The blogspot version of this blog is HERE. The Blogroll. My Home Page. Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Greenie Watch, Political Correctness Watch, Dissecting Leftism, Immigration Watch, Food & Health Skeptic, Tongue Tied and Australian Politics. See here or here for the archives of this site
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31 October, 2022

Supreme Court considers banning race in college admissions

The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments on Monday in two cases that could determine whether colleges can consider race in their college admissions process, a decision that could drastically affect how colleges admit students, and impact racial diversity far beyond higher education. 

The cases deal with the admissions policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) sued both schools, alleging their policies, which consider race as a factor in admissions, discriminate against Asian American applicants. 

SFFA first sued Harvard in 2014, and is now asking the Supreme Court to overturn its 2003 landmark decision Grutter v. Bollinger, which permitted race to be considered as one factor in college admissions because it believed student body diversity was "a compelling state interest."

In writing the opinion in the Grutter case, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that "race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time," and added that "we expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary."

Now, 19 years later, the Supreme Court is revisiting whether racial preferences are, in fact, still necessary. 

"The Supreme Court is going to once and for all be answering the question of whether our nation’s college and universities can consider race in the admissions process," Kimberly Herman, general counsel for the Southeastern Legal Foundation, told Fox News Digital. 

It is "one of the most consequential supreme court cases to ever be heard in higher education," Danielle Holley, Dean of Howard University Law School told Fox News Digital. "For selective admission universities, it would mean that if the Supreme Court finds against Harvard or UNC, those universities could no longer consider race in any way in admissions." 

That outcome would have significant effects on diversity on college campuses, Tiffany Atkins, a law professor at Elon Law School, told Fox News Digital. 

"From my perspective as a law professor and a lawyer, this is important because it affects the students that I teach, the conversations that we have, the richness of the conversation in the classroom," Atkins said.  

The consequences of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of SFFA would be far reaching, Atkins added, potentially affecting the pipeline for professions like doctors and lawyers. 

Yvette Pappoe, an assistant law professor at the University of D.C., said eliminating race-conscious admissions would have "devastating consequences on people of color, minorities generally," and strongly advocated for them to continue. 

"We absolutely still need race conscious admissions programs. The whole point of affirmative action was not to reward historically advantaged groups. The whole point was to remedy past discrimination, whether intentional or not, and that has not been remedied, whether we like to admit it or not," Pappoe said. 

"Banning such programs will harm students, it will harm schools, it will harm society in interrelated ways. It will not only deepen the existing racial disparities in higher education and other social institutions, it will disadvantage specifically Black candidates and other students of color in the admissions process. And then finally, it will fuel racist stereotypes about people of color, including and specifically Black women," Pappoe added. 

In the event that the Supreme Court did rule in favor of SFFA, Pappoe predicted it would not take long for diversity on college campuses to be affected. 

"In the blink of an eye, I can see that universities that have these policies that no longer want to have the policies will now have a reason to drop these policies. It could happen in this current cycle," she said, predicting that it could take less than a year. 

Because of this, Jonathan Feingold, an associate professor at Boston University School of Law, said it should be "concerning" that the Supreme Court may do away with affirmative action on college campuses.

"For anyone who’s committed to a racial diversity on campus, it certainly should be concerning to think of a future in which the Supreme Court prohibits any university from taking race into account," he said. "I think anyone who’s interested in a racially diverse campus, among other elements of diversity, [it] warrants concern." 

The Supreme Court is looking specifically at education in considering these cases, but their decision could have impacts for other industries as well. 

Feingold emphasized the importance of affirmative action in employment, saying it remains "a potent mechanism to make processes just more fair and neutral, such that the people who should have been there from the beginning are there now." 

Atkins also warned that depending on what the court says in their ruling, there could be a "domino effect" in other areas. 

"Here, we are talking about just the context of education. However, if they’re holding that the consideration of race is a violation of the equal protection clause, then I think that we will see a domino effect in other cases that could be touched," Atkins said. 

But, this would not necessarily be a bad thing, Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky told Fox News Digital. "I hope anywhere where race is being used for purposes such as awarding scholarships, hiring, will realize that they cannot do it."

"What the folks who support this are doing is setting up the same kind of racial spoils system that our civil rights laws were intended to stop, and the only thing they are changing is who benefits and who hurts," von Spakovsky added.   

https://www.foxnews.com/media/stake-supreme-court-considers-banning-college-admissions-basic-fairness

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My University Forced Me to Take Courses in Leftism

As I accepted an offer to enroll at American University in the spring of 2020, I knew what I was getting into.   

With American University currently ranked by Niche, a large college-information aggregator and review platform, as the single most liberal university in the country, you’d think I’d be a fool for even considering going there.  

One review on Niche cited “almost no diversity when it comes to political beliefs.” But I was set on taking my scholarship money and running with it.   

In my very first semester, I quickly realized that the ranking was well deserved.  

I found out, as a starry-eyed college freshman, that “American” University might not be so American, after all. 

My first class, which was nothing special, took place over Zoom, since I entered college at the height of the COVID-19 hysteria. I was sitting in my small apartment, listening to my fellow classmates introduce themselves and our professor going through “housekeeping” information.   

The first few classes went on like that, with the professor discussing various university resources and other miscellaneous information. Then things took a turn for the woke.    

All freshmen at AU are required to take AUx1 and AUx2, and all other students must take them to graduate. As part of the AU core curriculum, they take center stage as one of the first college experiences a new student will have.   

Both classes are a deluge of leftism.   

The very first text the professor assigned us to read was “Rising up From Hatred.” It recounts the story of a white nationalist who turned away from the movement and lived to tell the tale. Seems innocent enough, informative even. What’s so bad about that?   

The way his story was framed in class was the issue. Former President Donald Trump was equated with white nationalism many times in the book, as well as in class. When we discussed the book, questions were framed in a way that implied that the teachings of the class were unequivocally true, and we were simply being enlightened.  

That was the pattern for every class I attended. We would presuppose that what our material was teaching was true, and we would discuss how true it was.   

Each class amounted to a new sermon on leftist theology. The professor tasked us with consuming some form of leftist media and commenting on it. The list of suggested content contained works such as the documentary “Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement” and podcasts such as “Intersectionality Matters” and “The Diversity Gap Podcast: Unlearning Racism in a Community of Practice.”   

Our professor also had us read the book “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir,” written by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter. The book details how America is supposedly controlled by white privilege and racism, as viewed through the lens of the author’s own personal anecdote.   

Each week, we would have a discussion about what we read. The majority of people would just rattle off diatribes about systemic racism or one of the many other buzzwords that have become so popular with the Left.   

My problem with the content had nothing to do with learning about it per se, but with how it was presented as the “capital T” Truth, and how no one could challenge it. Since I needed a good grade, I held my tongue, lest I dare to speak out against the liberal orthodoxy and incur its wrath on my GPA.   

That was until the very last class, when we were called upon to give some “constructive criticism” of the class.   

I was glad to provide it. Of course, my classmates—who were more than willing to engage passively with course material, apparently because they believed it—did not take this well. The class was a breeze for them, since they intuitively knew the so-called answers.  

Meanwhile, I was forced to find inventive ways of completing assignments that didn’t involve me outright lying about my political affiliations.   

The fact that American University would require all its students to take these courses sequentially over two semesters and be graded on their adherence to leftist orthodoxy calls into question how “American” it really is. 

There’s nothing American about forcing critical race theory and neo-Marxism down students’ throats. The university is simply undeserving of its own name. Even as a junior now, I still haven’t seen progress. I pray that it becomes worthy one day, but that day looks to be far away. 

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/24/american-university-requires-students-take-aux1-aux2aka-leftism-101-102

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After Supreme Court Ruling, School District Will Reinstate Football Coach Fired for Praying

Coach Joe Kennedy is headed back to the high school football field, eight years after he lost his job for praying on the gridiron.  

Kennedy won his religious liberty case before the Supreme Court in June after a long legal battle. The fight began in 2015, when the Bremerton School District in Washington state outside of Seattle did not rehire Kennedy after he refused to stop praying at the 50-yard line after games.   

On Tuesday, Kennedy and the Bremerton School District submitted a joint stipulation to a federal district court in Washington agreeing that Kennedy would be reinstated as a coach.  

“Kennedy is to be reinstated to his previous position as assistant coach of the Bremerton High School football team on or before March 15, 2023,” the agreement reads.  

The Bremerton School District said in a statement that it has agreed with Kennedy to give him his job back, and that “Kennedy will be able to pray.”  

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in June in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Kennedy said all he ever wanted “was to be back on the field with my guys.”   

The justices ruled 6-3 in Kennedy’s favor, with Justice Neil Gorsuch writing in the majority opinion that the “Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal.” 

The agreement between Kennedy and the school district is no surprise, since it’s “always been inevitable that Coach would return to the field after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that his practice of praying on the field after a game is consistent with the Constitution,” said Jeremy Dys, a lawyer with First Liberty Institute, a nationwide legal organization protecting religious liberty that represented Kennedy.  

The school district says it will “not interfere with or prohibit Kennedy from offering a prayer consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion,” but notes that Kennedy and the school district are in disagreement over some of the wording the Supreme Court issued on the issue of prayer.  

The court agreement also states that the “parties disagree on the specific wording of the declaratory relief.” 

“We are eager to resolve the remaining questions and look forward to having Coach back on the field on or before March 15, 2023,” Dys said, referring to the disagreements over the interpretation of the court’s wording.  

The school district and Kennedy have until Nov. 8 to submit their “proposed wording on the disputed issues” to the court, at which time the court will then make a decision on the issues under disagreement.  

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/27/supreme-court-ruling-school-district-will-reinstate-football-coach-fired-praying

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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30 October, 2022

An Entire Generation of Students Left Behind

The consequences of closing schools for roughly two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, which required many K-12 students nationwide to participate in remote learning, are starting to become apparent. The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found a significant decline in student proficiency of both reading and math among students in grade four and grade eight compared to 2019.

After most schools were closed throughout 2020, districts nationwide turned to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and their Operational Strategy for K-12 Schools through Phased Mitigation guidelines to determine when it would be appropriate to reopen schools in 2021. The CDC has a long-standing practice of keeping draft guidance documents confidential, but senior officials within the agency shared the draft with the second largest teacher’s union in the nation- the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). AFT played an unprecedented role in the development of the phased mitigation guidelines that deviates from the CDC’s Evidence-Based Guidelines standards.

According to a damning report from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, the result of this CDC-AFT malfeasance was a set of guidelines intended to increase the likelihood of public schools remaining closed to in-person learning.

The actions of the AFT, which led to an increase in remote learning, and a decrease in on-site learning, may have been a contributing factor to the proficiency decline in math and reading among students in most states.

The decline in student proficiency in math amongst both fourth and eight graders, as measured by comparing the 2022 national average score to the 2019 national average score, was the largest declined ever recorded. Twenty-five percent of fourth grade students nationally scored below the NAEP Basic level of competency in math (an increase from nineteen percent in 2019). More substantial, thirty-eight percent of eight grade students nationally scored below the NAEP Basic level of proficiency in math. Although not as drastic, declines in NAEP Basic levels of reading proficiency were also recorded in both forth and eight graders.

Specifically, forty-three states saw a decrease in math proficiency amongst fourth graders, and all 50 states (along with the District of Columbia) saw a decrease in math proficiency amongst eighth graders, respectively. For reading, thirty states recorded a decrease in proficiency amongst fourth graders, and thirty-three states recorded a decrease in proficiency amongst eighth graders (an increase from thirty-one percent in 2019).

Contributing factors to the decline in proficiency during remote learning include: access levels to a computer (desktop, laptop, or tablet) at all times, availability of a quiet place at home that is conducive to focused work, availability of teacher assistance with homework, and, for eight graders, access levels to daily video lessons. As expected, students with higher levels of proficiency had greater access to the abovementioned. The inverse is true for students who demonstrate lower proficiency in test scores. Those students who were already disadvantaged were impacted more substantially.

Given these nationwide declines in student proficiency, and their correlation with increased remote learning during the pandemic, via the law of transitivity, a clear correlation also exists between Biden’s CDC allowing a teacher’s union to edit public health policy and the decline of student proficiency in math and reading.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky served as a direct contact to AFT. According to the House Subcommittee’s findings, she was personally responsible for incorporating the health policy edits from the teachers union. Initially, the Operational Strategy for K-12 Schools through Phased Mitigation lacked a specific COVID-19 infection rate threshold to trigger school closures, but AFT advocated for a conservative threshold trigger, similar New York Cities’ school closure threshold, which closed schools if the Covid positivity rate exceeded three percent.

An entire cohort of youth is now lacking foundational proficiency in education more than past generations. The teachers union acted against the best interest of students nationwide, educationally speaking. While it’s unclear if their motives were for preserving the personal health of teachers, giving these teachers continued income with less work, a combination of both, or other factors, they never should have been allowed to create public health policy. The move politicized public health and is responsible for a whole generation of under-achievers with increased mental health issues.

The only question is will Congress hold those who allowed politics to override sound policy responsible?

https://dailytorch.com/2022/10/students-struggle-after-teachers-union-interfered/

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Colleges are brain-free zones

All right, so here's this stupid, infuriating, idiotic story, which can only mean it bubbled up from academia. It happened at the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, where a female student was allegedly sexually assaulted during school hours. 

Now, that's bad enough, but it gets worse. Students, understandably horrified, demanded increased security on campus. And one anonymous student created a petition that garnered 6000 signatures asking for more security cameras and more stringent ID access passes. 

The university quickly responded with an email from the Vice Chancellor of Public Safety and Emergency Management. Remember the old rule? The longer the title, the less they actually do. In the email, the VC promised they would be taking additional actions, and that would include increasing patrols and security shifts, meaning more cops. 

Can you guess what happened next? Hint it always happens when common sense runs headfirst into the witless woke. Stupid, destructive outrage. See, the woke are like that drunken moron speeding southbound down a northbound highway, eventually causing destruction of someone else who was doing the right thing.

And so a backlash came from students who claimed the increasing police presence would threaten the safety of students of color. As opposed to, you know, wanna be rapists. You know, I didn't realize Pit was a school for the mentally challenged. What did these students have to do to get admitted? Sketch a turtle or a pirate? I tried that. 

So after a sexual assault, some students were more concerned over the presence of police than the presence of a rapist. Of course, this is what happens when the media distorts the odds of police shootings. College kids prefer rapists. Classrooms aren't safe during school, and cops are as popular as a fart in a hot tub. And I know that, done a lot of research in that area.

Which reminds us college campuses are not just gun free zones, they're also brain free zones. So here you got a microcosm of what you're seeing now in every city. Microcosm means a small sample of a bigger problem like Joy Behar’s small toe. That's pretty good. Yes. Could use a laugh. She never fails. 

With crime out of control and with so many female victims. Where are the feminists? Why are they so afraid of calling out repeat thugs who viciously brutalize women? Even when attackers are arrested, they're let free immediately and their only punishment is that they're late for their next attack. 

Here's the reason -- the female victim is now secondary to the mantra of systemic racism. For a long time, it's been a dogfight for first place on top of the victim totem pole. But sorry, gals. Being considered racially oppressed is the equivalent of drawing a royal flush in poker. No other hand can trump it. 

So if you're in the wrong group, you can't be a victim even when you're a victim. And if you complain, of course, you must be racist. In the world of social justice, violent felons can be busted and released without bail in hours because society did it to him and after each senseless attack, as always, the perp’s lengthy rap sheet is longer than a receipt from Walgreens. 

Don't dare add any more police because that will hurt feelings. So they can have a safe space from alternate ideas, but not rapists. Using their logic, if you're at an ATM late at night, you're better off if the guy behind you is wearing a ski mask than a cop's hat. 

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gutfeld-colleges-are-brain-free-zones

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Petticoat tyrants running faculty recruitment in Australin universities

<i>Males need not apply for many university teaching jobs</i>

ANU is not alone with its women-only recruiting. Swarms of other universities are at it too. Australia’s 40-year legal progress towards equal opportunity for males and females is white-anted by these progressive academics (the same ones who aren’t sure who’s a woman in the first place). Their flimsy rationale is to level up the sex ratios in their fields.

How successful are the women-only ads at hoovering up qualified women? Not very, apparently.

In November, the RMIT node [2] of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems provided feedback from its “women-only recruitment round”. This involved 13 women-only jobs and two “First Nations” slots (any gender). Maybe “First Nations” males in academia count as honorary females. Using the insane leftist jargon now blanketing academia, Chief Operations Officer Dr Mary Gray began by announcing how

“Patriarchy and racism are systems that exclude women, people of colour, and those living with disability from accessing the full benefits of the post-industrialised workforce.”

I feel sorry for Dr Gray because her centre rashly set a target of 40 per cent woman researchers by 2026 and now “we are being held accountable to this target by the Australian Research Council.”

Her recruitment exercise included beating away pathetic male optical physicists and engineers, many of whom — desperate for consideration — insisted on applying anyway. Qualified women hung back, needing strokes and reassurance, forcing the recruiters into what Dr Gray called “dozens and dozens of conversations.” In the end they got 311 applicants and filled a meagre five positions with women (37.5% of the advertised jobs). “We consider this an outstanding achievement, especially in the context of 2020!” she wrote, referring to covid issues.

Their attempt to fill an Aboriginal-only optics job at ANU was aborted as just too hard. I guess Aborigines with transformative meta-optical expertise aren’t all that thick on the ground, even in Canberra let alone Wadeye. Dr Gray says that on the challenge of recruiting women

"We appear to be in a position of an ugly compromise between delivering on our scientific objectives and building our diverse workforce. Globally there are enough women, with the right expertise to fill every single postdoctoral position in our Centre! However, Australia has been one of the world’s most locked-down countries globally and, in our disciplines, we are reliant on the international job market. Effectively, the pandemic has reduced the flow of new postdoctoral students and researchers into Australia to a trickle and competition is fierce to obtain women researchers. 

The competition is excellent for women, which we applaud … In practice, we have struggled to stick to our gender target in 2021. We must keep proving that it doesn’t have to be research goals versus diversity goals. The big picture objectives of building a diverse workforce for research excellence and the creation of transformative technologies in meta-optics is paramount. Integrity, accountability, and taking steps forward to recruit more women when international travel resumes is a priority for 2022 and 2023."

All this women-only monopolisation might be lawful, but it doesn’t pass the pub test. The legislative loophole was designed, according to the Human Rights Commission, for helping groups “who face, or have faced, entrenched discrimination so they can have similar access to opportunities as others in the community.” ANU-wise, there aren’t a lot of women, women-identifiers and LGBTQIA+s with space-optic ambitions now sleeping rough in Petrie Plaza after being cruelly knocked back for space jobs. Probably young women just don’t care about space-optics, and gravitate instead to school-teaching, law, health careers or Virgilian poetics.

There’s no university push to encourage males into female-dominated sectors, let alone go the whole hog and offer male-only student admissions and male-only faculty positions. More on that aspect shortly.

You might be wondering how the female-only ads square with equal opportunity – considering that they give males zero opportunity. Well, all the various Acts have permitted exemptions or “special measures”, originally intended for women’s refuge staffers or corsetiers and the like. They were uncontroversial despite their broad wording.

For example, the Federal Sex Discrimination Act has a get-out clause (7D) saying an employer “may take special measures for the purpose of achieving substantive equality between men and women” and between, for example, “women who are breastfeeding and people who are not breastfeeding.” [Disclosure of interest: I am among the “people who are not breastfeeding”].

The Victorian Act equivalent, similarly, says (S12) “special measures” are “for the purpose of promoting or realising substantive equality for members of a group with a particular attribute.”

From 2015 the universities began using the loophole for their women-only ads. Initially, there were doubts in legal circles that they’d get away with it. Employers in Victoria invoking the “special measures” in effect got a letter of comfort from Victoria’s Equal (sic) Opportunity and Human [i.e. Female] Rights Commission as follows:

“A university may identify an inequality – that women are under-represented in its academic workforce within a particular faculty. The causes of the under-representation may include a lack of female candidates for positions, a lack of female academic staff to act as role models, unconscious bias in recruitment practices or other societal and organisational-specific factors.”

The Australian Human Rights Commission defined “identified positions” , e.g. for women only, as helping “people who experience disadvantage to access equal opportunity in employment.” In fact, a woman associate professor ensconced in a useless gender studies department suffers no disadvantage over not being in a STEM area. The women-only push is coming from employers who feel disadvantaged by having too many blokes around. No bragging rights there. The Victorian commission in a case study actually rules out a co-ed high school offering an academic scholarship for girls under 14, on the basis that such girls don’t have any disadvantage and the school is really just doing a marketing exercise to attract girl students.[3] 

Note that the Victorian HR Commission has shown no interest that in Victoria in 2019, male students were only 24% in university school-education courses (27% nationally), 27% in health (26%), and 31% in “Society and Culture” (34%), according to  data from the federal Department of Education. In the hot-button field of “natural and physical sciences”, women students are well represented nationally at 51%. Conversely, they’re slightly under-represented in management/commerce (46%) and architecture (41%), and greatly under-represented in IT (19%), and engineering (18%).

Overall, universities have become bastions for female students. For domestic (non-overseas) undergrad and post-grad students (total 1.086m in 2019), the ratio is 59% females to 41% males. Yet universities continue to cosset female students with “women’s centres” and other privileges not offered to males.

In pre-school teaching, males nationally comprise a near-invisible 2% versus females’ 98%, according to last year’s census.[4]

WA sports a mere 27 men pre-school teachers vs 3507 women; NSW and Victoria combined muster a mere 448 men pre-school teachers vs 16,768 women. Not much of that oh-so-necessary “diversity and inclusion” there. But imagine the clamour from feminists if a pre-school tried to correct these gross imbalances via “men-only” recruitment ads. Indeed, men seeking pre-school and primary teaching roles would have a valid case of discrimination, given the general unfounded fear that they might sexually abuse children. (Another reason they’re opting out is that the only other male employee is often just the gardener). In school teaching, the lack of male teachers is not only concerning but deteriorates annually. Overall, males have slipped in 50 years from 41.3% to barely 28%. ABS 2021 data show that male primary teachers were 20.2% in 2006, decreasing annually to a mere 18.0% last year. In secondary teaching, males have slipped from 43.4% in 2006 to 38.8% last year.

Universities advertising for women-only and gender-diverse-only positions will soon be the new normal. Move along, nothing to see here. You “cis males” can just suck it up. The petticoat tyrants are on the march!

 https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/the-universities/2022/10/take-your-xy-chromosomes-and-begone/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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28 October, 2022

Collegiate Complicity in the Erosion of American Identity

By RICHARD K. VEDDER

I have taught about the economic history of the United States and Europe over the last seven decades, beginning in the 1960s and extending into the 2020s. I believe all educated Americans should have a decent understanding of American economic exceptionalism, how over the course of four centuries the area known as the United States went from being lightly populated and impoverished to being the richest and otherwise most exceptional place on Earth.

Yet the teaching of our past has declined in magnitude over time; mandatory collegiate instruction in history has largely ended. But it is worse: we are now lying about our past, telling stories that simply are not true. And the universities are at the forefront of this trend.

A brilliant entrepreneur and intellectual, Vivek Ramaswamy, put it well in his newest book, Nation of Victims:

We’re a nation that’s losing its memory, rewriting and sanitizing its own history to fit preapproved victimhood narratives. We suffer from our own version of Alzheimer’s. As we lose our memory, we lose our national identity.

The story of our past, accurately portrayed, provides the glue that brings together “Americans” from different areas, backgrounds, educational attainment, races, genders, etc. It gives strangers who are thrust together a common identity, placing them all together in one big tribe, the inhabitants of the United States of America.

For that reason, schools at all levels, and especially secondary and higher education institutions, once required all students to have some acquaintance with the American story. But no longer. Few colleges require instruction, for example, in American history, or even that of other parts of the world (I consider my year-long course in Western Civilization as a college freshman to be one of the most important and valuable courses I ever took). The famous George Santayana quote comes to mind: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

But it is far worse than that. We are now pushing a narrative of our past that is plainly false, aided and abetted by the truly execrable revisionist history known as the New York Times’ 1619 Project, led by journalist and pseudo-historian Nikole Hannah-Jones. According to this account, America’s most important distinguishing characteristic arose out of the arrival of slaves in 1619, and the American Revolution of more than one and one-half centuries later was fought to preserve the “peculiar institution” of slavery. In 55 years of reading and teaching about our colonial past, I never heard such a position espoused until the 1619 Project came along to reinvent our heritage.

Now we are, as Ramaswamy says, a nation of victims, ranging from 17th– and 18th-century slaves to the oppressed minorities of today. We should be ashamed, not proud, of our heritage. We should atone for our sins rather than extol the virtues of an extraordinary past. As for the colleges? They often promote this false narrative, telling us that evil people, predominantly white males, have victimized and subjugated relatively innocent individuals of different races and genders.

Empirical evidence, of course, seems irrelevant. Why have literally tens of millions of persons from all over the planet descended upon America? Why is one of the biggest domestic issues today the annual flow of literally millions of illegal migrants to our nation—in 2022, about six thousand a day, or more than four persons every minute, day and night? If we are such a horrible, oppressive place, why do they keep coming?

Vivek Ramaswamy’s own background better describes the real, exceptional America. Several decades ago, his parents moved to America from Kerala, a poor Indian state. Vivek went to school in Cincinnati, graduating from one of Ohio’s very best high schools (St. Xavier) as valedictorian. He then went to Harvard, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and then to Yale Law School. He also launched a successful career as an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist while marrying his sweetheart, another super-achiever, who graduated from the Yale School of Medicine and is now a professor at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. At 37, Ramaswamy has established himself as a leading commentator on American life—while running a business as well.

As a child, and later as a parent and grandparent, I was mesmerized by the children’s book The Little Engine That Could, which tells a story of how hard work and persistence could achieve the seemingly impossible task of getting a train over a mountain. It is a quintessentially American story of overcoming adverse conditions. Late-19th-century Americans were attracted to the story of Horatio Alger, who through hard work (and some luck), managed to move from rags to riches.

By contrast, today’s universities seem to show disdain for achievement, evidenced by such things as rampant grade inflation, downplaying academic performance in college admissions, and even glorifying victimhood, often accompanied by attempts to force students and faculty alike to profess to their manifest sins in promoting the inequities that allegedly tarnish our nation.

One thing that universities respond to is money. Maybe, as Milton Friedman hinted to me almost precisely twenty years ago, the time has come for us to start taxing rather than subsidizing universities. Perhaps they are no longer serving the public good. For whom does the bell toll? Maybe a generation from now, it will elicit a mournful sound akin to “Taps” as it tolls amidst a sadly diminished university.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14313&omhide=true&trk=title

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D.E.I. Statements: Empty Platitude, or Litmus Test?

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education involve a range of objectionable elements, such as giving preferential treatment to job candidates from particular race and gender groups and generating a massive administrative staff that encroaches on faculty autonomy and attempts to structure and surveil even informal campus interactions. One element of the phenomenon that has received increasing attention is the proliferation of DEI statements: requirements that candidates submit testimonials of their contributions to DEI as part of the academic hiring and promotion process, and official pronouncements of the values of a university or unit within it. A growing number of university departments now announce their support for DEI while demanding that any potential future colleagues do the same.

Others have advanced capable and instructive attacks on these statements. I write simply to point out a dilemma: such statements are necessarily either too weak or too strong.

Defenders of DEI statements often ask how such a practice can be problematic. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are positive values, the argument goes; what kind of person would not support them? The implication is that the DEI statements contain an affirmation of self-evident goods to which no good person could object, obvious truths beyond the realm of reasonable contestability. Being asked to testify to one’s support for DEI could give no pause to any sensible person’s conscience.

But if the statements are platitudinous and banal, why have they become so popular? Applicants for a position aren’t required to profess allegiance to happiness or good times or kindness or doing the right thing. Departments don’t issue statements acknowledging that the sun rises in the morning, that one should provide for one’s children, or that it is good to try the best one can. And it would be wrong to do so, for unnecessary obligations add to the endless administrative overhead afflicting professional life today and generate opportunities for decisionmakers to treat applicants arbitrarily. Mandating a “why caring about others is better than not” statement for evaluating chemists or physicists, for instance, could only introduce a confounding variable into the process and lead to the hiring of worse chemists and physicists.

Moreover, how could the ballooning administrative apparatus at universities that exists largely to oversee DEI statements be justified if they amount to nothing more than uncontentious sappiness? Indeed, if higher ed really is facing an adverse economic climate—with austerity looming even in its core pedagogical and research functions—then it is irresponsible to devote so many university resources to such a pointless enterprise.

Apologists for this burgeoning practice have been pushed toward emphasizing a level of generality and lack of clear content in DEI statements, even at the cost of making them seem pointless and wasteful. The reason is clear: as Brian Soucek, a defender of diversity statements, acknowledges, less “specific” (in other words, more substance-free) statements are less susceptible to the challenge that they constitute “thinly veiled ideological litmus tests.” The more obvious interpretation is that DEI statements have been adopted across academia with such passion and pervasiveness not because they are empty vessels, but because they do express a particular value system and political outlook. DEI statements demonstrate, and align universities with, a way of looking at the world fashionable among faculty and (especially) administrators.

But if these professions are meaningful at all, then they curtail academic freedom and abet already-rampant discrimination in academic careers. When demanded in the context of hiring and promotion, DEI statements either serve to downgrade and exclude candidates who are honest about holding views that dissent from progressive orthodoxy on race and gender, or they enjoin applicants to mislead about their views and violate their consciences. During the struggle to rescind the religious tests that limited Oxford and Cambridge to Anglicans until the second half of the nineteenth century, critics noted that constrained professions of belief have the tragic quality of being most effective at keeping out people with integrity, people unwilling to distort or lie about their beliefs to get ahead. But this is exactly the kind of person whom academia should prize.

Universities and departments render free speech a dead letter when they issue substantive DEI statements. Students and faculty will rightly worry about repercussions for running afoul of the opinion announced on behalf of the corporate body to which they belong. Permitting proponents of one side of a question to trade on the prestige of the university’s name tilts the field of debate unfairly. A DEI statement with even the slightest substantive purchase transforms the institution from a true university—a place where all are welcome who can contribute to the discovery and transmission of knowledge—into a sect with lab space.

Defenders of DEI statements cannot help but be stuck on one horn of this dilemma. The statements are too weak to justify implementing or too strong to cohere with the academic mission. Either they are so empty and trivial that building a bureaucracy around them and expending moral and financial capital inserting them into so many aspects of university life constitutes an indefensible waste; or they contain substantive positions, in which case they are instruments for the further marginalization of disfavored viewpoints under the guise of inclusivity. In practice, the latter situation is increasingly the norm in higher education.

The pretense of a happy and uncontestable generality is, for apologists of this burgeoning practice, the price to pay for keeping the DEI engine rolling. But the truth is that DEI statements subvert the ideal of impartial evaluation of scholarly achievement and skirt nondiscrimination law in order to limit academic hiring and promotion to desired perspectives and groups. And that is, sadly, precisely why they are gaining ground across higher education today.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14317&omhide=true&trk=rm

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British schools may be forced to cut teachers and expand class sizes due to ‘devastating’ funding shortages

Schools are considering cutting teacher numbers and making class sizes bigger in a bid to save money.

In a new poll by an education union, most said they were likely to take these measures or were at least thinking about them.

Headteachers have been raising the alarm over stretched school budgets for months, as soaring inflation and staff pay increases push up costs.

Nearly all now face having to make cuts, the new poll by the Association for School and College Leaders found, with 98 per cent of respondents saying they would have to find savings either this year or the next.

Over half – 58 per cent – said they were considering or likely to reduce teaching staff and increase class sizes to deal with cost pressures.

Meanwhile, 55 per cent said they were thinking about reducing the number of teaching assistants in their school, while around 40 per cent said they were considering reducing curriculum options.

One headteacher told The Independent last month that his secondary school had already cut back on subjects in a bid to save on costs.

Geoff Barton, from the ASCL union, said: “School leaders in this survey use words such as ‘catastrophic’ and ‘devastating’ to describe the financial situation they are facing and the impact on their pupils.  “It is clear that the future is bleak unless the government acts urgently.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/school-budgets-teachers-class-sizes-b2211005.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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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27 October, 2022

School Choice Milestone Calls for New Approach

Next year will mark 30 years since California’s Parental Choice in Education Initiative, Proposition 174, appeared on the ballot. The measure provided a voucher equal to roughly $2600 for use at qualifying government, independent or religious schools. 

As the Christian Science Monitor noted, “not since California started the national tax revolt in 1976 by adopting Proposition 13 have voters faced an initiative with greater political and policy consequences.” Proposition 174 failed, partly due to opposition from then-governor Pete Wilson, a Republican, who called the measure “too costly.” 

Since 1993, California voters have had no opportunity to vote on a parental choice measure. The pandemic amplified the problems of government schools with unnecessary shutdowns. Children are now subject to racist government propaganda, and parents may be branded domestic terrorists if they dare to protest. The problems parents face are best modeled by the “captain of the anti-choice team.” 

Government schools in Washington D.C. are dysfunctional and dangerous. For low-income students, most African American, the only alternative is the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships Program, a school choice program run by Congress. Obama education secretary Arne Duncan not only limited the program but rescinded scholarships that had already been granted, sending the students back to failing schools. 

Back in 1993, Prop 174 supporters said parents should have the right to choose the schools their children attend. It would be more accurate to say that parents have had this right all along. Still, it has been taken away from them, just as Arne Duncan rescinded scholarships already granted. Call it educational theft. 

The strategy moving forward should be to restore the right to choose. If the legal and political obstacles seem daunting or “too costly,” ponder the prospect of another 30 years under current conditions. Teacher cartels call the shots, students are essentially captives to government propaganda, and parents are forced to pay the freight. 

The right to choose must be restored, and the dollars should follow the scholars, as in the G.I. Bill. That is the path to meaningful reform, increased student achievement, and the expansion of liberty. 

https://blog.independent.org/2022/10/21/school-choice-milestone-calls-for-new-approach/?omhide=true

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Jewish University Launches New Strategy Amid Religious Freedom-LGBT Conflict

An Orthodox Jewish school at the forefront of the battle for religious freedom has presented an interesting compromise: Rather than endorse the LGBT student club that is currently suing the school for recognition, it will launch its own club that it says will help LGBT students while obeying the Law of Moses.

Yeshiva University announced Monday that it has established “the Kol Yisrael Areivim club for LGBTQ students striving to live authentic Torah lives.” The announcement came just over a month after the Supreme Court rejected the university’s request to block a non-final New York trial court order forcing it to recognize YU Pride Alliance, an LGBT student group that promotes activities that conflict with Torah values, according to the university.

The New York Appellate Division later agreed to rehear the denial of Yeshiva’s request to block the order, and the Pride Alliance agreed to let Yeshiva’s rejection stand for the duration of the litigation.

“We are eager to support and facilitate the religious growth and personal life journeys of all of our students to lead authentic Torah lives, and we hope that this Torah-based initiative with a new student club tailored to Yeshiva’s undergraduate LGBTQ students will provide them with meaningful support to do so,” Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, said in a statement.

“We love all of our students, including those who identify as LGBTQ,” the university wrote in a frequently asked questions document explaining the new club. “Through our deep personal relationships and conversations with them, we have felt their struggles to fit into an orthodox world that could appear to them as not having a place for them. We recognize the inherent challenges of our LGBTQ students who are fully committed to live uncompromising halachic lives. Their struggles are our struggles, and we remain eager to support and facilitate their religious growth and personal life journeys.” The term halachic refers to Jewish law.

The university described the Pride Alliance as “a recognized movement in colleges throughout the country that not only fights anti-LGBTQ discrimination, a cause which we fully support, but also promotes activities that conflict with Torah laws and values.” Yeshiva University did not provide further language clarifying what it means by such “activities,” but it appears the term refers to homosexual activity and expressions of transgender identity, which the Torah forbids (Lev. 18:22, Deut. 22:5).

“While an adoption of this national brand is inherently unacceptable in the context of Yeshiva, we also realize the need to find additional ways to be supportive of our students that are consistent with halacha … and inspired by our values,” the university added. “That is what we have done with the approval of this new student club. It is worth noting that this approach is in line with other devout, faith-based universities nationwide, who similarly do not host Pride Alliances, but have established clubs consistent with their own faith-based languages and traditions.”

In addition to the new club, the university also announced that it would enhance “on-campus support for its LGBTQ students.” Yeshiva University will launch new efforts, in addition to the efforts it currently has underetaken, which will include “sensitivity training for faculty and staff”; “strict anti-harassment, anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies”; and “an ongoing LGBTQ support group.”

Yeshiva University, America’s oldest Jewish institution of higher education, has operated by Jewish law for 135 years, but New York County Supreme Court Judge Lynn Kotler ruled that the school did not qualify as a religious corporation under state law.

The case represents an important test for religious freedom. Does a Jewish university have the right to apply its values in its operations, or must it kowtow to the demands of LGBT activists and New York’s public accommodations laws? If religious institutions like Yeshiva wish to welcome all students, but also to follow their religious convictions against endorsing homosexual activity and transgender identities, must they forgo public funds and move to states with more favorable laws?

Conservative Christians often use the phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin.” This phrase expresses the heart of what Yeshiva University aims to prove with this new student group: The college will accept all students who struggle with homosexual orientation and gender dysphoria, without endorsing homosexual activity or transgender identity. Many Jewish students may feel same-sex attraction and may feel like they are women trapped in male bodies (or vice versa), but in keeping with Yeshiva’s Torah values, they refuse to act on those feelings.

Yeshiva will have to work hard to preserve the distinction between its new club and the activities the school refuses to endorse. It will need to be clear on the nature of those activities and on the limit of the support it is willing to give LGBTQ students. The future of religious freedom in America may depend on it.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/24/yeshiva-university-walks-fine-line-lgbt-issues-new-student-club

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Dearborn dads get school board to buckle — providing an example to America’s men

The most perverse in our society will always seek out the most vulnerable, and lately, literary perversion has crept its way into schools and libraries nationwide by means of progressive influence and paid for with our tax dollars.

These perverse actors have attempted to weaponize our parental instincts to protect our children from anything age-inappropriate by claiming our objections are either politically or religiously motivated.

For the last few weeks, Dearborn, Mich., has become another battleground as parents showed up in force to school-board meetings in fierce opposition to books being available that feature highly sexually explicit content and instructions.

One of the books parents particularly objected to, “This Is Gay,” was accessible to students despite giving explicit details on a variety of sexual acts and even offering suggestions on where to find sexual partners.

“I’m a 43-year-old man, embarrassed to say this stuff, and yet you say it’s OK for this to be in the hands of my children. Shame on you,” fumed a father at a recent meeting.

This stark response from the community led the school board to abruptly end one meeting early and proceed with another meeting later at a larger venue able to support the number of people from the community who wanted to have their voices heard.

The media and social media’s central focus was aimed at the religious demographics of the residents — Dearborn has the largest Muslim population in the United States per capita. But for me, their religion took a backseat as to what was vastly different at Dearborn versus every other school-board confrontation we’ve seen: The speakers were mostly men.

It wasn’t just fathers who were outraged enough to come and express their opposition to explicit books on school shelves; the community’s elders also made their presence known. Masculine righteous indignation permeated these meetings as men felt schools were encroaching on their community’s children’s innocence.

For the first time since the start of these nationwide school-board battles, I saw men rallying together to make it clear that any action to exploit their children’s vulnerability will receive an equal and opposite reaction. They weren’t cowering in fear of being “canceled” or labeled “toxically masculine” because they’re like most fathers: We would rather risk death than allow our children to remain in harm’s way.

Despite being falsely accused as anti-LGBT because of their Muslim faith, they remained steadfast in insisting that sexual perversion, regardless of orientation, is unacceptable, and they’ll without hesitation fall on the sword of slander to protect their children from it.

While both parents have a duty to protect their children, I’ve seen the lack of male representation at these school-board meetings as a troubling sign for the state of fathers today. Too many have left the burden of protection solely on the mothers.

What is happening across our nation at school-board meetings isn’t a minor squabble over lunch-food selections — it’s about stemming the tide of inappropriate sexual content before it becomes normalized and justified as being beneficial for your child’s education.

The progressive perverts pushing this content are cowards, and the only way they change course is when the public exposes their deeds. But the public can’t be just the attentive mothers.

We need our fathers to take ownership in protecting our offspring from the indoctrination and immorality perpetrated by representatives and employees of the state, and we need our mothers to advocate for their participation as well.

The men of Dearborn led the charge there — and it quickly forced their school district to create a Book Reconsideration Committee, providing a process for parents to challenge the age-appropriateness of books in their district’s libraries. Our most vulnerable need their fathers fighting for them as hard as Dearborn’s.

Our protection is love, and we need to lovingly protect.

https://nypost.com/2022/10/25/dearborn-dads-get-school-board-to-buckle-providing-an-example-to-americas-men/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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26 October, 2022

Top NYC prep schools with annual fees of $60,000 force PARENTS to take woke 'anti-racism' workshops run by groups that have called property taxes, the NFL and the Nobel Prize 'racist'

Several New York City private schools are pushing diversity, equity and inclusion values, with one school saying it 'expects' both students and parents to participate in 'anti-racist training.'

The Brearley School, with a tuition of $58,800, released its 'Commitment to the Brearley Community' to students and parents, which includes its 'anti-racist statement.'

'We expect teachers, staff members, students and parents to participate in anti-racist training and to pursue meaningful change through deliberate and measurable actions,' the document reads. 'These actions include identifying and eliminating policies, practices and beliefs that uphold racial inequality in our community.'

'Parents are subsequently urged to discuss with your children Brearley's mission, diversity, equity and inclusion, and anti-racist statements in the student handbooks, and establishing your family's responsibility to uphold these values.'

Other schools, like The Spence School, with a tuition of $60,880, have invited parents to partake in DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) workshops led by a consulting firm that previously called property taxes racist.

The Pacific Educational Group, a San Francisco-based DEI consulting firm, has argued that 'systemic racism' is 'deeply embedded in the fabric of this nation.' 'To become truly anti-racist, it takes abandoning all sense of ego and comfort,' one tweet reads.

'The opportunity to participate in the DEI program offered by PEG is strictly voluntary for parents. These programs do not involve students,' a spokesperson for Spence told the New York Post.

Through a series of tweets, the firm has said it believes 'racism in the NFL is far from surprising news' and awards like the Nobel Prize 'often come with the baggage of a racist history.'

The Chapin School, located in Manhattan's Upper East Side, held another workshop to discuss the school's 'ongoing commitment to equity & inclusion, including our newest community-wide initiatives.'

It was advertised as optional, though one mother told the post that 'they take attendance, they have name tags, there is someone from the admissions office to keep track of who goes and who doesn't.' 'If you don't go, your child is not going to go very far in the admission process,' she said.

One other school, Grace Church High School, required students to sign pledge in 2020 to fight against 'racial propaganda' and 'interrupt biases' 

Bronx-based Horace Mann School lauded the author of 'White Fragility,' a book that suggests all white people are racist, in a presentation by Ronald Taylor, the school's former associate director of the office for identity, culture and institutional equity.

'How can we take (Robin) DiAngelo's message and make it applicable to all communities in the (Horace Mann) community,' he asked.

'I don't want to be in necessarily white spaces, because when black children were put into those spaces their support and caregivers were taken away and they were put into racially hostile environments.' 

A school spokesperson said the presentation by Taylor 'was designed to educate parents about what they were hearing not only in the news at the time but from their children.

'It was completely voluntary and if a parent rejected this instruction or the content, their children would be welcome at Horace Mann.' 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11343981/NYC-prep-schools-require-students-PARENTS-anti-racism-workshops.html

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UK: Christian school teacher vows to fight on despite losing High Court bid to overturn dismissal and lifetime classroom ban for refusing to use eight-year-old trans pupil’s preferred pronouns

A primary school teacher who was sacked after refusing to call an eight-year-old transgender pupil by a boy’s name has vowed to fight on against ‘injustice’ in classrooms.

She was yesterday refused permission for a judicial review over safeguarding concerns at her former school.

However, the Christian woman pledged to continue raising awareness of the ‘danger’ around damaging ‘trans affirming policies’, which she claims puts children ‘at serious risk’.

The woman, known by the pseudonym Hannah to avoid identifying the child involved, claimed the result is ‘not the end’ of her case.

Despite losing her landmark legal challenge, she is internally appealing against her school’s decision to dismiss her after she argued its transgender stance could harm youngsters.

If this is rejected, a full employment tribunal will commence.

Speaking after her application for a judicial review was refused by a High Court judge, Hannah said: ‘Injustice has not been done against me but against all the children in our schools.

‘How else am I meant to raise the danger of the trans affirming policies in our schools which are doing such damage?’

She added: ‘Teachers are being discouraged from questioning trans affirming policies when evidence shows that the actual result of the approach is to put the welfare of children at serious risk.

‘More must be done to protect vulnerable children across the country from long-term mental, emotional and irreversible physical damage inflicted upon them by this dangerous ideology.’

The teacher had attempted to gain permission to pursue a judicial review surrounding the refusal of her school’s governing body and local authority to address her transgender safeguarding concerns.

But Judge Honorable Mrs Justice Farbey, sitting at Birmingham civil and family justice centre, said the application ‘failed to take into consideration the private life of Child X’ who is ‘young and vulnerable’.

She added that the ‘public is divided on the issue of transgenderism in schools and there is no consensus on the approach’.

The teacher was told last September she had a child in her class who wanted to change gender.

Hannah, from the East Midlands, refused to call the pupil by a boy’s name, or refer to them with male pronouns, saying it ‘went against her Christian beliefs’.

She was originally suspended and later dismissed on the ground of gross misconduct after arguing that the school’s ‘transgender affirming’ policies could harm children.

She had claimed that it could damage the young student, known as Child X, to unquestioningly encourage the belief that they were ‘in the wrong body’.

Richard O’Dair, representing the teacher, told the court his client was acting in the ‘best interests’ of Child X, and had correctly raised safeguarding concerns - a responsibility for all staff.

He said schools also have a duty to secure balanced treatment of political issues, but staff went to a seminar where they were provided with resources, which were not assessed for ‘impartiality’.

Mr O’Dair added: ‘My submission is that the material which the teachers were supplied with was only an affirmation of transition. ‘In the transition session, where lots of documents were provided, there was nothing to alert staff to the risk of transitioning, for example, under the pressure of a parent. ‘And we say that was inappropriate because transgender issues are highly political.

‘When teaching the children or teaching the teachers teaching the children the material has to be balanced.’

However, the court heard the teacher was sacked after ‘obsessively’ accessing Child X’s personal information and fears she would ‘out’ the pupil.

Multiple accesses were made in the week, at weekends and late at night as she ‘trolled for information to support her case’, it was claimed.

Representing the local authority, Aileen McColgan KC, said: ‘The duty of safeguarding points goes to all staff - from the groundsmen to the dinner staff. ‘The claimant is driven ideologically and not by the best interest of the child.’

Hannah has been reported to the Teaching Regulation Agency and could be barred from teaching for life in future.

Her case was supported by the Christian Legal Centre, the legal branch of the evangelical group, Christian Concern. It will now look into options for appeal.

Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said: ‘We are disappointed by this decision but are resolved to keep standing up for the well-being of children.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11352901/Christian-teachers-High-Court-battle-sacked-not-using-childs-8-correct-pronoun.html

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UK: University is blasted as 'woke' for changing student email address format to use random letters - instead of the user's initials - to be 'more inclusive' to those who are 'assuming a new identity'

University bosses have been slammed as 'woke cultists' after they stopped using students’ initials for their emails and usernames - because it is not 'inclusive'.

The University of York used to use the first letters of students’ first name and surname to create their official emails and the username.

But education chiefs have now scrapped the practice because they say too many people were changing gender or asking to change theirs part way through their courses for other reasons. 

Toby Young, the founder and director of the Free Speech Union, blasted the move and said: 'This seems like a parody of political correctness gone mad, the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a Netflix series satirising the ideological capture of universities by woke cultists.' 

But the top-flight university insisted it decision was about improving students' experience at the institution and followed a number of requests from learners.

'We feel that breaking the link between a person’s name and their username is important for making the University of York a more inclusive place to work and study,' the university added in an online explainer.  

York said some students were adopting Western names or getting married or divorced and didn’t want to keep the same initials.

While others had 'difficult' family relationships and didn’t want to be associated with their surname.

The university has now said it will simply use randomly generated letters with no relation to the people involved.

Leaders at the institution argue that not using initials - which can change if students alter their gender while they are studying - can improve students’ experience.

An explainer on the University of York’s website said the decision was taken this month and added: 'Usernames are a unique identifier for users within the University.

'Unfortunately, basing them upon a person’s initials means that some people ask for their username to be changed when they believe that it no longer reflects their identity.

'This normally happens when someone has changed their name - for example, following marriage or divorce, to adopt a Western name, to distance themselves from a difficult family relationship or to match their gender identity.

'Unfortunately, we do not currently support changing a person’s username as it is used as the primary identifier in a large number of disconnected systems.

'We would like to support this in the future but enabling this will be a long-term project.

'What we can do now is improve the experience for new staff and students in such situations, and so we have changed the way we generate usernames for all users (staff, students and other affiliated users alike).

'We feel that breaking the link between a person’s name and their username is important for making the University of York a more inclusive place to work and study.'

Toby Young said the decision by the university was 'the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a Netflix series satirising the ideological capture of universities by woke cultists'

Criticising the move, social commentator Mr Young said: 'I still can't believe it is real. 'Wouldn’t it be simpler to just stick with the system they know and which everyone has got used to?

'If the university authorities want to cheer up trans students, they should just give them the money that they will inevitably have to spend dealing with the unintended consequences of introducing this crackpot idea.

'Since there are probably no more than a dozen trans students on campus, I imagine that solution would be very popular with them.'

The change came after students requested to alter their username when they felt it didn’t reflect their identity - because of marriage, divorce, adopting a Western name, distancing themselves from their family or wanting it to match their gender identity.

But the university couldn’t alter these as usernames are used to uniquely identify students across all the institution’s disconnected systems.

In the new identification style, the university will no longer be using vowels or the letter 'y' to avoid names, profanities or offensive words - and has asked students to report any combinations they think should be blacklisted. 

The approach has been implemented for students and staff joining the University after October 12 - and will not affect those already studying.

Their name will still appear on the email system as the sender.

A University of York spokesperson said: 'With our existing systems, we are not able to fulfil any requests by staff or students to change their username to more accurately reflect their current initials - for example, as a result of marriage or assuming a new identity.

'The aim of our new approach, which uses randomly selected letters and numbers to create usernames, is to break the perceived link between a person’s name and username, therefore avoiding any issues individuals may have on the inclusion of their current or future initials.'

The university - which ranked 24th in the UK last year - had a total income of £414million in 2020-21.

Earlier this month it announced a £6million package to help students through the cost-of-living crisis - including a £150 energy grant for households.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11352167/initials.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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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25 October, 2022

‘I Had No Power Over My Kids’ Education,’ Maryland Mom Says After Asking to Opt Her Second Grader Out of LGBT Lessons

An elementary school just outside the nation’s capital touted Gay Pride Month and defined words such as “transgender” in a video sent to students. A middle school in the same school system displays pride flags and “LGBTQ+ stories” in class.

A local mom, who wishes to remain anonymous but whom The Daily Signal will refer to as Rebecca Martin, said her two children were in second and fifth grade at Kensington Parkwood Elementary School in suburban Maryland when the school distributed a video marking Pride Month on June 4, 2021.

“I could not believe what I was seeing. I was just in absolute shock,” Martin said.

Martin also witnessed rainbow-striped pride flags on display in her son’s classrooms at North Bethesda Middle School on back-to-school night last fall, after he was enrolled there, she told The Daily Signal. 

The lone bulletin board in one classroom was given over to what decorative letters described as “LGBTQ stories,” she said.

Both schools attended by Martin’s children are part of Maryland’s highly rated Montgomery County Public Schools.

At the time it sent out a video celebrating Pride Month, Martin said, Kensington Parkwood Elementary used a hybrid learning model because of the COVID-19 pandemic: Students attended class in person some weeks and remotely during other weeks.  

Her fifth grade son was taking classes from home the day the elementary school sent out a weekly video hosted by media specialist Esther Girón. 

In the video, Girón tells students that “we’re celebrating Pride Month for LGBTQ+ people.”  

She goes on to share some “fun facts” about Pride Month, including feeling-based definitions for a list of words such as gender, transgender, pride, gay, and lesbian.

Girón also highlights two LGBT activists: the late San Francisco elected official Harvey Milk, described as “one of the first openly gay politicians in the United States,” and Laverne Cox, the transgender actor in the adult Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black.”

Girón didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s emailed request for comment.

“I was in shock, and I was also frustrated and … angered,” Martin told The Daily Signal.

The terminology used in the video for the elementary school’s students wasn’t correct, she added. “They were confusing gender and biology.”

Martin said she especially was disturbed that her second grade daughter, as well as other kids as young as kindergarten age, were exposed to this content.

Martin said her children are the third generation in the family to be enrolled in Montgomery County Public Schools, which is among the most affluent school districts in the nation.

“Never, never … was anything remotely like this taught,” she recalled. “And if it was, you had to get parental permission.”

Martin said she sent an email to Kensington Parkwood’s principal and vice principal the day she saw the video on the school’s KPTV channel.

She requested to opt her children out of future attempts to push what she saw as age-inappropriate material on her kids without her consent, Martin said. But she never got a response from the school.

“I don’t feel, as a parent, this is appropriate for my child,” Martin told The Daily Signal. “I felt … I had no power over my own kids’ education.”

Kensington Parkwood Elementary didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment by The Daily Signal by publication time. 

This past year, Martin said, she attended back-to-school night at North Bethesda Middle School, where her son now is enrolled. 

A rainbow or transgender flag was on display in each of her son’s seven classes, she told The Daily Signal. Such “pride flags” hung on the same poles as American flags at the school. 

In one classroom at Bethesda Middle School, Martin said, the single bulletin board on the walls featured what were called “LGBTQ stories.”

The principal of North Bethesda Middle School, AnneMarie Kestner Smith, described her school’s LGBTQ-related policies in an email to The Daily Signal.

“These are not topics in middle school curriculum but is [sic] something students are aware of,” Smith wrote, adding:

MPCS [Montgomery County Public Schools] takes pride in the level of support for both students and staff that identify in the LGBTQIA+ community. We have welcoming, affirming schools, classrooms, teams, and clubs. We value all of our children, youth, teachers, staff, and parents.

In June, Smith emailed students and parents to alert them to an incident during eighth grade lunch that she described as hateful toward the school’s “LGBTQ+ community.”

The principal wrote:

I was disappointed and dismayed to learn that during 8th grade lunch on the first day of PRIDE month some students displayed hateful and threatening behaviors towards members of and allies of our LGBTQ+ community. This type of behavior, along with any hateful, racist, or bullying behavior is not acceptable at North Bethesda Middle School.

The 8th grade administrator, counselor, and team leader created a safe space for students impacted by this event during lunch today and continue to be available to support.

Smith added that she and other school administrators would investigate and “address the behavior with appropriate consequences.”  

It isn’t clear what the hateful behavior was, Martin told The Daily Signal. And what constitutes “hateful” for the principal isn’t necessarily what many parents would consider hateful, she said.  

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/20/public-schools-in-dc-suburb-tout-pride-month-lgbtq-stories/

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Father Blasts Woke School Board, Starts Speech with Verse Straight from Bible and One Question

A conservative activst, pastor and father in North Carolina is going viral after torching a woke school board’s equity initiative during a meeting earlier this month.

During his remarks before the Wake County School Board, John Amanchukwu slammed officials for worrying about a diversity office when achievement numbers for black students in core subjects were abysmal.

“We’re wasting taxpayer dollars putting money toward this diversity office that’s not benefiting those who need it the most,” he said.

However, it was the Bible verse he started his speech off with, Luke 17:2, which ought to provide parents a roadmap on how to shame liberal school boards.

The verse, which was paraphrased by Amanchukwu: “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.”

“And so the question today to the school board is only you know whether or not your role — the policies, the curriculum and the things that you allow in this school system in Wake County — only you know whether or not a millstone is tied around your neck,” said Amanchukwu, who has campaigned against initiatives like critical race theory.

“God is going to judge every last one of you for decisions that are made on behalf of black children,” he continued.

“This past year, we spent one million dollars on a diversity office. And how did that benefit black children? How did it benefit children in general? Well, 78 percent of 3rd through 8th grade black students are not proficient in math in Wake County.”

He noted this meant that “we’re wasting taxpayer dollars putting money toward this diversity office that’s not benefiting those who need it the most.”

“If they’re not reading on grade level, they’re not performing mathematically, then they’re not going to be able to get jobs in the fields like STEM, but we’re wasting money on a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Office while we are failing black students in the name of diversity,” he added.

“As we talk about inclusion and making sure that the trans student feels comfortable and the queer student feels comfortable, what does that have to do with reading, writing and arithmetic?” Amanchukwu continued.

“As we are teaching cultural Marxism and grooming children to be the next pervert, we are damaging our kids in this public school system, and it needs to stop.”

He also urged for school choice for those who public education was failing: “In the Jim Crow era, Black students were locked out of the public school system, but today they are trapped in.”

Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier brought the clip to wider attention, tweeting it on Wednesday.

“This pastor in NC nailed it while giving this speech to the woke Wake County school board,” he said. “God Bless this guy!”

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/watch-father-blasts-woke-school-board-starts-speech-verse-straight-bible-one-question

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Australia’s dumbed-down schools are going nowhere

Over the last month, there have been yet another two initiatives designed, supposedly, to improve the performance of Australian schools, raise standards and ensure greater equity. The first is an interim report by the Productivity Commission evaluating the 2018 National School Reform Agreement.

The NSRA is signed by Commonwealth, state, and territory governments and details strategies designed to ‘lift student outcomes across Australian schools’ by implementing a range of policies including a unique student identifier, reviewing senior secondary pathways, and strengthening the initial teacher education accreditation system.

The second initiative involves establishing a panel to review the effectiveness of teacher training established by the Commonwealth Minister for Education Jason Clare and chaired by the ex-ABC Managing Director Mark Scott.

While applauded as the panacea to achieve excellence and equity both initiatives are destined to join a long list of reviews and reports beginning in the early 1970s that have proven counterproductive and worthless in strengthening Australia’s education system.

Since the Karmel Report in 1973 and Victoria’s Blackburn Report in 1985, there have been over 20 reviews and reports at all levels of government designed to strengthen schools, improve teacher effectiveness, and raise standards.

Among the plethora commissioned are the Keating government’s National Statements and Profiles (1992), the NSW’s review of the Higher School Certificate (1995), a national inquiry into literacy teaching (2005), the Gonski Review of School funding (2011), the Review of the National Curriculum (2014), the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence (2017), and a review of the NSW curriculum (2020).

In addition to the eight state and territory education departments and curriculum bodies, in yet another attempt to improve Australia’s substandard educational performance, the Commonwealth government has also established the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (2005) and the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (2008).

The dismal results of the last 50 years of reviews, reports, and government policies are obvious to all. Australia has slipped down the rankings as measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) tests.

Apprentices start work with substandard literacy and numeracy skills, universities have dumbed-down first-year courses, and too many students leave after 12 years of schooling culturally illiterate and morally adrift.

If those responsible for Australia’s education system were in charge of a business they would have been sacked or gone broke. Instead, like the old industrial relations club, those responsible for the current malaise are reappointed to peak positions and given yet another chance to prove their ineptitude

What’s to be done? While the Greens Party, the Australian Education Union, and sympathetic academics argue what is needed in increased investment over the last 20 to 30 years proves spending more is simply throwing good money after bad.

It’s also useless to establish yet another committee made up of bureaucrats and education department, teacher union, and subject association representatives who have minimal, if any, experience as practising teachers.

Until there are significant structural changes schools will continue to underperform, students will continue to suffer, and the nation’s cultural capital and productivity rates will continue to decline.

The first step is to realise there is no magic bullet and one-off reviews and reports focusing on a single issue like the curriculum, teacher training, how teachers are rewarded, and classroom pedagogy will achieve nothing.

What determines school effectiveness and student achievement depends on a number of complex, interrelated factors that have to be addressed as a whole and at the same time.

Secondly, schools need to be freed from provider capture and what Michael Gove did when the British Secretary of State for Education derided as the ‘blog’. Schools need greater autonomy and flexibility and less bureaucratic red tape and interference from on high.

The curriculum is overcrowded while the superficial and criteria-based diagnostic assessment and reporting regime forces teachers to spend weeks writing voluminous descriptive reports. This is ineffective and takes energy away from teaching.

It should not surprise, proven by research by Australia’s Gary Marks and overseas academics including Ludger Woessmann and Eric Hanushek, giving schools greater autonomy and flexibility allows non-government schools to outperform government schools.

The cutting edge of reform overseas involves charter schools in America, city academies and free schools in England plus charter schools in India. Such is their popularity in disadvantaged communities, enrolments are oversubscribed.

For far too long Australia’s education system has fallen victim to progressive, new-age fads including open classrooms, process and inquiry-based learning, student agency, teachers as facilitators, and a curriculum driven by neo-Marxist inspired Woke ideology.

Schools have also been infected with the soft bigotry of low expectations where disadvantaged students are expected to always underperform. It’s time to stop experimenting with unproven fads and ensure all schools embrace rigorous standards and high expectations.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/australias-dumbed-down-schools-are-going-nowhere/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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24 October, 2022

America’s teacher shortage

More than half of public- school principals reported that their school was under staffed entering this school year, especially for special- education positions, according to a September U.S. Education Department survey. That’s more than double the 20% who said they were understaffed before the pandemic. But, as with so much of education in the U.S., this problem isn’t affecting all schools equally. Several teachers told TIME they were leaving Paterson for districts that could pay them better and offered more resources. At least one survey has found that schools in lower- income areas are more likely to have vacancies.

Meanwhile, students are suffering the consequences. At Eastside High School in Paterson, nearly 600 students are currently enrolled in science classes that lack a fulltime teacher, with four substitutes filling in as the school tries to fill five vacancies for science teachers. A spokesperson for the district said the school’s supervisor of science has been uploading lessons and assignments for those students, who receive grades via a virtual learning platform. Some students don’t have a teacher for their science classes at all, and are working on assignments in the school’s auditorium “under staffsupervision.” In addition to paying existing staffextra money to cover classes with vacancies, the district says it will soon begin paying teachers a stipend to grade work for classes without permanent teachers.

A month into her senior year at John F. Kennedy High School in Paterson, 17-year-old Abriannie Lima has permanent gym and English teachers, but has a rotation of substitute teachers in three other classes, where she says she has still received no homework or graded assignments this year. (A spokesperson for the district says classes without permanent teachers have assignments posted online every day.) “It’s hard because it’s my last year. We actually haven’t been in school for almost two years,” Lima says. “Sometimes I just don’t feel like going because there’s no point in going if I have no teachers.”

That’s exactly what worries Brown, who fears her son will fall behind in writing and math without a certified special- education teacher.

The pandemic led to some of the biggest declines in academic achievement recorded over the past 50 years and widened the achievement gap between Black students and white students. As schools try to help students catch up, their solutions include smallgroup instruction and individual tutoring—which are nearly impossible to offer without enough educators. “You’re talking about gaps in learning. We are still suffering from COVID,” Brown says. “I feel like now with the vacancies, we’re never going to be able to catch up.”

Although surveys throughout the pandemic hinted at a looming mass exodus of teachers, that hasn’t come to pass. And some experts point out that many districts have been using federal relief funds to hire more teachers and staffthan they had before the pandemic.

Researchers found at least 36,000 vacant teaching positions across the country and at least 163,000 positions that are held by under qualified teachers, according to a working paper published by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute in August. Their analysis shows the problem varies widely by state. Mississippi, for example, had about 68 vacancies for every 10,000 students. New Jersey—a state that, alongside cities like Paterson, is also home to some of the wealthiest communities in America—had just one vacancy for every 10,000.

And certain districts are struggling more acutely. Schools serving more students of color and schools in high-poverty neighborhoods reported a larger percentage of teacher vacancies than schools serving mostly white students and schools in wealthier areas, according to an Education Department survey from January. Even before the pandemic, high- poverty schools had about twice the teacher turnover rate of low-poverty schools.

Public-school funding in the U.S. depends heavily on property taxes. As a result, districts serving wealthier white students tend to be better resourced than those serving low- income students and students of color. That’s partially why high-poverty districts, with less money for teacher raises and other resources, are more likely to have teacher shortages right now.

In Paterson, where about 60% of students are Latino and 25% are Black, two-thirds of students are considered economically disadvantaged, according to state data. In New Jersey, state money makes up much of the funding gap in poorer school districts. (Paterson is in the midst of contract negotiations with the teachers’ union, which is calling for increased starting salaries and regular raises.)

While teachers have long raised concerns about being underpaid and disrespected, the wage gap between teachers and other professions has grown worse over time. In 2021, teachers earned 23.5% less than college graduates with a comparable education level, the biggest gap since 1996, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

https://blendle.com/i/time/the-cost-of-americas-teacher-shortage/bnl-time-20221014-0a475306baf

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California Tries to Delay Release Of K–12 School Test Scores Until After Election

Last year, California K–12 school test scores showed that the math proficiency of the median eighth-grade student was at about the level of a fifth-grader. Hispanic and Black students, who represent over 60 percent of the state’s student population, performed even worse, with proficiency barely above the level of a third-grader.

“Horrible,” “awful,” and “unacceptable” are a few adjectives that describe this outcome. Many of these students will never catch up, because mathematics builds on itself. Many of these students will never succeed in technical fields such as engineering or computer science because these fields are based on mathematics. Some of these students may not even develop the mathematical knowledge to become financially literate. Many may economically struggle throughout their lives, being shut out of high-paying STEM jobs. Many may require some form of public assistance as adults, as the grossly deficient education they are receiving will leave them poorly prepared to earn a decent living in a world that will almost certainly leave them behind.

How many kids are we talking about? There are currently about 5.9 million students enrolled in California public schools, making the scale of the problem nothing short of a disaster. And while the magnitude of this educational deficiency is likely the result of remote learning during COVID, the deficiency itself has been around for decades; a study by the RAND Corporation, “California’s K–12 Public Schools: How Are They Doing?” dates California’s educational failures back to the 1970s.

The 2022 test results have been available for months, but the California Department of Education decided to withhold the results and not release them until an undetermined date later in the year. For parents and educators, this means that students are well into their next school year without the necessary data to determine what support and remediation they may need.

Why wait to release the results? According to one spokesperson for the Education Department, the delay is because they want to release the rest results at the same time they release other metrics, such as absenteeism and school suspensions, though no compelling reason was given for tying the test score release with these other data and releasing all the data at the same time was never done in the past. Another person in the Education Department said the department was still reviewing the data for validation, but if that were the case, then why let local districts release the data? Some schools released test scores early last summer.

Others note that the delay may be politically motivated, because the test scores will show continued learning outcome deficiencies, so bad that they might impact the November elections involving education leaders. This includes the election for state school superintendent, with incumbent Tony Thurmond running against Lance Christensen, as well as many local school board races.

Enter EdSource, an independent education organization whose mission is to inform the public about state education issues. EdSource asked for the test score results in August and was rebuffed by the Education Department. EdSource next sent a letter to the Education Department from its attorney. The lawyer didn’t pull any punches, stating, “EdSource considers delay tantamount to denial as it effectively robs the public of its vital role in overseeing the CDE [California Department of Education] and individual districts and in holding both accountable to its students and the public. This is especially important during what continues to be one of the most challenging and impactful times to our educational system due to the COVID pandemic.”

EdSource challenged CDE’s decision to withhold the test scores: “The CDE cannot identify any ‘public’ interest in non-disclosure that could justify its denial position, let alone an interest that ‘clearly outweighs’ the substantial public interest in access to this information.”

David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, a San Rafael–based open government group, argued that there are no exemptions in the law that allow the government to withhold records from the public because they are inconvenient or embarrassing, saying, “The state can’t talk out of both sides of its mouth” by giving districts data that shows their test results and then refusing to release the overall data set.”

The Center for Reinventing Public Education stated in a report issued this month, “The academic, social, and mental-health needs are real, they are measurable, and they must be addressed quickly in order to avoid long-term consequences.” EdSource’s staff writers added, “Waiting until later this year to release how students scored last spring will delay needed public discussions on how districts should respond to serious setbacks in learning including shifting funding immediately and next summer to accelerate learning.”

Timely release of these data is critical for helping students get back on track. Less than 50 percent of third graders tested at grade level or above in English language arts during the 2018–19 school year, before the pandemic stalled learning. Nearly two-thirds of today’s third graders are reading below grade level.

EdSource’s legal challenge appears to have worked. The Education Department has reversed course, indicating it will release the data this month—though the release date may be after some ballots are returned—stating that “there is no reason to withhold the data.” This statement raises the question of why the department made such a quick reversal after they indicated that the data was incomplete and needed validation.

California’s public education system is failing most of our children, despite taxpayers spending nearly $20,000 per pupil per year. This failure is chronic. It continues year after year, decade after decade, and the root cause is a politically influenced education system that desperately needs a complete do-over.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp

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The writing crisis in Australian schools

A review of 10 million NAPLAN year 3-9 writing results and more than 350 persuasive writing samples by the government-funded Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) has found students’ writing declined significantly in every key skill area but spelling over seven years to 2018.

“We do have a serious decline, and it’s worse for our older students,” said the head of AERO, Jenny Donovan, who called for the core skill of writing to be given greater emphasis in the nation’s schools. “It’s a big drop and [writing] is a really basic expectation.”

Claire Wyatt-Smith, an Australian Catholic University professor who was a key contributor to the NSW Education Standards Authority’s review of writing in schools, said an emphasis on reading had taken the focus off writing in Australian schools.

“Writing is of at least equal need and greater urgency,” she said. “The teaching of writing is perhaps the biggest equity issue we face. We can use the word illiterate. They finish school and are unable to have the proficiency in writing they need for workplace engagement.”

The national findings echo those of a major review in NSW, which also found teachers lacked confidence in teaching writing, were not given the training and resources they needed, and spent too little classroom time focusing on it, particularly in high school.

Writing is key to success at school because students who struggle to express their thoughts clearly on the page cannot demonstrate their knowledge. Research has shown that writing ability in year 9 is a strong indicator of success in year 12, when many subjects require essays.

Donovan said clear written expression was also essential to life after school. “Everybody is going to need to write a job application,” she said. “They’ll have to question a traffic fine, or make a case for why their rental bond should be returned.”

AERO’s analysis found the decline was particularly noticeable among high-performing students.

In 2011, more than 20 per cent of year 9 students achieved five or six out of possible six marks in sentence structure, which meant they could write sentences that varied in length and complexity. By 2018, that proportion had fallen to just eight per cent.

Writing standards

Forty-five percent of students in Year 7 can score a 3 out of a possible 6, meaning they can correctly write most simple and compound sentences, and some complex sentences. In year 9, more than a third of students are still only able to write at the same basic level. 

Only a quarter of year 9 students used apostrophes, commas and colons correctly most of the time. Most were at the level of a competent year 3 student as defined by curriculum documents, which meant they could use capital letters at the beginning of sentences and full stops at the end.

The many students who are below the standard assumed in the curriculum are likely to find lessons and assessments too hard. This is a particular problem in year 9, although students in years 5 and 7 are also achieving at a lower level than curriculum expectations.

“Students are a long way short of where the syllabus and curriculum anticipates they should be in their learning,” said Donovan.

“When teachers are using the syllabus or curriculum to guide them, rather than the knowledge of where their students are up to, they’ll miss the mark. They’ll be teaching at a point where the students are not ready for learning. “There’s no reason why a year 9 teacher will know what’s in a year 3 syllabus document. That’s a big gap to straddle.”

Donovan has made writing a priority for AERO, which was founded to help schools use effective teaching approaches, and has developed resources that teachers can use in their classroom. “The good news part is we also understand what to do about it,” she said.

NSW has also become the first jurisdiction to make writing a key focus of its new syllabuses.

https://www.smh.com.au/education/we-can-use-the-word-illiterate-the-writing-crisis-in-australian-schools-20221017-p5bqfb.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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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23 October, 2022

NYU Professor Maitland Jones Jr. fired for being too hard says colleges ‘coddle students’

An NYU chemistry professor who claimed he was fired after students complained that his class was too hard said colleges “coddle” students instead of helping them succeed with “tough love.”

Maitland Jones Jr. taught at the expensive Manhattan private school for 15 years before he was canned ahead of the fall semester after a student petition alleged that his organic chemistry class was too difficult to pass.

“Organic chemistry is a difficult and important course,” he wrote in an op-ed published in the Boston Globe Thursday.

“Those of us who teach it aim to produce critical thinkers, future diagnosticians, and scientists.”

The 84-year-old said he has witnessed a decline in student capacity in recent years as well as administrators bending to the wishes of students more often than not,

“Deans must learn to not coddle students for the sake of tuition and apply a little tough love,” Jones wrote. “They must join the community in times of conflict to generate those teachable moments.”

He said professors now fear teaching demanding material and assigning low grades to students who perform poorly because they worry they’ll face punishment.

“[Young professors’] entire careers are at the peril of complaining students and deans who seem willing to turn students into nothing more than tuition-paying clients,” Jones said.

The ex-teacher said the students must learn to accept failure and grow from their mistakes. He argued doing so is a vital life skill today’s students aren’t getting.

“Students need to develop the ability to take responsibility for failure,” he wrote. “If they continue to deflect blame, they will never grow… Failure should become a classic ‘teachable moment.'”

Jones, who previously taught at Princeton University, said he watched a decline in students’ attendance and participation in his class over the past couple of years. He said the college kids were simply not studying and working hard enough.

“They weren’t coming to class, that’s for sure, because I can count the house,” he wrote in a grievance to NYU. “They weren’t watching the videos, and they weren’t able to answer the questions.”

His students said in their petition that Jones often addressed them in a “condescending and demanding” tone and that he “failed to make students’ learning and well-being a priority.”

NYU cited students’ complaints of the professor’s “dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension and opacity about grading” in its decision to fire the professor.

They did not, however, call for his firing.

A spokesperson for the university said his course evaluation was “by far the worst, not only among members of the chemistry department but among all the university’s undergraduate science courses.”

Still, Jones doubled down that universities must hold students to high standards in education.

“Without those standards, we as a nation will not produce those individuals — doctors, engineers, scientists, – citizens! — who will guide us toward a better future,” he wrote in the op-ed.

https://nypost.com/2022/10/20/nyu-professor-fired-for-being-too-hard-said-colleges-coddle-students-for-tuition-money/

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Doubt-Free, America's Schools Warm to Climate Activism

Public school districts are adopting curricula on climate change from well-funded progressive groups casting the issue as a threat to life on the planet that students should respond to through activism. 

As of fall 2020, 29 states and the District of Columbia have adopted standards that require science classes to teach human-caused climate change as a peril beyond dispute, according to K12 Climate Action,  a group that is part of the progressive Aspen Institute. 

The school districts often rely on information provided by advocacy groups including the Sierra Club and the U.S. Green Building Council. A Sierra Club teaching “toolkit” signals a wide purpose across subject areas: “The ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of moving our entire society to 100% clean energy — and for fighting climate change more broadly — can be woven into many subject areas, including: biology, chemistry, physics, and even social studies.” 

Still more curricular guidelines and suggestions are distributed by well-funded progressive groups that include the United Nations’ Office for Climate Education, and the North American Association for Environmental Education. 

Many scientists agree that human activity has contributed to the warming of the Earth in recent decades. But it’s still not clear how much temperatures will rise in the future and the effect that might have on society. While the Biden administration and progressive groups who help shape the school curricula argue that it is imperative to end or limit the use of fossil fuels, there is vigorous debate among scientists and policy makers about the best way to balance mitigation measures with economic and other tradeoffs that, critics say, are largely ignored in schools. 

“It’s fine to teach climate if you summarize the pro and con arguments of climate change,” said John Staddon, professor emeritus of biology at Duke University and author of Science in an Age of Unreason. “But you don’t talk about it as a concluded issue. It’s a very political area and [climate change] is about scientific data, which is not a consensus.” 

A RealClearInvestigations review of materials used to advance climate learning found that many contain an uncritical examination of climate change; they tend to emphasize worst-case scenarios, and to urge encouraging students to organize as activists. 

“There are a lot of resources out there that are … helping students draft policies as well, and getting them involved from the beginning. And this is what we want to see, this whole-institution approach where we’re creating this culture of climate action,” Kristen Hargis, who works on research with the North American Association for Environmental Education, told attendees of an August webinar. 

After the pandemic caused a delay to implementing its standards adopted in 2020, New Jersey this school year became the first state to introduce a mandatory comprehensive curriculum of environmental education in its public schools. State lawmakers in Connecticut earlier this year voted to make climate education in public schools mandatory starting next year, while a group of teachers in Oregon have drafted legislation that would create a curriculum similar to New Jersey’s. 

Activists in other states are also working through legislators and state education boards to make uncontested climate change assertions part of classroom teaching.

Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, said there are limits to what high schoolers can be expected to read and understand from complicated climate science reports. “But you do want them to realize that [climate change] is a real thing and know the causes and … that it’s a serious problem that will be disruptive to nature and society for centuries to come and that there are ways to adapt.” 

To question the widely disseminated doomsday view of much climate science is to invite outrage and personal attacks, as Wade Linger found in 2014. As a member of the West Virginia Board of Education, Linger sought to change the wording in a proposed lesson that would, if his amendment were adopted, allow students to consider “factors that have caused the rise and fall” of global temperatures over the past century, rather than only considering the idea that temperatures have increased. Linger also suggested students be allowed to consider the credibility of climate change data. 

The lessons he challenged were developed largely by Next Generation Science Standards, developed by a series of mostly progressive science learning groups; they encourage students to “[take] action within their own spheres of influence” to combat what is presented as out-of-control global warming. 

“This was a precursor on the education scene to all the indoctrination stuff like [critical race theory] and the gender conflicts,” Linger said in an interview with RCI.  “This was an early trial balloon to see how they can use the system to indoctrinate kids.” 

His stance drew widespread criticism, with strangers shouting him down on social media. State universities and science groups sent letters to the board, denouncing Linger’s proposal. 

“Adding the words ‘“and fall’” to [the lesson] risks confusion among students between the concepts of weather and climate,” read a letter from the National Science Teaching Association.  

Despite a widely mixed series of public comments on the planned curriculum, Linger’s suggestions were not implemented. He resigned in 2017. 

“No one ever wanted to debate the data,” said Linger, who was appointed by then-Gov. Joe Manchin, now a moderate Democratic U.S. senator from the coal-producing state. 

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/10/20/with_little_skepticism_americas_schools_warm_to_a_climate_of_settled_science__and_activism_858950.html

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Racism Theory Found Widespread in Public Schools

To what extent, if at all, are critical race theory (CRT) and gender ideology being taught or promoted in America’s schools? With little data available, and no agreement about what constitutes the teaching of critical social justice (CSJ) ideas, the answer up to now has remained open to political interpretation.

Motivated by the work of Manhattan Institute senior fellow and City Journal contributing editor Christopher F. Rufo, many on the right allege that CRT-related concepts—such as systemic racism and white privilege—are infiltrating the curricula of public schools around the country. Educators following these curricula are said to be teaching students that racial disparities in socioeconomic outcomes are fundamentally the result of racism, and that white people are the privileged beneficiaries of a social system that oppresses blacks and other “people of color.” On gender, they are being taught that gender identity is a choice, regardless of biological sex. But are the cases Rufo and others point to representative of American public schools at large—or are they merely outliers amplified by right-wing media?

The response to these charges from many on the left has been to deny or downplay them. CRT, they contend, is a legal theory taught only in university law programs. Therefore, what conservatives are up in arms about is not the teaching of CRT, but the teaching of America’s uncomfortable racial history.

But strong connections exist between the cultural radicalism of CRT and the one-sided, decontextualized portrayal of American history and society that Democratic activists endorse. And these ideas have also influenced many Democratic voters. Indeed, according to a 2021 YouGov survey, large majorities of Democratic respondents support public schools’ teaching many of the morally and empirically contentious ideas to which opponents of CRT object. These include the notions that racism is systemic in America (85 percent support), that all disparities between blacks and whites are caused by discrimination (72 percent), that white people enjoy certain privileges based on their race (85 percent), and that they have a responsibility to address racial inequality (87 percent).

Whatever one thinks of these ideas, they are hardly “settled facts” on the same epistemic plane as heliocentrism, natural selection, or even climate change. To the contrary, they are a moral-ideological just-so theory of group differences, an all-encompassing worldview akin to a secular religion, whose claims can’t be measured, tested, or falsified. They treat an observed phenomenon (disparate group outcomes) as evidence of its cause (racism), while specifying causal mechanisms that are nebulous, if not magical. Their advocates have not refuted counterarguments; they’ve merely asserted empirically unverified statements about the nature of group differences.

Publicly funded schools that teach and pass off left-wing racial-ideological theories and concepts as if they are undisputed factual knowledge—or that impart tendentiously curated readings of history—are therefore engaging in indoctrination, not education. The question before us, then, is not whether or to what extent public schools are assigning the works of Richard Delgado, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and other critical race theorists. It is whether schools are uncritically promoting a left-wing racial ideology.

To answer this and other related questions, we commissioned a study on a nationally representative sample of 1,505 18- to 20-year-old Americans—a demographic that has yet to graduate from, or only recently graduated from, high school. A complete Manhattan Institute report of all the findings from this study will be published in the coming months; what follows is a preview of some of them. Our analysis here focuses mainly on the results for the sample overall rather than for various subgroups.

We began by asking our 18- to 20-year-old respondents (82.4 percent of whom reported attending public schools) whether they had ever been taught in class or heard about from an adult at school each of six concepts—four of which are central to critical race theory. The chart below, which displays the distribution of responses for each concept, shows that “been taught” is the modal response for all but one of the six concepts. For the CRT-related concepts, 62 percent reported either being taught in class or hearing from an adult in school that “America is a systemically racist country,” 69 percent reported being taught or hearing that “white people have white privilege,” 57 percent reported being taught or hearing that “white people have unconscious biases that negatively affect non-white people,” and 67 percent reported being taught or hearing that “America is built on stolen land.” The shares giving either response with respect to gender-related concepts are slightly lower, but still a majority. Fifty-three percent report they were either taught in class or heard from an adult at school that “America is a patriarchal society,” and 51 percent report being taught or hearing that “gender is an identity choice” regardless of biological sex.

We also wanted to assess whether certain concepts were more likely to be taught in some educational contexts than in others. To this end, we separately asked respondents whether, “in high school, college, or other educational settings,” they were ever taught that “discrimination is the main reason for differences in wealth or other outcomes between races or genders” or that “there are many genders, not just male and female.” Overall, excluding those who didn’t know, 62 percent were taught that discrimination is the main reason for outcome gaps and a third were taught that there are many genders. As shown in the chart below (which includes “don’t know” answers), statistically significant (if only modest) differences emerged between respondents with no versus at least some prior college instruction: 58 percent and 26 percent of those in the latter group, respectively, report having been taught these two concepts, compared with 50 percent and 25 percent of those in the former. Far from being the preserve of academic curricula, then, CSJ ideas central to contemporary left-wing racial and gender ideology are being taught to students before they arrive at college.

The summary chart underscores the pervasiveness of at least some form of exposure to these concepts. For instance, 93 percent of respondents reported either being taught (85 percent) or hearing from an adult at school about at least one of the eight listed concepts, with an average of 4.3 concepts; 90 percent reported either being taught (80 percent) or hearing about at least one of the five CRT-related concepts, with an average of 3.0 concepts; and 74 percent reported either being taught (54 percent) or hearing about at least one of the three gender-related concepts, with an average of 1.3 concepts. While these figures are for the sample overall, they do not meaningfully differ by school type. Levels of exposure were similar regardless of whether respondents reported attending public or private high schools.

https://www.city-journal.org/yes-critical-race-theory-is-being-taught-in-schools

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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21 October, 2022

Parents Lead the Nation on School Choice

The largest political coalition in America is not Republicans, Democrats, or even independents. It's parents, who comprise a significant majority of all U.S. adults. And today mothers and fathers are more united and energized than ever before around the defining issue of 2022: the education of their children.

This is a new development in American politics, and a direct response to the multi-year campaign of left-wing schooling policies that can only be described as a woke war on parents.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, moms and dads have gotten a clearer view than ever of what goes on with their kids' schooling. What they have seen is one scandalous abuse of power after another.

First there was the COVID paranoia. For more than a year after scientific evidence showed kids were not at risk, and that school closures inflicted unprecedented psychological trauma and learning loss on students, entitled teachers' unions insisted schools stay closed.

During this experiment in institutional negligence we euphemistically called "distance learning," parents also got a glimpse of the ideological indoctrination that woke school boards and bureaucrats called their "curricula." Barely a week goes by without new and outrageous revelations of critical race theory, grooming, the sexualizing of young children, anti-family corruption, and outright crimes committed in the name of woke extremism.

Across the country, biological boys are being praised for dominating the competition... in girls' sports. Edu-crats are proudly filling school libraries with graphic porn. They're banning the Pledge of Allegiance, re-segregating schools by race, and urging pre-pubescent kids to identify with the opposite sex while keeping it secret from their parents.

In these fights, South Carolina families are on the front lines. The state's school librarians are fighting parents to keep pornographic books on their shelves. Richland County School District 2 bureaucrats removed parents' access to the school libraries' online catalogs to hide their anti-parent conspiracy. Pickens Middle School tried to organize segregated lectures from an "antiracist" propagandist.

Other Palmetto State districts are requiring students to read anti-American, ahistorical, racist texts. South Carolina schools are using South Carolinians' tax dollars to teach South Carolina children to hate.

Even worse, leftist elites have embraced this bigotry. President Joe Biden wants to ban schools from telling parents about their children's gender dysphoria, and to potentially punish parents for not using preferred pronouns! This on the heels of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland ordering the FBI to investigate parents protesting woke school boards as potential "domestic terrorists."

Many leftists deny the right of moms and dads to direct their kids' education. Virginia's Democratic gubernatorial candidate last year openly campaigned on the issue: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."

These elites oppose legislation banning CRT or protecting girls' sports and bathrooms. They don't even think parents have a right to know what their children are being taught!

The woke elites in charge of America's education system want to destroy children's innocence, parents' rights, and communities' authority over their schools.

The question now is whether South Carolina lawmakers will stand up to these attacks—whether they will stand up for moms, dads, and kids against the woke bullies standing between America's schoolchildren and the genuine education they deserve.

Parents across the country are now looking for leadership—looking for help. Conservative fighters with the right ideas can deliver it—and now is the time for them to do so.

Critical race theory must be removed from classrooms and pornography purged from school libraries. Lesson plans and materials must be made available to parents. Government must protect parents' right to raise their kids, and girls' right to private spaces and a level athletic playing field.

These reforms are necessary, but not sufficient.

Elected leaders must finally deliver educational choice to all families. School choice is no longer just the civil rights issue of our time—it's the political opportunity of a lifetime and the gateway to full parental control of their kids' education.

Nationwide, 72 percent of registered voters support school choice. Arizona just created the nation's first universal school choice program: $6,500 to every student in the state, every year, to attend whatever school or follow whatever educational approach parents decide. There is no reason South Carolina should not follow suit.

Conservatives have never had a substantive political opportunity like this before. We must seize it and unite America's families against the woke elites conspiring against them.

https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/parents-lead-the-nation-school-choice

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Middle-Schooler Secretly Records Teacher, Exposes Her Mocking of Trump-Supporting Parents

Parents, be very aware of whom you’re turning your children over to, particularly at public schools. It could be someone like Ann Cook.

Cook is a resource-room instructor at Gray-New Gloucester Middle School in Gray, Maine. She’s managed to go bad-viral after local news outlet The Maine Wire published a five-minute audio recording on Sunday of her mocking supporters of former President Donald Trump, calling a student’s relatives uneducated for voting for him.

The Maine Wire also said the teacher made “several questionable or outright false claims about Trump, President Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The audio was reportedly recorded in April by an eighth-grade student at the school who was alarmed about some of his interactions with Cook. Previous conversations reportedly involved her sexuality, as well as that of her students.

The first minute of the recording involves Cook praising Harris’ time as a prosecutor in California, including “putting pedophiles behind bars” (now there’s a brave position for a prosecutor to take) and offering new, progressive opportunities for drug offenders. (Tulsi Gabbard might want to have a word with Cook about that.)

Cook then went on to say that “Trump has a degree from a college — a very, very low-level college — and he was a very poor student.”

As we all know, the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania — Trump’s alma mater — is pretty much America’s safety school. Sure, it’s Ivy League, but it’s not like it’s Ivy Ivy League, if you get my drift. It’s certainly not the University of Delaware, Joe Biden’s undergraduate alma mater.

She went on to say that “if people want to admire [Trump] — I don’t know why — but it wouldn’t mean that I would dislike somebody.”

“Just because somebody’s wearing a Trump hat, I would think to myself, ‘There’s somebody who needs to be educated.’ But I wouldn’t hate them or call them names,” Cook continued.

Clearly not. She then went on to belittle the student’s parents because they supported Trump.

“Your father and stepfather are just caught up in the propaganda,” Cook said. “They believe the lies. And that’s the whole point of lying is that people believe it just ’cause you say it.”

You know, like when you lie and say Trump went to “a very, very low-level college” or insinuate, as she did earlier in the rant, that “he doesn’t pay taxes.”

“I pay taxes, but he doesn’t pay taxes, because he cheats the system,” Cook said.

“He’s a liar and a cheater and he’s not that smart,” she said in a moment of profound projection. “And apparently he’s not that nice either.”

Toward the end of the rant, Cook managed to get racial as well: “Gas prices went up because Russia invaded Ukraine, and rich white men are afraid they’re not going to be making” as much money, she said.

On Monday, school board chairman Sam Pfeifle told the Maine Wire he was “disappointed” in Cook’s propagandizing.  “It’s clearly unacceptable for a teacher to be saying those things to students in their classroom,” he said. “It doesn’t follow our controversial topics policy,” Pfeifle said. “I don’t think it follows our mission. I don’t think it’s kind.”

“We try to lead with love and kindness,” he added.

The Maine Wire said Pfeifle couldn’t disclose what disciplinary action Cook faced, if any, because of privacy laws. However, after talking with the school principal and district superintendent, he said, “I’m satisfied that our administration followed all the policies.”

Gray-New Gloucester Middle School Principal Rick Riley-Benoit said he’d had a discussion with the child’s parent after the audio leaked

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/middle-schooler-secretly-records-teacher-exposes-mocking-trump-supporting-parents

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Another Vermont Father Says School District Is Punishing Him for Speaking Out Against Biological Male in Girls’ Locker Room

Another Vermont parent has told The Daily Signal that he believes the school district is punishing him for speaking out against a biological male using the girls’ locker room.

John Helfant is one of the volunteer coaches of the Randolph Union High School girls’ varsity soccer team, he said in a Wednesday phone interview. He said he has served as a police officer for 32 years and is the chief of police of the Northfield, Vermont, police department.

Now he believes that because he spoke out against a biologically male student who identifies as transgender using the girls’ locker room, the school district superintendent is using a technicality to prevent him from continuing to coach the varsity girls’ soccer team.

The father of three spoke out in an interview with The Daily Signal team last week outside of a school forum where community members aired their thoughts on a biologically male 14-year-old student using the girls’ locker room while the girls were changing.

“We’ve been fighting for women’s rights as a nation 100 years at least,” Helfant said in the video interview. “I think this is an invasion of women’s rights, it’s just in a different form.”

On Monday afternoon, according to emails reviewed by The Daily Signal, Superintendent Layne Millington emailed Helfant to inform him that the district does not have a record of Helfant “completing the background check procedure, specifically the fingerprinting check.”

“Beginning immediately and continuing until this matter is resolved, you cannot volunteer in any role or for any activity within the OSSD,” the superintendent said, emails show.

Helfant responded to the superintendent: “I will take this as retaliation for my comments against the OSSD and will be informing my attorney.”

“As you know I am a police officer of 32yrs,” he continued. “I obviously have no criminal record or would not have been able to retire from the State Police nor would I still be Chief of Police in Northfield if I did.”

Helfant also told Millington that he submitted the proper paperwork and fingerprints, adding, “If there is a paperwork snafu it is with your people as I provided them with all required paperwork.”

In a phone interview with The Daily Signal, Helfant said that he had fingerprinted himself—which he told Millington officers do “regularly” at his employment—filled out the paperwork, and turned it into the Randolph Union High School front desk.

“My belief is they’re upset about me being outspoken and they wanted to find a way to get me off the field,” Helfant said.

Millington told The Daily Signal that Helfant “is not an employee and hence cannot be disciplined by the district.” He pointed The Daily Signal to an email in which he told Helfant, “No one works or volunteers in the district without full background checks.”

“We receive an actual letter with the results when they have completed their check,” he told Helfant. “It sounds like based on the conversation you had with the secretary, that you were trying to run your fingerprints yourself. There are select locations that do this type of check and who ensure all the paperwork is together at that time so it all gets to the right place. It sounds like you did not follow this process or go to one of those centers – hence the probable hang up.”

The school superintendent, who has claimed that coverage of the girls’ pushback has sparked hatred and bigotry toward both the trans-identifying student and the school district, also accused The Daily Signal of asking “inaccurate” questions and said he would no longer be responding.

In a Wednesday email to the school district community, Millington canceled all Randolph Union High School and district-level open forums, including a Thursday forum, accusing “local members of the community” of reaching “out to groups around the country to try and stir anger against the district.”

“We have again had several threatening phone calls from across the United States,” he said in the email. “While there are no credible threats, out of an abundance of caution we have ramped up security around the district.”

Chris Hurley, another Randolph Union High School father, told The Daily Signal that canceling the meeting has “nothing to do with security.”

“As momentum grows for his removal, he’s trying to control the narrative and cancels his own forum that allows us to speak directly to him and more importantly the community members that he has hoodwinked into believing that the girls’ parents are mere transphobes and hateful bigots for wanting their children safe,” Hurley said. “Again, Layne and his admin have shown contempt for the very community they are hired to serve. People are growing extremely frustrated with his iron fist style of governance.”

School officials have cited state law allowing for students to use locker rooms and bathrooms that align with their stated gender identity. These officials say that they care about everyone’s safety and that Randolph Union High School is investigating whether harassment took place when the girls told their biologically male classmate not to come into their locker room while they were changing.

Parents who spoke with The Daily Signal last week said neither Millington nor the school forum focused on the most pressing matter at hand: their daughters’ discomfort at having a biologically male student in the locker room able to observe them while they are changing. 

In a previous interview with The Daily Signal, Helfant cited Vermont’s voyeurism statute, which states that “no person shall intentionally view, photograph, film, or record in any format” the “intimate areas of another person without that person’s knowledge and consent and under circumstances in which the person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

“There are no exemptions for schools,” he said, emphasizing that it is “clearly a law violation for a male student to view, watch a female student change her bra or underwear in a women’s locker room or bathroom.”

“My entire life, there’s been this fight for women’s rights and equal pay,” Helfant added. “Guys are literally attacking women’s rights that have been fought so hard for since, you know, the last 100 years, since the suffragettes and to the present time. So it just doesn’t make any sense to me. And I don’t understand why more people aren’t speaking out against it.”

Millington also suspended Travis Allen without pay from his position as the coach of the middle school girls’ soccer team for using male pronouns to refer to the trans-identifying student. That suspension also followed the Daily Signal report highlighting Allen’s daughter’s discomfort at a biological male using her locker room while she was changing.

Allen’s daughter Blake is one of several young ladies who said they were in the Randolph Union High School locker room changing when the trans-identifying student, a biological male, entered the locker room.

Several girls who spoke with The Daily Signal said they asked the student to leave, but that the student did not immediately do so. The girls said the student stood in the corner and looked at them while they were changing, causing them to feel uncomfortable.

Allen offered to avoid using gender pronouns while communicating with trans-identifying students and to take down his social media post. But the school district demanded a public apology from Allen, which he refused, resulting in his suspension.

“When he asked me to publicly apologize, I thought about it,” Allen told The Daily Signal on Tuesday. “I did pause and waited a few seconds. And I’m thinking, ‘If I say that I’ll apologize, I’ll be able to coach my youngest daughter for the rest of the season, but I’m going to, in turn, hurt my other daughter, because I’m not standing up for what we believe in, I’m just cowing to them like so many other people have done. And I just can’t do that.’”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/19/i-will-take-retaliation-another-vermont-father-says-school-district-is-punishing-him-speaking-biological-male-girls-locker-room

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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20 October, 2022

Judges Fighting Yale Law School Show They Know ‘What Time It Is’ in America

Josh Hammer 

Late last month at the sixth annual Kentucky Chapters Conference of The Federalist Society, Judge James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit (disclosure: my former boss) issued a call to arms.

Ho—who earlier this year ruffled feathers at Georgetown University Law Center by using the occasion of his own talk at Georgetown to defend then-embattled Georgetown scholar Ilya Shapiro from the school’s own pusillanimous dean—announced in the Bluegrass State that “starting today,” he would not hire future law clerks who matriculate at Yale Law School. (Current Yale Law students and Yale Law alumni are unaffected.)

The reasons for the law clerk hiring moratorium are fairly straightforward: “Cancel culture” and, more specifically, a hostility to religious and conservative viewpoints and a demonstrated willingness to “shout down” such speakers, are disproportionately pervasive at Yale Law; Yale Law consistently ranks as, and holds itself as, the single preeminent institution of legal education in America; because of that perceived perch, Yale Law is more capable of influencing other legal institutions to denounce “cancel culture” and make itself genuinely open to “dissident” speech from the “deplorable” half of the American citizenry.

Ho’s critics immediately swarmed from every possible direction. The Left was, of course, predictably apoplectic. On the Right, some, such as the purportedly right-of-center Dispatch podcaster Sarah Isgur, have complained that it’s not clear what Yale could actually do to effectuate meaningful change.

Such defeatism is unwarranted. One clear first step would be for Yale to embrace the Chicago Principles, a product of the University of Chicago, which would have the effect of protecting conservative students, conservative speech, and conservative programming.

Some—seemingly including fellow 5th Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith, who took time away from defending corporate vaccine mandates in the Federal Reporter to condemn Ho’s stance as “regrettable”—suggest that a boycott of Yale Law is counterproductive and bad for Yale students.

But the hard truth is that, right now, conservative law school matriculants should simply not go to Yale—period. Yale does not want them, and their peers will do their best to stymie their careers, and they will be supported by the Yale Law School administration in those efforts. An investigation last year by The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium, covered by this column at the time, powerfully highlighted the point.

The reality is that, if Yale Law School were openly discriminatory against blacks and/or Hispanics, not a single person would object to a boycott; on the contrary, all decent people would join it. The fact that Ho’s speech in Kentucky elicited as much scorn and dismissiveness as it did thus demonstrates something that we conservatives already knew to be the case, but which can still be galling to internalize: Anti-conservative, anti-religious, and anti-traditionalist discrimination does not attain anywhere remotely near the same cultural clout as does opposition to racial discrimination.

Fortunately, there has been some recent momentum against Yale.

Last week, Sibarium reported at the Free Beacon that 12 federal judges, spanning both the trial and appellate levels, had confirmed to him that they would also no longer hire clerks from Yale Law School.

And last Friday, Nate Hochman of National Review reported that conservative stalwart Judge Lisa Branch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit would join Ho. In her statement, Branch cited the “legitimate concerns” that had been “recently raised … about the lack of free speech on law school campuses, Yale in particular.”

Other judges, while stopping short of an on-record law clerk hiring boycott, have offered rhetorical support. Ho and Smith’s 5th Circuit colleague, Judge Edith H. Jones, told Reuters earlier that she is “very worried” about cancellation-style tactics in the legal profession, “and to the extent such exclusionary tactics are encouraged by the law schools, shame on them.”

Much as we might say, then, that there are some conservative politicians and intellectuals who are pushing the Right to move beyond the dog-eared “zombie Reaganism” playbook and embrace some newer tactics, so too do we see such a divide emerging in the judicial arena. Much as in politics, the judicial “zombie Reaganites,” such as Smith, are misguided.

Notably, with a mere two on record boycotting federal judges as of this writing, Yale Law has already been pressured enough where it felt the need to respond. On Oct. 12, it issued a missive titled “A Message to Our Alumni on Free Speech at Yale Law School,” which brought Yale incrementally closer to the Chicago Principles.

The steps announced in the brief post are far from perfect; indeed, in what can only be described as an epic self-own evincing the pampered nature of its own student body, Yale Law “welcomed a new Dean of Students who is focused on ensuring students learn to resolve disagreements among themselves whenever possible, rather than reflexively looking to the institution to serve as a referee.”

Imagine that—the nation’s putatively best institution of legal education forced to hire a dean simply to help students get along. Perhaps those students forgot that the practice of law itself is inherently adversarial by nature.

Still, though, if only two federal appellate judges can lead to meaningful action by Yale Law, then what might a broader boycott accomplish? Judges who have privately pledged to not hire future law clerks from Yale should now go on record in order to help generate momentum and, ultimately, better protect conservative law students, conservative lawyers, and conservative speech. And those judges should go on record posthaste.

Nor is there any reason why future tactics in “canceling the cancelers” must be cabined solely to the realm of the judicial branch. As law professor Josh Blackman blogged shortly after Ho’s speech in Kentucky:

“A future Republican administration can categorically label every [Yale Law] grad a squish. It is quite feasible for President [Ron] DeSantis [a Harvard Law grad] to simply boycott all Yale grads who matriculated after 2021. Good luck with explaining why you chose to stay at [Yale)] for that shiny brass ring as some Chicago grad gets the [nomination].”

More generally, conservatives must be willing to prudentially engage in escalatory tit-for-tat tactics across all areas of our republican life—to merely rebalance our wildly off-kilter status quo that favors progressives over conservatives across all of society, if nothing else.

If the notion of “knowing what time it is” means anything, surely it means that. Now, with a small victory at Yale Law under our belts, let’s keep it up.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/17/canceling-cancelers-at-yale-law-school/

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Vermont School District Suspends Father of Girl Who Pushed Back Against Biological Male in Her Locker Room

A Vermont school district under fire for allowing a biologically male student to use the girls’ locker room has suspended a father from his position as soccer coach for using male pronouns to refer to the trans-identifying student.

Travis Allen has been suspended without pay from his job as the Randolph Union Middle School girls soccer coach, Orange Southwest School District Superintendent Layne Millington said in a Tuesday letter. His suspension follows a Daily Signal report highlighting his daughter’s discomfort at a biological male using her locker room while she was changing.

The superintendent, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal, said that Allen was being punished because he “misgendered a transgender student in our district.”

Allen’s daughter Blake is one of several young ladies who said they were in the Randolph Union High School locker room changing when the trans-identifying student, a biological male, entered the locker room.

Several girls who spoke with The Daily Signal said they asked the student to leave, but that the student did not immediately do so. The girls said that the student stood in the corner and looked at them while they were changing, causing them to feel uncomfortable.

In a Facebook comment, Blake’s mother, Jessica Allen, told the trans-identifying student’s guardian, Melissa Sivvy, that she would be “GLAD to have a conversation” on “this matter.” Sivvy, who has told The Daily Signal that her child is a girl and deserves to be in girls’ spaces, had asked for “justice for whoever was wronged” in a Facebook comment.

“I am the father of the girl you claim ‘made up a story for attention,’” Travis Allen wrote in a Facebook reply to Sivvy. “The truth is your son watched my daughter and multiple other girls change in the locker room. While he got a free show, they got violated.”

The father added: “You think this is fine and dandy. I wonder how you would feel if I watched you undress?”

Allen told school officials that he called the biologically male student a “he” on purpose, Millington said in his letter, adding: “Such conduct is unprofessional and unbecoming, and flies in the face of the Vermont Principal Association’s athletic regulations, Vermont State regulations, and the RUHS Middle-High School expectations.”

Millington wrote that school officials have “significant concerns” about Allen’s ability to “support all of our students as the law requires.”

Allen offered to avoid using gender pronouns while communicating with trans-identifying students and to take down his social media post. But the school district demanded a public apology from Allen, which he refused, resulting in his suspension.

“The public apology was how I could keep my position and continue to coach at the school,” Allen said, describing himself as “pretty upset” by the entire sequence of events. The father of four said that he has coached his children for the past 12 years as a way of being involved in their lives and teaching them life lessons.

“It’s not just playing soccer,” he said. “We have to deal with other personal issues that come with the team as well—bad attitudes, kids being bossy, things like that.”

“When he asked me to publicly apologize, I thought about it,” Allen told The Daily Signal. “I did pause and waited a few seconds. And I’m thinking, ‘If I say that I’ll apologize, I’ll be able to coach my youngest daughter for the rest of the season, but I’m going to, in turn, hurt my other daughter, because I’m not standing up for what we believe in, I’m just cowing to them like so many other people have done. And I just can’t do that.’”

Allen said he and his family were never looking for attention.

“We’re a family that pretty much goes with the flow,” he said. “And this time we just couldn’t do it.”

School officials have cited state law allowing for students to use locker rooms and bathrooms that align with their stated gender identity. Those officials have repeatedly said that they care about everyone’s safety, and that Randolph Union High School is investigating whether harassment took place when the girls told their biologically male classmate not to come into their locker room while they were changing.

Co-Principal Lisa Floyd told The Daily Signal on Thursday: “Student safety is our district’s highest priority. We always do our best to maintain a supportive learning environment for all of our students.” 

“The district has policies and procedures to respond to student harassment based on protected characteristics or other misconduct,” she added. “We are not able to discuss any specific students because of federal privacy laws. However, when we become aware that there has been a violation of our policies, including harassment of other students, we respond immediately. 

“Where the policies and expectations are violated, we take disciplinary action consistent with the law and reasonably calculated to prevent further misconduct. We also do our best to give victims supportive measures,” Floyd said.

During a forum with parents last week, Millington claimed that coverage of the girls’ pushback has sparked hatred and bigotry toward both the trans-identifying student and the school district. And other parents and students criticized Blake and her family for speaking up on the matter. 

Parents who spoke with The Daily Signal said the superintendent and the forum did not focus on the most pressing matter at hand; namely, their daughters’ discomfort at having a biologically male student in the locker room able to observe them while they are changing. 

“I want all kids, all kids at RUHS to feel safe, all kids nationwide to feel safe in their spaces, where they need to change or are supposed to be private spaces,” Jessica Allen told The Daily Signal in an interview last week. “We have to get creative as a nation to really figure out how to keep everybody safe, and everyone working together. The hate really does need to stop, because that’s not what this is about. … Let’s have an open dialogue about how to keep everybody safe and feeling comfortable, because we’ve taught children to protect their bodies.” 

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/18/vermont-school-district-suspends-father-of-girl-who-pushed-back-against-biological-male-in-her-locker-room

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You are needed to educate voters about Critical Race Theory (CRT) before the November elections

The Left counts on parents not knowing what is going on with their children’s indoctrination in schools. If parents do know, the Left counts on them staying quiet.

And this strategy by the Left has taken root.

Already, thanks to radical teachers’ unions and liberal school boards, many children have fallen victim to the first phase of Critical Race Theory – that parental authority is not the final word - children don't have to believe what their parents believe.

Here’s a teacher in Utah indoctrinating her class on the first day of school that their parents are dumb and should not be listened to:

My parents are freaking dumb, okay. And the minute I figured that out, the world opens up. You don't have to do everything your parents say. And you don't have to believe what your parents believe. Because most likely, you're smarter than them. ...¹

Once the breakdown of parental authority is established then comes the poison of CRT.  Here are eight ugly truths about the destructive and harmful teachings of Critical Race Theory and why conservatives need to lead the charge to remove it from our schools:

1.       Children are taught first that racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, every interaction, and at home.²

2.       That white people only give black and other people of color opportunities and freedoms when it is in the interest of white people.²

3.       CRT teaches free societies are racist and bad.  It demands they be dismantled and replace with something its advocates can control.²

4.       The Left wants the stories of minority struggles and hardship to the justification for rebuilding society.  CRT is used to teach children that science, fact, and reason are a “white” way to build societies.²

5.       CRT teaches children that all potential alternatives to view society, like colorblindness, character, and achievement are forms of racism.²

6.       CRT teaches children to band together and attack and bully anyone who disagrees with CRT as a racist and white supremacist, even if those people are black.²

7.       CRT allows the Left to never be satisfied, so it can remain as an activist black-hole that is free to destroy everything it wants to control.²

8.       CRT is Marxist in that it uses race instead of economic class as the line where white people are the “privileged” and “oppressors” above the line while Blacks and other people of color are below that line who become “marginalized” and “oppressed.”³

Despite all the liberal hype and Big Media support for CRT, opposing CRT is a winning message for Republicans going into the 2022 midterms.  According to a survey of 1,200 likely suburban voters that the NRSC polled from 192 suburban counties in 37 states, GOP candidates can win on demanding CRT to be removed from their state and district school curriculum.⁴

This was clearly the right choice of conservatives and concerned parents in Virginia who feared the dissemination of liberal ideas being taught to their school children under the guise of “equity.”  Because of this common fear, they banded together to challenge the CRT movement at the state level.

In fact, it was this anti-CRT movement by conservatives and concerned parents that played a major role in Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in taking back the governorship in Virginia in 2021.  With the help of conservatives and parents, Youngkin was able to increase the suburban mom vote, along with the Hispanic and African American vote, because together they exposed Youngkin’s Democrat opponent’s radical position for school boards having the sole power on what to teach children.  

These voting blocs all favored having a say in their children’s educations, include removing CRT from schools and support for Charter Schools where parents have more say in what is taught.

With 58 percent of Americans polled opposed to teaching Critical Race Theory in school, conservative and Republican voters can help elect GOP candidates by educating others to expose Democrat candidates who support CRT as both radical and extreme.⁵

https://www.conservativehq.org/post/you-are-needed-to-educate-voters-about-critical-race-theory-crt-before-the-november-elections

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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19 October, 2022

Should failing students really graduate as doctors?

Lionel Shriver

 

If I seem to be bashing universities lately, they’ve asked for it. The prestigious New York University in lower Manhattan didn’t cover itself in glory when, just before this semester began, it responded to a petition from 82 students (out of a class of 350) by sacking the professor. The petitioners’ main objection? The course was too hard.

After retiring from Princeton’s chemistry department where he’d taught organic chemistry for more than 40 years, Maitland Jones Jr taught the same course at NYU on one-year contracts as an adjunct. I used to be an adjunct, and this much hasn’t changed since my day: adjuncts are atrociously paid. I’m just guessing, but Dr Jones would surely have been handsomely remunerated at Princeton. His pension must be plump. He could only have continued to teach organic chemistry at NYU for chump change out of passion for his subject and perhaps a devotion to community service. Among many publications, Jones is the author of a classic, widely used 1,300-page organic chemistry textbook. NYU was getting a bargain. Firing a distinguished academic who’s taking on classes of 350 as de facto charity work was worse than thankless.

There’s more at stake in this sorry tale than a rude conclusion to one man’s impressive career. Organic chemistry is mostly taken by pre-med students. The demanding course is commonly regarded as a ‘weed-out’ class. Students who can’t cut the mustard fail or drop out. The subject’s complex problem-solving and lab work develop many of the skills that physicians require (or so I’m given to understand; I wouldn’t survive 15 minutes of organic chemistry). In other words, organic chemistry is supposed to be hard.

Yet as of about ten years ago, Dr Jones revealed in an interview, he noticed that students had lost focus. ‘Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate,’ he wrote to NYU in a letter objecting to his dismissal. He made his exams easier, and still their grades continued to drop. Covid restrictions inflicted the coup de grâce. In the past two years, their grades ‘fell off a cliff. We now see single-digit scores, and even zeros’. Not only did students not study, Dr Jones observed – they didn’t even seem to know how to study.

When our Gen Z students can’t do the work, what do we do? Dumb the classes down? If course requirements are relaxed too radically so that more students do well, professors will fail to convey the body of knowledge the classes are designed to deliver. Everyone gets an A, but still knows diddly-squat about organic chemistry. Education becomes theatre.

But then, education at elite American colleges is already in danger of becoming theatre, an empty going through the motions, at the end of which graduates know little more than they did to begin with. For one ingredient in this story is money. Attending NYU, if you’re paying full-freight, costs $83,250 per year (a whopping £75,000, in today’s sadly depreciated sterling).

Parents want their stonking money’s worth, and the universities want their stonking money. The student-as-customer model encourages administrations to placate petulant undergraduates. After all, the customer is always right. And no parent wants to submit to such severe sticker shock only to have their darling doctor-to-be ‘weeded out’. In the end, a degree is not something you earn, but something you buy.

I’ve grown pretty cynical about higher education. Many majors NYU offers (most notoriously, film majors) won’t result in careers that ever earn back the £300,000 cost of the diploma. Plenty of graduates in a range of soft subjects haven’t been prepared to make a social contribution of any consequence.

But all degrees are not a joke. Some occupations still require you to know what you’re doing, and medicine is one of them. None of us wants to be operated on by a surgeon who failed organic chemistry, or who took baby chemistry because big-boy chemistry was too demanding. Parents and students may not care for the ‘weed-out’ system, but ushering less capable young people onto non-pre-med career paths protects patients of the near future. At 65, I’m looking out for my own interest here.

Reading up on Dr Jones, I sampled the 6,000+ comments after the New York Times article that reported the story. Wouldn’t readers of America’s most woked-out newspaper sympathise with struggling ‘snowflakes’ whose meanie professor gave them crummy grades? To the contrary.

The New York Times readership is the educated professional class – they have high standards. An overwhelming majority of those commenting were appalled that NYU had capitulated to student complaints about the curriculum being intolerably difficult. Many readers had taken organic chemistry. Some had failed organic chemistry and claimed that they deserved to fail, because they realised they didn’t have the chops for pre-med.

Others were teachers or professors who, like Dr Jones, decried their recent students as abysmal. Their classes were full of young people who couldn’t write, couldn’t read and couldn’t absorb information. Some of these teachers had quit.

The larger issue extends beyond medicine and isn’t specific to America. Tertiary education is now infected with solicitousness. Professors are meant to please students, while it used to be the other way round. Aggressive affirmative action drastically lowers admission standards for minority students, often resulting in an embarrassing bottom-of-the-class status for many of its supposed beneficiaries, the easiest solution to which is to reduce academic rigour for everybody. Grade inflation is rife, and cases like Dr Jones’s will encourage other untenured professors to simplify their lessons and give unwarranted high marks. Further bruised by catastrophic Covid lockdowns, both British and American Gen Z kids seem curiously fragile.

The cumulative result is bound to be a less qualified, less skilful and less resilient workforce. Today’s university students are the people who in short order will diagnose our cancers, repair our bridges, design our software, service our nuclear power stations and conceive technological solutions to challenges we can’t yet anticipate. Woe is the day that they throw down their tools because keeping fuel rods in the reactor cool is ‘too hard’.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/university-is-supposed-to-be-hard/

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UK: 'White teachers should teach ethnic minority children to sing God Save the King', says government's social mobility tsar Katharine Birbalsingh

The government's social mobility tsar has said that white teachers should teach schoolchildren from ethnic minority backgrounds to sing God Save the King.

Social Mobility Commission chair Katharine Birbalsingh, known as Britain's strictest headteacher, said children are at risk of feeling they don't 'belong' in the UK if they do not sing the national anthem - even if it makes them feel 'uncomfortable'.

In a lecture at the University Oxford yesterday Ms Birbalsingh, 49, said that ethnic minority children can suffer poor teaching of 'basic cultural knowledge' because teachers believe they 'cannot identify with so-called "white" things'.

She added that white teachers can 'feel uncomfortable having ethnic minority children sing the national anthem'.

'But who loses out?' the co-founder Michaela Community School in Wembley, London asked the audience of her Roger Scruton Memorial lecture education, race and conservatism.

Ms Birbalsingh said the child who is 'taught over and over by his school, by the media' that he does not belong in country loses out as no child could succeed in a country they do not see as home, The Telegraph reports.

The 'Tiger Teacher' issued a stark warning that not letting ethnic minorities identify as 'British' left them 'ripe for radicalisation'.

Ms Birbalsingh also slammed identity politics taking over British schools as well as plans to 'decolonise' the curriculum.

Pupils at her school sing the national anthem and teachers wore black and flew the Union Flag at half-mast in the wake of the Queen's death.

She added that stopping poorer children from learning about Great British culture, customs and historical literature 'shuts them in a cage'.

It is also right to talk about controversial parts of Britain's history and wrong to 'whitewash' ethnic minority people out of it, adding that it was 'wrong to talk about "black history" as if it is some kind of add-on.'

 She said the 'determination of the progressives to deny ethnic minorities their birthright to identify as British, is outrageous'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11327229/Social-mobility-tsar-White-teachers-teach-ethnic-minority-children-God-Save-King.html

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Let’s get uni students face-to-face again – for their mental health

A couple of weeks ago, I asked a university colleague if she had an unusual number of students experiencing psychological distress. “Yes,” she replied. “I have lots of students like that.” I told her that I had never had so many students dealing with mental health issues. We looked at each other in silence not knowing what to say.

I already knew that Australian university students suffered significant rates of anxiety and depression. When I wrote a column on higher education for The Age, I’d report on research about students’ mental health. One study that stood out, published in Australian Psychologist, showed university students had higher levels of psychological distress than the general population.

I also knew from studies that financial stress and working long hours affected students’ mental health. I can reel off other predicators for psychological distress, too. At the moment, none of these predicators seem to worry my colleagues and I more than the enduring effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on students.

Now it seems that our hunch that the COVID pandemic has had a negative psychological impact on students is correct. A new Monash University study, led by PhD candidate David Tuck, concludes that more tertiary education students experienced higher levels of psychological distress during the pandemic.

“More tertiary education students experienced severe distress during the COVID-19 pandemic than adults in the general population, as well as before the pandemic,” the Monash researchers say in their study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

It is one of the first Australian studies to investigate the level of psychological distress among tertiary students during the COVID pandemic. The research shows almost 71 per cent of the more than 1000 students surveyed displayed elevated levels of psychological distress during the pandemic between September 2020 and February 2021. Twenty-three per cent of the sample reported extreme levels of distress.

Another worrying finding is that students who had already been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, PTSD or other mental disorders before COVID had significantly higher levels of distress than students who did not have a previous diagnosis of a mental health disorder.

And it is the younger students and those studying undergraduate degrees that have higher levels of distress than older and postgraduate students. It’s understandable why this would be the case. It can be tricky for students to make the leap from high school to university, and this year’s first-years have done much of their final years of high school online at home during COVID lockdowns. The students had to readjust to being in classrooms and then acclimatise to university life.

So, what can universities do to help students?

They certainly can do more to help students feel they belong to their campus. One way to achieve this is to make more classes face-to-face. I have been shocked at how many undergraduate subjects, particularly in the humanities, are still being taught online. This semester students told me they chose my unit because it has a face-to-face tutorial. One student said that she “just wanted to see other students”.

Imagine, for a moment, the pressure placed on my first-year students last semester when they had a mix of online and face-to-face classes and had to try to navigate them on one day. I had students doing online classes in the morning and then racing to university to attend their face-to-face tutorial. Or some would try to do their online classes in the library whispering their answers during a Zoom discussion.

Universities justify the increase in the number of online classes by saying they are giving students a choice. But what about the pedagogical reasoning, particularly after students have spent so much time isolated at home during lockdowns? Previous Australian studies have suggested that online learning is not always appropriate for undergraduates because they are unaccustomed to the university style of learning. Besides university is more than the academic work. Campuses are where students can make lifelong friends.

I’m also unsure what the pedagogical reasons are for having pre-recorded lectures, which began during the lockdowns. Yes, students can listen to them any time, but from what academics tell me, many don’t watch them because the lectures are not engaging. You can’t ask questions in real time and hear the student responses.

University bosses need to think less about how to make cuts to teaching resources and examine the evidence about the best teaching methods for students in this COVID age. They could also speak to David Tuck and his colleagues, who have published material on how tertiary students can be helped during this period of COVID. They emphasise that positive social interactions in tertiary settings are vital to helping students.

In the International Journal of Stress Management, the researchers concluded that “engaging in enjoyable and personally meaningful activities, focusing attention on the present moment, exercise, positive social interactions, humour, and acceptance in difficult circumstances have the largest effects on improving resilience in tertiary education students”.

I’m sensitive to what my students are going through. But that’s not enough. Universities need to step up more to support and reduce stress among students. Then my colleague and I may not be staring at each other in silence wondering what will happen to our students going through psychological distress in this age of COVID.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/let-s-get-uni-students-face-to-face-again-for-their-mental-health-20221016-p5bq5m.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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

18 October, 2022

Tyranny’s higher education production line

Reflecting on Jacinda Ardern’s recent attack on free speech at the United Nations, British pundit Brendan O’Neill astutely declared that ‘tyranny has had a makeover’.

O’Neill warns us that we should no longer fear the ‘gruff cop dragging you into a cell’ for saying something dangerous but be on alert for authoritarianism disguised by a broad smile, polite voice, and the tell-tale ‘caring liberal head tilt’.

So where in fact did this ‘makeover’ occur? We need look no further than our universities.

The long march of the left through our institutions is now paying off handsomely as their graduates scale the commanding heights of big business and big government.

You see, Jacinda Ardern is one of the many great success stories of this system. Her appearance on the political scene did not happen by mistake. The speech she delivered at the United Nations outlining the dangers of viewpoint diversity has been decades in the making.

Ardern, like Obama and Trudeau before her, is one of the finest products of tertiary institutions run by ‘intellectual elites’. Woke alumni conditioned to regurgitate their progressive dogma are being churned out in their thousands each year.

The Arderns of the world are made in the image of their creators – entrenched left-wing lecturers, administrators, and bureaucrats who fill universities across the Western world, particularly Australia.

These individuals have turned universities into institutions that limit free speech via a culture that is antagonistic to viewpoint diversity. This directly opposes the historical mission of higher education.

The true mission of a university is to impart knowledge and hone the mind through debate and challenge, yet groupthink and cancel culture have been rife on campus for years.

In 2019, a survey published by the Institute of Public Affairs titled The Free Speech Crisis at Australia’s Universities showed 59 per cent of students felt they were sometimes prevented from voicing their opinions on controversial issues by other students.

Even worse, 31 per cent of students said they had been made to feel uncomfortable by a university teacher for expressing their opinion. Nearly 60 per cent of students said they were more exposed to new ideas while using social media than through their studies at university.

Increasingly, universities are limiting speech by institutionalising ideology. Indigenous relations, Climate Change, and gender equality litter the policy lists of the higher education sector.

There is no better indication that free-thinking intellectuals are losing the battle than the fact that the number of policies instituted by universities has increased exponentially in recent years, jumping from 136 in 2018 to 281 in 2022. Many of these new policies directly promote social justice causes.

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

This closes debate and crushes viewpoint diversity. A university cannot be dedicated to an ideology and simultaneously open to challenging perspectives.

The latest tactic of university-trained elites, like Ardern, is to claim an alleged influx of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ when thought goes against their opinion.

During her UN speech, Ardern scolded those who did not agree with her views on climate change, and claimed they were guilty of spreading ‘misinformation’ that could be used as ‘weapons of war’ to cause ‘chaos’.

So much for leaders of the free world defending free speech!

Former Chief Justice Robert French said of free speech and academic freedom, ‘A culture powerfully predisposed to the exercise of freedom of speech and academic freedom is ultimately a more effective protection than the most tightly drawn rule.’

However, Chief Justice French went on to warn, ‘A culture not so predisposed will undermine the most emphatic statement of principles.’

Unprecedented prosperity, opportunity, education, tolerance, and welfare are hallmarks of Western Civilisation and are the products of freedom of speech, thought, and association.

The fall of most great societies take place as they turn against, or fail to value, the things that made them great.

Free speech is under attack by the Jacinda Arderns of the world. The new authoritarianism is as O’Neill said, ‘well dressed’ and ‘polite’.

Each day more Jacindas are rolling off the university production line. Warm, genteel, and empathetic right up until the moment they want you silenced, cancelled, or fired from your job.

The Enlightenment mission of universities has been turned on its head. Tyranny has indeed had a makeover and every day our graduates exit university more closed and small-minded than ever before.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/tyrannys-higher-education-production-line/

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Fauci says school closures led to ‘deleterious collateral consequences,’ but he had ‘nothing to do’ with it

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic over the last two-and-a-half years, deflected responsibility for school closures in an interview on Sunday while admitting to some negative effects for children. 

The head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who is stepping down in December after five decades in the role, was asked by ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl whether it was a “mistake” for schools to be closed down as long as they were. 

“I don’t want to use the word ‘mistake,’ Jon, because if I do, it gets taken out of the context that you’re asking me the question on,” Fauci said. “We should realize, and have realized, that there will be deleterious collateral consequences when you do something like that.” 

Fauci went on to say the virus has killed nearly 1,500 children, but that he always emphasized health officials must do “everything we can to keep the schools open.”

“No one plays that clip. They always say ‘Fauci was responsible for closing schools.’ I had nothing to do [with it]. I mean, let’s get down to the facts,” Fauci told ABC News. 

Numerous studies have shown that school closures contributed to unprecedented learning loss in K-12 students. 

A Department of Education study released last month found that average reading scores for 9-year-olds fell five points and average math scores fell seven points in 2022 compared to scores in 2020. The decline in reading scores was the largest drop in over three decades, while the decline in math scores was the first on record. 

High schoolers are increasingly unprepared for college. Average scores on the ACT college admissions test by the class of 2022 were 19.8 out of 36, the lowest score since 1991. 

During the height of the pandemic, Fauci routinely emphasized the need for schools to stay open while hedging that it may be necessary for health officials to close down schools in areas with high infections. 

In August 2020, Fauci told the Washington Post that the “default principle should be to try as best you can to get the children back to school,” but that local authorities in states with high infections “may want to pause before they start sending the kids back to school for a variety of reasons.”

It’s not the first time that Fauci has admitted to some mistakes by the government. He said at the Texas Tribune festival last month that “certain aspects” of the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic were “botched.” 

“Although you have to be aware and not deny that there are deleterious consequences for prolonged periods of time for keeping children out of school, remember, the safety of children is also important,” Fauci said. 

https://nypost.com/2022/10/16/fauci-says-he-had-nothing-to-do-with-covid-19-school-closures/

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Australian teachers turning to YouTube and Facebook to source lesson material, damning new report says

<i>I am not at all sure I am on-board with the idea of government-provided lesson plans for teachers.  It would certainly help if experienced teachers passed on their usual lesson plans to newbie teachers but having the government do that would reduced the already limited diversity in what is taught.   It could make a lesson into not much more than a video.

There is a better option:  The teacher could know her subject matter so well that no preparation is needed.  The teacher could just look at the curriculum and talk about it. It's what I did as a teacher of High School economics.  I just talked about what I found interesting or exciting about economic issues.  That generated real student interest and my students did very well at exam time.

So subject knowledge should get heavy emphasis in teacher training.  I had not one minute of teacher training but I have an almost missionary zeal to communicate the realities of economics</i>

Teachers are relying on YouTube, Facebook and Pinterest to source classroom materials in a “lesson lottery’’ for students that will prompt a ­national review of curriculum planning.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said he would raise the Grattan Institute’s alarming findings of “rudderless teachers’’ at his next meeting with state and territory ministers in ­December.

He said teachers were working unnecessarily hard because they often had to plan lessons from scratch. “If we get this right, this has the potential to really reduce the workload on teachers,’’ he told The Australian.

“I am keen to talk to teachers about the findings in this report, as well as ACARA (the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) and my state and territory colleagues when we meet in December.’’

The Grattan Institute survey of 1915 teachers and 328 principals across Australia reveals that half are interpreting the curriculum on their own to devise assignments and set lesson plans.

YouTube is twice as popular as education department websites for sourcing teaching mat­erial, with two-thirds of teachers accessing YouTube at least once a fortnight, compared to 31 per cent using government websites.

Half the teachers buy lesson plans from Teachers Pay Teachers – an online marketplace with more than 16,000 assignments, assessments and lesson plans for sale.

One in four teachers uses Facebook, one in five uses Pinterest, 12 per cent use Instagram and 5 per cent use Twitter to source assignments and lesson plans.

In contrast, one in five teachers used professional teacher association websites and 17 per cent used the Khan Academy website for inspiration.

Only 15 per cent of teachers have access to a common bank of high-quality curriculum materials for all their classes, the survey found.

A third of teachers have no access to common material for any of their subjects.

“High-quality curriculum materials are hard to find,’’ the Grattan Institute report states. “The internet is awash with options, but not a lot of detail about quality.’’

The survey found that a typical teacher spent six hours a week sourcing and creating mat­erials – and one in four teachers spent more than 10 hours a week planning lessons.

“Teachers are struggling with the curriculum planning load,’’ lead author and Grattan Institute education program director Jordana Hunter said on Sunday.

“Teachers tell us they often plan alone from scratch, searching social media to try to find lesson materials. This creates Australia’s lesson lottery – it undermines student learning and adds to the workload of our overstretched teachers.’’

The Grattan Institute estimates teachers would save three hours a week by sharing curriculum materials – adding up to 20 million teacher hours every year.

It found that a high school teacher with four subjects would need to spend 2000 hours to develop curriculum materials for all their classes if they had to start from scratch.

Ninety per cent of teachers surveyed agreed that sharing high-quality instructional materials would free up time to evaluate and respond to individual student learning needs.

“Great teaching requires classroom instruction based on well-designed, knowledge-rich and carefully sequenced lessons that build student knowledge and skills over time,’’ Dr Hunter said.

“Without a whole-school approach to curriculum planning, which carefully sequences learning of key knowledge and skills across subjects and year levels, even the hardest-working teachers will struggle to give their students the best education.’’

The Grattan Institute wants governments and the Catholic and independent education sectors to invest in high-quality, comprehensive curriculum materials, and make them available to all schools to adapt and use, if they choose.

“These materials should be quality-assured by an independent body,’’ the report states.

NSW has already announced it will build a library of syllabus materials for use in schools, while the Victorian government recommends a whole-school approach to curriculum planning to avoid repetition or gaps in learning.

Queensland’s Education Department provides lessons and assessment tasks through its Curriculum into the Classroom, or C2C, program.

The Grattan Institute survey found that only one-third of teachers agreed government-provided instructional materials were of high quality, with half saying the resources were hard to find.

Dr Hunter said teachers in disadvantaged schools were only half as likely to have access to a common bank of curriculum mat­erials as teachers in wealthier schools. “Many teachers and students get a losing ticket in the ­lesson lottery,’’ she said.

“The Australian curriculum and its state variants provide high-level direction only, leaving vast gaps for teachers to fill in.

“For too long, governments have underestimated the subject-matter knowledge, curriculum expertise and time required to bring the curriculum to life in the classroom.’’

The Grattan Institute criticises individualised curriculum planning as “hugely inefficient’’.

“In reality, teachers are struggling to fit the hours required into their working week,’’ the report says. “The current system wastes time and results in lost learning.

“Every school and teacher should have access to comprehensive curriculum materials that they can choose to use and adapt as required.

“As an immediate priority, governments should consider buying high-quality materials from overseas, and adapting them to the Australian context.’’

The Grattan Institute report notes that students can leap ahead in learning by one or two months a year when teachers use carefully sequenced, high-quality curriculum materials.

“Materials need to be specific about what knowledge students are expected to learn,’’ the report says. “(They) should include targeted assessments that enable teachers to accurately assess student learning of particular concepts, content and skills taught.’’

Half the high school teachers surveyed were teaching a subject for the first time, and 15 per cent of primary school teachers were taking on a new year level.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/teachers-turning-to-youtube-and-facebook-to-source-lesson-material-damning-new-report-says/news-story/66986be7168eb91accc88646e257fcf6

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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17 October, 2022

Conservatives stand up to Loudoun County School board over transgender student policy

Conservatives sounded off on school policies they say harmed children, at Tuesday's Loudoun County Public Schools board meeting.

Virginia parents with differing viewpoints sounded off on school policies they say harmed children at Tuesday's Loudoun County Public Schools board meeting.

One year ago, LCPS passed Policy 8040 to follow Virginia Department of Education guidelines put forth by the previous Democratic administration to protect transgender students. It requires employees to address students by their chosen "name and gender pronouns" and gives students access to the bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams that match their gender identity. The decision sparked a backlash among parents, particularly because it did not require parents to be notified or approve of changes made to their child's gender identity.

Several parents came to the meeting Tuesday to demand schools comply with new guidelines released last month by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R., which says parents must sign off on changes to their child's gender identity and assures accommodations will be made. It also separates sports by biological sex.

"I implore you to adopt Gov. Youngkin's new Model Policy in place of existing Policy 8040. The fact that parents have to advocate and fight for their parental right is absolutely absurd," Michelle Warner, a mother of two Loudoun County students told the board. 

"LCPS seems to think they are better equipped to discuss sexuality, feelings, body image, morals and such over their own parents," she continued.

Another parent, Abbie Platt, urged the board to "honor" the new policies, after she tearfully shared how her young boys were forced to use the bathroom while "little girls" watched them last year. "There are obvious challenges with what happened last year… Do the right thing," she told the board.

Amy Paul read an excerpt from a novel she said was currently in six public elementary schools called "It Feels Good to be Yourself." She blasted the book as "propaganda" that "encourages" young children to question their gender.

Parents Clint and Erin Thomas likened the board to a "cult" who uses "disassociation from the family, love bombing and indoctrination" on children.

"This board thinks you're part of the problem, which means they need to protect your child from you," he warned fellow Loudoun County parents.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/parents-stand-up-cult-loudoun-county-school-board-transgender-student-policy

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High School Girls Explain Why They’re Uncomfortable Having a Biological Male in Their Locker Room

Blake Allen and her teammates spoke out when a biologically male student used their locker room. Now these young girls face heavy criticism—and maybe even punishment.

Our Daily Signal team traveled up the coast this week to the town of Randolph in northeastern Vermont, just in time to catch the last few days of the town’s beautiful fall foliage. We wanted to meet these girls, cheerful young ladies who chatted with us over pancakes and coffee. They shared their stories and anxieties from the past few weeks of tension and acknowledged the risks of publicly addressing such a controversial topic.

It’s an issue that not many parents expect their 14-year-old daughters to grapple with, much less address publicly: a biologically male student identifying as a transgender girl, playing on the girls’ volleyball team, and using their locker room. 

But in this Vermont school district, school officials cite state law allowing for students to use locker rooms and bathrooms that align with their stated gender identity. These officials say that they care about everyone’s safety and that Randolph Union High School is investigating whether harassment took place when the girls told their biologically male classmate not to come into their locker room while they were changing.

During a well-attended Tuesday evening forum with parents, school Superintendent Layne Millington claimed that coverage of the girls’ pushback has sparked hatred and bigotry toward both the trans-identifying student and the school district. And other parents and students criticized Blake and her family for speaking up on the matter. 

Parents who spoke with The Daily Signal said the superintendent and the forum did not focus on the most pressing matter at hand: their daughters’ discomfort at having a biologically male student in the locker room able to observe them while they are changing. 

Early on a foggy Wednesday morning, we met up with some of these young ladies at the local bowling alley-turned-diner. Nervous to speak out, but determined to speak her truth, each girl sat down, mic’d up, and offered her own explanation as to why she believes her voice is not being respected. 

These girls tell us they bear no ill will toward the trans-identifying student—they just don’t believe a biological male should be in their locker room and they can’t understand why school officials seemingly don’t care about their feelings and their discomfort. 

“A male was in our locker room when volleyball girls were trying to get changed,” said Blake. “And after I asked him to leave, he didn’t, and later looked over at girls with their shirts off. And it made many people uncomfortable and feel violated. And I left as soon as I could in a panic.”

“It’s not fully the trans student’s fault,” she added. “It is much more the school board’s fault and they’re failing everyone. Not just the volleyball team, not the transgender student. They did nothing to help this situation. They still aren’t. They just want people to be in trouble and they’re not trying to help make a change.” 

A female member of the volleyball team who identified herself as Lilly claimed at Tuesday evening’s forum that none of the girls in the locker room were changing when the trans-identifying student entered the room. Kayla, one of the volleyball players who sat down with us, says that’s simply not true. 

“Everyone was at different points of changing,” she explained. “Some girls were already dressed, some girls weren’t dressed at all, some girls were in the middle of changing.” 

“So why would someone say that they weren’t?” I asked her. 

“I feel like everyone’s just trying to twist the story on us and make us look like the bad people in this situation,” the high school student said. 

The trans-identifying student’s guardian, Melissa Sivvy, has insisted to The Daily Signal that her child is a girl, deserves to use the girls’ locker room, and never behaved inappropriately.

Offered a chance to respond to this story, the child’s guardian asked The Daily Signal to explain what “biologically male” means and what the girls meant by saying that they were uncomfortable having her child in their space while they were changing.

“Your child is biologically male, correct?” I asked Sivvy on Wednesday evening. 

She responded: “Do you think adults should be thinking about what is under children’s clothing? Seems a little inappropriate to me.”

Parents we spoke with told us that they are outraged that the school district and the high school would allow such an incident to even occur—they don’t want biological boys in their daughters’ locker rooms, and they are bewildered as to why the school system is apparently prioritizing the needs of students who identify as transgender over their daughters. They also strongly pushed back against allegations that speaking up is hateful. 

“I want all kids, all kids at RUHS to feel safe, all kids nationwide to feel safe in their spaces where they need to change or are supposed to be private spaces,” Blake’s mother, Jessica Allen, told us. “We have to get creative as a nation to really figure out how to keep everybody safe, and everyone working together. The hate really does need to stop, because that’s not what this is about…let’s have an open dialogue about how to keep everybody safe and feeling comfortable, because we’ve taught children to protect their bodies.” 

“I feel it’s not the place for them,” added Eric Messier, Kayla’s father. “My daughter feels uncomfortable … while that other student’s in the locker room. 

“All that matters is she’s uncomfortable. It’s pretty simple,” he added, describing his daughter and her friends as “tough, resilient young girls.” 

“They need to make a change and make everybody comfortable.” 

School officials keep pointing to Vermont state law on the matter, Jessica Allen noted.  “But the law, as it reads, has some room for creativity,” she said. “So let’s get creative and let’s make that happen so everyone does feel safe.” 

Blake tells us that she is not only failing to get support from the school—she’s also facing punishment. Emails viewed by The Daily Signal show that school officials are investigating her for “harassing someone based on their gender” and have launched an investigation into this allegation following a “Hazing, Harassment, and Bullying” process. 

School officials would not comment specifically on these allegations against Blake. Co-Principal Lisa Floyd told The Daily Signal: “Student safety is our District’s highest priority. We always do our best to maintain a supportive learning environment for all of our students.” 

“The District has policies and procedures to respond to student harassment based on protected characteristics or other misconduct,” she added. “We are not able to discuss any specific students because of federal privacy laws. However, when we become aware that there has been a violation of our policies, including harassment of other students, we respond immediately. Where the policies and expectations are violated, we take disciplinary action consistent with the law and reasonably calculated to prevent further misconduct. We also do our best to give victims supportive measures.” 

Blake says she does not regret speaking out. 

“I’m glad I spoke out because there’s still so much that could be done, that the law could be changed, because now it’s national news,” she told me. When it comes to the trans-identifying student, “He had the right to go in, but once we said we were uncomfortable, he should have just left. It should have been that simple.” 

“I don’t want other girls to have to feel uncomfortable about it,” the high school student added. “I think everyone should be able to just get changed in a locker room that they were born as. If you were born a girl, you can go in the girls’ locker room, get out when you’re done. It should be simple and it’s not anymore.” 

Kayla said she’s heard a lot of people saying that school officials are treating the trans-identifying student as if that student has more rights than the girls. 

“That’s a good way to put it,” she said. “They care more about that one single student than the rest of the girls. So they’re telling us all to go get changed in the single stalls instead of the locker room. And the trans person can have the locker room while all of us go into different places.” 

“I feel like the team’s really brave about doing this because we all knew what was going to happen if we did, the consequences. If one of us were to get a scholarship, they could find this on the internet and take it away,” she added. “And so there’s many consequences to doing it, but I think it’s really important that we’re doing it.” 

“Is it hatred and bigotry to say that you don’t want a biological male in your bathroom or locker room?” I asked most of the girls. 

“Nope,” says Grace, a senior at Randolph Union High School. 

“Not at all,” Blake tells me. 

“No,” says Blake’s mother. “It’s about their comfort and their feelings.” 

“It’s also a fact,” adds Grace, “because they are a biological male and it’s not hatred. It’s just we want to feel comfortable.”

“Talk about women’s rights,” the student added, “we should have the right to go to the bathroom without a male in our bathroom.” 

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/13/high-school-girls-explain-why-theyre-uncomfortable-having-biological-male-their-locker-room/

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Western Australia introduces new consent lessons for students

<i>Doubtful if this is apopropriate for the early years. Better for High School students only</i>

School students in Western Australia will be given updated lessons on consent and healthy relationships.

The curriculum change aims to equip students with "age-appropriate knowledge and skills" in a bid to reduce sexual violence, the WA government said.

Pre-primary to Year 10 students will benefit, Education and Training Minister Sue Ellery and Women's Interests Minister Simone McGurk said.

Ellery said such lessons are currently taught "ad hoc" in Western Australian schools but students have said they want a clear way to respond to real-life situations.

"These changes are designed to equip students and their families with age-appropriate knowledge and skills to understand the concept of consent and what healthy, respectful relationships look like in everyday settings and real-life scenarios," she said.

The "age-appropriate and progressive lessons" in WA will start before primary school.

Topics for the youngest children will include "keeping safe" and "saying no".

McGurk said she was proud of the move. "Evidence shows that early education is a powerful tool in reducing sexual violence which we know can have lifelong consequences," she said.

The Department of Education said it will support public school teachers to implement the new content.

A draft version of the new consent curriculum has been published by the School Curriculum and Standards Authority and is open for comment.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/consent-educations-schools-western-australia/e03c70ca-f0bd-4881-a6bd-8d29f1456880

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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16 October, 2022

Seven Australian institutions in Times Higher Education top 100

<i>I have impressive pieces of paper from two of the universities listed below, plus I taught at a third.  On a per head basis, Australian universities do very well.  Consider that there are 300 million Americans and only 25 million Australians.  Australia produces roughly twice as many top universities per head as the USA does.  It's not a small difference

So why the difference?  I know why but it would be vastly incorrect for me to spell it out so  I think I should refrain from doing so.  Let me just mention the undisputed fact that Australia has very few Africans</i>

Australia now has seven universities in the world’s top 100 as ranked by Times Higher Education with the University of Adelaide joining the elite group.  The University of Melbourne remains Australia’s most highly ranked institution, slipping to 34th this year from 33rd last year.

Monash University is next at 44th place, after rising from 57th last year.

The University of Queensland (53rd), the University of Sydney (54th), the Australian National University (62nd) and UNSW (71st) also make the top 100, along with the University of Adelaide at 88th, up from 111th last year.

The University of Adelaide said its success in entering the world’s top 100 universities was a significant milestone for higher education in South Australia. “A top 100 university is only possible with top ranked staff. They should be proud of their achievements,” said UA vice-chancellor Peter Hoj.

Times Higher Education chief knowledge officer Phil Baty said Melbourne was the city with bragging rights. “It now boasts Australia’s number one and number two universities, with Monash University leapfrogging ahead of Brisbane’s University of Queensland and pushing it into third place,” he said.

Monash University vice-chancellor Margaret Gardner said the results were a landmark for her university.  “This achievement will inspire exciting opportunities to access new research funding, build new partnerships and attract additional students,” she said.

University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell said the rankings reflected the global standing of Australian universities highlighting their contribution during the pandemic and their value to society.

There are signs that US universities are trending downwards in the Times Higher Education ranking. The number of US universities in the top 100 continues to fall, from a peak of 43 in 2018 to 34 this year.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/university-of-adelaide-joins-six-australian-institutions-in-times-higher-education-top-100/news-story/8debbd06bf18dc16d36666063862bc34

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Notre Dame Professor Offers Abortion Assistance to Students

A sociology professor at the University of Notre Dame offers to help students in procuring chemical abortions and “morning after” pills, a student newspaper reported Wednesday.  

The Irish Rover, a conservative Catholic publication, reported that the professor, Tamara Kay, had advertised her willingness to assist in abortions on her office door with a sign reading: “This is a SAFE SPACE to get help and information on ALL Healthcare issues and access—confidentially with care and compassion.”  

Kay’s actions came after the Indiana Legislature passed a law Sept. 15 to ban abortion statewide. Notre Dame is a private Catholic university, and the Catholic Church has explicitly pro-life teaching on abortion.

Kay’s sign included her personal email address. Her office door also was adorned by the letter “J,” which denotes a Notre Dame professor willing to help students seeking abortion.  

It isn’t clear how many Notre Dame professors display the symbol. Kay since has removed the sign from her office door, The Irish Rover reported. 

Kay, a professor of global affairs and sociology at Notre Dame for six years, recently was part of a panel discussion titled “Post-Roe America: Making Intersectional Feminist Sense of Abortion Bans.”

During the event, she discussed “why she thought abortion bans are ineffective and immoral, complementing her work to bring abortion to Notre Dame students,” The Irish Rover reported. 

In a Sept. 16 tweet, Kay wrote: “Will help as a private citizen if you have issues w access or cost. DM [direct message] me,” according to the Rover.  

The Rover also reported that, during the week of Sept. 26, Kay changed her Twitter profile from “Dr. Tamara Kay—Notre Dame abortion rights expert.” It now reads: “Dr. Tamara Kay: Abortion Rights & Policy Scholar.”  

Kay’s Twitter feed regularly features retweets of messages from Catholics for Choice and Abortion Finder. She has deleted tweets regarding students and abortions, the Rover reported.  

Merlot Fogarty, president of Notre Dame Right to Life, a pro-life student organization, told The Daily Signal in an email that he commends Notre Dame for being a pro-life institution, but that the university should do more to protect women and unborn children from chemical abortion. 

“We want to emphasize our support for Notre Dame as one of the few institutions still formally committed to protecting life, but [Notre Dame] needs to be doing more to protect women and children to truly promote a culture of life on campus,” Fogarty said. “We look forward to a public response from Notre Dame on this situation and [to] working with [the] administration and residential life to educate students and faculty on the danger of chemical abortion.” 

Fogarty emphasized Notre Dame’s role as setting an example for other Catholic institutions, and the responsibility that comes with being a prominent Catholic university. 

“Notre Dame is poised as the preeminent Catholic university to be the model for Catholic institutions across the nation in the onset of the battle against chemical abortion and the culture of death,” Fogarty said. 

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/13/notre-dame-professor-offers-abortion-assistance-to-students/?

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Fuming NYC parents rip DOE over faulty new grading, attendance system

Exasperated parents are ripping into the New York City public schools’ faulty new system that has been barring them from readily accessing their children’s grades or easily contacting teachers.

The Department of Education has been rolling out its own free grades, attendance and messaging applications, to replace banned third-party software that was involved in a data breach of more than 800,000 students last school year.

But families and teachers say the new system freezes or does not show data, and its features slow to roll out — leaving many without a sense of how their kids are faring in school.

“We’re having a lot of issues, parents having a lot of issues, schools having a lot of issues,” said Shirley Aubin, co-chair of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council (CPAC), where families on Thursday blasted the new platform during a meeting with DOE Chancellor David Banks.

“The parent interface is not there — and to put it more bluntly, it should’ve been ready before the first day of school,” Aubin said.

More than 500 schools have signed on to using the DOE system this school year, officials said last week — many to replace the breached products from software company Illuminate Education, including Skedula and Pupil Path.

The department announced its software rollout last May, saying at the time in a news release that the applications would be available before the first day of the school year.

Banks conceded to the parent council on Thursday he had heard about issues with the new applications before. “The system that we had before, the system itself worked fine enough, but the company that was responsible for it was in a position where people’s personal information was being co-opted,” Banks told the irate parents at the CPAC meeting.

“So we had to break ranks with them. We would have liked to have more time, more preparations so everything runs smoothly — but sometimes you’re thrown into a situation where you have to make a change. “And there’s nothing we can do about it. We just have to figure it out as we go.”

But David Irons, a parent of five teenage foster and adopted children on Staten Island, said he can’t check if his kids regularly attend class or are passing their classes.

“The DOE has a $38-billion budget, and they can’t get this simple thing done,” said Irons, also a high school special education and English teacher on the same borough. “The new system is all aspirational. None of it is ready to go.”

Irons told The Post that the old platforms used to have a messaging feature connecting teachers and parents.

Now, if involved families want to reach out to a teacher, they have to rely on the school or hope an online staff directory is updated. And if teachers want to reach out to families and let them know how their students are doing in school, they need to look up their contact information and hope its up-to-date — or find alternate messaging platforms. “I feel like we have no connection with the parents now,” Irons said.

While hundreds of schools are using the applications, other principals have opted for pricier third-party technology in lieu of the city’s free system — even while three-fourths of schools face budget cuts this fall.

Arthur Goldstein, an English as a second language teacher at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, said his school bought third-party tech last week, more than a month into the school year.

Goldstein told The Post he didn’t give tests until last week because of the unworkable grading software, and found many of his students failed. 

“It’s my fault,” said Goldstein. “But it’s also the fault of this system that requires me to approach my work differently, because I’m waiting for something that works.”

After that, he asked his administrators for his students’ contact information, and got a wonky spreadsheet with some functional phone numbers — while others didn’t work and some were missing. He said he “absolutely” would’ve made those calls earlier, had he had a better way to call home. “My classes are running much better since I made 20 or 30 phone calls.”

One high school parent at Susan Wagner on Staten Island told The Post she hasn’t been able to access the grades or attendance of her son, who had a 90-average pre-pandemic. Now, his grades have been slowly slipping, to 70s and 80s in recent school years.

Some class time has also been lost to teachers sitting down with students to manually show them their grades, a teacher at the school added.

“I’m afraid I missed something,” said the parent, “if I missed an alert I should’ve been able to see — to keep up with my son and his work. I’m afraid that he may fail something.”

The mom said she’s tried talking with her son, but wishes she had a better grasp of his progress to help guide him. “He tells me he does the work, but I’m really not sure because he’s never working at home,” she added. “I hope I’m getting through to him — but I really don’t know.”

The DOE did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

https://nypost.com/2022/10/13/nyc-parents-rip-doe-over-faulty-new-grading-attendance-system/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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14 October, 2022

Harvard's Data Undercuts Its Affirmative Action Defense

<i>They trumpet inclusion and practice exclusion.  They claim diversity while creating a monoculture.  America's leading university has completely lost touch with their own reality.  Poor reality contact is the leading sign of psychosis.  With such incompetent intellectual analysis, have they forfeited any respect as a university?</i>

Every year since 2013, usually during the first week of September, the Harvard Crimson publishes survey results profiling the incoming freshman class, including their political and social orientations. These feature-length reports have consistently shown that a dominant majority of Harvard’s incoming students identify as politically and socially progressive, with ever-fewer students identifying as conservative. This year, however, the Crimson didn’t publish the feature and didn’t reply to my inquiry about whether they would do so. Harvard may have good reasons for wanting to delay such a report, given an upcoming Supreme Court case.

In Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Supreme Court will reexamine a half-century-old justification for race-based university admissions—namely, that racial diversity generates viewpoint diversity on campus and contributes to the lively exchange of ideas. Past results of Harvard’s freshman surveys, which detail growing racial diversity but diminishing viewpoint diversity, discredit this justification. Of the Class of 2025, for example, only 1.4 percent identify as very conservative; only 7.2 percent identify as somewhat conservative; and only 18.6 percent identify as moderate. By contrast, 72.4 percent of freshmen identify as predominantly liberal. Yet this class is the “the most diverse class in the history of Harvard,” according to William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid.

Other survey responses drive the point home. Of members of the Class of 2025 who supported a candidate in the 2020 presidential election, 87 percent backed Joe Biden. Meantime, 82 percent said they supported the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, which resulted in at least $1 billion in damages and numerous deaths, while nearly half (49.8 percent) said that they supported defunding the police. This doesn’t sound like viewpoint diversity to me.

Without viewpoint diversity as a justification, race-based admissions—that is, affirmative action—may not survive. Since 2014, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a nonprofit group of more than 20,000 students, parents, and others, has argued that affirmative action violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which prohibit public and private universities receiving federal funds from discriminating based on race, color, and national origin. This straightforward legal argument is likely to play well with a Supreme Court that leans toward originalism, but this doesn’t mean that the justices’ decision will rest on that philosophy alone. In fact, the Court’s jurisprudence on race-conscious admissions has centered predominantly not on the legality of the policy but on its implications for higher education.

In his landmark opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Lewis Powell argued that the use of race as a factor in college admissions ought to be permitted because it would (presumably) lead to greater student-body diversity. This was a laudable goal for a university, he said, for it would allow it to achieve “a robust exchange of ideas.”

Sandra Day O’Connor recapitulated Powell’s argument in her opinion for the Court in Grutter v. Bollinger, upholding the University of Michigan Law School’s policy of intentionally favoring applicants from certain racial groups over others with similar qualifications. O’Connor justified the decision largely by appealing to its supposed policy implications. She cited several amicus briefs submitted by left-wing academics, corporations, and professional organizations, all of which alleged countless studies showing that racial and ethnic diversity guaranteed greater viewpoint diversity and, in turn, increased tolerance of differing opinions.

But is this true? Has the use of racial preferences in higher education admissions achieved the “robust exchange of ideas” on which it was originally justified by the courts?

In an amicus brief supporting SFFA’s challenge to race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the Legal Insurrection Foundation (LIF) says “no.” In the years since Grutter was decided, “the American university campus,” LIF argues, “has become less ideologically diverse and more intolerant of ideas challenging campus dogmas.” The group cites several nonpartisan surveys to support the claim. A 2021 survey of 37,104 students conducted jointly by the College Pulse, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and RealClearEducation found that more than 80 percent of students reported some amount of self-censorship.

Similarly, LIF notes that a Knight Foundation-Ipsos study released in January showed that 65 percent of college students felt today’s “campus climate prevents people from saying what they believe for fear of offending someone.” What’s more, less than half of all college students “said they were comfortable offering dissenting opinions to ideas shared by other students or the instructor in the classroom.” And 71 percent of students who identified as Republican “felt that the campus climate chilled speech.”

The Court now seems likely to strike down the use of race-conscious admissions in higher education next June. Given the originalist-bent of the Court’s majority, the decision will rely most heavily on the text of both Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause, which prohibit racial discrimination. But it may also have something to say about the faulty premise underlying race-conscious admissions all these years. Contrary to what O’Connor claimed in Grutter, affirmative action has not led to greater diversity of thought on America’s college campuses.

https://www.city-journal.org/affirmative-action-and-viewpoint-diversity-at-harvard

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Jewish students face vile abuse on campus as 'unacceptable' rise in anti-Semitism is recorded at UK universities

The findings come amid an ongoing investigation into the National Union of Students (NUS) over anti-Semitism allegations.

Robert Halfon, Commons education committee chairman, said: 'Universities and unions trumpet their so-called ''inclusion and diversity agenda'' but when it comes to anti-Semitism, it seems that those of the Jewish faith don't count.' 

A record 111 incidents of anti-Semitic abuse at universities were reported in 2020-21 to the charity Community Security Trust (CST).

Last year it recorded three incidents of swastikas or anti-Semitic messages graffitied on campus.

Earlier this year at Manchester students reportedly told someone at a Jewish Society stall which displayed an Israeli flag that she was 'worse than Hitler'.

An NUS spokesman said it could not comment due to the KC-led probe but added: 'We will take appropriate action in due course.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11309845/Anti-Semitism-rise-UK-universities-new-data-reveals.html

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Oregon Spends $90M on Practically Empty Pre-K

The Oregon Department of Education’s Preschool Promise Program has given nearly $90 million in grants to early learning facilities. Many of these facilities are under enrolled, including some with fewer than 10 students, one with a single student, and another with no students.

Oregon’s Preschool Promise program was launched in 2016 to provide publicly-funded preschool for 3-4 year-olds for families at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $53,000 for a family of four. It assigns "slots" to 268 select childcare providers — each one representing one student and being worth approximately $14,000 per year. By comparison in-state tuition and fees to attend the University of Oregon is $14,420.

The program has suffered from well-below expected enrollment, but still spent the money: $90 million for school years through February 2021 and February 2022.

The overspending in under-enrolled schools has more than a few examples, according to Fox News.

One such school, Village Childcare was paid $600,000 for 33 preschool slots in 2020-2021, and 20 preschoolers in 2021-2022. But the center reported fewer than ten students enrolled in the program during that time, Fox News reported.

All Families Welcome was paid to fill 18 slots in 2020-2021, but had no students enrolled. In 2021-2022, just one student was enrolled. Yet the center was paid over half a million dollars — $300,000 one year, and more than $220,000 the next year, Fox News reported.

Neighborhood House was awarded 36 slots both years, but had fewer than 10 students enrolled. They were awarded $448,000 in the 2020-2021 school year, and $370,000 in the 2021-2022 school year. 

All awarded facilities were paid for expected, not actual, enrollment. Why no cutback to match attendees?

An Oregon Department of Education spokesperson told Fox News that the Preschool Promise funding is mostly for fixed costs, including staffing, utilities and facilities.

Centers “require that programs be ready to serve eligible families as soon as they are referred, which means programs must be prepared at all times to serve the full number of funded slots,” the spokesperson said.

In the midst of these lower-than-expected numbers, the Early Learning Division said it’s “examining protocols to review enrollment and direct programs to reduce operations until enrollment increases.”

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/10/12/oregon_spends_90m_on_practically_empty_pre-k_858233.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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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13 October, 2022

Public School Fires Substitute Teacher for Raising Concerns Over Book Depicting Same-Sex Couples

Lindsey Barr was fired from her substitute teaching job after expressing concern over the content of a book in the school library.  

Barr is a mother of three boys. All her children attend public school in Bryan County, Georgia, about 30 miles southwest of Savannah, where she also works as a substitute teacher.  

In August, Barr learned that McAllister Elementary School, where her first- and third-grade sons attend and where she sometimes works, planned to have the book “All Are Welcome” read during a “read aloud” story time in the school library.  

“I actually thought that the theme of the book was great, kindness, … including everyone,” Barr, 37, told The Daily Signal during a phone interview Thursday, “but the images, the illustrations, are contrary to what we believe for traditional marriage and families.”  

The book’s colorful pictures include depictions of same-sex couples taking their children to school and two lesbian mothers, one of whom is pregnant.  

“I want to be able to instill [in my own children] what I think is biblically correct for marriage and family. And [the book] was against those beliefs,” said Barr, who previously worked as a full-time teacher for a decade in Bryan County public schools.  

On Aug. 16, Barr spoke with her 6-year-old son’s teacher and asked that he not be a part of the story time where the book was to be read. The teacher said that was not a problem.  

Later that day, Barr emailed Heather Tucker, principal of McAllister Elementary School, and asked to talk with her. The two had a phone call the following day, and Barr expressed her concerns over the pictures in the book.  

Barr says she explained to the principal that she and her husband would like to be the ones having conversations with their kids about issues such as same-sex marriage, rather than the school. The mother says she was clear that she wasn’t asking for the book to be removed from the school, only that her children not be exposed to the content.  

The principal agreed that her sons didn’t need to participate in the story time, Barr recalled.  The call ended and Barr said she felt like everything “was fine.” 

Not long after the conversation, Barr said, she tried to log into the online portal the school uses for substitute teachers to pick up more work. She could not do so. She emailed the principal, asking whether she had been removed as a substitute teacher, but did not hear back.  

“The next thing that I heard from the school was from the human resources director asking me to come in for a face-to-face meeting in regard to my role as a substitute teacher,” Barr told The Daily Signal.  Barr met Aug. 23 with the principal, Tucker, and Debi McNeal, director of human resources for the school district.  

“I’m gonna start by just saying some of the comments that I’m gonna say are difficult, they’re gonna be difficult to hear, they’re difficult for me to say,” Tucker told Barr at the beginning of the meeting, according to a transcript. The principal went on to explain to Barr why she was no longer allowed to be a substitute teacher in the school district: 

So last week you accused McAllister [Elementary] of pushing a propaganda campaign … with liberal extreme worldviews. That’s inaccurate. That is not something that we’re doing. However, every educator that walks into this building, regardless of personal views, they have to drop their biases at the door. It just has to be done. We have to be willing to support every child that comes into this building. 

Tucker said she was concerned about Barr’s bias “against same-sex couples,” according to the transcript. “It is very real that we could have a student that identifies as gay, or that has parents that identify as gay,” the principal said, “and I have concerns on how you would be able to support that student since those biases are still entering into the workplace as well.” 

Barr responded that she brought her concerns to the principal as a mother, not as an employee of the school district.  “I wasn’t sharing a bias with you. That isn’t a personal bias. I said, ‘As a Christian mother of children, young children, I don’t think that we should be pushing same-sex marriage on my children,’” Barr told Tucker.  

The two told Barr that she no longer would be allowed to be a  substitute teacher in the Bryan County school district. 

Philip Sechler, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal aid organization, sent a letter Sept. 13 to Trey Robertson, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning at the Bryan County Board of Education.  

In the letter, Sechler demanded that the school system “immediately reinstate Mrs. Barr so she can resume working as a substitute teacher at McAllister [Elementary], and that it refrain from any future retaliation against Mrs. Barr for her protected speech.”  

Sechler asked for a response from Robertson or the school district by 5 p.m. Sept. 16, explaining that if Barr was not reinstated, she would be “forced to pursue other legal options to vindicate her rights.”   Neither Robertson nor any other Bryan County school district official responded, Sechler says.  

Attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit Sept. 30 against McAllister Elementary School and Bryan County Schools with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Savannah Division. 

“Parents shouldn’t be bullied and intimidated by public schools who don’t want to hear their views,” Sechler told The Daily Signal. “Lindsey [Barr] expressed concerns to protect her own children and they fired her … and that’s wrong.”  

Barr said she is taking a stand to protect her constitutional right to free speech. Public schools, she said, “can’t retaliate against parents for expressing genuine concern about their own children’s education.”  

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/09/public-school-fires-substitute-teacher-for-raising-concerns-over-book-depicting-same-sex-couples/

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NYC schools struggle to cope with influx of 5,500 migrant kids

A Manhattan public school with just one certified bilingual teacher is reeling under the weight of a sudden influx of migrant students who don’t speak any English, The Post has learned. “We’re overwhelmed,” one frustrated teacher at PS 33 Chelsea Prep said Tuesday.

“We’ve all got migrant students in our classrooms. The teachers don’t speak Spanish. There’s no resources helping us out right now — it’s a very challenging situation.”

One outraged mom said migrant kids — easily identified by lime green ID tags that hang from their necks — have swelled the size of her daughter’s class from 15 to 20 kids.

“She’s in the third grade. Her teacher is giving her lower-level work due to the immigrants. They’re making the curriculum easier,” said Maria, a 29-year-old fashion designer. “The work is too easy for my daughter. There’s first-grade, second-grade and third-grade levels in her class. It’s ridiculous.”

The burden has some furious parents preparing to pull their kids out and send them elsewhere.

Maria said she’s “been looking at a private school on 42nd Street” where she’s planning to enroll the girl.

Another parent, Cooper, a 45-year-old chef, said he’s also “trying to change schools” for his 7-year-old son, who’s in second grade.

The alarming situation offers an example of how the flood of migrants to the Big Apple — now nearly 19,000 strong, with no sign of stopping — is straining the city’s ability to provide them with housing, education and social services.

On Friday, Mayor Eric Adams said that 5,500 migrant kids have been enrolled in the city’s public schools, revealing the startling number as he declared a state of emergency over the migrant crisis.

An official tally by Community Education Council District 2 lists 50 migrant students PS 33, which enrolled 555 children in 2020-21, the most recent school year for which the Department of Education has data posted online.

But a PS 33 teacher said that the count was far too low.   “There’s way more than 50 migrant students. It’s at least 90 right now,” the teacher said.

Other official totals include a combined 120 at PS 111 and MS 933, which share a single building, 65 at PS 51 and 15 at MS 297, with an unknown number at PS 11.

Earlier this month, The Post exclusively revealed that the influx of migrant kids swelled some classes at PS 111 to 38 students, leading to the transfer of 15 to PS 51.

The DOE decides where migrant kids can attend school, based on factors including the proximity of the shelters where their families have been placed by the city and the availability of seats in area schools.

https://nypost.com/2022/10/11/nyc-schools-struggle-to-cope-with-influx-of-5500-migrant-kids/

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University of Florida students protest Ben Sasse, say he poses a 'threat' as president due to his 'anti-gay marriage, anti-transgender and anti-abortion record'

University of Florida students are protesting their school's nomination of Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse as the new president given his conservative views. 

Several student groups, including the UF Young Democratic Socialists of America, UF Communists and UF College Democrats, organized a protest during three Q&A sessions between the Republican and the student body on Monday. 

Sasse, who's served as a senator for Nebraska since 2015, is poised to be the school's new president when he is expected to resign from office in December. 

Many of the university's liberal students, however, claim Sasse poses a 'threat' to the student body as they held protests over his looming appointment. 

'Ben Sasse is on the record anti-gay marriage, anti-transgender people and anti-abortion,' one student who joined the protest told Fox News. 'He poses a threat to all students that may be queer or non-men. 'I'm worried that it might be even harder for students to get an abortion.'

As students chanted and yelled against the Republican, he could be seen rushing out of the school following three Q&A sessions

The protesters, who were staged outside the ballroom where three forums with students were held, could still be heard inside as Sasse took questions from students. 

The senator was grilled on his prior stances, including his condemnation over the 2015 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing same-sex marriage.

Sasse has also been on the record celebrating the high court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and defended former ESPN commentator Curt Schilling when he was fired for sharing a meme about transgender bathrooms.  

Despite his right-leaning views, Sasse has taken a stance against his GOP colleagues. The Nebraska senator often criticized Donald Trump when he was president and even vowed not to vote for him in 2016. 

The Florida students were heard chanting: 'Hey, hey. Ho ho. Ben Sasse has got to go,' with others shouting, 'We don't want you here.' 

The school's socialist group also cheered on after Sasse rushed out of the university in a police car amid the protest.   'We ran Sasse out of our swamp,' the group wrote on Instagram. 'Today we showed the university that we will not let bigots enter our halls of power so long as we have a voice.' 

Several of the protesters told Fox that Sasse's appointment as president would hurt the school's reputation. 'If this goes through, I'm not going to be proud to be a Gator, and I'm worried that this might affect our rankings.' one student said. 

The University of Florida said Sasse was the sole finalist chosen by its search committee to replace outgoing president Kent Fuchs, who served for eight years and will become a teacher next year. 

After beating out 700 candidates, Sasse is expected to take the helm of the school in February.   

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11305477/University-Florida-students-protest-Ben-Sasse-say-views-pose-threat-school-president.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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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12 October, 2022

Britain’s ‘strictest headmistress’ gets a nod in Australia

At the Michaela Community School near Wembley, in north-west London, there are no mobile phones, detentions are given for the slightest misdemeanour and a disused car park is the no-frills playground.

The high school is famed for being Britain’s strictest, and its headmistress, Katharine Birbalsingh, pulls no punches.“We have the same issues that you have in Australia: poor behaviour and poor learning outcomes, in particular for disadvantaged children,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Birbalsingh espouses traditional teaching and believes in military-style discipline: students walk the corridors in silence and get detentions for forgetting a pencil case, ruler or not turning in their homework. Times tables are taught by rote. Progressive education methods are shunned. Gratitude is practised and expectations are high.

“I’m not wandering up and down the corridors with whips and chains, obviously,” she says. “People say [discipline] is mean. I’d say what is mean is keeping a child illiterate and innumerate.”

Birbalsingh, who was recently appointed chair of the UK’s social mobility commission, was thrust into the spotlight after giving a speech at the 2010 Conservative Party conference where she warned the education system was “broken because it keeps poor children poor”. Four years later, after battling a barrage of detractors and critics, she opened the Michaela school in a dreary converted office block based in the disadvantaged borough of Brent.

The school’s explicit teaching methods, no-excuses behaviour policy and direct instruction style divide opinion. Tough-love behaviour systems (slouching in class is off-limits, toilet breaks are timed) has attracted controversy and critics.

However, it has also drawn praise from experts including Programme for International Student Assessment boss Andreas Schleicher who has described the school as creating “discipline created through structure, predictability and ownership. The children I met appeared happy and confident.” And its results place it well above average when compared to other similar schools, with graduates going off to universities including Oxford and the London School of Economics.

Birbalsingh, labelled Britain’s strictest headteacher, is firm that the school’s behaviour policies, including the silent corridor rule, minimise bullying and maximise teaching time.

“In schools with disadvantaged children sometimes you can find poor behaviour, and it can be constant disruption. As a disadvantaged child school is your one route out, your way of being able to be socially mobile. And if school lets you down, then that’s it.”

“We expect everyone to do their homework. If standards are lowered for certain children, who will inevitably be the disadvantaged children, then those children will never succeed.”

She rejects “progressive” teaching methods, where desks are grouped and students “lead the learning”. Teachers at Michaela have a single voice in the classroom and there is silence for reading, writing and practice.

“You have got to have lots of knowledge about something to think differently about it. When you teach children as a traditionalist you can still break up explanations and have a bit of turn to your partner work and class discussions.”

Tight rules around smartphones and social media are also critical, she says. At an education conference this year she told the audience: “If we genuinely want things to be fairer, and we want our disadvantaged children to be socially mobile, the best thing is getting them not to have a smartphone.”

Students are encouraged to hand over their mobile phones where they are put in a school safe for days, weeks or months.

Michaela, one of about 600 “free schools” in the UK, was singled out last month by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet in a speech for the James Martin Institute as a school with a “rigorous culture of high expectations, high behavioural standards and back-to- basics teaching that [has] propelled disadvantaged students to extraordinary achievement. I want the same outcomes for our kids.”

“When students are held to reasonable standards of behaviour and respect – they perform better, and they are happier,” he said. It came after NSW announced a global recruitment search for a chief behaviour adviser, as schools across sectors battle worsening student conduct.

This month, Birbalsingh, who was a teacher for more than a decade in inner-London schools before starting Michaela, will appear at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney on a discussion about building world-class schools.

She emphasises that her school, next to the jubilee and metropolitan line (the train can be heard rattling loudly in the bare-bones schoolyard), looks “quite simple”.

“We’ve not covered the walls with lots of pictures and things. People don’t realise, when I was a younger teacher, I spent all of my time decorating. I use my fire engine red paint for the border around my bulletin board and would put up lovely dark blue paper with a golden border around it and I would pay myself to create big laminated sheets with instructions.

“I should have as my time planning better lessons... I shouldn’t have been spending my time on that. And sometimes we all spend our time on things that don’t have as much impact.”

Oliver Lovell, a Melbourne-based maths teacher who visited the school last month, said while it was hard to overstate the positive impact of Michaela’s instruction on disadvantaged students, there were potential costs when a particular educational approach is passionately pursued.

“Some have argued that highly structured instructional methods reduce learner independence which has negative impacts when the structure is removed at university and beyond. I’m glad that we have a diversity of schools, including Michaela, so that we can begin to gain clearer answers to these important questions.”

Lovell said one of the most striking aspects to the school was seeing how the lack of student disruptions “frees up teacher time”.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/britain-s-strictest-headmistress-on-what-schools-should-do-differently-20221007-p5bnza.html

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Woke University of Southern Maine students demand education professor be fired after she told class that there are only two sexes

A group of students at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine are calling for their professor to be fired after she said in class only two sexes exist. 

Christy Hammer, a professor of education, allegedly made the statement during a heated debate about gender identity in her  'Creating a Positive Learning Environment' class, causing an uproar among the graduate students.

Only one student agreed with the educator. The rest maintained both biological sexes and social genders are on a spectrum. 

The point was first made during class on September 7, but was repeated a week later after student Elizabeth Leibiger, who is non-binary and was absent the previous week, brought up the topic again. 

She then said she felt 'under personal attack' after the professor again said only two sexes exist. 'I asked [Hammer] how many sexes there were,' Leibiger said. 'She said, 'Two.' I felt under personal attack.'

Biologically, there are only two sexes. Men have XY chromosomes, while women have XX chromosomes. Progressives say gender can have a broader spectrum than sex. 

But anti-woke campaigners warning that the fixation on denying the biological reality that only two sexes exist is absurd, and potentially puts people's health at risk. 

Almost the entire class of 22 students walked out, all except one demanding a  meeting to be held with the university's School of Education and Human Development.

'I let her know I didn't think she was qualified to teach a class about positive learning environments. It's the ultimate irony,' Leibiger said to Fox News. 

A restorative justice meeting was held, but Professor Hammer's position didn't change.

Two dozen graduate students in the class continued to demand that the university replace Hammer, believing her to be transphobic.

Students are now refusing to return to the classroom in which she teaches and will only attend class if a new educator be appointed. The class is a requirement to complete the graduate-level Extended Teacher Education Program and become a certified teacher in Maine. 

'We are aware of this situation and are taking steps to provide students with the support needed,' Interim Provost Adam Tuchinsky told the Bangor Daily News.

Another student suggested Hammer either undergo diversity training or simply retire.

The university has now suggested that an 'alternative' section for the class will be created but that the professor will not be removed.

'We have developed an alternative plan for this class and will be opening a new section of this course for those students who would like to move. The original section taught by professor Hammer will continue for any student who wishes to remain in that class,' a university spokesperson said.

University officials have not revealed how many students will be moving to the new class.

'It's our job as educators to grow and change, address our biases, and above all else, protect every one of our students,' Leibiger said. 'I think that the next step USM needs to take is being clear what accountability will look like for Christy Hammer.'

There appear to be plenty of people happy to support Hammer's position with almost 2,000 people signing a petition for her to keep her job.

Wrangles over sex and gender issues continue to roil campuses across the US. Transgender rights supporter say they wish to boost visibility and equality for a small, vulnerable section of society.

Critics have likened the issue to a mania they say is eroding women's rights, and convincing youngsters to seek potentially irreversible medical treatments it is feared they could one day regret.  

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11293139/University-Southern-Maine-students-demand-education-professor-fired-told-class-theres-two-sexes.html

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A hate-filled curriculum in Australia

It has not taken long for Prime Minister Albanese to weigh into the culture wars, even though the lefty progressive types insist that they are a figment of our imagination. Last week, our new PM sent up a rallying cry for what he termed as ‘fair dinkum’ history to be taught in Australian schools. By ‘fair dinkum’ he meant that children need to be taught about the atrocities committed by people of British descent upon indigenous people.

It is clear that the PM has not read the latest version of the national curriculum. If he had, he would have known that according to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority ‘Indigenous’ or ‘Aboriginal’ are now verboten because they are terms of oppression. We now must use ‘First Nations Australians’ or ‘Australia’s First Nations Peoples’. Keep up, Albo!

He would also know that the singular narrative currently taught to Australian children in the history syllabus is that Australia was founded on racism, and that the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 resulted in dispossession and genocide.

In Year 3, teachers will explain that ‘people have different points of view on some events that are commemorated and celebrated; for example, some First Nations Australians regard “Australia Day” as “Invasion Day”’. In Year 4, students will learn about the ‘effects of contact with other people on First Nations Australians and their Countries/Places following the arrival of the First Fleet and how this was viewed by First Nations Australians as an invasion’.

As part of a classroom activity, they will look at ‘paintings and accounts by individuals involved in exploration and colonisation to explore the impact that British colonisation had on the lives of First Nations Australians; for example, dispossession, dislocation and the loss of lives through frontier conflict, disease, and loss of food sources and medicines, the embrace of some colonial technologies…’.

In Year 9, they will study ‘the impact of colonisation by Europeans on First Nations Australians such as frontier warfare, massacres, removal from land, and relocation to “protectorates, reserves and missions”’. They will also investigate ‘the forcible removal of children from First Nations Australian families in the late 19th century and 20th century (leading to the Stolen Generations), including the motivations for the removal of children, the practices and laws that were in place, and experiences of separation.’

We are all for talking about the mistakes of the past. Nobody is suggesting that they should be ignored. No one is saying that there was no violence between white settlers and the indigenous populations. Quite the contrary. These are important aspects of the history of modern Australia that all children should know.

But this discussion has nothing to do ‘fair dinkum’ history, or even unfair dinkum history for that matter. What Australian children are being introduced to in the classroom is pure post-modernist theory, specifically post-colonial theory. They are being schooled in the ‘settler colonialism genocide’ paradigm which sprang from the febrile imagination of Australian historian Patrick Wolfe in the 1990s.

Wolfe famously declared that settler colonialism was a structure, not an event and that it was premised on the elimination rather than exploitation of the native population. According to Wolfe, how settler colonialism disrupted the indigenous relationship to land was a profoundly violent attack on their very being, which violence continues with every day of ‘occupation’.

Our education bureaucrats are motivated by the belief that European expansion was a capitalist and racist attempt to replace indigenous people with more productive non-indigenous populations, even at the cost of genocide.

Wolfe’s paradigm has been embedded into every single subject of the national curriculum, not just history, via the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Cultures and Histories cross-curriculum priority. The ‘organising ideas’ of this priority are worth reproducing in full. Namely, that:

First Nations communities of Australia maintain a deep connection to, and responsibility for, Country/Place and have holistic values and belief systems that are connected to the land, sea, sky and waterways.

The occupation and colonisation of Australia by the British, under the now overturned doctrine of terra nullius, were experienced by First Nations Australians as an invasion that denied their occupation of, and connection to, Country/Place.

The First Peoples of Australia are the Traditional Owners of Country/Place, protected in Australian Law by the Native Title Act 1993 which recognises pre-existing sovereignty, continuing systems of law and customs, and connection to Country/Place. This recognised legal right provides for economic sustainability and a voice into the development and management of Country/Place.

If Prime Minster Albanese was really concerned about truth-telling in history, he would make sure that the history syllabus desists from propagating historical inaccuracies, such as the mythical notion that the British were warmongering, genocidal invaders. He would make sure that the positive aspects of how modern Australian history came into being were taught to children. He would start explaining to young Australians why this country has been the safe haven for millions of people fleeing from all over the world.

But the Prime Minister is not interested in a true account of history, he is interested in spin and politics. The left wing of the Labor party, of which Albanese is a product, sees power in the division of society, which is why it so strongly believes in multiculturalism and in undermining unifying symbols such as the Crown, Australia Day and the parliament.

Right now, the Albanese government is committed to dividing Australians by race by way of creating a parallel system of representative government comprised of indigenous Australians to the exclusion of all other Australians. Albanese and the left-wing political parties will use education to continue to inflict guilt and shame upon the nation until such a time that their ideas are accepted as fait accompli.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/unfair-dinkum-history/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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11 October, 2022

Arizona families keep winning on school choice and more states need to follow our lead

Arizona families will now be able to freely choose any school of their choice and have state tax dollars follow their child to that school. Our new universal Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) law is in effect for all Arizona students after radical opponents of school choice failed to submit the minimum required signatures to put the law on hold and refer it to the 2024 ballot. This is the first legislation of its kind and is now the gold standard in the United States. Every state in the nation should also follow our lead in freeing students from undesirable educational settings. 

After the Arizona legislature passed this legislation and when Governor Doug Ducey signed it into law on July 7, a union-backed organization (Save our Schools - SOS) immediately started organizing a campaign to gain enough signatures to refer it to the ballot. That would have temporarily denied school choice to thousands of Arizona students. Arizona provides for laws to be referred to the ballot before going into effect if enough valid signatures are gathered on legal petitions by opponents of those future statutes. 

This group began their efforts by setting up tables around the state to attract individuals to sign their petitions. On Saturday, July 9, I first encountered a couple working for SOS. They misrepresented the petition by saying untrue things about ESAs, upsetting me. I would have been fine if they were gaining signatures from Arizona voters on the proper merits of the policies, but I was not going to stand for lies — especially since my family greatly benefited from this program over the past decade. In a respectful way, I verbally countered two of their volunteers for over an hour on their misrepresentation, and that is when I decided I wasn’t going to stand by and watch this happen to our state and to our families.  

I went on the group’s social media accounts to find out where they were collecting signatures in my community and began countering them one after another. I would position myself nearby on public sidewalks in 110-degree heat, waiting for unsuspecting Arizonans to approach the SOS signature gatherers so that I could give them the truth before they signed. I quickly found that voters would look through the legislation, which was attached to the petitions, after hearing my arguments to find out for themselves what was inside this legislation. 

SOS repeatedly lost support because they could not persuade reasonable people once the truth was exposed. After doing this for two weekends in a row, I realized I couldn't do this by myself and started to call people to help me. Four friends came out to help me the third weekend, which grew the following weekend to 61 friends, and then to 107, and more each week. We ended this little campaign with over 1,000 families helping statewide — a huge achievement and commitment for everyone involved.  

Our children were flipped off, cursed at, and assaulted while we peacefully protested. The union-backed group tried to bully and intimidate our families in the hope that we would just go home. Instead, our peaceful band of parents prayed for them, ignored them, and pushed on with our mission. All of us were united to ensure every voter in Arizona fully understood the ramifications of what they were signing. 

Thanks to our tireless efforts to educate voters and counter the lies of the anti-school choice movement this summer, SOS fell well short of the minimum requirement for petition signatures, which was around 120,000.  

This organic movement started with a mom, a private citizen, and remained a grassroots, collective effort from start to finish. The union-backed group tried their best to paint a bad picture of us to the public, but these attempts flopped. 

When you have hundreds of individual citizens standing up for their freedoms, it is impossible to blame one person. SOS should look in the mirror if they want someone to blame for the huge pushback they experienced. If they didn't lie to voters to gain their signatures, we might have never been motivated to counter them.  

Parents want options for their children's education, and that is why ESAs have been popular among a lot of Arizona families for years. However, since the universal ESA application went online mid-August, more than 23,000 new students have applied for this new-and-improved scholarship, surpassing a lot of expectations - and it's still early on in the process. The unions behind SOS know that they are immediately losing control of thousands of Arizona families, and that is why they worked so hard to stop this legislation. Thankfully, they came up short with their referendum attempt. 

Parents are the first and primary educators of their children, and they want to be able to have their children attend a school that allows them to thrive and become the people they were created to be. The world will be a better place when parents are freely directing their child’s education with no obstacles in their way. And now, in Arizona, that educational freedom is our way of life. 

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/arizona-families-keep-winning-school-choice-more-states-need-follow-our-lead

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Do Oxford students really need trigger warnings?

It is freshers’ week on campus [at Oxford]. Brand new students get to make friends, get drunk and find their way around university. The excitement culminates with freshers’ fair, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to find your tribe by joining everything from the paragliding club to the Mao appreciation society. Who cares if you never attend a single meeting? For one brief moment, you can flirt with the person you might become.

Freshers’ fairs offer new students a glimpse of the intellectual and political possibilities on offer at university. But sadly not at Oxford. This year, Oxford University’s freshers’ fair comes with a big fat trigger warning. Apologies. I should of course have prefaced that sizeist statement with ‘Trigger Warning: body shaming.’ And to be totally accurate, it is not one big fat trigger warning on the whole fair but a multitude of little warnings, one for each stall deemed to be promoting activities or ideas those in charge think new students might find distressing.

It is unlikely to be the bungee jumping club or the competitive vodka-drinking society that gets slapped with a trigger warning. It is not physical risks that students are being advised to avoid but emotional distress. The fashion for warnings has taken off following a row over the presence of an anti-abortion, pro-life group at last year’s fair.

Whatever your view on abortion, the application of a trigger warning suggests that the mere presence of pro-life campaigners is potentially so distressing that students should steer clear altogether. But what is the point of a university if not to confront difficult ideas? Presumably, medical students need to think about how they might counsel pregnant women; philosophy students may ponder the point at which human life begins and history students might look at how women’s rights have changed over time. Badging these topics as potentially distressing helps no one.

The focus on anti-abortion campaigners reveals the political motivation that lies behind trigger warnings. Whatever the rhetoric, they have nothing to do with protecting people suffering from trauma. Repeated studies have shown that trigger warnings are not only ineffective but may actually be counterproductive when it comes to helping psychologically vulnerable students. But they continue to be useful for activists who want to flag up people or ideas they consider politically dangerous. Trigger warnings highlight challenges to the current consensus on campus.

Spraying trigger warnings around universities like disinfectant has a devastating impact on free speech. Students learn that university is not a place for exploring ideas but a place to be protected from anything controversial. They learn that debate is not an exciting chance to hone your arguments or change your mind, but something best avoided for your own emotional safety.

With this in mind, Oxford’s freshers’ fair also has a ‘wellbeing zone’ where students who feel ‘uncomfortable’ can go to relax and chat with members of the ‘advice and wellbeing team’. Presumably there will be colouring books, bean bags, milk and cookies. This is not university but play school.

I have been writing about campus censorship for more than a decade. Back at the start, I was at pains to point out that few students arrived at university itching to no-platform controversial speakers or sign petitions to have books removed from the library. I argued it was activist academics and university administrators who taught students to see themselves as vulnerable and ideas as dangerous.

Things have changed since then. Often, it is the students’ unions, like the one at Oxford, that are now pushing for trigger warnings. The freshers’ fair organisers have justified their plans on social media, explaining that they are no longer able to ban societies outright because of freedom of speech legislation. We can only imagine their frustration. The trigger warnings, then, are a ‘mitigation’ put in place ‘to support the welfare of students’.

It is now students who want to stick red flags on ideas they find distasteful. This is peer-to-peer censorship by young adults firmly wedded to a perception of themselves as mentally and emotionally vulnerable and in need of psychological protection from dangerous ideas. The form-wielding bureaucrats and rainbow lanyard-clad lecturers can stand down. Their work is complete.

In truth, students’ unions have always attracted busybodies wanting to boss their fellows into organised activities and carefully-controlled fun. The difference is that today, their main concern safeguarding the fragile mental health of their peers and opposing political views they find distressing. We have to hope that Oxford’s latest intake will ignore the trigger warnings and turn the wellbeing zone into a space for ferocious debate.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/do-oxford-students-really-need-trigger-warnings/?

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One of Australia's most prestigious universities to crack down on students who claim to be Aboriginal without ANY proof

<i>About time.  <a href="https://malcolmsmiscellany.blogspot.com/2022/10/blackfellas-and-not-so-blackfellas.html">Malcolm Smith</a> has a graphic commentary on the matter</a>.  I put up a similar gallery <a href="http://jonjayray.com/abocon.html">in 2020</a></i>

One of Australia's most prestigious universities has been praised for a crackdown on students 'rorting the system' by falsely claiming they are Indigenous or Torres Strait Islander.

The University of Sydney has drafted a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Status Policy which means undergraduates can no longer simply sign a statutory declaration to prove they have a First Nations background.

Instead, the university may force students to supply a 'letter of identity' from a local Aboriginal Land Council and complete the Commonwealth Government's three-part identity test.

Radio 2GB host Ben Fordham praised the university for introducing the measures and called on others to follow suit.

'Other organisations should introduce stronger checks too, because what we're seeing is wrong and it's fraudulent,' he said.

The changes come after lobbying from Aboriginal land councils which allege there has been a significant increase in people applying for the benefits.

The latest Census results released in June 2021 found a 25 per cent increase in Australians identifying as Indigenous.

Indigenous groups said the way the current system is being abused is 'embarrassing'. 'It's open fraud. We say to academic students: can they pass a paper without citing a verified source?' Aboriginal Land Council CEO Nathan Moran told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Michael Mansell, Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman, said poor white people were falsely identifying as Indigenous in a move he called 'identity seeking'. "They don't attribute any value to their identity as a poor white person in Tasmania, so they are searching to attach themselves to something that has greater value and I think many of those people believe that's in being Aboriginal,' he said following the release of the Census results.

Fordham said students abusing the system for places in courses or more affordable degrees was 'wrong and fraudulent'. 'They are attending schools, they're getting jobs and taking away opportunities from people who grew up Indigenous,' the 2GB host said.

'People are falsely identifying as Indigenous when they're not - there are Indigenous voices calling out a fraud, and we should be listening to them. 

'Sydney Uni should be congratulated and other organisations should be following suit. Because it's wrong and it's fraudulent. Some of the so-called First Nations people receiving benefits are as genuine as a three dollar note.'

A spokesperson for Sydney University said its review was not motivated by fraudulently claimed scholarships, but the institution wanted to ensure its program was 'in line with current community expectations'. 

'[The review] was initiated in response to multiple expressions of community concern, particularly in relation to the use of statutory declarations, rather than any specific concerns about fraud,' they said.

'We are seeking feedback and further input from members of our own and the broader community, representative organisations and other universities on this culturally significant matter.'

The university has an enrolment of 0.9 per cent Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander students, which is below the national sector average of 1.72 per cent.

Students however believe the change in policy could result in at-need Indigenous people missing out on places because of the red tape around new enrolment.

'This new policy is likely to disproportionately affect Indigenous people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds,' a group of Indigenous students opposing the change said in a statement.

'In some circumstances students may come from abusive families, have been in foster care or for other reasons not be able to get family documentation to undergo the process that has been proposed.'  

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11297517/University-Sydney-praised-crackdown-students-falsely-claiming-Aboriginal.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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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10 October, 2022

Can Public Schools Be Saved?

For decades conservatives have decried the erosion of standards in our taxpayer funded public schools, but we now recognize that in addition to being ineffective at teaching children the basic skills they need to be functional adult citizens, the public schools are also the source of much of the cultural rot that is destroying the moral underpinnings of American civilization.

This has caused many parents, grandparents, and taxpayers to conclude that our public schools are beyond saving. The only answer is to pull children out of the cesspool many public schools have become and to homeschool kids or enroll them in privately funded religious schools.

Our friend E. Ray Moore, Chairman, Christian Education Initiative (www.Christedu.org) and Chairman, Public School Exit (www.publicschoolexit.com), is one of the leaders who says “promoting the school reform idea after so much hard evidence that for decades shows public schools are harmful to children, do not educate but rather indoctrinate, and that public school reform does not work.”

Pastor Moore, an Air Force Reserve Chaplain, says we are now at a once in a one-hundred-year moment for a new K-12 Christian education and homeschooling awakening with millions of children entering the safe sanctuary of free-market and private Christian education, and he asks “How much longer do we need to wait until the conservative movement sees the utter futility of conservative public-school reform?” State-sponsored public education must be abandoned by Christian and conservative people if we are to win the hearts and minds of our youth, he concluded.

Now, Pastor Moore’s Christian criticism of public education has been joined by a powerful voice on the more secular Right – that of Michael Reagan, the prominent syndicated columnist and political commentator and eldest son of President Ronald Reagan.

In a column for NewsMax, “Best Way to End Depraved Curriculums, Take Your Kids Out” co-authored with Michael R. Shannon, Michael Reagan revealed that the New Jersey Board of Education has issued rulings on a variety of degenerate activities that must be taught in the state’s public schools and it’s worse than you can imagine. (Emphasis by CHQ.)

Everything the "church ladies" warned of when sex education was introduced into schools (and some no one could have imagined) has painfully come true, wrote Messrs. Reagan and Shannon. Depravity, grooming, obscenity and innocence theft are all now a feature of government-mandated public school pornography exposure.

According to the research documented in the article, New Jersey education "experts" think 13-year-olds are emotionally ready for this: "according to the New Jersey standards, students should 'describe pregnancy testing, the signs of pregnancy, and pregnancy options, including parenting, abortion, and adoption;’ and 'Define vaginal, oral, and anal sex.'"

Once they’ve mastered all the sexual techniques the Bible warns against, the same students should "develop a plan to eliminate or reduce risk of unintended pregnancy and STIs (including HIV)."

That plan is easy enough and contains only a single word: Abstain. But we think the demon-possessed state Board would find that approach to be not "inclusive" enough, observed Reagan and Shannon.

In the unlikely event a New Jersey local school board is run by adults who don’t think the role of education is to act like evangelists for sexual license, the options for sanity are limited, wrote Reagan and Shannon. One educrat — who was happy to emphasize there is no hope for normal parents — boasted that opting not to indoctrinate students is impossible.

"If we do not, we do not pass New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (NJQSAC) monitoring. If the district fails this process we may become ineligible for state and even federal funding."

We are happy to commend the parents who opted their children out of this disgusting curriculum, but the bad news is, it’s not enough, the authors observed. The children whose parents didn’t opt them out will be happy to share all the titillating details and graphic illustrations with children whose parents did opt out, noted Reagan and Shannon.

Once this teacher transmitted virus enters the school system there is no isolation strategy that will work. The only real choice is to get your children out of public (read government) schools, concluded Messrs. Reagan and Shannon.

Can public schools be fixed, even by electing more conservatives to local school boards and state legislatures? You can't fix socialism, says E. Ray Moore, and public education fits the definition of socialism where government owns the means of production, property and services.

Many conservative leaders, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who has invested a lot of political capital in electing conservatives to Sunshine State school boards would disagree.

https://www.conservativehq.org/post/can-public-schools-be-saved

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UK: Student union BANS white students from attending Black History Month events - sparking accusations of racial segregation

A student union has come under fire after it banned white students from Black History Month events, sparking accusations of racial segregation.

Students at the University of Westminster were told by its union in an email that some of the events would be 'reserved for black students to encourage a safe space for discussions and honest conversations'.

But social anthropology lecturer at Edinburgh University Dr Neil Thin hit back and branded the move 'tragic', accusing the London university of copying racial segregation 'previously seen in South African and USA education systems'. 

The University of Westminster students were not told which events which they would be banned from during a month specifically celebrating black history through talks, dance nights and film screenings, the Telegraph reports.

Dr Thin said: 'It is bitterly ironic to see the rhetoric of 'safe spaces' abused to justify racial segregation. 

'Nothing is more likely to make social spaces unsafe than this kind of wilful sowing of interethnic suspicion and division.'

But just yesterday, the student union's most recent social media post emphasised that all students were invited to an event with Zoe Garsh, founder of Ms Independent which runs career courses for young women.

The caption said: 'This is a Black History Month event but ALL students are welcome! Be sure not to miss out'.

Leader of the Free Speech Union Toby Young has also weighed in to the debate as he labelled the group 'zealots' who were failing to see the bigger picture.

'At some point, you’d think it would be clear to these zealots that you’re not going to reduce racial discrimination by discriminating against people on the basis of their race, but they’re so blinkered by ideological groupthink they cannot see this glaring contradiction,' he said. 

Tory MP Sir John Haynes has called for an investigation to see if there was any potential discrimination.

He also voiced concerns over the 'sinister' nature that 'such ideas can be propagated in a free and open society'.

The Westminster Students' Union declined to comment. 

Meanwhile a spokesman for the university said: 'One of the university's key Black Lives Matter commitments was to eliminate all gaps associated with success measures for all BME students. Black History Year Create, an intensive career-defining programme aimed at addressing disparities among black students, does exactly that.

'Equality of opportunity does not always mean giving everyone access to the same thing; it means creating a level playing field by offering some programmes to those who are underrepresented or those who have had less access to opportunity.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11294051/Student-union-BANS-white-students-Black-History-Month-events.html

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Australia: How left-wing teachers have taken schools 'back to the Middle Ages', according to ex-PM Tony Abbott - and conservatives are 'too polite' to stop it

Left-wing teachers have taken Australian schools 'back to the Middle Ages' as dogma replaces learning and 'heretics' are hunted down, according to former prime minister Tony Abbott. 

The radicalisation of education by the left was so 'pervasive' and 'destructive' the damage done would take generations to fix, the firebrand conservative said. 

And he warned conservatives were not without blame in the rise of left-wing ideology - saying they were often too polite to call out the 'palpable nonsense' of activists. 

Mr Abbott made the remarks on stage with fellow staunch conservative, former Liberal senator Amanda Stoker, at the right-wing CPAC convention in Sydney. 

He said nowhere had 'the long march of the left through our institutions... been more pervasive and destructive than in our educational system'.

'It’s almost like we have gone back to Middle Ages where there is dogma - only it's not Christian dogma, it’s anything but Christian dogma - with modern day inquisitions hunting out modern day heretics (and) if not burning them at the stake at least cancelling them,' Mr Abbott told the October 1 conference. 

Mr Abbott admitted he was out of step with the core beliefs of left-wing dogma. 'I don't like the climate cult, I don’t like the virus hysteria. I can't understand the gender fluidity push,' he said. 

He warned that repairing the state of the schools would be a 'multi-generational' task that would require a cultural shift.  'It took us a long time to get into this deplorable position and I fear it's going to take a long time to get back to where we should be,' Mr Abbott said.

Mr Abbott called for more parental involvement in schools, greater attempts to attract the 'best and brightest' people to teaching and 'above all more academic rigour'. 

He believed that education should be about the 'disinterested pursuit of truth'. 'There's got to be this insatiable curiosity, what more can we know? How better can we be,' he said.

Mr Abbott said he believed activists had taken advantage of the 'good manners' of people who knew their left-wing beliefs were 'palpable nonsense' but were too polite to say so.

'One of the things I often say is the majority that stays silent will not long remain the majority for very long,' he said. 'Good people have been too polite in the face of things that defy common sense. 'We can't let politeness stop us from expressing ourselves and contradicting in a polite and respectable way stuff which is palpable nonsense. 'Sometimes we have been unduly deferential. We have been remarkably shy of being the adults we should be.'  

The former prime minister, who won office in 2013 but was deposed by Malcolm Turnbull in 2015 after a run of poor polls, also argued strongly against the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament, calling it 'discrimination'.

'Just because there may have been institutionalised discrimination in the past that’s no reason to institutionalise discrimination in the present and the future' Mr Abbott said to a round of applause from the CPAC crowd at Sydney's Darling Harbour. 

The Albanese government has promised to hold a referendum on amending the constitution to create the special 'Voice' body, which would advise federal parliament on matters important to Indigenous Australians.  

Mr Abbott argued the Voice to Parliament was being pushed with bullying tactics. 'We should never allow ourselves to be morally bullied into changing what works and if something doesn’t work let's fix it,' Mr Abbott said. 'What we shouldn’t do is forsake the important principles that made our country special and precious in an attempt to apologise for bad behaviour in the past.' 

He said if Indigenous people weren't sufficiently represented in parliament they should be elected 'in the normal way'.

'Likewise the emissions obsession will eventually end when weather-dependent power can't keep the lights on. 'And the cultural self-loathing will stop when people have to choose between liberal democracy and its alternatives. 'That’s our task, to fight the good fight, to stay the course and keep the faith.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11281887/Tony-Abbott-says-schools-hunt-heretics-teach-CPAC-Sydney-event.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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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9 October, 2022

Elon Musk blames woke colleges for turning his transgender daughter Vivian, 18, against him and accuses America's elite institutions of teaching 'full-on communism'

Elon Musk has blamed America's woke colleges for turning his transgender daughter Vivian against him. 

In a new interview with the Financial Times, the world's richest man blamed 'neo-Marxists' in elite schools and universities for the estrangement between him and his daughter.  He added: 'It's full-on communism . . . and a general sentiment that if you're rich, you're evil.'

It is unclear where Vivian goes to school, and Musk offered no further details on his allegation. Woke students seeking to ban and censor views they consider offensive have gained a foothold in many liberal schools and universities across the US.

The long-form interview was part of the newspaper's Lunch with the FT series. During the Q&A, Musk also touched on issues relating to Donald Trump's social network and politics in general. 

Musk, the father of nine, appeared to shrug off having a relationship with Vivian by saying: 'It may change, but I have very good relationships with all the others. Can't win them all.' 

Vivian, who was born a biological male and given the name Xavier Alexander Musk, submitted a legal petition to change her name and her gender back in April.

She told a California court she wanted to be known as Vivian Jenna Wilson, in part to distance herself from her father, who is worth close to $272 billion. That petition was granted in June. Her mother is Canadian writer is Justine Wilson. 

Musk once famously tweeted: 'I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare.' And: 'Pronouns suck.' 

Later in the FT interview, Musk said someone who is twice the age of the average age of the United States should not be in charge, a not-so-thinly veiled jab at President Joe Biden. 

Musk also spoke about his behavior on Twitter, saying: 'Aren’t you entertained? I play the fool on Twitter and often shoot myself in the foot and cause myself all sorts of trouble . . . I don’t know, I find it vaguely therapeutic to express myself on Twitter. It’s a way to get messages out to the public.'

Speaking about politics, Musk said he was considering launching his own political action committee that will support candidates who are more moderate known as the Super Moderate Super PAC. 

The Tesla founder earlier hinted support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if the Republican ran for the presidency in 2024.   

Musk spoke about the other favorite for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump, in the Financial Times feature. 

He called the former Apprentice host's social platform Truth Social 'essentially a right-wing echo chamber. It might as well be called Trumpet.' 

Musk previously made it clear that he did not hate Trump but said he hoped the former president would 'hang up his hat and sail into the sunset.'

In July, during a rally in Alaska, Trump called Musk a 'bulls*** artist.'  

When talking about his proposed deal to buy Twitter, Musk said: 'I'm not doing Twitter for the money. It's not like I'm trying to buy some yacht and I can't afford it. I don't own any boats.'

He went on: 'But I think it's important that people have a maximally trusted and inclusive means of exchanging ideas and that it should be as trusted and transparent as possible.'

Musk continued: 'Twitter is certainly an invitation to increase your pain level. I guess I must be a masochist.'

He previously stated that he would reinstate many of those who had been banned from Twitter if he took over, a move that would hurt the relevancy of Truth Social.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11293657/Elon-Musk-blames-woke-colleges-turning-transgender-daughter-Vivian-18-against-him.html

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NYC's private $57,000-a-year Barnard College will offer abortion pills to students as a result of Roe v Wade being overturned

Barnard College, a private women's university in New York City where tuition goes for $57,00 a year, will offer abortion pills to students by next year. 

School officials announced Thursday that Barnard will work to ensure students' access to abortion health services in response to the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

In a statement to students, college officials wrote: 'Barnard applies a reproductive justice and gender-affirming framework to all of its student health and well-being services, and particularly to reproductive healthcare. 'In the post-Roe context, we are bolstering these services.'

The school is the latest to provide such services to its students after Massachusetts and California enacted laws to do the same their public colleges by 2023. 

Although New York continues to provide access to abortions, 22 states have enacting laws banning the procedure. 

A majority of the laws were put into place immediately after the Supreme Court's decision over the summer, which removed women's federal rights to abortion.  

Bernard President Sian Beilock said that the university's move was to prepare for any possible barrier to access in the state in order to stand by its student's reproductive rights. 

'I think we're putting a stake in the ground that we believe that health and wellness is really the institution's responsibility for students, and we want to do everything we can to support our students,' she told the New York Times. 

Marina Catallozzi, Barnard's chief health officer, said the new program would ensure students more privacy at the campus, which already has a vending machine for emergency contraception. 

'With every reproductive health decision, but particularly around a pregnancy,' she told the Times. 'We want to make sure that students have all of the options: if they want to continue a pregnancy, if they want to continue and go on to adoption, if they want to terminate.' 

The chief health officer added that the option could help students if New York abortion services were ever to become overcrowded by out-of-state residents looking for the procedure because it was banned in their state.  

While New York has not enacted any laws for public schools to provide this kind of service for their students, Massachusetts and California have. 

Over the summer, Massachusetts passed a law requiring public colleges to submit plans to provide abortion pills to students by November 2023. 

California passed its own law to do the same in 2019, with the legislation set to be enforced by January. 

Conversely, at the University of Idaho, officials sent a memo to all staff about restrictions at the school following the states near-total ban on abortion. 

Employees were warned not to counsel patients about abortion or refer them to any abortion services at the risk of being charged with a felony, fired and permanently barred from working for the state.  

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11291799/NYCs-Barnard-College-offer-abortion-pills-students-following-Roe-V-Wade-overturn.html

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Gender Ideology Is ‘Half-Baked, Incoherent,’ Filmmaker Matt Walsh Tells Full House at Catholic University

Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh spoke to a full house about his documentary film “What Is a Woman?” on Tuesday at the Catholic University of America. (Photo: David Keith/Young America’s Foundation)

Despite efforts by a leftist group to prevent it from taking place, conservative commentator Matt Walsh, producer of a documentary film questioning the legitimacy of transgenderism, spoke Tuesday at the Catholic University of America.  

Nearly 750 people attended the event in Washington to hear Walsh discuss his controversial new documentary “What Is a Woman?” One leader of the hosting group told The Daily Signal it had the highest turnout of any political event in the school’s history.

“In the film, I talked to a therapist who was ready to affirm me as a woman because I confessed to enjoying scented candles,” Walsh said at the event, hosted by the university’s Young America’s Foundation chapter.

He told his audience that, while making the film, he was most surprised to learn how pervasive gender ideology really is. He found that was the most common observation among his audience as well.

“This is not strictly the province of gender studies professors and weirdos on TikTok, many of whom are gender studies professors,” explained Walsh, who is also the author of a children’s book, “Johnny the Walrus,” that pokes fun gently and indirectly at transgenderism.

The basic tenets of gender ideology … that gender is fluid, that people can decide for themselves whether they’re men or women, that transgenderism is a valid and healthy state of being, which should be affirmed and encouraged, that sex is not binary, that there are dozens, if not … an infinite number of valid identities outside of man and woman … . All of these beliefs, however, half-baked and incoherent they may be, can be found everywhere in the country.

He recalled interviewing an administrator at a school where students identified as cats, and teachers affirmed them as cats. Walsh also interviewed a man who identifies as a wolf—and also as a woman.

Another thing Walsh said he learned was the confusion regarding biological sex that he encountered really seemed to be an affectation driven by fear.

One woman he interviewed seemed to be genuinely confused, Walsh said. She was so committed to a relativist view that when he asked her, “What would happen if it was my truth that she no longer exists?” she looked him straight in the eye and said: “Well, then, I don’t exist.”

“I knew that women were being erased in our culture. I didn’t realize that some of them were so eager to erase themselves,” Walsh said. 

Often people would give vague and evasive answers to the question, “What is a woman?” said Walsh. “They’re afraid to speak basic biological truths.”

“Gender ideology paves the way for itself with intimidation, threats, coercion,” he explained. “Fear is a big part of the story.”

But, Walsh said, that’s nothing new. “The roots of modern gender ideology could be traced all the way back to the 19th century—arguably even earlier than that,” he explained. Gender ideology as we know it today really began to take shape in the mid-20th century, Walsh noted, “thanks to the work of two hideous and evil crackpot degenerates named Alfred Kinsey and John Money.”

Kinsey and Money, 20th-century psychologists and pedophile activists, pioneered the medical castration of children through gender-reassignment surgeries and hormone treatment.

“I learned that the ultimate goal of the gender ideology agenda goes far beyond gender,” Walsh said. “The ultimate goal is to undermine, destroy, and erase truth itself.”

Walsh added:

The final thing I learned from spending a year staring into this abyss is that we can win this fight … . Gender ideology is insane, destructive, pervasive, ubiquitous. I believe [it’s] the greatest evil that the world has ever seen. It’s also beatable.

“We can win because the other side can be crushed under the weight of simple questions,” he added. “The experts crumpled and collapsed and panicked in front of me.”

Noting those on the Left who have accused him and others of advocating violence and terrorism, Walsh responded: “The only thing we’re coming armed with is a spine and questions.”

Attendees asked Walsh questions following his remarks. Stacy Langton, one attendee, commented that she was the mother who exposed what she considers pornographic material in the libraries at her children’s school in Fairfax, Virginia. Even before she asked her question, the audience gave her a standing ovation.

One Catholic University student asked Walsh how to better help those who experience the pain of gender dysphoria. Walsh said he would treat gender dysphoria by addressing the underlying confusion. “We see the confusion itself as the problem,” he explained. “You’re not the problem. Your body is not the problem. There’s nothing wrong with you as a person … there’s something going on in your mind.”

That’s the problem with the “gender-affirming” model, he said, contending that therapists are affirming the feelings of kids who hate themselves and hate their bodies, in effect saying, “You really should hate yourself.”

“It’s abominable. It really is,” Walsh remarked. “I would advocate an approach of true self-acceptance.”

Catholic University’s new president, Peter Kilpatrick, shared in a Tuesday email to the student body that one group of students asked him to cancel or censor Walsh’s event. The group, which Kilpatrick did not identify, claimed Walsh’s appearance would make its members feel unwelcome and unsafe. 

“The argument made an impression on me because it came from a sincere desire, which I share, to create on this campus an inclusive and welcoming atmosphere for all students,” Kilpatrick wrote.  

The president said he could not agree to the group’s request, however, while adding he did “not want any student to feel unwelcome or unsafe.”  

A week before the event, Catholic University’s Progressive Student Union released a statement, which it posted on its public Instagram account. The progressive students group claimed Young America’s Foundation is “contributing to a campus culture which promotes division over unity, discrimination over inclusivity, and fear over hope.” 

A Progressive Student Union spokesperson told The Daily Signal in an email that the group has nothing further to say following the event. “We are focusing our energies on supporting workers at the Catholic University of America and building a better, more unified campus, for all people,” the spokesperson wrote. 

The LGBTQ student group CUAllies, which remains unsanctioned by the university, also sent an email to its members urging them not to attend the Walsh event.  

The email, shared by Young America’s Foundation member Nick Baker, stated: “We want to let you know that this is happening and that you SHOULD NOT go to the event.” CUAllies board members explained they were concerned about “the rhetoric that Matt Walsh spreads, and the message that the university is sending by allowing him to come to campus.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/06/gender-ideology-is-half-baked-incoherent-filmmaker-matt-walsh-tells-full-house-at-catholic-university/

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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 October, 2022

NYC ramps up safety strategy at ‘most challenged’ public schools

<i>Good luck with all that but there is no substitute for a  better curriculumm and real classroom discipline</i>

The city Department of Education is ramping up safety and support at more than 100 schools where students are most often involved in troubling incidents, suspended or missing class, Mayor Eric Adams and Chancellor David Banks announced Thursday.

Project Pivot is investing $9 million in youth nonprofits focused on school safety, after-school and mental health support. Officials expect to reach up to 10,000 school kids.

“This project will bring community-based organizations into our schools to connect with young people at a pivotal moment in their development through counseling, mentoring, violence intervention,” Adams said outside Tweed Courthouse, the DOE’s headquarters.

“We’re thinking about our children, and the right they have to succeed,” he added. “And in the long run, we will keep them safe and keep their schools safe.”

The schools, mostly in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan, were selected based on safety and academic data showing children were disengaged from classes, or more likely to need support.

That data includes discipline and suspensions, but also relied on attendance — like the number of students chronically absent. More than 40% of kids missed one in 10 school days last year, city data show.

“We’ve identified 138 schools, some of the most challenged schools in the city, who are crying out for additional supports, additional resources,” said Banks.

“They have children in their schools who are brilliant,” he added. “They are every bit as talented as everybody, as any other child — they just need the additional supports.” 

The nonprofits offer services in safety and violence prevention in and outside school, counselors and mentorship, enrichment programs like sports and the arts, and skills like financial literacy. The programs are backed by research and their effectiveness, officials said.

“We talk often about safety, and many of these organizations are going to provide a deeper level of safety in our schools,” said Banks, who started his education career as a school safety agent.

One of the organizations, Elite Learners Inc., supports traditional school safety staffers with more adults trained in anti-violence near the schools — on a corner, at a local bodega and inside nearby parks.

“So many young people were getting in altercations outside of the building that interfered with their learning in the building,” said Camara Jackson, founder of the Brooklyn-based nonprofit.

“If you don’t feel safe coming to school, how can you sit throughout the day and be successful? So we want to address that,” Jackson said.

The organization stations bright orange and yellow vans — equipped with PlayStations and refrigerators — outside the schools to form relationships with the students.

Other nonprofits range from Save Our Streets, a community-based program to end gun violence, to National Cares Mentoring, a black mentorship program founded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The DOE is also recommending groups like Youth Education Through Sports and the Canvas Institute arts and culture center on Staten Island, officials said.

“These are all activities that can serve as a motivating factor for many disengaged students, and can be the proverbial carrot to increase student achievement,” said Aaron Barnette of the DOE’s Office of Safety and Prevention Partnerships.

Project Pivot is funded by COVID aid, which expires in a few school years. The DOE didn’t provide The Post with concrete plans for funding when federal stimulus runs out, though said they would continue to prioritize student safety and well-being.

The new initiative comes as the number of weapons recovered in the public schools soared last year — a trend Banks attributed to safety concerns on the way to and from class, rather than conflict on campus. Roughly 5,000 weapons were recovered in the city schools last year, most of which were defense mechanisms like pepper spray and tasers. 

Violence outside the school building has led multiple schools to temporarily lock their front doors, with students free to move between classrooms but not to leave the building.

https://nypost.com/2022/10/06/nyc-ramps-up-safety-strategy-at-most-challenged-schools/

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Many NYC public school grads aren’t ready for college, state audit finds

More city students may be graduating from high school these days — but fewer are actually ready for the rigors of college, a state audit released Tuesday found.

Only 57% of city students were “college ready” the study by the state Comptroller’s office found — and of those who went on to higher education, a disappointing 37% dropped out in the first semester.

“We found DOE [Department of Education] should do more to prepare students to be college ready,” the report said.

“DOE should do more to help students gain the proficiency levels needed to enroll and persist in a post-secondary institution, and this preparation should begin much earlier in students’ school years.”

The report focused on the last pre-COVID-19 class in 2019, and found that only 77% of students across the five boroughs graduated that year.

Sixty-three percent of all students went to college — even though the study found that only 57% were ready based on how long it took them to graduate high school and how they did on state proficiency tests.

And their lack of readiness showed, as 37% of them left higher education by the end of the first semester, the audit found. This number is compared to national data published in the nonprofit news outlet The Hechinger Report, which found 26.1% of students who started college across America in fall 2019 dropped out by the end of the school year.

The report also found a racial disparity, as roughly four-out-of-five students who didn’t graduate by their expected dates were hispanic or black.

Rates also varied widely across the city’s many neighborhoods, including in District 23, where nearly half of students in Ocean Hill and Brownsville didn’t graduate on time.

And nearly half of kids in a smaller, randomized sample didn’t meet the DOE’s own standards for college readiness, based on years it took for them to graduate or academic proficiency on state tests.

“The DOE must make sure students are ready for their next steps after high school and should prioritize elementary and middle school intervention in city school districts where large numbers of students do not graduate high school,” said State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Meanwhile, changes both to whether state tests were optional or administered at all, and how those scores factor into a student’s eligibility for a diploma, have made it possible for students to graduate high school without demonstrating their grasp of basic skills in reading and writing, and in math, the report said.

“This made it easier for students to graduate although they may not have been college ready,” read the comptroller’s report.

While the study focused on students who graduated before the pandemic upended school in the city and across America, it comes as and expert said universities nationwide have reported more freshmen arriving unprepared due to COVID-19 disruptions.

“Students coming into classes, I think many of them did experience upheaval in their education, especially in math,” said Elisabeth Barnett, a college readiness professor from Columbia University Teachers College and researcher at the national Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness.

Barnett told The Post the New York City data mostly lines up with national figures, given the demographics of the city’s public schools. But that students benefit from showing up to campus prepared for the work, even though supports may be available once they get there.

“Especially when students first get to college, they’re often very insecure about if they belong there. So if they get told they’re not college ready, that can be a very big blow,” Barnett said.

Recognizing many of the problems laid out in the audit, the city is rolling out programs that include funding and staff training for college and career advising, advanced coursework like AP courses, early college credit programs, and “bridge-to-college” programs the summer after graduation.

“This administration is deeply committed to continuing to strengthen the path from high school to college and good paying careers,” DOE spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said.

One of those programs, announced on Tuesday, is a small but ambitious push to help 230 students in foster care enroll and complete college. The so-called “College Choice” initiative directs $15,000 per student in city funds towards the unwieldy price tag of any college — plus room and board, and a stipend.

“We cannot just drop you off and say you are no longer our responsibility,” said Mayor Eric Adams at a news conference announcing the program.

“We got their backs, because we’re going to need them to have our backs,” he added. “Our young people are not the leaders of tomorrow — they’re the leaders of today.”

https://nypost.com/2022/10/04/many-nyc-public-school-grads-arent-ready-for-college-comptroller/

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Campus Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Excludes and Targets Jews

Making the world safe for Jews in an age of skyrocketing antisemitism isn’t something American universities tend to believe they need to stand for. In a review of 24 major college and university diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the advocacy group Stop Antisemitism found that only two of them had any specific programming or materials related to antisemitism. “DEI departments have not made fighting antisemitism a priority,” the group concludes in its 2022 “report card” of American campuses.

DEI itself is definitely a priority on campuses, though. Among the 65 large universities that comprise the “power-five” athletic conferences there are nearly 3,000 employees dedicated to DEI, according to a July 2021 analysis by the Heritage Foundation. Collectively, these institutions had 1.4 DEI officers for every history professor, and 3.4 DEI officials for every 100 tenured or tenure-track scholars in their employ.

As the report notes, these institutions have no legal obligation whatsoever to hire thousands of diversity bureaucrats—which is not the case, for example, with staff dedicated to providing federally required aid to disabled students. Even so, of the 65 universities surveyed, only Baylor University and the University of Minnesota employed more Americans with Disabilities Act compliance officers than DEI personnel. A pricey, often-invasive DEI regime is something these universities chose to expand in the wake of the nationwide racial justice protests in 2020, at the expense of providing adequate support for adjunct faculty, limiting class size, and other lesser budgetary priorities. Mistaken or not, DEI is an expression of academia’s deepest sense of its mission during a time of rapid social dislocation.

The reason that taxpayers should care about how American higher ed chooses to deploy its resources is that we are paying for it. On top of the enormous cost of America’s publicly funded higher education system, President Joe Biden’s executive decree of limited debt relief for certain student loan borrowers will cost the government upwards of an additional $400 billion, according to a late September analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. In practice, this is an eye-watering taxpayer subsidy for a system that has transformed itself over the past three decades into a vast federally funded cartel that has shunted aside traditional academic occupations of teaching and research in favor of bureaucratic thought-policing and ideological indoctrination. It is a mark of the failure of this system to provide the educational goods that taxpayers think they’re paying for that its graduates now require emergency federal assistance years or even decades after graduating.

Even when it comes to combatting prejudice and hate, the new academic DEI bureaucracies are quick to discard discernible social reality when it does not match up with their ideological aims and goals. It is to be expected that acts of antisemitism are common at American universities because they are so frighteningly common in the United States in general. The Anti-Defamation League’s annual nationwide audit of antisemitic incidents for 2021 reported an all-time record since the audit was first conducted in 1979. Incidents increased 34% overall year over year, with assaults spiking 167%, and harassment rising 41%. Sure enough, antisemitic incidents on college campuses rose by 21%.

It would be reasonable to expect campus-based initiatives aimed at addressing institutional racism to focus on any apparent overlap between the prejudices of the wider society and those that manifest within the supposedly more enlightened, diversity-obsessed confines of America’s universities. The overlap is there for anyone to see. Universities that consider themselves a beacon of social tolerance are becoming anxious places for Jews. Over the past 18 months, a Torah scroll was desecrated during a break-in at a George Washington University Jewish fraternity, neo-Nazis beat up a Jewish student at the University of Central Florida, a participant in a Students for Justice in Palestine rally hurled rocks toward counterprotesters outside the University of Illinois Hillel, and the AEPi house at Rutgers was egged on Holocaust Remembrance Day for the second year in a row. Sexual assault survivors’ groups at both the University of Vermont and SUNY New Paltz banned Jews insufficiently hostile to Israel; a series of anti-Jewish threats, vandalism, and harassment seized Indiana University and the University of Wisconsin; and “long live the Intifada” was spray-painted in the middle of Boston University’s campus.

Need more examples? The Amcha Initiative lists 851 instances of “antisemitic activity” on U.S. college campuses in 2021 alone.

Two instances of insensitivity toward Jews had a direct relationship with campus DEI initiatives. At Yale University, a diversity trainer the Yale Law Journal had brought to campus told her audience that the FBI inflated antisemitism statistics. When asked why her presentation hadn’t mentioned antisemitism, she replied that she didn’t need to discuss it, since at least some Black people were also Jewish. At USC, a student and former DEI officer serving on the engineering school’s student senate posted a series of antisemitic social media messages in Arabic, including one stating that she “want[s] to kill every motherfucking Zionist.” Apparently, those who teach academia how to fight hatred are themselves quite comfortable hating Jews.

Incidents from the ongoing academic year, still only a few weeks old, show that the problem is no closer to being solved on campus than it is anywhere else. The Rutgers AEPi house was egged yet again, this time on Rosh Hashanah. A remarkably diverse coalition of student groups at the University of California law school at Berkeley, including the Women of Berkeley Law, Law Students of African Descent, and the Queer Caucus, updated their bylaws to ban the invitation of any speaker supportive of “Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.” This would bar 85% or so of American Jews from speaking at these groups’ events, including Berkeley Law’s own dean, the distinguished legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky. UC Berkeley’s Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP) reportedly wrote and promoted the bylaw, which states that all of the groups adopting the new rule have committed to participating in a DEI-type training, in this case a “‘Palestine 101’ training hosted by LSJP ‘to create a safe and inclusive space for Palestinian students,’” according to the Jewish Journal.

Acts of antisemitism have been given a unique status by DEI bureaucrats and the milieu in which they are embedded, in that they are apparently defined as having no broader “structural” implication beyond the individual people and communities who are attacked. Whereas racist flyers or epithets are held to automatically reflect centuries of legal discrimination and violence, the structural origins of antisemitism in the history of the West are ignored entirely. The incredible violence directed at Jews throughout the history of the West, culminating in the Holocaust, which is an event that happened in the lifetime of people still living on this earth; the mass ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab countries; the overt, vile, legalized discrimination against American Jews in housing, education, private associations, and numerous other areas of American social life have all been amply documented by historians, Jewish and not, at every level of craft. If anyone has suffered from discrimination, violence, and social prejudice, across the broad expanse of Western history, surely Jews have.

Yet in New York City today, frequent physical attacks on Jews are treated as fairly normal and are very seldom punished with prison time. On a national level, a recent White House summit on hate crimes “overwhelmingly focused on right-wing extremism, with only scant allusion to the attacks Jews have faced from other sectors in recent years, including the pro-Palestinian left,” according to reporter Ron Kampeas of the JTA, who noted that the meeting generated controversy over an alleged lack of Orthodox Jewish representation, as well as over the involvement of Al Sharpton, who has a long history of antagonism toward Jewish communities in his native New York. The event did not include any reported participants from the Haredi community, who are by far the most common victims of antisemitic violence in the United States.

In practical terms, a reversal of DEI regimes’ determined obliviousness toward Jew-hatred probably wouldn’t help much. New York University is one of the only institutions that Stop Antisemitism surveyed to include Jews in its DEI efforts; it is also one of three universities in the report to have received formal federal-level complaints from a Jewish student under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Heritage study examined student surveys on the state of campus life at schools with DEI bureaucracies of varying size and found that “there appears to be little relationship between DEI staffing and the diversity climate on campus.” In an April 2021 story, Tablet’s Sean Cooper reported that despite their newfound ubiquity and high cost, there is shockingly little proof that DEI programs result in more tolerant workplaces and college campuses or reduce racism.

The DEI regime is often framed as a brave and honest reckoning with structural racism, educational inequity, individual bigotry, and other abiding sources of establishment shame. In fact, the purpose of DEI, and perhaps of the ideological and quasi-spiritual project underlying DEI, is to delay or deflect hard conversations about how universities operate, or any awkwardly critical assessments of the value of the education they provide, or the kinds of spaces and citizens they now produce. If it had any other purpose but creating a false edifice of reassurance and moral rectitude, campus DEI would have a lot to say about the higher education system’s continuing role as a locus of American antisemitism, rather than nothing at all.

Campus DEI regimes’ total lack of interest in antisemitism makes it obvious that Jews are not seen as part of the social justice mission of the university. Then again, much of the organizational architecture and bureaucracy of the contemporary university, from the stringency of the admissions process, to the emphasis on “diversity” itself, originated with the institutions’ attempts to keep Jews out, as Tablet has been recounting in Gatecrashers, a podcast exploring the history of antisemitism within the Ivy League.

One key difference between now and the 1920s, when the last largescale movement to exclude Jews from American campus life happened, is that Jews now lead and hold prestigious tenured chairs at major American universities, which host entire academic departments devoted to Jewish life and learning. That thousands of Jewish faculty and administrators, as individuals and as scholars, have allowed this resurgence of academic scapegoating and exclusion of Jews from campus life to happen with only occassional bursts of dissent is striking, at least to anyone who doesn’t spend their life on campus.

The institutional world’s hesitation to examine or even acknowledge its antisemitism problem points to a larger academywide fear of confronting institutional sins of the type that have little to do with Harvard’s or Yale’s involvement in the slave trade 200 years ago. Today’s universities are content with being unaffordable behemoths and lifestyle brands for the same reason they remain uninterested in the antisemitism they have historically practiced and indulged. The academy’s flaws, and the literal and figurative costs they arrogantly impose on the rest of American society, fall outside the purview of institutions that are rushing to add thousands of administrators who are supposedly dedicated to making the world a more tolerant and equitable place. In truth, the goal of these universities in a moment of disorienting and unpredictable social and political change is to protect their cartel from the scrutiny it has earned through its glaring inability to productively educate millions of students, and its determination to saddle ordinary taxpayers with the cost of its failures.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/campus-diversity-equity-inclusion-dei-excludes-targets-jews

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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 October, 2022

Alabama’s federal funding could be stripped away by Biden administration over trans bathroom demands

Undeterred by repeated losses, the Biden administration’s war on red states and our "Neanderthal thinking" rages on. This month, my colleagues and I are fighting Biden and his comrades at the United States Department of Agriculture in court to protect the right of states to run their public schools as they see fit. This time, the fight isn’t over curriculum or masking — it’s whether states still possess the paltry authority to require boys to use the boys’ bathroom at school. 

The United States Constitution leaves no doubt as to the states’ broad authority over their own public schools, but the Biden administration supposes that everything — even schoolchildren — has a price. 

The USDA is the federal agency that directs the myriad "cooperative" federal food programs — including the Supplemental Food Assistance Program (SNAP), the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program (WIC), and the Child Nutrition Program (including the school-lunch program). These programs both tug at the heart strings and come with a hefty price tag for states, so the Biden administration has found them to be ideal vehicles for forcing genderlessness into our state governments, and more particularly, our public schools. 

By issuing a USDA memorandum and accompanying administrative rule, the administration has waged a campaign to impose the left’s extremist "gender identity" agenda on schoolchildren with the implied threat that if states resist, their programs and public schools will get less money from the federal government. 

It is important to understand how compliance with the left’s radical gender identity agenda would destroy the educational experiences of students — girls in particular. The Biden administration’s own fact sheet about its guidance indicates that preventing a boy from using the girls’ restroom would be discrimination if the boy identifies as a girl. Similarly, the fact sheet suggests that preventing a boy from trying out for the girls’ cheerleading squad would be discrimination if the boy identifies as a girl. This is what the left wants to see in Alabama’s schools. 

Alabama parents — the taxpayers who fund our schools — do not share the Biden administration’s goal of genderlessness in our classrooms. That is why the people of Alabama have supported laws that protect girls’ sports and girls’ bathrooms, as well as laws that prohibit sexual indoctrination in the classroom. 

The federal government’s ever-increasing control over primary and secondary education offends our American constitutional system. The root cause is coercion through federal funding, upon which states have been far too willing to blindly accept and jealously rely. 

The Biden administration’s actions seeking to impose the left’s gender identity agenda on schoolchildren are illegal and unconstitutional. But even if they were not, and federal funding was at risk, the duty of state leaders is not to dollars. We are meant to serve the interests of the people of our states — and the people of Alabama have clearly spoken, through their elected representatives, that they do not wish for sexual politics to be thrust on their children by the far-left in Washington. 

While I hope to preserve every penny of federal funding being threatened by this administration, Alabama’s sovereignty is not for sale. 

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-administration-demands-alabama-embrace-genderless-schools-or-else-we-arent-giving-in

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Homecoming season is here — and for many young people in parts of the South, that means homecoming mum season is here, too.

Now, however, mums — which started off as simple corsages, essentially — have become bigger than ever.  

And it's why photos of teenage girls wearing large decorative flowers continue to flood the internet year after year.

Here’s the story behind the "homecoming mum" phenomenon.  Homecoming mums are said to have hit the scene in the 1930s in the South — sharing a longstanding tradition in states like Texas.

Kisha Clark, the founder of Mums Inc., spoke with Fox News Digital about the phenomenon and how it began. 

"If you go all the way back to where it began, [these] were actually live flowers that evolved over time to a silk flower," the Texas mum maker said. 

This flower, normally given to a girl by her homecoming date, was a symbol that she had a date to the homecoming football game and school dance. 

Over the years and even decades, these small live flowers turned into huge, over-the-top decorative pieces. 

Clark has been making mums for 20 years, using 1,700 square ft. in her Little Elm, Texas, home as a workspace.

Ten years ago, she started Mums Inc., an organization of mum makers across the country who share trends, tips and supplies.  A mum, at the time, would have a decorative ribbon, the homecoming dates’ names, the high school name, etc. and one fake mum flower positioned at the top. 

"Somebody somewhere added a feather boa. I’m not even sure who that was … Now I can’t make the boa situation end."

Clark said she began to see a shift in the types of mums people were ordering. Clients wanted their mums to be much larger than before. "We started to see a shift in design where people wanted a more custom product," she said. 

Clark said that cutting machines were new around the same time, which changed the game for mum makers. 

As the years went on, the mum flower on the designs doubled to two, then three — and on and on from there. Customers also wanted stuffed animals incorporated, plus cow bells for noise, lights for fun — even feather boas for flair. 

"Somebody somewhere added a feather boa. I’m not even sure who that was," said Clark.

"Now I can’t make the boa situation end," she said. 

And in case anyone needs proof that everything really is bigger in Texas, Clark said a mum she made recently took her three days to complete and cost over $400. 

She also said the COVID pandemic, interestingly enough, has played a huge role in mum development.

"COVID changed our industry," she said. "A lot of these people do not want their children to miss out on the ability to have some sort of normality in their lives."

Clark said mum sales have only increased since the lockdown.

"It’s almost as if people made a new connection to spirit at school because they didn’t have it," she said.  

Tara O’Donnell owns Tarariffic Mums in Houston, Texas, and makes an average of 60-80 mums each season. 

"After the chaos of the last few years, my mum orders this year definitely express each student's personality," she shared with Fox News Digital. 

O’Donnell said "themed mums" have been more specific this year, with one student even requesting the center mums resemble a paw print. 

"Whether the mom is in tears over her daughter’s senior mum or the student squeals in delight — knowing that I have made their vision a reality is a satisfying conclusion to the process," she said. 

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/high-school-homecoming-mums-word-southern-tradition-takes-texas-big-way

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Longer school day, master teachers could solve Australia's education productivity problem

Changing the length of the school day and employing master teachers are among the solutions the Productivity Commission has put forward to improve the performance of Australia's education system.

Australia is spending more than ever per student on education and yet national literacy and numeracy achievement is stagnating.

A new report by the Commission investigates why this problem exists and what can be done across the school and higher education system to solve it.

One in five Australians have low basic skills, impacting on their job opportunities, capacity to learn further skills and wages.

Productivity Commission deputy chair Dr Alex Robson said the while spending had grown, Australian students' results were not improving.

"One of the issues could be that the best practice is not becoming common practice," Dr Robson said.

"So diffusing what works and, just as importantly, what doesn't work in the classroom in different circumstances, that's one of the things we focus on."

The report said classroom teachers spend much of their working time on low-value administration tasks that could be reduced or reassigned to support staff.

Technology also has a role in relieving this burden and improving student outcomes but it needed to be introduced carefully.

"It's not a silver bullet... there's a digital divide where some schools have access to the technology and others don't, but then also in terms of how it's used and what's more effective in different circumstances," Dr Robson said.

An increase in the numbers of support staff and lower student-to-staff ratios don't appear to have had any impact on student results.

The report suggests improving consistency of professional development for teachers and employing master teachers to spread best practice teaching across schools.

It also suggests trialling more radical changes, such as extending the length of the school day or adopting the United Kingdom's model of academy schools to improve under-performing public schools.

"Maybe some of these more forward-looking ideas are possible solutions, but we're definitely not saying that that's the exact answer," Dr Robson said.

The report also suggests a HECS-style system for vocational education could reduce some of the up-front costs and disincentives for students to go down that path that could be more appropriate for their career ambitions compared to university.

The commission was highly critical of the changes to university course fees under the Coalition's job ready graduates reforms, stating that price signals for in-demand fields didn't work under the income-contingent loan system.

The commission is seeking feedback on the report by October 21 and will hold roundtable discussions.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7929419/longer-school-day-master-teachers-could-solve-australias-education-productivity-problem/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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5 October, 2022

'History is now a niche subject': Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer says children 'miss out on so much' and teachers should teach more than just 'Hitler and Henry VIII'

Earl Spencer has criticised 'niche' history taught in schools, claiming children 'miss out on so much'. The historian and younger brother of Princess Diana said he would like to broaden the way the subject was taught because pupils learn only about 'Hitler and Henry VIII'.

'This is one of my bugbears, how history is taught,' he said at the Henley Literary Festival. 'I'm 58 and I'm probably the last generation who was brought up on a very wide arena of British history just as standard fare because history was compulsory when I was at school. 

'Now it's a niche subject and history teachers quite rightly have to attract people to their subject, so what they're going to do is give you Hitler and Henry VIII and I'm afraid things like Henry I just drop off the chart. 

'I don't know if I would dare change [the curriculum] but I do think history is such an important subject, not in itself necessarily but for perspective and context. 'So I would broaden the way this is taught because I think you miss out on so much if you don't have it. 

'But I realise I would be up against a lot of resistance.' 

The peer was speaking to promote his latest book, The White Ship: Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I's Dream. 

He described the sinking of the vessel as 'the greatest maritime disaster in British history', adding: 'There's not been a shipwreck that has changed a dynasty and I think that's where it wins gold.' 

The White Ship sank in the Channel in 1120, killing William Adelin, Henry I's son and the heir to the throne. It prompted a succession crisis and a period of civil war between 1138 and 1153 known as The Anarchy. 

Earl Spencer said it was extraordinary that so few people knew about the story yet in 1956 Winston Churchill felt it was too well known to put in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. 

He added: 'My first history book was incredibly non-PC, it was called Our Island Story and it was a Victorian look back at how wonderful Britain has always been, and the Henry I chapter is basically about the White Ship because it was such a hackneyed subject up until the Seventies.' 

He also lamented the lack of understanding of the history behind road names. 'Out of all my education, the thing I'm most excited by is being able to see bits of history still alive,' he said. 

'If you put Blenheim Road up now they'd think what the hell are you on about.' 

A survey by academics at Oxford and Reading universities last year found that a small number of schools said they had 'reduced the attention given to certain topics – specifically medieval British or Tudor history – in order to accommodate new ones or a new kind of emphasis'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11276735/Princess-Dianas-brother-Earl-Spencer-says-children-miss-history-lessons.html

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Vermont High School Under Fire as Girls, Parents Push Back Against Biologically Male Trans Student Using Female Locker Room

Two Vermont high school girls did what few of their peers have dared: When a biological boy who identifies as a transgender girl entered their locker room, they asked that student to leave.

The Randolph, Vermont-based Randolph Union High School told the community in a Sept. 23 email that it is “launching a harassment investigation” —apparently into the girls’ conduct rather than the 14-year-old trans-identify student’s behavior, parents suggested. The Daily Signal has chosen not to name these students due to their youth, though local outlets have reported some of their names.

Since then, The Daily Signal has spoken with a number of parents who are outraged that the school and Orange Southwest School District allowed such an incident to occur. These parents do not want biological boys in their daughters’ locker rooms, and they are bewildered as to why the school system apparently prioritizes the needs of students who identify as transgender over the needs of their daughters.

“We allowed a child who is biologically the opposite sex, male, go in a locker room where biologically girls were getting fully changed,” one of the girls’ mothers told The Daily Signal. “The biological child was not changing and sat in the back and watched girls getting changed. That made girls feel uncomfortable, made girls feel violated and not protected.”

“When parents and kids went to the school principals they were told it was a law—nothing they could do about it,” she added. “The law gives them room to protect all and they did not.”

Beginning Friday afternoon, The Daily Signal has unsuccessfully attempted to reach the student who identifies as transgender or the student’s mother via social media and email.

Girls Speak Out

Female student A, who is 14 years old, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview that she was dressing for a game when the trans-identifying student began to enter the locker room. She shared that she was not wearing a shirt, only a bra, and was halfway through putting on her shorts.

“Please don’t come in here, we’re still changing,” she says she called out, as she struggled to clothe herself.

But the trans-identifying student allegedly told her that it was fine, entered the locker room, and stood in the corner “watching” as the other girls finished dressing. Female student A said that the interaction made her incredibly uncomfortable, and her mother compared the incident to “voyeurism” in a phone interview with The Daily Signal.

Asked why she took issue with the trans-identify student entering the bathroom, female student A answered slowly, as if surprised she must explain: “It’s a dude.”

“He was born a boy,” she said. “I don’t care if he’s on my team, he can join any team, I don’t care. But when I’m undressing and there’s a male in the girls locker room or in the bathroom with me, I feel very uncomfortable.”

Female student B told The Daily Signal in a phone interview that she also unsuccessfully told the student that identifies as transgender that the girls needed their privacy.

“I think everyone feels this way about going into a locker room, you shouldn’t be uncomfortable,” said female student B, who is also 14. She joked that since all the girls have the same body parts, they are comfortable changing around one another. “But then when [the trans-identifying student] comes through, it doesn’t feel that way. It’s like, a male is in here. Everyone feels so awkward.”

Female student B said that though she asked the trans-identifying student to leave the locker room, the student stayed. When she and her fellow teammates tried to bring the matter to school officials, she said, they were told that they had to comply with state law (which allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding with the gender they identify with).

Most of the girls’ teammates agreed that biological boys should not be allowed in the girls’ locker rooms, both female students told The Daily Signal. Female student A said that she only knew of their two volleyball teammates who said they were fine with the student who identifies as transgender being in the locker room while they changed.

“Everyone was telling me they were happy that I did the thing on the news to get awareness about it,” female student B said, referencing an interview she did with a local outlet. “They don’t like it either.”

But female student B said that on Thursday, during a math class, some of her friends showed the news hit to the trans-identifying student. According to female student B, the student allegedly reacted to the video by allegedly saying, “I’m going to f—ing kill someone,” before allegedly adding, “I f—ing hate” female student B.

Female student B said she headed to the principal’s office as soon as she heard what the trans-identifying student had allegedly said. Co-principal Lisa Floyd reportedly told her that the school would conduct a threat assessment, she said, police arrived, and she was ultimately sent back to class (Floyd did not address The Daily Signal’s request for comment on the trans-identifying student’s alleged remarks but stressed that “student safety is our District’s highest priority”).

On Friday afternoon, the girls said, both female student A and B played in their volleyball game with the trans-identifying student.

Female student A and B both told The Daily Signal that the student had allegedly also said, “my male instincts are kicking in,” referring to another female students’ breasts (though neither female student A nor female student B heard the remarks made herself).

In a comment on a local outlet’s Facebook post about the incident, a woman who claims to be the trans-identifying student’s mother denied that any such comments were made.

“I am the mother of the trans student in question and my daughter did not make any comments at all. The entire team can back this up, other than the girl that made up the story for attention,” Facebook user Mo Sivvy posted (she did not immediately respond to a request for comment).

“This is slander, defamation of character, and we have secured a lawyer,” the comment continued. “My daughter has no interest in anything other than being accepted for who she is and playing volleyball. What inappropriate comments would she have made, I’m curious? This is outrageous. The ACLU has been enlisted. There will be a thorough investigation and truth will prevail.”

The ACLU did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/02/vermont-high-school-under-fire-as-girls-parents-push-back-against-biologically-male-trans-student-using-female-locker-room

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NYU Students Failed Organic Chemistry, Got Prof Fired

In the field of organic chemistry, Maitland Jones Jr. has a storied reputation. He taught the subject for decades, first at Princeton and then at New York University, and wrote an influential textbook. He received awards for his teaching, as well as recognition as one of N.Y.U.’s coolest professors.

But last spring, as the campus emerged from pandemic restrictions, 82 of his 350 students signed a petition against him.

Students said the high-stakes course — notorious for ending many a dream of medical school — was too hard, blaming Dr. Jones for their poor test scores.

The professor defended his standards. But just before the start of the fall semester, university deans terminated Dr. Jones’s contract.

The officials also had tried to placate the students by offering to review their grades and allowing them to withdraw from the class retroactively. The chemistry department’s chairman, Mark E. Tuckerman, said the unusual offer to withdraw was a “one-time exception granted to students by the dean of the college.”

Marc A. Walters, director of undergraduate studies in the chemistry department, summed up the situation in an email to Dr. Jones, before his firing.

He said the plan would “extend a gentle but firm hand to the students and those who pay the tuition bills,” an apparent reference to parents.

The university’s handling of the petition provoked equal and opposite reactions from both the chemistry faculty, who protested the decisions, and pro-Jones students, who sent glowing letters of endorsement.

“The deans are obviously going for some bottom line, and they want happy students who are saying great things about the university so more people apply and the U.S. News rankings keep going higher,” said Paramjit Arora, a chemistry professor who has worked closely with Dr. Jones.

In short, this one unhappy chemistry class could be a case study of the pressures on higher education as it tries to handle its Gen-Z student body. Should universities ease pressure on students, many of whom are still coping with the pandemic’s effects on their mental health and schooling? How should universities respond to the increasing number of complaints by students against professors? Do students have too much power over contract faculty members, who do not have the protections of tenure?  

And how hard should organic chemistry be anyway?

Dr. Jones, 84, is known for changing the way the subject is taught. In addition to writing the 1,300-page textbook “Organic Chemistry,” now in its fifth edition, he pioneered a new method of instruction that relied less on rote memorization and more on problem solving.

After retiring from Princeton in 2007, he taught organic chemistry at N.Y.U. on a series of yearly contracts. About a decade ago, he said in an interview, he noticed a loss of focus among the students, even as more of them enrolled in his class, hoping to pursue medical careers.

“Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate,” he wrote in a grievance to the university, protesting his termination. Grades fell even as he reduced the difficulty of his exams.

The problem was exacerbated by the pandemic, he said. “In the last two years, they fell off a cliff,” he wrote. “We now see single digit scores and even zeros.”

After several years of Covid learning loss, the students not only didn’t study, they didn’t seem to know how to study, Dr. Jones said.

To ease pandemic stress, Dr. Jones and two other professors taped 52 organic chemistry lectures. Dr. Jones said that he personally paid more than $5,000 for the videos and that they are still used by the university.

That was not enough. In 2020, some 30 students out of 475 filed a petition asking for more help, said Dr. Arora, who taught that class with Dr. Jones. “They were really struggling,” he explained. “They didn’t have good internet coverage at home. All sorts of things.”

The professors assuaged the students in an online town-hall meeting, Dr. Arora said.

Many students were having other problems. Kent Kirshenbaum, another chemistry professor at N.Y.U., said he discovered cheating during online tests.

When he pushed students’ grades down, noting the egregious misconduct, he said they protested that “they were not given grades that would allow them to get into medical school.”

By spring 2022, the university was returning with fewer Covid restrictions, but the anxiety continued and students seemed disengaged.

“They weren’t coming to class, that’s for sure, because I can count the house,” Dr. Jones said in an interview. “They weren’t watching the videos, and they weren’t able to answer the questions.”

Students could choose between two sections, one focused on problem solving, the other on traditional lectures. Students in both sections shared problems on a GroupMe chat and began venting about the class. Those texts kick-started the petition, submitted in May.

“We are very concerned about our scores, and find that they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort put into this class,” the petition said.

The students criticized Dr. Jones’s decision to reduce the number of midterm exams from three to two, flattening their chances to compensate for low grades. They said that he had tried to conceal course averages, did not offer extra credit and removed Zoom access to his lectures, even though some students had Covid. And, they said, he had a “condescending and demanding” tone.

“We urge you to realize,” the petition said, “that a class with such a high percentage of withdrawals and low grades has failed to make students’ learning and well-being a priority and reflects poorly on the chemistry department as well as the institution as a whole.”

Dr. Jones said in an interview that he reduced the number of exams because the university scheduled the first test date after six classes, which was too soon.

On the accusation that he concealed course averages, Dr. Jones said that they were impossible to provide because 25 percent of the grade relied on lab scores and a final lab test, but that students were otherwise aware of their grades.

As for Zoom access, he said the technology in the lecture hall made it impossible to record his white board problems.

Zacharia Benslimane, a teaching assistant in the problem-solving section of the course, defended Dr. Jones in an email to university officials.

“I think this petition was written more out of unhappiness with exam scores than an actual feeling of being treated unfairly,” wrote Mr. Benslimane, now a Ph.D. student at Harvard. “I have noticed that many of the students who consistently complained about the class did not use the resources we afforded to them.”

Ryan Xue, who took the course, said he found Dr. Jones both likable and inspiring.

“This is a big lecture course, and it also has the reputation of being a weed-out class,” said Mr. Xue, who has transferred and is now a junior at Brown. “So there are people who will not get the best grades. Some of the comments might have been very heavily influenced by what grade students have gotten.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/us/nyu-organic-chemistry-petition.html

4 October, 2022

Conservatives Fear Schools Being Pressed to Accept Transgender Pronouns, Bathrooms and Showers

Texas school boards are being pressured to adopt policies giving transgender students the right to use preferred pronouns, school bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers, according to conservatives who feel schools are stepping on parental rights.

The Texas American Civil Liberties Union presented a “best practices” program on transgender student legal issues based on Biden’s Department of Education interpretation during a convention on Sept. 24 in San Antonio.

The Texas Association of School Administrators and Texas Association of School Boards 2022 convention included speakers and training for Texas school officials. The ACLU, a liberal civil rights group, titled their program: “Transgender Students in Texas Schools: What You Need to Know.”

ACLU attorneys gave a presentation at the convention that included transgender students speaking directly to officials on “challenges” in schools with restrooms, sports, dress codes, pronouns, and bullying.

David Hamilton, a board member at Fort Bend Independent School Board who attended the ACLU presentation, posted on Twitter that the union was “trying to force Texas public schools to allow boys in girls’ locker rooms, showers, restrooms, and athletics.”

“They had a biological girl who IDs as a boy speak because that appeals better,” his post continued.

When contacted by The Epoch Times, Hamilton said he viewed the ACLU presentation as a warning that schools must accommodate transgender student rights or face lawsuits from it or other liberal groups.

The ACLU did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Texas state Rep. Steve Toth (R-Woodlands) agreed there was a concerted effort to push schools to accept the Biden administrations’ interpretation of Title IX as law. But part of the problem lies with the trustees who don’t question what they’re told, he said.

“There’s no way this isn’t coordinated,” he said. “We’re hearing this in all 50 states.”

“If they put this into place, they’re violating the law,” said Toth, who intends to introduce legislation in 2023 to protect students from sexualization at school.

Title IX, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, now permits students to use restrooms, locker rooms, and compete on sports teams based on their gender identity instead of their biological sex.

Biden issued an executive order after a June 2020 landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that expanded the legal definition of sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity in employment situations.

The Department of Education and EEOC issued “guidance” in June 2021 prohibiting such discrimination and promising enforcement action against violators, including the loss of federal funding for schools.

However, the Biden administration’s push to enforcing the executive order designed to protect the LGBT community from discrimination in schools and the workplace was blocked by a Tennessee federal judge in July, while a legal challenge launched by 22 attorneys general, including Texas, is making its way through the court system.

On May 5, 2022, the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Services issued guidance to Texas and other states announcing that discrimination on the basis of sex in Title IX and the Food and Nutrition Act includes discrimination on the bases of sexual orientation and gender identity.

This put Texas’s Title IX and SNAP school lunch funding at risk.

Also, Biden’s policy directly opposes a Texas law passed last year requiring student-athletes to play on sports teams that correspond with their sex as listed on their birth certificate.

Julie Pickren, a former school board trustee for Alvin ISD and candidate for State Board of Education District 7, told The Epoch Times trustees need a choice regarding training that is objectionable to the values of conservatives.

“We have a responsibility to protect our kids as parents, educators, and public servants,” she added via text.

Hamilton said that ACLU lawyers presented information at the convention indicating suicide attempts by transgender students decreased if schools affirmed their choices on things like pronouns and bathroom preferences.

He felt that the presentation would give school districts who wanted to adopt liberal policies on transgender students an excuse to do so.

Meg Bakich, a parent activist in the Highland Park school district, said parents need to understand what’s happening in their schools.

“Why are school boards paying tax dollars to an association indoctrinating our trustees?” she asked. “Our legislature has done nothing to stop it.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/conservatives-fear-schools-being-pressed-to-accept-transgender-pronouns-bathrooms-and-showers_4764422.html

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LA: Grover Cleveland High School was a "humanities" magnet school -- riven with sexual abuse  of minors

The faculty of E Hall were celebrity educators, rock stars of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). They ran Cleveland’s renowned humanities magnet, an interdisciplinary program combining instruction in history, literature, art, and philosophy. “We were like a little Sarah Lawrence in the middle of a Title I school,” an alum told me, referring to the federal program that provides financial assistance for schools with a large population of low-income students. Since its founding in 1981, the magnet had been the subject of glowing news stories, and schools across Los Angeles had replicated its curriculum. The program, which called itself Core, produced so many graduates bound for top-notch colleges that some alumni referred to the University of California at Berkeley as “Core north.”

Core teachers prided themselves on being radicals. They encouraged students to eschew taboos, expand their horizons, and question conventional wisdom. They lectured on systemic racism and postmodernism, and they treated the teenagers they were tasked with educating as “young men and women,” a phrase the program’s founder, Neil Anstead, was fond of using. In turn, the students worshipped them.

Chris Miller was an object of particularly intense adoration. Miller, who taught American history and social studies to juniors, had been with Core since its founding. His students read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. They discussed the imperative of dismantling white supremacy and the patriarchy. A white man approaching fifty, Miller wore Birkenstocks and jewelry, and had a long ponytail that he adorned with a threaded hair wrap, the kind popular among aging hippies and teenage girls. He hugged students and urged them to talk about their feelings; crying wasn’t unusual in his classes.

The fall semester after the Northridge earthquake, Jackie* began eating lunch in Miller’s room. Jackie was petite, with dark hair and a wide, winning smile. But, entering the 11th grade, she felt insecure. “I basically advertised within those first few weeks that I was an incredibly vulnerable 16-year-old girl,” Jackie told me. She assumed that her friends were smarter than she was, and her parents’ rocky marriage was taking an emotional toll. Meanwhile, she struggled to navigate the sexual attention that men and boys had begun showing her.

*Asterisks denote pseudonyms The Atavist is using for women who requested that they not be identified in this story. 

Miller made Jackie feel comfortable in his class right away. “He was teaching us things other people were afraid to teach us,” she said. “He was brave, he was a pioneer.” When they talked one on one, she felt that he treated her like an adult, asking her about her life and listening when she spoke. He gave her The Celestine Prophecy, a popular novel about a man’s spiritual awakening, to read and discuss with him. Barely a month into school, Jackie wrote in her diary that Miller was “so fucking cool”—and also a “big flirt” and “very sexual.”

One day, Miller asked Jackie if he was right in sensing an attraction between them. Jackie felt like she had to say yes or he would be disappointed. Besides, maybe she did like him, or should. When Miller asked if she’d ever had sex, Jackie told him she had, which was true. In response, Miller drove her to get an HIV test. Jackie felt like he was taking care of her.

They started seeing each other off campus—teachers and students in Core often interacted outside school, so Jackie didn’t think twice about it. But then, according to Jackie, Miller began sexually abusing her. Once, while giving her a ride to a friend’s house, he pulled over and lunged across the console between them. As Miller kissed Jackie, he placed her hand on his erection. On another occasion, he took her to the beach with two of her friends, both male Core students. The group sat on the sand, with Jackie leaning against Miller’s legs, his arms wrapped around her, and his hands on her breasts. That night, as Miller drove Jackie home, he told her that she could “use” him to work through the problems in her life. He suggested that they write letters to each other and leave them in a filing cabinet in his classroom. He told her to call him “Journey” in the correspondence.

Miller said he loved her. Jackie wanted to believe him. It would be more than two decades before she learned that she wasn’t the only student Miller pursued—and that Miller wasn’t the only Core teacher who allegedly targeted students for abuse.

In 2021, Jackie and three other Jane Does filed lawsuits claiming they were groomed and sexually abused while they were students in Core. Four former teachers, including Miller, are named in the suits as perpetrators. The alleged abuse happened between 1994 and 2009; during that same time frame, according to public records, two additional Core teachers were convicted of crimes involving students, including statutory rape, and a third Cleveland teacher whose classes were popular with magnet students was convicted of possession of child pornography.

Read the legal complaints filed by the four Jane Does and an open letter written by the first woman to come forward to report abuse.

An estimated 10 percent of U.S. students suffer sexual misconduct at the hands of a school employee before they leave high school. Over the past decade, LAUSD has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in response to abuse and harassment claims. What makes Core unique is the number of teachers accused of misconduct over a prolonged period, and the apparent use of the magnet’s curriculum itself to groom students. There is also evidence that some of the teachers’ colleagues and school officials were aware of what was happening but did little or nothing to stop it. “They put the magnet program’s reputation over a student’s well-being. That hurts, you know?” said Kate*, a classmate of Jackie’s and another plaintiff in the lawsuits. “At the end of the day, it was almost like they didn’t care.”

Like the blind thrust faults beneath Los Angeles, the network of suspected wrongdoing at Core is dense, and its capacity for devastation is enormous. This story is based on extensive interviews with the four Jane Does, dozens of other Core alumni, and multiple educators with knowledge of the program. It draws from hundreds of pages of depositions and other legal documents, as well as personal correspondence, yearbooks, journals, and social media postings shared by Core graduates. Two of the accused teachers, including Miller, are deceased; the others either declined to comment for this story or did not respond to interview requests. A spokesperson for LAUSD, which is named as a defendant in the lawsuits, said in a statement that the district “does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation.”

In 2021, Core celebrated its 40th anniversary. The program remains a crown jewel of LA’s public education system. The women who have come forward understand why: Core taught them to disrupt the status quo, expose injustice, and demand accountability for harm. Now they are doing just that.

https://magazine.atavist.com/fault-lines-cleveland-high-school-reseda-los-angeles-core-abuse/?

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Who's to blame for our censorious students?

Without freedom of speech, you do not have a university. More than any other value, it is freedom of speech that most defines the university, that makes it a special place in society set aside for debate and inquiry in which speech and thought should be freer than in practically any other workplace or institution.

And yet an alarming proportion of students seem not to have got the memo. A new study by the Policy Institute at King’s College London confirms what has been clear for some time: that today’s students, far from being rebellious free-thinkers, are if anything more supportive of censorship than the general population.

The numbers are pretty stark. Forty-one per cent of students believe that academics who ‘teach material that offends some students’ should be fired, compared to just 25 per cent of the general public. Similarly, 39 per cent of students believe that students’ unions should ‘ban all speakers that may cause offence’, compared to just 26 per cent of the general public.

The notion that even discussing bigoted ideas risks legitimising them is also alarmingly mainstream on campus. Forty-six per cent of students believe that ‘if you debate an issue like sexism or racism you make it acceptable’. This is essentially a blank cheque for censorship, based on the conviction that people are too easily led to even be exposed to obnoxious ideas.

On all of these questions, a plurality of students side, essentially, with censorship – only around 30 per cent of students disagree with any of these statements. This is the crucial context to the never-ending stories of campus censorship. Whether it is the hounding of Kathleen Stock or the No Platforming of ‘Islamophobic’ speakers – in each case, an alarming number of students will think ‘fair enough’ when they see such censorship. And while ban-happy SU bureaucrats hardly represent all students, we’d be foolish not to take this ideological drift away from free speech among students seriously.

The danger, of course, is that this takes the form of boomerish hectoring – of greying columnists demanding to know why young people aren’t what they used to be. But aside from this tending to alienate those we should hope to win over, this also tends to let older generations off the hook. These illiberal ideas didn’t come from nowhere. These students didn’t emerge from the womb with a predisposition to censorship. They’ve been socialised into a society that sees free speech as dangerous.

Take the great awokening of the British police. It should be little wonder that students’ union officials are clamping down on ‘offensive’ speech when literally thousands of people have been arrested in recent years for posting ‘offensive’ things on the internet. And this wasn’t the work of millennials, working their way through the ranks – restrictions on ‘hate speech’ of one kind or another have been on the British statute books for decades.

We conceded the principle on freedom of speech a long time ago in this country. So much so that even nominally pro-freedom politicians are apparently incapable of defending it as an indivisible liberty. When the government introduced its Free Speech Bill in 2021, then universities minister Michelle Donelan was slapped down for suggesting that Holocaust deniers should be allowed to speak on campus. Boris Johnson’s spokesman quickly made clear that this wasn’t government policy.

It should go without saying that Holocaust deniers are odious racists. But the lot of the free-speech advocate is occasionally having to stick up for the rights of odious racists. You either support free speech for all or for none at all. Plus, what constitutes ‘hate speech’ is very much in the eye of the beholder. Having failed to hold the line on freedom of speech, politicians and commentators can hardly now act surprised that a younger generation is demanding the censorship of a new set of ideas and speakers who they deem wrong and hateful.

Where did these censorious youngsters come from? It’s really quite simple. They were born into a society that has lost faith in freedom of speech.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/whos-to-blame-for-our-censorious-students/

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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 October, 2022

NYC moves away from de Blasio’s unfair high-school-admission scheme — but not far enough

Kudos to Schools Chancellor David Banks for telling kids and parents: “We do believe in high standards.” Good grades and hard work will matter again under the city’s new high school admission process. Too bad he didn’t go far enough.

The revised system puts about a fifth of students citywide into the top tier that gets “first access” to screened high schools: 8th-graders (with a GPA of 90 or above) who place in the top 15% of their middle school or the top 15% citywide. As Banks notes, this rewards “those who work hard academically and make it to the top of their middle school class.”

Last year’s top tier included 60% of 8th-graders; the resulting lottery then placed far too many kids in schools that didn’t match their abilities — condemning far too many high achievers to schools that can’t challenge them.

But one holdover from the de Blasio war on excellence remains: Schools can’t use scores on state proficiency exams as one criterion for admissions. Why not, Mr. Chancellor?

 

We have no problem with boosting “access to communities who have historically been locked out of screened schools,” as Banks says his system does — provided it has safeguards against wholesale grade inflation at the middle-school level.

That is, as is the new system penalizes kids whose middle schools set higher expectations. If he’s serious about excellence, Banks needs to give selective schools some way to address such issues. Otherwise, he’s still guaranteeing grim cases of mismatch.

But at least this streamlined admissions process is simple and easy to understand, with faster timelines for open houses, applications, and admission offers. It also extends the wait-lists period into mid-September to ensure that any open seats get filled by students desiring to enroll.

The plan also ends the de Blasio ban on screened middle-school admissions: It’s up to the superintendents of each of the city’s 32 school districts to work with middle-school leaders and the community to devise admission criteria for such programs. Parents can at least hope that, for example, a performing-arts middle school can screen for performing-arts aptitude.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/29/nyc-moves-away-from-de-blasios-unfair-high-school-admission-scheme-but-not-far-enough/

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Cambridge university traduces itself

It’s perfectly legitimate for Cambridge University to seek to understand its history, warts and all. But the University’s final report of its ‘Legacies of Enslavement Advisory Group’, established in 2019 to investigate the university’s historic links with slavery, is short on facts and long on opinions. It also fails to consider Cambridge’s links with the noble cause of anti-slavery.

It is hardly surprising that Cambridge should have been associated with slavery. The Atlantic slave trade and West Indian slavery were integral to the British empire between the late sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet the report tells us that no ‘Cambridge institutions directly owned any plantations that exploited enslaved people’.

Instead, the Advisory Group focus in their report on ‘individuals closely associated with Cambridge and its colleges’. No one today would hold a university responsible for the subsequent actions and opinions of the students it educated. Yet this report proceeds on this basis, relying on ‘guilt by association’. Much of the evidence is not about Cambridge but individuals linked to it in tenuous ways.

Cambridge is held to be complicit in slavery because a number of those who established the Virginia Company in the early seventeenth century were educated there. The university is apparently shamed by ‘the parents of Cambridge students’ who invested in the Royal African Company which traded in slaves.

Individuals who did nothing to further slavery are also shamed, such as Adam Sedgwick, professor of geology and teacher of Charles Darwin. Sedgwick received a legacy, after the emancipation of slaves in the British empire in 1833, from a woman whose family had previously owned a plantation. Or take Henry Coulthurst, a brilliant Cambridge mathematician, the vicar of Halifax, and a prominent abolitionist. Coulthurst’s father and brothers owned plantations in the West Indies, and the report condemns him for their sins. He might more appropriately be praised for his opposition to the slave trade.

Even Thomas Clarkson, second only to William Wilberforce in the campaign to abolish the slave trade, is fair game because of his ‘gradualism and elitism’ and his realism in accepting that slavery could only be ended by compensating slaveholders. Clarkson and other Cambridge abolitionists should be ‘interrogated’, we are told, because they followed different strategies from those advocated by the Cambridge Advisory Group two centuries later. Clarkson was the very hero of the movement. He rode through Englandfor years, stopping to convene meetings to raise awareness of the hated trade while holding aloft his famous image of the innards of a slave ship.

The report is intolerant of different views and ignorant of context. The authors are appalled that during the American Civil War many Cambridge students supported the Confederacy, the southern slaveholding states that seceded from the Union, and that Charles Kingsley, then Regius professor of history, gave lectures endorsing the Confederacy’s right to secede. The authors seem not to know that these views were commonplace in Britain, especially among the governing class. The Union’s imposition of import tariffs to pay for the war; the struggles with Britain over ‘rights of search’ on the high seas; the blockade of Southern ports, depriving Lancashire of cotton; and traditional British support for national self-determination led many Britons to favour the Confederacy. Cambridge students merely reflected a section of national opinion.

There is little sensitivity and respect for literature either, as in the case of the poet John Donne. Donne was educated in Oxford, receiving an honorary degree from Cambridge. Geographical references, images drawn from the age of exploration, and metaphors based on voyaging were frequently used by him in poems that many consider among the greatest literary works of the Renaissance. Yet in a few words Donne, who had nothing to do with slavery, is set down as a colonialist and white elitist. There is no mitigation in literary genius.

Worst of all is to write about ‘legacies of enslavement’ in Cambridge with only the most cursory treatment of the university’s many associations with antislavery.

Cambridge University was one of the communities, alongside whole cities like Birmingham, Bristol and Leeds, which had its own list of subscribers to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, founded in 1787. Everyone has heard of William Wilberforce, the society’s leading spirit, and many will know the name of Clarkson: both were educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge in the early 1780s. But fewer will know of the Clapham Sect, evangelical Christian families, gathered around Holy Trinity Church on Clapham Common in the 1780s and 1790s, who led the abolition campaign. And no one will be able to appreciate the links between Clapham and Cambridge from reading this report. Yet Cambridge men were prominent in the Sect. They included Wilberforce himself; Henry and John Venn, father and son, successive pastors at Holy Trinity; Charles Simeon, of King’s College, Cambridge and the minister at Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge; and Isaac Milner, president of Queen’s College.

Leading figures in the Anti-Slavery Society, which campaigned for emancipation after 1823, included two men educated in Cambridge, George Stephen and Thomas Babington Macaulay, the famous historian, who spoke brilliantly at the Society’s first mass meeting. Both were sons of leaders of the Clapham Sect. A portrait by Reynolds of the Anti-Slavery Society’s president, Prince William Frederick, second duke of Gloucester, hangs to this day in the Hall in Trinity College, Cambridge. The second earl Grey, prime minister when slavery was abolished, was educated at Trinity.

The name of Peter Peckard, Master of Magdalene College, deserves more than just a single passing reference in the report. In a sermon in 1784, he denounced the slave trade as a ‘sin against the light of nature, and the accumulated evidence of divine Revelation’. The following year, as Vice-Chancellor, Peckard set the question: ‘Is it lawful to enslave the unconsenting?’ for the annual Latin essay prize. It was won by Clarkson for an essay on the Atlantic slave trade which was declaimed in the university’s Senate House. Three years later, Peckard published his famous pamphlet Am I not a Man and a Brother?, a criticism of concepts of African inferiority. Its title became the slogan of the antislavery movement. Peckard was also a supporter of Olaudah Equiano, the African-born abolitionist.

There is no statue of Peter Peckard in Cambridge and it is unlikely one will be erected on the evidence of this report, which does all it can to ignore him, and others like him. In any case, Cambridge is more concerned to pull statues down than to commemorate its true heroes.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/09/the-problem-with-cambridge-universitys-slavery-report/

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Christian nurse sues controversial Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust for 'forcing racist ideology' on students in lecture entitled, 'whiteness - a problem of our time'

A Christian nurse, who is suing an NHS Trust for discrimination, has claimed that the healthcare service forces a 'racist ideology' onto its students.

Amy Gallagher, 33, is taking legal action against the Portman Clinic in North London, part of The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust.

The nurse, who is in her final stages of a two-year course in forensic psychology at the trust, claims she has been discriminated against on the basis of race, religion and philosophical belief.

The mental health nurse took issue with the trust when she was allegedly forced to take part in a lecture titled 'whiteness - a problem of our time' in October 2020.

The online presentation then said, 'the problem of racism is a problem of whiteness' and encouraged attendees to confront 'the reality of whiteness'.

At a meeting with her course leader Ms Gallagher explained she did not consider herself racist and that she took a 'colour-blind' approach, meaning she did not judge people by their skin colour.

Ms Gallagher claims she was told that such a colour-blind approach is now 'outdated'.

Ms Gallagher then filed a formal complaint to the Tavistock Trust in January last year.

In March the legal case was escalated after an external speaker complained to the Nursing and Midwifery Council, claiming that Ms Gallagher had 'inflicted race-based harm' and as a result could not work with 'diverse populations', The Telegraph reports.

Ms Gallagher said she believes it will be the first legal case for 'lack of belief' that argues that a white Christian woman cannot believe in Critical Race Theory.

The theory says racism is institutional and rejects the colour-blind approach.  

She told The Telegraph: 'They are forcing Critical Race Theory onto people - you're not allowed to disagree with it, or they will bully you for two years.

'I'm bringing this legal case to protect my career but it's also the in the courts.  'The NHS is forcing someone to adopt a racist ideology and it needs to be stopped.'

The nurse who will be represented by Andrew Storch Solicitors, filed court documents in the Central London County in March.

Shakespeare Martineau law firm, representing the trust, plans to file its defence this week.

Ms Gallagher, who has worked for seven years, enrolled on the Portman Clinic's D59F Forensic Psychodynamic Psychotherapy course in September 2020 to finish her clinical training. She had already completed the Tavistock's foundation psychotherapy course.

She said she initially enjoyed the two-year, part-time course, which will qualify her to set up her own private psychotherapy practice.

But became concerned when, in November, students were given a compulsory lecture on race and racism by forensic psychoanalyst Dr Anne Aiyegbusi.

Ms Gallagher claimed that the lecturer 'spoke negatively about Christianity while no other religions were mentioned'. 

In August 2021, the nurse set up a Go Fund Me page titled '#StandUpToWoke Tavistock discrimination Lawsuit'.

On the site, she said the money would help fund the initial lawsuit, class action lawsuit and an application for a Judicial Review.

It has raised £27,518 in the last year.

The nurse previously said that the Trust had threatened to suspend her from her final year of the course to become a psychotherapist, which cost more than £20,000.

She previously told MailOnline in January: 'On the basis of my experience there, what they describe as anti-racism is racism. What they describe as tolerance is an intolerance of anyone who thinks differently to them.

'Left unchallenged, such institutional bullying will only be emboldened.

'I feel passionate about this. I hope my case will prove that teaching these discriminatory ideas – as though they are factual and true – within the NHS or within academia is wrong.'

A spokesman for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust said: 'We cannot comment on an ongoing legal case. 'As a trust, we have made a public commitment to work to become an anti-racist organisation.'

In July, the NHS Trust's controversial child transgender clinic was forced to shut down after a report found that it was 'not safe' for children.

The gender identity service will instead be replaced by regional centres at existing children's hospitals, which will provide more holistic care with 'strong links to mental health services'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11271893/Christian-nurse-sues-Tavistock-Portman-NHS-Trust-forcing-racist-ideology-students.html

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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2 October, 2022

UPenn medical school professor says new 'anti-racism' policies are 'lowering standards and corrupting medicine' because they focus on 'skin color' and not the 'best and brightest'

A University of Pennsylvania professor has condemned recent movements for racial equity in health care, saying they prevent white and Asian students from being accepted to medical school.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, 78, professor emeritus at the university's medical school, told the New York Post that a 'focus on diversity' has become detrimental to medical education. 

'I understand we need to give people more opportunities,' Goldfarb said. 'But there are some things you can't sacrifice.

'This focus on diversity means we're going to take someone with a certain skin color because we think they're OK, that they can do the work, but we're not going to look for the best and the brightest.

'We're going to look for people who are just OK to make sure we have the right mixture of ethnic groups in our medical schools.'

A spokesperson for the medical school said Goldfarb's statements do not reflect 'core values' representative of the school.

To complement his public statements, Goldfarb is also chairman of Do No Harm, an organization that says it wants to remove 'the same radical movement behind critical race theory in the classroom and Defund the Police in health care.

The organization's website says it works toward protecting doctors, patients and health care in its entirety from 'discriminatory, divisive ideologies.' 

He most recently wrote a new book, released in March, titled 'Take Two Aspirin and Call Me by My Pronouns: Why Turning Doctors into Social Justice Warriors Is Destroying American Medicine.'

In response to Goldfarb's public comments, the school's chairman, Dr. Michael Parmacek, has called Goldfarb 'racist' in communication with school staff, according to The Post.

Goldfarb said he blames the 2018 arrival of Senior Vice Dean Dr. Suzanne Rose for the school's push toward diversity.

'We'd had a very stable leadership for quite a while and resisted going the way some other medical schools were going but she brought in this new ideology,' Goldfarb said.

 'She wanted to link up to what the American Medical Association was doing in education, which was promoting woke ideas, and there was a phrase that she told me that always stuck with me. 

'She said we have too much science in the curriculum - which meant physicians should be more akin to social workers in their activities, particularly primary care physicians, rather than learning hard science that relates to patient care.'

In 2020, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) said systemic racism was to blame for the disparities between white and black patients.

They then announced a three-year plan in 2021 to 'aggressively push forward' policy to encourage people of color to enter the medical profession.

Because of this, other students do not have access to medical school, Goldfarb said.

'It's manyfold harder for a white medical student who has average grades to get accepted into medical school, maybe 30 or 40 times harder than a minority student with the same grades,' he continued.

Dr. Ashley Denmark, founder of Project Diversify Medicine, started a petition in early 2022 demanding Goldfarb's removal from the school.

Denmark, 38, started Project Diversify Medicine to help minorities get into medical school.

'Goldfarb represents the privilege that a lot of white male doctors enjoy, which is the ability to express themselves freely without recourse,' Denmark said. 

'Doctors like me don't get the support a white doctor like Goldfarb does. Racism ends in a funeral for a lot of black and brown patients. All we want is more doctors who look like our community.'  <i>[Looks matter in a doctor??]</i>

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11267659/UPenn-professor-says-new-anti-racism-policies-lowering-standards-corrupting-medicine.html

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Berkeley is slammed for allowing NINE student groups to create 'Jew-free zones' that prevent speakers who support Israel or Zionism from being allowed on campus

Several student groups at the University of California, Berkeley, law school have adopted a bylaw prohibiting pro-Israel speakers at events.

Written by Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP), the bylaw is meant to ensure 'the safety and welfare of Palestinian students on campus.' It added that the organization will hold 'Palestine 101' training courses.

At least nine groups have adopted the rule so far, including the Berkeley Law Muslim Student Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Womxn of Color Collective, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Queer Caucus, Community Defense Project, Women of Berkeley Law and Law Students of African Descent.

Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school's dean since 2017, identifies as Jewish and recognizes that under this new bylaw he would not be able to speak.

'It is troubling to broadly exclude a particular viewpoint from being expressed,' he told The Jewish News of Northern California. 'Indeed, taken literally, this would mean that I could not be invited to speak because I support the existence of Israel, though I condemn many of its policies.'

Some Jewish organizations have criticized Chemerinsky's response, indicating he has allowed for an anti-Semitic environment at the school. 

Head of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Berkeley law alumnus Kenneth L. Marcus said that students involved 'are taking a step down a very ugly road.'

'Berkeley Law wouldn't be Berkeley Law if students didn't engage in a certain amount of wrongheaded political nonsense,' he said.

'This is different, because it's not just a political stunt. It is tinged with antisemitism and anti-Israel national origin discrimination.'

The Jewish Students Association at Berkeley Law wrote in response to the byline that they were 'saddened' and  'concerned' that groups will 'silence Jewish voices on campus' while alienating 'many Jewish students from certain groups on campus.'

'Students can advocate for Palestinians and criticize Israeli policies without denying Israel the right to exist or attacking the identity of other students,' the statement, co-written by five members, says. 'We are troubled that this bylaw creates an environment in which only one viewpoint is acceptable.'

The campus's larger group, the Jewish Students Association, complemented this opinion.  'When an affinity group adopts this by-law or conditions speaking privileges on denouncing Israel, many Jewish people are put in a position all too familiar: deny or denigrate a part of their identity or be excluded from community groups,' the group wrote.

The bylaw starts by saying the group, which adopts it will 'include a Palestine-centered and de-colonial approach to holding club activities,' according to a LSJP Instagram post.

'The (insert organization name) is committed to providing a supportive community space for all indigenous peoples globally, including movements for Palestinian liberation,' it reads.

A caption on the post says LSJP is openly promoting the bylaw to other student groups: 'LSJP is calling ALL student organizations at Berkeley law to take an anti-racist and anti-settler colonial stand and adopt the bylaw into their constitutions ASAP!'

In response to backlash from the bylaw, LSJP said they believed 'Israel is an apartheid state,' which requires them to 'have an obligation to act.'

'Supporting Palestinian liberation does not mean opposition to Jewish people or the Jewish religion; in fact, Jewish liberation and Palestinian liberation are intertwined, and we are committed to each other's safety,' it said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11266921/Law-student-groups-Berkeley-amend-bylaws-develop-Jewish-free-zones.html

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Appeals Court judge says he will REFUSE to take on law clerks from Yale because the 'intolerant' Ivy League school 'not only tolerates the cancellation of views - it actively practices it'

A federal appeals court judge appointed by former President Donald Trump has said he will no longer hire clerks from Yale Law School, which he says is plagued by 'cancel culture' and students disrupting conservative speakers.

'Yale presents itself as the best, most elite institution of legal education,' US Circuit Judge James Ho said in remarks given to the Federalist Society on Thursday. 'Yet it's the worst when it comes to legal cancellation.'

Ho said Yale 'sets the tone for other law schools, and for the legal profession at large,' but it has set a poor example in recent years due to its 'closed and intolerant environment.'

The judge then added, Yale: 'not only tolerates the cancellation of views - it actively practices it.' 

'I want nothing to do with it,' Ho concluded.

He has urged his fellow judges to likewise boycott the Ivy League institution which has been the scene for several controversies over an allegedly 'woke' culture among students and faculty leading to several flashpoints in this year alone.

Yale Law School is one of the most prestigious law schools in the country, having produced some of the nation's most prominent leaders, including Presidents Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford, at least five current US senators and four current Supreme Court Justices.

Among the incidents he cited was a free speech talk in March by Kristen Waggoner - who defended a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding in a case before the Supreme Court - that was disrupted by nearly 120 students supporting the LGBTQ community. 

Waggoner, who is now the president of the conservative religious rights group Alliance Defending Freedom, has supported Ho's remarks.  

'Yale still hasn't condemned the behavior of its law students last semester, so no one should be surprised when a federal judge notices,' she said in a statement after the judge's comments.

The havoc caused by the student demonstrators appeared to violate the university's free speech policy and when they were reminded by moderator Kate Stith, she was met with chants and raised middle fingers, to which she replied: 'Grow up.' 

The students hit back, arguing that their disturbance was execution of 'free speech' and continued to scream at the panelists.

Police were forced to escort the guest speakers from Yale Law School's free speech debate after the students intimidated the conservative panelist by yelling obscenities, including one person who shouted 'I will literally fight you, b***h.' 

Heather Gerken, Dean Yale Law School, insisted that the students hadn't violated the college's rules.

Judge Ho has previously railed against the woke culture at Yale, having defended Ilya Shapiro - former director of the Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy Center - after students at Georgetown University's law school urged that he be ousted from a new faculty position. 

Shapiro caused outrage when he wrote tweets questioning President Joe Biden's pledge to nominate a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A prominent conservative legal scholar, Shapiro was suspended but later cleared to become the executive director of Georgetown Law's Center for the Constitution. 

He eventually quit, however, saying the school's handling of the matter made working there 'untenable.'

Ho said, 'At Yale, 'cancellations and disruptions seem to occur with special frequency.'

Senior US Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, an appointee of former Republican President Ronald Reagan, had in March called on judges to think twice about bringing on Yale students who disrupted Waggoner's event.

He wrote in an email, 'All federal judges – and all federal judges are presumably committed to free speech – should carefully consider whether any such student so identified should be disqualified for potential clerkships.'

Silberman said students at the event had 'attempted to shout down speakers participating in a panel discussion on free speech.'

The incident 'prompts me to suggest that students who are identified as those willing to disrupt any such panel discussion should be noted,' he wrote.

Ho said that event was just one example. U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was also 'disrupted by loud angry law students in the classroom' at Yale a few years ago.

That incident, Ho said, was because as Alabama's Republican attorney general, Pryor backed Texas' defense of the anti-sodomy law struck down in 2003 in the landmark Supreme Court gay rights case Lawrence v. Texas.

Ho, according to NPR, is an outspoken opponent of abortion rights and a staunch advocate for gun rights, causing the public broadcaster to refer to him as potentially 'President Trump's most enduring legacy.' 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11268739/Judge-says-REFUSE-clerks-Yale-intolerant-school-fuels-cancel-culture.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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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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