October 20, 2021
AND HARVARD IS RECEIVING FEDERAL GOVERNMENT $$$, WHY? “Harvard’s Endowment Ballooned By $11 Billion As It Fought Off Student Class-Action Lawsuit Over Tuition Costs.”
“DOMESTIC TERRORISM” ALERT! “‘Just Unconscionable’: Parents Protest Outside The Justice Department Against ‘Domestic Terrorist’ Label.”
Frustration at school boards boiled over for some parents and activists who protested outside of the Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C. Sunday.
A small crowd gathered for the “Parents Are Not ‘Domestic Terrorists’ Rally,” a reference to Merrick Garland’s Oct. 4 memorandum that called on the FBI to “use its authority” in response to the “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” . . .
Parents are expressing their concerns with how children are being educated, said Brian Schultz, a Fairfax County taxpayer and parent of a former Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) student, who he and his wife now homeschool. He believes children are learning things that are inconsistent with American values.
“They are forcing children to hate each other through CRT (Critical Race Theory), and they are also not listening to us when it comes to things like having porn in schools,” Schultz told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We want that to end.” . . .
One mother, Stacy Langton, went viral for her comments at a FCPS school board meeting where she lamented about two books featuring child pornography and pedophilia available to students as young as 12 in the district’s libraries.
“I had 30 seconds left on my two minutes to speak, and they cut the feed and cut my mic and wouldn’t let me finish,” Langton told the DCNF. “Just a few days after that was when Merrick Garland issued the statement from the DOJ coming out against parents who speak at school board meetings like me.”
Langton called the NSBA and DOJ’s actions “ridiculous” and “fundamentally un-American.”
This is what “domestic terrorism” look like:
Parents protesting outside of the Justice Department chant “stop peddling porn” in American schools. pic.twitter.com/MHAusdN8u6
— Kendall Tietz (@TietzKendall) October 17, 2021
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH IS NOT A SERIOUS INSTITUTION OF HIGHER EDUCATION: “Students, faculty demand Sewanee revoke evangelical Eric Metaxas’ honorary degree.”
PATHETIC: “Leading physicist resigns in protest after speaker invite request denied over George Floyd riot comments.”
A leading climate physicist at University of California, Berkeley, resigned in protest after his colleagues rejected his bid to invite a speaker to campus following outrage on the speaker’s views on the sweeping violence last summer after George Floyd’s death.
“I hold BASC and its faculty – my friends and colleagues – in the highest regard, and so it has been a great honor to serve as BASC’s director these past five years. But it was never my intention to lead an organization that is political or even ambiguously so,” David Romps said in a Twitter thread explaining why he resigned as director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center.
He resigned Monday after Berkeley rejected his request to invite Dorian Abbot to speak on campus, according to his Twitter thread. He will officially leave the position by the end of the year or when the school finds a replacement.
“FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITY, TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS NEED.” “Why Is The Left Waging A War On ‘Gifted’ Children?”
Public schools across the country are eliminating gifted and talented programs, removing advanced courses and overhauling admissions processes to achieve equity across racial categories.
Removing gifted and advanced courses is a no-cost way to cover up the racial achievement gap while ignoring its root causes, according to Harry Jackson, president of the Thomas Jefferson High School Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA).
“Gifted programs and advanced courses provide a mechanism for low-income households to achieve a stellar education for their children and serve as a ‘great equalizer’ to those families that opt for private education,” Jackson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “By eliminating gifted programs and advanced courses in the name of equity, they will create greater inequities,” he said.
Black students make up 15% of the student population and 10% of the gifted student population, while Hispanic students make up 27.6% of the student population and 20.8% of the gifted student population, according to a Fordham Institute study. Those student groups are 49% and 23% less likely to participate in Advanced Placement programs than their peers, respectively, according to the Fordham Institute.
SOMETIMES YOU CAN’T MAKE UP THIS STUFF. As I’ve said many times, I’m not a psychiatrist, so I have nothing to say about this: “Ohio college student ‘angry’ and ‘scared’ after ‘cisgender men’ installed radiator in dorms: ‘Safe space’.”
A student at Oberlin College in Ohio described being “scared” and “angry” after the school announced a work crew would be installing radiators in a “safe space” dormitory for women and trans students, explaining the crew would likely be “cisgender men.”
“I was angry, scared, and confused. Why didn’t the College complete the installation over the summer, when the building was empty? Why couldn’t they tell us precisely when the workers would be there? Why were they only notifying us the day before the installation was due to begin?” Oberlin student Peter Fray-Witzer wrote in an op-ed published in the college newspaper on Friday.
The student said he grew concerned because he had not heard of the installation plans before a school email was sent on Oct. 7. He explained that the crew would likely be cisgender men entering Baldwin Cottage, which is home to a “safe space” for “women and transgendered persons.”
“In general, I am very averse to people entering my personal space. This anxiety was compounded by the fact that the crew would be strangers, and they were more than likely to be cisgender men.”
The work crew eventually showed up at the dorm, and Fray-Witzer described that he saw “immediately that they were all men.”
SERIOUSLY, THE #JUST-WALK-AWAY MOVEMENT APPLIES TO COLLEGES AS WELL. “College students: Whites need to be ‘re-educated’ on race, 59% back CRT.”
Most college students, including a majority of white students, believe that racism is so rooted in America that whites need to be “re-educated” on the issue, and one way is through the forced teaching of critical race theory.
In a survey of students from McLaughlin & Associates for Yale University’s William F. Buckley, Jr. Program, 71% agreed that “systemic racism is a big problem in society today and white people still contribute to it, whether they realize it or not.”
What’s more, 66% said that “most white Americans need to be re-educated about the true history of America and what it means to be actively anti-racist.”
And when it comes to changing the nation’s view of racism, 59% told the pollster that they “favor allowing the teaching of critical race theory in all high schools and colleges, which says America is founded on white supremacy and most laws and institutions in America today are inherently racist.”
DECLINE AND FALL OF MEDICAL SCHOOLS. Remind me to never have surgery performed by a doctor from the University of Louisville School of Medicine: “Medical School Hosts Seminar on ‘Body Terrorism’ Against ‘Fat LGBTQ+ People’.”
THE ULTIMATE ACT OF “DOMESTIC TERRORISM”: PULLING ONE’S CHILDREN FROM THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS: “Parents Allege Arizona School Disregarded Opt-Out From ‘Gruesome’ Curriculum.”
Watch this video:
Must Watch.
Tonight, the Souza family stepped forward to share how @peoriaunified11 violated their parental rights by forcing their daughter to complete an assignment they had opted her out of. pic.twitter.com/Ebpt6edmrG
— Free to Learn (@ftlcoalition) October 15, 2021
October 19, 2021
IN THE IMMORTAL WORDS OF MARIE ANTOINETTE, “Let them freeze.” “Oberlin student miffed at male maintenance workers entering ‘Women & Trans Collective’”
“DOMESTIC TERRORIST” ALERT—Crazy Mom Edition. THE MILLION MOM MARCH COMES TO DC: “Virginia Parents Announce ‘Not a Domestic Terrorist’ March in Washington.”
ON THE ONE HAND: “TX Public School Leader: Books on the Holocaust Should Be Balanced with ‘Opposing’ Views.”
It’s another day ending in “Y,” so there’s more upside-down, crazy stuff from the left.
As in — let’s all be Holocaust deniers.
That’s what Gina Peddy last week told Texas teachers in a school district near Fort Worth.
Peddy, an executive director of curriculum for Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, was training teachers on how to stock their classroom libraries in light of new legislation requiring schools to present varied viewpoints on controversial subjects, according to the Southlake podcast of NBC News Digital. . . .
That’s where Peddy decided that, somehow, the Holocaust is controversial. Peddy, in effect, said there’s more than one viewpoint to genocide.
“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” Peddy said, as she was secretly recorded, with the recording given to NBC. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust that you have one that has an opposing … that has other perspectives.”
AND ON THE OTHER HAND: “Texas School District Backtracks: There Are ‘Not Two Sides’ to Holocaust.”
A Texas school district attempted to walk back a scandal late Thursday after teachers were told in a meeting to present “both sides” of the Holocaust. “During the conversations with teachers during last week’s meeting, the comments made were in no way to convey that the Holocaust was anything less than a terrible event in history,” Carroll Superintendent Lane Ledbetter wrote on Facebook. “Additionally, we recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust.” The meeting, led by the Southlake, Texas, district’s head of curriculum, had urged teachers to conform with Texas House Bill 3979, which requires teachers to balance out “widely debated and currently controversial issues” with a both-sides approach.
“As we continue to work through implementation of HB3979, we also understand this bill does not require an opposing viewpoint on historical facts,” Ledbetter wrote. “As a district we will work to add clarity to our expectations for teachers and once again apologize for any hurt or confusion this has caused.”
COULD THIS STORY GET ANY MORE CORRUPT: “Loudoun County prosecutor who sought to jail father of girl allegedly raped at school tied to Soros, McAuliffe.”
ISN’T IT NICE THAT YALE CARES SO MUCH ABOUT YALE STUDENTS EVERYWHERE? “Yale says COVID restrictions apply to students in other states”
WHATEVER. Maybe the Reason Foundation should spend less time trying to “reform” the system and more on encouraging parents to #Just-Walk-Away: “The First Step to Rightsizing Education Spending is Reforming Teacher Pensions.”
DON’T CELEBRATE TOO SOON. It’s not a victory unless the professor never teaches again. “VICTORY: VT replaces prof who apologized for being White on syllabus”
COMING SOON TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL NEAR YOU: 1+1=social, economic, and political injustice “Colleges offer ‘social justice’ math classes for students, future teachers”
THIS ARTICLE IS FULL SEXIST SNARK BUT EVEN BAD ADVERTISING IS GOOD ADVERTISING: “Moms for Liberty has turned ‘parental rights’ into a rallying cry for conservative parents.”
The three-dozen women who showed up at the Brevard County school board meeting last week wore identical “Moms for Liberty” T-shirts, declaring they don’t “Co-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.” . . .
In 10 months, Moms for Liberty has grown to 135 chapters in 35 states, with 56,000 members and supporters, according to the organization’s founders. The group hopes to one day have chapters in all 3,143 counties or equivalents in the United States.
“Now is the time to capture these parents for the long-term,” said Tina Descovich, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty. “If you miss this opportunity, when they are really engaged [during the pandemic], it’s going to be hard to engage them in the future.”
FROM AMERICA’S INTELLECTUAL ELITE:
Recommended reading from the professor of education at Berkeley includes concepts such as “white people are not born white”.
White people are “born human” and then “white parents physically and psychologically ABUSE them” into becoming “white people”. pic.twitter.com/GOtjrFCC7m
— Mythinformed MKE (@MythinformedMKE) October 18, 2021
NOT QUITE ORWELLIAN, BUT A LEVEL OF RATIONALIZING, POLYMORPHIC LOGIC THAT I FIND DISTURBING: “Masks Are Changing How Kids Interact.”
NO, THIS NOT A GRIFT AS SOME ARE SUGGESTING. Kendi is simply cashing in on the delirium of the new religionists. And, as P.T. Barnum once said, “there’s a sucker born every minute,” well at least in Michigan that’s apparently true. “EXCLUSIVE: UMich paid Kendi $20k for a one-hour virtual event.”
The University of Michigan paid Ibram X. Kendi $20,000 to speak at a one-hour virtual event in November 2020.
Campus Reform obtained the contract through a public records request, which detailed that the November 11 speaking engagement would occur on Zoom.
The university’s November 2020 talk, “Discussion with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi,” centered around the Boston University professor’s book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.
“SOME AMERICANS cling desperately to the myth that we are living in a post-racial society, that the election of the first Black president spelled the doom of racism. In fact, racist thought is alive and well in America – more sophisticated and more insidious than ever,” the book description reads.
SELF-PARODY ALERT: “Academic union allows members to self-identify as black, disabled, or opposite sex.”
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN . . . ??? “As student violence surges, educators say mental health issues are ‘absolutely through the roof’ and draining teachers.”
“First-graders slapped a teacher in the face, second-graders slapped a teacher in the face, middle schoolers corralled around a teacher and shoved her,” she said. “Every single day I get a story from an educator.”
I wonder if the NSBA and U. S. Attorney General Merrick Garland consider this to be “domestic terrorism”?
VERY INTERESTING. “It’s Time to Face the Facts on School Closings.”
If you were a school superintendent considering whether to keep your district open in-person or move to online, how would you decide? Most people would suggest you look at COVID-19 case numbers in your community. Perhaps you would consider the vaccination rate, and if you had students with auto-immune disorders or other risk factors, maybe you would consider that. Most Americans would find these sorts of considerations reasonable.
As it turned out, this was far from what happened in American schools last year. An analysis of school-closing data on the nation’s 150 largest school districts reveals something entirely different. Rather than the progress of the disease in a local community, the most important predictor of remote schooling was a school district’s historical propensity to prioritize the interests of its teachers over the competing interests of its students.
We looked at specific ways districts favor teachers over students, such as prioritizing teacher seniority over new teachers and teacher performance, granting teachers more days off, and limiting the number of hours students spend in school each day. Districts that had historically scored high on these metrics were significantly more likely to opt for the remote-learning format last year. In aggregate, these measures of district-level teacher favoritism do far more to explain remote vs. in-person school decisions than every other variable we tested, including the COVID-19 infection rates in the community. When investigating the demographic features of school districts, we found that student-favoring districts were significantly different from teacher-favoring districts. Student-favoring districts were wealthier, whiter, and less urban and had a higher percentage of families who spoke English at home. However, even controlling for these demographic variables, teacher-favoring districts were far more likely to opt for remote learning.
Turns out the children from poorer, multi-ethnic backgrounds were screwed, basically, by those places that had strong teachers’ unions. I recommend that you read the whole thing.
October 18, 2021
MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE ADMINS WEREN’T INVITED TO THE PARTY: “Yale administrators demanded conservative law student apologize to peers for ‘triggering’ them”
HOW LOW CAN YOU GO? “Governor Newsom vetoes bill eliminating minimum GPA for financial aid.”
CRT IS BAD HISTORY, AND IT’S IMMORAL TO BOOT: “What Is Critical Race Theory, Really? And why that’s often the wrong question.”
. . . As the debate over the teaching of various critical theories in U.S. public schools has heated up, major papers have published wave after wave of articles denying that critical race theory is taught much at all outside law schools, while other writers have drawn the most technical of distinctions between “CRT” and other academic specialties like critical theory, whiteness studies, critical pedagogy, intersectionality, white fragility, white privilege theory, and so on.
This debate over semantics might provide an interesting basis for a panel at a scholarly conference, but it’s of little use or interest for parents concerned that their children are being taught partisan nonsense. While technical differences exist between the various critical paradigms, virtually all of them share three baseline assumptions: that racism is “everywhere,” and supposedly neutral systems, such as policing or standardized tests, are set up to oppress minorities; that to prove the existence of this oppression one need only note that large groups perform at different levels; and that the solution to this problem is equity—or proportional representation of all groups across all endeavors.
I WONDER HOW THE EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT WOULD RESPOND TO THIS CHINESE-AMERICAN MOM (AKA “DOMESTIC TERRORIST”)? “Woman Who Survived Maoist China Comments on America in 2021.”
Xi Van Fleet, who as a child endured the Maoist Cultural Revolution in China before immigrating to the United States, has spoken with Fox News and other news outlets to explain how Garland’s Department of “Justice” and the National School Boards Association are using tactics similar to those she witnessed in communist China to take control of children and prevent parents from having any say.
If you think that sounds far-fetched, well, did you grow up in China during the Cultural Revolution?
What she saw then was disturbingly similar to what we’re seeing in American “cancel culture.” The goal in those days was to cancel traditional Chinese culture and destroy Chinese heritage. The spate of statue-toppling by leftist rioters that destroyed symbols of our national history would have been smiled upon by Chairman Mao.
“When I was in China,” Van Fleet said, “I spent my entire school years in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, so I’m very, very familiar with the communist tactics of how to divide people, how they canceled the Chinese traditional culture and destroyed our heritage. All this is happening here in America.”. . .
After Garland’s announcement of the tough stand he’d take against parents, she had more to say. “I do have a question,” she told Fox. “What’s [the] next step? Is the Tiananmen Square crackdown the next, or the parents who one day risked their lives just to speak out for the children? That’s why I’m here.”
Watch XI Van Fleet eviscerate the Loudon County School Board:
OF COURSE. THEY’RE FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE: “University of California system now requires FLU vaccines for all students and staff.”
WHAT HAVE I BEEN TELLING YOU FOLKS FOR OVER A MONTH NOW? The Education Establishment regards your children to be their children: “Whose Children Are These? From vaccine mandates to enabling life-altering surgery for children, California’s public officials are usurping the role of parents.” I urge you to read the whole article. I’m leaving out the truly horrifying stuff.
Sadly, the state is now leading the nation in stripping parents of their childrearing authority.
For starters, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a vaccine mandate on October 1, making California the first state to require that public and private school students age 12 or older be fully vaccinated for in-person instruction. (Unvaccinated students will have the option of enrolling in an online school or attending independent-study programs offered by districts.) The mandate will go into effect once the Food and Drug Administration approves vaccines for kids over age 12. Depending on when the expected FDA decision comes down, students will need to get the jab by either January 1 or July 1 of next year. Next up are schoolchildren ages 5 to 11, who will be forced to join the vax club as soon as the FDA greenlights it for them. Newsom recently claimed that so far, 63.5 percent of kids between 12 and 17 had received at least one dose of the vaccine. . . .
“It’s unconscionable that a society uses its children as shields for adults,” says the Hoover Institution’s Scott Atlas, an M.D. and former advisor to President Trump. “The children do not have significant risk from this illness.”
What effect Newsom’s mandate will have on school enrollment remains to be seen, but California public schools have already lost more than 160,000 students, a 2.6 percent decline—the largest enrollment drop in two decades—since the start of the pandemic. A mandate isn’t likely to reverse that trend. And since the edict also covers private schools, look for homeschools and micro-schools in California to grow. According to California Globe, immediately following the announcement of the mandate, homeschooling and tutoring inquiries were up dramatically, with some homeschooling sites crashing from the sheer volume of parents searching for information. Many teachers may follow students out the door, since they, too, must be vaccinated. . . .
Legislative totalitarians in California are usurping the role of parents. Unless they leave the state, parents and other concerned citizens will need to find a way to push back.
Lest we forget (see point five under Color Group Collectivism):
And, of course, you must never-ever forget, and I will never let you forget, the immortal words of Melissa Harris-Perry:
There is one and only one solution to this: take ownership and control of your children and #Just-Walk-Away. Let a million new home schools bloom.
And it looks like some moms are refusing to turn over their children to the State:
EVEN CALIFORNIANS HAVE LIMITS: “California parents, teachers plan statewide walkout to protest school vaccine mandate.”
California parents and teachers who oppose school vaccine mandates are planning a statewide walkout Monday, according to reports.
News about the planned protest has spread on social media, with organizers suggesting that parents pull their children out of school and that teachers and staff who support the protest stay home.
California became the first state to mandate vaccinations or coronavirus testing for eligible children to attend in-person classes at public and private schools after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the requirement Oct. 1. Students who don’t comply will be required to do an independent study. There are medical and personal belief exemptions.
A NOTE TO CONNECTICUT PARENTS: IF THEY DON’T GIVE YOU EVERYTHING THAT YOU’RE CALLING FOR, THEN #JUST-WALK-AWAY: “A Citizen’s Action Plan to Keep CRT Out of Schools.”
Resolution number 1:
This school board will not accept, nor utilize any material, from The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which argues that slavery is the central theme of U.S. history, that 1619 is the year America “began,” and that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery.
Democracy – government of, by and for the people – is the central theme of U.S. history. Immigration is a more important theme than CRT. Virtually all Americans are immigrants or descendants of immigrants.
Resolution number 2:
This school board will not apply for federal education grants in the U.S. history and civics curricula.
The Biden administration’s U.S. Department of Education has proposed a rule stating that it will prefer grant applications which incorporate CRT-type themes in the projects for which funding is sought. An application incorporating CRT is against the policy of the board; an application not incorporating CRT is a waste of time and resources, since it would have no chance of being approved and funded.
Resolution number 3:
This school board rejects the resolution adopted this past summer by the national convention of the National Education Association, namely “NEA New Business Item 39.”
NEA New Business Item 39 states “The NEA will provide an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project.”
It should be noted that “NEA New Business Item 39” was removed from the NEA website within a week of its adoption.
Resolution number 4:
This school board will not accept books from the American Federation of Teachers nor from the First Book non-profit, which are distributing for free books by Ibram X. Kendi, an activist scholar. In his book “How to Be an Antiracist,” Kendi states that “The only remedy to past racism is present racism. The only remedy to present racism is future racism.”
Naturally, the only way to interpret this quote is that the “remedy” is to discriminate against whites. The cure for racism is not more racism.
THE EDUCATION DEEP STATE WANTS TO EXTEND THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL SYSTEM TO INFANTS AND TODDLERS. This is a recipe for disaster on several different fronts, and you should resist it with all your might, but for god sake don’t act like, ya know, “domestic terrorists”: “Childcare Entitlement Will Send Federal Costs Skyrocketing.”
President Joe Biden and the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives are struggling to gain support for their $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, with moderates saying it is too costly. The new childcare entitlement is a perfect example of its largess. The Democrats want the federal government to cover childcare expenses for rich and poor families alike, funded through higher taxes and borrowed money, while driving up childcare costs through wage mandates and new regulations on childcare providers at the same time. Not only is the childcare entitlement a recipe for skyrocketing federal costs, it will magnify current problems by pushing out small, family providers through increased requirements, and reduce family choices in the process.
MORE ADMINS PUTTING THE “FU” IN FUN: “Michigan school district ditches Halloween, Valentine’s Day in the name of ‘inclusion’”
STANDARDS ARE SO LAST YEAR: “College works to fire tenured professor fighting to maintain rigorous math standards”