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30 June, 2023
Supreme Court Strikes Down Race-Based Admissions at Harvard and U.N.C.
It's a wonder that blatant racial discrimination survived there for so long, given the 14th Amendment. And the Left are mourning the loss of their power to discriminate. Ever since Karl Marx they have been obsessed with race. Marx was an antisemite even though he was himself a Jew!
I note in the NYT article below that Democrats were pressing for equal opportunity when in fact they were plainly advocating UNequal opportunity. The mind of a Leftist is a strange thing. To them, black can be white, if I may risk using those terms
If Harvard really is forced to admit purely on merit without regard to race, its student body will shortly become mainly Asian, with a white minority of mainly Jews. Much heartburn! We can be sure that who is actually admitted in the near future will be very carefully and widely scrutinized so Harvard will not easily be able to slide around the law.
What Harvard will do has however already been foreshadowed: Blacks will be considered to have endured "Hardship" and will be admitted on those grounds. But a lot of immigrant Asians will have claims of real hardship, so the lawsuits will keep coming. In a rerun of the Bakke case, some smart working class white or Asian kid will challenge the selection of a middle-class black kid and the fun will begin. I would not like to be in the shoes of any black kid who does get selected though. He will be minutely scrutinized
The 6-3 ruling could drastically alter college admissions policies across the country. Criticizing the decision, President Biden said this was “not a normal court” and directed the Education Department “to analyze what practices can build a more inclusive and diverse” student body.
Race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, the latest decision by its conservative supermajority upending decades of jurisprudence on a contentious issue of American life.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the 6-3 majority, said the two programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner” and “involve racial stereotyping,” in a manner that violates the Constitution.
Universities can consider how race has affected a student’s life — a topic they may write about in an application essay, for example — but he warned schools not to use such considerations as a surreptitious means of racial selection. “Universities may not simply establish through the application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today,” he wrote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor summarized her dissent from the bench — a rare move that signals profound disagreement. The court, she wrote, was “further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.”
“The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated,” she wrote.
The decision reflects the country’s division over affirmative action, which breaks along racial and political lines, and could have far-reaching effects. Beyond forcing colleges and universities across the country to revisit their admissions practices, the ruling could set the stage for challenges to diversity efforts in the business world.
President Biden assailed the ruling in a televised address hours after it was handed down, saying the country could not allow the decision to be “the last word” on the issue of affirmative action.
“Discrimination still exists in America,” he said, repeating his words for emphasis. “Today’s decision does not change that.”
Mr. Biden paused before leaving his remarks as a reporter asked if the court was “rogue.” “This is not a normal court,” he responded.
The opinions in the case — including concurring opinions from Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh and another dissenting opinion from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — total 237 pages. (Justice Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case because she had been on the university’s board of overseers.)
Chief Justice Roberts, who has long been skeptical of racial preferences, emphasized that students “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual.” That is likely to make admissions essays a crucial way for students to discuss their racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Mr. Biden offered guidance to colleges about how to move forward, proposing they take into account the adversity a student has overcome when choosing applicants from the pool of students that meet their admission standards. Colleges “should not abandon their commitment to ensure student bodies of diverse backgrounds that reflect all of America,” he said.
The two cases were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by Edward Blum, a legal activist who has organized many lawsuits challenging race-conscious admissions policies and voting rights laws, several of which have reached the Supreme Court. He said his organization would be “vigilant” in making sure colleges and universities adhere to the ruling, warning their leaders not to try to create workarounds in order to consider race.
Conservative leaders and advocacy groups celebrated the ruling. Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, one of the nation’s largest conservative groups, said that the affirmative action ruling Thursday, coupled with the Supreme Court’s decision last year that ended the constitutional right to abortion, “serve as a triumphant return to restoring our tattered Constitution.”
Nine states already ban the use of race-conscious college admissions at their public universities, and their experience could provide a sign of the ruling’s consequences.
Congressional Democrats condemned Thursday’s Supreme Court decision dismantling race-conscious college admissions as a step backward for racial justice, while Republicans largely celebrated the ruling, saying it would make the process more fair.
Democrats predicted that the decision would diminish progress on racial justice, and many committed to continue pressing for equal opportunity.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/29/us/affirmative-action-supreme-court
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Suddenly, School Choice: Its Rapid Post-Pandemic Expansion Sets Up a Big Pass/Fail Test for Education
A growing number of states are adopting a comprehensive new type of school choice program that would pose a threat to public schools if many students were to leave them for a private education.
Eight states – including Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and West Virginia – have approved “universal” or near-universal school choice laws since 2021. They open the door completely to school choice by making all students, including those already in private schools and from wealthy families, eligible for about $7,000 to $10,000 in state funding each year for their education.
What’s more, most of these states have also enacted education savings accounts, or ESAs. They give families much more freedom than traditional tuition vouchers, depositing state funds into private accounts to spend on virtually anything related to learning, from homeschooling and online classes to therapy and supplies.
The universal laws amount to a bracing change in school choice. Such programs have existed for decades but until now have been limited to a narrow set of students, such as those from low-income families, or in poor performing public schools, or in need of special education.
By making all students eligible, regardless of their ability to pay for a private education, universal programs in the eight states expand the pool of possible participants by about 4 million students, according to an estimate by EdChoice, an advocacy group. That’s a 40% increase in eligibility since 2021, bringing the total to 13.6 million students after the programs start in the next few years.
School choice advocates – led by grassroots conservative Christian groups, big money political lobbies like American Federation for Children, and education nonprofits like EdChoice – call the universal programs a major milestone in their long and contentious battle for parental rights. They argue that parents, not the government, are best suited to direct the education of their children and should receive taxpayer support to do so as a competitive check on public schools they also pay for but consider failing or inadequate.
But over the years, school choice has suffered from a low participation rate, with fewer than 1 million students partaking in state programs today, mostly to attend religous schools, in a nation with about 50 million public school students. The big question is whether universal laws, paired with the flexibility of ESAs to customized learning, will spur a major exodus to private schooling.
“Universal choice is really a significant move beyond the existing programs we have now,” says Professor Patrick Wolf at the University of Arkansas, who has studied school choice for 25 years. “In terms of regulating education providers, this is a much stronger move into the free-market provision of K-12.”
This sudden success reflects both long-term trends and recent events. Americans’ satisfaction in public education has slowly eroded over the last two decades. And during the pandemic, student test scores in math and English plummeted as a result of ineffective remote learning, with satisfaction dropping sharply from a majority before COVID to a mere 42% last year, according to Gallup.
Advocates in Republican-controlled states seized the opportunity created by COVID, when teachers unions blocked the reopening of schools, spurring parents to search for educational options, including homeschooling, to keep their kids from falling behind.
“Parents saw there were many ways to educate kids,” says Robert Enlow, president of EdChoice. “It opened up a world of possibilities for them.”
At the same time, the spread of a woke curriculum following the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 provided some parents with another reason to seek alternatives to public schools. In cities from Seattle to Buffalo, students have been taught a version of history casting white Americans as privileged oppressors and blacks and Latinos as powerless victims of structural racism.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis made these two related educational crusades ? curbing political correctness and passing universal choice ? his own in the runup to his campaign for president. In 2022 he spearheaded a Florida ban on teaching that America is racist at its core, and also won restrictions on instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity – prohibitions embraced by several other states as well. Then earlier this year, DeSantis won legislative approval of a universal law, making Florida the largest state to adopt school choice for all.
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DeSantis sues Biden administration over higher ed accreditation process
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday filed a lawsuit against President Biden’s Department of Education, accusing the administration of unlawfully interfering in the Sunshine State’s higher education accreditation process.
“I will not allow Joe Biden’s Department of Education to defund America’s No. 1 higher education system all because we refuse to bow to unaccountable accreditors who think they should run Florida’s public universities,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Tampa, Fla., where he announced the lawsuit.
Higher education institutions are required to be accredited by one of several private accrediting agencies to receive federal funds from the Department of Education.
In the complaint, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody writes that “Congress has ceded unchecked power to private accrediting agencies to dictate education standards to colleges and universities” and that the accrediting agencies have “broad power to apply their own standards to colleges and universities, subject only to limited judicial review.”
Moody argues that because federal law requires “reasonable cause” to change accreditors, it is unjustly burdening the state, which now requires colleges and universities to switch their accreditor every few years.
The AG claims that the Department of Education is targeting Florida’s new legislation, citing “guidance documents” issued to accreditors “seeking to deter new accreditors from working with Florida.”
The new state law also allows universities to sue accreditors for damages if they believe they had been negatively affected.
DeSantis and Moody on Thursday noted that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, or SACS, which oversees accrediting in the Sunshine State, “threatened the accreditation of Florida State University” in 2021 when Richard Corcoran, Florida’s then commissioner of education, was a candidate to be the next president of the school.
SACS argued that Corcoran’s candidacy posed a potential conflict of interest if he refused to step down from his role as education commissioner.
“For too long, private academic accreditors have been holding our colleges and universities hostage,” Moody said Thursday. “Thanks to the fearless leadership of Governor DeSantis, we are fighting to take back our public postsecondary education system from unelected private organizations that have no accountability or oversight.”
Earlier this year, DeSantis appointed six new members to the New College of Florida’s board of trustees – where Corcoran eventually landed as interim president – in an effort to move the institution in a more conservative ideological direction.
The governor and 2024 GOP presidential candidate also signed legislation last month that bans state and federal funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs at state colleges and universities.
“Throughout my time in office, I have made it a priority to bring transparency and accountability to higher education and to reorient the mission of our colleges and universities away from purveying destructive ideologies and back toward the pursuit of truth and the preparation of our students for success,” DeSantis said Thursday. “The Biden administration’s attempts to block these reforms is an abuse of federal power, and with this lawsuit, we will ensure that Florida’s pursuit of educational excellence will continue.”
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29 June, 2023
Higher Education Needs Some Creative Destruction
Picking up on the ideas of Karl Marx and German historian-economist Werner Sombart, Joseph Schumpeter, in his 1942 classic Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, suggested that in a vibrant, private, competitive market economy, firms are constantly being created and destroyed. Businesses who miscalculate—those who fail to adequately meet the needs of their customers or utilize new, cost-saving technology—lose sales and profits. They may even go bankrupt. This “creative destruction” frees up resources to be utilized by firms who are better responding to consumer needs and expanding.
The destruction of businesses is part of the process of economic growth. In 2000, Enron, Sears, and Eastman Kodak were important, even iconic, American businesses, and now they are either gone or, in the case of Kodak, shadows of their former selves. Meanwhile, companies like Apple, Alphabet (Google), and Tesla have grown dramatically, and their owners have been richly rewarded. Creative destruction and expansion were occurring simultaneously, and the output and consumption of goods and services grew as well.
Contrast this to universities. My student assistant Nicholas Jadwisienczak examined the nation’s top companies in 2000 and 2022 and compared them with the leading universities in both years. He used the Fortune 500 list to find the largest corporations (by sales), and the U.S. News & World Report rankings to find the best national universities for both years. For the private corporations, only six (24%) of the top 25 in 2000 existed in the same form in 2022. Some companies merged with others, or divided themselves into multiple firms, or simply died. There was a lot of creative destruction. What about universities? Of the top 25 in 2000, 24 were still in the top 25 in 2022. The University of Virginia barely moved off the list, while New York University joined it. Most schools showed little movement. For example, Harvard went from #2 to #3. Harvard was in the top three in 2022, but it would have been so if we had U.S. News rankings in 1922, or for that matter 1822 or 1722.
With private businesses, we can track real-time changes in valuations by following the stock market, and quarterly assessments of progress by looking at changing sales. But how do we measure how Harvard is doing? Universities have no widely accepted bottom line. Consequently, it is hard to either accurately reward or penalize individuals for exemplary or poor performance.
The founder of modern economics, Adam Smith, was aware of this problem, and he pointed to a possible solution in The Wealth of Nations. Smith noted that professors at the University of Oxford had “given up altogether even the pretence of teaching” after Oxford decided to pay faculty a salary from its endowment income rather than have the professors charge students directly (keeping most of the proceeds). When professorial income depended on obtaining tuition money directly from students, faculty applied themselves, carefully preparing for class, helping students outside the classroom, etc. Today, some professors are relatively indifferent toward their students because their financial rewards come primarily from publishing articles in the Journal of Last Resort that few read and almost no one cites.
So, with some nudging from participants at a recent, marvelous Independent Institute conference in California, I have decided to write a book on “creative destruction” in higher education—how we need more of it, penalizing those who do not perform the central mission well and rewarding those who do. Maybe we should again have professorial pay depend at least partly on student fees. Maybe schools should have “skin in the game” (financial stake) when students do not repay their loans. Indeed, maybe borrowing for college should be reformed, with students selling equity (like common stock) in themselves instead of just borrowing (income share agreements). Maybe research funders should take costs more seriously, giving some grants to the lowest bidder (maybe the one getting the least “overhead” compensation for doing grant work) for topics suggested by the grantor, not the grantee.
Maybe we could better assess teaching performance if we had a standardized national exit examination. Indeed, why not let students take courses at a multitude of colleges and, if they pass a rigorous national exam, why not give them a college equivalence diploma (similar to the GED given to those who seek high-school-level diploma credentials)? Why should a single college have a monopoly on providing students educational services?
Additionally, maybe governments should get out of the business of directly funding higher education—their claim that colleges are a valuable “public good” seems increasingly dubious. At a minimum, states should permit, maybe even nudge, schools to engage in some creative destruction, killing mediocre colleges with high costs and/or poor student outcomes. That is starting to happen already, but with reduced governmental subsidization it would increase. As an intermediate step, maybe states should fund students (with scholarship vouchers) and not schools, introducing more competition in higher education financing. Schools would then be more dependent on students for dollars, which would probably lead to a significant downturn in spending for today’s woke ideological fixations.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14579
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Harvard Melts Down Over Threat to Affirmative Action
With the Supreme Court set to release a potentially monumental decision as early as this week ending racial preferences in college admissions, professors at the Harvard Graduate School of Education organized an alumni event on “Anticipating a Post-Affirmative Action World: Insights and Strategies for the Future.”
Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, only two minutes of the hourlong panel discussion on April 4 was allotted to discussing the cases before the Supreme Court.
The balance of the time was spent discussing racism, white privilege, and blaming white men—in other words, elite-level thinking at Harvard. That the plaintiffs in the case (and in a companion case arising from the University of North Carolina) before the Supreme Court are Asian is entirely irrelevant to Harvard’s freethinkers.
One of the panelists, Tony Jack, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who as a student majored in women’s and gender studies and the author of the book “The Privileged Poor,” had a lot to say about the “regime of colonialism and racism in this country.”
Jack is fearful that, as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, colleges and universities will start using “place as a proxy for race.” Although he deserves points for his clever use of alliteration and rhyme, his concern makes clear that academic achievement is irrelevant to how he would propose the admissions office make its decisions.
Jack is rattled by the prospect of race-blind admissions. He says we have to stop and ask ourselves: “Are we setting ourselves up for even more heartache?” Four minutes into the session, it was clear that the promised discussion of Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina was instead a one-sided political rant.
That was further clarified when another panelist, Angel Perez, CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said it was time to “get our fight on.” He hopes to see more “activism on campuses” and finds it “inspiring to see students protest.”
He also warns about “dangerous” legislation against diversity, equity, and inclusion at the state level. On that note, Jack chimed in, leading with “I don’t like to say I’m from Florida” and claiming the Supreme Court’s “divine nine” (another trademark rhyme) are corrupted in ways comparable to that of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Jack also asserted that “education isn’t a resource for the individual, but for the group” and that “it’s not about ‘I,’ but about ‘we.’” After all, it wouldn’t be a Harvard panel discussion without a nod to Marxism.
Reorienting the conversation back to racial preferences, Harvard professor Susan Dynarski lamented that it’s unfortunate that “we can’t admit students unless they apply.” Indeed, why bother with the hassle of applying if the odds disproportionately favor your admission? Dynarski stands solidly in the camp that thinks ending racial preferences would spell doom for higher education.
One major concern of the panelists was that disposing of racial preferences would negatively affect woke DEI offices. Students aside, there were grave concerns over the job security of DEI officers. (The Left has never found a jobs program they couldn’t get behind.)
Complaints about how bloated administrative staff have limited financial resources is ironic to say the least, especially at a school sitting on a $50 billion endowment.
Many of the comments in the virtual chatroom included remarks like, “It sounds like a repeal of affirmative action would lead to more black and brown students being excluded.” One student claimed that conservatives “want to keep schools white.”
Ironically, none of the white students or faculty in attendance were seen volunteering to leave their position so a black or brown person could have it. No, the problem is seemingly always some other white person, though not at Harvard, who is keeping minorities out.
This panel discussion on the future of racial preferences was full of the same Pavlovian drivel you would expect from Harvard. It’s the sort of real-life farce that The Babylon Bee can’t skewer, because the reality is a parody already.
It was politically charged, baseless, and racist in its own assumptions, masquerading as a balanced and objective discussion.
But it was also incredibly revealing, because people signal their weaknesses. Poker players say that most everyone has a tell, and by hosting this event, the woke folks at Harvard just revealed their hand. They are absolutely terrified that the Supreme Court might end their ability to discriminate on the basis of race in college admissions and expose their grift.
These “educators” sell snake oil, teaching that America is irredeemably racist, and as such, students need DEI, critical race theory, and affirmative action to succeed.
It’s a racist business racket, and they are afraid the Supreme Court might just upend their entire narrative with one simple ruling; namely, that people can succeed on merit.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/06/27/harvard-melts-down-threat-affirmative-action/
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Australia: Universities waste a fortune on consultants. When will they learn?
Jenna Price, writing below, lets her hostility to business apear but she is broadly right. Universities are a unique institution and need their own rules. I personally see little wrong with the original model where a university was entirely run by its senior teaching staff
My refugee parents were obsessed with education to both protect and embolden me. Mum, mother of the naughtiest girl in the school, was relieved when I graduated. At universities in those days, you actually had permission to talk in class. It was powerful and transformative.
That’s not what’s happening now. Universities are now online assembly lines where interrupting wildly is nearly impossible, and the atmosphere is more likely to be lagging from our unpredictable internet connections than anything else. Staff aren’t paid properly. Class sizes grow. Student satisfaction has plummeted.
How did we get to this? Sherryn Groch, writing for this masthead, reveals a disturbing pattern – Australian universities are spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year hiring consultants, including from scandal-drenched PwC.
Groch listed wage theft and cruel – often involuntary – redundancies, but there’s more to add to the list. Education, the experience of connection and of intellectual intimacy are being stolen from this generation. Young people have never paid so much for so little.
In the meantime, the consultants –and those who hire them – go about their business with no concern for the ethical aspects of what they are doing. Every single researcher at a university has to complete ethics approval. I doubt consultants would get to first base with such a requirement. The PwC revelations show us we should have trust issues with consultants.
How have they come to dominate the culture of higher education? Just look who is on the councils of these institutions. Academics for Public Universities say there has been a dramatic shift and now barely a third have expertise in the sector. Councils are crammed with big business types and the culture trickles down to vice chancellors and on to deans.
One academic staff member tells me she has to explain to other council members that teaching university students is not like working in a factory. Yes, you might be lucky to get a vice chancellor who can persuade a bunch of profit-hunters that universities are about something higher than money. Staff representatives can’t stand up for everyone on their own.
Business loves cutting costs and restructures. Are those the values we should bring to our future – our teachers, nurses and doctors, engineers, computer scientists, sociologists and lawyers?
In 2017, a consultant interviewed me at a Sydney cafe about the faculty in which I worked. Too noisy to record, she took desultory notes. The experience of my colleagues in that review was pretty similar, although one told me, she instructed her interviewer: “Write this down.”
I asked questions, she already had answers. My trust in the process disappeared entirely. The “strategic assessment” cost the university many thousands of dollars and ended with a document that generative AI could have written if you’d put the words visionary, mission statement and “do better with less” into its prompt.
A few years later, the whole process happened all over again. This time it was a bunch of international academics who had as much understanding of the Australian job market (or, indeed, Australian universities) as I had about herrings.
At Deakin, consultants delivered a course on change management and leadership. Jill Blackmore, Alfred Deakin professor of education and president of the Australian Association of University Professors, who sat in on the course, said: “Worst course I’ve ever been in, and we paid for it. It did not understand what leadership in a university was all about.”
Just now, at a university near you, a consultant has been called in to investigate the use of offices. The academics have said, repeatedly, hot-desking and open-plan offices might be OK if you didn’t have to deal with sobbing students and more recently, sobbing colleagues. After two years of consultations, enthusiasm has cooled and the report is shelved. Money for nothing.
Look, every organisation, be it universities, hospitals, telcos, or banks, needs to have reality checks. But let’s engage experts who think about the national good and not the bottom line.
The nation’s 10 top-ranked universities alone spent at least $249 million on consultancies last year, more than they spent before the pandemic.
Universities spend money on consultants instead of education. Every teaching academic I know has had to defend paying casual staff – those running tutorials – to attend lectures. I once had to do an entire cost proposal which took me hours for the sheer bloody-mindedness of my then-boss – at the same time, we were wasting money on consultants.
The University of Melbourne’s Michael Wesley, author of the new book Mind of the Nation: Universities in Australian Life, knows we have a problem. We hire people from the corporate sector, and they lose their minds at what they see as waste.
“But as my boss points out (Duncan Maskell who last week called for free higher education), we are a not-for-profit organisation ... [the] ruthless pursuit of shareholder value is utterly alien to the university. The corporatisation of [Australian] universities is almost unique in the world.”
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27 June, 2023
South Carolina teacher's CRT lesson accused of race-shaming against White people: 'I hope I don't get fired'
Mary Wood is an English teacher who was accused by some students of 'indoctrination studies' and making them feel ashamed to be White.
A South Carolina public school teacher has been accused by some of her students of "indoctrination studies" and causing them to feel ashamed to be White.
Mary Wood is an advanced English language teacher in Chapin High School located in Lexington-Richland County School District Five. This past year some students complained about lessons, which she had delivered in prior years, to school board trustee Elizabeth Barnhardt.
According to an opinion article the trustee wrote Saturday, Wood began her lesson by stating, "Hopefully, I don't get fired for this."
"Anyone who opens their remarks, including a teacher, with [those]… words already knows they are walking on shaky ground on whether what they are doing is right or not," Barnhardt said.
One of Wood's lessons included the book "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates which infamously called 9/11 heroes "menaces."
Coates wrote about 9/11 responders, "They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body."
In the same book, he referred to "White America" as a "syndicate" designed to "dominate and control our bodies."
A student reported that the teacher "prepared" them for the Coates book by introducing two videos which made them feel "uncomfortable."
One of the videos was titled "Structural Discrimination: The Unequal Opportunity Race." It was a metaphor of critical race theory concepts expressed using a track competition of White people racing against Black people. It showed White people gleefully winning, acquiring money, while barriers like rocks, red lights, cages and brick walls were presented in front of the Black runners.
In one instance, the White people condescendingly said, "Bye, bye" as they passed by the Black runners who were prohibited from competing. Another section showed a White person being advantaged by "Privilege," an "Old Boy Network" while a Black runner was blocked by a brick wall, which said, "Dead End."
The trustee responded stating, "The teaching and videos are part of what is also known as DEI, discrimination, exclusion, and indoctrination studies. This includes another tenet called ‘identity politics’ which makes one’s identity the focal point of any perceived or imagined discrimination, ie, race, sex (what many wrongly call gender today), sexual preferences, social status, etc."
Wood responded to the allegations on Sunday's "The Mehdi Hasan Show." "I had no concerns about teaching this lesson. I had vetted it before," she said.
"I think it's important to mention that the goal wasn't to say, ‘Read this and then agree with what is being presented.’ The goal was to say, 'Here is an argument. Now you research on your own afterwards and determine if what you have done is valid," she continued.
However, a student accused the teacher of "indoctrination" under the guise of presenting different points of view. Fox News Digital asked Wood about alternative views she presented vis-à-vis Coates but did not immediately get a response.
A student said, "This past week, my teacher presented two videos tiled 'The Unequal Opportunity Race' and ‘Systemic Racism Explained.’ Prior to showing these video clips, Mrs. Wood spent 20 minutes expressing her personal opinion, telling us she felt these videos to be true. Hearing her opinion and watching these videos made me feel uncomfortable. I actually felt ashamed to be Caucasian."
Critical race theory holds that America is systemically racist and puts people into oppressor or oppressed categories on the basis of their supposed privilege. Its founding theorists believed that discrimination against privileged groups can combat past discrimination.
The teacher was purportedly asked by the school to change her lessons.
The district released a statement to Fox News Digital, which said, "Daily operations of School District Five of Lexington and Richland Counties are governed by School Board Policies. These policies state that matters concerning academic freedom are to be handled between teachers and administration. As a result, School District Five has no further public comment."
Wood was contacted for comment and did not immediately respond.
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Pupils identifying as cats. Teachers too scared to speak out. And a bid to smash every rule and boundary... What we are witnessing is an all-out war on parental authority – but the ultimate victims are our children
Are we seeing the tide finally turn on gender madness in schools?
Hopefully we are, in view of the widespread reaction to shocking audio footage last week from a school in Sussex that revealed a teacher calling a teenage pupil ‘despicable’ for disputing the idea that a classmate could identify as a cat.
Other reports poured in, from multiple schools, of children identifying as dinosaurs, animals or even moons.
Of teachers afraid to challenge them for fear of being seen as discriminatory.
Now, leaked draft guidelines for schools on gender identity suggest the Government is creaking into action, with a ban on embracing pupils’ exotic ‘identities’ without involving parents.
But will this be enough? I think not. The roots of this madness are far more insidious, and far more widespread.
We are witnessing nothing less than an all-out war on ‘normal’. And it’s justified by a sinister body of thought known as ‘queer theory’.
Let’s be clear: most of us support gay and lesbian people living normal lives, free of unjust discrimination. But queer theory isn’t about including gay and lesbian people in normal society.
It sees normal society as the source of oppression. And that means dismantling normal society.
The doctrine has been smuggled into schools and institutions, on the coat-tails of gay inclusion.
It wants to smash every kind of rule, boundary, institution, and norm – all the way to the foundations of biology itself.
And it has set its sights on Britain’s children.
Evangelists of queer theory say there’s nothing natural about our bodies, or our desires.
The categories ‘male’ and ‘female’, they claim, are not facts of biology but cruel, oppressive fictions that cramp individual self-expression.
Nor is there anything natural about who we’re attracted to, or why.
According to queer theory, the normal pattern of attraction between men and women, and the benefit to society of stable couples raising children together, is ‘heteronormativity’, designed to lock us all in oppressive boxes.
Earlier this year, a report revealed just how far this doctrine has been embedded in schools, via largely unregulated private companies delivering lessons on Relationships and Sex Education (RSE).
According to the report, the RSE provider School of Sexuality Education says its aim is precisely not teaching children what’s normal.
Instead, it sets out to teach youngsters that there is no such thing as normal sexuality – or even normal sexed bodies. That sex doesn’t matter.
That humans can be any ‘gender’ they like. That there are no better or worse kinds of relationship or sexual practice.
That casual sex is just as good as marriage. Many leading advocates of such beliefs go further, attacking the idea of ‘childhood’ as another oppressive ‘construct’.
In practice, that means attacking the authority of parents.
It is no surprise, therefore, that the School of Sexuality Education wants to end parents’ right to opt their children out of such lessons.
None of these ideologues seem to acknowledge where this thinking leads. If you treat every norm or rule as oppressive, that means smashing even the norms and rules that protect vulnerable groups. Such as children.
This includes the sense that children aren’t mature enough to make irreversible decisions about their own ‘identity’.
Not to mention the equally obvious truth that, with rare, unfortunate exceptions, parents are best-placed to safeguard their children’s interests.
The fact is that this protective instinct is a product of human evolution, helping our slow-developing offspring survive into adulthood.
Sadly, there are already too many wanting to weaken that bond.
As seen in places such as Rotherham, where grooming gangs have targeted girls in care, the most vulnerable children are those without attentive, loving adults watching out for them.
Again and again, we discover that liberating children also creates opportunities for adults.
The earliest queer theorists were at least honest. Michel Foucault, often called the godfather of queer theory, argued for the abolition of age of consent laws.
(After his death, it was revealed that Foucault sexually exploited under-age boys in Tunisia.)
Other leading queer theorists sought to defend ‘boy-lovers’, or condone forms of incest.
Of course, not everyone who wants to ‘liberate’ children has nefarious intentions.
But the push to free young children from their parents’ protective authority ends up aiding and abetting those who do.
We should take heed of the horror stories percolating out of North America and Canada, where this ideology is rampant.
Take the chilling recent story of a 14-year-old American girl who was sex-trafficked by sadistic rapists, after her school hid her ‘gender identity’ from her parents and helped separate her from their care.
America is a global outlier in gender extremism. Thankfully, we in Britain are more moderate.
There’s still a chance of resisting this tide of madness. So we must welcome every signal, however weak, that Government Ministers still recognise that ‘normal’ exists.
Miriam Cates MP, who commissioned the RSE report, welcomed the proposed new guidance on sex and gender in schools.
But she added a note of warning, telling me: ‘It’s a positive step forward that the guidelines seem likely to ban teachers from “transitioning” without parental consent.’
She says this doesn’t go far enough – ‘we shouldn’t be transitioning children at all’.
None of this should even need saying. But while governments shy away from saying it, ideologue ‘educators’ are still busy in schools, teaching the exact opposite to our children.
Disgracefully, parents are not even entitled to see the lesson plans. Last week, a mother lost a court battle to get her 15-year-old daughter’s school to tell her what her daughter was being taught in class about gender.
It’s no use shoring up the roof if the problem is termites in the rafters.
In much the same way, there’s little gained from shoring up parents’ right to know that their child wants to change ‘gender’ in class, if unaccountable ‘educators’ can still use secret materials to indoctrinate that class.
The new gender guidance will be welcome – if it ever appears – but it’s not enough.
Of course, children should be taught about gay and lesbian inclusion, but as part of a wide education on what’s normally true about our bodies and our nature.
For the war on normal hasn’t changed the basic facts. None of us gets to choose the sex we are born.
Babies still arrive the same way and follow the same stages of development.
And children haven’t stopped needing love and protection from parents, just because some dodgy theorists decided they’d be better off liberated.
But we can’t defend these truths while the social norms that shore up society are being turned to dust, from the inside out, by sex and gender ideologues.
Every day we see new evidence of how their poisonous ideas have crept into schools, institutions, charities, and even the police.
This ideology has hidden behind a rightful and justified effort to protect gay and lesbian people from cruel bullying and discrimination. And now it’s waging war on normal itself.
And it must be stopped. It should be clear by now that the real winners of a war on normal are the kind of monsters who flourish in a world without truth, or rules, or consequences.
And its ultimate casualties? Our children.
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Australia: Cyber bullying, sexual content against teachers on the rise, eSafety commissioner warns
Teachers are experiencing escalating abuse from students and the eSafety commissioner warns the problem will get worse as generative AI technology becomes more widely used.
The commission has received reports of students taking photos of their teachers and rating their physical appearance, starting organised campaigns to have staff removed, making damaging allegations and creating sexualised abuse content.
“Some Australians are at greater risk of online abuse than others and sadly eSafety is aware teachers and principals are among them,” commissioner Julie Inman Grant said.
“We have received a number of reports of this form of abuse from across the community and we expect many more as generative AI technology becomes more widely dispersed.”
She said along with race, gender, sexuality and religion, perpetrators of abuse sometimes target specific professions, especially where their work is performed in the public eye, including teachers and principals whose work is sometimes known to “several thousand”.
While the commission has a good success rate in removing harmful content, Grant said social media platforms need to take responsibility for the “weaponisation of their platforms”.
“Teachers are incredibly vulnerable ... people don’t realise that feeling of being in a classroom with 20 or 25 or 30 young people.”
The commission is developing a social media self-defence program similar to other specific resources available for journalists and sportspeople.
Research from 2019 found 70 per cent of teachers reported being bullied or harassed by a student in the previous 12 months. Verbal abuse was the most common form, while 10 per cent said they had been hit or punched by a student.
Nearly 60 per cent reported they’d been bullied or harassed by parents. Women were more likely to be subject to abuse, while men were more likely to have students organise against them.
“Teachers are incredibly vulnerable. People don’t realise that feeling of being in a classroom with 20 or 25 or 30 young people,” said the study’s author, Dr Rochelle Fogelgarn – a lecturer in teacher education at La Trobe University and former teacher.
“[Teachers] are putting themselves out there for the services of the community. It’s not for the money.”
She said it was unrealistic to expect schools or teachers to crack down on abuse, especially as so much of it was anonymised online.
Psychologist and Headspace App mental health expert Carly Dober said bullying could have long-term impacts on teachers and lead to them dropping out of the industry.
“The lack of control that can really shake the person’s confidence, self-esteem and motivation to continue on in the role and to continue serving and giving as much as you do as a teacher,” she said.
“I’ve been hit, pinched, scratched, pushed, and sometimes come home with bruises on me.”
Liz Michelle, casual relief primary school teacher
“It can also leave people a bit paranoid, wondering who has seen this, and what do they think?”
Headspace App’s Workforce Attitudes Toward Mental Health Report found 34 per cent of people working in the education sector said they have felt extreme stress every day over the past 12 months, while 42 per cent reported an increase in violence or threats.
NSW Teachers Federation senior vice president Amber Flohm said the union was aware of the issue.
“Cyberbullying against teachers is not uncommon and reflects both the complexity and challenges of teachers’ work and ever-evolving technologies in classrooms and schools,” she said.
The parents who are driving teachers out of the classroom
“Platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram are frequently used to ridicule teachers which of course has a significant impact on teacher’s wellbeing.”
NSW Education Minister Prue Car said a mobile phone ban in state public high schools, which will be implemented from term 4 of this year, would help reduce opportunities for student abuse.
“Teachers have been through enough in the past few years without having to endure abuse, whether actual or online. There is no place for this sort of behaviour in our classrooms,” she said.
The department will review the former government’s suspension policy to ensure teachers have the “right tools” to manage student behaviour.
A draft will be released for consultation in the coming months.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said he met the eSafety commissioner last week, who will brief state and territory education departments on the issue.
“There aren’t many jobs more important than being a teacher, and they deserve to be safe at work,” Clare said.
The minister will meet with state and territory counterparts next month to discuss teacher safety and AI frameworks in schools.
Liz Michelle is a casual relief primary school teacher and runs a parenting blog called Teaching Brave.
She has been a relief teacher for nine months after leaving the early childhood care sector and said she was shocked at the level of abuse from young children she received.
“I’ve been hit, pinched, scratched, pushed, and sometimes come home with bruises on me,” she said.
“I get quite a bit of verbal abuse, so that comes in the vein of screaming, swearing, insults. Verbal abuse can be quite significant. Any expletive you can think of, it all comes out and gets screamed in my face.”
Some incidents she reported to the school, she said, but found most outcomes unsatisfactory. As a casual, she said she’s particularly vulnerable to abuse and has chosen not to work at certain schools.
Michelle said while she hasn’t experienced cyber abuse, she was aware of colleagues who had seen nasty posts written about them, had been cyber stalked and had students invade teachers’ personal privacy.
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26 June, 2023
Is this a case of crazy wokery I see before me? Actors ridicule university trigger warnings over blood in Macbeth
It is Shakespeare's most violent play – a bloody saga packed with stabbing, strangling and poisoning that reaches a grisly climax with a beheading.
And for more than 400 years audiences have been enthralled – if a little disturbed – by the butchery of Macbeth.
But now one of the UK's top universities stands accused of 'infantilising' students after it warned them they might be 'offended' by the 'bloodshed' in the play.
Queen's University Belfast has issued the warning to undergraduates studying a module called Further Adventures in Shakespeare on its BA English course.
'You are advised that this play could cause offence as it references and / or deals with issues and depictions relating to bloodshed,' the warning, a copy of which has been obtained by this newspaper under Freedom of Information laws, states.
The university has also applied similar warnings to the Bard's Richard III, Twelfth Night and Titus Andronicus.
Some of Britain's biggest theatrical stars last night branded the warnings counterproductive and unnecessary. They point out that Macbeth, which was first performed in 1606, is particularly popular with schoolchildren.
Sir Ian McKellen, who starred opposite Dame Judi Dench in Sir Trevor Nunn's landmark 1976 RSC production, said warnings such as this could undermine the dramatic impact of the piece.
He said: 'My sister (a teacher) used to show Sir Trevor Nunn's TV version of the 1976 Macbeth to her teenage students.
'She'd pull down the blinds, start the video and then leave the classroom and count the minutes till she heard the first scream from within. Had the youngsters had trigger warnings in advance, the effect of the play would have been considerably diminished.'
He added: 'I remember talking to a priest who saw a number of performances of the stage production at the Stratford Other Place.
'He would hold out his crucifix throughout the performance, to protect the audience from the devilry conjured by the cast. I suppose these triggers are something similar.'
Call The Midwife star Jenny Agutter, who has acted in Shakespeare's The Tempest, King Lear and Love's Labour's Lost, said: 'I don't understand why anyone should feel warnings are necessary for Shakespeare's plays. Unless we need to be constantly warned that depicting human nature might cause offence.'
Sir Richard Eyre, the former Director of the National Theatre who has directed productions of Hamlet, Richard III and King Lear, said: 'It's completely fatuous and totalitarian to try to police people's minds with these absurd warnings. Ridiculous, contemptible, infantilising.
Presumably the people putting out the trigger warnings feel they are able to cope with the content of these plays, but weaker, younger, less intelligent people aren't.' Doctor Who star David Tennant and The Good Wife actress Cush Jumbo are due to star in a new production of Macbeth which opens in London in December. It is one of four major productions of the play set to open in the UK.
Queen's Belfast's trigger warning for Twelfth Night centres on what it calls the 'depictions relating to sexuality or gender. Warnings for Richard III and Titus Andronicus relate to depictions of disability in the former and 'race and or racism' in the latter. A spokesperson for Queen's University Belfast declined to comment.
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The Sad State of Civics Education
In the waning days of our collective ChiCom Virus psychosis, we looked forward to sending our kids back to the classroom, where (we hoped) they would once again get a solid education in the fundamentals.
To our dismay, we found exactly the opposite.
Last fall, the National Assessment of Education Standards was administered to 13-year-olds across the country, testing students’ proficiency in math and reading. The results of “the nation’s report card” were abysmal. “The 13-year-olds scored an average of 256 out of 500 in reading, and 271 out of 500 in math,” reports The New York Times, “down from average scores of 260 in reading and 280 in math three years ago.”
But at least the pandemic was an equal-opportunity destroyer. The Times adds: “Achievement declined across lines of race, class and geography. But in math, especially, vulnerable children — including Black, Native American and low-income students — experienced bigger drops.”
Now, so-called education experts are scratching their heads without seeing the obvious — like, oh, the fact that many schools locked kids away for two years without any social interaction. As political analyst Ed Morrissey writes, “That certainly would explain why economically disadvantaged children suffered more of a drop-off, since they would be more at risk for learning loss in a remote environment — and some might not have had ongoing access to remote education at all.”
But that’s not all. The NAES found that scores had been falling long before the coronavirus. Morrissey adds: “The post-pandemic part of the plunge proves that not only did we get no benefit from those policies, we did real damage to the cognitive development of our children, and almost certainly their social and psychological health as well. The fact that scores had been falling previous to the pandemic does not negate that conclusion at all — it proves that our pandemic policies made an already-bad situation worse.”
If educators and politicians are looking for answers, they needn’t look very far. For example, California’s Mathematics Curriculum Framework seeks to replace rigor in mathematics education with cultural Marxist teachings in environmental and social justice. No kidding. Teachers there are instructed to teach “socio-political consciousness” instead of algebra — which, if you live in Cali, explains why your kids might not be able to solve a basic equation, write a complete sentence, or explain the difference between the executive and the judicial branches. But when it comes to political activism, they’re ready to take to the streets for Black Lives Matter, Greenpeace, or Pride Month.
For the sane opposition, here are Williamson Evers and Ze'ev Wurman from the Independent Institute: “A real champion of equity and justice would want all California’s children to learn actual math — as in arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus — not an endless river of new pedagogical fads that effectively distort and displace actual math.”
Unfortunately, the Left’s union-driven education agenda affects subjects across the board, including civics. As for the NAEP, “Just 13% of eighth graders met the proficiency standard for history,” Fox News reports. “Barely 20% met the standard for civics. According to the 2022 Annenberg Civics Knowledge Survey, less than half of Americans could name all three branches of government; less than 25% could identify the freedom of religion as guaranteed by the Constitution.”
And we wonder why these children grow up to vote Democrat. Even the paucity of civics education they do receive is becoming increasingly politicized.
“Teachers have rewritten their job description,” argues Bethany Mandel at The Spectator. “Out: civics basics. In: indoctrination. They believe that their mandate isn’t to teach history or civics, but instead, to brainwash children; and lo and behold, just a few years later, children are falling ever further behind in competence in this newly hyperpoliticized subject area.”
All this makes one wonder whether our kids might’ve been better off staying at home post-COVID. At least at home they’d avoid that steady diet of anti-American propaganda and Marxist indoctrination.
Former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers thinks some form of national service might unite the country again. And we get it. Serving others is never a bad approach, and it might help build character and unity among those who join in. But national service still leaves our kids without a solid education in the three R’s or even a basic grasp of civics.
We have years, perhaps decades, to fight and win this war. The good news is that a national movement is underway. Thanks to COVID-19, we finally got to see the true colors of the teachers unions. (Imagine that. They’re commie red.) And parents, students, educators, and political leaders are finally fed up with our schools serving as Marxist boot camps.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/98308?mailing_id=7579
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Reading and Math Scores Plummet as Racial and Sexual Activism Replace Academics
As America’s public education system reports the worst literacy and math performance in decades, its schools dedicate increasingly immense portions of their time to lessons on the supposed virtues of racial and gender segregation.
With only eight hours per day and 180 school days per year, one would think that everyone from the newest teacher’s aide to the tenured administrators would call “all hands on deck” to spend every moment trying to close the enormous performance gaps inflamed by COVID-19 lockdowns.
Instead of utilizing data-proven methods to close gaps in literacy and math, like many private and microschools do, most public schools have centered on a different tactic: political distraction.
As parents around the country began demanding answers for the lack of results from those they entrusted their children to, schools began presenting scapegoats to deflect the culpability in the mess they helped to make.
Teachers unions, school “equity officers,” and administrators began proclaiming that historic racial inequities were responsible for the massive gaps in black and Hispanic students’ reading scores. They claim “white supremacy” is responsible for students’ disengagement—that “students of color” would learn far more if they were “allowed” to read books by black authors under black teachers.
This is, of course, highly misleading. Students respond more to the quality of the text and the educator than to the race of the teacher. The “racial inequities” claim also ignores that the highest-performing demographic, Asian students, aren’t reading books by predominantly Asian authors and studying under Asian teachers.
Nevertheless, major metropolitan districts have doubled down on the need for a focus on racially-driven education—often implementing the tenets of critical race theory and citing its so-called scholars.
Indianapolis Public Schools and its over 30,000 students languish in illiteracy, but you won’t hear superintendent Aleesia Johnson apologize for a lack of results. Instead, she flocks to media outlets to praise the school’s third gallant push towards “racial equity” (because apparently, the first two didn’t succeed).
Instead of hosting emergency training sessions to bring Indianapolis teachers up to speed on proven reading instruction pedagogy, Indianapolis brought critical race theory scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings in for an emergency “all staff required” session on racial equity. One Indianapolis middle school required students to attend so-called racial equity sessions in which Black Lives Matter activists told them that crime was a “made up” term by “the white people.”
In undercover interviews with several Indiana schools, Accuracy in Media captured several administrators admitting to consistently wasting reading instruction time with racially segregationist activism—even if they had to hide it from parents.
In 2021, Chicago Public Schools boasted only a 17% literacy rate for Hispanic students and an 11% literacy rate for black students. Rather than assist black and Hispanic students in improving the single greatest factor in adult success, Chicago launched another racial equity initiative and hired additional “Office of Equity” staff.
While racial equity is most often the distraction touted by inner-city metropolitan schools—from New York City and Washington, D.C., on the East Coast to Los Angeles and Seattle on the West Coast—the suburban school districts surrounding them usually tout LGBTQ activism as a school focus.
Several California suburban public school districts reported abysmal reading and math performances in 2022 but have spent little time attempting to provide remediation since. Instead, these California districts threw their time and resources into celebrating LGBTQ activism.
Hollywood and Glendale schools chose to implement curriculum on the history of “LGBTQ+ activists” in place of additional reading and math instruction. Hispanic and Armenian parents flocked to school board meetings to protest what many called “a waste of time.”
“Why can’t you just focus on teaching our children to read?” a parent of elementary school children asked the Glendale Unified board.
The grassroots advocacy organization Parents Defending Education cites dozens of suburban school districts in over 40 states that have launched LGBTQ initiatives in the last five years, with district after district replacing an academic focus with hour after hour of learning about racial and sexual activism.
The British newspaper the Daily Mail gained access to a private online meeting of a group of midwestern public school teachers discussing ways to spend time encouraging students to engage with LGBTQ activism and to consider “transitioning” kids (calling them by different names and pronouns and letting them dress as members of the opposite sex) during the school day without telling their parents—even in the face of recently passed laws forbidding sexually explicit discussions with students in class.
Florida—which has enacted legislation to forbid racial and sexual activism in the classroom—along with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to keep public schools open during the COVID-19 pandemic, has shown greater reading and math score improvement than any other state in the country.
Education reform advocates for years have been touting the positive data regarding keeping schools open during the pandemic and keeping the focus on academics. Consistent reports from Corey DeAngelis of the American Federation for Children, Robert Pondiscio and Max Eden of the American Enterprise Institute, and Jason Bedrick and Lindsey Burke of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy prove what common sense suggests: Students who focus on reading and writing in the classroom fare better than those who don’t. (The Daily Signal is the multimedia news and commentary outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
While The New York Times may suggest it’s “breaking news” for math and reading scores among 14-year-olds to be the “lowest levels in decades, with a sharp drop since the pandemic began,” it really isn’t news—and it’s not breaking.
When a school wastes eight hours a day on political activism instead of academic instruction, literacy and math competency don’t improve. Political activism isn’t preparing students for the challenges of their future career and for adulthood, and public schools’ attempts to convince parents that it does are losing their luster.
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22 June, 2023
The Uprising: Families Clash With Schools Over LGBTQ Propaganda
In a June like none other, where the LGBTQ agenda has been crammed at increasing velocity down the throats of unwitting Americans, everyday folks are reaching their limits.
With two more weeks to go in “Pride Month,” this is bad news for the rainbow mafia. But it’s a sign of character and courage that the rest of us can take hope in—especially when demonstrated by families in the direct line of propagandistic fire.
In response to the Left’s “sex-and-gender-everything” policies, parents and kids are both flexing their muscles in opposition to schools that are all in on “Pride.”
Earlier this month, a group of students at Marshall Simonds Middle School in Burlington, Massachusetts, reportedly protested a “Pride Month” event by tearing down LGBTQ “Pride” signs and banners and chanting, “USA are my pronouns.”
This prompted the Equity Coalition, an LGBTQ advocacy group, to demand that the Burlington school district discipline students involved in the protest and fill the district’s vacant position of director of diversity, inclusion, and equity, or DEI.
In Huntington Beach, California, students at Edison High School revolted against a “Pride” video shown in math class. For their outbursts, their teacher threatened: “if you’re going to be inappropriate, I will have supervision down and give all of you a Saturday school for next year.”
And a few miles up the California coast, in ultra-Left Hollywood, parents kept their children home from North Hollywood’s Saticoy Elementary School in protest of a planned “Pride Day.”
The frustration extends beyond LGBTQ school events to curriculum and policies, too.
Parents at an elementary school in Connecticut were infuriated after their 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds were shown a video celebrating gender identity without the parents’ knowledge, and then given “puberty kits” to take home.
One parent, Kyle Reyes, the father of four kids under age 9, decided to pull them all out of the Granby School District as a result of policies on sexual orientation and gender identity, saying: “These are conversations that, if anyone is going to have with their kids, it should be the parents having with their kids.”
North of the border, at a large protest in front of an Ottawa school board led by Muslim Canadians but also attended by Christians and Jews, parents and kids voiced their opposition to radical gender ideology in the classroom.
Much of their ire was directed at the school board’s recent mandate on gender-neutral pronouns, prompting chants of “Let the parents decide.”
The divide between propaganda and common sense is no more readily apparent than in the context of scholastic sports—where Gallup now reports massive increases in the number of Americans who say biological sex—and not gender identity—should dictate participation in organized sports.
Gallup notes:
A larger majority of Americans now (69%) than in 2021 (62%) say transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender. Likewise, fewer endorse transgender athletes being able to play on teams that match their current gender identity, 26%, down from 34%.
This finding tracks with a recent study indicating that 65% of Americans say they believe there are only two genders—an increase of six percentage points from 2021.
Now, if school districts had been paying attention to such numbers and operated according to federal law and not the will of cultural elites and LGBTQ evangelists in the federal government, situations like those in Wisconsin and Vermont high schools might have been avoided.
At East High School, in Wisconsin’s Sun Prairie Area School District, an 18-year-old biological male who identified as “trans” entered the girls’ locker room and showered naked in front of a group of terrified 14-year-old freshman girls. In a manifestation of what’s become a troubling trend on parental disenfranchisement, the school district chose not to contact the girls’ parents.
Now, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty is urging the U.S. Department of Education to investigate whether the high school violated federal civil rights law.
A few weeks ago, a Vermont school district that punished a father and daughter for speaking out about a biological male using a girls’ locker room was ordered to cough up $125,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees. Considering this, the Wisconsin school district might want to get its legal house in order.
LGBTQ talking points once focused on “equality” and wanting to “live and let live.” Now, yearlong “Pride” initiatives look more like a hostile takeover of government school systems.
What with school libraries shelved with gay porn, LGBTQ curriculum, gender-neutral bathrooms, preferred pronoun policies, and gaslighting parents on the gender identities of their own minor children (frequently facilitated by school administrators), families finally have had enough.
For once, the alphabet mob is back on its heels. But only because taxpaying parents and their brave kids are speaking up.
As noted by Kyle Reyes, the Connecticut dad: “Parents are starting to come out of the woodwork, and it’s time to start fighting back.”
And fight back they will.
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Academic Freedom Is Social Justice
In 2014, Harvard student Sandra Korn wrote a column in the undergraduate newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, titled “The Doctrine of Academic Freedom: Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice.” Korn, a joint major in history of science and studies of women, gender and sexuality, argued that rather than relying on the principle of “academic freedom” to guide decisions about what kinds of academic expression should be permissible, we should rely instead on principles of “academic justice”:
"If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of ‘academic freedom’? Instead, I would like to propose a more rigorous standard: one of ‘academic justice.’ When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue ... It is tempting to decry frustrating restrictions on academic research as violations of academic freedom. Yet I would encourage student and worker organizers to instead use a framework of justice. After all, if we give up our obsessive reliance on the doctrine of academic freedom, we can consider more thoughtfully what is just."
A fellow undergraduate, Garrett Lam, a neurobiology and philosophy major, penned a response, “Academic Freedom Is Academic Justice.” He answered “Korn’s central question: If we oppose social injustice, ‘why should we put up with research that counters our goals?’” Thus:
"We shouldn’t ... science can do many things, but it can’t justify oppression. After all, science tells us the way things are. It tells us what is natural. But just because things are a certain way does not mean they ought to be that way ... If we believe people should be treated equally, an institution that treats them unequally opposes our values. But even if it were true that people are born with unequal capacities, this would not imply that we should treat them unequally ... Rather than closing our eyes and plugging our ears (which, by the way, wouldn’t make [scientific] truths cease to exist), we’re better off confronting them in the long run. After all, we choose how to apply knowledge, and can leverage it to effect the change we want in the world."
During the Korn/Lam exchange, I was busy teaching and advising Harvard undergraduates in my department, Human Evolutionary Biology, and somehow missed it. But it was far from the first time that members of the Harvard community disagreed about the limits of academic freedom. One particularly noteworthy event occurred in 2005, months after I’d earned my Ph.D. from Harvard (on testosterone and sex differences in cognition). I was furiously preparing to teach my very first class as a lecturer, “The Evolution of Human Sex Differences,” when the president of Harvard, Larry Summers, plunged right into my area of expertise.
At what was supposed to be a small, closed conference focusing on the problem of the underrepresentation of women in STEM careers, Summers gave a talk in which he proffered several hypotheses to explain the imbalanced sex ratio. One invoked “different socialization and patterns of discrimination” which was unlikely to ruffle any feathers. But another hypothesis was that the underrepresentation was partly due to “different availability of aptitude at the high end.” It does appear that on many traits, including cognitive ones, males vary more than females—the male distribution curve is flatter, with more males than females in both the high and low tails. As Summers noted, this can result in a large male bias at the extreme levels of ability, from which elite universities draw their STEM job candidates.
Although Summers only said that he was offering his “best guesses” which “may be all wrong,” when his remarks were leaked, the Harvard campus (and the wider world) exploded in controversy. I was interviewed by a writer for the Crimson, and said what seemed obvious to me: “We tend to put blinders onto science when the explanations for behavior or social problems are distasteful or difficult ... We must explore all reasonable hypotheses.” Summers said what he did because he believed that openly debating the possible causes of a problem was an important step in trying to solve it. All these years later, I am even more convinced that this is right.
I teach behavioral endocrinology, which touches on sensitive issues related to stress and trauma, health disorders, and sex and gender. Student after student has told me how learning about this topic has helped them personally: gay students who have gained the confidence to come out to their families; trans students armed with knowledge about how hormones shape behavior and impact gender transitions; and students with differences/disorders/variations of sexual development, who can make better decisions about treatments. Students also tell me that learning about the science of sex and gender has increased their understanding and empathy—especially toward those who are different in terms of sex-related biology or gender expression. Many of them have been inspired to pursue careers in the medical or psychological fields as a way to care for people with such differences. These are the same students who don’t always agree with me about where the evidence points, but we almost always have productive, respectful conversations, in and out of class.
Unfortunately, the production and communication of science, on university campuses, scientific journals, and the popular press, has become more politicized over the last few decades. As academic freedom has been significantly eroded, disagreements about its limits have become more extreme and heated. One recent example of this erosion is a statement from the editor of the prestigious journal Nature Human Behavior, describing new guidelines and policies that echo Ms. Korn’s proposal in her 2014 Crimson article. The editorial, innocuously titled “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans,” indicates that editors’ publishing decisions will be influenced by their judgments about an article’s potential to “cause harm.” Problematic content includes that which “undermines—or could reasonably be perceived to undermine—the rights and dignities of an individual or human group on the basis of socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings.” Groupings based on “sex, gender identity, sexual orientation” are given as examples.
Since the word “dignities” in particular is hopelessly vague and subjective, policies of this sort threaten to further restrict scientific research and scholarship in the areas of sex and gender. If we restrict research on the basis that it may undermine “dignities,” then we place severe limits on our ability to discover what is true. And to whom should we bestow the power to determine our “dignities,” and what qualifies as undermining them? Are these judges of dignity deemed to be the most moral among us? Would they represent everyone’s views, or just a subset of society? Or would they be elevated to the position by others with power?
Last but not least, when we censor research that fails the “dignity test”—say, research claiming that psychological sex differences may have some biological origin—we implicitly endorse the idea that troubling ethical and practical consequences follow from evidence of group differences. That is a big mistake, one that science educators, researchers, and publishers should focus on correcting before real damage is done to science, and to the lives of vulnerable people.
Apart from helping to attract a huge number of students to my seminar on sex differences, the Summers controversy had no practical effect on my work or life at Harvard. But a similar controversy, in which I became embroiled 16 years later, did. I found myself on the receiving end of public moral outrage in response to comments I made about human sex differences (also on a public platform), which have impinged upon my ability to teach and research in my area of interest and expertise. As a result, I am currently on leave from my position at Harvard.
Part of what is significant about my case, and most others like it, is that the limits on my academic freedom were not set by explicit, detailed, formal guidelines and policies like those outlined in the Nature Human Behavior editorial. Rather, my troubles were due to informal and personal attacks on my character, initiated by people without much institutional power, but implicitly sanctioned by those with it.
In the summer of 2021, shortly after the publication of my book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us, I appeared on Fox and Friends, a news program on the Fox network. I was asked to comment on an article written by the journalist Katie Herzog, about the pressure some professors felt to back away from using language like “male and female” and “pregnant women” in teaching.
I agreed to appear on Fox and Friends for a few reasons. First, my book had just been released and I wanted it to reach as large an audience as possible. Second, while I am in favor of using language that makes people feel respected and comfortable, I feel strongly that we should resist succumbing to the demands of bullies and be unafraid to use clear, indispensable scientific terms like “male” and “female.” And third, I wanted to explain that sex categories are facts of nature which do not carry implications for anyone’s value or rights. I had nothing to say in the interview about how to describe pregnancy.
While people might have objected to just about anything I said, simply because I said it on Fox, here’s the bit that got me in real trouble:
The facts are that there are ... two sexes ... there are male and female, and those sexes are designated by the kinds of gametes we produce ... The ideology seems to be that biology really isn’t as important as how somebody feels about themselves or feels their sex to be, but we can treat people with respect and respect their gender identities and use their preferred pronouns, so understanding the facts about biology doesn’t prevent us from treating people with respect.
In response to my appearance, a graduate student tweeted out a thread, representing herself in her official capacity as director of my department’s Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging task force. She said, among other things, that she was “appalled” by my “transphobic” and “dangerous” remarks which allegedly interfered with the task force’s efforts to ensure that the department was a “safe space” for people of “all gender identities and sexes.”
At the time, I had few followers on Twitter and was not particularly active on the platform. I was not tagged in the student’s tweet. I learned about it secondhand. I felt scared and nervous that this awful portrayal of me, written by someone in an official position in my own department, was broadcast to the entire world. (This might be a good time to make clear that I care deeply about my students, whatever their identities happen to be. Based on my strong relationships with students, their comments and reviews of my teaching, the teaching and advising awards I have earned, and my being repeatedly voted one of “Harvard’s favorite professors.”)
Since I thought the tweet thread might adversely affect my relationship with future undergraduates and my reputation in general, I attempted to control the situation by quote-tweeting the thread, asking the student to explain what I had said that was harmful to undergraduates. I didn’t get what I considered a straight answer. Soon the whole thing went viral, with headlines like “Harvard professor Carole Hooven who refused to use term ‘pregnant people’ rather than ‘woman’ is accused of transphobia.” Again, I never said anything about “pregnant people,” but some newspapers seem not to care about getting the facts straight.
Most of the public (and private) comments and coverage were in my favor, and the graduate student received lots of criticism on Twitter, some of it harsh. Inside Harvard, though, things were quite different. Soon a narrative developed in the department that I was the primary bad actor, “punching down,” and had caused a graduate student to suffer abuse. A petition against me was linked to a Crimson article about the incident. Thankfully, the petition never gained much steam, but the damage had been done. I found myself walking with my head down in places on campus where I used to feel at home. I feared that someone might recognize me as the “transphobe” from whom students needed to be protected.
Being called transphobic for declaring the reality of sex on Fox and Friends was not a complete surprise; in the few years leading up to that appearance, I had felt an increasing intolerance of straight talk about what it means to be male or female. What was a surprise was the way people “in charge” responded: Vacations were interrupted by this “situation,” and a flurry of activity followed, in the form of emails, phone calls, and Zoom meetings. I was not privy to most of it, however.
Even though someone publicly maligned my speech in their official capacity as a representative of the institution, which is a clear violation of Harvard’s Free Speech Guidelines, the person who maligned me was not sanctioned. A few faculty members, still my good friends, expressed concern about my well-being and supported me personally, and I owe them a debt of gratitude. But despite my pleas for help, those who could have done so failed to defend my right to express my views and to communicate biological facts, to apologize for what happened, or to make any statement on my behalf.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/academic-freedom-social-justice
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Don’t stop at affirmative action: End college legacy admissions too
Sometime this month, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the future of affirmative action in college admissions.
A pair of lawsuits brought against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, by advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions, accuse the effort to admit a more diverse class of systemically disadvantaging Asian applicants.
A decision could come anytime between now and June 30, and many legal analysts expect the conservative-majority court will overturn race-conscious admissions practices.
It would be a consequential and disruptive decision that, in my view, would represent a victory for fairness in the application process.
But it would only do part of the job of making college admissions truly fair: The next behemoth that should be tackled is nepotism.
Thanks to the Supreme Court case, Harvard had to hand over troves of internal data about how they craft their classes. And, when you pull back the curtain on that infamously cutthroat and opaque admissions process, you find rampant backdoors into Harvard.
In 2019, researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed Harvard’s admissions data. They found that, while Harvard’s admissions rate averaged 6% from 2009 to 2014, special interest groups had a drastically easier time getting in.
A legacy applicant with a close relative who graduated from Harvard had a 33.6% chance of acceptance (the Common Application used by most colleges and universities explicitly asks where your parents went to school, which shouldn’t even be a question).
A student on the “dean’s interest list” — code for someone whose family donated to the school — had a 42.2% shot. And a child of faculty or staff had a 46.7% chance of getting in.
In fact, the researchers found that 43% of white students at Harvard were either legacies, children of faculty, kin of donors, or a recruited athlete. And a staggering 75% of them wouldn’t have gotten in if not for that special status.
Harvard admits fewer than 2,000 students per class, and its admissions rate has plummeted to just 3.41% this year.
It’s harder than ever to get into Harvard… that is, if you were born with the wrong last name or to parents with the wrong bank balance.
I saw this firsthand when I went to a boarding school. My father never went to college, and I didn’t apply to my mom’s school.
But my peers who were children of Ivy League graduates sailed into their parents’ alma maters, and oftentimes their more qualified classmates received rejection letters from the very same colleges and universities.It was straight up unfair — and everybody knew it.
Every spot taken by someone who got in for the wrong reasons is a spot stolen from another applicant who busted their butt to get flawless grades and perfect test scores while juggling varsity sports and starting their own company on the side. There are many such stories of unsuccessful Harvard hopefuls.
Booting those kids out for an affirmative action admit is no less justifiable than skipping over them for an graduate’s kid. Both are unfair. And neither should ever happen. A alumnus or donor or professor’s child should have the same odds as anyone else.
If schools like Harvard are truly interested in creating a diverse class, they should be trying to diversify the last names of their students by dumping special legacy considerations. Undoubtedly, doing so would open the door for more first-generation graduates and underprivileged kids.
Harvard fought all the way up to the Supreme Court to maintain their race-conscious admissions process, claiming it’s critical to creating a diverse class.
But, in all reality, getting rid of the special status they confer on kids who know the right people would help achieve that same goal.
In fact, the researchers found that “removing preferences for athletes and legacies would significantly alter the racial distribution of admitted students, with the share of white admits falling and all other groups rising or remaining unchanged.”
The fact that we have a meritocracy and not an aristocracy underpins the American dream. Anyone can make it here with hard work and grit.
But schools like Harvard, which are churning out generation after generation of elite graduates from the same rich families, are manufacturing an American aristocracy.
It’s time for that to change.
https://nypost.com/2023/06/21/dont-stop-at-affirmative-action-end-college-legacy-admissions-too/
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21 June, 2023
New York State’s Directive to Schools: Lie to Parents
Parents who send their kids to New York public schools have lots to worry about. Is he really learning? Is she really safe? And: Is the school gender-transitioning my child behind my back?
Earlier this week, the New York State Department of Education (NYSED) published a “legal update and best practice” document for how schools should serve “transgender and gender expansive” students. The key takeaway: if your child decides that he or she wants to socially transition to the opposite gender, it is now a “best practice” for the school to lie to you about it.
“Only the student,” the NYSED declares, “knows whether it is safe to share their identity with a caregiver.” The baseline assumption, then, is that “unaffirming” parents are dangerous to their children. If Kevin wants to go by “Kimi” but doesn’t want his parents to know, the best practice, according to NYSED, is as follows: “The teachers call her Kimi and use she/her pronouns at school. When calling home for any reason, teachers use the name Kevin and he/him pronouns.”
Leading experts like Hilary Cass, a medical doctor who documented rampant malpractice in England’s Tavistock child gender clinic, have explained that social transition is not a neutral act but rather an active psychosocial and arguably even medical intervention. Finnish medical authorities have discouraged gender self-identification for children, recognizing its potential to disrupt healthy development and result in unnecessary medicalization. While activists believe that transition is beneficial to mental health, a new study in the U.K. finds no improvement for socially transitioned kids relative to control groups. Evidence suggests that treating children as if they are the opposite sex can cause their feelings of gender dysphoria to persist and increase the likelihood that they will seek experimental hormonal intervention.
If the NYSED has its way, schools will also effectively market experimental hormonal interventions. Its new policy recommends that all schools, at a minimum, adhere to the guidelines of the National Sex Education Standards, which state that children should learn about puberty blockers by fifth grade. It may be doubted whether schools would provide the full medical picture concerning the use of puberty blockers, including the lack of evidence for their benefits, the serious long-term side effects, and the near-certain progression to cross-sex hormones that can cause permanent sexual dysfunction and sterility.
The National Sex Education Standards also recommend introducing children to the concept of “gender identity” starting in kindergarten. As a next step, NYSED recommends that staff actively solicit sexual and gender information by “ask[ing] students which terms they use and generally us[ing] the term the student uses to describe themselves.” (This includes terms such as “agender,” which “refers to a person who does not identify with or experience any gender, [and] is different from nonbinary because many nonbinary people do experience gender.”) In New York, schools now apparently stand ready to tell five-year-olds that they might have been born in the wrong body, socially transition them behind their parents’ backs, and steer them toward experimental hormonal interventions.
Public polling suggests that NYSED’s policies on gender are massively unpopular. About 70 percent of registered voters oppose teaching students in elementary school about sexual orientation and gender identity, and 75 percent say that schools should be required to get parental consent before facilitating a gender transition.
But when it comes to public education, the will of parents matters far less than the whim of activist-captured bureaucrats. These widely unpopular “best practices” have been sent out to schools as a “legal update”—and school district administrators and principals will not unreasonably assume that the recommendations are required for legal compliance.
If parents don’t want this indoctrination going on in New York public schools, they must get organized and petition their local school boards. But they face two stiff headwinds. First, activist groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center have labeled positions on these issues held by the vast majority of the public as “hate,” so anyone openly advocating for them runs the risk of cancellation. Second, since school board members are voted for in off-cycle elections with extremely low turnout, they may feel little need to pay attention to parents’ preferences.
Still, if parents don’t push back, no one will.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-states-directive-to-schools-lie-to-parents
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Schools are scaring our kids to death with this indoctrination program
As nearly every standardized test is showing, our schools are doing an abysmal job teaching kids how to read or do math. In some cases, kids graduating from high school can barely read their diplomas.
But the schools are wildly succeeding with their climate change indoctrination program.
When I speak to kids on high school and college campuses and ask what the greatest threat is to their generation, the answer isn't China's aggression. It isn't a drug abuse problem that is becoming the leading killer of our children. It isn't the failed schools or the corrupt government or the more routine violations of freedom of speech. It isn't the $32 trillion national debt soon headed to $50 trillion. (I always remind the kids, I won't be paying for this Mount Everest-sized debt burden. YOU will.)
No, they almost all raise their hands and moan that they are most worried about global warming or "climate change." We are raising a generation with millions of Greta Thunbergs.
A Daily Telegraph poll found that more than half of teenagers surveyed believe that the world "may end in their lifetime" because of climate change. No one has ever told them that the climate has been changing for as long as the planet has existed.
They've apparently never heard of the ice ages. The Earth has gone through centuries of warming – and that was before air conditioning, which the climate czars want to take away from us to combat warming. Figure that one out.
I'm not here to argue about "the science" of global warming. What I do know is it's only "settled science" because anyone who dares question the "experts" is written off as crazy or a quack.
Meanwhile, the people who warned us about "the population bomb," nuclear winter, mass starvation, running out of energy, global cooling and a future so polluted that everyone would have to wear gas masks in cities, are telling us to just trust them as they are busy at work erecting a multitrillion-dollar climate change industrial complex that revolves around our planetary savior – the windmill.
But scaring the bejesus out of our kids to score political points is a reprehensible practice. Our school kids are being terrorized with misinformation. This, in turn, is leading to all sorts of maladies, including a rise in teen depression, suicide, lower productivity and drug addiction.
Worst of all, we are seeing the opposite of a population bomb. We are experiencing one of the most severe birth dearths in American history. The birth rate is plummeting and no surprise. Who wants to bring kids into a world that will be uninhabitable in 50 years?
Psychologists are attributing these dysfunctions to a new syndrome called "eco-anxiety." It's a fear that Mother Earth is going to punish us in a brutal way – and very soon.
The irony of all this is that today's children and teens are inheriting a living standard, a cleaner planet, and a level of goods and services and technologies and medical care that is far superior to anything anyone in history – even the richest kings and queens – had access to even 100 years ago.
Biden's green movement isn't about better energy, it restricts what works: Alex EpsteinVideo
If kids think climate change is worrisome, they should try dealing with the bubonic plague, which killed one-third of Europe's population, or polio or tuberculosis – or fending off barbarians or working 60 hours a week in a coal mine.
If my parents were part of the "greatest generation," living through two world wars and a Great Depression, then this must be the psychotic generation. Are they to blame? No, we – their parents – are.
We are the ones who have passively sat by as the Left turned our kids into neurotic Green New Dealers. Death to the machine. Turn the lights out. No more cars. No more flush toilets or washing machines. What's next to save the planet? Euthanasia?
That's what happens when you teach your children that they aren't inheriting the Earth, but a fiery hell.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/schools-scaring-kids-death-indoctrination-program
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Utah school district puts Bible back on bookshelves after pushback: 'Significant, serious value'
Colton Lindsay, a Utah parent, said he opposes his daughter's school district removing the Bible from elementary and middle schools for "vulgarity or violence"
A school district in northern Utah on Tuesday reversed its prior decision to remove The Holy Bible from its middle and elementary schools.
The Davis School District determined the texts were appropriate for students and will now be available in all district libraries, district officials said at a board meeting on Tuesday. The reversal comes after 70 community members appealed last month's decision to ban the Bible over claims it was not age-appropriate.
School board members voted unanimously to return the Bible to district libraries.
The district, located north of Salt Lake City, received a request in December for the Bible to be reviewed in response to the state's "sensitive materials" law passed last year allowing residents to challenge books found in schools and libraries that they believe are inappropriate. The request argued that the Bible is "one of the most sex-ridden books around."
Utah Parents United, one of the primary groups involved in curriculum battles, "left off one of the most sex-ridden books around: The Bible," the challenge read, referring to parents' efforts to remove books about sex, gender and critical race theory.
"You'll no doubt find that the Bible … has no serious values for minors because it's pornographic by our new definition … If the books that have been banned so far are any indication for way lesser offenses, this should be a slam dunk," it continued.
The challenge also criticized a "bad faith process" and said the district was "ceding our children’s education, First Amendment Rights, and library access" to Utah Parents United.
A review committee – made up of mostly parents – determined the Bible was not age-appropriate for middle or elementary school students. Appeals were filed shortly after the decision.
On Tuesday, the school board said an appeal committee, basing their assessment on community standards, determined the Bible has "significant, serious value for minors which outweighs the violent or vulgar content it contains."
"The magnitude of the value of the Bible as a literary work outweighs any violence or profanity which may be contained in the book," District Board Vice President Brigit Gerrard said at Tuesday's meeting.
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20 June, 2023
High school math teacher is fired after comparing students' skin tones to coffee roasts including 'extra cream', 'medium roast' and 'dark roast'
A Florida high school math teacher has been fired after a 'racially charged incident' that saw him compare students skin tones to different types of coffee roasts.
Cary Altschuler, who taught AP statistics and precalculus at Lake Worth High School, posted photos of three students on his smart board along with the labels: 'Extra Cream,' 'Medium Roast,' and 'Dark Roast.'
He claims he did it in response to two students who began calling each other 'light-skinned'. Altschuler reportedly told the students that if they were going to mock the color of each other's skin, they should be more creative.
Altschuler pulled the shocking stunt in February and was fired on Wednesday by the Palm Beach County School Board after they conducted an investigation.
Lake Worth High School Principal Dr. Elena Villani called the incident 'egregiously inappropriate,' and in a letter sent to parents apologized for the 'disturbing' situation and referred to it as a 'racially charged incident.'
According to WPTV, Altschuler admitted he posted the three students' pictures on the Smart Board during his math class and that he took the pictures from the SIS software that teachers use for student grades and attendance.
Two of the pictures were students in the classroom at the time of the incident and the other student was from last year.
Some of the students told a few teachers at the school what had happened and how it made them feel very uncomfortable. They also went on social media to share the dreadful experience.
The ex-teacher said that he was just joking with the students in his class, but then realized he made a 'major mistake' and later admitted it 'was wrong of him to jump in and discuss skin tones.'
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Schools and the federal government are trying to usurp parental authority when dealing with the topic of “gender transitions.”
Moral and Ideological Kidnapping
Ideological grooming is taking place in schools across the nation. Thousands of school administrators are prompting their teachers to teach about LGBTQ+ in the name of “diversity” and “inclusion.” It is a religious instruction packaged in the name of civil rights and identity politics. Because of that deceptive packaging, it was not immediately thrown out of the public school classroom — like the Bible and prayer have been. Schools have also instructed teachers to hide when a student declares a change in gender identity — i.e., when a teacher’s ideological instruction has brought about a conversion.
If this teaching is right and good, why hide it from parents? The answer is obvious. It is not right or good; in fact, it is abuse of power. But the radical leftists long ago decided that they would brainwash children into their political worldview to ensure their hold on political power. That worldview now includes radical Gender Marxism and the enforcement of celebrating every aspect of the LGBTQ+ community … or else.
President Joe Biden recently said: “These are our kids. These are our neighbors, not someone else’s kids; they’re all our kids. … LGBTQI+ Americans, especially children: You are loved. You are heard. And this administration has your back.” In essence, Biden is echoing what has long been a left-wing sentiment: that children belong to the government and not their parents. “It takes a village,” as Hillary Clinton once put it.
The Federalist’s David Harsanyi comments that Biden’s statement “sounds like an innocuous platitude to some woke White House speechwriter, but to me it sounds like a totalitarian notion.” Harsanyi goes on to clarify that he doesn’t think Biden is going to send parents to the gulags or that they are particularly deep thinkers when it comes to gender theory. But he does think that “the White House is teeming with wannabe authoritarians who believe the state would do a better job raising kids by filling their impressionable heads with corrosive, immoral ideas.”
What have been the consequences so far for parents who have discovered, to their dismay, that their child was brainwashed into the transgender ideology cult? The lucky ones lied until they could get their child out of the hostile school system to rectify the damage inflicted on their beloved child. The not-so-lucky ones have had Child Protective Services CPS come in and take these gender-confused children out of the home. Immigrant single mother Abigail Martinez lost her beautiful daughter to CPS and suicide because of this ideology. It destroys families.
What are the consequences for the children who are indoctrinated into this cult, which lets them put themselves in the place of God and choose their own gender? They are warped morally. Many develop mental disorders (such as depression) if they weren’t already struggling with one. Still others slip down the pipeline of never-ending medical treatments that never give them the desired solution: For their lie to become truth.
The children are put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones that make them feel good for a while, but down the road, when their brains are fully developed, many deeply regret this decision. These drugs cause sterilization and make the user more vulnerable to developing other deadly conditions including cancer. Several countries in Europe have seriously restricted the use and distribution of these drugs to children, as there are no discernible benefits to using them. Some children go on to actually mutilate their bodies in an attempt to be who they are not. They destroy healthy body parts and are left with useless flesh and mountains of medical bills.
What precisely are the federal government and public schools advocating for educationally? One need look no further than the topless stunt that male “transgender” social media influencer pulled a few days ago at the White House for clarification. Under the guise of “tolerance,” “acceptance,” and “inclusion,” kids are sexualized. They are made to believe that their identity lies in their sexuality. They are exposed to pornographic books. The goal is no longer to educate but to indoctrinate. Governmental entities don’t have to put back the broken pieces that they shattered. They only care that the broken child is so warped that they will still vote Democrat when they turn 18.
To quote Harsanyi again, our children “are human beings with rights, parents, and unique ambitions, not platitude-spouting automatons who should be categorized by skin color or gender ‘identification.’”
Conservatives have rightly pointed out that children belong to their parents, certainly not the government. Representative Byron Donalds (R-FL) sums up this sentiment perfectly: “I think politicians should really stay out of that stuff. I don’t think we should be making that statement [that they’re all our kids] at all, especially with something so controversial. And at the end of the day, what we really need to do is let kids be kids, not use them as political tools, political weapons [emphasis added]. Let them grow up. Make sure that they understand that there’s a lot that they need to learn and work through, and not bring politics into it. I think kids being a part of this thing is the worst thing.”
As Christians, we believe that all children belong to God. Parents are merely stewards of those lives entrusted to our care. It is parents who have the right and the duty to train their children morally, ideologically, and religiously. The government’s job is to protect our rights and uphold our laws. None of which the Biden administration seems to be doing very well.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/98133 ?
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Mother of Year 8 pupil scolded by a teacher for questioning classmate's claim she identities as a cat says she is proud of her daughter amid 'ridiculous' gender row
The parents of a 13-year-old girl who was branded 'despicable' by her teacher after she rejected a classmate's claim that she identified as a cat have tonight told of their fury.
The angry couple say their daughter was 'bullied' by her life education teacher for speaking out and have blasted a decision to report her as 'ridiculous'.
Two teenage Year 8 pupils at Rye College in East Sussex were ordered to stay behind in class after clashing with their classmate who identifies as a cat.
One of the girls secretly recorded their conversation with the teacher, who can be heard reprimanding them both for their views that gender is binary, calling it 'really despicable' and 'very sad'.
The girls are also told 'if you don't like it you should go to a different school.'
Tonight, the mum of one of the girls, who has asked to be kept anonymous, told MailOnline: ‘I’m so proud of my daughter, she will always stand up for what she believes is right and this is all that she did.
‘She expressed a view that many, many of her classmates and their parents would share yet she was shouted down and bullied by someone in authority.'
She continued: 'For that teacher to tell her to leave and go to another school if she didn’t like what she was being told made my blood boil. What kind of welcome is that for a 13-year-old girl.
‘My daughter texted me from her life education class last Friday and said that she was being taught gender identity and asked to fill out a worksheet. We’ve spoken about the issue before and she’s like me you can be whatever you want to be - but facts are facts.
‘I replied that she could walk out of the lesson if she didn’t feel what she was being taught was right.
‘She didn’t, however, and stayed in the classroom but her and her friend put their views across and clashed with another girl in the class who identifies as a cat
‘My daughter told the teacher that what they were learning was ridiculous and the girl identifying as a cat tried to argue that it wasn’t and that anyone could identify as anything.
‘As she said that my daughter replied “so If I identify as a kangaroo then I can say I'm a kangaroo?!” Some of the others in the class started laughing and the girl who thinks she’s a cat started crying.
‘My daughter and her friend were told to stay after the class and were given a warning to stop and toe the line. That’s when she started secretly recording the teacher.
‘I have to say that when my daughter came home from school and told me what happened. I didn’t believe her, I thought she was a typical teenage girl exaggerating.
‘But then she played me the recording and I was shocked and then horrified and then furious. I still get angry listening to it.
'There are girls in her class and at the school who are trans and she has no problem with any of them, she calls them by their preferred pronouns and accepts them for who they are - but there are only two sexes. It's just science, you are born male or female.
'The fact that the school is shielding this young girl who identifies as a cat and reprimanding anyone who challenges that notion seems to me to be completely absurd.
‘Why on earth are 13-year-old kids being taught about gender identity anyway? They're just children. It’s not right.
‘So many people agree with us on this but many are reluctant to put their heads above the parapet, so to speak, because they’ll be labelled a bigot, a TERF or a Tory. But this sort of stuff is messing with children's heads.'
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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19 June, 2023
University Announces Big Move on Confucius Institute After Republicans Call It Out
A New York university will shut down its Confucius Institute by the end of June after facing intense scrutiny from Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
“I’m glad to see Alfred University finally doing the right thing and shutting down its Confucius Institute,” Gallagher, R-Wis., said in a statement Thursday. “But the Confucius Institute is only one tool in the CCP’s toolbox—it will use research partnerships, talent programs, and other initiatives to gain access to sensitive research and technologies that fuel the [People’s Liberation Army]’s advancement.”
“We’re going to continue to dig into the facts to make sure that no American taxpayer dollars are supporting research partnerships that the CCP can exploit for its own purposes,” Gallagher said.
China funds Confucius Institutes, founded in 2004, as “cultural” centers operating on college campuses. In the past few years, these centers have come under increased scrutiny as operations of Chinese state influence.
Gallagher sent a letter to Alfred University President Mark Zupan on May 31 and launched an investigation into the university.
“In 2022, you were awarded a $13.5 million DOD research grant for hypersonic weapons while simultaneously hosting a Confucius Institute and partnering with a Chinese university ‘actively engaged in defense research’ on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA),” Gallagher wrote to Zupan.
“To put it plainly, you are conducting advanced, hypersonic weapons-related research while actively partnering with a Chinese university that performs similar research for the PLA. We seek additional information regarding this alarming matter and Alfred’s commitment to safeguard sensitive U.S. military research,” Gallagher also wrote.
A lawyer representing Alfred University responded to Gallagher in a letter Tuesday.
“Alfred University has decided to close the Confucius Institute as of June 30, 2023. I also note that Alfred University takes very seriously the issue of protecting intellectual property and improper technology export,” the lawyer wrote.
“Even though Alfred University does not engage in classified research, it has for multiple years engaged with the Department of Commerce and the FBI to strengthen its export control policies and processes,” the lawyer added. “Thank you for attention to this matter and the important oversight function you fill as a member of Congress.”
“While our community has benefited from the cultural programming provided by the Confucius Institute that we have operated since 2008, current geopolitical concerns regarding China make it difficult to continue to run it. With respect to those concerns, we have decided to close our Institute effective June 30, 2023,” Mark Danes, vice president for marketing and communications at Alfred University, told The Daily Signal in an email.
Gallagher also sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on May 31 and launched an investigation into the Defense Department.
“The Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation write to express our deep concern that lucrative Department of Defense (DOD) research grants continue to be awarded to universities that host Confucius Institutes,” Gallagher wrote in the letter to Austin.
“These institutes are ‘funded by the CCP Propaganda Department’ and ‘overseen by personnel based in Chinese embassies and consulates,’ according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission,” the chairman also wrote
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College Board Will Not Revise AP Course to Comply With DeSantis' Education Laws
On Thursday, the College Board, which oversees the Advanced Placement program, told Florida leaders that it will not revise its psychology course that covers the topic of sexual orientation and gender identity.
According to The Washington Post, the organization sent a letter to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to notify them that it will not change the course.
“Please know that we will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics,” the organization said in a letter to Florida’s education department. “Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for success in the discipline.”
Last year, Florida began enacting restrictions on curriculum surrounding gender identity and sexual orientation in public schools. A letter sent from DeSantis’ administration to the College Board last month asked the organization to review its courses and make changes to comply with the state law.
“Some courses might contain content or topics prohibited by State Board of Education rule and Florida law,” the department’s letter reportedly stated.
In April, Townhall covered how the College Board announced that it would revise its Advanced Placement African American studies course following criticism from scholars and from DeSantis’ administration. Reportedly, the course included lessons in “black queer” studies and “intersectionality.”
In addition to restricting lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity, DeSantis has come out against other “divisive” topics in schools, like Critical Race Theory.
In a statement, the College Board said that it is “committed to providing an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African American history and culture. To achieve that commitment, we must listen to the diversity of voices within the field. The development committee and experts within AP remain engaged in building a course and exam that best reflect this dynamic discipline. Those scholars and experts have decided they will make changes to the latest course framework during this pilot phase. They will determine the details of those changes over the next few months.”
Months prior, DeSantis had rejected the AP course over its “political agenda.”
“We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them when you try to use black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes,” DeSantis said at the time.
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Australia: Government schools losing students
No surprise why. Government schools offer a choice range of chaos and propaganda
Public primary schools in Sydney’s east, north shore and inner city have lost more than 4700 students in the past four years, with more children being clustered in composite classes to manage shrinking enrolments.
The decline in public sector enrolments – intensified in more affluent suburbs – comes as more families move suburbs, switch catchments, or leave to secure a place in year 5 at private schools.
In a letter to parents last month, Clovelly Public’s principal Matt Jackman made an impassioned appeal to parents urging them to push back against the “pressure and marketing the private sector” places on families and keep children enrolled through to year 6.
“As with most public schools in the eastern suburbs, we are seeing an even greater increase in students leaving the public education system at the end of year 4,” he wrote.
“There are a variety of reasons this happens, but the one I hear most is that private schools can’t guarantee placements in year 7 if the child does not transfer over in year 5.”
The fall has occurred as schools in the east and north have recorded the fastest growth in composite classes – where students from different years are grouped – rising by 35 classes, or 20 per cent between 2019 and 2022.
Principals say cost of living pressures mean families are relocating to more affordable parts of Sydney, while private schools are competing for top-achieving students in year 5 by offering scholarships or encouraging parents to enrol before year 7 to avoid forfeiting a place.
A NSW Education Department spokesperson said there had been a surge in births between 2005 and the end of the baby bonus payments in 2014, which was translating into falling enrolments.
Public primary schools in the eastern suburbs have been hit with the biggest enrolment drop, declining by 13 per cent in four years, followed by the northern beaches, North Sydney and inner west.
In Maroubra Junction Public’s latest annual report, the school notes declining enrolments are partly due to families moving “out of the local area for financial reasons, transferring into their local school closer to their new residence”.
Morag Bond said she opted for Coogee Public for her son Jonah – who is now in year 4 – because of the school’s proximity to the family home, the teachers and extension activities offered.
“Coogee is our local school, and we really saw the benefits in that. But it’s been hard this year. He’s losing his friends as they go into private and Catholic schools,” she said. “I appreciate it’s such an individual decision, but we are happy, and he will stay until the end of year 6.”
She is undecided about secondary options, except that it will be a school close to home. “There is also the massive financial pressure of private education. People can get seduced by well-kept grounds, or the facilities, but it’s important to look at the school as a whole,” she said.
Despite an overall decline in public school enrolments due to population changes and lower migration, private schools have retained a steady share of students over the past four years.
Independent schools increased enrolments from year 4 to year 5 by 1500 students in 2022, up by 35 per cent from 2020. Year 5 is the biggest intake grade into private schools after year 7.
Another parent, Heather Shepherd, who has a son in year 4 at Randwick Public, said there was a noticeable difference in year 5 and 6 class sizes.
“There is a lot of pressure on parents to get them into a private school, or they are moving away from Randwick because there is no co-ed public high school option. Families leave for different reasons, but I think staying at the school until year 6 is such a rite of passage,” she said.
NSW Department of Education Secretary Murat Dizdar said he wants parents to see public schools as the first choice. “I know independent and Catholic schools compete strongly for enrolments. I want our public schools to be competing too, and that starts with attracting and retaining the very best teachers and school leaders,” he said.
The department spokesperson said it was common for schools across NSW to have composite classes and the evidence shows they do not disadvantage students compared with single grade classes.
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18 June, 2023
Cambridge College goes for Woke
There are some wokefications in this world of ours that are a little more disheartening than others. One of those was the news that on June 4th, Cambridge University’s Corpus Christi College at held a Pride themed Formal Hall in its beautiful Pugin wallpapered, 19th Century gothic Dining Hall.
The College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary was founded by townspeople in 1352 after the Bubonic plague had decimated 30-40 percent of the population. As the Italian author Bocaccio commented, such was the terrifying speed at which the virus spread, that its victims ‘ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors in paradise.’ About 2/3 of the clergy were wiped out, prompting the surviving members of two Cambridge gilds, still reeling from the horror, picked themselves up and founded a college specifically to train priests.
This June, the college sought to create a ‘comfortable, safe space for our LGBTQ+ family’ with a Pride themed Formal Hall. Organisers positioned an enormous rainbow balloon arch at the hall’s entrance, which was apparently ‘the showstopper of the evening.’ Once they had taken their seats in front of plates adorned with rainbow napkins, attendees were treated to selection of queer- themed lectures, delivered from a lectern draped in a voluminous rainbow flag.
First up was Leah Palmer of the Scott Polar Institute who talked about ‘how queer voices are changing our thinking about the Arctic and Antarctic regions’. She was followed by a public servant who rift on ‘what LGBTQ+ people think about having children’. Then an induvial by the name of Roan Runge from the Department of Anglo Saxon- Norse and Celtic, gave a lecture on medieval Irish hagiography from a ‘Trans Studies perspective’. According to her bio, Ms Runge occupies her time by ‘thinking about the continued dehumanization of trans people, as well as trans reclamations of unhumanity and monstrosity’, hoping to ‘take theoretical approaches to figures who linger between species and gender.’ The evening must have been a blast.
Once the propagandising was over, hungry college members were dished up the type of fare that you might expect at a four-year old’s birthday party, the catering staff apparently pulling out all stops to produce a three-course meal of rainbow -themed food. The entire evening was an embarrassing infantilisation of students, academics, and staff. The college has survived the Peasants Revolt, the Reformation, Civil War and Two World Wars, but whether it will survive the war on reality by the forces of woke remains to be seen.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/06/cambridge-college-goes-for-woke/
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Fighting Woke
People hate Chris Rufo. "Your agenda to turn our campus into a space of extremist indoctrination is harming our enrollment!" shouts a student at Florida's New College. "You are the problem!"
"I'm not the problem," Rufo tells me in my newest video. "I'm actually the solution."
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made Rufo a trustee of a state college. Rufo quickly moved to end what he considers leftist indoctrination. "We fired the director of DEI and abolished her entire department."
Rufo learned about indoctrination after making a PBS documentary on poverty. He started getting odd leaks from government workers. "Mid-level bureaucrats, so exasperated with what was happening, started feeding me documents," says Rufo.
The documents showed that government Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officials pushed anti-white racism. Seattle told employees, "Work on undoing your own whiteness."
It's a product of critical race theory, says Rufo. "The intention is to have an emotional lever against you."
"What's in it for them? I ask.
"Career advancement, and cultural and emotional power over others," he answers.
Tweeting the leaks led to more leaks. "I did one story, and then I'd get five or six people sending me documents ... then suddenly it was 100 people and 1,000 people."
A worker at the defense contractor Sandia Labs revealed that Sandia's new hiring rules require them to always interview "at least one" woman and one minority.
"Sounds fair," I say to Rufo. "Make up for past discrimination."
"You should be encouraging a wide variety of people to apply," Rufo responds. "But when we're talking about nuclear weapons, you need to have the most capable individuals, regardless of race or sex."
Rufo's critics accuse him of making things up. The New Yorker profile on him was titled "How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory."
"I post all of the original source documents for every one of my stories," Rufo responds. "It's so shameful when it's exposed to sunlight that they've engaged in these accusations as a form of denial."
"All 100 Fortune 100 companies have DEI bureaucracies. It's seen as second nature to endorse Black Lives Matter, a left-wing racial activist organization responsible for rioting, violence, but if you say, 'I'm pro-life and I want a pro-life message in a corporate setting,' it would be shut down immediately! ... Why are only one set of political ideologies allowed?"
I push back, "Because America's history of slavery and oppression is so bad."
"But that's also based on a lie!" Rufo replies. "Of course, slavery is an abominable historical legacy, but the record of the United States on slavery ... is much better than almost anywhere else."
Florida now has banned all public universities from funding DEI programs, and from claiming that systemic racism is inherent in the United States.
But doesn't that violate professors' right to speak? The free speech group FIRE calls Florida's new university rules "flatly unconstitutional."
"I worry about things you and DeSantis do," I tell Rufo. "It feels authoritarian."
"Impressionable young kids should not be taught race hatred," Rufo responds. "These are commonsense restrictions that aren't authoritarian. They're simply acknowledging that the state is the authority in the public schools."
Florida forbids public schoolteachers from teaching the '1619 Project,' which argues that America was really founded when slaves were brought here.
"The idea that the founders fought the revolution to protect slavery," says Rufo, "is so mind-boggling that even Marxist historians debunked it."
That's true. But doesn't he worry that the next Florida governor might require schools to teach things like the '1619 Project'?
"Of course I worry about that," says Rufo. "But that's what democracy is for ... what politics is for."
Really? I think politics is for letting us choose representatives who preside over limited government, one that protects us from fraud, force and theft, but mostly leaves us alone.
Florida leads the nation in school choice. That's great. We're better off when politicians give power back to parents. Then parents who want their kids taught the '1619 Project' can have that. Those who don't are free to pick another school.
Choice is better than diktats from politicians.
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2023/06/14/fighting-woke-n2624458
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Why the Left Can’t Stand Homeschooling
Loudoun County has been in the news quite a bit recently. Why? Because parents in the Northern Virginia enclave are outraged over the baptism of their children in “woke” ideology. For example, last year the Virginia Department of Education enacted a policy that allowed schools to shirk their obligation to notify parents of a change in their child’s gender identity.
Some of those parents have been harassed, and at least one has received death threats.
But that wasn’t enough. The smear campaign against concerned parents got some help from the media. Namely, The Washington Post, which recently decided to run a hit piece on homeschooling by cherry-picking a disgruntled couple who’d been homeschooled themselves but decided later to enroll their own children in public schools to free them from what they now claim is the oppressive and abusive environment of a Christian homeschooling education.
The fact that the Post had to find a needle in a haystack to make a point is a testament to homeschooling and represents the lengths to which the enemies of homeschooling are willing to go. Meanwhile, it only takes a click of the mouse to unearth thousands of disturbing reports coming out of public schools each year about drugs, violence, sexual assault, critical race theory — you name it.
One of the more despicable undercurrents within the Post’s article is that Christianity is synonymous with child abuse. Besides basic observation of society all around us, at least one study refutes that dubious insinuation.
“What they want is for people to put their kids in government schools,” writes Joy Pullmann at The Federalist. “As this article shows, they’re willing to invest major business resources in smearing anybody who doesn’t obey. Since we’ve established it’s not because The Washington Post cares about child abuse — because if it did, it would go to war against dismembered marriages, the No. 1 risk factor for child abuse — we have to ask the real reason it is using such sharp rhetorical swords to herd people into this one childraising direction.”
The Post’s cross-town rival, The Washington Times, adds this: “We won’t do the couple a disservice by mentioning their names, but they were perfectly cast in this Post screed, which is anti-Christian and anti-home schooling. They’re probably nice people, especially since they were raised in Christian homes. But somewhere, the husband lost his faith.”
How convenient. But it’s nothing new. This is simply one of the strategies of the Left. When covering a political campaign, they’ll showcase the one pro-abortion Republican candidate, write an article about the one conservative librarian who doesn’t mind putting pornographic materials on the bookshelves, or fawn over the one church pastor who thinks Jesus was nonbinary.
What’s ironic is that the Post fully supported homeschooling for several years during the COVID-19 scare, praising the benefits of keeping our kids away from their teachers and classmates. Now, though, the Post thinks it’s dangerous.
In another irony, it was the pandemic itself that made many parents across the country realize that homeschooling was a better option for their kids. Data show that major public school systems across the board have lost a significant number of students who’ve never returned. Today, their parents are taking advantage of homeschooling or independent schools.
Educators should celebrate these trends, but a child who doesn’t attend public school is a child who can’t be controlled by the teachers unions, the activist teachers, or the cultural Marxist ideology that permeates the current public school curriculum.
For these reasons, the so-called progressive Left has done everything to scare parents away from alternative methods of educating their children. Indeed, for decades they’ve claimed that homeschooling is steeped in racism and child abuse.
Leftists fail to address why parents are pulling their kids out of public schools “because the fruits of the poisonous tree would lead back to these same failed leftist education policies,” as our own Emmy Griffin wrote last year. “More and more parents are unwilling to sacrifice their children on the altar of the leftist agenda.”
Parents who want the best for their children need not fear the Post’s attack on homeschooling because the movement to stand up and protect our children is growing larger each year — thanks to the Left’s very own noxious and destructive policies.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/98132
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16 June, 2023
UK: Teacher faces having to remortgage home due to mounting legal costs after being suspended for refusing to use transgender student's preferred pronouns and name
The woman, who cannot be named as a result of a court order, was suspended by a primary school after she refused to use a student's preferred pronouns and name.
The pupil, who was born female, had been placed in her year 4 class and used male pronouns and had a male name.
After arguing that it could be harmful to encourage the child's belief that they were 'in the wrong body', the teacher was sacked last year when she continued to challenge the school's policies.
The High Court rejected the teacher's application for a judicial review and ordered her to pay the council's £14,000 legal costs, according to The Times.
The court ruled that she lacked 'standing' to challenge safeguarding failures. It also noted that the school had moved the child to a different class in response to raising a safeguarding concern.
Now, Nottinghamshire County Council say she is not 'impecunious' and that she owns a four-bedroom property. Council lawyers say that a charge could be placed on the home to settle the costs.
Speaking to The Times, the teacher, referred to as 'Hannah', said: 'Teachers are being bullied not to question trans-affirming policies when evidence shows that the actual result of the approach is to put the welfare of children at serious risk.'
The Christian Legal Centre, which is representing the teacher, said she has launched a tribunal claim against the school for allegedly victimising her for whistleblowing, unfair dismissal and religious discrimination. The tribunal is expected to hear the claim in August 2024.
At the time of her bid for a judicial review, the teacher told The Sunday Times that 'children are being experimented on', adding: 'Schools are silencing teachers who disagree with the policy of simply accepting that if parents ask for a child to be treated as the opposite sex, they must go along with that.'
When the High Court rejected the application last month, the reasons cited for stopping the case from going ahead included the teacher lacking 'standing' to challenge safeguarding failures in relation to an individual child at the school.
It emerged yesterday that lawyers for the council have told the teacher that it would be lawful to 'enforce' the costs immediately and have put forward the proposal that she could remortgage the house she shares with her husband.
Lawyers for the teacher argued that she has been left impoverished by being sacked.
They also argued that enforcing an order on legal costs would be unlawful under whistleblowing legislation before an employment tribunal rules on her case.
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‘Eat or Be Eaten’: Academe’s Cancel Culture Law of the Jungle
In the savagery of the jungle, the rule is “Eat or be eaten.” It seems that law of the jungle has made its way to college campuses.
“At Oxford, students now live in fear – they think cancelling each other will help them get ahead” reads a headline from the British outlet the Telegraph, depicting a reality many warned would happen if cancel culture were allowed to rage unchecked.
The once prestigious institution has followed its academic peers across the globe in becoming a hotbed of illiberal activity.
Just last month, students protested a planned appearance by feminist scholar Kathleen Stock over her views on gender, claiming that allowing her to speak would be endorsing what they call “transphobia.” Stock’s position that transgenderism is ideological nonsense ensured she inevitably became the target of activist students.
Two years earlier, Oxford played host to a cadre of leftist professors who claimed that musical notation was a “colonialist representational system” and that it was complicit in perpetuating white supremacy.
Dominus illuminatio mea, “The Lord is my light,” may be the official motto at Oxford, but the discourse going on at the university is anything but illuminating.
It also should be cause for concern.
The insanity occurring at the university has caused the students there to mutate into a new kind of beast, one more than willing to cannibalize others to achieve dominance.
From the Telegraph article:
At parties and events, people live in fear of something they say or do being recorded. This is more than just the effects of the internet age. It is well-known that certain people, especially in student politics or journalism, often secretly audio-record the entire evening in the hope of catching someone out.
And buried deeper in the article was an anecdote that would be hilarious if it weren’t such a grim reminder of the state of college campuses.
“I remember how, at the dawn of the invasion of Ukraine, there was a scramble among students to be the one who set up the University’s Ukrainian Society,” the author writes, adding:
Once formed, it was immediately added to some of the victorious founders’ LinkedIn and Twitter bios, even though they were yet to do anything.
In an ecosystem where all that matters is the perception of virtue, it should come as no surprise that the animals within will do whatever it takes to seem virtuous. They act like woke peacocks that are willing to kill other birds to be the most beautiful one of all.
While this urge to hunt prey has unfortunate consequences for the state of higher education, it has even more dire consequences for the state of Western civilization.
The law of the jungle at its core is that the strong will dominate the weak. The snake eats the mouse and is in turn consumed by the hawk.
The point of civilization is to reject the natural, entropic state of things, to bring order to the chaos by establishing a society where the weak can coexist with the strong. The snake and the mouse and the hawk are all neighbors and only fight over politics or sports.
By so callously looking for opportunities to destroy their opposition, to tear them apart with fang and claw, the students at Oxford backslide into a state of nature and barbarism.
Once they leave campus, there’s zero doubt the “eat or be eaten” philosophy they so carefully honed at school will follow them.
In a brilliant article from last year, historian Victor Davis Hanson warned that “Americans will come to appreciate just how thin is the veneer of their civilization” and that “we are relearning that what lies just beneath is utterly terrifying.”
What lies beneath is the beast, the primal state of man. And it’s hungry.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/06/08/campus-cancel-culture-law-jungle/
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Teachers Union Unveils LGBTQ+ Toolkit for Indoctrination
This month, the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the country, released a toolkit for educators intended to help guide them on LGBTQ+ issues with their students.
According to the NEA’s “LGBTQ+ Support & Protection” webpage, the toolkit, titled “Defending the Freedom of our LGBTQ+ Students to be Themselves,” gives teachers guides to addressing students by their preferred pronouns, offers LGBTQ+ classroom library book recommendations, and provides art that teachers can display in their classrooms to use as a “tool for change.”
“In English, we have two sets of gendered pronouns: 'she/her/hers' and 'he/him/his' are pronouns that are attached to a particular gender. Men/males have typically been referred to using he/him/his and women/females by using she/her/hers. We likely all grew up assuming we knew someone’s pronouns just by looking at them, or knowing their gender, but that isn’t the case,” the NEA’s Pronoun Guide document states. “In an effort to be more affirming of all, it is important to get out of the habit of assuming pronouns. Plural pronouns are becoming more widely accepted as gender-neutral singular pronouns. It is grammatically correct to use singular ‘they’ to refer a singular person of unknown gender or to a non-binary person who does not feel gendered pronouns work for them.”
The toolkit encourages teachers to use “gender neutral” pronouns, which includes “they/them/theirs” and terms like “ze/zim/zir/zirs/zirself/zay” and includes six “professional learning” modules for educators to use to learn about “addressing bias around sexual orientation and gender identity,” and “how to create a safe school climate for students and staff.”
In recent years, teachers unions have circulated materials in schools pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity, which Townhall has covered. Last fall, it was revealed that the NEA equipped teachers in Ohio with QR-code badges that direct students to how-to guides promoting “non-binary” gender identities, “queer sex,” and the idea that “transgender men” can become pregnant, among other things.
"Instead of doing the work to teach kids what pronouns actually are, the NEA wants to push very controversial ideas about sex and gender,” Alex Nester, an investigative fellow with Parents Defending Education, told Townhall.
Last fall, Townhall covered how teachers unions across the country refused to return to work after COVID-19 lockdowns despite extorting billions of dollars from taxpayers in order to open schools back up. And, when schools were scheduled to open up, teachers unions in several cities went on strike over issues like air conditioning, class sizes, salaries, among other issues. At the same time, the National Assessment of Educational Progress' scorecard was released showing that students suffered irrecoverable learning loss due to lockdowns. The scorecard showed that students who were already behind in school fell even more behind.
“That's all they're doing here. It's not about inclusion, or caring for kids. If the NEA really cared for kids, they would work to improve test scores and student achievement--not promote political agendas,” Nester added.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/06/14/teachers-union-pronoun-toolkit-n2624500
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15 June, 2023
Middle school students tear down Pride banners, chant 'USA are my pronouns' while wearing red, white, and blue
School administrators in Burlington, Massachusetts, called the actions of students who resisted a middle school's Pride Month celebrations "completely unacceptable." They also said it was "demeaning" to other students while likening it to violence.
According to Boston.com, on June 2, 2023, students at Marshall Simonds Middle School showed their obvious displeasure with the school's "spirit day" celebration. The event was requested and sponsored by the school's Spectrum Club, a student group for alleged LGBTQ+ students and allies, according to the outlet.
The club decorated the school with "Happy Pride Month" signs and posters that said “Why it’s not ok to say ‘That’s so gay.’” Rainbow streamers, banners, and stickers were handed out while students and faculty were encouraged to wear rainbow clothing.
Opposing students reportedly tore down banners and signs and chanted “U.S.A. are my pronouns” as they wore red, white, and blue clothes with their faces painted. The outlet also reported that students were seen “being inappropriate” with the rainbow stickers used during the event.
School Principal Cari Purchase said in a letter that she was “extremely disheartened” by the students. She both said that she respects "freedom of speech" but also claimed beliefs that are "demeaning" to others are not acceptable.
“I fully respect that our diverse community has diverse opinions and beliefs. I also respect individuals’ right to express their opinions through clothing choices and freedom of speech,” she wrote. “When one individual or group of individuals’ beliefs and actions result in the demeaning of another individual or group, it is completely unacceptable.”
“I am truly sorry that a day meant for you to celebrate your identity turned into a day of intolerance," the principal continued. "Schools are supposed to be a safe place for ALL students and faculty. Some community members’ actions created an unsafe environment for many of our students, caregivers, and faculty,” she added.
The Burlington Public Schools Superintendent, Eric Conti, also reportedly wrote a letter to parents to denounce the students. The administrator allegedly claimed that there has been an increase in anti-LGBTQ+ violence in the country and that it “has no place in our schools.”
“Like any spirit day celebration at MSMS, participation is optional. Respectful behavior across the entire student body, however, is non negotiable,” he wrote.
Even a school board member, Mike Espejo, condemned the students for their actions. “I didn’t think this could happen in Burlington,” he said. He then reportedly stated that he was disappointed that the school has yet to hire a diversity, equity, and inclusion director yet.
Re-Education
Principal Purchase said that the school would look into a program that would teach the children about tolerance, acceptance, and respect.
A local group of non-profits that claim to promote diversity, the Burlington Equity Coalition, demanded the children be punished and that the district hire a diversity, inclusion, and equity director.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/middle-school-pride-protest-ma ?
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UK: History teacher, 54, was 'treated like a paedophile' and faced classroom ban after giving science lesson about puberty that 'upset' children with gender dysphoria
A senior teacher has told how he was ‘treated like a paedophile’ and faced being banned from the profession over a science lesson about puberty that upset children with gender identity issues.
Roy Huggins, 54, a history teacher with more than 30 years’ experience, was asked to fill-in for an absent colleague to teach a class of 11 and 12-year-olds.
He read from a national curriculum textbook about the physical changes to the bodies of boys and girls during puberty and provided some additional explanation to help the pupils understand. He believed the lesson went well.
But unknown to Mr Huggins there were at least two pupils in the Year 7 class who were ‘diagnosed with gender dysphoria’ and several pupils later lodged complaints about ‘inappropriate’ comments he made in the lesson which caused offence.
Instead of simply discussing the problem with Mr Huggins to avoid a repetition, the school reported him to the local authority safeguarding body who deal with allegations against adults working with children.
To his relief Mr Huggins was quickly cleared of any wrongdoing and he said the authority even ‘criticised the school.’
But not satisfied with the conclusion, the headteacher at Retford Oaks Academy in Nottinghamshire then referred Mr Huggins to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) who have the power to ban teachers from working with children.
It triggered a ‘nightmare’ two months during which the married father-of-two and grandfather became ‘suicidal’ as a reputation built up over decades at the top of his profession was put at risk.
He blamed his treatment on a culture at the school for ‘pushing a radical agenda.’
Last week he received notification from the DBS that he was in the clear as there was no case to answer, but he decided to publicly reveal details of his ordeal as a warning of what can happen to teachers treading through today’s gender identity minefield.
Speaking from his home in South Yorkshire, Mr Huggins said: ‘What’s happened to me is a cautionary tale for our modern times of how systems can be abused by people pushing an agenda. Maybe my experience has shined a light on why quite a few people are leaving the profession.’
Instead of backing him, he said the school authorities ‘threw me to the lions’ and warned in the current culture ‘they are prepared to sacrifice people on the altar of these ideologies.’
During a long career as a history teacher he has also been an assistant head, educational consultant and written books and education content about teaching.
He was helping struggling pupils in the library when he was called to teach a class of 30 children who had no science teacher. The head of science told him: ‘Roy you are dealing with this lesson on puberty.’
He said: ‘It’s every teacher’s nightmare to be stuck with something like that and I said “can we change it to something else as I’m not comfortable teaching it?” This is a difficult subject to teach in today’s day and age and I’m a history teacher with no training in something like this.’
However, he agreed to stick to the planned lesson topic. The task was to take information from a textbook to design an information poster about changes to a boy and girl' body in puberty.
He said: ‘I read from the textbook and talked about the hormonal changes that take place to the body during puberty. The text book described how boys develop broader shoulders and girls develop wider hips. One child said to me “Sir why do women have bigger hips” to which I replied “to have children.”
‘I said when my grandson was born last month he fitted into the palm of my hands like this [cupping his hands together] and was the size of a small football.
‘I said during puberty boys develop more muscles, women also develop more muscles as well but different muscles in order to give birth. I said when my wife gave birth and my daughter gave birth it was rather like “having a poo.” You say this because they tell you to personalise it, contextualise it.’
Mr Huggins said he talked about developing body and facial hair and when boys should start to shave. He also said it was a good time for boys to work out in the gym to add muscle as they produced far more testosterone ‘than an old man like me.’
‘What I didn’t know is that there were children in that classroom who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and who were apparently upset by this. I had no idea of this.
‘In order to be referred to safeguarding you have got to have caused “serious harm.” They said I made inappropriate comments and caused offence and harm to the children.’
Mr Huggins has never been given any details of the gender identity issues of the pupils involved, who has complained or told by the school why he was referred to the authorities.
However, he was given feedback about the complaints from the supply agency. He was accused of saying ‘boys must be muscly to attract girls’, ‘boys must start at the gym at 12 to get muscly’ and ‘girls get hips to allow them to child bear, something all women should do.’
Other alleged comments were: ‘Stay away from women at the time of the month’, ‘boys must be clean shaven and girls must shave too’ and ‘make sure you smell nice to attract the ladies.’
One pupil also complained of being told to draw a penis, breasts and V shape in his book by the teacher.
Mr Huggins said the comments were either ‘untrue’, taken out of context or the result of a misunderstanding.
In his statement given to the local authority, he stated: ‘I feel my conscience is clear and that I have not done anything wrong. I am always happy to reflect and learn from my mistakes, but I am at a complete loss over the allegations that have been made and why they were not addressed at the school level as they are pretty laughable.’
Two days after the lesson Mr Huggins was phoned by the supply agency as he drove home from work and told ‘there has been a complaint.’
For the next two months the family man’s life was on hold. The letter stating he faced being barred from teaching caused him to ‘almost have a heart attack.’
‘I was on the floor, it was the worst thing that can ever happen to you as a teacher. You are being put through the same process as though you were a paedophile or hit or harmed a child. That’s how serious it is and it can destroy your reputation.
‘There I was at the end of a glittering career and it could all be destroyed by these false allegations by a school who decided to pursue this radical agenda.
‘It utterly destroyed my confidence and left me at times feeling suicidal. Thinking I’ve worked hard all my life, I’ve devoted myself to teaching, they are desperate for teachers and they are treating someone like me like this, why?’
He was so ‘embarrassed’ about the accusation he only told his wife Julie, a primary school teacher.
Mr Huggins said his crime was to ‘upset some children who have got gender issues.’ He is ‘mystified’ as to why they complained but believes it must be because they don’t conform to the genders he was discussing.
Despite being cleared he has never received an apology and must inform any school of the investigation if he applies for work in future.
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Maine Is Sued for Seeking To Evade Supreme Court’s Ruling That Forbids Excluding Religious Schools From State’s Voucher Program
The campaign by the state of Maine to avoid having to obey a 2022 Supreme Court ruling prohibiting discrimination against religious schools in its voucher program will be challenged by a new lawsuit filed by a Catholic school and Catholic authorities in the state.
St. Dominic Academy, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, and a local Maine family filed a lawsuit yesterday in the federal court for the District of Maine against the commissioner of the Maine Department of Education, A. Pender Makin, and members of the Maine Human Rights Commission.
In St. Dominic Academy v. Makin, they allege that the policies of the department and commission target religious schools to prohibit them from the school voucher program and violate the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled, in Carson v. Makin, that Maine’s education assistance program, which prohibited the use of vouchers for religious schools, violated First Amendment protections. Maine provides tuition assistance vouchers to families in rural areas where there are no available public schools so that children can attend private ones.
While the Nine was deciding Carson, Maine bureaucrats and the legislature, sensing that the state would lose the case, amended its human rights law to make it virtually impossible for religious schools to comply, thereby excluding them from the voucher program in all but name only.
“Maine’s attempts were open and blatant: craft a new policy to get out from under the clear pronouncement of Carson,” the plaintiff’s complaint says. “Maine implemented these changes to continue the exclusionary practices that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in Carson.”
“You can’t do an end run around the Supreme Court,” a senior counsel at Becket, a nonprofit law firm focused on religious liberty, Adele Keim, who represents the plaintiffs, tells the Sun. “The Supreme Court said excluding religious schools because they’re religious is wrong. And Maine needs to obey the law just like everybody else.”
Among the new laws and regulations plaintiffs contend exclude religious schools from the voucher program are ones stating that a school cannot allow for religious preferences in hiring, and that if a school permits religious expression it must allow any kind.
“So a Catholic school that has Mass would also then have to have a religious service from another faith, like the Baptist students would be able to use the chapel,” Ms. Keim says. “A Catholic school can’t do that. That’s not what it means to be a religious school.”
The other major contention in the plaintiffs’ complaint is that Maine’s human rights act with regard to gender identity and sexuality makes it impossible for religious schools to comply with both their beliefs and the regulations. The act states that it is a violation of the law to prohibit a student from using the bathroom a aligns with gender identity, say, or a violation when a teacher “refuses to acknowledge a student’s gender identity.” Catholics, as is true of Muslims and other faiths, may have different views on gender identity and same sex-marriage than bureaucrats at Augusta.
“Diocesan schools cannot delegate their responsibility to make religiously grounded decisions regarding appropriate student conduct to the Maine Human Rights Commission,” the plaintiffs’ complaint states. “The Catholic faith views parents as the primary educators of their children. … But the Commission, the state agency responsible for enforcing the Act, has interpreted the gender-identity nondiscrimination provision to require a school to facilitate a student’s efforts to change his or her gender identity even if the school knows that the student’s parents object.”
“You can’t have the Maine Human Rights Commission, which enforces the Maine human rights act, telling the Catholic school how it should teach what marriage is or what sex is or what gender is,” Ms. Keim says. “The Catholic school needs to be able to teach Catholic things about those.”
Plaintiffs also contend that the state of Maine intentionally crafted these regulations to exclude faith-based schools from the voucher program. Replying to a tweet saying Maine had outmaneuvered the Supreme Court by passing new rules for schools receiving vouchers, the then-speaker of the Maine house, Ryan Fecteau, tweeted, “Sure did. Anticipated the ludicrous decision from far-right SCOTUS.” The state’s attorney general also issued a statement saying he was “terribly disappointed and disheartened” by the Carson decision.
“The education provided by the schools at issue here is inimical to a public education. They promote a single religion to the exclusion of all others, refuse to admit gay and transgender children, and openly discriminate in hiring teachers and staff,” Maine’s attorney general, Aaron Frey, said.
The Catholic family suing in this case, Keith and Valori Radonis and their three children, want Maine to amend its law so they can get vouchers for their children to attend St. Dominic Academy. “All families should have the option to provide the education that’s right for their children using Maine’s tuition program, including religious families like ours,” they said in a statement.
Maine’s Department of Education has not replied to a request from the Sun for comment.
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13 June, 2023
Biden Admin Says Suspending Minority Students for Skipping School Is Racist
President Joe Biden's Education and Justice Departments on Wednesday released their "Resource on Confronting Racial Discrimination in Student Discipline," which contends that persistent racism clouds school disciplinary systems. That racism is exhibited in school disciplinary codes and actions as early as preschool, according to the memo, and is evident when schools discipline minority students for excessive absences or for failing to follow the dress code, among other examples. "Discrimination in student discipline forecloses opportunities for students, pushing them out of the classroom and diverting them from a path to success in school and beyond," the memo states. "Significant disparities by race—beginning as early as preschool—have persisted in the application of student discipline in schools."
The Justice Department lays out actions it has already taken to correct course, including pushing one Maryland school district to promise to no longer suspend students for truancy. The department says frequently skipping school is not a "severe" misbehavior and asks schools to instead opt for "restorative practices" such as "conflict resolution" and "reflective writing assignments."
Biden administration officials have a long history of accusing America's public educators of racism. In 2021, liberal education policy expert Kayla Patrick blamed "whiteness" for creating a "racist" student disciplinary system in public schools across the country. Just months later, Biden's Education Department tapped Patrick to run its Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development.
"In this country, nearly 80 percent of the teachers are white. And sometimes their mindsets are based solely in whiteness," Patrick said. "So that means when they come into school, they have predisposed mindsets about who black children are, what they need to wear, and how they need to behave. And so instead of celebrating their identities and cultures, schools often erase them."
The administration's Wednesday memo outlined numerous investigations federal civil rights officials undertook to correct the racism supposedly baked into public schools' disciplinary systems. It also laid out the outcomes of those investigations, each of which involved changes to school disciplinary policies or procedures.
In one case originating in a Maryland school district, black students were allegedly "overrepresented" in misbehavior incidents that included school resource officers. Following pressure from the Justice Department, the district agreed to refrain from using "exclusionary discipline" to address truancy and other misconduct, instead opting for "behavioral support plans, reflective writing assignments, conflict resolution, and restorative practices." The district also agreed to allow truant students to make up schoolwork, rather than giving those students failing grades.
In another case, the Justice Department found that black students in a North Carolina district were "overrepresented in discipline for subjective offense categories" and unfairly suspended for repeated "lower-level infractions." As a result, the department pushed the district to provide "implicit bias training for district staff," agree to "community involvement in district development of student discipline practices," and implement "alternatives to suspensions."
The memo is seemingly at odds with other federal government findings on school discipline. Last year, research from the National Institutes of Health indicated that, "regardless of race," students in lower socio-economic classes "received more childcare provider behavioral complaints" than white and minority children of higher socio-economic status. Still, the Biden administration's Wednesday memo did not discuss the impacts economic factors have on student discipline rates.
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Violence Against Teachers Is on the Rise
When English teacher Lauren Forbus saw three students at her middle school sneak in through an exit-only door, she stood in the hall with outstretched arms and told them to turn around. Instead, she said, they cursed at her and told her to move.
Then came a push that spun her around, she later told school police. Her face smacked into a set of blue lockers. Dazed, she found herself lying on the carpeted floor, tasting blood, as her colleagues called for help and Dilworth Middle School went into lockdown. Her right eye later turned black and blue.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” she recalled. “I just knew I was in pain.”
The incident on Dec. 15 jolted the 61,000-pupil Washoe County School District and injected fresh urgency into its efforts to better protect staff amid growing concerns about student violence.
So far this school year, students in the district have committed more than three dozen acts of criminal battery against staff, according to school police. District officials call both the frequency and nature of the incidents alarming.
“Most minutes of the school day everything is fine, but then there are these flashpoints of violence,” Washoe County school board president Beth Smith said.
Across the U.S., violence against teachers has ratcheted up since the widespread return to in-person learning in 2021, and in some areas the problem is worse than it was prepandemic. The data are limited, because many states don’t specifically track teacher assaults, or use the same methodology to make the data comparable.
From September through May of the current school year, the number of assault-related workers’ compensation claims filed at some 2,000 schools in different regions of the U.S. topped 1,350, a five-year high, according to claims and risk-management services firm Gallagher Bassett.
The average cost of those claims has increased 26% to around $6,700 compared with the same period in 2018-19.
“We are witnessing the highest levels of frequency, severity and complexity for these kinds of assault claims when compared to the last four complete school calendar years,” said Greg McKenna, public-sector practice leader at Gallagher Bassett.
Several high-profile attacks on educators have made national headlines, such as in Newport News, Va., where authorities said a 6-year-old boy wounded teacher Abigail Zwerner in January by intentionally shooting her in the hand and chest with a gun he brought from home. The boy’s family has said he has an acute disability. His mother faces criminal charges of child neglect and for leaving the gun in reach of the child. She hasn’t entered a plea, her lawyer said. In March, two administrators at Denver’s East High School were shot and wounded by a 17-year-old student who fled and was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot.
In a nationwide American Psychological Association survey of nearly 15,000 teachers and staff from July 2020 to June 2021, 14% of teachers reported physical violence from students, and 49% of teachers said they wanted to quit or switch schools. While teachers are frequently hurt intervening in fights, some are targeted. The incidents go along with more attention on violence in schools more broadly, including fighting and bullying among students.
“Across the board, we continue to see significant mental and behavioral health challenges with youth, some of which are manifesting in violence and aggression to fellow students and staff,” said Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, director of policy and advocacy at the National Association of School Psychologists. She said greater access to school psychologists, counselors and social workers is needed, along with increased involvement of students’ families.
Many educators cite unmet mental-health needs and social disruption during the pandemic as causes. Others partly blame a shift to disciplinary practices they say create a sense of impunity among students by de-emphasizing traditional punishment for misconduct.
Teacher safety concerns—largely tied to student fights—are a front-burner issue in northern Nevada’s vast Washoe County. The district is taking a multitrack approach, officials said, working to toughen penalties for misbehavior and to make it easier for teachers to summon help, while expanding students’ access to mental-health care.
In the first 110 days of the school year, the district recorded 7,418 violent events, a category that includes fighting and bullying. That is the most in five years and an 8% increase from 2018-19, officials said.
Also up are the number of incidents in which students strike school staff, said Paul LaMarca, a social psychologist who oversees behavior issues as the district’s chief strategies officer. “It seems like it’s been a bit more extreme, a little bit more frequent this school year than it has in the past,” he said.
A subset of more-serious incidents classified as criminal battery by school police, who are armed law enforcement, are down compared with 2018-19, but have edged higher since the start of the pandemic. School district officials said the data aren’t complete because teachers don’t always report incidents, but administrators, teachers and school board members say they feel the problem has gotten worse.
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/violence-against-teachers-is-on-the-rise-97a74dcf
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Students groan, jeer, boo when Pride video is shown in class; teacher threatens 'Saturday school' if they don't 'knock it off'
A video has been circulating on social media showing students in a classroom reacting negatively to a Pride video being shown to them. Amid numerous students jeering and booing, a teacher is heard threatening students with "Saturday school" if they don't "knock it off."
What are the details?
The clip purportedly was shown in a math class in Edison High School in Huntington Beach, California. The date the video was shown is unclear.
Early in the clip, the teacher gives an initial warning for unruly students to "stop!"
When the negative reactions continue, the teacher adds, "Hey, I'm warning you guys now, if you're gonna be inappropriate, I will have supervision down and give all of you a Saturday school for next year. So knock it off."
While many have reacted harshly toward the teacher in question as if airing the clip was her idea, conservative commentator Robby Starbuck — who posted the clip on Twitter — noted in a subsequent tweet that "some 10th grade students came forward to tell me that this video was played in ALL classes that day, not just math class. They’re upset about it and want the school to refrain from playing videos like this."
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Another Twitter user — @inminivanhell — made a similar claim on Twitter, saying the clip was shown in all classes and actually is from the student news channel.
That Twitter user added, "In an effort to control the class, the teacher can be heard warning the students if they can’t behave they will receive Saturday school. This teacher is now dealing with her picture & name being posted all over the Internet — because she asked them to behave in class."
That same Twitter user also noted the following: "Further context: the student news video was 10 mins long, it shared graduation information, interviews with students, sports recap, and videos reflecting on their school year. This video clip about Pride was a 1-min segment during the episode."
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12 June, 2023
Asian-American who scored 1590 out of 1600 on SAT, got 4.65 GPA says he applied to Harvard, Princeton, 4 other elite colleges — and they all rejected him
Jon Wang, an Asian-American, achieved a nearly perfect sore of 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and attained 4.65 grade-point average in high school — well beyond perfect.
Most folks likely would assume that waves of red carpets would come rolling in from elite colleges that would love nothing more than to scoop up a student boasting such numbers.
Indeed, Wang told Fox Nation he applied to six "top-tier" institutions of higher learning — Harvard, Princeton, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology, Carnegie-Mellon, and the University of California, Berkeley.
But the verdict — despite Wang's performance, which included a perfect 800 on the math portion of the SAT — was a resounding no from all six schools, the cable network program said.
Wang — a Florida native and the son of two first-generation Chinese immigrants — told Fox Nation the rejections weren't entirely surprising given that he spoke to friends and school guidance counselors amid the application process, and they all said the same thing.
"They all told me that it's tougher to get in, especially as an Asian-American," Wang told Fox Nation. "I just took it as gospel."
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UC Berkeley Brings Chesa Boudin Aboard
“The University of California at Berkeley has chosen Chesa Boudin, former San Francisco District Attorney, as founding executive director of the UC Berkeley Criminal Law & Justice Center.
“The center will serve as a national research and advocacy hub focused on critical law and policy changes to advance justice in the criminal legal system,” Boudin explained. “We will participate in impact litigation and help to educate the next generation of frontline advocates, policymakers and thought leaders emerging from the UC Berkeley School of Law.”
Elected in 2019, “Chesa Boudin threw a monkey wrench into the city’s criminal justice system,” recalls Richie Greenberg, San Francisco resident and business consultant. “Amid a series of high-profile cases, his promise to release repeat criminals and to allow quality of life crimes to go unpunished, San Francisco descended into a scofflaw paradise.”
Greenberg spearheaded a recall effort, and in June of 2022, San Francisco voters booted Boudin by a 60-40 margin. Mayor London Breed then appointed University of Chicago law alum Brooke Jenkins, a prosecutor in the city’s homicide division.
Jenkins proceeded to fire 16 Boudin loyalists, part of “important changes to my management team and staff that will help advance my vision to restore a sense of safety in San Francisco by holding serious and repeat offenders accountable and implementing smart criminal justice reforms.”
Last November, Jenkins prevailed over three rivals with approximately 54 percent of the vote.
Boudin will not contend for the job. The rejected DA is “choosing a different path for now—that is still consistent with my lifelong commitment to fixing the criminal legal system, ending mass incarceration and innovating data-driven solutions to public safety challenges.” The new executive director believes he’s uniquely qualified for the position.
“Both of my biological parents were arrested when I was a baby and spent a combined 62 years in prison. A lifetime of visiting them behind bars, together with the years I spent as a public defender and then an elected prosecutor, taught me how catastrophically California and the nation’s current approach to justice are failing.”
His biological parents were Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, members of the Weather Underground. They were arrested for their involvement in a 1981 armored car robbery in New York State that claimed the lives of security guard Peter Paige and two police officers, including the African American Waverly Brown.
Kathy Boudin is the daughter of Leonard Boudin, a lawyer who represented Cuba’s Communist dictatorship. Chesa, named after fugitive cop-killer Joanne Chesimard, worked for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez but wanted to make a difference in America. San Francisco voters turned him out, but UC Berkeley rolled out the welcome mat.
“Chesa was chosen after a national search and has substantial experience across the criminal justice system,” proclaimed Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “He has thought deeply about the system, and I cannot think of anyone better to create and direct this important center.”
https://blog.independent.org/2023/06/06/uc-berkeley-brings-chesa-boudin-aboard/?omhide=true
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Protests mounting and Pride flags underfoot after Ottawa teachers told to refer to all students with 'they/them pronouns' and prohibit opt-outs from '2SLGBTQ+ learnings'
In its latest effort to force staff and students to fully embrace LGBT activism and gender ideology, an Ottawa school board appears to have found Canadians' breaking point.
Upon learning that students will no longer be referred to as boys or girls, but will rather be addressed as sexless pluralities, protesters took to the streets, demanding that the leftist administrators "leave the kids alone."
How did it start?
A trio of Ottawa-Carleton District School Board superintendents reportedly sent a letter to staff May 31 entitled, "Supporting Inclusivity: Actions for Pride Month and Beyond." The letter, obtained by Chanel Pfahl, a school trustee candidate, clarified that nothing save for total submission to LGBT precepts would be acceptable in the district.
Mary Jane Farrish, the superintendent of equity instruction, Shannon Smith, superintendent of indigenous education instruction, and Brent Smith, acting superintendent of program and learning, stressed that "2SLGBTQ+" representation in the curriculum and classroom is a "fundamental human right."
Accordingly, staff must embed resources that "accurately reflect and honor 2SLGBTQ+ identities into curriculum subjects and the overall learning environment, from Kindergarten to Grade 12."
The superintendents noted that honoring non-straight "identities" and peddling LGBT propaganda in every grade were only partial measures.
Teachers were further instructed to use "they/them pronouns" when referring to all students, not just those with gender dysphoria.
Extra to asking teachers to apply a blanket denial of biological reality in their engagement with students, the superintendents underscored that "2SLGBTQ+ learnings should be offered to the school community without the option to opt out. It is essential to understand that human rights are not open to debate or selective participation."
The Counter Signal reported that last week there was a silent protest in the district: absenteeism skyrocketed on the first day of Pride, with absences reaching above 60% in two schools and over 40% in nine others.
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11 June, 2023
Teachers Are Divided on Whether Arming Themselves Would Make Schools Safer: Poll
Those in support of the Second Amendment have argued that police presence at schools, as well as more mental health resources, could reduce school shootings. Some have argued that arming teachers would make schools safer. A new survey published this week asked teachers if arming themselves could make schools safer.
In the survey conducted by the RAND Corporation, more than half of teachers said that they believe arming teachers would make schools less safe (via CBS News):
Still, 19% said they would be interested in carrying a gun to school, according to the RAND Corporation's survey of K-12 teachers — which would equate to more than 550,000 of the nation's 3 million K-12 teachers.
The remaining 26% said it would neither make schools more or less safe, according to the survey of 973 K-12 teachers conducted by RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, between October and November 2022.
[...]
White teachers were more likely to believe carrying firearms at schools would make them safer, compared to Black teachers. Male teachers in rural schools were also more likely to say they would carry a firearm if the school allowed, according to the survey.
According to the survey, the top concern for students among teachers is bullying.
"Despite the prevalence of anti-bullying programs, everyday school violence is a concern for teachers. Bullying, not active shooters, was teachers' most common top safety concern, followed by fights and drugs," Heather L. Schwartz, a policy researcher at RAND who co-authored the study, said.
In the findings, 49 percent of teachers said their top concerns were bullying and cyberbullying. This reportedly varied by the age of the students taught. Middle school teachers said self-harm was also a top concern.
https://townhall.com//tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/06/06/teachers-gun-safety-study-n2624084
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Parents livid over Pride video shown to 3rd, 4th, 5th graders in which child says, 'I never really felt like a boy, and I don’t really feel like a girl, so I’d rather be both'
Some parents in Connecticut are up in arms over a Pride Month video that was shown to 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders; one of the scenes features a child revealing, "I never really felt like a boy, and I don’t really feel like a girl, so I’d rather be both."
What are the details?
Some parents whose children attend Wells Road Intermediate School in Granby argued that they should have been told about the video before their children were shown it, WFSB-TV reported.
What's more, some parents said their children are too young to learn about the topics like gender, the station said, adding that parents should be the ones to have such discussions if they so choose.
The video shows children describing what Pride Month means to them, WFSB said.
“Pride means you should be able to be free," a participant named Simon — who uses he/they pronouns, said in the clip. "All my life I never really felt like a boy, and I don’t really feel like a girl, so I’d rather be both."
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Parents told the station the day the video was shown at school, their kids got home and told them about it.
"When I saw the video, I was extremely disturbed," parent Kyle Reyes noted to WFSB. "These are conversations that, if anyone's going to have with ... kids, it should be parents having them with [their] kids."
Reyes added to the station that he's pulling his four children — all of them under the age of 9 — out of the district over the video.
WFSB showed the video to a mother who was in the school pickup line Monday: “They needed to get parents’ permissions to show their children that. We should’ve been told so we can have a conversation at home and not be thrown off guard this way.”
Stephen Davis was picking up his 8-year-old granddaughter and told the station that "there was nothing warning us" and that children "don’t have to worry about being an adult when they’re 8 years old."
What did the district have to say?
The superintendent’s office said parental concerns are being dealt with internally — and that the video was designed for 2-to-12-year-old students, WFSB reported.
The station said it obtained a letter from Wells Road principal Pauline Greer sent to parents over the issue: “It certainly was not intended to alienate or disturb any child. In context, we were trying to remind students that it is ok to be who you are and still be treated with respect dignity, and kindness.”
Reyes noted to WFSB that "parents are starting to come out of the woodwork, and it’s time to start fighting back."
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Australia: Parents left in the dark by new-age learning
In the jargon and edubabble much loved by new-age, Woke educrats teachers no longer teach, instead they are described as facilitators and guides by the side, and students, instead of being students, are knowledge navigators and digital natives where self-agency and self-directed, inquiry-based learning prevails.
Teacher-directed lessons have been scrapped to be replaced by collaborative, negotiated, goal-setting based on deep dives and holistic synergies. Instead of pass/fail, assessment is based on muti-tiered progression points and zones of proximal development.
Welcome to the mad, crazy world of 21st century learning where teachers are drowned in education gobbledegook making it impossible to teach effectively and to ensure students work hard to achieve the best results.
No wonder, despite the additional billions invested over the last 10 to 20 years education standards, as measured by international mathematics, science, and literacy tests, have either flatlined or gone backwards. Employers also complain about young employees lacking basic skills.
Teachers are no longer the masters of their subject based on the fact they know more than their students. Instead, learning is restricted to the world of the student. Teachers are told students must have choice, voice, and agency when it comes to what happens in the classroom.
Primary school children, in particular, are centre stage where self-directed learning draws on a process model that allows students to engage with the curriculum at their point of need and that engages them as the centrepiece in the inquiry cycle.
Students pose questions, seek answers, and are guided to become effective researchers where they take ownership and co-construct meaning with peers. To cater for all learning styles, success-criteria is outlined and/or co-constructed so that they can be set up for success, and ultimately be rewarded in the classroom.
When it comes to assessment the new-age classroom is also progressive and decidedly Woke. Gone are the days when students either passed or failed and where the class was ranked in terms of performance.
Those responsible for Australia’s National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) boast there is no pass/fail in the national test as students are assessed as either exceeding, strong, developing or needs additional support. Whatever that means.
Instead of summative assessment, where 4 out of 10 means fail and work is ranked A to E, teachers now use an assessment that is descriptive, diagnostic, collaborative, and based on a developmental continuum with various progression points.
Not only do students progress from year to year without any explicit measure of whether they have mastered what is required, but parents are left in the dark as their children progress through school. The first time students face a high-risk, objective test is Year 12.
Not surprisingly, one of the common complaints made by teachers is that instead of having the time and energy to actually teach and interact with students they are exhausted by a new-age approach to learning and assessment that is cumbersome, time-consuming, and counter-productive.
What needs to be done? Instead of meaningless edubabble what happens in the classroom should be expressed succinctly and directly in plain English based on what the evidence suggests is the most teacher friendly and effective approach.
Teachers, instead of being guides by the side, must be authority figures in charge of the classroom. Students, especially boys, need boundaries as the most effective classrooms are those where there is a disciplined, industrious environment with consistently enforced consequences for bad behaviour.
One of the reasons Australian classrooms are ranked among the most disruptive and noisy across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries is because schools have adopted fads like open classrooms and teachers as friends instead of authority figures.
Teachers and schools must also set high expectations where students are pressured to excel instead of excusing failure because students are from so-called disadvantaged groups and less well-off communities.
One of the reasons Asian students in places like South Korea, Japan, and China outperform Australian students in international tests like TIMSS and PISA is because every student, whether poor or rich, city or country is pushed to excel.
The expression only a fool repeats again and again what has been proven to fail is especially true when it comes to education. Notwithstanding that the gobbledegook forced on teachers is responsible for falling standards and teacher burnout, it is still all pervasive.
The most recent asks teachers to implement a multi-tiered level system of teaching, involving ‘universal student screening, evidence-based interventions provided on a sliding scale of intensity, and progress monitoring of students receiving intervention’.
Asking teachers to evaluate and monitor every student, each lesson based on individualised learning programs and progression points, once again, overwhelms them with paperwork, taking time from actually teaching and raising standards.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/06/parents-left-in-the-dark-by-new-age-learning/
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8 June, 2023
Junior high teacher in Canada berates Muslim students for boycotting Pride events: 'If you don't think that should be the law, you can't be Canadian'
An audio clip, which has gone viral on social media, revealed a teacher at a junior high school in Canada chastising the Muslim students in her class for staying home from school rather than participating in scheduled Pride events. During the rant, the teacher became so heated that she even told Muslim students that they "can't be Canadian" if they do not support legalized gay marriage.
On the clip, a teacher at Londonderry Junior High School in Edmonton, Alberta, scolded students for skipping school "because you think there's some Pride activities going on" that day, and she gave several reasons that such behavior was not "acceptable."
First, she seemed to imply that Muslim students are obliged to support the LGBTQ agenda — which she even hinted was a kind of "religion" — because LGBTQ students have supported Islamic holidays in the past. "They're here when we did Ramadan," she reminded the class, "... And they're showing respect in the class for your religion, for your beliefs."
She then warned Muslim students that if they want "to be respected for who" they are, if they want to avoid racial or religious "prejudice," then they "better give" the same respect "back to people who are different" from them. The relationship "GOES TWO WAYS," she enunciated clearly.
"Back and forth. You want it, you gotta give it," she insisted.
During the two-minute clip, which was reportedly recorded and shared by a student, the teacher also discussed the differences between the laws and values in Canada and the laws and values in other countries. She asserted that all Canadians "believe in freedom" and "believe that people can marry whomever they want." Canada officially legalized so-called same-sex marriage in 2005.
She also seemed to presume that such laws grant Canada better moral standing in the world, and she drew a contrast between her home country and countries such as Uganda, which she incorrectly asserted will "literally ... execute" anyone suspected of being "gay." Under the new law, Ugandans caught engaging in sodomy can face up to life in prison, but the death penalty is restricted only to those who engage in "aggravated homosexuality" involving children, vulnerable adults, or those who are HIV-positive.
According to the teacher, anyone who supports such a law is not welcome in Canada. "If you believe that kind of thing, then you don't belong here," she said. "Because that is not what Canada believes."
"If you don't think that [gay marriage] should be the law, you can't be Canadian," she continued. "You don't belong here, and I really mean it."
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Award-Winning Gay Teacher Suspended for Speaking Out Against Transgenderism
A gay fifth grade teacher in Glendale, California, was placed on leave after complaining at a school board meeting that his school promotes transgenderism.
Ray Shelton, a 25-year veteran teacher, spoke at a recent meeting of the school board for the Glendale Unified School District wearing a T-shirt that read “Make Biology Great Again.”
Shelton, who teaches at Mark Keppel Elementary School, has been named the Glendale school district’s “Teacher of the Year” twice and earlier this year won the PTA’s Golden Oak Award.
In an exclusive interview, Shelton, who is gay, told The Daily Signal that his intent in speaking at the Glendale school board’s April 18 meeting was to speak what he called “basic, commonsense truths.”
Shelton told the board:
Two plus two equals four. The world is not flat. Boys have penises; girls have vaginas. Gender is binary and cannot be changed. Biology is not bigotry. Heterosexuality is not hate. Gender confusion and gender delusion are deep psychological disorders. No caring professional or loving parent would ever support the chemical poisoning or surgical mutilation of a child’s genitalia.
Transgender ideology is anti-gay, it is anti-woman, and it is anti-human. It wants to take away women’s sports, women’s rights, women’s achievements—it is misogyny writ large.
And I can also say this as a gay man, the gay people …
At this point, someone muted Shelton’s microphone and a board member informed the teacher that his time was up.
Applause broke out from the audience.
Glendale, a city located in the San Fernando Valley, is part of Los Angeles County. Its school system has 32 schools and 25,000 students, according to the district’s website.
A fellow teacher, Alicia Harris, filed a formal complaint against Shelton at 12:36 p.m. April 19, claiming that he was “showing off a swastika” during the school board meeting.
Shelton says during the board meeting he held up four “Progress Pride” flags arranged in a pattern to form a swastika. This, however, is a familiar meme on social media meant to criticize progressives by arguing that authoritarian measures to compel speech are fascist:
Shelton also alleges that Hagop Eulmessekian, Glendale’s director of student support services, assaulted him by ripping several “gay pride flags” out of his hand.
This incident is referenced in Harris’ complaint against Shelton to Kyle Bruich, the Glendale district’s human resources director, for holding up what she called a swastika at the April 18 school board meeting:
In a comment on social media praising a different speaker at the board meeting, teacher Taline Arsenian claimed that Shelton proved he is a Nazi by holding a banner mocking transgender activists as fascists:
The next day, April 19, Shelton was visited in his classroom at 8 a.m. by Principal Kristine Tonoli and a Glendale district administrator.
Shelton told The Daily Signal that he was given a letter informing him that he was being placed on paid leave pending investigation after “several complaints” were lodged against him.
But, the teacher said, all of the complaints provided to him by the Glendale district were made after he had been put on leave, not before, suggesting either that Glendale didn’t provide Shelton with earlier complaints or that Tonoli lied to Shelton. All of the emailed complaints provided to The Daily Signal originally were sent after the meeting at 8 a.m. April 19, according to time stamps.
After that classroom meeting April 19, Shelton was escorted to the edge of school property and told not to return unless accompanied by someone from the Human Resources Office.
When most public school districts place a teacher on leave, questions from students, parents, the community, and media typically are deflected with a response along these lines: “This teacher has been placed on leave pending an investigation; for the privacy of all parties, this is all we can say at this time.”
The Glendale district’s administration took a slightly different approach.
On April 20, Tonoli sent out an official email, via the district’s communication program Parent Square, accusing Shelton of “hate speech and hate symbols"
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The campaign against New York’s exam for specialized schools punishes the children of working-class immigrants in the name of racial equity
In late October 2012, as Hurricane Sandy was set to crash upon the shores of New York City, I remember standing in front of a newsstand in my neighborhood of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and scanning the headlines. A Chinese-language newspaper, the Sing Tao Daily, displayed a large photo of the white vortex on the front page. Below that was a banner: “SHSAT Postponed To November 18.”
What exactly is the SHSAT—something so important to Chinese-language New Yorkers that its postponement received top billing alongside one of the biggest natural disasters to ever strike the city? The Specialized High School Admissions Test (commonly abbreviated as the SHSAT) is the sole gatekeeper of admission into New York City’s specialized public high schools, some of the most prestigious public schools in the entire country. It is also a central battleground in a conflict over what kind of country America should be.
In working-class Sunset Park, where half the population is foreign-born and much of the other half is made up of the children of the foreign-born, tutoring centers are ubiquitous in the Asian-populated cross section. An array of acronyms fill the front windows of each tutoring center: SHSAT, PSAT, SAT, ACT, AP. While some immigrants may not have a full grasp of the English language, they can still understand that these acronyms serve as symbols of upward mobility—and of a meritocracy where access to elite spaces is not about knowing the right people and signaling the right cultural cues, but about competency on an exam that anyone can pass with enough studying. That’s what drew Jewish immigrants in droves to specialized high schools decades ago. And in an era where elite colleges consistently rank Asian applicants lower in “personality” metrics—a loophole that allows them to impose quotas and cap the number of incoming Asian students in the name of increasing “diversity”—it’s no wonder why many Asian immigrants are working to preserve standardized testing.
The children of Asian immigrants, like myself and the current and former students who spoke with me for this article, still tend to see the test as a good thing. For us, a colorblind, meritocratic admissions system is not only perfectly consistent with liberal ideals, but also serves as a crucial engine of economic mobility.
On the other side of the debate, the fight to eliminate the SHSAT is led by a cohort of identity rights activists, wealthy progressives, and other members of the professional-managerial class who depict the test as an oppressive tool of racial segregation. These people are represented by leading figures in the liberal educational establishment and by institutions like The New York Times, which published an article last week decrying the “lack of diversity” in city schools, while also noting that Asian students were offered 53% of all seats in the specialized high schools this year.
The Times article also describes the restoration of “tougher criteria” at specialized high schools as a move that is “worrying integration advocates.” In other words, the article and its supporters argue that people who support rigorous academic standards that are applied without regard for race or ethnicity are segregationists. And indeed, that is exactly how it was characterized by The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch, who responded to the revelation about a testing system in which Asians dramatically outperform whites and every other group by tweeting about “segregationist admission statistics,” which he labeled “an ongoing disgrace.”
A colorblind, meritocratic admissions system is not only perfectly consistent with liberal ideals, but also serves as a crucial engine of economic mobility.
The case for racial equity in New York’s schools was made most explicitly by former Department of Education Chancellor Richard Carranza who, in arguing against the SHSAT in 2018, remarked that “I just don’t buy into the narrative that any one ethnic group owns admission to these schools.” His statement set off a wave of grassroots protests from Asian American parents, who knew exactly which “ethnic group” he was talking about.
Despite Carranza’s suggestion that a single homogenous group was unfairly monopolizing the top schools, the reality looks very different. During the four years I attended Stuyvesant, the most selective of all the specialized high schools, I witnessed a dazzling variety of ethnicities, cultures, and religions. Students wearing kippahs commingled with students clad in hijabs. Students from the West Indies socialized with students from India. Students from various East Asian backgrounds coagulated around similar interests: bubble tea, Korean pop music. No Stuyvesant student would ever claim that “one ethnic group” dominated the school.
The common thread that linked students of all stripes was the immigrant experience. During a social studies class one day, the teacher asked us to raise our hands if we had at least one grandparent born outside the U.S. Every single hand shot up. The teacher then dramatically shrunk the question’s scope to only apply to students with two foreign-born parents. Even then, only a few hands came down. Some students were immigrants themselves, coming with their family to America before high school and still managing to secure admission into the halls of upward mobility.
What is most notable about the schools, and yet goes largely ignored in the anti-SHSAT racial equity discourse, is that the immigrant dynamic operates separately from race. When The New York Times published a profile in 2012 of a Black student at Stuyvesant, titled “To Be Black at Stuyvesant High,” the student profiled was a Jamaican immigrant. The piece mentioned the former president of Stuyvesant’s Black Students Association, who is also Jamaican. The Times seemingly never gets tired of this subject, and ran another profile of Black Stuyvesant students seven years later. In that piece, every student profiled either had one non-Black parent or was from a Nigerian, Eritrean, or Kenyan immigrant family.
While New York’s top public schools are still full of the children of immigrant strivers, many among the city’s white liberal elites—America’s white saviors, as Zach Goldberg dubbed them—prefer sending their children to private schools that cost tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition.
These same private-school parents partake in cost-free virtue signaling by demanding that the SHSAT be eliminated to ensure more “diversity.” In fact, The New York Times seems to have made it a mission to guilt these parents into supporting the equity agenda. In 2020, the paper put out a podcast called Nice White Parents, then followed that up with a piece about “How White Progressives Undermine School Integration.” The podcast and article fail to consider the roles Asian American parents have played in the education debate. Indeed the only mention of Asians is a throwaway line where one panelist declares that both “white and Asian families” were complicit in opposing “integration,” and later mentions “white and privileged parents”—a rhetorical sleight-of-hand that casts Asians as oppressors of people of color, despite the fact that Asians are people of color.
But while the test-based system is presented as racist and backward, the evidence shows the opposite. Not only does it favor students from Asian backgrounds, it does so despite their relative lack of resources. Half the students at specialized high schools currently qualify for subsidized lunches. In contrast to media portrayals of “crazy rich Asians,” Asian Americans are the poorest racial group in New York City.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/last-holdouts-american-meritocracy
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7 June, 2023
Community Furious After Student Is Cut from Graduation for Stating There Are Only Two Genders
At Kellogg High School in Kellog, Idaho, another conservative American is facing consequences for affirming a traditional view of male and female.
During a recent assembly where soon-to-be graduating seniors were meant to give parting words of wisdom to underclassmen, 18-year-old Travis Lohr made a statement that apparently offended the school’s administration.
“Guys are guys and girls are girls,” Lohr said according to the Shoshone News-Press. “There is no in-between.”
Shortly thereafter, Lohr was informed that he would not be allowed to walk in the school’s graduation ceremony.
Lohr and the other seniors had to prepare their statements in advance for school approval. After school officials told Lohr he wasn’t allowed to say that “guys are guys and girls are girls,” he chose to share the statement anyway, according to the News-Press.
“I feel that I shouldn’t be punished for believing in something that I believe,” Lohr told the News-Press.
“It’s more that people took it the wrong way. Everyone can speak freely, I can’t see why I can’t voice my opinion.”
On Twitter, the Idaho Tribune shared a short clip showing over 100 parents and students mobilizing outside the school to protest Lohr’s suspension on Friday.
According to KHQ-TV, a number of students participated in a walkout that day in protest of the suspension.
The walkout is shown in the Tribune’s video, with the many parents in attendance cheering loudly as the protesting students exited the building.
Later in the video, the crowd can be heard forcefully and repeatedly cheering “Let him walk.”
Nevertheless, it appears that Kellog High School will stand by its decision.
Later on Friday, the Kellogg School District announced it would be postponing the graduation ceremony, which was originally meant to take place on Saturday, claiming that “threats” had made the situation unsafe, KHQ-TV reported.
Despite all the controversy caused by his comments, Lohr stands by what he said. “I would love to walk in my graduation ceremony. I don’t believe that I should be punished for what I said. I wasn’t directing it at anybody or any groups, it’s just something that I believe in,” Lohr told the Shoshone News-Press.
“Kids nowadays really support gay people, transgender people, and it wasn’t targeted at that but there’s a lot of confusion about genders in the world today and I figured that underclassmen might find something in me saying that.”
“There’s a lot of support for other genders and other groups, but yet I don’t see any support for people who just believe in two (genders). I don’t have any hatred toward gay people or transgenders — just like I hope they wouldn’t have any resentment toward me for believing what I believe.”
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Biden’s Education Department Tells Nation’s Schools to Go Back to Race-Based Discipline
The school year is over, but a new race-based missive from Washington will loom over teachers and students all summer.
Just before Memorial Day, federal education officials issued a “Dear Colleague” letter telling the nation’s educators that the Biden administration is resurrecting a policy of investigating and coercing schools to adopt more lenient discipline policies.
This policy originated under President Barack Obama’s administration but was rescinded in 2018 by a commission led by then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The Federal Commission on School Safety found that parents and local educators are better at deciding when a student’s disruptive actions warrant suspension or expulsion than are quotas handed down from Washington.
The reprieve from race-based federal manipulation was short-lived.
Federal policymakers from the Justice Department and Education Department released a letter to K-12 schools stating: “Significant disparities by race—beginning as early as preschool—have persisted in the application of student discipline in schools.”
Yet what if the student behavior is the issue, not skin color?
A new survey from the Education Department finds that 84% of school personnel report that “the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the behavioral development of students” and a plurality of 46% said that “threats of physical attacks or fights between students” have increased since before the pandemic.
Fully 39% of school personnel report that physical fights between students are up, the survey finds. And 61% said “classroom disruptions from student misconduct” also have increased.
Vandalism, out-of-control behavior in school hallways, verbal abuse—all have increased since before the pandemic. Yet the new letter from Washington redirects attention to students’ ethnicities instead of classroom safety.
This isn’t the first time this year that the Education Department has tried to micromanage local school safety policies and emphasize racial preferences.
The agency issued a report in March that urged educators to use “restorative justice” practices instead of suspension and expulsion, although exercises such as “restorative circles” and other conversation-style interventions leave disruptive students in class with their peers, even after they have been violent or otherwise interfered.
School officials in Broward County, Florida, had employed these methods for years before an expelled student shot and killed 17 at his high school in 2018, opening school leaders to intense criticism.
These new reports from the Justice and Education departments warn schools that employ school resource officers that their activities should be limited. Emails obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project under the Freedom of Information Act show that the two agencies coordinated their statements on school resource officers. The Justice Department report says these officers should undergo “anti-bias” training and use restorative justice practices.
Not all school districts are ready to limit school resource officers, though. In Washington, D.C., which is under federal authority, local policymakers are reconsidering their 2020 decision to remove all school resource officers by 2025.
The last three budget proposals from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, have included “fully funding” school resource officers in District of Columbia Public Schools, according to The Washington Post.
The Post’s editorial board praised these proposals, writing: “Many cities yanked officers out of schools while reassessing policing after George Floyd’s 2020 murder. However well-intentioned, the experiment has left kids more vulnerable and classrooms less safe amid surging youth violence.”
Neighboring jurisdictions such as Alexandria, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland, also are considering hiring more school resource officers, as are Boston and Phoenix, the Post’s editorial board wrote.
Two students were shot in separate incidents in just the last two weeks near D.C. high schools, police said. A D.C. Council committee notes that 77 knives, 15 tasers, and five guns were found on the school system’s campuses in the 2021-2022 school year.
Incidents such as these, along with surveys showing a surge in disruptive student behavior after the pandemic, explain why the new federal guidance on limiting school resource officers and calling for racial preferences in student discipline isn’t what schools need.
School officials should judge each disciplinary incident on its own merits. Parents and educators know their students and their schools best, and they should decide how to keep students safe and maintain order.
They can do that without letters from Washington that reek of racial quotas.
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What Settlement of Vaccine Mandate Case Says About Corruption of Teachers Unions
Teachers unions across America have defended members from termination for virtually every imaginable kind of misconduct.
The unions defended teachers for illegal marijuana use and intoxication on the job. They defended teachers who stole money, had excessive absences, or otherwise abused their position.
They defended teachers who had pornographic materials in the classroom. They defended incompetent teachers who failed to produce positive student achievement.
And in Rhode Island, the teachers unions vigorously defended one teacher who engaged in inappropriate touching and language with his female students. They appealed his firing all the way to the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
As one of the primary purposes to justify the paying of dues, teachers unions promote themselves as fighting to protect the jobs of teachers and rarely ever backing down when it comes to the dismissal of one of their members.
But unions are criticized routinely for defending bad employees, regardless of the cost, and often seeking alternate accommodations or filing their own grievance, no matter the gravity of the sin.
However, teachers unions cannot tolerate one sin, and they’re willing to break the law in order to virtue signal.
That sin?
Exercising one’s religious freedom by choosing not to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Oh, the horror.
In early 2022, in the small town of Barrington, Rhode Island, three teachers were fired for this unforgivable sin. Throughout the long ordeal that followed, the teachers nobly stuck to their principles and stood their ground.
Last month, they emerged from their battle with a rare major legal victory and complete vindication, when their lawsuit against Barrington Public Schools was settled. The settlement included payment of all back salaries, significant compensatory damages, and attorney’s fees.
But a second lawsuit by the teachers is pending, one that has garnered little media attention but may have greater long-term implications. That lawsuit also was filed against the Barrington Education Association, which brazenly abandoned these three dues-paying union members.
In the same case earlier this spring, the three teachers’ attorney, Gregory Piccirilli, filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claim against the Barrington teachers union, an affiliate of the National Education Association.
The teachers filed a legal complaint May 25 in Rhode Island Superior Court, the state’s second-highest court, against the NEA’s local, state, and federal branches. The lawsuit alleges that the union discriminated against teachers based on their religious beliefs and breached its “duty of fair representation.”
According to federal law, neither employers nor unions may discriminate against employees or members for religious reasons, as the Barrington teachers union did when deciding not to represent the three teachers.
And under Rhode Island law, unions are required to provide a “heightened” obligation to defend their public sector members against wrongful termination, not abandon them.
The suing teachers hope to demonstrate that the local teachers union openly conspired with the Barrington school committee, or school board, which not only imposed the vaccine mandate but fired the teachers who resisted it.
An attorney for the teachers claims that he has irrefutable proof that the local and statewide NEA chapters not only publicly advocated that every school district impose such a vaccine mandate, but that the union clearly said it wouldn’t defend any teachers fired as a consequence of the policy.
This declaration may be viewed only as open collusion with school districts. In essence, the union said to them, “If you implement a vaccine mandate, we will support the school district policy, not our own teacher members. So go right ahead, impose your authoritarian dictate, and we’ll stay out of the way.”
Most school committees in Rhode Island understood that such a mandate wasn’t within their purview to make medically; it belonged to the state Health Department. Also, lawyers for many school committees had legitimate, and prescient, fears of being sued for overstepping their bounds.
But, as it turned out, Barrington was the only school district in Rhode Island that took this unjustified and legally dangerous step. The district went so far as to deny paying the three fired teachers their lawfully required salaries until the end of the school year. And now, the school district is paying a steep price.
The lawyer for the Barrington school committee, who supported the teachers union’s push for the vaccine mandate and firing the teachers, eventually was fired herself for her incompetence and shockingly poor legal advice.
The school committee’s recently hired attorney, recognizing the obvious legal peril, quickly moved to settle the case. At the school district’s great expense, the three plaintiff teachers were “made whole, plus” in a settlement that exceeded their original demands.
Soon, the unions may suffer the same fate for failing to fulfill their legal and moral responsibilities. Instead, they chose to demonstrate egregiously blind adherence to a false government narrative.
Imagine an innocent citizen, charged with a criminal offense, discovering that her own defense attorney was conspiring with the prosecutor to ensure her conviction.
Basically, the same thing happened in Barrington, Rhode Island, where the three teachers were denied their rightful and guaranteed legal representation by the union, which had openly colluded with the school district. More alarmingly, these teachers were treated even worse than actual criminals.
But why?
Why would a teachers union so blatantly sell out these teachers and so obviously break the law in order to push a vaccine mandate that didn’t work?
Are they just incredibly stupid and ignorant? Were they completely and mindlessly brainwashed, as so many others have been—and still are—about the false claims of the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines? Were they drunk with power?
Or was it just pure corruption?
In perpetual league with local and state officials—elected and appointed—public sector unions routinely enjoy every conceivable legislative and regulatory advantage. To maintain its illicit gravy train of taxpayers’ money, were this teachers union’s illicit actions simply a means of showing support for the government’s narrative?
In a recent example of unions dutifully backing the official narrative, another local teachers union in Rhode Island actually went to the extent of filing suit against a mother for asking too many questions about the government-run school system’s radical racial curriculum.
Regardless, such union disregard for the law—and for its own responsibility to dues-paying members—must be exposed and punished to such an extent that it never happens again.
The National Education Association has a $1 million liability insurance fund; no doubt that fund will be greatly depleted after the resolution of the pending lawsuit, which will seek significant punitive and emotional distress damages.
It is time for school districts to return to the basics of education. Similarly, teachers unions must keep to their collective bargaining duties and desist with their open promotion of controversial and divisive curricula and of all things big government.
Corrupt departure from traditionally accepted educational norms now may lead to severe legal and financial costs. It’s about time.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/05/30/a-vaccine-settlement-that-exposes-teachers-union-corruption/
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6 June, 2023
Family punished for opposing transgender student in girls' locker room scores settlement with school district
A family reached a $125,000 settlement with a Vermont school district that punished them for speaking out against a biological male student using the girls' locker room, the Daily Signal reported Friday.
"This settlement was a huge victory for freedom of speech, not just for Blake and me, but for anyone who wants to voice their opinion on important topics," Travis Allen told the White River Valley Herald.
Blake Allen, then 14, was suspended from school and her father Travis Allen lost his coaching position after both spoke out against a biological male using the girls' locker room at Randolph Union High School.
Under the terms of the settlement, the Allens' records will be cleared of references to the disciplinary action; Travis Allen will be reinstated as a middle school soccer coach, and the district will pay the family and their attorneys $125,000.
"The settlement of Blake and Travis Allen’s case is a resounding victory for freedom of speech," Phil Sechler, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, told the Daily Signal.
"We are grateful that the school recognized it was wrong to suspend Blake from school and Travis from his coaching position simply for exercising their freedom of speech. No one should lose their job or get suspended from school for voicing their opinion or calling a male a male and we are glad to see this case resolved favorably, not only for Blake and Travis, but for all students and coaches to be able to speak freely and without fear of retaliation," Sechler also said, as the Herald reported.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/travis-blake-allen-randolph-union-school-settlement
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University of Cincinnati student alleges professor failed her for using the term ‘biological women’
A sophomore at the University of Cincinnati claims that her professor gave her a zero on a college project for using the term “biological women.”
Olivia Krolczyk, 20, said her professor for Women’s Gender Studies in Pop Culture class failed her for using the “exclusionary” term despite admitting that she submitted a “solid proposal,” the student told The Post.
The course instructed students to pick a topic related to feminism, with Krolczyk choosing to research the changes female athletes have experienced throughout history and the rights and opportunities they have been awarded and fought for in athletics.
Her project discussed things like the first woman to compete in the Olympic games to the fight female athletes like Riley Gaines are making for proposed to Title IX.
The chemistry major said her project ended by sharing how “these rights and opportunities are being threatened by allowing men to compete in women’s sports.”
Krolczyk, who hasn’t identified the professor for fear she may be subjected to online harassment, first made the claim in a now-viral TikTok, which has been viewed more than 2.5 million times.
The clip shares an apparent photo of the zero grade and the professor’s comment, which reads, “Olivia, this is a solid proposal. However, the terms ‘biological women’ are exclusionary and are not allowed in this course as they further reinforce heteronormativity.”
“The final grade is based on the very few assignments we have, adding up to 200 total points. All grades relating to this specific project add up to 100 points, which is half of my grade,” Krolczyk told The Post.
“The project in general was very broad and the students had a lot of freedom to pick a topic.”
The undergrad student — who competed in cross country and track throughout high school and the beginning of her college career before transferring to the University of Cincinnati — said she followed the professor’s instructions to a tee, including using three sources from the class and formatting the paper to the teacher’s requirements.
“The directions for the assignment in which I received a zero on specifically state, ‘This exercise is developmental. Thoughtful proposals submitted on time will receive full credit.’ I turned in my assignment on time and I can guarantee 100% that my proposal was extremely thoughtful,” she insisted.
Krolczyk also said she had contacted the university’s Gender Equality office, which told her they would have a different professor review and grade her work — but she is yet to see her grade change nearly two weeks later.
The student also claims this was not the first time she’s run into issues with this professor.
Krolczyk said she was rebuked when she pushed back during a class discussion and argued that generalizing all white men as having privilege is “not fair.”
“She commented that something along the lines of it being necessary and important to recognize privilege and oppression. I was docked on my grade,” the student alleged.
The University of Cincinnati’s said the matter is being reviewed through their established policies and processes.
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MSU hit with civil rights complaint alleging school’s business boot camp discriminated against white males
A government watchdog organization on Friday filed a civil rights complaint against Missouri State University, alleging that the school’s business boot camp program illegally discriminated against white males.
The Equal Protection Project (EPP) said it was bringing the civil rights complaint against MSU for "engaging in racial- and gender-based discrimination through its sponsorship, promotion, and hosting of a small business training ‘boot camp’ that limited participation to individuals who identify as ‘BIOPOC’ … or are female. White males, and white males alone, were excluded from eligibility."
"BIPOC" is an acronym for "Black, Indigenous and Persons of Color."
In its complaint to the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education, the EPP accused MSU’s program of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
"The OCR should investigate this program and the circumstances under which such a blatantly discriminatory program was approved, take all appropriate action to end such discriminatory practices, and impose remedial relief," EPP said.
MSU began accepting applications for the Spring 2023 Early-Stage Business Boot Camp program in late November.
The university said the program was for "aspiring or current BIPOC and/or women small business owners who have recently started or are in the idea phase" and live in Southern Missouri.
The program ran for eight sessions (once a week for eight weeks) and concluded in mid-April. Participants were given a $3,000 stipend for transportation, childcare, or other business expenses.
Per EPP, the program was funded by a $30,000 grant from U.S. Bank Foundation for the university’s foundation for the "efactory," a technology-focused business incubator and entrepreneurial development center. Funding also came from the Missouri Scholarship and Loan Foundation.
After EPP filed a complaint to the Missouri Attorney General in April, MSU said the program would be offered to everyone "irrespective of their race and/or sex."
MSU told Fox News Digital at the time that the program was "designed to assist new and aspiring small business owners in establishing and growing their business."
"The Spring 2023 program was funded by the U.S. Bank Foundation and, on a one-time basis, focused on minority and/or woman-owned businesses," MSU said. "On an ongoing basis, the efactory will continue to offer the Early-Stage Business Boot Camp Program at no cost to the participants, and irrespective of their race and/or sex."
EPP founder William A. Jacobson said the change was a "good first step" but argued that MSU "needs to publicly and officially acknowledge its wrongdoing, and make clear what steps it will take to make amends to the people wrongly excluded based on race and sex."
"Missouri State also needs to state whether there are any other segregated or discriminatory programs, what investigation it has done to identify such programs, and what specific steps it will take to prevent such misconduct," Jacobson said in a statement.
"It's not enough, when caught, to say 'oops, sorry.' Sunlight needs to shine on the nature of DEI activities at Missouri State, and how such a blatantly discriminatory program was allowed to happen in the first place."
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5 June, 2023
Another "cancellation" that perverts history
It is unreasonable to blame people for accepting the conventional wisdom of their day
IN 1914, 50 years after his graduation from Middlebury College and two years after completing his term as Vermont's 53d governor, John Abner Mead reached out to his alma mater with a generous offer.
In a letter to the college president that was forwarded to the board of trustees, Mead proposed to underwrite the construction of a campus house of worship — a "dignified and substantial" chapel that would reflect "the simplicity and strength of character" of the people of Champlain Valley and the state of Vermont. Specifically, wrote Mead, he would provide $60,000 to build a chapel at the highest point on the Middlebury campus, "to be known as the Mead Memorial Chapel."
The trustees readily accepted Mead's offer. A groundbreaking ceremony for the chapel was held in June 1914; the completed building was dedicated two years later. By then, the funds donated by the former governor had risen to more than $75,000 — the equivalent of $2.2 million today. The chapel soon became an iconic feature of the Middlebury landscape and the college's branding. It still is. But the building was recently stripped of its benefactor's name. Thereby hangs a lawsuit, and another chapter in the dismal annals of contemporary cancel culture.
On Sept. 27, 2021, with no advance notice, Middlebury workers were dispatched to remove the stone slab engraved with the words "Mead Memorial Chapel" from its niche above the building's entrance. With the name gone, bare brick was exposed beneath the pediment.
Hours later, Middlebury administrators issued a statement announcing that after a "deliberative process," they had decided to eliminate the name of the chapel's donor on the grounds that he had played a role in "advocating and promoting eugenics policies in Vermont in the early 1900s."
Mead thus joined a long list of prominent historical individuals whose names or images have been stricken, toppled, defaced, or expunged from public places of honor because things they did or said long ago are regarded today as shameful or benighted. Statues of figures as varied as Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, and the singer Kate Smith have been "canceled" in this manner, as have buildings named for Woodrow Wilson, the Sackler family, and Dianne Feinstein. In Boston, the street bearing the name of former Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey was renamed in 2018. A year later, Roxbury's central hub became Nubian Square, memory-holing the name by which it had been known for generations, that of Puritan governor Thomas Dudley.
Sometimes the case for removing a statue or a name from a building is undeniably compelling. I have long argued that monuments honoring leaders of the Confederacy — the vilest cause in American history — deserve no place in a free society. Too often, however, men and women whose careers were admirable and even heroic have been dishonored because in one notable respect they fell short.
Jefferson, for example, was among the most visionary, inspiring, and influential leaders in US history. But because he was a slaveholder, he is deemed by many to be unworthy of any honor. In his case and numerous others, historical figures are reduced by contemporary critics to a single, defining negative characteristic — and that moral failing is given more weight than all the good they may have achieved in a life of accomplishment and merit.
That is what Middlebury has done to Mead. And to rectify that unfairness, a more recent Middlebury alumnus — former Vermont governor James Douglas — has gone to court to get his predecessor's name restored to the chapel made possible by his munificence.
In a 79-page lawsuit filed in Vermont Superior Court, Douglas makes two essential arguments.
One is that removing Mead's name from the Middlebury chapel amounts to a breach of contract, since the former governor's offer to pay for the building was conditioned on its being called the "Mead Memorial Chapel." That understanding was expressed in numerous communications at the time, Douglas contends. Mead specified that the building to be constructed with his money would bear his family's name, and the college accepted that term. "The name 'Mead Memorial Chapel' was the essence of the deal and it was the entire deal — forever," the complaint reads.
Whether that argument will stand up in court is unclear. In a motion to dismiss Douglas's suit, the college argues that Mead's offer in 1914 was never made explicitly contingent on a permanent grant of naming rights and that "it certainly did not call for a reversion of the gift if the name should be changed more than one hundred years later."
But if Douglas's legal claim is iffy, the moral argument he makes is wholly convincing.
In prying the former governor's name from the chapel because of his support for eugenics — support that appears to have amounted to little more than a single passage in Mead's farewell speech as governor — Middlebury College "sullies the reputation of a decent man," Douglas maintains. The college "has obliterated any memory of the selfless acts and the altruistic contributions John Mead made to his nation, state, county, town, church, and to Middlebury College itself."
Those acts and contributions were considerable. Mead, an orphan who worked to put himself through school, became a successful doctor, businessman, and philanthropist. He served as Vermont's surgeon general, a state senator, the mayor of Rutland, and lieutenant governor before being elected to the state's highest office in 1910. As governor, Douglas observes, Mead was a progressive who supported women's suffrage, toughened child labor laws, and strengthened campaign finance statutes.
John A. Mead, who graduated from Middlebury College in 1864, went on to become a physician, a businessman, the governor of Vermont, and a philanthropist.
It is true that he was sympathetic to eugenics and believed that "undesirable" people, such as the mentally ill and criminally insane, should be restricted from procreating. But in the early decades of the 20th century, that was the mainstream progressive view, enthusiastically embraced by leading thinkers, scientists, and activists, including Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, and Helen Keller. Mead's single 1912 speech on the subject was, by modern standards, profoundly unenlightened. But it changed nothing and was not a subject he pursued further. Not until 1931 did the Vermont legislature pass a bill for the sterilization of "mentally unfit" people. By that point, Mead had been dead for over a decade.
Whatever else might be said about Mead's views on eugenics, they didn't define his life or his legacy. They were far outweighed by the good he did as a citizen, a public official, and an alumnus of his college. To strip his name from the landmark chapel he provided because his once-conventional support for eugenics is now disfavored doesn't amount to an honorable grappling with history. It amounts to tawdry virtue signaling by an institution that should be better than that.
With or without Mead's name, the chapel he built will continue to stand tall. A pity the same can't be said for the president and trustees of Middlebury College.
https://jeffjacoby.com/27020/middlebury-college-flunks-a-history-test
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Conservative Efforts To Roll Back DEI in Higher Education Sweep Through Another State
Ohio college students should thank Jerry Cirino. The Republican state senator has written a bill designed to spare those students instruction in the type of sordid thinking that sees all of life in terms of group power dynamics, cancels opposing views, preaches color consciousness, and discourages merit.
In other words, Cirino wants to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, requirements from Ohio’s public university system.
One of the nation’s largest, with 14 four-year research universities, 24 regional campuses, 23 community colleges, and 13 graduate schools, Ohio’s higher education system would be better off without DEI.
Some Ohioans, of course, don’t see it Cirino’s way. That’s to be expected, but what’s hard to grasp is the degree of demagoguery that has met his bill.
What this criticism shows, once again, is the instability produced by the type of regime politics America is gripped by at the moment. We are arguing not over fine policy points, but what type of regime we will have.
To describe the two camps briefly, those on the Left claim that America is systemically racist, in the sense that the American system itself—everything we do—oppresses members of the “marginalized” categories. From this leftist perspective, DEI training is needed to deprogram the American mind and reset it with a greater awareness of racial matters.
On the other side, people say no: Although there certainly are racists (just as there are murderers and rapists), the system itself is not racist. America is also far from being an oppressive state. Although the government can and should do nothing about “thought crimes” or freedom of association, state and federal civil rights laws adequately protect against true discrimination.
The conservatives in this latter camp say that diversity, equity, and inclusion practices themselves often violate the spirit and letter of statutes that proscribe race-conscious decisions by the government and the private sector. They also affirm that DEI in practice at public colleges unconstitutionally compels speech, enforcing the view of America as being racist and oppressive.
Cirino’s anti-DEI bill is an attempt to correct these wrongs, among others. This comprehensive legislation also addresses many aspects of higher education in Ohio that are in need of reform, from the terms of trustees to making syllabuses digitally searchable.
But the key part of the bill would prohibit “any mandatory programs or training courses regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion.” This section deals mostly with banning compelled speech or requiring particular ideas as a condition of admission, hiring, or obtaining a degree.
One section, for example, would order the boards of trustees of colleges and universities in the Ohio system to require their institutions to “affirm and declare that the institution will not encourage, discourage, require, or forbid students, faculty, or administrators to endorse, assent to, or publicly express a given ideology, political stance, or view of a social policy, nor will the institution require students to do any of those things to obtain an undergraduate or post-graduate degree.”
Cirino’s bill, which has many other sponsors, passed the state Senate, headed to the state House, and may appear on the desk of Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, for his signature.
The legislation also supports viewpoint diversity, attempting to ensure that universities “will seek out invited speakers who have diverse ideological or political views.”
It also would eliminate the practice of canceling conservative speech. It would require that an institution of higher learning “declare that its duty is to ensure that, within or outside the classroom, the institution shall not require, favor, disfavor, or prohibit speech or lawful assembly.”
The bill moreover rightly would bar the Chinese Communist Party, China’s ruling organ, from influencing America’s young minds. It says that “no state institution of higher education shall accept gifts, donations, or contributions from the People’s Republic of China or any organization the institution reasonably suspects is acting on behalf of the People’s Republic of China.”
These are commonsense approaches, but they are being demagogued by a leftist professoriate that runs the university system as its fiefdom.
One ethnic studies professor, Timothy Messer-Kruse, seized on the bill’s single use of the term “divergent” in a definition—“‘Intellectual diversity’ means multiple, divergent, and varied perspectives”—to make outlandish claims.
The bill, writes Messer-Kruse, would require him “to teach the ‘divergent’ theory of racial construction, which is that race is a biological, fixed, natural attribute of humankind.”
The professor continued: “It requires me to teach the ‘divergent’ theory of civil rights, which is that the Constitution allows for the legal separation of races and that this is a justifiable form of equality. It requires me to teach that the South seceded because it wished to defend states rights against the unlawful aggression of the Lincoln administration.”
But none of this is true. These lines are meant to scare good people who are too busy to read the bill. In fact, the legislation would entrust to professors “the exercise of professional judgment about how to accomplish intellectual diversity within an academic discipline.”
The teachers unions are up in arms, too, demagoguing the bill and crying about the limitations on China’s influence.
Fighting DEI will not be politically easy, as Cirino is finding out. But for the more than half a million students attending Ohio’s institutions of higher education, it’s worth it.
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The sinister side of making ‘misgendering’ a disciplinary offence
Should ‘misgendering’ someone be a disciplinary offence? One Oxford college seems to think so. Yesterday, Regent’s Park College posted a ‘Trans Inclusion Statement’, burnishing its existing bullying and harassment policy. On a long list of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ that might warrant punishment is ‘consistently using incorrect titles, pronouns or names to refer to a trans person’ – also known as ‘misgendering’ or ‘deadnaming’ someone.
The obvious problem here is that the list of speechcrimes provided could apply to almost anyone who simply doesn’t believe in the eccentric tenets of gender ideology
The timing can’t have been coincidental. All eyes were on Oxford this week due to the strangely controversial appearance at the Oxford Union of gender-critical feminist Kathleen Stock, whose great heresy is to believe in biological sex and women’s rights. There were protests and demands the event be cancelled. Regent’s Park College says it has been working on this policy ‘since 2022’, but just so happened to choose this week – of all weeks – to publish it.
‘Regent’s Park College celebrates and values the diversity of its student groups, workforce, and visitors, and we aim to create a place for them that is welcoming and inclusive’, the statement begins. Which might sound reasonable enough. After all, no sane person is in favour of bullying and harassment, certainly not bullying and harassment fuelled by hatred of a minority group.
But the more you dig into the document, the more it becomes clear just how stretched the definition of bullying and harassment has become these days – and how, certainly where the trans issue is concerned, this poses a direct threat to free thought and speech.
Alongside the prohibition on ‘misgendering’ and ‘deadnaming’ we are told students must not deny or dispute ‘the validity and / or existence of a trans person’s identity’, make ‘jokes about trans people or their trans status’, or refuse ‘to treat a person in accordance with their affirmed identity’. Such behaviour, the document suggests, is tantamount to abuse.
One could easily see a situation in which some unpleasant person could deploy all these tactics and more to make someone’s life hell. But harassment is harassment, regardless of how you go about it. The obvious problem here is that the list of speechcrimes provided could apply to almost anyone, however reasonable or well-meaning, who simply doesn’t believe in the eccentric tenets of gender ideology – or who simply shows insufficient deference to them.
Take ‘misgendering’. There are an awful lot of people who cling to the view, held by everyone until about five minutes ago, that you cannot change sex – not least because it is an observable scientific fact. Some will happily refer to trans people using their ‘preferred’ pronouns, because they see it as somewhere between a courtesy and a harmless fiction. But others would just rather not. Must they really be compelled to do so – to lie, essentially – under pain of punishment? Compelled speech corrodes freedom of speech.
The pronouns thing is particularly insidious given the fact that we mainly use someone’s pronouns when that person isn’t around. (When you’re out for a drink with a friend you don’t turn to them, at the appropriate time, and say ‘would she / her like another pint?’) What is ultimately being demanded here is that you change how you think about someone, and how you describe them when they aren’t there, not just how you address them.
As for this demand that all staff and students treat people ‘in accordance with their affirmed identity’ – which according to the policy needn’t mean he or she has had any medical treatment – this is an affront to safety as well as conscience. What if a female student would rather not have a male-bodied individual in the women’s loos – and dares to say so? This whole approach seems particularly foolhardy given the small, but not insignificant, number of abusive, nefarious men who have abused the notion of ‘gender self-ID’ in recent years in order to gain access to women’s spaces.
The Regent’s Park College policy is testament to the doublethink of our age: it exhorts its residents to be ‘inclusive’ while excluding anyone of an opposing view. Worse, it would happily compel students to say things they don’t believe and act in a way that is against their conscience. We need to rediscover the true meaning of tolerance. Everyone is entitled to their views so long as they don’t impose them on anyone else. Is that really so difficult? In the gender wars of today, apparently so.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/06/the-sinister-side-of-making-misgendering-a-disciplinary-offence
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4 June, 2023
Harvard rejects brilliant Asians in favor of poorly qualified blacks
Although I don't condone it, I can sort of understand what they are doing. If all admissions were on merit, the Harvard student body would have a minority of whites -- mostly Jewish -- and a majority of Asians.
If the Harvard leaders really do have a hankering to see black faces in the student body they could achieve that without loss of standards by recruiting from South India. There are some very bright people there who are also very black
And they are at a high cultural level too. Tamil Nadu is the only surviving classical civilization. Some Tamils below
Any day now, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue rulings in a pair of landmark cases Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) has brought forth against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, alleging that their race-based college admissions practices actively discriminate against high-achieving students who don't fit the woke mold, often Asian American applicants.
Townhall has conducted a series of sitdown interviews, in the lead-up to the much-anticipated SCOTUS decisions, with Asian American community members outraged over the Ivy League's racial gatekeeping and affirmative action's trickle-down effects, now seeping into suburbia. As an affront to the race-obsessed Left's forever war on meritocracy, and in unyielding defense of the American Dream, which we, like many, believe is well worth fighting for, here are their firsthand accounts from the frontline:
Jon Wang, Harvard University reject now-attending the Georgia Institute of Technology
Harvard hopeful Jon Wang, currently a freshman at Georgia Tech double-majoring in mathematics and computer science, was rejected by the Crimson's guard despite submitting a near-perfect SAT score. Achieving an elusive 1590, just 10 short of the total possible points, Wang outperformed 99 percent of all other test-takers, which also meant he placed among the top 1 percent.
"It's harder to gain acceptance as an Asian American..." Wang, remaining "cautiously optimistic" at the time, recalled his high school counselor telling him, in essence. "They didn't really give me much advice other than to try to appear a bit less Asian."
For example, Wang said, "Don't write your essays about Chinese traditions or things commonly associated with Asian culture."
On paper, Wang was surely a shoo-in for the Ivies: Aside from graduating with a 4.65 GPA, extracurriculars-wise, he was captain of the academic QuizBowl team, a competitive golfer, making headlines at junior tournaments across the country, and co-founded a start-up company that provides golf-data analytics to the Chinese market via an app he had developed the backend code for.
"Obviously, race plays a factor in it," Wang stated, noting that based on SFFA's acceptance-percentage model, his approximately 20-percent possibility of being admitted into Harvard as an Asian American would have skyrocketed to a 77-percent chance of admission if he were Hispanic, with the liklihood climbing to 95 percent if his race was black. "The model's results are pretty clear..." Wang said of the calculations. "The fact that I'm Asian—I don't think makes my accomplishments any less valuable."
Shortly after the Harvard-rejection letter arrived, Wang joined SFFA in hopes of changing the racially rigged game for younger college-bound Asian Americans facing the feat soon as well as applicants of the coming generations. "Maybe my kids in the future," Wang, the son of first-generation Chinese immigrants, mused, "so they don't have to deal with unfairness in the system."
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Prestigious University May Expel Students Who 'Misgender' Trans Peers
In January, Townhall reported how Ithaca College in New York will allow students who identify as "transgender" or "non-binary" to live in a separate residential community that excludes "cis-identifying students." This move was meant to create a "supportive community" for students who identify as LGBTQ+. Shortly after, reports broke that students at the all-women's Wellesley College voted to allow transgender and nonbinary individuals to apply to the school.
Now, another university announced that students who "misgender" a transgender student could face expulsion for doing so.
Students at the University of Oxford in England could be expelled for misgendering their peers under a new "transgender harassment policy."
Regent's Park College unveiled a new "trans inclusion statement" in an effort to combat "transphobia" on campus, according to The Telegraph:
The new policy says that “unlawful discriminatory behaviour, including transphobic harassment or bullying … will be regarded extremely seriously and could be grounds for disciplinary action”.
The statement lists examples of harassment, including “consistently using incorrect titles, pronouns or names to refer to a trans person (‘deadnaming’) especially where this causes distress”.
The college’s students are also banned from “unduly intrusive or personal questioning”, “making jokes about trans people or their trans status” and “denying or disputing the validity and/or existence of a trans person’s identity”.
Students found to have broken the policy may face “expulsion or dismissal”, the statement continued.
In addition, the college reportedly said that it believes "gender reassignment" is not an "exclusively medical" term and that it has "personal" dimensions.
"Individuals perceived as having the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (even incorrectly) are still afforded its protections," the statement said.
Last year, a teacher in Ireland was suspended from his job and jailed for contempt of court after he refused to address a transgender student by their "preferred pronouns," which Townhall covered.
Reportedly, Burke, who teaches history, politics and German, refused to address a "transgender" student as "they" instead of "he." Burke addressed the student by male pronouns. The school then placed him on administrative leave "pending the outcome of a disciplinary process."
"I love my school, with its motto Res Non Verba, 'Actions not words,' but I am here today because I said I would not call a boy a girl," Burke said in court, according to the New York Post. "Transgenderism is against my Christian belief. It is contrary to the scriptures, contrary to the ethos of the Church of Ireland and of my school."
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Just 3pc of tech graduates are job-ready, Australian Information Industry Association survey finds
Only 3 per cent of Australian tech companies believe graduates are job-ready after finishing university, with many taking up to 12 months of training to reach required productivity levels.
The lack of readiness is tightening the overall jobs market, forcing smaller firms that can’t afford to train staff without experience to fork out hefty sums while competing against major companies for highly-skilled workers.
The state of the market amid Australia’s current skills and labour shortage is severely limiting the ability for Australian tech start-ups and small firms to be innovative, Australian Information Industry Association chief executive Simon Bush said.
“Feedback from our members is that on average it takes between six to 12 months to train a graduate and while larger companies can take on that overhead and the cost of training, for smaller companies it is a real handbrake on productivity,” he said.
The 3 per cent job-ready rate, which arrived from the AIIA’s fourth Digital State of the Nation survey, had fallen from 5 per cent in the previous year.
Across the nation, cybersecurity positions are the most in demand in the tech space followed by artificial intelligence roles.
To meet demand, many tech companies had moved away from hiring people university degrees and were actively hiring workers who had recently completed micro-courses and vocational training courses, the AIIA found.
Some of the training provided in short courses was similar to on-the-job learning, and easing the pressures on companies to train staff, Mr Bush said.
“We’re finding that our members really are looking to hire people from non-traditional areas, in other words, non-ICT areas in order to meet demand,” he said. “And in relation to cyber security, micro courses are the what the market wants.”
The local tech market will not be as active as previous years over the next 12 months, with 26 per cent of companies unsure if they would actively hire this year, the survey found.
The pulling back on expanding staff headcounts may drive some pressure down on graduate salaries, which The Australian revealed last year had been as high as $147,000 to $350,000 at the top-paying firms.
“What’s happening with consumers, and cost of living, inflation and interest rates there, companies are not looking to grow their business as much as they perhaps were going to last year in terms of hiring people,” Mr Bush said.
The roles which demand a premium are cybersecurity and AI, with senior staff in those fields in more demand than ever before. “If you are an AI expert in a technology company, right now you are a rock star,” Mr Bush said.
Of those looking to hire, the intention to bring on local workers had grown to 69 per cent, up 5 per cent from the previous years when borders were closed.
The major factor driving companies toward hiring overseas staff was the skills shortage. Labour costs were another factor, cited by 17 per cent of staff, down from 50 per cent the previous year.
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2 June, 2023
Some Democrats Give Hypocrisy A Bad Name On Education
"Public schools are good for your kids but not good for... my kids?"
This should be the Democrat Party's motto. They practice this hypocrisy, and sadly, get away with it. The liberal media is AWOL on challenging them.
Democrats would say "let public funds be used only for public schools." Translation: If you do not have the personal means, you are screwed; you have no school choice. That is not very American. All children should have an equal opportunity at success with no child being trapped in a failing school.
Why can't people take their resources (public funds derived from taxes paid) with them to the school of their choice? Why should only the wealthy be able to choose the school of their choice?
The landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 changed America for the better. "With all deliberate speed," it put us on course for a desegregated educational system meant in the bigger picture to convert us into an integrated society with no second-class citizens.
For decades, the leadership of the teachers unions and their acts to deprive all children and their families of the fundamental right to select the school of their choice - as long as parents could transport their children to the school - is in direct opposition to the spirit of the aforementioned Supreme Court decision.
Having been a product of integrated schools, as well as my children, as well as my students at Georgetown and the University of Virginia, I will go out on a limb and say that students of color who attend integrated K-12 schools do better than those in segregated schools.
Thus, we know one of the solutions, yet we refuse to take one of the remedies to failing schools and allow for school choice.
The public gets it. They have been screaming to free our children. Polls show that 72% of Americans are in favor of K-12 school choice. Democrat leaders, however, are out of touch.
In fact, recently North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, made national news when he wrongly declared a state of emergency because the Republican-controlled legislature decided to expand school choice in the state.
Democrat presidents past and current, an award-winning Democrat educator now serving in Congress, Democrat governors, and a host of other Democrat leaders have exercised their right to send their children to non-public schools. And yet they all attempt to forcefully deny that right to their constituents. Their actions are disingenuous.
Back in the day, no member of Congress would be caught driving a foreign made car. It was considered hypocritical to encourage Americans to buy American, and then be seen driving a foreign made vehicle because you could afford to do so (now, many foreign cars are actually assembled in the U.S.).
But Democrats have no qualms about sending their children to non-public schools simply because they can afford to do so, while prohibiting others from doing the same. That is a classic double standard.
Democrats and teachers unions are inseparable and make an interesting pair. If you look at who these unions give nearly every dollar to in political campaigns (well over 90%), you would believe that the forced dues they collect from every public school teacher in the land means that nearly all teachers are Democrats. Well, no. Not true.
One of their top agenda items is thwarting any form of non-public school choice. Tens of millions of campaign contributions go only to those political candidates who accept this absurd position.
It begs the question: If Democrats can be hypocritical on this issue, what other issues are they not being "straight" with us on?
Economics play a role in segregated schools as neighborhood schools in all Black neighborhoods would be nearly all Black, but school choice helps to alleviate this issue by allowing a child to leave their segregated school for an integrated one.
Black Democrat politicians working with the teachers unions are actually keeping Black children trapped in failing public schools. They are inadvertently supporting segregated schools.
Black Democrats have drunk the "Kool-Aid" that more spending will yield better test results. Yet the record is clear that spending on education has continuously gone up over the years. Throwing more money at schools is not the solution. But it is the narrative that teachers unions have been promoting for decades. Doing the same thing year after year, decade after decade, and expecting a different result is the textbook definition of insanity.
Republicans practice what they preach. They believe in school choice for themselves and for all Americans.
The Democrats' do-what-I-say-and-not-what-I-do form of governance is not the message we should be sending to our children and future leaders of America.
We cannot be so cynical that we allow such hypocrisy to be "par" for the course.
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DHS-funded college program equates conservatives and Christians to militant neo-Nazis:
A college program that received taxpayer funds from the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security equated conservatives and Christians to militant neo-Nazis, according to watchdog group MRC Free Speech America.
Documents obtained by the conservative media watchdog revealed that the DHS’ Office of Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention doled out $352,109 in fiscal year 2022 to a University of Dayton program that aimed to “develop and implement modules on the risks of and protective factors for radicalization to violence related to media literacy and online critical thinking for students,” the New York Post reported.
The DHS awarded 80 grants totaling nearly $40 million under its Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program to establish “media literacy and online critical thinking initiatives.” In an internal memo obtained by MRC, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas referred to the grant program as a “high priority.”
According to the watchdog organization, the University of Dayton’s PREVENTS-OH was “among the most radical grantees.” The program vowed to fight “domestic violence extremism and hate movements.”
“For example, a chart used by DHS and its grantee in a training program equates mainstream groups with militant neo-Nazis, including: The Heritage Foundation, Fox News, the National Rifle Association (NRA), Breitbart News, PragerU, Turning Point USA, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), the American Conservative Union Foundation (ACUF) and the Republican National Committee, among others,” MRC stated.
The chart, labeled “The Pyramid of Far-Right Radicalization,” sorted various Christian, conservative, and known neo-Nazi groups into a pyramid. It placed “smaller” organizations with an “increased level of extremism” closer to the top.
During the university’s seminar, the presenter explained that groups listed at the bottom of the pyramid are considered “mainstream conservatism,” including the Republican Party, Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, and the Christian Broadcasting Network.
The second level of the graphic was labeled “alt-lite” and included Breitbart News Network, PragerU, Turning Point USA, Infowars, and “Make America Great Again.”
The final top two tiers, labeled “alt-right” and “accelerationist terrorism,” listed known radical hate groups.
“The seminar also compared former President Donald Trump to Pol Pot and suggested Florida Governor Ron DeSantis might wish to start a second Holocaust,” the watchdog group stated.
A DHS spokesperson told the Post, “This seminar was not funded, organized, or hosted by the Department of Homeland Security.”
“Similarly, the presented chart was not developed, presented, or endorsed by the Department of Homeland Security, and was not part of any successful grant application to the Department of Homeland Security. DHS does not profile, target, or discriminate against any individual for exercising their constitutional rights protected by the First Amendment,” the spokesperson added.
However, a DHS employee participated in the university’s seminar to discuss the department’s Center for Prevention Programs and Partnership. Additionally, Dayton researchers noted that the seminar was part of the DHS grant program.
MRC’s vice president Dan Schneider accused the agency of “lying through its teeth once again.”
“DHS did indeed fund the PREVENTS-OH program a year after a graph and documents were presented that equated Nazis to conservatives, Christians, and Republicans,” Schneider stated.
“Laughably, the DHS Ohio grantee quickly scrubbed its website following this report, something innocent groups don’t do. But it is too late; we have already copied it. We also have proof that ‘PREVENTS-OH’ actually hosted the conference and that DHS was an active participant, including featuring a senior DHS official at the conference,” he continued.
Schneider called on Mayorkas to “step down immediately” and urged Congress to launch a criminal investigation into the DHS.
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Virginia mom denounces book with illustrations of ‘deviant sex acts’ in school library, demands answers
A “frustrated” Virginia mother told Fox News Digital that Fairfax County Public Schools Board members need to address sexually explicit books found in their school library.
Stacy Langton, a mother of six, called out Fairfax County Public Schools for lack of inaction and accountability after she called to attention a book that contains illustrations of “deviant” “sex acts” that she discovered in the Fairfax County Public School Library.
Langton said that over the last 18 months, she spoke about several other books during the public comment period at school board meetings, a series she has titled “porn book story hour.”
“They have never once reached out to me,” she said. However, she did hear a response from the school board about “Queer: A Graphic History.”
“But when I spoke about this particular book, two weeks ago, they sent me an email the next day and that has never happened before,” she said. “It sounds like, they intend to speak to me about this book, which I find interesting because they’ve never done that before… maybe for them–maybe this book was a bridge too far. I don’t want to get overly optimistic because they’ve never done anything about these books.”
Langton added that “Queer: A Graphic History” is “especially egregious.”
She said “there hasn’t been any further motion” from the school board since she spoke up about the book two weeks ago.
On May 11th, Langton showed the board images from “Queer: A Graphic History,” a book authored by Meg-John Barker and illustrated by Jules Scheele during the public comment period.
She said to the board that the book “teaches that there is no good or bad kind of sex and that there are only a diverse range of practices and attractions.”
She described to the board an image in the book that involves “mom and dad” having “anal sex” but with the roles reversed with the mom using a strap-on dildo.
“Kids are supposed to think that this is normal and what parents are doing in private?” she told the board.
Other images in the book contain three people, including two men and one woman engaged in sexual intercourse.
Furthermore, the book delves into the history of sexual therapy, which was pioneered by Virginia Johnson and William Masters in the 1960s.
Langton told Fox News Digital that she wants accountability against the school board for allowing kids to have access to “sexually explicit” books.
“I’ve been looking for accountability on all of this from the beginning. I’ve been asking these questions on accountability from day one and nobody ever gives any accountability,” Langton said. “So one of the things I’ve asked is, how did this kind of material end up in the system? Who is bringing this into our school district? Right? And I can’t get any answers on that. And then the other part of the accountability is I’ve been saying from day one, this is illegal. You cannot put sexually explicit imagery in front of minors. It’s against the law.”
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1 June, 2023
What is the point of teaching English?
I greatly enjoyed my experience of English classes over 60 years ago. I got heavy exposure to the literary greats, both in poetry and fiction. It was a pleasure that I would wish on others but I know that the silver cord has been loosed and the the golden bowl is broken. More details on what has been lost here:
https://memoirsjr.blogspot.com/2015/07/some-reflections-about-education.html
Only in the world of English teaching could you leave an industry conference feeling more confused about the purpose of your discipline than when you arrived. This conference was held in February by VATE (The Victorian Association of Teaching English) bringing secondary English teachers and department leaders from across Victoria to Deakin University. The dark cloud hanging over the industry, in this case in the form of a national teacher shortage, did not dissuade the typical good-natured banter and cheerful complaining between the mutually fatigued. Teachers became students as the day was divided into several sessions broken by recess and lunch. Those from the Grammar schools made comparisons between who had done a better job of gaming their median study score the previous year through tactical enrolments and expulsions, while those from public schools looked over in envy before turning to each other with tall tales of wrangling delinquents and plucking gems from the great unwashed masses. Scattered throughout the room were a few fearful whispers of ChatGPT. As a teacher who is two years into their career, I was here to learn how to better teach English – but what is teaching English?
English is often considered the beating heart of a secondary school’s academic life. This is partly out of necessity because most states require students to complete an English subject at Year 12, which ties a school’s ranking to its English proficiency. This is also caused by the more material fact that success in English predicts positive effects in other subject areas. English is also unique within the traditional core subjects (Science, Mathematics, English, History) as the only subject that has art, and the appreciation of art as art, at the centre of its classrooms. The only serious encounters with art that many Australians will have in their lives will be had within an English classroom.
Despite its importance, the purpose of English is a contentious issue among politicians, parents, journalists, and academics, let alone among teachers and students. There is a general consensus among English teachers that we are sick of being at the whim of Culture Wars, though I will posit that this is only another way of saying that we wish our culture would win already. For we know that the business of English teaching, whatever it is, is important. And woe to the civilisation which fails to realise this.
Returning to the conference… I was about to see first-hand the confusion surrounding the purpose of English. With an acknowledgment that Deakin had stolen the land it stood on (and with no sign that it would be giving it back anytime soon), we launched into the morning session. We delved into functional grammar and effective feedback, everything was grounded in objectivity as we looked into ‘the mathematics of English’ as the speaker put it. We poured over punctuation, syntax, spelling, and how best to teach them. Cast in this light, the goal of my profession, above all else, seemed clear: to teach students to accurately understand the world around them and, in turn, be understood through clear communication. But where exactly did that leave the beauty of the literature we studied? Was this beauty merely a utility that authors used to better communicate? Perhaps we would find out in the next session.
The next session focused on the new VCE unit featured in the senior year levels, Crafting Texts (Year 11) and Creating Texts (Year 12) with our speaker being one of its designers. As our speaker explained, the senior text lists are increasingly including shorter texts and anthologies of short stories as opposed to the traditional novel or play. This has been done to keep English engaging in light of our population’s diminishing attention span and a general lack of interest in reading books. In what is a step further in this direction, students will no longer be required to read whole texts, short or long, but rather a collection of excerpts called Mentor Texts centred around a generalised topic. Examples of these topics include ‘Futures’ or ‘Nature’ or perhaps, ‘Food’ – the choice of which is left with the school, as are the Mentor Texts. What is concerning here is not really the unit itself – which exposes students to a variety of writing techniques and approaches to a topic – but rather the line of thinking behind it. The conclusion of this sort of pandering to the lowest common denominator will eventually mean the expulsion of books altogether in favour of short-form media. How short? If we take the most popular media application with teens as an example, TikTok, then about 15 to 60 seconds. We are kidding ourselves if we think this change is a natural evolution of artistic tastes and that we, as English teachers, need to somehow keep up with or bow down to. Are we meant to believe nothing would be lost by reducing Shakespeare into bite-sized snippets or as if anything bite-sized could aspire to anything like the depth of a work by Shakespeare?
Part of the issue is that many educators have given up on taking an active role in the development of their students, taking a descriptivist role rather than providing any sort of prescription. In other words, we are stuck teaching students to appreciate what they are already interested in, cursed by the hangover from the academic fads of whole language approaches and process writing that taught English teachers to only ‘facilitate’ the organic development of language and not to provide rules that would obstruct that natural growth. While these approaches have rightly fallen out with academics they live on in schools and in curricula, drawing us ever closer to the day we begin teaching Emoji 101. It is from these educational trends that I was given the impression that English teaching is not about grammar but is about, above all else, facilitating the self-expression of our students. As the University of Melbourne academic, Raymond Misson wrote, ‘English teachers are not on about teaching single truths, they are on about capacity building, giving students the capacity to create their own set of values and their own hierarchy of truths suitable for dealing with the diversity of the texts they come across and the diversity of the world they live in.’
Though it may seem ridiculous to those outside of the teaching world, there are indeed teachers who happily celebrate the death of the novel and play as the predominant text forms studied in English. ‘Down with Shakespeare, down with Dickens!’ they cry. For it is often their view that the form of traditional literature, as well as the content, is contaminated by the slew of likely -isms, racism, sexism, colonialism, et cetera. In their view, the length of the novel or play amounts to textual mansplaining. The same teachers when forced to teach classics typically set students activities that gloss over the depth of these texts, by getting them to write and perform rap songs loosely connected to Hamlet or create blackout poetry by vandalising a page out of Bleak House. That students walk away from these texts feeling like they are irrelevant is often the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy held by these teachers that the classics are old, stuffy, and boring – even though the boredom is rather the result of poor teaching due to a lack of familiarity with these texts and their milieus. And thus the TikTok-isation of English appears to them as revitalisation. As for some, this pandering is a cathartic release from fears that they could bring more into their classrooms than merely a highly detailed knowledge of the Harry Potter universe. A release from fear that if they had used a fraction of the time they have spent arguing Dumbledore’s sexuality on online forums with familiarising themselves with the Western Canon that their classrooms would become portals to exploring truly different worlds rather than indulgent playgrounds populated by the inoffensive. It is these teachers that have raised our most recent generation to require the censorship of Roald Dahl’s use of ‘horsey face’, ‘idiot’, and ‘fat’.
These new senior English units based around short mentor texts are then a double-edged blade. In the right hands, it can be an engaging way of viewing a topic from multiple viewpoints across different time periods. It could also give students a cursory survey of many texts they could choose to read in full later on (unlikely, but possible). However, there is the danger that in the absence of a single authorial voice, or at least the absence of an artistic effort unified into a single text, students could be exposed to a shallow reading of texts cherry-picked according to agendas held by our more dictatorial teachers. This leaves the passing down of literary tradition vulnerable to being strangled, so to speak, in its crib. It is no coincidence that Adolf Hitler read in a manner similar to the process set up by these mentor text units – Hitler would skim read while choosing passages to literally rip from the books after first reading through the contents and the concluding pages to check it was suitable according to his own political ideology. It was this functionalist method that allowed him, for example, to make selective analogies from Carlyle’s biography of Frederick the Great to match his own circumstances. This approach could be seen not just in Hitler’s reading habits but also in the wider efforts of his regime, such as in the selective reading of the Bible that led to the creation of an antisemitic New Testament featuring an Aryan Jesus who hated the Jews. These tyrannical hermeneutics are common to all dictatorships, not to mention being increasingly found today festering around our schools and publishing houses. Therefore, in the teaching of these mentor text units, we would be wise to heed Pope’s famous warning: A little learning is a dangerous thing / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
With the mentor text units explained, we had a brief lunch and shifted to the third session of the conference on the ethics of selecting texts. This session largely followed the party line that I had been hammered with over my two-year Master’s degree at the University of Melbourne. For while the error of over-prioritising self-expression has largely subsided in the academy, another has arisen around the role of English in the cultivation of morals. Thus, I was reminded in the third session that the actual purpose of English teaching is, above all else, creating a just and equitable society. In this session, our sixty minutes of hate featured one of the usual suspects that we as English teachers need to combat by putting the right books in the right hands. Whether it is the patriarchy, heteronormativity, settler-colonialism, or white supremacy the story always ends the same way and rests on the same erroneous propositions about English teaching and the nature of literature. The first error is always the reduction of the artwork to a sociological artefact or political chess piece, whether it’s a reduction of the content of the book or of its authorship. This attitude has long been entrenched in the discipline, as Paul de Man wrote in the 80s, English departments have become ‘large organisations in the service of everything except their own subject matter’. Hence, as we unwrap English teaching from these erroneous propositions let us make use of its own subject matter; namely, literature.
It should be no surprise then that merely teaching about the economic conditions of 19th-century England will not give students the same experience found in reading Dickens’ Hard Times, nor will instruction in Catholic theology give students the same experience as reading Dante’s Divine Comedy. Similarly, when we reduce a play like Macbeth to a solely feminist reading we are robbing our students of the full experience the text offers, and again not heeding Pope’s warning on the dangers of ill-digested books. Bringing ‘theory’ into our English classrooms may prove useful in illuminating the tenets of feminism – however, it ultimately fails in opening the text to a reader. It is particularly fraught in these ideologies with strict social programs. The students who are interested will soon find more straightforward propaganda and those who are not interested will walk away with a poor impression of what books can offer, either because they have been taught a good book in a shallow way or taught a shallow book.
The chief reason that our text lists are bloated with mediocre books is because of a preoccupation with author identity and apprehension to teaching books authored by ‘dead white males’. This has led to many texts being introduced on the virtue of their creator’s identity rather than on the text’s quality. This prejudice is merely a mirror image of the one it is aiming to solve and often results in a vicious circle where fresh prejudices form amongst students who are forced to read mediocre books studied merely because of the author’s identity. Ultimately, this attitude to text selection largely stems from exaggerated self-victimisation. As my University of Melbourne professor told my fellow teacher-candidates and me in a tutorial, ‘There are no First Nations authors on the text list this year so effectively Aboriginal viewpoints have been banned from being studied.’ Following this logic, we can find not only evidence of systematic racism against First Nations people in the text selection process but also Estonians since there were no Estonian authors, not to mention the Innuits, and all the other categories of persons not included that year. But of course, under the tenets of Wokery, certain kinds of oppressed peoples are more equal than others. For example, even the womanhood of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has done nothing to protect her from the charge of being white and writing about black experiences in America. Indeed, the classic book has now been labelled racist by critics calling for it to be removed from English syllabi. Ironically, the nuance of the characters within To Kill a Mockingbird teaches the exact lessons about human nature that would benefit those obsessed with identity politics. That Atticus Finch can see the goodness in the mean-spirited and racist Mrs Dubose and call her ‘the bravest person [he] ever knew’ simply does not compute with a fanatical mind. Then again, perhaps it is nuance itself which offends.
Even if we imagine the social programs promoted by these ideologues were not so wrapped in fanaticism and hypocrisy, there are still a number of issues that plague the prospect of treating English as moral cultivation. For even when the right books are put in the right hands there is no guarantee that students will take away the intended message. There is no guarantee our students will automatically identify with the Aboriginal cause in watching Rabbit Proof Fence and go on to further the process of reconciliation. We can observe this in the attempted moral betterment of A Clockwork Orange’s Alex DeLarge, where despite giving the impression to the prison chaplain that he has taken to Christianity he actually enjoys reading the Bible to imagine ‘helping in and even taking charge of the tolchocking and the nailing in, being dressed in a toga that was the height of Roman fashion’.
But we need not be an Alex DeLarge to have monstrous thoughts while reading. As academic Joshua Landy has written, there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between our everyday beliefs and those we take on in reading a book. When watching a monster film, we often find ourselves taking some satisfaction when the rationalist character is brutally killed (the one who is stoutly closed-minded to the existence of the monster until it is too late), despite the fact our everyday beliefs concerning monsters are more likely aligned to the rationalist character than any other. Even the prospect of improving a general moral faculty like empathy is dubious and more often than not a reader may rebel, as Oscar Wilde did regarding Dickens’ moralistic tale The Old Curiosity Shop, writing: ‘One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.’
Despite these points, a proponent of the moralist approach to English might shelter behind an aestheticist position that students engaging with the artistry of writing is a good in itself. However, in reality, there is nothing preventing the fruits of eloquent writing from being used for evil ends. For instance, the use of euphemisms to conceal or distort ugly truths can be observed through the language used by the mafia (‘we took him on a one-way ride’), the military (‘significant collateral damage’), journalists (‘anti-choice politicians attack female reproductive rights’) or real estate agents (‘this cosy cottage is a renovator’s dream’).
I reflected on this and more as the teaching conference came to an end and we streamed out of Deakin University. Specifically, I tried to fit together in my mind the three answers I had received while trying to discern the purpose of my vocation. It was a difficult task since each member of this trinity appears to be incompatible with the others. They are also inadequate if they solely form the basis for discipline. If it’s based on grammar, then English is too dry and does not comprehend beauty. If it’s based on self-expression, then English becomes hopelessly solipsistic and forces teachers to pander to the whims of popular culture. Finally, if English is based on do-goodery it devolves into a study of propaganda at worst, or ineffectual moral development at best.
Yet there is hope. A harmony between the different aspects of English is possible because there once was such a harmony in the traditional trivium of rhetoric, logic, and grammar which once filled the educational role for society that English now does. In the trivium the objective, subjective, and ethical concerns of the language arts were balanced against each other. However, there is yet another trinity that underpinned and allowed this harmony to exist, and that is the trinity of the transcendentals – the true, the good, and the beautiful. Our secular society has given up the transcendental nature of the good, the true, and the beautiful and so there is no longer any social credence behind the idea that beauty is the splendour of truth, or in those famous words by Dostoevsky that: ‘Beauty will save the world.’ It is a return to transcendental truths that could bring a unified and purposeful direction back to English and save the discipline from disintegration. Or at the very least, save me from a life of teaching the art of the euphemism to future real estate agents.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/what-is-the-point-of-teaching-english/ ?
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How the Teachers Union Broke Public Education
On May 17, the Oakland, California, teachers union ended a two-week strike—the union’s third strike in five years. The district offered a substantial salary increase for teachers before the strike even began, but negotiations remained deadlocked for days over the union’s other demands. The Oakland Education Association (OEA) put forward several “common good” proposals that included drought-resistant shrubs, a Climate Justice Day, reparations for Black students, and converting unused school and office buildings into housing for homeless kids and their families.
Most of these “common good” issues were outside the legal scope of teachers’ contracts, but as The Wall Street Journal editorial board pointed out, OEA is not a rogue branch of the teachers union. The National Education Association (NEA)—the largest labor union in the U.S. representing teachers and other school faculty—explicitly tells teachers to bargain for the “common good,” advising union branches that, “When we expand the continuum of bargaining, we build power, and go on the offense in order to fight for social and racial justice.”
What makes the NEA’s bargaining approach so remarkable is the fact that this union and its counterpart, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), have recently inflicted profound racial and social injustice on the country’s school children in the form of extended school closures.
As an Oakland public school teacher, I was a staunch supporter of the teachers union and was a union representative at my school for three years. In 2020, however, I began to disagree with the union when it prevented me from returning to my classroom long after studies proved that school reopening was safe, even without COVID-19 mitigation measures. In my experience, the union’s actions were not motivated by sincere fears, but rather by a desire to virtue-signal and maintain comfortable work-from-home conditions.
Although union bosses like Randi Weingarten continue to obfuscate their role in school closures, the historical record is clear: The union repeatedly pushed to keep schools closed, and areas with greater union influence kept schools closed longer. Politicians, public health officials, and the media certainly had a hand in this fiasco, but the union egged on dramatic news stories, framed school reopening as a partisan issue, and directly interfered in CDC recommendations. Teachers saw firsthand that virtual learning was a farce and that children were suffering. While there may be plenty of blame to go around, teachers’ abandonment of their own students was a special kind of betrayal.
I am well aware that there were many problems plaguing public education before school closures, and that teaching was a challenging and exhausting job. Today, however, the crisis teachers face is an order of magnitude worse than it was in 2019, and this crisis is almost entirely self-inflicted. Public school enrollment is plummeting, kids are refusing to go to school, and disciplinary problems are spiraling out of control.
Many districts are in freefall. In Baltimore, one high school student told the local news that, “The rising number of violence within city public schools has been unfathomable.” More than 80% of U.S. schools have reported an increase in behavior issues. Nearly half of all schools have teacher shortages, and teachers continue to leave in droves.
Nationally, the chronic absence rate doubled, and it is not showing signs of improvement. In one San Francisco elementary school, almost 90% of students were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year. In New York City, 50% of all Black students and 47% of all Latino students were chronically absent. Parents have no idea how far behind their kids really are, and schools cannot repair learning loss on a mass scale because the available workforce is simply not up to the task.
School closures were a yearlong exercise in anti-solidarity.
What happened in 2020 was the result of a long process in which the union replaced labor-related goals, which are finite and measurable, with activism, which is infinite and abstract. In 2018, a group of West Virginia teachers kicked off a national teachers strike wave. Most of these strikes had reasonable goals and broad public support, but, like all social movements, this strike wave gave birth to insatiable fanaticism.
In his 1951 book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Eric Hoffer explained, “The danger of the fanatic to the development of a movement is that he cannot settle down … The taste for strong feeling drives him on to search for mysteries yet to be revealed and secret doors yet to be opened. He keeps groping for extremes.” The teachers union may have once had noble intentions, but these intentions have been hijacked by histrionic fanatics whose thirst for extremes might have contributed to the deaths of thousands of children and teenagers.
Although it still has the veneer of a labor organization, the teachers union is an activist arm of the Democratic Party. Since 2016, progressive leaders of the AFT and the NEA have increasingly prioritized political causes like Black Lives Matter and their opposition to Donald Trump. What’s more, external elements have also parasitized the union for their own objectives. For several years, left-wing publications and organizations pressured the teachers union to embrace social justice goals unrelated to those of traditional organized labor. The Democratic Socialists of America (an organization mostly composed of college-educated millennials) even made open attempts to infiltrate and influence the union.
At one time, the teachers proudly viewed education as an engine of social mobility. Today, the union is a captured institution, and it argues that the country must be remade for education to even be possible. Favoring ideological indoctrination over academic achievement fundamentally devalues teaching and learning. It is this devaluing that was the nail in the coffin for the school system
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-teachers-union-broke-public-education
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Australia: The Budget’s rivers of gold bypass education
Comedy writer Robert Orben is credited with saying, ‘If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.’ It is a phrase the federal government appears to want to put to the test.
This is despite handing down a Budget earlier this month which shows government spending is set to reach its highest level since 1993.
It was surprising to find education funding did not share in the rivers of taxpayers’ gold, given it was a fairly traditional Labor Budget. Treasurer Jim Chalmers did not even mention schools or universities in his Budget speech.
The little funding for education announced in the Budget papers was laser-focused on forcing the issues of race and gender onto students in a manner that almost put the cross-curriculum priorities in the National Curriculum to shame.
Perhaps the activists consider the long march through our educational institutions and our national curriculum complete…
As postmodern ideologies infiltrated the National Curriculum, Australia experienced a two-decade-long decline in education standards. A trend that is continuing, according to the OECD’s latest report.
Worse still, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows the average 15-year-old is more than a year behind students 10 years ago in reading, science, and maths. Today, Singapore, Poland, and Canada are among the many countries whose students are ahead of Australian 15-year-olds in these three key areas.
What is abundantly clear is that our education sector is failing young Australians.
A rare, glaring admission of the dire state of things was this Budget’s provision of $436 million for a foundation skills program to improve adults’ literacy, numeracy, and digital skills.
So, after 12 years of the National Curriculum, schools have been unable to inculcate the basics into a sizable number of their students. Any responsible government would recognise this as a profoundly significant problem and seek to address it forthwith.
According to the IPA’s research report, De-Educating Australia: How the National Curriculum is Failing Australian Children, students are being taught to view the world through a postmodern lens that recognises no objective fact.
This year’s Federal Budget has an obvious political slant, directing funding at minority groups while failing to address the broader problems in the Australian education system.
Independent schools are the losers, with funding expected to fall as inflation outstrips government support over the next financial year. Not surprisingly, the National Curriculum was the winner, with funding for ‘progressive’ priorities like Indigenous education and gender equity while infinitely more important outcomes like literacy and numeracy are ignored.
Funding for Indigenous education highlights the federal government’s focus on race as a key issue. The Budget sets aside $14.1 million to place educators in 60 primary schools to teach First Nation languages and provide greater cultural understanding. The problem with this decision is that it takes time and funds away from teaching the English language and the foundational skills students need.
Last year, the Federal Education Department’s performance measures showed that 11.2 per cent of Year 3 students failed to meet the minimum standard in national literacy tests.
Gender equity is another priority, with $20 million going toward teaching students about sexual consent and respectful relationships. Here the state takes on the role of the parent while once again failing to deliver core outcomes: literacy and numeracy. Programs like The Good Society, Respectful Relationships, Safe Schools, and Consent training promote a politicised narrative about gender and sexuality that disregards the views of many parents.
Gender equality and women’s participation in male-dominated sectors is another area underpinned by major funding. Women have been placed at the core of a $3.7 billion agreement between the states and territories to fund vocational education and skills training over the next five years. This feeds into the narrative that any disparity in the number of men and women working in a particular field is due to discrimination rather than choice.
The Labor government should stop and consider if women even want roles in male-dominated fields before they spend billions of taxpayers’ dollars on such programs.
The failure of leaders to understand key educational data and act accordingly is deeply concerning. While the $10 million set aside for phonics-based reading instruction for teachers is a step in the right direction, it is undercut by activities that clutter the curriculum.
This year’s budget fails our children while propping up a radical political agenda focused on gender equity and indigenous studies. It’s an education Budget for the Canberra bubble and inner-city elites, to the joy of left-wing activists and lobbyists.
But it is far removed from reality and the pressing needs of Australian students who after more than a decade of the National Curriculum still cannot keep pace when it comes to the basic skills of reading, writing, and understanding maths.
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http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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