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Quis magistros ipsos docebit? . |
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29 September, 2023
The Left's thought police are destroying America's colleges
The discourse surrounding campus free speech , or the lack thereof, is a political wedge on the Left between liberals and progressives.
On one hand, liberals have joined the conservative outcry against campus hall monitors who sanctimoniously police university classrooms for violators of anti-racist and woke gender ideology. On the other, progressives defend their illiberal tactics and wither at the thought of state legislatures and governors stepping in to strengthen the values of the First Amendment .
The tension is at the heart of United States politics. Have institutions, including the university system, been so thoroughly captured by anti-American and illiberal ideology that the government must step in to restore viewpoint diversity, free thought, and free expression?
To help answer the question, as chairwoman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, I investigated the state of free speech on college campuses and released the findings in a report .
The thrust of the report paints a grim picture: free speech is all but an illusion for many college students, teachers, and administrators.
The report highlights university policies that are flagrantly anti-free speech. Take, for example, the oxymoronically named “free speech zones,” which limit speech to highly regulated and often out-of-the-way areas of campus. Modern universities purport to be places of free debate and open discussion, but in fact, this freedom is often forced out of the classroom, where instead, students are expected to parrot their professors and peers. This policy is clearly unconstitutional, and yet dozens of schools maintain it.
Policies such as these are the reason nearly two-thirds of college students believe their campus climate prevents individuals from speaking freely on campus. These numbers are chilling.
They also reveal the extent to which universities, in practice and often in policy, have strayed from what the Supreme Court has long established: that “state colleges and universities are not enclaves immune from the sweep of the First Amendment.”
Yet university culture is directly at odds with free speech principles. Colleges and universities have used taxpayer dollars to subsidize culturally one-sided woke faculty and administrators and to allow shout-downs , disinvitations of speakers, and “ cancelations .” A recent survey found that almost two-thirds of college students see no problem with shouting down speakers on campus, and nearly one in five considers it acceptable to use violence to stop certain speech.
Moreover, many universities require lock-step discipleship behind woke policies and politics. Coerced conformity is antithetical to academic freedom, and yet, increasing numbers of schools use political tests to exclude dissenting positions and ensure conformity. Currently, one in five schools requires faculty candidates to provide a statement on their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Take the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for example, which announced that by the 2024-2025 academic year, candidates seeking promotion or tenure must submit personal DEI statements.
Pushing the discipleship of DEI is not only happening at the faculty level. Over 90% of freshman orientation programs across the nation included DEI programming, while only 30% reviewed free speech or viewpoint diversity.
The fundamental telos of every academic institution is – or should be – the relentless pursuit of truth. The rampant censorship described by the committee report undermines that pursuit, but the report also offers possible solutions.
If colleges and universities cannot safeguard diversity of thought among their students and faculty on their own, then Congress may look to where the law could assist institutions in upholding First Amendment rights. Committee recommendations include institutional disclosure requirements, adoption of free speech statements, and prohibitions on the use of political tests.
Congress is not merely free to uphold the First Amendment rights of students and faculty – it is obliged to do so. Remaining silent on this issue is an easy way to lose forever these institutions to progressives who have no moral qualms about turning the university from the free market of ideas into a monolithic echo chamber of woke viewpoints.
Liberty is endowed to the people by our creator, not by government institutions. The government, therefore, has the moral obligation to protect and defend that liberty in the context of taxpayer-funded institutions such as colleges and universities.
Bottom line: our university system has been captured by anti-American and illiberal ideology, and it is time to restore viewpoint diversity, free thought, and free expression in American universities.
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Why have so many British parents stopped sending their children to school?
Breaktime at school, and 13-year-old Harry was crouching in the only place he felt safe — a bush in the corner of the playground.
Since returning to school after lockdown, he had been relentlessly bullied by a gang of children. 'I told loads of teachers multiple times. They never even talked to the bullies.'
That morning Harry had plucked up the courage to ask the deputy head if he could move to another school. 'The situation is even worse there!' he told the boy.
Now Harry heard the gang yell out his name. He felt so scared, he thought he was going to be physically sick. Suddenly he got up and walked out of the school gates. At home he told his parents, 'I don't want to go back. Ever!'
So he hasn't.
Around the country, children have been starting the new academic year. But an increasing number, like Harry, are being home-educated.
Indeed, the statistics are startling, as a report from the Centre For Social Justice (CSJ), called Out Of Sight And Out Of Mind, reveals. It estimates some 81,000 children were home-educated at the start of the 2021/22 academic year. That's equivalent to 80 average-sized secondary schools. Even more extraordinarily, half of those had only moved into home education since lockdown.
Local authority sources spoke to the Centre For Social Justice only on the condition of anonymity — proving how loaded the topic of home-schooling is. They revealed that, in some areas, home-education uptake shot up by 180 per cent when schools re-opened.
Of course, home-schooling has long been a feature of our education system, albeit a niche one — for wealthier families who can afford to have one parent educating their children, or for those who prefer a more alternative lifestyle. But as I've discovered in this exclusive investigation, the current explosion in home-schooling reveals something more disturbing than parents suddenly fancying a spot of teaching at their kitchen table — a worrying flight of children leaving state education.
And, make no mistake, the families abandoning formal education are not homeschooling because they want to. They are home-schooling because they are desperate. Last year, my two-part series for the Mail, The Lost Children Of Lockdown, revealed how profoundly teens and young children had been affected by Covid lockdowns.
Yesterday, the Education Committee revealed 22.5 per cent of pupils are consistently absent from school — almost double the pre-pandemic rate. It described this as a 'great concern'.
That might, in part, be explained by a study by consultancy Public First this month, which showed that factors such as Covid, teachers' strikes and, most recently, the RAAC concrete scandal, have also contributed to a 'seismic shift' in parental attitudes towards education.
Pre-pandemic, ensuring daily attendance was considered a tenet of good parenting, but now it's socially acceptable to take children on holiday in term time. From there, it's not such a big step to abandoning school altogether.
I found every sector of society was affected — from the most comfortable to the poorest: middle-class families; single parents; ethnic minorities; even parents whose own education was so bad they are, in effect, functionally illiterate — all forced to home-educate.
All pointed to an education system in crisis. Some parents felt schools were failing their children academically or emotionally, painting a picture of a generation of children anxious in the aftermath of lockdown.
Others felt they were hotbeds of violence and bullying. Some cited a new educational 'woke' agenda which they felt had become uncomfortably prevalent, and was being presented to children at far too young an age.
And — as is always the case — I found the poorest hardest hit, with an absence of guidance or financial support.
'Home education is changing out of all recognition at the moment,' explained Jacky, the lead for home education at a local authority in the north of England, who spoke to me off the record.
'Covid revealed a lot,' added Ziggy Moore, founder of Moore Education, an online tuition programme for maths and English, who has seen a boom in business because of parents home-schooling and also using private tutors.
Thanks to online lessons during lockdown, parents observed how schools were educating their kids up close — and what they saw did not please them.
'I am now seeing with my own eyes that you are not educating my child to a level that is even passable. I can see first-hand how it's not benefiting my child,' as one African Caribbean mother from Brixton, South London, remarked about her 12-year-old daughter's school.
She now home-schools her, assisted by a part-time job with the local council which means she can work flexibly. She hopes to do the same with her two other children.
She's not alone. 'Online learning was a joke in my child's school,' said one parent. 'Some teachers disappeared abroad, we heard. And they never marked my son's work,' said one mother who now home schools, but to do so had to give up her job and go on benefits. 'Money is tight, I can tell you,' she admitted.
Some previously unhappy children blossomed away from school — especially those with special educational needs (SEN), such as the children of Natasha, who is self-employed and lives in a prosperous market town in the Midlands.
'My twins were failed by the school system from the moment they entered it,' she said. She saw her primary-aged twins just parked in a classroom with one teaching assistant and a group of other SEN children.
'Then, during the first lockdown, I was able to see the mental health issues and stresses from being let down by the school system melt away [from them].'
She started teaching them herself. Today, she says: 'My children are thriving. I have them back!'
Some parents acted to avoid disaster for their children's mental health. One single mother who lives in a leafy Essex suburb gave up a well-paid job in marketing to homeschool her child.
'She has suffered from anxiety and depression since lockdown and refuses to go to school. If I was not home-schooling, she would not have an education.' The school tried to help by offering flexible hours to her daughter, but as the mother pointed out: 'You can't force a 15-year-old into school.'
But even without the impact of lockdown, many no longer see school as a safe place, thanks to bullying and social media spats boiling over.
'My children need safeguarding from school,' said one father from Norfolk. He caught his teenage son stealing a kitchen knife from the house 'for a showdown with another lad'. They had been exchanging threats on Snapchat all night.
For today, social media means bullying continues 24/7 on children's smart-phones, with feuds erupting into sickening violence — no doubt contributing to the fact that, shockingly, boys under 16 are most likely to be stabbed on the way home from school.
'Around here,' said the Norfolk father who has reluctantly started home-schooling, 'you hear the police sirens at 8am then again at 3.49pm.'
It's not surprising, then, that parents of home-schooled teenage boys see a substantial reduction of peer-group influence and online bullying.
I also found home-schooling burgeoning among ethnic minorities. As one African Caribbean mother from Streatham, South London, explained: 'School is where our boys start on the trajectory to gangs, crime and prison. Why would I set my child on that path?'
Her son is 15. She credits home-schooling with the fact that he is focused on his education and hasn't been drawn into gang culture.
The curriculum is another cause for concern. Emily, from an upper-middle-class family, worked for a charitable foundation until an incident at her daughter's state school forced her to opt for home-schooling.
Her seven-year-old daughter had become increasingly anxious and depressed. 'She finally admitted she was scared men with terrifying weapons were going to come and take her away and told me: 'And I won't see you again!' '
Baffled, Emily looked through her daughter's school workbooks — and found they contained the story of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani education activist who was shot in the head by the Taliban aged 15 on her way to school.
'My daughter is seven. She does not know where Pakistan is. This is an issue in Islamic countries, but no teacher will point that out because it's considered racist. So my daughter thinks this is happening in Clapham.'
Another home-schooling mother who lives in Richmond, South-West London, discovered her seven-year-old son was encouraged to report on parents who held 'old-fashioned views' on trans rights and climate change. She said: 'My son's teachers are all young activists. They are trying to create a different belief system in my child which actively undermines my parental rights.'
I found some home-schooling parents were anxious about relationships and sex education classes. Indeed, Ziggy Moore explained that, for children from traditional communities, school can be a minefield: 'If you do not hold the prevailing view, you are in trouble.'
But the prevailing view changes from month to month and is very confusing for a child, especially for 'say, children from poor, African, church-going families whose parents work back-to-back shifts'.
They are unaware of the difference between LGBQ and LGBTQ or the potential offence leaving out a letter can cause. They soon learn.
Ziggy knows one West African 12-year-old who handed his relationships and sex education teacher a note two days before class. 'Please, Miss, don't ask me any questions. I will say the wrong thing and the other kids in the class will come after me.'
Three home-schooling Muslim mothers from North London told me they were disconcerted by 'the LGBTQ agenda that's being pushed onto our kids now', and what they saw as inappropriate sex education at too young an age.
One told me she also felt strongly that home-schooled children were more polite, articulate and confident than many of their school-educated peers.
While her child has been taught about the importance of diversity, trans rights and gay marriage, she believes the school failed her six-year-old on the basics. 'I had her in school for two years and she's so behind on reading and writing. The only thing she knows is what I've since taught her at home.'
Certainly, these parents felt they had no alternative. But the fact remains that little data is collected about home-educated children.
Indeed, nine in ten local authorities admit they are unable even to identify every child in home education. We have the highest rate of home education in Europe, but the least regulation.
What happens to these children? Do they pass exams — homeschooled children are not required to sit GCSEs — go to university, find employment, end up in prison? No one knows.
There is no legal obligation on parents to disclose their reasons to home-educate. In one local authority, according to the CSJ report, almost half of families did not give a reason at all.
In practice, home-educating means those 81,000 children could be anywhere. Enjoying an educational trip to a stately home. Selling pies on a market stall. Or on a train delivering drugs on county lines.
The only thing they have in common is that their parents have sent a letter to school de-registering them. Officially, at least, they are being 'home-educated', rather than just being persistently absent from school.
But even for those with the best of intentions, home-schooling can prove a challenge — especially for disadvantaged parents.
Just taking a GCSE can cost up to £300 each. Jacky, the lead for home education at a northern local authority, sees many families doing an excellent job. But many struggle. In the CSJ report, one local authority admitted that, of its 500 home-schooled children, only half were getting a suitable education.
Local authorities, too, are vague about what an education is — counting leaves in a park or baking a cake satisfies one, bedtime reading another. Working on a market stall full time — as one child was doing — does not.
The only tool Jacky has for children like this is a School Attendance Order, which is expensive to apply for and can take months to enforce, during which time the child is not being educated.
It's too easy for children simply to disappear. One officer admitted he had not seen a particular child for two years.
Harry, the bullied boy who walked out of school, shows the chalk and cheese elements of home education. Both his parents worked and could not afford to stop. Harry admits, left to himself, he would have sat in his room on his computer.
Fortunately for him, his aunt Mary stepped up. She explained: 'Not everyone has got a retired aunt with pointy elbows who was an accountant. And you need pointy elbows because kids like Harry have suffered so much.'
She was shocked to discover the lack of funds available for home-schooling families, and the complication of which syllabus and exam boards to choose. 'Every stage is a learning stage,' said Mary. 'But I like a challenge.'
She was dismayed to discover how far behind Harry was, and how damaged he had been by constant failure at school. He did not know his times tables or how to subtract. But she was soon rewarded by his transformation when they discovered physics together.
'That was the first moment I have been happy in years,' admitted Harry. Mary managed to get funding from a charity to pay for Harry to train as a car mechanic two days a week. He plans to have a career working with farm equipment.
The morning Harry got 100 per cent in an online maths quiz, 'he nearly cried', said Mary. 'I never got 100 per cent before,' Harry said. His aunt beamed: 'It's like changing someone's life story.'
What a shame it took such a crisis in his school, a place he should've been safe, to make that change
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Why bad classroom behaviour is demoralising Australia's teachers
This is a major reason why I sent my son to a private school
Australia is facing a dire teaching shortage, and one of its root causes remains under-addressed: out-of-control classroom behaviour. Privately, and in online discussion groups, teachers report feeling burnt out and unsupported. They face defiant pupils, uncooperative parents and administrators with impossible expectations.
“I’ve been teaching for 22 years. Over that time student behaviours gradually worsened but this has dramatically accelerated since Covid,” lamented one teacher in online forum r/AustralianTeachers.
These anecdotes are backed up by large-scale survey evidence. In 2022, a Monash University study of 5000 teachers found that one-quarter did not feel safe in their job. In online forums, teachers share their war stories. “I’m on duty in a break and I go to tell a group of kids sitting out of bounds and out of sight to come back, and they just say ‘nah, we’re not gonna do that’,” writes one teacher.
“I signed up to teach not to manage behaviour. I always knew I would have to deal with some behaviour, but not to the point where my class has to be evacuated for safety,” reports another.
Forget about microaggressions, or poor-taste jokes (reasons for other workplaces to be described as “toxic”) for teachers, a toxic workplace consists of chairs being thrown around rooms, and weapons being brought to class.
“I’ve had to confiscate knives from students and I’ve been punched in the stomach while pregnant by a student,” reported one teacher in a 2019 study. And it isn’t just the experiences of those teachers who post online. A 2021 survey of 570 Australian teachers found that: “Behaviour management was … frequently nominated by teachers as the greatest challenge they face. Teachers explained that just a small minority of disruptive students can have a large and negative impact on the majority, and that managing these behaviours takes even further time away from teaching. Sixty-eight per cent of teachers indicated they spend more than 10 per cent of their day managing individual student behavioural issues. Seventeen per cent said that this consumes over half their day.”
Parents are not much help, either. Teachers report the parents of defiant pupils often have uncooperative attitudes themselves, and can be dismissive of their child’s bad behaviour. One teacher online shares their daily routine of emailing parents about their child’s disorderly conduct, only to receive such responses as “hahaha sounds like them”.
Within three years, NSW is projected to have a shortfall of 1700 secondary teachers, according to federal Department of Education modelling. And this shortage will be most acute in science and mathematics. This is part of a broader trend across Australia, where more than 9000 secondary teachers are expected to be in short supply, and more than 50,000 teachers are anticipated to leave the profession between 2020 and 2025, including 5000 aged 25 to 29.
Currently, one in five pupils in regional NSW is taught maths by a non-specialist teacher, and up to 70,000 pupils could be affected by teacher shortages by 2030. Despite a government strategy to add 3700 teachers over the next decade, there is still no plan to address teachers’ work conditions, such as deteriorating classrooms and stress, in order to make the profession more sustainable.
So what is to be done? Greg Ashman, a deputy principal and education researcher, argued in a NSW Senate inquiry earlier this year that the first step to fixing a problem is recognising there is one.
The Senate inquiry’s terms of reference emphasised that, based on a 2018 Program for International Assessment analysis, Australian classrooms are some of the most chaotic globally, ranking 69th out of 76 jurisdictions.
Ashman argues that part of the issue is that our education bureaucracy is influenced by ideologies that do not recognise bad behaviour for what it is. Poor behaviour is interpreted as a “form of communication,” meaning a child or teenager is in need of extra support, not consequences.
This is reflected in the comments posted by teachers in online forums: “Apparently we are not supposed to use the term ‘behaviour’ anymore,” wrote one teacher just this week. “Apparently behavioural issues are ‘wellbeing’ issues. And behaviour is a stigmatising term for young people.”
In some cases, bad behaviour is medicalised as Oppositional Defiant Disorder – a disorder that is recognised by the The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5). It may be appropriate to use this label in some cases. However, once a disorder has been diagnosed, all consequences can be interpreted as “discrimination”. Schools are required to be “inclusive” and that means being inclusive of children with ODD.
Disability and mental health diagnoses of all types are on the rise. Last year, 22.5 per cent of schoolchildren in NSW were identified as having at least one “disability”, a label that often works as a get-out-of-consequences-free card.
Given the war stories and dire statistics, perhaps it should be no surprise that 40 per cent of teachers leave the profession within just five years. We do not expect other professionals to work in environments where they are disrespected and, at times, abused just for doing their jobs.
But ultimately, the real victims in all of this are the pupils who are just trying to learn. Disruptive children make it hard for everyone to concentrate, and one problem child can detrimentally impact an entire classroom.
Given the lack of control in our classroom environments, perhaps it is no surprise our literacy and numeracy standards continue to decline. Despite the hundreds of billions spent on education.
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27 September, 2023
Freedom of Choice in Education: the Origins of a Slogan
American Federation of Teachers leader Randi Weingarten is currently taking heat for her attempts to revive an old smear against school vouchers. In a recent interview, the teacher’s union boss claimed that pro-voucher slogans about “choice” were really coded dog whistles from the segregationist era.
Weingarten has a long history of falsely claiming that vouchers originated as part of the backlash against the 1954 desegregation ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. In reality, the concept of school choice traces back centuries prior. It can be found in the works of classical liberal philosophers Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, and John Stuart Mill, all of whom were also outspoken antislavery men. As a matter of education policy, the first voucher programs came to the United States in the late 19th century, when towns in rural New England set up a town-based tuitioning system that offered students a choice in public schooling.
Voucher opponents have nonetheless pushed the line that the idea grew out of the segregationist backlash to Brown v. Board in the 1950s south. In addition to its anachronism, this claim is at odds with historical evidence. In Virginia, which adopted a voucher-like tuition grant system in 1959, several segregationist hardliners mounted a campaign against the program. According to their openly racist arguments, vouchers would open the door to the “negro engulfment” of formerly all-white public schools by giving African-American students the ability to transfer schools. This practice undermined some of the main segregationist tactics for slowing the implementation of Brown: the use of enrollment caps, geographic zoning, and other barriers to impede the enrollment of black students.
Weingarten’s own union forebears had direct culpability in these racist actions. The Virginia Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, linked arms with segregationist attorney John S. Battle, Jr. to attack the tuition grants. In 1961, the union launched a lobbying campaign to restrict their use after a Richmond newspaper reported that many parents were using the grants to move their children out of segregated schools and into integrated institutions.
In this case, Weingarten’s latest argument carries the added twist of a new historical falsehood.
In January of 1959 that year, the Virginia assembly was thrown into chaos after a pair of court rulings struck down the segregationist “Massive Resistance” program of US Senator Harry Flood Byrd and his political machine. Seizing the opportunity to outflank Byrd, an unusual coalition of moderate segregationist “cushioners” and anti-segregationists, the latter mostly from the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C., crafted a race-neutral tuition grant program as part of a replacement for “Massive Resistance.” Supporters dubbed the tuition grant system a “freedom of choice” program, which is the basis of Weingarten’s claim about language and the coding thereof.
As we dig deeper into the evidence though, an added complication emerges. The tuition grant provision originated on a subcommittee of the specially-convened Perrow Commission on Education, which was tasked with a legislative response to the court rulings. On that subcommittee sat Sen. John A.K. Donovan, an anti-segregationist from Northern Virginia. During the Massive Resistance era, Donovan provided one of the only consistent votes against the Byrd machine. He made a name for himself after Brown v. Board by denouncing legislative harassment of the NAACP by the Byrd machine.
Senator Donovan was also a voucher supporter with close ties to the Catholic voucher advocacy group, Citizens for Educational Freedom (CEF). Records from the legislative proceedings indicate that Donovan was one of the main drafters of the tuition grant bill’s language
This historical detail matters, because in 1961 Donovan recounted these events in a letter to Father Virgil Blum, a priest at Marquette University who directed CEF’s national voucher advocacy efforts. Blum himself was an outspoken anti-segregationist, and encouraged his organization—with Donovan’s assistance—to file amicus briefs in the ongoing court battles against Prince Edward County, Virginia, a “Massive Resistance” holdout that shuttered its school system to prevent integration.
In their 1961 correspondence, Blum noted that he had made use of the “freedom of choice” slogan to advocate for vouchers. As Donovan quipped in return, “incidentally, I am to blame for Virginia’s school plan being titled ‘freedom of choice.’” He recounted that he used this phrase in a press statement as the bill was being unveiled. Thereafter, “the Governor and the press called it the ‘freedom of choice plan.’”
Blum responded to Donovan, stating “I am happy that you supplied the title ‘freedom of choice’ to the Virginia school plan. If this term should receive a general acceptance throughout the United States, it would serve to point up the fundamental issue of the civil rights of parents in the choice of a school for the education of their children.” Blum had a reason of his own to appreciate the slogan. Around the same time as the events in Virginia, he published a short book entitled Freedom of Choice in Education, laying out the philosophical case for school vouchers.
As these details reveal, the language of “choice” traces back to a voucher-supporting state senator and a voucher-supporting Catholic priest. Incidentally, that state senator provided a lonely voice against the very same segregationist “Massive Resistance” movement that Weingarten invokes to smear voucher advocates today. And the same Catholic priest denounced the segregationist alliances that Virginia’s teachers union embraced.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14675&omhide=true&trk=title
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Pennsylvania Students Protest Pro-Trans Bathroom Policy
High school students in the Keystone State are protesting transgender ideology in their bathrooms. Hundreds of students in the Perkiomen Valley School District north of Philadelphia staged a walkout on Friday, in response to the school board allowing students who identify as transgender to use whichever bathroom they like.
A policy barring students who identify as transgender from accessing bathrooms that don’t correspond to their biological sexes was proposed at a school board meeting Monday of last week. After a four-hour board meeting, five board members voted against the policy and four voted in favor of it.
John Ott, the student who organized the subsequent walkout, explained, “Kids were upset. Girls—we wanted to protect them. They were upset. They didn’t want men in their bathroom.”
Ott’s mother, Stephanie, added, “The safety of females is so important and these students that stood out that walked out, they are to be commended. They have courage and they exercised their First Amendment rights. This is about protecting our children and our privacy and boys and girls. It’s simple biology.”
Student Victoria Rudolph said, “There needs [sic] to be some changes. It’s just uncomfortable, seeing 19-year-old men or 18-year-old men in the bathroom.”
The Perkiomen Valley walkout comes in the midst of a nationwide debate over the transgender agenda in classrooms, including in school bathrooms.
In California, for example, the state’s attorney general is suing school districts for implementing parental notification policies, requiring staff and faculty to alert parents when students attempt to socially transition genders, including when students use bathrooms that don’t correspond to their biological sexes.
Despite this, a growing number of Golden State school boards are implementing these policies, and parents have introduced ballot initiatives to combat pro-trans legislation. Those ballot initiatives make parental notification policies mandatory and require students who identify as transgender to use the bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams that correspond to their biological sexes.
In August, a judge in New Jersey also barred Garden State school districts from implementing parental notification policies, despite a wide number of New Jersey residents—including a majority of Democrats—favoring such policies. In Maryland, a federal judge ruled that parents can’t opt their children out of LGBT propaganda sessions in elementary schools, even when invoking religious liberty.
Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia first drew national attention to the transgenderism-in-schools debate back in 2021 after implementing numerous pro-trans policies and firing or suspending teachers for refusing to go along with the program.
Perhaps most notably, the school board was intensely criticized for allowing at least two female students to be raped and sexually assaulted by a male student who identified as “gender fluid,” and attempting to cover up the assaults.
The first rape occurred in a women’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School, when a 12-year-old girl was forcibly sodomized by a male student. Later, when attempting to approve a policy allowing trans-identifying students to use the bathrooms of their choice, the school board denied any knowledge of the rape, even when questioned by the victim’s father.
Just as students are now doing in Pennsylvania, students at Broad Run High School in Loudoun County staged a walkout after the school board’s complicity in the rape was revealed.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/20/pennsylvania-students-protest-pro-trans-bathroom-policy
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School District Can’t Punish Teachers Who Refuse to Lie to Parents About Their Children, Court Rules
A federal judge has blocked a Southern California school district from punishing teachers who notify parents about their child’s purported gender transition in violation of district policy.
One of the lawyers who represented the teachers claims the ruling provides a “framework” for striking down policies banning parental notification across the country.
“It’s hard to overstate the significance of this ruling. There’s really nothing like it nationwide,” Paul Jonna, special counsel at the Thomas More Society and partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “These gender policies at schools are dangerous and unconstitutional, and this ruling provides a framework for striking them down nationwide.”
“We know this fight is far from over, but the Thomas More Society is committed to seeing it through to the end,” Jonna added. The Thomas More Society, a not-for-profit public interest law firm, focuses on cases involving life, family, and freedom.
The Thomas More Society represents Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, two teachers in the Escondido Union School District with 55 years of experience between them. The teachers sued the school district after it established policy Administrative Regulation 5145.3, which mandates that teachers and school staff will immediately accept a student’s expressed gender identity and bars teachers from revealing the student’s claimed gender identity to parents or guardians unless the student consents to notifying them.
In a training session on Feb. 3, 2022, a district instructor told teachers that if they revealed a student’s stated transgender identity to parents or to other “individuals who do not have a legitimate need for the information,” that would be considered discriminatory harassment punishable under a policy the district adopted in 2003.
In August 2022, the teachers received an email with a list of students, including their preferred names and pronouns. The list included directions on whether teachers could disclose the names and pronouns to the students’ parents or guardians. Mirabelli reportedly received an email with a list of students like this: “[student name]: Preferred name is [redacted] (pronouns are he/him). Dad and stepmom are NOT aware, please use [redacted] and she/her when calling home.”
Mirabelli and West sued the school district, the California Board of Education, and the state superintendent of public instruction, claiming AR 5145.3 violates their First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion.
Judge Roger T. Benitez in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California ruled Thursday that the teachers are likely to prevail on their religious freedom claims, and he granted a preliminary injunction preventing the school district from punishing Mirabelli and West if they notify parents about their kids’ stated transgender identities.
Benitez, an appointee of President George W. Bush, noted that the district considers “communicating to a parent the social transition of a school student to a new gender” to be “discrimination/harassment” despite “having little medical or factual connection to actual discrimination or harassment.”
He ruled that Mirabelli and West “are entitled to preliminary injunctive relief from what the defendants are requiring them to do here, which is to subjugate their sincerely-held religious beliefs that parents of schoolchildren have a God-ordained right to know of significant gender identity-related events.”
Benitez cited nine Supreme Court rulings declaring that “parents have a right, grounded in the Constitution, to direct the education, health, and upbringing, and to maintain the well-being of, their children.”
“Parental involvement in essential to the healthy maturation of schoolchildren,” he wrote. “The Escondido Union School District has adopted a policy without parent input that places a communication barrier between parents and teachers. Some parents who do not want such barriers may have the wherewithal to place their children in private schools or homeschool, or to move to a different public school district. Families in middle or lower socio-economic circumstances have no such options.”
“For these parents, the new policy appears to undermine their own constitutional rights while it conflicts with knowledgeable medical opinion,” he added. “An order enjoining the new district policy is in the better interests of the entire community, as well as the plaintiff teachers.”
The judge cited Dr. Erica Anderson, a clinical psychologist with 40 years of experience who claims to be a transgender woman.
“A school-facilitated transition without parental consent interferes with parents’ ability to pursue a careful assessment and/or therapeutic approach prior to transitioning, prevents parents from making the decision about whether a transition will be best for their child, and creates unnecessary tension in the parent-child relationship,” Anderson warned. “Nor is facilitating a double life for some children, in which they present as transgender in some contexts, but cisgender in other contexts, in their best interests.”
Benitez concluded that the school’s policy causes “a trifecta of harm.”
The policy “harms the child who needs parental guidance and possibly mental health intervention to determine if the incongruence is organic or whether it is the result of bullying, peer pressure, or a fleeting impulse. It harms the parents by depriving them of the long recognized Fourteenth Amendment right to care, guide, and make health care decisions for their children. And finally, it harms plaintiffs who are compelled to violate the parent’s rights by forcing plaintiffs to conceal information they feel is critical for the welfare of their students—violating plaintiffs’ religious beliefs.”
The judge ruled that it is unclear whether the teachers can prove the school district violated their rights to free speech, but the court can resolve that issue later, because the school district likely violated their religious freedom.
Both Mirabelli and West believe that God has ordained the relationship between parents and children and that God forbids lying and deceit.
Since teachers, rather than all school staff, were required to attend the February 2022 training, Benitez ruled that the school district’s policy was not “generally applicable” and, therefore, it is subject to “strict scrutiny,” a legal test to determine if the government violated essential rights. To pass this test, the government must prove that the policy is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest.
The judge ruled that the district has not identified a “compelling government interest” in hiding a student’s stated gender identity from parents and that the district did not consider the “least restrictive means” in pursuing such a policy.
“In the end, Mirabelli and West face an unlawful choice along the lines of: ‘lose your faith and keep your job, or keep your faith and lose your job,'” Benitez ruled.
The judge’s ruling does not resolve the case. Rather, Benitez granted a preliminary injunction blocking the school district from punishing Mirabelli or West for disclosing students’ stated gender identities to parents. The injunction will only last until another order from the court, and the underlying case remains unresolved.
The ruling comes shortly after California’s Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, sued the Chino Valley Unified School District to block its policy requiring schools to notify parents if their children claim to identify as transgender. Earlier this month, a California superior court judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Chino Valley policy.
Bonta and other California officials will likely defend policies that hide the truth from parents, but Benitez’s ruling may well provide a “framework” for striking down such policies, as Jonna suggests. In any case, these issues are likely to rise to higher courts, and parental notification ultimately may reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
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26 September, 2023
The Government Public Uneducation System
Over the last several years, there has been an undeniable decline in the public education system. As evidenced by the programs that have been invoked through past administrations, there is reason to suspect that the agenda is to intentionally create an entirely uneducated society.
In 2002, there was the implementation of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act that essentially placed all determination of a school’s success on getting every kid to pass identical tests throughout the year. It discouraged creativity and exploration in education and stifled the unique talents and strengths of every teacher that they might have otherwise used to help children develop a love of learning and forced both educators and students into a box with little chance to grow outside of that set space.
The Obama era Common Core system was met with mixed feelings at best. Teachers were forced to switch to this new method of instruction in English and math, while parents were caught in the weeds of helping their children with homework assignments based on what sometimes seemed like nonsensical methods. While Common Core was adopted by all but four of the 50 states, many have since abandoned the standard, as there was little evidence to suggest that it was having the intended effect of boosting educational outcomes.
However, despite the underwhelming delivery of these past programs, it is probably safe to point to the school closures during the pandemic of 2020 as having the most devastating impact on the educational progress of any generation in modern history.
Since then, studies have suggested that the learning loss for children kept out of their primary learning environment for this extended period may be years, and it is a loss that would be almost impossible to make up under the best of circumstances.
Even so, every effort should be made to increase the focus on material that would possibly accelerate the lessons for these students, foster an environment to encourage setting goals and reaching milestones, and work to overcome these unprecedented challenges.
But this is the year 2023. And virtually nothing makes sense anymore.
Instead, there are schools that have decided to ride the downward spiral set by the events of the last few years. There are teachers who believe that students will thrive if all obstacles and challenged are removed. As these students were pushed back down to the lowest rung of the ladder in their educational progress, their instructors have decided that it’s where they should stay.
In Portland, Oregon, proposals are being put forward that would essentially set a groundwork of failure for students who are already struggling. The New York Post outlines some of the practices for teachers to consider: “No more zeroes, no more 100-point scale, no more points docked for late work, and no more grade penalties for those who cheat.”
Of course, if anyone is to question the motives of laying out a plan that will clearly punish those who work hard and reward those who slack off or cheat, you will be called a racist. Apparently, this system is “about reducing bias” and “considering the diverse backgrounds and needs of students.”
Similarly, across the country in another blue-state dystopia, math scores plummeted by 26% in Brooklyn’s Math and Science Exploratory School. Instead of examining the teaching methods that were used and brainstorming ways to improve the approach so that students could absorb what they were being taught and bring their scores back up, the administrative body decided to remove the word “Math” from the name of the school entirely.
It is now just “The Exploratory School.”
Students are being robbed. The younger years of childhood are the most opportune stages of life where it is possible to bounce back, to overcome, and to regain lost momentum.
By contrast, to encourage kids to believe that being challenged is unnecessary, and to have the adults around them make the intentional decision not to improve their education, denies them critical aspects of their growth and development.
We know that when we are challenged, we mature and flourish in ways that we would not be able to otherwise. It is that space of discomfort and having our abilities tested where the greatest progress is made, remarkable levels of confidence can be achieved, and the highest points of potential can be reached.
Yet these kids will grow up without that understanding.
The people meant to lead them there are, once again, shutting down the most crucial aspects of their learning environment, and making it unavailable for the foreseeable future.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/100663-the-government-public-uneducation-system-2023-09-22
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The Left’s Priesthood: How DEI Offices Weaponize Virginia Universities
Tyler O'Neil
Those of us who work in the capital city I refer to as “Mordor” have slim pickings on where to live, and I chose Virginia, which I consider to be the most conservative option. Little did I know, the Old Dominion ranks first in the nation for applying the Left’s most effective tool in weaponizing public universities: offices purporting to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
These DEI offices are the bureaucracy of the bureaucracy. They exist to push leftist ideology throughout the institution, hounding school administrators, staff, and professors to toe the line on “anti-racism” and gender ideology.
They represent a new priesthood pushing leftist dogma within noble institutions once dedicated to higher learning but increasingly acting as ideological factories that produce “woke” activists.
While corporate America has begun excising the DEI cancer, it has taken root and flourished in academia.
Last week, we saw DEI on full display when Virginia Tech’s DEI director, Catherine Cotrupi, used her publicly funded email account to forward someone’s email pleading with readers to campaign against school board candidates the email branded as “hateful.”
Why did the candidates qualify as “hateful?” Because they support Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s commonsense policies on transgender issues. Youngkin, of course, is a Republican.
One of the targeted school board candidates said she was considering filing a lawsuit. The other candidate is a father who personally experienced the “transgender” nightmare of having a school tell him it knows better than him what is good for his daughter.
From public comments on Facebook, it seems that some of Cotrupi’s colleagues have defended her, saying that it’s her job to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion and that the school board candidates were spreading “hate.” Therefore, it is permissible for Cotrupi to use government funds to encourage people to campaign against these candidates—regardless of what the law or Virginia Tech’s official policy states.
This defense reveals the underlying mentality of DEI and why these offices pose such a threat to open discourse in American universities.
The email in question praises two school board candidates, one for attacking “anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric” by “comparing it to the racism she experienced growing up in the era of school integration resistance” and the other for opposing “the hateful proposals being set forth by the Moms for Liberty crowd.”
These sentences sum up the Left’s attack on the parental rights movement, specifically echoing the Southern Poverty Law Center.
As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it has used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it against conservative groups, partially to scare its donors into ponying up cash and partially to silence ideological opponents. In 2019, amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal that led the SPLC to fire its co-founder, a former employee came forward to call the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center puts conservative groups on a “hate map” with the KKK. In 2012, a terrorist used this “hate map” to target a Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C. Although the SPLC condemned the attack, it kept the target of the gunman’s attack on its “hate map.”
Earlier this year, the SPLC added parental rights groups, including Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education, to its “hate map.” A few months before that, the SPLC compared the parental rights movement to the “Uptown Klans” of white southerners opposed to school integration in the 1950s.
It may seem an accident that one DEI director at Virginia Tech forwarded this one email opposing school board candidates and echoing the SPLC, but the DEI apparatus exists to forward a notion of “diversity” that brands opponents as “racist,” “bigoted,” or “hateful.”
Americans support the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion, but the DEI movement defines these terms in divisive ways: Racial diversity counts, but ideological diversity does not. “Equity” translates to redistribution of wealth along racial lines rather than equal rules for everyone to succeed according to his or her effort and merit. “Inclusion” encompasses any sexual or gender “identity,” but rarely the Judeo-Christian principles that built the very universities these DEI offices subvert.
DEI also isn’t limited to Virginia Tech.
A Heritage Foundation report measured the size of DEI bureaucracies at the 65 universities that in 2021 were members of one of the Power 5 athletic conferences (the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac-12, the Southeastern Conference, and the Atlantic Coast Conference), finding that the average university listed more than 45 people as having formal responsibility for promoting DEI goals. (The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundation’s news outlet.)
DEI staff outnumbered professors at the average university’s history department (by a factor of 1.4 to 1). The average university had 3.4 employees working to promote DEI for every 100 tenured or tenure-track faculty members.
Although universities in California and Oregon employed many DEI staff, Virginia ranked No.1 in the nation for the most leftist culture warriors working full time, according to a recent Heritage analysis.
The University of Virginia listed 94 employees as part of its DEI bureaucracy, while Virginia Tech had 83 and George Mason University had 69—a far greater percentage of staff per 100 tenured or tenure-track faculty.
Virginians consider George Mason University a center-right school, but its University Life division hosts a “Black Lives Matter” website that recommends donating to or signing petitions for organizations that support abolishing police departments, engaging in Marxist revolution, treating Americans differently according to their race, and diminishing the nuclear family. The school’s “advocate” button links to an article entitled “Guide to Being an Anti-Racism Activist,” which implores readers to combat “systemic racism” and encourages white readers to acknowledge “the racism that lives within you.”
As Youngkin spoke at George Mason’s graduation ceremony in May, Galilea Sejas-Machado, a student who founded the Hispanic Latine Leadership Alliance (which appears to use “Latine” in its name and refers to Latino and Latina students as “Latinx”) and served as a student ambassador at the Center for Culture, Equity and Empowerment, held a sign reading “We Will Not Debate Humanity!”
Sejas-Machado had given a speech honoring “Indigenous communities and sovereign tribes,” in which she identified herself as “a strong, independent Latine woman.”
DEI activists have used the idea of “diversity” to set up an ideological bureaucracy in the academy, and this bureaucracy undermines the open debate and free inquiry that should define higher learning. These offices impose the tenets of woke ideology, from an obsession with race to the mandated belief that a man can become a woman just by saying so.
The Virginia Tech DEI director’s decision to use her publicly funded email account to oppose “hate” in an school board election marks one example of how universities’ DEI bloat impacts the world outside the ivied walls of higher learning.
As more students such as Sejas-Machado matriculate through these institutions, this ideology will spread far beyond the university.
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Arizona State University’s Racially Biased Training Violates State Law, Watchdog Warns
Arizona State University officials appear to have violated state law by requiring staff to complete “racial equity” training, according to a new report by the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute.
Arizona has stringent laws against imposing training in diversity, equity, and inclusion—called DEI—in taxpayer-funded programs. These laws prohibit the use of taxpayer money for training sessions that assign blame or judgment based on race, ethnicity, or sex.
Arizona State University’s sessions, called training in “ASU Inclusive Communities,” require school staff to sit through lessons on how to “critique whiteness,” “white privilege,” and “white fragility.” The training claims that the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution are “systems of [white] superiority.”
Goldwater Institute, a free market think tank, describes this training as a part of what it calls the state university’s “DEI regime—a cancerous web of taxpayer-funded, racially discriminatory initiatives that are seeping into every aspect of university life, from faculty hiring to faculty training to classroom indoctrination.”
Goldwater also alleges that ASU, also in Phoenix, requires journalism students in its Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication to take a “mandatory DEI course as a requirement for graduation.”
Stacy Skankey, a Goldwater staff attorney who authored the report, told The Daily Signal that the course includes units on preferred personal pronouns “and other biased language.”
This isn’t the first time ASU stoked controversy via progressive activism. In July, ASU professors told students not to attend a university event with Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk, resulting in donor Tom Lewis canceling future gifts to the university.
“Thirty-seven out of 47 faculty at Barrett signed a really nasty letter of condemnation for the event. You can find it online,” Lewis told the Daily Signal in an interview. “They were calling Prager and Kirk purveyors of hate and homophobes and things like that.”
Goldwater filed a public records request March 6 with ASU, asking for “copies of course syllabi for the ‘Diversity and Civility at Cronkite’ course for the fall 2022 and spring 2023 semesters.”
The think tank’s two requests for an update on the filing March 20 and 24 were unanswered. After an attorney requested an update April 7, Kimberly Demarchi, ASU’s vice president of legal affairs and deputy general counsel, replied that “some responsive records were gathered” and the school “would follow up in the next week with an update.”
Demarchi did not “follow up in the next week,” however. She didn’t respond until April 29, when she wrote that the university would not provide copies because of “copyright protection” for the course syllabi.
But no state or federal copyright law protects a state university’s course syllabi from a public records request.
Skankey’s report for Goldwater Institute concludes that “the school has delayed in providing full answers to what’s being taught in the DEI course, even though it’s public information under Arizona’s public records law.”
To combat Arizona State University’s apparently obstructive approach, Goldwater sent two letters to Fred DuVal, chairman of the Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees and regulates the state’s public and private colleges and universities.
The two letters to DuVal allege that it’s illegal for ASU to be “spending public money and requiring faculty and staff to take the ‘ASU Inclusive Communities’ training course.” The letters cite state law (ARS § 41-1494).
“That statute prohibits the state and its agencies from: (1) ‘us[ing] public monies for training’; or (2) ‘requir[ing] an employee to engage in training … that presents any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex,’” Skankey wrote.
Another letter from the Goldwater Institute, dated Tuesday, demands that ASU provide full access to the requested materials, threatening legal action if the university fails to comply with state law.
DuVal did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by time of publication.
Jay Thorne, associate vice president of media relations and strategic communications for ASU, responded to The Daily Signal’s earlier request for comment after initial publication of this report. Thorne confirmed some of Goldwater Institute’s claims while disputing its characterizations of them.
Thorne confirmed that all undergraduate students in the degree programs for sports journalism, journalism and mass communication, and digital audiences must take a required one-credit course called “Diversity and Civility at Cronkite.” Thorne insisted that the diversity aspect includes conservatives.
Although he disputed that the course includes a “section” or “module” on personal pronouns, Thorne confirmed that it “does discuss the concept of pronouns (along with many other concepts) as it relates to gender identity.”
Thorne also confirmed that ASU employees receive training on “Inclusive Communities” in order “to ensure their success in working with a very large student community that comes from all socio-economic backgrounds from all 50 states and 150 countries from around the world.”
The ASU spokesman disputed the notion that such instruction is a “DEI program,” however.
“There are no required DEI programs for ASU faculty or staff,” Thorne said.
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25 September, 2023
How the Supremes can head off back-door racial favoritism by US colleges
Legend had it that whoever untied the impossibly convoluted Gordian Knot would rule the world.
Facing the intractable challenge, young Alexander the Great took out his sword, cut the Knot and went on to conquer the largest empire to date, spanning Greece, Egypt and India.
We have a Gordian Knot today — in the form of the murky college-admissions environment that followed the Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
The ruling was plain enough: Students must not be treated in any way on the basis of race in admissions; that amounts to unconstitutional racial discrimination.
Yet the ruling set off a woke storm.
The White House blasted the ruling (though President Joe Biden never explained what about it exactly ticked him off), and Harvard immediately redid its upcoming admissions application form to help get around the order: Its first essay prompt now asks applicants how their “life experiences” shaped them in view of Harvard’s recognition of the importance of a “diverse” student body.
Expect the multibillion-dollar Diversity, Equity, Inclusion industrial complex to rack its brains finding schemes to circumvent the SFFA ruling.
DEI racketeers’ continued prosperity depends on their tenacity to subvert Chief Justice John Roberts’ dictum that the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to . . . stop discriminating on the basis of race. They’ll be searching high and low for ways.
Sure to come, then, is an unending stream of increasingly complex and stealthy schemes resulting in multitudes of expensive legal actions sure to keep lawyers busy for decades — all while allowing colleges to continue their racial discrimination.
The Supreme Court has a choice.
It can allow itself to be trapped into a war of attrition with the DEI establishment, and labor to unravel each and every twisty, stealthy scheme, now and to come, each with its double-speak, code words and plausible deniability. That would suit the DEI folks just fine.
Or, it can whip out a mighty sword and cut the Gordian Knot — by asking why colleges have a race checkbox in the first place.
Many colleges don’t ask for SAT/ACT scores any longer, because they say they fear triggering “implicit racial bias.” (They actually think the existence of scores data would add pressure to admit kids based on race-blind merit.)
They don’t ask for applicants’ (your child’s future roommates?) criminal history any longer, because, again, they say they fear triggering “implicit racial bias.”
Yet they explicitly ask for race? If they aren’t doing racial engineering, why track racial-engineering performance?
Might there be a legitimate need for colleges to collect self-identified racial information? That’s hard to imagine. For starters, self-identified race is hoax-ridden, with 34% of white college applicants pretending to be “minority,” per one study.
Furthermore, racial categories, in truth, have neither biological nor cultural validity, with neither “Asian,” nor “Hispanic,” nor “black,” nor “white” describing anything in common without engaging in at best ignorant and at worst toxic stereotyping.
Still, granting a theoretical possibility for a legitimate (constitutional) need, the Supreme Court could allow the collection and use of racial information, but it should subject such policies to the high legal standard of strict scrutiny.
That means colleges — and their regulators and suppliers — that want to collect or use such info may do so, but they must show that:
They have a legitimate need for it that cannot be fulfilled another way.
The use of racial information effectively addresses the stated need in a precise and measurable way.
The need (and policies) have an end date declared in advance.
The schools have put safeguards in place to ensure the racial information is used only for the stated need and duration.
This is precisely what the Chinese American Citizens Alliance-Greater New York asked the Supreme Court to consider in the amicus brief it filed Friday, along with eight other educational partners, asking the justices to hear an appeal by parents of Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School in their lawsuit against their school board for racial discrimination against Asian students.
Such conditions would ensure that colleges follow the plain order in the SFFA ruling —that “what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly.”
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UK: Teachers who 'misgender' trans pupils are not guilty of discrimination, says equality watchdog
Teachers who ‘misgender’ trans pupils are not guilty of discrimination, guidance from the equality watchdog suggests.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) also urged the Government to publish its own long-awaited guidelines to give clarity to teachers and families.
Rishi Sunak vowed in March that official guidance on transgender students would be released before the summer break. But Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said in July that it would be delayed.
Yesterday, the EHRC clarified its own legal advice, deleting an example in an earlier version from 2014 to reflect that misgendering a pupil does not constitute discrimination.
The original guidance posed the question: ‘A previously female pupil has started to live as a boy and has adopted a male name. Does the school have to use this name and refer to the pupil as a boy?’
The answer provided said that to not do so would be ‘direct gender reassignment discrimination’. Misgendering a pupil would not amount to discrimination because they do not have the legal right to transition gender, it is understood.
Campaigners yesterday hailed the watchdog’s change in position.
Helen Joyce, from campaign group Sex Matters, said: ‘It’s very helpful that... the EHRC has finally removed this legally faulty example from its technical guidance.
‘The improvements will make it easier for the Department for Education to bring out strong guidance.’
Baroness Falkner, chairman of the EHRC, said the DfE should publish the guidelines as soon as possible, adding: ‘It is crucial we avoid any confusion on this important topic.’
This week the NHS published its own trans guidance for schools due to the delayed government document. It says schools should not let children who question their gender ‘socially transition’ without parental consent
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Australia: Will no university students ever fail now?
British politician Enoch Powell famously said ‘All political lives end in failure’ – a proposition amply corroborated by his own career. Scholars are vulnerable to a similar fate. To paraphrase the famous anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, academics can be certain of two things: someday, they will all be dead, and eventually, they will all be proven wrong. (Sahlins’ tip for a successful scholarly career: make sure the first precedes the second.)
Even superstars fail. In a classic Nike advertisement, basketball legend Michael Jordan confesses to missing more than 9,000 shots and losing almost 300 basketball games in his career. ‘Twenty-six times,’ he says, ‘I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot – and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life.’ Then he delivers the line that has attracted millions of people to view the ad on YouTube: ‘And that is why I succeed.’
Jordan’s message is motivating and inspiring, but it’s also worrying. If failure is essential to success, then what are the prospects for our current crop of students who have never experienced failure of any kind? No school student is held back, summer school repeats are rare, and first-class honours are becoming the typical university grade. What happens when these students move out of education, where success is now the norm, to a world in which failure is ubiquitous? Never having had to deal with setbacks, never having failed at anything, will they have the capacity to cope? We will soon find out.
Over the past 20 years, government policy has resulted in an avalanche of university students. The highest-ranked institutions swept up the best-prepared applicants, forcing the less prestigious universities to lower their entry standards drastically. Not surprisingly, many of these poorly prepared students are finding themselves unable to complete their courses; dropout rates have climbed to record levels.
Under the rules governing accreditation, Australian universities have a legal requirement to ensure that the students they admit have the educational background and study support to complete their courses. It appears that universities have flaunted this requirement, so the government has stepped in.
In a daring display of its unshakeable commitment to the academic success of its constituents, the federal government has introduced legislation that could revolutionise, or perhaps obliterate, the way we understand the concept of failure. Call it the ‘No Student Left Behind – Especially If They’ve Failed’ Act. It’s an ambitious move, guaranteeing the total eradication of that ghastly ‘F’ word from the Australian educational system: failure.
The Australian government is mandating that university students who score less than 50 per cent in their exams shall be entitled to a slew of educational life-savers. University-funded tutoring, counselling, examination do-overs, special exams and extended deadlines are all on the table. With these bountiful resources at their disposal, no student will ever feel the sting of failure again. And to ensure universities are as invested in the success of their students as the government, a hefty fine of $18,780 per student will be introduced for those institutions that fail to help their students rise above the 50 per cent benchmark.
If Dante were alive, he might have added a tenth circle to his Inferno for the university administrators who will have to deal with this fiscal sword of Damocles. Instead of cramming more students into lecture halls and labs, universities will have to find funds for an army of tutors, counsellors and exam monitors.
But worry not, for the Education Minister has spoken: ‘Universities should be helping students to succeed, not to fail.’ It’s a comforting thought, almost reminiscent of a fairy tale ending. It gives students a cosy sense of assurance that the government is there, always ready to sweep in and replace the big bad wolf of failure with the benevolent fairy godmother of success. But will it work?
Tim Harford fears it won’t. In his book, Adapt: Why Success Always Follows Failure, Harford claims that messing up is central to learning. Students gain more from mistakes, blind alleys and dead ends than from success. Failures give students the opportunity to ‘pick themselves up, dust themselves off and start all over again’.
Such resilience is essential because becoming an expert is a long process, at least 10,000 hours, says Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers. Expertise takes a long time to acquire because, outside of universities, 50 per cent is not good enough. The real world has higher standards. Businesses will collapse if their accountants are only 50 per cent accurate, computer programs that work only half the time are useless, and no one would be happy if surgeons fluffed half their operations. A 10,000-hour apprenticeship provides plenty of opportunities for students to learn from their errors, and everyone knows that practice makes perfect.
Failing is not only essential to honing one’s skills, but it also provides the chance to cultivate oneself (‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’). The character traits forged by experiencing and overcoming failure are necessary for success in any field. Tenaciousness, resilience, drive, perseverance and the ability to delay gratification while working toward a distant goal are just as crucial in achieving success as intelligence. Psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth calls this combination of character traits ‘grit’. It comes from confronting failure and overcoming it. Without failure, progress is impossible.
Universities, faced with high costs and potential fines, may be tempted to take the easy way out and pass every single student. That view might sound cynical, but it is realistic. Will a university degree retain its lustre when passing becomes an expected, almost mundane occurrence rather than a reward for hard work, grit and resilience? If everyone is a winner, is anyone winning anything at all?
But these are long-term concerns and our politicians are unable to think beyond the next election campaign. They look forward to offering voters a world where failure ceases to exist and success requires no effort. A world in which every student gets a degree just for showing up.
It’s an idyllic vision that might catch on across the globe. Imagine a future in which everyone gets a shot at the Grand Dream, even if their exam scores are below 50 per cent, a time in which the ‘School of Hard Knocks’ has shut its doors forever. Fans of Horatio Alger novels, the stoic pioneers who defined the ethos of hard work and success through perseverance, must be turning in their graves.
The moral of the story, dear reader, is that university failure is on the brink of extinction. At least, it is Down Under. This extraordinary development will have vast repercussions for education, success, and the very nature of our universities.
Of course, we want our students to succeed. But passing every student will ensure just the opposite. By preventing students from experiencing failure, we will keep them from gaining the self-confidence that comes from overcoming it.
If we want young people to be able to handle life’s inevitable slings and arrows, then for their own sake, we must let them fail.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/eliminating-the-f-word/
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24 September, 2023
Fury as ZERO children at 13 Baltimore state schools pass math exam - as parent groups call on leaders to step down
Baltimore is very Leftist and very black. Some very intensive tutoring would be needed to turn the situation around. It doesn't seem likely to happen
A slate of Baltimore schools have sparked outrage after zero students passed their state math exams - with almost 75 percent testing at the lowest possible score.
The poor performances came in the latest round of Maryland's state testing, where 13 high schools in the city - a staggering 40 percent - failed to produce a single student with a 'proficient' score in math.
'This is educational homicide,' said Jason Rodriguez, deputy director of Baltimore-based nonprofit People Empowered by the Struggle, to Fox Baltimore.
The activist said there is 'no excuse' for the failure, which has come after years of warnings over the city's poor education standards.
It also comes days after a scathing new study found that schooling across America fell to dire lows during the pandemic, concluding that one-third of fourth and eighth grade students can't even read at a 'basic' level.
The concerning results, which were first raised by Project Baltimore, also saw 74.5 percent of students in the 13 failing schools score just a one of four on their test - the lowest a person can score.
Some of the city's best-known schools, including Patterson High School, Frederick Douglass, and Reginald F. Lewis, made their way onto the list, while Baltimore City Schools also received $1.6 billion last year from taxpayers.
It was the largest funding the educational authority has ever received, leading to questions over where the money went.
'So, it's not a funding issue. We're getting plenty of funding,' Rodriguez said. 'I don't think money is the issue. I think accountability is the issue.'
Alongside the huge investment from the taxpayers, the school district also received $799 million in Covid relief funding from the federal government.
Rodriguez's group has previously held rallies over the mounting educational crisis in the city, and in 2021 led calls for Baltimore City Schools CEO Dr. Sonja Santelises to resign over low test scores and falling graduation rates.
The frightening situation has come six years after another report by Project Baltimore again found that 13 schools in the city had zero students test 'proficiently' in math.
'We're still dealing with these same issues year after year,' Rodriguez continued. 'It's just scary to me and alarming to me because we know that what's happening now, you know, it's just opening up the floodgates to the school-to-prison pipeline.
'I'm beyond angry... This is why we've been calling for the resignation of the school CEO.'
While a lack of funding may not be to blame, a bombshell study published this month by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) found that 16 million students were chronically absent during the pandemic.
The millions of students had missed more than 10 percent of schools days during the 2021-22 year, twice the number seen in previous years.
More than eight in 10 public schools also reported stunted behavioral and social-emotional development in their students due to the pandemic, according to a May survey cited in the report.
Project Baltimore was reportedly able to produce the results through a source, and the state is not due to announce the official results until later this month. The results are allegedly expected to be heavily redacted to confuse the number of schools underperforming.
In a statement following the shocking test results, Baltimore City School District said: 'Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) appreciates recent one-time and ongoing increases in funding from our community.
'City Schools uses the funding to increase student achievement. Our complete 2023 Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program (MCAP) math data paints a genuine picture of our progress.
'But make no mistake: these recent increases do not diminish or patch over years of chronic underfunding that has directly contributed to our current outcomes. That recovery takes an equal or more significant amount of time to remediate.
'Right now, the facts are clear: City Schools' students have earned two consecutive years of improved scores on the math MCAP following national decreases during the COVID pandemic. Seven of eight grade levels experienced growth in math between SY2021-22 and SY2022-23, mirroring growth in Maryland overall.
'We acknowledge that some of our high school students continue to experience challenges in math following the pandemic, especially if they were struggling beforehand.
'The work is underway to improve outcomes for students. But treating student achievement as an 'if-then' proposition does a great disservice to our community.'
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Former teacher of 30 years quits job over 'out of control' students, low pay: We've 'had enough'
Stacey Sawyer, former public school teacher of 30 years, discusses the state of U.S. public schools post-pandemic, teacher salaries, students' test scores and school attendance.
Teachers nationwide are quitting their jobs at an alarming rate. Florida's Lee County School District is dealing with a major shortage, with several teachers quitting after feeling financially undervalued and facing a lack of discipline among students.
Stacey Sawyer is one of the many teachers choosing to cut ties with her 30-year career as an educator, arguing that students' behavior has gotten "out of control" since the pandemic.
"The behavior issues have gotten out of control from a lot of things. There are no subs for teachers, so they're having to work during their planning and take over other classes," Sawyer said during an appearance on "The Big Money Show."
"Those classes are getting inundated with more and more students. The district just puts more work on to the teachers and there is no extra pay. And I think that teachers are just – they're tired. ‘Teacher tired’ is a whole different ballgame, and they've had enough."
The teacher shortage is not unique to the state of Florida. Some students are finding themselves in classes without licensed teachers while districts across the nation face shortages across the board – ranging from school nurses and psychologists to educators.
Clark County School District, the largest in Nevada and the fifth largest in the United States, is also the district facing the most teacher vacancies in the state.
Co-host Jackie DeAngelis asked the former teacher what she believes could be an impactful solution, and for her, the answer was simple: Higher pay.
"They need extra pay because otherwise it just seems like they're doing it all for nothing. They keep getting extra put on top of them. 'Do this,' 'work an extra hour after school' and 'work during your weekends,' and add more to it. And so the pay is not worth it anymore to some of these teachers," Sawyer said.
"They feel like they're being taken advantage of. And they are. And if you want to keep your teachers, especially your veteran teachers, your veteran teachers are going to be the ones that help you and that help the younger teachers. They need to be paid. And those younger teachers need to see that, 'Hey, the longer that I stay in the profession, I'm going to get paid more.'"
In correlation to the teacher shortage, the U.S. education system is experiencing "multi-decade lows" when it comes to student test scores, as noted by substitute co-host Lydia Hu.
Sawyer explained that students who are giving minimal effort are being "pushed along," allowing them to continue to under-perform. She argues that teachers are "doing the best" they can, but parents need to make sure they're getting their kids to school.
"We are seeing our students being pushed along. So, I've had students that have missed 70 some days of school, and they still got pushed along. They were given a test at the end of the year, and even given help on that test. And they passed the test, and they move them along," she added.
"I'm not sure if the teachers can do anything about it. We try we make phone calls. We try to get them in the school. We're doing the best that we can, but we need parents' help also. Parents need to make sure that they're getting their kids to school, and they're not."
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West Point Military Academy Sued Over Race-Based Admissions
A conservative advocacy group that won a Supreme Court case against race-based enrollment policies at Harvard is now suing the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, alleging that the academy's admissions policy is unconstitutional as it's partly based on race.
Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed a complaint (pdf) on Sept. 19 at a federal court in New York, arguing that West Point uses race and ethnicity as factors in admissions, violating the Fifth Amendment's equal-protection principle.
The group wants the court to find the use of race in admissions at West Point unconstitutional and impose race-blind candidate evaluation procedures.
SFFA is the same group that won a case before the Supreme Court on June 29, reviving a strict interpretation of the 14th Amendment to make clear that equal treatment under the law bars discrimination based on race, even when that discrimination gives a leg up to groups considered "marginalized" or "underrepresented" in public life.
Heartened by its recent win against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the group has set its sights on purging the U.S. military—and West Point—from what it sees as woke policies.
In its latest legal action, SFFA argued that, for most of its history, the West Point Academy evaluated cadets based on achievement and merit—but that has now changed.
“Instead of admitting future cadets based on objective metrics and leadership potential, West Point focuses on race,” the group wrote in the lawsuit. “In fact, it openly publishes its racial composition ‘goals,’ and its director of admissions brags that race is wholly determinative for hundreds if not thousands of applicants.”
But "America's enemies do not fight differently based on the race of the commanding officer opposing them" and "soldiers must follow orders without regard to the skin color of those giving them," the group added.
However, West Point sets benchmarks for the percentage of each class that should be filled by people of different races and ethnicities, and it "meticulously tracks its compliance with those figures down to a tenth of a percentage point," the group said.
West Point has nearly 4,400 undergraduates. Of these, 2,693 are white, 483 black or African American, 545 Hispanic/Latino, 414 Asian, and 38 American Indian or Alaska Native, according to October 2022 data from West Point (pdf).
SFFA wants the court to declare West Point's admissions policy unlawful and block it, arguing that the academy "discriminates based on race."
"Over the years, courts have been mindful of the military's unique role in our nation's life and the distinctive considerations that come with it. However, no level of deference justifies these polarizing and disliked racial classifications and preferences in admissions to West Point or any of our service academies," Edward Blum, president of SFFA, said in a statement.
Asked for comment, the West Point public affairs office told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement: “The U.S. Military Academy does not comment on pending litigation.”
On its website, West Point says that its Military Equal Opportunity (MEO) program "formulates, directs, and sustains a comprehensive effort to maximize human potential and to ensure fair treatment for all soldiers based solely on merit, performance, and potential in support of readiness. MEO philosophy is based on fairness, justice, and equity."
West Point pledges to "ensure equal opportunity and fair treatment for all cadets, soldiers, and family members, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex (gender identity), or sexual orientation and provide an environment free of unlawful discrimination and offensive behavior. "
This comes amid a broader critique that the quality of America's warfighters is being undermined by policies and actions that generally fall under the umbrella of "woke.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/west-point-military-academy-sued-over-race-based-admissions-5495225
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21 September, 2023
Progressives Hate School Choice Until It’s Time to Send Their Kids to School
Another week, another batch of teachers union officials lobbying against school choice while sending their own children to private schools.
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates and Illinois Education Association official Sean Denney send their kids to private schools while devoting their time to fighting against poorer parents’ rights to send their children to similar schools.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. Gates and Denney join a long line of hypocrites who live the “school choice for me, but not for thee” lifestyle.
“School choice” is the principle that families, not the government, should decide where their children go to school. It encompasses a wide range of options, from providing parents vouchers for private and charter school tuition to accessing “education savings accounts” for tuition, education materials, and special needs testing.
In practice, school choice allows parents to direct the education tax dollars already spent on their children instead of requiring the money to be spent at an assigned public school based on the parents’ ZIP code.
Advocates for school choice suggest that the primary benefits of “funding students [directly], not systems” include fostering competition among schools, improving academic performance, and providing access to quality education for all students, regardless of their socioeconomic status.
Progressives often lambast the practice—suggesting that allowing parents to choose which schools their children and money go to will drain and destroy public schools.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency in May after the state Legislature passed additional measures to expand school choice in North Carolina.
Cooper claimed the Legislature was trying to “tear our public schools down” by allowing parents to choose where education tax dollars allocated for their children went.
Ironically, Cooper sent his children to a private school because the governor preferred that option over a public school. Unlike many North Carolina residents who are poorer than he, Cooper could afford to send his children where he wished—and so he did.
President Joe Biden, while still a candidate for that office, also warned that voucher programs and school choice measures would defund public schools.
Writing on Twitter in January 2020, Biden claimed: “When we divert public funds to private schools, we undermine the entire public education system. We’ve got to prioritize investing in our public schools, so every kid in America gets a fair shot. That’s why I oppose vouchers.”
Biden didn’t practice this “investment” in his private life, however, sending both of his sons to the private Archmere Academy, a Roman Catholic college preparatory school in Claymont, Delaware.
Other elected Democrats who sent their children to private schools while speaking out against school choice include former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. A host of state legislators also do so.
There are so many hypocritical elected officials, business executives, and union officials in this category that the Education Freedom Institute created an interactive map to catalog the rapidly growing list of those taking advantage of privileges their constituents cannot.
Why go to the trouble of fighting so desperately against school choice if you’re sending your children to school choice options anyway?
Recent polls indicate overwhelming support of additional school choice options among all major political parties and demographics.
A poll from RealClear Opinion Research found a 9% increase in support for school choice among Democrats, to 59%, since April 2020. Republicans’ support for school choice rose by 7% for a total of 75% in the same poll, and independents by 7% for a total of 67%.
The poll also found that 72% of white voters, 70% of black voters, 66% of Asian voters, and 77% of Hispanic voters said they support school choice.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, claims that the union’s fight against school choice keeps public schools from closing and prevents America from returning to racial segregation.
In Chicago, Gates went so far as to call private schools “fascist,” though the teachers union president has no problem sending her kids to one.
Broader union positions over the past few decades claimed simultaneously that school choice options would result in the abandonment and closing of public schools while asking state and federal legislators to drastically increase funding for declining public schools.
An analysis on the fourth-grade level would note that if public schools were such a great option, parents wouldn’t pull their children from those schools if given a choice. Additionally, public schools that have received drastic funding increases over the past decade have seen only greater academic decline and more parents pulling out their kids anyway (often at great personal cost).
Although Gates argues that private schools are racist and fascist, her own Chicago Public Schools is a school district that boasts a 17% literacy rate for Hispanic students and an 11% literacy rate for black students in 2021.
Anti-choice activists openly argue that if parents want to send their children to private, charter, or microschools, they should pay the additional cost—therefore funding both the local public school and the school parents want to send their children to.
I don’t have an issue with teachers union officials and Democrat politicians sending their children to private schools. Parents should have the right to send their children to a school that best suits the values and needs of that family.
The problem rests in the hypocrisy of the situation. Few things come across worse than the Marie Antoinette look.
Forcing families to funnel their money into failing public schools while your children go to better schools of your choice fosters resentment. If you really believe public schools are the best option to the point of advocating against other options, your children better be attending those public schools.
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Stanford University will return $5.5M in donations from Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX
Stanford University reportedly plans to return the millions of dollars it received in charitable contributions from Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto firm FTX before its spectacular collapse.
The alleged fraudster’s parents — Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, longtime professors at Stanford Law School — allegedly pushed the crypto exchange and its related entities to donate “more than $5.5 million” to the elite school “to boost Bankman and Fried’s professional and social status at the expense of the FTX Group,” according to a lawsuit brought by the bankrupt firm’s advisors in Delaware bankruptcy court.
“Bankman also conceived of various creative means by which to remit payments to Stanford University through different FTX Group entities,” according to the complaint filed Monday.
Stanford received the donations from November 2021 to May 2022, the lawsuit said. FTX, once valued at $32 billion, imploded in November 2022 with $8 billion in liabilities to as many as 1 million creditors.
“We have been in discussions with attorneys for the FTX debtors to recover these gifts and we will be returning the funds in their entirety,” a Stanford spokesperson told Bloomberg on Tuesday.
Representatives for the university didn’t immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
The decision to return the fund comes after FTX’s advisors claimed Bankman and Fried, “misappropriated funds” they received from FTX and its sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, including when they allegedly “pushed for tens of millions of dollars in political and charitable contributions, including to Stanford University,” the court documents said.
The parents have come under intense scrutiny as their son’s fraud trial approaches on Oct. 2. Neither has been charged with any wrongdoing. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty.
Bankman took a leave of absence from Stanford Law School in December 2021 to focus on the FTX Group, according to the filing.
The charitable gifts to Stanford allegedly began the month before when “Bankman directed a donation of $500,000 from FTX Trading to pass through Paper Bird,” a Delaware-based company owned by Bankman-Fried, according to the court filing.
In February 2022, he allegedly proposed a $4 million gift to the Stanford School of Medicine to support its Fund For Pandemic Preparedness.
According to the court documents, Bankman called the donation “pretty much a no-brainer,” but he wanted to run it by FTX’s project officer.
“A few months later, the gift was funded by a Bitcoin transfer from an Alameda Ltd. FTX.com exchange account that, because of the fluctuating price of Bitcoin at the time it was sold, was worth $4,010,579,” the filing said.
In March 2022, Bankman allegedly asked that the FTX Foundation dish out $1.5 million to Stanford, which FTX debtors claimed was handed over via two wire transfers.
An FTX bank account also contributed $10,000 to sponsor the Stanford Blockchain Conference in July 2022, according to the filing.
The lawsuit went on to claim that weeks before FTX’s house of cards came crumbling down, “Bankman directed another $500,000 donation to Stanford Law School.”
Bankman, a Stanford professor for more than three decades, also allegedly ordered FTX to pay for one of his students to go to a Formula 1 Grand Prix in the south of France, including plane tickets, $1,200-per-night hotels, and tickets to the event, the filing said.
Lawyers for Bankman and Fried told Bloomberg that FTX’s allegations of fraudulent transfers are “completely false.” A representative for the parents declined to comment on Stanford’s decision to return the donations, the outlet reported.
Bankman-Fried is currently awaiting his fraud case -- set to go to trial on Oct. 2 -- at a Brooklyn jail.
https://nypost.com/2023/09/20/stanford-university-to-return-millions-in-donations-from-ftx/
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Maryland county battle heats up over 'sexually explicit' books in schools as mom vows to appeal decision
FOX News Digital spoke to Moms for Liberty chapter president Kit Hart on the battle she is leading in her county over "sexually explicit" books in public libraries.
Hart won a minor victory in Carroll County, Maryland, after a local reconsideration committee made up of teachers, parents and even students voted to remove two books from school libraries. As of Wednesday, the committee has decided to remove two books and keep seven other books on school library shelves. The deciding body still has 49 books to review, Hart said.
The two books that were chosen to be removed from schools were "A Court of Thorns and Roses" and "Water for Elephants."
The first book was found "not appropriate for recommended age and grade levels" by the reconsideration committee, Hart said. "It's basically for a mature audience and much of the book is based around sexual content."
The second book also had so much "graphic and explicit material" that made it "inappropriate for children," she explained, adding that "we really need to start understanding that the distinction between what a child can be exposed to and what an adult can deem appropriate or entertaining."
It's a difference, she added, that "should be very different and respected."
Hart said that, as a rule, the books she recommends for removal from school libraries "contain very, very graphic and explicit sex" that makes them clearly "not appropriate for schools" or for the eyes of children.
But Hart said that she wasn't done fighting the battle to keep children safe in her district from "sexually explicit" materials. The next stage in her battle with her county was appealing the committee's decision to the local superintendent.
When asked roughly what percentage of parents were for or against removing sexually explicit books from schools, Hart said that the group supporting "taking a look at these books and considering removing them" was likely the majority. The opposing side has largely taken an attitude that removing sexually explicit or controversial books from schools is a form of censorship.
"There is a faction of the population that consists of parents and some librarians who I think have taken the narrative of book banning and censorship and really fought against that idea rather than look at the individual content of the books," she said, which forced them to "defend the concept of book banning" as a political tool.
That's also because, Hart added, the defenders of these allegedly graphic books have trouble actually defending "the content of the books."
She also weighed in on the popularity of the term "book bans."
"People throw out terms like book banning and censorship" because, Hart said, "Americans don't like those concepts."
"Of course, we firmly believe in the First Amendment," Hart said. "We will fight for that."
But the issue of keeping sexually explicit books in schools was an entirely different one, she said, calling the phenomenon a "manufactured crisis."
Hart argued that the movers and shakers in school libraries across the country, like American Library Association (ALA) President Emily Drabinski, have "totally captured" school libraries. Drabinski is a self-identified "Marxist lesbian."
"We're responding, we're calling out what we deem to be inappropriate," Hart said.
Hart also said that parents have every right to want to protect their children and reduce their exposure to sexually graphic materials in school.
"We are entrusting our children, our most prized possession [to schools]," she said.
"And so when they go into these libraries, and they're finding these books, that's not a safe environment for them," she added. "And it really breaks the trust that parents have" with their "librarians and their schools."
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20 September, 2023
‘Double Standard’: Appeals Court Rules in Favor of Christian Athletic Club Ousted From California School District
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that a California school district violated the rights of a Christian athletics club by forcing it off campus.
In 2019, the San Jose Unified School District derecognized the Fellowship for Christian Athletics after a teacher made complaints that the club was sharing its faith on campus, which included the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.
The FCA filed a lawsuit with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in April 2020 but faced several defeats in court, until the 9th Circuit ruled Wednesday that the district had potentially violated the FCA’s rights under the First Amendment and reversed a previous decision to deny FCA’s request for an injunction, according to court documents.
“The District, rather than treating FCA like comparable secular student groups whose membership was limited based on criteria including sex, race, ethnicity, and gender identity, penalized it based on its religious beliefs,” the ruling reads. “Because the Constitution prohibits such a double standard—even in the absence of any motive to do so—we reverse the district court’s denial of FCA’s motion for a preliminary injunction.”
The FCA requires students who volunteer with the club in a “leadership capacity” to sign a statement of faith that includes the belief that “sexual intimacy is designed only to be expressed within the confines of a marriage between one man and one woman” and that they will follow the club’s policy on this issue, according to the ruling.
In April 2019, Peter Glasser, a teacher at Pioneer High School, obtained a copy of this statement of faith and posted it on his whiteboard, saying that he was “deeply saddened” by such a policy.
The following month, after several complaints from Glasser, the district stripped FCA of its Associated Student Body status and could not longer be a recognized club on campus, according to the ruling. Principal Herb Espiritu said the policy is of a “discriminatory nature” in the Pioneer’s school newspaper, The Pony Express, despite later testifying that he did not consult FCA about the policy before making the decision.
A district court ruled against the Christian organization’s request for an injunction in June 2022, meaning the group could not operate on campus as an Associated Student Body while the lawsuit went through the court system, according to the ruling. The appeals court, however, determined that the lower court’s decision was flawed since it was trying to hold the FCA to a higher standard than it had for the past two decades, according to the ruling.
“Here, the District’s new policy of enforcing its nondiscrimination rules likewise alters the status quo of providing FCA clubs ASB recognition,” the ruling reads. “Because it was the District’s action that ‘affirmatively changed’ that status quo and Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction seeks to restore that status quo … the district court thus erred in applying a heightened standard applicable to mandatory injunctions.”
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Australia: Universities deliver ‘woke’ degrees to trainee teachers who demand more practical training
“Woke’’ universities are instructing trainee teachers in gender theory, climate activism and race relations, as young teachers demand practical classroom skills.
One in five teachers has warned the federal Education Department that universities failed to teach them all the practical skills required to teach children to read and write, or to manage classrooms.
Up to one-third of recent teaching graduates from some universities declared their degree had failed to prepare them for the classroom.
Teachers-in-training have been lectured on “postmodernism, existentialism and reconstructionism” in the University of Canberra’s initial teacher education degree.
Course materials sent to students show lecturers have critiqued the “social and political content’’ of the Australian Curriculum, mandated by the nation’s education ministers for teaching children from primary school through to year 10.
A lecture slide notes “we aren’t even doing a very good job”, tallying up 19 references to social justice, Aboriginal rights, invasion, colonisation, the Stolen Generation, assimilation, social justice and racism.
The course material includes a slide from CNN, with the title “Our World Today’’, linking climate change to aggression and violent behaviour, depression and anxiety, farmer suicide and forced migration.
Thousands of students skipped school on Friday to march in “School Strikes 4 Climate’’ protests in Brisbane, Darwin and Melbourne.
One protester brandished a misspelt placard declaring “I’M MAD AND DISSAPOINTED”.
Two of Australia’s most eminent scientists – Nobel laureate and Australian National University vice-chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt and former chief scientist Dr Alan Finkel – this week criticised the poor levels of literacy and numeracy among school students and called for greater focus on schools teaching the basics of English and mathematics.
One-third of school students failed to meet the minimum standards for reading, writing and numeracy in this year’s NAPLAN (National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy) tests, with students twice as likely to fail than to excel in the tests.
But many teachers are struggling with literacy and numeracy themselves, as universities fill their teaching degrees with lectures on social justice.
The federal Education Department revealed on Tuesday that many teachers fresh from university feel their degrees failed to prepare them for classroom teaching.
“A lot of students talked about the need to have more practical on-the-job training as part of the course and some suggested something along the lines of an apprenticeship model,’’ said Lisa Bolton, director of research and strategy for the department’s Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching survey of university graduates.
“They wanted to know more about classroom behaviour management, dealing with parents and dealing with students with particular learning needs.
“They said the placement was too short, the course was too theoretical and even a bit outdated. A few had made comments about wanting the lecturers to have more recent teaching experience in schools.’’
One University of Canberra final-year student told The Australian the education degree was “teaching us to indoctrinate students’’. “It teaches about gender diversity and critical race theory rather than drilling down on the fundamental skills so we can be really effective teachers ourselves,’’ the student said.
“I’m pretty irritated by all the politically correct and woke stuff. “We could learn more in a school classroom than in the university … and save ourselves and the taxpayer a lot of money.’’
At the University of Canberra, a lecturer’s slide about “postmodernist writing’’ includes a rambling and incomprehensible 92-word sentence: “The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.’’
A University of Canberra spokeswoman said the student’s complaints “do not accurately represent’’ the quality and content of its degree. She said trainee teachers were given practicum placements in schools, ranging from a week in the first year to 30 days in the fourth year of study.
“Taken together, all units of study that focus on a key learning area of the Australian Curriculum – mathematics, English, science etc – represent approximately 50 per cent of the total units studied by students in an undergraduate course of initial teacher education,’’ the spokeswoman said.
“The other half of the courses focuses on educational and developmental psychology, classroom and behaviour management, the use of data to improve learning, designing learning for diversity and inclusion, and the development of a professional identity well-informed by policy, theory, appropriate sources of professional learning and codes of conduct and practice.’’
Federal, state and territory education ministers have given universities until the start of 2025 to update their degrees to focus more on classroom management, children’s brain development and the teaching of phonics-based reading and writing, as well as mathematics.
The detail of what is taught in existing university degrees is kept secret: universities must submit course content to state and territory teaching accreditation bodies for approval, but most only publish a broad outline on their websites.
The Australian sought the universities’ course materials from the Queensland College of Teachers but was told they could not be released “for privacy reasons’’.
The University of Queensland’s website shows that teaching students spend the first six weeks of their degree learning about “sociological ideas and concepts needed for understanding the complexities of schooling and the social processes that often go on within them”. “We delve into the history of knowledge production in sociology, and explore the need to decolonise, expand and diversify what we know about schools and the processes that go on in them,’’ it states.
Students are assessed, in part, on a 10-minute verbal presentation explaining concepts such as “decolonising knowledge’’, the “myth of meritocracy” and “deficit discourses’’. Another lecture is about “expanding notions of sex, gender and sexuality’’.
At Victoria University, the very first subject in its teaching degree aims to “develop understanding for the cultures, histories and languages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and to use this knowledge in the promotion of reconciliation”.
The teaching of science, maths and reading is not covered until the second year, and students must wait until the final year of their four-year degree to specialise in subjects such as biology and humanities, or to integrate the use of digital technologies in lessons.
Charles Sturt University’s course handbook for its Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood and Primary) has a list of 11 outcomes for its graduates.
The top priority is for graduates to be “agents of change’’’.
“Graduates from this course will teach for social justice and equity,’’ it states. The fifth priority is that “graduates from this course will teach for student learning’’.
At the University of Adelaide, an introduction to Australian history “treats the development of Australian society to the present through the lenses of Aboriginal deep time history; convicts and colonialism; war and conflict; migration and multiculturalism; landscape and the environment, and; the development of democratic institutions”.
Despite 13 years at school and four at university, 7 per cent of the 20,000 final-year trainee teachers failed to pass the mandatory literacy and numeracy test in 2021.
The Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education Students was set up as a guardrail to keep poorly trained teachers out of classrooms.
The test includes questions that could be answered by primary school students, such as correcting a spelling error or answering: “This year a teacher spent $383.30 on stationery. Last year the teacher spent $257.85 on stationery. How much more did the teacher spend this year than last year?’’
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The DEI Racket Transformed Our Colleges, Universities. But Tide Could Be Turning
College campuses have been dominated by the Left for generations. That’s hardly news to anyone. But a recent news report sheds light on how higher education has been transformed from a general haven of left-wing ideology into an engine of radicalism and revolution in the name of DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The lengthy report in The New York Times, of all places, highlights how the use of DEI statements essentially has allowed schools to create ideological loyalty oaths for new faculty. These tests aren’t being applied only in humanities departments, they’re the norm in science departments and all others too.
California—upholding its reputation for being at the cutting edge of anti-civilizational lunacy and tyranny—has predictably gone all in on the diversity, equity, and inclusion regime. Fealty to DEI dogma has become practically mandatory at all levels of higher education.
The Times notes that the faculty senate at the University of California, San Francisco urged professors to apply an “anti-oppression and anti-racism” lens to their coursework. On its website, UCLA’s public affairs school pledged to “decolonize the curriculum and pedagogy.” And the faculty senate of California Community Colleges instructed teachers on their duty to “lift the veil of white supremacy” and “colonialism.”
“Professions of fealty to DEI ideology are so ubiquitous as to be meaningless,” Daniel Sargent, a professor of history and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Times. “We are institutionalizing a performative dishonesty.”
It’s not just that school administrators enforce a pervasive, left-wing culture on campus. That’s been happening for generations. These schools also are hiring with strict DEI-style parameters, to the near total exclusion of merit.
In one study, according to the Times, researchers found that at Berkeley “a faculty committee rejected 75% of applicants in life sciences and environmental sciences and management purely on diversity statements.”
It seems this may have been a racial test too. From the Times’ report:
Latino candidates constituted 13% of applicants and 59% of finalists. Asian and Asian-American applicants constituted 26% of applicants and 19% of finalists. Fifty-four percent of applicants were white and 14% made it to the final stage. Black candidates made up 3% of applicants and 9% of finalists.
That makes sense, given what’s in the diversity statements. Many schools, including Berkeley, publicly post their standards online. Among the answers that will produce a low score is saying that you will “treat everyone the same.”
To get the highest scores, you need to be explicitly racial in thinking and demonstrate that you’ve not only participated in or will participate in campus DEI programs but will be actively leading new initiatives.
What’s clear is that these schools aren’t focused simply on weeding out conservatives. People anywhere vaguely on the Right clearly don’t have a ghost of a chance of getting through the application process. No, these schools are about finding active, devoted leaders of social justice causes.
If you aren’t a DEI revolutionary, schools don’t want you to teach about science or engineering or anything else at their institution.
Remember, when the Left says “believe the science,” what it’s really saying is “believe the left-wing activist with institutional backing next to his/her/zir name.”
Unfortunately, what started in California didn’t stay in California, as many schools around the country copied the Golden State model.
Among the methods schools use to promote DEI goals is what John Sailer, a fellow at the National Association of Scholars, called “cluster hiring.” Universities hire applicants in bulk, using DEI statements to weed out most unwanted applicants.
Sailer noted how in 2021, Vanderbilt University’s Department of Psychology undertook a cluster hire that “eliminated approximately 85% of its candidates based solely on diversity statements.”
The federal government exacerbates this problem.
“The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has allocated $241 million in grant money for cluster hires at universities around the country—with the condition that every search committee must require and heavily weigh diversity statements,” Sailer wrote.
The DEI racket is a national phenomenon, but this bleak environment includes signs that change may be coming.
It seems that some school systems are reconsidering their DEI litmus tests. For instance, Georgia’s public university system eliminated DEI requirements in July. It put out a statement saying that hiring decisions should be “free of ideological tests, affirmations, and oaths.”
I’d like to ascribe this change to a genuine change of heart, but it’s telling that this policy shift came right after the Supreme Court’s ruling that racial preferences in college admissions are unlawful.
It goes to show how much of a game-changer that decision is. Schools now have reason to be concerned about lawsuits from applicants claiming discrimination.
Creating ideological litmus tests that appear to discriminate and actually tell faculty that not discriminating is bad surely won’t help the cause of colleges and universities.
This small retreat won’t exactly fix what ails higher education in America, but it does represent an opening for a recalibration.
Larger change will happen when more schools return to a classical learning model and jettison the DEI regime altogether. That seems unlikely to happen without outside pressure.
But outside pressure is building as institutional trust declines. If more states reject the California model, a genuine new birth of freedom in education may not be so far-fetched as it seemed just a few years ago.
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19 September, 2023
‘School Choice for Me but Not for Thee’: New Report Reveals Backroom Deals Between Teachers Unions and Louisiana Schools
A new report published by the Pelican Institute, a Louisiana think tank, reveals a series of detrimental, hypocritical, and possibly illegal deals brokered between teachers unions and several public school systems—including clauses giving teachers who have kids school choice opportunities that other parents can’t access.
Six Louisiana school systems and two New Orleans charter schools annually broker bargaining agreements between Louisiana teachers unions and the school system, regulating school policy and teacher behavior. These collective bargaining agreements, like most around the country, are made in secret.
The Pelican Institute has just released several findings from these secret collective bargaining agreements. These agreements, made on behalf of teachers whether they are in the union or not, restrict what teachers and administrators can do to determine how the school operates and only allow teachers to leave the union during a specific window.
Four parishes in Louisiana have brokered collective bargaining agreements with teachers unions that provide the unions exclusive time during the year to recruit new members—specifically during faculty meetings and new teacher orientation. Additionally, the Pelican Institute found that unions were given exclusive access to distribute literature and use the schools’ email systems.
In St. Tammany Parish, the brokered collective bargaining agreement not only gives the union access to teachers’ time, space, and resources—but forbids any outside organization from using teachers’ time or accessing school space and resources.
No third party, other than the teachers union, is allowed to “distribute literature, place messages on the email system, have presentation time at orientation, use school facilities, or post messages on a school bulletin board.”
St. Tammany Parish also agrees to give the unions an annual list of new faculty for targeted recruitment.
These collective bargaining agreements also forbid teachers who are a part of the union from leaving the union except during a “very narrow window” each year. In St. John Parish, teachers may only resign from the union from the beginning of the academic year to Sept. 1. In Vermilion Parish, teachers are limited to resigning from the union from the beginning of the academic year to Aug. 1. St. Bernard Parish teachers only have “the first 10 working days of school” to leave the union, and St. Tammany Parish only allows teachers to leave the union in July.
If teachers don’t resign during those incredibly small windows, they will be fined another year of dues. According to Louisiana State Superintendent Cade Brumley, that can range from $200 to well over $600 per year.
This may not be entirely legal. In Janus vs. AFSCME (2018), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unions may not force employees to retain membership or pay dues. Courts have struck down these “resignation windows” in states like Michigan.
Sarah Harbison, author of the Pelican Institute report, told The Daily Signal that she’s looking for a Louisiana teacher who would be interested in suing the union over forcing what she called the “unconstitutional drop window” requirement.
The Pelican Institute’s most damning discovery involves a form of school choice for teachers with kids that is not available to other parents in two school districts.
Under current Louisiana state law, Louisiana families are only allowed to move their children from “a failing school to a higher performing public school,” severely limiting school choice and parental preference. In the collective bargaining agreements for St. Bernard and Vermilion parishes, however, teachers are granted the opportunity to “select a different school that fits their children,” including non-public schools.
Why is that particularly damning?
A bill to expand school choice in Louisiana via education savings accounts would have extended funding for all parents to send their students to a school of their choice. Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, however, vetoed the measure twice. Both the Louisiana Federation of Teachers (the state affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers) and the Louisiana Association of Educators (the state affiliate of the National Education Association) repeatedly endorsed him.
The unions also lobby consistently and passionately against expanding to parents the same school choice opportunities that their St. Bernard and Vermilion Parish members enjoy. The Pelican Institute report dubs this policy “School Choice for Me but Not for Thee.”
Harbison told The Daily Signal that she believed these contracts further illustrate the unions’ dedication to themselves, not children:
Schools exist for the sake of kids, not for the sake of unions. Instead of unions focusing on serving their own ends, we should all focus on how to make education better for our children—and that means ensuring that every kid gets a school that fits.
The Pelican Institute has proposed eight recommendations for the Louisiana Legislature to ensure teachers unions aren’t brokering backroom deals with parishes at the expense and against the wishes of Louisiana teachers, parents, and students:
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Donald Trump Pledges to Champion Homeschool Families
Former President Donald Trump pledged Thursday to champion American homeschoolers if he should again become president in 2025.
“As president, it was my honor to support America’s homeschool families—and to protect the God-given right of every parent to be the steward of their children’s education,” Trump said in a new Agenda47 video released on social media and Rumble. “Since the China virus, America has seen an estimated 30% increase in homeschool enrollment.”
“When I am reelected, I will do everything I can to support parents who make the courageous choice of homeschool,” he emphasized. “Under the Trump tax cuts, we allowed families to use 529 education savings accounts to spend up to $10,000 a year tax-free on tuition for grades K through 12. This was a tremendous win for school choice—very important, school choice, remember that term—and yet, that benefit did not apply to homeschoolers.”
In his next term, Trump pledged, he will fight to “allow homeschool parents the same incredible benefits—$10,000 a year per child, completely tax-free—to spend on costs associated with homeschool education.”
“I will also work to ensure that every homeschool family is entitled to full access to the benefits available to non-homeschool students—including participating in athletic programs, clubs, after-school activities, educational trips, and more,” the former president said. “To every homeschool family, I will be your champion.”
Trump closed his message by urging homeschooling parents not to vote Democrat, warning that “they are looking to destroy you.”
Many American families began homeschooling their children during the COVID-19 pandemic due to shutdowns and the discovery of ideological, racial, and sexual content in schools. But data shows that post-pandemic, homeschooling is still on the rise.
Research from the Household Pulse Survey found that as of May 2023, 5.4% of American students are homeschooled, 9.6% attend private school, and 85% go to public school. Pre-pandemic, the Reason Foundation reports, 2.8% of American students were being homeschooled.
Research published by the Urban Institute found that in states that require homeschooling to be reported (21 states and Washington, D.C.), homeschool enrollment increased by 30% between the 2019 to 2020 and 2021 to 2022 school years. Pennsylvania (53%), Florida (43%), and New York (65%) saw “particularly large” increases in homeschool enrollment, the Urban Institute found.
“Notably, this dramatic increase reflects enrollment during the second full school year under the pandemic, when most schools returned to in-person instruction,” the Urban Institute report said. “These data indicate that the early homeschooling increase documented by a US Census Bureau survey persisted into the 2021–22 school year.”
Trump enjoys a large lead in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, with 56% in the RealClearPolitics polling average, leading the second- and third-place candidates, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (13%) and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (6.6%), by a wide margin.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/14/donald-trump-pledges-champion-homeschool-families/
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New College of Florida is right to abolish gender studies
Predictable accusations have greeted the announcement by Manhattan Institute fellow Chris Rufo, trustee of the New College of Florida, that the college is abolishing its gender studies program in a move designed, he wrote, to ‘begin rolling back the encroachment of gender ideology and queer theory on its academic offerings’.
Earlier this month, Rufo explained in City Journal that cancelling the program is part of the university’s renewed commitment to ‘revive classical liberal education and restore the founding mission of the college’.
In response, 36 professors opposed to the plan have either left the college on their own initiative or been dismissed, and critics have been quick to paint the gender studies decision as an attack on academic freedom. They say that it will transform New College of Florida into a know-nothing institution in which critical thinking and open-minded exploration will be walled out of the school.
One might have thought that with close to four thousand degree-granting post-secondary institutions in the United States, the gender warriors might have let a single institution minimise its gender offerings. But feminist ideologues never sleep, and their rhetoric around New College of Florida has moved immediately into DEFCON 2 territory.
As he publicly announced his resignation from the school, Nicholas Clarkson, a transgender man and the school’s only full-time professor of gender studies, branded all of Florida as ‘the state where learning goes to die’ proclaiming his refusal to remain ‘in an environment characterise by censorship, refusal of accountability, blatant disregard for students’ well-being, and consistent denigration of both my work and my personhood’.
The President of the National Women’s Studies Association said that controversy over gender studies was ‘a struggle for the heart and soul of this nation’ and claimed:
‘If we let them win this battle, they will never stop attacking us, threatening us and intimidating us.’
Reading these melodramatic accusations, one might conclude that it is highly unusual for university programs to be scaled back or disbanded. But in fact, it happens all the time, usually without so much drama. Universities continually make decisions about their emphasis, programming, and public image in order to secure funding and attract students. Individual departments and programs do the same, justifying their course requirements, defending their budgets and hiring needs.
Often cuts are made to courses and programs that were once at the core of a classical education. As a faculty member at the University of Saskatchewan and University of Ottawa, I was often saddened to see traditional programs diluted of content and rigour in the name of (alleged) relevance or faculty/student interest. At the University of Ottawa, the Classics department was folded in with Religious Studies to create what seemed a mishmash of courses and options, some focusing on ancient languages and culture, some covering modern world religious, including Amerindian and Inuit traditions, and even a special offering on non-religion.
The description of the department’s offerings states that the programs’ ‘11 full-time professors specialise in a wide range of fields that occasionally interlock, though for most day-to-day purposes […] operate independently’.
In other words, two small groups of scholars, unable to represent all major dimensions of their separate disciplines, must make peace with fragmentation and incoherence. I can’t say for sure that secularism and progressivism played any role in the reduction of the two programs, but given that neither lends itself readily to intersectional feminist orthodoxies, it seems possible. A few years ago, Princeton decided to abolish the Latin and Greek language requirements for its Classics major over concerns about ‘systemic racism’.
The obvious difference between a program in Classics and one in gender studies is that it is extremely difficult to learn ancient languages and history without the guidance of trained specialists. Nearly anyone with access to social media can figure out gender studies.
But what about the claim that gender studies should be a part of any true classical liberal education?
This is the argument made by Marcie Bianco, feminist author of Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Fight for Freedom, which argues, according to the author’s blurb, that, ‘…equality is a racist, patriarchal ideal that perpetuates women’s systemic oppression.’ In an opinion piece for MSNBC New College of Florida’s attack on gender studies gets ‘classical liberal arts’ all wrong, Bianco claims that gender studies embodies the true essence of a liberal arts education in opposition to the theocratic mental enslavement sought by a right-wing agenda.
Bianco detects a religious agenda in Rufo’s reference to the classical pursuit of ‘the true, the good, and the beautiful’. Though she admits that Rufo never mentions Christianity in his announcement, she notes that because Christian Neoplatonists defined God as ‘truth, goodness and beauty’, that counts as a ‘direct allusion’ to a not-so-secret plan to smuggle in ‘doctrinal Christianity’ under the guise of the liberal arts. Bianco’s observation might be slightly more persuasive if so many non-Christians hadn’t used the phrase ‘the true, the good, and the beautiful’ over the years (for a detailed genealogy, see John Levi Martin’s 50-page analysis).
Bianco wants her readers at MSNBC to believe that gender studies is under attack precisely because, as a bastion of truth-seeking and critical interrogation, it stands against the ‘ignorance’ that Ruffo conservative associates favour. Gender studies, she explains, ‘…is simply the rigorous examination of how arguably the human dynamic and social and political roles of gender have acquired meaning and shaped humanity and our institutions for centuries across cultures.’
As to the content of gender studies and why it matters to a classical liberal education, Bianco can only attest that it is ‘the epitome of learning’, which is ‘to ask questions, to examine, to be critical and think critically’. She assures us that it is ‘the polar opposite of the ideological indoctrination that conservatives seek’.
Unfortunately for those of us who like the sound of ‘rigorous examination’ and ‘critical’ thinking, they are perceived by some fans of gender theory to be merely code for a series of hermetic claims about hegemony, language, power, and systemic oppression that brooks no opposition. Try standing up in a gender studies course to argue that we do not live in a rape culture, and see how many instructors applaud your critical thinking. Try arguing that biology, not ‘discourse’, is the primary driver of gender roles. Try arguing that gender dysphoria is a disorder that should be treated as such, not augmented with hormone blockers and surgery. Try arguing that white men do not have privilege as white men, and that in fact, they experience systemic discrimination in North America. Any such critical thinking will not be welcomed.
A liberal arts education, by contrast, encourages questioning because it pushes no specific iron-law ideology; rather, it examines ‘the best that has been thought and said’, as Matthew Arnold put it, and draws rich content from the greatest thinkers in history. Unlike the fly-by-night trendiness of gender ideology, a classically liberal education is founded on the tradition of Great Books – from the ancient Greeks to the Founding Fathers, from (in the English literary tradition) Beowulf to Virginia Woolf. Long-standing classics of philosophy, art, literature, and political thought are taught, as much as possible, without ideological distortion, presented in their particular contexts and carefully read (not blithely dismissed or acclaimed) so that students can grasp their enduring significance. Once their meaning is grasped, students are encouraged to question, judge, compare, and criticise.
Gender studies has never done anything like this. It has been judged from the beginning in ignorance and rage, without proportion and without rational argument or sound evidence. It has pushed lies as truth (see, for example, Christina Hoff Sommers’ debunking of fundamental falsehoods about women’s experience in Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women), denying biology and history.
From its earliest incarnations, gender studies have promoted preposterous contentions about Woman as Other (Simone De Beauvoir), the suburban family as a comfortable concentration camp (Betty Friedan), the social construction of gender (Kate Millett), women as Playboy Bunnies (Gloria Steinem), the female eunuch (Germaine Greer), honourable man-hating (Robin Morgan), rape culture (Susan Brownmiller) gynocide (Mary Daly), compulsory heterosexuality (Adrienne Rich), white privilege (Peggy McIntosh), intersectionality (Kimberlé Crenshaw), family abolition (Sophie Lewis), gender as performance (Judith Butler) and the difficulty of distinguishing rape from normal sex (Catharine MacKinnon), to name only a few. Its purpose was never to encourage critical thought, let alone disagreement or resistance.
Marinating in the impenetrable jargon and the gaseous outrage of victim politics, students learn almost nothing of substance except to hate their society and to embrace the utopian necessity of its destruction.
While deploring New College of Florida’s alleged gender bigotry, critics have also pointed out (somewhat paradoxically) that the move is hollow: gender studies at the college was an interdisciplinary program, meaning that it had only one full-time faculty member and primarily drew on courses taught by academics working in various established departments, many of whom (despite the culling) still work on gender and intersectional theory in their disciplines.
But far from detracting from the significance of what the college has done, this reality suggests the depth of the rot gender studies has brought to academic departments, a rot that has now spread throughout the arts, humanities, and social sciences, even into many faculties of business, journalism, law, and medical science, as research is corrupted by social and political advocacy. It will not be easy to reform the universities. Still, New College’s decision to abolish an avowedly radical, anti-family, and anti-social program is good in itself and sends a good signal: dispassionate research, the genuine pursuit of truth, and the transmission of the Western heritage are in; facile isms, intersectional victimology, and overt indoctrination are out. As the (feminist) slogan goes: Never retract, never explain, never apologize: Get the thing done and let them howl.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/new-college-of-florida-is-right-to-abolish-gender-studies
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18 September, 2023
Another CA School District Will Protect Parents’ Rights in Education
On Thursday, another California school district passed a new policy to protect parents’ rights and notify them if their child requests to be identified as a gender other than their biological sex at school.
According to KCRA, the Dry Creek Joint Elementary School District Board of Trustees passed the policy unanimously after two hours of public comment this week.
"Dry Creek is committed to working with parents and guardians, community, and educational partners in efforts that continue to promote a safe, welcoming and inclusive school environment for all students," the school district said in a statement. "As a District, we believe communication and honesty between students and families is profoundly important, and we encourage families to speak about sensitive and important matters."
Cara Hytoff, a mother in the district, told the outlet: “We really want parents to be notified of very important mental and health things that are going on with their students and we feel that teachers keeping secrets is not good for kids. It's not good for families. It's not good for teachers.”
School districts in California have recently been a battleground over transgender parental notification policies. Townhall previously reported how Chino Valley Unified School District moved forward with a policy of their own in July, prompting other nearby districts, like Orange Unified, to do the same.
Shortly after, Townhall reported how Democrat California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the school district over the policy. And, a San Bernardino County Superior judge ruled that the Chino Valley Unified School District cannot enforce a new policy.
Earlier this month, another California school district paid $100,000 to settle a lawsuit after a mother, Jessica Konen, claimed that district supported her child’s gender transition and kept it a secret from her.
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Yale University student Saifullah Khan acquitted of rape SUES his accuser for defamation after Connecticut Supreme court ruling clears the way
A former Yale student who was expelled by the university after being accused of sexual assault is suing one of his accusers for defamation - and is demanding $110million in damages from the school after not being able to get his degree.
Expelled in 2019, Saifullah Khan, 30, filed the suit more than four years ago - 20 months after after he was acquitted of raping a female student on Halloween night in 2015, but deemed 'responsible' for the act by the school months later.
The case has since slowly grinded through the Connecticut courts, culminating in a recent ruling this past June where jurists said the then 21-year-old woman is not immune from a defamation lawsuit, while not commenting on the merits of such a case.
Khan - a member of the class of 2016 who had his undergraduate studies upended over the claims - was found not guilty of the alleged rape in a court of law.
Following his exoneration - which came at the height of America's #MeToo movement - Khan was readmitted as a full-time student in 2018, but was subject to protests from the student body along the way, the suit claims.
Barely a month later, another student - one of Khan’s chief supporters during the trial and a former romantic partner - came forward to claim Khan slapped him during consensual threesome in DC in June of 2018.
Aired in an interview with the school newspaper, those claims led to Khan being again suspended - and eventually expelled in January 2019 after the school ruled that he was 'responsible' for the other unproven act even without a conviction.
The ruling came more than three years after the alleged assault was first reported, and made way for Khan's new suit, now given the greenlight.
It demands $110 million in damages on the basis that the school violated his rights throughout the investigation process, particularly a federal law that governs how universities should handle sexual assault hearings called Title IX.
The aforementioned damages attributed to the obstruction of his degree completion, reputational harm, and breach of his right to privacy, the suit states - along with alleged instances of emotional distress.
The filing describes in-depth how Khan was arrested in November 2015 for the alleged rape ahead of his trial, which, initially slated for 2017, was postponed after Yale Police failed to provide the defense with interviews from prospective witnesses.
Before providing Khan's version of what happened, lawyers wrote how the Afghani neuroscience student, who began attending Yale in 2012, was expected to graduate 'with a Yale baccalaureate,' and 'was on the cusp of a world filled with promise.
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Empty shelves, desolate minds: Canada’s ‘equity book-weeding’
At least in previous centuries a trail of smoke loitered in the air after the censors were done burning books. The smell of information dying could not be escaped, nor could the haze be hidden.
In the digital era, information is deleted and edited by millions of invisible hands. Entire works of fiction are rewritten by publishing houses given custody of their survival, while historical records are misplaced if they invalidate the ‘current thing’. One wonders how much we have lost in the last 5 years…
These are dangerous times for knowledge.
Libraries are one of the few places where censorship can be seen in the flesh. Housing real books, their absence is conspicuous. This became the topic of conversation last week when parents in Canada were startled by a half-empty library in an Ontario school.
In a brazen fit of superior wisdom, books published before 2008 were removed to ensure the library remained ‘inclusive’.
Call me crazy, but it’s pretty ‘exclusive’ to cut down the history of human thought to the last 15-odd years of unremarkable publications.
Try to name of a great work published after 2008. No? That is probably because civilisation has been saturated by propaganda rather than talent. You are more likely to find illustrated rainbow pornography in the children’s section than a book on mathematics.
Described by staff at the school as ‘equity book-weeding’, parents fear it has left the library devoid of knowledge.
Historians would sell every organ in their body to magically recreate the lost libraries of Alexandria. The point of knowledge is to hoard it. That is what made civilisation smarter. The written word is a key indicator of success, as oral traditions are not enough to preserve knowledge. It is too easily lost, corrupted, forgotten, or misremembered.
Civilisations without written texts failed to progress at the speed of their peers in the ancient world. Our historical kin understood this, which is why they built and revered libraries. Would Cleopatra have authorised the weeding out of dusty scrolls? As for our so-called modern civilisation, if it keeps deleting things it will suffer from amnesia.
The libraries of Alexandria were destroyed in stages, with a final record found in 642 AD after being captured by the Islamic forces of Amr ibn al-As. The destruction of the remaining scrolls was ordered by Caliph Omar who is said to have reasoned, ‘If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them.’ It is a sentiment re-emerging within the jealous and inferior ideology of progressive thought.
In Canada, dismayed by the savage weeding, the Ontario Education Minister asked the school to stop chucking out books.
‘Ontario is committed to ensuring that the addition of new books better reflects the rich diversity of our communities. It is offensive, illogical, and counter-intuitive to remove books from years past that educate students on Canada’s history, antisemitism, or celebrated literary classics,’ said the Minister.
Oh well… At least the library’s books are donated and end up in the hands of someone who might learn something. No chance. According to CBC, ‘When it comes to disposing of the books that are weeded, the board documents say the resources are “causing harm”, either as a health hazard because of the condition of the book or because “they are not inclusive, culturally responsive, relevant, or accurate”. For those reasons, the documents say the books cannot be donated as “they are not suitable for any learners”.’ This has since been rectified.
Christopher Hitchens once asked in his famous lecture on free speech, ‘Who would you trust to make the decision about what you are allowed to read?’ The answer appears to be something along the lines of politically sensitive school boards and the education bureaucracy.
While it is unsurprising that such directives exist in 2023’s schooling environment, what is surprising is the silent obedience of those who carry out these orders.
The ‘weeding’ has since been described as a ‘miscommunication’. Would this slight backtrack have happened without the public outrage? Almost certainly not. Social media is increasingly being used to hold institutions to account.
Later, the board explained its focus on ‘safe’ and ‘inclusive’ material that is ‘culturally appropriate’ and viewed through the ‘right lens’. Which, as the rest of the world has been trying to explain, is the entire problem. This kind of political curation of a library is the opposite of diversity.
When asked if the board would replace the books which were thrown out, they said only that the shelves needed to be filled swiftly. Even when asked if Anne Frank’s diary would be returned, the answer was something about ‘if relevant to student learning about history’ which is a far cry from, ‘Of course – we are so sorry – that will never happen again – I am going to go out and buy that myself and personally put it on the shelf.’
It was only later, after a few train wreck interviews, that the following statement was released:
‘To be clear, books such as The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and the Harry Potter series remain in our collections, and where needed, newer versions may be purchased if the book is in poor condition.’
Why was that so hard to say?
The idea of an ‘equity lens’ is a disturbing turn of events. ‘Equity’ is a cursed word of the modern era that deliberately represses and discriminates on account of historical revenge. It does not lead to an equal society, but a society built on aggressive political narratives tailored to fit the personal ideology of those at the top of the bureaucracy.
Sadly, this topic may be largely academic. Education statistics in the West – particularly for Australia – demonstrate that the only ‘inclusive’ item is the collective deterioration in children’s reading skills. Since so many of the great Western classics were ditched in favour of ‘culturally appropriate’ works written in the last 20-odd years, education has fallen off a cliff. It’s almost as if old books were better at expanding the minds of our children than the vast majority of what most of us call ‘useless Woke crap’ which has become the staple of our education system.
A good book can change a child’s life and set them on a path of learning – but give them a library full of tedious, political drivel written by Chat GPT and you’ll end up with a generation that places zero value in its history.
Or perhaps that’s the point?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/empty-shelves-desolate-minds-canadas-equity-book-weeding/
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17 September, 2023
PragerU Is Now in Schools. Teacher Unions Are Fuming
For more than a decade, we at PragerU have been dedicated to helping America’s next generation live and think better by producing pro-America educational content that doesn’t just reach billions of people each and every year, but also changes hearts and changes minds.
And now, with our recently announced partnerships with the states of Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma, PragerU is now in schools.
Last month, Florida approved PragerU as an educational vendor in the state, allowing teachers throughout Florida to use PragerU materials directly in their classrooms without any fear of reprimand or reprisal.
Immediately, the Left devolved into a tailspin. Joy Reid of MSNBC labeled us a “racist” organization. California Gov. Gavin Newsom derided us as “propaganda.” And if this isn’t just the icing on the cake, NBC accused us of perpetuating “indoctrination by cartoon,” referring to our animated series “Leo and Layla’s History Adventures” and our financial literacy series “Cash Course.”
And this tailspin shows little indication of ending anytime soon, especially in light of Texas’ decision to approve PragerU as a vendor and Oklahoma’s decision last week to join the fray as well.
With all of the Left’s recent outrage, I’ll admit, it has left me pondering: Since when did the Left give a darn about indoctrination?
Since when did they hold signs outside of school board meetings—like they did in New Hampshire as the State Board of Education deliberated on a proposal to allow PragerU’s financial literacy videos and lesson plans to be counted for course credit for high school students—that read “Education NOT Indoctrination”?
And since when was financial literacy “indoctrination”? Since when did the word “indoctrination” even exist in the vernacular of the Left and the deep-pocketed union bosses they’re beholden to?
I’m still struggling to answer that one.
Because if the Left really cared about indoctrination—and I’m placing a lot of emphasis here on the really—where were their protests when critical race theory seeped into America’s schools, casting white children as oppressors, black children as victims, and America as a perpetual villain?
Where were the Left’s condemnations when a California high school teacher forced her students to watch a “Pride” video during math class and threatened punishment if they didn’t comply? It was a video so inappropriate that one student asked in a video that has since gone viral, “Why are you showing this to kids?”
The answers to these questions are simple: Never and nowhere to be found. Because, to answer my earlier question, the Left doesn’t actually care about indoctrination.
What they have a problem with is competition. For decades, the Left has been allowed unfettered and unmitigated access to America’s classrooms and, by extension, to the hearts and minds of America’s children.
With little (if any) challenge, they have been allowed to promote dangerous and false ideas, from the notion that America is a systemically racist country whose history is defined by little more than slavery to nonsensical fallacies that portray gender as no more than a social construct or an antiquity of the past.
The Left isn’t lashing out at PragerU because they’re concerned about “indoctrination.” They’re lashing out because they’re concerned that their monopoly on the psyche of America’s young people might finally be coming to an end, and because as PragerU enters more and more classrooms throughout the country, they fear that America’s children might finally (and much to their chagrin) hear the other side to the one-sided agenda they have long perpetuated.
But do you know what the irony in all of this is? While the Left has never shied away from injecting politics into the classroom, that has never been the goal of PragerU.
Our goal has been—and will always be—to simply inject truth. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Harvard's woke student newspaper claims limiting applicants to 200-words penalizes students from 'marginalized backgrounds'
Harvard's student newspaper has claimed that a new admissions test is racist and discriminatory, because the 200-word limit for the essays do not give applicant from 'non-traditional backgrounds' enough space to explain themselves.
The Crimson this week, run by Cara Chang, published an op-ed written by its editorial board.
They argued that replacing the previous one optional open-ended essay and two optional short essays with five compulsory 200-word segments was discriminatory.
'Shortening the essays has a disparate impact that falls heaviest on those from marginalized backgrounds,' the board writes.
'Learning to package yourself within a shorter amount of space is a product of advanced education; longer essays more equitably allow applicants to discuss their experiences in full, particularly if they are from non-traditional backgrounds and require more space to elaborate on nuanced qualifications.'
By contrast, the authors argue, 'longer essays more equitably allow applicants to discuss their experiences in full, particularly if they are from non-traditional backgrounds and require more space to elaborate on nuanced qualifications.'
They argue that 'trauma dumping' is acceptable, describing it as 'explaining how past life experiences have shaped who you are'.
'Those who have undergone traumatic experiences should not have to fear that writing about the experiences that shaped them looks like a beg for admission,' they state.
The board adds that some of the questions are also flawed.
The authors point to the question: 'Briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you.'
They write: 'This question seemingly privileges applicants from well-resourced backgrounds for whom additional academic opportunities were plentiful in high school.'
Two members of the Harvard editorial board, Ruby J.J. Huang and Joshua Ochieng, disagreed with their colleagues and co-wrote a dissenting op-ed.
Huang and Ochieng argue that the new five short essays actually make Harvard more accessible.
'The new five prompts ask applicants to talk about different aspects of themselves, from their intellectual interests, extracurriculars, and family responsibilities to their life experiences,' they write.
'These prompts give clear guidance on what Harvard wants to know about its applicants.
'For a student with limited experience in writing an application, the prompts assuage the burden of trying to determine the aspects of their life that are of interest to Harvard.'
And they argue that it is an over-simplification to say that shorter essays are harder to craft.
'Writing is an idiosyncratic process that, dependent on a myriad of factors, will require different skills from different people,' they state.
'For some, brevity may be necessary to get the point across, while for others, a little elaboration may drive the point home.'
The discussion came following the June decision by the Supreme Court to end affirmative action in college applications - seen by supporters as one of the key achievements of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
As a result, universities can no longer consider applicants' race or ethnicity as they seek to correct long-standing inequalities resulting from America's segregationist past, with the aim of boosting black, Hispanic and Native American enrollment.
Universities are now wrestling with how to make their student body more diverse, within the law.
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College Lacrosse Coach Ousted From Position After Speaking Up Against Male Athletes Competing Against Women
Far-Left Oberlin at work again
After speaking out against biological men competing in women's sports, Oberlin College’s head women’s lacrosse coach was “reassigned” to a desk job. (Photo: Wirestock/Getty Images)
Oberlin College’s head women’s lacrosse coach, Kim Russell, has been “reassigned” to a desk job after she spoke out against allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports, the Independent Women’s Forum reported.
Russell shared a post on social media praising Emma Weyant as the “real winner” when Weyant placed second after transgender athlete Lia Thomas during the 500-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA women’s swimming championship.
Two weeks after the Independent Women’s Forum released a documentary about Oberlin’s response to her post, the college has given her a new role as an “Employee Wellness Project Manager,” where she will have virtually no contact with students, according to the Independent Women’s Forum.
“I have been taken out of the role of coach, which is what I’ve done for 27 years,” Russell told Fox News Tuesday on “America’s Newsroom.” “I’ve been a P.E. teacher, a coach, and a teacher of programs of wellness, yoga, all sorts of things, kickboxing … and [have been] asked to take a role as employee wellness program manager, which would have no contact with students and be creating things—which is paperwork.”
Russell alleged in August that she was “burned at the stake” by the college for standing up for women’s rights in athletics, and that administrators and students had repeatedly attacked her for her personal opinions on biological men competing in women’s sports. Russell deplored the current state of women’s rights in the United States and said that the newer generations of women do not appreciate what older women fought for, according to the Independent Women’s Forum.
“I am so passionate about this because the reason we have these opportunities to play and coach and to do the things we do is because of the women who came before me, who fought for Title IX, who fought for us to have these opportunities,” Russell told Fox News. “And I don’t think that the younger generation even understands that these opportunities weren’t here years ago.”
“Hearing Kim Russell is no longer allowed to interact with students is so disappointing,” Paula Scanlan, a former teammate of Thomas and a spokeswoman for the Independent Women’s Forum, told the Independent Women’s Forum. “It’s unbelievable that saying women’s sports are for females only would lead Oberlin College to take such an extreme step—it’s a reprimand and punishment.”
Russell and Oberlin College did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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14 September, 2023
'The Words You Spoke Are Disturbing': Kennedy Stuns As He Reads Explicit Kids' Books During Hearing
Sen. John Kennedy showed his Democratic colleagues exactly what they’re defending in public schools and libraries when he read sexually graphic excerpts from some of the “banned books” at the center of this culture war battle.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature,” Kennedy read from “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Gender Queer” – the two most banned books during the 2021-2022 school year, according to PEN America.
"What are you asking us to do? Are you suggesting that only librarians should decide whether the two books that I just referenced should be available to kids? Is that what you’re saying,” the Republican asked Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias.
“With all due respect, Senator, the words you spoke are disturbing, especially coming out of your mouth, it’s very disturbing,” Giannoulias responded. “But I would also tell you that we’re not advocating for kids to read porn.
“We are advocating for parents, random parents, not to have the ability under the guise of keeping kids safe to try and challenge the worldview of every single manner on these issues,” Giannoulias continued. “When individual parents are allowed to make a decision of where that line is and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ which involves a rape scene, should that book be pulled from our libraries? I think it becomes a slippery slope.”
While Kennedy agreed with the witnesses that “censorship is bad,” he said the point is about the books he referenced, not “Catcher in the Rye.”
“So tell me what you want, who gets to decide? And all I’ve heard is the librarians. And parents have nothing to do with it. And if that’s your response, what planet did you just parachute in from?” Kennedy said.
“Senator, with all due respect, parents absolutely have a say. My parents were immigrants, came to this country. We never checked out books without our parents seeing what books we’re reading,” Giannoulias replied. “They encouraged us to read books.”
Democrats, like Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL), argued that they’re not “advocating for sexually explicit content to be available in an elementary school library or in [the] children’s section of the library.”
“That’s a distraction from the real challenge,” he continued. “I understand and respect that parents may choose to limit what their children read, especially at younger ages. My wife and I did. Others do, too. But no parent should have the right to tell another parent’s child what they can and cannot read in school or at home. Every student deserves access to books that reflect their experiences and help them better understand who they are.”
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'Atrocious': PA School District Rehires 'Trans' Coach Who Undressed Around Young Girls
This week, a school district in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania voted to rehire a tennis coach who believes he is a “trans woman” and previously undressed in front of young girls in the locker room.
According to Penn Live, the Gettysburg Area School District voted 6-to-2 to rehire David “Sasha” Yates, the coach in question. The board was previously deadlocked and experienced weeks of delays on coming to a final decision.
In an email to Penn Live after the decision, Yates claimed that he felt “delighted” to return to his position as a tennis coach for the local high school. Yates reportedly began “transitioning” to live as a woman in 2021.
“I have been very moved by the outpouring of support that I have received,” Yates said, adding “I am very much looking forward to continuing to support and guide both teams as they represent Gettysburg Area High School in the coming seasons.”
Penn Live’s report claims that the situation arose from conservatives in the community taking issue with the fact that Yates thinks he is a woman (via Penn Live):
The lack of clarity as to why Yates’ contract was being impeded - despite what students described as a stellar coaching record - led to an outpouring of concern that Yates was indeed being singled out because of her gender. The issue was exacerbated by board member Michelle Smyers giving interviews to conservative media outlets criticizing Yates, and working with a right-wing law firm that said it was combatting the “insidious transgender movement” by assisting Smyers.
However, Townhall previously reported that there was more to the story. At a recent school board meeting, a parent named Steve Carbaugh shared that his daughter ran into Yates in one of the women’s facilities
“My daughter was in the bathroom across from the gymnasium in the senior high school, going to the restroom before one of her sporting events. While she exited the bathroom stall, she ran into Mr. David Yates in the female bathroom. Imagine that, a 16-year-old female running into a full grown adult in the restroom of her high school,” Carbaugh reportedly stated.
In addition, reports claimed that in the fall of 2022, Yates entered the girls’ locker room while the soccer team was changing (via The Epoch Times):
Mr. Yates changed his clothing too, stripping down to bra and panties, a school board member familiar with the situation told The Epoch Times, adding that students reported that it was clear from what they saw that Mr. Yates was still fully a man.
Two school board members have students on the soccer team and at least one of their students was present when this occurred, the board member said.
“Now, everybody in this area seems to be crying that it is hate—that nobody wants this guy back because he's transgender and it’s hate. This has absolutely nothing to do with hate on my part. I don't care what the guy wants to call himself,” Carbaugh reportedly stated. “What's right is right. What’s wrong is wrong.”
“My job as a parent is to protect my child. And he had no business going into that bathroom, and his actions proved that he cannot be trusted. He went into a girls’ locker room and changed while the girls varsity soccer team was in there. They talked to him about it. And he went into a girls’ restroom facility. When is enough enough?” he added.
Paula Scanlan, a teammate of Will “Lia” Thomas at the University of Pennsylvania who was forced to share a locker room with him, called the decision to rehire Yates “shameful.”
Meg Brock, a Republican committee member in Pennsylvania, called the decision “atrocious” and added that schools aren’t protecting girls if there’s no policy in place explicitly preventing “confused men who think they are women” from women’s spaces.
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California school district pays $27M to settle suit over death of teen assaulted by fellow students
A Southern California school district has agreed to pay $27 million to settle a lawsuit by the family of an eighth-grade boy who died after being assaulted by two other students at a middle school four years ago.
The settlement with the Moreno Valley Unified School District was announced Wednesday by lawyers for relatives of 13-year-old Diego Stolz, who was sucker-punched at Landmark Middle School in September 2019.
One of the teens struck the teenager in the head from behind and he fell, hitting his head against a pillar. The teens then continued punching Stolz, who died nine days later from a brain injury. The attack was recorded on video.
Dave Ring, an attorney for the Stolz family, said the boy’s death would have been preventable if there was an anti-bullying policy in place at the school about 65 miles east of Los Angeles.
“Schools need to realize that bullying can never be tolerated and that any complaints of bullying and assault must be taken seriously,” Ring said in a news release.
School officials will not be commenting on the settlement, district spokesperson Anahi Velasco said in an email Wednesday.
The district said previously that it changed its bullying reporting system and its training for employees. Also, the school’s principal and vice principal were replaced.
The family’s wrongful-death lawsuit claimed that Stolz complained to the assistant principal that he was being bullied before the assault that killed him.
The assailants, who were 14 at the time of the attack, entered the equivalent of guilty pleas in juvenile court to involuntary manslaughter and assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury.
The teens spent 47 days in juvenile custody. A judge declined to sentence them to more jail time, but ordered that they undergo anger management therapy.
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13 September, 2023
Schools, Universities Bringing Back Mask Mandates, Shutdowns
Schools and universities around the U.S. are bringing back mask mandates and shutdowns as COVID-19 numbers rise, according to public records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Runge Independent School District in Texas, Magoffin County Schools in Kentucky, Lee County School District in Kentucky, and Rosemary Hills Elementary School in Maryland are all reimplementing some form of COVID-19 measures, according to public records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Some universities are reimplementing mask mandates, such as Dillard University in Louisiana and Morris Brown College in Georgia, though Morris Brown College backtracked on its mandate.
Rising COVID-19 numbers are cited by schools, colleges, and universities as the reasoning for returning COVID-19 mandates and shutdowns. COVID-19 hospitalizations increased 15.7% from Aug. 20 to Aug. 26 compared to the previous week, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Magoffin County Schools and Lee County School District in Kentucky shut down in-person classes due to respiratory illnesses in the districts in August.
“We were seeing an uptick of absentees. They were saying COVID, but they were also putting strep throat in there, and there was a virus going around, a stomach virus,” Magoffin County Health Department Director Pete Shepherd told WKYT News, a Kentucky-based outlet.
Three kindergarteners at Rosemary Hills Elementary School in Maryland tested positive for COVID-19 Tuesday and the school is now requiring the students and staff involved to wear masks for 10 days.
Children don’t become seriously ill from COVID-19 as often as adults do, according to the Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit medical center. “While children are as likely to get COVID-19 as adults, kids are less likely to become severely ill. Up to 50% of children and adolescents might have COVID-19 with no symptoms,” its website reads.
Dillard University in Louisiana reinstituted a mask mandate to “mitigate the spread” of COVID-19 on campus in August.
“COVID-19 cases are on the rise across the nation and we are seeing elevated numbers of reported infections in the Dillard community as students return to campus from across the country. We want everyone to be aware of the steps being taken on our campus to mitigate the spread of COVID-19,” Dillard University’s website reads.
Morris Brown College reinstituted its mask mandate in August due to rising COVID-19 cases in Georgia and said the college has no cases yet but is “taking precautionary measures for the next 14 days.”
“Ensuring the safety and well-being of our Morris Brown College community remains paramount to this administration,” read a campus letter that President Kevin James shared with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
A January 2023 Cochrane meta-analysis found that it was “uncertain whether wearing masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses.”
Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance introduced legislation for a federal mask mandate ban Tuesday, according to a press release. “We tried mask mandates once in this country. They failed to control the spread of respiratory viruses, violated basic bodily freedom, and set our fellow citizens against one another,” Vance said in the press release.
Runge Independent School District, Magoffin County Schools, Lee County School District, Rosemary Hills Elementary School, Dillard University and Morris Brown College did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/08/schools-universities-bringing-back-mask-mandates-shutdowns
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Education Around the Country Looks Different This School Year. Here’s What Parents Need to Know
Jennifer Wolverton has a plan for her child’s education: A great laptop, software programs for practicing writing and designing artwork, piano lessons, and art classes.
She is also looking for education therapy sessions for help with ADHD and dysgraphia (difficulty writing by hand).
But that’s just for ninth grade. She has plans for her student’s entire high school career, including community college classes on videography, business management, and graphic design.
Now, though, there are obstacles in the way. “Last year, we spent $3,400 on therapies alone, and we are looking at $10,000 in therapies this year,” Wolverton said in an interview.
She would consider a traditional school, but, she says, “The schools have never ‘pivoted.’” That is to say, they have not updated their services to meet the new needs that students today are bringing to school.
“We need an exit ramp, and an education savings account is an exit ramp,” Wolverton says.
As we explain in our new report, these accounts and similar education choice options are now available to millions of families around the U.S. after state lawmakers made 2023 the “year of education freedom.”
Officials in four states enacted new universal choice policies (Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Utah) and legislators in two other states expanded existing policies to all students (Florida and Ohio), bringing the total number of states with universal choice to eight.
Policymakers in seven states passed new education choice policies and eight states expanded existing education opportunities, such as private school scholarships and education savings accounts.
With a K-12 education savings account, mothers and fathers can use their child’s portion of the state education formula to “unbundle” his or her children’s education.
They can hire personal tutors, purchase textbooks, pay private school tuition, find education therapies, and more—simultaneously, if they choose.
Wolverton’s family lives in Alabama, and she is already taking advantage of homeschool co-op and micro-school options in the state, but, as her plans indicate, she has ambitious expectations through high school and beyond.
To reach their goals, education must be more than a system of “moving a pot of money from this school to that school,” she says. It should be a process of selecting from different products and services and “making it more flexible.”
Mothers and fathers are clamoring for these choices. After Arizona lawmakers expanded student eligibility for the state’s education savings accounts in 2022 to include all children in the state, more than 50,000 new students have enrolled in the accounts. In Ohio, where officials expanded eligibility for private school scholarships this year, more than 66,000 students have applied to participate.
Some 55% of adults say they are dissatisfied with K-12 education today, a figure that has seen a steady increase since 2020. The reasons are many—including that reading and math test scores have fallen to historic lows.
But that’s not all. Surveys find that Americans do not want children taught radical ideas about “gender” in school, nor do they want boys participating on girls sports teams. Polls find that parents do not want their children taught that America is defined by slavery or that their skin color is the most important thing about them.
In 2023, lawmakers addressed these concerns, too.
Lawmakers in seven states adopted either parental bills of rights or provisions that require school officials to inform parents when their student comes to school and wants to be addressed by a name or pronoun that does not match the child’s birth certificate, or both. The latter policy, called the Given Name Act, is an effective measure that calls on educators to work with mothers and fathers and secures parents’ roles as their child’s primary caregivers.
Alabama lawmakers expanded the state’s existing private school scholarship option for K-12 families, but Wolverton and other parents like her are watching what legislators are doing in states nearby.
The broad eligibility for education options in states such as Florida and Oklahoma and the versatility of the education savings accounts and account-style options in Arkansas and Iowa “would be life-changing” for her family and those like hers, she said.
“We love unbundled education in our house,” Wolverton said.
State lawmakers made this school year one of new, creative opportunities for millions of families around the U.S. Millions more are waiting—and ready—for education freedom to come to their states.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/11/new-school-year-brings-unbundled-education-freedom
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Private Catholic School Quietly Introduces Social Justice Course, 'Disguised as Religion Class,' Required for Graduation
A private Catholic school in Maryland has quietly introduced a social justice course for seniors that's required for graduation. One mother calls it social justice indoctrination "disguised as a religion class." The curriculum is vague; much is kept secret.
Now, she's demanding answers.
"We chose this school because we thought it was more conservative compared to some of the others," Mrs. Fletcher told The Epoch Times.
Social justice training, on the other hand, frequently pushes students to see the world through the lens of systemic racism and inequity, in other words, that of CRT.
The "syllabus" is particularly vague, and Mrs. Fletcher is unsettled by the ambiguity surrounding the curriculum.
The document states that classroom assignments, tests, and homework will be done primarily in the form of essays.
"There aren't even any books," Mrs. Fletcher said. "For three years, I bought religion books and books for English class. But this year, no religion books. I've never seen a class with no books. How will I know what's being covered in class?"
Grades are based on an equally vague points system. Students receive up to five points at the end of each eight-day cycle based on their level of "participation" in the class.
Mrs. Fletcher questions whether "participation" refers to the student's level of involvement or the degree to which a student agrees with the teacher.
Knowing that CRT often goes hand in hand with transgender ideology, Mrs. Fletcher worries that JC could be indoctrinating her daughter through a secretive social justice course.
"My daughter came home yesterday and said she was confused," she recalled. "When I asked her to show me what confused her, she wouldn't show me. That's because she knows it's something I won't want to see. You shouldn't want to hide things from your parents."
The Epoch Times has previously reported on children who were secretly indoctrinated into the transgender lifestyle at their schools.
Another document, the "Reflection Rubric," thinly explains the teacher's expectations and his scoring system.
Up to 10 points are possible for students who can "explain the key points of his or her reflection" when answering questions.
Handwritten notes taken by Mrs. Fletcher's daughter during class show the definitions students were given for four topics: Catholic Social Teaching, Economics, Politics, and Prudential Questions. The last topic deals with political issues "where the Church can offer guidance, but does not have a universal teaching."
"What does any of this have to do with religion?" Mrs. Fletcher asked.
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12 September, 2023
Elementary school teachers must now embrace DEI principles to get hired at many public schools: study
There’s no question students face mounting challenges as they head back to classrooms across the country this month. But are COVID-era school closures solely to blame?
The answer is a resounding no.
The lagging test scores and reading delays that have been widely reported over the past few months stem from much more than simply misguided COVID policies.
A new report from the National Opportunity Project reveals that school districts across America – in red and blue states alike – are now considering teachers’ social and political views alongside instructional qualifications during the hiring process.
This means that if the teacher at the head of your kid’s classroom was hired in recent years, there’s a strong chance he or she was chosen not for their credentials — but because they passed an ideological litmus test.
The National Opportunity Project surveyed more than 70 school districts across America over the past year about their hiring protocols.
They also reviewed district hiring documents such as applications, interview questions, and candidate evaluation rubrics.
Here is what NOP found: Applicants in the Denver Public School system for an elementary art teacher position must: “Lead for racial and educational excellence and work to dismantle systems of oppression and inequity in our community…”
In Georgia, City Schools of Decatur require hiring teams to be staffed for racial and gender equity by “ensur[ing] that there is at least one person of color and one woman or gender-fluid individual on the interview panel. Individuals who embody other aspects of diversity should be included as well.”
Since when were these characteristics needed to determine who should be teaching our kids?
Indeed, more than one-third of the school districts that responded to NOP’s request for transparency around their hiring practice revealed protocols that are clearly based on ideological bias.
Many more districts tout public commitments to divisive ideologies or DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion)-focused mission statements. We’ve known for a long time that these types of controversial policies are commonplace in higher education; but only recently are they permeating classrooms with students as young as preschool age.
What’s the reason for all this? As the old adage goes, “Personnel is policy.”
The people behind these policies aim to change the culture of public schools by only hiring staff who adhere to their political and ideological viewpoints.
The districts’ DEI statements — or commitments to “culturally responsive-sustaining education” in the case of New York Public Schools — are not merely lip service.
They inform every element of the public school experience, including who gets to stand at the head of the classroom.
It’s no wonder far-left political viewpoints now course through much of America’s public school systems; the application process is designed to weed out anyone who thinks differently or is independent-minded.
The National Opportunity Project found that the same schools giving preference to teachers with certain political and social views are adopting other divisive, and sometimes illegal, policies, as well.
In Fairfax County, Virginia, applicants to the public school district are asked, “What does equity mean to you? How do you plan to keep equity at the center of your classroom?” Responses that show strong agreement with DEI concepts such as “equity journey,” “equity work,” and “understanding that race is a social construct” are rated more highly on a scoring rubric.
However, not everyone in Fairfax County thinks this type of discrimination is acceptable.
The school district is facing a federal lawsuit for adopting race-based admissions to its selective math and science magnet school.
In neighboring Loudoun County, Virginia, applicants for teaching positions are asked: “How would race and diversity impact your classroom?”
In the meantime, the Loudoun County Public Schools have faced multiple lawsuits for racial and viewpoint discrimination and bias against a teacher and students in recent years.
In Evanston, a large suburb outside Chicago, the local high school district has highlighted its commitment to “anti-racism” since at least 2020.
The National Opportunity Project’s investigation found that candidates for teaching positions must “demonstrate a commitment to social justice, equity, excellence and high expectations for all students.”
The district’s equity pledge even spurred the creation of Advanced Placement Calculus classes segregated by race.
When it comes to our kids, they need the best and brightest teachers by their side – not people who pass a political litmus test.
As the gaping holes caused by COVID-era closures confirm, American students are struggling to catch up in the classroom and prepare for life after graduation.
School hiring policies should be focused on putting the most qualified adults in front of students, no matter their race, their personal political beliefs, or their point of view on the news of the day.
https://nypost.com/2023/09/09/dei-is-now-required-to-get-hired-by-many-public-schools/
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Youngkin Pardons Father Who Erupted At School Board Meeting After His Daughter Was Sexually Assaulted
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA.) pardoned the Loudoun County father who protested against the sexual assault of his daughter and her school's attempt to cover up the incident.
On Sunday, Youngkin said he righted a wrong after the father, Scott Smith, was convicted of disorderly conduct in August 2021 after he erupted at a school board meeting after its members mishandled the investigation into his daughter's attack.
“I spoke with Mr. Smith on Friday, and I had the privilege of telling Mr. Smith that I will pardon him, and we did that on Friday," Youngkin said on Fox News. “We righted a wrong. He should've never been prosecuted here. This was a dad standing up for his daughter."
The governor claimed the school district covered up the young girl’s attack, where she was sexually assaulted in a school bathroom.
“No one did anything about it,” Youngkin added.
Smith's daughter was sexually assaulted in a restroom at Stone Bridge High School by a biological male who identified as a female. The boy was reportedly wearing a skirt.
Youngkin praised the father’s action, suggesting any parent would have done the same thing.
"Mr. Smith did what any father would do, what any parent would do, which is stand up for their child," Youngkin said. "This was a gross miscarriage of justice."
A month after the incident in August 2021, Smith was arrested and eventually convicted of two criminal charges after the school board meeting went off the tracks involving Sheriff deputies.
However, his conviction of resisting arrest was eventually tossed out.
“I really appreciate what he had done because when he campaigned, he made it very clear that if he were elected, he would do what he could to get to the bottom of what happened to not just my family but everything that was going on in Loudoun County," Smith said in a statement.
Youngkin has been a vocal opponent against the Left’s transgender propaganda. He has vowed to crack down on Virginia public schools that refuse to enforce requirements that parents be informed if their child expresses any gender confusion at school.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/09/10/youngkin-pardon-n2628205
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Australia: Poor reading and writing skills are dooming students to failure in high school and university, eminent scientist warns
One of Australia’s most eminent scientists has blasted a lack of basic literacy for sabotaging students’ success in high school and university, as damning new data reveals that failed teaching methods could cost a generation of children $12 billion in lifetime earnings.
High school science teachers have blamed low literacy for students’ struggles in the high-stakes STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and maths.
Australia’s former chief scientist, Alan Finkel, is demanding more focus on the phonics-based teaching of reading and writing in primary school, as well as the basics of mathematics, to stop students failing in high school.
“These are muscle memory subjects you need to know early,’’ Dr Finkel said on Sunday.
“In literacy, not teaching phonics has been a serious problem because we have a generation that hasn’t been taught effectively how to read. And good luck picking up mathematics at university for a subject like engineering or architecture if you didn’t learn it at school.’’
Shockingly low levels of literacy are also revealed in a report by Equity Economics, which calculates $12bn in lost lifetime earnings for children who fail to master reading and writing.
The report is under consideration by a panel of experts advising education ministers on key targets and priorities for their next national school reform agreement.
Teachers Professional Association of Australia’s Scott Stanford launched a scathing attack against the sheer…
It shows the ACT is the only state or territory in which year 9 students are reading at the level expected for their grade, based on mean scores from last year’s NAPLAN literacy and numeracy tests.
ear 9 students performed at the level expected of a year 8 student in South Australia, NSW, Victoria and Western Australia. But in Queensland and Tasmania, year 9 students had the reading ability of a year 7 student, in terms of mean scores.
The report says four out of every 10 students in Australia do not meet international reading benchmarks for 15-year-olds.
“Children with lower levels of literacy are more likely to end up in the lowest income bracket in the future,’’ the report states.
“This perpetuates a cycle of reliance on government assistance and escalates costs within healthcare, housing, employment and justice systems. The impact extends across lifetimes and generations.’’
Dr Finkel, an eminent neuroscientist and electrical engineer who served as chief scientist from 2016 to 2020, warned that low levels of literacy were sabotaging teenagers’ learning in other subjects at high school.
Many science teachers “do not think their students are proficient in what many would consider basic skills.’’
“Literacy and numeracy underpin the higher-order thinking we expect in our science classrooms,’’ he said.
“Students in science should be applying their knowledge from maths and English classes to reinforce their learning and access scientific concepts.’’
The warning from such a high-profile scientist will put pressure on the nation’s education ministers to mandate the teaching of phonics-based reading – in which students sound out letter combinations to “decode’’ words instead of guessing them by looking at pictures, or learning them by heart.
Dr Finkel, who has also served as special adviser to the federal government on low emissions technologies, co-founded science education company Stile Education, which provides curriculum materials to one in three Australian high schools.
In Stile Education’s latest survey of more than 1100 Australian high school science teachers, 57 per cent per cent felt their students’ literacy levels were limiting their ability to understand science in high school.
Half felt their students’ poor grasp of maths was limiting their ability to understand science. Students could not use basic spreadsheet tools to manipulate or visualise data.
Dr Finkel said children also needed to be taught to touch type, given they spent so much time on computers.
Forty per cent of teachers felt their teenage students were not proficient touch typists – an important skill if children were to avoid injury such as carpal tunnel, tendinitis or repetitive strain injury from using keyboards incorrectly.
Alarmingly, given the rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT, 40 per cent of teachers felt their students could not understand the difference between a good and a bad source of information on the internet.
To reduce cheating and improve learning, Dr Finkel called for a return to pen-and-paper exams in schools, with students reading their answers aloud, to “bypass any opportunity for AI to be involved”.
Dr Finkel said it was essential that students learn to think for themselves, based on the foundational skills of reading, writing and maths taught in schools.
“People need that ability deeply ingrained in their brains, so they can be part of a real-time conversation,’’ he said.
“Too few students can tell the difference between good and bad information on the internet.
“In the workplace, if you’re having a discussion with people around the table, you expect each of your colleagues to articulate their thoughts clearly and verbally.
“You can’t do that if everyone says, ‘I need 10 minutes to research my answer’.”
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said on Sunday that he was “interested in what works’’.
“Phonics is a critical part of that and so is catch-up tutoring,’’ he said. “Some children need extra intensive support, either one-on-one or in a small group to help them catch up and keep up.’’
Mr Clare said educational priorities and targets for schools were under review for the next schools reform agreement with state and territory governments next year.
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11 September, 2023
Teachers union chief calls private schools ‘fascist’ but sends her son to one
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis-Gates loves to call private schools “fascist” and “racist” — but it turns out she sends her son to one.
Davis-Gates has long bragged about how her children go to the Chicago public schools. But she recently got outed as sending a son to a prestigious private Catholic school on Chicago’s south side, De La Salle Institute (average tuition: $14,750 a year).
Good for her as a mom, choosing what’s best for her boy.
But this makes her rhetoric calling school choice “actually the choice of racists” and private schools “segregation academies” utterly damning.
She even helped kill an Illinois program providing grants to underprivileged children for private-school tuition; when it ends in January 2025, some 9,000 kids will lose out on what she provides for her own son.
That doesn’t merely make her a hypocrite: It means she knows her rhetoric is untrue — but spouts it anyway in service to her powerful union.
That is, she’s demonizing others for power and profit — a hallmark of actual fascists, in most people’s books.
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Classical Education’s Remedy for America’s Loneliness
By Rachel Alexander Cambre
In-person social engagement has been decreasing across all age groups for quite some time, as has the average number of close friends Americans report having.
Classical schools embrace an older understanding of education, one that prepares students for festivity and friendship, rather than socially handicapping them.
In immersing students in the truth, beauty, and goodness of reality, institutions of classical education are leading the way.
At a weeklong Austin Institute seminar for high school students for which I served as a faculty member this summer, I was pleased, but not surprised, by the academic caliber of the participants. What I didn’t expect, however, was their notable sense of social ease, which I witnessed as they quickly began to befriend one another both inside and outside the classroom. I soon discovered their educational backgrounds had taught them not only how to read, write, and think, but how to live well with others.
The Loneliest Generation
The social graces of the twenty rising high school juniors and seniors were especially striking in light of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory issued this May. In the advisory, the Surgeon General warns of an alarming dearth of social connection throughout the U.S. In-person social engagement has been decreasing across all age groups for quite some time, the report details, as has the average number of close friends Americans report having.
The consequences are serious: the weaker our social ties, the more susceptible to physical and mental health problems we become. Young people are particularly at risk, with Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 today spending 70% less time with friends than the same age group did in 2003, and reporting greater levels of loneliness than in past generations.
Why are today’s teens and twenty-somethings, many of whom are surrounded by peers in high school or college, so lonely? In his work on Generation Z, what he dubs the “loneliest generation,” Daniel Cox, a scholar in polling and public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, links higher levels of social isolation to changes in upbringing.
For generations, Cox explains, childhood revolved around “developing strong social networks” by, for instance, spending time “going to church barbeques or block parties.” Over the past few decades, however, parents have increasingly prioritized individuality as the primary goal for their children, beginning with the unique baby names they give them to help them stand out, as Joe Pinsker explored in an essay for The Atlantic last year.
Hence, kids spend much more time trying to distinguish themselves in achievement-based activities than trying to get along with siblings or neighbors through play around the neighborhood or conversation around the dinner table. Cox concludes that consequently, fewer young Americans have learned the art of cultivating community.
Education Ordered toward True Leisure
The Austin Institute participants had been raised differently. While many factors influence upbringing, one constant was that they had each received a classical education—some at public charter schools, others at private religious academies, and still others at home through homeschool co-ops. During our week together, it became clear that the purpose, content, and method of their educations had helped to form their social natures.
While mornings and afternoons at the Institute were spent in classroom sessions on philosophy and literature, evenings were spent engaging in a range of recreational activities, from playing music and learning the English waltz to theatrical readings of Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance and Karol Wojty?a’s The Jeweler’s Shop.
Having taught college students and observed their social customs for the past five years, I expected the group of 16- and 17-year-olds at the Austin Institute to balk at the notion of soberly singing, dancing, and acting in front of one another. Studying great texts is one thing; performing is another. But these students welcomed the opportunity. I soon learned they weren’t afraid to “perform” for one another precisely because they did not see these activities as opportunities for performance. They saw them not as instrumental—avenues for achievement—but as intrinsically worthwhile occasions for leisure.
Nor were their dispositions coincidental. They were informed by their classical educations, which teach students to pursue truth, goodness, and beauty not for the professional or social accolades that academic study can accrue, but for its own sake. As I outlined in a Heritage Foundation Report on leisure and education in America earlier this year, classical schools offer students a countercultural approach to education, departing from their mainstream counterparts perhaps most radically in their overarching commitment to “the enduring, the changeless, and the permanent,” as the Great Hearts Academies teaching philosophy puts it, rather than to the trendy, the circumstantial, or the contingent.
Much like the Gen Z parents Daniel Cox describes, mainstream educational institutions profess to help students stand out and get ahead, whether through high standardized test scores, Advanced Placement courses, competitive arts and athletic programs, or, more recently, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. High school teachers and administrators counsel students to pursue these various measures of achievement and individuality for the opportunities they will provide, offering social mobility through admission to certain colleges and, eventually, eligibility for careers.
At its best, an achievement-oriented education teaches students to work hard and strive for excellence. But “teaching to the test” or to college admission standards often leaves students with another takeaway: that one studies, plays sports, or pursues justice not because the material one studies is true, the sport one plays is beautiful, or the justice one pursues is good, but because such pursuits will earn professional promotion, economic advancement, and social approval. Should these activities cease to further one’s academic or career success, they would likewise lose their value. Even worse, this utilitarian attitude can easily corrupt relationships with other human beings. Once games and service hours become a means to personal advancement, so, too, can the teammates, friends, and community we serve.
In contrast, classical schools embrace an older understanding of education, one that prepares students for festivity and friendship, rather than socially handicapping them. Like their ancient and medieval predecessors, classical educators maintain that a crucial purpose of education is to liberate students from a calculative, utilitarian mindset by teaching them how to enjoy intrinsically worthwhile activities for their own sake. This does not mean that classical schools downplay the importance of working hard or striving for excellence, but that they emphasize the intrinsic goodness and beauty of those virtues—like those of fortitude and magnanimity—so that students might cultivate them because they are good and beautiful, not because they will help them to acquire wealth, power, or fame.
In other words, classically educated students learn how to practice virtue when they are at leisure, not just when they are pressed by necessity. As Aristotle explains in the Politics, education must make citizens “capable of being at leisure.” This is why, in addition to teaching citizens useful arts and sciences, the Greeks also reserved a central place for music, “with a view to the pastime that is in leisure.”
In learning how to hear and marvel at intricate melodies and harmonies, students also learn how to perceive and appreciate the order and beauty of nature and the whole of human life, and, further, how to celebrate that beauty in genuine festivity, with friends and fellow citizens. Hence, Aristotle references Homer’s Odysseus in saying “that this is the best pastime, when human beings are enjoying good cheer and ‘the banqueters seated in order throughout the hall to listen to a singer.’”
Similarly, today’s classical schools teach students how to be at leisure with one another in part by hosting social gatherings that they prepare students to enjoy beforehand. As several Austin Institute students explained to me during our evening of waltzing, their schools and homeschool co-ops host ballroom, swing, and line dance lessons before every school dance, so that they might become occasions for delight rather than anxiety or boredom.
Other students added that they had begun to play musical instruments in a similar manner—learning casually from friends and siblings after school. In doing so, these students had picked up more than skills in the arts or lines for their résumés; they had learned how to enjoy life together.
The Great Conversation
This conviviality animates the classroom as well, where classical educators teach students how to converse with peers and authorities alike by raising questions that have captivated thinkers for millennia. Though classical curricula can vary, a common commitment to “renewing the great conversation,” to quote the theme of this year’s National Symposium for Classical Education, unites them. Aware of the extensive history of pivotal words and deeds—treatises, speeches, dialogues, poems, and plays, as well as foundings, covenants, discoveries, revolutions, and wars—that have shaped the way we live today, classical educators seek to bequeath to new generations their intellectual heritage, helping them better understand themselves and the world around them.
Neither geographically nor ideologically monolithic, this heritage includes the Western foundations of Greek philosophy and Roman law, as well as the Eastern origins of Judaism and Christianity, and its leading thinkers are marked not by unexamined opinion but by a willingness to question opinion through deliberation and discourse.
Hence, studying the key questions that have perplexed the greatest minds of human history not only introduces students to the “great conversation” responsible for our civilization today but invites them to join in. When encountering Plato and Aristotle’s disagreement over the idea of the good, the Bible and Niccolo Machiavelli’s divergent teachings about virtue, or James Madison and Thomas Jefferson’s debate over intergenerational justice, students discover that these arguments are not mere historical artifacts but live questions for each of us today.
Furthermore, exchanges like these demonstrate that the search for truth occurs not in isolation but in community, through living and reasoning together. Students of classical education thus learn that without meaningful conversation and friendship, individuality can only take you so far.
Replacing Imaginary Friends with Real Ones
Perhaps the most obvious sign of social maturity among the summer seminar students was their detachment from personal devices, which the Surgeon General Advisory on loneliness singles out as detrimental to social connection. Though most of them had phones in case of emergency, they voluntarily kept them stowed away for the week. This healthy freedom from screens the students no doubt learned from their parents, the primary educators of their characters. Yet, it surely helps that most classical schools also discourage the ubiquity of phones and tablets. “Although we teach to a variety of learning modes,” the Great Hearts Academies teaching philosophy explains, “we believe the written and spoken word hold a privileged position in human expression and knowledge.”
The Surgeon General Advisory identifies “reform[ing] digital environments” as one of its six pillars for advancing social connection. In calling for increased data transparency from technological companies, the Surgeon General hopes to further the development of “safety standards (such as age-related protections for young people) that ensure products do not worsen social disconnection.”
Measures to reduce smartphone addiction among the youth are commendable, especially as artificial intelligence companies work to create chatbot-driven avatars to fill the void of in-person relationships. Still, these efforts will only go so far without commensurate endeavors to draw young people into the “real world.” In immersing students in the truth, beauty, and goodness of reality, institutions of classical education are leading the way.
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A reading revolution is underway in many Australian schools but classes are still a 'lottery' for parents
Noni Bogart's daughter Zoe was a bubbly and confident child when she started school. But she struggled to learn to read, and repeating a year didn't help.
Zoe was learning to read at a Canberra school that used a strategy that has since been removed from the Australian curriculum, yet remains in use in many classrooms around the country.
The three-cueing system encourages children to think of a word when they get stuck and ask themselves: "Does it make sense here? Does it sound right? Does it look right?"
This technique is coupled with "predictable" home readers — books that follow a pattern with pictures to match.
"The books that she was reading at the time, they were pretty much just 'look at the picture and guess what the words are'," Ms Bogart says.
By year 3, Zoe was barely able to read kindergarten books. It left her feeling frustrated and her mother "quite let down".
"I put my trust into the teachers and into the public system, and I've literally got no result," Ms Bogart says.
She took matters into her own hands, finding a tutor and scraping together enough money to move Zoe and her older sister Lacey to a Catholic school.
There, they were taught letters and sounds in a particular order so they could blend them and decode unfamiliar words.
The theory is that, after a child has decoded a word a number of times, they will just know it and progress to more difficult words and sentences.
Canberra-Goulburn Catholic schools, as well as public schools in South Australia, New South Wales and Western Australia, have trained their teachers to deliver this structured, explicit literacy approach.
Once Zoe was taught this way, she caught up to her peers within two years.
Ms Bogart says her family is an experiment that shows how effective the explicit instruction of phonics can be.
Her son Jagger learnt this way from the start, and the kindergarten student is already at a year 2 reading level, according to his mother, who has been on her own learning journey to teach her children at home.
Jagger had the benefit of using Zoe's old "decodable readers" — books that use a restricted number of letters and sounds the child has been learning. "There's proof there that those decodable readers work," Ms Bogart says.
Children like Zoe are known as "instructional casualties" by advocates of structured, explicit literacy.
Speech pathologist Scarlett Gaffey sees many of them in her Canberra clinic who are "failing to learn to read not because they can't but because they're not taught well enough".
"I'm working on other things like speech and language or stuttering perhaps," Ms Gaffey says. "But on top of that, because the school is teaching them using a 'balanced literacy' method, I then have to spend significant amounts of time teaching them to read."
Debate has raged for decades over the best way to teach children to read — whether that's focusing on the meaning of words in a balanced literacy approach, where students immerse themselves in literature, or focusing on learning letter-sound combinations, known as phonics.
Pamela Snow co-founded the Science of Language and Reading Lab at La Trobe University. She says the evidence clearly backs the explicit instruction of phonics and that reading, unlike speaking, must be taught.
"We know that children who are effective readers early on are the ones who have acquired those automatic decoding skills," she says. "What we don't want is for children to be taught strategies that effectively promote guessing."
Professor Snow says there is huge variation in how schools teach across the country, creating a "lottery" for parents. "Two schools only a few kilometres apart can be taking a completely different approach to reading instruction," she says.
"It's reasonable for parents to not give any real thought to the question of whether their child would be taught to read when they go to school — it's just assumed — and some will be lucky and some won't be so lucky. "But it shouldn't be a lottery."
Professor Snow says the stakes are high: children who are early strugglers experience a "multiplier effect" as they go through school, potentially facing a "lifetime on the margins of society".
"When that support isn't provided in a timely manner, the gap opens up — and it opens up early and it opens up very wide," she says.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-10/literacy-teaching-revolution-underway/102834334
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10 September, 2023
A Conservative State May Offer Students a traditional Alternative to the ACT and SAT
This year, Townhall reported how the United States Supreme Court struck down affirmative action admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. This change to college admissions sent shockwaves across the country
Now, one state is proposing a new kind of exam to offer as an alternative to the SAT and ACT, which would change up the college admissions process at public universities throughout the state.
This week, the New York Times reported that Florida is expected to approve a classical exam as a competitor to the SAT and ACT to “shake up the education establishment.”
Reportedly, the Classic Learning Test is an alternative to the SAT and ACT for some religious colleges and includes an “emphasis on the Western canon, with a big dose of Christian thought.”
This week, Florida’s public university system is expected to approve the test for its admissions, which would include Florida State University and the University of Florida.
“We are always seeking ways to improve,” Ray Rodrigues, the chancellor of the State University System of Florida, told the outlet.
Jeremy Tate, the founder of Classic Learning Initiatives, developed the exam. It includes three sections on verbal reasoning, grammar and writing, and quantitative reasoning.
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Schools are cutting advisers and tutors as COVID aid money dries up. Students are still struggling
Davion Williams wants to go to college. A counselor at his Detroit charter school last year helped him visualize that goal, but he knows he’ll need more help to navigate the application process.
So he was discouraged to learn the high school where he just began his sophomore year had laid off its college transition adviser – a staff member who provided extra help coordinating financial aid applications, transcript requests, campus visits and more.
The advisers had been hired at 19 schools with federal pandemic relief money. In June, when Detroit’s budget was finalized, their jobs were among nearly 300 that were eliminated.
Millions of kids are missing weeks of school as attendance tanks across the US
An unprecedented infusion of aid money the U.S. government provided to schools during the pandemic has begun to dwindle. Like Williams’ school, some districts already are winding down programming like expanded summer school and after-school tutoring. Some teachers and support staff brought on to help kids through the crisis are being let go.
The relief money, totaling roughly $190 billion, was meant to help schools address needs arising from COVID-19, including making up for learning loss during the pandemic. But the latest national data shows large swaths of American students remain behind academically compared with where they would have been if not for the pandemic.
Montgomery County schools, the largest district in Maryland, is reducing or eliminating tutoring, summer school, and other programs that were covered by federal pandemic aid. Facing a budget gap, the district opted for those cuts instead of increasing class sizes, said Robert Reilly, associate superintendent of finance. The district will focus instead on providing math and reading support in the classroom, he said.
But among parents, there’s a sense that there remains “a lot of work to be done” to help students catch up, said Laura Mitchell, a vice president of a districtwide parent-teacher council.
Mitchell, whose granddaughter attends high school in the district, said tutoring has been a blessing for struggling students. The district’s cuts will scale back tutoring by more than half this year.
“If we take that away, who’s going to help those who are falling behind?” she said.
Districts have through September 2024 to earmark the last of the money provided by Congress in three COVID relief packages. Some schools have already started pulling back programming to soften the blow, and the next budget year is likely to be even more painful, with the arrival of what some describe as a “funding cliff.”
In a June survey of hundreds of school system leaders by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, half said they would need to decrease staffing of specialists, such as tutors and reading coaches, for the new school year. Half also said they were cutting summer-learning programs.
https://apnews.com/article/school-covid-money-counselors-tutoring-cb387a3f2d738db3f392f4e4fbfb8958
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Students at a regional Australian university told to 'reflect deeply' on career choice if they oppose more rights for blacks
A university professor is under fire for telling allied health students who don't support the Indigenous Voice to Parliament to consider a different career.
Charles Darwin University Associate Professor Bea Staley sent a pro-Voice email to speech therapy students suggesting they should rethink a career in allied health if they plan to vote No at the October 14 referendum.
'As you know, CDU has also taken the stance of a Yes vote,' Professor Stanley wrote.
'The speech pathology courses at CDU have been created with notions of equity and social justice at their core. We will be voting Yes.
'If you feel you are unable to vote Yes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' rights, you might want to reflect deeply on whether a career in allied health in Australia is really for you.'
Associate Professor Staley described the referendum as 'Australia's Brexit moment'.
'If we as Australians seek to move towards reconciliation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, we must vote Yes,' she continued.
'A Yes vote will not make up for the atrocities of colonisation, but it is certainly a step in the right direction for a more humane and just Australian society.'
Federal NT Senator and prominent No campaigner Jacinta Price described the email as 'effectively bullying'.
She claimed concerned students had previously contacted her office regarding CDU's stance on the Voice.
'They no longer feel like they have the freedom to discuss – certainly this issue – and that they are being ostracised because the school, the University, took the position to support the Voice,' Senator Price told Sky News on Thursday night.
'This is a leadership failure, and I would call on the chancellor to correct this to ensure this sort of pressure isn't applied to students by their lecturers.'
'Universities are supposed to be spaces where debate is encouraged, where universities don't take a position on a political issue.
Sky News host Rita Panahi later described Professor Staley's email as insane.
Charles Darwin University vice-chancellor Professor Scott Bowman said the lecturer would be 'counselled' and stressed that anyone who votes No still make excellent healthcare workers.
'We respect everyone's right to hold their own views regarding the referendum,' he said.
'CDU has actively provided a platform for discussion and the exchange of well-informed ideas and points of view. 'We know that people who vote no will still make excellent healthcare workers.'
CDU is yet to comment on whether the matter will be investigated further but has reiterated its support for the Voice.
Professor Stanley supervises PhD students in her areas of expertise and has several active research projects.
'Bea's teaching and research interests relate to language development, literacy, diversity and difference,' her university bio states.
'Bea studies children and youth in the context of their families and communities.'
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8 September, 2023
5th California School District Says Teachers Must Notify Parents If Kids Identify as Trans
Parental rights triumphed over the transgender agenda in the shadow of California’s capital overnight, as the state’s fifth school district adopted a policy requiring teachers to notify parents if their children begin to identify as a member of another sex.
Parents burst into cheers as the Rocklin Unified School District board of trustees adopted the policy by a 4-1 vote Thursday morning around 12:40 a.m. local time.
The regulation stipulates that schools must contact parents within three school days if their child requests to use a name, pronouns, or sex-segregated facilities “that do not align with the child’s biological sex.” Trustees also clarified that a student’s gender identity remains confidential to everyone “except the student and their parent(s).”
“We trust our parents to know what is best for their children,” said Rocklin school trustees shortly after the vote. “We believe that the best way to address these challenges is together, with open communication and clear expectations. The board’s action to strengthen parental notification and communication reinforces our commitment to include parents in school activities and decisions related to their child.”
The new measure is aimed at “strengthening the relationship between our staff, students, and family,” they stated.
The vote came after hundreds of people crowded into a grueling, six-and-a-half-hour meeting that included more than four hours of public comments that ranged from heartrending to hot-headed.
“This policy is violent,” asserted an LGBTQ activist wearing a rainbow cape, a cloth COVID-19 mask, and hoisting a handheld transgender flag. “You are waging war, and we will not take it quietly. … We’ll shame you in public! … Take our kids’ futures and we’ll take your livelihood!”
“We don’t take threats up here,” replied RUSD Board President Julie Hupp, who favored the policy. “Threatening the board members is not how we work up here.”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a promise!” said the speaker, who identified as Jay Smith, to the cheers of rainbow flag-waving audience members.
More than one speaker wore an LGBTQ cape in the manner of a superhero. Teachers in the school district reportedly passed out rainbow ribbons to oppose notifying parents.
Mothers and fathers asked those teachers not to lock them out of knowing the most fundamental facts of their children’s lives.
“Please support parental rights. Basic safeguarding of children means not keeping secrets from parents,” pleaded concerned parent Beth Bourne.
One of the district’s concerned parents, California Assemblyman Joe Patterson, a Republican, thanked the trustees for their service, empathizing with those who received “really hateful comments.”
“What this whole issue is about is: Who gets to raise our kids? Who gets to raise the next generation of Californians? Is it the government, or is it their parents?” declared Assemblyman Bill Essayli, a Republican who has championed a similar policy at the state level (AB 1314).
“The central question is: What authority does a school have to withhold information from parents?” asked Essayli. He noted that courts have ruled “there is no right to privacy between children and their parents.”
Liberals promised swift political retaliation against RUSD and its four pro-parent trustees.
“Hit me up if you want to run for school board next year,” said Jonathan Cook, the executive director of the Sacramento Housing Alliance. (RUSD trustee Michelle Sutherland cast the lone dissenting vote on Wednesday night. Julie Hupp, Tiffany Saathoff, Rachelle Price, and Dereck Counter voted in favor.)
One political communications specialist urged LGBTQ activists to nullify or counter messages that parental notification policies validate parents’ love for their children.
But messages of support also poured in from those unable to attend. “Parents have every right to know what’s happening with their kids. State politicians need to stay in their lane and stop meddling in parents’ efforts to raise their children,” said former state Sen. Melissa Melendez, a Republican.
Many of those who opposed the policy reportedly came from outside the district, while some who supported it cited their faith.
Hupp took a moment during the hearings to address a “controversy” over a social media post in which she invited “Christ-centered, family-focused individuals” to attend the proceedings, noting that she posted a second message inviting all families to take part.
The lopsided passage constitutes an act of defiance on the part of Rocklin, which is located in Placer County—a mere 22 miles outside Sacramento, where the administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has made a full-court press against parental notification policies.
California State Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, won a temporary restraining order Wednesday morning against the first district to approve a parental rights policy, Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County.
Sonja Shaw, Chino Valley Unified School District president, who has endured disturbing and specific death threats for her stand in favor of parental rights, objected that the policy “simply says that parents have a right to know what is going on at school and not be the last person informed.”
Judge Thomas Garza’s order, which applies only to Chino Valley, represents “a temporary setback in the ongoing struggle to affirm parents’ God-given and constitutionally protected right to direct the upbringing and education of their children,” said California Family Council President Jonathan Keller.
Bonta’s threats and legal intimidation amount to little more than “a political gimmick to intimidate school boards,” said Lance Christensen, vice president of education policy and government affairs at the California Policy Center.
“Gov. Newsom and other state officials are on a mission to strip parents of their rights and give control over their kids to the government,” he continued. “Bonta is using the power of his office to scare other school boards that are considering adopting parental rights policies. They should not be intimidated.”
“Despite the court’s decision, we stand undeterred by intimidation tactics from legislators, executives, and bureaucrats,” vowed Keller. “This is not just a legal battle; it’s a defining moment for our culture, drawing a line between government overreach and the sacred realm of family.”
Both see the lawsuits as an attempt to blunt the momentum in favor of parents’ rights and pro-family policy in deep-blue California.
Chino Valley affirmed parental rights by a 4-1 vote in July, followed by Murrieta Valley Unified School District and Temecula Valley Unified School District (both in Riverside County), and Anderson Union High School District in Shasta County.
“Five down, 939 to go,” quipped Christensen.
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Progressives ending grading in schools are condescending racists
I went on a guided tour Thursday of Rome’s historic Colosseum and saw the significance of the barbarism there thousands of years ago.
Rome presented its public executions as equitable since the person losing a life was armed equally to the professional combatant tasked with spilling the prisoner’s blood.
Even the Romans understood the benefit of faking fairness to persuade the public to accept the overwhelming gaps in skillset and preparedness in those defending themselves in such a cruel environment.
Today’s progressives are much like the Romans of the past.
In liberal school districts across America, they’re doing everything possible to get the public to accept mediocrity as fair and equitable and arming our children with educational paper swords, misleading them into believing they can battle the world without the solid weapon of knowledge.
Take Portland Public Schools.
The district is considering adopting new “equitable grading practices” that it’s already using in some schools.
It sent a handout pointing to data showing historical racial disparities in students’ pass/fail rate.
The handout instructs teachers to avoid giving zeros — or any grade lower than 50% — on assignments not meeting expectations, incomplete or handed in late or not at all.
Homework can’t be graded.
Teachers can’t even penalize the scores of students who’ve cheated.
How do officials justify these wild alterations from the typical grading structure?
“What it’s doing is, it’s assessing mastery and accuracy,” PPS’ Chief Academic Officer Kimberlee Armstrong stated.
“It’s about fairness, it’s about reducing bias, it’s about considering the diverse backgrounds and needs of students.”
Progressive school administrators always talk about biases that exist within their schooling structure, but they rarely discuss what policies exist that are objectively accentuating those biases.
They only know how to present the veneer of fairness by artificially inflating underperformers and leveling the more exceptional students.
A school district that states we need to have fewer expectations of students handing in course work on time because the minority children fail to do so is beyond condescending.
I feel bad for any parent who has a minority child under the tutelage of any “educator” who truly believes this.
Though they’re supposedly fighting to end racial biases, the officials’ reasoning and methodology in changing the grading system only exposes how their motives are based on racial biases, racist tropes and simplistic theories assuming certain groups’ lack of output is equal to intellectual inferiority.
These elitist progressives cannot conceive any other possibility why some minority children are unable to keep up with others in an equal environment other than their race — and to cover up their own years of failure to uplift the ones who have fallen, they manipulate the grading system instead of helping these children.
Real white supremacists would allow someone who doesn’t look like them to struggle surviving while reinforcing the false belief that he or she is actually excelling so the kid fails in a competitive world.
Real racial bias shows itself when officials claim your black child can’t meet simple expectations like handing in work on time.
Now that I think of it, they probably do believe the trope that black people are always late, so let’s not penalize them for handing in work late: They can’t help it, right?
More and more of America’s educators have become ideologically captured and put into practice the most condescending ideas as they claim to be the saviors of the melanated class.
The truth is, they look down on us with pity and have become our social executioners as they create circumstances to set us up for our demise.
The paper sword they’re handing minority children is crafted by a patronizing anti-racist, not a diligent educational sword maker.
Even the ancient Romans could see this isn’t a fair fight.
https://nypost.com/2023/09/07/progressives-ending-grading-in-schools-are-condescending-racists/
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Single-sex schools have the academic advantage, Australian data reveals
When prospective parents agonise over the decision to enrol their daughter in a single-sex school, Campbelltown’s St Patrick’s College for Girls principal Sue Lennox has a simple answer: “Boys get away with stuff because ‘boys will be boys’ and that is a dreadful lesson for girls. That is what girls at co-ed school learn,” she said.
“When girls are in class without the boys, they can be themselves. It is a safe place where they can ask questions. They don’t feel they have to be anyone in particular because there are no boys. They grow in confidence.
“In co-ed schools, some subjects are considered ‘boy subjects’ and some are considered ‘girl subjects’. That is absent here.”
An analysis of NAPLAN results from across the country’s 304 single-sex schools shows there is another advantage to segregating boys and girls: they both perform slightly better when it comes to academic results.
After accounting for socio-educational background, the analysis by Catholic Schools NSW using NAPLAN test data from 2019 to 2022 found the single-sex advantage was particularly pronounced when it came to numeracy scores in boys’ schools.
Students enrolled in boys’ schools typically scored between 11 and 12 points higher than those in co-ed schools, after accounting for socio-educational background, the report said.
“Overall, the results of this analysis imply a modest academic advantage for single-sex schools, with the advantage generally greater for boys’ schools than girls’ schools,” the report said.
When it came to numeracy, girls who went to a single-sex school scored on average three points higher than those who attended a co-ed school, after differences in social background were considered.
There are about 284,000 students across the country enrolled in single-sex schools. While they might be performing better academically, the share of all students in those schools across the country declined slightly from 7.2 per cent in 2018 to 7 per cent in 2022.
The shrinking share of students in single-sex schools is likely driven by the fact that many boys schools have decided to open their doors to girls, the report said.
In Sydney, that includes Marist school Corpus Christi College which opened its doors to girls in year 7 this year. It followed North Sydney’s Marist Catholic College North Shore which went co-ed in 2021.
The $41,000-a-year Cranbrook in Bellevue Hill will open its doors to girls in 2026, and Newington College in Stanmore is also weighing up a possible shift to co-ed.
Flinders University researcher Dr Katherine Dix analysed NAPLAN data ranging from 2010 to 2012. She found in numeracy that students at boys’ schools were one school term ahead of students in girls’ schools. However, her research found single-sex schools offered no added value in academic results over time when compared to co-ed schools.
She now believes girls’ schools remained popular because the values they promoted were attractive to parents, while that was less the case for boys’ schools.
“Wanting to develop strong independent young women is a stronger driver in a traditionally male-dominated world. The same driver is not there for single-sex male schools,” she said.
Chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW Dallas McInerney wants single-sex schools to remain an option for parents. He warned that going co-ed by admitting girls should not be considered a quick-fix solution to help a struggling school.
“Just as we believe in parental choice between sectors, it also extends to the type of school be it co-ed or single sex because different children are better suited to different environments,” he said.
“There are a number of different reasons we might want to bring together two single-sex schools on a single site. But as a general principle, one section should not be called upon to save a failing school of the opposite sex. Don’t bring in girls to salvage a struggling boys’ schools.”
At St Patrick’s in Campbelltown, Rebecca, 15, said when she compared the school to her co-ed primary school she preferred just having girls in the classroom.
“It is a lot more quiet and focused,” she said.
Abigail, 15, said she liked the close friendships she had made at school, while her classmate Diadem, also 15, said she liked being in a supportive environment of an all-girls school.
“It is a sisterhood, I feel really encouraged to do my best,” she said.
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7 September, 2023
Arizona Parents’ Nightmare Shows It Matters How States Implement School Choice
Accursed Accurso
Following the election of Republican Tom Horne as the state’s superintendent of public instruction in November, families cheered—hoping that a better director of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program would be appointed.
Horne wanted an ESA supporter to manage the program, so he appointed Christine Accurso, an activist who had led the campaign to protect universal expansion of access to Arizona’s version of education savings accounts from a ballot initiative that sought to overturn it.
Unfortunately, Accurso didn’t prove up to the task. In the ensuing months, she frequently made changes to how the ESA program operated, nearly always making it harder for parents to use their accounts. Parents grew increasingly upset with seemingly arbitrary policy changes and the ever-growing backlog of reimbursements for expenses.
From obstructing and preventing parents’ access to the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program to allegedly violating the privacy of hundreds of Arizona families, Accurso guaranteed that few would mourn her eventual resignation.
Unpopular Decisions
As tens of thousands began applying for Arizona’s ESA program in late 2022 and early 2023, Accurso hit the brakes via numerous policy changes that, in the name of “accountability,” reduced accessibility and usability for parents.
One of her more unpopular decisions was to halt the issuing of “ESA debit cards,” which allowed families to spend money directly on education expenses, instead directing families new to the program to use the online ClassWallet portal.
However, not every eligible education vendor was accessible via the ClassWallet portal, especially as some vendors had complained about not being paid for their services for weeks or longer due to the Arizona Department of Education’s backlog of expense reviews. This posed a particular challenge to families of students with special needs, who were more likely to use services that weren’t yet in the portal.
Accurso blamed her refusal to issue new ESA debit cards to new program applicants on several shifting “obstacles.”
In a March email, she argued that allowing parents direct access to their funds would be “tax dollars immediately spent without accountability,” even though ESA parents had to submit all receipts for review before the next quarterly disbursement.
A 2018 report by Arizona’s auditor general, however, found that misspending via ESA debit cards amounted to less than 1% of total ESA spending, although it recommended several upgrades in system administration to reduce misspending.
A more recent audit concluded that “concerns with debit card administration have largely been addressed.” Indeed, the rate of improper payments to unapproved merchants had been reduced to just 0.001%.
In an April email, Accurso said ESA debit cards were being distributed, albeit on an individual basis rather than as a blanket policy as in previous administrations. But she said her office had lagged due to “the massive backlog of pre-paid card transactions” aided by ClassWallet, a third-party vendor that she had pushed the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts office to use.
Changing Qualifications
That backlog, however, to a great extent actually was due to Accurso’s own decision to manually review every single ESA transaction rather than to adopt a risk-based review process that approved routine transactions, with greater scrutiny applied only where warranted. Arizona’s auditor general recommended such a risk-based review years ago.
In two public meetings early this year, Accurso’s office said ESA debit cards couldn’t be issued based on a fear of “auditing our office.” The auditor general, however, had given previous administrations high marks for oversight of the debit cards.
Accurso also routinely changed the qualifications for what did and didn’t qualify for ESA funds. Several emails obtained by The Daily Signal show that Accurso consistently found excuses for not covering educational expenses that qualified for funding under previous Arizona Department of Education administrations and in other states with education savings accounts.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/05/the-incompetent-who-almost-ruined-arizonas-school-choice-program
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It's Begun: Some Schools Are Reinstating Mask Mandates for Children
COVID is endemic. People are still going to get it, regardless of vaccination status. And many more will contract the virus multiple times. It will be like flu season, folks, which also has a vaccine that can prevent severe illness or death but is not a silver bullet against infection. It’s not being reported anymore, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the COVID and influenza vaccine efficacy is similar, around 40-50 percent. Take the shot, don’t take the shot, but the experts self-immolated when they said if you take the vaccine, you’d be shielded forever.
And we’re back to the window dressing that is mask-wearing. It’s been documented for months now that store-bought masks don’t work. KN95 masks are useless for kids because they don’t fit properly; their faces are too small. But it gets better: even for adults, this mask, marketed as the Rolls-Royce of face coverings, did nothing to stop the spread. Still, a Silver Spring, Maryland, school decided to wrap these kids’ faces up because some students tested positive.
COVID is over. The Left may not want to admit it because it helped them win the 2020 election, and the panic peddlers yearn for the days of mass infection to further test the limits of government power. Not anymore. The pandemic is done. Every aspect of social life is back, and lockdowns aren’t coming back.
Science fiction has become official policy on COVID, which, if you think about it, isn’t all that shocking since progressives think that biological males can become women, have babies, and menstruate. If you can stomach that delusional hayride, believing that masks will curb the spread of the coronavirus isn’t too far off the reservation.
https://townhall.com//tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/09/05/the-covid-mask-karens-are-targeting-children-again-n2627987
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California Mom Wins Settlement Against School District That Socially Transitioned Her Daughter
California mom Jessica Konen won a $100,000 settlement from her daughter’s school district, Spreckels Union School District, after Buena Vista Middle School had socially transitioned her 11-year-old daughter, Alicia, without her knowledge or consent. The school district still refuses to admit that it’s at fault.
Many are calling this a landmark case, saying it will make other school districts across the country think twice before transitioning kids behind their parents’ backs.
Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for education studies, told The Washington Stand, “This is a great development in the overall move to stop mistreating children based on gender identity declarations at school. When California is debating the issue of whether or not to inform parents if their child makes a declaration or is accommodated as the opposite sex, this is also timely.”
At the beginning of her sixth-grade year, a friend invited Alicia to the school’s Equality Club, headed by two seventh-grade teachers, Lois Caldeira and Kelly Baraki. While there, the teachers told her that she was bisexual and later on identified her as transexual. (Alicia wasn’t sure what either of those terms meant, but trusted the teachers, was given more material to read, and believed them.)
Later, in the spring, Alicia went to the school counselor because she was depressed and stressed. She had weekly meetings with the counselor as well as Caldeira and the principal. Alicia was informed that she was depressed and stressed because she was “not being who she was” and that if she became her “true self,” she would get better.
According to the legal complaint, Caldeira and Baraki identified students for the school’s Equality Club “based on comments students made to them, comments that they overheard students make to others, and their own observations of students in the classroom setting, and otherwise. Once they identified students for the club, Caldeira and Baraki would invite them to participate.”
In a leaked recording from a 2021 California Teachers Association conference, these teachers discussed how they kept meetings private and “stalked” students online for recruits.
“When we were doing our virtual learning—we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing school work,” Baraki admitted. “One of them was googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus.”
Spreckels Union School District adopted a “Parental Secrecy Policy,” ensuring that staff at Buena Vista would “conceal from parents that their minor children had articulated confusion about their gender identity, evinced a desire to change their gender identity, or assumed or expressed a new gender identity, unless the student expressly authorized the parents to be informed.”
Remarkably, Spreckels Union would “intentionally deceive parents regarding students’ new gender identity and expression by, among other things, not publishing the Parental Secrecy Policy on the Spreckels Union website, using students’ birth names and pronouns in communications with parents despite using students’ new names and pronouns when parents were not there, instructing students they were not to tell their parents about their new gender identity or expression because their parents ‘couldn’t be trusted,’ and otherwise concealing those facts from parents.”
Devastatingly, the school’s actions drove a wedge between Konen and Alicia.
These are tactics promoted and encouraged by teachers unions such as the California Teachers Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association, as well as the union for school counselors, the American School Counselor Association.
They result from common attitudes among the education establishment and others on the political Left who view parents as potential threats to their own children if they don’t accept LGBTQ ideology.
For example, Peter Renn, an attorney for the LGBTQ legal organization Lambda Legal, said, “Outside of school, these students may similarly face potential hostility at home because of who they are. For example, involuntarily outing a student as LGBTQ to their parents can very well lead to them getting kicked out of the home in some circumstances.”
Thankfully, during Alicia’s eighth-grade year, she was learning at home due to COVID-19 school shutdowns. This is when, in Alicia’s words, she “ended up being out of control of the school” and figured out who she really was—a girl.
Now, five years after Alicia started being transitioned by her school, she and her mom have received counseling, and their relationship has been restored.
Konen and Alicia’s lawyer, Mark Trammel, are calling on parents across the country to be pro-active and realize that this is not just something that happens in California. He says that his office has likely received calls from parents in all 50 states who have gone through something similar to Konen’s situation.
Joseph Backholm, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for biblical worldview and strategic engagement, told The Washington Stand:
This situation is further evidence that many in the education system view parents as a threat to children. Parents need to be very careful about the environments and people they entrust their children to. There are a lot of ‘nice’ people who will do terrible things to you and your children.
Konen advises parents to be fully involved in their children’s lives; do their research on their school’s faculty, curriculum, and clubs; and listen to their intuition.
Backholm said, “I am encouraged by the result of this lawsuit, not only because it is appropriate under the circumstances, but because it will hopefully deter other schools from doing something similar in the future. When significant things are happening in a child’s life, parents need to be the first to know, not the last. Schools that do not believe that should quickly be reformed or cease to exist.”
Kilgannon agreed. “No one can ‘do over’ even one second of childhood, never mind the years that can be consumed by this evil and the irreparable harm that is done. Let’s celebrate this victory and remember it is but one battle in the ongoing war to protect children and parents.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/05/california-mom-wins-settlement-against-school-district-that-socially-transitioned-her-daughter
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6 September, 2023
Voters Dissatisfied with Quality of Public Education—Poll
At the Republican primary debate last week, presidential hopefuls disparaged the state of education in the nation, with some candidates advocating for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education and the promotion of school choice options.
It’s an issue that seems sure to reappear as voters signal strong concerns with the quality of traditional public education. The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll, conducted by Noble Predictive Insights, found that more Americans are dissatisfied than satisfied with the quality of education at their local public school.
The poll of 2,500 voters found that 39% were satisfied with the quality of their local public school’s education, and 41% were dissatisfied. The poll asked 1,000 Republicans, 1,000 Democrats and 500 independent voters about their views.
Moderates who lean Republican had the highest dissatisfaction rate, 52%, followed by voters who identified as strong Republicans with a 51% dissatisfaction rate. Of all Republican respondents, 47% said they were dissatisfied. Of Democratic voters, 33% were dissatisfied.
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2023/08/voters-dissatisfied-with-quality-of-public-education-poll
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Tim Scott Challenges the Schools
Certain educrats have a tell when they’re afraid of losing control of our kids: They go to the Leftmedia with scare tactics, and they claim Republicans are “waging war” on education.
In this case, it’s they who are waging war — against South Carolina Senator and Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott, who simply wants to empower parents and make sure schools aren’t using our kids as pawns in their woke social experiments.
Just last year, in fact, Scott introduced legislation to cut federal funding to schools that implement transgender policies denying parental notification. And now, Scott has introduced a plan to create a “family first” culture in education.
More specifically, Scott’s 12-point plan promises to “defend every parent’s right to know what their child is hearing and reading in school” and “empower every family the right to opt out of propaganda that attacks their values and religious liberty.” Additionally, the plan pledges to break the backs of the teachers’ unions, protect girls’ sports, and take critical race theory out of the classroom.
“Teachers’ unions, Big Tech, and Joe Biden are on a mission to make parents less important,” said Scott in a press release. “I have a bold agenda to support and empower parents — from the classroom to the locker room to the smartphone. We must empower parents and give them a choice, so that every child has a chance.”
Scott faces a steep uphill struggle to win the GOP nomination and then the White House, but while his plan shares some characteristics for improving education that other candidates have embraced, it shows an emphasis that is unique to Scott. Even CNN has noticed his focus on education: “Scott has made education a central theme of his campaign since its launch in May,” the network reports, “frequently citing his own experience growing up in poverty and attending college on a partial football scholarship. He often tells audiences at campaign events that education ‘is the closest thing to magic,’ and has stressed the importance of education in overcoming the disadvantages facing poor Black Americans.”
Maybe that’s why those on the Left are so critical of Scott’s plan. Maybe that’s why they say he’s targeting race and gender (like we haven’t heard that charge before).
In reality, he’s tapping into a national movement to remove politics from our classrooms, keep the focus on traditional values and proven educational methods, and give parents a say in where they send their kids to school. Of course, none of these measures sit well with Democrats, who want nothing more than to protect their education monopoly.
“At its core,” writes the Washington Examiner’s Kaylee McGhee, “Democrats’ opposition to school choice stems from the realization that it would break the education monopoly they’ve spent the past several decades building. If parents have the financial power to leave the government’s system, then that system no longer has control — control over government funds, over the ideological upbringing of children, and over the families who have been bullied into thinking they have no say in the matter.”
One of the best ways to shatter the federal education bureaucracy and empower parents is to eliminate the Department of Education, which, incidentally, four Republican presidential candidates pledged to do in last week’s first debate. Tim Scott wasn’t one of them.
Nonetheless, giving parents an educational voice is one of the central pieces of Scott’s plan, which allows parents to decide “whether it’s public school, private school, charter school, STEM school, or homeschool that is best for their child.”
In the end, Scott’s presidential aspirations may be a long shot, but the eventual GOP nominee would be wise to give his plan serious consideration. It’s a detailed, workable, and winning plan to save our schools from the Marxist assault on our children.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/100136 ?
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Australia: Deakin University: Pressure to change name due to racist views held by Alfred Deakin
An Australian university is under pressure to change its name because the former prime minister it is named after held racist views.
Deakin University in Melbourne is named after Alfred Deakin, who served as Australia's second Prime Minister in 1903, and the nation's first Attorney-General.
He helped pass the Aboriginal Protection Amendment Act of 1886, which led to the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families, known as the Stolen Generations.
Deakin also helped create the White Australia Policy in 1901, which restricted the number of non-white migrants coming to Australia.
In 1901, Deakin controversially predicted: 'In another century, the probability is that Australia will be a white continent with not a black or even dark skin among its inhabitants.
'The Aboriginal race has died out in the south and is dying fast in the north and west even where most gently treated.
'Other races are to be excluded by legislation if they are tinted to any degree. The yellow, the brown, and the copper-coloured are to be forbidden to land anywhere.'
Deakin was prime minister of Australia for three terms - from 1903-1904, 1905-1908 and 1909-1910. He died in 1919.
Sixteen academics from Deakin University created a seminar titled 'We need to talk about Alfred Deakin and his ideal of a White Australia', in 2020, and questioned why the university was named after someone with such racist views.
However the university's Vice-Chancellor Professor Iian Martin said a potential name change was not on the cards.
'This is not something that we are looking at and is absolutely not something that those Indigenous leaders...are asking to do,' Professor Martin told The Age.
While acknowledging the views of Mr Deakin would not be acceptable today, Prof Martin said changing the name would not help people understand previous injustices.
'If we simply expunge things from the record, what hope is there learning from the mistakes of the past,' he said.
Indigenous leaders, university staff and relatives of Mr Deakin have all been consulted by the university, Prof Martin said.
He stressed Indigenous leaders did not want the name to be changed.
According to their website, Deakin University 'is committed to Reconciliation and Treaty, advancing the educational aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples'.
'All our endeavours aim to reflect Australia's full history and seek to build an inclusive future'.
Deakin University has been a leader in Indigenous education for 40 years, the vice-chancellor added.
Mr Deakin served three terms as prime minister and was instrumental in Australia becoming a Federation.
He also helped establish the High Court and the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12473099/Deakin-University-change.html
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5 September, 2023
Back to school chaos: Thousands of pupils to start term from home as 100 schools warned of building collapse
More than 100 schools in England have been told to immediately close classrooms and buildings over safety fears, plunging the annual back to school rush into chaos for many.
Thousands of pupils now risk having to start the year taking lessons online or in temporary accommodation.
Ministers were accused of “incompetence” after the order – which will see some schools forced to shut completely – was issued just days before schools reopen next week after the summer break.
The number of schools affected could still rise as newly issued government guidance set out plans to survey all schools suspected of suffering similar problems within “weeks”.
Teaching unions slammed the situation as “nothing short of a scandal”.
The closures follow fears over a type of concrete, described as “80 per cent air” and “like an Aero Bar”.
Known as reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), the lightweight material was used in schools, colleges and other buildings between the 1950s and the mid 1990s, but has since been found to be at risk of collapse.
Earlier this year the National Audit Office (NAO) assessed the risk of injury or death from the collapse of a school building as “very likely and critical.”
Schools have been told they can temporarily house pupils in local community centres or empty office buildings.
But the government’s guidance to schools said funding will only be provided for works that are “capital funded” and schools will have to pay for rental costs themselves for emergency or temporary accommodation.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan said telling schools to vacate areas containing the concrete was “the right thing to do for both pupils and staff” as she insisted the plans would “minimise” the impact on pupils.
“Nothing is more important than making sure children and staff are safe in schools and colleges, which is why we are acting on new evidence about RAAC now, ahead of the start of term,” she said.
Over the summer engineers have been assessing school sites for RAAC and “a couple of cases have given us cause for concern.” she told the BBC.
But the Children’s Commissioner called for “clear direction” about where pupils should go.
Dame Rachel de Souza warned ministers had to learn “lessons from the pandemic”.
“After years of disruption for children and young people, what they need most is stability and getting back to normal”, she said.
“Everything must now be done to ensure the impact on children’s learning is minimised. And it is particularly important that everyone working with children prioritises those who are vulnerable and those with additional needs.”
The Department for Education said it was taking precautionary steps following “careful analysis of new cases”.
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A Peek Into the J-Schools Helps Explain Our Partisan Press Industry
Over the weekend, a rather stark dichotomy in the news coverage emerged from CNN. On Saturday a shooter entered a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida and killed three people. Unsurprisingly, Jim Acosta convened a panel to discuss this matter, delivering his expected cant and melodrama. In the course of the segment, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was inevitably brought up, and accusatory words were thrown at the governor about whether he would deviate from his presidential campaign and fly into Jacksonville.
It was mere hours after the deaths of three innocents, but already he was absorbing critical commentary about perceived inaction. (DeSantis did make it into town quickly, giving a speech and a prayer vigil - for which he was also criticized.) What made this imbecilic commentary all the more ridiculous was a separate report from CNN at almost the exact same time.
Sunday morning saw a piece from Kevin Liptak that was a warm assessment of Joe Biden’s extended time off in the month of August. As Hawaii dealt with a catastrophe that employs the use of the term “death toll”, Biden could barely be budged off the beach, taking nearly two full weeks before arriving on the scene. The most critical word from Liptak was in quoting those darned Republicans who dared criticize Biden for dragging his sand-covered feet on that tragedy.
This type of biased, partisan double-standard seen from CNN is by now an expected reality in journalism. In my daily media column, I frequently post entries on the press applying differing standards based on who and from what party the details emanate. We are almost conditioned by now to the blatant favoritism seen from the news outlets, but every so often it helps to explore from where this partisanship derives. After all, were these journalists not schooled in the proper ways of applying reportorial skills and journalistic ethics in the execution of their job duties?
On Twitter, a reliable source of leftist dogma is Jay Rosen. Scroll his timeline on any given day and you get a tangible sense of his left-leaning approach. While this is itself not a notable point, once you understand Rosen is a journalism professor at New York University his consistent combative position from the far left you can begin to get a sense of just the type of conditioning his students may be receiving before being sent out into the journalism wilderness. And he is hardly an outlier.
This month I came across a report told with alarm about the media conditions within the state of Wyoming. The piece centered on a relatively fresh news outlet called Cowboy State Daily. This is a right-leaning outlet that launched in 2019, and its popularity, as well as its coverage, is delivering deep concern, both for the type of news offered as well as how it has emerged in a time when many local papers were shuttering across the state. You get the sense of the dire opinion immediately, as you are greeted by the headline, “Trouble In Wyoming."
This panic feature was delivered by The Columbia Journalism Review, the online outlet of the famed Columbia School of Journalism. The concern is that this news outlet was undertaken and funded by a Republican donor and prospective GOP candidate, Foster Fries. In its setup of the “problems” this right-leaning outlet poses, CJR described the conditions that have led to this nefarious uprising.
Like most US states, Wyoming has suffered a decline in local journalism in recent decades; this year the Casper Star-Tribune reduced its weekly print run to three days. The drop-off follows a national pattern that’s seen the US lose over 2,100 newsrooms since 2004, a trend that, Tow Center research has found, accelerated during the pandemic with at least a hundred more news organizations (local and national) closing.
America’s growing news deserts have become vulnerable to wealthy partisans setting up local news outlets to push their political agendas. This has raised concerns about one-sided, politically motivated narratives being strong-armed into local political discourse.
What becomes rather evident in reading this lengthy assessment is that those concerns are also one-sided. If you were expecting to see examples of these problematic news outlets from both sides of the political spectrum you will be left wanting. It is clear that CJR sees the problem in one direction, and there is little in the way of open-mindedness or allowing for divergent opinions to be represented. This is seen in the primary critical focus being applied to the coverage of what it describes as “energy reporting."
Cowboy State Daily has appeared to throw doubt on the reality of man-made climate change, which is the consensus among the global scientific community.
Listed are a number of headlines from pieces that “throw doubt”, such as noting the mental impact climate panic has on children, asking about the veracity of Greta Thumberg’s popularity, and reporting that Vanguard pulled out of a climate alliance. Most notable though is that this J-school outlet is not permitting anything in the form of an open forum on the topic. It states clearly that man-made climate change is a “reality." Any journalistic exploration is, as a result, antithetical and outright considered to be wrong.
This is the type of dogma being taught to these burgeoning reporters and journalists and serves as an example why there is such a rock-ribbed slant in the news coverage these days. I looked through the CJR’s recent archives and saw little in the way of a critical voice applied to journalism on the left. One particular story caught my eye and revealed much about this J-school publication.
The headline was ‘Pink slime’ network gets $1.6M election boost from PACs backed by oil-and-gas, shipping magnates. Named after the overly processed meat products exposed decades ago, this was in regard to a practice that has emerged over the years - especially around elections - of partisan groups setting up a network of ersatz newspapers and/or digital outlets that resemble established sources.
These publications are set up to resemble legitimate local news outlets, with entries both local and statewide, regional features, and even local weather, but are designed to insert stories that frame a desired voting result as well. Candidates or other ballot initiatives will be covered in a way favorable to the backers, and these are designed to coax or fool voters into believing the news coverage is legitimate.
While this is a concerning practice, what is seen from CJR is that it is presented mostly as a one-way occurrence. The site presents this as almost entirely a conservative-right-leaning tactic. Passing mention of this being a two-sided activity is made early (something seen “increasingly by both the left and the right”), but from there this lengthy rundown is focused solely on conservative or Republican efforts.
Last fall I covered a leftist network of these ‘Pink Slime’ outlets that operated ahead of the midterms. There is, curiously enough, little in the way of curiosity about these left-leaning sources being problematic in the field of journalism. A search made on CJR of the various names of these pre-fab newspapers and websites I spotted delivers no returns. I also searched on the CJR-affiliated web outlet The Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and tellingly that site also had little to nothing to say about these Democrat-favoring news outlets.
While none of this is particularly surprising, it still becomes quite revealing. The J-school approach to things is clearly on par with what has been displayed by so many universities that foster an environment of left-wing social messaging. It appears obvious that while they might give voice to the vocation being one of non-partisan unbiased reporting, in guidance and in practice all evidence points to the J-schools being just as prone to the leftist ideology seen from many college campuses.
Understanding that they become a laboratory of left-leaning agitprop and send their charges into the journalism industry “properly” indoctrinated, you then grasp why we see so many of the problems today in the press environments.
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Why State-run Schools Should Refuse Federal Money
Just recently, the Biden administration authorized guidance from the U.S. Department of Education (USED) to block key federal funding for schools with hunting and archery programs. This ridiculous restriction, while shocking to some, was just the latest in a long line of governmental overreaches from the past few decades.
Last year, the Biden administration bullied local school districts into either supporting an immoral agenda or losing federal dollars for school lunches.
In 2016, President Barack Obama wrote every local school district, overriding local and parental authority, and told them to “let transgender students use bathrooms matching their gender identity” or else risk lawsuits or federal funding.
The reality is that despite dramatic increases in federal intervention and funding in the government education system since the 1960s, education achievement has not improved. The most widely used measures of school achievement are scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which shows no significant change. Efforts to improve educational outcomes for low-income children have also been expensive and unproductive. Even the federal college grant and loan programs have been ineffective for students. The evidence is inarguable — the federal government’s intervention in education has been and continues to be a dismal failure.
Americans have had enough of these federal control freaks. Considering the recent offensive policies issued from USED, states are beginning to consider whether they should continue accepting federal education funding.
USED mandates Common Core, Marxist critical theories, the sexualization of children, anti-American propaganda, and threatens to withhold federal funding for noncompliance. None of these serve the best interests of children. USED exists because they seek to control state education systems through bribery and blackmail using federal dollars. Additionally, they exist so federal elites have the muscle to control children.
National test scores scream at us that children desperately need to learn reading, writing and math, not more federally mandated critical race theory and overt sexualization.
The key to eliminating federal intervention in government schools is to eliminate federal funding.
The time is right for states to wean themselves off the federal dole. Serious conversations are taking place throughout the country about the legitimate and effective role of the federal government in education. But who has a viable plan to dismantle the behemoth?
The “Blueprint to Establish State Control of Education by Eliminating all Federal Education Dollars,” written by United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) outlines the necessary steps to restore state sovereignty for education policy and practice — and it’s achievable.
The Blueprint explains detailed steps to help governors and state legislators develop and execute a concrete plan, and even provides clear evidence as to how educational outcomes can improve.
States can eliminate federal funding in four steps:
1. Analyze education funds by source: federal, state, and local.
Total education spending in the United States is the second highest funding category, behind health care but ahead of national defense. Some argue this level of spending has corrupted the system, which is why educational outcomes are so dismal, but the majority of funding comes from the states and local communities, not the federal government.
2. Conduct a Cost of Compliance Study for federal funds.
In order to maximize the effectiveness of every dollar spent on government education, it is important to assess overhead demands in terms of cost placed on the state, district, and local schools by accepting federal funds and implementing federal education programs. Once known, a determination can be made if the cost of compliance, including federally imposed control and regulation, exceeds the value of the funding. Relying on state-funded education rather than federal funds offers the opportunity to streamline compliance and return control of education policy to the state and local level.
3. Identify state programs to replace USED programs.
After completing the Cost of Compliance Study, an assessment can be made as to which programs could be eliminated because they are ineffective, inefficient, or unnecessary. Other programs could be replaced by comparable programs within the state. As each program is evaluated, a multi-step, multi-year transition plan could be established.
Eliminating federal funding opens opportunities for creative solutions based on the values, vision, and objectives of local communities, returning control to parents and community members where it belongs. Ideas for program level discussions should follow.
4. Shift education revenue responsibilities entirely back to the state.
One approach to generate required revenue could be to establish a state tax called “offset to federal funds” calculated to collect the amount needed. Since most of the federal tax is collected from income taxes, a replacement tax using the same model might be most easily understood by the public.
To keep from sending the federal government the money they previously took and gave back, taxpayers would need a mechanism to deduct this offset from their individual federal taxes. Since the state and local tax deductions were eliminated in the last major tax bill, a special arrangement would have to be made. However, there is benefit to the federal government in this arrangement as the savings from program improvements would be shared with them, since only the replacement funding is deducted.
USPIE looks forward to engaging governors, state legislators, influential think tanks, and citizen activists to further develop the proposal. The only way to eliminate the onerous, ineffective USED and return control of children’s education to parents and local communities is for Americans rise up and fight for the wellbeing of America’s future. If we don’t take a stand now, it may become too late
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4 September, 2023
Regulatory Overreach 101 – Brought to You by the Department of Education
Democrats’ war on for-profit education has now reached a point where it threatens the online offerings of traditional schools.
After a disastrous attempt at introducing new guidance earlier in the year, the Department of Education is again preparing to attack the online program management industry. Online program managers – or OPMs – are companies that provide the internal organs, in essence, that make modern online education initiatives go.
Depending on the schools and contracts they’re honoring, online program managers market the universities’ online education programs, recruit students, counsel them through the admissions process, enroll them, provide the software and tech support and even work with professors to make the professors’ courses more online-friendly.
Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, NYU, Cal-Berkeley, North Carolina, Northwestern, Syracuse and Rice are among the highly regarded schools that use online program managers, although the schools rarely mention their involvement in the product.
Their services are so critical to the programs’ operations that online program managers typically earn 60% of the course’s revenue, although some schools are moving away from the revenue sharing model to a fee-for-service arrangement as schools develop their own online capabilities and no longer need everything on the online program managers’ menu of services.
Third-party providers, such as online program managers, are forbidden by law to earn commissions for recruiting students, but they can recruit if this is part of a package of services the providers offer to colleges, which is the case with online program managers.
That’s too much profit for the Biden administration, so it has proposed regulatory changes that would force schools to rework their contracts with online program managers in a way that will add crippling costs and risk to all parties.
The department has indicated that it wants to change the rules to more closely scrutinize whether online program managers are being paid according to how many students they recruit in violation of the law. The Government Accountability Office said last year after studying the industry for more than two years that some arrangements with colleges may skirt the rule, but by and large the industry and the universities it serves comply with the law as is.
The charge is that if online program managers are being paid to recruit, that imposes costs that unnecessarily and unlawfully drive-up costs and erode the effectiveness of higher education.
But what the schools and their partners in online program management have actually done is innovate, both in terms of product offerings and in terms of their relationships, so as to provide maximum access to flexible, innovative, and effective online education for millions of American college students. The department claims these vendors have increased costs and eroded the effectiveness of higher education in America.
But like a college freshman, the department has failed to show its work. It has presented no evidence that online program managers increase costs or reduce access. It has failed to explain why the colleges would so eagerly enter into these arrangements if they were counter to the wellbeing of their students. It has failed to explain how this demand would be met – which is greater and more consistent since Covid – without these arrangements. Other than political talking points and partisan preference, it has failed to give any reason for changing the rules on something that appears to work.
This is the worst kind of regulatory overreach. This process would be unacceptable if it was being used to change something as mundane as the way asphalt is used as a highway surface. The fact that this rushed, half-baked process is being allowed to change something as essential and fundamental as the way Americans learn is both unbelievable and unconscionable.
Online education programs aren’t quick or easy to develop. The initial budget impact of a college attempting to build an online curriculum from the ground up would be prohibitive without the knowledge and experience provided by OPMs. These partnerships have been effective and beneficial for all involved, from schools to private companies to, most importantly, students.
What the Department of Education should do is what the GAO recommended – continue to study the issue and ensure there aren’t abuses and violations of the current rules. Officials should look at costs, student outcomes and the relationships with colleges to make sure taxpayers and students are getting their money’s worth. But absent evidence they’re not – and we haven’t seen any such evidence – there’s no reason to change the current 2011 guidance.
https://townhall.com/columnists/brianmcnicoll/2023/08/31/colim-n2627791
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Historic University With Christian Background Allows Students to Live in Dorms Based on 'Gender Identity'
Earlier this year, Townhall reported how Wellesley College, an exclusive all-girls school, decided to allow its student body to vote on allowing transgender and non-binary students. And, in January, Townhall reported how Ithaca College in New York will allow students who identify as “transgender” or “non-binary” to live in a separate residential community that excludes “cis-identifying students.” This move was meant to create a “supportive community” for students who identify as LGBTQ+.
Furman University, the oldest private university in South Carolina and among the 75 oldest high education institutions operating in the U.S. today, allows students to live in a dormitory based on their “gender identity” rather than their biological sex. The school was named after Baptist pastor Richard Furman.
On the university’s website, it clearly states that “Furman will provide students housing consistent with their gender identity.” This means that students who “identify” as the opposite sex can live in the student housing among them.
Additionally, transgender students can choose whether or not to disclose this information to their new roommates.
“Housing and Residence Life keeps a student’s disclosed gender identity confidential and will share it only with employees who need the information in order to perform their job duties. A transgender student may choose whether to disclose gender identity information to a roommate,” the website states.
Additionally, the school allows transgender students to use restrooms and facilities that align with their “gender identity” instead of their biological sex (via Furman University):
All students should have access to locker room, bathroom, and shower facilities that are safe, comfortable, and convenient. Transgender and gender non-conforming students may use any facility consistent with their gender identity. Moreover, gender-neutral bathrooms are located in the Chapel, Dining Hall, Estridge Commons, Infirmary, Library, Music Building, Physical Activity Center, Shi Center, and Trone Student Center.
Townhall previously reported how female students on the University of Pennsylvania’s swim team were forced to share a locker room with Will “Lia” Thomas last year. Paula Scanlan, one of Thomas’ former teammates, said in an interview that she used to “change as fast as possible” when Thomas was present.
“It [the locker room] was uncomfortable. I did notice a few girls – there’s a few bathroom stalls in the bathroom – and I did notice some girls changing in the bathroom stalls for practice, which I’ve never really seen that before,” Scanlan said. “For me personally, the biggest thing was, when you’re changing, there’s all these people talking in the background, all these women’s voices, and then all of a sudden you hear a man’s voice. I’d always kind of jump a little bit [hearing Thomas’ voice].”
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Australia: Students who are illiterate, innumerate, and scared: be disappointed, but not surprised
Why would anyone be surprised at the latest NAPLAN results? Yes, they are disappointing, but the amount of hand-wringing expressed through media demonstrates either naivety or ignorance.
Many of us have been explaining the reasons behind our struggling schools for a long time. This makes it all the more frustrating to hear the media’s tiresome excuses. Here are a few ways to translate common phrases thrown around in media reports as excuses for why so many of our students are not doing well, remembering that, as CS Lewis quipped, the best lie is the one closest to the truth:
We need to get back to basics: Of course, this is right, yes? It might be, if teachers knew what it meant. Many do not. Today I heard a commentator say, ‘Yes, we have to get back to basics with young students – they must learn how to learn.’ Learn how to learn? What incoherency… It reflects the ‘21st Century education’ philosophy that says if we know how to think, we do not have to learn sequential core content. But that is not true. We must have our students instructed in the underlying information upon which they can build. An expert is someone who knows more than others and then they have a basis for thinking critically. Too often our teachers are not taught this.
Our teachers are not trained enough: I remember visiting a school in the village hill districts of Costa Rica. They had their first year of graduating students leave the school, half of whom were from an economically poor village and yet obtained full scholarships to American colleges. Further, at least half their teachers had no tertiary teacher training. Who were they? They were American college graduates who came to live in that village and teach their college subject to these school students as an extended ‘gap year’. Why did this work? These young teachers demonstrated outstanding relational commitment to the students around them, and through that relationship, developed a fruitful teaching and learning environment. What would our teacher unions do with a program like this in Australia?
We must focus on anxiety crises: The environment is boiling, the colonials are oppressive, and we must develop our own identity based on our fleeting feelings… This sort of thinking has replaced any certainty about what individual character is about in our schools. Character used to be based on understanding that we, as humans, are made to live in certain ways. This gave us a common mind on which common sense was based. Now we have dysphoric minds that chase therapeutised illusions of reality. That is the relational context of the current Australian classroom.
Teachers must manage classrooms better: As one young teacher said to me, the best way to do this is to redirect students and use better words. Because character has disappeared, and identity personality tests have taken over, teachers are timid in implementing consequences for bad behaviour. Oh, and I just used two politically incorrect words – ‘consequences’ and ‘bad’. What might happen if teachers actually spoke of punishment for wilful misbehaviour?
Our teachers are not paid enough: the history of investment in education in Australia clearly demonstrates that spending more money the same way does not make a difference. As in all aspects of life, it is what we do with what we have that makes a difference. But like so many of our federal government ministers, bigger government is given as the answer to the problems created by big government.
Our teachers are not paid well because of independent schools: Last time I checked, the NSW independent schools saved the NSW government the same amount as the price of the NSW Police department. The pleas to close down the schools that parents are actually choosing over state schools is driven by the unspoken belief that the government should have more influence than the family.
Trust us to fix it: Again, nothing will change in schools while government policy does not support families as families. Why do we think the best way to live as a society is by the government paying people to care for us, cradle to the grave? I am old enough to remember when I could at least claim something for supporting the rest of my family, while we chose to have only one of us working for pay. Why is it assumed that a child is only ‘ready’ for school if he or she has gone to a pre-school? Why are families discouraged to look after those in need in the family by the push to have everyone in the paid workforce?
Reviewers like Kevin Donnelly have summarised all this by highlighting that we are not instructing our students enough on essential knowledge anymore, and we have ignored our Judeo-Christian heritage. Douglas Murray’s recent article spoke to the heart of our cultural malaise when he asked, ‘Are we pleased to be in this country compared to others, or not?’ The anthropologist might ask it this way: ‘Should all non-Indigenous Australians simply sail away so that the original locals can continue with their pre-medieval designer tribalism?’
It is good that we are disappointed by reports that reveal learning difficulties for our students. But acting surprised by this news is to deny the dynamics of the false reality being constructed by people who call themselves progressive, but are in fact are taking us to hugely regressive places.
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3 September, 2023
Maine Hospital Fired Nurses for Refusing COVID Shots—Now It’s Begging Them to Come Back
Nurses and other health care workers at MaineGeneral Health, one of Maine’s largest health care providers, were unceremoniously fired two years ago if they refused to take the experimental mRNA injections touted as COVID-19 preventatives.
Some of those workers were even slapped with misconduct charges for refusing to comply with the mandate, many were later denied unemployment benefits, and no requests for religious exemptions were honored.
Now, one of the nonprofit hospitals that left some employees jobless and without recourse to Maine’s unemployment insurance benefits is sending text messages to the same employees it cast aside practically begging them to come back to work.
“You were once a proud member of the MaineGeneral team. Would you consider rejoining us? We would be pleased to discuss options with you,” the MaineGeneral Health Recruitment team said in a text message to former registered nurse Terry Poland.
“As you know, nearly 2 years ago MaineGeneral had to comply with a state mandate for COVID-19 vaccination. We lost a number of great employees as a result, including you,” MaineGeneral said.
“MaineGeneral has eliminated the COVID-19 vaccination as an employment condition,” MaineGeneral said.
Poland, who lives in Augusta, had worked as a registered nurse for 33 years. Her career included employment with MaineGeneral, Central Maine Medical Center, Pen Bay Medical Center, and the Aroostook Medical Center.
She couldn’t believe that the hospital would contact her in such a manner after casting her life into chaos for nearly two years.
“I was livid. Like, how dare you force me out of a career that I’ve dedicated my whole life to, taken away my livelihood, my ability to earn a good income, and now you think I’m gonna come grovel back to you?” Poland said.
Poland continued:
“I don’t hardly think so. And that’s the attitude of most everybody that I’ve been in contact with since yesterday.”
A source told the Maine Wire that about 15 former MaineGeneral Health employees received similar text messages.
Poland refused to take the experimental COVID-19 shots after Gov. Janet Mills decreed on Aug. 12, 2021, that health care workers would be forced to receive the shots as a condition of working in health care by Oct. 1, 2021.
Documents reviewed by the Maine Wire show that MaineGeneral established a speedier timeline of Sept. 17 for compliance.
Eventually, the state pushed back the deadline to the end of October.
Poland was never opposed to vaccines generally speaking.
Though she previously used a religious exemption to avoid taking an influenza shot, she willingly took the other vaccines required to work in health care prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, including immunizations for measles, mumps, rubella, and hepatitis B.
She said she was concerned about the novel nature of the mRNA technology, a form of gene therapy, which prior to COVID-19 had not been used in the standard schedule of immunizations.
“I knew enough not to take it. I’ve been a nurse long enough to know I need to question what new products are,” Poland said. “I’m not going to be the first one to jump on board of an experiment.”
When she discovered that fetal tissues are commonly used in the development and production of the drugs, that only strengthened her resolve as a Christian not to get the injections.
In previous years, Poland has said she was allowed an exemption from taking the influenza shot so long as she wore a mask during flu season. However, the hospital was unwilling to provide this accommodation for COVID-19.
As a result of her choice, Poland faced not only termination but also an allegation of misconduct from her former employer.
When she applied for unemployment benefits, she was rejected because of the misconduct allegation.
When she appealed, she was turned away.
Documents reviewed by the Maine Wire show that the Maine Department of Labor determined that MaineGeneral Health “discharged” her; however, the agency concluded that Poland’s refusal to get the injections was a violation that constituted a “culpable breach of obligations to the employer.”
As a result, Poland had to rely on her savings to get by in the middle of economically disastrous government lockdowns and soaring inflation.
Poland then sought help from the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming that she’d been discriminated against on the basis of her religious beliefs.
MaineGeneral Health, in responding to the commission, argued that allowing Poland religious accommodations would impose an “undue hardship” on the hospital. On that basis, the commission declined to take on her case.
The Maine Human Rights Commission also rejected her discrimination complaint.
“[T]here has been positive energy between human resource personnel and managers who are in the process of working together to reach out to former employees to see if they are interested in returning,” said Joy McKenna, director of communications for MaineGeneral, in an email.
“Since Monday, we are only aware of a few people who have indicated that they are interested in having a conversation about applying for an open position,” she said. “We currently have 453 open positions, which is similar to our pre-COVID open position count.”
McKenna said the hospital did not intentionally fire unvaccinated employees in a way that would block them from getting unemployment benefits.
Some of those positions have been filled by foreign nationals with green cards, McKenna said, though she was not able to provide an exact number on Aug. 9.
At the time MaineGeneral fired her, Poland was working at the MaineGeneral Rehabilitation and Long Term Care at Gray Birch facility in Augusta.
The facility provides nursing home and assisted living services and has a 37-bed capacity. Federal stats show the facility had 141 staff before the mandate and 110 after it was enforced.
In the years since she was fired, she estimates she’s earned only $12,000 and $17,000 as a home health care worker, a position that hasn’t provided similar benefits to the job she lost.
As a registered nurse, Poland was making about $75,000 per year.
She’s still not willing to give MaineGeneral another shot.
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New ‘Pirola’ variant of COVID is spreading fast, has experts concerned
As COVID-19 cases continue to rise nationwide, a new variant dubbed “Pirola” has experts worried.
Also referred to as BA.2.86, Pirola is a highly mutated variant of the Omicron strain of the coronavirus, which emerged in 2021 and led to a frightful spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths.
“When Omicron hit in the winter of 2021, there was a huge rise in COVID-19 cases because it was so different from the Delta variant, and it evaded immunity from both natural infection and vaccination,” infectious disease specialist Dr. Scott Roberts said in a Yale Medicine bulletin.
The bulletin states that “there is some reason to worry, in that this variant … has more than 30 mutations to its spike protein,” referring to the proteins on the surface of the virus that allow it to enter and infect human cells.
“Such a high number of mutations is notable,” Roberts said. “When we went from XBB.1.5 to EG.5, that was maybe one or two mutations. But these massive shifts, which we also saw from Delta to Omicron, are worrisome.”
Is the new COVID variant worse?
The three biggest questions facing medical experts are: How transmissible is Pirola? Will it bypass existing immune defenses? How lethal will it be for those unlucky enough to get infected by it?
“Nobody knows right now, but studies are ongoing,” Roberts said.
The Pirola variant was initially detected in Israel and was later identified in Canada, Denmark, the UK, South Africa, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Thailand, according to the CDC.
By August, it had surfaced in Ohio, Virginia, Michigan and New York. And Thursday, Dr. S. Wesley Long of Houston Methodist Hospital reported that he had isolated a Texas case of the Pirola variant.
The rapid spread of Pirola “doesn’t look good right now,” Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, Calif., told Reuters.
Pirola’s multiple mutations make it “radically different in its structure” compared to earlier coronavirus variants, Topol said.
As far as Pirola’s severity is concerned, “[i]t is too soon to know whether this variant might cause more severe illness compared with previous variants,” the CDC stated.
Our current levels of immunity, whether from vaccination or prior infection, also remain to be seen.
The new booster shots, expected to be available later this month, were developed to target the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5.
Nonetheless, the boosters “will likely be effective at reducing severe disease and hospitalization” from BA.2.86, the CDC states. “That assessment may change as additional scientific data are developed.”
“The vaccine is still going to provide you great defense against illness and death,” Long said.
Other experts agree: Despite Pirola’s mutations, “it’s important to remember that it’s still the same virus at its core, so the same prevention methods — masking, vaccination and hand-washing, among others — can help people avoid infection,” Roberts said.
https://nypost.com/2023/09/01/pirola-variant-of-covid-spreads-fast-has-experts-concerned/
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Team Youngkin Addresses Future COVID-19 Restrictions: ‘In Virginia You Get to Choose’
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin won’t be mandating that Americans mask up or lock down to fight the COVID-19 pandemic any time soon, The Daily Signal has learned.
Some schools, hospitals, and businesses have begun encouraging Americans to wear masks again amid a rise in COVID-19 cases throughout the country, sparking fears that lawmakers will once again institute lockdown measures and mask mandates.
Youngkin’s office told The Daily Signal on Thursday that such measures won’t be happening in the state, where the governor previously has banned schools from mandating masks.
“Governor Youngkin has been consistent since the beginning of his administration, if you want to wear a mask, wear a mask, but in Virginia you get to choose,” spokesman Christian Martinez said.
He added: “On Inauguration Day, Governor Glenn Youngkin declared Virginia open for business, the governor has no plans to change that.”
On Tuesday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen said that up to 10,000 people have been hospitalized with COVID-19 per week in the United States. Cohen noted that this number is significantly lower than the comparative figures for August 2022, at the pandemic’s highest point, when there were 40,000 hospitalizations a week.
“We’re in a much different and better place in August of 2023,” she said. “We have stronger immunity and tools to protect ourselves, we have vaccines, at-home tests, effective treatments, and commonsense strategies like washing your hands and staying away from people when you’re sick.”
The Daily Signal also asked 2024 presidential candidates whether they would support future mask mandates or lockdowns. None of the 2024 hopefuls that The Daily Signal spoke with supported any such restrictions.
“No mask mandates,” candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told The Daily Signal on Thursday. “No vaccine mandates. No lockdown ever again.”
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1 September, 2023
California Students Sue the State Over Educational Inequities During Lockdown
As has been said many times, and studies have shown, the Covid pandemic exposed the racial and economic disparities in the health system in the United States. Race was reportedly a factor in the treatment of Covid, and longstanding systemic social and health inequities apparently contributed to an increased risk of death from COVID-19. Blacks and Hispanics suffered more heart ailments and worse in hospital prospects for mortality because of both medical and social inequities. But the inequities of the pandemic extended further and affected school children who were locked down out of school and were supposed to get an education via remote learning. The socio-economic divide apparently interfered with children’s education during Covid. Now, students are going to court to prove it.
California lawsuit
A judge gave the green light to a group of low income students of color to go to trial with the lawsuit against California. The students allege the state failed to provide the neediest students with adequate equipment and services to learn remotely during the eight months in 2020, when schools were closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The state doesn’t dispute the fact that studies have shown "educational inequality increased from 2019 to 2022, and achievement gaps widened" between public school students of different races and income levels in California. This is according to Alameda County Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman. The judge added that during the pandemic, the state "implemented a remote learning policy that failed to provide all students with computers and Internet access," and California officials knew that non-white and low-income students were being harmed more than others. Seligman added that a trial was necessary to see if the state had violated discrimination laws and a state constitutional guarantee of educational equality.
Suit doesn’t seek monetary damages
The lawsuit isn’t asking for money, but instead wants court ordered measures to close the statewide learning gap, such as tutoring, literacy coaches and accountability requirements for California. There are about 6 million students in California public schools. According to Judge Seligman, in the eight months after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered schools closed, the state distributed more than 45,000 laptops and more than 73,000 computing devices to students. However, between 800,000 and 1 million students still lacked adequate access, or any access at all, to online classes.
State officials claim the impact of the pandemic was similar among all categories of students. Researchers for the plaintiffs say poor and non-white students were harmed disproportionately, and a trial is needed to resolve the factual dispute. A spokesperson for Public Counsel, a non-profit law firm representing the students, said the ruling by Judge Seligman to go forward with a trial is a “resounding victory” for the students and shows they have a good case. The state Department of Education had no comment.
Remote learning didn’t work
The suit describes the conditions for 14 non-white students during lockdowns in Oakland and Los Angeles. Twin sisters living in Oakland were attending school until March of 2020, when school stopped. Their teacher held remote classes only twice during the rest of the school year. The suit says the teacher told the student’s mother some other students couldn’t connect remotely so classes were cancelled. One girl received a computer which stopped working after a month and took another month to replace. The suit also contends during the lockdown "wealthier students more often had access to private spaces conducive to learning, while lower-income students of color typically shared their 'classroom' with other family members."
Lawyers for California maintain the state "has worked aggressively to bridge the existing digital divide and provide technology and connectivity to the students." Judge Seligman disagreed, noting in the plaintiff’s research there was a dramatic decline of low-income students during the lockdown. "While there is evidence that (state officials) took some steps to address pandemic-related impacts, the question is whether those steps were reasonable," and this must be decided in a trial, the judge wrote. It appears the inequities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic go beyond health care in this country.
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Back to (What Kind of) School: Education or Indoctrination?
As millions of children return to public school, it’s a good idea to again examine what they are being taught and what is being left out. It also offers an annual opportunity for parents to ask if their kids are being educated or indoctrinated.
At the recent convention of the National Education Association in Orlando, Florida, reports told of delegates waving rainbow signs proclaiming: “freedom to teach” and “freedom to learn.” The demonstrators oppose parental concerns over what they regard as pornography in certain books, an opposition that has tarred them as “book banners.” Peculiar how it’s “academic freedom” to introduce books that promote behavior and ideas many parents oppose, but “censorship” to object to them.
The NEA adopted two amendments supporting “reproductive rights” for women. “Forced motherhood is female enslavement” read a second amendment. This is appropriate for prepubescent children, or students of any age? The delegates continue to favor the LGBTQ-plus agenda, which professes to advocate for sexual and gender equality under the law. They also approved a measure supporting “asylum for all.”
How is any of this preparing children to compete with China and other nations in math, reading, and science?
It isn’t.
The New York Times reported last October: “U.S. students in most states and across almost all demographic groups have experienced troubling setbacks in both math and reading. … In math, the results were especially devastating, representing the steepest declines ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the nation’s report card, which tests a broad sampling of fourth and eighth graders and dates to the early 1990s.”
The COVID-19 pandemic is blamed for some of the decline, but as the NAEP notes, the trend has been headed downward for many years.
It hasn’t always been this way. Joel Belz, a columnist for World magazine, recalled in 2006 a 1924 education pamphlet designed to prepare eighth graders for high school. It had the lengthy title “Stephenson’s Iowa State Eighth Grade Examination Question Book.” Belz thinks most high school seniors today would find the questions challenging.
They include arithmetic: “A wall 77 feet long, 6-1/2 feet high, and 14 inches thick is built of bricks costing $9 per M. What was the entire cost of the bricks if 22 bricks were sufficient to make a cubic foot of wall?”
Grammar: “Define five of the following terms: antecedent, tense, object, conjugation, auxiliary verb, expletive, reflexive pronoun.”
Civil government: “Name three township, three county, and three state officers and state what office each person holds … “
I’m betting not many students today could name their members of Congress, much less local officials.
Other categories were geography, physiology (“beginning with food in the mouth, trace the course of digestion, naming the juices with which the food is mixed and the results. What is the reason that spitting on the street is dangerous to the health of a community?”), history, music, and reading.
These were supported by a daily salute to the American flag and other expressions of patriotism.
Who decided these subjects and practices were unnecessary to a well-rounded education and equipping children to become good citizens and lead prosperous and healthy lives? Is it the teachers unions and other activists who see schools not as places for educating the next generation, but as indoctrination centers for their secular-progressive worldview?
Some parents have begun moving away from public schools. Increasing numbers are homeschooling their children or taking advantage of school choice programs.
For the rest, get them out now while you are still able to save their minds, spirits and the country.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/17/back-what-kind-school-education-indoctrination
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Australia: A pushback against the war on the West
Amongst the post-modern rot that infests most of our universities’ humanities faculties stands one small institution that proudly focuses on the origins and brilliance of our Western Civilisation. This institution is growing (officially opening new buildings last week), has heavy-weight support, and is getting outstanding student feedback. Could it serve as the beacon for others to follow, and in doing so, be an important pushback against the intellectual war on the West?
My hope is that the answer is yes. Such a pushback is desperately needed in Australia, particularly in academia, which I will explain.
But first, let me tell you about the institution in question: Campion College. Located near Paramatta in western Sydney, Campion established itself as Australia’s first liberal arts college in 2006 and today has graduated hundreds of students. It dedicates itself to immersing students in the great books and figures that underpin our modern culture, in the correct belief that such immersion is important for individual development, and vital for the continuation of a society that is amongst the most wealthy, tolerant, and free of any society in all of human history.
Students in their three-year degree follow a linear progression starting first in the ancient world, then the medieval, and finally the modern world in third year. Philosophy, history, literature, and theology are interwoven into a coherent picture of the West’s development and the greatest thinkers who influenced it.
Sound radical? Of course not, but unfortunately such an approach is radical in today’s higher education landscape. Much of what is taught in humanities faculties either ignores the development of Western ideas and societies or is markedly hostile to them. It is particularly anti-Christian, which is intricately tied to Western development.
It is difficult to get a complete read on this, but consider the Institute for Public Affairs’ analysis of university history courses. It examined the 791 subjects offered across 35 Australian universities in 2022 and determined that history ‘is no longer about a study of the past, as it has been replaced by post-modern theory…[where] traditional explanations of cause and effects are discarded as everything is reduced to a study of (purported) power relations.’
It found that more history subjects taught about race, than democracy. More taught about ‘identity’ than enlightenment. A full 255 of the 791 subjects were expressly focused on identity politics. That is class, race, or gender.
I am not aware of analyses of other disciplines in the humanities faculties, but I would be surprised if there were not similar findings.
Moreover, except for the three universities that accepted the funding offered by the Ramsey Centre for Western Civilisation, almost none has a dedicated program, like Campion’s, which is an integrated course of study to instil in the student the sweep of ideas that have led to where Australia is today.
The same trend has occurred in school curriculum. When, as Education Minister, I first examined the new draft national curriculum in 2021, I was astounded that there was almost nothing positive said about modern Australia and almost nothing negative about ancient Australia before Europeans arrived.
The forgetting (or loathing) of our history is undoubtedly already having an impact on the confidence that people have in our society today and in the future.
Already a third of 18 to 29-year-old Australians believe that there are preferable alternatives to democracy, according to the Lowy Institute Poll.
If our schools and universities are not teaching the origins and demonstrable benefits of our modern Western society (or are being explicitly hostile to it), then where will we be in 20 years when another generation has been ‘educated’ in these institutions? Will young people defend our democracy as previous generations did? Will we remain as tolerant, cohesive, or wealthy if we are always assessed on our race, gender, or sexuality, and not the content of our character?
Scottish historian Niall Ferguson believes that the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in Western countries is not radical Islam, or a potential clash with a rising China, but the eating of our society from within.
We have to push back and this must involve getting our education institutions back to teaching at least a neutral view of our history, if not an overtly positive one, given the opportunities a person lucky enough to be Australian has been blessed with.
This can be done in schools through government decisions, as I was attempting to do with the national curriculum. In universities, it requires institutional leadership.
Campion College shows that it can be done. Its building opening last week was attended by former Prime Ministers, sitting MPs, religious leaders, and senior business people. They were present to support the small college, but mainly to support a bigger principle.
As former deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, said in officially opening the buildings: ‘We are in a civilisation moment.’
Campion College is doing its bit to keep us on the right side of this moment. I hope others follow.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/the-pushback-against-the-war-on-the-west/
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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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