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30 March, 2022
Education Freedom--the Civil Rights Issue of our Time
Education is free. Freedom of education shall be enjoyed under the condition fixed by law and under the supreme control of the state. -- Karl Marx
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. -- Adolph Hitler
“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” --Democrat candidate for Governor Terry McAuliffe
Perhaps you remember the song "Teach the Children" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. In the perspective of the progressive socialist left the word 'teach' is replaced with 'indoctrinate'. I find it interesting that the first person to introduce the idea of state control of education was one Karl Marx. With the rise of power of the leftist teachers’ unions we are witnessing the manifestation of one of Marx's fundamental planks as written in his book, The Communist Manifesto.
Our children are being forcibly indoctrinated in the philosophy of cultural Marxism masquerading under the title of Critical Race Theory. It appears that the current Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson lied about her knowledge and understanding of Critical Race Theory (CRT) at the school for which she serves as a Board of Trustee, Georgetown Day School. I tend to believe that such would disqualify her from being considered for a position on the highest court in the country. No, not her support of CRT, but lying about it.
We are watching history being redefined by the progressive socialist left, such as America was not founded on July 4th 1776, but rather in 1619. How could such an absurd assertion be taken seriously, certainly be allowed to have any credence in the realm of academic study?
I reside in Texas, and one would think that the education system would be great here, but that is not the case. Texas ranks near the bottom of education in America. In Texas nearly 67% of 4th graders cannot read at grade level.
Instead, kids in Texas, such as in the Austin Independent School District (ISD) are having LGBTQI+ (I think I got all the letters right) pride celebrations and parades along with instruction. As well, the kids are being told they should not share this with their parents, which harkens back to Terry McAuliffe's comment.
Just recently we had two major universities in Texas, University of Texas and Texas A&M University have their faculty senate vote overwhelmingly, to "teach" Critical Race Theory on their campuses. In essence, the faculty has decided to proliferate cultural Marxism on a state funded college campus.
At the University of North Texas, a father who is fighting to protect his young son from being transitioned by way of puberty blockers and hormonal therapies was shouted down and cursed at by leftist students. I actually thought a college campus was a place for diversity of opinions for the purpose of furthering education.
As well, in Texas, and all over America, parents are finding very questionable, highly sexual, books in school libraries. When parents step in to protect their children, leftists call them "extremists" or even “domestic terrorists.” Perhaps the best unintended consequence of the COVID shutdowns was that parents finally saw what was happening in our schools, and they were appalled. The movement to empower parents and protect children is growing, as can be seen by the attention around the movie “The Mind Polluters.”
Leftist elected officials and the teachers’ unions are allowing children to be abused by this indoctrination even as they insist on insidious masking mandates that further stunt their social development.
We must reassert educational freedom and parental choice in America, this is the new civil rights battlefield. My very own parents made the decision about my early education realizing that a good quality education unlocks the doors to equality of opportunity. If we continue down this current path we lessen the opportunities for our children, but we increase the ability for others to determine their outcomes. If taxpayers, parents, are the ones funding public education, then they are the investors and have a definitive interest in their return on investment.
The time is upon us to take back control of education in America; it is not the realm of the State. It does not exist for the control of the progressive socialists and Marxists. Education exists to unleash our freedom of conscience and enable us to be critical thinkers and productive members of the American society...not mindless lemmings.
If Americans are to Live Free, then we must reestablish educational freedom for the sake of our future generations. If we fail, then the sage wisdom of Ronald Reagan could come true, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."
We pass on freedom by teaching children it as a core foundation of our country rooted in our founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution--not by holding LGBTQI+ parades and advancing gender dysphoria while attacking parents.
Steadfast and Loyal!
https://townhall.com/columnists/allenwest/2022/03/29/education-freedomthe-civil-rights-issue-of-our-time-n2605167
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A NJ University Will Offer a Masters Degree in 'Happiness Studies'
Centenary University in New Jersey announced the launch of a new degree program, a "Master of Arts in Happiness Studies."
The program, which the school said is the first of its kind, will "explore the implications of happiness for individuals, the workplace, and our broader society" and will cost students $17,700. According to the university's announcement, the program will launch virtually in the fall.
Centenary University President Bruce Murphy said in his announcement at the World Happiness Summit in Miami, Florida on March 18 to mark the United Nations International Day of Happiness that the program was designed to "promote well-being and resilience in the midst of current world stress."
"This online, 30-credit graduate degree is an interdisciplinary program designed for leaders who are committed to personal, interpersonal, organizational, and societal happiness," Murphy said. "Grounded in science and research, this new degree will study happiness and resilience to prepare graduates to make an impact in a wide range of fields."
Centenary University is a private college in Hackettstown, New Jersey, with about 1,100 students enrolled. The university partnered with the Happiness Studies Academy to create the new happiness degree program.
According to the academy's website, its mission is to "lead the happiness revolution by educating leaders who are themselves dedicated to personal, interpersonal and communal flourishing."
The degree will include parts of several other disciplines, such as psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, finance, business, literature, religion and music.
"This fully online accredited MA in Happiness Studies focuses on educating leaders who are committed to the cultivation of wellbeing in themselves and others, to the fulfillment of society’s potential for both happiness and goodness," the program's website reads. "Regardless of your area of interest and action—be it in business, education, psychotherapy, coaching, health or law—the rigorous ideas and evidence-based interventions that are part of the MA in Happiness Studies will help you bring out the best in your family, colleagues, clients, students and yourself."
Centenary University has received nearly 40 applications for the program since it was announced on March 18.
The program's site states that the purpose of offering a degree in happiness is "to provide students the opportunity to engage academically with that which [philosopher] William James refers to as 'human life's chief concern.' By receiving a broad theoretical foundation coupled with applied, practical knowledge, students will become positive change agents, creating a better, happier world."
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/landonmion/2022/03/26/a-nj-university-will-offer-masters-degrees-in-happiness-studies-n2605074
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The Biden administration has quietly declared war on charter schools
The decades-long honeymoon between Democrats and charter schools was too good to last.
Starting in the Reinventing Government era, Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama praised public charter schools for their innovations. Many “No Excuses” charters, in particular, succeed in teaching low-income African-American and Hispanic children when many traditional public schools fail, as decades of research demonstrate.
Even traditional liberal Hillary Clinton got boos from a National Education Association audience during the 2016 presidential campaign when she made positive remarks about charter schools, despite criticizing for-profit schools of all kinds. (A few charters are managed by businesses.) With this and other remarks, Clinton showed that she supported low-income parents, even at the cost of some union support.
But now, with Democrats going woke and a new president in town, the US Department of Education has declared war on charter schools, using obscure bureaucratic rulemaking to kill the federal charter-school program without having to explain why.
On March 11, a Friday when media attention was focused on Ukraine and the Senate’s Thursday-night passage of the $1.5 trillion bill to fund federal-government agencies for the rest of the fiscal year, the Biden administration’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education issued 13 pages of rules designed to cut off charter schools from federal support and that will likely serve as a model for state regulations limiting charters.
The administration’s proposals clearly took months to prepare, and their publication not even 24 hours after the key funding vote cleared the Senate, and after important House and Senate votes gave charter supporters in both parties less clout to bargain for changes, was timed to get as little notice as possible.
The administration is also employing a truncated comment process. That may sound arcane, but here’s why it matters for democratic governance. In accord with the 1946 Administrative Procedures Act, to ensure transparency, proposed new regulations are published in the Federal Register, with lengthy public-comment periods before rules are finalized. This gives time for experts, interest groups and the public to offer input, making regulations both more legitimate and more realistic.
For example, when Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rewrote Title IX sexual-assault investigation rules in 2020, she did so after an 18-month process that considered more than 124,000 public comments, producing better regulations because of this transparency.
For less-controversial proposals, a two-month public-comment process is the norm. Yet the Biden administration has allowed just one month for input on its proposed charter-school rules, from their publication March 11 to the closing of public comment April 13. For charter opponents, the fix is in, with devils in the details.
Among other things, proposed rules strongly recommend that charter schools seeking federal funds “collaborate with at least one traditional public school” and “provide a letter from each partnering traditional public school or school district demonstrating a commitment to participate in the proposed charter-traditional collaboration.” This is like letting General Motors veto where Honda can sell cars.
Charters must also prepare a “community impact analysis” demonstrating “unmet demand for the charter school, including any over-enrollment of traditional public schools.” Of course, the worst traditional public schools are under-enrolled because parents of means left long ago. That means this regulation could remove options from low-income parents — all in the name of equity.
Likewise, the proposed rules require reporting on the “racial and socio-economic diversity of students and teachers in the charter school, and the impact of the charter school on racial and socio-economic diversity in the public school district.” In the real world, many charter schools exist to serve low-income students, so their demographics differ from those of the surrounding school district.
Again in the name of “equity,” this change would slash funding to charter schools and encourage their opponents to attack as “racist” charter schools that provide education options to the (overwhelmingly minority) parents who need them most.
All schools buy goods and services from businesses. The proposed rules would require extensive reporting requirements for charter schools — but not district schools — that contract with for-profit companies providing anything from food service to tutoring. This will harass charters with extra paperwork.
As my own research shows, big charter networks such as the Knowledge Is Power Program schools have the lawyers and connections to survive more regulations, but regulations reduce the numbers of charters started by educators of color and disproportionately shutter schools that serve students of color. In practice, regulations purported to advance equity do exactly the opposite.
The good news is that parents of the 3.5 million students in charter schools have until April 13 to tell regulators and Congress how they feel about the Department of Education’s attack on their schools.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/28/the-biden-administration-declares-war-on-charter-schools/
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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29 March, 2022
California State University Drops SAT Test as ‘Too Stressful’
Chalk another one up for progressives never letting a good crisis go to waste. They have been using the COVID-19 crisis to implement a host of progressive dream programs, including government handouts, eviction protections, enhanced unemployment benefits, universal mask and vaccine mandates, and trillion dollar government spending packages.
A far more insidious, yet lesser known, COVID-19 era invention is the end of standardized tests like the SAT and ACT for admission into college. About 80 percent of universities in the United States eliminated the requirement during the pandemic.
Here is a typical statement: “The California State University understands the challenges that students are facing due to COVID-19. In response, the CSU has temporarily suspended the SAT or ACT test requirements only for students applying for admission in fall 2022 as freshman.”
But, surprise, what starts as temporary, suddenly becomes permanent. CSU, the largest public university system in the country, just made the change permanent, joining the more prestigious University of California system that made a similar announcement last year.
It is not hard to figure out what is behind this: “equity.” In November 2020, California’s radical left failed in their effort to lift the state’s ban on affirmative action in admissions to state schools and in state employment. The ban was first put in place through a vote of Californians in 1996. The effort to overturn it was rejected and by a wider margin (16 points). In defeating affirmative action twice, Californians have been clear: They oppose race or ethnicity playing a role in the admission of students to college.
But the California left does not let the will of the people, or the state Constitution, get in the way of implementing their radical agenda. They simply change the name from affirmative action to equity and keep right on going. Equity, as people are now learning, is not about treating people equally, but rather treating them unequally in order to achieve an equal outcome based on race or ethnicity or whatever other category the left decides needs its help.
The biggest impediment to implementing equity is a standardized test, so they got rid of it. And they are not trying to hide what they are doing. Acting CSU Chancellor Steve Relyea said the move “aligns with the California State University’s continued efforts to level the playing field and provide greater access to a high-quality college degree for students from all backgrounds.” He also said the test was too “high-stress.”
Robert Keith Collins, chair of CSU’s Academic Senate, said, “We all realized that in many cases, the disparities in terms of access outweigh the benefits of the SAT and ACT.”
So, while recognizing that the tests benefit the admissions process, he says they must be tossed out because they create disparities based upon race. He acknowledges that students will now be admitted who are not college-ready, but that professors “welcome the challenge of bringing new students up to college-level readiness.” Up to? The whole point of the admissions process is supposed to be to assure that incoming students are at that level!
The move totally ignores the individual. The fact is African Americans (only 5.8 percent of California’s population), are far more likely to have been raised in a single parent home. As then-Senator Barack Obama noted, children who grow up without a father are nine times more likely to drop out of school. Latinos (39 percent of California’s population) are far more likely to have been raised by recent, legal or illegal, immigrants with less education and English as their second language.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/california-state-university-drops-sat-test-as-too-stressful_4363246.html
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UK: Children should learn about the benefits of empire, says Nadhim Zahawi
Education Secretary cites the civil service system left behind in Iraq as an example of the positives of colonial rule
Children should learn about the benefits of empire, Nadhim Zahawi has said, as he praised the impact of British rule on Iraq.
The Education Secretary was speaking before the publication of his new White Paper on schools reform, which includes a pledge for all schools to become academies by the end of the decade.
Longer average school weeks and up to six million one-to-one tutoring courses by 2024 are also key components of the policy document.
Asked whether he agreed with Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, that teachers needed to “tell both sides of the story” when teaching the British Empire, Mr Zahawi said: “Yes, I do.
“Let me give you an example. My parents fled Iraq because of Saddam Hussein. If you asked Iraqis before the Ba’athist regime came into office - Saddam's cronies and criminals - Iraq was left a legacy of a British Civil Service system that actually served the country incredibly well for many, many decades.
“That's the sort of thing that actually children should be learning about, and, of course, all aspects of empire. And I think that's important.”
'Too many teachers reinvent the wheel'
Mr Zahawi’s White Paper, published on Monday, warned teachers against diverting from the National Curriculum in their classes, amid new safeguards in recent weeks designed to ensure schools remain politically neutral.
“Curriculum design is an expert skill, yet too many teachers reinvent the wheel and design new lessons,” it said.
“This situation fails those new teachers and fails the children they teach. In no other profession are newly trained employees expected to discover by trial and error how to deliver.”
Speaking at Monega Primary School, in east London - which was deemed “outstanding” by Ofsted inspectors this month after an “inadequate” rating five years before - Mr Zahawi said the thought of children “not getting the education they deserve” is “what keeps me awake at night”.
He said: “I am working tirelessly to bring everyone with us on this journey, so that we can realise the full potential for the next generation - whether it’s the Church of England schools, Catholic schools, religious schools, grammar schools.
“We’re going to spread brilliance throughout the country where everyone in every school is working together and all of us are focused on delivering outcomes. Only by creating this system can we be really confident about levelling up every part of our country and of course championing the interests of every single child.”
Target for greater 'competence and rigour'
Asked by The Telegraph if he would consider supporting more grammar schools, Mr Zahawi praised their ethos and said he would want to spread that across the entire system.
However, he said: “The real difference in outcomes for children’s lives, especially the most disadvantaged, will come if I put every school in a high-performing multi-academy trust family of schools.”
He rejected the idea of the Department for Education entering a “bidding war”, in response to criticism from unions and teachers that the education recovery programme may not be enough to achieve the scale of his reforms.
On what he wanted to see change from his time as an education minister throughout 2018 and 2019, Mr Zahawi said: “Operational competence and rigour. What do I mean by that? When we did the vaccine programme, the greatest focus was on how good we were on the ground.”
The White Paper also set out details of a new register for children not in school, the biggest ever early-years training programme and an annual behaviour survey aimed at guiding best practice.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/03/28/children-should-learn-benefits-empire-says-nadhim-zahawi/
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Australia: A school assignment that gave students the option to argue in support of the slave trade is under investigation
<I>This Would Be A Rather Good Exercise In Thinking Outside The Box but sensitivities were understandably aroused</i>
Lake Macquarie High School, south of Newcastle, came under fire after the history assignment handed out earlier this month was shared on social media.
It gave students the option to write as the US Economy Minister where “your report will argue for the continuation of the Slave Trade” or as the US Human Rights Minister where “your report wants to stop Slave Trade”.
For those arguing in support of slavery, students were told to outline “the positive contribution” slaves made to economies in Africa, England and the US.
They were instructed to present their viewpoint from an “empathetic perspective”, which was described as to “understand from the viewpoint of the people involved”.
Maria Alier shared the assignment on Instagram, which she had received from a friend of African descent whose siblings were in the class.
She claimed students were even told by the teacher that if they wrote a report advocating for slavery, they were more likely to receive higher marks.
Ms Alier said she was “initially baffled and then quickly insulted” by the assignment brief and couldn’t understand how it was not stopped along the way before it was handed to students.
“Asking kids to justify the unjustifiable and argue for the continuation of indescribably painful and cruel practice such as slavery sends their easily impressionable adolescent minds to the very same right wing material that could manipulate even the most forward thinking kids into a rabbit hole of bigotry and prejudice,” she told news.com.au of her reasoning to share the assignment on social media and encourage people to contact the school and department of education to voice their concerns.
“No one is saying that we can’t learn about slavery or the injustices of the past, but it is not correct to sit there and justify them.”
Ms Alier pointed out it wouldn’t be appropriate to justify the Holocaust or the Stolen Generations, so she couldn’t understand how educators thought it would be for the slave trade.
Commenters on Ms Alier’s Instagram post praised her for publicising the issue, and others shared their reactions on TikTok.
“As a person who has been racially abused for being black in the past, thank you,” one woman wrote. “Thank you so much, you are spreading information and empowering other people to speak out about injustice.”
Another replied: “This is honestly so disgusting that a school will allow this. thank you for sharing this! The school/teachers need to be held accountable.”
Jagorda Manyuon, the older sister of students in the class, told Pedestrian her family received a verbal apology from the principal after persistent complaints were made.
“[They] said ‘I’m not racist’ and I get that. Okay, cool you’re not racist – but can you still do something about this? What’s being done?” she said.
“I’m not sure an apology is enough. These things will just keep happening.”
The NSW department of education confirmed to news.com.au it was “aware of an allegation of inappropriate content appearing in an assessment task” at the school and was investigating.
“The Department has had an Anti-Racism Policy in place for 30 years,” a spokesman said.
“It promotes respect for people from all cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds and rejects all forms of racism in schools and department offices.”
Ms Alier said what she wanted to come out of the investigation was a public apology to African students, how the department plans to ensure it doesn’t happen again, and better implementation of the school’s anti-racism policy and training.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/school-life/nsw-school-investigated-over-proslavery-assignment/news-story/41c0d720489de501eceec6590e6e4f27
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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28 March, 2022
The Dems’ Student Loan Forgiveness Scheme
Desperate to avoid a midterm shellacking, Democrats may resort to bailing out irresponsible borrowers.
Americans like to rally around their president during times of global uncertainty. But they’re not rallying around Joe Biden. His approval ratings are terrible, and Democrats are now getting desperate to salvage as many votes as they can before November’s midterm elections.
One scheme they’re floating is a further extension of the student loan freeze, currently set to expire on May 1. They want students to be able to kick the can down the road at least until after they’ve voted Democrat. Like our energy dependence, though, the federal loan debacle could have been avoided.
As we wrote last year, “The plan to erase student debt is yet another example of the government riding in on a white horse and promising to save us from a crisis government created in the first place.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board goes further, writing: “Here we go again. The March 2020 Cares Act provided a temporary pause on loan payments and interest accrual through September 2020. Presidents Trump and Biden used emergency executive power to extend the forbearance, which has cost taxpayers about $5 billion a month. Borrowers have saved on average $400 a month. Most haven’t needed the relief.”
So far, the extensions have cost taxpayers at least $100 billion.
The editors add that there’s more going on behind the scenes, including an effort pitched by Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren to allow some students to cancel as much as $50,000 in loan debt.
Not surprisingly, there’s no mention of the students who’ve done the right thing and made good on their loans over the years without whining for help. It’s doubtful that they’ll ever be reimbursed, but students who never had any intention of paying off their loans might well be rewarded.
Warren’s proposal is actually timid compared to another idea being mentioned by former Secretary of Education John King, who wants the federal government to cancel the entire $1.7 trillion owed by current and former American college students. To put this into perspective, total federal spending in 2021 was $6.8 trillion.
Of course, this is all about politics. As Politico reports, “Advocates in close touch with the White House are impatient, arguing that even if Biden ultimately moves forward with another payment suspension by the May expiration date, it’s becoming increasingly tough for them to inspire restive young voters to match their record 2020 or 2018 turnout levels.”
The Department of Education isn’t waiting until that May 1 expiration date, announcing recently that a select group of 100,000 borrowers will have $6.2 billion in student loans canceled. The catch is that borrowers need to qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, among other requirements.
And there’s another group that can’t be pleased by all this talk of loan forgiveness: private loan borrowers. You see, in the real world outside the Beltway, lending banks tend to want their money back, and there’s little Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden can do about it. Unfortunately, a significant number of borrowers hold both federal and private loans.
“Private student loans are held by private banks,” columnist Sydney Lake writes, “and there’s no real incentive or reason for those companies to cancel out those loans. They’d be losing out on that money and all the interest they expect to make on those loans over the next several years. Plus, the federal government can’t force banks to forgive private student loans.”
The government shouldn’t allow colleges to hand out thousands of dollars of loans to students far beyond the cost of books and tuition, or to students who couldn’t qualify for a private loan in the first place. And let’s not forget that the beneficiaries of any student loan forgiveness scheme aren’t likely to be poorer students or people of color. Instead, they’ll be well-to-do liberal elites.
The Democrats have been pledging to wipe out student loan debt for years, but they’ve never pulled it off. And even with all the power now in their hands, it’s unlikely to happen this year either.
Maybe, when Republicans take Congress in January 2023, they’ll put an end to all this nonsense about debt forgiveness. And maybe they’ll fix the problem that caused this mess in the first place.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/87178-the-dems-student-loan-forgiveness-scheme-2022-03-25
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Is Federal COVID Aid Setting Schools Up to Fail?
America’s K-12 schools have been among the biggest winners of COVID relief funds since March 2020. But wasteful spending decisions by administrators are setting public school districts up for big failures when the COVID relief money spigot gets shut off in two years.
RealClearInvestigation‘s Steve Miller explains how today’s bad spending decisions by public school bureaucrats will lead to bad outcomes for teachers and students:
As school districts across the country grapple with declining enrollments induced by the pandemic, many are engaged in spending sprees like those of the past leading to widespread layoffs and budget cuts when federal money ran out.
Bolstered by $190 billion in pandemic relief funding from Washington, the nation’s public schools are hiring new teachers and staff, raising salaries, and sweetening benefit packages. Some are buying new vehicles. Others are building theaters and sports facilities.
Using such temporary support for new staff and projects with long-term costs is setting the table for perilous “fiscal cliffs” after COVID funding expires in 2024, some education budget analysts say. And that’s on top of doubts about whether money to battle the pandemic is being properly spent in the first place.
Schools’ Spending a Study in Waste
Miller lists several examples of wasteful spending by bureaucrats at several school districts across the U.S., including:
McAllen, Texas’ Independent School District’s $4 million expenditure for expanding an urban bird sanctuary in the city.
North Carolina’s Moore County Schools, which burned through $25 million in its COVID relief funds, used them to buy gym lockers and build two running tracks.
Iowa’s Creston Community School District’s use of $231,000 in COVID relief funds to upgrade their sports stadium bleachers to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Other school districts are hiring teachers and staff or are buying vehicles and other assets that have short lives and high costs, even though their enrollments are falling. While they can afford them now with their COVID relief “stimmy” checks, a harsh economic reality will set in when those funds go away.
Lessons from the Past
That harsh reality is easily predictable because it has happened before. Miller relates the history of what happened after a temporary Obama-era funding program for schools went away just six short years ago:
Recent history makes some of the new wave of spending hard to defend, and its dire consequences foreseeable. In a report meant to provide guidance for future grants, the Department of Education Inspector General examined how 22 districts spent money from 2009’s $107 billion Recovery Act and Education Jobs program, enacted in the wake of the 2008 recession.
Much like today, the money was spent on hiring more staff, professional development, salaries, technology, and facilities. Half the districts used at least some of the money to add employees or expand services, aware that they were unable to pay for them once the money ran out.
Layoffs predictably began in 2016 and swept the education sector, disproportionately affecting schools in lower income areas. “Tears and disbelief” was how the Baltimore Sun described the impact of layoffs, while progressives continued to criticize state education funding as unequal and unfair.
A similar fate awaits bureaucrats wasting today’s COVID school bailout money. These education professionals should have learned more about their need for sustainable spending policies from their previous failures. But I somehow doubt they’ve ever given themselves an “F” when grading their own fiscal performance.
https://blog.independent.org/2022/03/18/is-federal-covid-aid-setting-schools-up-to-fail/?omhide=true
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Australia: Elite universities boost their share of international students
The Group of Eight research-intensive universities have boosted their share of international students during the past year of the Covid pandemic.
New data from the Go8 shows its universities enrolled nearly half (48 per cent) of international students in January this year compared with 41 per cent in January last year. The figures indicate that students are more wedded to what they perceive as the more prestigious degrees at Go8 universities, compared with the generally lower-cost courses at other universities.
The Go8 universities also enrol a higher proportion of Chinese students – who have proved more willing to continue studying during the pandemic – than other universities, either online or at study centres set up in Chinese cities. In January this year the Go8 market share of Chinese students enrolled in higher education courses in Australia rose to 75 per cent, compared with 69 per cent in January last year.
Overall, the number of Chinese students studying in Go8 universities is still lower than a year ago. In January this year the figure was 65,663, compared with 70,760 in January last year.
But even in the Indian market, where students look for lower-fee courses and the research-intensive universities attract a far smaller segment of the market, the Go8 still improved its share of students over the past year. In January this year the Go8 had a 17 per cent slice of the Indian market, compared with 14 per cent in January last year.
Again this was achieved despite a drop in the number of students from India enrolled in Go8 universities. In January this year the figure was 4083, compared with 6130 in January last year.
The Go8 data gives a fuller picture of the latest international student statistics released by the federal Education Department, which shows 201,052 international students were enrolled in higher education in January this year, 23 per cent less than in January last year.
In all education sectors (including vocational, schools and English language tuition), there were 364,643 international students in January, down 21 per cent on January last year.
The worst hit sector is English language tuition where 8,187 international students were enrolled in January this year, 52 per cent less than in January last year.
Because English language tuition relies on students spending a relatively short time in Australia for courses of up to six months, it was quickly devastated by the Covid border closures. This year’s enrolments are 83 per cent less than two years ago
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/group-of-eight-unis-boost-their-share-of-international-students/news-story/18e757603dd49fb89df12a687b890549
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27 March, 2022
South Dakota Governor Signs Bill Banning CRT-Based Trainings at Universities
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) signed a bill into law Monday banning public colleges and universities in the state from using "divisive" Critical Race Theory-inspired trainings or orientations.
"No student or teacher should have to endorse Critical Race Theory in order to attend, graduate from, or teach at our public universities," Noem said in a statement. "College should remain a place where freedom of thought and expression are encouraged, not stifled by political agendas."
House Bill 1012 outlines seven "divisive concepts" that may no longer be a mandatory part of trainings and orientations for college students or faculty members.
The Board of Regents, the Board of Technical Education and any institution under their control is prohibited from teaching, advocating for, acting upon or promoting that an individual is inherently superior or inferior, or should be discriminated against, based on their race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity or national origin.
The institutions are also barred from pushing concepts stating that a person's moral character is determined by their race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity or national origin, or that the individuals are racist, sexist oppressive or are inherently responsible for past actions made by other members of the same race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.
Training and orientations suggesting that an individual should feel discomfort or another form of psychological distress due to their race, color, religion, ethnicity or national origin is also banned from the academic institutions, as are trainings and orientations stating that "meritocracy or traits such as a strong work ethic" are racist, sexist or were created by members of a certain race or sex in order to oppress those of a different race or sex.
Additionally, students may not be directed or compelled to personally affirm, adopt or adhere to the seven "divisive concepts."
The bill also takes aim at affirmative action, stating that the aforementioned institutions "may not condition enrollment or attendance in a class, training, or orientation on the basis of race or color."
The legislation notes that it does not prevent "an employee or a contractor who provides mandatory orientation or training from responding to questions that are raised by participants in the orientation or training and which pertain to the divisive concepts."
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/landonmion/2022/03/21/south-dakota-governor-signs-bill-banning-crtbased-trainings-at-universities-n2604855
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Harvard cancels a black academic who debunked woke orthodoxy
Roland G. Fryer is a tenured professor of economics at Harvard — an anointed member of the elite by most definitions. He is also black, widely published and the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur “genius” grant for his work on the black “achievement gap” in grade school. Fryer was a student of Nobel laureate Gary Becker and a close associate of other economists who focus on rigorous analysis of empirical data.
That’s led him to observations that were a bit unsettling to higher-education orthodoxies. For example, Fryer found that the academic achievement gap accelerates between kindergarten and eighth grade. He also found that, controlling for a few variables, the initial disparity disappeared.
“Black kindergartners and white kindergartners with similar socioeconomic backgrounds” achieved at similar levels. “Adjusting the data for the effects of socioeconomic status reduces the estimated racial gaps in test scores by more than 40% in math and more than 66% in reading.”
The number of books in a child’s household also made an appreciable difference. “On average, black students in the sample had 39 children’s books in their home, compared with an average of 93 books among white students.” Adjusting for that “completely eliminates the gap in reading” as children progress through first grade. These findings contradicted the standard view that black children are already locked into academic last place before they even reach school.
This is good news, in that it means the problem is not as intractable as it seemed. Or rather, it would have been good news to anyone who wants the racial disparity to disappear through interventions that are known to work.
But it was terrible news to activists who are invested in the idea that “systemic racism” explains everything. Socioeconomic standing and household reading, after all, can be improved.
I have borrowed from Fryer’s 2006 article “Falling Behind: New evidence on the black-white achievement gap” for my summary. Fryer, however, was just warming up to further provocations against racial orthodoxy. He also decided to take a look at the data about police stops and shootings. He confirmed that blacks were more than 50% more likely than whites “to experience some form of force in interactions with police,” something that Fryer said was “the most surprising result of [his] career.”
But when it came to shootings, he could find “no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.” This flat-out contradicts the Black Lives Matter assertion that has been uncritically embraced by the academy, the press and numerous politicians who hold that police readily resort to deadly violence in dealing with blacks.
Fryer’s paper on this, “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force,” was written in 2016 and published in final form in 2019 in the Journal of Political Economy, well before George Floyd’s death ignited riots and a frenzied affirmation in academe that police are the agents of brutal, racially motivated oppression.
From this, one might conclude that Professor Fryer had learned how successfully to kick over the traces of the liberal academic establishment. He was by no definition a conservative, but a kind of independent contrarian who was willing to go wherever the evidence took him. And for a while it appeared to have taken him to the heights of academic achievement. His work received a lot of criticism in places like The New York Times, but he also won substantial funding for his Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard.
Then the bottom fell out.
I have no shortage of bottom-falling-out stories for academics. They are sometimes caught doing atrocious things, sometimes punished for speaking up against academic policies they disagree with and sometimes disciplined because administrators seem entranced with bizarre ideas. We are in academia, after all, where egos are fragile and reputational destruction is the favorite sport. Reputational destruction, of course, comes in two popular flavors: race and sex. Since Professor Fryer is black, you might expect the line of attack will involve sex, and you’d be right.
According to The New York Times, Professor Fryer was accused in 2018 of engaging in “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature toward four women who worked in the Harvard-affiliated research lab he created.”
I have no access to the details of the allegations, but Harvard did its work and came back with a report that amounted to a finding that he had flirted with a graduate student years ago, and that a woman he had fired found some of his language annoying. Naturally, these claims were stretched to their outer boundaries, but the initial faculty committee saw nothing of great moment.
In the #MeToo era, rules of double jeopardy don’t apply. Harvard decided to put the case before another tribunal — a secret one, but one that happened to include two black faculty members whose work had received some shade from Fryer’s academic writings. Sure enough, the second tribunal decided that Fryer had crossed all sorts of invisible lines.
As a tenured member of the Harvard faculty, Fryer couldn’t easily be fired, though administrators pushed to fire him, which would have been a first since the Civil War. But there are lots of other ways to ruin a faculty member. They suspended Fryer for two years, during which he was barred from teaching or using university resources. And they permanently closed his off-campus lab, the Education Innovation Laboratory.
This looks like an academic death sentence for an obscure violation, yet Fryer may well stage a comeback. In a new documentary, professional filmmaker Rob Montz has assembled, for the first time in video form, a compelling 25-minute presentation on what happened to Fryer at Harvard, complete with scary music.
Fryer didn’t participate in the documentary, which perhaps allowed Montz to say things that Fryer himself probably wouldn’t. I’ve never met Fryer, but we have several mutual friends who alerted me to his story, and I have heard several grapevine versions of what happened that run in the same direction: a tale of a vindictive former employee and others sharpening grievances for their own ends and a total denial of due process in favor of putting the man in the hands of his campus adversaries.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/25/harvard-cancels-a-black-academic-who-debunked-woke-orthodoxy/
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Professor fired for calling microaggressions ‘garbage’ can sue, judge rules
Nathaniel Hiers, a former University of North Texas adjunct math professor gets full support from the United States District Court for Eastern Texas after exercising his right of free speech.
The court said the university likely violated Hiers’ free speech rights when his contract was rescinded following a joke he wrote on a chalkboard.
Hiers found flyers in the math department faculty lounge about “microaggressions,” and then wrote a quip on the chalkboard: “Please don’t leave your garbage lying around,” with an arrow pointing to the flyers, which weren’t official university documents, the lawsuit says.
Judge Sean Jordan, made a ruling on March 11 in his 69-page order saying that the university officials should have known that math professor Nathaniel Hiers’ speech “touched on a matter of public concern and that discontinuing his employment because of his speech violated the First Amendment,” before they fired him for going public with his disagreement with the left-wing concept of “microaggressions.”
More details of this story from Just the News:
According to Jordan, “all parties agree” Hiers’ message “was intended as a joke,” yet math department chair Ralf Schmidt demanded the “coward … immediately” come forward. While Hiers copped to the message, he refused to apologize or participate in “supplemental diversity training” on top of the mandatory diversity training he was scheduled to take.
Less than a week later, Schmidt rescinded Hiers’ spring contract, claiming the chalkboard message was at least upsetting and “can even be perceived as threatening.”
According to Jordan, the professor has “plausibly alleged that the university officials violated his right to freedom of speech.”
Only days later, the school rescinded Hiers’ teaching contract. The school used the absurd excuse that Hiers could “be perceived as threatening” others with his opposition to extremist, left-wing orthodoxy
Hiers earned his doctorate in math in the spring of 2019 and was hired as an adjunct professor in 2019. Langhofer said Hiers intended to launch his academic career at UNT, eventually working his way up from an adjunct professor to a tenured faculty member.
Getting fired as an adjunct has made it hard to find a position elsewhere, Langhofer said. Hiers has been working as a substitute teacher around North Texas, including at Denton ISD, since his dismissal.
https://2020conservative.com/one-woke-college-just-got-the-worst-news-it-could-have-gotten/
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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25 March, 2024
It's Time to Talk About All the Freaks Who Have Infested Our Schools
Matt Vespa
I never really considered myself a culture warrior at all. I like watching brutally violent movies. I don't care about the amount of sex or nudity there is out there in entertainment. I will watch whatever the hell I want and let the market do the rest. For the most part, I mostly stay away from socially conservative agenda items because a) we already have writers who do that, and b) it's just not my area of interest. I'm not pro-abortion, but I know it's a high-intensity issue for a large swath of our base. While I'm not a hardcore pro-lifer, I abhor the left's penchant for baby killing. It is an issue loaded with nuance, which is probably why the left just goes all-out in advocating for unrestricted abortion up until birth; liberals hate nuance.
I generally don't care what gay Americans do. If they want to marry and suffer like the rest of us—go for it then. I'm for the decriminalization of prostitution. I'm against the war on drugs. Socially libertarian-ish is where I land, though I don't take on a moral superiority complex like most in this area.
These are just low-grade issues for me, but then education becomes infiltrated with those who just want to turn all the kids transgender and not tell their parents, which is beyond disturbing. I guess in the end, the one thing the left will do is make you care. They will make you care.
What the hell is going on in our schools? Again, at first, it was usually a few freakishly odd teachers or faculty. I remember the stories in high school. David Horowitz wrote a book, "The ProFessors," which detailed some of the nation's far-left faculty, not that we could do anything about it. I wouldn't be shocked if all these instructors had tenure. Yet, the whole gender games thing was never a thing. It's not just conservatives. Bill Maher, an ardent left-winger, admits that five-six years ago, defunding the police was not a thing, neither were three-year-olds coming out as transgender. Little kids don't know what that is—it's the parents.
Now, apparently, there are enough parents who find this behavior acceptable since our schools have become war zones for these sorts of outlandish spectacles. I've tried to dismiss it as a one-off thing, but it's become out of control. When one of the most liberal areas in the country, Northern Virginia, has had it with the "woke" critical race theory antics—you know Democrats are barking up the wrong tree.
The Loudoun County school district was engulfed in controversy during the 2021 elections when it was discovered that the school board had tried to sweep a gender-fluid student's sexual assaults under the rug. This was also around the time when the Biden Department of Justice declared war on parents for merely being against the insane COVID protocols and other questionable curricula being peddled at the schools where their children attend.
Whatever happened to English class, math class, history, foreign language, and the sciences? It was a simple day of learning from all those fields of study. Now, we have added all this gender crap into the mix. Little kids are holding Pride parades. We have these creepy TikToks from teachers in this community saying the quiet part out loud. Libs of Tik Tok has become indispensable in tracking and exposing these creeps.
Right now, the left is all in a furor over Florida's so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill. The word "gay" is not mentioned, though that hasn't stopped these folks from going indiscriminately insane. It should be called the "STFU and teach" bill because that's what it does. Teach the normal curriculum and leave the gender/gay/transgender/whatever the hell else to the kids, their families, and keep it in the home. We have TikToks of teachers coming out as transgender to their fourth-grade class.
What is this? These students are not a base of support. They aren't your shoulder to cry on; this isn't a support group. It's a classroom.
https://townhall.com/columnists/mattvespa/2022/03/22/its-time-to-talk-about-all-the-freaks-who-have-infested-our-schools-n2604854
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Movement for Restoring Parental Rights in Schools Represents the Majority
The grassroots parental rights movement is picking up steam, and it’s pushing legislators to act.
On Tuesday, the Kansas Legislature passed a “parents’ bill of rights” that would allow parents to “inspect any materials, activities, curriculum, lessons, syllabi, surveys, tests, questionnaires, examinations, books, magazines, handouts, professional development and training materials and any other materials or activities that are provided to the parent’s child.”
It’s a notable step as many public schools don’t give the public access to this information. It can be extremely difficult for parents and the public to have any knowledge about what’s being taught in the public schools that their taxpayer dollars pay for.
That’s changing. The Kansas bill is just one piece of a much larger national puzzle. A growing movement of parents is fighting back against schools that have prioritized indoctrination and the interests of teachers unions over parents and children.
Some states have taken the lead on these issues.
Perhaps most notably, the Florida Legislature passed a bill in early March that removes discussions about sex and gender identity from the curriculum of classrooms with young children. It moves those discussions back to where they are most appropriate: at home with families and their children.
Left-wing and corporate media outlets clearly tried to derail the bill. They almost uniformly picked up the language of left-wing activists and labeled it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, despite the fact that the legislation has nothing to do with not saying “gay.”
Big Tech social media companies are quite eager these days to dictate what counts as “misinformation.” Isn’t it interesting that they don’t do a thing about the “don’t say gay” headlines that proliferated in the lead-up to the Florida bill’s passing?
Regardless of the disinformation from the media, the Florida bill passed, and as of this article’s publication, it sits on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk for signing. DeSantis has made it quite clear that he won’t be deterred by media hysteria over this issue or woke corporate bullying.
When Disney CEO Bob Chapek met with DeSantis to air the grievances of woke Disney employees over this bill, the Florida governor did not fold.
“The chance that I am going to back down from my commitment to students and back down from my commitment to parents’ rights simply because of fraudulent media narratives or pressure from woke corporations, the chances of that are zero,” DeSantis said.
That kind of courage is contagious. One man with courage may not really make a majority, but it might encourage a majority to act when times are desperate and the cause is just.
A critical factor in this fight over parental rights, transparency, and curriculum is that while the institutions are seemingly all in on the woke revolution, the people aren’t.
A poll conducted on behalf of The Daily Wire on March 12-13, after the Florida bill was passed, showed that a majority of those surveyed supported the most important features of the legislation. And so, the movement spreads.
The Alaska Senate recently proposed a parental rights bill.
Arizona has also been working on a parental rights bill that was recently passed in the state Senate.
There are many other states, too. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo wrote in February that “legislators in 19 states have introduced bills to require curriculum transparency statewide.”
From the introduction of radical gender theories, to critical race theory, to ridiculous COVID-19 restrictions, it’s clear that many Americans have had enough and are becoming a potent political counterweight in an environment once dominated by teachers unions.
As Jonathan Butcher, an education policy expert at The Heritage Foundation, wrote of the Kansas bill and parental rights legislation in general:
These parental bills of rights put parents back at the center of intimate questions regarding a child’s mental and physical health. The proposals also empower parents to make decisions as they protect their children from radical, explicit sexual teaching content—along with racially discriminatory material—being used in state public schools.
Transparency in public K-12 education is both popular and necessary. It’s a good sign that at least some political leaders are stepping up to turn grassroots energy into concrete legislation and policy change.
However, it’s important not to be lulled into thinking that the passage of these bills is “mission accomplished.” Parental rights and transparency in public school curricula merely establish beachheads in the greater battle over education in America.
The left’s long march through the institutions is nearly complete, and it would be unwise to think this larger debate over what America should be is going to end after a single piece or several pieces of positive legislation. Much work still needs to be done.
If we really do intend to pull education in America back from the brink, then our attitude must be like the great sea captain John Paul Jones.
We have not yet begun to fight.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/03/22/the-movement-for-restoring-parental-rights-in-schools-represents-the-majority
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Florida Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Appeal on Textbooks Being Used in Florida School District
On March 18, the Florida Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal filed by the Collier County School Board over a lower court ruling stating the school board violated the state’s Sunshine Laws during its textbook selection process in the 2016–2017 school year.
Attorneys for the parents’ rights organization that filed the initial lawsuit assert that the same illegal process was used for the adoption of books for the 2021–2022 school year and have filed motions to have every textbook removed, or to have the court “order the school district to immediately start the textbook adoption process all over again.”
As explained on the website for Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, “Florida’s Government-in-the-Sunshine law provides a right of access to governmental proceedings at both the state and local levels,” and “virtually all state and local collegial public bodies are covered by the open meetings requirements.”
On Sept. 15, 2021, The Epoch Times reported that the Second District Court of Appeal of Florida had ruled the “textbook committee” process used by the Collier County School Board to review and approve textbooks had violated Florida’s Sunshine Laws.
“The Sunshine Law applies to the Textbook Committees, and the failure to give reasonable notice to the public of their meetings resulted in violations of the Sunshine Law,” the court concluded. “Further, the School Board did not cure the violations.”
“This has huge ramifications for every Florida school district that uses a committee to adopt and purchase textbooks,” Keith Flaugh, managing director of Florida Citizens Alliance, told The Epoch Times. “This rules that school boards who delegate textbook selection to their superintendent, who subsequently delegates to a committee, must operate in the sunshine with proper public notice of every committee meeting. It’s a huge win.”
Moreover, Flaugh contends that “every textbook that [Collier County Public Schools] has adopted since is tainted unless they can prove they cured the original public notice requirement of the Sunshine Law. It also means that the English Language Arts (ELA) and math textbooks that [Collier County Public Schools] just adopted on March 8 are null and void because all of their committee meetings to finalize those recommendations also failed to comply with the Sunshine Law and the basis for this original case.”
Brantley Oakey, an attorney for Florida Citizens Alliance, has filed motions with the local court to amend the final judgment entered by the Second District Court of Appeal.
“In September, the Second District Court of Appeal entered a ruling that found the trial court had erred and the school board of Collier County had violated the Florida Sunshine Laws in the way they went about adopting the textbooks for the 2016–2017 cycle,” Oakey explained to The Epoch Times, “which included all of the social studies or social science textbooks for every grade in Collier County.”
While the school board sought a rehearing with the Second District Court, that appeal was denied. A move to have the Second District Court stay the effect of the ruling until they could review it with the Florida Supreme Court (FSC) was also denied. A subsequent petition with the FSC to take the case and stay the mandate from the Second District Court was also denied, as was the petition to have the FSC itself review the case.
“That means the school board has exhausted any and all remedies at trying to stay the effect of the Second District’s mandate and there’s no further possibility for appeal,” Oakey concluded.
Because the process used in 2017 was deemed to have violated Florida law, and the same process was used to adopt the current textbooks, Oakey contends that “every textbook being used in Collier County is unapproved and therefore illegal because state law requires that every textbook be approved through a specific approval process in the district.”
“We have filed motions with the local court to amend the final judgment they entered, which is erroneous, to have it reflect the order of the Second District Court of Appeal and are asking the local court to enforce the Second District’s order, which specifically asks that every textbook be removed or they order the school district to immediately start the textbook adoption process all over again so all the textbooks currently being used in the classroom will go through the legal vetting process in the Sunshine where the public can participate in the meeting and provide input.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/florida-supreme-court-ruling-suggests-all-textbooks-being-used-in-one-florida-school-district-are-illegal_4357007.html
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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24 March, 2024
Schools nationwide are quietly removing books from their libraries
<i>The miserable Left will do anything they can to make others miserable, and leading children into unhealthy sex lives just suits them down to the ground. So it is good to hear that resistance to that is having some effect. The rate of suicide amomg sexual deviants is high so I use the word "unhealthy" advisedly</i>
Samantha Hull was on vacation when she got the call about the missing books.
Eight titles had melted away seemingly overnight, a panicked school aide told Hull, from the shelves of an elementary school in one of the 22 districts Hull oversees as co-chair of a group representing school librarians in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster and Lebanon counties. The books included titles such as “In My Mosque,” which instructs children about Islam; “A Place Inside of Me,” which explores a Black student’s reckoning with a police shooting; and “When Aidan Became a Brother,” whose main character is a transgender boy.
[Librarians and parents: Tell us about book challenges in your school district]
Hull, 33, couldn’t understand it: None of those books had been formally challenged by parents, even though she knew that activists across the country were targeting books featuring discussions of race, gender and LGBTQ identities for removal. The growing national furor had already arrived in Hull’s corner of Pennsylvania: Parents at a high school in Lancaster County, she said, had requested the elimination of “Gender Queer,” a memoir about being nonbinary, and “Lawn Boy,” a young-adult novel that includes a description of a sexual encounter between two boys.
Slowly — over months of meetings, investigations and secret conversations with fearful librarians across her counties — she came to understand the disturbing reality. Administrators, afraid of attracting controversy, were quietly removing books from library shelves before they could be challenged.
“There’s two battles going on at once,” Hull said, referring to parallel pushes from parents who want titles stricken and from school officials who are removing books preemptively. “And it’s been really difficult to fight both of those.”
The education culture wars
in eight states and nearly a dozen districts revealed similar stories that paint what they describe as a bleak picture of their profession, as they fret about and fight against American schoolchildren’s shrinking freedom to read.
School book bans are soaring: Although the vast majority of challenges go unreported, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom counted 330 incidents of book censorship in just the three months from September to November 2021 — marking the highest rate since the association began tracking the issue in 1990. The questioned texts have mostly been “books about LGBTQ people and race and racism,” according to the National Coalition Against Censorship, and many removals sprang from challenges launched by White, conservative parents spurred on by pundits.
Meanwhile, state legislators are advancing bills that would restrict what children can access in school libraries — some of which also suggest penalizing librarians. A member of the Idaho House is advancing a bill that threatens librarians with a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison if they lend explicit materials to a student under 18.
In Tennessee, a bill proposes to prohibit school libraries from offering books defined as “harmful” to minors. “I don’t appreciate what’s going on in our libraries, what’s being put in front of our children. And shame on you for putting it there,” Republican state Rep. Jerry Sexton told a group of Tennessee librarians early this month. An Oklahoma lawmaker last week compared librarians to cockroaches.
And for some, professional consequences have already arrived: An assistant principal of a Mississippi elementary school was fired this month for reading the picture book “I Need a New Butt!,” which jokingly describes the adventures of a child who searches for a new posterior, to a class of second-graders.
Far less well understood, though, has been a backdoor campaign by wary administrators to remove books. The scope of that effort is impossible to estimate, given its secretive nature, but — in one example — a Nebraska librarian said three of the six book battles she’s been guiding this year have dealt with removals carried out by school officials working outside the bounds of book-challenge procedures.
All of this is having an effect: Librarians in many places are starting to self-censor. They are refraining from recommending or reading aloud certain titles to students, from displaying certain books on prominent shelves — and even from ordering certain kinds of reading material in the first place.
Although Hull has remained an outspoken advocate for keeping all kinds of books in schools — and has spent much of the past year fighting for books in meetings with various Lancaster and Lebanon school officials — even she is feeling the chill. In the current climate, she said, she would not be willing to order a copy of “Gender Queer” for any of her libraries.
Homes in Lancaster County, Pa., fly the American flag, the state flag and the Pine Tree flag, a Revolutionary War banner that has been adopted by some conservatives. (Kyle Grantham for The Washington Post)
Over the course of the 2021-2022 school year, according to Hull and several librarians who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, there have been formal challenges of six books across the 22 school districts in Lebanon and Lancaster counties. Meanwhile, at least 24 books have been pulled temporarily or permanently from the shelves by officials, without public announcement or explanation — including the children’s books “All Are Welcome,” “It Feels Good to Be Yourself” and “Families, Families, Families!”
A spokeswoman for Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13, the educational agency that oversees and provides services to the 22 districts, said, “we are unable to offer any details about this topic” because “we are not involved in [districts’] selection of local curricular resources including local library collections.”
Hull said she has recently been having trouble sleeping, consumed by thoughts about what she views as a war on books. She worries most about the consequences for the next generation of Americans. If book banning continues, she warned, “there will be absolutely no progress for our society.”
“When these students — who weren’t exposed to other realities, to people who are different, who have different life experiences than them — when they have children,” Hull said, “we will be right back where we were, fighting the same fight.”
‘Angry, hurt and frustrated’
Stacy Langton believes parents should control when and how their children learn about sex, and she is adamant that “Gender Queer” and “Lawn Boy” should not be on the shelves in the Fairfax County Public Schools, where two of her six children are enrolled. She has spent the past six months trying to remove the texts, which she believes threaten children’s morals because they describe sex scenes in graphic detail — including, in “Gender Queer,” an encounter between an apparent teenager and an older, bearded man.
“There’s an age-appropriateness to all things, and that includes sex education — you’re inherently going to be destroying a child’s innocence and their purity until they’re old enough to be able to understand,” said Langton, 52.
School officials decided after months of review that both books have literary value and neither depicts pedophilia.
Psychologists, academics and librarians reached by The Washington Post said they see value in introducing children to books that contain challenging material, including of the sexual kind, provided it is done with appropriate context, care and tact.
Research shows there is an association between children reading certain kinds of explicit texts — those that depict sexual violence, degrade women or do not discuss boundaries or consent — and engaging in risky sexual behaviors, as well as sex at an early age, according to Amy Egbert, a research fellow in Brown University’s Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior.
But, Egbert said, she doesn’t believe that those types of books are available in school libraries. The books being challenged, she said, are often those that deal with difficult topics, featuring a main character struggling to understand their sexuality or experiencing some kind of racial tensions or racism. Removing those books is an obstacle to children’s development, she said, pointing to research — including on abstinence-only sex education — that shows that not talking about subjects with children does not change their behavior.
“Those books help kids to start thinking about topics — topics they are probably thinking about already and a lot of times would find information on,” she said. “The information is presented in a way that is more manageable in books. … The books that are being banned, if handled right, can allow kids to explore the human condition in a safe way.”
https://archive.ph/vOXER
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California’s Math Curriculum Framework: Still Woke
The California State Department of Education has released a new draft of its curriculum framework for K-12 mathematics. While it is notably improved regarding opportunities for advanced work, the document is still woefully laden with dogma about politics and about how to teach math.
The framework promotes only the progressive-education approach to teaching math, calling it “student-led” instruction, “active learning,” “active inquiry,” and “collaborative” instruction. But evidence from the 1950s through recent times shows that this way of teaching math is ineffective. That evidence comes from scrutinizing carefully designed studies featuring randomized control and what are called quasi-experiments, which come close to the effect of randomized assignment. Quasi-experiments look at cases, for example, where two adjoining districts with similar populations or two adjoining similar schools adopt different policies. Both sorts of studies are much stronger evidence than the case studies that progressive educators rely on.
In the spring 2012 issue of American Educator, the magazine of the American Federation of Teachers, top educational psychologists Richard E. Clark, Paul A. Kirschner, and John Sweller summarized “decades of research” that “clearly demonstrates” that for almost all students, “direct, explicit instruction” is “more effective” than progressive education in math.
Clark, Kirschner, and Sweller conclude that after “a half century” of progressive educators advocating inquiry-based teaching of math, “no body of sound research” can be found that supports using that approach with “anyone other than the most expert students.” Evidence from the best studies, they emphasize, “almost uniformly” supports “full and explicit” instruction rather than an inquiry-based approach. Yet when explicit, direct instruction is discussed in the proposed math curriculum (chaps. 3 and 6), it is deprecated.
Moreover, in 2016 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported on its 2012 round of tests, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The data clearly showed that “teacher-directed” instruction was more effective than “student-oriented” instruction.
Yet the proposed math framework promotes only progressive education’s inquiry-based approach. This is ideology, not science. It will not help those who struggle in math. It can only bring down student achievement.
If the framework writers had wanted solid evidence, they would have relied on the final report and subgroup reports of the 2008 federal National Mathematics Advisory Panel. They would have made even more use of the practice guides of the federal Institute of Education Sciences, which are designed for teachers and curriculum writers. Instead, the framework’s writers pretend this high-quality evidence doesn’t even exist.
In terms of putting students of similar preparedness together the new draft improves over its predecessor. The previous draft would have outlawed any classes that were grouped according to math achievement in K–10. The current draft still speaks of the “negative aspects” of tracking systems in middle school (chap. 9) and disparages “blunt methods” of tracking (chap. 9). But on the whole it has a salutary emphasis on accessible options and opportunities for students to “catch up with content as well as accelerate” their learning.
The previous draft was also notable for its heavily politicized content. Over 1200 figures in California’s community of scientific and math professionals (most of whom are college and university professors) denounced this importing of political content into math instruction. In some ways the new draft is an improvement. It has removed claims that math is not a neutral, objective discipline, and some highly political vignettes have been toned down.
Nonetheless, “trauma-induced pedagogy” is still highlighted (chap. 2). This is the idea that students are disabled emotionally by a racist, sexist, violent society ruled by a capitalist class and that therefore teaching should be therapeutic. Such teacher-therapists often conclude that their teaching should encourage resistance to society’s institutions. This is an ideological distraction.
So the proposed math curriculum is still highly politicized. A teacher is considered exemplary for promoting “sociopolitical consciousness” (chap. 2). Teachers are told that they should take a “justice-oriented perspective” at any grade level, K–12, in order to empower their students politically (chap. 2). For example, teachers are told to have students do practice exercises and data analysis in the context of “environmental or social justice” (chaps. 1 and 7).
Math should be neutral and nonpolitical. A math that caters to the 12 percent of Californians who are “strongly liberal”is a math that will upset the millions of parents who are not that liberal. Why should they pay their tax dollars to have their children indoctrinated?
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14086&omhide=true&trk=rm
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The Very Model of a Modern University President
While American higher education often is rightly condemned for being inefficient, non-innovative, and resistant to change, there are exceptions, and there are some collegiate entrepreneurs whose success is worthy of commendation and emulation. To me, the top award for American higher education innovation must go to Mitch Daniels, who is just beginning his tenth year as the president of Purdue University.
I had a nice chat with President Daniels the other day. At the beginning, I reminded him how we first met: I visited him in his office as Governor of Indiana in late 2012, shortly before beginning his tenure as Purdue’s president.
Daniels wanted to talk about the compensation package for Purdue’s president, and rather than wanting me to provide clever arguments why his salary should far exceed that of his predecessor, he said he was willing and even eager to take a reduction in the presidential salary—as long as he could earn performance bonuses for doing a good job running the Boilermakers. I said to my sidekick with me at the interview (Anthony Hennen, formerly with the James Martin Center), “he will be an unusual college president.” For once, an economist (me) forecasted correctly!
The measurement of academic outcomes is seldom straightforward, so Daniels and I talked about the problems with using such indicators as attrition (dropout) rates (a statistic that can be superficially improved simply by lowering academic standards), magazine rankings, financial reserves, enrollments (which likewise can be temporarily increased by lowering standards, likely harmful in the long run), outside research grants received, student outcomes on standardized tests, etc.
Daniels is not only competent but kind and considerate: I once ate breakfast with Mitch at the tony Four Seasons Hotel in Washington when he suddenly got up and started helping understaffed employees bus tables!
Nine years later, Mitch Daniels lives up to his billing. At a time of stagnant national enrollments, Purdue’s are booming, at record highs. Student quality is rising. A remarkable tuition freeze has lowered the inflation-adjusted cost of Purdue by over 20 percent, making it the bargain school in the Big Ten.
He realized higher education’s (including Purdue’s) weaknesses, getting out of activities that Purdue did not do particularly well, ones outsiders could do better and cheaper. For example, Purdue used to run a transportation service, busses to get students around the spacious campus—he ditched that, turning the job over to private providers who were transportation experts. Similarly, as he told me “We did not do online education particularly well.” So he went out and bought Kaplan, a major for-profit provider (for one dollar!) letting it morph into Purdue Global, today educating nearly as many students as attend the main campus in West Lafayette.
Although somewhat constrained by laws and finances, Daniels has started to change the way students pay for college. Mitch correctly thought it strange that relatively financially unsophisticated teenagers amass large amounts of debts to pay for college, rather than sell equity (stock) in themselves, so he has started an Income Share Agreement plan at Purdue that has attracted an increasing number of students who contract to have their tuition (or part of it) at Purdue paid for while attending school in return for giving up a percentage of their postgraduate earnings.
For all the purely economic successes Purdue has mounted (running budget surpluses every year, for example), Daniels seems to agree with something I feel: when he started at Purdue in 2013 the key problem in higher education was affordability and rising costs. Today, equally important is the threat from a breakdown in intellectual diversity—robust debates on the direction society should be moving. Purdue was a very early pioneer in adopting the Chicago Principles favoring unfettered and robust debates on campus on hot button issues. No Cancel Culture or Wokeness at Purdue.
Daniels has also emphasized expansion in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) areas. Purdue’s historic reputation was that of a good engineering school, and the nation needs more scientists, engineers, computer gurus. Purdue is pouring new resources into those areas. Although he did not say it, I suspect that he is content on having cross-state rival Indiana University excel in, for example, music composition, vocal performance, or journalism. He appropriately seems gratified that Purdue is riding a wave of high demand for scientists.
We talked about being a university president. I observed that several other Big Ten schools had actually ousted their presidents in the last decade or so—Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State come to mind. He commented that with just nine years tenure at Purdue, he now had the greatest seniority of all Big Ten presidents.
Why don’t presidents stay around longer? Is it the pressure of the job? Without complaining, President Daniels acknowledged that the job of being a college president is not an easy one, requiring skills in a multiplicity of areas. Although he is 72, he seems to have no immediate plans to retire: the job is often challenging but always interesting and occasionally even fun.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Daniels has pushed Purdue into some new areas, including opening a new polytechnic college that caters to non-traditional post-secondary students benefiting from a more hands-on approach to learning. Mitch acknowledges the need for good quality shorter vocational certificate programs training students to, say, drive a long-distance truck, learn how to weld, or become a computer coder.
He is not a “college for all” president, and freely acknowledges that appropriate learning experiences vary considerably from individual to individual. Indeed, unlike the arch-typical president, he does not constantly badger the state government that he once headed for money, noting that inflation-adjusted appropriations from the state of Indiana have not risen during his presidency—but he is not angry about it, observing that there are many pressing needs for funds besides higher education.
Mitch Daniels, of course, is not alone in being dynamic, entrepreneurial, and generally successful in a higher education setting. For example, the granddaddy of all university presidents, Gordon Gee, has run five universities (now West Virginia University) for well over four decades with great competence and verve. Michael Crow has built Arizona State University into something of a national powerhouse, with an aggressively successful online presence.
The great master at online learning, however, may well be Paul LeBlanc, who has taken the sleepy University of Southern New Hampshire and made it a major presence in online education. And waiting in the wings to demonstrate his special qualities: Pano Kanelos, president of the new University of Austin that wishes to instill and enhance intellectual diversity at that institution, following a stint at the uber-traditional Saint John’s.
I used to believe that great University presidents had to have lots of experience doing what universities do best—teach truly “higher education” while expanding the frontiers of knowledge. Mitch Daniels shows that is not always true. Mitch went to great private schools—Princeton and Georgetown, and witnessed academic excellence, but he also honed his skills working for many years at a private company (Eli Lilly) and through government service (including being U.S. budget director as well as a governor.)
There are a lot of mediocre people and ideas contributing to American universities being excessively costly, with too little learning and vocational relevance, and a disturbing contempt for a diversity of ideas to challenge student minds. But there are also the leaders like Mitch Daniels who are striving to have America maintain and expand its higher educational exceptionalism in the decades ahead.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14078&omhide=true&trk=rm
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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23 March, 2022
'Cult-Retreat-Like Experience': California School District Trained Staff to Use Preferred Pronouns, Names
The Los Angeles Unified School District required its staff to participate in "socioemotional learning" training that involved educators agreeing to use students' preferred names and pronouns.
According to nonprofit parents group Parents Defending Education, a district staff member said the training consisted of "critical social justice gender ideology." The staff member also said staff were led by a "restorative justice teacher" and that they were given handouts to "address" instances in which students or staff make an "unacceptable error in words or actions that are against gender ideology."
The staff member called this training a "cult-retreat-like experience."
During the training, staff members were called to "raise our hands if we could commit to using preferred pronouns and STAND UP if we commit to using trans students' preferred names."
If staff failed to stand up, the staff member explained, "it was an obvious sign that you're problematic and bigoted and in the wrong."
The handout provided to staff, titled "Identity Working Terms," defines the term "gender identity" as "our innermost feelings of who we are as a woman, man, both, and/or neither." The handout also states that people can communicate their gender identity through actions, clothing, hairstyles, makeup use, voices, body movements and "other forms of presentation."
One page of the handout is titled "Interrupting Bias: Calling Out vs. Calling In" and encourages staff to call someone out for several perceived problems, including when their "words or actions are unacceptable and will not be tolerated" and when an interruption is needed to "prevent further harm."
The handout also offers examples of phrases for staff to use when calling someone out for "unacceptable" language. One example of this is, "That word/comment is really triggering and offensive. Be mindful and pick a different word."
It also claims students have the "right" to be referred to by their "chosen name/pronouns, regardless of their legal or school records," adding that a student's legal name change "is NOT required for unofficial name changes."
Parents Defending Education president Nicole Neily slammed the district's required training for staff as "appalling" and an indication that the district values social issues over learning core subjects like math and science.
"Pressuring LAUSD employees to adopt language with which they may disagree - and encouraging others to bully, intimidate, and silence dissenting views - is appalling. This took place during an all-staff mandated school hours 'training' during a shortened school day, which places a significant burden on working families," she said in a statement to Townhall. "By prioritizing topics like this over students' mastery of core subject areas, district administrators have shown that they prioritize social issues over learning."
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/landonmion/2022/03/19/cultretreatlike-experience-california-school-district-trained-staff-to-use-prefer-n2604767
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NYC schools bracing for budget realities of 120K enrollment drop-off
Schools Chancellor David Banks addressed the City Council’s education committee Monday on the proposed education budget, which accounts for student enrollment predictions and trends. Previously during the pandemic, schools did not lose funding if enrollment dropped.
According to the department, 120,000 students and families have left city schools over the last five years.
“How many more will come back? We don’t know. So we have to hope for the best but plan for the worst,” Banks told the committee.
Much of the loss can be attributed to a decline in new enrollees, the Independent Budget Office found this month. That includes families in some of the city’s traditionally most sought-after school districts, encompassing neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and Park Slope.
“For our schools to deliver on their original promise of serving as the engine of the American dream, we will need to do things very differently in ways that build trust one big step at a time,” said Banks.
To help get families back or new families enrolled, Banks said the system needs to connect students with the “real world” and “what matters to them,” and engage parents as partners.
“It is the biggest complaint that I’ve heard since I started as chancellor — parents have felt unheard and disrespected,” he said.
Banks added many schools experienced “big changes” in enrollment over the last few years that have not yet been reflected in their budgets. To soften the blow next school year and the following, the system will spend $160 million and $80 million in federal funding to partially make up those losses.
Council members pushed Banks on efforts to bolster enrollment, and how those tie into other problems the system faces, like run-down buildings and other crumbling infrastructure.
“You want to bring them back, but the environment has to also be inviting,” said Council Member Rita Joseph of District 40 in Brooklyn, a former teacher who heads the education committee. “Most of them look like jails. They said the colors are terrible, the settings are horrible.”
Banks, who had previously characterized shrinking enrollment as an “indictment” of the DOE he inherited, encouraged city leaders to foster a more positive, “new narrative” that could help reach families.
“We’re also trying to be fiscally prudent as well, as we look at what these trends are demonstrating. So it is disturbing, and so we’ve got tough choices that we have to make here,” Banks said.
“How do we get families to re-engage, and to trust, and want to come back into our schools? That will solve a lot of these other financial issues that we have.”
https://nypost.com/2022/03/21/schools-preliminary-budget-reflects-student-enrollment-drop/
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Mob Rule and Cancel Culture at Hastings Law School
By Ilya Shapiro
I’ve given more than 1,000 speeches in my career, and I’d never been protested—until March 1, when dozens of students shut down my event at San Francisco’s UC Hastings College of the Law. In January the school’s Federalist Society chapter invited me to talk about my recent book on the politics of judicial nominations, a subject that became timelier with Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement.
On Jan. 26 I tweeted in opposition to President Biden’s decision to limit his nominee pool by race and sex. I argued that Judge Sri Srinivasan was the best candidate, meaning that everyone else was less qualified, so if Mr. Biden kept his promise, he would pick what, given Twitter’s character limit, I characterized as a “lesser black woman.” I deleted the tweet and apologized for my inartful choice of words, but I stand by my view that Mr. Biden should have considered “all possible nominees,” as 76% of Americans agreed in an ABC News poll.
I was about to start a new job as a senior lecturer at Georgetown and executive director of its law school’s Center for the Constitution. Georgetown placed me on paid leave pending an investigation into whether I violated any university policy. I can’t comment on that investigation because eight weeks later it’s still in process.
It’s clear that a vocal minority of Hastings students wanted to hear neither my reasoning about Mr. Biden’s selection criteria nor my broader analysis now that there is a nominee. They screamed obscenities and physically confronted me, several times getting in my face or blocking my access to the lectern, and they shouted down a dean.
They also castigated their school for allowing me to speak and circulated a letter demanding “a committee of diverse student representatives” to approve speakers as well as mandatory training in critical race theory for students and faculty. Never mind that Hastings, a public institution, would be violating the First Amendment if it disapproved speakers based on their viewpoints.
And never mind that preventing a duly invited speaker from speaking is against UC Hastings’s rules. The school’s chancellor wrote in a communitywide email the next day: “Disrupting an event to prevent a speaker from being heard is a violation of our policies and norms . . . which the College will—indeed, must—enforce.”
But don’t hold your breath for anybody to be disciplined there or at Yale Law School, where an event was similarly disrupted the next week. Too few administrators follow the example of the University of Chicago’s Robert Zimmer. In response to pressure to punish Prof. Dorian Abbot for criticizing affirmative action, Mr. Zimmer reaffirmed his commitment to faculty members’ freedom to “disagree with any policy or approach of the University . . . without being subject to discipline, reprimand or other form of punishment.”
You’d think that law students should have a particular appreciation for spirited and open engagement with provocative ideas. They’ve chosen a career that centers on argument and persuasion.
But alas a heckler’s veto prevailed. I’d welcome the opportunity to return to Hastings—or anywhere—to discuss the Supreme Court. It’s even more important to have a national reckoning about our inability to discuss controversial issues without canceling our opponents.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mob-rule-at-hastings-law-school-shouting-obscenities-ilya-shapiro-georgetown-yale-law-11647957949?mod=hp_opin_pos_6#cxrecs_s
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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22 March, 2022
Woke Harvard students force CLOSURE of on-campus police station after moaning that cops' presence was 'a violent, visual intimidation tactic' and raging at officers who ate in student dining rooms
An on-campus Harvard University police station was forced to closed after students complained that its presence was 'a violent, visual intimidation tactic.'
The police department's substation, located inside the Mather House residential hall, closed in February following years of outcry from both woke students and faculty.
They argued the outpost, which opened in 2005 and was one of four on campus, was more intimidating than helpful, according to the Harvard Crimson, and even took aim at officers for eating in the students' dining room.
Eleanor 'Ellie' Taylor, a Harvard student and resident of Mather House, claimed the substation was being used as a 'visual intimidation tactic' against students.
'The real effect that the presence of the HUPD substation has on the Mather community is simply a violent, visual intimidation tactic that students are forced to see every time they enter the house,' Taylor said.
She added there were concerns about Harvard University Police Department officers eating meals alongside students in the dining hall during the 2019-2020 academic year, which she said made many students feel uncomfortable.
Faith Woods, another resident at Mather House, told the Harvard Crimson that having the police substation attached to the hall where she lived was not helpful, but instead 'implies that we're being watched and policed, which is not a pleasant feeling.'
'I am well aware that the police are not there to keep me actively safe,' Woods said. 'Having a police car sitting outside of Mather every night — which it does — doesn't bring me any sense of safety.'
Harvard University Police Department spokesperson Steven G. Catalano wrote in an email to the newspaper that the closure was a result of concerns raised by students, as well as how much police used the substation.
'The decision to close the Mather House substation was made last week in response to concerns raised by Mather House staff and students as well as the amount of use of the substation by officers and community members,' Catalano wrote.
The police substation was located at Mather House on Cowperthwaite Street. Now, the closest station is 0.6 miles away from the residential hall, according to Harvard's campus map.
Kai DeJesus, another Mather House resident, told the Harvard Crimson that the substation's closure is a 'really good first step,' but believes that the university's police department ultimately needs to be abolished.
DeJesus pointed to a 2020 incident in which an officer was accused of using excessive force, while arresting a black man in Harvard's Smith Campus Center.
'It's really important that we keep these violent institutions outside of residences,' DeJesus said. 'Ultimately, HUPD remains the police force that disproportionately targets Black and Brown people here on campus and in Cambridge.'
'For real justice to exist on this campus, HUPD must be abolished,' DeJesus said.
HUPD will continue to operate substations at the University's Longwood Campus, the Smith Campus Center, and the Harvard Kennedy School's Wexner Building.
'The closure will not impact the Department's ability to respond to calls from the community in an effective and timely manner,' Catalano wrote.
The substations were designed to build community relationships, the Harvard Police Department maintains on its website.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10633043/Harvard-police-station-closes-students-complained-visual-intimidation-tactic.html
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SHOCKING: New York College Honors Cop Killer
Leftists describe murderer as a "loving human being."
Once again leftists prove what we’ve known all along. Criminals are the new upstanding citizens. At least in the world of leftism.
Thus, it’s no surprise that one New York college set out to honor a convicted cop-killer.
In 1971, Jalil Muntaqim, formerly known as Anthony Bottom, helped kill two NYPD officers. At the time, Bottom was active with a militant wing of the Black Panthers known as the Black Liberation Army. As such, he was partly responsible for a series of deadly attacks aimed at law enforcement.
NPR.org elaborates:
Authorities said Bottom and his accomplices lured Officers Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini to an apartment building in Harlem before shooting them from behind.
Bottom was later captured and convicted of two counts of first degree murder. Like many Black revolutionaries from that era, he’s been in prison ever since, currently incarcerated at Sullivan Correctional Facility north of New York City.
Denise Piagentini, widow of one of the officers, has petitioned parole board officials over the decades since to keep Bottom behind bars.
“Anthony Bottom assassinated my husband and Waverly Jones because they wore the blue uniform,” Piagentini said at a police officer union event last year. “We need to remember that under the uniform there is a person.”
Her pleas were enough to keep Bottom behind bars until Black Lives Matter culture took over. Now, Piagentini and Jones are no longer the priority to the parole board. So, in 2020, they set Bottom free.
On Sept. 11, New York’s parole board reversed itself, granting Bottom release. State officials declined to immediately release documents explaining their decision.
The move went unnoticed until the New York City police union issued a statement on Sept. 23 blasting the parole board, which in recent years has released more formerly violent offenders from prison, including men who attacked or killed police.
“We are furious with the cowards and lunatics who claim to lead this state,” said Police Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch in the statement.” They have chosen to stand with the murderers, cold-blooded assassins and radicals bent on overthrowing our society.”
The statement also included a statement from Denise Piagentini who said she was “heartbroken” by the parole board’s decision.
https://theblacksphere.net/2022/03/shocking-new-york-college-honors-cop-killer/
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Multiple COVID cases won’t trigger NYC health department assessment in schools
Multiple COVID-19 cases in New York City public schools will no longer trigger “epidemiological assessments” by the health department, according to an internal memo obtained by The Post.
The city Department of Education memo to principals comes as the new Omicron subvariant, BA.2 sparks fears of a possible surge.
If there’s a breakout of multiple cases in classrooms or on sports teams, the memo says, principals should distribute COVID-19 home test kits to students who have been exposed.
The superintendent’s office can help assess “what may be causing the increase in transmission” and consult the Office of School Health “to minimize further transmission.”
“I didn’t realize that epidemiology was part of my principal’s duties,” said a Brooklyn administrator, who asked not to be named without DOE permission to speak.
The Kings County principal said the new directive, which went into effect March 14, confused him and several colleagues.
“It’s the honor system at this point,” the principal said. “The kids come back to school and you don’t know if they tested or what the results were.”
“We feel they want to decrease the staff in the Situation Room,” he added, referring to the team of DOE and health officials who oversee COVID cases in schools.
“This is the way they’re doing it and putting it on us.”
DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer denied any changes in Situation Room procedures.
“There is a citywide shift away from universal contact tracing, but all of the same alerts and systems are in place in our schools,” he said. “The ask of the principal remains the same as it has been since January.”
The current threshold to gauge transmission is 10 cases in a classroom or sports team, though officials said that number could be revisited as the pandemic evolves. In the Brooklyn administrator’s building, cases have not reached that count at any point in the pandemic, he said.
The policy shift comes after the Post reported that principals will earn millions in overtime pay for an avalanche of work imposed by the Situation Room, including tracing what students and staff were exposed to COVID and notifying families.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/18/multiple-school-covid-cases-wont-trigger-health-dept-review/
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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21 March, 2022
Los Angeles Unified School District announces end to indoor mask mandate
The second-largest school district in the country, with over 600,000 students and 30,000 teachers, said masks will now only be “strongly recommended” indoors.
The new policy still needs to be formally ratified by union groups, but is expected to go into effect no later than March 23, district officials said in a press release.
The district’s face-covering policy is now in line with guidelines from the state and those of LA County’s Departments of Public Health.
Most districts in California lifted their mask mandate earlier this week, but LAUSD held off while it met with the teachers’ union, United Teachers Los Angeles, to come to an agreement, according to ABC 7.
“I strongly support ending the indoor mask requirement and am committed to continuing to uphold our science-based approach to COVID-19 safety and protocols,” Superintendent Alberto M.Carvalho said in a statement.
“I want to personally thank our students, employees and families for their support and patience. We know some in our school communities and offices will continue to wear masks while others may not. Please consider your situation and do what is best for you or your child. Now that this important issue is behind us,it is time to focus on each students’ full academic potential.”
According to the agreement, the district has agreed to continue weekly PCR COVID-19 testing of all students and staff through the end of the school year – a policy that will be reviewed again in April or May.
LAUSD has also agreed to provide KN95 or N95 masks to all employees who request them. The district also must provide take-home COVID-19 tests to all students and staff “for baseline testing prior to the beginning of the 2022 spring break.”
https://nypost.com/2022/03/18/los-angeles-unified-school-district-announces-end-to-indoor-mask-mandate/
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UK: Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi plans crackdown on 'Mickey Mouse' degrees - with universities required to publish drop-out rate and graduate job outcomes on every advert
Nadhim Zahawi is planning a crackdown on 'Mickey Mouse' degrees, the Mail on Sunday can reveal. Universities will be required to publish the drop-out rate and graduate job outcomes on every advert they put out for a degree, in the same way loans have to be upfront about APR, under plans being considered by the Education Secretary.
This would apply to both physical and online adverts for courses and aim to ensure students are not 'misled' when applying, insiders said.
Mr Zahawi wants to see tighter criteria for entry to university and curbs on courses that do not deliver good job prospects while saddling young people with debt.
A government source said the aim is to tackle universities cynically offering degrees as 'silly' as 'David Beckham studies' while knowing they are unlikely to lead to better career or earnings prospects for young people. They pointed out that some Management degrees have a drop out rate of more than 50 per cent.
Ministers are currently discussing proposals to introduce a 'no C at Maths GCSE, no university' rule to significantly tighten criteria for entry.
The tougher measures are designed to push pupils towards other routes including apprenticeships.
A senior government source spoke in favour of demanding a minimum C level Maths for all university applicants. However the plan is controversial and others want a softer version of pupils needing to have passed either Maths or English at GCSE or have a minimum of two Es at A-Level to be able to attend university.
This would apply to both physical and online adverts for courses and aim to ensure students are not 'misled' when applying, insiders said (stock image)
The talks are part of a Department of Education consultation on introducing minimum qualifications for student loan access.
Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons Education Select Committee, said: 'I hope they proceed with caution on this. Some people who are very bad at maths may be able to do a history degree.
'Rather than denying someone a place in university, we should offer them a refresher course while they are at there.'
The Department of Education is concerned that 'not all students receive the same high quality of teaching' and that many end up with saddled with student loan debt for courses with poor job prospects.
An insider familiar with the talks said: 'The problem with universities is they see themselves as part of a free market, but they are not because they have got taxpayers paying.'
These plans are part of wider reforms separate from the upcoming education white paper, expected at the end of this month.
Mr Zahawi plans to use the white paper to make apprenticeship and vocational routes more appealing to young people. This will involve an overhaul of T Levels, or technical qualifications, with the aim of making them as prestigious as A Levels.
T Levels will be designed with employers on 'robust employer standards', a source said, and will offer a 45-day work placement for students.
A government source said: 'What we need to achieve is for aspirational parents and kids, following vocational routes becomes as prestigious as an academic or university one. People shouldn't feel they have to go to university' adding that vocational routes should not be seen as just 'hard hats and high vis jackets' but also highly technical professions including working on film sets.
Mr Halfon said: 'Instead of university, university, university, it should be skills, skills, skills. That's why getting T-levels right is so important.
'We should be encouraging more students to do T-Levels and apprenticeships – in contrast to most students who go to university and do not get good graduate jobs despite the great whacking loans they take out.'
Other measures expected to be announced in the white paper include new 'covid catch up' measures including targeted support for children who fell behind during the pandemic.
New targets will be set for pupils passing English and Maths GCSE for 2030, which will be more ambitious than pre-Covid ones.
The white paper will also set out a plan to make all schools run by academy trusts, which would give them more autonomy from local councils.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10631871/Education-Secretary-Nadhim-Zahawi-plans-crackdown-Mickey-Mouse-degrees.html
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The isle of banned books: Tiny island off Maine - with a population of 100 - is buying controversial novels that have been prohibited by certain schools or US counties as 'push back' on censorship
The tiniest library in Maine, housed on Matinicus Island 22 miles off the state's coast, is on a mission to fill its shelves with unwanted and banned books.
From 'And Tango Makes Three,' the story of two male penguins that raised a chick together, to classics like 'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee, 'The Handmaid´s Tale' by Margaret Atwood, 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck and 'The Bluest Eye' by Toni Morrison, all books are welcome including those that are being banned or canceled in other parts of the country.
Eva Murray recently returned from a trip to the mainland with a bunch of books including 'And Tango Makes Three,' which the American Library Association says is one of the most banned books in the country.
She also brought back a number of field guides, which she told the Bangor Daily News are 'popular here.'
Islanders also requested copies of 'Maus,' Art Spiegelman's graphic novel retelling his father's experiences as a Polish Jew and a Holocaust survivor, but Sherman's Maine Coast Book Shop in Rockland was out of copies.
Other than the field guides, which Murray purchased, the library's entire inventory is donated. It is organized and maintained entirely by volunteers, who tend to the 24/7 library whenever they have a spare moment.
'We are buying banned books in order to publicly push back against the impetus to ban books. To say, 'If you don´t want it in your library, we want it in ours,'' Murray told the publication.
For years, islanders just traded books among themselves, but they decided to create a grassroots library in 2016 in an eight-by-ten prefabricated storage shed that an islander sought to get rid of.
'Getting and acquiring a building out here is no small thing,' Murray, who is the founder of Matinicus' recycling program, told the publication. 'I said, 'How about we take it, move it off the property, renovate it and it can become our library,'' she said. 'That is, in fact, what happened.'
Islanders applied to give the library nonprofit status, then had an island carpenter renovate the shed's interior and Murray's electrician husband wire it.
It expanded in 2020 to add a second shed for a children's library after Kristy Rogers McKibben, who grew up on the island and had established a short-lived, ad-hoc lending library 40 years prior, applied for a grant from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation. A second insulated shed was delivered to the small island on a ferry.
'It's cute as a bunny,' Murray said of the children's library. 'It's just something that makes people smile. It's got the same nice carpentry inside, pine shelving, and I painted this neat, colorful floor.'
There's no librarian. Patrons borrow books using the honor system. Books are checked out by writing the book's name in a notebook.
As the library grew, the island started to become the bookish equivalent of the 'Island of Misfit Toys,' the place where unwanted toys reside in the Christmas classic, 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.'
The library is also the island's first free wireless hotspot, which Murray said has made a difference for a lot of residents. The sheds aren't heated, but patrons make do.
'I am every day surprised how much people respect and honor and appreciate and support this,' Murray said.
The emphasis on banned books does not seem to be controversial on Matinicus, the state´s most remote and isolated community.
With only 100 year-round residents, a live-and-let-live tolerance and appreciation for differences is essential.
'We are in a privileged position to say, 'We don´t ban books,' and that we welcome people´s suggestions for books,' Murray said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10630429/Maine-island-library-wants-banned-books.html
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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20 March, 2022
Charter schools’ common sense ask of NY state Legislature
A pro-charter school rally in City Hall Park Wednesday served as a reminder of yet another thing Albany isn’t doing: letting more kids attend good schools.
The Legislature refuses to lift the cap that prevents more charters from opening in New York City, though enrollment in charters has jumped 9% these last two years even as Department of Education schools keep losing kids by the tens of thousands. The best chance to do it is now, as part of the budget due April 1.
With 50,000 kids stuck on the waitlist for a charter seat, “it is unconscionable in these past two years in particular that we would not do everything possible to make sure that our kids and our families have the best possible education choices,” notes Crystal McQueen Taylor from StudentsFirstNY.
The smallest fix would be to revive the dozen-plus “zombie” charters, issued in past years but no longer active, so that schools ready to open could do so. That’s “just a different way to count charters as the number of schools operated,” argues James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center.
Better still, end the special cap on charters in New York City, and let Gotham use some of the 70-plus charters still available under the main cap in the rest of the state.
Best of all would be to do away with the cap entirely: It was set up when charters were experimental; now that they’ve succeeded so thoroughly, the only reason to keep it is the lobbying of the teachers unions that dominate the regular public schools.
If the Legislature refuses to at least lift the cap, it’s a clear sign lawmakers just don’t care about the kids.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/18/charter-schools-common-sense-ask-of-state-legislature/
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Auckland University student who admitted raping student allowed to keep studying
A student who a university proctor agreed had twice raped and physically assaulted another student was given a written reprimand and allowed to keep studying.
The victim complained to the University of Auckland about the two sexual assaults, as well as several other attacks including her rapist covering her face with a pillow so she couldn't breathe when she confronted him.
The university proctor accepted it happened, reprimanded the man and told him not to contact the woman. But eight months after her complaint he is still studying at the university.
However, the woman had to quit her studies and return to her home country after becoming severely depressed.
Only last week did the university tell the woman via letter the man would have to face a disciplinary committee over his actions - one day after the Herald on Sunday started asking questions.
In that letter the university admitted to a failure in its disciplinary procedures, saying the proctor did not have the power to resolve such a serious case and it should have been referred to the university's discipline committee.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-university-student-who-admitted-raping-student-allowed-to-keep-studying/OKFDT2XDSBIWNMDYIRYI4BL3PE/
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Australia: Pandemic lockdowns have widened the wealth gap in our schools
<i>Less intelligent students need more help to achieve so reducing that help has serious consequences. Highly intelligent students by contrast do well in any system. And intelligence is both hereditary and a major precursor to wealth. So private schools on average have smarter kids with richer parents</i>
A learning gap between rich and poor students is widening as literacy and numeracy tests reveal schools in disadvantaged suburbs have fallen behind during the pandemic lockdowns.
Educators have warned of higher dropout rates and social scarring without intervention to help students from poorer families catch up on their lost learning.
Fresh NAPLAN data, to be published on Wednesday, reveals patches of poor performance in suburbs blighted by high unemployment, poverty or large numbers of students whose parents don’t speak English.
Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe warned that many students from disadvantaged backgrounds were being “left behind’’.
“These deep-rooted education inequities have widened in recent years because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Morrison government has done nothing to address them,’’ she said.
Across Australia, the average NAPLAN score for year 9 reading fell by 4.5 points to 577, while writing scores rose by 1.8 points to 551, between 2019 and 2021. Numeracy performance dropped by an average of 4.6 points to 588.
At Chifley College’s Mt Druitt campus in western Sydney, where three out of four students live in the poorest 25 per cent of households and half speak a foreign language, the year 9 writing results fell by 18 points, while writing scores dropped 35 points.
Bucking the trend is Sydney Adventist School in Auburn, in Sydney’s multicultural western suburbs, where old-school teaching methods have driven success.
Despite 80 per cent of children being from non-English speaking families, the school lifted the reading and writing scores for year 3 students in 2021. The school’s deputy principal, Jenny Hahnel, said the school expected high academic standards from students, whose migrant parents value education and respect teachers.
The school uses “explicit teaching’’, providing clear instruction until each student has mastered the content of a lesson.
Reading is based on phonics, and children learn their times tables, as well as hands-on learning such as measuring objects in the playground for maths. “Explicit teaching focuses on a lot of repetition,’’ Ms Hahnel said.
“Every day we start the lesson revisiting content we’ve already taught. We’re consistently checking for understanding during the lesson, and we focus on student engagement.
“You’ll never see a child sitting at a desk and not knowing what to do. Not one child went backwards during Covid.’’
The Smith Family, a charity that is helping 58,000 disadvantaged children attend school through its Learning for Life sponsorship program, warned that more children had fallen behind as a result of lockdowns.
Anton Leschen, the charity’s Victorian general manager, said he knew of a single parent home schooling seven children, using one smartphone with a cracked screen and limited data.
“Living in disadvantage is a matter of chaos and survival,’’ he said. “Access to digital resources is always a major issue.’’
Mr Leschen called for targeted learning support for children who had fallen behind at school. “Some of them are very bright and hardworking,’’ he said. “Others have arrived at school with low initial literacy and cognitive and social skills. They’re not write-offs, but targeted support and help to catch up is all the more necessary.’’
At Kurnai College in Morwell, in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, reading scores dropped by 38 points, writing by 43 points and numeracy by 17 points. On the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, half the students attending Western Port Secondary College live in the poorest 25 per cent of households.
Year 9 students’ NAPLAN results dropped 15 points for reading, 56 points for writing and 15 points for numeracy.
Punchbowl Boys’ High School in NSW enrols 72 per cent of its students from the poorest households – virtually all from a non-English speaking background. Its results in year 9 fell by 19 points for reading and 23 points for numeracy, but rose six points for writing.
At Durack, one of Brisbane’s poorest suburbs, Glenala State High School’s year 9 students performed 10 points lower in 2021 than the crop of year 9s in 2019, before the start of the pandemic.
Writing scores fell 15 points and numeracy scores 19 points.
Australian Secondary Principals’ Association president Andrew Pierpoint said many poorer families could not afford computers or tablets for home schooling and online lessons.
“They might have a phone shared between siblings,’’ he said.
“The students have to read a document and type on a phone.’’
Mr Pierpoint said the pandemic had made the gap between poor and wealthy students “wider than we’ve ever seen before’’.
He called for more funding for the most disadvantaged schools. “Some schools need more money because life keeps running over the top of them, and it’s not the kids’ fault,’’ he said. “We need to address this as a nation.’’
Australian Primary Principals’ Association president Malcolm Elliott said many students had struggled when their parents could not help with home schooling, provide technology or pay for tutoring.
“Some of the maths that children get sent home with can look very complex for parents,’’ he said.
NSW Teachers’ Federation senior vice-president Amber Flohm said 3000 students had dropped out of school in 2020 and “never returned’.
“Students with disability or who are learning English are heavily reliant on face-to-face interaction,’’ she said. “English as an additional language is not something that lends itself to remote learning and teaching.’’
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/naplan-pandemic-lockdowns-have-widened-the-wealth-gap-in-our-schools/news-story/a2fdbd208d65d3c693aa412c79a5e674
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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18 March, 2022
Tony Sewell is a good man betrayed by university
We have known for a long time that many of our universities are dominated by senior dons who pursue Leftist causes while worshipping piously at the shrine of wokery.
What is less widely realised is that these universities can be more mercenary than the most hard-hearted capitalists, and have sometimes established cordial relations with the world’s nastiest authoritarian regimes.
To some, it may seem a paradox that institutions that espouse supposedly enlightened thought, and vilify their traditionalist adversaries, should at the same time have dealings with reactionary and disagreeable people.
Yet I fear it is part of a common pattern.
The latest case concerns Tony Sewell, a distinguished black educationalist who has helped thousands of black children from poor backgrounds to get into universities.
It would be hard to think of a more admirable man.
However, Dr Sewell attracted the ire of various Left-wing luminaries after chairing an official report which concluded last year that Britain is not an institutionally racist country.
It added that our multi-racial society should in some ways be considered a model for other nations.
Among those seemingly driven into paroxysms of rage was a coven of dons at Nottingham University, where Tony Sewell obtained his doctorate in 1995.
He had had the temerity to reject the core Leftist belief that this country is riddled with racism.
It emerged earlier this week that Nottingham has withdrawn an offer of an honorary degree made to Dr Sewell.
The reason given was that the university doesn’t confer such degrees on figures ‘who become the subject of political controversy’.
This is utterly disingenuous. In the first place, Dr Sewell can hardly be said to be ‘the subject of political controversy’. He has merely enraged a few Left-wing Labour MPs and some bigoted academics.
But Nottingham University’s explanation is especially obnoxious in view of its honouring of a number of questionable recipients who are unworthy of holding Dr Sewell’s mortar board.
For example, an honorary degree was given by Nottingham to Liu Xiaoming, a former Chinese ambassador to the UK, who has dismissed videos showing Uighur re-education camps in the western Xinjiang region of China as ‘fake news’.
The red gown of an honorary doctor was draped around the shoulders of Fu Ying,another former Chinese ambassador to London, who has also questioned claims of human rights abuses against the Uighur people.
But let it not be said that Nottingham University confines its favours to unedifying representatives of the Chinese Communist Party.
Also honoured was Najib Razak, a former prime minister of Malaysia, who was jailed for 12 years in 2020 after embezzling £537million from a state-owned investment firm.
They do know how to pick them in Nottingham, don’t they?
I submit that the above named characters, and others whom I haven’t the space to enumerate here, are politically controversial figures in a way the good and decent Dr Sewell plainly isn’t.
The difference, of course, is that there are sound commercial reasons for honouring powerful Chinese and rich Malays.
Indeed, Nottingham University has campuses in both China and Malaysia.
Stephen Odell, who sits on the council of Nottingham University, has earned almost £150,000 from a firm called Evraz, which is linked to the Kremlin and is suspected of supplying steel to build Russian tanks.
Mr Odell resigned from the board of Evraz only last week.
What an intellectually tangled university Nottingham must be!
It snubs a fine British man who has helped thousands of poor black people to attend university while honouring the unsavoury representatives of foreign regimes that happen also to be rich.
This is the paradox at the heart of many of our modern universities. What is particularly objectionable is the conjunction of progressive thought with low, self-interested motives.
Look at Jesus College, Cambridge, which in 2018 accepted £200,000 from an agency linked to the Chinese Communist Party for its Global Issues Dialogue Centre.
In 2019, it accepted £155,000 from the Chinese technology company Huawei.
And yet this same Jesus College, so careless in accepting arguably tainted money, is trying to move heaven and earth to get rid of a plaque to Tobias Rustat, a 17th-century royal courtier and benefactor with links to slavery.
How painless to embrace the fashionable cause of removing a monument put up to a man who died more than 300 years ago.
How painful to return today’s hefty cheque to Beijing.
Study, too, the case of Edinburgh University. In 2020, after student protests, it renamed the David Hume Tower on account of the beliefs on race held by the great 18th-century philosopher which it believed ‘rightly cause distress today’.
David Hume is in no position to complain. A very easy thing to cancel him.
Nonetheless, Edinburgh conveniently forgot its principles when it awarded Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal a distinction after his foundation bankrolled an Islamic study centre at the university with an endowment of £8million.
It didn’t matter that a year before the Saudi Arabian Prince had offered 100 luxury cars to pilots in his country who had bombed Yemen.
Wokery is embraced by university authorities to advertise their virtue.
But when millions of pounds are at stake, any pretence of proper moral conduct is at once cynically suspended.
If the students at Liverpool University want to rechristen an accommodation block named after the great 19th century Liberal Prime Minister, William Gladstone (whose father was a slave trader), by all means let them.
But given that 29 per cent of the university’s income comes from Chinese students, we must never say a word against Beijing!
Greed is, in fact, the curse of our modern universities. It has other manifestations, such as the grotesque salaries which vice-chancellors (the senior dons who run the show) are paid.
The average annual salary of such people is £269,000, with a handful of them pocketing more than £500,000.
So skewed are the values of these grandees that some leading universities continued to teach pupils via Zoom long after Covid restrictions had been lifted while still charging them maximum fees of £9,250 a year.
Another ruse to rake in extra money has been to boost undergraduate numbers, though the consequence is sometimes lecture rooms so crowded that students are forced to sit on the floor, as well as seminars as big as school classes.
Many of the 24 supposedly elite Russell Group universities have expanded at an alarming rate.
Exeter has seen an increase of 61 per cent in the number of its undergraduates between 2009/10 and 2019/20.
Liverpool and University College London have grown by 59 per cent over the same period.
I feel very sorry for the students, and it is hard to believe that the universities — and the Government that has renabled them to behave in this selfish and venal way — won’t one day face a backlash.
But I reckon Tony Sewell is well out of it. He should rejoice at his rejection by these hypocrites.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/stephen-glover-tony-sewell-is-a-good-man-betrayed-by-dons/ar-AAVaC18?ocid=winp1taskbar
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Jacinda Ardern introduces a new school history curriculum calling on teachers to reflect on their 'white guilt' - as critics say she's DELIBERATELY dividing New Zealanders on race
New Zealand will introduce a new history curriculum in schools, encouraging teachers and students to think more critically about British colonialism and its ongoing impact on M?ori communities.
Beginning next year, the plan riled up fringe libertarian groups who accused Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of pushing 'left-wing narratives' and evoking 'white guilt'.
But the Labour government argues New Zealand's history has been shaped by 'the use of power, relationships and connections' between M?ori and European settlers and must be taught to children in full.
'The new curriculum content has been created to be flexible allowing local, national and global context that span the full range of New Zealander's experience to be included,' Ms Ardern said.
'It will help us celebrate our unique place in the world and highlight what has made New Zealand the country we are today.
'This is an important milestone and I know it will help bring our nation's histories to life in our communities.'
Education minister Chris Hipkins said it was vital young Kiwis understood 'history as a continuous thread, with contemporary issues directly linked to major events of the past'.
'Our diversity is our strength, but only when we build connections to each other. We can move forward together, stronger when we understand the many paths our ancestors walked to bring us to today,' he said.
But not everybody in The Land of the Long White Cloud shares this sentiment.
ACT's Education spokesperson Chris Baillie said the curriculum 'divides history into villains and victims, contains significant gaps, and pushes a narrow set of highly political stories from our past'.
'Today, Labour is trying to make New Zealand an unequal society on purpose. It believes there are two types of New Zealanders. Tangata Whenua, who are here by right, and Tangata Tiriti who are lucky to be here. We should be learning the history of our multi-ethnic society,' he claimed.
'The curriculum pushes a number of left-wing narratives, including about the welfare state, 'cultural appropriation', and a partnership between the Crown and M?ori.'
Mr Baillie took aim at the three 'big ideas' put forward by the curriculum.
The first 'big idea', that M?ori history is the 'continuous history' of New Zealand, excludes the many people who have travelled from the furthest points of the globe, brought their histories and cultures with them and worked to give themselves, their families and this county and better future,' he said.
'The second, that colonisation 'continue[s] to influence all aspects of New Zealand society', is depressing and wrong and neglects the elements of our society that are untouched by colonisation.
'The final big idea, that power has been the primary driver of our history, creates a narrative of oppressors and oppressed, and leaves out the many forces that have propelled our past, including scientific discoveries, technological innovations, business, and artistic creativity.'
The curriculum centres around three 'big ideas' that took three years to drum out.
First, that 'M?ori history is the foundational and continuous history of Aotearoa New Zealand'.
Second, that 'colonisation and settlement have been central to Aotearoa New Zealand's histories for the past 200 years'.
And finally that 'the course of Aotearoa New Zealand's histories has been shaped by the use of power.
'Relationships and connections between people and across boundaries have shaped the course of Aotearoa New Zealand's histories'.
In practical terms, resources for teachers suggest things like they should 'not drape The Treaty of Waitangi with the Union Jack of England, but rather with your M?ori cloak, which is of this country'.
Guidelines also encourage teachers and students to watch the documentary series by RNZ called The Land of the Long White Cloud which 'tells the stories of New Zealanders who are reflecting on their colonial heritage and white guilt, and the ways they push through to find a more healthy P?keh? identity'.
Andrew Judd, a former white mayor of New Plymouth, appeared on the program and famously made the statement: 'We are the problem, always have been'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10621967/Jacinda-Ardern-accused-dividing-New-Zealand-new-history-curriculum.html
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Australia: English teachers told to focus on grammar, punctuation as writing declines
English departments will be chiefly responsible for teaching grammar, sentence structure and punctuation, under a draft new syllabus, after the decades-long approach of sharing the job among teachers from all subjects contributed to a steep decline in writing standards.
The draft NSW English syllabus for years 3 to 10 will intensify focus on literacy skills amid concerns writing has been neglected in high schools, leaving even the brightest students struggling with crucial skills such as writing clear sentences and expressing ideas.
But the English Teachers Association (ETA) said the changes - to be released for consultation on Friday - would hand them an unnecessary burden because literacy skills differed from subject to subject.
“Returning sentence structure and all of that kind of stuff purely to English I think is unfortunate,” said Eva Gold, executive officer at the ETA.
The changes follow a NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) review, revealed by the Herald, that found writing had been neglected in the state’s high schools and in 2019 year 9 students were the equivalent of five months behind their peers in 2011.
A survey of more than 4000 teachers found many - especially science teachers, but also two in five English teachers - felt they lacked the skills and confidence to teach writing.
Among the reforms in the draft years 7 to 10 syllabus, students will be taught ways to interpret unfamiliar words and use grammar to clarify complex ideas. They will also read a wider range of texts, including non-fiction and essays. They could include George Orwell’s Why I Write, which is an HSC text.
The new syllabus will also address concerns about reading. After the kindergarten to year 2 syllabus focused on phonics, the year 3 to 6 one will increase emphasis on vocabulary - key to reading comprehension - and require teachers to ensure students in years 3 and 4 can read fluently and decipher new words quickly.
The focus on reading skills also aims to foster enjoyment of reading.
Peter Knapp, an expert in teaching writing, said sharing responsibility for teaching writing between different subjects was introduced 30 years ago, and was never enacted properly. Science did not think to teach sentence structure, and English did not think to teach scientific report-writing.
“The reality is that no one is doing it,” he said.
Maureen Abrahams, the head of English at Asquith Girls High School, said students often have brilliant ideas but cannot express them because of limited writing skills. She said English would still focus on literature, but welcomed the new responsibility for literacy. “I feel with writing and literacy, there are deep connections to English as a subject,” she said.
But Ms Gold said writing styles differed between subjects and English teachers should not have to teach skills better left to other faculties. Science, for example, used the passive voice, which was avoided in English. “We like students’ writing to be active, to be vibrant, and not to be detached or removed unless we are asking for it,” she said.
“Often students who perform only in a mediocre way [do so] because they are not confident of the language of their discipline, and it’s not up to English to teach that.”
Head of humanities and English teacher at Northholm Grammar, Rebecca Birch, said she understood the new approach. “This is knowledge and understanding that until now we have assumed students come with when they arrive in high school, but obviously a lot of students don’t,” she said.
However, many English teachers were themselves never taught skills such as grammar at either school or university, and NESA would need to address a skills shortage. “Three years of studying literature won’t cut it under this new syllabus, so universities need to step up in their offerings,” she said.
NESA will also release a draft years 3 to 10 maths syllabus, in which some times tables will be introduced in year 3 and the rest in year 4. There is controversy over times tables, with the federal government saying Australia’s national curriculum - to which NSW is aligned - should follow Singapore’s lead and introduce them in year 2, and have students master them in year 3.
The new high school curriculum will also scrap a three-tiered approach to maths in years 9 and 10, in which there are syllabuses of varying difficulty, and instead have core subjects that equip students for HSC standard maths, and more difficult options that prepare students for harder subjects.
A NESA spokesperson said the recommendations are being integrated across the new NSW curriculum.
“The new content will embed, more explicitly, writing skills across all subjects. To equip teachers delivering the new curriculum, NESA is providing teachers with enhanced support materials which will include teaching advice,” the spokesperson said.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said draft English and maths syllabuses - to become mandatory in 2024 - would create room for deeper learning, put more focus on reasoning and problem-solving in maths, and better prepare students for HSC courses.
“Our focus is on lifting standards in reading, writing and numeracy so providing all students with a great education and the benefits that brings,” she said.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/english-teachers-told-to-focus-on-grammar-punctuation-as-writing-declines-20220317-p5a5l9.html
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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17 March, 2022
How schools' covid-aid joy ride could send new hires off a fiscal cliff -- again
As school districts across the country grapple with declining enrollments induced by the pandemic, many are engaged in spending sprees like those of the past leading to widespread layoffs and budget cuts when federal money ran out.
Bolstered by $190 billion in pandemic relief funding from Washington, the nation’s public schools are hiring new teachers and staff, raising salaries, and sweetening benefit packages. Some are buying new vehicles. Others are building theaters and sports facilities.
Using such temporary support for new staff and projects with long-term costs is setting the table for perilous “fiscal cliffs” after COVID funding expires in 2024, some education budget analysts say. And that’s on top of doubts about whether money to battle the pandemic is being properly spent in the first place.
The latest round of pandemic relief for K-12 schools – the 2021 Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER – provided $122 billion to help school districts “safely reopen and sustain the safe operation of schools and address the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.”
In a January press release hailing what it called the success of the program, the Department of Education highlighted vaccination programs, tutoring, retention bonuses, and new hires. But it neglected to mention numerous other perks and frills that districts are bankrolling with that money.
Creston Community School District in Iowa used $231,000 of COVID relief to expand its sports stadium bleachers to make them compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The school board in Fort Worth, Texas, in October approved spending $171,000 of the district’s pandemic money for five vans to transport the district’s gifted and talented students.
Moore County Schools in North Carolina is already asking the county for more money after exhausting its pandemic account, which funded expenditures including the installation of two new running tracks and gym lockers.
The McAllen, Texas, school district, which has lost 15% of its enrollment since 2011, approved using relief funds for a project that critics contend is not connected to education: a $4 million expansion of a nature park on city property. That was permissible under the spending rules, so long as the state education department approved the construction project.
In an email, Texas Education Agency spokesman Frank Ward said approval of ESSER-funded construction projects “only certifies that the school system has met the minimum requirement for prior approval,” but declined to elaborate on individual projects. “Ultimately, allowable uses of ESSER funds will be determined by auditors,” Ward wrote.
Education analysts say the spending free-for-all is occurring precisely because of such murky, open-ended guidance from Washington. Each state was required to file a general spending plan for its share of ESSER funding – but not to provide specifics.
The “current wave of funding is all over the place,” said Chad Aldeman, policy director at Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, which conducts research on the economics of education. “There is not a clear articulation of what this money is for.”
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/03/15/how_schools_covid-aid_joy_ride_could_send_new_hires_off_a_fiscal_cliff_-_again_821109.html
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Texas University’s Insistence on Critical Race Theory, Ideological Conformity Draws Overdue Pushback
Is it time for lawmakers to take a more active role in curtailing the radicalism now pervasive throughout higher education?
There are certainly signs that’s the case, and it should have happened long ago. A battle going on in Texas underscores the point.
Last year, Texas banned the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 public school classrooms. It was part of a larger, nationwide effort to keep racially essentialist ideas out of the official instruction in public schools.
The Faculty Council at the University of Texas at Austin recently passed a resolution, by a 41-5 vote, supporting the teaching of critical race theory in the name of “academic freedom.” The resolution said that “educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning.”
So, a small band of academics and administrators have the right to foist whatever ideas and theories they favor on young people over the desires of the representatives of the people?
The resolution then said that the university stands with K-12 teachers who “seek to teach the truth in U.S. history and civics education.”
Note that critical race theory is being peddled here as simply “the truth.”
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, responded by proposing that the state should look at curtailing tenure for professors who insist on promoting critical race theory.
“The critical race theory people are trying to take us back to a divided country,” Patrick said at a press conference in February.
To these professors who voted 41 to 5, telling the taxpayers and the parents and the Legislature, and your own Board of Regents, to get out of their business, that we have no say in what you do in the classroom, you’ve opened the door for this issue because you went too far.
Actions such as stripping tenure from professors would certainly be an aggressive move with potential downsides. After all, tenure may be the only thing protecting the few right-leaning professors remaining in academia, such as Scott Yenor at Boise State in Idaho, who has the temerity to defend the nuclear family, among other things now considered verboten on college campuses.
Still, the university faculty’s resolution highlights the fact that school administrations are in many cases out of control and have often violated the public trust, despite the significant public investments they receive.
Dissenting University of Texas associate professor Richard Lowery assailed the pro-critical race theory resolution, calling it an inappropriate response from the school, which has deviated from the idea of free speech and has thrown in entirely with enforced advocacy.
“So many of the faculty view themselves as activists first, and educators and researchers maybe second or third, at best,” Lowery said in an interview with Fox News.
The school is “promoting the idea that academic freedom is the collective right of the faculty to decide which ideas are allowed on campus, not the individual right of faculty to express their own ideas,” he said, adding:
That is not what academic freedom means.
He said it’s ridiculous for the school to try to justify its support of critical race theory on the grounds of academic freedom when the school at the same time is creating a “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policy that applies a “political test” to new hires.
The professor then criticized the school for stepping into the state’s electoral politics.
“The Legislature trusted you to be the right people to judge the curriculum and to focus on education and keep politics out,” he said, noting:
They didn’t give you autonomy so you could turn our school into a social justice indoctrination camp.
Unfortunately, that’s what much of American higher education is becoming. The institutional focus is moving away from maintaining elite standards in education and toward reinforcing an aggressively left-wing ideological position.
It’s no surprise, then, to see other institutions in America conform to that same ethos. Like octopus tentacles, that dynamic is spreading out from college campuses into every other significant institution of society.
What the University of Texas faculty and the vast apparatus of higher education is promoting is not academic freedom. It’s the freedom of the academy to advance its ideological agenda without resistance or restraints.
The problem with critical race theory and the more expansive set of ideologies under the banner of diversity, equity, and inclusion goes beyond a single professor or university. The problem, as the left likes to say, is systemic.
The entire bureaucratic apparatuses of most college campuses are now constructed to reinforce the ideology of diversity, equity, and inclusion and social justice, as Lowery said.
Jay Greene, an education researcher for The Heritage Foundation, laid out in a recent study that there is a glut of diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators on college campuses. These administrators have become the empowered inquisitors to reinforce the cultural revolution. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Greene’s study reinforces the reality that diversity, equity, and inclusion has become the “central” concern of higher education in America. And this focus, reinforced by aggressive administration and faculty, pervades college campus culture.
The typical modern college campus is an environment that chills the freedom of thought and expression, where students “self-censor,” rather than debate the issues of the day.
That reality was underscored this week by Emma Camp, a student at the University of Virginia, who has taken a lot of flak in left-wing circles for publishing an essay March 7 in The New York Times about how universities stifle genuine free discussion.
She laid out how students are simply unwilling to discuss certain topics because they are afraid of repercussions, both socially and literally.
“I went to college to learn from my professors and peers. I welcomed an environment that champions intellectual diversity and rigorous disagreement,” Camp wrote. “Instead, my college experience has been defined by strict ideological conformity.”
Ironically, many academics and journalists on Twitter were angry the piece even got published, or they simply insulted the author—essentially proving her point.
Two aspects of the piece stood out: First, modern college campuses are clearly becoming places where free speech and independent thought go to die. Second, the dominant ethos that’s being reinforced is creating an environment where genuine “elite” education is missing or stultified.
Entire topics are set aside, like in the case of discussions about suttee—a traditional Indian practice in which Indian widows commit ritualistic suicide—because of racialized identity politics. And what is discussed is unserious, such as debates about whether “Captain Marvel” is a feminist movie.
With America’s highest achieving students, we are creating an elite in name only.
That professors—especially in the humanities departments—lean left isn’t new. What’s making higher education a stifling silo of culturally leftist conformity are school administrations that reinforce those ideas and make it very clear that the only diversity that’s desired is contained within the ideological confines of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Given that higher education is the feeder to most of the top professions and institutions in America, from corporate America to the tech industry and from journalism to politics (among many other fields), it’s not hard to see how college campus culture is transforming our institutions so completely.
To reach the upper echelons of the American ruling elite, you must navigate a system that only accepts a narrow ideology as “truth” and punishes dissenters with threats of cancellation. The larger goal is to place this new ethos at the heart of American and Western society, to make it as pervasive and unquestioned as it is at most universities.
College campus radicalism didn’t moderate when it hit the real world. To the contrary, it’s now shaping that world. It’s using America’s most powerful institutions to bludgeon the rest of society into accepting this revolution.
If you don’t conform, you won’t be accepted in American elite circles. If you resist, you will find yourself ridiculed, ostracized, and censored by the institutions they control.
That’s the daunting challenge before the American people. It’s the people versus the institutions. The first step in changing that dynamic and our trajectory is acknowledging the true challenge before us.
We, the people, have the right to determine the course of our country. That right does not belong solely to a cloistered, out-of-touch clique of academics and administrators operating behind closed doors.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/03/15/texas-universitys-insistence-on-critical-race-theory-ideological-conformity-draws-overdue-pushback
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Charter schools, advocates push lawmakers to expand seats in NYC
Charter school advocates rallied in City Hall Park Wednesday to push state lawmakers on action that would increase the number of charter school seats in the Big Apple.
A debate to lift a statewide cap on charter school licenses has stalled, leaving New York City maxed out on its number of charters – even though a slew of the licenses are for schools that are now closed.
Charter school leaders and supporters are asking the state Legislature to include in its budget a change that would allow dormant “zombie” charters to be reassigned to new charters.
“It is unconscionable in these past two years in particular that we would not do everything possible to make sure that our kids and our families have the best possible education choices,” said Crystal McQueen Taylor from StudentsFirstNY.
“There’s actually something that we can do about this right now.”
James Merriman, chief executive officer of the New York City Charter School Center, called the approach “so modest and commonsensical that it’s almost embarrassing that we have to be up here asking lawmakers to do it.”
The contentious debate over lifting the charter school cap in New York City has pitted advocates for school choice against opponents to redirecting public funds to private operators.
Charter proponents say reissuing closed charters is a simple solution that keeps the cap in place. It also incentivizes low-performing charters that close to be replaced by new and improved alternatives.
“That’s the point of charter schools in part — if they don’t perform, they close,” Merriman said.
“What we’re really asking for is just a different way to count charters as the number of schools operated.”
Charter school leaders have been adamant that the demand for more seats is there. Though enrollment has jumped in city charter schools by 9 percent over two years, five charter schools opened this school year, according to the New York City Charter School Center.
The center added Mayor Eric Adams has previously thrown his support behind the idea, testifying at a legislative hearing in Albany about getting “zombie” charters back in use.
Critics of the plan to reissue those charters, which has precedent in the state, have said it circumvents the cap and shortchanges students in Department of Education-operated schools by sharing the wealth — and space. Close to half of the city’s 271 charter schools are at least partially in buildings owned or leased by the department, center data showed.
But at the rally, speakers with aspirations to found new charter schools painted a picture of what they could accomplish if allowed to open their doors.
Three years ago, Daniel Diaz sought approval for Haven Charter High School in the Bronx, where he said a student would graduate with a diploma, certification and potential job offer with its partner New York Presbyterian.
“We got approved — with an IOU,” said Diaz, who is also the executive director of East Side House Settlement. “And that IOU set people back a couple of years, because then we were not able to open our doors.”
https://nypost.com/2022/03/16/charters-advocates-ask-lawmakers-to-reopen-closed-schools/
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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16 March, 2022
How an Academic Grudge Turned Into a #MeToo Panic
How the weaponization of sexual misconduct allegations wrecked Florian Jaeger's life and cost his university millions
During normal years, Meliora Weekend at the University of Rochester (U.R.) is one of the biggest events of the fall. A four-day combination of Homecoming and Family Weekend, parents visit, alumni return to campus, and there's good old-fashioned student debauchery. In 2021, events were smaller and subject to COVID-19 protocols, but in addition to a stand-up set by comic Margaret Cho and an address by actress Geena Davis, there was another notable event: a student-led protest on campus against a formerly rising-star professor. His name is Florian Jaeger.
At the time, the campus paper reported that around 40 students showed up, and the organizers' goal was to "bring awareness to new students" who had never heard of Jaeger or what happened. To Jaeger, there's some dark irony to this statement, because while these students may think they know what happened, he insists that they don't. What they know, he says, are rumors that spread across campus like a toxic algae bloom: that he's an abuser, a predator, a rapist. Rumors that made him persona non grata in his field; that led to threats, hate mail, formal censures; that got him banned from local businesses and disinvited from international talks. Rumors that nearly destroyed his department and made his accusers icons of #MeToo. But these rumors, according to multiple investigations, dozens of witnesses, and Jaeger himself, are largely false. What was sold to a national audience as an archetypal case of sexual harassment was, instead, a poisonous mix of professional competition, personality conflicts, bad blood, and an inner-departmental fight over hiring gone horribly wrong.
While the accusers' side of the story has been told many times, passed along both through rumor mills and media reports, Jaeger has largely remained silent. Part of this is because, during the investigations that would follow, he was directed by the university not to speak about what happened. But it's also because much of this occurred in a moment when the voices of the accused were largely unwelcome. At the height of #MeToo, few people wanted to hear from the men who had allegedly done wrong. And so the story that's been repeated over and over went largely unchecked—a twisted game of academic telephone that, in the end, would trigger four investigations, cost the university millions of dollars, and lead to multiple resignations, including that of the president of the university. And it would destroy the career, reputation, and nearly the life of the once-promising scholar Florian Jaeger.
Much more here:
https://reason.com/2022/03/14/how-an-academic-grudge-turned-into-a-metoo-panic
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Biden's Backdoor to Student Loan Forgiveness
Just who decides policy at the White House isn’t clear. But after the President's latest flip-flop, certainly, President Biden does not call the shots. Scarcely a week had passed since the administration promised to end an almost– two–year-old moratorium on student loan repayments when the President reversed course and extended it through May. After a year of failing to pass substantive policies, Democrats want victories to make temporary policies permanent, even if it means abusing executive powers. This abrupt about-face can undoubtedly be attributed to pressure from his progressive base.
Democrats’ push for student loan cancellation is a simple political calculation led by progressives, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They think the moratorium offers an expeditious path to achieving complete student loan forgiveness and a surefire way to keep the progressive base happy. This goal is popular with their college-educated and elite donors, who owe the most significant share of student loan debt.
Congress originally included the student loan moratorium at the peak of the pandemic in the CARES Act and the emergency program was intended to only last six months. It has since been extended five times even though almost every state has ended major coronavirus restrictions. Extensive prolonging will only make it more difficult for borrowers to meet their future financial obligations. Even senior Biden Administration officials have pushed to end the moratorium, but their voices were ignored because they opposed Biden’s activist base.
Since Biden started his campaign, special interest groups have pressured him constantly to address student loan debt. The American Federation of Teachers and MoveOn expected Biden to forgive student loans on his first day in office. While not capitulating to this demand outright, the President did not reject it, either. Instead, he bought himself time by ordering the Department of Education to study the issue.
Democrats are fighting so hard for the moratorium in 2022 because their congressional agenda has failed and they need a victory ahead of the midterms to solidify their government overreach. Democratic Members of Congress have introduced legislation that would forgive student loans, but these bills have stalled because members cannot agree on how to construct the policy. Democrats want to use executive orders to rubber stamp a stalled agenda as settled policy, bypassing the deliberative legislative process.
Rep. Cori Bush argues, "Forcing millions to start paying student loans again and cutting off the Child Tax Credit at the start of an election year is not a winning strategy."
Ending student loan repayments and expanding the Child Tax Credit might seem like good ideas for members, such as Rep. Bush, who won by almost 60 percentage points in 2020, but they won't be a winning message for members in competitive districts. A majority of Americans oppose efforts to enact blanket student loan forgiveness, and 59% of Americans believe that if any student debt is canceled, it must be canceled by Congress rather than by President Biden.
Additionally, Democrats often cite student debt’s impact on low-income Americans as proof that we must cancel student debt immediately. However, in their efforts to rid students of debt, Democrats would subject the entire country to a drastic increase in inflation. A recent report by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) shows that canceling student debt would increase the federal deficit by a whopping $1.6 trillion and increase inflation by as many as 50 basis points.
The rise in inflation would increase the price of basic goods and disproportionately affect low-income Americans. Considering that 4% of households below the poverty line are making payments on student debt, and that wealthy households hold significantly more debt than low-income households do, it is easy to see why the CRFB considers debt cancellation to be a regressive policy.
Democrats are desperately searching for a political victory for their elite liberal donors and radicalized progressive base, even if it means jamming through an unpopular policy by executive orders. Ultimately, this is a miscalculation and will cost Democrats seats come November. The American people see through President Biden’s charade.
https://townhall.com/columnists/rickmanning/2022/03/11/bidens-backdoor-to-student-loan-forgiveness-n2604390
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Australian school principals hounded out by violent parents and students
Violence, burnout and “brutal’’ workloads will push school principals to quit in record numbers this year, a study shows.
Four out of 10 principals were exposed to violence in schools last year, with some punched or pushed by angry parents, or injured breaking up schoolyard fights.
Escalating violence and stress in schools is exposed in the latest Australian Principal Occupational Health and Wellbeing Survey of 2590 principals and deputy principals, which is carried out each year by Australian Catholic University researchers.
Workloads worsened during the pandemic, with principals and their deputies working 55-hour weeks, on average, as they devoted more time to dealing with pandemic planning and students’ mental health problems.
The research shows 39 per cent of school leaders were exposed to workplace violence in schools last year – 10 times higher than the general population. Some 7 per cent of principals were threatened with assault by parents and 37 per cent by students.
“At this rate, half of all school leaders will endure physical violence by 2025,’’ ACU investigator and former principal Paul Kidson said on Monday. “Principals have to deal with students who are fighting one another – if three or four students are belting one another up and they have to get in the middle to break up the fight, they’re exposed to violence.
“I’ve even had to break up parent scuffles in the carpark.’’
Dr Kidson said the survey found principals had “brutal’’ workloads and worked an average of 23 hours a week during school holidays. A record one in 12 principals intends to retire early this year, as school leaders report the highest level of mental burnout since the survey began in 2011.
“The system is broken and on its knees,’’ one NSW public high school principal said.
“(There is) an unsustainable workload, poor working conditions (and) a significant increase in students and their families presenting with complex problems that schools do not have the resources to manage effectively.’’
Australian Secondary Principals Association president Andrew Pierpoint said he had been “roughed up’’ by a former student 10 years ago.
“The young fellow came into the school – I don’t know why he was aggrieved or if there was substance abuse – but I asked him to leave the school grounds, calm down and then come back,’’ Mr Pierpoint said. “He lunged forward and punched me in the head – that really rattled me for a while.
“There are plenty of women who’ve been attacked by students or parents,” he added.
Mr Pierpoint said increasing violence, as well as the pandemic, had made life “close to intolerable’’ for some principals. A third of principals reported being cyberbullied, and 45 per cent were victims of gossip and slander.
“It’s not just physical bullying; I know of a principal who had his face superimposed on a known pedophile’s body and circulated among the community,’’ Mr Pierpoint said. “He and his family had to pack up and leave town.’’
Mr Pierpoint said principals were also having to deal daily with students distraught over bushfires, floods, domestic violence and Covid-19 outbreaks.
Australian Primary School Principals Association president Malcolm Elliott said he had been “threatened so many times I’ve lost count’’.
“I’ve witnessed a principal who was punched in the face by a high school student,’’ he said.
“The student’s parents and relatives drove into the carpark, then a carload of people got out and egged on the student as he punched the principal.
“Principals are being manhandled and hit, injured and having objects thrown at them.
“We’re not talking about children throwing a rubber – just recently, one principal was hit on the head with a sizeable rock.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/school-principals-hounded-out-by-violent-parents-and-students/news-story/21b84bdbe41ec1c2880e18a9ea03675e
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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15 March, 2022
Pete Buttigieg’s "husband" caught forcing sick propaganda on children!
United States Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s documentary caused major outrage on social media as disturbing clips emerge.
In a video clip posted on Twitter, the husband of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Chasten Buttigieg leading a group of children in a modified pledge of allegiance to the gay pride flag went viral late Wednesday.
Chasten began a pledge of allegiance to this pride flag, and the children repeated after each line. Many people believe that progressives are trying to indoctrinate kids at an early age with their twisted ideology.
Many believe that it encourages children, who can’t even decide what crayons to color with, to question their gender and sexuality.
Chasten Buttigieg and the campers recited:
“I pledge my heart to the rainbow of the Not So Typical Gay Camp, one camp, full of pride, indivisible, with affirmation and equal rights for all.”
At the end of the pledge, Chasten waved the rainbow flag to the cheers of the LGBTQ youth group.
What many believe the left is doing. “Manipulation and indoctrination.”
From controlling kids with mask mandates to pushing the LGBTQ lifestyle on them, many of today’s children are so confused and depressed, they don’t know which way is up.
http://2020conservative.com/pete-buttigiegs-husband-caught-forcing-sick-propaganda-on-children/
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Australia: The Gonski ‘failure’: why did it happen and who is to blame for the ‘defrauding’ of public schools?
<i>Gonski was just a well-connected businessman. He knew little about education. His ideas were accordingly just conventional dreams. "Spend more money" was the core of his profoundly unoriginal contribution
And he seems to have had no clear idea of how and why educational inequalities come about. That they are unfair and wicked seems to have been the depth of his thinking. No wonder his recommendations went nowhere
The commenter below is similarly uninteresting</i>
When the Gonski review was released a decade ago, it was hailed as the answer to Australia’s educational woes – a roadmap to creating an equitable school funding system, and boosting the performance of Australian students on the global stage.
But rather than celebrating its success, its 10-year anniversary last month sparked critique of the failure of successive governments to implement the report’s recommendations.
Despite record levels of funding flowing to Australia’s schools, education results have suffered a 20-year decline on international benchmarks.
Meanwhile, a new analysis paints a bleak picture of a widening gap between advantaged and disadvantaged schools, with commonwealth and state funding for private schools increasing at nearly five times the rate of public school funding over the decade to 2019-20.
Education experts now warn that the vision enshrined in the review will only be realised if the commonwealth and states unite to end the “defrauding” of public schools and fully fund them to their needs-based benchmark.
Ahead of next year’s expiry of the current state-federal funding deal, the National School Reform Agreement, experts say there must be a coordinated effort to ensure Gonski’s vision is realised.
What did Gonski recommend?
In 2010, businessman David Gonski was engaged by the Rudd government to lead a review into Australia’s school funding, with the aim of reducing the impact of social disadvantage on educational outcomes, and ending inequities in the distribution of public money. The report was released in February 2012, during Julia Gillard’s prime ministership.
The reforms recommended that governments reduce payments to overfunded schools that didn’t need them and redirect funds on a needs-based model. Its key recommendation was the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) – a base rate of funding per student with additional loading for disadvantage factors such as Indigenous heritage. The SRS would determine the required funding needed for each school. But a decade on, most public schools are yet to reach their full funding according to their SRS and more funding has gone to the less needy schools, with non-government schools well above their benchmark.
Gonski said the system would “ensure that differences in educational outcomes are not the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions” when he delivered his findings to government in 2011.
Why did it fail?
Trevor Cobbold, an economist and national convenor for public school advocacy group Save Our Schools, says the failure to achieve the review’s goals was a result of failures by the Gillard government and those that followed to implement the report’s recommendations.
“Gonski didn’t fail. It is governments that failed Gonski, and thereby failed disadvantaged students,” he says.
“You have to construct a system that recognises both the commonwealth and state roles, and Gonski did this by designing a nationally integrated model on a needs-basis.”
Tom Greenwell, a Canberra-based teacher and co-author of Waiting for Gonski – How Australia Failed its Schools, says a “huge problem” is that the “real work of additional funding has always been delayed beyond the forward estimates, to the next funding agreement”.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/13/the-gonski-failure-why-did-it-happen-and-who-is-to-blame-for-the-defrauding-of-public-schools
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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14 March, 2022
CDC and AAP Congratulate Themselves for Wrecking Children’s Literacy
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now patting itself on the back for its excellent call to mask students in grades K-12. The CDC specifically capitalized on a study that used the state of Arkansas’s schools as a study group. Forgive us in advance, but we have questions about The Science™.
According to this report, the masks were proven to be effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in schools. The CDC isn’t the only one crowing with triumph — the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) also published a study that is a little more thorough. The AAP study discussed the data its researchers and scientists gleaned from 61 schools across nine states.
Upon a cursory inspection, it would seem that the data does confirm the studies’ premise … that is until you bother to read in depth the limitations.
Here were a few of the most telling “limitations” for both studies.
They relied on contact tracing.
They had shifting variables that influenced the numbers, such as schools changing masking policies based on whether the cases were high in their area.
Both studies were conducted on one strain of COVID-19, and that strain was Delta. This is pertinent because, with the advent of Omicron, contact tracing wasn’t possible. The spread was too fast. It also makes this data irrelevant since the virus is unlikely to revert back to Delta or Alpha settings.
Ultimately, the CDC and AAP taking credit for this “victory” in masking our children is petty in light of the lack of information (i.e., Omicron threw a wrench in the mix). Plus, the seriously damaging results that masking has had on children’s education in general and literacy in particular speak more toward the “cure” being worse than the disease.
We cannot emphasize this enough. Our children lost so much ground between lockdowns, masking, and virtual schooling. It is unlikely for them to regain all that ground. Their mental, emotional, and academic well-being were sacrificed at the altar of “the greater good.” For the CDC and AAP to even dare to justify their ridiculous stance on masking kids is an insult to our intelligence.
The CDC and the AAP aren’t the only organizations trying to justify their decision-making regarding masking children in this pandemic. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), wrote in a social media post (grammar in the original): “We are so glad that masks are coming off with the drop in Covid and in accordance with CDC guidelines. These new studies make clear if —our teachers and students ever need them again to keep communities safe and classrooms open, they work.”
This statement reads more like a threat in light of how Weingarten has used political thuggery and undue influence during this crisis. Never forget, she was not above holding our children hostage in order to push her agenda. It’s also ludicrous because of Omicron, the infection rate of which revealed masking to be merely a virtue signal — or, to quote CNN’s medical analyst Leana Wen, “facial decorations.”
The pandemic really did expose a lot of the dark underbelly of schools. But the gaslighting continues. These “studies” are yet another example of politics dictating science.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/86845-cdc-and-aap-congratulate-themselves-for-wrecking-childrens-literacy-2022-03-11
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Stanford University cancels $1.7M Russian contract
Stanford University is terminating what appears to be the last remaining active Russian contract among colleges in the United States after Fox News reached out for details and comment on the arrangement.
Stanford entered into a $1.65 million agreement with an unidentified Russian entity in December 2020, a search of the College Foreign Gift and Contract Report database shows. The three-year agreement contains sparse details, though it notes the funding did not come from the Kremlin.
The contract is for "online access to business-related professional development courses" and is in "full compliance" with U.S. sanctions, Dee Mostofi, Stanford's assistant vice president for external communications, told Fox News on Thursday.
On Friday, however, Mostofi emailed Fox News saying Stanford now "is in the process of ending the contract."
Mostofi did not address other questions on the contract, including who in Russia was involved and whether the university plans to take up Russian contracts in the future.
Then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos "found that there was almost $7 billion given to universities that were not being reported by the university to the federal government as required by law," Rep. Virginia Foxx, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, told Fox News.
"Most people give money for a reason," the North Carolina Republican said. "It's generally accepted that they are looking for ways to influence what is happening in the colleges and universities."
The Department of Education in 2020 discovered $6.5 billion in previously unreported foreign money to universities from adversarial countries, including China and Russia.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign also reports an active Russian contract in the foreign money database. The records show the agreement began in October 2014 and runs through June 2022.
However, a University of Illinois spokesperson told Fox News it was a fee-for-service agreement to "provide DNA sequencing services" to the Russia-based Evrogen Lab that concluded last month.
"The last samples analyzed under that agreement were received and analyzed in February," the spokesperson said. "We are not accepting any new samples for analysis under this contract."
Other universities have also cut student, research and financial ties from Russia, distancing them from the authoritarian superpower.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology severed a research partnership with the Kremlin, and the University of Colorado is liquidating investments in Russian companies, Forbes reported. The Arizona Board of Regents told the institutions it oversees – Arizona State University, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University – to sell off their Russian assets, NBC News reported.
Other schools, like Middlebury College, are suspending study abroad programs in Russia.
Like many universities, Stanford also runs a program that sends students to Russia.
The program, called the Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum, describes itself as the "world's only independent research organization that bring students and young professionals from the United States and Russia together to foster understanding between the cultures, share the knowledge, and gain experience in doing collaborative research."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/stanford-russia-contract-divest-fox-inquiry
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Single picture costs Australian university $16 million as funding pulled over ‘unacceptable’ decision
Last week, the university handed out its latest round of honorary doctorates and a photo of it circulated online. But critics couldn’t help but notice one glaring detail in the picture – the six recipients were all white men.
On Monday, this prompted the Snow Medical Research Foundation, which has given $24 million to Melbourne University in recent years, to immediately halt any further funding programs.
That included suspending its Snow Fellowship program, of which $16 million had already been pledged to the university.
“The University of Melbourne awarded their most prestigious award, their honorary doctorate, to six white men,” Snow Medical said in a statement.
“Further, in the last three years, not a single honorary doctorate has been awarded to women or someone of non-white descent. This is unacceptable.”
When Snow Medical challenged the uni about its recent spate of awards, “the response from the University of Melbourne has been unsatisfactory,” it added.
“While it appears the policies on gender equality and diversity are in place, the outcomes do not align with the University’s stated goals.”
The organisation’s founder and chair, Tom Snow, said it was a “difficult decision” but ultimately a necessary one to suspend funding indefinitely.
“This has been a difficult decision for our family, but a decision we have made very proudly,” he said online.
“NOW is the time for action on gender equality and diversity.”
Mr Snow himself attended the University of Melbourne as a student in the 1990s and his foundation has given out $90 million in research funding to date, to a number of universities and various research projects.
The current $16 million in place will still be provided to researchers, the foundation clarified, in a bid to “provide long-term certainty”.
Melbourne University admitted it had a lot of room for improvement but was obviously disappointed by the decision.
“The University of Melbourne is committed to strengthening a vibrant and inclusive community where diversity is recognised, valued and celebrated,” it said in a statement.
“While we acknowledge the areas where we need to improve, Snow Medical has made their decision on the basis of a single honorary doctorate event.
“This event is not a true reflection of who we are as a university and the steps we are taking, and continue to take, to build a diverse university community, reflective of broader society.”
Three women and an Indigenous man were meant to be at the ceremony as well but were unable to make it.
Mr Snow said he was unimpressed and wondered why they didn’t delay the ceremony until everyone could attend.
“Not one person along the way said, ‘It’s not right, we should be deferring the ceremony,’” he said.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/single-picture-costs-university-16-million-as-funding-pulled-over-unacceptable-decision/news-story/f02b225b9ef2eb435fdcc3d18e4d83b9
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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13 March, 2022
'I can only describe LSE as an orgy of debauchery,’ an academic told a tribunal
<i>What a whiner! In his position I would have just smiled</i>
A professor has called one of Britain’s most prestigious universities an ‘orgy of debauchery’ after alleging he was sexually harassed by two female colleagues.
Dr Theodore Piepenbrock told a tribunal there was a culture of heavy drinking and affairs between academics at the London School of Economics (LSE).
He claims he was the victim of a ‘campaign of vengeance’ there after making complaints.
The economist, who is seeking more than £4million in compensation, said LSE destroyed his career after he complained he had been sexually harassed by Joanne Hay, now LSE’s deputy chief operating officer.
Dr Piepenbrock, 57, said he was in a lift in his first week as a fellow and deputy dean at the department of management when Miss Hay entered and ‘appeared to be very drunk’.
He said: ‘After the doors closed, the woman approached me, put her hand on my chest, spoke close enough to me to smell alcohol on her breath.
'Miss Hay told me, “Please don’t hesitate to let me know if there is anything I can do to make your stay more pleasurable”.
‘I asked Miss Hay to take her hand off my chest and please to leave me alone.’
The Times reported how he filed a grievance report against her at LSE for ‘sexual assault, harassment and defamation’.
‘My rejection of Miss Hay appears to have caused a multi-year campaign of vengeance against me,’ he added.
Dr Piepenbrock also alleged a female teaching assistant became obsessed with him on a work trip. He said he had to dismiss the woman, Miss D, after she opened her hotel room naked from the waist down.
He told LSE officials he was being harassed by her but was unaware Miss D also complained about him, alleging he told her she had ‘a beautiful body’ and threatened to ruin her reputation. He denies her allegations.
He went off work after suffering from depression. His LSE contract was not renewed.
‘Based on my personal experience of Miss Hay’s drunken sexual assault… Miss D’s indecent exposure and the LSE’s systemic refusal to investigate my grievances... I can only describe LSE as an orgy of debauchery,’ he told the tribunal.
He is claiming victimisation, unfair dismissal and disability discrimination because LSE allegedly failed to take account of his autism and depression.
LSE denied wrongdoing.
It said there was ‘no basis’ for extending his three-year fellowship ‘given the nature and extent of [his] grievances’.
In a separate case, Piepenbrock lost a £4 million compensation claim against LSE at the High Court in 2018 for errors in the handling of a complaint against him by a young female teaching assistant. The court found that his conduct towards her was 'inappropriate...inept...unprofessional and wrong'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10604713/LSE-orgy-debauchery-economist-claims-seeks-4million-compensation.html
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Critical race theory exposed in detail in new documentary, 'Whose Children Are They?'
In recent times, critical race theory (CRT) has come under increasing scrutiny.
If there is a silver lining in the COVID-19 crisis over the past two years, it's that American parents have seen firsthand, via their children's online classes, how public schools have pushed a radical agenda that includes CRT (whether it's actually called that by schools or not).
Now, a new documentary "Whose Children Are They?" reveals the issue in detail. "Whose Children Are They?: Exposing the Hidden Agenda in America’s Schools," shines a light on "the need to return to the original intent of education, not indoctrination," as Fathom Events, the project’s distributor, points out on its website.
With the premise that "public education is the most important domestic issue facing America today," the documentary is opening in select theaters on March 14, for one night only.
It calls on parents, teachers and others to partner together "for the innocence and well-being of our children."
"The so-called teacher unions and their political allies are heavily pushing CRT in our K-12 schools, colleges and universities."
"I’d like parents to understand that the root problem in our schools is the so-called teachers’ unions and their radical agenda — not good teachers," Rebecca Friedrichs, a producer on the project and a cast member, told Fox News Digital in an interview earlier this week.
The mother of two grown boys, Friedrichs is co-founder of For Kids and Country, a national movement of parents, teachers and citizens who want to restore the culture in public schools.
During a 30-day window from March 15-April 14, viewers can see "Whose Children Are They?" via ticketed events at their churches, homes, schools and more.
To do so, they can click on a button on the film's website that says, "Bring to My Church." After that first month, the movie will be available via premium video on demand.
CRT is ubiquitous in America, noted Friedrichs ahead of the documentary's debut. "The so-called teacher unions and their political allies are heavily pushing CRT in our K-12 schools, colleges and universities," she said.
"It is imbedded in curricula, teacher trainings, school cultures and especially through Obama-era racial equity discipline policies that have turned our classrooms into war zones."
Friedrichs also said, "The education establishment wants teachers to weave CRT into every subject. But good teachers reject CRT because it teaches children to judge their peers [based] on the color of their skin instead of the content of their character."
Friedrichs added, "My students and I always celebrated that we were living Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream because we had students from all over the world in our class, but we all respected one another."
"We were a true melting pot. Unions and their allies seek to divide us all with CRT. Beware: CRT is presented under a score of other titles."
Her lawsuit, Friedrichs v. California Teachers’ Association, brought with 10 others, was argued before the United States Supreme Court in 2016 and "blazed the trail for ending forced unionism for all teachers and government employees."
"If parents will stand with good teachers and help them to reject the unions, we can restore our schools," explained Friedrichs. "The unions are the culprits behind undermining parents, indoctrinating children, pushing an anti-American agenda, destroying our once outstanding educational system and more."
https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/critical-race-theory-documentary-children
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Australia: A handful of Sydney students were shocked when they opened up their email on a Friday night to find some “bloody awful” news waiting in their inbox.
On Friday night, at 5.15pm, journalism students from Macleay College, a private college based in Sydney which also has a virtual Melbourne campus, found a “life-changing” email waiting for them in their inbox.
Two weeks into their first trimester, they were informed that the Diploma and Bachelor of Journalism courses had been cancelled due to “low enrolments”.
Earlier that day, the first-year students had gone to class and had been assigned homework for the following week.
In fact, their tutors and lecturers were only warned 25 minutes before them about the course terminations.
It has left staff facing unemployment and students with their life turned upside down; pupils in the middle of their degree may only be able to leave with a statement of attainment, not even a diploma or a degree to show for their hard work.
Meanwhile, first year students have quit full-time jobs, moved interstate and turned down other university offers for a now defunct degree and it is too late to apply to another university for this term.
“To be told on a Friday afternoon after hours is really heartless,” new journalism student Chelsea Caffery told news.com.au.
Students are wondering why Macleay College allowed their classes to continue for two weeks with the knowledge that enrolment numbers were too low to keep the course going.
The college has offered up an alternative degree, Digital Media, which is not a pure journalism course like the one they signed up for.
Now students have just one week before the census cut off date to decide whether to drop out of the course or enrol into the alternate degree.
For students where this is not their first year in the course, they have a “teach out” option which involves them studying as much as they can until their trimester ends on May 20, by which time they will either have finished their degree or will only receive a statement of attainment.
Contractors revealed to news.com.au that their contracts were never renewed for this year, and instead they were being paid through weekly invoices, in what could be a sign that the future of the course had been uncertain for some time.
Ms Caffery, 20, who was two weeks into the $54,000 Bachelor of Journalism course, gave up a full-time job and another university offer to land her dream degree at Macleay.
“It’s really really tough, we’re angry and we’re upset and we’re really confused,” she said.
“We’re literally four business days [until the census date] away from making a life-changing decision.
“This was the next two years of my life, I had it all planned out. This degree I was so excited for. I’ve been sitting here for the next 24 hours wondering what do I do with my life now.”
In a move that students have labelled as even more insulting, their queries to Macleay College have gone unanswered, some claim.
The bombshell email was sent 15 minutes after close of business on a Friday and students have been unable to get in touch with college executives since.
Students have taken to social media to express their outrage, with one person calling the situation “unconscionable”.
Macleay College was purchased by fashion entrepreneur Sarah Stavrow last year.
Ms Stavrow had previously assured staff that the program would be retained as it was what Macleay was “known for”.
But at the meeting outlining the course closure, Ms Stavrow was not present and refused to take calls afterwards
https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/bloody-awful-lifechanging-news-in-email-from-australian-university/news-story/b1d9119afc988bbd61ba21546b812792
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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11 March, 2022
Georgia high school coach suspended after restraining student who had loaded gun
A Georgia high school coach was suspended after he defended himself and restrained a student who was in possession of a loaded weapon in school.
“I don’t feel like I did anything wrong,” Tri-Cities High School coach Kenneth Miller said, according to News 19. “I only adhered to what Fulton County School Board Policy says you’re allowed to do.”
Miller said that on Aug. 20, the school’s principal called him to her office about reports of students on campus with guns. “During that process, we located guns. We saved lives,” Miller told Fox 5.
Miller confronted one female student while in the presence of police officers. Miller and the officers were unaware the student, who eyewitnesses described as belligerent and aggressive, had a gun at the time of the confrontation.
The situation escalated when the student hit Miller with a stapler, News 19 reported. Miller then grabbed the girl and restrained her until officers stepped in and took her into custody.
Miller was initially fired, but the school district later reversed the decision to a suspension which has lasted months, News 19 reported.
“The district administration does not support Mr. Miller’s actions relating to this event and believes his conduct failed to meet the professional expectations it has for employees. Mr. Miller inappropriately intervened in a student matter being handled by school administrators and law enforcement. Mr. Miller acted outside of the scope of his authority and responsibilities,” Fulton County Schools said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Thursday.
“Mr. Miller’s conduct resulted in an escalation of a physical altercation with a student in crisis, which conflicts with district expectations to deescalate in these types of situations. Mr. Miller has not exhausted his due process rights at this time and remains on full, paid administrative leave.”
Miller’s lawyer called on school systems to support teachers who “get put in terribly dangerous situations.”
“Those teachers are our first line of defense against guns and other types of terrible violence that happens in schools,” Miller’s lawyer said.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/11/georgia-tri-cities-hs-coach-kenneth-miller-suspended-for-restraining-student-with-loaded-gun/
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America tried exporting woke education — the UK fought back
An American school has been “downgraded” by officials. The cause? The school is accused of “placing more weight on teaching social justice than on subject-specific knowledge.” So apparently, pupils at the school spent more time being taught about “social justice” than tedious old skills like reading, writing and math. Teachers, meanwhile, were accused of clogging up lessons with “stridently expressed views on social justice” and creating a culture “where alternative opinions are not felt welcome.” All the time, educational standards have slipped.
Now which school could that be? It could be any number in Manhattan, especially the more elite ones like the disgraced Grace Church School.
But actually it is none of New York’s shakedown woke factories. The school in question is the American School in London. And the downgrading has been issued by the British schools inspectorate, Ofsted.
Unhappiness at the American School in London has been brewing for some time. Expat parents have been complaining increasingly bitterly in recent years. The school charges $43,763 a year, per student. For this, parents say that the school is teaching children all the usual American neoracism about “white privilege,” “white fragility” and the like. All part of that brilliant modern headlock whereby someone who is called a racist and objects to it is simply displaying more racism. It is a new twist on the old medieval trick for discovering witches. Dunk the women in a river and if they drown they are not a witch. If they float then they are a witch, so you can burn them.
Of course, the classroom is no place for such divisive nonsense. But it is being taught at schools across America and American schools abroad, as well. And as almost any parent can now tell you, and a growing body of work demonstrates, the results are simply camouflaging a collapse in standards.
In his new book, “Race to the Bottom: Uncovering the Secret Forces Destroying American Public Education,” Luke Rosiak lays this out in remorseless detail. He shows, for instance, how it isn’t just what is taught in American classrooms that is the problem. It is the whole crumbling structure now looming behind it.
The way in which, for instance, even the most well-off school districts try to get around any disparities in racial testing among students. One way to address this would be to improve teaching in the classroom, focus more on students who are struggling and encourage greater discipline in after-school homework assignments. But that is the hard way. Much easier is to call in huckster “advisers” who for a suitable fee will pronounce the testing system itself as racist. What happens next is predictable as the sun rising. Standards go off the cliff.
Yet the appeal is obvious. If a school can stop testing, then, hey presto, there is no testing gap. No tests, no testing gap. See how easy it is?
And it is not as though it is some fringe movement that is trying this trick. Randi Weingarten is one of the most powerful people in American education. Perhaps one of the most important people in America. She is the president of the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers. And she is just one of those who in recent years has decided to proclaim that standardized testing is — guess what — racist. Weingarten is probably one of the people most responsible for the decline in education standards in this country. Not least as one of those most responsible for the shutting of American schools during the pandemic. Though she has tried to rewrite her history since, Weingarten is one of those who should take most blame for the years of lost learning in America.
But for people like Weingarten, there is always an explanation that sidesteps their own blame. Last year, she lammed into Stuyvesant HS for being too Asian. Weingarten didn’t exactly put it like that, but it is the only possible conclusion from her remarks. Of that school’s 750 students admitted in the previous year, only eight were black and 20 were Latino. Whereas 65% of the students that year were Asian. The blame? “Standardized tests.” Because obviously if you abolished tests, then the school would be more equitable, more socially just and have better results.
There is absolutely no evidence for any of this, but Weingarten and a whole generation of American educators are wedded to it anyway. For them, it is the easier path, and the best way to cover over their own stupendous failings.
Since they have proved unable to raise standards, they have decided instead to change the purpose of education. Such as by creating a generation of young activists and blaming any and all failures on amorphous forces such as “social injustice” or “systemic racism.” In doing this, the bureaucrats imagine that they are saving themselves. And they may well be. But they are wrecking the chances of a generation of American students, including those from underprivileged backgrounds who need excellence the most.
For it is relatively easy to rewrite the rules of any game. In tennis, for instance, it is certainly easier to play with the net down. As it is easier to play basketball if you pretend that the aim of the exercise is not to get the ball into the hoop. In making these adjustments, you would undoubtedly solve one problem. You may even have persuaded some people to feel like winners. In reality, you’ve created a game where everybody loses. Who needs a generation of same-thinking automatons who excel in precisely what exactly?
https://nypost.com/2022/03/10/america-tried-exporting-woke-education-the-uk-fought-back/
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Gov. Ron DeSantis Takes ont LGBT-Obsessed Left in schools
The Florida state Senate on Tuesday passed a parents rights bill, a media-maligned piece of legislation that will prohibit primary school teachers from talking about sexual orientation with children in pre-K through third grade.
Senate passage of the Parental Rights in Education bill by a vote of 21-17 marks a milestone in parents’ efforts across the nation to fight back against the radical left in the classroom. The legislation also represents a model for other states to use as they push back the woke tides.
The Florida House of Representatives passed the legislation last month, 69-47. It now goes to Gov. Ron DeSantis for his signature.
Opposition to the Parental Rights in Education bill has been fierce, with many on the left attempting to reframe the law as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The left has attempted for years to indoctrinate children with LGBT ideology in public schools, and now activists are furious at attempts by conservatives to push back.
To be clear, the Florida legislation is not an “anti-gay” bill. It is instead a bill aimed at protecting children—and preventing educators with an agenda from infecting young kids with radical ideology.
DeSantis, a Republican, has expressed as much. In an exchange with a local reporter during a Monday press conference, the governor reiterated that the legislation was about protecting kids and that the corporate media was lying about what it would do.
DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw went one step further and argued that the bill, which takes effect July 1, was more of an “anti-grooming” measure.
They’re both correct, of course.
Americans are just waking up to how tight a grip the radical left has on the education system, and what dire consequences can result from that amount of control.
In Howard County, Maryland, eighth grade students were subjected to a video in English class featuring a biological woman who identifies as a man talking about transgender issues. The video begins with discussions surrounding genital surgery, sex, and public restrooms before devolving into a screed about transgenderism in general.
Or consider the two California teachers who aided a 12-year-old girl with a gender transition without telling her parents, then called Child Protective Services when the parents found out and tried to stop it.
Parents and states must be empowered to counter the left’s complete and utter control of the education system. And when states take actions to empower parents, they should be praised.
DeSantis and Florida Republicans deserve credit for his aggressive efforts to push back against transgender idealogy. It’s not a given that lawmakers—whether local, state, or national—will take a stand and fight the left.
Last year, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, failed to stand up for biological reality when she vetoed a bill to ban biological males from participating in girls and women’s sports. Noem’s actions empowered the radical left, which viewed her refusal to ban men from ruining women’s sports as a jab in the arm toward its warped worldview.
Although Noem since has backtracked and signed South Dakota lawmakers’ Fairness in Women’s Sports bill last month, it came on the heels of DeSantis’ signing an identically named bill last June.
DeSantis and his team understand deeply that the radical left won’t stop and doesn’t care about parental concerns about the negative effects of its agenda on children. The left, alongside allies in the corporate media, will continue to lie about conservative efforts to counter its propaganda war in America’s classrooms.
That’s why it’s so important for DeSantis and his fellow conservatives in state legislatures and governor’s mansions to fight back actively. Because as passage of the Florida bill proves, conservatives can win.
DeSantis’ achievement in Florida should cause a cascade of similar legislation across the country. Americans who are rightfully concerned about leftist indoctrination deserve recourse against the activists who are hellbent on harming children.
There’s a long road ahead. But DeSantis and his team, along with GOP state lawmakers, can take credit for a huge first step.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/03/08/gov-ron-desantis-proves-conservatives-can-beat-lgbt-obsessed-left
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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10 March, 2022
Australian universities criticise minister’s research veto powers
<i>Vetoing apparenty silly and trivial research grants has always been politically available to avoid public criticisms about a waste of taxpayers' money</i>
University leaders have warned of a chilling effect on research caused by the federal education minister’s ability to veto funding grants, saying their institutions were at risk of losing world-class academics to overseas competitors.
In a decision that has been widely criticised by academics, acting Education Minister Stuart Robert vetoed Australian Research Council (ARC) funding to six humanities projects for 2022 on Christmas Eve – the third time in four years the power has been used by the Coalition.
Appearing at a Senate inquiry on Wednesday, university chiefs and academic leaders were in lockstep in raising concerns about the lack of transparency over the ministerial intervention and the singling out of individual grants for rejection without detailed explanation. But they were divided over a Greens proposal to abolish the veto, with the Senate’s education committee examining the merits of a bill by senator Mehreen Faruqi that would amend ARC legislation to achieve this.
Supporting the bill, ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt said the minister’s veto power was a “serious problem” that was compromising universities’ ability to attract and retain world-class academics, saying the issue had been raised with him by top researchers from overseas competitor institutions.
“People around the globe who I talk to, trying to recruit [them] to come to Australia, have noticed what’s going on. [They] have expressed their concerns to the point of saying ‘I am not going to come to Australia until you sort this out’,” Professor Schmidt told the inquiry. “It is literally affecting my ability to attract talent to Australia”.
Professor James McCluskey, University of Melbourne deputy vice-chancellor research, said the veto power was a “significant departure from world’s best practice”, noting that research councils in the US and UK were autonomous and not subject to ministerial intervention.
Western Sydney University had two grants vetoed in the 2022 funding round, with deputy vice-chancellor Deborah Sweeney telling the inquiry the intervention had had “a chilling, devastating and demoralising effect” on those researchers.
The ANU, University of Melbourne, Western Sydney University and the University of Tasmania support removing the veto power – a position that has been also been endorsed by Universities Australia and Group of Eight lobby groups.
But some universities – including the Australian Catholic University and Queensland University of Technology – have departed from this view arguing that the ministerial veto should be rarely used, but not be scrapped entirely. Instead, they support legislative changes that would improve transparency over the decision-making process, such as requiring the minister to provide an explanation to the Parliament detailing why projects were rejected.
Dr John Byron, from QUT, said completely removing the veto power was not “politically realistic or necessarily democratically desirable”, telling the inquiry that the principles of responsible government meant the minister must retain oversight of funding decisions.
Monash University deputy vice-chancellor Rebekah Brown said the lack of transparency in the veto process was diminishing credibility in the ARC’s peer-review process, and gave evidence about how a project vetoed in 2018 had significantly affected the university’s broader program of humanities research.
“The project was eventually funded two years later, but missed a significant opportunity in those intervening two years to make a global impact [and] to collect really important data during that two-year period,” she said.
Under the ARC process, an independent college of experts reviews the grant applications, worth between $30,000 and $500,000 a year, and makes recommendations for approval.
The six rejected projects included one about student climate protests and democracy, and one about religion in science fiction and fantasy novels. Two were about modern China, and two were about English literature.
Mr Robert has claimed that the six projects, which were all recommended for approval by the ARC, did not demonstrate value for taxpayers’ money or contribute to the national interest. He approved 98.8 per cent of projects recommended.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/chilling-effect-universities-criticise-minister-s-research-veto-powers-20220309-p5a32b.html
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Even With ‘Defund the Police’ Discredited, Some Schools May Still Shun the Police
Des Moines this week suffered its first fatal school shooting – reigniting a controversy in the city after the district removed police officers from its schools last year.
Police say a group of teenagers in vehicles outside Des Moines' East High School fired multiple rounds onto school property on Monday, killing a 15-year-old boy and critically wounding two female students who were bystanders. Six teenagers, some of them current Des Moines students, have been charged with first-degree murder.
The deadly drive-by shooting now hovers over the decision by Des Moines officials, along with about 30 districts across the country, to exile cops from schools. These moves were part of the "defund the police" movement that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. It’s a movement now reeling in the face of violent crime surging nationwide, punctuated by President Biden’s State of the Union vow last week to “fund the police.”
But in schools, at least, a decision to bring back cops -- or “school resource officers,” as they are called -- isn’t a slam dunk in places where students of color had been arrested at higher rates than whites.
Des Moines (population: 214,000) provides a case in point. So far its district, half of whose students are black or Latino, has not followed schools from Maryland to California heeding pleas to restore the SROs. Instead, Iowa’s capital city is rolling out a new community-engagement safety plan to replace the cops.
And that infuriates parents alarmed by school mayhem long before Floyd’s death moved racial justice to the front burner -- parents like Lindsay LaGrange. The Des Moines mom reached her breaking point in November after a student in her son’s middle school was found with an airsoft pellet gun on campus. “My son turned in this boy to the front office, and then later this boy beats up my son after school,” she said. “Almost every day he said there’s another fight at school. The kids are not safe.”
Des Moines joined the wave of districts that hired SROs after the rash of school shootings in the 1990s, a decade capped by the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. The killing of Sandy Hook elementary school children in Connecticut in 2012 spurred more districts to follow suit. As many as 25,000 law enforcement officers are working today in all types of schools, from rural to suburban to urban, said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO).
In Des Moines, SRO was a coveted job. Cops went through a competitive hiring process, which vetted them for the patience and savvy to communicate with teenagers, said Sergeant Paul Parizek of the Des Moines Police Department. Not every officer was a good fit. Those tapped went through training at NASRO, a crash course in seeing the world through the eyes of a teenager.
Des Moines started its SRO program about two decades ago. The district would eventually hire 10 SROs and a supervisor – one cop for each high school and four that were shared by the middle schools. Seventy percent of SROs were white men and women. Black men made up 30%.
Parizek said the public has harbored misconceptions about the approach. SROs weren’t placed in schools to jack up kids with a dime bag. Although an average of 287 Des Moines students were arrested annually in the years before the pandemic, the goal was prevention: to build relationships with students to deter them from trouble and to hear chatter about what’s going down in the schools. Who’s going to fight? Who has a gun?
“The guns we recovered in 2019, we recovered them before they made it inside the school door,” Parizek said. “And this was because of the relationships that SROs had with students who provided them with information.”
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/03/09/even_with_defund_the_police_discredited_some_schools_may_still_shun_the_police_820477.html
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Australian medical school sets aside dozens of positions for country kids who could stay locally for good
Country kids who grew up dreaming of being doctors now have the chance to follow that path without moving to the city.
Deakin University's new rural training stream reserves highly competitive medical school places for country applicants who already hold a degree.
Once enrolled, the students are sent for hands-on training in small hospitals in towns in the west of Victoria including Ararat, Portland, Stawell, and Warrnambool.
Rural Community Clinical School director, associate professor Lara Fuller said the program was designed to address the issue of workforce shortages in the south-west and Grampians.
"The idea is to recruit students from the region, train in the region, and the idea is that they will stay in the region," she said. Dr Fuller said that there was "good evidence" to suggest that that was a likely outcome.
"Work we've done looking at our own graduate outcomes has shown that rural clinical experience, plus selecting students from a rural background, means that those students are more likely to work rurally when they graduate," she said.
Dr Fuller said the approach could help to resolve the brain drain from country towns.
"Historically, for medicine, medical school and post-graduate training has been located in cities," she said. "It can take a long time, we're talking 10 years-plus, to complete the full medical training.
"They put down roots and develop relationships and so on in the cities, so then it becomes a fait accompli almost. It's very difficult to go back."
The new model Deakin has adopted provides 30 training places available only to rural and regional students, and gives priority to applicants from Deakin's rural partner communities in South West Victoria and the Grampians region.
Deakin's Dean of Medicine, professor Gary Rogers, said it was the first step towards a bigger vision where country kids who dreamt of being doctors might never have to leave their home towns.
"Into the future, we believe it will be possible for learners to undertake all their training from high school to independent medical practice without having to live in a metropolitan area," Professor Rogers said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-10/medical-school-aims-upskill-locals-who-will-stay-for-good/100856922
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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9 March, 2022
CA: State Agency Conducted ‘Mask Raids,’ Interviewed Preschoolers Alone
Several parents at Aspen Leaf Preschool are furious that state child care licensing investigators questioned their children without supervision.
During the investigation, regulators separated children and interviewed them without familiar adults present in isolated rooms. Many Aspen Leaf parents said they believed such severe tactics were only meant to be used in child abuse investigations.
Stephanie and Richard Rosado recently told their 4-year-old son about the importance of not talking to strangers. Only days later, state regulators came to the child’s preschool, isolated him in a room away from his teachers and friends and asked him questions about masking.
His parents, and many others at the preschool, were furious.
Regulators questioned the Rosados’ son as part of an investigation into masking practices at Aspen Leaf Preschool, which operates three locations in San Diego. All three locations were simultaneously “raided,” as some parents have called it, in mid-January. Regulators separated the children and toddlers from familiar adults at each of the centers to ask questions about the preschools’ masking policies.
What’s strange about that decision, parents and teachers say, is that Aspen Leaf officials had already been open with parents and regulators about their decision to not mask children.
Regulators isolated and interviewed children aged one to four, a step many parents say was inappropriate and unnecessary.
“This gross abuse of power is shameful and unacceptable for many reasons,” wrote the Rosados in a complaint. “The people who ordered this to be done and those who participated should be held responsible.”
The California Department of Social Services and its child care licensing program oversee regulatory compliance in preschools. Child care licensing investigators do have the authority to interview children in isolated settings, but many Aspen Leaf parents said they believed such tactics were meant to be used in extreme cases, like alleged child abuse.
Regulators “determined that the interviews were conducted in an appropriate manner and were a necessary component of the required complaint investigation,” Kevin Gaines, deputy director of child care licensing, wrote to one Aspen Leaf parent, who lodged a complaint.
“Staff are trained to conduct interviews with children in a manner that avoids causing undue stress,” Gaines wrote.
An Aspen Leaf adult was in the “line of sight” of each child, who was interviewed, Gaines told the parent.
Child care officials’ reasoning has not soothed parents’ anger.
Connie Wu’s daughter was not yet 2 –years old when she was interviewed by regulators in January. Wu doesn’t know what happened in the room or how her daughter felt – because her daughter is too young to say.
“She’s not developmentally able to tell me,” Wu told me. “She doesn’t have the vocabulary to be able to talk about being interviewed by a stranger.”
Aspen Leaf closed briefly when the pandemic began in March 2020. But when it re-opened in June, it openly did not enforce the state’s mask requirement.
The owners of Aspen Leaf reasoned that children would not be allowed to wear masks while they were sleeping or eating. In other words, they’d give each other COVID-19 no matter what. On top of that, they didn’t believe the masks would be great for children’s development.
Howard Wu, unrelated to Connie Wu, is a part-owner of Aspen Leaf and a lawyer. He believes the state’s child care licensing department doesn’t have the authority to enforce the mask mandate – essentially because of a technicality.
In order to enforce a regulation, the agency must issue a regulation, Wu said. But so far, the child care licensing department has not issued regulations on masks.
Instead, the California Department of Public Health issued a mask requirement. Had the state’s health department tried to enforce the mask mandate, Howard Wu said Aspen Leaf would have either complied or considered whether they had any recourse to fight it.
Child care licensing officials have asserted that they do, in fact, have the authority to enforce the state mask mandate.
The question has not been tested in court.
Howard Wu believes child care licensing officials went after his facilities, because he questioned their authority. Child care licensing officials did not respond to a question about whether they treated Aspen Leaf more severely than other facilities.
https://voiceofsandiego.org/2022/03/07/state-agency-conducted-mask-raids-interviewed-preschoolers-alone/
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NYC kids see their classmates’ faces for the first time in years
Jubilant city kids were able to behold the full faces of their smiling pals Monday for the first time in years.
“It was surprising to see my classmates without a mask,” said a Stuyvesant High School student named Tasnim. “You see them in a new light. When you see only the top of their face it becomes part of their personality.”
While some students chose to keep their facial coverings, others ripped them off after the city dropped a mask mandate for kindergarten through 12th graders.
Some kids cautiously split the different and tucked their masks under their chins.
“People have been gearing up for this for a while saying ‘What do you look like without your mask?'” said a Stuyvesant freshman. “It’s been a whole thing for the past two weeks.”
Noah Vera, 8, marveled at his unobscured friends. “It was nice to see each other’s faces again,” he said.
Another student said the mask removals vastly improved communication across the board.
“You can actually breathe when you’re playing in the playground and it’s much easier to talk to your friends and teachers,” observed Meison Horie, 8. “I started wearing a mask in first grade and I have been waiting for the rule to change ever since.”
Classmate Kalei Olaes, 9, said he was surprised how accustomed he had gotten to covering his face. “Every now and then I’d think ‘Oh no, where’s my mask,'” he said. “But then I remembered I didn’t care because we don’t have to wear masks anymore.”
A survey of the PS 165 playground found that roughly 1 in 10 kids opted to keep their masks on.
Olaes said about three out of 12 kids kept their masks on in his class and that their choices were respected.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/07/kids-celebrate-as-nyc-drops-school-mask-mandate/
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‘Master teachers’ on $180k could help boost education standards, say Australian campaigners
Education campaigners want public schools to get a fair go and for “master teachers” – on wages of up to $180,000 to lift standards as Australia’s performance in the global education rankings continues to slide.
That slide has come despite billions of extra dollars going into schools in the last decade.
And despite a push to remove the inequities in the education sector by giving more funding to those who are disadvantaged, unions say it is private students that have benefited the most from federal funding, receiving three times the amount going to public students.
The Australian Education Union (AEU) said the Productivity Commission had found private school students received $10,211 each from the federal government, while public school students got just a fraction of that – $2760.
The bulk of public education funding actually comes from the states and territories – 80 per cent compared to the federal government’s 20 per cent.
So overall, the government said, public schools received the highest level of support, with average per student public funding in 2019-20 reaching $20,181, compared with $13,189 for non-government school students.
The union countered that argument by saying private school fees paid by parents ensured private students were far better off than their poorer cousins in the public sector.
Australian Education Union federal president, Correna Haythorpe said the recommendations of the 2012 Gonski report, which was about finding a way to financially support disadvantaged students, had been ignored by successive Coalition governments.
Figures showed that public schools were only funded, by both levels of government, to the tune of around 90 per cent of what Gonski recommended, according to McKell Institute chief executive Michael Buckland.
The McKell Institute looked across the whole of the sector from early-childhood to primary, secondary, tertiary and vocational education, and concluded reform was necessary, if Australia wanted to compete on the world stage with the likes of China.
The slow running down of TAFE and the flawed funding model for universities, which heavily relied on overseas students, were also problems, Mr Buckland said.
“Australia’s fall in education rankings, underfunded public schools and the long running down of investment in TAFE are shortsighted public policy decisions that hurt us all,” he said.
“We also risk damaging universities for good if we don’t come up with another way to fund it.”
The results of a survey by the AEU released this week revealed that 83 per cent of TAFE teachers reported that their institution had closed courses in the past three years, with lack of funding the most commonly cited reason.
It also found 80 per cent of teachers did not believe TAFE students studying today were receiving the same quality of education as they did two years go.
Meanwhile, Universities Australia chief executive Catriona Jackson said the sector took a $1.8 billion hit during the pandemic, when international students were unable to get into the country. In order to mitigate those financial losses, 17,300 full-time, part-time and casual jobs had been slashed.
“The way we fund universities is not sustainable,” she said.
Ms Jackson said the group would be calling on the federal government to invest more and encourage industry with incentives to back university research programs.
Mr Buckland said free TAFE courses in identified areas of skill shortages was an economic reform that would help Australia build back stronger after Covid, while good quality, childhood education from birth to primary school would also benefit kids and the economy.
He said that the Federal Government also needed to do more to combat the shortage of teachers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects by introducing incentives.
Grattan Institute’s Jordana Hunter said a top priority for new education spending was to restructure the teacher career path to encourage high achievers to pursue the profession.
“We should be paying our expert teachers much more and giving them more responsibility for building the quality of teaching in our schools,” she said.
Ms Hunter said the institute, a public policy think tank, recommended two new roles. ‘instructional specialists’ would be paid around $140,000 – about $40,000 more than the top pay for classroom teachers – to work with teachers in their schools. ‘Master teachers’ would be paid around $180,000 to work with several schools to improve practices.
Meanwhile, early childhood education campaigners said one in five kids from disadvantaged backgrounds were already behind their peers when they started primary school – and they were never able to catch up.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/federal-election/education-master-teachers-on-180k-could-help-boost-education-standards-say-campaigners/news-story/7fc3ce6598849b07d40866e16a0c2c76
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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8 March, 2022
Australian Chief Scientist wants more girls to embrace science and maths
<i>This pressure is a bit arrogant. Why should girls not choose what they want?</i>
Dropout rates from high school maths and science subjects have sparked calls from Australia’s chief scientist Cathy Foley for better trained teachers.
Dr Foley said women risk missing out on highly paid jobs unless more girls studied STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects at school and university. She said boys made up 78 per cent of physics enrolments for the Higher School Certificate in NSW.
Too many students were “dropping out of important subjects at the last minute’’ in years 11 and 12, Dr Foley said. “That’s not the recipe we need for great opportunities for women to have fabulous jobs that are technology-based.’’
Student enrolment data for the two biggest states, NSW and Victoria, reveal high dropout rates from science subjects in senior years. In NSW, one in three of all students who enrolled in physics or chemistry in 2019 had dropped the subject by the end of year 12.
In Victoria, a quarter of students who enrolled in year 11 chemistry in 2020 dropped the subject in year 12, with 3886 students quitting the core science subject last year.
In mathematical methods, necessary to study engineering or medicine, one in four students shed the subject between years 11 and 12.
Nearly 4000 year 12 students completed specialist mathematics in Victoria last year, but boys were twice as likely as girls to have studied the most difficult maths subject. Just 1653 year 12 girls completed physics studies last year compared with 5596 boys – with a 22 per cent dropout rate for the subject in the senior years in Victorian high schools.
In systems engineering, 68 girls finished the subject in year 12, compared with 1045 boys.
Dr Foley said school girls with a talent for science often dreamt of becoming doctors so they could help people.
That meant girls were overlooking lucrative and interesting careers in data science, artificial intelligence and robotics that could help humanity, she said.
“A lot of young girls are brought up with societal expectations to be a carer, a social secretary and to make sure they’re nice to people,’’ she said.
“But there’s a narrow idea of what it means to help people. If they go into STEM-related research, they can develop something used by many people; they can change the world by science.’’
Dr Foley said Australia will need an extra 250,000 workers with digital skills within the next two years. “We’re not graduating anywhere near the number of (qualified workers) we need … to move from a service-based economy built on mineral extraction and services.’’
She said international students were more likely than Australian students to study engineering or physical sciences at university.
Better teaching, rather than a new curriculum, was the key to stopping students dropping out of science and maths in senior high school, Dr Foley said.
“Curriculums don’t inspire children, teachers inspire children. It doesn’t matter how good the content is, you need an inspiring teacher.
“At the moment, teachers often are teaching outside their area of expertise.
“Phys-ed teachers working as maths and science teachers is not a pathway that’s serving us well.’’
Dr Foley praised schools such as St Aiden’s Anglican Girls’ School in Brisbane, where students learn about coding and robotics from their first year of primary school.
Girls take part in an annual robotics contest, the Australian Space Design Competition and a First Lego League contest.
Principal Toni Riordan said 45 per cent of the class of 2021 year 12 graduates had applied for STEM-related studies at university. This year, 22 per cent of year 12 students are studying physics, 54 per cent chemistry and 56 per cent biology.
“The quality and professionalism of our teachers allow us to deliver our school-wide priority to deliver age-appropriate and diverse opportunities in STEM,’’ Ms Riordan said. “Our students embrace these opportunities with a curious mindset and creative problem-solving, which we know will prepare them for the world they will encounter.’’
Dr Foley, who trained as a school teacher before becoming a scientist, said too few teachers had the “right skills’’ to teach maths and science.
She said children’s engagement with social media and gaming meant “their need to be excited and inspired and engaged is heightened’’.
Scientists, engineers and IT professionals needed financial incentives, such as scholarships, to retrain as teachers, she added.
And she questioned the need for university-educated professionals to complete a two-year master’s degree in education to become a teacher.
“If you’ve been on a fair salary, you can’t suddenly dip out for two years (to complete a master’s degree),’’ Dr Foley said.
“Many people who’ve been in the workforce a long time have skills that are transferable.
“They might not need to do all aspects of a two-year master’s (degree).’’
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/chief-scientist-wants-more-girls-to-embrace-science-and-maths/news-story/35682520d46c3e8684b812ef416a4bee
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Professors tweet about how they are using the '1619 Project' in class
Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted to college professors in December, asking them to share their syllabi with her if they use the 1619 Project in their classrooms.
Scholars from around the country have since left comments on Jones’ post about how they use or have previously used the ideas from her publication in their own classrooms.
Hannah-Jones claims in her "1619 Project" that America’s history is centered around the arrival of the first slave ship in the colonies in 1619.
John Duffy, a University of Notre Dame Professor of English, was among the first to post a reply.
“I don’t know if you saw this,” he wrote, linking to a Washington Post article that is titled “Professor: Why I teach the much-debated 1619 Project – despite its flaws.”
Duffy is quoted in the article and wrote extensively about his support for Jones and why he uses her ideas in his classroom.
“Yet my reasons for teaching the 1619 Project are not entirely intellectual. They are equally visceral,” Duffy states. “Most of my students come to the class with sketchy notions of the realities of slavery.”
Middlesex Community College Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Paralegal Studies Program Director Halye Sugarman shared a tweet about her own classes.
“I teach paralegal studies and have begun to incorporate 1619 and would like to do more! Anyone who want to collaborate DM me,” she wrote.
Illinois State University History Professor, Dr. Andrew Hartman, is teaching a graduate seminar about the 1619 project.
“Teaching a grad seminar this summer, geared for high school history teachers, that I call: "A Ruthless Critique of the American History Survey." We will take the controversy over 1619/1776 as our starting point,” Hartman tweeted.
Hunter College Professor of Art History, Michael Lobel, has found a way to incorporate Jones’ ideas into his art courses.
He wrote, “Not a whole course specifically on the project, but I'm teaching a course on the African American presence in the graphic arts & will be covering 19th-century prints that reference the date 1619, including this @librarycongress chromolithograph.”
University of Pittsburgh Director of Undergraduate Studies and Senior Lecturer, Brock Bahler, tweeted: “I taught a Philosophy of Race & Religion in Spr 21 & would like to incorporate #1619Project into it next time. The intertwinement of colonialism, slavery & Jim Crow w/ Christianity in US history figured quite prominently.”
He included a screenshot of his syllabus which already includes readings such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” Richard Delgado’s “Hallmark Critical Race Theory Themes,” and Peggy McIntosh’s pamphlet called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”
Another University of Pittsburgh Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Health Equity, Dara D. Mendez, tweeted:
“Ive incorporate the readings into my Social Epi class over the past 2 fall semesters. Just got the book as Xmas gift :).”
On Mendez’s school profile, she includes a personal statement about her teaching practices. “My research, teaching, curriculum development and service applies equity, anti-racism, anti-oppression praxis as well as Black Feminist Theory, Critical Race Theory and Public Health Critical Race Praxis,” she wrote.
More here:
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=19065
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A feminist failure
<i>Trophy wife can be an attractive role still</i>
By MAGGIE McPHEE
I have been teaching at an all-girls’ school for more than 11 years, and I am still astounded at my students’ capacity for romance.
Even after 60 years of modern feminism, patriarchal myths sold in the fairytales of childhood, have al alluring pull over many young women.
A case in point: our leavers were asked to dress up as their future selves as a lighthearted activity. We saw astronauts and doctors, but a couple dressed up as “trophy wives”.
I asked them if they were being ironic. They were not.
Just the other day when my Year 12 English class was talking about gender politics in society, the subject turned to #MeToo. To my horror several girls asked innocently: “What’s #MeToo”?
As their committed feminist of an English teacher, I feel the need to “sell” feminism, to prepare them for when they inevitably leave the protected matriarchy of single-sex schooling and prepare to engage in earnest with the complex reality of a male-dominated world.
It’s a hard sell. Some of our strong, clever young women are afraid of the label “feminist” and avoid association with the movement. It is frustrating that some students are blasé about gender issues in a world in which Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins are fighting so hard for their rights as women. What are they afraid of? Being labelled as “difficult”? A complainer? Or perhaps the potential, and unspoken consequences of such an association.
Why are our young women disengaged from this issue that connects so directly to the shape of their futures? Perhaps the subtle messages their context sends them are part of the problem. Often, we underestimate girls, thinking they are not able to cope with the complexities of life. We protect them, enable their relatively harmless fantasies (the Year 12 ball is testament to that) and risk failing to prepare them for the challenges of a life that will expect them to be able to stand their ground and stake their claim.
We also give them an exhausting list of boxes to be ticked – you need to be independent, educated, skilled and trained, but you also need to be soft, empathetic, gentle, kind and feminine. No wonder my students are overwhelmed.
I suppose I can understand the impulse to retreat to the safety of apparently simple roles or solutions. Sometimes it may even be easier to opt out of the discussion altogether.
We all know the statistics trotted out every International Women’s Day about the gender pay gap, and we know the reasons : women tend to enter less lucrative industries; they take unpaid or poorly remunerated time out of the workforce for childrearing; women are less likely to go for top jobs and less likely to negotiate the same sort of salaries as their male counterparts. These statistics are stubborn – and although we are preparing girls for a world 60 years on from the second wave of feminism, it seems there is little we can do to shift these numbers.
What can we do collectively as educators to enable girls to be women who can choose to study in a male-dominated field or to have the self-confidence to apply for the top job and sit in front of a room full of men to argue for a higher salary?
At schools such as mine much has been done to try to develop resilient and courageous young women, including the introduction of programs designed to encourage taking a risk, potentially failing and trying again, as well as encouraging students to develop self-leadership skills, the confidence to persist in adversity.
It is important that we don’t just teach our young women the content they will need to study or to get a job – they need to have the personal skills to accompany that knowledge. All this is necessary. I see my role as a teacher as educating critical minds that will question assumed wisdom and cultural myths, including those around gender. The tempting illusions that we allow to remain unquestioned by young women should be challenged, for their necessarily complex lives to be rich and fulfilling.
Greater comfort will derive from deep engagement with the world as it is. The great challenge facing young people, not just girls, is disinterest and disengagement from the great ideas and movements flowing through the world. By protecting our students from the fascinating grubbiness, we are potentially robbing them of the chance to be realistic, pragmatic and perhaps even develop enough resistance to change the world.
I have made peace with the fact that my task is to plant a seed, not grow the garden.
Not everything can be taught before they leave school.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/special-reports/life-plan-for-girls-trophy-wives-or-astronauts/news-story/2a25ce76086a9eff8d17db1e9fd58464
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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7 March, 2022
Don’t Buy Media’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Distortions About Florida’s Parental Rights Bill
For the crime of trying to protect young children from sexually explicit material in the classroom, Florida legislators are being crucified by the media.
The Florida House recently passed the parental rights bill known as HB 1557, and it has cleared a final committee in the state Senate. Senators now have until March 11 to pass the legislation and put it on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk.
The media has wildly distorted the intent of the bill. Yes, I know, what’s new?
But the sheer level of message discipline by a broad swath of media outlets to promote the message of left-wing Democrats is impressive.
A quick internet search reveals an almost uniform effort in the media to call HB 1557 the “don’t say gay” bill. NPR, ABC, NBC, and The Associated Press are among many news outlets that have labeled it as such.
Not only is this label for the legislation clearly just aligning with the message that Democrat opponents want to promote, it’s also not in any way accurate about what the bill would do.
When one looks at the text, there is nothing about not saying “gay.” This points to the larger issue that Democrats who oppose the bill, and their media allies, don’t want to discuss the specifics.
Instead, they want to use the debate as an opportunity to label conservatives and Republicans as mean and hateful.
Some of the criticism has devolved into outright hysterics.
President Joe Biden jumped in with the straw man, calling the bill “hateful.” What a surprise.
Again, the implication—from the media headlines and political attacks—is that Florida lawmakers are considering an extremist, anti-gay hate bill.
So, what would the legislation do? In short, it would ban sexually explicit content for young children in public school classrooms.
A fact sheet produced by Heritage Action for America explains:
The bill would prevent school personnel from pushing planned instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity issues in kindergarten through third grade or in contexts that are not age-appropriate in later grades. The bill does not prohibit organic conversations between students and teachers, nor does it prohibit age-appropriate discussion of social issues including sexual orientation if it is in accordance with state standards.
Again, nothing about the bill requiring that Floridians not say “gay.”
Another media distortion is that HB 1557 would force schools to “out” students who are not heterosexual. This just isn’t true.
The bill actually encourages any student “to discuss issues relating to his or her well-being with his or her parent or to facilitate discussion of the issue with the parent.”
This provision is a response to what’s happened in some schools, where a student is pushed by school officials to undergo a gender transition without the permission or knowledge of parents.
There may have been a time and place where such restrictions on sexually explicit content for young children didn’t have to be addressed, but the reality is that more of such content is getting injected into children’s books and other materials.
This is pretty commonsense stuff. Even the leader of a prominent Republican LGBT group has said as much.
Charles Moran, president of Log Cabin Republicans, also said it was important to put restrictions on curriculum. A third-grade-and-younger demographic, he said, is “entirely too young of an age bracket to be having these types of very adult and very complex conversations around sexual orientation and gender, specifically gender identity issues.”
Sexual orientation and gender identity, Moran added, “is not an appropriate subject matter [to be] teaching at that time.”
Importantly, Moran said, the bill wouldn’t prevent children from having discussions about related topics, even while in class. Instead, he said, it “prevents the school from building this into curriculums and having some sort of forced conversation about it.”
Despite how some are portraying it, this isn’t a free speech issue. Teachers and school administrators can’t just say or do whatever they want in public school classrooms, yet that is the message that the left has sent over the past few years.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/03/03/dont-buy-medias-dont-say-gay-distortions-about-floridas-parental-rights-bill
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More And More Schools Caught Discriminating Against Unvaccinated Children!
Disgusting propaganda about COVID-19 vaccines that featured fifth- to eighth-graders in a musical play is now facing allegations of organizing a play that discriminated against unvaccinated kids.
The said show used the tune of ’80s hit “The Safety Dance,” including: “It’s safe to vax/and if your friends don’t vax/then they ain’t no friends of mine.”
Overall the play only shows disgusting propaganda about submitting to the medical mafia and taking experimental shots, reports said.
But the performance organizers of the December holiday show at MS 243 Center School on 84th Street and Columbus Avenue allegedly took things to another despicable level by using kids in dance numbers, songs, and skits that ostracized anyone that stood up for their bodily autonomy.
Here are more details from the New York Post report:
During one sketch, kids held signs with the names of big pharma jab-makers “Pfizer” and “Moderna” painted in red and drawn into the outline of a syringe.
Another scene had students mocking conservatives and those seeking medical or religious exemptions to the jab. Some held signs reading “I fear God not COVID” and “I am not a science experiment.”
They were pitted alongside people intended to look crazy, including one child dressed as a box of Kool cigarettes and another as Napoleon Bonaparte. Another student paraded around the stage as Jacob Chansley — the infamous horn-hat and fur-wearing Jan. 6 Capitol rioter who was recently sentenced to 41 months in prison.
Parents outraged by the theatrics said afterwards the show shouldn’t have gone on.
“It was an abomination,” said mom Antigone Michaelides, who watched the play with her husband. “It is discrimination and bullying and there is no reason you should make kids feel bad about themselves. Haven’t they been through enough in two years?”
Michaelides said several unvaccinated children were required to participate in the production which denigrated their parents’ decision to keep them unvaxxed. She said the show has been created by teachers at the school and was part of a larger climate of intolerance, and that unvaccinated kids — like her son — were frequently singled out.
“I do know for a fact that he’s been exposed to hurtful things being said around him. This I can tell you for a fact,” Michaelides said. “Hurtful things were said to him about the vaccine by other kids.”
A representative from the Department of Education said the agency is investigating the allegations.
“Every student deserves to feel welcomed in their school and this incident was immediately referred for investigation,” said spokesman Nathaniel Styer.
https://thepatriotnation.net/more-and-more-schools-caught-discriminating-against-unvaccinated-children
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At the University of Massachusetts, STEM professors resist indoctrination
by Jeff Jacoby
HERE'S SOMETHING you don't see every day: More than 50 faculty members at the University of Massachusetts Boston are openly criticizing a campaign to bind their institution into an ideology of racial and social engineering far removed from the time-honored role of higher education.
The professors' criticism takes the form of an online letter posted in response to proposed new mission and vision statements for the university. They reflect what faculty members regard as a hyperfixation on the part of the campus's leadership — UMass Boston recently installed a new chancellor and a new provost — with casting everything the university does, as some of them put it, in terms of power dynamics and hidden racism.
UMass Boston already has a mission statement. Adopted in 2010, it admirably lays out the university's purpose. Its first sentence identifies UMass Boston as "a public research university with a dynamic culture of teaching and learning, and a special commitment to urban and global engagement." It celebrates the school's "vibrant, multi-cultural educational environment" and "broadly diverse campus community." And it commits UMass Boston to "creating new knowledge while serving the public good of our city, our commonwealth, our nation, and our world."
Following that statement is a longer discussion of the university's values. They include "creativity and discovery," "diversity and inclusion," and "economic and cultural development." Emphasized again and again, however, are three values in particular: teaching, research, and service — quintessential objectives for the only public research university in New England's largest city.
As a concise summary of what UMass Boston stands for, the 2010 statement is close to ideal. By contrast, what the administration suggests replacing it with reeks of woke indoctrination.
The proposed new mission and vision statements mention "research" and "teaching" only in passing. They begin instead by proclaiming that UMass Boston must become "an anti-racist and health-promoting institution" that supports "diverse forms of knowledge production" and is dedicated to education "rooted in equity, environmental sustainability, [and] social and racial justice." They reiterate that the university's purpose is to be "anti-racist" and to promote "climate, environmental, and racial justice."
The draft of the vision statement concludes with a vow to hold everyone associated with the university "accountable" for ensuring that "these values drive all decision-making" at UMass Boston — including decisions about research, the allocation of funds, and the development of campus policies.
Alarm bells went off when these drafts were released. In the College of Science and Mathematics especially, several instructors were dismayed by the statements' heavy dose of political and activist code language with the unmistakable implication that at UMass Boston, the pursuit of knowledge and exchange of ideas is to be subordinated to a rigid left-wing agenda.
In an email exchange shared with me, several faculty members described UMass Boston as being under pressure from administrators to change its image from that of a research and teaching institution that highly values social justice to that of a social justice institution that does a bit of research and teaching. Several feel strongly that what is at stake is the soul of the institution.
So late last month, a group of professors in the STEM fields — engineering, biology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and computer science — released a letter expressing their "extensive concerns" about the tone and direction of the proposed new statements.
"Under no circumstances can political or ideological activism be the primary purpose of a public university," they wrote. Of course individual students or staff members have every right to be active in social causes. "However, in this regard the role of the university is to empower people to take action themselves — not to coerce students, faculty, or institutional units to do so."
They are objecting not because of their political views but because they are teachers: If political activism becomes "a central goal of the university," warns the open letter, inevitably "it will conflict with education and research. The search for truth can never be subjugated to social or ideological beliefs."
Most worrying to many of the signers was the draft statements' exhortation that all decisions about research must adhere to an overarching creed of racial, social, and climate justice. Not only is such a mandate antithetical to the spirit of open inquiry and academic freedom, but in some cases it is downright incomprehensible.
"If your research on quantum computing is not perceived as promoting climate, environmental, or racial justice," the authors of the open letter ask, "will you be held accountable and your resources re-allocated?"
There was an era, not so long ago, when spirited debate over questions of university policy and politics was an integral part of higher education. Today, when expressing the "wrong" opinion on a controversial social issue has led to the investigation, censure, suspension, or firing of hundreds of faculty members around the country, it takes moral courage to openly criticize the progressive dogma being pushed by the UMass Boston leadership. In opinion surveys, nearly 2 in 3 American adults say that they are afraid to honestly express their views. In too many institutions of higher education, illiberal hostility to free speech has grown endemic.
All the more reason, then, to applaud the UMass instructors who have put their names to the open letter challenging the university's misbegotten — but ideologically fashionable — statement.
What the administration proposes, the objecting faculty members write, "would bring serious damage to . . . the demographically and ideologically diverse group of students we serve — particularly those who see education as a means to rise socio-economically."
The professors' letter continues to collect signatures from all UMass Boston departments. It is a tribute to the intellectual integrity of which American higher education remains capable. Perhaps it is also reason to hope that the woke juggernaut rolling through academia may not be unstoppable.
https://jeffjacoby.com/26064/at-the-university-of-massachusetts-stem
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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6 March, 2022
SHOCKING: MI Governor Admits Promoting This in Public Schools
According to national data, American schools are failing, especially in larger urban areas run by national teachers’ unions. Instead of raising standards, far-leftists are instead feeding social justice into the schools, increasing racial tensions, while promoting more and more gender identities.
On the darker side of their efforts, in line with other dictators who from the beginning of world history have targeted children, an increasing amount of new curriculum is being used to indoctrinate the youth.
One of the worst is Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer who has aggressively pushed for the insertion of critical race theory into her state’s schools. Now her administration is providing controversial material promoting race essentialism to teachers.
Whitmer’s Educator Advisory Council has published a report called “Social Justice and Anti-Racist Educator Resources”. It gives schools and teachers the materials they need to push race-essentialism, ensures that race is seen as a central determinative factor in everyday interactions, and teaches some children that they are oppressed and others that they are oppressors based entirely on the color of their skin.
The report’s opening page includes; “The compilation aims to help colleagues begin, continue, and further their own work to FIRST educate themselves and then bring anti-racist teaching to all grade levels and subject areas.”
To kick off their new instruction, the teachers are told to read an article titled 106 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice. This piece, in what appears to be an update in their February 2022 article says, “Our work to fix what we broke and left broken. The work isn’t done until Black folks tell us it’s done.”
In their mission statement, it declares “We, as members of the Governor’s Educator Advisory Council, hear the moral outcry being shouted and felt throughout the world. … We believe education is the key to promoting social justice in society.”
“We realize we are battling two deadly viruses: COVID-19 and the virus of racism,” it continues. “We pledge to promote educational policies, practices, and resources which will help put an end to systemic racism. We will fight for more diversity in all aspects of the educational profession.”
The material references the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. It instructs teachers that “whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America’s history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.”
“People of color must always consider their racial identity, whatever the situation, due to the systemic and interpersonal racism that still exists,” and “whiteness (and its accepted normality) also exist as everyday microaggressions toward people of color.”
https://trendingpolitics.com/shocking-mi-governor-admits-promoting-this-in-public-schools-ethom/
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Academic sabotage at NYC’s famed arts high school
Count LaGuardia HS for the Performing Arts is yet another casualty in the war on excellence. How long will it take new Chancellor David Banks to reverse the school system’s bias against achievement?
Students and parents at the “Fame”ous school just learned that its Advanced Placement Calculus class lost College Board accreditation this year. Worse, some teachers have reportedly discouraged kids from taking AP exams.
This, a year after parental outcry supposedly got the school to drop plans to undermine its AP offerings.
AP classes are a huge win for kids, since they can earn college credits if they pass the corresponding test and save big money if they finish faster. How is discouraging them from taking the test helping students?
It’s been a tug of war: Lisa Mars was forced out as LaGuardia principal in 2019 after some students, parents and faculty found her to be too focused on academics. That ushered in new leadership that attacked AP classes as supposedly too stressful for kids and insufficiently creative (or something) for teachers.
The real issue seems to be the woke idea that high achievement is a “manifestation of white supremacy.” A PowerPoint presentation last year told families that “colleges acknowledge that standardized test scores reflect systemic racism rather than student achievement.”
All this is an insane disservice to kids. Banks, who rightly says increasing chances for students to excel is vital to restoring parental trust, should order a review of LaGuardia’s leadership and course offerings.
Any so-called educator who embraced the de Blasio-era assault on excellence should be shown the door.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/04/academic-sabotage-at-nycs-famed-arts-high-school/
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$40,000-a-year Chicago private school boasted of injecting critical race theory into PHYSICS classes as far back as 2016 – and revealed that students' reactions would be 'tracked'
A $40,000-a-year- private school in Chicago had allegedly injected critical race theory into its physics classes as far back as 2016 and tracked students' attitudes to the courses to see to see if they were successful.
Emails from The Latin School of Chicago obtained by The Federalist, a conservative news outlet, revealed that former director Elizabeth Denevi introduced a new curriculum to ninth grad students called 'Social Justice in Physics' six years ago.
According to one email, which was addressed to parents, the course was meant to 'address power dynamics, systematic racism, white privilege and the shortage of people of color and women in the field of science, especially physics.'
The email explained that the course was designed by Moses Rifkin, a physics teacher at University Prep in Seattle who claims to work with white teachers to help them understand 'their privilege and the role they can and must play in working for social justice,' according to his bio on the Learning for Justice, a branch of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The course began with discussing the 'significant underrepresentation of Black American physicists' and asked students to complete a survey on a range of statements regarding race and racism.
The email also stated that the effectiveness of the course would be tracked through the survey as they hoped students would 'reflect deeply' on their lessons.
It is unknown if the course is still ongoing in the school, and The Latin School did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment.
The lessons and theory taught are markedly similar to the types of 'equity' instruction that have roiled school boards across the US over the last year, with critics condemning the teachings as divisive and simplistic.
A separate email from a parent in the school, also obtained by The Federalist, showed that the parent was concerned about the course and the questions on the survey.
According to the email, the students were asked to rate the statements with how much they believed in it.
Some of the statements read: 'American society fits my definition of racist, Talking about race makes me uncomfortable and having questions about another race is an example of racism.
One statement read: 'White Americans must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society.'
Months after the course was implemented, Denevi went on to co-found Teaching While White, and education group working to help white educators become 'anti-racist in the classroom.'
This year, San Francisco School District recalled three board members over their woke obsessions - keeping schools shut for far longer than other US cities because of 'safety.'
The same board infuriated the city's parents by removing merit-based entry to the city's top public high school, Lowell, in favor of a lottery system to enhance 'equity' by increasing the number of black and Latino attendees.
While depriving students of in-class instruction, San Francisco's School District got stuck into renaming local schools whose current titles were deemed 'problematic' - including one facility named after Abraham Lincoln.
The board also sought to destroy an almost 100 year-old mural by a well-regarded Depression-era artist over its depiction of Native Americans.
Similar incidents have played out across the US this year, with boards in Virginia also roiled by their obsession with 'equity' based topics and race.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10581373/Chicago-private-school-injected-critical-race-theory-PHYSICS-classes-far-2016.html
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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4 March, 2022
A Racist Virginia School Board and Principal Get Called Out
In a terrific win for parents, hardworking students, and those who want to end discrimination in our schools, a federal judge has thrown out the racist admissions policy of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a prestigious public magnet school in Fairfax County, Virginia.
On Feb. 25, federal district court Judge Claude Hilton granted summary judgment to the Coalition For TJ, a coalition made up of Asian American parents with children who had applied for admission to Thomas Jefferson High School or were planning to do so. They were represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation.
The parents challenged the change in the school’s admissions policy implemented by the elected members of the Fairfax County School Board in 2020. Hilton concluded that change was made with a clear racist purpose:
Board members and high-level FCSB (Fairfax County School Board) actors did not disguise their desire for TJ (Thomas Jefferson High School) to represent the racial demographics of Fairfax County or Northern Virginia as a whole.
Despite their efforts at ensuring “holistic” admissions, Hilton found the policy to be “racial balancing for its own sake,” and therefore, “patently unconstitutional.”
As internal emails and other evidence showed, the 12 members of the school board were upset that so many Asian American students, and so few black and Hispanic students, were accepted at the school. So was Thomas Jefferson’s principal, Ann Bonitatibus, who seemed more concerned with the race of her students than their individual character or education.
In the 2020-21 school year, before the policy change, the racial makeup of the student body was 71.9% Asian American, 18.34% white, 3.05% Hispanic, and 1.77% black. The defendants expressed their anger that the Hispanic and black racial makeup of Thomas Jefferson did not reflect that of Fairfax County, which is 19.8% Asian American, 36.8% white, 27.1% Hispanic, and 10% black.
With the implementation of the new admissions policy, which resulted in 64 more students being admitted than in previous classes, the percentage of Asian American students in the class of 2025 still fell to only 54%.
The change in the admissions policy was prompted, in part, by George Floyd’s death in May 2020. Bonitatibus sent an email a week after Floyd’s death to the Thomas Jefferson community about “black citizens facing death and continued injustices” and complaining that the high school “did not reflect the racial composition” in the Fairfax County school system.
Other board members expressed similar sentiments, with one saying she was “angry and disappointed” about the old admissions policy and saying they had to “address the under-representation of black and Hispanic students.” While white students are also “underrepresented” at the school, that apparently wasn’t a concern to the board members.
But Hilton found that “board member communications show a consensus that, in their view, the racial makeup of TJ was problematic” and they “set out to increase and decrease the representation of certain racial groups at TJ.”
The school’s original, rigorous admissions policy explains why it has been regularly rated as one of the top high schools in the country. Students from five different school districts are eligible to apply. But in addition to requiring applicants to have a minimum core 3.0 grade point average, the school also required students to take three standardized tests: the Quant-Q, the ACT Aspire Reading, and the ACT Aspire Science tests.
Students who met certain minimum scores advanced as semifinalists for another review that evaluated their GPA, test scores, teacher recommendations, responses to three writing prompts, and a problem-solving essay.
The daughter of one of the authors went through this tough process and graduated from Thomas Jefferson in 2012.
Keep in mind that in the case against the school board, there was no evidence produced of any kind that the preexisting admissions policy, including the battery of tests that was administered to applicants, was at all discriminatory. It is simply that this objective process did not produce the racial proportions the school board and the school principal wanted.
Instead, the board eliminated the standardized tests in their entirety, got rid of the multistage review process, and implemented a “holistic” (i.e., subjective) evaluation that included “Experience Factors” such as “(a) attendance at a middle school deemed historically underrepresented at TJ; (b) eligibility for free and reduced price meals; (c) status as an English language learner; and (d) status as a special education student.”
The school board also guaranteed seats for 1.5% of the eighth-grade students at each public middle school, creating a pool for the remaining unallocated seats.
Hilton concluded that there was “no dispute” that the board was “racially motivated” and “acted with discriminatory intent” when it changed the admissions policy. It implemented, according to Hilton, a policy that “does not treat all applicants to TJ equally,” where Asian American students are “disproportionately deprived of a level playing field.”
Moreover, the board short-circuited the usual process for making policy changes in order to dampen public opposition, going out of its way to prevent input from stakeholders—something Hilton himself noted. He found that “the process was rushed, not transparent, and more concerned with simply doing something to alter the racial balance at TJ than with public engagement.”
The process suggests—as one board member said in an email—that the board was moving “quickly” because it was “currently incurring reputational/political risks,” meaning that “now is better timing.”
Hilton contrasted the fact that the school board held “full, public meetings” on renaming two schools named after Confederate generals with the fact that the “public did not even see the proposed plan that the Board actually adopted for TJ admissions until 30 minutes before the final meeting.”
He said that the board could not “transform racial balancing”—discriminatory conduct forbidden by the Constitution—by “simply relabeling it ‘racial diversity.’” And it didn’t even consider alternatives “like further increasing the size of TJ or providing free test prep … before the Board defaulted to a system that treats applicants unequally in hopes of engineering a particular racial outcome.”
What is crystal clear from this decision and the evidence that was introduced is that the members of the Fairfax County School Board, the principal of Thomas Jefferson High School, and numerous others inside the school system had no hesitation in implementing a racially motivated, discriminatory admissions policy intended to achieve a racial quota system that would allocate seats in the entering class based not on the qualifications, credentials, and hard work of those students, but their skin color.
All of them should be ashamed for betraying the public trust and engaging in such egregious conduct.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/03/02/a-racist-virginia-school-board-and-principal-get-called-out
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Another Loony Lib Teacher Caught Wishing Death On Conservatives…
A liberal Texas middle school teacher was caught telling two other women that “conservative Christians” needed to “get COVID and die” because of their political opposition to coronavirus mandates, which she says has “impacted” the “rest of [her] life.”
Parents have identified the teacher as Lisa Grimes, who used to teach at Colleyville Middle School. She was reportedly upset over political opposition to pandemic-related restrictions and blamed conservative Christians for prolonging the pandemic.
I mean, nobody was stopping her from living her life except for her. She is the type of person who thinks that your freedoms stop because of her fear.
A hidden video captured while talking with two other women, Grimes starts going off on a rant about vaccines and their importance:
“We have a political system that will not allow us to [inaudible] so we’re vaccinating like the flu … which is, you know … get the flu vaccine if you want but you can’t — don’t ‘tread on me.’ But it’s too late. It would have had to have been immediate. If we would have done it immediately, it’d already be gone. That’s what’s frustrating. The rest of my life is impacted because of politics?”
Grimes, before she walked away, chose to make one last scathing comment that she will likely regret:
“Because of conservative Christian crap?”
“I’m telling you, those conservative Christians … they need to die … they need to get covid and die.”
100 Percent Fedup reported:
Grimes was recorded by an anonymous school parent who wishes to remain unidentified at this time.
According to LinkedIn, Grimes attended a Graduate program at Texas Christian University. She is also a fitness and nutrition coach who, according to her bio, wants to “live a happy life and influence others to do the same.”… well, as long as they’re not conservative or Christian.
Her social media is also littered with posts that are clearly meant to convince others that she is a good person, with a ton of posts about BLM and how to not be a racist. The majority of content on her accounts is either virtue signaling, social justice, or yoga.
One of her Twitter posts is captioned “Only Love.” and includes a quote from MLK which reads, “And may the appalling hate of others fuel you to step more deeply into your work as a warrior of love, justice, and freedom in the fight against oppression and bigotry.”
Pretty ironic considering she just admitted to wanting Christians and conservatives to die because they disagree with her political views. If that isn’t bigotry then what is?
Not to mention the “appalling hate” that Grimes holds against such a large number of people based on their religion.
But that “science” she was governed by must have changed, given that in the video above she and the other two women she was talking with were not social distancing, nor were they wearing masks.
A woman with this much hate in her heart should not be educating children, especially in such important developmental years.
https://theinformedamerican.net/another-loony-lib-teacher-caught-wishing-death-on-conservatives/
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Elite International Schools Have a Racism Problem
Around the world, finishing schools for the Davos class teach excellence—as long as the excellence is White, Western, and English-speaking.
The “placement gong” rings out in the offices of Teaching Nomad, a recruiter for international schools, every time the company places a teacher. The past few years it’s been ringing a lot.
International schools—private, expensive, the instruction almost always in English—were once the exclusive domain of the children of diplomats and expat executives. Today, parents everywhere want in, seeing a Western-style education as a child’s pathway to success. On average, two new international schools are opening a day, and the demand for teachers is insatiable. Teaching Nomad’s website features hundreds of job openings, from Panama to Vietnam.
Some applicants are novices looking for an overseas adventure. Others are veteran educators seeking to burnish their credentials. Few of them understand, however, that their chances of getting a job might come down to the photo they upload with their résumé. It’s been an open secret in the industry for decades that parents, and therefore schools, demand Caucasian teachers and administrators.
Teaching Nomad responds to that with a simple system: Candidates are categorized Level I for Whites, Level II for all others, according to four former employees who logged and classified applicants at the company’s offices in Denver and Shanghai. The agency also notes what kind of teachers each institution seeks, with a drop-down box that offers the option “White Only,” say the ex-employees, who asked not to be identified, citing concerns about legal retaliation for violating confidentiality.
Brett Isis, Teaching Nomad’s founder and president, says the ex-employees misunderstood. Teaching Nomad does separate candidates into tiers, he says, but the levels have nothing to do with race—they’re an assessment of a candidate’s “hireability,” based on many factors. He acknowledges that the system notes schools’ requests for only White candidates but says Teaching Nomad forwards all qualified applicants to those schools, regardless of their skin color. “The reality is that we’ve helped hundreds, if not thousands, of minorities to achieve their teach-abroad goals,” Isis says, pointing to the company’s reviews on goabroad.com and gooverseas.com. “Many, many of those are African American or Black candidates.”
Teaching Nomad isn’t an outlier. Teach Away, a competitor in Toronto, has worked with local recruiters and partner schools in China that categorize candidates by race: A 2019 spreadsheet seen by Bloomberg had a column labeled “skin color”—with A for Black, C for White, and B for the rest. Teach Away said in an email that since August 2018, it’s required all clients to accept a school diversity pledge and that schools which don’t follow best practices on diversity and inclusion risk having their contract canceled.
These are just two agencies, doing what’s expected in an insular system that’s only beginning to examine itself. The racial reckoning that swept schools across the U.S. in 2020, calling attention to the White privilege and systemic racism endemic in academia, initially went unheeded at international schools. It was an American problem, irrelevant in their enlightened halls. But as the Black Lives Matter movement rippled abroad, students, alumni, and teachers began to peel back that worldly patina. First-person testimonies about racial discrimination emerged from schools on six continents, inspiring a movement calling on international schools to expand beyond their Western-centric biases.
Interviews with dozens of teachers, administrators, and recruiters reveal hiring tactics unheard of in almost any other industry. International schools overtly prize White skin and calibrate salaries accordingly. Ads for teaching positions are blunt about what kind of candidates should apply: “White only,” reads a recent one for a school in China. Another, for a Saudi school, states, “Must—Native American (Fair and Blonde).” In the U.S. such practices would be illegal. But abroad, discrimination laws differ, enforcement can be negligible, and the schools are largely unregulated. There’s a rule of thumb in the trade: The more elite the school, the less diverse the staff.
David Stewart, a former Teach Away recruiter, says he tried repeatedly to place qualified candidates of color but found it too hard. After two years he left, dispirited. “Racism” he says, “is just baked into the business model.”
International schools trace their roots back more than a century and a half. They were born of a certain idealism. In 1864, Charles Dickens urged his countrymen to take note of a new international school established right outside Paris—the first in a program that planned to rotate boys through schools in Europe so they could learn alongside classmates of all nations and acquire the local language in each country. The result would be “a citizen of the world at large,” Dickens wrote.
As businessmen and diplomats increasingly began venturing abroad with their families, there was also a practical need for schools that allowed children to continue their education overseas. A group of enterprising women in Tokyo banded together in 1902 to create what would become the American School in Japan. Two decades later, Royal Dutch Shell set up a school on Borneo, where it had struck oil, to attract engineers from Europe.
International schools today guarantee children will emerge speaking fluent English, the language of aspiration and a prerequisite for a shot at the Ivy Leagues and Oxbridge. Power coheres early, and children establish lifelong ties with peers groomed for the global elite. The notables who’ve emerged from such schools include Rockefellers and Rothschilds, former chief executive officers of Nokia Corp. and Standard Chartered bank, the king of the Netherlands, and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson. North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un, attended the International School of Berne in Switzerland.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-03-04/elite-international-school-education-runs-on-systemic-racism
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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3 March, 2022
2+2=5? Bill Gates funnels $1 MILLION to push 'math is racist' narrative
<i>The Left will stop at nothing to destroy the society they live in. Very twisted people pretending to be do-gooders</i>
With a $1 million check from the Gates Foundation, leading universities and local governments are building an effort to bring “anti-racism” efforts to mathematics.
A Pathway to Equitable Instruction exists to address “barriers to math equity” by offering “guidance and resources for educators to use now as they plan their curriculum, while also offering opportunities for ongoing self-reflection as they seek to develop an anti-racist math practice.”
Among the group’s content developers are Ruth Basket, Mirna Maranda-Welsh, and Malane Morales-Van Hecke from the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s Multilingual Academic Support Unit; David Chun, the Director of K-12 Mathematics at the Sacramento County Office of Education; and Mindy Shacklett, a Coordinator of Mathematics at the San Diego County Office of Education. Multiple professors from the University of California system and Loyola Marymount University also worked on the project.
In its acknowledgments section — which lists the aforementioned universities and governments as “dedicated partners” — the project thanks the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for its “generous financial support.”
Gates Foundation senior communications officer Josie Duckett McSpadden confirmed to Campus Reform that the nonprofit gave $1,000,000 to the group.
One of the group’s guides — entitled “Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction” — lists the “focus on getting the ‘right’ answer,” the emphasis on “real-world math,” state standards directing classroom instruction, and the sequential teaching of skills as “white supremacy culture.”
Accordingly, the guide endeavors to debunk several alleged signs of white supremacy in mathematics. For instance, the notion that “‘good’ math teaching is considered an antidote for mathematical inequity” among minority students is decried on the grounds that “either/or thinking” “allows the defensiveness of Western mathematics to prevail.”
In addressing the belief that state standards ought to direct classroom instruction, the guide suggests that teachers “unpack how the standards uphold white supremacy culture.”
As an antidote to white supremacy culture, the guide suggests centering the classroom upon “ethnomathematics.”
Students may, for example, “recognize the ways that communities of color engage in mathematics and problem solving in their everyday lives” or “challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.”
Teachers are likewise encouraged to “intentionally include mathematicians of color” in their instruction and “acknowledge the mathematical knowledge of students of color, even if it shows up unconventionally.”
Another guide — “Sustaining Equitable Practice” — asserts that “the relationship between instructional coach and teacher can be complicated and nuanced given the intersectionality of both participants’ identities.”
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16895
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Indiana Parents’ Rights Over Their Child’s Education Are Threatened. Here’s What Parents Around the Country Need to Know
Parents and voters are taking every opportunity to reject racially biased teaching and sexually explicit classroom material. Through whistleblower activity and using their right to speak at school board meetings, families are advocating for their students’ interests, and state lawmakers should take notice.
Currently, a high-profile legislative proposal in Indiana is going in the wrong direction. Hoosier officials are considering an amended proposal that makes only a mild attempt at allowing parents to see what their children are being taught and no longer protects children from racial prejudice. State lawmakers are proposing to make it optional for school leaders to inform parents about the topics educators are teaching students.
Legislators recently replaced provisions from a proposal introduced earlier this year that would have required public school leaders to make textbook lists, course syllabi, and results of student surveys available to families with optional measures for disclosing school content. And that’s not the worst of it.
The latest version of the proposal struck key provisions that would have protected teachers from critical race theory’s racial bigotry. Lawmakers had considered preventing school employees from being compelled to affirm racist concepts, but such language has since been erased.
Students are also at risk under the proposal because lawmakers would allow school counselors and, potentially, unlicensed school employees to meet with students and provide “ongoing” therapeutic services without parents’ permission. School officials are required to “attempt” to contact parents. Parents have a limited window during which they can remove their children from this treatment before it begins.
Surveys find that parents do want school leaders to inform families about conversations that educators are having with children on gender identity, and parents want their children taught that slavery “was a tragedy that harmed the nation, but our freedom and prosperity represent who we are as a nation.” Indiana’s amended proposal dismisses parents’ priorities.
Those who argue that critical race theory and radical gender theory are not taught in Indiana schools should see the social media feed for Carmel Clay schools, a district located 30 minutes north of Indianapolis. There, district officials advertise their advocacy for transgender activism.
In January, the district hosted a speaker with “extensive research in colonialism, white supremacy, and concept of racism [sic],” who said students should avoid “othering [sic] of ‘BIPOC/LGTBQ+’” because it leads to “oppression”—all ideas straight from the canon of critical race theory and gender theory.
Indiana officials should move quickly and consider proposals that protect children from racial bias and empower families with access to course outlines, reading lists, and other class material. Lawmakers should say that no public official can compel a teacher or student to affirm any idea, but especially ideas that violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This would mean, for example, that professional development programs for teachers could not require educators to profess that individuals should receive benefits or punishments based on the color of their skin—something the Indiana proposal, in its current form, should strengthen through a prohibition on compelled speech. Further, by specifically addressing compelled behavior, educators would be reminded that dividing students into mandatory affinity groups according to race for different school activities is discriminatory.
Such affinity groups have been the subject of a lawsuit in Illinois. A similar lawsuit unfolded in Massachusetts, where district officials dropped an affinity project after settling with Parents Defending Education.
Indiana lawmakers should also require school leaders to post textbook lists and assignments online so that parents can see what teachers are presenting to children. And legislators must make sure parents know what mental health interventions school counselors are planning to use, and, aside from a medical emergency, parents should be intimately involved with and have the final word on such treatment.
The San Francisco school board recall election last week, where voters unseated three board members with reputations for radical positions, was the latest in a string of voter activity that will help protect children from discrimination and aggressive sexual content in schools. Parents are advocating for their children—and Indiana lawmakers should defend the rights of both.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/02/24/indiana-parents-rights-over-their-childs-education-are-threatened-heres-what-parents-around-the-country-need-to-know
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Stop this ‘COVID-theatre’: Florida governor chides students for wearing face masks
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a fierce opponent of coronavirus mask and vaccine mandates, grew visibly annoyed and admonished a group of students for wearing face masks at a news conference on Thursday AEDT.
DeSantis, a Republican, approached the students and asked them to remove their masks as they waited for him at the news conference at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
“You do not have to wear those masks. I mean, please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve got to stop with this COVID theatre. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous,” he said, letting out an audible sigh and shaking his head.
DeSantis is running for reelection and is considered to be a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate.
His opposition to masks and vaccines has drawn national attention, and his administration has banned mask mandates in schools.
DeSantis’ office did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
The federal Centres for Disease Control and Prevention late last month eased its masking guidelines.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/stop-this-covid-theatre-florida-governor-chides-students-for-wearing-face-masks-20220303-p5a18s.html
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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2 March, 2022
British university 'failed to protect and support' lecturers who were targeted in 'campaign of intimidation and harassment over transgender privileges
Academics have condemned a leading university after trans rights activists targeted colleagues who wanted to cut ties with Stonewall.
They accused Cardiff of failing to ‘protect and support’ lecturers who had urged the institution to review its membership of a scheme run by the gay rights campaigning group.
Staff members at the South Wales campus have faced a ‘campaign of intimidation and harassment’ for raising concerns about freedom of speech in relation to transgender rights.
Their names and photographs were circulated on leaflets which branded them ‘transphobic’ and featured a cartoon of a woman holding a gun, while ‘knee capping and throat punching’ threats were made on the university’s LGBT+ society’s official Facebook page.
Twenty-three academics across the country have now signed a letter to protest about the ‘relentless harassment’.
They have demanded that president and vice chancellor Professor Colin Riordan and deputy vice chancellor Professor Damian Walford Davies ‘denounce the threats of student activists seeking to undermine academic speech and reasonable discourse’.
The row began when 16 Cardiff academics wrote to Professor Riordan last June, arguing that it was ‘inappropriate’ for Stonewall to be ‘embedded’ within the institution and ‘influencing policies which affect freedom of expression’.
A counter letter, condemning the ‘transphobia’ of the signatories, was signed by more than 100 academics at Cardiff, and over 1,000 current and former students and others.
Days later, a protest took place outside the university, and leaflets featuring the names and photographs of the signatories were circulated. They featured the caption: ‘Not gay as in happy, but queer as in f*** you.’
In November, stickers appeared on campus depicting a raised gun, with the same caption as the leaflets. The open letter, launched on Friday, claims the original Cardiff signatories were cast as ‘transphobic’ by staff, students and external parties.
It alleges they have been subjected to ‘relentless harassment’ that has been ‘ignored by university administration’.
The document accuses the university of repeatedly failing ‘to undertake proper investigations’.
A Cardiff University spokesman yesterday disputed that these matters have not been ‘thoroughly investigated’. He said: ‘We have found insufficient evidence to link Cardiff University staff or students to any actions that would breach our internal disciplinary codes.’
The university has ‘remained in dialogue’ with staff over the last few months and will ‘continue to support staff and students on all sides while upholding our commitment to free speech’.
Toby Young, general secretary of The Free Speech Union, yesterday demanded Cardiff launch a ‘proper investigation’ into its ‘bungled handling’ of the matter.
He said: ‘Cardiff University has completely failed to intervene while militant trans activists have created a culture of abject fear, with anyone who opposes their ideology afraid to speak out.’
He has written to Jeremy Miles, Minister for Education and Welsh Language, urging him to intervene in the row.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10558643/University-failed-protect-support-lecturers-wanted-quit-Stonewall-academics-say.html
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History and Literature students at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland have been warned the classic novel contains 'graphic fishing scenes'
It is a story of one man’s heroic struggle against the elements and often viewed as a metaphor for life itself. But Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel The Old Man And The Sea is the latest victim of today’s woke standards, with students warned that it contains ‘graphic fishing scenes’.
Successive TV and film adaptations of the 1952 classic have been awarded U and PG certificates, suitable for children, but a content warning has been issued to History and Literature students at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland, an area renowned for its fishing industry.
Mary Dearborn, the author of Ernest Hemingway, A Biography, said: ‘This is nonsense. It blows my mind to think students might be encouraged to steer clear of the book.
‘The world is a violent place and it is counterproductive to pretend otherwise. Much of the violence in the story is rooted in the natural world. It is the law of nature.’
Jeremy Black, emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter, added: ‘This is particularly stupid given the dependency of the economy of the Highlands and Islands on industries such as fishing and farming.
'Many great works of literature have included references to farming, fishing, whaling, or hunting. Is the university seriously suggesting all this literature is ringed with warnings?’
The content warning was revealed in documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday under Freedom of Information laws.
The novel tells the story of Santiago, an ageing fisherman who catches an 18ft marlin while sailing in his skiff off the coast of Cuba.
Unable either to tie the giant fish to the back of the tiny vessel or haul it on board, he proceeds to hold the line for an unspecified number of days and nights.
Despite suffering intense physical pain, Santiago feels compassion for the captured animal. Only when the fish begins to circle his craft does he reluctantly kill it, but he is then forced to fight with, and kill, several sharks intent on devouring the corpse.
Santiago chastises himself for killing the marlin and tells the sharks they have killed his dreams, before eventually making it to shore.
Fans of the novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, believe Santiago’s battle with the forces of nature is a reference to Hemingway’s own struggles, while others have seen the story of bloodshed, endurance and sacrifice as a metaphor for Christianity.
The University of Highlands and Islands, made up of 13 research institutions and colleges, has issued content warnings for other classics.
Students studying Homer’s The Iliad, written in the 8th Century BC, and Beowulf, an English poem penned around 1025 AD, are warned that they contain ‘scenes of violent close combat’.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is flagged because it contains ‘violent murder and cruelty’ and students studying Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Romeo And Juliet are warned that the plays contain scenes of ‘stabbing, poison and suicide’.
A University spokesman said: ‘Content warnings enable students to make informed choices.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10555411/University-warns-students-Ernest-Hemingways-Old-Man-Sea-contains-graphic-scenes-FISHING.html
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Students and recent grads describe challenges of being a young conservative
College-age attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando spoke with Fox News about what it’s like to be a young conservative in America today.
"Being a young conservative is really hard nowadays," said Madeline, a student at Ohio Northern University. "You really have to have a lot of guts to put up a big fight. You're fighting not only your peers, but also the big institutions that are after you, that are trying to silence you,"
For all the pushback some students feel, others told Fox News they won’t be silenced by those who oppose their conservative beliefs.
"There's always going to be a few people who say things about you, but at the end of the day, you just have to stand up for what you believe in and fight for what's right," Eric said.
Joseph, a student at East Carolina, told Fox News he felt "scorn" from professors for expressing his conservative viewpoints but that he feels a responsibility to create a positive environment for future generations, which he believes is rooted in conservative principles.
"You kind of have to step in, and you have to stand up, and you have to say, 'That's not what I want, that's not what I want for this country.' You know, we're going to grow up, we're going to have kids, we're going to have grandkids," he said.
"And so it's kind of on us to make sure that we're charting the course and that we're supporting the people and the policies … that are going to make this country prosper," he continued.
The annual CPAC conference brings together conservative activists, elected officials and candidates for office. Former President Trump is slated to speak Saturday evening.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/students-recent-grads-describe-challenges-being-young-conservative
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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1 March, 2022
GA Senate Passes Bill Barring Students from Competing on Sports Teams Not Consistent with Biological Sex
The Georgia Senate passed a bill that would ban student-athletes from competing on sports teams that do not align with their biological sex.
SB 435, also known as the Save Girls' Sports Act, passed Thursday in a 34-24 largely party-line vote.
The bill would prohibit school sports teams with transgender athletes from competing against other teams in the state in an effort to preserve "the fairness of sports."
"No local public school system, public school, or participating private school in this state shall operate, sponsor, or facilitate interscholastic or intramural athletics" that allows male athletes to "participate in any interscholastic or intramural athletics that are designated for females," the bills reads, similarly adding that such schools would also be banned from allowing female athletes to "participate in any interscholastic or intramural athletics that are designated for males."
The legislation allows exceptions in cases where "there is not an equivalent interscholastic or intramural athletic program" for a student athlete's biological sex.
The bill would also allow grievance complaints to be filed against schools that fail to comply.
Republican lawmakers argued that it is unfair for biological girls to have to compete against biological boys and explained that separating athletes by gender ensures fairness.
"Forcing girls to play against biological boys inhibits the ability of young girls to win competitions, achieve scholarships and achieve the highest level of success," state Sen. Marty Harbin (R-Tyrone Republican) said on the Senate floor Thursday.
Democrats, however, took issue with the legislation, with state Sen. Sally Harrell (D-Atlanta), who is the mother of a transgender child, urging her colleagues to not "move so fast, because this is hurting our kids" during her remarks on the Senate floor.
And Georgia's Democratic Party slammed the bill following its passage, claiming it is a piece of "extreme legislation."
"It's absolutely despicable that Georgia Republicans are attacking kids for political gain," spokesperson Rebecca Galanti said in a statement. "This hateful bill is a dangerous ploy to rally political support in an election year by demonizing Georgia’s transgender community and threatening kids and teenagers’ wellbeing."
The bill now heads to the Republican-controlled House, where it is expected to be passed. The bill would then go to Gov. Brian Kemp's (R) desk to be signed into law. The governor has previously indicated his support for the bill and likely would sign it once it passes the House.
Kemp said in his State of the State speech last month that he would "strongly support [legislation] to ensure fairness in school sports."
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/landonmion/2022/02/25/ga-senate-passes-bill-barring-student-athletes-from-competing-on-sports-teams-not-consistent-with-biological-sex-n2603816
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Arizona State’s WOKE Theatre Performance Excluded White Students
The Sundevil leadership at Arizona State University has lost control of their campus social justice activists. Instead of ensuring they are providing a productive learning environment for all students, they instead appear to be focusing on bombarding potential students worldwide with marketing material, hoping to convince them to attend their various online or on-campus classes at locations located in the Phoenix, AZ metro area.
As big-time proponents of the BLM, LGBTQ, and BIPOC movements, some “people of color” in the student body have felt emboldened to openly attack white students and Christians on campus.
In a recent example, a few Woke Arizona State University students accused the college of ‘persecuting’ THEM after they were reprimanded for making two white students leave campus multicultural space because of their anti-Biden shirt and pro-cop laptop sticker.
College Fix reported that Arizona State University’s theatre department hosted a performance of “The Color Cabaret,” which excluded white students, a potential violation of federal law preventing discrimination based on race.
The description for “The Color Cabaret” says that it is “an opportunity for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) students in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre to create performances that speak to their own experience.”
“This performance also serves as a fundraiser for the BIPOC student scholarship fund, led by the ASU Music Theatre and Opera Student Organization,” the description also said. “Together we celebrate and highlight what makes us different.”
The State Press reported that the performance, “held Jan. 29 and 30, was made up entirely of students of color, and the songs performed told a story with heart, grace and a cultural flair representing the diverse community at ASU.”
“Thanks to Brian DeMaris and our supportive faculty and staff, we have made it known to our entire community that diversity and equity are the pillars that carry this program,” a program for the performance said. “Through hard discussions and active change, the MTO program has made it clear that all Black, indigenous, and People of Color, no matter the artistic background, are free and welcome to take up space here,” student director Jonice Bernard wrote.
The problem with excluding anyone based solely on their immutable characteristics is, it’s illegal. It violates the Civil Rights Act which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.”
The show has been performed since 2013. It reportedly excluded white students from participating, so the Fix asked the school if it could confirm such reporting and whether a university attorney reviewed the event to make sure it didn’t violate the Civil Rights Act.
ASU responded to the Fix by releasing an unsigned statement:
The Music Theater and Opera Student Organization (MTOSO) is one of hundreds of registered student organizations at ASU. Like every other registered student organization, MTOSO is responsible for planning and organizing its meetings and programming. And like every other registered student organization, MTSO has committed to operating in a manner that does not discriminate. Consistent with that commitment, the MTSO Color Cabaret was open to all Music Theater and Opera undergraduate, graduate, and vocal performance students.
While the statement said the event was open to all students, it did not explicitly say whether white students did, in fact, participate or were encouraged to do so along with students of color.
Hey ASU, here is a simple fix to your growing problem. Go back to treating everyone equally, and require your students to leave their aggressive radical “justice’ issues off-campus.
Now that was not too hard, was it?
https://trendingpolitics.com/racism-arizona-state-theatre-performance-excluded-white-students-ethom/
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U.S. Catholic schools see first enrollment hike in two decades
National Catholic school enrollment increased by 3.8 percent this year, officials said, marking the first hike in parochial students in two decades.
Demand began to mount during the pandemic-impacted 2020-2021 school year, where most Catholic dioceses offered in-person classes while many public schools did not.
Catholic schools added 62,000 kids to their rolls this academic year, according to data from the National Catholic Schools Education Association.
The total parochial population is now 1.68 million kids across the country.
The draw of stable full-time schooling attracted a surge of new applications and students in recent years, local Catholic school administrators told The Post.
“I think some parents were compelled to look elsewhere during this whole ordeal,” a Brooklyn Catholic school principal said. “And in a lot of cases I think they liked what they were seeing.”
City Catholic schools — which enroll roughly 70,000 kids across the boroughs — boosted their registers while traditional public school enrollment fell.
Locally, the Diocese of Brooklyn reported a 2.4 percent increase in enrollment this year — the first hike in a decade, officials said.
But Catholic school officials cautioned that future advances are not guaranteed.
“Catholic schools innovated throughout the last two years to meet the needs of their communities,” the National Catholic Educational Association said. “They need to continue to adapt to those needs and use the momentum to retain students and recruit new students in the upcoming years to stabilize or continue to increase enrollment.”
Despite the recent uptick, the number of American Catholic schools is still well below what it once was.
There are currently 5,938 parochial schools across the country — down from 11,000 in 1970.
https://nypost.com/2022/02/24/catholic-schools-see-first-enrollment-hike-in-two-decades/
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Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.
TERMINOLOGY: The English "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".
MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).
There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.
The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed
Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.
Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor
I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.
Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".
For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.
The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"
A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933
I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.
I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!
Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.
Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.
Comments above by John Ray
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