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30 June, 2024
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Federal Government to Pause Student Loan Payments, Interest for 3 Million Borrowers
In response to court rulings blocking key elements of the federal government’s new student loan repayment program, the Biden administration will be giving approximately 3 million borrowers a reprieve from their monthly payments.
The 3 million borrowers eligible for the pause are enrolled in the income-driven repayment program dubbed SAVE, and have a monthly payment that is more than $0 a month, the U.S. Department of Education said. About 4.5 million SAVE enrollees who qualify for $0 payments because of low incomes will not be included in the pause.
The payment pause is similar to the COVID-19 student loan relief that lasted three and a half years from March 2020 through September 2023, during which borrowers didn’t have to pay monthly bills and interest didn’t accrue.
Borrowers who are eligible for the new pause will be informed directly in the coming days, a spokesperson for the Education Department told The Epoch Times.
The announcement was made days after a federal judge in Kansas, siding with attorneys general of three Republican-led states, blocked the implementation of the final segment of the SAVE plan but declined to unwind the portions of it that are already in place.
The blocked segment is a calculation formula update scheduled to take effect on July 1. It would have allowed borrowers with undergraduate loans to have their monthly payments capped at 5 percent of their discretionary income, down from the current 10 percent limit.
Borrowers with undergraduate and graduate school loans would have also seen a reduction in repayments, with the amount depending on the proportion of their graduate and undergraduate loan debt.
A separate ruling out of a federal court in Missouri put SAVE’s debt discharge provisions on hold while litigation challenging the program moves forward. The SAVE plan offered debt cancellations for those who originally took out $12,000 or less in loans and have made at least 10 years of monthly payments.
Both of the judges presiding over the twin cases agreed that the SAVE plan, which uses the Higher Education Act (HEA) to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in loan debt, goes beyond what the statute authorizes.
In his opinion, Judge John Ross of the Eastern District of Missouri said Congress did not intend to make debt forgiveness under HEA as economically far-reaching as President Biden’s program.
“The court is not free to replace the language of the statute with unenacted legislative intent. Congress has made it clear under what circumstances loan forgiveness is permitted, and the [income-contingent repayment] plan is not one of those circumstances,” Judge Ross wrote.
A Congressional Budget Office estimate said SAVE could cost $230 billion over the next decade, while researchers at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania placed the price tag at $475 billion over the same 10-year period.
The pair of rulings prompted some Democrat lawmakers to urge the Education Department to place affected borrowers on forbearance, citing the confusion that could result from the injunctions.
“This damning and harmful lawsuit will only throw struggling borrowers further into chaos, deny them the student debt cancellation they demand and deserve, and prevent them from purchasing homes, growing their families, and so much more,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said in a statement. “The Biden Administration must continue to take immediate action to ensure borrowers receive the student debt cancellation they were promised.”
The federal government has promised a continued push for student loan forgiveness.
“President Biden, Vice President [Kamala] Harris, and Secretary [Miguel] Cardona remain committed to fixing a broken student loan system and making college more affordable for more Americans,” a spokesperson for the Education Department said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
“They will not stop vigorously defending the SAVE Plan, the most affordable repayment plan in history, and will continue to fight for this long-overdue relief.”
Some 414,000 borrowers have had their federal student loan debts erased under SAVE, according to the Education Department. The injunctions will not affect any forgiveness that has already been granted.
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Jewish groups turn on Sydney University
A rare coalition of Australia’s peak Jewish groups says it has “lost confidence” in the University of Sydney to provide for the safety of Jewish people, and that the organisations “stand ready to provide support to Jewish students and staff … who now wish to leave the university”.
The move follows the university’s controversial agreement with the Muslim students society, which defied university orders to pack up its pro-Palestine encampment protest and has been implicated with extremist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir.
In a significant escalation of pressure on Australia’s oldest university, six Jewish organisations, including some of the most powerful in the country – the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, the Zionist Federation of Australia, the Australian Academic Alliance Against Anti-Semitism, and the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council – said they were “appalled and deeply concerned” by the university’s agreement.
“Many of the protesters were from outside the university, yet they were allowed to menace the university community and disturb campus life without challenge,” their joint statement reads.
“They have now been rewarded for doing so.”
The groups said they had rejected the University of Sydney’s offer to participate in a working group to review defence and security related investments and called on others not to partake in the “sham” and “fundamentally flawed process”.
The university has pledged to grant a seat on that working group to the Sydney University Muslim Students Association under last week’s agreement. It has also promised a suite of other measures in return for an end to the encampment protest after almost two months.
Those measures include a pledge to disclose defence and security related investments and research ties and to double its expenditure to support academics under its scholars-at-risk program with a particular focus on Palestinians.
The agreement came a week after the university ordered the campers off the lawns, threatening that failure to comply with directions to leave would constitute an offence. Everyone but the Sydney University Muslim Students Association left following that order. That group defied orders and camped out another week until the agreement was struck.
They said in a statement last week that this defiance “worked in our favour across many fronts, most particularly being the catalyst for negotiations with the uni”.
The Jewish groups said the agreement would “only act as an incentive for further and more extreme disruption at the university in the future”.
“Based on our interactions to date, we have lost confidence in the capacity of the university to provide for the physical, cultural and psychosocial safety of Jewish students and staff members.
“This is not just our view. We have been made aware that several academic staff, some of them leaders in their fields and employees of long standing, have already notified the university of their decision to leave the institution. We have also been informed that a number of Jewish students are now considering shifting to other universities.
“We have also rejected the university’s offer, extended to us after an agreement had been reached behind our backs, to participate in the proposed process to review the university’s investment and research activities. “The process is in our view a sham and we will have nothing to do with it. We encourage individuals and groups of standing likewise not to engage with or lend credibility to such a fundamentally flawed process.
“We continue to explore all options to ensure the safety and wellbeing of students and staff at the University of Sydney and stand ready to provide support and assistance to Jewish students and staff at the university, as well as those who now wish to leave the university.”
The University of Sydney has repeatedly said the working group will not review the university’s research activity.
When contacted for a response to the letter, a university spokeswoman said: “These are deeply challenging times and we recognise the significant distress relating to this conflict and also the way the university has managed the encampment.
“We deliberately took time to listen and understand our community’s concerns with the intention of coming to a peaceful resolution.
“We are pleased the encampment was resolved without violence. The ending of the encampment is the first step, and we know we need to work hard to rebuild our relationships with some members of our university community.”
One Jewish student at the University of Sydney, Zac, told The Australian that he was considering transferring following the last few months of tensions on campus. He did not want his face photographed or his surname published for fear of reprisal.
“I’ve been harassed,” he said. “They had a protest. I was filming the protest just in case anything happened. I got told I wasn’t welcome here and that I had to leave – I said, I’m a student at the university and they didn’t care. And I got pictured and posted on Instagram and they called me a ‘Zio’.”
Zac said the university’s deal with protesters announced last Friday confirmed to him that the university “didn’t care about me personally”.
“I guess the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If they complain loudly enough, it doesn’t necessarily mean their opinion’s right or anything they do is right. They’re just the loudest.
“I’ve looked into it a lot, into transferring to UNSW, or UTS, or Macquarie. When you don’t feel comfortable walking around campus, and your classes are on campus, and there are people who you thought were friends who now you don’t talk to or they don’t talk to you, it sort of makes it hard to want to keep coming to uni.”
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27 June, 2024
Female Athletes, Coaches Take on Biden’s War on Title IX
The Biden administration is waging war on Title IX and, in response, a group of female athletes, coaches, and sports advocates have spent the month of June touring the country to sound the alarm.
Title IX has long served to protect girls’ and women’s education and sports opportunities. The 1972 federal education amendment requires there be equal opportunities for men and women in schools across the country, but President Joe Biden is working to undo those protections by unilaterally rewriting Title IX.
“The Biden administration has decided they want sex to be equivalent to gender identity; meaning, anyone that identifies as a woman, aka men, can take female opportunities,” former collegiate swimmer Paula Scanlan says.
Scanlan was forced to compete with a male athlete who identifies as a woman on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team. Now, she is speaking out against Biden’s attempted changes to Title IX because, by redefining sex in Title IX to include gender identity, Biden is swinging the door wide open for girls and women to be relegated to the sidelines in their own sports.
Scanlan says she thought it was a prank when a male swimmer, William Thomas, announced in the fall of 2019 that he would be competing on the female team the following season.
“I thought that someone was going to come out with a camera crew and say, ‘Pranked you! We’re starting a new prank TV show,’” Scanlan said, explaining that a male competing on the women’s team just sounded “so unreal.” But it was real, and soon Scanlan and the other University of Pennsylvania female swimmers were sharing a locker room with Thomas, who now goes by the name Lia Thomas.
After she graduated, and after watching Thomas take medals and opportunities from female athletes, Scanlan joined other defenders of women’s sports, among them Riley Gaines, and began speaking out about her experience.
Scanlan is one of the many female athletes who have participated in the Independent Women’s Forum Take Back Title IX Summer Bus Tour to inform Americans of the Biden administration’s bid to change Title IX, which not only threatens women’s sports, but throws open restrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories.
Scanlan and Kim Russell, the former head women’s lacrosse coach at Oberlin College, join the “Problematic Women” podcast to discuss the fight to keep women’s sports female only.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/06/27/female-athletes-coaches-take-bidens-war-against-title-ix/
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Virginia’s Fairfax County Weighs Teaching Elementary Schoolers About ‘Gender Spectrum’
A Northern Virginia school board will vote Thursday on a proposal to add lessons on the “gender spectrum” to elementary school curriculum—despite opposition from a majority of parents and community members.
The Fairfax County School Board reviewed recommendations from the 2022-2023 Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee that it had not yet acted on. That included a proposal to add instruction on the so-called gender spectrum at the elementary school level and “a more inclusive curriculum overall.”
“The exclusion of gender identify at the elementary level does not create an environment that is open and accepting of all students or provide a safe space for students to learn about themselves and others,” the recommendation reads. “Students who do not ‘see’ themselves in the curriculum do not feel valued and may feel that there is something wrong with them or they are being dismissed.”
Fairfax County Public Schools also proposed teaching kindergartners about families with “two moms” or “two dads.”
“This recommendation broadens examples of family structures to be more inclusive of the many different families in our schools,” the Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee recommendations say.
The district proposed teaching 10th graders to “recognize the development of sexuality and gender as aspects of one’s total personality.”
“Why is there such an obsession in K-12 schools to waste hours on discussing issues that have nothing to do with academics?” senior adviser for Parents Defending Education Michele Exner asked.
“Schools are still lagging behind because of [COVID-19] closures, and Fairfax County was one of the slowest school districts to reopen,” Exner, a mother of two and a Fairfax County resident, told The Daily Signal. “It is unconscionable that the School Board continues to push social and political topics instead of focusing on children’s core educational needs.”
Most parents and community member do not support adding lessons on gender identity in elementary schools, the district admitted in a summary of the comments submitted.
The Family Life Committee conducted a community review of the proposed changes from May 10 to June 10. More than half of the 2,539 people who commented were local parents of students in Fairfax County schools. Other respondents included community members, school staffers, and students.
Parents shared concerns about lessons on gender identity not being age-appropriate for elementary schoolers, and expressed the belief that they should be the primary educators of their children on such topics, according to the district’s summary of comments.
Some parents said they were afraid that lessons on the so-called gender spectrum would confuse their children and cause misunderstandings.
“Instruction should focus on facts about sexual development and limit instruction on sexual-orientation and gender-identity terms,” said one of the surveyed residents of Fairfax County, located in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. “Gender identity and gender spectrum are not needed in elementary school.”
Many community members called on the school district to focus on improving academics instead of focusing on the Family Life Education Curriculum.
“Trying to normalize ideas like ‘gender is a spectrum,’ and ‘not everyone has a gender,’ is harming many of our kids and society,” another respondent said.
The changes to the Family Life Education Curriculum focus on sexualizing children, rather than family or education, Katie Gorka, chair of the Fairfax County Republican Committee, told The Daily Signal.
“They introduce mature sexual ideas at too young an age and push transgender ideology, which is deeply destructive to children,” she said. “The Fairfax County School Board needs to listen to Fairfax parents and put their radical ideology to the side.”
Fairfax County spokeswoman Julie Allen told The Daily Signal that parents can opt their children out of the Family Life Education Curriculum.
“If you wish to opt your child out of all or some of the Family Life Education lessons, please complete this form and return it to your child’s classroom teacher prior to FLE instruction,” a message on the school district’s website reads.
Virginia law requires schools to notify parents when instructional material contains “sexually explicit content” and allow parents to opt into non-explicit material.
The proposals under consideration have no neutral educational benefits, said Gorka of the Fairfax GOP.
“What the School Board is proposing is obviously a part of the broader, politically motivated move to indoctrinate America’s children and to insert radical sexual ideology into our classrooms,” she said.
Fairfax County mom of three Stephanie Lundquist-Arora said she is most concerned about the district’s “obsession with pushing early exposure to age-inappropriate and otherwise controversial topics.”
“What is their hurry to introduce young children to these issues and why are they so insistent on doing so despite substantial community and parental opposition?” she wonders. “The consideration of these absurd recommendations also raises larger questions about the purpose of public schools and demonstrates how far they’ve strayed from their actual mission in Fairfax County.”
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Australia: Physics students in catastrophic decline in senior high school
A catastrophic decline in the number of students studying physics in senior high school is ringing alarm bells, with one eminent scientist fearing Australia will lose the expertise it needs to be competitive as an advanced economy.
The University of Western Australia’s David Blair, who won a Prime Minister’s science prize for his role in the discovery of gravitational waves, said if school physics enrolments continued to fall at their current rate there would be no female school leavers qualified to study physics at university by 2032 and no males by 2035.
“We are on track to having no young medical physicists, no physicists to become tomorrow’s astronomers, no physicists to support the energy transition, no physicists to support the nuclear industry – not just submarines but crucial medical products – and no climate scientists,” he said.
“Hospitals employ medical physicists who are essential for producing the short-life radioactive isotopes for medical diagnoses and PET scans.
“Our mineral industry depends on a huge number of physicists.”
Data from WA, which Professor Blair said was representative of Australia as a whole, shows year 12 physics enrolments fell from 3868 in 2015 to 2436 in 2023. The number of girls studying physics fell even faster over the period. Girls made up 42 per cent of the year 12 physics cohort in 2015 but only 31 per cent by 2023.
Professor Blair and a fellow Prime Minister’s science prize winner, Susan Scott from the Australian National University, are pushing for a rethink of school science to keep children interested so more choose to study science in their senior years.
The pair are leaders of the Einstein First program which, backed by UWA, now operates in 55 schools, teaching year 3 to year 10 students modern physics topics that engage their interest, such as black holes.
Figures show that 14-year-olds are far more interested in physics after doing Einstein First. Before the course, only about a third of the girls and half the boys found physics interesting. After the course about 80 per cent of both girls and boys were interested.
A $1.5m Australian Research Council grant for the Einstein First team was announced on Friday for them to revitalise school science education and improve the training of teachers to teach modern science.
Einstein First and UWA have also just launched 12 Quantum Explorer STEM clubs, which are particularly aimed at sparking the interest of girls.
The Australian Academy of Science is also part of the push to improve science and maths education in schools, and on Tuesday launched two free online “toolboxes” for primary school teachers to help them teach these subjects.
Academy CEO Anna-Maria Arabia said that the science kit (Primary Connections) and the maths kit (reSolve) catered for teachers at whatever level of science understanding they had and helped them teach in effective ways regardless of where their students were at.
“We would love all teachers to be trained in science and maths but that is long-term,” Ms Arabia said.
The academy’s secretary for education and public awareness, Lyn Beazley, said the new resources were needed to fill a gap.
“Today’s teachers work so hard, but they are extremely time – poor, with many competing demands. This can lead to teachers preparing for what their students need to know, rather than designing how students will best learn,” Professor Beazley said.
Launching the new toolboxes at Hughes Primary School in Canberra, federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the resources were designed to take the load off teachers and engage students and help them to fall in love with science and maths.
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26 June, 2024
Grade Inflation and Campus Protests
By RICHARD K. VEDDER
Why the outburst of campus protests in recent years, culminating in the sizable and sometimes violent demonstrations at such prestigious universities as Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, and Stanford? While many factors are at work, one that seldom gets mentioned: boredom. Students often have a lot of free time. TikTok, Instagram, drinking, sex, and internet porn do not provide adequate fulfillment.
Why? Most college students don’t have much to do academically. Why is that? Grade inflation. Surveys of time use by the federal government suggest that the amount of time college kids spend on their academic work has fallen from an average of perhaps 40 hours weekly in the middle of the last century to about 27 or so hours today. Since a “year” in American collegiate parlance is actually only about 32 or so weeks, college students probably average less than 900 hours annually working on school tasks, probably less than much younger elementary or high school students—and less than half as much as the highly productive professional, technical, or managerial workers that most college students aspire to be.
Harvard’s great political scientist Harvey Mansfield has taught in every decade since the 1960s—seven in total (as have I). In a great recent interview in the Wall Street Journal, Mansfield recalls how students do far less reading and writing in class than they did decades ago—but for much higher grades. Mansfield taught at the oldest and most elite of our colleges, while I had very similar experiences, teaching a bit at highly selective schools, but mostly at a very typical high mid-quality state institution with only moderately selective admission criteria, Ohio University. When I started teaching American economic history in the 1960s, students were expected to read a textbook and about five other supplemental books. In my last years of teaching (until a couple of years ago), I considered it an accomplishment if students read the text and maybe a couple of short supplemental readings. Looking at old gradebooks, in the mid-1960s, my average grade in an introductory economics class was a “C” and it was rare for even 10 percent of students to get an “A.” Mansfield notes that a majority of grades today at schools like Harvard are “A” or “A-.” Nearly all students wrongly consider themselves Masters of the Universe.
The grade system provides vital information not only to the universities themselves but to future employers wishing to separate the best and brightest from the mediocre and mundane. If everyone gets nearly the same grades, their informational value is virtually lost. Student incentives to work hard are dramatically reduced, allowing them time to form campus encampments and demonstrate for days over events occurring thousands of miles away that only very tangentially touch on their lives.
A major factor in the rise of grade inflation probably was the introduction of institutionally administered student evaluations of professors on most campuses in the late 1960s or 1970s. In an attempt to make colleges more comforting and responsive to students in order to avoid unwanted campus discontent, college administrators initiated evaluations that at many schools were perceived by the professoriate to have some importance—bad evaluations sometimes severely reduced the prospects for tenure, for example. By giving high grades, professors thought that could buy some popularity and indirectly job security.
I believe the increased role of the federal government has lowered the quality of American higher education materially in the last half century or so, but a case could be made that schools receiving federal financial support should not be allowed to have average cumulative grade point averages above 3.0 (“B”) for the undergraduate student body (exceptionally good students could still get near 4.0 averages). State governments could do the same for the universities they subsidize. Another approach would be to introduce a “grade inflation tax” whereby schools would lose a proportion of subsidies—including research support, Pell Grants, etc.,—if the accumulative grade point average of all undergraduates exceeded a “B” average. Collegiate apparatchiks, in turn, would have to harass or incentivize faculty into making the grading system useful again.
To be sure, there are other factors involved in today’s campus protests, and one can legitimately argue that peaceful protests that do not interfere substantially with the pursuit of knowledge and discovery of truths are actually good—signs of a vibrant campus with a considerable diversity of views and members of the university community interested in the broader world. The protests of the Vietnam War era, for example, occurred when grade inflation was dramatically lower. But students today are not challenged by their academic duties enough, leading to such modern phenomenon as excessive time spent on social media rather than learning the verities contributing to prosperous and long lives. College should be more than four or five “gap years” of fun between secondary school and the “real world.”
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14965
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Confidence in colleges, universities reaches all-time low, new poll indicates
Confidence in colleges and universities has reached a new all-time low, according to a recent poll commissioned by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago.
"In two AmeriSpeak panels representative of the U.S. household population, we asked Americans: ‘How much confidence, if any, do you have in U.S. colleges and universities?’" a press release from FIRE reads.
The question is similar to one asked by Gallup last year, which found that Americans who had a "great deal" of approval for institutions of higher education had plummeted from 57% in 2015 to 36% in 2023.
By comparison, FIRE's report indicated only 28% of Americans had "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education as of May 2024.
Thirty percent similarly said they have "very little" or no confidence at all in higher education.
Democrats, women and younger Americans aged 18-34 saw "some of the largest drops," according to the report, while the level of confidence among conservatives – which was already low in the past – has "reached a floor."
On one hand, some say colleges and universities have lost their credibility as many Americans realize their return-on-investment in higher education failed to meet their expectations.
"Those of us who attended college or University in the mid 2000s (when quality started really dropping) have seen that it had little or no impact on our careers and that most of what we were taught ended up having very little value in the real world," Bobby Kittleberger, a web designer and founder and editor of Guitar Chalk, told Fox News Digital.
"Colleges are now viewed as having primarily a social agenda and not an economic or even an educational agenda. Even if you want an education driven by a social agenda, the asking price is incredibly high," he added.
He also argued that information is easily accessible on the web and the astronomical cost of a college education doesn't make much sense as an investment, especially considering that the wages for jobs that require a degree have not kept up at the same pace.
In a previous interview with Fox News Digital, Kittleberger said he actively encourages his kids to skip college because his degree in computer science has been "completely irrelevant" to his real world work.
His perspective aligns with the growing trend of skipping out on the traditional 4-year college plan. Many members of Gen Z, for instance, have shunned that path in favor of trade school, leading many to coin them as the "Toolbelt Generation."
Some contrarily speculate that partisan politics inside the classroom and recent on-campus chaos surrounding the Israel-Hamas War could be to blame for disillusionment with higher education. Last December, for instance, University of California, Santa Cruz professor John Ellis wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that the system of higher education needed to be reformed by getting left-wing activists out of the classroom.
"Never have college campuses exerted so great or so destructive an influence. Once an indispensable support of our advanced society, academia has become a cancer metastasizing through its vital organs. The radical left is the cause, most obviously through the one-party campuses having graduated an entire generation of young Americans indoctrinated with their ideas," he wrote at the time.
He cited "virulent antisemitism" that flared up following Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks against Israeli civilians as an addition to – or byproduct of – already pervasive cultural issues like censorship, DEI content and ideologies like "anticolonialism" and "anticapitalism."
In that same month, as then-Harvard President Claudine Gay was embroiled in controversy over campus antisemitism, college admissions consultant Christopher Rim told Fox News he was "completely shocked" to see students turning down their acceptances to the university for the first time in his career.
"This is the first time and first application season where I've seen a student who got into Harvard early that I've worked with for almost three and a half, four years now, starting in ninth grade — we're seeing them say, ‘You know what? I want to apply to other schools because what if I graduate and this stigma and this reputation of Harvard stays the same?’ That's their true concern," he said.
The Ivy League institution also reported a dropoff in early applications, something Bob Sweeney, a retired college counselor at New York's Mamaroneck High School, told Bloomberg he believed could have been partially caused by the antisemitism controversy.
FIRE's report additionally noted confidence had reached record-lows after "months of campus protests over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Congressional hearings about antisemitism on college campuses."
A separate FIRE/NORC poll found that 72% of Americans believed that students who participated in encampments should face punishment though those included in the poll disagreed on how severe such punishment should be.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/confidence-colleges-universities-hit-low-new-poll-indicates
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Australia: Physics students in catastrophic decline in senior high school
A catastrophic decline in the number of students studying physics in senior high school is ringing alarm bells, with one eminent scientist fearing Australia will lose the expertise it needs to be competitive as an advanced economy.
The University of Western Australia’s David Blair, who won a Prime Minister’s science prize for his role in the discovery of gravitational waves, said if school physics enrolments continued to fall at their current rate there would be no female school leavers qualified to study physics at university by 2032 and no males by 2035.
“We are on track to having no young medical physicists, no physicists to become tomorrow’s astronomers, no physicists to support the energy transition, no physicists to support the nuclear industry – not just submarines but crucial medical products – and no climate scientists,” he said.
“Hospitals employ medical physicists who are essential for producing the short-life radioactive isotopes for medical diagnoses and PET scans.
“Our mineral industry depends on a huge number of physicists.”
Data from WA, which Professor Blair said was representative of Australia as a whole, shows year 12 physics enrolments fell from 3868 in 2015 to 2436 in 2023. The number of girls studying physics fell even faster over the period. Girls made up 42 per cent of the year 12 physics cohort in 2015 but only 31 per cent by 2023.
Professor Blair and a fellow Prime Minister’s science prize winner, Susan Scott from the Australian National University, are pushing for a rethink of school science to keep children interested so more choose to study science in their senior years.
The pair are leaders of the Einstein First program which, backed by UWA, now operates in 55 schools, teaching year 3 to year 10 students modern physics topics that engage their interest, such as black holes.
Figures show that 14-year-olds are far more interested in physics after doing Einstein First. Before the course, only about a third of the girls and half the boys found physics interesting. After the course about 80 per cent of both girls and boys were interested.
A $1.5m Australian Research Council grant for the Einstein First team was announced on Friday for them to revitalise school science education and improve the training of teachers to teach modern science.
Einstein First and UWA have also just launched 12 Quantum Explorer STEM clubs, which are particularly aimed at sparking the interest of girls.
The Australian Academy of Science is also part of the push to improve science and maths education in schools, and on Tuesday launched two free online “toolboxes” for primary school teachers to help them teach these subjects.
Academy CEO Anna-Maria Arabia said that the science kit (Primary Connections) and the maths kit (reSolve) catered for teachers at whatever level of science understanding they had and helped them teach in effective ways regardless of where their students were at.
“We would love all teachers to be trained in science and maths but that is long-term,” Ms Arabia said.
The academy’s secretary for education and public awareness, Lyn Beazley, said the new resources were needed to fill a gap.
“Today’s teachers work so hard, but they are extremely time – poor, with many competing demands. This can lead to teachers preparing for what their students need to know, rather than designing how students will best learn,” Professor Beazley said.
Launching the new toolboxes at Hughes Primary School in Canberra, federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the resources were designed to take the load off teachers and engage students and help them to fall in love with science and maths.
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25 June, 2024
Parental Rights Group Delays Vote on Colorado School District’s Transgender Policy
A parental rights group has successfully delayed a Colorado school board’s vote on what parents call a radical transgender policy for students.
The Colorado Parent Advocacy Network gathered 335 signatures in only six hours on its petition to delay the Douglas County Board of Education’s vote on the proposal to classify female-only spaces as discriminatory. Now, the group has until August to convince the school board that public opinion is against the policy, even if President Joe Biden isn’t.
“If they had voted ‘yes’ on it yesterday, it would have cemented that biological males could be in girl spaces by policy as opposed to practice,” Lori Grimesheltyn, the network’s executive director, told The Daily Signal. “What this policy would have done, and will do if they end up voting on it, is basically submitting the Title IX changes that President Biden’s administration has pushed forward.”
Title IX is a federal law prohibiting sexual discrimination by schools or education programs that receive federal funds.
The Colorado public school district’s proposed policy prohibits discrimination by “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” at any school activity, event, or activity. This would allow boys to share restrooms and locker rooms with females and participate in girls’ and women’s sports.
Any student or parent opposed to boys’ sharing private spaces with girls and competing in girls’ sports could be accused of harassment under Title IX, the law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in schools.
The Douglas County School District prioritizes “making all kids feel safe and welcome,” spokeswoman Anna Hriso told The Daily Signal
“This, of course, includes our girls and our transgender students,” Hriso said. “We work through each situation individually in collaboration with families to ensure that each and every one of our students feels safe and welcome at school.”
When asked whether a girl who is uncomfortable sharing a restroom with a biological male could be found guilty of harassment, Hriso replied that such situations are rare.
“The situations you describe very rarely arise in our school district, but when they do we collaborate with the students and families to ensure comfort and safety for all involved,” Hriso said. “As for harassment, we always consider the totality of the circumstances—simply being or avoiding being uncomfortable without other circumstances does not constitute harassment.”
In April, the Biden administration finalized a reinterpretation of Title IX that adds prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.” Several states have challenged the rule, saying it is discriminatory to allow males in female-only spaces.
The Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, a parental rights group, organized a petition to pause the school board’s votes on the policy until changes to Title IX are finalized, to give the school district more time to review the proposal and engage parents and others in the discussion.
“Recent court decisions against the Title IX actions taken by the Biden administration suggest that the rules governing these actions are likely to be revised or even revoked,” the network’s petition says. “This evolving situation necessitates a careful and thoughtful approach to implementing new policies.”
The parent group’s stated goal is “to protect the safety and well-being of all students.”
The proposed policy prioritizes the comfort of transgender students over the safety of girls, the group’s executive director, Grimesheltyn, said.
“We’re just putting kids in uncomfortable situations for a special population,” she said. “We’re giving special rights to a special group. And it’s superseding the rights and safety of other children.”
The Colorado Parent Advocacy Network says it is monitoring gender ideology and related actions in each of Colorado’s school districts.
“We’re going to see this creep into all 178 school districts, and CPAN is going to be keeping a very watchful eye on the boards that do side in favor of allowing transgender students into female spaces,” Grimelshetyn said.
However, Grimelshetyn said, she is encouraged that parents on both sides of the political aisle are starting to stand up for their rights and the safety of their children.
“This is a matter of right versus wrong,” she said. “And the majority of people strongly believe that we need to get back to academic rigor, secure and safe schools, [and] parents being the experts in directing their child’s upbringing and education.”
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San Francisco Schools Let Students Change Name, Pronouns Minus Parents’ Knowledge or Consent
The San Francisco public schools allow students to change their preferred name and pronouns at school without the knowledge or consent of their parents.
San Francisco United School District’s LGBTQ Student Services department offers guidance on “Changing Your Name and/or Gender” in the district’s systems. The document offers a note “for students to think about,” recommending they wait to change their in the school records if they are not ready for their parents to find out their gender identity.
“Remember that your caregivers have the right to check out some of your school files, Google Classroom, or may end up on a Zoom call or meeting with you and staff at your school, and may see/hear that you are using a different name or pronoun,” the note reads. “If you are concerned about your caregiver’s response, you may not be ready to complete any of the above processes.”
It’s unclear why the district refers to parents as “caregivers.”
The San Francisco district says students have the right for peers and staff to use their preferred name and pronouns at school “without having to sign any forms or get your caregivers permission.”
Policies like San Francisco’s could be mandated statewide in California, as a bill that would prohibit school districts from telling parents about a child’s gender expression without the child’s permission is moving forward in the state Legislature.
Students in San Francisco also are entitled to ask school staff to use their preferred name and pronouns only in certain places or around certain people, including or excluding their “caregivers.”
That falls under the “right to be safe and respected at school,” the school district maintains.
San Francisco grants students the “right” to come out and transition at their own pace and in their own way, as well to file a report if someone purposely refers to them by pronouns they don’t prefer.
The district encourages students to tell school staff if they want to hide their gender identity from their parents so that a staff member doesn’t accidentally reveal it.
“We cannot guarantee that people will always remember which name and pronoun to use for you or when,” the document says. “There is always a risk that someone might slip up.”
“If you are not planning to change the name or pronouns you go by at home, make sure to let your teacher and school administrator know so that they can support you,” the district advises.
The San Francisco United School District did not respond to The Daily Signal’s question about whether its policy violates parental rights.
A nonbinary-identifying biology teacher named River Suh has his own method of determining whether his students’ parents support their gender identity.
Suh passes out a form for his eyes only determining the student’s name in the school record, what the student wants to be called in class, and what name and pronouns he should use when contacting the student’s parents.
The teacher posted the confidential “Name and Pronoun Onboarding Form” on his blog so other teachers can use it.
“Sometimes our students use different names and pronouns at home, in our classroom, and at school,” Suh wrote in 2020. “Welcome a student with this form and make them feel safe about their self-expression.”
Suh teaches at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco and is a writer for “Gender-Inclusive Biology,” a website with biology lesson plans that aim to “embed” so-called gender inclusion as a “recurring part of the curriculum, not a one-time lesson, an extension, or a reaction to an interaction.”
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Scientific American: Homeschooling Parents Need to Undergo Background Checks
There’s a growing list of states adopting universal school choice, and Louisiana is the most recent addition.
“The LA Gator Program puts parents in the driver’s seat and gives every child the opportunity for a great education,” said Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican. “When parents are committed to the value of their child’s education, government should never get in the way.”
And it seems many of these parents are moving to homeschooling to ensure their children are getting a well-rounded, trustworthy education. This, however, has received pushback.
The editors of Scientific American magazine published an article last month claiming “children deserve uniform standards in homeschooling.” And what does this look like? The idea the editors had in mind is that “homeschool parents could be required to pass an initial background check, as every state requires for all K-12 teachers.”
Scientific American is concerned that the growth of homeschooling is a “problem” since it’s hard to keep track of how many children are being homeschooled these days. “Some children may not be receiving any instruction at all,” the editors wrote. “In the worst cases, homeschooling hides abuse.”
But for education experts like Molly Macek of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the article is a false alarm. The “venerable magazine’s call for restrictions isn’t based on science,” she wrote. Macek continued, “Most would find it hard to argue with the editors’ opening argument that ‘children deserve a safe and robust education.’ But they go on to use this as the reason that homeschooling should be tracked and regulated in the U.S. This conclusion just doesn’t hold water based on the evidence from studies they cite.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins considered Scientific American’s push against homeschooling on Thursday’s episode of “Washington Watch” with Mike Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association.
Perkins asked, “[W]hy is the Left so threatened by parents leading their children’s education?” And more specifically, how should we respond to it all? Farris replied, the “editors of the Scientific American need a basic course in constitutional law.”
He continued, “The federal government has no jurisdiction to implement the kind of plan that they are calling for,” which happens to be “a very draconian plan.” Ultimately, it seems “their motive and their operational plan … would be just, on its face, unconstitutional.”
Farris pointed out that one of the reasons for their argument is that parents who choose to homeschool often “teach their kids about creation as opposed to evolution,” which “is something, clearly, that people have the right to do.” And so, he added, for the editors of Scientific American to have a problem with that says a lot about their motivations.
“It’s almost laughable,” Perkins noted. He recalled the editors’ call for parents to undergo background checks. “[A] background check?” he hooted, “to teach your own children?”
Farris concurred, stating it’s “amazing” how parents can be with their children all day, “but if you want to teach them about math and reading and science in the Bible, then you have to have a background check. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Farris also drew attention to the concern Scientific American highlighted about children being abused. As he explained, there are unfortunate cases of homeschool children who are being “seriously abused.” However, “The reality is, in the vast majority of cases like this … the government officials knew about the problems with the family long before there was ever any claim to be a homeschooling family.”
And so, when a homeschooling family gets caught up in abuse accusations, it’s often the case that “the officials use that as a cover-up for the fact that they failed to do any reasonable inquiry into the family when they first found out about the problems.”
Farris went on to explain the harsh reality of how “the number of cases of sexual abuse of children by public school teachers dwarfs the number of any claim relative to homeschooling, just in sheer volume of numbers. … It’s just far, far greater.”
They also claim, Perkins added, that homeschool “kids are being educationally deprived.” But if you look at the statistics and “the test scores from the public schools in the last few years,” the scores are the lowest they’ve been in decades in both math and reading.
“The reality is,” Farris urged, “homeschooling works very, very well.” He went on, “[P]eople say that the test scores are not conclusive. [But] they’re conclusive of this: that homeschooling performs adequately. That’s absolutely conclusive. I think that the test scores also show that homeschooling is the best form of education.”
And while he acknowledged there’s “more debate that could be made about that” final claim, he reasoned that homeschooling parents “don’t have to prove that we’re the best. We just have to prove that we’re at least as good as the public schools.”
Perkins also emphasized that, “given the woke ideology that’s invaded schools,” it’s becoming less and less difficult to prove that point. “But at the bottom line of this … is [that] it’s a clash of worldviews.” And more specifically, it’s a “hatred for a biblical worldview.”
Farris agreed, noting a common reason opponents give is “they want all children in America to be indoctrinated in their worldview, not the parents’ worldview.”
Perkins raised the question: When “parents make that type of investment in their education by homeschooling them,” what are the practical benefits? According to Farris, the reason most parents choose to homeschool is because “children get their values from whoever they spend the majority of their time with.” As such, parents want their children to embrace their values.
As Farris detailed, “[O]ur kids are not cookie cutters of either [my wife] or I in any respect, but they share all of our core values about God … the Bible … America … freedom … [and] the principles of protecting human life. We’ve effectively transmitted our values to our kids, and they’ve turned out just fine academically.”
Not to mention, he added, “We have a very close family. We have consistent values. We have high academic achievement. I can’t ask for anything better. And it’s just the best thing we ever did for our family.”
Perkins emphasized, “Homeschool families are close, and when we talk about close,” it’s because “they stick together. … [T]here’s a bond that takes place through that process of learning about life together.”
Given this reality, Perkins clarified that an attack such as what’s coming from Scientific American isn’t new. But “what do we need to do to make sure we don’t lose this God-given right to teach our own children?” For Farris, it’s about staying “nimble and organized.”
He discussed how a lot of people reasonably worry about their children’s schooling, which gives homeschooling families an opportunity to show how great of a practice it is.
Homeschooling brings a “kind of assurance and affinity,” he concluded. “I think we’re in a really strong position. We just got to keep putting the pedal to the metal and not letting any lackadaisical spirit come in. We got to defend our liberty day in, day out.
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24 June, 2024
The Mission Driven University is Facing a Crisis. New Accreditors Are Here to Help
Michael has written before about the value of the reforms to university accreditation implemented by the US Department of Education (ED) under the leadership of Secretary Betsy DeVos. Passed in 2019, these regulations significantly overhauled the way accreditors are recognized and governed, holding legacy agencies accountable and opening the doors for new ones to enter the space and compete with established counterparts.
In just the several years since their enactment, some states (such as Florida and North Carolina) are already moving to have their public institutions switch accreditors. Texas is considering a similar move. Meanwhile, for the first time in recent memory, new accrediting agencies are cropping up, challenging the regional monopoly formerly enjoyed by six legacy accreditors. Promisingly, some of those legacy accreditors are consequently moving outside their traditional regions and making their own cases to institutions willing to switch.
Michael has also written about the looming presence of new guidelines expected to be finalized by the current administration within the coming months. Although unlikely to be a wholesale reversal of the DeVos changes, these are still likely to pose a serious threat to much of the progress brought about by their predecessor. Among other things, the proposed regulations would make it far more risky for universities to form relationships with non-legacy accreditors by raising the bar for how they can qualify to gain recognition from ED. They would also put a cap on the number of institutions a new accreditor can take on, hindering new entrants from gaining the momentum needed to stay afloat.
All of this represents a unique challenge that will have consequences for a number of parties within the world of higher education, perhaps most notably for the newer accreditors who are just starting to make strides toward ED recognition. Last week, Michael hosted a web event with the heads of three of these agencies to talk about the work they’re doing and see how they’re thinking about the future of their roles.
Anthony S. Bieda serves as the executive director of the National Association for Academic Excellence (NAAE), an agency that he started building just several months ago. In Bieda’s words, “NAAE will be the accreditor for institutions that want to be rewarded, encouraged, and nudged towards academic excellence, towards robust scholarship, and the ability to promote independent thinking, freely from any kind of doctrine or other political influences.” It is this standard of academic excellence that, in Bieda’s view, is absent from the goals of current accreditors and in need of fulfillment.
Stig Leschly takes a markedly different approach in his role as the president of the Postsecondary Commission. He aims to provide accreditation “for institutions that want to be recognized for and held accountable for doing extraordinary things for the economic opportunity of their students.” Throughout the event, Leschly emphasized the importance of universities providing their students with high returns on investment and how the Postsecondary Commission intends to reward institutions that generate the best results in this dimension.
Robert Manzer, the president of the American Academy for Liberal Education, aims to tackle a more narrowly tailored educational goal in his role as an accreditor, serving universities that specifically wish to advance the principles of liberal education. “Liberal education is the cornerstone of higher education,” Manzer said, “we believe that the disappearance of this notion has a lot to do with higher education’s sinking reputation and the perception of politicization that is so widespread.”
Manzer was particularly optimistic about the potential for inter-accreditor competition fostered by the 2019 regulations. “The opportunity,” he noted, “is to have accreditors that are actually interested in the quality of academics, the quality of academic programs, [and] the quality of the student outcomes.” This particular insight seemed to resonate with his co-panelists, who agreed that it’s high time to move beyond a one-size-fits-all solution to accreditation.
The debate over the primary goals of higher education is having something of a moment right now in the public sphere. Despite their organizations’ missions reflecting very different answers to this question, a shared attitude toward how the debate should be settled is perhaps the common thread joining our three guests together. Not only is there room for different approaches regarding higher education’s aims, they might agree, but variance ought to be actively fostered among competitors. Only when universities are given the ability to freely pursue their aims will hundreds of flowers be able to bloom and consumers have the power to collectively decide which actors thrive.
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/06/university-facing-crisis-new-accreditors-help/
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Ivy League school to offer course on ‘Politics Of Fatness’ to examine how fatphobia intersects with oppression
Brown University is offering a summer course on the "Politics of Fatness," providing students with the opportunity to explore the concept of "fatphobia."
The pre-college course at the Ivy League school, "The F-Word: Examining the Science, Culture, and Politics of Fatness," will teach students "about the many perspectives surrounding fatness throughout history and across cultures," according to the course description.
"You will consider the pathologization of fatness in the medical community and the rising prevalence of eating disorders, as well as how fatphobia intersects with other systems of oppression," the description states.
By the time they complete the course, students will understand "the social, medical and cultural implications of fatness," "apply major theoretical lenses to the study of fatness, including the feminist/gender lens, reader-response lens, historical lens and race lens" and "think critically about differing perspectives relating to the stigmatization of fatness in modern society," according to the description.
"Ten years ago, you could hardly open a magazine without seeing an advertisement for a fad diet," the course description reads. "Today, you can hardly open TikTok without seeing a self-proclaimed ‘body-positive’ influencer, with some even going as far as to call themselves ‘fat-positive.’ Despite these creators' best efforts, the word ‘fat’ still holds an overwhelmingly negative connotation."
The description states that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with thousands of dietitians, continue to speak of "the so-called ‘obesity epidemic.'" It also noted that "several recent sociological publications have gained recognition detailing the racial origins of fatphobia, condemning the anti-fat sentiment of so many authorities."
"All of this begs the question: is this a public health or social justice issue? An introduction to the emerging academic field of ‘Fat Studies,’ this course does not seek to indoctrinate students with the tenets of the body positivity community but rather to provide you with the information and skills necessary to think critically about how fatphobia permeates the fabric of our society," the description continues.
Brown's pre-college programs are for high school students "to explore the challenges and opportunities of the college experience," according to the school's website. The classes are meant to allow them to balance academics with social activities "without the pressure of formal grades."
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Fresh warning over ‘politicised’ schools
Lowering the voting age to 16 could “politicise” schools and divide teachers and students, a leading constitutional law expert has warned.
University of Sydney professor Anne Twomey, appearing before a House of Representatives inquiry into civics education in Australia, said a push to lower the democratic franchise from 18 to 16 had some “upsides” but also contained a sweep of risks.
Chief among them, schools could become political zones, as “political parties see a new market for voters”, she said.
The professor added teachers could be swept up into politics and find themselves accused of political activism.
The inquiry, chaired by Labor Jagajaga MP Kate Thwaites, is conducting hearings into how to support greater democratic engagement and participation in an era of escalating misinformation and disinformation.
“In a time when we’re seeing challenges for democracies across the world, and a rise in mis and disinformation, it’s important that every Australian has the opportunity to be informed about and engaged in our democracy,” Ms Thwaites said when starting the inquiry.
“The committee wants to hear Australians’ experiences of civics education and what we can do better to support democratic engagement and participation.
“So many young Australians are passionate about social and political issues, but they may not have access to relevant and reliable information about democratic and electoral processes.”
Some witnesses, including youth democracy organisation Run For It, have argued the voting age should be lowered to engage youngsters in the democratic process.
“Lowering the voting age is not a groundbreaking idea – this policy has already been implemented across many countries,” the group said in its submission to the committee.
“Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil, who also have compulsory voting, have all lowered the voting age to 16.
“Other countries that have enfranchised 16 and 17-year-olds include Cuba, Nicaragua, Austria, Ecuador, Argentina, Malta, Scotland and Wales.
“These countries have seen meaningful benefits as a result of lowering the voting age, including increased political engagement from young people. In some cases, young people participated in elections at higher rates than older age groups.”
The Greens Party supports lowering the voting age, and independent Kooyong MP Monique Ryan has also expressed support for the idea.
Professor Twomey, a leading expert in constitutional law, said the move could make voting seem more important to 16 and 17-year-olds and trigger more interest in civics education.
But she also said it would be “wrong” to fine school-age teens for not voting, the current system in place for Australia’s compulsory voting laws.
She also flagged issues of “maturity and influence” and said young people were sometimes not as sophisticated as they might believe themselves to be.
“I am very embarrassed by some of the views I had at that age,” she said. “That also gives me some pause to think as well. “I really wasn’t as sophisticated as I thought I was.”
Professor Twomey recommended critical thinking courses be included in school curriculums to help youngsters defend themselves from wild conspiracy theories and slovenly thinking on the internet.
She also argued social media companies had a “responsibility” to keep discourse civil.
She said anonymity on the internet was “corrosive” and those participating in online discussion should also post their names.
“You need to do that openly, you need to do that with your name and your face,” she said.
She said social media companies should accept they were a “part of the community” and uphold civil standards on their platforms.
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23 June, 2024
UK: VAT [sales tax] on private schools: a spiteful policy?
As my stepson in Scotland remarked to me the other day: "In typical leftist style, Labour's attempts to "close the class divide" will only widen it!". It will make private education an option for the very rich only. At the moment, a lot of middle class parents have managed to afford independent schooling by cutting back on other things.
And the claim that it will raise tax income to the government is very shallow. Many parents will instead send their kids to the better-run of the government-funded schools, thus putting their budgets under presure, which government will have to fund. And the tax will raise NOTHING from them
In good Leftist style, the underlying intention is clearly to hurt rather than help
"Another day closer to the general election and I'm at my daughter's prep school in Oxfordshire," said Arabella Byrne in The Spectator. Once again, "I'm having a 'VAT chat' with a fellow mother".
We've known about Labour's plan for months – stripping the VAT exemption from private school fees. But as the election draws near, the reality is starting to sink in. It will lead to a likely 20% rise in fees, which for many parents, including me, will be unaffordable. "I will have to take my daughter out of the school that she loves."
This is an appalling policy, motivated by "the politics of envy" and "simple spite", said Martin Stephen in The Daily Telegraph. The success of independent schools has always been "an embarrassment" to Labour. The policy will be a "hammer blow", ensuring that in future, they are only for "the super-rich".
No 'mass migration' from sector
This "niche" issue has been given an amazing amount of coverage by the right-wing press, said Catherine Bennett in The Observer. There are endless "sob stories" about this "formerly obscure minority of a minority": private school parents who now "face the brutal prospect of state education". We hear about all the sacrifices they've had to make to pay fees, driving old bangers, denying themselves West End shows, and so on. But let's not forget that Labour's policy is actually a moderate "compromise": private schools are not being abolished or stripped of charitable status, they're just having their VAT rules changed.
Most services, after all, have to charge VAT, said Daniel Freeman on CapX. And I am unconvinced that this policy will lead to a "mass migration" from the sector. Private schools have provided clear evidence that parents aren't sensitive to fee hikes. Since 1997, average fees have more than doubled in real terms. The effect? "Essentially none." Besides, there is little reason to believe that schools will pass on the full cost of VAT, at least in the short term. They're more likely to cut the lavish facilities they provide.
A 'counterproductive' plan
Bigger, richer schools will be able to take the hit, said Anne McElvoy in The i Paper. Others won't. For example, Downham Preparatory in Norfolk, which gives a third of its places to autistic children, says it will not survive the VAT hike.
Admissions to private schools have already fallen by nearly 3% in the past year, said Mike Harris in The Guardian. Labour says the policy will raise Ł1.6bn to pay for more state school teachers. But every child who leaves a private school, so their parents can avoid Ł3,000 of VAT, will cost the schools budget Ł8,000. So Labour's plan risks being "counterproductive".
https://theweek.com/education/vat-on-private-schools
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School District Evaluates Parent Knowledge of Child’s Transition
A Colorado school district uses a form asking staff whether a student’s parents know their child identifies as transgender and support that decision.
St. Vrain Valley Schools, in a Denver suburb, developed a so-called Gender Identity Guidance form for “counselors, interventionists, and administrators to support students dealing with issues related to gender identification.”
The document, found on the public school district’s website and reviewed by The Daily Signal, includes questions about students’ preferred name, birth name, sex at birth, and gender identity. A section asks whether parents are aware of their child’s gender identity and if they support that, as well as who can advocate on behalf of the child if his or her parents won’t.
Gender-Identity-Guide Download
“Do I understand the parent/guardian support and am I able to identify other supports for the student?” the form asks.
Follow-up questions on the school district’s form include:
— “Do student’s parents/guardians know of the gender identity?”
— “Do parents/guardians support the gender identity?”
— “Who can advocate or support the student if not the parents/guardians?”
— “What are the communication methods/issues/challenges between school and home?”
— “Who are the adult contacts at school for support, concerns, etc.?”
Gender policies such as this one at St. Vrain Valley Schools, which allows children to hide their gender identity from parents, undermine parental authority and rights, Lori Gimelshteyn, executive director of the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, told The Daily Signal.
“As parents, our priority is our children’s well-being and safety,” Gimelshteyn said. “No institution should intervene between us and our children, especially during critical times like mental health crises.”
St. Vrain Valley Schools did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about whether the district conceals students’ gender transitions from parents.
Another section of the Gender Identity Guidance form inquires about others’ awareness of a student’s gender identity.
The school employee who fills out the form must indicate the status of the child, who currently knows about the child’s transition, whether the transition is public or private, and who else needs to know.
The form lays out how schools in the St. Vrain district should handle communication related to the child’s gender, including how to discuss the transition in an “age appropriate” manner with classmates.
The form also tracks a child’s preferred personal pronouns and how to refer to that student in school records.
A bill in the Colorado House of Representatives would require educators statewide to call students by their preferred name upon request.
The Gender Identity Guidance form reviews a student’s use of facilities to determine whether the child is using restrooms and locker rooms in line with his or her gender identity.
The St. Vrain district also connects students with “outside resources,” such as Rocky Mountain Equality, the Human Rights Campaign, and other LGBTQ+ activist groups.
Rocky Mountain Equality offers programs for LGBTQ+ youth ages 11 to 18. Only those under 12 need parental permission to participate. The group provides children with “gender-affirming clothes” such as chest binders. (“Binders are reserved for those ages 11 to 18,” the website says.)
The school district’s form considers “the social dynamics with other students/families/staff” and addresses potential challenges with extracurricular activities, such as sports and clubs. The Colorado High School Activities Association reviews students’ requests to play sports in accord with their “gender identity” if it “differs from their sex assigned at birth.”
A bill requiring student athletes to play sports in line with their biological sex failed to pass the Colorado House last year.
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Fury at Sydney University’s ‘capitulation’ to protesters
The University of Sydney’s concessions to some anti-Israel protesters for closing their campus encampment peacefully have been met with fury from Jewish groups and the federal opposition.
Australia’s oldest university on Friday night announced it had struck an agreement with the last of the Gaza war encampment protesters, the Sydney University Muslim Students Association.
The agreement would see the students end their near-two months-long protest in return for a suite of measures, including a seat at a working group to review the university’s defence and security investments.
The Muslim Students Association earlier on Friday said their defiance of university orders to vacate had “worked in our favour across many fronts, most particularly being the catalyst for the negotiations with the uni”.
The social media post was made in conjunction with stand4palestineaus, which was recently implicated with extremist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir in a report in the Nine newspapers.
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Ossip lashed the management of the university and accused it of “thoroughly deceptive and misleading” engagement with the Jewish community.
“This is nothing short of a scandal. [Vice-chancellor] Mark Scott, his offsider Darren Goodsir, Chancellor Belinda Hutchinson and the University of Sydney have hideously capitulated and done a deal with a group dominated by Hizb ut-Tahrir – an organisation proscribed as a terrorist organisation in much of the world including the UK,” Mr Ossip told The Australian.
“In a sign of how futile this appeasement is, Hizb ut-Tahrir have already announced that they are planning future activities to put pressure on the university and have not ruled out a further encampment,” he said.
Sydney University’s administration has responded that “our campuses must be welcoming and safe for all our community, including our Jewish and Muslim students … our focus from the beginning has been to de-escalate tensions – not fuel them”
“The university’s engagement with the Jewish community has been thoroughly deceptive and insulting,” Mr Ossip said.
“Despite assurances to the Jewish community that any offer to the encampment was off the table and that the university would be pursuing alternate options to clear the encampment, the university instead reopened negotiations with a group dominated by Hizb ut-Tahrir.
“When we found out about these negotiations on Wednesday and formally requested immediate crisis talks, Mark Scott ignored this request and has still not picked up the phone to us.
“Instead the university negotiated with only one side, reached an agreement with a group dominated by Hizb ut-Tahrir, sought to bury the story on a Friday night (the Jewish Shabbat) and allowed the radical protesters to first announce the deal.
“No amount of mealy mouthed, pro-forma spin from the university should be allowed to distract from the utter shame of the university’s behaviour or the pathetic terms they have agreed to.
“This deal is not just about ‘transparency’ as the university claims. It goes beyond the terms agreed by any other institution and effectively gives Hizb ut-Tahrir influence over the university’s research and investment activities.
“Be in no doubt – whilst the university may be enjoying its new collaboration with Hizb ut-Tahrir, the university’s relationship with the Jewish community is in absolute tatters.”
Opposition Liberal education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said the “capitulation to activists, including people linked to the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, is untenable”.
“The government must step in and overturn all such agreements, particularly those struck with groups which are listed terrorist organisations in some other countries,” Ms Henderson said.
“How can students and staff be safe on a university campus when vice-chancellors are bargaining with extremists?”
Liberal federal member for Berowra and prominent Jewish MP Julian Leeser accused Professor Scott of having “ceded control to radical extremist groups” and he repeated calls for a judicial inquiry into campus anti-Semitism.
“Why, when there is clear evidence that extremist groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir are infiltrating our universities, has the Albanese government refused to take action,” Mr Leeser said.
“Instead of demonstrating leadership and providing a safe and cohesive learning environment, the University of Sydney’s vice-chancellor Mark Scott has ceded control to radical extremist groups.
“Sydney University’s actions are setting a terrible example for the next generation that Jewish students and staff don’t count and that if you intimidate people enough you can get whatever you want.
“The Albanese government proves every day how weak they are in combating anti-Semitism.
“It is time Labor took campus anti-Semitism seriously and supported my bill for a judicial inquiry into anti-Semitism in Australian universities.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin lashed the agreement with the “anti-Israel fanatics”.
“This dismal decision by the university shows that unlawful conduct, intimidation and extremism are effective tactics against weak leadership,” he told The Australian.
“Today, there will be celebrations among those who have turned one of our finest institutions into an eyesore and created no-go areas on the campus.
“Meanwhile, Jewish students and staff will feel that once again their basic rights and equality mean less than the outrageous demands of anti-Israel fanatics,” Mr Ryvchin said.
The deal, announced by the Muslim Students Association and confirmed by the university on Friday evening, would see the university disclosing details of defence and security-related research and investments.
The University of Sydney will also double its expenditure over the next three years to support academics under its scholars-at-risk program, with a particular focus on Palestinians, the SUMSA president said.
Most significantly, the university committed to set up a working group to review its defence investments and research disclosures, and granted protesters a seat at the table.
The deal is similar to the offer the university made weeks ago that sparked backlash from Jewish leaders and calls for vice-chancellor Mark Scott to resign.
When contacted for comment, a University of Sydney spokeswoman said: “Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our community. Our campuses must be welcoming and safe for all our community, including our Jewish and Muslim students.”
“We understand there is deep trauma on both sides of this conflict and a wide range of views exist. Our focus from the beginning has been to de-escalate tensions – not fuel them. It is worth acknowledging we have not seen the violence that we have seen on other campuses during these challenging times.
“Our priority has always been a peaceful resolution and we are pleased our proposal has been accepted,” the University spokeswoman said.
“Our position aligns with similar offers made at leading universities from around the world including Harvard University and the University of Melbourne.
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20 June, 2024
40 years later, our schools are at greater risk
School's out for the summer, so now it is time to examine the state of our education system.
By any objective measure, our school performance is fair or poor for most children. Math scores hit a 20-year low. ACT scores dropped to a 30-year low last year. In dozens of schools throughout the country, not one child is reading or practicing math at grade-level proficiency. Not one!
Some of this poor performance is due to the unforgivable mistake of shutting down our schools during COVID-19 -- despite children being less vulnerable to the virus.
But our schools were in long-term decline before the pandemic.
One of the world's top education scholars, Eric Hanushek, recently issued a report on the 40-year anniversary of the famous federal study published in 1983 called "A Nation at Risk." That study famously warned that "if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."
But tragically, nobody listened or paid attention to the warning. The unions kept pushing for more money with no accountability. Schools were turned into social welfare agencies instead of factories for learning. So they started to pursue both missions -- poorly. In more recent years, educators decided their job was to teach about social justice, climate change radicalism, LGBTQ issues and "systemic racism."
Betsy Devos on falling test scores: 'This is appalling' Video
In many public schools, patriotism and love of country gave way to a "blame America first" narrative. Math, reading and science took a backseat.
But the taxpayer money poured in as if from a firehouse. Hanushek notes that, adjusted for inflation, per-pupil spending since 1960 quadrupled. Since 1980 the funding per student has doubled.
Yet over the past several decades, there isn't much evidence of improvement (if any). In most school districts, the reverse is true.
The feds have kicked in hundreds of billions too. Yet there is virtually no evidence that Uncle Sam's spending has added much value. Mostly it's added more red tape. Test scores haven't budged.
Still, President Joe Biden's plan is to spend hundreds of billions more -- mostly because the teacher unions are the strongest force in the modern Democratic Party. Unions. Not parents.
Finally, after 40 years of failure, parents are taking notice and taking action. The parental choice movement is gaining steam -- especially in red states. Some 13 states in the last two years have added programs to allow education dollars to follow the kids -- that means lower-income parents are provided the funding to send their kids to charter schools, Catholic schools or other alternatives.
This should hopefully provide incentives for the public schools to compete and improve.
One of Hanushek's key conclusions provides some glimmer of hope. He finds "some evidence that spending more money can improve student learning in public schools." But he adds conditionally that the dollars need to be tied to "rewarding performance."
For example, incentivizing teacher excellence through pay for performance and getting rid of bad teachers -- by eliminating or reforming tenure -- can improve schools and throw a lifeline to kids.
Here's the problem: the teacher unions are adamantly opposed to anyone measuring their performance.They can grade the students, but no one dares to grade the teachers.
Back in 1983, the warning was that our schools had slipped into a cesspool of "mediocrity." Here we are over 40 years later, and in too many cities and states, mediocrity would be a vast improvement.
Reforms are coming -- but will they get here soon enough? We certainly can't wait another 40 years.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/40-years-later-our-schools-greater-risk
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Louisiana Expands Education Choice to All
Education freedom is on the march.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry on Wednesday signed legislation making the Pelican State the 16th state in the nation to enact K-12 Education Savings Accounts and the 11th to offer education choice to every K-12 student, following Alabama earlier this year.
The legislation creates the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise—LA GATOR—Scholarships, which families can use to choose the learning environments that align with their values and work best for their kids.
As with other ESA policies, parents can use the LA GATOR Scholarships to pay for private school tuition, textbooks, curricular materials, special-needs therapy, and more.
“The LA Gator Program puts parents in the driver’s seat and gives every child the opportunity for a great education. When parents are committed to the value of their child’s education, government should never get in the way,” said Landry, a Republican. “School choice is now a reality in the state of Louisiana!”
Most students will be eligible for scholarships worth about $5,200 annually, which is just over a third of the average per-pupil spending at Louisiana district schools. Students with special needs and children from low-income families can receive higher scholarship amounts.
The scholarships will initially be limited to students who are switching from a district or charter school, are entering kindergarten, or who are from families earning no more than 250% of the federal poverty level. In the second year, families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty line will be eligible, and in the third year, the scholarships will be open to all K-12 students in Louisiana.
More than a quarter of K-12 students nationwide are currently or soon will be eligible for a publicly funded education choice policy. Including privately funded tax-credit scholarship policies, more than 36% of students nationwide are eligible for a private education choice policy.
The new scholarship policy is an example of how the school choice movement has moved in a more free-market and family-centric direction. Instead of relying on bureaucrats to provide top-down accountability, the new policy trusts parents to provide bottom-up accountability.
The LA GATOR Scholarships will replace the state’s overregulated school voucher program, which produced the nation’s first negative results in a random-assignment study on the effects of a school choice policy on participating students’ academic performance.
“Equalitarian” regulations intended to guarantee access and quality—such as open admissions requirements, price controls, and mandating the state test—backfired by chasing away high-performing private schools.
Fortunately, Louisiana lawmakers have learned from their state’s own mistakes, as well as the success of states such as Arizona and Florida, which have shown that a free-market approach to education does a better job of providing a high degree of access and quality.
The new scholarship policy eschews the harmful regulations of its predecessor.
Louisiana’s embrace of universal school choice also shows the success of efforts by conservatives to channel parents’ frustrations over “woke” ideology in traditional public schools into public support for policies that empower parents to choose schools that align with their values.
“Our people seek government that reflects their values,” said Landry during his Jan. 8 inauguration. “They demand that our children be afforded an education that reflects those wholesome principles, and not an indoctrination behind their mother’s back.”
The same week that the Louisiana Legislature gave the green light to the LA GATOR Scholarships, it also approved legislation curbing the ability of “woke” teachers to indoctrinate students in radical gender ideology behind parents’ backs.
Similar to Given Name Act policies in other states, Louisiana’s HB 121 would prohibit public school employees, including teachers, from referring to children by pronouns that are inconsistent with their sex, or any name other than the student’s legal name or common derivatives thereof.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/06/19/louisiana-expands-education-choice-all/
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War College: How a Berkeley Professor Inspired and Engineered Anti-Israel Protests/b>
Echoing the Muslim prophet Muhammad, Professor Hatem Bazian, a University of California, Berkeley lecturer, told his fellow Muslims: “The Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews.”
At the Santa Clara conference sponsored by the American Muslim Alliance, Bazian exhorted the crowd: “They are on the west side of the river, which is the Jordan River, and you’re on the east side until the trees and the stones will say, ‘Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him!’ And that’s in the Hadith [the sayings and deeds of Muhammad] about this. This is a future battle before the Day of Judgment.”
Bazian’s threatening prophecy from 1999 might be lost to history but for the central role he has been playing in the anti-Israel protests that have erupted at college campuses. Two groups he helped create, Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine, have been instrumental in organizing the demonstrations. In recent months he has visited the encampments from coast to coast, exhorting students to condemn Israel for launching counterstrikes in Gaza after marauding Hamas terrorists attacked and slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis in October and took hundreds of others captive, including several Americans. Bazian has urged students to call on administrators and national leaders to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza, whom he claims are victims of a “genocide” carried out by the Israeli government.
Although many opponents of Israel’s war against Hamas deny that their movement is tied to antisemitism, critics say Bazian’s deep involvement in the protests and his long history of inflammatory rhetoric against the Jewish people puts that claim in doubt. “The campus unrest is being driven by people with a very troubling past,” said Jon Schanzer, a former U.S. Treasury counterterrorism official. “They’re trying to legitimize Hamas.”
Drawing on a wide array of public records, RealClearInvestigations found that Bazian has been agitating against Jews and Israel on college campuses for decades. His 1999 exhortation of Holy War between Muslims and Jews was part of a larger pattern of words and deeds in which he sought to radicalize young Americans against the Jewish people. Bazian’s history – and the top place he holds in the ongoing turmoil – also reveal the key role he’s long planned for America’s institutions of higher learning to play in mainstreaming and spreading ideas that many people consider hateful.
A Palestinian immigrant, Bazian was born in the West Bank town of Nablus and attended high school in Jordan. He graduated from San Francisco State University and then moved to Berkeley, where he chairs the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project.
Upon arriving at Berkeley in 1993, Bazian helped start the first college chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine – whose national organization says it supports more than 350 “Palestinian solidarity organizations.” In 2006, he co-founded its umbrella organization, American Muslims for Palestine. “We support campus activism through Students for Justice in Palestine,” AMP states on its website.
“AMP is directly involved in the campus chaos,” Schanzer said, by helping coordinate protests at colleges where its SJP outposts operate. AMP provides funding and guidance for the chapters for, among other things, holding anti-Israel “teach-ins,” erecting pro-Palestinian tables, crafting media “talking points,” and creating flyers and placards for the campus encampments and occupations that demonize Israel and sanitize Hamas atrocities as “resistance.”
As AMP’s chairman, Bazian has visited several encampments, including at the University of Pennsylvania, San Diego State University, UC-San Diego, University of San Francisco and UC-Berkeley, where his acolytes have set up a “Gaza Solidarity Camp.” RCI’s review of videos posted on social media of his encampment talks reveals he’s instructed students not to be “nice” while protesting, because he said being polite won’t get the attention of college administrators or President Biden, whom he demands divest from Israel and pressure Israel to withdraw from Gaza.
Meanwhile, his organization, which employs a full-time campus outreach coordinator, is under both federal and state investigation for ties to Hamas, and is also a defendant in a major new lawsuit brought by survivors of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack.
A Richardson, Texas-based lawyer representing Bazian and AMP did not reply to requests for comment. After also reaching out to Bazian directly, RCI’s messages went unanswered. Bazian has a history of seeming to endorse, or even call for, violence, and then denying doing so. In 2004, while Hamas was leading a deadly resistance, or “intifada,” in Israel that included suicide bombers, Bazian reportedly called for an “intifada” inside America while addressing a largely Muslim crowd at an anti-Iraq war rally.
“Are you angry? Are you angry?! Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine,” Bazian shouted. “How come we don’t have an intifada in this country?”
“They’re going to say [I’m] some Palestinian being radical – well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet,” he added. “It’s about time we have an intifada in this country!”
He later claimed his remarks were meant to incite only a “political intifada” inside this country, not violent revolt. Last month, while rallying protestors at a University of San Francisco encampment, Bazian again called for “intifada,” asking students, “Can you all say intifada?”
“Intifada!” protesters shouted back.
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19 June, 2024
Wall Street turns its back on Ivy League universities and activist students
For decades, the narrow path to an entry-level job at an elite Wall Street firm typically has begun with an Ivy League degree. However, attitudes are shifting among bosses.
These bosses once had fierce allegiances to Ivy League institutions including Harvard and Yale and so-called target schools such as Stanford that put them on track to running some of the world’s most powerful companies.
Blackstone, the $US1 trillion ($1.5trn) asset manager run by Stephen Schwarzman, a Harvard alumnus, has adapted its recruitment strategy from focusing on about nine universities in 2015 to more than a thousand this year.
Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, has started interviewing entry-level candidates from hundreds more institutions after shifting to doing first-round interviews virtually.
Bank of America said it worked in partnership with 34 community colleges on a “readiness curriculum” for careers in financial services and had hired thousands of people from such institutions.
McKinsey & Company, the consultancy led by Bob Sternfels (Stanford), has more than doubled the number of American universities from which it recruits and is now a vocal supporter of the “paper ceiling” movement, which strives to take the stigma out of not having a degree.
“When we look for talent, we look at the whole person, not just degrees or institutions,” Blair Ciesil, McKinsey’s leader of talent attraction, said.
“We find that students flourish as whole people when they pick a school environment suited to them, not simply the one that’s highest-ranked.”
The shine has come off elite institutions in the past year amid allegations of anti-Semitism and co-ordinated pro-Palestine campus protests.
Johnny C Taylor Jr, of the Society for Human Resources Management, said there was a concern “that if you recruit from a school that is known for its activism, that those students don’t magically stop being activists when they show up at your workplace.
“They’ve been trained for four, six years in this activist mindset. Then when they come here and you say, ‘I want you to come back to work in the office’, they are like, ‘no, we are not going to do that,” Taylor said.
“And we are going to boycott – as you saw at Google – we are going to take over and boycott the divisional president’s office. We are going to walk off the job.’ Is this the type of employee that we want?”
In April Google dismissed 28 workers who had staged sit-ins at its offices in New York and California in protest at a contract with the Israeli government.
Taylor said human resources professionals could recruit from state institutions such as the University of Florida, where the person at the top of their class would be “really smart” as well as having the right “mindset” compared with an applicant from a top university who could “make it difficult for us to get our work done and to turn a profit”.
Brett Bruen, a former diplomat who now runs Global Situation Room, a crisis communications agency, said: “There is no doubt that the last several months have taken some of the shine off the Ivy League diploma.
“In part it is due to how the administrators handled some of these protests and it reinforced concerns about how out of touch and out of step some professors and administrators are with the realities in the business world and on main street,” Bruen said.
“They may be particularly effective on educating on the most elusive and esoteric theories; they are not giving a great education in some cases in the school of hard knocks and the school of how the world really works.”
Taylor said there had been a broader cultural shift in the past two decades, which he linked to low unemployment rates after the 2008 financial crash and a gradual awakening to the idea that elite universities “didn’t have a lock on smart people”.
Non-Ivy League universities and colleges had become smarter at working with big employers to ensure that students hit the ground running on day one, he said.
Luis Romero, managing partner at Romero Capital, a New York-based private equity fund, said that a “talent war” was under way between finance, technology, start-ups and entrepreneurship.
“Private equity firms are looking for intelligent, overachieving, competitive, hungry kids who take action and solve problems. These candidates are ten out of ten and Stephen Schwarzman, founder of Blackstone, only hires tens. And there is a shortage of tens.”
Meanwhile, meritocracy is becoming a buzzword. Alexandr Wang, the chief executive of Scale AI, an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco that works with companies such as General Motors, published an “MEI”, or “merit, excellence and intelligence”, hiring policy this month.
He said the policy meant “we hire only the best person for the job, we seek out and demand excellence and we unapologetically prefer people who are very smart”.
In June the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional to consider race in university admissions. Taylor said companies used to be able to use race as a proxy for disadvantage, but must now find candidates who represent all types of diversity.
Young professionals are sceptical, however, that the Ivy League is losing its grip on Wall Street.
An associate at a private equity firm in her thirties who did not go to an Ivy League university said that her background was far from the norm.
“You can make it, but it’s much harder,” she said.
Members of the C-suite, including at her firm, organise recruiter days at institutions that they themselves attended, perpetuating the phenomenon, while some banks have dedicated representatives at Ivy League campuses to advise students on interviews and resumes.
She said she knew of finance professors with links to Wall Street firms who ran maths challenge competitions and then referred winning students for interviews and internships, opportunities that are not common at lower-ranking institutions.
Kaleb Davenport, 23, a software engineering manager from Tennessee who was rejected from Ivy League colleges and decided not to pursue a degree, does not think his decision not to go to university would prevent him from working for a company such as Google.
“I think it’s more the middle layer of the economy,” he said. “I think it’s like the Wells Fargos, the places that are good companies but not culturally significant and they just use whatever default process was put there before them.”
Wells Fargo said it hired from a “variety of talent sources” and that its 2024 internships class had come from more than 250 public and private schools throughout the United States.
Davenport has found himself excluded from alumni networking events in New York, such as the Duke University founders meet-up. Sometimes he shows up anyway, but the reception can be frosty if he is not an official alum.
The important thing, he said, was to acknowledge that your career path will be more challenging without the advantages that come with an elite education and to build your own network. “When you have a different hand, you must play it differently.”
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How craven Cambridge University has fallen to the woke mob
By NIGEL BIGGAR
Britain’s universities are now ruled by fear. Fear of associating with the wrong people, saying the wrong thing, even being said to think the wrong thing — the paranoias are stifling our institutions.
This can make life extremely unpleasant for many students, who find themselves trapped in a hostile environment where a cadre of intolerant bullies can dictate what the rest are or are not allowed to do.
This noisy, ignorant minority is even able to disrupt crucial exams, as pro-Palestine protesters at Oxford did last week.
But most terrified are the university authorities. Rather than stand up to the woke mob and their sloganeering on climate change, colonial legacy or gender identity politics, the administrators are cravenly giving in to any and all demands.
This week, leaked papers from a council meeting at King’s College Cambridge revealed the university plans to bar investment with Barclays and Lloyds banks, over ‘financing of fossil fuels’.
Most of Cambridge’s 31 colleges are believed to bank with either Lloyds or Barclays. The latter has a history with the university going back more than 200 years.
Those links are now threatened because the vice-chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice, and her management team are afraid to confront the protesters. Rather than act like adults, they are behaving like a bunch of immature first-year students, and handing responsibility to whoever shouts loudest.
Cambridge is an august seat of learning with a history spanning more than 800 years. If it caves in so easily to infantile pressure politics, no other university, scientific establishment or arts organisation is likely to resist.
The university officials are in thrall to a pressure group, Banking Engagement Forum (BEF). Its chief financial officer, Anthony Odgers, proclaims its goal is, ‘finding financial services products that do not contribute to the expansion of fossil fuels — in particular, new coal and gas-fired plants which lock in demand for decades’.
In fact, Barclays and Lloyds can both claim to pass that test. Barclays said in 2022 it would cease direct funding of new gas and oil projects.
Lloyds is seen as one of the more ‘progressive’ banks in this regard... and last year, Leeds university actually switched to Lloyds, reasoning that it ‘has the lowest fossil fuel investments of any of the major UK banks’.
This hasn’t stopped student activists from staging childish protests, including a ‘die-in’ by pro-Palestinian demonstrators at a Barclays branch in January. Chanting slogans including, ‘Israel is a terrorist state,’ they accused the bank of funding arms manufacture for the Israeli army.
One activist said the demo included making a paper chain, ‘with lots of messages to Barclays for all the harm they’re causing’, plus some anti-war origami.
Student pacifism has a long tradition, and these young people have every right to exercise free speech. But it’s ridiculous that Cambridge university authorities are running scared of protesters whose tactics are more suited to a nursery school.
My own experience shows how timid the leadership has become. Seven years ago, when I began to attract criticism for my studies of the British Empire and its ethics, a senior member of staff at Oxford invited me for a chat.
When we met in a cafe, he insisted we sit behind a screen where we wouldn’t be observed together. Though he assured me that the university backed my work and would resist bids by some of my colleagues to have the research project shut down, he was clearly petrified of being seen with me.
Since then, no senior figure in the university has shown any interest in hearing about my experience and what it implies about the threats to free speech, teaching and research in our universities.
My problems have been minor compared to those of some dons, such as Professor Kathleen Stock, who was driven to resign her post at the University of Sussex following a sustained campaign against her by both students and staff.
Her offence as a philosopher was to hold gender-critical, feminist views — to insist people with male genitalia are not women, however much they might wish it.
The hounding of isolated academics has consequences far beyond the damage done to individual lives. One cancellation can deter thousands from speaking their minds. They see how Professor Stock has been abandoned and betrayed by her former university and they decide to keep quiet.
Freedom of speech, a fundamental of universities until now, has been abandoned with sickening haste.
Last month, I was asked to speak at the Cardiff Academic Freedom Association’s inaugural meeting. The city’s university refused to fund security arrangements, no doubt hoping that this inconvenient offshoot of democracy would wither and die.
The event went ahead after the Free Speech Union paid, but we were forced to move to a different venue. An organiser admitted to me that the lack of support by the university would make him think twice about staging a public meeting again.
All over Britain, small but impassioned groups are being silenced by the same illiberal, anti-democratic trend. The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts was a victim this month when virtue-signalling celebrities, including comedian Nish Kumar and singer Charlotte Church, urged a boycott.
A Corbynist pressure group called Fossil Free Books attacked a festival sponsor, investment group Baillie Gifford, on the grounds that it holds shares in some oil and gas companies. They also accused it of being complicit in ‘Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide’ in Gaza.
A spokesman for the group said: ‘We do not want our literary life to come at the expense of human rights in other countries.’
Organisers of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, another beneficiary of Baillie Gifford sponsorship, pointed out that their funding provided free tickets and books for children. ‘Without their contribution, this crucial work simply will not happen,’ they said.
In fact, without generous sponsors, countless small arts and book festivals, science fairs, theatre productions, painting exhibitions and musical events will cease to exist — to the impoverishment of education in Britain.
It is particularly invidious that so many activists waging these facile protests are well-off and highly privileged, as investigations by the Mail have shown. Insulated by family wealth from the damage they create, they pretend to be ‘saving the world’ while ignoring the harm they do to others all around them.
There’s an ethical parallel between a barricade on a motorway by Just Stop Oil, and the blockade of a university end-of-year exam. In both cases, ordinary people are victims of arrogant, self-serving poseurs who don’t care what chaos they inflict, as long as they enjoy a smug feeling of moral superiority.
Where the activists are young, they at least have the excuse of being immature, naive and ignorant. The authorities at Cambridge University have no such defence. They are the adults in the room and should start behaving as such.
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Bush-Appointed Judge Blocks Biden’s New Title IX Rule in 6 More States
A Kentucky federal judge blocked the Biden administration Monday from implementing its Title IX expansion for LGBTQ+ students in six states.
Bush-appointed U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves sided with Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman’s lawsuit against the United States Department of Education in blocking the Biden administration’s new Title IX rule in Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia, according to the court documents. The new Title IX rule, set to take effect on Aug. 1, 2024, expands protections for LGBTQ+ students by preventing discrimination based on “gender identity.”
The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, and it alleges “the Department has used rulemaking power to convert a law designed to equalize opportunities for both sexes into a far broader regime of its own making.” Reeves limited the injunction to the six plaintiff states.
“The new rule contravenes the plain text of Title IX by redefining ‘sex’ to include gender identity, violates government employees’ First Amendment rights, and is the result of arbitrary and capricious rulemaking,” Reeves states in the court ruling.
Reeves siding with Coleman’s lawsuit follows in the same steps of Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty blocking President Joe Biden’s Title IX rule in four Republican states last week.
Biden’s Education Department has suffered a string of losses over the expansion in recent weeks, with Trump-appointed Doughty blocking the rule in four Republican states on Thursday.
Title IX, created in 1972, “protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance,” according to the Education Department. “Title IX applies to schools, local and state educational agencies, and other institutions that receive federal financial assistance from the Department.”
“We are reviewing the ruling. Title IX guarantees that no person experience sex discrimination in a federally funded educational environment. The Department crafted the final Title IX regulations following a rigorous process to realize the Title IX statutory guarantee. The Department stands by the final Title IX regulations released in April 2024, and we will continue to fight for every student,” an Education Department spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“It would have been hard to find any who thought that discrimination because of sex meant discrimination because of sexual orientation—not to mention gender identity, a concept that was essentially unknown at the time,” Reeves said in the court ruling.
Biden’s rule expansion doesn’t mention transgender athletes, an issue that has spurred contentious debate in localities across the country.
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18 June, 2024
Beating the odds: How students stand out and get into Harvard
If you think a perfect GPA and a 1600 score on the SAT will guarantee a spot for your child at Harvard or Stanford — think again. Grades and test scores alone are not enough to earn a student a place at a coveted Ivy League university anymore.
In reality, top schools and Ivy League colleges could fill incoming classes multiple times over with students with perfect academic stats. As a result, it’s critical for applicants to stand out from their peers. Top-tier colleges want to admit students who have made an impact in their community, followed their passions, and gained real-life experiences through internships and jobs.
Rather than only selecting high-achieving students, colleges seek to build well-rounded classes composed of students with distinct passions, dynamic interests, and singular focus.
Suppose a student intends to become such an applicant. In that case, they must start exploring and tailoring their passions early in their high school career so that they can engage in meaningful experiences that convey their depth of engagement with their defining interest.
Seeking to share his admissions discoveries and story with other aspiring students and help families navigate the changing landscape of elite college admissions, Christopher Rim founded Command Education to empower students to identify their passions and articulate their accomplishments, interests and experiences to top schools.
Why trust Rim? He was accepted into Yale University with a 3.7 to 3.8 unweighted GPA — almost unheard of when discussing Ivy League admissions — thanks to his extracurricular activities that allowed him to stand out.
“I just followed my passions and my interests,” said Rim, 26. “That authentic story is what I think resonated with admissions officers.”
Rim’s theory rings true, as he was the only student out of 18 other applicants at his high school accepted into Yale. To top it off, Rim had the lowest grades out of all of them.
What Is Command Education?
Since the creation of Command Education in 2015, Rim has worked with dozens of students from Horace Mann, Trinity, Collegiate, Brearley, and Riverdale — and parents pay him upwards of $1,500 per hour to help their teenagers get into sought-after Ivy League schools.
“The entire purpose of [Command Education] is to help students identify and develop their passions and interests,” Rim told The Post. “It has to be authentic and cannot be manufactured.”
Rim further explained that curating genuine interests aims to help students stand out. After all, almost all students applying to Ivy League schools have near-perfect grades and test scores. This makes extracurricular activities, research and projects vital to landing a spot on an admissions roster.
To enhance each student’s opportunities, many Command Education clients start the process in grade nine; however, some begin as early as grade seven. This is because “you can’t go back in time,” and “everything counts towards the college application process,” he says.
Best of all, when students join Command Education, they are matched with one mentor throughout their college admissions process to aid in tutoring and guidance. This mentor is a full-time employee of Command Education and is a graduate of an Ivy League or top-tier college. Clients receive 24/7 access to them through email, phone calls, texts, and meetings.
This interpersonal, passionate and academic-led program juxtaposes many other college admissions services, as others serve as “more of a checklist,” according to Rim.
Does Command Education Work?
Aside from Rim and Command Education’s success, one may still wonder: “Does Command Education really work?”
Considering that a staggering 100% of students that applied to Harvard in 2021 with the help of Command Education were accepted, over 9 out of 10 students who applied got into at least one of their top three schools and that the company has guided nearly 1,000 teens with a 90% direct referral rate, we say yes.
Pleased parents of happy students are also proof that Command Education is worth it — even with the high price point of $85,000 to $120,000 per academic year.
“We’ve hired virtually every tutor and counselor for [Command Education student] Brooke prior to working with Chris, but no one was able to get through to her like Chris and his team,” said a mother of a former Riverdale Country School student. “Command Education put her in a position to succeed like no one else she’s ever worked with.”
Another happy Command Education parent said, “Chris and his team were the buffer my husband and I needed. I let them handle everything with Mark [Command Education student]. I fully put my trust in Chris, and not only did [our son] Mark get into Wharton, but I think he totally saved our marriage!”
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Chicago Teachers Union president raises eyebrows with claims about conservatives
Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Stacy Davis Gates told a news radio host that conservatives do not want Black children to read, adding that it is "part of the oath they take to be right wing."
In an interview published on WBBM News radio’s site on Sunday, the station’s political editor, Craig Dellimore, spoke with Davis Gates on "At Issue," about the union’s contract demands.
Some of the demands included social justice issues.
During the interview, Dellimore asked Davis Gates about the teacher union contract proposals that drew criticism from conservatives for being "too big," and raising concerns that too many elements are not directly concerned with education.
"Conservatives don’t even want Black children to be able to read," Davis Gates said. "Remember, these same conservatives are the conservatives who probably would have been championing Black codes, you know, during reconstruction or thereafter. So, forgive me again if conservatives pushing back on educating immigrant children, Black children, children who live in poverty, doesn't make my anxiety go up. That's what they're supposed to say. That is literally a part of the oath that they take to be right wing."
The teachers’ union is in the process of negotiating a new teacher’s contract with the public school system, which calls for an extra $50 billion in funding. The massive increase is being proposed to cover wage hikes as well as other demands. For instance, the money would be used to provide fully paid abortions for its members, new migrant services and facilities and a host of LGBTQ-related requirements and training in schools.
Last year, the total base tax receipts for the state of Illinois was $50.7 billion.
The incredible demands are being made despite its members delivering underwhelming results for its students. Only 21% of the city’s eighth graders are proficient readers, according to the Nation’s Report Card, which provides national results about students’ performance.
Terry Schilling, the president of the American Principles Project and a conservative school choice and education advocate, told Fox News Digital that if conservatives did not want minority kids to know how to read, they would not protest.
"They would allow and support the teachers union and give them everything they want, because right now in Chicago public schools, only 20% of minority students can read at grade level," he said. "Whatever the conservative goals are, I disagree with what she was saying. I want every kid to know how to read and write. I think that our country’s a lot better off when everyone’s literate, when everyone knows how to do math."
Schilling is a father of seven who lives in Fairfax, Virginia. During the pandemic, he pulled all of his kids out of public schools because he felt the academics were terrible.
He explained that he got to see firsthand what his kids were learning and found out that only about 36% of the students in Fairfax County Public Schools could read at grade level.
So, when looking at one of the wealthiest and best-funded schools in the country and finding out less than half the kids could read at grade level, "it was a no-brainer," he said.
Davis Gates touted having her children in public schools in 2022. She said it helps to "legitimize" her position within the union and that she could not advocate on behalf of public schools if that were not the case, according to NBC Chicago.
However, in 2023, Davis Gates placed her teenage son in a private Catholic high school in the city.
"She is the poster child for what it means to be part of the teachers union," Schilling said. "They’re all hypocritical. The leaders of the teachers' unions, almost none of them, send their kids to public schools, and they know that these are failing public schools and putting their kids in these schools means that they won’t be that smart. They want the best for their kids, but not for our kids."
He continued by saying the leadership of the district is important, and who the leader is trickles down to everyone below.
"If your leadership is corrupted at the top, then everything else is going to follow suit below," he said. "And that's what we're experiencing with Chicago public schools: it's rotten from the top down."
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Australia: Dire warning childcare centres are indoctrinating your kids and turning them into 'activists' after woke change to curriculum
A think tank has warned toddlers could be indoctrinated into activism and identity politics due to the federal government's new childcare teaching curriculum.
The Institute of Public Affairs has sounded the alarm claiming many parents would be unaware of the ideology being promoted in the Early Years Learning Framework.
Analysis by the conservative think tank found diversity, inclusion and equity is mentioned 149 times, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and reconciliation is mentioned 96 times, and mother, father or parent is not mentioned at all.
Dr Bella d'Abrera, who is director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation program at IPA, said parents should be concerned.
'These centres should be where children play in sandpits, draw with crayons and have afternoon naps, not be inducted into the cults of social justice, identity politics and sustainability by activist educators,' she said.
'Parents should be very concerned that the federal government supports young children being exposed to very adult themes such as gender, sexuality, race, culture and the environment, years before it is appropriate.'
The federal government's childcare regulator, the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority, oversees applying the Early Years Learning Framework, which is titled 'Belonging, Being and Becoming'.
The regulator suggests children perform a daily Acknowledgement of Country and that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags are displayed in childcare centres.
Learning materials recommended by the regulator include ideas that children should be 'understanding and exploring gender' and that 'colonial understandings' should be 'disrupted'.
'Similar to the National Curriculum, Australia's early learning framework begins the process of indoctrination by introducing infants and toddlers to radical gender and social justice theory, rather than allowing children to simply be children,' Dr d'Abrera said.
'As Australia's education system has shifted away from the acquisition of knowledge towards activism and social justice, results have continued to slide compared to other nations.
'By focusing on division rather than age-appropriate, fact-based education, we are setting another generation up for failure.'
A childcare insider told the Herald Sun there was no backlash within the sector to the framework and individual centres had room to apply the principles as they see fit.
'Some services in inner Melbourne will have a very different interpretation of what is needed compared to those in regional communities,' the insider said.
The Belonging, Being and Becoming framework, introduced in 2009, was updated in 2023 and made compulsory for 2024.
A spokesman for the federal Department of Education said approved learning frameworks had 'always included respect for diversity and the ongoing learning and the sharing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures'.
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17 June, 2024
British teachers are quitting in droves to double their money abroad
British teachers are quitting their jobs in droves in search of the good life abroad, enjoying less stress, more money and a better lifestyle - as a classroom crisis looms back home.
Teaching vacancies are at a record high and recruitment firms are cashing in on the shortage, making millions by placing 'unqualified' supply teachers or 'cover supervisors' into classrooms on rates even lower than full-time teachers would earn.
One senior state school secondary teacher with 15 years' experience who recently moved to a job in a private school in the Far East told how 'cost of living, workload, challenging behaviour from children and a massive amount of stress' were factors in driving teachers away from the profession in the UK.
'The pandemic changed things for many parents and children and you've ended up with some children who just aren't socialised because they missed out on key stages of learning to get along with their peers.
'Their development is impaired. 'In some cases you've also got parents who expect teachers to take on some of the roles which rightly should be theirs. And if you don't do it, who else is going to?'
Social media is full of images of teachers showing exotic lifestyles in Dubai, Australia and the Far East.
'I felt I was giving everything to the job and getting nothing back while working hours I'd be paid a fortune to do in industry,' said the 46-year-old teacher from the south of England.
'I wanted to save money to buy a house for me and my family but it was never going to happen while working in a state school in England.
'But it's not just money. At the weekend you can go off and snorkel-dive with turtles. We couldn't even afford swimming lessons for the kids in Britain.
'My children can go to the same private school where I teach, which we could never afford back home.'
Former teacher Ruth Harron, 44, from Belfast, worked in a school in the UAE between 2008 and 2010, then set up her own business, recruiting others, called Teachers in UAE.
'They love the Brits and the Irish and we get 50 strong candidates enquiring each week, with many of them recruited throughout the year', she said.
With tax-free incomes, most teachers will receive double their UK salaries each month, often with rent-free accommodation, paid utility bills and flights home.
But Ruth says it's not just the money or the climate that lure people there.
'The push factors include overwork and stress in the UK, the cost of living and sometimes a lack of respect for teachers from students and parents,' she said.
'Teachers in the UK aren't allowed to say boo to a goose when they are faced with challenging behaviour, but in the UAE, you're backed up by colleagues if you're faced with difficult classroom management situations – and it just doesn't happen as often.
'Teachers are held in some esteem in the UAE, and they're treated well.
'There's extra pay if you organise after-school activities and you're encouraged to do your planning work during gaps in the day when the children learn Arabic and Islamic studies, so you don't have much work to take home.'
Among others extoling the virtues of working in Dubai is primary teacher and YouTuber Thomas Blakemore, 27.
He told his 48k subscribers how his main reason for leaving the UK was for a better lifestyle, but also cited politics and parents.
Some parents wanted him to 'be a parent, rather than a teacher and that's not my job.'
He also told of the frustrations of applying for education, health and care plan for three children in his class only to have two of them rejected 'multiple times,' despite gathering huge amounts of evidence.
Other ex-pat teachers display their enviable situations on social media, such as Jennifer Connor, seen on a boat trip in the Gulf. The Liverpool Hope University graduate has worked in the UK and Dubai with 15 years of experience in teaching.
British teacher Laila Ahadpour posts scenic shots of herself in Dubai on Instagram under the handle Diary of a Dubai Teacher. She’s been teaching Foundation Stage 2 children there aged between four and five for the last six years.
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AI lab at Christian university aims to bring morality and ethics to artificial intelligence
A new AI Lab at a Christian university in California is grounded in theological values — something the school hopes will help to prevent Christians and others of faith from falling behind when it comes to this new technology.
"The AI Lab at Biola University is a dedicated space where students, faculty and staff converge to explore the intricacies of artificial intelligence," Dr. Michael J. Arena told Fox News Digital.
Arena, who has been the dean of the Crowell School of Business at Biola University since April 2023, was formerly vice president of talent and development at Amazon Web Services. The AI Lab is located in the building of the Crowell School of Business on campus.
The lab is meant to "be a crucible for shaping the future of AI," Arena said via email, noting the lab aims to do this by "providing education, fostering dialogue and leading innovative AI projects rooted in Christian beliefs."
While AI has been controversial, Arena believes that educational institutions have to "embrace AI or risk falling behind" in technology.
"If we don't engage, we risk falling asleep at the wheel," Arena said, referring to Christian and faith-centered institutions.
He pointed to social media as an example of how a failure to properly engage with an emerging technology with a strong approach to moral values has had disastrous results.
"The rise of [social media] has produced a sharp decline in face-to-face social engagement, particularly among teenagers — exacerbating feelings of loneliness," Arena said, noting that nearly three-fourths of Gen Z individuals "acknowledge experiencing loneliness at times."
"Without proactive involvement in guiding AI's development, there's a risk that we will replicate this story," he said.
The AI Lab at Biola University is unique in that it "places emphasis on moral and ethical discernment," rather than technical skills, Arena said.
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Australia: Queensland Labor shelves reforms to stop faith-based schools discriminating against gay teachers
A rather mournful report from the Guardian below
The Queensland government will renege on its promise to pass new anti-discrimination laws before the October state election – a move advocates say will leave women fleeing domestic violence, people with disabilities and members the LGBTQ+ community at risk.
Guardian Australia revealed on Monday that the state government was considering watering down reforms proposed by a review of the 33-year-old act.
State cabinet has approved a new plan that involves passing some measures – the parts that are a priority of the union movement – which mimic the federal “respect at work” bill, including placing a positive duty on workplaces to prevent discrimination or harassment.
It remains unclear whether other elements of the proposed reforms will be included in the new bill – due to be tabled on Friday – and which will be shelved until after the election.
The most controversial recommendation – to scrap the so-called “genuine occupational requirement” clause that has enabled faith-based schools to discriminate against teachers based on their sexuality, pregnancy, relationship status and gender identity – will not be passed during this term of government.
Other measures also likely to be delayed include proposals to scrap exemptions that allow accommodation providers to lawfully discriminate against sex workers; employers to discriminate against gender diverse or trans people when working with children; and IVF providers to discriminate against people on the basis of sexuality.
In a statement, the attorney general, Yvette D’ath, said the government remained committed to all of the reforms but that further work was needed to ensure new laws aligned with the federal approach to a March report by the Australian Law Reform Commission calling for the removal of exemptions for religious schools.
“This is a complex issue and many in the community have differing opinions,” D’ath said. “We need to make sure we get these legislative reforms right.”
Advocacy groups said this week they are concerned that a delay until after the election – with Labor well behind in published opinion polls – would put unfinished reforms at risk.
Alastair Lawrie, the director of policy and advocacy at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, said there was “no justification” for Queensland to stall on the basis of the ALRC report.
“Indeed, the stance of the commonwealth government, which is currently refusing to introduce its own legislation without bipartisan support that is unlikely to be forthcoming, places more rather than less pressure on the Queensland government to act,” Lawrie said.
“The current ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ approach under the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act does not work and does not protect the rights of workers who should be employed on the basis of their skills and experience, not their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Matilda Alexander from Queensland Advocacy for Inclusion said splitting the reforms would create a “chaotic and siloed” series of protections.
“It’s incredibly frustrating to hear that the Anti-Discrimination Act changes will not be going ahead,” Alexander said.
“Queenslanders have said conclusively what we think respect at work looks like in Queensland. We need the government to listen.
“And what we have comprehensively and completely told them is a respectful workplace in Queensland is one where all forms of discrimination are unlawful.
“We understand that the commitment was to repeal and replace the Anti Discrimination Act, which is now more than 30 years old. It’s outdated. It’s not fit for purpose. It can’t be tinkered with, it needs to be repealed [and] these changes need to happen now.”
Nadia Bromley, the chief executive of the Women’s Legal Service Queensland, said the reforms included measures to protect women experiencing domestic and family violence from discrimination.
“A woman who was fired for being the victim of domestic and family violence cannot sue for discrimination in Queensland,” she said. “They can also be denied access to housing by a landlord afraid of having their rental accommodation damaged.
“The bill’s been 33 years in the making already. It’s a really disappointing decision.”
Labor sources have said the government was “not up for a fight” with religious groups who had criticised draft legislation as “a betrayal of all faith communities in Queensland”.
The government needs to table the new bill by Friday for it to pass the parliament before the election.
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16 June, 2024
Woke plan to 'decolonise' philosophy 'erasing achievements of West'
So much hate!
Academics have become embroiled in a furious scrap over a university's decision to sideline philosophers such as Aristotle and Socrates in favour of 'decolonising' classroom learning by getting rid of 'dead white men'.
A new toolkit for schools and universities was produced by SOAS University of London, formerly the School of Oriental and African Studies.
New-age thinkers who are being recommended instead include an Indian-American feminist, a Nigerian 'gender theorist' and a Japanese zen expert.
The toolkit dismisses the study of classical Greek thinkers Aristotle, Plato and Socrates as 'armchair theorising'.
But the guidance produced by SOAS academics aimed at 'decolonising' philosophy has been eviscerated by anti-woke academics, who said that it erased 'the identity and extraordinary achievements of Western civilisation.'
The university says the approach should 'help empower students to think of themselves as active participants in curriculum and assessment design'.
Dr Paul Giladi, one of the co-creators, said: 'Thinking back to my own years at university, I saw that my philosophical training had been blind to, even uninterested in, the wealth of wisdom from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Indigenous communities.
'Why it was blind was something I couldn’t fully explain as an undergraduate.
'Only later in my academic career was I able to recognise that the learning environment shaping my training was not designed to promote critical thinking.
'Learning was orientated towards obeying and reproducing an already agreed philosophical tradition that we are not meant to challenge.'
But Christopher McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, blasted 'woke' academics for rolling out the new toolkit.
He told MailOnline: 'This new toolkit is part of the aggressive Woke imperialism that is subjugating our universities.
'Decolonising the philosophy curriculum is "code for" erasing the identity and extraordinary achievements of Western civilisation.
'The reason why certain philosophers are more central than others is to do with the profundity of their understanding of the human condition.
'When the Oracle of Delphi announces that Socrates was the wisest of all men he responded by saying that he knew nothing but that, unlike other philosophers, he knew that he knew nothing.
'The new "toolkit" for decolonisation has all the arrogance and certainty that was highlighted by Socrates.'
Lashing out at the move, Exeter University historian Prof Jeremy Black told MailOnline: 'This is a totally juvenile approach by staff and students alike - one that fails to understand that issues of quality and scholarship trump those of flag waving on behalf of particular groups.'
Among the 'new voices' suggested by the guide is Nishida Kitaro, a Japanese philosopher whose multicultural school of thought is said to 'challenge eurocentrism'.
Also included is Uma Narayan, an Indian scholar of philosophy who 'criticises culture-reductionist forms of postcolonial feminism'.
And African philosophers Kwasi Wiredu - developer of 'conceptual decolonisation' - and Nkiru Nzegwu, a leading African theorist of gender are also recommended.
The toolkit is being made available on the SOAS website as an online platform for education providers.
It was produced by four undergraduate student interns and four academic philosophers at SOAS, the Times reported.
The guide describes how mainstream curriculum teaching is 'predominantly focused on canonical western philosophers offering in-depth retrospections of their own experiences'.
The toolkit adds: 'A lot of the epistemological discourse also involves "armchair theorising".'
The authors recommend a curriculum which does include Plato but also adds works with titles such as Knowledges Born in the Struggle, Conceptualising Epistemic Oppression, On Being White: Thinking Towards a Feminist Understanding of Race and Race Supremacy and Knowledge Sovereignty among African Cattle Herders.
They also suggest teachers should better understand their role in 'racist systems'.
The guidance adds: 'Without this intellectual insight, it is impossible to even find the root of the problem, let alone begin to address it.
'The teacher in a decolonial classroom must learn to learn from the perspectives and knowledge systems of the students and to unlearn their own colonially mediated assumptions and background knowledge.
'Unlearning means stopping oneself from always wanting to correct, teach and enlighten. Rather, the teacher should be prepared to forgo a singularly authoritative role and be a facilitator of, and participant in, good learning.'
Also proposed is an end to exams, pen-and-paper tests and essays - said to unfairly hinder students who are neurotypical or from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Blogs, podcasts, exhibitions, case studies and infographics are suggested as potential alternatives for assessing philosophy pupils.
SOAS, where more than half of the intake is from ethnic minority backgrounds, describes itself as having 'an exceptionally diverse student body' and says its mission is to 'recruit and teach diverse students'.
Alumni include Myanmar politician Aung San Suu Kyi, journalist and screenwriter Jemima Khan, Labour's shadow foreign secretary David Lammy and the late US singer and activist Paul Robeson.
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How a Pro-Refugee Lobby Group Embedded Itself in England’s Schools
I have written previously about the prevalence of woke ideology in schools, notably the promotion of intersectionality via the teaching and promotion of Critical Race Theory. Over the last year, I have been monitoring a peculiar element to this ideological trend that is gaining traction: a pro-refugee movement called Schools of Sanctuary, which is effectively the education wing of the City of Sanctuary movement and whose overall objective is political and cultural change to facilitate pro-refugee policies and legislation. Aside from GB News’s coverage in October 2023, which involved Nigel Farage reporting on it, and Toby Young’s commentary in episode 59 of the Weekly Sceptic, there has been limited scrutiny of it. There is evidence that this organisation, either directly or indirectly, politicises education under the facade of charity. In doing so, it places schools in breach of existing legislation and guidance and undermines political impartiality.
The requirements and obligations of schools when dealing with political issues are quite clear. Section 406 of the Education Act 1996 forbids the “pursuit of partisan political activities” and the “promotion of partisan political views”. However, according to section 407 of the Education Act 1996, controversial political topics can be taught provided they are done so in a balanced way. The Department of Education’s guidance on political impartality in schools published 2022 recognises that pupils should have “an understanding and respect for legitimate differences of opinion”. It reaffirms the Education Act 1996 by stating schools “must prohibit the promotion of partisan political views” and insists pupils be given a “balanced presentation of opposing views on political issues”.
The 2022 guidance also draws on the definition of “partisan” as established by Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education and Skills (2007) and defines partisan activities as “one-sided” with the intent to “further the interests of a particular partisan group, change the law or change government policy”. Rather importantly within the context of this article, the 2022 guidance also recognises that charitable organisations can be politically partisan. Schools of Sanctuary tries to justify some of its political activism by invoking the Equality Act 2010. While that legislation means it is unlawful for a school to discriminate against its staff or pupils on the basis of their “protected characteristics”, it does not oblige schools to actively campaign for a political cause. And some of the aims, ideological foundations and resources of Schools of Sanctuary, and the behaviour of those schools that have engaged with the organisation, appear to be in breach of the Education Act 1996 and the 2022 guidance.
The background of some of City of Sanctuary and Schools of Sanctuary’s trustees and the content of its materials and resources suggest a political objective and an adherence to identity politics. The trustees of City of Sanctuary include the chair, Yusuf Ciftci, who completed a PhD on immigration policy and the ways to influence changes in said policy. Much of this appears to have influenced the general strategy of City of Sanctuary. One of the trustees, Alice Mpofu-Coles, has been a Labour councillor for Whitley Ward, Reading, since 2021. She describes herself as “a passionate advocate for social justice” and a “tireless activist”. She is also a trustee of Alliance for Cohesion and Racial Equality Ltd, a charity that aims to address “imbalances in power and bring about change founded on social justice, equality and inclusion”.
According to its trustees’ report of 2022, City of Sanctuary is seeking “big political change” and intends to build a “strong and widespread movement” that will “translate into public support for changes in policy and practice”. With a General Election just a few weeks away, there is an opportunity for City of Sanctuary and Schools of Sanctuary to pursue that objective. The Illegal Migration Act 2023, in particular, is being targeted by City of Sanctuary and Schools of Sanctuary, as demonstrated by School of Sanctuary’s “useful” General Election door hanger, which urges people to repeal the Act. These aims clearly point to a political objective and thereby run counter to the Department of Education’s 2022 guidance.
An ideological imbalance in Schools of Sanctuary is implicit elsewhere in its literature and resources. A resource pack from Schools of Sanctuary suggests as much as it says there is an “increasingly hostile environment for people seeking sanctuary in the U.K., feeding anti-immigrant sentiment, racism”. Elsewhere on its website, Schools of Sanctuary claims there is “widespread hostile – and often inaccurate – rhetoric in the public and in the media driving increasingly cruel immigration policies and encouraging attitudes of distrust and hate”. It asserts “the challenges that people who are seeking sanctuary experience often intersect with racism”. This organisation seems to think immigration can only ever be positive and beneficial. Any concerns, criticism, challenge or opposition to immigration are by implication racist and unjustified.
Such beliefs inevitably necessitate a filtering of factual evidence. With the upcoming General Election, Schools of Sanctuary has issued guidance on having “courageous conversations” as part of its push to get people to “step up” This guidance states it “isn’t about debating the other person” and instead emphasises the strategy of emotional persuasion, of encouraging individuals to “speak from the heart” rather than relying on facts. This is a convenient strategy to use with many children, since it dispenses with the need to find, analyse and evaluate tangible evidence. This is essentially derived from the concept of “lived experience” and avoids the troublesome problem of contending with data which does not fit an established narrative.
And where Schools of Sanctuary does stoop to mentioning facts, it does so selectively. Take, for example, the assertion that asylum seekers only receive Ł49.18 per week which “must cover all food, transport, hygiene items, phone data and clothing”. To be sure, this specific figure is not incorrect. But it certainly lacks context and overlooks a considerable number of other facts, such as the ability of refugees to access Universal Credit, Child Benefit (both of which can be backdated to the date of an asylum claim) and NHS services with free prescriptions and dental care. None of this is mentioned by Schools of Sanctuary and it is not surprising since recognising such facts would undermine the organisation’s agenda. Besides not being objective and impartial, this filtering of information is not exactly consistent with City of Sanctuary’s self-proclaimed belief in “high standards of honesty and behaviour” either.
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Adults who skipped college urge high school grads to follow suit, say rewards are ‘immeasurable’
Young trade workers on why they chose trade school over college
Concerns about the rising cost of tuition and university campus culture are driving a significant number of Americans away from higher education, and entrepreneurs who skipped out on a four-year degree are urging others to follow suit.
Guitar Chalk editor Bobby Kittleberger told Fox News Digital he actively encourages his kids not to attend college.
"I like to put it this way: You never see a dude pull up in a Ferrari and think, 'Oh, I bet he has a college degree!' So, I tell my kids, why would you walk a path that by design does not lead to wealth and prosperity?" he said.
Kittleberger, who also works as a web designer and SEO consultant, has several reasons for pushing his kids away from a traditional university path. Although he graduated with a computer science degree, one of the highest-paying majors right out of college, Kittleberger said his diploma has been "completely irrelevant" to his real-world work and career path.
Alternatives to college education
In his opinion, the price of a degree has a terrible return on investment. The recent costs of higher education have led many of his friends to work jobs they could have achieved with a high school degree, such as real estate, trading and insurance.
According to the Education Data Initiative, the average cost of attendance for a student living on campus at a public in-state institution is $108,583 over four years. Out-of-state students will pay an average of $182,832 in the same time frame.
Private colleges can be notably higher, with some charging $250,000 or more over four years in tuition and fees. For instance, Kenyon College in Ohio charges more than $71,000 in tuition a year, not including board fees.
Kittleberger said that if someone wants to become a doctor, lawyer or any other profession that requires a degree, college is almost always the best course of action. But for many fields, he said it is absurd to try and learn to make money from professors who have likely never run their own business.
He plans on encouraging his children, especially his two boys, to enter the labor market and learn crucial financial skills.
"These days, we have so much information at our fingertips. You can learn almost any discipline on your own and make yourself incredibly valuable without paying a dime," he added.
According to a 2023 Gallup poll, confidence levels in colleges and universities recently dropped to just 36%, down from 48% in 2018. In 2015, the confidence level in higher education was 57%, based on those surveyed.
Undergraduate enrollment dropped from 18.1 million students in 2010 to 15.4 million in 2021. While enrollment increased slightly in 2023 following the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education experts have worried that rising college costs and a declining birth rate could drive more Americans away from campuses.
23-year-old Mikey Fieldman is an entrepreneur in Illinois. He said he has never clocked in a day in his life and has been self-employed since he was 14.
In middle school, he started his first business with an iPod touch and made a profit that was not often seen by a 20-year-old. He briefly attended college but soon realized it was not for him. He wishes he had never attended in the first place.
Fieldman spent seven years growing social media accounts that amassed over 7 million followers. He later used the money he earned from social media to start a sports cards and memorabilia business called Field of Cards. Today, he owns his third company, a junk removal business in the Chicago area.
In his view, college and entrepreneurship both have unique advantages and disadvantages that cater to an individual's unique mindset and traits. Colleges, for example, give young adults access to experts in a variety of fields who are there to answer questions and mentor.
"Having that in your back pocket is an advantage," Fieldman said. "You can never know too many smart people."
He also said college provides a unique experience for young adults, as they are surrounded by other people their own age in their formative years. That social setting and the relationships made along the way, he noted, can have tangible value for many people.
Why one college's enrollment is booming
On the other hand, he said a young person who directly enters the labor market can still go to college campuses and visit friends on the weekend to make up for that.
He noted that blue-collar workers with no degree will likely have little to no debt and can make significant money in a trade right away, often rivaling the salary of entry-level positions for recent graduates.
"If you go into something and then don't pursue it, I feel that's even worse, even if it's the same amount of debt. Like, I know personally, I would feel worse about myself adding that much debt if I wasn't doing anything with my degree," he said.
Fieldman said blue-collar jobs also offer many opportunities for side gigs. However, he stressed that this work can often be hard on the human body.
As the CEO and founder of Premier Staff, Daniel Meursing said he wholeheartedly understands the appeal of sidestepping college to pursue alternative entrepreneurial avenues of growth and fulfillment.
"In a world where traditional education is no longer the sole gateway to achievement, the decision to dive into the labor market early can open doors to invaluable experiences and opportunities," he told Fox News Digital.
Like many young adults, Meursing was at a crossroads upon completing high school. He opted to skip the well-trodden path of college to pursue modeling. There, he found a penchant for finance and transitioned into the mortgage industry as a loan officer.
"The decision to forgo college was not without its challenges. However, each obstacle presented an opportunity for growth and self-discovery. Navigating the intricacies of the mortgage industry and later, the event staffing world taught me invaluable lessons in adaptability, problem-solving, and the art of building meaningful relationships," he said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the event staffing industry ground to a halt, and Premier Staff was in peril. Rather than succumb to despair, he embraced the challenge as an opportunity to regroup and emerge stronger.
Today, his company works with renowned brands such as Bentley, Ferrari, Louis Vuitton, Netflix, the BET Awards and the Oscars.
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13 June, 2024
You Won’t Believe How This High School Spent a $10,000 Grant
A high school in New Mexico used a $10,000 grant to purchase chest binders and pro-LGBTQ+ books for its students.
According to the Independent Women’s Forum, this discovery was made after a mother named Rachel Hein sounded the alarm earlier this year that her daughter’s prospective high school, Las Cruces Centennial High School, planned to install a “transgender closet” for its students. This way, students who identify as “transgender” could change their “gender identity” at school.
Hein’s daughter was preparing to attend Centennial when an article posted on Facebook by another member of the community caused her to reconsider.
“I thought ‘please tell me this is a joke,’” Hein told IWF. “The high school my daughter was going into had been awarded a $10,000 grant to get a ‘transgender closet’ installed.”
The left-wing organization “It Gets Better” reportedly funded the grant for the school to provide “gender-inclusive” and “affirming” supplies for kids who think they’re transgender.
“If you go to school and you don’t want your parents to know you’re changing your identity at school, there you go,” Hein said. “There’s your closet to do that without any [parental] knowledge. They’re trying to keep us out.”
“They don’t care what [parents] think—they want to do with our children what they will and to turn them into whatever they want,” she added. “And that’s not okay with us.”
During the enrollment process, the forms asked the parents to give permission for the school to provide “healthcare” to students. Hein did some research and found that a piece of legislation, S.B. 397, gave schools the right to treat students without requiring parental consent.
“It’s them opening the door to, well, you’re too busy to take them to their pediatrician, so we can handle that here,” she said. “ And once you give over that control, then they can start giving them treatments and all kinds of things that parents are not in the know about.”
In April 2024, the New Mexico Freedoms Alliance filed a public records request, which revealed that despite receiving the $10,000 grant from It Gets Better, Las Cruces’ Centennial High School did not build the “transgender closet.” Instead, Centennial High School used the grant money to buy “chest binders,” which are used to flatten women’s breasts to achieve a masculine appearance, and pro-gender ideology books for their school library, according to the public records request (via IWF):
LCPS’ legal support told the New Mexico Freedoms Alliance that $8,370 of the $10,000 grant was spent on chest binders that were handed out at a “Pride Day event in October 2023” in Las Cruces. This event was likely the Southern New Mexico Pride Celebration in September-October 2023. According to photos published by the Las Cruces Sun-News, the parade was attended by community officials, activists, drag performers, and families with children, some of whom can be seen digging for candy in rainbow-colored wagons.
"At first glance, Centennial High School's decision not to use the grant funds provided by It Gets Better to build a "transgender closet" seems encouraging. However, the reality of the matter is that those funds were used in potentially even more destructive ways,” said Ashley McClure, storytelling assistant at Independent Women’s Forum. “While building a ‘transgender closet’ serves those who already identify as transgender, pro-gender ideology library books expose children to age-inappropriate material and may encourage them to adopt identities that they wouldn't have otherwise.”
“Furthermore, chest binders pose serious physical risks to young girls. Based on their decision to spend $10,000 on these items, it would appear there is a very clear and potentially devastating agenda being pushed on children at Centennial High School,” McClure added.
Hein and her family ultimately moved out of New Mexico over the radical ideology permeating the schools.
“It all started right after the pandemic,” Hein said. “[My eight-year-old] is not going to be able to differentiate between what’s right and wrong, and it will be very confusing that the teachers who she’s around so much, and maybe even the counselors, are pushing [gender ideology] as though it is good.”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2024/06/12/new-mexico-gender-affirming-school-n2640370
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Ontario Catholic School Board Votes Against Flying Pride Flag at Schools
The Toronto-area Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board has voted against flying the pride flag at its schools.
The board voted 6-3 on June 11 against a motion that would have allowed non-government flags to be flown at schools.
Opposing the motion were trustees Paula Dametto-Giovannozzi, Herman Viloria, Luz del Rosario (Chair), Darryl D’Souza, Anisha Thomas, and Thomas Thomas.
Supporting the flying of non-government flags were Brea Corbet, Bruno Iannicca, and Mario Pascucci. Trustees Shawn Xaviour and Stefano Pascucci were absent.
Five delegates made a presentation at the meeting, including representatives of Campaign Life Coalition and Parents as First Educators, calling for the board to vote against flying the pride flag. Afterward, they welcomed the board’s decision.
“The significance of this victory cannot be understated,” said Josie Luetke, Campaign Life Coalition’s director of education and advocacy. “This victory is an incredible testament to the power of both prayer and grassroots lobbying.”
Delegates referred to a 2021 statement from Toronto Cardinal Thomas Collins, which said the appropriate symbol of inclusion for Catholics is the cross.
“The cross outside of Catholic schools and any Catholic church, hospital or institution, signals our commitment that all who enter the building are welcomed and loved in their beauty and uniqueness as children of God,” the cardinal said.
“There is a belief among some that unless one embraces secular symbols, one cannot be inclusive or accepting. This is simply not true.”
The 2021 statement said that Catholic educators should stay true to Catholic teaching, even though “there are times when the presentation of Catholic teaching will clash with the views held by many in society, whether these relate to human sexuality, the sanctity of life, issues of social justice or other deeply held beliefs. Those who are faithful to these teachings are often ridiculed, mocked and excluded.”
Another delegate, Gregory Tomchyshyn from CitizenGo, presented a petition with over 15,000 signatures against flying the flag.
Debate
Trustee Brea Corbet, who supported the flying of non-government flags, said that an aggressive smear campaign had been run over the issue.
“Since our vote on June 4 at our bylaw and policies review committee meeting, it has resulted in targeted advocacy, aggressive campaigns, smear campaigns, intended to use intimidation, and threats to influence the decision tonight,” she said.
Ms. Corbet said she had personally received phone calls, emails, and messages on social media from people “who claim to be Catholic” that contained hate speech and discriminatory language.
“It was defamation of character, and reputational harm to the integrity of this board and it has to stop “
Jack Fonseca, Campaign Life Coalition’s director of political operations, said the battle continues, as pride flags are still permitted to be displayed inside the schools.
“Parents and faithful trustees must work even harder to remove ‘Pride’ symbols from inside the classroom,” he said.
The Dufferin-Peel board is not the first Catholic school board in Ontario to ban the flag. In 2023, the York Catholic District School Board voted not to raise the flag for Pride Month.
The decision prompted then-Education Minster Stephen Lecce to issue a memo saying that it was “incumbent on all school boards” to make LGBT students feel supported.
“That includes celebrating Pride in a constructive, positive and meaningful ways [sic] to affirm that 2SLGBTQ+ students know that their educators and staff, school board administrators, and government stand with them,” he said at the time.
Similar to last year, during the Prime Month in June, some parents this year have opted to keep their children home or hold “pray-ins” at school board headquarters.
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Modern math
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12 June, 2024
Rich Students Disproportionally Play the Radical: Should We Fund Elite Universities?
By RICHARD K. VEDDER
My friend, John Fund, a distinguished journalist and political commentator, has brought to my attention a fine study done by the Washington Monthly, showing that virulent anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests have occurred disproportionately at elite colleges where most students come from relatively rich families.
You heard a lot about pro-Palestinian demonstrations, building occupation, and tent encampments at schools like Columbia or Northwestern, but little or no mention of protests at schools where those attending are primarily from working-class families with a high proportion of first-generation students or at historically black colleges and universities.
The Washington Monthly examined this exhaustively and confirmed that the less selective public universities had far less protest activity than the elite and richly endowed private schools. This is in marked contrast to the widespread Vietnam War era protests, which were prominent at state schools, most tragically, at Kent State University, where four people died.
As one who has studied, taught, or guest lectured at schools of all stripes—I estimate on between 300 and 400 American campuses—I sense the zeitgeist of America’s collegiate villages varies enormously, consistent with the Washington Monthly study.
Many members of the campus community at the most elite schools think they are what Glenn Loury, in his spectacular new memoir Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative, calls masters of the universe—among the chosen persons classified as the best, brightest, smartest. They think they are today’s philosopher kings, destined to lead the nation in the future just as their professors and alumni did and do today.
The crisis in higher education today is that the academy’s perceptions have likely never been more divergent from those of American society as a whole.
The noble wunderkind idealists inhabiting the Harvards and Columbias of the world believe they have almost a divine right to behave as they wish, ignoring not only the rule of law but also accepted boundaries of protest in the democratic polity in which they live. Worse, they lately have displayed a despicable hatred or contempt towards a group of people based on their religion and traditions, also known as racism—evaluating people on group characteristics instead of their own worth as individuals.
But, the excessive disconnect between the real world and college is beginning to have seriously negative consequences.
Universities are utterly dependent on public support. This dependence is somewhat less pronounced for richly endowed schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Northwestern, Duke, and Stanford. However, even these institutions face significant challenges, particularly with the potential imposition of larger endowment taxes. The indication that rich alums will be withholding millions, maybe billions, in support hurts the elite schools, as does a decline in applications, making them less selective, less elitist, and less the home of the chosen ones and instead the home of what that great American philosopher Leona Helmsley once memorably called, “the little people.”
I suspect we are in the early, not late, stages of the impact of the abrupt decline in public support for universities. Waning student interest and the very real birth dearth already provide a bleak future for enrollments and governmental subsidies. When progressive icons like the New York Times and the Washington Post start critically editorializing about some of the practices of the self-appointed collegiate establishment, you know higher education is in trouble.
Both market forces—subdued as they are given massive public and private subsidies—and even governmental actions should bring corrective actions that may lead to improvements: lesser control of campus activities by leftist faculty, administrative, and student leaders. Colleges may be saved by crackdowns initiated by alumni and governing boards of private elite institutions as well as politicians and trustees of state universities.
Already, encouraging signs are appearing. MIT says faculty will no longer be asked to sign loyalty oaths to the woke supremacy commitments to support “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Decidedly, non-elitist Yeshiva University reports booming enrollments as abled—and often rich—Jewish students flee what they see as anti-Semitic hotbeds—Harvard and Columbia.
Spineless, unprincipled, and often academically dubious presidents of schools selected in a self-congratulatory affirmation of racial and ethnic inclusiveness are being defrocked from positions of dominance. And, as the public increasingly says no to campus wokeness, once religious and academically traditional schools are flourishing.
Maybe sanity will prevail, and higher education will come through wiser, rededicated to principles of free expression, civil debate, and respect for the rule of both formal and collegiate forms of the rule of law.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14954&omhide=true&trk=title
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Can a Return to Traditional Discipline Save Public Schools?
On a bright morning in May at the Columbus Collegiate Academy Main, orderliness is on display. Students in khakis and blue tops carrying bulging backpacks walk briskly in line through the front doors of the single-story brick building – looking like young people who really want to be there.
In class after class, the predominantly black and Latino student body appears seriously engaged, with pencils in hand or fingers on keyboards. Teachers move rapidly through lessons. Hands shoot up to answer questions. No one is fooling around or disturbing others, which seems remarkable for a middle school full of teenagers.
The academy is one of an estimated 1,000 high-performing urban charters that run on the No Excuses model. Its firm rules for behavior require students to sit up at their desks, remain silent unless called upon, and respect each other, which creates calm conditions for learning.
After another year of disarray in many urban public schools, with the vast majority of teachers reporting that behavior issues were their biggest challenge, proponents say No Excuses charters provide an example of how to restore order and learning.
Instead, they have been banished to the sidelines of public education. Progressive educators who have embraced “anti-racism” as their guiding principle over the last five years have assailed the charters, claiming they single out students of color for stern discipline. The rhetoric has been inflammatory, alleging that the charters “control black bodies” and prepare students for prison, despite the high rate of No Excuses graduates who go on to college.
The term “No Excuses” was coined in the 1990s as a plea for educators to stop using excuses, such as poverty and broken homes, for the turmoil in urban schools that made learning impossible. A group of teachers, including David Levin of the charter network KIPP, brought together ideas from their experiences to fashion a new kind of urban school with a culture of high academic expectations and a precise set of rules and consequences to help students reach them.
Today, the slogan No Excuses is so controversial that many charters avoid it, even while continuing its practices. Other charter networks, like Achievement First, have completely abandoned the No Excuses model and joined the anti-racism crusade, only to see their performance plummet after ratcheting back discipline and lowering academic standards to ensure students pass courses and graduate.
No Excuses leaders admit they made mistakes early on in their zeal to improve urban education. Some networks, such as KIPP, pushed discipline too far by publicly shaming students, a stain on the movement’s record. Others, like Ascend Learning, depended on rote instruction that discouraged students from thinking for themselves and developing the inquisitiveness and agency they would need to succeed in college and beyond.
The criticism spurred many No Excuses charters to change, becoming less rule-bound and more student-led, says Steven Wilson, the founder of Ascend Learning.
“One of the things that I admire about these high-performing charters is that they are constantly willing to criticize themselves and evolve,” said Wilson, whose book about how anti-racism doctrine is replacing academic instruction will be published this fall. “No Excuses practices could really help traditional schools struggling with high levels of misbehavior if they were willing to evolve, too.”
But one core principle of No Excuses hasn’t changed, according to Doug Lemov, author of a popular No Excuses teaching manual entitled “Teach Like a Champion”: Equity for marginalized students starts with their high achievement in school.
What sets No Excuses schools apart is the priority they place on creating a culture of high expectations that’s constantly reinforced. Students at the Columbus academy hear daily pep talks over the public address system about hard work leading to success. They strive to be included among the names of students who are learning rapidly that are posted in the hallway. They also look up at the dozens of college pennants hanging on walls, reminding them to keep their eye on the prize.
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Parent Group Says More Monitoring Needed After Graphic Sexual Material Presented in SK School
The head of a grassroots parent group in Saskatchewan thinks education departments around the country need to become more vigilant about materials being offered in sex education in schools.
This comes after a deck of playing cards called “Sex: From A-Z” made its way into a Grade 9 class in Lumsden, Saskatchewan.
The cards include descriptions of graphic sexual practices involving feces, urine, and semen.
The cards were brought in by a Planned Parenthood presenter, although the organization has said the material was not part of the main presentation, calling it “secondary materials.”
In response, Saskatchewan’s Education Minister Dustin Duncan has issued a temporary ban on Planned Parenthood presentations in schools in Saskatchewan—with a review to take place over the summer.
But Nadine Ness with Unified Grassroots believes the problem runs deeper than what is being characterized as an error by one organization.
“I think there needs to be more monitoring of who has access to our kids in our school. There’s other organizations that are working to bringing this stuff in,” she said, pointing to similar incidents elsewhere.
For example, in March 2023 in Fort Nelson, B.C., the same deck of cards was used by a public health presenter to Grade 8 and 9 students, sparking concern among parents, and leading Northern Health to issue an apology on its Facebook page.
Ness said it seems to be part of a trend.
“There’s this kind of escalation of sexualizing children,” she said. “And I find that very concerning, although not surprising.”
The 26 cards have a sexual term, with a cartoon, for every letter of the alphabet.
Ness said she was contacted by parents at the school after it happened.
A former police officer, she said she was nevertheless shocked by some of the cards.
“It made me sick,” she said. And for her, equally concerning is the fact the material was brought into a school.
“The fact that facilitators … would even put that into their material to bring to the school. It shows their mindset,” she said.
For its part, Planned Parenthood has apologized to the school division for what happened.
“As part of our education and outreach programs, we also bring along secondary materials, targeted to address specific questions that youth may have about sex, sexuality, and their health. At this visit, a resource the school did not approve ended up in the hands of a student. Planned Parenthood apologizes for the difficult position that our prairie Valley School Division partners have been put in as a result of this incident,” the group said in a statement posted to its Facebook page.
However, the statement goes on to say Planned Parenthood Regina is “disappointed” with the government’s decision to suspend them from presenting in schools.
“We believe that all youth, including 2SLGBTQIAP+ youth, have the right to access relevant, affirming, and evidence-based information about sex, gender, and sexuality. Access to this kind of education has been shown to increase media literacy, delay the initiation of sexual activity among youth, decrease the risk of sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancy, and prevent serious mental health crisis, including suicide among 2SLGHTQIAP+ youth,” it says.
Ness said the fact that similar incidents have happened in other schools around the country shows that governments should take a more active role in making sure materials for sex education follow approved curriculums—and keep a closer eye on what outside presenters are bringing in.
“I think the government needs to start paying more attention,” she said. “But governments are too afraid to say, ‘Hey, maybe this is not what’s best for the kids.’”
So, while she approves of the temporary measures taken in Saskatchewan in response to the cards, she believes it’s a bigger issue.
“I’m hoping they are going to make a more detailed curriculum,” she said. “When it comes to the sex education curriculum, especially since it’s such a controversial one for parents, it’d be good for there to be strict guidelines on that, so that parents know exactly what their children are being exposed to.”
Ness said they are not opposed to sex education, but presenting things that clash with the values that parents are trying to teach their kids is creating problems.
“It’s not fitting the family’s values. And the majority of parents that I’ve spoken to are really not okay with this, like, especially the way they’re teaching the whole gender is just a social construct,” she said.
“Everyone’s too afraid to talk about it … it’s a problem,” she said.
The cards have been available through a group called Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange (CATIE), which is partly funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada. The listing for the cards on CATIE’s website has since been taken down, but back in 2015—after a similar incident in a Chilliwack, BC school—a spokesperson told the National Post the cards were never intended to be used with minors in schools.
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11 June, 2024
Higher Education Doesn’t Have to Happen on a College Campus
With my children slowly matriculating through K-12 schools, my wife and I have wrestled with the wisdom of sending them to college. We’re both college graduates, but we are concerned by the inflated costs, diminished value of degrees, and institutions surrendering to radical ideologies. Many jobs no longer require a four-year degree, and online education provides various high-caliber educational portals at a low cost, meaning anyone could easily create a custom portfolio on just about any subject without incurring a six-figure debt.
So we asked ourselves: Should a college degree be the primary goal for our children, or would we be the generation that didn’t actively urge our kids to go to college?
There are myriad ways future generations can be academically adroit and engaged citizens, beneficial to their local economies without an expensive credential. Experience and consequence are incredible educators.
A new friend, Hannah Maruyama, argues on her Degree Free platform that funneling high schoolers into the academic-industrial complex isn’t always the best option for parents and their children facing the decision of whether or not to go to college. She recently outlined a few perspectives that seem to be hardwired in our collective American psyche from which we struggle to escape.
Currently, outstanding student loan debt sits around $1.7 trillion. Forty-five percent of college graduates are underemployed, and students from a quarter of higher education programs are making—on average—less than $32,000 a decade after graduation. The average cost of a bachelor’s degree is estimated at $509,434 in tuition, interest, and lost wages as of 2023. These numbers vary state-to-state, but are, nevertheless, sobering.
The idea that college creates well-read critical thinkers and offers exposure to different cultures is, well, laudable. However, data show the median college graduate only reads seven books a year. And cross-racial/class interactions are less frequent on diverse college campuses than expected.
American high schools have become college pipelines where degrees are bought at a great price. Students become both commodities to a financial cabal negotiating their financial aid packages far above their heads and slaves to a debt burden they don’t really comprehend as they borrow more to stay afloat in an inflated economy.
As wonderful as they are, high school administrators and guidance counselors have limited vocational creativity and love the prestige college acceptance letters bring, thus limiting the menu of alternatives for students. They have an incentive to exclusively encourage the bachelor’s degree track, so trade school, homemaking, or freelancing careers are largely ignored.
Girls are particularly affected by these pressures. They are often directed towards so-called “pink collar” fields like teaching, social work, or psychology which often require multiple degrees and specialized credentials. Women often put off family creation in search of credentials and validation only to be rewarded with relatively low salaries and large student debt obligations despite their ambitious curriculum vitae.
I have one daughter who wants to be a teacher and another one who wants to be a gymnastics coach. I’ve told them that they can do whatever they want in life, just not all at once. They’ll need to make sequential, character-building decisions guided by their core principles. I’ve counseled them to ignore the cacophony coming from the “girl boss,” aspire-higher camps who want it all, now. I believe my daughters can better accept the consequences of life if they aren’t pressured to aimlessly follow the crowd to college but find vocations that complement their lifestyle choices, including marriage and motherhood.
Some of the most satisfying work I did in my younger years was as an electrician’s apprentice. There are fewer things more satisfying than powering up a newly built home and seeing the blueprints become someone’s home. While professional tradesmen may study hard for a certification, the hands-on training is where the lessons are learned and rewarded.
There is a growing trend of private companies and government agencies dropping college degree requirements. The internet-based economy and independent contractors are ambivalent about college degrees. Employers are focusing on skills and experience rather than expensive degrees that may or may not be relevant even as innovation and artificial intelligence march forward at break-neck speed.
None of this is meant to denigrate those who have or would get college degrees. I believe it’s necessary to have highly trained doctors, and university campuses can be important labs for scientific study, scholarly collaboration, and specialized learning. But we should seriously reconsider our college-above-all position as a society. Are we pushing our kids to mortgage their futures based upon our nostalgia of yesteryear? Will the ever-growing list of marginal college degrees really benefit future generations? Does anyone need to walk across the stage after four years to be deemed a success?
Let’s encourage our young people to pursue an education and their avocation, and if they feel like they need a college degree, for that to be a secondary consideration.
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Biology Professor Fired By DePaul University Over Assignment On Israel-Hamas Conflict
DePaul University in Chicago has terminated a part-time biology professor over an assignment about the Israel-Hamas conflict, Fox News reported Monday.
Anne d’Aquino was allegedly fired after assigning students students to discuss the impact of the “genocide in Gaza on human health and biology” in early May, according to Fox News. This task was part of a course titled Health 194, Human Pathogens and Defense, which typically covers the biological aspects of infectious diseases, including the mechanisms of viral and bacterial infections and the methods to combat them, Fox noted.
The university initiated an investigation following complaints from students about the political nature of the assignment, the outlet reported.
“We investigated the matter, spoke with the faculty member, and found it had negatively affected the learning environment by introducing extraneous political material that was outside the scope of the academic subject as outlined in the curriculum,” DePaul said Friday in a statement, Fox 32 reported.
Following the investigation, the university dismissed d’Aquino and assigned a new instructor to the class.
The situation has stirred a broader debate on campus, as it coincided with an anti-Israel encampment at the university. D’Aquino has defended her assignment, and argued at a student rally that it was relevant to the course’s objectives, citing concerns about the spread of infectious diseases in Gaza due to inhospitable conditions, Fox News reported.
“My termination was a breach of my academic freedom and another example of this administration’s efforts to twist any discussions of Palestine and Palestinian liberation language into false claims of antisemitism,” D’Aquino said during a demonstration Thursday, Fox News stated.
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NY high school students will no longer need to pass Regents exams to graduate under new plan
Another episode in the dumbing down of American education
New York teenagers will no longer need to pass Regents exams in order to receive their high school diploma under a new plan unveiled by the state Education Department Monday.
The education department plans to scrap the requirement that students need to pass five Regent exams to graduate high school — but will continue to administer the tests as an option for students to “demonstrate their proficiency in meeting the State’s learning standards.”
The department presented its proposal at Monday’s Board of Regents meeting based on recommendations from a special commission of students, parents, educators, researchers and community leaders.
The “NYS Blue Ribbon Commission on Graduation Measures” was formed in 2019 as part of the Board of Regents and Education Department’s initiative to reimagine “what a New York State diploma should signify.”
The commission’s main goals were to create true equity in the public school system and to ensure all New York students learn the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed both in school and after.
In November 2023, the commission shared its findings and recommendations, which became the basis for the education department’s plan released on Monday.
Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said the new plan was developed largely from the input of public school students and their families.
“The bold vision we are advancing today is a direct result of countless hours of collaborative work from an incredibly diverse group of expert practitioners and the public,” Rosa said in a statement. “The educational transformation we envision reflects the thoughtful input we received from our stakeholders – particularly from public school students and their families.
“It takes an incredible amount of time, work, and collaborative effort to transform an education system, and we will not stop working until we get the job done right for all New Yorkers.”
In place of the three-hour Regents exams requirements, the Education Department proposed creating a “portrait of a graduate” metric that assesses students’ success as “critical thinkers, innovative problem solvers, literate across all content areas, culturally competent, socially-emotionally competent, effective communicators, and global citizens.”
Before the plan is officially adopted, the education department will host a series of public forums to gather feedback on the proposed changes between July and October 2024.
The following month, in November 2024, the department will present an implementation plan and timeline for its proposal to the Board of Regents which must then approve any changes to New York’s graduation requirements before they are officially implemented.
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10 June, 2024
Maryland elementary school faces backlash over Pledge of Allegiance, 'mandatory patriotism'
One Maryland public school was coerced into no longer requiring students and staff to recite the Pledge of Allegiance after a free speech group pushed back against what it called "mandatory patriotism."
Twin Ridge Elementary School officials in Mount Airy reversed course on mandating the pledge after clarification was needed on the school's policy for the salute. Back in April, the school emailed all staff clarifying that the Pledge of Allegiance was mandatory.
It read, "all students and teachers are required ‘to stand and face the flag and while standing give an approved salute and recite in unison the pledge of allegiance," according to the state's code of education.
Shortly after the clarification email was sent, the free speech nonprofit organization Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) demanded the school retract its stance, citing concerns stemming from the First Amendment.
Twin Ridge Elementary School is no longer requiring students and staff to recite the Pledge of Allegiance after pressure from a free speech group. (iStock)
The organization called out the school for failing to note that students and teachers could opt out of the pledge if they chose to do so.
"The First Amendment protects not only your right to express yourself, but also the right to refrain from doing so. That includes refusing to salute the flag. Mandatory patriotism is no patriotism at all," FIRE Senior Program Officer Stephanie Jablonsky said.
Maryland mother Kathleen Champion joined "Fox & Friends First" to discuss why she was "not surprised" the school reversed course and the broader issue at hand stemming from patriotism and respect for the American flag.
"I do believe that everybody should stand for the pledge. I do understand that some people have religious beliefs that makes them have a difference from it, and that makes sense. I think that that should be the only exception that there is from it. But I really, honestly don't understand why people have a problem standing and saying the pledge in this country," she told Carley Shimkus on Friday.
"We're American citizens, and we should be proud of that country that we're lucky enough to be in," she continued.
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UK: Fury As Durham University Calls Off Gaza War Debate After “Mob” of Pro-Palestine Protesters “Locked” Students Inside Chamber
Durham University has been slammed for its failure to uphold free speech, after cancelling a Gaza war debate due to pro-Palestine protesters locking students in a chamber for over two hours. The Mail has the story.
Students preparing the chamber for the Friday night debate – about whether “Palestinian Leadership is the Biggest Barrier to Peace” – found themselves locked inside when protesters created a human chain around the building.
Those who were set to defend the argument were Natasha Hausdorff, of U.K. Lawyers for Israel, investigative journalist David Collier and Lance Forman, a former Brexit Party MEP.
Students preparing the chamber “locked themselves in to prevent the mob entering the building”, Mr. Forman told the Mail.
Union members called the University authorities to request police assistance to clear the entrance for the debate.
Mr. Forman said: “The University did not act and before long the mob grew in size and formed a human chain around the building to prevent access.
“The students inside were by this point terrified that they would also break in. It was up to the University to speak to the police to facilitate this. But they backed down and caved into the mob.”
The Mail understands that the University could have classified the protesters as ‘trespassers’. If they had done so, the police would have been able to remove the protestors and allow the event to take place, but the University chose not to do this.
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ANU student expelled after saying on ABC radio that Hamas deserves 'unconditional support'
The Australian National University (ANU) has expelled a student over comments they made about Hamas during an interview about pro-Palestinian protests on ABC radio.
The ABC has confirmed that Beatrice Tucker was expelled by the university, with sources confirming the ANU believed their comments may have been construed as supporting a terrorist organisation.
Hamas was the militant group behind attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023.
Beatrice Tucker was interviewed on ABC Radio Canberra in late April as one of the members of a pro-Palestinian encampment that had been established on the ANU campus.
During the program, Beatrice Tucker was asked by host Ross Solly whether they wanted to send a message to Hamas for its actions on October 7.
"I actually say that Hamas deserve our unconditional support, not because I agree with their strategy," Beatrice Tucker said.
"But the situation at hand is if you have no hope, if you are sanctioned every day of your life, if you're told you're not allowed to drive down a road because somebody who is Israeli gets to have preference and you sit there for 12 hours, the reality of life in Palestine."
The ABC understands the decision to expel Beatrice Tucker was due to these comments, and not related to their involvement in the encampment or protest action.
A group that has been associated with the encampment, Students and Staff Against War ANU, condemned the ANU's decision. The group said Beatrice Tucker had been banned from entering the ANU campus and continuing their studies.
"After making these comments, Tucker was targeted by right-wing media outlets like The Australian and Zionist organisations like the Executive Council of Australian Jewry," the statement read.
"They demanded Tucker's immediate expulsion and accused Tucker of supporting 'terrorism'.
"These same organisations have called for the Palestine solidarity encampments across Australian universities to be shut down."
Group member Finnian Colwell condemned the university for taking action against students rather than meeting the demands of protesters, including that the ANU divest from companies linked to the Israeli government.
"ANU has taken an unprecedented and dangerous step in smothering free speech on campus," Mr Colwell said.
"The ANU would rather punish students for repeating what they have learnt in its international law courses, that armed resistance is a legal human right for oppressed nationalities, than divest from over $1 million invested in eight arms companies with links to Israel."
The ABC has confirmed the expulsion is one of a number of similar investigations the ANU is undertaking at the moment.
It is understood the university is concerned about public commentary supporting terrorism, as well as actions and words that could be deemed to be racist or anti-Semitic.
The ANU said in a statement it could not comment on specific disciplinary matters. "ANU is a place of respectful debate and we are proud of our long history of student political engagement," the statement read.
"All staff and students are free to express themselves and protest in line with the university's academic freedom and freedom of speech policies."
"With these rights come responsibilities."
Last week, the university ordered members of the pro-Palestinian encampment, which has been active since April, to leave the campus, citing safety concerns.
The students have since moved their encampment to a different part of the campus, which remains active.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-06/anu-expels-student-over-comments-supporting-hamas/103944796
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June 09, 2024
Math Teachers Group’s Push for Identity Politics Damages Math’s Inherent Equity
The world’s largest math education organization is injecting identity politics where it doesn’t belong—and undermining math education in the process.
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics told teachers to “regularly and intentionally integrate more equity, justice, and culturally centered mathematics education” in every math lesson in a May 20 position statement,
The council argues that math education must respond to the “culture” of students, represented in “multidimensional identities,” including “race, ethnicity, religion, generation, gender, sexual orientation, education, class, occupation and socio-economic status, and disability.”
While proper math education, to an extent, can engage with culture, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ position incorporates a facet of culture that doesn’t need to touch math class; namely, identity politics, the idea that people are divided into subgroups based on factors such as race, gender, and sexual orientation.
There is a place in math education for interacting with the cultures of students. Classes that disregard it entirely can become governed by rote memorization, which prevents students from learning to think deeply and analyze context.
Culturally interrelated aspects of math include the history of math discovery and its practical applications, according to Jonathan Gregg, assistant professor of education at Hillsdale College, who holds a doctorate in math education.
Interacting with student thinking and highlighting the multiple ways to reach solutions allow teachers to leverage culture in the classroom, Gregg told The Daily Signal.
Yet the math teachers council advocates for centering math on the wrong aspects of culture.
Math education shouldn’t treat students as divided into identity groups, such as by race and sexual orientation, as the council’s statement recommends.
Teachers can try to understand and connect with their students by allowing them to ask questions and share their ideas, but math itself remains the same.
If teachers focus on “cultural practices” that distract from the subject at hand, a generation of students could graduate with an insufficient understanding of math and underdeveloped problem-solving skills.
“The truth or falsity of a mathematical proposition does not depend on a person’s race, ethnicity, religion, generation, gender, sexual orientation, education, class, occupation, socioeconomic status, or disability,” Hillsdale College Associate Professor of Mathematics David Gaebler told The Daily Signal.
The truth in math is timeless, unchanged by the constantly evolving ideology promoted in the council’s statement. Teachers who “leverage cultural knowledge and lived experiences as assets” as the council recommends in its statement, are powerless to change math’s truths.
The council’s interpretation of “culturally responsive math” could even violate parental rights, as many parents may not want their children to learn about sexual orientation or so-called social justice at school, in math class or elsewhere. (The council did not respond to The Daily Signal’s inquiry about that.)
The statement rejects a “color evasive” approach to math students, seemingly suggesting that educators should adjust their teaching approach on the basis of the student’s race.
Context matters in some math problems, giving it an element of subjectivity, and technical terms of mathematics can have multiple interpretations. Furthermore, some assignments ask questions with multiple answers, like “explain your reasoning” or “justify your answer,” questions that may have multiple right answers, but also wrong ones.
But if teachers fail to recognize math’s objectivity, the subject could forfeit its natural equity.
“If you ignore the objectivity of mathematics,” Gregg said, “you usually miss its connections to truth and (ironically) actually lose one of the ways that it, as a discipline, promotes equity—that it, on some level, is the same for us all and unifies us as human beings.”
Regardless of the color, background, religion, or class of the student solving a math problem, the correct answers are the same, making it equally accessible to all.
School districts, education departments, and teachers across the country have lost sight of this, causing more schools to see education through the lens of identity politics.
For example, Webster Groves School District in suburban St. Louis, Missouri, includes the personal pronouns “they/them” in math problems and employs “math interventionists” to fight so-called racism and gender bias in math classes, The Daily Signal reported.
The Oregon Department of Education instructed teachers to “dismantle systemic inequities” in math class, recommending that teachers reduce rules that “imply that certain skills and knowledge are valued more than others” and instead prioritize the “rights of the learner.”
Good math teachers need to recognize that even though there are usually multiple ways to get to the solution, math has right and wrong answers.
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics seems to be on the right track with its desire to include student collaboration in the math classroom. But by instructing its 38,000 members to undermine the objectivity of mathematics, it risks costing students critical logic and reasoning skills—as well as the opportunity to understand what makes math equitable.
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2 School Textbook Giants Replace ‘Sex’ With ‘Gender.’ Parents, Teachers Aren’t Buying
Two giants among publishers of children’s books and textbooks are selling the idea of “gender” to small children. But are Americans buying?
Scholastic, one of the world’s largest publishers and distributors of children’s books, released a “Resource Guide” for parents and teachers promoting its “Read With Pride” series. The guide is aimed at children of all ages, from birth to the end of high school.
Scholastic includes a glossary in the guide that defines “agender” (having no gender identity) and “allocishet” (a term for “people whose gender and sexuality are privileged by society”), among other terms that are hard for even adults to follow.
Scholastic’s guide is misreading the market. Educators oppose teaching young children about the concept of “gender.” A Pew survey from February found that 50% of teachers said students shouldn’t learn about “gender” in school (compared to 33% who said children should learn they can be a gender that is different from their sex).
A survey from the Public Religion Research Institute finds that 65% of Americans say they believe there are only two genders—male and female, a finding that contrasts sharply with Scholastic’s glossary.
New York-based Scholastic isn’t the only publisher pushing this ambiguous idea that you can “think” yourself into a gender that doesn’t match your biology.
London-based Pearson, the largest publisher of college textbooks but also a significant player in the K-12 market, once featured a textbook on sociology on its website that advocated use of “gender identity” instead of “biological sex” to describe individuals. The book approvingly cited the work of Alfred Kinsey, a trained zoologist who argued young children can benefit from sexual activity.
Pearson quietly removed much of its website material promoting gender as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion after a Heritage Foundation report exposed this content in June 2023.
For now, Scholastic still advertises books for children describing the idea of gender.
And gender is just that, an idea. Gayle Rubin, whose influential 1984 essay “Thinking Sex” explains the central concepts of so-called queer theory, says gender and sex aren’t “biological” entities but ideas that change over time. Accordingly, Scholastic’s glossary lists “genderfluid,” describing someone whose gender fluctuates.
The confusing definitions aren’t the primary issues. Queer advocates want children to be familiar with the words and the sexually infused content that follows. Rubin criticizes traditional boundaries around young children’s exposure to radical notions about the sexual act and gender identity, calling the scope of laws stopping children from engaging in “erotic interest and activity” (such as age-of-consent laws) as “breathtaking.” She describes these boundaries as oppressive instead of recognizing them as protective measures.
The number of organizations Scholastic lists as allies in the gender movement should certainly leave parents short of breath. Scholastic features the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, which specializes in identifying “hate groups” and here decries “binary notions” of biology.
SPLC’s education arm, Learning for Justice, produces classroom material on critical race theory while offering “tools and practices” for talking about gender to “students of all ages.”
Teachers and parents should ask their school district officials whether curriculum coordinators are purchasing Scholastic’s gender materials. School boards and school district personnel have authority to acquire textbooks, so parents and educators alike should tell these local officials that they don’t want their children exposed to sexual content and ambiguous ideas on gender.
State superintendents of education and state school boards, who set academic standards, should include standards that stick to reality—we are born male or female. Teachers may help a boy or girl confused about his or her sex by including parents and families in discussions with children who show gender dysphoric symptoms, which often are accompanied by other mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.
State lawmakers may assist by considering the Given Name Act, which requires educators to address a student by the name and personal pronoun corresponding with a child’s birth certificate, unless teachers receive consent from parents to do otherwise.
Lawmakers in more than a half-dozen states have adopted these provisions. This proposal prevents school personnel from driving a wedge between children and their parents in crucial, health-related conversations.
Even with Scholastic and Pearson’s significant reach into textbook markets, policymakers, parents, and teachers don’t have to buy their definition of sex. Nor the confusion and explicit material that follows.
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Mixed results for Australian universities in international rankings
My student days are 50 years behind me so these results don't reflect on me personally for good or ill but I am still pleased to see three of the four that I went to in the top 40 worldwide.
I particularly liked my time doing my Masters at U.Syd, so I am pleased that it has kept up its high quality. It even pips most of America's "Ivies" LOL
Australian universities have boosted their international standing but regional universities have tumbled in the latest annual global rankings.
The University of Melbourne was the highest rated Australian institution taking 13th spot on the QS World University Rankings 2025, up one place.
The University of Sydney also fared well, rising to number 18 while the University of New South Wales maintained its 19th spot.
Australian National University in Canberra rose four places to 30, while Monash University in Melbourne came in at 37, up five places. The University of Queensland rounded out the top 40, up three places.
The top regional university was the University of Wollongong at number 167, down five places. It was followed by the University of Newcastle which was ranked at number 179, although it dropped five ranking spots.
Deakin University rose to 197 after ranking 233 in 2024. LaTrobe University came in at 217 rising from 242 in 2023.
The University of Canberra improved its ranking by 14 places to reach an equal 403rd position.
University of Wollongong acting vice-chancellor and president professor David Currow said the rankings reflect dedication and hard work of staff across UOW's network of campuses.
"The latest QS World University rankings underscore our ongoing commitment to excellence in research and sustainability," Professor Currow said.
"The University's remarkable performance in Research Citations is particularly noteworthy, highlighting the impactful research being conducted at UOW. These research streams address global challenges and contribute significantly to the advancing new knowledge."
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June 06, 2024
Here’s Why a Civil Rights Complaint Is Being Filed Against This New York School District
Parental rights organization Parents Defending Education has worked nonstop in recent years to expose school districts across the country for policies and curriculum meant to indoctrinate students. This ranges from curriculum on Critical Race Theory (CRT) to keeping parents in the dark about their children’s names and pronouns at school.
Townhall has covered how many districts have been caught trying to implement these things into their schools. Now, PDE is going to file a federal civil rights complaint with the US Department of Education against a New York school district for discrimination on the basis of race in programs that receive federal financial assistance.
According to PDE, the Kingston City School District in New York “has educator programming and that are not accessible to all educators” (via PDE):
The District only permits some educators to participate and their participation is based on immutable characteristics.
Allegedly, KCSD’s Department of Diversity’s goals include to “implement a plan for hiring staff to proportionately reflect our student body” and other things that show that the school district is acting “in a race conscious and discriminatory way” (via PDE):
The department has two primary goals: “develop and implement a plan for faculty and staff to proportionately reflect the diverse student body” and “conduct a thorough curriculum review, adopt culturally relevant curricula and provide teacher support in the implementation and evaluate district policies, practices and procedures through the lens of equity”
The Director of the department, Kathy Sellitti’s role is to “create pathways for curriculum development that consistently look through the lens of inclusion and belonging,” as opposed to other important merit-based curriculum factors
The Equity in Action Committee notes the importance of “expect[ing] to experience discomfort,” “expect[ing] non-closure,” and “recognizing/owning your privilege in the room” are primary agreements involved in the DEI policy and curricula development”
[...]
Admittance into the “Educators of Color Network” affinity group appears to be solely based on an individual’s race. This particular affinity group appears to only aid in the recruitment and retention of educators, based solely on the individual’s race.
“Identifying, hiring, and retaining educators based on their race and gender identification, who lack baseline certifications, is an abhorrent abuse of power and disgusting use of taxpayer dollars, not to mention illegal. Students need to be surrounded by educators who excel in their fields and can help them meet their fullest potential. Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg. OCR should promptly investigate Kingston City School Districts, as well as any others who’ve created DEI departments in the K-12 space,” Caroline Moore, vice president of PDE, told Townhall
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2024/06/04/pde-exclusive-n2639928
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‘Gender Inclusion’ Policy in Minneapolis Schools Allows Boys in Girls’ Restrooms, Locker Rooms
Minneapolis Public Schools passed a new “Gender Inclusion” policy allowing boys who identify as girls to share restrooms, locker rooms, and overnight-trip hotel rooms with females.
The School Board unanimously adopted a policy stating that “gender-expansive” students can use facilities and participate in programs consistent with their “gender identity” at an April 23 meeting reviewed by The Daily Signal.
The Minnesota district stated priorities in determining transgender students’ preferred facilities are maximizing the transgender students’ “social integration” and “comfort,” and “minimizing stigmatization,” rather than protecting the safety of female students in restrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities.
The district, comprising 97 schools and more than 36,000 students, will “in no case” require transgender students to use a restroom or locker room that conflicts with the gender they identify with, according to the policy.
“Transgender” is defined as “people whose gender identity or expression is different from that traditionally associated with an assigned sex at birth” in the resolution.
Minneapolis Public Schools will never require a transgender student to use a single-stall restroom, meaning any boy who identifies as a girl can enter the girls’ restroom. The district will work with “transgender and gender-expansive student[s] to determine which restrooms are most comfortable for the student.”
Minneapolis Public Schools did not respond to The Daily Signal’s questions about whether it would take any measures to protect the safety of girls in bathrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-segregated spaces.
This comes after a Virginia judge found a transgender-identifying biological male guilty of sexually assaulting a girl in a girls’ restroom in Loudoun County in 2021.
Girls could have to share a bedroom with a male on overnight school trips under the new policy.
“All students shall be permitted to participate in all school trips in a manner that corresponds with their gender identity,” the policy says. “In planning school trips, staff is expected to assess the student’s needs in collaboration with the student and/or the student’s parent(s)/guardian(s) and make reasonable efforts to provide an acceptable accommodation to the student.”
Students can also participate in physical education classes, health classes, and school sports in accordance with their preferred gender identity, though biological males are dominating girls’ high school sports across the country.
Sophomore Aayden Gallagher, who identifies as female, beat seven girls in the 200-meter dash at an Oregon state meet on May 18. Lizzy Cohen Bidwell, a Connecticut resident whose name at birth was Lucas, qualified in mid-March for the national meet by taking first place in the girls’ high jump in a regional competition.
The purpose of the so-called Gender Inclusion policy is to address the “inequities some students, including intersex, transgender, two-spirit, gender expansive, non-binary, and gender-questioning students, confront as they navigate a system designed using a gender binary model,” according to the resolution.
“The students and staff of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) deserve respectful and inclusive learning environments that value students’ gender identity and gender expression,” the policy reads.
That policy defines “gender expansive” as an “umbrella term that is used to describe individuals whose gender expression, gender identity, or gender role is fluid and/or may differ from gender norms associated with their sex assigned at birth.”
A student “in any grade” who requests to be referred to by a name or gender different from his legal ones has “the right to be referred to at school by a name and pronouns that align with their gender identity” in the district after the policy’s adoption.
Gender is a social construct, according to the district’s policy, while “gender identity” is a person’s “sense or psychological knowledge” of their gender, which can differ from “sex or gender assigned at birth.”
The district’s superintendent, Ed Graff, is responsible for providing training on the “Gender Inclusion” policy and establishing additional regulations. He did not respond to the question of whether he would promulgate a rule to protect girls from the potential dangers associated with males sharing their private spaces.
“It is disappointing, but not surprising, to see the Minneapolis School Board’s activism and willingness to put the rights and safety of some students over others in order to advance a very narrow social agenda,” Minnesota homeschooling mother of three and founder of the Minnesota Parents Alliance Cristine Trooien told The Daily Signal.
The district already compromises student and teacher safety with its “ideologically driven approach to addressing student conduct, discipline, and incident reporting,” she said.
“Unfortunately for the families they serve, [Minneapolis Public Schools are] getting very little right when it comes to policymaking. Their misguided priorities, irresponsible decisions, and unaccountable leadership [have] resulted in dramatic declines in achievement and skyrocketing absenteeism, violence, and disorder in the buildings, as well as a $115 million deficit,” Trooien said.
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Gina Rinehart steps in to help worried parents fight back against 'woke' nonsense being taught at elite girls' school
Australia's richest person Gina Rinehart is supporting parents of students at an elite all girls' school who are fighting against 'woke' gender ideology.
The billionaire has offered her encouragement after St Hilda's Anglican School for Girls in Perth introduced 'anti-Australian propaganda' that parents are concerned is being forced upon students.
Concerns came to a head after two teachers were appointed this year - one transgender and one non-binary.
Ms Rinehart, who is among four generations of her family to attend the prestigious college, starting with her mother Hope Nicholas, graduated from the Anglican school more than 50 years ago.
The mining magnate told Sky News she had met with the head of Moms of America, who are fighting the same ideologies in classrooms in the United States.
'I understand a rough estimate is that woke, anti-Australia and similar propaganda takes up approximately one-third of the school curriculums in Australia,' Ms Rinehart said.
'So yes, if you are concerned about your children and grandchildren being exposed to such things instead of facts, logic, and reason, it's time to have a Mums for Australia start and flourish here.'
Ms Rinehart told the news outlet that although it's not easy to stand up, people need to consider speaking up 'for the sake of our children and grandchildren'.
One parent said the situation at the school had become a 'clash of values' between the 'traditional' beliefs in the school community, and principal Fiona Johnston's more 'progressive' stance.
The parents also pointed to a lack of discussion and consultation between themselves and the school.
Among issues was a Pride assembly last year, and gender identity lessons which showed slides telling the students 'having a penis doesn't mean you have to perform the role of a man… Having a vulva doesn't necessarily mean you're a woman and want to use women's spaces like bathrooms'.
Another slide showed a 'Sexuality Matching Game' which used the terms 'transgender' and 'cisgender'.
It is understood a classroom was admonished after one student used the term 'Sir' instead of 'Miss' for one teacher.
Independent think tank Women's Forum Australia CEO Rachel Wong contacted the school after speaking to worried parents.
'Another teacher who identifies as non-binary… the girls are meant to refer to as Mx. These poor, young girls are terrified of being accused of bigotry for potentially misgendering,' she said.
St Hilda's Anglican School for Girls told Sky News it is proud about 'providing an inclusive and progressive' environment.
The school also noted they are an equal opportunity employer and do not judge people based on their beliefs or sexuality.
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4 June, 2024
Pride Month in Canada Starts With School Walk-Outs, ‘Pray-Ins,’ Flags Flying
Pride? I have never understood why anybody would be proud of inserting their appendage into another guy's rear orifice
As many schools across Canada began flying the Pride flag on June 3 and scheduling various events for Pride Month in June, some parents opted to keep their children home in protest.
The flag isn’t about “inclusion” as some frame it to be, said Josie Luetke of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), a socially conservative group that organized school walk-outs. “It comes with a very controversial ideology,” she told The Epoch Times.
That ideology, she said, goes against Christian beliefs about how God created man and woman. It teaches about a spectrum of genders, and has children discuss their sexuality and gender at a young age. Ms. Luetke said she expects many Muslims also kept their children home, as happened during last year’s walk-out.
“At the very least, the pride flag confuses a lot of students,” she said. Catholic schools in particular should not hold Pride events or fly Pride flags, she said, though many do.
Ms. Luetke attended a CLC-organized “pray-in” at the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) headquarters on June 3. This and other pray-ins across Ontario were held in conjunction with the school walk-outs nationwide.
“It’s important to let everyone know within our Catholic schools that they’re welcome, that they’re loved, and that they’re cared for,” said Mr. Campbell, who is an assistant professor of education at the University of Toronto.
“The Pride flag, the rainbow flag, represents love and inclusion. Well, I know you know what the opposite to that is. The opposite to that is hatred and the opposite to that is making people feel unsafe,” he said.
In 2019, TCDSB first voted to include “gender identity” protections in its code of conduct. At the time, the Archdiocese of Toronto spoke out against such policy.
“We do not accept the view of the human person which underlies this terminology, since that view is not compatible with our faith,” the Archdiocese said. In an interview last year with Argentine newspaper La Nación, Pope Francis said that “gender ideology” is “dangerous.”
CLC also held a pray-in at the Archdiocese of Toronto.
Various parental rights groups across Canada urged parents to keep children home on June 3. A group called Educating Minds; Parents of Waterloo Region (EMPOWR) in Ontario highlighted Pride Month activities suggested to teachers by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.
One suggestion was that teachers read books aloud to their classes about gender and sexuality. One suggested book is “10,000 Dresses” by Marcus Ewert. It’s a story about a boy who identifies as a girl and dreams of wearing extravagant dresses.
Ms. Luetke estimated about 100 participants province-wide for the pray-ins. The walk-outs involved parents keeping their children home from school, and the number of participants may only become clear as absence rates at schools are reported in the coming months.
Last year, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board saw a major drop in attendance on June 1, the day of the national walk-out. Board spokesperson Darcy Knoll told The Epoch Times at the time that two schools in the board had up to 60 percent of their students absent, and nine other schools had 40 percent or more absent. Some absences were attributed by parents to Pride events and some to other reasons, such as wanting an extra long weekend ahead of a PA day on June 2.
In at least two schools last year—one in Edmonton and one in Windsor, Ont.—teachers allegedly scolded Muslim students for not attending Pride events.
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Columbia University alumnus donates $260 million to Israeli university in major snub of his alma mater
A Columbia grad who was 'active in World War II' has donated $260 million to Israel's Bar-Ilan University.
The anonymous donor's offering is the largest-ever gift received by the institution, and as the board chair of American Jewish University, Harold Masor, said he and his wife Amy will also donate $4.5 million to the LA-set private school.
Both gifts were made in the face of fierce pro-Palestine processions that have surfaced across the US over the past several months.
The donation to the Israeli school, again, was made by an unknown figure, who along with the sum, offered only the two identifying factors as to whom he may be.
It will go toward advancements in technology, specifically science research, as person responsible made a point to state he attended the school that has surfaced as a focal point in discourse surrounding the current conflict.
'The donor, a man of broad academic education, believed that the development of Israel’s technological resilience relies primarily on breakthrough science,' Bar-Ilan University President Arie Zaban announced Monday at a board meeting.
'The donor, a man of broad academic education, believed that the development of Israel’s technological resilience relies primarily on breakthrough science,' the 79-year-old Israeli continued.
'During his visits to Israel, he recognized the significant impact Bar-Ilan University has made in key areas thanks to its science-based infrastructure and deep connections to all sectors of Israeli society.
'This gift will be invested in the development of Deep Tech sciences and has the potential to positively influence the future of Israel and humanity.'
The university added in a statement that the donation will be used to recruit researchers seasoned in fields such as 'energy, environment, cryptography, bio-convergence, quantum, AI, and natural language processing,'
'Bar-Ilan will take the lead in building advanced research laboratories,' it continued.
'[It will support] advanced degree students, and creating state-of-the-art innovation hubs.'
Bar-Ilan is one of the largest public research universities in Israel, with some 19,000 students.
Not only did the donor make a point to tell onlookers he fought in a conflict entrenched in antisemitism, but he also reiterated how he graduated from Columbia.
'It’s a smack in the face of Columbia. It’s just the beginning,' added political Hank Sheinkopf, offering the insight to the famously pro Israel New York Post.
The school in Upper Manhattan, meanwhile, has become a focal point of student unrest seen across the US, and the donation appears to indicate dismay over this.
Moreover, The Supreme Leader of Iran - whose Hezbollah has long been viewed as a threat to Israel - thanked US college students for joining his country's 'resistance' movement against Israel with their recent spate of campus protests,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote on X later last week. 'Dear university students in the United States of America, you are standing on the right side of history.'
'You have now formed a branch of the Resistance Front and have begun an honorable struggle in the face of your government's ruthless pressure - which openly supports Zionists.'
In an open letter published the next day, the radical Islamist again addressed US students, this time to say: 'This is an expression of our empathy and solidarity with you. As the page of history is turning, you are standing on the right side of it.'
The Ayatollah's shocking endorsement stunned many, considering Supreme Leader's abhorrent human rights track record.
Just this month, Iran executed three men who participated in anti-government protests, adding to the four who have already been hanged since late last year as part of the regime's response to demonstrations against the Islamic Republic.
Also this month, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, 70, was met with a a mix of cheers and boos before flag-waving students marched out of the Wallace Wade Stadium event on Sunday.
They were opposed to Seinfeld appearing due to his pro-Israel views, after which The North Carolina school issued a statement to DailyMail.com in the aftermath.
'We’re excited and delighted for the Class of 2024 and their families,' Frank Tramble, vice president for marketing, communications and public affairs at Duke said.
'We understand the depth of feeling in our community, and as we have all year, we respect the right of everyone at Duke to express their views peacefully, without preventing graduates and their families from celebrating their achievement.'
A few days earlier, President Joe Biden compared the actions of Hamas to those of the Nazis and condemned the 'ferocious surge of antisemitism' rising up around America.
'I have not forgotten, nor have you, and we will not forget,' the president said during remarks at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.
'As Jews around the world still cope with the atrocities and trauma of that day and its aftermath, we've seen a ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world,' he noted.
Biden's speech on Capitol Hill on Tuesday came as he tries to balance his support for Israel's war with concern for the citizens of Gaza and amid tension in his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netnayahu.
He spoke as Israel sent tanks into Rafah and took control of the Gaza side of a crossing to Egypt that is a major conduit for humanitarian aid, and as college campuses continue to be rocked by pro-Palestinian protests,
Some - including Columbia - have cancelled commencements and entire graduations, with the Ivy league school electing to do the latter in May
The president, in a forceful speech greeted with several rounds of applause, vowed to support Israel's right to exist 'even when we disagree.'
He began his remarks by tracing the rise of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany in 1933, noting the dictator rose to 'power by rekindling one of the world's oldest forms of prejudice and hate- antisemitism' through propaganda and economic hardship.
'We recommit to heading the lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history, revitalize and realize the responsibility of never again,' he noted.
And, he pointed out, 'the truth is, we're at risk of people not knowing the truth.'
'Now, here we are not 75. years later, but just seven and a half months later,' he added in reference to the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas - the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust
'People are already forgetting - already forgetting - that Hamas unleashed this terror,' he said and vowed: 'I have not forgotten nor have you. And we will not forget.'
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Australian school doubled its high achievers in exams. Now its techniques are spreading
Note "explicit instruction". Old ways work best
Just over a decade ago, Elise Mountford was teaching a routine year 6 maths class when she asked one of her students to solve a simple equation.
“He became so frustrated at not being able to do the task he knocked over a chair and stormed out of the room. That moment really hit home for me. This student had been at our school for years, but he didn’t feel capable and wasn’t engaged in learning,” she recalls.
Mountford was a teacher at Charlestown South Public at the time, a small public primary school in Lake Macquarie, south of Newcastle.
“The teachers knew something wasn’t working. The school was underachieving and was targeted by the department for reading support. We were putting in huge effort, we cared so much, but it wasn’t paying off,” she says. “We also had a school culture problem where students were disengaged.”
The turning point came in 2015 when Charlestown’s staff and then-principal, Colin Johnson, shifted the school to an explicit teaching model based on the instruction method used at south-east Melbourne private school Haileybury College.
Enrolments increased, and the school later became famed for achieving a dramatic turnaround in maths and reading results. In the five years to 2021, the school lifted its proportion of students in the top two NAPLAN bands from 34 to 79 per cent. Several years ago, it outperformed selective private school Sydney Grammar in year 3 writing.
“We brought in ‘warm-up’ sessions at the start of class and reviews at the end [of lessons] that checked students’ knowledge of concepts. Students became so much more engaged,” Mountford says. “We had been trapped in this cycle of needing to reteach all the time. And that disappeared.”
The change in approach was backed by research into cognitive load theory and a 2014 NSW Education Department analysis that showed students who experienced explicit teaching outperformed those who did not.
Mountford says teachers gave students clear instructions and broke down information into bite-sized chunks to avoid children quickly forgetting what they had been taught. Teachers check for understanding constantly to ensure students master a topic before moving to independent or inquiry learning, she says.
While overhauling the teaching approach, the school also surveyed parents about what they wanted in a bid to boost enrolments. “I spent mornings at the front gate, started a school band, and brought in more sport too,” Johnson says. “We changed the expectations of the community.”
Principles of a maths lesson under this teaching model:
Students review previously taught topics at the start of lessons in daily review sessions
New concepts and content are taught explicitly first
Maths topics are ordered so students gradually build understanding
Students work with teachers to master concepts before completing independent work
Lessons change and adapt according to students’ needs
Teachers regularly check for understanding during the class
Charlestown South is now among 30 public primary schools in the Newcastle, Central Coast and Hawksbury regions that have formed a grassroots group known as the Effective and Systematic Teaching Network (EAST) to share lesson plans, resources and hold professional learning sessions for teachers and school leaders.
“It started with Charlestown South, and [Central Coast school] Blue Haven Public, and over a few years we’ve started connecting with other schools that are teaching in a similar way,” Mountford says.
When the new NSW maths syllabus was released in 2022, Mountford and a group of teachers in the EAST network spent six months writing week-by-week lesson plans schools could use alongside the kindergarten to year 6 maths curriculum.
“We wanted to help other schools prepare for the new syllabus. It means teachers don’t need to create lessons from scratch each day, or make up questions the night before,” she says.
The lesson materials form a guide for teachers on each topic – such as division, volume or measurement. “They are fast-paced and interactive, but flexible too. Students are showing the teacher how they are working out problems as they go.”
Ian Short, principal at Vardys Road Public in north-west Sydney, which is part of the network, said the maths program and lesson outlines had helped ease teachers’ workload.
“Studies have been done on how much time can be saved by sharing curriculum resources. When teachers are doing it alone, the workload can be insurmountable,” Short says.
In 2022, the Grattan Institute suggested all Australian schools adopt a whole-school approach to curriculum planning, with a survey showing teachers are often planning on their own and regularly use YouTube and Facebook to source lesson ideas or materials.
Windsor South Public principal Belinda Bristol, whose school is also part of the network, says embedding daily reviews in maths and literacy lessons in all grades was key in stopping students falling behind.
“In the past, children would go away on holiday and forget everything. Now, we are making sure kids aren’t slipping through the cracks,” Bristol says.
Mountford, now deputy principal at Glendore Public in Maryland, said the EAST network’s maths lesson plans allowed teachers to be “highly responsive to students, but it’s still flexible for the teachers and takes the pressure off with preparation”.
“Once students have very deep understanding of the concepts, the teachers can then give them more opportunities for independent learning and problem-solving,” she says.
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3 June, 2024
Another University Held Segregated Graduation Celebrations
The University of Nevada was added to the list of universities who offered segregated graduation ceremonies this year.
According to Campus Reform, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas hosted five “affinity” celebrations.
From May 7 to May 10, the Office of Student Diversity Programs (SDP) reportedly organized graduation celebrations for Asian and Pacific American, “LatinX”, Native American, African American, and LGBTQ+ students. The goal was to celebrate students with diverse backgrounds and recognize their achievements.
“We strive to serve a diverse student population, elevating and affirming their identities through an intersectional framework that champions student success,” the SDP said in their mission statement.
The University of Nevada, Reno also hosted “affinity” celebrations from May 8 to May 13, Campus Reform reported.
“By recognizing and honoring different cultural traditions and themes, the celebrations create spaces where students can feel proud of their heritage and share it with others,” Reno Student Supervisor Emily Thao-Singh said in a campus statement. “These celebrations help foster a sense of belonging and inclusivity for students of diverse backgrounds.”
The Multicultural Center is in charge of the graduation celebrations in Reno and claimed to continue to produce the celebrations in the future due to its rise in “demand” and “popularity”.
For years, other schools have offered “affinity” celebrations for specific students. For instance, the Daily Wire reported that in 2021, Columbia University began to host segregated graduation celebrations.
The Daily Wire also said, in April, “Dirty Jobs” Host Mike Rowe ridiculed Harvard University’s use of "affinity" celebrations.
“I’m old enough to remember when this was called ‘segregation,’” Rowe said. “At Harvard, they call it ‘affinity.’ To be fair, Harvard’s website says these celebrations are not in lieu of the official graduation, and open to all students who pre-register. But the celebrations themselves are clearly labeled, and the invitees are hard to misconstrue.”
Universities claim "affinity" graduation celebrations are not graduation ceremonies; however, they are structured similarly.
At UNLA, graduating seniors were invited to sign up for the "affinity" celebrations on their school Involvement Center website. UNLA told students they were able to "invite up to 6 guests." The university also told students they would be given a "stole to wear at commencement as part of the ceremony."
By implementing "affinity" celebrations on campus, the University of Nevada joins other universities who encourage segregation on campus by instigating exclusive graduation "celebrations" for students prior to the actual graduation ceremony.
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America’s education system is a mess, and it’s students who are paying the price
“Math and reading scores for 13-year-olds have hit their lowest scores in decades.” When the recent NAEP long-term trend results for 13-year-olds were published, the reactions were predictable: short pieces in the national press and apologetics in education blogs. COVID-19, we were told, was continuing to cast its long shadow. Despite nearly $200 billion in emergency federal spending on K–12 schooling, students are doing worse than a decade ago, and lower-performing students are today less capable of doing math than they were thirty-five years ago.
What is striking has been the pervasive weariness evident in the commentaries on the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The news was heralded as “alarming,” “terrifying,” and “tragic.” As for responses? At the end of his piece on the results, AEI’s Nat Malkus concludes that “nothing less than Herculean efforts will make up for such shortfalls”—but on just what those efforts should be, he was silent. Writing for The 74, political scientist Vladimir Kogan concludes that “the new federal data send a clear message that we must do better”—but, once again, nothing about how.
Other responses have been predictable. In her blog, Diane Ravitch wrote: “Will politicians whip up a panicked response and demand more of what is already failing, like charter schools, vouchers, high-stakes testing, and Cybercharters? or [sic.] will they invest in reduced class sizes and higher teacher pay?” Her response points to a familiar split in the education policy community: On the one hand, the defenders of public education blame chronic underfunding of schools and of teacher salaries in particular, and an overreliance on teaching to the test. On the other, their conservative critics point to lack of school choice, poor teacher preparation programs, and (more recently) the woke invasion of classrooms.
Both sides are partially correct, of course: In multiple states, a heavy reliance on local property taxes to pay for education creates regressive per-pupil funding, meaning that more dollars go to the education of more affluent students. Teacher preparation still relies too much on textbook theory instead of clinical practice (a vital switch the medical profession made a century ago). Tests, especially in reading, are poorly designed (e.g., “Hamlet was confused because… A, B, C or D—circle the right response”). Too many parents are stuck sending their children to underperforming schools.
But these are just symptoms. Factors beyond the schoolhouse door—the legacy of race-based redlining, the underfunding of health care for the worst off, the lack of support for child care and parental leave, and other social and economic policies—remain hugely impactful. But inside the education system itself, the fundamental cause of poor outcomes is that education policy leaders have eroded the instructional core and designed our education system for failure.
Pre-K is a wild West, with the result that students enter kindergarten with large gaps in their readiness to learn. Children aren’t seriously assessed until they are 8, by which time it’s too late for sustained intervention; the gaps never close. Meanwhile, curricula, tests, and teacher education programs exist in deep silos, creating a fragmented system where teachers aren’t trained to teach the materials their schools use and tests don’t test students’ mastery of those materials (with a tiny exception in Louisiana).
Almost uniquely among advanced industrialized nations, U.S. school systems disconnect testing from student incentives. State tests are used to evaluate schools but are often irrelevant to students: Only eleven states still require high school exit exams for graduation, and there are often alternative pathways for those who fail the test. We don’t link the results of high school exit exams to college admissions—instead, using grade-point averages and tests like the ACT and SAT, which are disconnected from course curricula. Speaking of GPA, we have steadily inflated grades at school and college; We simply call success what was once failure.
We have also created a preferential ranking of subjects. Student achievement in reading and math, and, to a lesser extent, science, get all the attention, while students who are drawn to robotics, graphic design, the arts, environmental science, etc., can’t take high school assessments that count for entry into higher education. At the same time, with a few shining counterexamples, our career and technical learning options are a pale shadow of the world’s best: While Switzerland designs exacting pathways from school to employment with options for a return to higher education, America shunts millions of students into dead-end experiences, where they discover that their CTE has failed to provide an employment-ready credential. Many of these same students end up at community colleges with extraordinarily low graduation rates.
Perhaps in response to two decades of disappointing results, academic achievement itself is increasingly out of fashion. Critical thinking, metacognition, grit and positive mindset, and “21st century skills” are in—competence in mathematics, not so much. It seems to have escaped us that students cannot think critically about nothing in particular; mastery of content is a prerequisite.
The turn away from academics is rocket-propelled by a genuine problem. American teenagers stare at social media on a screen almost nine hours every day, with one result being surging loneliness and depression. Many American school systems have reacted by putting social and emotional learning at the top of the agenda. Few would argue that students shouldn’t be given effective support; putting mental health counselors in large high schools, for example, makes sense. But the pretense that there is a new science of SEL is largely pablum. When you chase it to ground, what it means is that teachers should encourage, not discourage, students. A poor test result calls for more effort, not the conclusion that the child is bad at math. Such wisdom has been available for two thousand years.
To top it all off, the American K–12 education system spends at least $30 billion per year on educational technology with essentially nothing to show for it. As it was for the introduction of radio, then TV, then computers, so it is likely to be for artificial intelligence—the latest great hope to circumvent and supplant effective, inspiring teaching of children by a human being.
As we have sown, so shall we reap. The unique sense of achievement that a student experiences when she or he masters a rigorous skill, digs into deep knowledge, creates a piece of writing or art, completes a challenging science assignment or piece of music—this is all being washed away. We are tired of bad news, and our instinct is now to punish, or at least ignore, the messenger. But our students are desperately the worse for the mess we have made of their schooling.
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University of Sydney professor tells first year students that Hamas' mass rapes on October 7 are 'fake news' and a 'hoax'
This must be a high point of Leftist reality denial but is not a big surprise coming from an Australian Sociology Dept. I taught in one between 1971 and 1983 and all the other teaching staff there were Marxists of one stripe or another.
In this case the lady is a prolific and and successful writer of fiction so it might be that her fictive imagination has run away with her.
She is of South Indian origin so an "anti-colonial" orientation may also have informed her thinking
As I am a graduate of Sydney U, I would be embarrassed if she is allowed to continue teaching there. I believe that theuniversity is "investigating"
First-year university students have been left 'repulsed' after a professor told them mass rapes committed by Hamas during the October 7 attacks were a 'hoax' and 'fake news'.
Sujatha Fernandes, a sociology professor at the University of Sydney, told her class in April that the media had 'distorted' the war, The Australian reports.
'Western media has played the role of an ideological state apparatus by suppressing coverage of the atrocities, peddling fake news,' Professor Fernandes said.
'[The media] promoted hoaxes that Hamas beheaded babies and carried out mass rape, in order to shore up support for Israel, and distorting events.'
The United Nations (UN) has said there were 'reasonable grounds' to believe Hamas carried out mass and gang rapes on October 7.
Professor Fernandes' continued her lecture by alleging Israel had engaged in 'ethnic cleansing, collective punishment and forced starvation', the report also claims.
A number of students, who wished to remain anonymous, said they were shocked by Professor Fernandes' comments.
One said they didn't commit to four years and thousands of dollars' worth of university classes to be taught by lecturers who 'blatantly promote lies and foster an unsafe, threatening environment'.
Another student who identified themselves as Jewish said it reflected a 'rising trend of anti-Semitism' at the university.
They added that it was particularly concerning for a professor to 'deny undeniable proof of the events of October 7, which Hamas proudly filmed themselves doing'.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Professor Fernandes and the University of Sydney for comment.
Pramila Patten, the UN's Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, said they witnessed 'scenes of unspeakable violence perpetrated with shocking brutality'.
Ms Patten said the acts committed on October 7 were 'a catalogue of the most extreme and inhumane forms of killing, torture and other horrors', including sexual violence.
Her team found 'convincing information' that sexual violence had been committed against hostages and those in captivity.
They reached the conclusion came after reviewing over 5,000 photographic images and some 50 hours of footage of the attacks.
However, part of the report also found that at least 'two allegations of sexual violence in kibbutz Be'eri - widely reported in the media - were unfounded'.
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2 June, 2024
America’s Children Are Not Well, and Their Schools Are a Big Part of the Problem
With “Teacher Appreciation Week” now behind us, it’s crucial that we pay close heed to the well-being of the students, and the news is not good. Gen Z-ers and the newest crop—Generation Alpha—are struggling, and schools are the focal point of the problem.
A new report from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation surveyed more than 1,000 Gen Z students between the ages of 12 and 18 and found that just 48% of those enrolled in middle or high school felt motivated to go to school. Only half said they do something interesting in school every day. On a similar note, a new EdChoice survey reveals that 64% of teens said that school is boring, and 30% feel that it is a waste of time.
Many students are venting their unhappiness by regularly ditching school. In fact, an estimated 26% of public school students were considered chronically absent in 2023, up from 15% before the pandemic, per the most recent data compiled by the American Enterprise Institute. Chronic absence is typically defined as missing at least 10% of the school year, or about 18 days, for any reason. AEI Senior Fellow Nat Malkus notes that in 33 of 39 states reporting data, chronic absenteeism rates improved in 2023 but still remained 75% higher than the pre-pandemic baseline.
According to Malkus, chronic absenteeism is the most critical issue in public schools today. It is projected to significantly impede any efforts to recover from problems incurred during the COVID era. The extended school closures mandated by teacher unions, which prevented in-person instruction, have led to unprecedented and long-lasting learning loss for students.
The AEI report further discloses that students from economically disadvantaged families have been disproportionately affected by chronic absenteeism. However, even in the most affluent districts, chronic absenteeism was nearly twice as high in 2023 as in 2019. Interestingly, the duration of school closures did not significantly influence absenteeism rates. In 2023, chronic absenteeism was at 28% for districts that remained closed the longest, only slightly higher than the 25% for districts that reopened the fastest.
Many children who do show up at school are acting out as a result of their unhappiness, anxiety, and boredom. District data show that in Los Angeles, violent incidents rose from 2,315 in the 2018-2019 school year to 4,569 in 2022-2023.
Too many K-12 schools pay no mind to the lack of student learning and, instead, blithely graduate many who have no business getting a degree. One of the consequences of this irresponsible practice is that about 40% of high school graduates who enroll in college don’t complete their coursework, according to a new report from the National Center for Education Statistics.
The increasing disinterest in post-K-12 education is showing itself in the number of colleges that are shutting down. In fact, per the Hechinger Report, about one college per week on average so far this year has announced that it will close or merge, up from a little more than two a month last year.
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Beware the University of California’s Parent Ploy. It aims to discriminate on the basis of status
The University of California at San Diego is a DEI stronghold, and things are about to get worse. Starting next year, students who choose “selective” majors such as computer science, bioengineering, and aerospace engineering—high achievers, in other words—will face more discrimination. As civil rights attorney James Breslo explains, the “primary determiner” for admission to these programs “will be the status of the students’ parents.”
For selective majors, UCSD “awards one point each for having a 3.0 GPA or higher in the major screening courses; California residency; Pell Grant eligibility; and first-generation college status (as determined by information received at the time of initial admission to UC San Diego).” The University of California admits the top tier of the state’s high-school students, so a 3.0 GPA is no problem. On the other hand, as Breslo notes, “half of the criteria is based upon the student’s parents,” so their income, college record, and so forth is the determining factor, not the grades and aptitudes of the student.
“The reason for the new policy is pretty obvious,” contends the attorney. “It will advantage black and Latino students, and disadvantage white and Asians,” the latter a group “already overrepresented” on campus. Breslo also sees the move as an end-run around the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which specifically addressed discrimination against Asians. As UC officials have forgotten, California has already addressed discrimination against all students.
As Breslo recalls, “In 1996, Californians voted, 55 to 45 percent, to ban the use of affirmative action in admissions to state schools and in state employment.” The attorney is right about the numbers but somewhat misleading on the issue.
The UC system had discriminated on the basis of race for decades, as demonstrated in the landmark case of Allan Bakke. The California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), Proposition 209 on the November 1996 ballot, banned “racial preferences” in state college admissions, employment, and contracting. Schools could still take affirmative action to help students on an economic basis but could no longer discriminate on the basis of race and ethnicity.
In 2010, the state Supreme Court upheld the measure, and, as Hoover Institution scholar Thomas Sowell notes in Intellectuals and Race, the number of African-American and Hispanic students graduating from the UC system went up, including a 55 percent increase in those graduating in four years with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. Critics still claimed that the civil rights initiative somehow harmed “diversity,” which often escapes definition.
As college bosses see it, if the UC system does not reflect the ethnic proportions of the population, the reason must be deliberate discrimination, remedied only by the type of racial preferences imposed before 1996. The problem is that proportionality dogma is not found in the U.S. or California constitutions, in state law, or in reality. As Sowell has often noted, nowhere in society are people found in their proportions in the population at large.
Diversity dogma fails to account for personal differences, effort, and choice. No group is “overrepresented” at the University of California or anywhere else, and the more high achievers the better. The DEI bureaucrats serve no purpose, and the UCSD parent ploy is another violation of the California Civil Rights Initiative, which is state law.
In 2020, an axis of politicians and government bureaucrats tried to repeal CCRI through Proposition 16. The people kept it in place by a margin of 57.3 to 42.77, as Breslo notes, an even wider margin than 1996’s. For parents, students, and taxpayers across the country, the lessons should be clear.
Beware of back-door discrimination schemes such as California’s parent ploy. Student achievement, and nothing else, should be the primary determiner for so-called selective majors. Raise standards in K–12, keep the SAT, and never confuse the people of California with the state’s woke ruling class.
To maintain civil rights and boost student achievement, get a measure like the original California Civil Rights Initiative before the voters of your state
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14937
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New York Considers Smartphone Ban in Schools, Citing Student Mental Health Concerns
Gov. Kathy Hochul is mulling how to get smartphones out of New York schools as city and state officials grapple with the potential harmful effects of social media and other online platforms on youth mental health.
This week, Hochul said smartphones should not be available to students during the school day, adding that she is exploring ways to make that happen next year. The governor and other city and state officials say social media platforms are designed to be addictive, harm young people’s mental health, and create avenues for bullying.
“They’re living in this dark place where there’s this FOMO — fear of missing out — that if they put down their device for one second, that someone might be saying something about them, or they’ve got to respond to something,” Hochul told reporters on Tuesday. “This is how addictive it is. We have to liberate them from this. We have to just draw a line now and say, ‘No. Enough is enough.’”
The governor has added she understands parent concerns over maintaining a line of communication with their children during the school day and indicated the state may consider action that solely affects the use of smartphones.
“I’m okay if you have a flip phone,” she said during a Thursday appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “But you don’t have to be in the world of social media throughout the day. So, let’s talk about that for New York.”
A spokesperson for Hochul confirmed she intends to engage with teachers, families, and others about potential legislative action for the next session, which begins in January 2025. But officials added there was currently no formal legislative proposal.
Julie Scelfo, founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction, said potential legislation by the governor would represent “an important step toward keeping addictive technology out of the classroom and ensuring school hours remain devoted to education and in-person social interaction.”
“Smartphones have no place in the classroom,” she said in an emailed statement. “Educators, social workers and parents understand that the presence of phones during the school day impedes students’ social, emotional and academic growth and further fuels the current youth mental health crisis.”
In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly blamed social media companies for the nation’s ongoing youth mental health crisis. Earlier this year, the city joined hundreds of other municipalities in filing a lawsuit against five leading social media companies.
Though the city’s schools have not adopted a system-wide policy on cellphones, schools Chancellor David Banks said officials are continuing to pay attention to the issue. While some public schools require students to turn in phones at the start of the school day, others employ more relaxed policies.
“These are all complicated issues, and we have not made any decision,” Banks said at a Thursday press briefing. “In light of what the governor just said, I think it’s incumbent upon us to absolutely start exploring these issues.
“The kids are on these phones 24 hours a day, and there’s all kinds of research that’s coming in and talking about all the negative impacts that it is having on them,” he added. “We can’t control what happens once they’re home … but maybe six to eight hours out of the day, we might have a little bit more control.”
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/05/hochul-new-york-smartphone-ban-schools-student-mental-health/
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A Slush Fund for Radical Protesters?
The profusion of identical green tents at this spring’s anti-Israel protests struck many as odd. “Why is everybody’s tent the same?,” asked New York mayor Eric Adams. Like others, the mayor suspected “a well-concerted organizing effort” driving the protests. More recent reporting shows a concerted push behind the Gaza protest movement. But it is not as simple as a single organization secretly rallying protesters or buying tents. Instead, the movement’s most determined activists represent a network of loosely linked far-left groups. Some are openly affiliated with well-known progressive nonprofits; others work in the shadows.
The movement also draws on diverse but generous sources of financial backing. Those funding streams may soon be augmented by the federal government. As I chronicled last year in a Manhattan Institute report, “The Big Squeeze: How Biden’s Environmental Justice Agenda Hurts the Economy and the Environment,” the administration’s massive program of environmental justice grants seems designed to prioritize the funding of highly ideological local groups. The Inflation Reduction Act, for example, earmarks $3 billion for “environmental and climate justice block grants” intended for local nonprofits. Today, hundreds of far-left political groups include language about environmental issues and “climate justice” in their mission statements. If just a fraction of planned grants flows to such groups, the effect will be a gusher of new funding for radical causes.
As the Gaza protests spread across U.S. college campuses, many observers noted an eerie uniformity among them. From one campus to the next, protesters operated in disciplined cadres, keeping their faces covered and using identical rote phrases as they refused to talk with reporters. The Atlantic noted the strangeness of seeing elite college students “chanting like automatons.” Students held up keffiyeh scarves or umbrellas to block the view of prying cameras and linked arms to halt the movements of outsiders. At Columbia University and elsewhere, protesters formed “liberated zones,” from which “Zionists” were excluded. Around the edges of the encampments, the more militaristic activists donned helmets and goggles and carried crude weapons, apparently eager to mix it up with police or counter-protesters. We’ve seen these tactics before—notably during the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, when full-time agitators helped ignite riots, set up a police-free (and violence-plagued) zone in Seattle, and laid nightly siege to Portland, Oregon’s federal courthouse.
In a remarkable work of reporting, Park MacDougald recently traced the tangled roots of organizations backing pro-jihad protests, both on and off campuses. These include Antifa and other networks of anonymous anarchists, along with “various communist and Marxist-Leninist groups, including the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and the International ANSWER coalition,” MacDougald writes. Higher up the food chain, we find groups openly supported by America’s growing class of super-rich tech execs or the anti-capitalist heirs of great fortunes. For example, retired tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, who is married to Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, funds The People’s Forum, a lavish Manhattan resource center for far-left groups. As the Columbia protests intensified, the center urged members to head uptown to “support our students.” Following the money trail of other protest groups, MacDougald finds connections to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and—surprising no one—the George Soros-backed Tides Foundation.
Of course, the current wave of anti-Israel protests also involves alliances with pro-Hamas organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine. Last November, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies testified to the House Ways and Means Committee that SJP and similar groups have deep ties to global terrorist organizations, including Hamas.
For many keffiyeh-wearing protestors, however, a recently professed concern for Palestinians is just the latest in a long list of causes they believe justify taking over streets and college quads. In Unherd, Mary Harrington dubs this medley of political beliefs the “omnicause,” writing that “all contemporary radical causes seem somehow to have been absorbed into one.” Today’s leftist activists share an interlocking worldview that sees racism, income inequality, trans intolerance, climate change, alleged police violence, and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts all as products of capitalism and “colonialism.” Therefore, the stated rationale for any individual protest is a stand-in for the real battle: attacking Western society and its institutions.
In the U.S., this type of general-purpose uprising goes back at least to the riots at the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. In those protests, mainstream liberal factions—including labor unions and environmentalists—were joined by “black bloc” anarchists and other radicals eager to engage in “direct action” against police. That pattern—relatively moderate demonstrators providing a friendly envelope for hard-core disruptors—formed the template for many later protests: the Occupy Wall Street encampments in 2011, demonstrations following the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, 2016’s Standing Rock anti-pipeline movement, and of course, the calamitous summer of 2020.
These uprisings were not entirely spontaneous. In some cases, activists spend months planning mass actions—for example, against economic summits or political conventions—and can recruit street fighters from across the country. In others, an event, such as George Floyd’s death, sparks popular protests involving neophyte demonstrators. Those attract far-left activists, who swoop in to organize and expand the struggle, often tilting it toward more radical action.
That has certainly been the case at the college Gaza-paloozas. At Columbia, the New York Times spotted a woman old enough to be a student’s grandmother in the thick of the action as protesters barricaded that school’s Hamilton Hall. The woman was 63-year-old Lisa Fithian, a lifetime activist, who Portland’s alternative weekly Street Roots approvingly calls “a trainer of mass rebellion.” A counter-protester trying to block the pro-Hamas demonstrators told NBC News, “She was right in the middle of it, instructing them how to better set up the barriers.” Fithian told the Times she’d been invited to train students in protest safety and “general logistics.” She claims to have taken part in almost every major U.S. protest movement going back to the 1999 “Battle in Seattle.”
America’s radical network has plenty of Lisa Fithians, with the time and resources to travel the country educating newcomers about the “logistics” of disruptive protests. And these activists appear to have played key roles in the college occupations. The New York City Police Department says nearly half the demonstrators arrested on the Columbia and City University of New York (CUNY) campuses on April 30 were not affiliated with the schools. One hooded Hamilton Hall occupier—photographed scuffling with a Columbia custodian before getting arrested—turned out to be 40-year-old James Carlson, heir to a large advertising fortune. According to the New York Post, Carlson lives in a $2.3 million Park Slope townhouse and has a long rap sheet. For example, in 2005, he was arrested in San Francisco during the violent “West Coast Anti-Capitalist Mobilization and March Against the G8.” (Those charges were dropped.)
For a quarter-century now, Antifa and other anarchist networks have worked to refine tactics and share lessons following each major action. At Columbia, UCLA, and other schools, authorities found printouts of a “Do-It Yourself Occupation Guide” and similar documents. The young campus radicals are eager to learn from their more experienced elders. And, like the high-achieving students they are, they follow directions carefully. MacDougald asked Kyle Shideler, the director for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, about the mystery of the identical tents. There was no need for a central group to distribute hundreds of tents, Shideler said. Instead, “the organizers told [students] to buy a tent, and sent around a Google Doc with a link to that specific tent on Amazon. So they all went out and bought the same tent.”
In other words, America’s radical class has gotten very skilled at recruiting and instructing new activists—even from among the ranks of elite college students with a good deal to lose. How much more could this movement accomplish with hundreds of millions in federal dollars flooding activist groups around the country?
https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-slush-fund-for-radical-protesters
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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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