and respect the many diverse Indigenous peoples still connected to this land.” It touts its “justice commitments,” namely reproductive justice, anti-fetishization, racial equity, and environmental justice. Among the workshops the center hosts is the “Gender 101” workshop on gender as a “constellation framework.”

The Harvard Women’s Center condemned the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade and committed to partnering with student organizations that are “pursuing reproductive justice goals.” These include Sexual Health Education & Advocacy throughout Harvard College (SHEATH), but not Harvard Right to Life, the pro-life student organization.

SHEATH hosts an annual “Sex Week” in the fall and “Sex Weekend” in the spring. The 2021 Sex Week included “Feel Those Good Vibrations: Sex Toys 101,” “Come Together, Right Now: Orgies 101,” and “What What, in the Butt! Anal 101.” The “F*** Fest” event celebrates Sex Week, and attendees are encouraged to wear lingerie. The 2022 Sex Weekend events included “Feelin’ Chemistry: Psychedelics and Sex,” “Pussy Portraits: Celebrating Genital Diversity,” and “Banging Beyond the Binary: Trans Sex 101”; meanwhile “oh-mazing toys” were raffled after each event.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/the-sexual-experiment-at-the-ivy-leagues/

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Five is too young for radical gender theory

Kevin Donnelly

The Sydney parent of a 5-year-old child attending Roseville Kids Care complaining about his child being indoctrinated with radical LGBTQ+ gender theory has done Australian parents a great service.

On being interviewed by the Daily Telegraph the parent complained, ‘There was a giant out-size pride flag, it was the biggest flag in the room, far bigger than the Australian flag.’ And, ‘When I went in there was an entire wall describing different sexualities giving definitions of things like pansexual and lesbian.’

Parents have every reason to be fearful and anxious. Proven by the National Quality Framework Approved Learning Discussion Paper pre-schools are the latest ground in the cultural-left’s long march pushing radical gender and sexuality ideology.

This can be seen in the documentation.

Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity

Children have multiple and changing identities. There is a push for strengthening the identity of children and young people as Australian citizens with connection to the identities of others. Aspects of identity formation that encompass gender identity and gender expression (with a non-binary dichotomy) and family diversity are also critical.

Pre-schools and kindergartens across Australia have to abide by the Discussion Paper and there’s no doubt, compared to the previous guidelines, the proposed new framework represents a radical change.

Gone are the days when pre-schools and kindergartens focused on finger painting, learning to socialise, physical play, and learning the alphabet and rudimentary numbers. Instead, pre-schools and kindergartens are told ‘children have multiple and changing identities’.

In a similar manner to the Marxist-inspired Safe Schools gender fluidity program, the Discussion Paper states, ‘Aspects of identity formation that encompass gender identity and gender expression (with a non-binary dichotomy) and family diversity are also critical.’

At a time when most pre-schoolers want to enjoy childhood and lack the ability to conceptualise and understand complex ideas, gender activists want to weaponise the early years of childhood to indoctrinate sensitive minds to adult concepts that require sexual knowledge.

Ignored is the science proving the overwhelming majority of babies are born as girls and boys with XX and XY chromosomes respectively. Also ignored, according to Identity matters: sexual identity in Australia published by the Commonwealth’s Parliamentary Library, heterosexuality is the norm with only 4 per cent of the population aged over 15 years identifying as non-binary.

Proven by the rationale underpinning the gender fluidity Safe Schools program, funded under Labor and Liberal governments, parents need to realise that the campaign to undermine human biology and radically change how society views family, gender, and sexuality is Marxist in origin.

One of the founders of the Safe Schools program, Roz Ward, admits the school program has nothing to do with stopping bullying, rather, ‘Marxism offers both the hope and the strategy needed to create a world where human sexuality, gender and how we relate to our bodies can blossom in extraordinary, new and amazing ways.’

As argued by the Italian philosopher and cultural critic Augusto Del Noce, the origins of radical gender theory can be traced to the Marxist academic Wilhelm Reich whose book The Sexual Revolution was published in 1936. Reich argues traditional sexual morality is used to reinforce capitalist control and domination.

To bring about the socialist utopia Reich argues people must be sexually liberated and empowered to express themselves free of what he describes as ‘repressive morality’. Concepts like the nuclear family and human biology are condemned as oppressive, restrictive, and binary in nature.

During the cultural revolution of the late 60s and early 70s Reich’s book was re-discovered leading to a sexual revolution epitomised by the slogan ‘Make Love, Not War’, the birth control pill, free love, and the emergence of the gay/lesbian pride movement.

Parents also need to realise the campaign to impose this radical gender ideology now infects primary and secondary schools from preparatory to year 12. In English classrooms, students are taught that traditional fairy-tale stories like Cinderella and plays like Romeo and Juliet are guilty of heteronormativity and cis-genderism.

The Australian Education Union for over 30 years has argued ‘homosexuality and bisexuality need to be normalised’, it’s wrong to assume being male or female is ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ and the school curriculum must embrace ‘non-heterosexist language’.

While unfair discrimination is wrong and all, regardless of sexuality and gender, must be treated without prejudice, what parents are facing is a doctrinaire campaign by the cultural-left to condition children to accept its radical ideology.

Whereas education was once based on the premise the curriculum should be balanced and impartial, and that teachers should refrain from proselytising, pre-schools and schools have become one of the front lines in the Culture Wars.

As a result, instead of parents being their children’s primary educators and moral guardians the cultural-left is all pervasive. It’s time for Australian parents, as they are doing in American states including Florida and Virginia, to reassert their right to teach their children and for schools to focus on education and not Marxist-inspired indoctrination.

Childhood should be a time of innocence and wonder, a time when children can enjoy being happy, playful, and creative instead of being burdened by cultural-left ideology riven with identity politics and victimhood.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/five-is-too-young-for-radical-gender-theory/

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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)

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26 July, 2022

‘Queer All School Year’: Los Angeles School District Forces Gender Theory Into Classroom

The Los Angeles Unified School District is using presentations, training programs, and clubs to instruct K-12 students on gender identity. (Photo Illustration: JackF/Getty Images)

The largest public school district in California is teaching a curriculum promoting transgenderism and gender theory to children, according to public documents.

The Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity department at Los Angeles Unified School District is using presentations, training programs, and clubs to instruct K-12 students on gender identity, according to public documents, first reported by City Journal, that include classroom instruction materials and district-sponsored event calendars. The “trans-affirming” curriculum first appeared during the 2020-2021 academic school year.

For example, the district hosted a virtual conference that featured a panel of “queer 7th graders” to advise parents on what their “queer middle schoolers want you to know,” the documents showed. The conference also included a presentation encouraging queer athletes to “come out.”

A workshop on “International Transgender Day of Visibility” said “history has a disturbing way of elevating certain voices while silencing others,” the documents showed. The presentation focused on raising awareness for the transgender community to achieve “trans justice.”

The “Standing with LGBTQ+ Students, Staff and Families,” run by school administrators, taught “local social justice engagement” and gave out free “gender-affirming clothing,” the documents stated. Teachers were instructed how students can be “Muslim and Trans” and taught how to address different “religious objections” to gender theory.

A trans-affirming calendar, deemed “Queer All School Year,” featured different pride events in each month such as the “Standing With LGBTQ Students Conference,” according to the documents. The training program “Queering Culture & Race” promoted the abandonment of gendered expressions such as “boys and girls.”

“The Black community often holds rigid and traditional views of sexual orientation and gender expression,” the presentation documents showed. “Black LGBTQ youth experience homophobia and transphobia from their familial communities.”

Teachers in the district are instructed to address a student by their chosen name and pronouns, and are not permitted to alert the parents of the student if they change, the documents said. Students were also told they can use any pronouns, including “tree” or “ze.”

The school also established a “gender neutral dress code and school uniform policy” as an “elimination of barriers,” the documents stated.

More than 600,000 students attend the K-12 education in the school district that includes more than 115 schools and campuses, making it the second-largest district in the nation, according to the school’s website.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/21/queer-all-school-year-los-angeles-school-district-forces-gender-theory-into-classroom

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‘Cancel culture’ backfires as donors pull cash from Edinburgh University

The University of Edinburgh has seen its donations slump by almost £2 million after it “cancelled” the philosopher David Hume over his slavery links.

The institution said that 24 donations and 12 legacies had been “cancelled, amended or withdrawn” in response to the September 2020 renaming of a prominent campus building dedicated to its former student, one of the leading figures of the Scottish enlightenment.

While he argued against the institution of slavery, Hume was condemned by student activists largely for a footnote in a 1758 essay in which he said he was “apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites”.

The David Hume Tower was rechristened 40 George Square with the university claiming that while Hume’s opinions were “not uncommon” when he wrote them more than 250 years ago, they “rightly cause distress today”.

While it refused to say how much money had been withdrawn by donors directly due to the renaming row, overall donations to the university fell from £23.2 million in 2020-21, to £21.3 million the following year.

A small number of those to cancel donations also cited the treatment of the academic Neil Thin, who was investigated and later acquitted after wrongly being accused by students of expressing racist and other “problematic” views. 

Dr Thin, a senior lecturer, was a vocal critic of the campaign to rename the tower.

Pam Gosul, the Scottish Tory spokesman for higher education, said: “The reduction in donations will offer university bosses the chance to reflect on decisions they have taken.”

The information was disclosed to the Scottish Daily Mail in response to a Freedom of Information request. 

The university said that while it knew how much cash it had lost from donors who specifically cited the Hume and Thin controversies, it would not make the total public as it considered this commercially sensitive.

A spokesman said: “Every year, several thousand donors support our students and life-changing research, for which we are deeply grateful.

“Views among our donors will vary widely and we respect the fact individuals may sometimes disagree with decisions we take, and may choose to suspend or cancel their support.

“We always want to thank them for their generosity on behalf of the students, researchers and communities beyond campus who have benefited.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/20/cancel-culture-backfires-edinburgh-university-loses-donors-david/

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Teachers' body urges mandatory bag and pocket checks of students to stop 'out of control' vaping in schools

Vaping in schools is so 'out of control' that a leading teachers' body is begging for pocket checks and bag searches to be imposed on students as they enter the classroom.

A recent survey of 196 Australian schools found more than 80 per cent of high schools are aware of students who vape, with 16 per cent of parents or guardians giving their children e-cigarettes. 

Teachers' Professional Association of Queensland secretary Tracy Tully said stricter measures must be put in place to tackle the looming health crisis. 

'They should be doing bag checks and pocket searches on entry to schools. It's not a privacy issue, all the schools would have to do is amend their behavioural management plans,' Ms Tully told The Courier Mail.

'These vape instruments are very hard to detect, they can be so easily concealed.'

A George Institute for Global Health study found more than half of the students and teachers surveyed believe vaping has resulted in a 'shift in school culture'. 

It revealed lunch was the most popular time to vape for high school students, with before and after school the preferred times for primary school kids.

A small number of respondents across primary and high schools reported students had even vaped in classrooms. 

Bathrooms and sporting fields, however, were the two most popular locations for students to vape.

George Institute's Professor Simone Pettigrew said the research suggested Australian students have easy access to vapes. 

'Our study shows some concerning trends in e-cigarette use in Australian schools – particularly primary schools – that need to be nipped in the bud to prevent future harm,' he said.

It is estimated around 400,000 Australians now vape, including one tenth of the NSW population aged 16-24, with numbers doubling in the last year.

Experts warn e-cigarettes are actually even more dangerous for teens than smoking cigarettes.

The battery-powered vapes work by heating the liquid inside and producing an aerosol which is then inhaled.

But the vapour - once touted as a safer alternative to cigarettes - is made up of various 'cancer-causing' chemicals such as heavy metals - even if labelled 'nicotine free'.

Other risks of vaping can include cardiovascular disease and mental illness.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11048941/Vaping-school-Teachers-body-urges-bag-pocket-checks-students.html

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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)

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25 July, 2022

Children could be radicalised over summer break, London  police warn parents

The Metropolitan police force has taken the unprecedented step of writing to parents of school-age children, urging them to look out for signs of radicalisation because it fears the six-week summer holiday could lead to a rise in extremism.

Det Supt Jane Corrigan, of the Met’s counter-terrorism command and lead officer in the anti-terrorist Prevent programme, sent a letter to primary and secondary schools in London – the first time such a step has been taken – to distribute to parents last week. In it she expresses concern that children would be spending more time online during the summer holidays, and that this would create the risk they could come into contact with those attempting to radicalise young people.

She advised parents to use the ACT Early website to identify signs of radicalisation, such as becoming obsessive or expressing extreme views, and to contact Prevent for support.

The government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation welcomed the development, saying the police had concluded that tackling the radicalisation of youngsters required society’s efforts as a whole.

Jonathan Hall QC said: “What’s so striking is that counter-terrorism usually operates behind the scenes – they have a minimal public presence – and that’s why this letter seems really important. They’re coming out and saying: ‘We can’t do it on our own’.”

Prevent is intended to divert people away from extremist ideologies. Corrigan manages London’s vulnerability support hub, which works with psychiatrists, psychologists and nursing staff. “Our job is really about making sure that we catch people and support them before it’s too late,” she said. “The purpose of my letter was to make sure that we appeal to parents, because they are usually the ones that will identify that deterioration, that vulnerability.”

Corrigan said about 30% of Prevent referrals came from schools, so the letter was important to ensure children did not slip through the net when not being seen by teachers.

She said that police often did not need to intervene because families were already receiving support from children’s mental health services, education support workers or social services. “If you think they’re vulnerable to being radicalised and need support, then call the advice line and we will ensure they get the support they need,” she added. “That’s our job, and sometimes that means difficult conversations with statutory partners.”

Corrigan said that the nature of terrorism threats had evolved from groups with clear ideological motives to individuals often described as “lone actors” with “mixed, unstable or unclear ideologies”, which accounted for more than half of the referrals to Prevent across the country.

“We’ve also seen that those ideologies are diversifying, and they’re becoming less fixed,” Corrigan said. “Subjects are often picking and choosing extremist contents from a range of sources. So people are kind of flip-flopping between ideologies and beliefs, and in most but not all cases, they’re inspired to conduct low sophistication attacks.”

Vulnerable and marginalised people were often targeted by extremists, Corrigan added, noting that an Islamic State promotional video included a sign language interpreter. “The reason they’ve got somebody signing is because they’re trying to reach the deaf community. Who is thinking about approaching the deaf community in terms of them being radicalised? It’s not something that automatically springs to mind.”

London continued to see more referrals for Islamist threats than extreme rightwing ones, a situation “at odds with the rest of the country”, she said.

In May, a leaked version of a report by William Shawcross, Prevent’s independent reviewer, said that the programme was “carrying the weight for mental health services” because of the lack of resources, and that people had been referred simply to access other types of support.

The issue of youngsters being drawn into extremism has posed an increasing challenge for police and the intelligence agencies with a recent speech by Hall warning that teenagers suspected of sharing and promoting terrorist material online should be spared prosecution if they were just “keyboard warriors”.

Data shows that of the 20 under-18s arrested in 2021, only five were charged and one convicted, suggesting that the police were aware of the difference in threat between youngsters posturing online and a genuine terrorist

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/uknews/children-could-be-radicalised-over-summer-break-met-police-warn-parents/ar-AAZUqVf

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Zuckerberg-backed Summit Learning platform suggests schools 'listen' to parents' 'online conversations'

Summit Learning, a digital learning platform funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, recommended that schools monitor some parents' online activity, such as their critical comments and Facebook groups that are public. 

Summit recommended that schools should "Listen to online conversations" from parents and provided instructions on how to do so. Fox News Digital uncovered Summit Learning's recommendations in the internal portal that is not available to the public but to educators who use the platform. 

The digital platform is used by hundreds of schools around the U.S. and was developed, in part, by Facebook engineers who continued to work with the platform until Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's organization entered into the partnership in 2017.

Schools attempting to implement Summit have met pushback from parents concerned about students' data security, among other aspects of the program. For example, after Cheshire Public Schools in Connecticut entered into Summit in 2017, parents' "opposition" caused the program to be terminated, according to Summit. The Cheshire superintendent acknowledged that the platform would have access to students' names, emails and analytics on their performance.

Furthermore, research from The National Education Policy Center, which is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, alleged that Summit's contracts with schools "presents a potentially significant risk to student privacy and opens the door to the exploitation of those data by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and possibly by unknown third parties—for purposes that have nothing to do with improving the quality of those students’ educations."

Summit Learning disputed the researchers' allegations, calling them "incorrect." 

"Protecting student privacy is a top priority and something we take very seriously," Fox News Digital was told. Summit's privacy policy states that they "don’t sell or use personal information to make money" and that they "don’t use student personal information for anything other than educational purposes."

"In certain cases, we may use de-identified information, (i.e. information that cannot be used to identify or contact an individual) to improve your experience on the Learning Services," the policy added.

Using Cheshire as an example, Summit provided instructions to schools for an "aggressive communications strategy" to prevent a repeat of parents' successfully uprising against the platform.

"Online discussion group: Parents may create groups on Facebook or other online platforms to discuss Summit Learning… [these groups] have… been used to build a campaign against Summit Learning," it said. On this point, Summit suggested schools watch for "groups with critical names."

"You can stay up to date by establishing Google alerts that an email notification when keywords (such as ‘Summit Learning’ + your school name) appear on a website. Regular monitoring of your school’s social media accounts for comments and questions about Summit Learning is also critical," it said.

Summit suggested that schools should also "watch for" social media posts from reporters requesting interviews with parents about Summit Learning. 

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Summit Learning said, "The document you shared encourages School Leaders to pay attention to questions from their community so they can provide factual information and have open conversations about their vision for education."

To ward off anticipated resistance from parents, Summit suggested that schools should "cultivate" parents who can be "allies" a "year before controversy starts." For example, schools can encourage parents to speak up at school board meetings to balance out negative statements and write letters to the editor following negative coverage in local media. 

"If you have already identified supportive parents… Explore whether they are willing to share their experiences with other parents through a letter, newsletter, or school board meeting."

"The claim that the program encourages educators to 'spy' is untrue," Summit explained to Fox News Digital. "Connecting with parents on public social media outlets, paying attention to the local news, and having conversations with families are positive ways educators can understand, address and support the needs of their community."

https://www.foxnews.com/media/zuckerberg-backed-summit-learning-platform-suggests-schools-listen-parents-online-conversations

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Some University of Michigan medical students walk out of pro-life speaker's keynote address at White Coat Ceremony

Dozens of incoming University of Michigan Medical School students walked out of a pro-life keynote speaker’s address, after a previous petition to get the speaker removed failed.

Shortly after Dr. Kristin Collier, a pro-life assistant professor of medicine at UMMS, took to the stage Sunday to address the new students at their White Coat Ceremony, several dozen people got up from their seats and headed for the auditorium doors, video of the ceremony showed.

Collier’s speech was not expected to focus on abortion, but some students petitioned the school weeks prior to remove her as the keynote speaker over her support for the unborn.

"I want to acknowledge the deep wounds our community has suffered over the past several weeks," Collier started her speech, which could have been a veiled reference to the controversy surrounding the protest or the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

"We have a great deal of work to do for healing to occur," she continued, the National Review reported. "And I hope that for today, for this time, we can focus on what matters most: coming together to support our newly accepted students and their families with the goal of welcoming them into one of the greatest vocations that exist on this earth."

The protesting group included students, donning their medical white coats, and some parents. The school said 168 new medical students attended the initiation ceremony and took the White Coat Pledge and the Hippocratic Oath.

The petition to remove Collier, who is also the director of the UMMS Program on Health Spirituality & Religion, was ultimately denied by the school’s dean, Dr. Marschall Runge.

In his decision, he expressed the "critical importance of diversity of personal thought and ideas, which is foundational to academic freedom and excellence," according to the report.

The students, in the actions they displayed Sunday, expressed their disapproval of his decision.

According to the report, Dr. Collier made no mention of abortion, Roe v. Wade, or any political topic during her keynote speech. She simply encouraged students and parents and offered them advice on what to expect as they begin their careers in the healthcare field.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/university-of-michigan-medical-students-walk-out-pro-life-speakers-keynote-address-white-coat-ceremony

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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)

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24 July, 2022

NYC students stuck on hot school buses during heat wave with no AC

<i>This is crazy.  NYC regularly has hot summers.  It was quite hot last time I was there.  All buses should have working AC</i>

Many public school buses transporting young students and children with disabilities during an interminable heat wave in New York City don’t have air conditioning, families told The Post.

The advocacy group Parents to Improve School Transportation (PIST), citing workforce sources, says more than half of the buses don’t have cool air.

The city Department of Education has received hundreds of complaints about sweltering conditions on the vehicles since the “Summer Rising” academic and camp program began July 5, according to city data. The DOE did not provide its own counts of the buses without air conditioning or affected students.

“The bus drivers are sweating through their uniforms, the attendants [too],” said Paullette Healy, a parent in Brooklyn with two children in public schools and member of the Citywide Council for Special Education. “Kids are coming off flushed, fatigued, exhausted — so many signs of dehydration and heat stroke.”

The DOE estimated there are roughly 41,000 students being bused this summer. 

The crisis reached a boiling point on Thursday, when an overturned school bus in the Bronx injured dozens of drivers and staff, and led to delays and prolonged commutes for many more children. Advocates told The Post that children got nauseous and dizzy on the bus. 

“It’s hot. The AC is not working. They have no access to a bathroom or to water. Those are the circumstances that follow when accidents like this happen,” said Healy. 

According to the DOE, AC-related complaints so far this summer are down since before the pandemic in 2019 by approximately 75% — from 1,124 in 2019 at the same point in the summer to 285 this year as of mid-week. 

But advocates are certain that the number is an undercount, as parents report being put on hold for hours by the Office of Pupil Transportation’s call center — or not getting through at all. And when families try to file complaints online, they receive an auto-reply to call the hotline, they said.

Rima Izquierdo, a Bronx-based parent and advocate, told The Post she has filed multiple complaints about the heat, but the cases get closed because the buses are standard and do not have the capacity for cooling.

“They’re deterring people from filing incidents that give you a number and become something you can track,” Izquierdo said.

Those issues have persisted despite a recent $9.4-million contract to expand help desk services to support school bus inquiries, including up to 20,000 calls and 2,000 web chats monthly.

“My kids will come off the bus red, very flushed. Feverish. Sweating,” said Izquierdo. “The back of their shirt soaked, the front of their shirt in the middle soaked. Maybe sometimes the pants will have sweat marks from sitting down for so long. Both of my kids have asthma, so sometimes it results in them feeling tightness in their breath.

Of the drivers and attendants, she added, “Those are deplorable work conditions. You have to take care of children, you have to be attentive. How, if you feel you’re going to pass out yourself? It’s not safe for a driver to be driving in that heat.”

The Special Commissioner of Investigation put school bus vendors on notice in 2019 with an investigation into those operating at dangerously hot temperatures. Since then, the DOE says it has heightened inspection of vendors, including surprise visits, and increased follow-up on violators. Officials did not give the results of the actions, including fines.

The DOE also conducted meetings with bus companies reviewing “Climate Control Policy,” it said, but would not provide additional details. Buses without AC installed are ventilated with open windows, they added. 

Queens mom Denise Owens said her 11-year-old son Evan, who has autism, is legally entitled to cooler school buses as part of his individual education plan, or IEP.

“The city is having cooling centers, yet we’re putting our children on a hot bus. We’re giving out heat advisories, but we’re going to throw children with special needs on a hot bus,” Owens said.

Owens told The Post she has at least three open complaints to the pupil transportation office.

“When it comes to AC specifically, they’re breaking the law,” said Healy. “Any company that is not pulling a vehicle off the road without AC is violating the law.” 

Climate change experts are “virtually certain” that heat waves will become more common and more intense in future years.

“Every student who relies on school busing deserves a safe and comfortable ride to school, and we hold bus companies accountable to this standard,” said Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for the DOE.

“The DOE’s Office of Pupil Transportation tracks and quickly addresses any and all escalations related to temperatures on school buses, including assigning inspectors as needed and following up with bus companies based on reports received.” 

https://nypost.com/2022/07/23/nyc-students-stuck-on-hot-school-buses-during-heat-wave/

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Los Angeles Unified School District has adopted a radical gender-theory curriculum encouraging teachers to work toward the “breakdown of the gender binary,”

I have obtained a trove of publicly accessible documents from Los Angeles Unified that illustrates the extent to which gender ideology has entered the mainstream of the nation’s second-largest school district. Since 2020, the district’s Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity department has created an infrastructure to translate the basic tenets of academic queer theory into K-12 pedagogy. The materials include a wide range of conferences, presentations, curricula, teacher-training programs, adult-driven “gender and sexuality” clubs, and school-sponsored protests.

In a week-long conference last fall, titled “Standing with LGBTQ+ Students, Staff, and Families,” administrators hosted workshops with presentations on “breaking the [gender] binary,” providing children with “free gender affirming clothing,” understanding “what your queer middle schooler wants you to know,” and producing “counter narratives against the master narrative of mainstream white cis-heteropatriarchy society.” The narrative follows the standard academic slop: white, cisgender, heterosexual men have built a repressive social structure, divided the world into the false binary of man and woman, and used this myth to oppress racial and sexual minorities. Religion, too, is a mechanism of repression. During the conference, the district highlighted how teachers can “respond to religious objections” to gender ideology and promoted materials on how students can be “Muslim and Trans.”

In another training program, titled “Queering Culture & Race,” the Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity office encouraged teachers to adopt the principle of intersectionality, a key tenet of critical race theory, and apply it to the classroom. First, administrators asked teachers to identify themselves by race, gender, and sexual orientation, and to consider their position on the identity hierarchy. The district then encouraged teachers to “avoid gendered expressions” in the classroom, including “boys and girls” and “ladies and gentlemen,” which, according to queer theory, are vestiges of the oppressive gender binary. Administrators also warned teachers that they might have to work against the families of their minority students, especially black students, regarding sexuality. “The Black community often holds rigid and traditional views of sexual orientation and gender expression,” the presenters claimed. “Black LGBTQ youth experience homophobia and transphobia from their familial communities.”

Finally, Los Angeles Unified has gone all-in on “trans-affirming” indoctrination. The Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity department has flooded the district with teaching materials, including, for example, videos from the consulting firm Woke Kindergarten encouraging five-year-olds to experiment with gender pronouns such as “they,” “ze,” and “tree” and to adopt nonbinary gender identities that “feel good to you.” The district requires teachers to use a student’s desired name and pronoun and to keep the student’s gender identity a secret from parents if the student so desires. In other words, Los Angeles public schools can facilitate a child’s transition from one gender to another without notifying parents. And the district is far from neutral: it actively celebrates sexual identities such as “pansexual,” “sexually fluid,” “queer,” “same-gender-loving,” and “asexual,” and gender identities such as “transgender,” “genderqueer,” “agender,” “bigender,” “gender nonconforming,” “gender expansive,” “gender fluid,” and “two-spirit.”

The problem with creating a “trans-affirming” culture is obvious. In one of the district’s own materials, “Mental Health Among Transgender Youth,” the Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity department cites a survey by Mental Health America pointing out that, among 11-to-17-year-old transgender youth who were screened for mental health issues, 93 percent were at risk for psychosis, 91 percent exhibited signs of posttraumatic stress disorder, 90 percent likely used drugs and alcohol, 90 percent experienced moderate-to-severe anxiety, and 95 percent experienced moderate to severe depression. Additionally, according to a Trevor Project study, 71 percent of transgender youth have been diagnosed with eating disorders, with the ratio even higher for female-to-male transgender children.

These numbers are deeply alarming. But rather than provide a sober assessment of these risks and seek to mitigate them, Los Angeles Unified has adopted a year-round program glamorizing transgender identity and promoting an uncritical, “trans-affirming” culture in the classroom. It is, of course, a noble goal for schools to provide a safe environment for minority groups and to affirm the basic dignity of all children regardless of their sexuality. But Los Angeles Unified’s program goes much further, promoting the most extreme strains of transgender ideology, which almost certainly contributes to the “social contagion” effect documented by Abigail Shrier and others.

The Los Angeles Unified School District governs the educational life of more than 600,000 children, the majority of whom are racial minorities from poor families. The implicit cynicism of the district’s gender-ideology instruction is sickening: highly educated, well-paid bureaucrats promote fashionable academic programming that will do nothing to provide a basic education for these children or help them move up the economic and social ladder. It will only keep them trapped in a morass of confusion, fatalism, and resentment—while the bureaucrats keep collecting their paychecks.

https://www.city-journal.org/sexual-liberation-in-public-schools?

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Girl, 13, is youngest black student accepted to medical school: ‘What is age?’

At just 13 years old, Alena Analeigh Wicker just became the youngest black student to ever be accepted to medical school.

The young girl, from just outside Fort Worth, Texas, was reading chapter books at 3 and taking high school courses at 11 — and she enrolled in two colleges at 12 to earn two separate degrees.

But she’s not focused on her age — just her potential impact.

“What is age?” Alena asked during an interview with the Washington Post. “You’re not too young to do anything. I feel like I have proven to myself that I can do anything that I put my heart and mind to.”

The brilliant young teen has always been a few steps ahead of her peers but doesn’t think she’s too different.

“I’m still a normal 13-year-old,” Alena insisted.

Aside from her studies, she still enjoys going to the movies, playing soccer, baking and hanging out with friends.

“I just have extremely good time management skills and I’m very disciplined,” she explained.

Alena is currently a college junior at both Arizona State University and Alabama’s Oakwood University, where she is earning two separate undergraduate degrees in biological sciences through mostly online courses.

Encouraged by her family, educators and advisers, she applied for early acceptance to medical school at the University of Alabama’s Heersink School of Medicine for 2024.

In May she was accepted into the program — even though she is more than 10 years younger than the average incoming med student.

And regardless of her age, the chances of Alena being accepted were already very slim, with only 7% of applicants being accepted into US medical schools and only 7% of those being black students.

“Statistics would have said I never would have made it,” Alena wrote in an Instagram post sharing the exciting news last month. “A little black girl adopted from Fontana, California. I’ve worked so hard to reach my goals and live my dreams.”

“Mama, I made it. I couldn’t have done it without you. You gave me every opportunity possible to be successful. You cheered me on, wiped my tears, gave me Oreos when I needed comfort, you never allowed me to settle, disciplined me when I needed. You are the best mother a kid could ever ask for. MAMA, I MADE IT!” she continued.

“You always believed in me. You allowed me space to grow and become, make mistakes without making me feel bad. You allowed me the opportunity to experience the world.”

https://nypost.com/2022/07/20/girl-13-is-youngest-black-student-accepted-to-medical-school/

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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)

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22 July, 2022

What Harvard means by 'diversity'

by Jeff Jacoby

THE LEFT-WING takeover of American elite universities is a very old story. In 1951, a young William F. Buckley Jr. created a sensation with God and Man at Yale, his first book, which documented the largely socialist and atheist worldview that even then prevailed in the classrooms of the Ivy League institution from which he had just graduated.

In much of American academia today, that worldview no longer merely prevails. It overpowers. It is pervasive, aggressive, and deeply intolerant. Half a century after Buckley's debut, an even younger conservative graduating from another prominent university — Ben Shapiro of the University of California Los Angeles — published his first book, Brainwashed, which picked up where Buckley had left off. "I have seen firsthand the leftist brainwashing occurring on campus on a daily basis," wrote Shapiro. "Under higher education's facade of objectivity lies a grave and overpowering bias."

That was in 2004. The imbalance Shapiro described then is even more pronounced now. It seems almost superfluous to document the phenomenon, but documentation continues to be compiled. In surveys of college faculty members by the Higher Education Research Institute over several decades, liberals have always outnumbered moderates and conservatives. That is especially the case in New England, as Sarah Lawrence College political scientist Samuel Abrams noted in a 2016 New York Times column:

In 1989, the number of liberals compared with conservatives on college campuses was about 2 to 1 nationwide; that figure was almost 5 to 1 for New England schools. By 2014, the national figure was 6 to 1; for those teaching in New England, the figure was 28 to 1. . . . If you are looking for an ideologically balanced education, don't put New England at the top of your list.

And definitely don't put Harvard on your list.

The Harvard Crimson reported last week that 82 percent of Harvard's faculty of arts and sciences characterize their political leanings as "liberal" or "very liberal." By contrast, "only 1 percent of respondents stated they are 'conservative,' and no respondents identified as 'very conservative.'" Compared to the rest of the country, New England's 28-to-1 lopsided liberal faculty dominance may appear wildly out of whack. But it is a model of evenhandedness compared to the 82-to-1 slant among the Harvard professoriate.

Moreover, reports the Crimson, that's the way most Harvard instructors like it. "When asked whether they would support increasing ideological diversity among faculty by hiring more conservative-leaning professors, only a quarter of respondents were in support," the paper reported.

From time to time in the world of higher education, proposals are floated to actively increase the share of faculty members whose outlook is more conservative. A few years ago, an Iowa lawmaker drafted legislation to require public colleges in his state to ensure that liberal and conservative faculty members be hired in equal numbers. The University of Colorado at Boulder has an endowed visiting professorship in Conservative Thought and Policy. The conservative activist David Horowitz for several years promoted an "Academic Bill of Rights," lobbying state legislatures to pass measures barring universities from (among other things) hiring, promoting, or terminating professors based on their political beliefs.

I am skeptical of such efforts. The steady leftward march of academia's most prestigious institutions is a genuine problem, but it isn't one that can be solved by tokenism or litmus tests, or by involving the government in hiring decisions. Frankly, I doubt that it can be solved at all other than perhaps by building up new institutions of higher education — a worthy process, but one that, even in the best of circumstances, will take many years to succeed.

Harvard's 82-to-1 faculty ratio of liberals to conservatives makes a mockery of the university's avowed commitment to diversity. A handsome page on its website declares that "Harvard's commitment to diversity in all forms" — my italics — "is rooted in our fundamental belief that engaging with unfamiliar ideas, perspectives, cultures, and people creates the conditions for dramatic and meaningful growth."

Those fine words aren't true, of course. Everyone knows that Harvard has no desire to uphold "diversity in all forms." Like other institutions that go out of their way to trumpet their embrace of diversity — the media, Hollywood, major-league sports — Harvard wants its people to be "diverse" only when measured by the yardsticks that matter least: race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation. But the clash of ideas? A robust competition among worldviews? The exposure of students to compelling arguments that challenge liberal and progressive shibboleths? That's not what Harvard is interested in. It hasn't been for decades.

https://jeffjacoby.com/26329/what-harvard-means-by-diversity

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Broke Colleges Resort to Mergers for Survival

When Covid-19 first tore through the nation, hundreds of college presidents sent students home, looked across their empty campuses and wondered how they were going to pay their bills.

Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun saw an opportunity. On May 15, 2020, he called six senior managers to his office. “Colleges and universities will be challenged,” he told his cabinet, he recalls. “This may be the time to start looking at mergers and partnerships.”

Over the next few weeks, Northeastern created a specialized M&A team to assess the value and vet the balance sheets of dozens of flailing colleges in the U.S. and abroad. His directive came to fruition on June 30 when Boston-based Northeastern absorbed Mills College, a 170-year-old women’s school on a 135-acre campus not far from Silicon Valley.

In exchange for the land, worth perhaps $1 billion, the school’s roughly $191 million endowment and an art collection that includes works by Diego Rivera and Winslow Homer, Northeastern is absorbing $21 million in Mills’s liabilities, putting $30 million toward an institute designed to continue the school’s feminist scholarship—and keeping open a college that planned to close.

Dr. Aoun called the deal a once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand Northeastern’s footprint, prepare students for careers in Silicon Valley and amplify Mills’s tradition of women’s leadership and social justice. Some Mills alumni are calling their school leaders dupes, given the deal’s lopsided nature. Higher-education experts see the event as emblematic of a sectorwide shakeout.

Students continue to pack into flagship universities and brand-name colleges. Less-prestigious schools are struggling. The number of colleges closing down in the past 10 years, around 200, has quadrupled compared with the previous decade.

And in the past four years, there have been 95 college mergers, compared with 78 over the prior 18 years, according to data compiled by the consulting group EY Parthenon. In the past two months, St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia absorbed the crosstown University of the Sciences, and Boston College announced it will absorb Pine Manor College, also in the Boston area.

Schools merge to broaden their enrollment base, diversify programs, expand facilities and create efficiencies of scale. About 40% of mergers involve private, nonprofit schools, and the majority involve schools within the same state and with fewer than 5,000 students. Public university systems with excess capacity have made or are considering mergers in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin.

The stress they face is driven by rising costs for college and uneven return on investment, which has diminished public confidence in higher education, opened the door to competitors and led to falling enrollment.

In 2019, 51% of American adults considered a college degree to be “very important,” down from 70% in 2013, according to a Gallup poll. Positive perceptions of college among adults 18 to 29 fell the fastest of any group, to 41% from 74%.

Meanwhile, companies including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Coursera Inc., as well as coding bootcamps, have eroded colleges’ and universities’ near monopoly on post-secondary education, offering inexpensive online courses a la carte that are closely aligned with the labor market.

Enrollment declines accompanied these shifts. From 19.6 million students enrolled in spring 2011, the number fell to 17.5 million in spring 2019. The pandemic sped the decline, and the number was down to 16.2 million by this spring, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.

The steepest declines are at for-profit schools, community colleges and less-prestigious private colleges. Lower demand has pushed some to hand out more scholarships and grants. In the 2021-22 academic year, students paid just 45.5% of the sticker price on average, the lowest ever, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

Some schools have dealt with falling revenue by offering fewer classes and services—leading to still more enrollment challenges. The term applied to schools engaged in such a death spiral? Zombie colleges.

“These are schools that are under-preparing and under-serving their students,” said Ricardo Azziz, who coined the term. They “have excess capacity and are resistant to considering consolidation.” Dr. Azziz was president of Georgia Health Sciences University in 2012 when he oversaw a merger with Augusta State University.

The U.S. government gave $76 billion in aid to colleges and universities to shore up their balance sheets as Covid-19 swept the country. That money delayed some hard decisions, says Robert Zemsky, a professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania. He predicts that 500 four-year colleges and universities will close in the near term.

“This is an industry that is almost totally unprepared for this,” Dr. Zemsky said. “There’s a lot of pain ahead for a lot of small colleges.”

Northeastern University was built a century ago on a work-study model. Today, its students intern at one of 3,100 companies during their education. That forces professors to adjust their curricula repeatedly to meet the needs of industry.

This exposure solves a problem that has long plagued higher education, says Northeastern’s provost, David Madigan. Schools are organized around academic disciplines, a system he calls “inward looking and tantamount to medieval guilds,” and they struggle to stay relevant at times of rapid change in the economy.

Northeastern’s model has helped make the onetime blue-collar commuter college one of the nation’s more selective universities. In 2021, 91,986 students applied for 2,620 spots.

About a decade ago, Northeastern began looking beyond Boston. It examined regional labor markets to identify gaps between the supply of workers for an area’s industries and the local academic programs to produce them. Over the past decade, Northeastern has opened campuses in Charlotte, N.C., London, Portland, Maine, San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose, Calif., Toronto and Vancouver. A campus in Miami is in the works.

Northeastern’s Dr. Aoun earned degrees in Lebanon and Paris before getting a Ph.D. in linguistics and philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said studying on three continents gave him an appreciation for the American university system, which encourages innovation more than others. “If you look around the world, you see everything is determined in a centralized way by the government and minister of education,” he said.

Despite the opportunity to innovate, he sees plenty of groupthink in higher education. Universities in the U.S. are “diverse but not differentiated,” he said. “Everyone follows the same approach.”

Northeastern’s work-study model tends to force innovation. Dr. Aoun, who is 69, switched his sneakers last year because students told him a new brand was better. “If the world is changing around you and you’re not changing, that is risky,” he said.

Instead of other universities, he looks to global companies for insights on expansion. A notion he has gleaned is that each campus should serve the needs of the area where it’s located.

As the technology sector grew, so did Northeastern’s interest in having a toehold in Silicon Valley. In 2015, it opened a small campus inside the offices of a tech company in San Jose. It offers programs in computer science, data science and information systems.

Mills College, in nearby Oakland, began in 1852 as a women’s seminary. It grew into a liberal arts college with a focus on women’s rights and gender equity, with graduates who include well-known artists and activists such as Rep. Barbara Lee (D., Calif.) and singer-songwriter Laurie Anderson.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/broke-colleges-resort-to-mergers-for-survival-11658239445

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Australia: Queensland teachers strike gold

Teachers have won a 3 per cent “cost-of-living’’ bonus in Queensland after union leaders accepted an inflation-busting pay offer that will put pressure on ­public sector payrolls and other industries.

Queensland teachers and principals will pocket the highest salaries in Australian schools through pay rises ranging from 11 per cent to 20 per cent over the next three years, pegged to the rate of inflation.

The Palaszczuk government has broken ranks with other states, with the inflation payment smashing the 2 per cent annual pay rise accepted by Victorian teachers in May, and the 3 per cent pay rise offered to striking ­teachers in NSW. The inflation bonus could potentially blow out Queensland’s public education sector wage bill – currently more than $8bn – by more than $1bn over the next three years.

The Queensland Teachers’ Union has recommended its members accept the pay deal of a 4 per cent pay rise this year, backdated to July 1, with rises of 4 per cent next year and 3 per cent in 2024. The pay package includes a “cost of living adjustment” worth up to 3 per cent each year, to be paid to teachers in a lump sum if the annual consumer price index in Brisbane outstrips the pay ­increase.

Should inflation hit 7 per cent this year, as forecast by some economists, starting salaries will soar by as much as $100 a week to $78,783 a year – more than the ­average wage for newly graduated doctors, lawyers or engineers.

Beginner teachers in Queensland would pocket a $2945 pay rise, plus a cost-of-living bonus worth an extra $2297.

Lead teachers would get a $5001 pay rise plus an inflation bonus of $3900, boosting their pay to $133,926 this year – the highest teacher salary in Australia.

Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace, who is also the Minister for Industrial Relations, on Thursday boasted about the generosity of the pay deal that also offers bonus payments to teachers who move to regional or remote schools.

“This is an offer that includes some of the highest pay increases and best working conditions for teachers in Australia,’’ she said.

“The Palaszczuk government is committed to making the Queensland Department of Education the employer of choice for teachers in Australia.’’

Teachers in Queensland have until July 29 to vote on the offer.

NSW Teachers Federation president Angelo Gavrielatos on Thursday dismissed the NSW government’s 3 per cent pay rise offer as a “pay cut” because it failed to keep pace with inflation.

He refused to rule out ongoing strikes to secure more money, nominating an increase of 10 per cent or 15 per cent over the next two years as a “starting point’’.

“Our claim is more than reasonable considering the inflationary pressure that exists today,’’ he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/queensland-teachers-cash-in-on-inflation-with-costofliving-bonus/news-story/86cbc40a0b6d3ca59d0077c6da481ca3

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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)

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21 July, 2022

Oregon Education Department anti-bias training accuses White people of having a 'thorough racist conditioning'

The training included central topics in the critical race theory lens. For example, the literature in the training, reviewed by Fox News Digital, accused the U.S. of encompassing "white dominant culture."

"For white people living in North America learning to be anti-racist is a re-education process. We must unlearn our thorough racist conditioning to re-educate and re-condition ourselves as anti-racists," the literature from the training stated. "We are constantly tempted to detour off course by the racist propaganda of society and our own guilt and denial. In the face of society’s and our own resistance, sustaining the will to continue this journey takes bold and stubborn effort."

The literature also accused White children of being trained to hold prejudice.

"Most of us first became aware of racial prejudice and injustice as children. As white infants, we were fed a pabulum of racist propaganda. That early 'training' was comprehensive and left little room for question, challenge or doubt," the literature stated. "We resisted the lies, the deceit and the injustice of racism, but we did not have the skills to counter the poisonous messages. Our conditioning filled us with fear, suspicion and stereotypes that substituted for true knowing of people of color. We internalized our beliefs about people of color, ourselves, other white people and about being white. Those internalized attitudes became actualized into racist behavior."

One of the sessions in the seminar asked participants to enact microaggression scenarios over what may come up in a workplace. 

Racial microaggressions are defined by, according to ODE, "Commonplace verbal or behavioral indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults."

To deny one's "personal racism" or role in its perpetuation is a "microinvalidation," the training said.

Another "microinvalidation" included "statements which assert that race plays a minor role in life success," under an umbrella title called the "Myth of Meritocracy."

"Denial or pretense that a White person does not see color or race," another "microinvalidation" example said. 

The anti-bias training, which was launched in 2020, focused on "understanding of the institutionalized racist barriers that hinder elimination of the racial achievement disparities in our schools." ODE told Fox News Digital that "Supporting every learner requires addressing racial equity… We know there are long-standing inequities in our systems that have led to gaps in outcomes for students of color. We emphasize culturally responsive professional learning for Oregon Department of Education staff that is reflective of all communities in our state. There is both an intellectual and ethical basis for centering equity in professional learning and instructional materials."

Attendees were also instructed on "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" of "White privilege." 

The examples of White privilege included not being asked to "speak for all the people of my racial group."

"I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the 'person in charge' I will be [f]acing a person of my race," ODE's training said. "I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race."

https://www.foxnews.com/media/oregon-education-department-anti-bias-training-accuses-white-people-having-thorough-racist-conditioning

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Texas professor under fire after proposing a ‘cure for homosexuality’

A Texas professor was being scrutinized after an appeal to find a “cure for homosexuality,” along with the bizarre suggestion that doctors try to identify gay babies during prenatal testing.

Professor Timothy Farage is under investigation by The University of Texas at Dallas after a tweet that made misleading claims about an alleged link to homosexuality and monkeypox.

“Can we at least try to find a cure for homosexuality, especially among men,” the computer science professor wrote.

Farage insisted he has “nothing against homosexuals” during an interview with WFAA-TV, but suggested we try to find a “cure” to change someone’s sexual preference.

“I’m saying, do medical research on the causes for homosexuality,” he said while suggesting that the supposed testing could be administered in the womb.

Farage then admitted: “I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.”

The Rainbow Coalition, an LGBTQ+ student organization at UT Dallas, called on the university to take “immediate action” against Professor Timothy Farage, for the since-deleted post.

“Farage has a long, well-documented history of hostility on LGBTQ+ issues,” they said in a tweet. “He has been known to discuss controversial political positions and promote personal social media account during lectures, which goes against university guidelines for professor’s conduct.”

The university “received several complaints” and said the incident was under investigation.

“We take this matter seriously and that the statements by this individual do not reflect the core values of our institution,” the university said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the university offered students the opportunity to take classes with another professor.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/20/texas-professor-under-fire-after-proposing-a-cure-for-homosexuality/

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Affirmative-action fix: Let students know how they’ll fare before choosing a college

The affirmative-action debate’s many dimensions — legal, ethical and more — will receive another airing in the months ahead. But in a new Manhattan Institute issue brief, I examine a more empirical topic that strikes at the heart of affirmative action’s purpose: To what extent do affirmative action’s beneficiaries suffer from being “mismatched” with better-qualified peers, rather than benefiting from enhanced educational opportunities?

The question is hard to answer, both because social science is always difficult and because schools have been reluctant to release the needed data. Some things are clear, others quite muddy.

First, while many colleges are basically unselective, pickier schools do use race in their admissions processes, sometimes quite heavily, admitting students from underrepresented minority groups who’d have had little chance if they were white. In a recent paper, for instance, Peter Arcidiacono, Josh Kinsler and Tyler Ransom looked at the data shaken loose from the two schools currently before the Supreme Court. At Harvard, blacks get a fourfold increase in their chances of admission. At UNC, black applicants get a 70 percent increase if they’re in-state and a more than tenfold increase if they’re applying through the far more competitive out-of-state pool.

Second, schools rely on criteria such as test scores and high-school grades to begin with because these variables predict success in college.

Third, there’s lots of debate over whether these students would be better off at lower-ranked schools in concrete ways — completing difficult majors without switching to easier ones, graduating, passing the bar (in the case of law school). The evidence is stronger for some outcomes than others, but a commonsense way of interpreting the literature is simply that affirmative action has different effects in different situations.

What is to be done? The Supreme Court’s decision won’t moot this topic, even if schools comply with the ruling in good faith. Common alternatives to race-based affirmative action, such as preferences based on class or geography, can also create mismatch. I propose a simple solution: Give kids accurate information about how they’ll likely fare in the college programs that accept them, based on how similar students have performed in those same programs.

Recent years have seen a broad push toward providing better data on colleges, such as the government’s College Scorecard, which reveals important statistics such as graduation rates and median earnings after graduation. My additional suggestion is simply to work out how these outcomes vary based on students’ entering credentials.

This is common sense, and others have made similar proposals. In a 2017 Urban Institute brief, Jordan Matsudaira suggested giving students “personalized predictions of the likelihood that they complete programs of interest and the earnings outcomes associated with these programs,” predictions that would benefit from data on students’ academic backgrounds. Arcidiacono, Kinsler and Ransom have written that “universities have a moral imperative to provide students with accurate information about their prospects of success.”

Liberals and conservatives do not see eye to eye on affirmative action, and a Supreme Court decision will not settle the matter. They should be able to agree, however, to help prospective college students make better-informed decisions when they choose a school.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/20/affirmative-action-fix-let-students-know-how-theyll-fare-beforehand/

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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)

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20 July, 2022

After 2 Years Homeschooling Using High School Curriculum, Boy, 13, Graduates College With 3.78 GPA

After two years of homeschooling using high school curriculum, 13-year-old Elliott Tanner graduated college with a bachelor’s degree and a 3.78 GPA. Now, he’s a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota with ambitions to become a professor.

“It doesn’t really faze us that he is young, because this is just our life,” Elliott’s mom, 45-year-old Michelle Tanner, told The Epoch Times. “He has put in his time, and has proved himself to everyone that he is capable of being successful in college.”

Michelle, who lives with her family in St. Louis, always knew her son had big academic ambitions.

Elliott, who is the only child of his parents, loved being read to as a baby and taught himself to read at 2 years old, without any formal instruction. He started writing a year later, and became interested in math, moving quickly past basic sums into 3- and 4-digit addition, multiplication, and division.

The teen officially started homeschooling at the age of 6, after Spanish immersion in kindergarten. His parents provided him with “a ton of books,” mentors and tutors, and even industry tours to cater to his burgeoning love of math, physics, chemistry, and computer coding.

He finished high-school algebra and geometry at 7, took trigonometry at 8, and enrolled at college three weeks after his ninth birthday for calculus classes and beyond, earning an associate’s degree in mathematics at the tender age of 11 during the pandemic.

“He didn’t have a typical graduation ceremony, it was online,” Michelle lamented. “It was bittersweet; we were incredibly proud of him, but wished he could have celebrated by walking across the stage.”

While studying for his bachelor’s of science in physics, with a minor in math, at the Univesity of Minessota, Elliott contributed to research for the International Short-Baseline Neutrino Program at Fermilab in Chicago, Illinois. His research was determining the effects of Rayleigh scattering in the SBND.

Michelle recalled her son’s college experience.

“Before he was 13, I would take him to school and stay on campus while he was in his classes; I would find a coffee shop,” she said. “Once he turned 13, we felt good about being able to just drop him off and pick him up.

“Elliott took full days of classes and was also involved in the Physics Club … loved being able to hang out in the physics student lounge, attended Math Club. The workload of college isn’t too much for Elliott.”

She explained that he doesn’t spend long hours studying at night and usually gets his homework done in between classes, so that when the other junior high-school kids are getting off the bus, he can already be home and get ready to play.

Another of Elliott’s favorite pastimes was virtual reality gaming with his close friend, the actor Iain Armitage, who plays Sheldon on the TV show, “Young Sheldon.”

Elliott, who loves Minecraft, Dungeons and Dragons, board games, and hanging out at the amusement park with friends, used to “stick out” and prompt double-takes among his college peers when he was little. Some even assumed he was a student’s child in class. But since growing taller, he fits in, said Michelle, and the “shock value” of his age wears off quickly.

Apart from having great executive skills and maturity, Elliott also brings in a little fun at school, Michelle said.

Due to his academic achievements, many think he “doesn’t get to be a kid,” or that his childhood was taken away from him, Michelle revealed. However, she assures that is not the case at all.

“Not only does he regularly play with age-similar peers, but he also has his academic needs met,” Michelle said. “So he is able to hang with other teenagers as well as speak to other physics students and professors about high-level physics concepts. It’s been a perfect match to be able to stimulate all areas of his life, both socially and academically.”

Michelle, a freelance photographer and social media manager, and her music-producer husband, 56-year-old Patrik Tanner, advocate for their son as best they can, despite it being difficult for Elliot to be accepted in the industry.

“His age has drawbacks, such as not being offered a teaching assistant position at the university for his PhD program,” Michelle explained. “This means he is one of only 3 percent of physics PhD students in the U.S. that do not have a tuition waiver or stipend, so we have to try to raise funds for his tuition.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/after-2-years-homeschooling-using-high-school-curriculum-boy-13-graduates-college-with-3-78-gpa_4468991.html

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Betsy DeVos calls for the Department of Education to be abolished

Former education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the former department she led should be abolished.

Speaking at a "Moms For Liberty" summit in Tampa, Florida, DeVos said on Saturday that the Department of Education that she once led should be abolished in order to leave education decisions to state and local boards.

"I personally think the Department of Education should not exist,"DeVos said during her a keynote speech at the summit. 

The Moms For Liberty group is a parental-rights group that advocates for parental rights at all levels of government, according to their website. The group was founded in Florida, by parents who opposed mask mandates for children in school due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The co-founder of Moms For LIberty Tiffany Justice who interviewed DeVos during the summit are vocal opponents of government-backed mask mandates and teachers unions. She recently blasted teachers unions for their "radical agenda" and not fully representing parents and students.

The summit was a three-day event to equip members from 30 states on how to elect more conservative candidates to school boards. The event featured DeVos as one of the prominent Republicans to speak along with Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

Throughout her time in the Trump administration, DeVos was a frequent target of teacher unions and Democrats because of her advocacy for school choice and vouchers. The former education secretary recently called the Biden administration's new parents council a "laughable" attempt to fix "a very glaring issue" in a recent interview with Fox News Digital.

"Parents across the country are upset for a variety of reasons with how the system has handled the last two years. And they remain upset and they… want to have control of their children's education," she said. 

The Department of Education announced the National Parents and Families Engagement Council earlier this month as a means of finding "constructive ways to help families engage at the local level." The committee, the department said, will conduct "listening sessions" to explore what schools can do to help students recover from the pandemic. The formation of the council followed a wave of criticism aimed at the Biden administration and Democrats for downplaying parents' roles in their children's education. 

Parents all over the country have been speaking out against coronavirus related mandates in schools and progressive curriculums that have been associated with critical race theory or gender theory. 

The Biden administration specifically drew the ire of parents when the National School Board Association (NSBA) sent a letter to the Justice Department that requested parents' actions at school board meetings be examined under the Patriot Act as "domestic terrorists." Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a task group to investigate threats of violence against school boards after the NSBA letter. Critics called the move an attack on parents. 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/betsy-devos-calls-department-education-abolished

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Labour-run council becomes first in UK to stop excluding pupils for behaving badly unless they are risk to other children's safety

Students in a Labour-run council will no longer be excluded from school for their bad behaviour, it has been revealed.

In what is believed to be a UK first, secondary schools in Southwark, south London, will allow misbehaving pupils to remain as long as they do not put another child's safety at risk. 

Teachers will instead be encouraged to understand the reasons behind the bad behaviour by using a 'trauma-informed response' and to not take it at 'face value.'  

The schools have all signed up to the agreement after a 2020 report found the council had a higher than average exclusion rate. 

The same report, conducted by the council, also found that academies excluded more children than other schools. 

Meanwhile, a separate investigation by the council found that black students in the borough were 1.5 times more likely to be excluded than their white counterparts. 

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), councillors want the borough to be the first in England to exclude no pupils in the coming years.

Schools in Southwark reported zero exclusions in the 2021 autumn term. 

Southwark police will also be asked to sign up to the agreement, which reads: 'Our aspiration is for 100 per cent inclusion of children in education that keeps them safe and enables them to flourish. 

'Where appropriate, we will implement a trauma-informed response to behaviour of concern in children.

'By this, we mean not taking concerning behaviour at face value, but striving to understand what is driving that behaviour. […] 

'We will strive for best practice across our policies and processes and towards 100 per cent inclusion approaches to behaviour in education settings.' 

Councillor Jasmine Ali, cabinet member for children, young people and education, told a meeting on July 18 that 'even one child excluded' was too much.

She added: 'We're absolutely delighted to bring this charter.

'In 2018 we were rightly concerned that 49 pupils were excluded from education in this borough and they were disproportionately represented by children and young people of black and minority ethnic backgrounds, special education need or disability and many of them had care experience.'  

It comes after a report in April suggested there be no exclusions in primary schools from 2026 onwards.

The paper from former Children's Commissioner Anne Longfield also highlighted the 'adultification' of black students who are treated with less care and protection because of perceived maturity.

Those children seen as older are more likely to be punished or excluded, the report claimed.

Longfield's report came a month after the Metropolitan Police was heavily criticised for strip-searching 'Child Q' - a black 15-year-old girl - without an appropriate adult present on suspicion of possessing cannabis.

Ms Longfield said: '[Adultification is] very real and it has a huge impact on children's lives,' she said. 'Essentially, it's young people being viewed as older.

'That means that we look after them slightly less and they don't get the protections and safeguarding they should.'

The report from the Commission for Young Lives also included a suggestion to ban exclusions at the primary school level from 2026.

Ms Longfield said the report is not about ignoring behavioural problems in schools but is about bringing in 'a new era of inclusivity'.

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'This isn't trying to ignore the problems that are clearly being displayed with the child, nor is it about reducing expectations around academic achievement, but it is about taking that responsibility for all children within the classroom.

'And what we know is if we intervene early and offer that support to those children, often who will have special educational needs, they will be able to thrive in school.

'But schools really often find themselves wanting to do that, but between a rock and a hard place.

'They don't have often that specialist support on hand, and to some, sadly, they say exclusion is the only option for them.

'That's why we want to see a new era of inclusivity that can support those children to thrive.'

The report said the kind of treatment Child Q and other black children have been subjected to is damaging to their confidence in schools and the police. 

It also said that race-equality training should be a core part of teacher training while the school curriculum should be reformed to make it more inclusive. 

Jahnine Davis, director of child-protection company Listen Up, told BBC News: 'Black children are at a greater risk of experiencing this form of bias, due to preconceived ideas about black children being aggressive, deviant, and almost needing to be safeguarded from rather then safeguarded.

'Black girls tend to be met with suspicion. They tend to be perceived as being loud, as being aggressive and being hyper-resilient.

'If you want to explore the adultification of black girls, we have to look at the history, which is rooted in slavery and colonialism.'

In the past three years, 5,279 children were searched in London, with 3,939 (75 per cent) from ethnically-diverse backgrounds according to disclosures made under Freedom of Information laws.

Some 16 of those searched were aged between 10 and 12.

The Met has launched a review of its strip-search policy after the widespread backlash at the revelations about Child Q. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11027793/Labour-run-council-UK-stop-excluding-pupils-behaving-badly.html

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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)

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19 July, 2022

Genes and personality in education

Kathryn Paige Harden, a professor of psychology and behaviour geneticist from the University of Texas, says acknowledging "genetic luck" could be used to help create a more equitable society.

When it comes to how well kids and adolescents do in school, Professor Harden says we already know all things aren't equal.

"We have a ton of research about that from educational and developmental psychology," she says.  We know that poverty and disadvantage outside of school impact students' educational outcomes. 

But Professor Harden argues that cognitive ability is another part of the equation.  "If you have better working memory, better visual spatial reasoning [or] a stronger vocabulary, school is easier for you," she says.

Non-cognitive factors also come into it. One of those is personality, something that Professor Harden is very interested in.

"There are personality traits that might make school easier or harder," she says. Things like impulsivity, how organised you are and how persistent you are. And these traits are at least partly shaped by our genes, she says.

The relationship between genetics and educational and economic success is complex. Professor Harden says people often try and simplify it by comparing it to a poker game.

"There's the genes or the hand you get dealt, but there's still how you play that hand," she says.

But the effect of genes on things like personality means this metaphor can break down.

"Our genes are also influencing how we play the hand we're dealt. It influences how motivated we are, how [much we plan], how much impulse control we have," she says. "It makes this line between what's effort and agency and what's [genetic] luck kind of impossible to tease apart."

Given genes are immutable, Professor Harden says a lot of people have asked why the recent studies matter so much.

She says this is because there is scope to intervene and make a difference. "Just because something is genetic doesn't mean we can't intervene on it environmentally."

One example she highlights is how family therapy is used to help treat alcohol abuse problems in adolescents.

"[Genetically speaking], not every teenager is equally likely to develop an alcohol abuse problem. Some of that genetics has to do with how your body metabolises alcohol, but some of it has to do with personality," she says.

"Do you tend to like loud, rowdy friends? Do you like to go to parties where substances will be on offer?"

Professor Harden says randomised controlled trials have shown that family therapy, which aims to improve parent-teenager relationships and communication, is an effective treatment and helps kids who are "most genetically at risk".

"That's because one of the pathways between their genetic risk and their addiction is through their social environment."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-19/do-genes-play-role-in-how-successful-we-are-kathryn-paige-harden/101200088

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Success Academy shows again that charter schools can excel

Success Academy keeps showing how great public schools can be — when they’re focused on excellence for the kids, rather than serving adult “stakeholders.” The latest: The Post reports over 93% of Success Academy eighth graders passed four state Regents exams, when passing five is the central qualification for a Regents high-school diploma.

These kids are predominantly poor and black or Hispanic, and they were stuck in remote learning for more than a year. But they’re outperforming students in the regular public schools who are three and four years older.

That’s because the Success Network doesn’t fall back on excuses: It’s determined to teach, to help every scholar reach his or her highest potential. Even during COVID, every student learned from live instruction. (In one concession to the remote-learning challenge, Success dropped the passing score from 70 to 65, but that’s still a higher standard than the regular system uses.)

As a result, most of these young men and women not only passed, but scored at a high level in Algebra I, Global History, Living Environment and English. This, when fairly few city eighth graders even take one Regents exam.

Meanwhile, the state education establishment is working to please “equity” advocates who want to do away with the exams, watering them down and seeking every opportunity to cancel the tests.

No wonder students and families are fleeing city-run public schools and flocking to charters and other high-quality alternatives.

The only thing preventing more kids from enrolling at high-quality charters like Success is the state cap (preserved at the behest of the teachers unions) that prevents more such schools from opening.

Happily, GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin vows to eliminate the charter-school cap if elected in November. That makes him the clear choice for any voter who cares about public education, or simply about kids.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/18/success-academy-shows-again-that-public-schools-can-excel/

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Urgent warning issued to millions of Australians with student debt - with payments set to SOAR again

Millions of Australians still paying off their student loans will be hit with yet another increase in repayments amid the spiralling cost of living crisis. 

Millions of former university students will be stung with a $2.7billion interest bill after annual indexation rates surged from 0.6 per cent to 3.9 per cent. 

The soaring interest rates mean graduates with HECS or HELP debts will pay an extra $923 on top of the average loans repayment of $23,685. 

Indexation is a formula applied to student loans that have been unpaid for more than 11 months after the student has graduated. 

It maintains the real value of a loan by adjusting it in line with changes in the cost of living, which is measured by the consumer price index.

The rate is closely tied to inflation, which rose to 5.1 per cent in the March quarter. 

The surging borrowing rates comes as students feel the pinch from increasing costs of living, affecting the cost of petrol, groceries and electricity.

Graduates hoping to secure a home loan will also be impacted as banks consider outstanding HECS or HELP debt when deciding how much to lend.

Data from the Australian Taxation Office has revealed student debt has more than doubled in the last seven years with just under three million students owing a total of $69billion to the government. 

Students graduating in the next three years could be hit even harder by surging indexation rates after the former Liberal government axed taxpayer subsidies for arts, law or business courses from 2021. 

Graduates are required to start making payments on their HELP loans when they earn more than $48,361 - with the minimum wage just $42,000. 

In May, students with HECS or HELP were warned they would soon be slugged with the highest increase in repayments in 10 years. 

As a result, former students may choose to start making voluntary repayments towards their debt to bring the total down and decrease the interest rate.

Experts however said it would be foolish to pay HECS debt early because it's the cheapest loan a person will ever receive.

Pivot Wealth founder Ben Nash told Nine.com.au the indexation rate was concerning because it exceeded current wage growth.

'When you look at it against the wage growth, which is annualised at 2.4 per cent, you can see that it is challenging at a rate higher than the growth in wages,' he said. 

'So it means that people are going to have to pay more of their salary to have the same impact'.

Mr Nash said the numbers shouldn't discourage people from seeking higher education because it's likely the indexation rate will average out to about two per cent over 10 years.

'It's only slightly positive because the cost is still going up, but the HECS increases are not as high as increases in a lot of other goods and services,' he said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11022969/HECS-debt-Warning-former-university-students-loan-payments-set-soar-added.html

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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)

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18 July, 2022

Library Group Recommends ‘Pronoun Book’ for Infants

“Children’s entertainment” is no longer guaranteed to be appropriate for children. With Disney vowing to promote sexual perversion, and a drag queen story hour targeting children in every city, this conclusion has become increasingly obvious.

Yet, somehow, the Association for Library Service to Children has managed (or is it womanaged?) to up the ante yet again, aiming woke propaganda not at kindergartners, but at infants.

According to Amazon, “The Pronoun Book” is “for children aged 5+” and “gently encourages children to learn pronoun etiquette and educates them on they/them pronouns, trans and non-binary identities, misgendering and neo-pronouns such as xe, zir and hir.”

According to the Association for Library Service to Children’s 2022 Summer Reading List, the book is for children aged “Birth-Preschool” as well.

He might be drooling all over their onesie, but at least he’s got their made-up pronouns memorized—just kidding, he still calls his mother “dada” because that’s the only sound he has learned to make. In reality, this book is only useful for teaching toddlers what sound a duck makes.

Also Association for Library Service to Children-recommended for the “Birth-Preschool” crowd is “Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race.”

The Amazon description for “Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race” does say the book is for “toddlers on up.” It continues, “research shows that talking about issues like race and gender from the age of two not only helps children understand what they see, but also increases self-awareness, self-esteem, and allows them to recognize and confront things that are unfair, like discrimination and prejudice.”

After all, before a child learns the difference between red and blue, they should know that a few shades of difference in skin pigmentation tell them all they need to know about a person. Instead of enjoying a care-free playdate with her minority friend, that 3-year-old should be apologizing for her white privilege and giving away all her toys.

In fact, much of the list, which was “compiled and annotated by members of the ALSC’s Quicklists Consulting Committee” gives evidence that the committee members neither remember what it was like to be a small child, nor spend much time caring for infants and toddlers.

The books the association recommends range from potentially disturbing (“a story about a cat so adorable that anyone who sees her explodes”) to overly mature (“Jeff has eaten breakfast, watered the plants, and tried on the underwear his grandma gave him”—exactly what does a tot in size 3 diapers know of such things?), but mostly not appropriate for these tender ages.

Where are the likes of “Go, Dog, Go!,” “Fox in Socks,” “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom,” or even “The Adventures of Peter Rabbit”? Where are the books about how much Mommy loves them, sharing, or what sorts of things you can find in a supermarket?

Maybe, somewhere, there is a small child with a long enough attention span to sit through “100 Animals,” but a book on fake pronouns? Little Johnny’s going to squirm right out of your lap.

There are books on the association’s infant list about urban light pollution, lost mail, and traffic congestion—real world problems of which the 4-and-under crowd is blissfully unaware. Learning to walk, talk, and share is hard enough without someone who is miserable writing books to make you miserable, too.

The list contains “a primer on spatial awareness,” a “book about personal boundaries and consent,” “the complexities of emotion,” a “primer for little ones on color theory,” updated “nursery rhymes from a feminist perspective,” and other abstract concepts far beyond the grasp of little ones who can’t yet tell time, count money, or sing their ABCs.

Why the obsession with forcing woke gender and race theory into kids like they’re mashed peas? Likely because the left understands what George Barna’s research has uncovered. “Between 15 to 18 months of age is when most children start forming their worldview,” he said. “By the age of 13, it’s almost completely in place.” For the left, indoctrination must begin with baby books.

That’s why children must absolutely be protected from such poisonous contaminants at such an early age.

When, Lord willing, my wife and I welcome our first child into the world later this year, it will be our duty as parents to love him, clothe him, feed him, care for him—and, yes, to teach him, too. That will look like singing the ABCs with him in the car, reading Bible stories at bedtime, warning him about electrical outlets and busy streets, and habitually thanking God for every meal.

But it will also involve—in a way that was unthinkable 20, 10, or even five years ago—carefully curating the baby books we read to him to guard against the harmful content that is promoted even by the so-called Association for Library Service to Children.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/13/library-group-recommends-pronoun-book-for-infants

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Those destroying public schools don’t want you thinking about alternatives

What comes after the end of public schools? Anyone who cares about the education of children should be asking that question. So of course it’s one that the teachers unions don’t want us to discuss.

New York City schools are in trouble. As The Post reported Friday, “the city Department of Education expects to enroll roughly 28,100 fewer students this fall.” Enrollment at the city’s regular public schools already fell during the pandemic, and this new projection suggests it’s not improving any time soon.

And New York leads a large pack: California, Illinois, Oregon, Mississippi and Michigan have all seen serious losses of students departing their public-school systems.

Why? A Gallup poll last week showed only 28% of Americans have “a great deal or a lot” of “confidence in U.S. public schools.”

Much of this is tied to long closures during the pandemic. Teachers unions, with people like American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten leading the charge, pushed hard to keep schools closed for far too long. The shutdowns (and the travesty of remote learning) smashed public trust and it simply isn’t that easy to rebuild. Researchers at the American Enterprise Institute found that the longer a school district stayed remote, the larger its enrollment drop.

But parents tell me they have many reasons for saying “enough.”

New York City’s crushing of merit-based admissions under Mayor Bill de Blasio pushed people out, as did general woke nonsense replacing academics. Other parents pulled their kids when toddlers stayed masked after the rest of the city had stopped.

Mayor Eric Adams isn’t mincing words: “We have a massive hemorrhaging of students — massive hemorrhaging. We’re in a very dangerous place in the number of students that we are dropping.” But the City Council (clearly lobbied by the teachers union) is pushing for schools to retain funding at the old enrollment numbers. That’s crazy: These schools aren’t meeting families’ needs; they shouldn’t be rewarded for this failure with cash.

Especially because money is so often set on fire in the New York City system. Schools Chancellor David Banks and over 50 other staffers attended a conference last week “at a swanky hotel near Universal Studios in Orlando,” The Post reports. Kids had to zoom to get an education for over a year, but the grownups need to meet up near theme parks to discuss their education plan? Ridiculous.

Public schools are in a serious downward spiral. The options are fixing them, which hasn’t worked for decades, or letting parents get their kids out.

Public charter schools are, understandably, booming despite getting far less funding. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently pointed out, “Charter schools educate 7% of all public-school students, yet they receive less than 1% of total federal spending on K-12 education.”

On average, charters have higher math and reading scores than traditional public schools; Bloomberg notes, “Research has found that the benefits are especially pronounced for Black, Latino and low-income students.”

But the teachers unions hate charters. They hate when parents have choices for their kids.

They also hate outspoken parents fighting for their kids. Weingarten called parents showing up to school board meetings “racists” and has argued that school vouchers, which would give parents a way to get their kids out of failing schools, are “the end of public education as we know it.” To which we all should say: good.

Public education shouldn’t exist to serve Weingarten. It’s our money paying for our children to get an education.

School-choice activist Corey DeAngelis always asks, “Why would giving families a choice ‘end public schools’?” That’s the exact right question.

If parents are finding that the public-school system doesn’t serve their children, we need to give them an option to exit. If they all take that exit, that means their children have been failed by our current public-education model — and that’s a travesty we can’t ignore.

Politicians shouldn’t preserve this failing model because Randi Weingarten wants them to. They should remember: The last time they listened to her, public schools across the country lost over a million students.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/17/those-destroying-public-schools-dont-want-you-thinking-about-alternatives/

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Australia: Queensland’s most in-demand public schools continue to be flooded with thousands of out-of-catchment students despite strict enrolment requirements

<i>State High is selective.  Out-of-area students have to pass a type of IQ test.  That raises the standards of the school generally, which makes it popular:  A virtuous circle</i>

Queensland’s most in-demand public schools continue to be flooded with thousands of out-of-catchment students despite strict enrolment requirements and even threats of police action.

An exclusive Courier-Mail analysis can reveal more than 50 schools across the state have at least 500 out-of-catchment students enrolled this year.

Despite using private investigators and even threatening police involvement over catchment fraud, top public school Brisbane State High School still saw more than 1564 out of catchment students enrol in 2022, comprising about 46 per cent of its total student population.

According to the school’s enrolment management plan, BSHS – the country’s largest high school – still accepts more than 1000 kids into its selective entry program.

This is despite the state government building a brand new high school, the $153m Brisbane South State Secondary College, just three kilometres away.

Brisbane State High School has seen its percentage out-of-catchment students barely shift over the past three years with 48 per cent of students’ out-of-catchment in 2020.

Other major and in-demand public high schools also saw large numbers of students enrolled from outside the catchment zone.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/education-queensland/queendlands-most-indemand-public-schools-revealed/news-story/7a036892b54772a1097d1395fc48277d

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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)

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17 July, 2022

Woke Academic Gobbledygook Makes You Rich and Famous

This week, a professor went viral during congressional testimony regarding the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overruling Roe v. Wade. During her testimony, professor Khiara Bridges of Berkeley Law School refused to acknowledge any value at all in unborn children, instead stating, “I think that the person with the capacity for pregnancy has value and they should have the ability to control what happens.” 

This prompted Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., to ask, “You’ve referred to people with a capacity for pregnancy. Would that be women?” Bridges immediately responded, “Many cis women have the capacity for pregnancy. Many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy. There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as nonbinary people who are capable of pregnancy.” 

Hawley asked incredulously, “Your view, the core of this right is about what?” To which Bridges shot back, “I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic, and it opens up trans people to violence.” She then blamed Hawley for the high suicidal ideation rate of those who identify as transgender, and lectured him, “We have a good time in my class. You should join.”

Hawley was of course correct that only women can have babies; women who believe they are men are still women. And the notion that suicidal ideation rates among LGBT people are the result predominantly of societal bigotry is completely evidence-free; suicidal ideation rates among LGBT people remain massively higher than among cisgender heterosexual people in San Francisco just as they would in Alabama.

The question that should trouble us, then, isn’t whether men have babies. They don’t. The question is why our most prestigious academic institutions now churn out privileged pseudo-intellectuals who spout utter nonsense at the drop of the hat, and do it with self-assured sententiousness.

The answer lies in the incentive structure in higher education. Our higher education system is designed to benefit claims of victimhood rooted in intersectional identity politics. That is the only way to explain just why Bridges, one of the most educationally privileged members of American society, makes a career complaining about the systemic evils of the United States. It takes enormous gall and equal ignorance to claim that bigotry lies behind the reality of sexual dichotomy; it takes just as much gall and ignorance to claim that a country that has afforded you the opportunity to achieve a degree from Spelman College, a JD from Columbia Law School, a Ph.D. from Columbia in anthropology, and a career in classical ballet is somehow a country shot through with systemic racism.

And yet that is precisely what Bridges does for a living. Her study specializes in “race, class, reproductive rights, and the intersection of the three.” Author of “Critical Race Theory: A Primer” and a self-described “critical race theorist,” Bridges believes in the “rejection of legal conventions” and advocates in favor of the ideas that “racism is a normal feature of American society (and not a deviation from an otherwise fair and just status quo)” and that “traditional liberal understandings of the problem of racism and how racism will be defeated” ought to be rejected.

This, too, is nonsense. But it is nonsense cherished by the elite institutions that churn out supposed academics like Bridges. Our system of academia is irrevocably broken. Academia was originally perceived as a place of merit-based higher learning, a place in which the best and brightest formulated the most important policies. Academia was the West’s intellectual oligarchy. But if the idea behind a merit-based academic elite used to rest in the actual merit of ideas and performance, that idea was left behind long ago. Now, the self-perpetuating academic elite is happy to maintain control by paying lip service to radicals like Bridges. All that matters, in true Foucault fashion, is power. That, presumably, is the reason why Bridges treats dissent as a form of violence — oligarchs usually do. Intellectual oligarchs are no different. And the biggest casualty is truth.

https://stoppingsocialism.com/2022/07/ben-shapiro-woke-academic-gobbledygook-makes-you-rich-and-famous

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Girl Punished for Her Addition to BLM Poster

A 7-year-old girl who deviated from the acceptable language allowed by school officials when describing Black Lives Matter was punished by her California school.

But parent Chelsea Boyle is fighting back after her daughter was disciplined for putting “any life” under the words “Black Lives Mater” in a drawing, according to Fox News.

RedState reported Monday that the issue began in 2021 when the parents of a friend of Boyle’s daughter saw the drawing and complained.

Boyle said Jesus Becerra, the principal of Viejo Elementary School in Mission Viejo, forced the girl, then in the first grade, to make a public apology.

To drive home the point that deviation from prescribed language about race is not allowed, the child was denied recess time.

Boyle, however, knew nothing of this until she heard about it from another parent in March, roughly a year after the incident.

“My immediate reaction is just … I feel like I got hit by a bus, but I didn’t understand it. And I thought, oh, you know, my daughter has just been discriminated against. And I didn’t even want to contact a lawyer, but I just didn’t know what had happened to us,” she said, according to RedState.

At that point, Boyle asked her daughter about the incident.

“And then when I talked to my daughter — I think she said it was so sad. … And I said, ‘Well, what did the principal say to you?’ and [she said], ‘I can’t draw pictures anymore. And I can’t write those words.’ And I said, ‘Why did you write [those words]?’

“I don’t teach [about] Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, [or] anything in my house because I think my children are too young [for politics]. My children see color as a color, as a description. I am trying to raise them the way the world should be, not the way it is. That’s how I’m trying to make my personal change.

“[H]er best friend is brown — not black, but brown — and she didn’t understand why she didn’t matter, why her friend didn’t matter. She has another friend that is Japanese; she doesn’t understand.”

Boyle said that the wording was not even a variant that has raised hackles with the woke community.

“It wasn’t ‘all lives matter,’ it was ‘any life.’ It was something she came up on her own. She just didn’t understand it. It was completely innocent, and that broke my heart,” the girl’s mother said.

Boyle asked the school for an apology. She did not even get a response.

Alexander Haberbush, her lawyer, said the school just dismissed her concerns, Fox News reported.

Haberbush said a lawsuit could be brought against the Capistrano Unified School District, but he and Boyle are “trying to give the school every opportunity to settle this amicably.”

But they have “not heard a word from the school,” he said.

“Their silence is unacceptable,” Haberbush said in a statement to Fox News, adding that the school’s action was “a flagrant violation of the First Amendment rights of a student placed in their care.”

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/report-mom-sues-school-daughter-punished-addition-blm-poster-cruel-restriction

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Australia: Crisis on campus as student discontent rises by degrees

University cost-cutting is driving dissatisfaction among students as staff shedding and the shift to online teaching compromise academic achievement.

Students paying to study a degree have little recourse if they’re unhappy with the calibre of their education. Car buyers have more consumer rights than the students who fork out tens of thousands of dollars in tuition fees to institutions that effectively make and adjudicate their own rules.

National Union of Students president Georgie Beatty laments that many universities have failed to reinstate the face-to-face lessons that were standard before the Covid-19 pandemic forced courses online.

“The quality of education has gotten to the stage where it’s considered completely acceptable for you to pay $3000 for a subject and have to sit in a Zoom class with 40 other kids,” Beatty told Inquirer.

“We’re hearing so many stories of academic quality going down across the board. But there is no quality control and no protection or complaints mechanism in place, so we have to deal with a crap education. We are helpless in the face of these mighty vice-chancellors.”

Australian car buyers have consumer rights entitling them to a repair, replacement or refund if a new car is faulty. But what can students do if the university degree they’re paying for falls short of the quality or experience that was promised?

Beatty is concerned that the federal government’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency has not held a meeting of its student advisory board since April last year. “TEQSA says they care about students but their student advisory board hasn’t met for nearly a year and a half,” she says.

“They’re meant to keep universities accountable but they’re not doing it.”

As the agency that registers higher education providers and approves their courses, TEQSA fobs off most student complaints. “If you are unhappy about aspects of your experience with a higher education provider, you should access the policies and procedures they have established to resolve complaints,” its website states.

University students lodged just more than half the 289 complaints with TEQSA last year. The biggest issues involved online course delivery during the pandemic, the inadequacy of universities’ complaints handling processes and a failure to follow published admission policies.

“TEQSA is not a complaints resolution body and typically does not have a role in addressing individual complainants’ requests or grievances,’’ a TEQSA spokesman told Inquirer.

“Academic quality and student wellbeing and safety continue to be compliance priorities for TEQSA, and we will take action where we consider there are systemic issues or failures. This action may include informal resolutions, warning letters, enforceable undertakings, conditions on registration, revocation of registration or civil or criminal sanctions.”

TEQSA’s latest compliance report reveals it finalised only one investigation and 43 compliance assessments last year while imposing conditions on 47 course providers and negotiating 19 voluntary undertakings. “The most common Covid-19 related concern was in relation to … teaching and courses, including quality of online delivery,” the report states. For half of those complaints, “we decided it was approp­riate to bring the concern to the providers’ attention to inform their internal quality assurance and make improvements where appropriate”.

A four-year cycle of complaints at Central Queensland University relating to its sonography degree highlights the difficulties faced by students who were dismissed as “disgruntled”. CQU offers the nation’s only degree in sonography, costing students $8017 in the first year alone. It has 601 students in Brisbane, Mackay, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth who must complete 2000 hours of clinical placement during the four-year degree.

CQU began fielding gripes about the course in 2017, when 34 students signed a complaint sent to the university’s student ombudsman. However, it took three more years for CQU to acknowledge this as a formal complaint. In the meantime, one of the students complained about an assessment to the Queensland Ombudsman, which liaised with CQU and arranged for her to re-sit an exam in 2018.

Queensland’s Office of Fair Trading fielded a complaint from the same student last year, seeking a refund of her course fees. The OFT tried to conciliate. “Unfortunately, they weren’t willing to give you a refund,” an official wrote to the student. “The OFT cannot force a trader to give you a refund. Unfortunately, this means I am unable to assist you any further and your complaint will be closed.”

A former student complained to Fair Trading NSW that the course “has extremely high and unacceptable failure rates that show the service they provide is completely inadequate”. She was told university degrees were “not its jurisdiction”.

CQU waited until last year to launch an internal investigation, after what it described as a “spiral” in complaints from students ranging from fail rates and assessment issues to staff communication and industry placement problems.

The investigation was conducted by the school of health, medical and applied sciences, which CQU told Inquirer was “independent from the medical sonography academic team”.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/crisis-on-campus-as-student-discontent-rises-by-degrees/news-story/ffc218137f5e0bdaf6c0d1286f37e5bf

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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)

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15 July, 2022

Preferred Pronouns and More: What I Saw at Teachers Union Convention

As a teacher, I attended the National Education Association convention last week, and my worst fears were confirmed. 

Public schools are no longer a safe place for families who hold traditional values or for families who believe gender (as in male/female binary) is biologically determined. 

It was also evident that the teachers union is a lobbying arm of the Democratic Party. 

The NEA seems to think there are many gender options, and that’s why teachers and students must always address themselves with their “preferred” pronouns. It thinks this pronoun practice is essential and will create a more inclusive society. 

That was demonstrated firsthand when each state delegate who spoke during the three-day convention July 4 to 6 was encouraged to state his or her name and “preferred” pronouns before addressing the assembly.

Pronouns I heard were he, she, they—and hex. One delegate even announced “they” had a uterus before addressing the assembly, apparently because that was something we all needed to know.

In the teachers union’s preamble, it says, “NEA is to be the national voice for education managed by and for the public good, to advance the cause for ALL individuals.” 

However, as I read the 70 new business items and 40 amendments of bylaws, legislation, and resolutions, and listened to the platform speeches, it was obvious the NEA only represents those who hold the same ideologies and radical leftist political views. 

From what I observed, the NEA’s goal is for public education to be a training ground for political activism, while demonizing anyone—including students and their families—who does not share those same political and sociological beliefs. 

The NEA does not want public education to be neutral ground in developing critical thinkers with an emphasis on academic achievement.

Its priorities were apparent, because of the 110 motions discussed and voted on, only four remotely addressed student academic achievement. Those four dealt with student financial literacy and resources for English learners and language acquisition. 

Nearly half of the motions dealt with identity politics, social justice, and ways to promote the goals of the Democratic Party. 

Some examples: broad-brushing police as biased and corrupt; mocking the Second Amendment as a societal harm; fighting for preferential treatment for any and all groups considered “marginalized,” especially nonconforming genders and infinite sexual identities; fighting misinformation in the media (that is, any media outlets that do not agree with their views); increasing abortion rights; adding seats to the Supreme Court; and advocating for more queer representation on school boards. 

Some other outlier items addressed environmental issues, hiring illegal immigrants as teachers, funding research concerning autism as it relates to gender identity, and funding global feeding programs.

Close to 40% of the motions were related to protecting teachers’ jobs and increasing their benefits and their right to be social justice cadres.

Although the NEA says it fights for nondiscrimination and civil rights, the only state delegates able to attend the Chicago event in person were those fully vaccinated. Any teachers who didn’t have vaccination cards could only attend virtually, regardless of whether they tested negative for COVID-19 or their reasons for not getting the shots.

The vaccinated delegates, who attended in person, had all expenses paid by their union local, while unvaccinated teachers were excluded and stigmatized as a “harm” to attendees. For a group that screams “My body, my choice,” the double standard is appalling.

On a positive note, the NEA voted down a new business item trying to mandate that all teachers in the nation be vaccinated. It lost, with 84% of the vote opposing. 

Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the gathering on July 5 and repeatedly called Republican leaders in Washington “extremists.” The NEA’s executive director, Kim Anderson, said, “The Supreme Court has removed the right to marry someone of a different race.” (That’s flat-out false.) 

She went on to say, “This Supreme Court and a significant number of radicalized elected officials have walked away from ‘freedom for all’ for an extreme discriminatory, exclusionary, misogynist, homophobic, out of touch, racist, cruel, corrupt ideology!”  

Shortly after Anderson’s remarks, I spoke up during a debate opposing a new business item to create a smear list of organizations seeking to “dismantle public education due to diminishing freedoms of sexual and gender identities and honest education” (a smokescreen for critical race theory). 

This was my virtual statement: 

I, Brenda Lebsack, oppose [new business item] 15. NEA says they strive for a safe school climate for all, yet forget that, according to the 2021 Pew Research, 56% of Americans believe gender is based on biological reality. NEA does not believe this. NEA believes that a child can choose their gender based on their feelings and that there are infinite options and pronouns. How can public schools be a safe place for all students, when NEA leaders demonize over half of the families represented in our public schools?

If NEA creates a fact sheet of the organizations “dismantling” public education, please include NEA on that list. 

As founder of the Interfaith Statewide Coalition and a teacher in California, I can tell you that many orthodox Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and Christians no longer feel public schools are a safe place. 

Your social justice goals to assault family cultures that do not match your own, and to use public education to propagate extremist views, is wrong.  This is an abuse of power. That’s why I, as a teacher, support parent rights and school choice.

I was tempted to state my “preferred” pronouns as “Com, U, and Nism,” but I resisted the urge to do so.

In conclusion, with respect to almost everything the NEA accuses others of doing, it is one of the biggest offenders. 

America is in desperate need of educational reform because this powerful union, the National Education Association, has a delusional messiah complex and is using teachers and students as its political pawns.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/12/at-teachers-union-convention-indoctrination-trumps-education

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School Shootings Make The Case For School Choice

Schools are now out in most of the country. But many parents are worried about the safety of their children while in the classroom.

There are many things being discussed as ways to keep children safe in school. But one option that is not being discussed is expanding school choice.

The recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas shocked and horrified the nation. A shooter shot and killed 21 people while wounding 17 others.

The nation has been shocked and horrified by the response of the school district’s police department to the shooting. After initially claiming that the responding officers did not have the equipment to confront the heavily armed shooter, surveillance video from the school showed that heavily armed police officers arrived to the scene within minutes. Yet those heavily armed and well-equipped police officers did not try to confront the shooter, despite the fact that they were being urged to go in the classroom by agents from the Texas Department of Public Safety. 

Because the police officers waited to breach the classroom, the killer was able to conduct his murders with little opposition. The refusal of the police officers to confront the killer cost untold lives.

The police chief of the school district’s police force was placed on leave pending an investigation. But parents should not have to hope for some semblance of justice after their children have been slaughtered. They should have the sense of security that their children will be safe. 

One of the reasons the Uvalde school district could be so lackadaisical about the safety of their students is that essentially, they don’t face any competition. Therefore, the children are not treated as paying customers and instead are treated as a captive audience, subject to the whims of unelected officials. 

A well-designed school choice program will allow the money to follow the student to whatever school they attend. These programs provide incentives for school systems, whether they are public or private, to compete with one another. 

Most of the arguments for school choice are made in the context of improving academics or providing special needs programs that traditional government schools do not. But a similar argument can be made in the context of the important issue of school security. 

Just as school systems under school choice compete for students on their academic programs, and now in the wake of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling the type of religious and moral instruction the schools offer, schools can compete on school security. Schools will have more incentive to learn the lessons of the failed response by the Uvalde school district because school districts that do not incorporate those lessons will lose students and funding as parents take their children elsewhere. 

Thankfully, incidents like the Uvalde school shooting, while horrifying for parents, are rare. The biggest drivers of school violence are disputes between classmates and bullying, both online and on campus. Once again school choice can offer solutions for parents. Schools can compete for the dollars and attendance of students by detailing how they will keep students safe from bullying, drugs, and acts of violence. If parents do not feel secure in how schools will keep their children safe, they will simply take their children and their dollars elsewhere.

In addition, a way that expanding school choice can keep children safe is by expanding homeschooling. After all, children cannot be subject to an unsafe school campus if they do not attend a conventional school. But for most parents, homeschooling is simply not an option for many reasons.

Political commentator Michael Malice said, “Schools are literal prisons for children and the only place where many people will experience violence from their peers for their entire lives.” By expanding school choice, we can change this reality for many students.

https://catalyst.independent.org/2022/07/12/shootings-school-choice/

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Elite Colleges’ Quiet Fight to Favor Alumni Children

Colleges like Yale and Harvard give a boost to legacy applicants. But with affirmative action under attack, that tradition may become harder to defend.

Describing its incoming class of 2025, Yale boasted that its students hailed from 48 states, 68 countries and 1,221 high schools. What’s more, the university announced last year, 51 percent of the class identified as students of color.

Yet even as Yale promotes the diversity of its first-year students, the college has clung to an admissions tradition — legacy preferences — that mostly benefits students who are white, wealthy and well-connected. Of the incoming students, 14 percent were the offspring of a Yale graduate, receiving the kind of admissions boost also used at other elite institutions.

Not much has made a dent in the century-old tradition, despite efforts to end the preference that have been waged by progressive students, lawmakers and education reformers. Many colleges say legacy students cement family ties and multigenerational loyalty. And only a few elite colleges have abolished the preference.

The practice of legacy admissions, however, may soon face its greatest test yet — and in a twist, its future could be tied to the future of affirmative action.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments this fall about race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. If the court ends or rolls back the widely used practice of considering race in selecting students, as many experts expect, the ruling could prompt a reconsideration of legacy applicants. Explicitly favoring the children of alumni — some of whom would be competitive applicants regardless because of socioeconomic advantages — would become harder to defend if racial preferences are no longer allowed.

“If the Supreme Court outlaws affirmative action, legacy preferences will not be long for this world,” said Justin Driver, a professor at Yale Law School. Mr. Driver, an expert on the Supreme Court and education, supports race-conscious admissions and called legacy preferences “a little like rooting for Elon Musk to purchase the winning lottery ticket.”

The University of California system, the University of Georgia and Texas A&M all ended legacy preferences when they were pressured by lawsuits and ballot initiatives to stop using affirmative action, according to a Century Foundation analysis.

Students for Fair Admissions, the conservative group that filed the Supreme Court cases against Harvard and North Carolina — and also sued Yale — has argued that eliminating legacy preferences is one way to help achieve racial diversity without using affirmative action, which the organization says is discriminatory. One member of the court, Justice Clarence Thomas, has openly opposed affirmative action and signaled his belief that legacy preferences and other factors poison the admissions process.

That context puts universities in a decidedly awkward position when it comes to defending legacy admissions. The topic is so sensitive that few officials at selective colleges with legacy preferences would discuss them.

The use of legacy admissions dates back to the 1920s, when elite colleges, traditionally the domain of wealthy Protestants, became concerned that spots were being taken by Jews and Catholics.

The exact number of schools that use legacy preferences is unknown, but a survey by Inside Higher Ed in 2018 found that 42 percent of private schools — including most of the nation’s elite institutions — and 6 percent of public schools used the strategy. Only a handful of elite colleges — including Johns Hopkins and Amherst — have abandoned the preference in recent years.

Many college officials have argued that legacy preferences are only a small part of the selection process. But on a practical level, they help colleges manage their enrollment rates and predict their tuition revenue. Students who are legacies, as children of alumni are known, are more likely to attend if admitted, increasing a factor known as “yield” in the industry.

Donations are also a factor. “I think that a lot of elite and exclusive schools feel that they have to use the legacy preferences piece as a fund-raising mechanism from alumni,” said Andrew Gounardes, a state senator from Brooklyn, who recently sponsored a bill that would have banned legacy preferences in New York.

His bill was opposed by the state’s private school association, the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, which includes highly selective colleges such as Columbia, Cornell and Colgate.

In Connecticut, where lawmakers held a hearing on the issue in February, Yale was among the private schools that came out in opposition. In written testimony, Jeremiah Quinlan, Yale’s dean of undergraduate admissions, called the proposed ban a government intrusion into university affairs.

“The process for selecting students for admission, together with the processes for hiring faculty and deciding which courses to offer, defines a campus community and culture,” he wrote.

Peter Arcidiacono, a Duke economist who analyzed Harvard data that was released in the Students for Fair Admissions case, found that a typical white legacy applicant would have a fivefold increase in likelihood that he or she would be admitted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/us/legacy-admissions-colleges-universities.html

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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)

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14 July, 2022

Ohio college racks up millions in interest on cash owed to bakery over false racism allegations

<i>The behavior of college officials in the matter was so extraordinary that their hopes from an appeal must be rated as being as unrealistic as the original offensive actions.  They carried political correctness to the point of insanity.  "Blacks can do no harm" seemed to be their guiding principle</i>

The school and a former dean were found guilty of libeling the bakery as racist

Ohio court upheld $32 million win against Oberlin College over false racial accusations

Oberlin College in Ohio racked up more than $4 million in interest after not paying the more than $30 million in libel damages to a local family-run bakery over false racism allegations made in 2016. 

Gibson’s Bakery was awarded $31.6 million in July of 2019 after students and a college official were found guilty of libeling the establishment as "racist" following an altercation a store employee had with three Black students. 

The judgment now stands at more than $36 million after the school accumulated $4,300 daily in interest over the more than 1,000 days it went unpaid, local outlet The Chronicle reported last month. 

The damages stem from false racism allegations that were promoted by a former dean at the school. 

Allyn Gibson, the son and grandson of Gibson’s Bakery and Food Mart owners David Gibson and Allyn Gibson, chased down and tackled a Black Oberlin student in 2016 who was suspected of stealing bottles of wine. 

Two other Black students at Oberlin College, who were friends of the suspect, also became involved in the physical incident, prompting accusations of racial profiling. 

All three students were arrested, according to court documents, and ultimately pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and read statements claiming that Gibson’s actions were not racially motivated. 

The shoplifting altercation – which occurred one day after former President Donald Trump was elected president – sparked widespread condemnation from Oberlin students and claims that the Gibson family racially targeted the students. 

Gibson’s Bakery filed a lawsuit against Oberlin College in 2017, claiming they were libeled, and their business was hurt. 

Students boycotted the bakery and protested outside, while the school stopped buying food from the bakery. The Oberlin College Student Senate additionally passed a resolution accusing the bakery’s owners of being racist, which was emailed to the school community, Fox News Digital previously reported. 

Oberlin College vice president and dean of students, Meredith Raimondo, also handed out flyers stating that the bakery is a "RACIST establishment with a LONG ACCOUNT of RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION," according to court documents.

College resources were used to print the flyers and buy food and other supplies for the protesters, court documents also showed. 

A jury ultimately found the school and Raimondo guilty of libel. ​​The jury also found the college guilty of intentionally inflicting emotional distress on owner David Gibson, who has since died, as well as intentionally inflicting emotional distress on his son.

The jury originally awarded the bakery $44 million, but Lorain County Common Pleas Judge John Miraldi later lowered the damages to $25 million. In 2019, the court ordered Oberlin to pay an additional $6.5 million to the bakery to reimburse its legal fees. 

Now, the Gibson family is demanding Oberlin pay the full $36 million, which includes the roughly $4 million in interest, the Chronicle reported last month, after Oberlin College asked the Ohio Supreme Court to issue an order halting the payment. 

Attorneys for the bakery filed documents with the Ohio Supreme Court in late June opposing Oberlin’s request to halt the payment. 

"The Gibsons have correctly completed every step necessary to properly execute" a jury's award and Judge Miraldi's 2019 judgment, the lawyers wrote in a motion last month, according to The Chronicle. 

It is unclear when the state’s highest court might hear the arguments, according to the outlet.  

Gibson’s Bakery did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

When approached for comment, a representative for Oberlin College directed Fox News Digital to a webpage on the school’s site concerning updates on the case. The most recent update on the page is the school announcing on June 1 that it filed an appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court in May, and had the support of organizations such as the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, NAACP and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/ohio-college-racks-up-millions-interest-cash-owed-bakery-false-racism-allegations

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East Germany has been reinvented in American universities

Jeff Jacoby

AS AN undergraduate in 1977, I took a course on 20th-century European diplomacy with the historian Roderic Davison. The material was absorbing but challenging and I had to work hard to earn a B. Professor Davison's lectures were unfailingly interesting, but after all these years I have only one specific memory from my time in his classroom.

He was describing the breakdown of German society during the Weimar Republic and explaining the lure of the Nazi movement under Adolf Hitler. Suddenly he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small black comb. With his right hand, he quickly combed his hair forward across his brow, then held the comb horizontally against his upper lip. His left arm he shot stiffly outward and began declaiming in German. Most of my classmates laughed at the unexpected impersonation of the Fuhrer. But I was shaken. For me, with my family history, Hitler was no laughing matter. Davison's spoof upset me badly.

My response? I did nothing. I knew perfectly well that my professor had intended no offense. I didn't think his behavior had been improper. I may have been taken aback — in today's parlance, "triggered" — but I assumed that my discomfiture was my own problem. The lecture resumed, the course went on, and to this day I regard Professor Davison's course as one of the best of my college years.

What brings that long-ago episode to mind is the latest poll of undergraduates conducted by researchers from the Challey Institute for Global Innovation at North Dakota State University. The annual survey, which involves 2,000 students at 130 colleges and universities nationwide, gauges the views of students on multiple subjects, including viewpoint diversity and how higher education is influencing their views.

What the new poll reveals is a generation of college students deeply committed to the belief that if they are offended, someone ought to be punished.

In one eye-opening finding, 74 percent of undergrads endorse the view that a professor who says "something that students find offensive" should be reported to the university. By a majority almost as lopsided, 65 percent believe that a fellow student who says something they consider offensive should be turned in. That informers' mindset is especially pronounced among students who identify themselves as politically liberal, fully 85 percent of whom would report a professor who offends them. But even among self-identified conservatives, a solid majority — 56 percent — are of the same mindset.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain a generation ago, Americans were appalled to learn about the pervasive culture of betrayal that had taken root in East Germany, where hundreds of thousands of citizens informed on each other to the secret police. Yet the Challey Institute's findings suggest that on American college campuses today, something similar is becoming normal. Indeed, the survey implies that most students not only believe that wrong-thinkers should be penalized, but that they are oblivious to the chilling effect created in such an environment.

In what at first glance seems like an encouraging finding, 72 percent of undergraduates report that their classrooms are places where "people with unpopular views would feel comfortable sharing their opinions." Drill down into the data, however, and it transpires that it is overwhelmingly those students — the ones who say their classrooms are receptive to unpopular ideas — who also say that anyone making "offensive" comments should be turned in.

The survey doesn't define the term "offensive" but instances of heterodox views on college campuses being silenced, shouted down, disrupted, vetoed by hecklers, or turned into firing offenses have become almost too numerous to count. And what is true of undergraduates, according to a report published by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, is also true of advanced students: Express an opinion that others find offensive, and the consequences can be serious. The CSPI study found, for example, that 43 percent of American PhD candidates would back efforts to expel a hypothetical scholar whose research raised doubts about the benefits of racial and gender diversity.

Is it any wonder that, in academia as in society at large, self-censorship has grown pervasive? There is "a sustained campaign to impose ideological conformity in the name of diversity," the historian Niall Ferguson has written. "It often feels as if there is less free speech and free thought in the American university today than in almost any other institution in the U.S."

Perhaps the illiberal trajectory of American higher education can be reversed, though it seems quite a long shot. I only know that I'm grateful to have gotten my education before the politics of resentment and grievance became such unstoppable forces on campus. That was a golden age, though none of us knew it at the time.

https://jeffjacoby.com/26314/informers-on-campus

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Gender Fox in the Henhouse: Biden’s New Title IX Rule Puts Women in Danger

Once considered a feminist triumph, Title IX was enacted to prevent sex-based discrimination at any educational institution receiving federal funding.

The administration has opened sex-segregated spaces like bathrooms to anyone who identifies as a woman regardless of that individual’s biology.

The new Title IX rule removes commonsense student due process protections in campus sexual assault and harassment proceedings.

Conservatives have had plenty to celebrate recently: the end of Roe v. Wade, the reinforcement of the Second Amendment and the triumphs for the free exercise of religion, free speech and school choice. But not all is on the right track.

On its 50th anniversary, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972—the pinnacle achievement of sex equality in education—took a massive hit. Even as the Supreme Court delivered landmark opinion upon landmark opinion, the U.S. Department of Education issued a new rule on Title IX redefining “women” and proposing to undo many of the law’s successes.

Once considered a feminist triumph, Title IX was enacted to prevent sex-based discrimination at any educational institution receiving federal funding. For hundreds of thousands of women, it has opened the door to graduate schools, scholastic sports, study programs and, ultimately, professional achievement.

The rate of female participation in high school athletics is now 10 times what it was in 1972. Women now constitute over 56% of America’s college students. And they hold nearly half of all tenure-track teaching positions.

But on the law’s golden anniversary, and in a twist of nearly Shakespearean tragedy, the Biden administration redefined womanhood in the very law passed for women’s advancement and protection. In its 701-page proposed Title IX regulation, the Department of Education has expanded the term “sex”—plain, unambiguous and understood by the 1972 ratifiers to mean biological distinctions between men and women—to include “sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Seeking to advance his pet policy agenda on transgender ideology, the president has in one swift move made a mockery of the women’s liberation movement and the achievements of women everywhere. While the media fixates on protests over a woman’s “right” to obtain an abortion, a woman’s right to equal protection in education is on the line.

By redefining “sex” to include “gender identity,” the administration has opened sex-segregated spaces like bathrooms, locker rooms, dorm rooms and single-sex admissions programs to anyone who identifies as a woman, regardless of that individual’s biology. But in what can only be seen as his recognition of the issue’s abysmal polling, President Biden has separated out the controversial trans-inclusive athletic issue.

The Education Department “plans to issue a separate notice of proposed rulemaking to address whether and how the Department should amend the Title IX regulations to address students’ eligibility to participate on a particular male or female athletics team,” it wrote.

The use of “whether” is illuminating. The department’s unwillingness to commit to a full-throated repudiation of men competing in women’s sports hints that the proposed rule perhaps already addresses the issue.

Because it does.

After expanding the term “sex” to include gender identity, the proposal goes on to state, “under the proposed regulations … a recipient’s education program or activity would include buildings or locations that are part of the school’s operations. … A recipient’s education program or activity would also include all of its academic and other classes, extracurricular activities, [and] athletics programs.”

Thus, the department has ensured that the sports issue will be decided in favor of biological men whether or not it engages in additional rule-making.

In addition to the above, the new Title IX rule removes commonsense student due process protections in campus sexual assault and harassment proceedings, returning investigative power to the hands of a single, unelected bureaucrat, and gutting the 2020 Title IX rule that established those due process guarantees.

It likewise muzzles students and professors by elevating “misgendering” or a failure to use their preferred pronouns as a sufficient basis to launch a Title IX investigation, creating a heckler’s veto of the highest order.

The burden is on the Department to provide evidence that Title IX requires modification.

Rewinding the clock and pitting males against females once again fails to meet that burden.

https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/fox-the-henhouse-bidens-new-title-ix-rule-puts-women-danger-0

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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)

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13 July, 2022

Academia’s increasingly entrenched elitism

People earning doctorates in economics are roughly 500% more likely to have a parent with a graduate degree than average Americans, and 78% of graduates from the United States’ top 15 economics programs have a parent with a graduate degree—the latest sign of academia’s increasingly entrenched elitism. While it was always rare to find first-generation college students earning advanced degrees, it is now exceedingly so, with only 6% of economics graduate students being the first in their family to graduate college. The study’s authors noted:

Individuals’ socioeconomic background can affect their knowledge of economic issues, their choice of questions to investigate, and their values. While this may be an issue in any discipline, it seems particularly problematic in the social science of economics—a field concerned with income distribution, inequality, unemployment, access to education, the welfare system, poverty, and myriad other issues that disproportionately affect people who are not at the higher end of the income or education distribution.

https://thedailyscroll.substack.com/p/july-11-2022

<i>Journal abstract:</i>

 It is well documented that women and racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the economics profession, relative to both the general population and many other academic disciplines. Less is known about the socioeconomic diversity of the profession. In this paper, we use data from the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates to examine the socioeconomic background of US economics PhD recipients as compared with US PhD recipients in other disciplines, proxying for socioeconomic background using PhD recipients’ parents’ educational attainment. We find that economics PhD recipients are substantially more likely to have highly educated parents, and less likely to have parents without a college degree, than PhD recipients in other disciplines. This is true both for US-born and non-US-born PhD recipients, but the gap between economics and other disciplines is starker for those born in the United States. The gap in socioeconomic diversity between economics and other PhD disciplines has increased over the last two decades.

https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/wp22-4.pdf

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COVID-19 Lockdowns Damaged Speech and Mental Development of Children, Say Teachers

COVID-19 restrictions have damaged children developmentally in ways that might be irreparable, teachers say.

From early childhood to high school, children rely on facial expressions, social interaction, conversation with new people, and friendships to develop mentally.

Children denied social interaction don’t grow mentally in the same way. When governments closed in-person schooling for months, cracked down on activities like play dates, and ordered families to stay home it plunged children into painful isolation.

Now, teachers across America say the lockdown generation lags behind those raised in normal years. Older children have fewer friends and slower minds, while some of the youngest don’t feel the urge to make friends at all.

“One of the biggest differences is the number of kids who have no language,” said Rachel Garcia, a bilingual speech linguist pathologist clinical fellow at Ensemble Therapy Services. She works with children aged 1 to 3 in Palm Desert, California.

Growing Up Alone

As COVID-19 lockdowns continued, Garcia noticed that children aged three and under weren’t learning to talk.

Most babies start talking at about a year old. But many in the lockdown generation aren’t talking even as toddlers, she said.

This problem had devastating implications, Garcia said. Children need to speak for nearly everything.

In a normal year, a few children always struggle with learning to speak. But the pandemic saw these numbers explode.

“I’ve been seeing a lot more of those kids who are two and three years old and have no words,” she said. “That is, in my experience, more than in previous non-COVID years.”

The culprit seemed to be devastating isolation from other children, Garcia said.

Spending time with other young children helps kids learn to talk, she said.

But some lockdown children have gone years without seeing another child—or another adult, Garcia said. Meeting another human being for the first time sometimes terrifies them.

One child cried for a half-hour upon meeting Garcia, she said.

“He got put in a room with me and spent the next 30 minutes crying his eyes out because he was terrified,” she said. “‘There is another person here who is not Mom!’”

“I’ve found throughout evaluating and asking these parents and then treating these kids that, literally, the only people they see are Mom and Dad,” she said. “For two or three years, those are the only people they’ve ever interacted with consistently.”

With only parents as role models, children find themselves in a trap, Garcia said. Parents get good at taking care of their children without language, so they don’t bother learning it.

“Mom and Dad are so in tune with what the kid needs that they just go and do it,” she said.

Moreover, parents have extremely strong language abilities. Young children feel like they can’t reach that level, so they don’t bother starting.

“You don’t see Mom and Dad as people who used to be kids. You see them as Mom and Dad,” said Garcia.

When lockdown children only have their parents to be with, they sometimes become profoundly uninterested in what other people do, she said.

“They don’t look at Mom and Dad, they don’t look at me, because they don’t have to,” Garcia said. “They can go get their own toys, they can go do what they want, they don’t have to respond to you.”

This sort of independence doesn’t make lockdown children stronger, she said. When these children need help, they give up rather than ask others for it.

“It is better and easier for them to walk away from something that they want than to ask for it,” she said.

Lockdown children are so lonely they don’t know the meaning of loneliness, Garcia said. “They’re perfectly content to play by themselves. They always have. Why should they do anything differently?” she asked.

No Conversation, No Education

Development delays like these have long-term impacts, according to researchers. A child’s vocabulary at two years old predicts their success as they start school, which in turn predicts later success in life.

Even children who weren’t isolated faced big obstacles to learning. Children must learn to differentiate similar sounds and recognize different facial expressions. Masks made both these tasks difficult.

When masks hide adults’ expressions, children understand the meaning of their words less.

A recent survey by the Education Endowment Foundation found that 55 out of 57 schools said they were “very concerned” or “quite concerned” about the communication and language development of children. Schools also said they were concerned over personal, social, emotional, and literacy skills.

It’s still too early to know how the damage done by the lockdowns will impact America’s youngest children throughout their lifetime. But the lockdowns have affected older children across America in the same way, according to several teachers.

From second grade to high school, children seem two years behind developmentally, several teachers told The Epoch Times.

This measure includes both academic learning and social development. And even veteran teachers struggle to help children jump forward two years.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/covid-19-lockdowns-damaged-speech-and-mental-development-of-children-say-teachers_4590904.html

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Mom-of-8 Who Homeschools Her Children Says Seeing Them Grow Is a ‘Miracle to Watch’

A woman who home-birthed six biological children and adopted two has embraced life as a busy stay-at-home mom, homeschooling her tight-knit brood on the family’s small farm in upstate South Carolina. She says seeing each one of her children grow and learn is “truly a miracle to watch.”

Kelli, 39, and her husband, Trey Ingram, 38, are parents to seven daughters and one son: Lael, 12; Ruthie, 10; Salem, 9; Faith, 7; Eden, 5; Shepherd, 4; Ever, 2; and Olive, 9 months.

For Kelli, the motivation for homeschooling all of her kids was that she wanted to connect with them and didn’t feel like she’d be able to if they had gone away all day.

“I love being in charge of what they’re learning, I love being able to talk with them about God and our faith, and weaving that into everything we do,” Kelli told The Epoch Times. “I want to set them up well while they’re young with a firm foundation, so that one day, when they’re much more mature, they’ll be able to navigate the world wisely.”

Kelli’s three younger kids attend preschool in the mornings, while she minds baby Olive and oversees school work for her oldest four. All children finish school before lunch.

The Ingrams are part of a homeschool cooperative that meets once a week. “It’s such a blessing for me to have a day off from teaching, and it provides help in a few of our subjects,” said Kelli.

The mom of eight shared that keeping a clean, tidy house, and stocking the fridge and pantry, are two of her greatest challenges. However, she uses grocery delivery services to ease the burden of shopping, and cooks supper at home almost every night.

The children have their roles, too.

“We have a little farm on our property, and all of the kids help with feeding animals and the garden,” Kelli explained. “We don’t really have set chores in the house, but we expect all of our kids to pitch in and help with dishes and general tidying up after themselves.”

Kelli hires cleaners, who visit twice a month to do a deep clean of the house. She also has an aide for handling the family’s massive laundry demand every week. Meanwhile, a babysitter comes in when she needs to run errands; this support, she said, helps beyond measure in her bustling family home.

“There are constantly needs that must be met, but even in the difficult moments, I feel very fulfilled in my job as a mother,” Kelli said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mom-of-8-who-homeschools-her-children-says-seeing-them-grow-is-a-miracle-to-watch_4517003.html

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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)

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12 July, 2022

The Crash and Burn of Credentialism

The word credentials is derived from Latin for “believe” as in “Credo in unum deum” meaning “I believe in one God.” To have credentials is to have credibility, which is to say that people can and should trust you.

We saw this throughout the pandemic. If you did not have the right piece of paper—if you just wanted rights and liberties—your opinions did not count. Actually, even if you did have the right piece of paper and you disagreed with the professional consensus, you also did not count. And through this method, only one opinion prevailed. Those willing to say what Anthony Fauci wanted said rose to the top. Those who disagreed were cast aside.

So the credentialed elites had their way. And here we are with results about which no one seems pleased. Indeed, the long knives are out for all those people in whom we believed.

Perhaps we need another word, because credentials are being discredited by the day. They have led us down a destructive path. This applies not only to epidemiologists but also economists and public health officials and nearly every other field of expertise, particularly that which tied its credibility to the government’s pandemic response, which has ended in calamity for the world.

Politicians (Boris and Biden among the latest) are going down in flames but that’s just the beginning. Just as Henry Kissinger predicted on April 3, 2020, an aggressive response could and would lead to a wholesale loss of legitimacy for everyone involved. His warnings—born of his experience in watching Vietnam lead to a similar disaster—were ignored. Instead we ended up with his worst-case scenario: “a world on fire.”

I’ve earlier described the split in American political life as one between Patricians and Plebeians, recalling the ancient designations. One group rules and the other follows. This is not so much about ideology as it is control. To put a fine point on it, those who are ruled are fed up. They once trusted. They believed. They let their betters—those with credentials—have a go at it. And look at the mess they made!

It’s impossible to decouple the current economic and political crisis in America today from pandemic policy, which is why Brownstone Institute puts such emphasis on this topic at a time when both parties and most intellectuals want to pretend like it never happened. They are culpable, of course, so they wish to rewrite the history of our times as if the “public health measures” were perfectly normal and fine.

They were not. Their uselessness in mitigating disease was matched only by their brutality in dividing and demoralizing the population. The inflation of our times is directly caused by the pandemic response. The wild increases in public debt are utterly unsustainable. The educational losses are unbearable to contemplate. The health consequences of wrecked immune systems are more obvious by the day.

The ever-astute COVID-policy critic Alex Berenson has drawn our attention to a fascinating commentary that appeared in the New Yorker. The article is the usual attack on Ron DeSantis but it delves deeper and signals to the credentialed classes that something is very wrong:

When I asked Republican activists and operatives about the rise of the school issues, they told a very similar story, one that began with the pandemic, during which many parents came to believe that their interests (in keeping their kids in school) diverged with those of the teachers and administrators. As (Kevin) Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president, put it to me, parents who were in many cases apolitical “became concerned about these overwrought lockdowns, and then when they asked question after question, there was no transparency about them, which led them to pay more attention when their kids were on Zoom. They overheard things being taught. They asked questions about curricula. They were just stonewalled every step of the way.” The battles regarding the covid lockdowns, Roberts told me, opened the way for everything that came after. “This is the key thing,” he said. “It started with questions about masking and other aspects of the lockdowns.”

Both parties right now are trying to answer the question of how fundamentally covid has changed politics. “From 2008 to 2020, elections were decided on the question of fairness—Obama ’08, Obama ’12, and Trump ’16 were all premised on the idea that someone else was getting too much, and you were getting too little, and it was unfair,” Danny Franklin, a partner at the Democratic strategy firm Bully Pulpit Interactive and a pollster for both Obama campaigns, told me. But the pandemic and the crises that followed (war, inflation, energy pressures) were not really about fairness but an amorphous sense of chaos. “People are looking for some control over their lives—in focus groups, in polls, once you start looking for that you see it everywhere,” Franklin said.

Both parties had shifted, in his view. Biden had sought to reassure Americans that the government, guided by experts, could reassert its control over events, from the pandemic to the crisis in energy supply. Republicans, meanwhile, had focussed on assuring voters that they would deliver control over a personal sphere of influence: schools that would teach what you wanted them to teach, a government that would make it easier, not harder, to get your hands on a gun. A moral panic about gender identity might seem anachronistic, but it served a very current political need. Franklin said, “It’s a way for Republicans to tell people that they can have back control of their lives.”

Berenson comments:

The profound failure of lockdowns and now vaccines have woken many average folks to the dangers of bureaucratic overreach, expert overconfidence, and authoritarianism in the name of safety.

They took our rights. The media and public health authorities would like you to forget the closed playgrounds and shuttered malls and mask mandates of 2020. And the vaccine mandates of last fall. They want you to forget that for a while, the federal government tried to take the right to work from tens of millions of unvaccinated people. State and local governments went even further; and countries like Canada and Australia further still. UNTIL 10 DAYS AGO, CANADA DID NOT ALLOW UNVACCINATED PEOPLE ON PLANES—effectively curtailing their right to travel in a country that stretches more than 4,000 miles from British Columbia to Newfoundland.

And they took our rights FOR NOTHING.

That’s it. People not only want control back over their lives. They also demand control over their government, the control promised to us hundreds of years ago when modern political systems were forged with the primacy of freedom as a first principle. This is something we can believe in.

Whatever it is that the World Economic Forum is promising does not look especially impressive by comparison to the normal freedoms we took for granted. Indeed, we let the experts have a go at it and they created a monstrous experience for billions of people the world over. This will not soon be forgotten.

The younger generation was especially touched. They were locked out of dorms. They couldn’t go bowling. They couldn’t get a haircut. They couldn’t go to the movies. They saw family businesses wrecked, siblings and parents demoralized, and even churches shuttered. When they finally were allowed to move about again, it was only by covering their faces. Then the shot mandates came, which turned out to introduce more risk than reward. When people finally started traveling again, prices had nearly doubled. It is increasingly obvious that locking down for a virus was really about pillaging the public on behalf of a powerful elite.

It’s an outrage. The experience has shaped an entire generation, having taken place at the time when such experiences form an outlook that lasts a lifetime. The impact extends across all class, gender, language, and ethnic lines.

Notice too that things are not going in the direction that the credentialed lockdowners had hoped. Their censorship is not working, nor their media control, nor their intimidation tactics. They have been discredited.

We are looking for new ways to believe in something. Let’s just call it freedom. It’s not nearly as risky as putting our fate in the hands of the same gang that betrayed the multitudes in this last go around.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-crash-and-burn-of-credentialism_4588761.html

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How Covid-19 has dramatically increased the number of children who can’t read — “the worst educational crisis for a century”

When covid­-19 first began to spread around the world, pausing normal lessons was a forgivable precaution. No one knew how transmissible the virus was in classrooms; how sick youngsters would become; or how likely they would be to infect their grandparents. But disruptions to education lasted long after encouraging answers to these questions emerged.

New data suggest that the damage has been worse than almost anyone expected. Locking kids out of school has prevented many of them from learning how to read properly. Before the pandemic 57% of ten­-year­-olds in low and middle­-income countries could not read a simple story, says the World Bank. That figure may have risen to 70%, it now estimates. The share of ten-year­-olds who cannot read in Latin America, probably the worst­-affected region, could rocket from around 50% to 80% (see chart 1 on next page).

Children who never master the basics will grow up to be less productive and to earn less. Mckinsey, a consultancy, estimates that by 2040 education lost to school closures could cause global gdp to be 0.9% lower than it would otherwise have been— an annual loss of $1.6trn. The World Bank thinks the disruption could cost children $21trn in earnings over their lifetimes—a sum equivalent to 17% of global gdp today. That is much more than the $10trn it had estimated in 2020, and also an increase on the $17trn it was predicting last year.

In many parts of the world, schools were closed for far too long (see chart 2 on next page). During the first two years of the pandemic countries enforced national school closures lasting 20 weeks on average, according to unesco. Periods of “partial” closure—when schools were closed in some parts of a country, or to some year groups, or were running part­time schedules—wasted a further 21 weeks. Regional differences are huge. Full and partial shutdowns lasted 29 weeks in Europe and 32 weeks in sub­Saharan Africa. Countries in Latin America imposed restrictions lasting 63 weeks, on average. That figure was 73 weeks in South Asia.

Over two years nearly 153m children missed more than half of all in­-person schooling, reckons unesco. More than 60m missed three­-quarters. By the end of May pupils in 13 countries were still enduring some restrictions on face-­to­-face learning—among them China, Iraq and Russia. In the Philippines and North Korea, classrooms were still more or less shut.

Poorer countries stayed closed longer than their neighbours. Places with low-performing schools kept them shut for longer than others in their regions. Closures were often long in places where teachers’ unions were especially powerful, such as Mexico and parts of the United States. Unions have fought hard to keep schools closed long after it was clear that this would harm children.

School closures were also long in places where women tend not to hold jobs, perhaps because there was less clamour for schools to go back to providing child care. Many children in the Philippines live with their grandparents, says Bernadette Madrid, an expert in child protection in Manila. That made people cautious about letting them mingle in the playground.

Places where schooling is controlled locally have found it harder to reopen. In highly centralised France, President Emmanuel Macron decreed that all but the eldest pupils would return to school nationwide before the end of the 2020 summer term. It was the first big European country to do this. This gave other countries more confidence to follow. By contrast, decisions about reopening in places such as Brazil dissolved into local squabbles. In America a full year separated the districts that were first and last to restart properly.

In some countries the results were truly dire. In South Africa primary schoolchildren tested after a 22-­week closure were found to have learned only about one-quarter of what they should have. Brazilian secondary-­school pupils who had missed almost six months of face-­to-­face school did similarly dreadfully. A study of 3,000 children in Mexico who had missed 48 weeks of in-­person schooling suggests they appeared to have learned little or nothing during that time.

Before covid­19 governments in many developing countries were overlooking egregious failures in their education systems. Optimists hope that the pandemic could spur them to start fixing the problems. Schemes to recover lost learning could lead to permanent reforms. Never before has there been so much good evidence about what works to improve schooling at scale, says Benjamin Piper of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

https://blendle.com/i/the-economist/millions-of-wasted-minds/bnl-economist-20220708-9c42201fd70

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Australia: Private and independent schools awarded vast majority of $30,000 Ramsay Centre scholarships

<i>Despite Leftist hatred of the subject, it looks like Western civilization courses attract a lot of takers.  So much so that the demand greatly exceeds the supply of places.  That in turn means that a high bar has to be set for students to get in.  And that high bar consists of very good High School results.  And good High School results are most common in the private school sector.  So it folows that most admissions to such courses go to private school graduates.  It is nothing strange or sinister</i>

The vast majority of the generous Ramsay Centre Western civilisation scholarships have been awarded to private or non-government school students, with a top university now attempting to attract more public school applicants to the controversial program.

The centre says the $30,000-a-year scholarships, offered at the University of Queensland, University of Wollongong and Australian Catholic University in Sydney, give a much-needed “shot in the arm” to humanities in Australia.

Figures provided to the Herald show that at the University of Queensland, about 85 per cent of the 71 scholarship recipients over the past three years attended private or independent high schools. At the University of Wollongong, 71 per cent of the 93 recipients attended private or non-government schools.

The Australian Catholic University, which is not subject to NSW freedom of information laws, did not provide the full data on request and said a “public/private” school binary did not paint a fair and accurate picture of equality of outcomes.

The Western civilisation degrees, which are funded through a $3 billion bequest from healthcare magnate Paul Ramsay, are great books-style courses in which small groups of students study key texts from the Western tradition in depth. Up to 30 students a year at each participating university are offered the $30,000 annual scholarships for up to five years.

In 2018 and 2019, the centre was engaged in discussions to set up a base at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney. However, agreement on a proposed model could not be reached amid concerns about academic freedom and a backlash from some academics who claimed that the centre was trying to push a right-wing agenda.

Queensland University said the Western civilisation courses were now among the most competitive humanities degrees in the country, with required ATARs ranging from 95 to 98. It said the percentage of scholarship recipients was reflective of the number of applicants when comparing private/independent to public school data.

“To encourage greater representation from public schools, we are speaking with our current students from public schools to understand how we can better promote the scholarships and review administrative processes,” a spokesperson said.

“We will also have program ambassadors from public high schools to support this work. We have targeted engagement and outreach programs that prioritise public schools, and for regional schools, financial bursaries are offered for travel costs to attend.”

The university said of the scholarship recipients, 11 per cent were from regional Australia and 17 per cent identified as disadvantaged.

“It is sadly unsurprising scholarships are not being awarded or being promoted to those who would benefit from them most.”

National Tertiary Education Union president Dr Alison Barnes said the figures showed universities needed to review the selection criteria and processes around promoting the scholarships in public schools.

“It is sadly unsurprising scholarships are not being awarded or being promoted to those who would benefit from them most,” she said. “Irrespective of the course’s controversial curriculum, all scholarships should be available and made known to all students.”

A University of Wollongong spokeswoman said students enrolled in the course came from a broad mix of social and schooling backgrounds. In 2022, 37 per cent of the university’s scholarship recipients were from public schools, up on the three-year average of 29 per cent.

“UOW aims to attract high-achieving students from all backgrounds and all schools – whether public, Catholic or independent – to the course. We endeavour to make the course and the scholarships as widely known as possible among NSW high school students,” the spokeswoman said.

“We promote the bachelor of Western civilisation course in the same way we promote all other courses – via open days, discovery days, information evenings, career expos and other events, and by promoting it directly to schools and to students.”

A Ramsay Centre spokeswoman said the scholarship application process may, where appropriate, give preference to applicants who are disadvantaged or are from an underrepresented background.

“Our university partners continue to target engagement and outreach programs to public schools and lower SES students in line with their university policies,” she said. “We have always been keen to support three distinct programs at three distinct universities to ensure a diverse cohort of students have access to the wonderful opportunity the study of Western civilisation provides.”

“Having access to the scholarship makes a big difference to their ability to achieve their academic aspirations.”

Professor Robert Carver, director of the Western civilisation program, said most of its scholarship recipients came from Catholic schools where fees were “low to modest” and the student body was “rich in diversity of ethnic background”.

“About a quarter of our students are from outer suburban or regional areas and having access to the scholarship makes a big difference to their ability to achieve their academic aspirations,” he said.

“In all cases, we look at the totality of the person – our selection process (particularly the interview) gives us the scope to assess the potential of each candidate and the flexibility to take any mitigating factors or special circumstances into account.”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/private-and-independent-schools-awarded-vast-majority-of-30-000-ramsay-centre-scholarships-20220706-p5azi6.html

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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)

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11 July, 2022

Judge Sides With Parent, Strikes Down Los Angeles School Vaccine Mandate

A plan to mandate COVID-19 vaccine shots for hundreds of thousands of students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) will remain on pause after a Los Angeles County judge ruled on July 5 that the district lacks the authority to do so.

In his ruling, Judge Mitchell Beckloff of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County sided with a parent, whose 12-year-old son attends a public magnet school in North Hollywood. The parent filed the complaint in October 2021, about a month after the LAUSD announced its vaccination mandate.

Under the district’s mandate, all eligible students aged 12 and above must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination, or get approved for exemptions by Jan. 10 in order to attend school in person. Those who don’t comply would be transferred into the district’s remote learning program, City of Angels, which offers a mixture of live instruction and self-study.

The suing parent, identified as G.F., argued that it is unfair and unlawful for the child, identified as D.F., to have to lose his hard-earned place at a competitive school just because he and his parent have chosen to not get vaccinated on the basis of personal beliefs.

According to G.F., his son had acquired natural immunity after recovering from COVID-19. He also said he worried that vaccinating the child would put the child’s health in jeopardy.

“Either I get him a vaccine that I fear could harm him, or I send him to a virtual school that I know from experience and LAUSD’s own data would prove academically vastly inferior,” the father said earlier this year in a sworn declaration, reported City News Service. “The idea of dumping him into an online school, free of a rigorous academic program and torn away from his like-minded classmates, breaks my heart.”

Beckloff, who wrote in March in a tentative opinion that he might dismiss the case, agreed with the father in his final ruling, acknowledging that if D.F. refuses to comply with the mandate, he will be forced to accept a very different education.

“The [mandate] is not merely about how education is delivered or who may be physically present on campus as the court previously viewed it. Instead, the [mandate] dictates which school the student may attend, and the curriculum he may continue to receive,” the judge wrote, reported the Los Angeles Times.

The judge also noted that the LAUSD mandate is in conflict with California’s public health law, which allows personal beliefs-based vaccination exemptions.

“Judge Beckloff’s ruling confirms that individual school districts do not have the authority to impose local vaccination requirements in excess of statewide requirements,” Arie Spangler, an attorney for G.F., said in a statement. “We are very pleased with the ruling, as it ensures that no child will be forced out of the classroom due to their COVID-19 vaccination status.”

The decision doesn’t have an immediate impact on LAUSD, since the mandate has already been placed on hold after California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in April that the state would wait for the federal government to give full approval to the COVID-19 vaccine for young children. The Newsom administration and school district have both said they won’t pursue the pediatric vaccine mandate until at least the summer of 2023.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-sides-with-parent-strikes-down-los-angeles-school-vaccine-mandate_4580965.html

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Anger after elite $57,000-a-year Brooklyn private school Poly Prep asks students as young as 10 if all racial groups are as smart as each other, their sexual orientation and their parents' political beliefs

An elite Brooklyn private school was forced to shelve an invasive questionnaire that surveyed students as young as 10 about their sexual orientation and their parents' political beliefs. 

Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, which charges parents more than $57,000 per year, disguised the questionnaire under the name 'DEIB climate survey.' 'DEIB' stands for: 'diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.' 

Statements included: 'Most people think that people from my racial/ethnic group are as smart as people of other racial/ethnic groups,' 'Women have fewer chances to get ahead,' and 'Teachers teach about racial inequality in the United States.'

Students were required to answer on a scale going from 'really agree' to 'really disagree.'

The questions went on to become even more intimate in nature, asking about students' gender and sexual orientation. 

Other questions centered around parents' income, political opinions and personal beliefs. It was administered to children in grades 5 through 12. 

The questionnaire was made public by the Virginia-based advocacy group Parents Defending Education. The group describes itself as 'a national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas.'

According to the group, the answers were not anonymous and students were required to include their email address in their completed survey. 

In one section, students were asked if their parents had made a donation to the school, and how much they had given.

The school was forced to shelve the questionnaire in May after furious backlash from parents. 

An email to parents, leaked by Parents Defending Education, from the school's principal Audrius Barzdukas read: 'After reviewing our process, we learned of multiple issues with the survey including ones that made the data unreliable.'

The message continued: 'Those issues included final edits not being included in the version that was administered and significant variability in how the survey was facilitated. All the data have been permanently deleted.' 

In an apology, Barzdukas apologized for the 'confusion and discomfort this survey caused.' 

This is not the first time Barzdukas has faced backlash from parents. In November 2021, parents were furious when he fired the school's football coach Kevin Fountine. The principal accused the coach of promoting 'toxic culture' in the school's football program. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10998957/Elite-Brooklyn-private-school-forced-trash-62-page-invasive-questionnaire.html

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Harvard University is actively promoting anti-semitism on campus

Harvard University provides its students with unparalleled knowledge, skills and experiences. Yet, as we Jewish students have witnessed, the routine vilification of the State of Israel — both inside and outside the classroom — indicates that something in Harvard’s contemporary education has gone seriously awry.

In the latest example of this trend, the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson endorsed the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish state in an April 29 editorial. BDS represents the economic arm of a global effort — spearheaded militarily by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran — to destroy the Jewish state.

That a majority of the Crimson’s 87-member editorial board believes this movement to be part of the global struggle for social justice has significance both for Harvard and American society more broadly. The hostility toward Israel that has permeated our campus — which often involves the endorsement of anti-Semitic attitudes, assumptions, and activities — is symptomatic of larger trends: a retreat from robust critical thinking and a surrender to the most hysterical, least rigorous elements of campus activism.

Such trends at Harvard are regrettable not merely because BDS is fundamentally anti-Semitic but also because its advocacy rests upon several falsehoods. The most pernicious is the idea that Jews don’t belong in Israel, that their presence constitutes an act of colonialism against the native Palestinian population. Such a position betrays an often-contrived ignorance of the millennia-long connection between the land of Israel and the Jewish people. It is also a denial of the right of self-defense for history’s most persecuted minority.

Yet this view has become de rigueur in a contemporary Harvard education. The Chan School of Public Health hosts courses such as “The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health,” which focuses on demonstrating how Israel’s “settler colonial” society undermines the health of “indigenous people.” Harvard Divinity School’s program of Religion and Public Life has hosted a year-long series of anti-Israel seminars, platforming numerous speakers who advocate for the “decolonization” and even the “de-Judaisation” of Israel. It is hard to imagine that any other national entity would be subject to seminar after seminar informing them that their own national aspirations are uniquely illegitimate.

This makes Harvard less welcoming for Jewish students. Those who wish to enter the classes of Amos Yadlin, a retired Israeli general and politician, at Harvard Kennedy School have had to walk through a gauntlet of protesters accusing them of complicity in genocide. Jewish students have had to walk next to the “apartheid wall” constructed in Harvard Yard during Passover, which employs Holocaust imagery to depict Israel’s behavior toward Palestinians and declares that “Zionism = Racism.”

Inside many classrooms, Jewish students are too intimidated to speak out against the new intellectual and social orthodoxy that deems Israel to be the world’s worst human-rights violator. Having witnessed this process repeat itself across the university, we can’t avoid the suspicion that such hatred of the world’s largest Jewish collective is a smokescreen for something darker.

The Crimson’s endorsement of BDS has engendered a backlash within the Harvard community. Multiple former Crimson editors, current Crimson editors, and former Harvard president Lawrence Summers have all issued denouncements. An open letter opposing BDS has recently been signed by close to 150 faculty members. 

However, most of these signatories teach at Harvard’s medical and business schools and are therefore far removed from the classrooms in which such issues are likely to be discussed. 

The departments that produce future politicians, journalists, and members of the intelligentsia — especially Harvard’s Divinity School, Kennedy School, and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences — have become fortresses of anti-Israel ideology.

That Harvard students are absorbing and endorsing BDS attitudes raises central questions about their educational experience. Does nothing in their training demand a critical assessment of these ideas? Why have Harvard students, supposedly loyal to the value of veritas, abandoned the pursuit of complex truths in favor of wholesale condemnation of the world’s only Jewish country? 

Most importantly, if hatred of the Jewish state becomes the default position across campus, do Jewish students have a future at Harvard? The university should take a long, hard look at the attitudes currently holding favor within its confines.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/09/harvard-university-actively-promotes-anti-semitism-on-campus/

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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)

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10 July, 2022

School children are told prostitution is a 'rewarding job' by independent sex educaters, who also promote 'kinks' to pupils including flogging, beating and locking people up in a cage

School children were told prostitution is a 'rewarding job' by sex education providers who promoted wild kinks to pupils.

Organisations brought in to teach kids about sex have introduced children to hardcore kinks including being flogged, caned, locking people up in a cage and being slapped in the face, The Times reported.

Children were even told to show where they liked to touch themselves by one organisation.

Private contractor Bish (Best in Sexual Health) is written by Justin Hancock and charges £500 a day to deliver sex education sessions at secondary schools.

His website advises a 14-year-old girl in a relationship with a 16-year-old boy that her 'risks of pregnancy are very, very low' even if her boyfriend relies on pulling out rather than using a condom.

Mr Hancock did not tell her the relationship was illegal but instead suggested using lube during anal sex.

The 'sex and relationships educator' also told someone on his site that prostitution could be 'rewarding'. He suggested if this was not the case for a sex worker, they could 'get better clients'.

Writing about masturbation Bish suggested children could practice on plasticine models of their genitals to understand how to touch themselves, a move the Safe Schools Alliance told The Times was 'sexual abuse'.

Although Hancock said the website should not be used in classrooms, Bish says more than 100,000 young people learn about sex from the site every month.

Meanwhile, LGBT youth charity the Proud Trust, asked children between the ages of seven to 11 whether they were 'planet boy, planet girl, planet binary'.

Although gender is a social construct and can be chosen, sex is a biological fact and cannot be changed.

Last night campaigners said that 'inclusiveness is overriding child safeguarding' and that the materials were 'bordering on illegal'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10996893/Children-told-prostitution-rewarding-job-sex-education-providers-promote-kinks.html

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The online university is a cruel, destructive place

A lot has been written about the decline of humanities/arts faculties in the contemporary university due to the politicisation of much of the syllabus. Arguably, an even more serious development in the past two decades has been the elimination of the teacher, as a living presence and influence in lecture hall and seminar room – and not just in humanities. The role of teacher has been devalued.

The universities have been quick to embrace online learning, and they did so well in advance of the Covid years which made remote study a temporary necessity. Online learning is practical in some circumstances, but only in a subordinate role. Now, lectures and even seminars in many areas have come to be considered relics of a great one-thousand-year-old tradition, scorned as anachronistic and unsuited to modern students. Already 11 years ago, I was prohibited from including lectures in a new course – from which I then withdrew.

I well remember, when I was a postgraduate student in Cambridge, that my doctoral supervisor would give lectures on Romanticism to a packed lecture hall of 400, many of them, like myself, sitting in voluntarily. These lectures excited interest in historical themes, ideas, the characters of the poets whose lives and passions were woven in, but above all in the deep importance and significance of the scholarly enterprise exemplified by this charismatic teacher.

Plato held the most important social institution to be the one that teaches the teachers. Indeed, a key indicator of the health of any society is how it prepares every new generation to enter adulthood, with the character, education, and confidence to work effectively for the collective good.

Individuals, years later in life, may remember teachers with gratitude, some of whom changed their lives. What is usually described is character, as incarnation of personal virtues, including dedication to their subject and to their students (exemplars of vocation). Implied also is that these teachers were adults to admire, and to want to be like. It is less the particulars of what was taught that is recalled – this skill, or that body of knowledge – and more an ideal of how to be human, and how to move and act in the world.

Gifted teachers will almost inevitably pass on an enthusiasm for their subjects, but this is, actually, no more than a by-product of the true mission of education. Freud, reflecting on his schooldays, wrote: “In many of us the path to the sciences led only through our teachers.”

Above all, teachers are servants of the truth, dedicated to passing it on. Their role illustrates the centrality to the good life of coming into harmony with the deep truths of human existence; and believing in the possibility of so doing. This even holds in scientific and vocational disciplines, where an ethos is transmitted, including timeless methods of thinking, and ways to attack problems, as well as factual knowledge. Life, under this star, becomes a long voyage of learning, with the teacher as captain, bestowing legitimacy and authority on the voyage. The passion for learning flows from the same deep, core ­motivation.

But this only works in person, in an actual classroom. Imagine parenting by Webex or Zoom! Seminars and tutorials have their own importance here, settings in which students can freely test their own interpretations and understandings in the hurly-burly of group ­discussion, under the guidance of the teacher.

The Melbourne University Law Faculty has until recently made lectures compulsory – essential seminars are still not made available online. Students thereby used to have first-hand experience of their lecturers, some of whom alternate as leading barristers and authoritative essayists in their specialised areas. A true collegiate was hereby preserved, one in which students were admitted into a club in which they were invited to work, rub shoulders with, and listen to those who are leaders of the profession and who take it with deep seriousness. It is surely not unrelated that Melbourne Law has often ranked in the top 10 schools in the world, side by side with Stanford, Cambridge, and Yale.

The shift to online learning has also had financial attraction to the universities. It has made easier the steady shift away from employing full-time academics, on fair salaries, to emptying out their ranks, and filling the gap with low-paid casual staff – leading to exploitation of new generations of successful PhD students and researchers, and their demoralisation. The fewer students there are to teach in person, the easier for the institutions to make this rationalisation. Over the past century, university employment has swung from a ratio of 20 per cent administrative to 80 per cent academic, to well over 50 per cent non-academic today. The real work of the university – teaching and research – is now being carried out by a diminishing minority, overseen by a large bureaucracy.

The online university is cruel to students in another way. It destroys student life. A physical campus, with teaching buildings intermixed with cafes, squares, shops, and libraries, provides places for students to gather together with their fellows, catch up, and discuss classes. A key rite of passage is being damaged, one that is especially important for students who leave school and go directly to university, ones who find themselves cast adrift in a no man’s land, having to negotiate the hazardous transition to the vast and intimidating adult world.

The online university is at risk of compounding individual isolation and the anomic sense that the world is a lonely, unsupportive place. Older generations often remember fondly their student days as a time of liberation after school, experimentation, leisure and fun, peer camaraderie, and freedom from the responsibilities that come later with work and family.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/the-online-university-is-cruel-destructive-place/news-story/ca4914cb94722fd878572a2c8ad674bc

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U.S. News Ranked Columbia No. 2, but a Math Professor Has His Doubts

Everyone knows that students buff their résumés when applying to college. But a math professor is accusing Columbia University of buffing its own résumé — or worse — to climb the all-important U.S. News & World Report rankings of best universities.

Michael Thaddeus, who specializes in algebraic geometry at Columbia, has challenged the university’s No. 2 ranking this year with a statistical analysis that found that key supporting data was “inaccurate, dubious or highly misleading.”

In a 21-page blistering critique on his website, Dr. Thaddeus is not only challenging the rating but redoubling the debate over whether college rankings — used by millions of prospective college students and their parents — are valuable or even accurate.

Columbia said it stood by its data. Officials said there was no accepted industry standard for the data that goes into college rankings — every rankings project does it differently — and they strove to meet the technical requirements as set by U.S. News. But, they said, the university was not necessarily defending the process.

The dispute has seized the education world, and university officials are in the awkward position of trying to defend themselves against the sleuthing of one of their own tenured faculty, while not alienating him or his colleagues.

“I think the majority of institutions would be happy if the rankings went away,” said Colin Diver, a former president of Reed College, who has a book coming out about college rankings.

“But as long as the rankings are taken seriously by applicants, they’re going to be taken seriously by educators.”

This year, Columbia rose to No. 2 from No. 3, surpassed only by Princeton in the No. 1 spot and tied with Harvard and M.I.T.

Dr. Thaddeus notes that Columbia was ranked 18th in 1988, a rise that he suggests is remarkable. “Why have Columbia’s fortunes improved so dramatically?” he asks in his analysis.

He does not question that in some ways, Columbia has gotten stronger over the years, he said in a Skype interview this week from Vienna, where he is on sabbatical. But some of the statistics immediately aroused his suspicion because they did not conform to his own observations as a professor in the classroom.

Searching further, he said he found discrepancies with other sources of data that he believes made undergraduate class sizes look smaller than they are, made instructional spending look bigger than it is and made professors look more highly educated than they are.

Columbia officials said that the numbers could be sliced in different ways, including in ways that would be even more favorable to the university, and that the public data sources Dr. Thaddeus used were not always the final word. Asked about Dr. Thaddeus’s analysis, U.S. News & World Report did not address the details, but said that it relied on schools to accurately report their data.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/us/columbia-university-rank.html

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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)

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8 July, 2022

Biden Education Dept sued over new parents council that groups claim is ‘cabal’ of left-wing activists

Parents’ rights groups are suing the Biden administration over the Education Department’s creation of a new parents council, which the groups argue is politically biased and violates federal law.

Fight for Schools, Parents Defending Education, and America First Legal filed a joint federal lawsuit Wednesday against the Department of Education, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, and the department's National Parents and Families Engagement Council, which was created last month as a means to find "constructive ways to help families engage at the local level," the department announced June 14.

The council was launched to "facilitate strong and effective relationships between schools and parents, families and caregivers," according to the Education Department, following more than two years of protests from parents demanding more control in their children’s education amid decisions made by school boards surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The groups suing the Biden administration say the newly created council violates multiple provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) that require balance and transparency.

FACA requires that federal advisory committees have a membership that is "fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee."

The groups claim in their lawsuit that the council’s members are allies of the Biden administration, and that nearly 80% of their leaders have donated to Biden or other Democrats. 

"Defendant Cardona selected members that are agreeable, not balanced," the lawsuit states.

The groups claim that leaders at 11 of the 14 organizations selected for the committee donated to President Biden, Democratic lawmakers, Democratic fundraisers, or other associations or entities affiliated with Democrats, and that none of the organizations’ highest-ranking executive donated to Republicans or right-wing organizations.  

Organizations selected for the council include Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and multiple pro-Black Lives Matter groups, including Mocha Moms Inc., United Parent Leaders Action Network (UPLAN), and UnidosUS.

"To have a fair balance of viewpoints and competent deliberation on students’ needs, there must be fairly equal representation from both sides of the political spectrum," the lawsuit states. "That is not the case here, as the Council consists of groups that are already supportive of this administration."

The groups say the council is also in violation of a FACA provision that requires the "records, reports, transcripts, minutes, appendixes, working papers, drafts, studies, agenda, or other documents which were made available to or prepared for or by" the advisory committee shall be made available for "public inspection."

The groups point to two press releases by Cardona about the council, one on June 14 that said the council would be meeting in "the coming weeks," and another press release that same day that said "the council meets to discuss how children are recovering, the different ways schools are providing academic, mental health and social and emotional support, and how families can best constructively engage with schools."

The groups say the council is violating FACA’s non-discretionary transparency and public access requirements by apparently meeting "without public notice; without making those meetings open to the public; and without timely notice in the Federal Register."

"Plaintiffs only learned that the Council has met after the DOE indicated that meetings had occurred in its second Press Release," the lawsuit states. "Regardless of whether the Council has already met, the DOE’s equivocation shows the deficiency in Defendants’ disclosure of information to the public, in violation of FACA."

The lawsuit claims that the council causes injury to the suing groups because they now have to deploy more resources to investigate the council's operations.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-education-dept-sued-parents-council-groups-claim-cabal-left-wing-activists

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Elite Colleges Outsource Themselves as  Online Universities

2U Inc. isn’t a university, but it sometimes looks like one.

The online education company uses the “.edu” email addresses of partner universities to recruit students for them. It funds scholarships. The company also uses equipment that makes it look as if its recruiters are calling from universities’ area codes.

American universities are searching for ways to generate more revenue. As a result, hundreds of schools—including Vanderbilt University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—are teaming up with for-profit companies such as 2U to provide online programs.

As part of the arrangement, one that is reshaping higher education, universities sometimes hand over to companies a great deal of control of student recruitment and instructional design, especially for nondegree programs. For their work, the companies receive hefty shares of tuition dollars.

Much of this isn’t clear to prospective and current students. Universities often cooperate with companies in ways that can blur the lines for students between schools and recruiters.

2U, based in Lanham, Md., has emerged as a leader in the booming field, employing aggressive recruiting practices and in some cases playing down its role, according to interviews with current and former 2U employees and students.

Christopher “Chip” Paucek, 2U’s chief executive and a co-founder, said the company is providing valuable services to universities that many can’t do themselves. “For the last 14 years, 2U has worked to expand access to high-quality online education for learners around the world, enabling hundreds of thousands of students to transform their lives,” Mr. Paucek said in a written statement.

Christina Denkinger wanted something new after 14 years as an elementary-school teacher in Portland, Ore. After shopping around for a course in data analytics last fall, she requested information through a University of Oregon website portal for an online training program, called a boot camp, offered by the university’s continuing-education division.

She received a “uoregon.edu” email from someone identifying herself as admissions adviser for the boot camp. It had the university logo, and there was no mention in the email of 2U. Ms. Denkinger paid $11,995 to enroll last December.

“The only reason I signed up for this boot camp was because of the reputation of the university,” she said.

One month into the course, she was disappointed with the quality of instruction and began asking questions. That was when she realized that instructors and course materials were all provided by a unit of 2U, Trilogy Education Services.

When she went back and looked on the boot camp website, Ms. Denkinger saw “powered by Trilogy” at the bottom of the landing page.

“I thought it was technical services,” said Ms. Denkinger, who left the course early and has just received a refund. “I do, honestly, feel like I was misled.”

Mr. Paucek said that while 2U isn’t perfect, it doesn’t mislead students. He said disclosure of 2U’s role typically has been left to its university partners.

“Some of the early history of 2U is the university very purposefully wanting us to not be visible...in any way,” he said. The company’s role, he added, has since become “more front and center” on university websites.

As for scholarships that 2U recruiters sometimes offer, Mr. Paucek said these get approval from universities.

A spokeswoman for the University of Oregon said that it provides administrative oversight and that the partnership with 2U is noted in several places on the website and in its enrollment agreement. After The Wall Street Journal asked about disclosures in April, a line was added to the top of the boot camp landing page saying “in partnership with Trilogy Education Services, a 2U, Inc. brand.”

2U, which isn’t accredited as a university, kept 80% of the tuition from the University of Oregon program, according to its contract with the university, which the Journal reviewed. The university said its 20% share was about $600,000 in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021.

The U.S. Department of Education set the stage for a boom in this “ed tech” industry in 2011. It issued guidance permitting universities to share tuition revenue with for-profit vendors that provide a range of services, including student recruitment. The law still prohibits paying bonuses or commissions to recruiters for securing enrollments.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, in a May report, said at least 550 colleges and universities have hired vendors for online programs. At least 25 for-profit companies now are in the business of setting up online programs for universities and recruiting students to fill them, an industry with global revenue of an estimated $8 billion last year, according to the market-research firm Holon IQ. The companies have found willing university partners and an open faucet of federal and private student loans.

Universities, facing declining enrollment and cutbacks in funding, have looked to online programs as a way to generate revenue by reaching new audiences, including working adults. The promise of such programs became evident at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when many schools were forced to move classes online. Schools often set tuition and fees equal to or even greater than for in-person programs.

2U sometimes provides complete courses—including instructors—for universities’ boot camps and programs leading to a certificate. For degree programs, 2U often handles marketing, recruitment, digital recording of lectures and content delivery over a technology platform, while universities typically retain control over admissions, instruction, curriculum development, tuition-setting and financial aid.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/that-fancy-university-course-it-might-actually-come-from-an-education-company-11657126489?mod=hp_lead_pos5

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DOJ paying $1.5M for 'transgender programming curriculum' in US prisons

 The Department of Justice (DOJ) is paying a private company $1.5 million to develop a "transgender programming curriculum" to be used across all U.S. prisons.

The DOJ’s Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) entered a contract on July 1, 2021, with The Change Companies in Carson City, Nevada, for $1.5 million for developing transgender-specific programming for transgender prison inmates.

The BOP's Office of Public Affairs explained in a statement to Fox News Digital that The Change Companies is creating a curriculum for transgender federal inmates that "teaches techniques to seek support for mental health concerns and skills to advocate for physical, emotional, and sexual health and safety."

"The BOP provides services and programs tailored to address the needs of the transgender population," the statement read. "By entering into a contract with The Change Companies, the BOP is able to expand program offerings for transgender inmates."

"Through this engagement, the vendor has been tasked to develop transgender-specific programming to be implemented at all BOP institutions nationwide," it continued. "These include three programs focused on reentry, transition acceptance, and a support group to assist transgender inmates in addressing reentry needs and managing identity concerns. The vendor is in the process of creating these programs, which will include full curricula and facilitator’s guides, the use of instructional workbooks, and videos."

The development phase of the curriculum is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2022, according to the contract summary on the government’s website.

"The BOP maintains procurement integrity and compliance with laws and federal regulations when procuring contracts of goods and services," the agency’s statement continued. "The award of this contract was compliant with federal law and regulations to include fair pricing of the award."

The BOP also pointed to the agency’s "Transgender Offender Manual," which outlines the responsibilities of staff in handling transgender inmates. According to the manual, a transgender inmate must first meet with a BOP psychologist and sign a form indicating consent to be identified within the agency as transgender in order for special accommodations to be considered.

The BOP’s "Transgender Offender Manual," issued in January also includes new protocol regarding gender-affirming surgery for federal inmates. It states that surgery is the "final stage in the transition process and is generally considered only after one year of clear conduct and compliance with mental health, medical, and programming services at the gender-affirming facility."

"The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) recognizes the importance of appropriate gender-affirming management and treatment of transgender individuals in its custody," the agency’s statement to Fox News Digital read. "The programming developed under this contract will be available for individuals identifying as transgender who are currently in BOP custody and moving forward."

The Change Companies did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

The BOP’s policies for transgender inmates made headlines earlier this month after the agency worked to fast-track a transgender ex-neo-Nazi bank robber's gender affirmation surgery after the inmate, Donna Langan, filed a lawsuit claiming the BOP denied previous requests for the surgery.

In a case earlier this year, a federal judge in Illinois ordered the BOP to immediately find a qualified surgeon to perform gender-affirming surgery on transgender prisoner Cristina Nichole Iglesias.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-paying-1-5m-transgender-programming-curriculum-us-prisons

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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)

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7 July, 2022

HHS gives NYU $40,000 to study why children 'favor Whiteness and maleness'

 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded over $40,000 for New York University (NYU) researchers to conduct a study on why children "favor Whiteness and maleness over other identities."

The project titled, "Societal assumptions regarding typical personhood and their effects on reasoning development," seeks to uncover the developmental processes by which children "acquire the belief that White males represent the default person – a pattern rooted in the ideologies of androcentrism (centering the experiences of men) and ethnocentrism (centering the experiences of White people) prevalent in the United States," according to the grant summary on USASpending.gov.

HHS awarded NYU a total of $40,391 for the 3-year project, which began in February and will conclude on January 31, 2025.

"Despite national rises and racial and gender diversity, White men remain vastly overrepresented across a host of domains within the U.S., from media, to politics, to clinical research," the project description states. "Such overrepresentation poses severe costs to the rest of society – women of all races, men of color, and gender-nonconforming individuals – particularly within the domain of health, where clinical trials have historically prioritized the experiences, perspectives, and health outcomes of White men."

NYU researchers hope to discover through their research the "developmental trajectory" by which children’s default representations of people "begin to favor Whiteness and maleness over other identities." 

"Young children actively construct knowledge to make sense of their social environments. As part of this process, children absorb complex streams of information from the sources around them, including parents, peers, and broader societal institutions (e.g. media)," the description continues. "Thus, the beliefs children acquire tend to reflect the dominant ideologies embedded in their specific cultural contexts: Within the United States, androcentrism and ethnocentrism represent two such ideologies."

The grant was awarded as part of a program by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that "enables promising predoctoral students to obtain mentored research training while conducting dissertation research. The purpose of the training grant is to help postdoctoral students gain the research skills needed to eventually become independent researchers," NIH told Fox News Digital in a statement.

"As part of the doctoral dissertation research plan for this specific training grant, the researcher is developing a study to assess how children form ideas and assumptions about what a typical person looks like and how this view may develop and change across childhood," the statement read. "This research will address the developmental trajectory of children’s beliefs that often tend to select Whiteness and maleness over other identities when thinking of who represents a typical person. The research will test whether this belief is established early in development, or if children’s representations of a typical person may first reflect their own-gender biases (i.e., with girls favoring females and boys favoring males) and then may shift in middle-childhood."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hhs-gives-nyu-40000-study-children-favor-whiteness-maleness

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Private student loan interest rates slip for 5- and 10-year loans

Average private student loan rates for borrowers with credit scores of 720 or higher who used the Credible marketplace to take out student loans fell for 10-year fixed rates and 5-year variable rates during the week of June 27, 2022:

Rates for private student loans fell more than a quarter point this week for both 10-year fixed rate and 5-year variable rate loans. Rates for both loan terms are higher than they were this time last year. 

Still, it's worth noting that borrowers with good credit may find a lower rate with a private student loan than with federal loans. For the 2022-2023 academic school year, federal student loan rates will range from 4.99% to 7.54%. Private student loan rates for borrowers with good to excellent credit are lower right now.

Because federal loans come with certain benefits like access to income-driven repayment plans, you should always exhaust federal student loan options first before turning to private student loans to cover any funding gaps. Private lenders such as banks, credit unions and online lenders provide private student loans. You can use private loans to pay for education costs and living expenses, which might not be covered by your federal education loans. 

Interest rates and terms on private student loans can vary depending on your financial situation, credit history and the lender you choose.

Who sets federal and private interest rates?

Congress sets federal student loan interest rates each year. These fixed interest rates depend on the type of federal loan you take out, your dependency status and your year in school.

Private student loan interest rates can be fixed or variable and depend on your credit, repayment term and other factors. As a general rule, the better your credit score, the lower your interest rate is likely to be.  

How does student loan interest work?

An interest rate is a percentage of the loan periodically tacked onto your balance – essentially the cost of borrowing money. Interest is one way lenders can make money from loans. Your monthly payment often pays interest first, with the rest going to the amount you initially borrowed (the principal). 

Getting a low interest rate could help you save money over the life of the loan and pay off your debt faster.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/private-student-loan-rates-july-6-2022

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NY elementary school student, age 7, saves choking classmate with Heimlich maneuver

A 7-year-old elementary school student is being hailed a hero after he saved his classmate’s life during lunch by using the Heimlich maneuver.

David Diaz Jr., a second-grader from Woodrow Wilson Elementary in Binghamton, New York, stepped into action when he noticed his friend had begun choking on pizza at school.

He said he learned the life-saving move from "The Good Doctor," a TV medical drama he had been watching with his father, David Diaz Sr., during the last year.

"If anybody is choking or is in danger, you always have to save them," David Diaz Jr. told Fox News Digital during a recent phone interview.

"If you don’t, then that could be really sad," the boy added.

David said he did not know for sure that he would be able to save his friend when he put his arms around him, but he hoped that he could — since he was closer to the choking student than his teachers were at the time. 

Kristin Korba, a second-grade teacher at Woodrow Wilson Elementary, told Fox News Digital that David had been sitting across from the choking student.

"The adults were circulating the cafeteria, monitoring," Korba recalled. "David rushed behind [the choking student] and performed the Heimlich."

"I went over right after it happened and checked [on the student who choked]," Korba added. "He was cleared by the nurse and parents [were] contacted."

When Korba spoke with David, she learned he had seen the Heimlich maneuver performed on a TV show and made a note to "remember" it, since it looked like something "important" to know.

The Heimlich maneuver, also known as an abdominal thrust, is a first-aid procedure in which a person must apply pressure between someone else's navel and rib cage in order to dislodge an obstruction in the victim's windpipe, according to the National Library of Medicine. 

People can perform the Heimlich on themselves or others in the event of choking. 

David’s bravery was recognized on June 13 when Binghamton City School District superintendent Dr. Tonia Thompson and New York State Sen. Fred Akshar paid him a visit.  

He was presented with a New York State Senate Commendation Award for his heroic deed.

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/ny-elementary-student-saves-choking-classmate-heimlich

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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)

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6 July, 2022

UK: Sex education is 'driving pupils to identify as trans': Material pushing 'extreme gender ideology' is indoctrinating children

Sex education is fuelling the huge rise in the number of children who think they are transgender, an MP has claimed.

In a Westminster Hall debate yesterday, fears were raised that material pushing 'extreme gender ideology' is indoctrinating children.

MPs heard how some parents said their child showed no sign of questioning their gender until they attended relationships and sex education (RSE) classes or school assemblies about gender identity.

The debate was secured by Miriam Cates, Tory MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge and a former biology teacher.

She claimed the rise in the number of children wanting to transition was a 'social contagion, driven by the internet and reinforced in schools'.

A recent YouGov poll found 79 per cent of secondary school teachers had pupils who were trans or non-binary.

RSE lessons have been compulsory in English secondary schools since 2020. Department for Education guidance states that children should not be taught they are in the wrong body if they do not conform to gender stereotypes. But Mrs Cates said children are being exposed to 'a plethora of deeply inappropriate, wildly inaccurate, sexually explicit and damaging materials in the name of sex education'.

The MP cited materials from the Sex Education Forum that divided children into 'menstruators and non-menstruators' and said this would lead to confusion for a teenage girl whose periods did not start. Mrs Cates also quoted sex education provider Bish, which states that 'many people' are in the middle of the spectrum in terms of their genitals.

RSE is often contracted out to unregulated organisations with their own political agendas, creating a 'Wild West' scenario, she added.

Mrs Cates claimed that in some cases teachers have been treating pupils as the opposite sex without telling parents, who are effectively 'cut out'.

MPs heard one primary school teacher left her job after staff were asked to be 'complicit' in the 'social transitioning' of a seven-year-old boy. The incident followed a visit to the school by Gendered Intelligence, which runs workshops that aim to 'increase understandings of gender diversity'.

Mrs Cates, who sits on the Commons education committee, told the debate gender ideology 'has no basis in science'.

She added: 'And yet it is being pushed on children in some schools under the guise of RSE with what can only be described as a religious fervour.'

In response, schools minister Robin Walker said RSE guidance would be reviewed regularly but schools should be 'trusted' to design their own curriculum on the subject.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10971023/Sex-education-driving-pupils-identify-trans-extreme-gender-ideology-MPs-told.html

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UK: Education bosses call for crackdown on 'Mickey Mouse' university courses by telling students how many graduates get a decent job after qualifying

All adverts for universities should include data on how many graduates get a decent job – to help students spot 'Mickey Mouse' courses, the Department for Education has urged.

It also wants vice chancellors to include the proportion of those finishing courses.

The information should be displayed on course homepages, TV, radio and all social media adverts as well as being conveyed by any paid online 'influencers'.

The guidance is not mandatory, and there are no plans to make it so. However, it is hoped students – who face tuition fees of £9,250 a year – will be able to pinpoint courses with good outcomes.

It is understood the DfE will consider further options if universities are slow to take up the plan, which was first broadly outlined by universities minister Michelle Donelan in February.

The guidance comes in response to concerns that students are being duped into undertaking low-quality courses by flashy marketing materials.

Many promise glamourous or fulfilling careers, but do not provide any data to back this up.

In many cases, the drop-out rate can be high, and employment outcomes are poor.

Universities have been accused of having a vested interest in running these 'Mickey Mouse' courses because they are cheap to lay on and students still pay £9,250 a year in tuition fees.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10971547/Calls-Mickey-Mouse-degree-crackdown-telling-students-graduates-decent-job.html

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School board director Jenn Mason to teach sexual ‘pleasure’ class to 9-year-olds

A Washington state school board director who owns a sex shop is making headlines after announcing she will teach sex education classes for children as young as 9 on topics such as “sexual anatomy for pleasure” and “safer sex practices for all kinds of sexual activities.”

“The class for 9- to 12-year-olds is an introduction to topics related to relationships, puberty, bodies, and sexuality. We focus on what makes healthy vs. unhealthy friendships and romantic relationships, the science of how puberty works, consent and personal boundaries, defining ‘sex’, and discussing why people may or may not choose to engage in sexual activities,” Jenn Mason, owner of sex shop WinkWink in Bellingham and school board director for the Bellingham School District, told KTTH radio host Jason Rantz. 

Mason announced there will be four, three-hour sex education classes held at WinkWink next month as part of an event billed the “Uncringe Academy.” The classes, which Mason will teach, are broken down by age, with 9- to 12-year-olds in one class and 13- to 17-year-olds in another class. 

Class topics include, “What IS sex? Kinds of solo and partnered sexual activities,” “Sexual anatomy for pleasure and reproduction,” “Gender and sexual identities,” “Safer sex practices for all kinds of sexual activities,” among others. The description of the classes stipulates that the “workshops are divided by age and presentation of topics will vary for developmental appropriateness (sic).”

WinkWink is described as a “woman-owned, identity-inclusive sex shop” that is “sex-positive, body-positive, and gender-affirming.” While the “Uncringe Academy” is advertised as offering “honest, supportive, and inclusive sex education classes to help young people of all genders and sexual identities understand this important part of their life.” 

WinkWink did not immediately respond to Fox News Digitals’ request for comment, but Mason defended teaching “safer sex practices” for 9- to 12-year-olds in a comment to Rantz. She said the lesson is one that is “not generally covered as a main topic in this course except as it relates to consent, communication, and safety.”

Mason also described sex as something with no set definition, arguing that one person’s definition of sex can vary from another’s.  

“While some people think of sex as only being when a penis goes in a vagina, ‘sex’ can really be any activity that a person does with themselves or others to become aroused,” she said. “There’s no such thing as ‘real’ sex, and it’s OK if your definition of sex is different from someone else’s.”

Mason is a certified sex coach and educator, according to WinkWink’s website, and holds other classes and coaching lessons to help people “work toward your intimacy goals.” 

Mason made headlines earlier this year when WinkWink announced a “Queer Youth Open Mic Night” for children ranging from ages 0 to 18 at the sex shop, billing it as one celebrating “youth pride” by holding a space and “stage for young queer voices in our community.”

Mason serves as board director for ​​the Bellingham School District, but the upcoming sex education classes will be held in her personal capacity as a local business owner, not as a school official, Rantz reported. Similarly, the open mic night was not endorsed by the school district.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/05/school-board-director-jenn-mason-to-teach-sexual-pleasure-class-to-9-year-olds/

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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)

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5 July, 2022

UK: Head teacher brings in police sniffer dog and random bag searches to stop county lines drugs coming into secondary school in genteel market town

A highly-rated secondary school in a genteel market town is bringing in a police sniffer dog and random bag searches to tackle 'county lines' drugs, it has been revealed.

The head of Queen Elizabeth's School in Wimborne, Dorset, has warned parents in a letter of the upcoming enforcement measures.

The 'highly trained' sniffer dog will be accompanied by its handler and will roam the classrooms, library and shared areas.

There will also be a PCSO searching bags to ensure there are no banned substances, including tobacco, vapes and cigarettes, on site.

The mixed school, which has over 1,500 pupils aged 13 to 18, is rated as Good by Ofsted.

They said there is no 'drug problem' at the school but they are acting to 'protect the pupils from the dangers of illicit drugs'.

The hardline approach has been welcomed by some parents, although others have questioned whether it is right to 'forewarn' students as they will 'now leave their stuff at home'.

Michelle Lloyd said: 'If no other good comes of it, it will be a deterrent during school hours. 'It's a large issue to tackle and I don't think it will ever be stopped completely.  'Making it more awkward for people to use school kids is a good move forward.'

However, Andrea Holloway responded: 'Defeated the object now! Forewarning is forearming!

'They should have said it will be happening not when. Teenagers are pretty savvy!!!!!'

And one social media commenter said the measures were too heavy-handed as they made school like a 'prison'.

Cindy Lou said: 'I think schools are going to far with sniffer dogs, it's school not prison or a detention centre.'

The letter to parents explaining the initiative states: 'As part of our determination to educate students about, and protect them from the dangers of illicit drugs, the Queen Elizabeth's School has a programme of work that is delivered through assemblies and as part of the Curriculum for Life Programmes.

'In the light of recent news items about 'county lines', we have arranged for a drugs sniffer dog to attend on one day during the week beginning July 4, 2022. This approach has also been taken by a number of schools locally.

'Ensuring that our school is a safe, drug free and healthy environment for all students to learn and develop is a priority and reflects our community's values and expectations.  'It is with these goals in mind that we are undertaking this procedure.

'Your son/daughter will have had this explained to them by their tutor prior to the visit to prepare them. 'The dog will move across the school from class to class and in the shared areas, such as the library and reception. 'Students will be asked to file past the dog who will indicate any concerns to his handler.

'The student's parents would then be informed if, on further investigations, these concerns needed to be explored further.

'Periodically we will also be undertaking bag searches to ensure no banned substances, including tobacco, vapes and cigarettes have been brought into the school.'

The school, which has also erected a large fence to boost its security, said the sniffer dog will be on site next week as part of an initiative being run in several Dorset schools.

Katie Boyes, headteacher of QE School, said: 'It is important to state that the use of a dog is not in reaction to an incident and there is not a drug problem at QE School.

'We want to make the school as safe as possible and like other local schools decided to invite a sniffer dog in with its handler.

'It is entirely a preventative measure and is designed to help reassure parents that we are doing everything to ensure their children are safe.

'The visit of the dog for a few hours is allied to our programme of work that educates the children about the dangers of drugs.

'The new fence has been put up because it is a safeguarding requirement, and it is the recommended height for safeguarding compliance within schools.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10969487/Head-teacher-brings-police-sniffer-dog-stop-county-lines-drugs-coming-secondary-school.html

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Public schools in Texas would rename slavery as 'involuntary relocation' under new social studies standards 

Public schools in Texas would describe slavery to second graders as 'involuntary relocation' under new social studies standards proposed to the state's education board.

A group of nine educators submitted the idea to the State Board of Education as part of Texas' efforts to develop new social studies curriculum, according to the Texas Tribune. 

The once-a-decade process updates what children learn in the state's nearly 8,900 public schools.

The board is considering curriculum changes one year after Texas passed a law to eliminate topics from schools that make students 'feel discomfort.'

Board member Aicha Davis, a Democrat who represents Dallas and Fort Worth, raised concerns during a June 15 meeting that the term wasn't a fair representation of the slave trade. 

The board sent the draft back for revision, urging the educator group to 'carefully examine the language used to describe events.'

'I can't say what their intention was, but that's not going to be acceptable,' Davis told The Texas Tribune on Thursday.

'The board -- with unanimous consent -- directed the work group to revisit that specific language,' Keven Ellis, chair of the Texas State Board of Education said in a statement issued late on Thursday. 

The group consists of nine educators, including a professor at the University of Texas.

It is one of many such groups that are advising the state education board to make changes to the curriculum.

Part of the proposed draft standards obtained by The Texas Tribune say students should 'compare journeys to America, including voluntary Irish immigration and involuntary relocation of African people during colonial times.'

In this particular case, the have been given a copy of Senate Bill 3, Texas' law which dictates how slavery and issues of race are taught in Texas. 

The law stipulates slavery cannot be taught as part of the true founding of the United States and that slavery was nothing more than a deviation from American values. 

'Young kids can grasp the concept of slavery and being kidnapped into it,' Annette Gordon-Reed, a history professor at Harvard University, said. 

'The African slave trade is unlike anything that had or has happened, the numbers and distance. Using 'involuntary relocation' to describe slavery threatens to blur out what actually occurred during that time in history. There is no reason to use the proposed language,' she said. 

'Tell children the truth. They can handle it,' she added. 

Stephanie Alvarez, who is a professor at the University of Texas told the Tribune she was not at the meeting where the language was discussed but said she found it  'extremely disturbing.' 

Texas' public education system has become heavily politicized in recent years, with lawmakers passing legislation to dictate how race and slavery should be taught in schools and conservative groups pouring large amounts of money into school board races.

Texas drew attention for a similar situation in 2015, when a student noticed wording in a textbook that referred to slaves who were brought to America as 'workers.' 

The book's publisher apologized and promised to increase the number of textbook reviewers it uses.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10971401/Some-Texas-schools-call-slavery-involuntary-relocation.html

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CUNY Schools Jews on the New Race Regime

Of all the signs that the Jewish community’s political influence has waned in New York City, perhaps none has been as stark as the City University of New York’s frequent spasms of open distaste toward the Jews, many of them Mizrahi, middle class, or foreign born, who attend its dozens of colleges and graduate schools. 

The CUNY law school faculty unanimously endorsed a student council Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions resolution targeting Israel in May. Those students had also chosen Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of a radical activist group committed to “globalizing the Intifada” against Israeli Jews and their sympathizers, as one of their commencement speakers. The Professional Staff Congress, a union representing 30,000 CUNY employees, had passed a resolution in 2021 condemning Israel for the “massacre of Palestinians” and stating the union would consider an endorsement of BDS sometime in the near future.

Even if one doesn’t believe that repeated, organized, and highly selective attacks on the world’s only Jewish state are antisemitic, Jewish students and faculty have often reported a climate of stifling hostility that has forced them to hide outward signs of their Jewishness, and made it impossible to hold or promote even neutral events like Holocaust commemorations. 

An engine of social mobility for generations of Jewish New Yorkers had become a place where one of the city’s largest ethnic minorities no longer felt welcome. Like the high quality of the municipal tap water, CUNY is one of the last points of pride in New York City’s rapidly declining public sector. But to its critics, the university administration doesn’t care about the antisemitism in its midst, or even recognize it as a problem.

Recourse lies with the few remaining elected representatives inclined to do something about the plight of the average New York Jew, who isn’t particularly rich, powerful, or cool, and holds the unhip belief that Israel should exist. The state of New York is in danger of losing its last Jewish member of the House of Representatives; meanwhile the city’s most powerful elected Jew, Comptroller Brad Lander, is a progressive from Brooklyn’s brownstone belt, someone notably at home in the bourgeois activist world of the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. The charge against CUNY’s alleged complacency is instead being led by one of the city’s least powerful elected Jews, at least on paper: A Ukrainian-born, 37-year-old woman who is one-fifth of the 51-member City Council’s Republican minority.

Inna Vernikov stood at the base of City Hall steps on Thursday morning in front of rows of activists in blue #EndJewHatred T-shirts. In the back, a man in a blue Keep America Great hat cradled a small dog; on the other side of the plaza facing New York City’s beaux-arts capitol building, perhaps the entire male membership of the Neturei Karta Hasidic sect chanted its predictable anti-Zionist slogans, hoisting the same signs they’ve been bringing to events like these for most of the past several decades. Above Vernikov, a trio of differently patterned Pride flags hanging from a stone balustrade suggested the city had now come under the control of a coalition of very colorful militia groups. This was a typical New York circus, complete with a pro-Israel demonstrator who introduced himself to me as a retired NYPD officer and longtime clown. But the petite Vernikov is a figure before whom nonsense evaporates.

“We have a major problem in this city,” Vernikov began, “a culture of antisemitism that’s engulfed our college campuses.” Vernikov has shoulder-length hair that is almost hypnotically black; her nails were painted the same deep white as her jacket. She delivered her remarks quickly and clearly, in an accent that can only exist in New York—Chernivtsi by way of Sheepshead Bay, containing textures of sharpness and emphasis originating on opposite sides of the planet. The first Republican to represent anywhere in Brooklyn in the City Council since 2002 speaks with a directness that may very well be native to southwestern Ukraine, but which anyone who rides the Q, F, or D trains far enough can instantly recognize.

Vernikov explained that the morning’s hearing had originally been scheduled for early June, only to be canceled when CUNY Chancellor Felix V. Matos Rodriguez said he couldn’t attend. The meeting was postponed to accommodate him. In a rhetorical gift to Vernikov, Rodriguez decided at the last second that he wouldn’t show up today either. “What a sham,” thundered the councilwoman. “What an insult to the Jewish community of New York … This is why we have this problem, because nobody’s being held accountable.”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/cuny-schools-jews-on-the-new-race-regime

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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)

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4 July, 2022

Is there no way to stop the secret brainwashing of Britain's next generation?

By PETER HITCHENS 

I will always remember the day they took away the history books. My small boarding school, on a rain-lashed Devon hilltop, had until that day taught us about the glory and grandeur of English history. It was a story of courage, freedom and the defeat of foreign threats.

But these volumes, their pages soft from use, their illustrations in wistful black and white, were no longer acceptable. They were gathered up and carted off. Instead, we were given glossy, brightly-coloured replacements with larger print and supposedly exciting photographs of a brave new world.

Luckily for me, the change came just too late. I had already absorbed all the old stuff and I would never be able to regard the 1945 Labour Government as being as exciting or interesting as the Battle of Trafalgar. I thought then, as I think now, that this country had indeed had a Glorious Revolution in 1688. 

Significantly, it was about the same time that they began to inflict the ‘New Maths’ on us – but once again I had been lucky enough to learn my times tables by heart long before then.

I should stress that this was a private school mainly attended by the sons of naval officers and prosperous farmers. I’d guess it was round about 1963. Yet even we, in that lost era, could not escape the rising flood of indoctrination which has been washing over British education ever since.

How deep and nasty that flood is we may never know. Its victims, the school pupils don’t know that they are the victims of propaganda, since they have no way of telling when they are being brainwashed. Parents only discover by accident what their children are being taught, then are refused permission to see what is going on. For, as we have learned in recent weeks, the level and nature of propaganda in schools is an official secret, as closely-guarded as our nuclear launch codes.

A parent at Haberdashers’ Hatcham College, an ‘academy’ in South-East London, was concerned about what her teenage daughter was being taught. She found she had been exposed to all kinds of violent and dubious material, including politicised rap music. An assembly was held to discuss ‘white privilege’, in which pupils were told that people perpetuated their privilege just by being white. 

And of course (as usual) there was sex education which was more about spreading liberal immorality than anything else. The only unusual thing about this is the determination of the parents involved to find out the facts, and good luck to them.

Most parents have neither the time nor the energy to take this up, and many will reasonably worry that, if they make a fuss, their child will suffer in some way. Are they wrong to fear this?

From my correspondence over the years, I am pretty sure modern education, state and private alike, is filled with radical, politically correct propaganda. This includes the curriculum. And the effective nationalisation of all state schools by the ‘academy’ programme has if anything made them even more secretive than when they used to be run by local government.

This indoctrination works. If you go on social media and engage in debate on some subjects, especially illegal drugs or the sexual revolution, it is amazing how uniform and instant the response is to any conservative or Christian argument.

Someone has taught them to say these things. This conformism is combined with almost total ignorance of history, English literature or anything else worth knowing. The great thinker, academic and author CS Lewis used to ask ‘What do they teach them at these schools?’ I think we now have a pretty good idea, precisely because they won’t tell us.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10976505/PETER-HITCHENS-no-way-stop-secret-brainwashing-generation.html

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Principal accused of wanting to oust white teachers created school of ‘insanity’: petition

A Washington Heights principal, accused by staffers of trying to divide the school by race, made good on a vow to ax white staffers and has let the school devolve into “insanity,” insiders said.

Paula Lev, the principal of High School for Law and Public Service faced a Department of Education probe last year after allegedly telling a teacher she was “going to get rid of all these white teachers that aren’t doing anything for the kids of our community,” according to a complaint.

The complaint, first filed with the DOE, is now before the state Division of Human Rights.

Lev, who is Dominican, gave excess notices to four white staffers at the 450-student school in the last year, and made other unpopular changes, insiders said.

Some of the excessed teachers found new jobs, so they weren’t officially considered cut; others left on their own; and at least three more teachers decided to call it quits this month, an insider said.

“There are many more teachers who have voiced that they plan to leave and they feel demoralized,” the staffer said. The exodus comes after teachers took an unusual vote of no confidence against Lev a year ago.

Fed up students are also demanding action.

One student, Angel Dilawar, 17, who will be a senior in September and is the class valedictorian, started a petition on change.org saying “we have had enough and cannot bear to witness the utter disorganization and insanity at our school.”

“We have some new teachers that are super under-qualified, and staff members that were fully experienced and qualified were excessed,” reads the petition that garnered more than 370 signatures in two months.

Dilawar told The Post that Lev has wasted money on frills like hallway TV monitors and $50,000 worth of hoodies to go with school uniforms that no one wears. Meanwhile, violence has increased, she said.

“Right now students can do anything they want and they’re not going to get in trouble,” Dilawar said.

Dilawar said while helping out in the school’s college office she was asked to write recommendation letters for her peers because the assistant who was supposed to do the work had a limited grasp of English.

“These students would be shocked to find out that their recommendation letters would be written by a student, a junior,” she said.

Dilawar said she had emailed Schools Chancellor David Banks numerous times and had not received a response.

Another student, Hannah Maldonado, 16, who will be a senior, said Lev even created divisiveness during a recent Culture Day celebration to promote diversity. When Maldonado asked for a greater musical variety to be played at the cafeteria event, Lev said in Spanish to the DJ to play one other song — and then to “go back to Spanish music,” the student recalled.

“I was told that the student government curated a playlist to be inclusive to all of our cultures,” said Maldonado, who speaks Spanish.

Lev did not return a request for comment.

The DOE contended only two staffers had been excessed, a decision it maintained was determined by contractual rules regarding seniority.

It said a new position had been created to focus on “conflict resolution” and the Culture Day music selection was “informed” by a student survey.

“The Department of Education is absolutely committed to providing a strong and supportive environment in all of our schools and for all of our students. We work with our principals every day to ensure that students and staff receive the support they need,” said spokeswoman Jenna Lyle.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/02/principal-accused-of-wanting-to-oust-white-teachers-created-school-of-insanity-petition/

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Australia: Shameful star chambers ruin men's lives

Bettina Arndt

In a recent judgment about a sexual misconduct case at Cornell University, the judge compared the campus disciplinary committees to the infamous English Star Chambers. He warned, ‘These threats to due process and academic freedom are matters of life and death for our great universities.’

We too should be regarding what’s happening at our universities with utmost seriousness.

Our universities have wrongly taken it upon themselves to set aside our criminal law system and put in its place their own star chambers where administrators make life-changing decisions about accused young men, derailing their education and publicly shaming them.

This is happening every week in Australia simply because our lily-livered universities are too afraid to stand up to the feminist bullies demanding action in response to the fake campaign claiming a rape culture on campus.

For two years now I have been helping a young man being persecuted by a New South Wales regional university. I’ll call him ‘Andrew’ to protect his privacy – critical now that he has finally received his degree and with great relief left the university to start a new job and a new life. He’s made a podcast with me, bravely deciding to tell his story as a cautionary tale to male students, warning of dangers awaiting them at our universities.

Note: Having witnessed the ruthless behaviour of our universities, I regretfully decided to delete the name of this institution from the podcast rather than hold back on my commentary for fear of legal attack. 

For Andrew, it all started one night in March 2020, when he was a 22-year-old final year pharmacy student.

He was at a typical student gathering that involved a bunch of kids, including other pharmacy students, happily drinking together. But one female student, whom I will call ‘Fran’, went overboard and ended up vomiting and needing help to get back to her room at the college. A few students went with her, got her settled in bed, and then asked Andrew to keep an eye on her.

Andrew’s version of events, accepted by the court, was that when they were left alone, Fran suddenly became amorous, kissing Andrew, taking her pants off, and trying to undress him. He protested, telling her he had a girlfriend, but she persisted in pulling his pants down. That’s when the other students walked in on them. Fran’s friends quickly took control, demanding Andrew leave, despite Fran’s protest that he hadn’t done anything wrong and there was no need for him to go.

Despite this abrupt end to the evening initially, there seemed no negative repercussions, with Andrew having friendly social media exchanges with Fran where she showed no sign of any concern. What Andrew didn’t know was that Fran’s friends were at work, rewriting the history of the evening, and persuading Fran to make a complaint to the head of the college.

That happened, and the university leapt into action and started conducting its own investigation. Think about that. Here we have administration people – who not legally trained – blundering around, encouraging the young women to come up with their versions of events that evening. Suddenly there was the suggestion that Fran’s drink might have been spiked and that she was in and out of consciousness. Unsurprisingly, the whole scandal took on a life of its own and by the time the police were involved and sworn witness statements were taken, these colourful additions were part of the story.

It doesn’t take a lawyer to understand how that compromises the basic principles of police investigation. But that was just the beginning.

Andrew knew nothing about what was going on until two months later when he suddenly received a call from the university administration telling him he was excluded from the college and university campus until what was now a criminal matter was determined.

Andrew was no ordinary student. He was a hard-working kid on a scholarship doing honours in the final year of his pharmacy course. He was a resident fellow at the college, elected to the SRC, and a shining sports star. He was captain of various sporting teams, and had numerous leadership roles… All positions which he had to abandon when charged with a criminal offence.

When the shattered Andrew first contacted me, he was facing the frightening prospect of a criminal trial and the humiliation of finding excuses to withdraw from his numerous university positions, against the backdrop of malicious rumours about the allegations he was facing.

It was a tough year as we found local lawyers willing to represent him in the criminal case and brought in others to jump through the ludicrous hoops being erected by the university administrators. Boy, were these bureaucrats relishing in their power to torment this young man.

Although Andrew could study online in the early months of 2020 during Covid lockdowns, he needed to get back on campus for a few days in October to attend an intensive practical course to complete his degree. Naturally, the university’s petty tyrants said no.

Lawyers’ letters flew back and forth and then we had a breakthrough. A friend at the university dug out a regulation stating that the, ‘University must take steps to ensure students are not academically disadvantaged while a matter is being determined.’ Whoopee! That was inserted into the next lawyer’s letter and finally did the trick. Andrew was allowed to complete his course work – but the university still decided to withhold his degree, awaiting the decision from the magistrate’s court.

Convicted felons are allowed to study at our universities. What gives any university the right to steal a student’s degree – an asset towards which he has devoted years of effort and spent tens of thousands of dollars? Our laws say nothing about withholding degrees as punishment for sex crimes. The universities have made this stuff up with no proper authority.

So here we have the university telling this hard-working student that they were withholding his degree, refusing to allow him to take his rightful place as a qualified pharmacist, derailing his pharmacy internship, and costing him between $30-60,000 in earnings that year. This situation left him in limbo for half a year until a local magistrate could make a decision, and then another eight months while their star chamber swung into action.

In June 2021, the case was heard and the magistrate very quickly dismissed the single charge of ‘sexual touching’ that Andrew was facing, saying Andrew’s version of events ‘may well be true’. Fran repeated in court that she did not feel Andrew had done anything wrong at the time and confirmed that she had objected to her friends making Andrew go, asking, ‘Why does he have to leave?’

So that was it. Smooth sailing after that, you might imagine. Not with this university in charge…

We had an amusing moment late last year when Andrew received an email congratulating him on his degree and inviting him to apply to have his degree sent to him. He quickly filled in the right form and hoped for the best. Sadly, no degree arrived through the post. The invitation turned out to be a mistake. The bumbling administration then announced there was still a misconduct charge to be determined and the university planned its own investigation.

Here we have our justice system deciding a young man was innocent, but that’s not good enough for this great university. They chose to have another go, conducting their investigation and decision-making process. The reason? This university, as is true of all similar institutions, have decided they are entitled to their own star chamber determining these matters using a lower standard of proof. So, if he gets off in the criminal system there remains another, easier way to nail him.

Sure enough, after months of delay whilst everyone awaited the transcript of the magistrate’s written judgment, the university set up its investigation and re-examined all the evidence that the magistrate had used to determine Andrew was completely innocent. They then grilled Andrew – denying him any legal support in the process.

Eventually, they found him guilty of ‘behavioural misconduct’ because he should have somehow resisted any contact with the drunk girl. That’s very different from the original ‘sexual touching’ charge where he was wrongly alleged to have done something wrong, behaving inappropriately towards the girl. The university decided he was guilty of not doing something, failing to resist or retreat quickly enough from a girl’s amorous advances.

Not only are males now to be held responsible for taking advantage of drunk women, they are in trouble for letting such a woman near them.

Andrew was officially reprimanded and told he wasn’t allowed back on campus for three years. The decision was issued by a brand-new Vice Chancellor, who was no doubt keen to throw a bone to the feminists that control the university, as they do in all such institutions. Andrew was naturally upset by this decision, but the punishment hardly mattered. He has no intention of going near this dastardly institution ever again.

This week Joe Biden’s government announced new regulations to wind back the meagre reforms to the American campus star chambers which the Trump administration had managed to push through. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that Biden’s new regulations will eliminate or weaken basic procedural protections for students accused of sexual misconduct:

‘The right to a live hearing? Erased. Cross-examination? Unrecognisable. The standard of proof to determine guilt? Weakened,’ sums up the correspondent, adding that this sets the Education Department on a collision course with the courts. As he explains, over the past decade in America, judges nationwide have issued more than 200 rulings favourable to students accused of sexual misconduct, chastising universities for ‘rushing to judgment in rigged proceedings designed to appease the federal government’.

Our Aussie rigged proceedings were designed by our universities not to appease the government, but to kowtow to the feminist mob. That’s why they attract absolutely no scrutiny from our legacy media which serves precisely the same master. How else can we explain why journalists happily bang on about trans athletes – an issue which impacts tiny numbers in our community – whilst ignoring the huge population of families whose sons are at risk of injustice at our universities?

Our society’s indifference to what’s happening here is a national disgrace.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/07/shameful-star-chambers-ruin-mens-lives/

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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)

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3 July, 2022

Best Teachers Could Be Your Parents, ‘Homeschool Awakening’ Documentary Suggests

Actor Kirk Cameron’s new documentary “The Homeschool Awakening” features 14 homeschooling families. Those families, failed by the public education system, have embarked on a homeschooling journey, and they share how the decision has changed their lives.  

Like most other American families, those parents initially sent their children to public school because “it’s just what you do.” The public education norm controlled their family life, but they began to question it.  

“As a mom with my first baby, you are just with them 24/7, but then all of a sudden, time for school and the kind of unnatural feeling inside of me: ‘Is this really what I should be doing, dropping them off for a lot of hours, somewhere else?’” asks Cameron’s wife, Chelsea. The couple has six children, all of whom were homeschooled.  

Should it be the norm for a 6-year-old to spend eight hours away from his or her mother? Should the norm be for parents to have no idea what their children are being taught? Should the norm be considering a child smart based on how they compare with their peers? The 14 featured families are driven to challenge these norms and more through their homeschooling lifestyles.  

The parents addressed common concerns brought up by non-homeschoolers, such as whether homeschooled children would be socialized or whether the parents themselves are qualified to teach their own children.  

How do homeschooled children socialize? Well, do you consider socialization sitting at a desk next to someone for eight hours a day, with an hour for recess? Or is socialization, as these homeschooling parents suggest, the freedom to pursue friendships with individuals of their choice as opposed to who they are placed next to in class.  

The documentary highlights how homeschool children socialize through co-ops, sports, part-time jobs, and more.  

Many parents have the misconception they’re not qualified to teach their children, but Kathy Koch, the author of “8 Great Smarts: Discover and Nurture Your Child’s Intelligences,” and who holds a doctorate in reading and educational psychology, said, “Homeschoolers, we don’t teach content. We teach children.”  

She encouraged prospective homeschooling parents, saying, “You know your children better than anybody else, and you love your children more than anybody else, and you will be an excellent teacher.” 

She added, “One of the greatest advantages of homeschooling is learning with the kids.”  

“We redeemed over 16,000 hours to be with our kids just because we chose to home-educate our children,” one father noted.  

The parents in the film realized their responsibility in shaping their children’s minds. The benefits of homeschooling outweighed the sacrifices. The parents explained how homeschooling set them free to individualize learning unique to each child’s needs, and his or her style and pace of learning; to preserve their child’s identity, protecting them from negative outside influences; to deepen their relationship with their child through one-on-one time; and to allow for free, healthy discourse in their homes.  

As a former homeschooled student myself, I thought the film did a fantastic job showcasing the joys and freedom homeschooling offers while also including the common worries parents might have before they homeschool.  

The film did not offer a look into homeschooling as in depth as a personal experience would, but I think it would be helpful for those parents even slightly contemplating homeschooling to get a feel for the lifestyle and benefits it offers.  

The film concluded by featuring children expressing gratitude to their parents for homeschooling them. 

As one son said, “It is so easy to buy into the narrative you need to be this, you need to be that, that you lose your own sense of identity. I don’t know why you are here if you are just trying to be someone else. The greatest gift I was given was my own identity and the ability to do things my way.”  

“The Homeschool Awakening” was shown in theatres on two nights only last week, but post-theatrical release plans will be announced on thehomeschoolawakening.com. 

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/06/24/best-teachers-could-be-your-parents-homeschool-awakening-documentary-suggests

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Liberal ‘Tolerance’ on Display After Overturning of Roe v. Wade

The war on history came for all our past, from Columbus to the Founding Fathers to Abraham Lincoln. Now, college campuses appear to be conducting mop-up operations.

The College Fix reports that officials removed a bust of Lincoln from a Cornell University library exhibit after somebody complained.

“Someone complained, and it was gone,” Cornell University biology professor Randy Wayne said, according to The College Fix.

It wasn’t just the bust. They removed the plaque with the words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, too. In its place stands an empty display and a plain white wall.

Perhaps that says a lot more about the current state of our “elite” institutions than a statue of Lincoln and an ode to America’s founding principles.

The Lincoln bust and plaque were part of a “temporary exhibit” put on display in 2013 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Given that the exhibit has been there for nearly a decade, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the disappearance occurs now.

Cornell, according to The Fix, hasn’t announced why it decided to remove the bust and plaque.

In his interview with The Fix, Wayne explained what Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address mean to him and why it’s a travesty that the school removed them:

The Gettysburg Address is an incredible speech. We have a handwritten copy in Lincoln’s hand. It is known as the Bancroft Copy. It comes with an envelope signed by Lincoln (using his franking privilege), and a letter to [George] Bancroft, thanking him for requesting a copy of the address to put in a book to be sold for charity. I show these documents to my class, as well as the heavy iron manacles worn by slaves. Yes, we have a Lincoln legacy that has been inspirational to me and my students. To take his words (and bust) out of the hallway says something about our love of liberty.

Did this complaint come from a woke student or the ghost of Jefferson Davis? It’s unclear.

Still, it’s telling that a single complaint led to the removal of a cherished part of our history, with seemingly no resistance whatsoever from college administrators. Par for the course. 

When our country’s most powerful institutions aren’t going out of their way to placate the most absurd demands of every left-wing extremist, they generally are leading the revolution.

Although one would think Lincoln’s role in the dismantling of slavery would earn him at least a few points with the woke, it hasn’t stopped them from canceling the Great Emancipator in the past. 

No accomplishment is great enough. A single transgression against the current, evolving standards of social justice makes one susceptible to cancellation.

If you aren’t serving the cause, you are dispatched easily to the dustbin of history. Or perhaps that’s the dustbin of an Ivy League school’s library.

In 2020, when the San Francisco Unified School District suggested stripping Lincoln’s name from a school, the chairman of the naming committee said the 16th president “did not show through policy or rhetoric that black lives ever mattered” to him.

Lincoln only led this country through a war that ended slavery, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and ultimately was killed while leading this cause. But that just isn’t good enough for the zealous, middling bureaucrats now standing to judge him.

Of course, plenty of those who go through our esteemed colleges don’t appear to have much of a grasp of even the most basic facts about Lincoln’s life, or history in general. One of the leaders of a movement to force removal of a Lincoln statue at the University of Wisconsin said in 2017 that among the reasons is because Lincoln “owned slaves.”

Lincoln never owned slaves. No big deal. Why let a few details get in the way of the narrative about how our past and greatest heroes amount to little more than an edifice of structural racism?

It shouldn’t be surprising to see Lincoln unceremoniously dumped by Cornell or any other Ivy League school.

A few years ago, the so-called experts—as the corporate media portrayed them—weighed in on the war on history and said it was preposterous that removal of Confederate statues and monuments would lead to a general attack on historic figures such as Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.

Now these experts stay mostly silent as Lincoln, Washington, and many other parts of our past come down, too. 

A vacant space truly is the best symbol to represent the values of our elite institutions.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/06/29/cornell-university-removes-bust-of-abraham-lincoln-after-getting-1-complaint

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Australian teachers expose how much they REALLY earn and the reasons why they're striking: 'Pay isn't even the problem'

Teachers in New South Wales have explained the reasons why they're striking after marching on NSW Parliament demanding better wages and working conditions.

Dressed in red shirts emblazoned with the text 'More than Thanks', fired up teachers called on the government to offer them more than a three per cent pay rise on Thursday.

The NSW Teachers Federation is asking for a pay rise of between five and seven per cent to keep up with the cost of living.

Aussie teachers on Reddit and social media have cited work load as their main concern. 

'I earn $110K. My problem isn't really how much I'm paid,' one teacher wrote.

'It's the ridiculous amount of work that has nothing to directly do with teaching and learning. It's the changes in policies that require teachers to support a wider array of students in the same class.'

The same teacher added that schools have 'no idea how to measure workload' and teachers often have to 'parent students'. 

Another posted: 'Pay isn't even the problem though - it's workload.'

'My contract says 30 hours a week, but I've easily cleared that by Wednesday because of admin. What I wouldn't give for a PA, just so I could do my job.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10967581/NSW-teachers-reveal-real-reason-Thursdays-strike-Sydney-workload.html

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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)

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1 July, 2022

The attraction of Britain's top private High Schools

<i>As told by Tom Utley</i>

As soon as our eldest son was born in 1985, I put him down for Eton, and I did the same for boy number two when he came along in 1987. 

Looking back, I can see that I was suffering at best from an extreme form of wishful thinking, at worst from absurd delusions of grandeur.

Even at the time, I realised it was very unlikely that I would ever be able to afford the fees, which now stand at a cool £48,501 per boy per year.

Indeed, back then in the 1980s, when Mrs U and I were permanently on our uppers, the registration fee alone almost broke the Utley bank — and if my memory serves me, this was a mere £15 for each boy (call that about £38 in today’s money).

But then I told myself that anything might happen to change my financial circumstances in the 13 years before the boys would be old enough to start at Eton. 

Perhaps a long-lost great-uncle would die childless in some far-flung corner of the globe, leaving me his diamond mines. Or — who knows? — I might even write that best-selling novel (which I still haven’t quite got round to, getting on for 40 years later).

Enough to say that by the time Utley boys numbers three and four entered this world, in 1991 and 1993, I’d come down to earth with a bump. I realised there wasn’t the ghost of a chance that I’d ever be able to send any of our boys to the school, and I saved myself the money it would have cost to register these new arrivals.

Disgraceful

Mind you — and here’s a shameful confession — I always thought the £30 I’d invested in registering the first two was money well spent. This was because for 13 years it gave me bragging rights, enabling me to drawl, whenever people asked me where we planned to send them: ‘Actually, we’re not quite sure yet, but they’re down for Eton.’

Disgraceful, I grant you (though perhaps not as shameless as a former newspaper diarist friend, who habitually wore an Old Etonian tie, despite the fact that he’d never been anywhere near the place).

So why did I pick Eton as my first choice?

Well, I’d like to convince you — to convince myself, if I’m to be perfectly honest — that my main reason was that it is, and always has been, an extremely good school.

I’d been there only twice in my life. Once was for the celebrations on Founder’s Day, June 4, when I was the guest of family friends who had a son at Eton. The other time was for the 21st birthday party of my university friend Robert McCrum, whose father was then the headmaster. The party was held in the fabulous house that went with his dad’s job.

On both occasions I’d loved everything about the place — the history, the traditions, the venerable old buildings, the awe-inspiring facilities, the acres of playing fields on which the iron Duke of Wellington said the battle of Waterloo had been won.

All of which brings me to my sadness over the news that the traditional annual cricket match between Eton and Harrow is to be banished from Lord¿s, where it has been played since the first fixture in 1805

All of which brings me to my sadness over the news that the traditional annual cricket match between Eton and Harrow is to be banished from Lord’s, where it has been played since the first fixture in 1805

To this day, I remember the lavish picnics that appeared from the boots of Bentleys and Rolls-Royces on June 4. These were not picnics as I’d been used to them, spent squatting uncomfortably on rugs, sticky with spilt Lucozade, swatting away wasps amid the crumbs of sausage rolls and egg sandwiches.

These were veritable banquets of lobster and salmon, succulent beef, strawberries and profiteroles, served on picnic tables with crisp, white, linen tablecloths and washed down with champagne, cooled in silver buckets.

One day, I thought, one day I’ll come here in my own Bentley to see my own sons rowing down the Thames in flower-strewn boaters, chanting the traditional refrain as they’d face first one bank of the river, then the other: ‘Hats off, Eton! Hats off, Slough!’

But what I liked particularly about the school, formed from my own experience of several Old Etonians, was that it seemed to benefit brainboxes and thickos equally. The academically inclined were offered the best of teaching, while the dunces were imbued with that distinctive Etonian self-confidence — OK, nauseating arrogance, if you prefer — which seemed to keep them happy in their own skin.

Illustrious

Above all, I wanted my boys to be happy — and whether they turned out to be bright or dim, Eton seemed to offer the best guarantee of that.

Or at least that’s what I told myself. But I may as well admit, since I have no secrets from readers (well, not many), that I was also drawn to the sheer social cachet of the place.

True, my own school — Westminster — is also very old, very pricey and very good (it has seldom been out of the top three in the country’s exam league tables, and has often come in at No 1).

Like Eton, it has its illustrious roll-call of famous old boys, from Christopher Wren to Andrew Lloyd Webber, with six Prime Ministers in between. But let’s face it, Westminster is a distinctively middle-class, academic hothouse compared with the much grander Eton, which has an even longer list of famous alumni — including, dammit, no fewer than 20 Prime Ministers.

This week¿s match, which ended in victory for Harrow, may turn out to have been the last ever clash between the two schools at the ground known as the home of cricket. And all in the name of ¿inclusivity¿

This week’s match, which ended in victory for Harrow, may turn out to have been the last ever clash between the two schools at the ground known as the home of cricket. And all in the name of ‘inclusivity’

Yes, I know it’s terribly unfair that some children in this country enjoy huge advantages through no merit of their own, but simply because of the accident of birth that gave them parents rich enough to send them to posh schools. But as I’m far from the first to observe, life is unfair — always has been, always will be.

Indeed, I would go further, and suggest that attempts to make the poor richer by hammering the rich and abolishing privilege have almost always ended up making everyone poorer. Add the fact that I revel in the glories of our history and traditions, and you’ll see that I’m quite out of tune with the egalitarian, Britain-bashing spirit of the age.

Killjoy

All of which brings me to my sadness over the news that the traditional annual cricket match between Eton and Harrow is to be banished from Lord’s, where it has been played since the first fixture in 1805. This took place shortly before the battle of Trafalgar, with the poet Lord Byron appearing for the Harrow team.

In the true spirit of the times, the MCC — never noted in the past for its commitment to egalitarianism — has decided that the match is to be replaced by the finals of boys’ and girls’ Twenty20 competitions, open to all secondary schools. Indeed, this week’s match, which ended in victory for Harrow, may turn out to have been the last ever clash between the two schools at the ground known as the home of cricket. And all in the name of ‘inclusivity’.

Oh, for heavens’ sake, I ask you: What harm did this match ever do? Was anyone seriously offended by it — anyone, that is, apart from a maniacal minority of killjoy class-warriors on Twitter, who thrive on hatred of the rich and privileged (which is the one phobia, apart from contempt for Britain’s history, that’s deemed acceptable in woke society)?

For good measure, the MCC is also banishing the annual Varsity match between Oxford and Cambridge, which has been giving innocent pleasure to thousands at Lord’s since 1827.

I’m with Henry Blofeld, the former Test Match Special commentator — he with the impossibly posh accent and outrageously dreadful dress-sense — when he says: ‘Dropping these two fixtures has been done in an underhand way, without consulting the members. There’s a nasty taste to this.’

What bastion of privilege will be next for the chop? The Henley Regatta? Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot? The opera at Glyndebourne (where that class-warrior Angela Rayner was spotted sipping champers last week)?

God spare us from a world of dreary uniformity, in which none of us can aspire to even a taste of how the other half lives.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10971463/TOM-UTLEY-Eton-vs-Harrow-snobs-paradise-God-save-world-dreary-uniformity.html

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CUNY boss a no-show as Jewish students decry anti-Semitism

Students and professors at New York City’s public colleges testified Thursday that they have been targeted over their Jewish faith, telling lawmakers that the campuses of CUNY and other schools are a hotbed of anti-Semitism.

CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez, however, was a no-show for the long-awaited hearing held by the City Council Committee on Higher Education — and his refusal to testify didn’t go unnoticed.

“Last night, in a very cowardly fashion, the chancellor said he won’t appear. Instead he sent a lawyer to represent him. What a sham, what an insult to the Jewish community of New York,” said Brooklyn Councilwoman Inna Vernikov.

“When it comes to Jews, do Jewish lives matter?!” fumed Vernikov, a Ukranian-born Jew, who is the ranking Republican on the Council’s Education Committee.

The chancellor missed out on hearing horror stories from students and professors at city universities.

Former CUNY School of Law student Rafaella Gunz said she transferred to Yeshiva  University because, “I feared for my physical and emotional well being” after she was demonized by other students over her Jewish faith and Zionist beliefs.

Joshua Greenberg, a Baruch College student, said he was assaulted for being a “Jewish, disabled student,” and complained about restrictions on prayer. “It’s completely unacceptable what’s going on at Baruch College,” he said.

Michael Goldstein, a professor at Kingsborough Community College, said “it is horrible for Jews at CUNY”, claiming that anti-Semites defaced a photo of his dad, Leonard Goldstein, the former longtime president of Kingsborough, at the Brooklyn campus.

Students outside the CUNY system also sounded the alarm about anti-Semitism at their campuses.

Former NYU student Adela Cojab Moadeb said the downtown private college became “very unsafe for Jewish students” where pro-Palestinian supporters “equated Zionism with Nazism” and students were exposed to the burning of the Israel flag.

“I was afraid,” said Cojab Moadeb, who filed a federal civil rights complaint against NYU that resulted in a settlement, which The Post reported on in 2020.

Top reps from CUNY testified remotely, but did not have data at hand on the number of anti-Jewish incidents on its campuses, and acknowledged that it does not have a systemwide sensitivity training about anti-Semitism.

Bronx Councilman Eric Dinowitz, chairman of the higher education committee and head of the Council’s Jewish Caucus, said he was “deeply disappointed” that Matos Rodriguez, the CUNY chancellor, opted not to attend.

His absence and that other CUNY officials testifying remotely “doesn’t fill me with hope” that the university, which oversees 26-public colleges in the city, will aggressively stamp out hatred against Jewish students and professors, Dinowitz said.

Dinowitz read off some of the slurs and hate symbols that Jewish students who testified anonymously faced on CUNY campuses including, “We need Hitler again,” calls for the murder of Jews, the presence of swastikas, “jokes about Jews in ovens” and finding a Star of David smeared in feces, among others.

Council Republican Minority Leader Joe Borelli noted that Matos Rodriguez testified before the Council on CUNY’s budget request “begging for money from City Hall” but on Thursday he was MIA “when it comes to discussing the very serious and pervasive nature of anti-Semitism on CUNY campuses.”

Gerard Felitti, an attorney with the pro-Jewish Lawfare Project who is representing a Jewish victim in a federal hate crime case, called on Matos Rodriguez to be replaced by a chancellor “who cares about the Jewish people.”

CUNY said it is usually represented at Council hearings by campus leaders and subject experts who closely oversee the topic being discussed, while chancellors typically testify at the budget hearing.

During their testimony, CUNY senior vice chancellor for institutional affairs Glenda Grace and vice chancellor for student affairs Denise Maybank rattled off programs and events at various campuses to help combat anti-Semitism. “We understand more has to be done.” Grace said.

Maybank said “I hear you” and that more has to done to deal with “uncivil discourse” before it crosses the line into discrimination. She said it “remains our responsibility” to make students “feel safe and welcome on campus.”

The Jewish advocacy group AMHCA testified that is logged more than 150 anti-Semitic incidents on 11 CUNY campuses since 2015, when it began its tracking.

More than 60 of those incidents involve acts that directly targeted Jewish students for harm, including swastikas and other types of “genocidal” vandalism, bullying, suppression of movement and demonization.

Most of the incidents involving Jewish students being harassed on CUNY campuses have been Israel-related, and these acts have more than doubled over the last year, said AHCA Director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin.

https://nypost.com/2022/06/30/cuny-boss-a-no-show-as-jewish-students-decry-anti-semitism/

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NYC Council’s gripes on school cuts come with an extra heaping of audacity

It’s not unusual that City Council members are griping over some modest spending cuts for schools; as pawns of the teachers union, they’re always going to demand more money for schools. Yet their complaints this year come with an extra dose of audacity.

For one thing, the councilmembers themselves approved this year’s $101 billion city budget, which includes a modest $215 million in cuts for the city’s Department of Education. Now they’re turning around and blaming DOE mismanagement.

Yet the cuts represent a mere 0.7% of the agency’s $31 billion budget, certainly in line with falling enrollments. And don’t forget: Some of the schools’ budget last year came from DC via COVID-relief funds, to pay for extra pandemic-related costs. The pandemic’s over, so a slightly smaller budget is to be expected.

Get this, too: The mayor’s office says per-pupil spending will actually rise to $31,434, up from pre-pandemic figures — the highest of any big city in the nation. (And the DOE has another $4.3 billion in unspent federal COVID stimulus money to spend by 2025.)

Then there’s Schools Chancellor David Banks’ point: DOE “has a $31 billion annual budget … and yet we have 65% of Black and brown children who never achieve proficiency.” He calls that “outrageous” — a “betrayal.”

Council members who truly care about kids ought to be railing, like Banks, not about cuts but about the poor quality of education schools provide despite all those billions.

https://nypost.com/2022/06/30/nyc-councils-gripes-on-school-cuts-come-with-an-extra-heaping-of-audacity/

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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)

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Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.


TERMINOLOGY: The English "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".


MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.


The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed


Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.


Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor


I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.


Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".


For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.


The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.


Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.


Comments above by John Ray



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