Fox News reports that shocking video has surfaced of Ohio school officials discussing how they can push Critical Race Theory (CRT) covertly, working around school policies already in place and “tricking” parents.
“It should be a parent and school partnership, and it’s really not,” said Protect Ohio Children Coalition co-chair Cathy Pultz, a former teacher herself, on Fox & Friends First Thursday. “In our district in Upper Arlington, the transparency has been a problem for years. They have their agenda. They get caught doing something. They get caught reading books without telling the parents. And they turn around and say, we’re going to do an investigation, but then nothing happens.”
“There have been no consequences for any of our teachers or staff when they’re breaking board policy, and it is really frustrating,” she continued. “And this is just another example of parents losing control of what’s being taught to their children.”
The video, showing Ohio school officials discussing how they can secretly advocate the controversial content even if the state banned it, was released by a conservative media watchdog, Accuracy in Media.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Matthew Boaz, the executive director of diversity, equity and inclusion of Upper Arlington Schools, said. “You can pass a bill that you can’t teach CRT in a classroom, but if you didn’t cover programming, or you didn’t cover extracurricular activities or something like that, that message might still get out. Oops.”
“If we have a certain content that we want to share with students, and they see one in word the language, it’s like, oh, no, we can’t do that,” Hillary Staten, an administrative assistant for Groveport Madison schools, said in the video. “We have some parents… they don’t fully understand. So… it’s when we trick them, you know?”
Upper Arlington interim Superintendent Kathy Jenney wrote Wednesday, “While we remain committed to DEI, critical race theory is not part of the district’s academic program,” it continued. “The district follows the state learning standards and all laws in effect related to public education.”
This is the lie the Left always pushes: “We’re not teaching CRT in schools, you right-wing conspiracy theorists!” The truth is that CRT is being taught everywhere from pre-K through grad school, only it’s rarely actually called CRT.
Founded by the late Derrick Bell, critical race theory is an academic discipline which maintains that society is divided along racial lines into (white) oppressors and (black) victims, similar to the way Marxism frames the oppressor/victim dichotomy along class lines. Critical race theory contends that America is permanently racist to its core, and that consequently the nation’s legal structures are, by definition, racist and invalid. As Emory University professor Dorothy Brown puts it, critical race theory “seeks to highlight the ways in which the law is not neutral and objective but designed to support white supremacy and the subordination of people of color.”
A logical derivative of this premise, according to critical race theory, is that the members of “oppressed” racial groups are entitled—in fact obligated—to determine for themselves which laws and traditions have merit and are worth observing…
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2023-01-20 05:40:072023-01-20 05:47:18Video Catches School Officials Plotting to ‘Trick’ Ohio Parents, Teach Critical Race Theory Even if Banned
Anyone who has gotten to know her, already knows that, but for those that haven’t yet… Bloomberg headed down to Sarasota to spend a couple days diving into her story and how she became one of the leading Conservative School Board Members in the country.
As you listen to her story and her impact on Education, it’s important to keep in mind that her recent successes – flipping our School Board from 3-2 Liberal to 4-1 Conservative – are a culmination of almost a decade of non-stop efforts battling The Left & The Establishment.
And during that time, my wife was the target of press smears, some very nasty personal attacks and even vile and dangerous attacks on our children. Yet, she persevered and our School District, local Community and the next generation of children will be better off because of it.
Then reply back and share what you think of the discussion and what your thoughts are about your local School Board & public education.
Bridget Ziegler is a leader in the parental rights movement focused on US school board elections. The final episodes of the “Bedrock, USA” podcast examine her conservative agenda.
After all the talk of a “red wave” in 2022’s US midterm elections, the anticipated Republican sweep failed to materialize. Or did it?
At the school board level, candidates who opposed mask mandates and how gender and race are addressed in schools won about 30% of board seats, according to Ballotpedia, a nonprofit that tracks elections. Faced with new challengers, school board incumbents lost their elections at higher rates in 2021 and 2022 than in the previous three years, Ballotpedia’s analysis shows.
Up until 2021, “people really weren’t paying a lot of attention to what was going on in these elections,” says Doug Kronaizl, a senior staff writer with Ballotpedia. “And now all of a sudden people are paying very close attention to what’s going on.”
At the forefront of this trend is Bridget Ziegler, a school board member in Sarasota, Florida, and a mother of three. She is a founding member of Moms for Liberty, the right-wing activist group, and she has the support of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis; she says she was influential in helping pass the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, and is now supporting the governor’s Stop W.O.K.E. Act. Last year, she was put in charge of training people on how to run for school boards for the Leadership Institute, a conservative nonprofit that’s been helping politicians all over the country since the 1970s, including with big wins during the 2022 midterms.
Over three chapters, “The School Board Queen” podcast explores who Bridget Ziegler is, what she stands for, and how she plans to help reshape and influence American education. The miniseries is part of “ Bedrock, USA” — a podcast from Bloomberg CityLab and iHeart Media that examines how the far right is making inroads into local government.
The first episode looks at why Ziegler ran for school board — it was actually her husband’s idea. (Christian Ziegler is vice chair of the Florida GOP and currently running for chair.) Her goal was to help shape the schools her children would some day attend. Once she got on the school board she encountered members she called “mean” and unprofessional. She didn’t buy into how school boards were being run — too much control was given to the superintendent, she says. We also talk to Caroline Zucker, a school board member who worked alongside Ziegler and switched from Republican to Democrat because she “couldn’t take the shenanigans going on anymore.”
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In the second episode, we journey back in time to the 1950s and 1960s and discover the origins of the conservative movement in education. We speak to two historians, Michelle Nickerson and Natalia Mehlman Petrzela. Nickerson describes how conservative activists in the 1950s and 1960s pushed back against progressive measures for that era. And Mehlman Petrzela discusses how sex education took center stage in the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s. We draw a throughline from back then to today, and the big common denominator: the overreaching arm of government in children’s lives.
The last episode digs in with Ziegler about why she has been called racist and homophobic. She has criticized the Black Lives Matter movement and how it was taught in schools, and she has promoted unscientific ideas around trends in trans youth. She explains her beliefs and why she is supporting Governor DeSantis in his education agenda. We also spend time with an eleventh grade trans teenager who talks about what it’s like to be a student in Florida after the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act was passed.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Christian Zieglerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngChristian Ziegler2023-01-19 07:10:402023-01-19 07:16:20The School Board Queen: How a Florida Mom Is Shaking Up U.S. Education
The Florida College System (FCS) presidents said on Wednesday that no state funds will be used to support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or critical race theory (CRT) initiatives on campus, according to Florida’s Voice.
The presidents confirmed in a collective letter that none of the system’s 28 institutions would use state money to “fund or support any institutional practice, policy, or academic requirement that compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality, or the idea that systems of oppression should be the primary lens through which teaching and learning are analyzed and/or improved upon,” the letter, obtained by Florida’s Voice, read. The announcement came after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration requested information about how colleges and universities used state funding to support DEI or CRT initiatives on campus.
“Historically, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives served to increase diversity of thought as well as the enrollment and the success of underrepresented populations and promote the open access mission of our state college system,” the letter reportedly reads. “The presidents of the Florida College System (FCS) also understand that some initiatives and instruction in higher education under the same title have come to mean and accomplish the very opposite and seek to push ideologies such as critical race theory and its related tenets.”
BREAKING: Florida College System presidents declare their schools will not use funds to compel CRT beliefs on students pic.twitter.com/44RGuPrSzr
The presidents clarified that any initiative to limit CRT in the classroom will not infringe on academic freedom, but instructors will be required to teach the material in a “objective manner.”
“In the development of knowledge, research endeavors, and creative activities, a college faculty and student body must be free to cultivate a spirit of inquiry and scholarly criticism, and to examine ideas in an atmosphere of freedom and confidence, free from shielding and in a nondiscriminatory manner,” the letter continues. “The FCS presidents remain committed to developing campus environments that uphold objectivity in teaching and learning and in professional development and that welcome all voices- environments in which students, faculty, and staff can pursue their academic interests without fear of reprisal or being ‘canceled.’”
FCS presidents will review and remove any “any institutional instruction, training, and policies” by Feb. 1 considered to be discriminatory, according to the letter.
“I would like to commend our presidents for ensuring our state colleges are environments where all students can embrace educational freedom and acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for a thriving career,” Manny Diaz Jr., Florida’s education commissioner, told Florida’s Voice.
Diaz and DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-01-18 15:17:352023-01-19 08:51:14Florida College Presidents Pledge To Not Fund Critical Race Theory, Diversity Initiatives On Campus
Gay activist couple accused of sodomizing adopted sons, ages 1 and 9 and distributing home-made porn of the abuse. Sick. Throw them in prison! https://t.co/MTmTtOKOVw
“Whoever succeeds in telling the stories to the children gets to control the future.” That was Kirk Cameron’s answer to people wondering why he’s joined the debate over America’s libraries. As parents everywhere fight to keep graphic content out of their children’s hands, Texas officials are warning the battle is taking an ominous turn. It’s not just the forces of the Left that communities will have to contend with. It’s the federal government, whose new investigation into a local school district could upend every grassroots effort to protect kids.
For leaders in Texas’s Granbury School District, the bomb dropped shortly before Christmas. Officials in the Civil Rights Division of Biden’s Department of Education (DOE) said they’d received a formal complaint from the ACLU that the small community outside Fort Worth was somehow violating the government’s definition of “sex” by pulling books from school library shelves.
The ACLU’s beef dates back to November 2021 when Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) urged the state’s association of school boards to “ensure no child is exposed to pornography or other inappropriate content in a Texas public school.” His letter, which keyed off parents’ growing outrage about the material on school shelves, insisted on greater transparency about the content students can access. Abbott said his office had been contacted by a number of moms and dads who were “rightfully angry” about the “pornographic and obscene” content.
Granbury officials took the governor’s directive to heart, ordering a review of the district’s book titles. But what ultimately landed the district in hot water was a candid conversation Superintendent Jeremy Glenn had with the schools’ librarians — which was eventually leaked to the press. He talked about the conservative make-up of the community and insisted that they would act accordingly. “We do have a very conservative board,” Glenn said in a reference to the two new school board members. “They are elected, and recently more conservative. And so that’s what our community is. That’s what our job is.”
At the end of the day, Glenn insisted, “I don’t want a kid picking up a book, whether it’s about homosexuality or heterosexuality, and reading about how to hook up sexually in our libraries. … And I’m going to take it a step further with you,” the superintendent went on. “There are two genders. There’s male, and there’s female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women. And there are women that think they’re men. And again, I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries. … I’m cutting to the chase on a lot of this,” Glenn insisted. “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ, and the sex — sexuality — in books. That’s what the governor has said that he will prosecute people for, and that’s what we’re pulling out.”
Over the next two weeks, Granbury embarked on what the Texas Tribune called “one of the largest book removals in the country, pulling about 130 titles from library shelves for review.” Two months later, the volunteer review committee inexplicably voted to return all but three books that they’d permanently banned.
By then, the audio of Glenn’s meeting had made its way to the media, and liberal news outlets like the Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and NBC News pounced, accusing Glenn of anti-LGBT bias. That’s when the local chapter of the ACLU got involved, demanding an apology and calling for every book to be reinstated.
Glenn didn’t oblige, conveying through district spokesman Jeff Meador that all the titles they’d pulled from shelves are “sexually explicit and not age-appropriate.” That said, the libraries “continue to house a socially and culturally diverse collection of books for students to read, including,” he pointed out, “books that analyze and explore LGBTQ+ issues.”
Naturally, that didn’t satisfy the ACLU, whose lawyers decided to involve the federal government in a local dispute that could have a chilling effect nationwide. “If the government finds in the ACLU’s favor,” The Washington Post cautioned, “the determination could have implications for schools nationwide, experts said, forcing libraries to stock more books about LGBTQ individuals and requiring administrators — amid a rising tide of book challenges and bans — to develop procedures ensuring student access to books that some Americans, especially right-leaning parents, deem unacceptable.”
Of course, the heart of the ACLU’s allegation — that Granbury (and Glenn, especially) is violating the Left’s new definition of “sex” — is a stretch by almost every legal standard. The Biden administration may have twisted the word “sex” to mean “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” but that interpretation has never been passed into federal Title IX law.
And yet, the ACLU’s Chloe Kempf maintains (unconvincingly) that the “book removals and also the comments create this pervasively hostile environment.” “Both send a message to the entire community that LGBTQ identities are inherently obscene, worthy of stigmatization — and the book removals uniquely deprive LGBTQ students of the opportunity to read books that reflect their own experiences.”
Conservatives pushed back, insisting that this isn’t about LGBT hostility but age-appropriate content. Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, insisted that this whole controversy amounts to a leftist intimidation campaign. “The ACLU is bullying school districts who have responded to parental concerns about pornographic library books offered to children. Access to pornography at school is not a civil right.” Even if the law had been changed to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” in Title IX, “children still do not have a right to sexually explicit or violent content in public school library books. And school systems are under no obligation to support a publishing industry who can’t sell these books to parents and so sells them to librarians instead.”
Frankly, Kilgannon argued, “This is federal overreach into the education system, which is supposed to be a state issue.” Not to mention that “Biden is weaponizing another government agency: the DOE.”
If the president does intervene, dictating how school libraries handle certain book titles, the issue will almost certainly end up in court. “This isn’t the sort of civil rights issue that requires federal intervention,” Will Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty argued. “It’s a question about books in schools, not about individual rights being violated.”
Either way, it does show one thing: the potency of the parents’ movement. Cameron, who’s in his own fight to host story hours in the same libraries that allow drag queens, is witnessing the momentum firsthand. As many as 1,000 people turned out in Placentia, Calif. to hear the “Growing Pains” actor read his new book, “As You Grow.”
“I know why parents and grandparents are coming out of the woodwork,” Cameron told The Federalist. “They understand there is a war on children — and nobody’s going to stop it but us.” So if there’s one thing Americans can do, he told the crowd, it’s this: “Don’t just talk about what’s going on. Change what’s going on.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-01-18 14:49:272023-01-19 11:35:51Team Biden Joins the School Library Wars, Launching Federal Investigation
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the LGBTQ-sponsored “Religious Exemption Accountability Project” (REAP) asserting that “young and vulnerable” LGBTQ+ persons are “at the mercy of religiously affiliated, taxpayer-funded social service and educational institutions that often turn them away or force them into the closet.”
The students who litigated against the U.S. Department of Education and the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) wanted to overturn “a provision of Title IX that allows religious colleges to seek exemptions” from a law barring “sex-based discrimination.” Title IX is part of a 1972 measure and states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
However, there is a federal statute stating that Title IX “does not apply to an educational institution that is controlled by a religious organization to the extent that application of Title IX would be inconsistent with the religious tenets of the organization.” In other words, if a school believes that sexual intimacy is reserved for one man and one woman in the covenantal bond of marriage, and thereby adhering to 3,500 years of Judeo-Christian teaching, it can receive federal resources without penalty.
So, in October 2021, “the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon allowed three Christian post-secondary schools represented by Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys — Corban University, William Jessup University, and Phoenix Seminary — to intervene in the lawsuit and defend the relevant provisions of Title IX, the federal law under attack.”
The judge who issued the ruling, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, was appointed to the federal court by Bill Clinton. “Exempting religiously controlled educational institutions from Title IX,” she wrote in her decision, “is substantially related to the government’s objective of accommodating religious exercise.”
The judge also “rejected (REAP’s) argument that the exemption ran afoul of the First Amendment’s prohibition against the establishment of religion by Congress, saying they failed to show how the federal government, in contrast to the schools, advanced religion.”
Throughout the country — in workplaces, businesses, and other venues — LGBTQ-identifying persons can be subject to verbal cruelty and personal harassment. These are affronts to the God-given dignity enjoyed by every image-bearer of our Creator. Followers of Jesus should not only oppose them but defend those attacked when able.
With that said, I cannot help but wonder why the students who filed the lawsuit attend Christian colleges and universities whose faith commitments state clearly what they believe about human sexuality. Did they apply to and enter these schools under false pretenses — affirming the institutions’ doctrinal standards while intending to fight them once enrolled? Or upon attending, did they decide they were LGBTQ and choose to remain in order to overturn the schools’ commitments to biblical teaching?
Perhaps they felt they have a strong precedent for such initiatives as the REAP lawsuit. This past fall, the Christian Reformed Church, even though affirming the Bible’s teaching about men, women, and sex, decided to let the faculty at its flagship college, Calvin University, “dissent from a clause in (the CRC) confession of faith that regards sex outside of heterosexual marriage as sinful, enabling them to continue to work at the Christian school while also respecting their convictions.”
In other words, a college founded to uphold scriptural standards allows professors who disdain some of those standards to teach and, thereby, influence the young people who attend the institution. This is like saying that although my car uses diesel fuel I’m going to fill it up with low-octane gas. Hey, I’m filling it up, right? Why judge me for my tolerance of and even compassionate sympathy for diverse fuel types?
Similarly, some churches have abandoned the Bible’s clear teaching about human sexuality after intense and unrelenting pressure from LGBT-identifying activists and their allies. Even though the worldwide Methodist communion uniformly opposes any sexual intimacy outside of traditional marriage, American Methodist advocates of complete sexual autonomy have insisted on violating their church’s stated beliefs and are now dividing the United Methodist Church.
With precedents like these, it is understandable that the insistent and relentless demands of LGBTQ activists and their supporters would try to erode those institutions retaining fidelity to “the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:2).
Anyone who agrees with a school’s doctrinal statement or at least agrees to abide by its standards is welcome at a Christian college or university, depending on the individual institution’s rules. Yet no one is compelled to remain at a school whose standards are repellent to him or her. To do so speaks of a lack of moral courage and personal dishonesty as well, perhaps, of a certain desperation for affirmation that the student himself or herself does not possess within.
My heart goes out to those wrestling with issues of sexual identity. But this court case hasn’t been about any student’s view of his or her sexuality. It’s about standing for the truth of the Word of God and allowing those who follow it to do so without penalty. Continuing to stand without compromise is one of the great and ongoing challenges for the believing church today. May we be found faithful.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-01-18 05:58:232023-01-18 07:06:47Religious Freedom for Christian Colleges: A Victory in Federal Court
“Shall Paper live, or Ink/Since Brass and Marble Can’t Withstand/This Iron Age’s Violating Hand?” — Johannes de Bosco
The University of Southern California (that’s USC to you and me) has been thrust into the limelight yet again. In 2019, and for several years following, it was in the news as a major participant in the “Varsity Blues” scandal; rich parents were inveigled into paying bribes to the university’s water polo coach, so that their children might be admitted, as potential varsity players of the sport, to USC. It’s a university that as part of its online advertisement for itself says that “USC has conferred honorary degrees on 29 billionaires.” I’m not exactly sure why that should impress anyone, but some people at USC think it should; no doubt USC has its reasons that reason does not know. Some eyebrows were raised when USC agreed to pay its new football coach $10 million a year; not everyone on the faculty – you know, those old fogies who teach such frivolities as literature, history, and philosophy — were pleased by this demonstration of USC’s priorities. But what do those people know? Have they ever had to meet a payroll? A winning football team pays their salaries. They had better stop complaining.
And now the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work (USCSDPSSW for short) has put USC the news again. The school has just announced that it has decided to ban the word “field” from its curriculum. No longer will anyone at the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, whether faculty members, or staff, or students, be permitted to use the word “field.” From here on out, it’s strictly forbidden. The story of this remarkably thoughtful act of anti-racism can be found here: “Elite University Department Bans Use of Word ‘Field,’ Claiming It’s Too Racist,” by Alexa Schwerha, Daily Signal,
The University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work will no longer use the word “field” in its curriculum or its practices as part of its anti-racist framework, according to an email reportedly sent Monday.
The school reportedly stripped the word from use due to alleged ties to “anti-Black” and “anti-immigrant” rhetoric, according to the email sent by the Practicum Education Department to the campus community, faculty, staff, and students. The school informed [sic] that the word “practicum” would be used instead to “ensure [its] use of inclusive language and practice.”
“This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language,” the email reportedly reads. “Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.”
The revised language aligns with several anti-racist initiatives the school abides by, including the Council on Social Work Education’s Advancing Antiracism in Social Work Education and the Eliminate Racism Grand Challenge for Social Work, according to the email.
“In solidarity with universities across the nation, our goal is not just to change language but to honor and acknowledge incline [sic] and reject white supremacy, anti-immigrant and anti-blackness ideologies,” the email continues. “Words are powerful, but even more so is action. We are committing to further align our actions, behaviors, and practices with anti-racism and anti-oppression, which requires taking a close and critical look at our profession—our history, our biases, and our complicity in past and current injustices.”
The email then claimed the school would “train social work students” to “understand and embody social and racial justice” and told the campus community to “hold each other accountable.”
USC, the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, and the Practicum Education Department did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Don’t forgive them, Lord, at the USCSDPSSW they know exactly what they do. They are beyond all appeals to common sense. They will not engage – because they don’t know how to do so – in discussions about the right use of words. Delicacy, tact, intelligence – don’t even ask. Their every comical word-banning – don’t think they will stop with “field” — should be held up for ridicule, every jot and tittle of idiocy exposed, while those who refuse to get with the program should move unobserved from campus to campus, quietly distributing copies of Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language” and even more important, Ian Robinson’s The Survival of English.
Shouldn’t we do away entirely with the word “field”? If it summons up, as we are being asked to believe, images of black slaves in fields of tall cotton (but it was Johnny Cash, a white man, who sang about “them old cotton fields back home”), and Mexican workers in the bean fields and orange groves of sunny California, then it shouldn’t be banned just from the USCSDPSSW. It should be banned everywhere. Anti-racism demands it.
Think of all the possibilities. In sports, the USC Trojans run out onto the football practicum. Everyone experiences the collective thrill of anti-racism as they hear the announcer shout “they’re on the Prac-Ti-Cum and ready to go.” Baseball – same thing. The practicum of dreams will now have players catching balls at center, right, and left practicums.
In USC art classes, students will study such works of Van Gogh as “Wheat-practicum with a lark,” “The green wheat-practicum behind the Asylum painting,” and “Wheat-practicum with crows.” It takes a little getting used to, but just keep at it, and you’ll soon get the hang of it. And each time you refrain from saying the word “field,” you will have won a little victory for anti-racism. Rosa Parks would be pleased.
In the Department of Physics at USC, that last lonely professor who refuses to get on board with string theory, that is still all the rage, should announce that he is still working on trying to come up with a Unified Practicum Theory. You’re unfamiliar with that? Here’s what it is: in particle physics, it’s an attempt to describe all fundamental forces and the relationships between elementary particles in terms of a single theoretical framework. In physics, forces can be described by practicums that mediate interactions between separate objects.” There. That shouldn’t be hard to understand. A special house blend of quantum mechanics and general — or is it special? — relativity.
And let’s not stop with banning only the word “field” from our collective vocabularies and consciousnesses. There are so many other words that need to be excised from our scandalously offensive lexicons. Take the word “bend,” as in “the slaves had to bend over as they picked the cotton in their practicums.” Let’s fix it: “the slaves had to ____their torsos as they picked the cotton in their practicums.” Fill in the blank. Anything you come up with will be better than “bend.” Then do the same to transform “a bend in the river” and “South Bend, Indiana” and “bend it like Beckham.” See – you can even have fun as you deracistize your language.
What about the word “cotton” itself? I bought a cotton polo shirt the other day, and when I got home I couldn’t stop thinking about those held in bondage in the antebellum South picking the very same stuff that my shirt was made of, and I felt so…so racist. I should have been more attentive to my language. I should have taught myself to think of my recent purchase as a “shirt made of a soft white fibrous substance that surrounds the seeds of a tropical and subtropical plant and is used as textile fiber and thread for sewing.” And from now on I will. Now, isn’t that better?
I fear there is no end to this. There are so many words — thousands, maybe tens of thousands — that will need to be replaced. Whole departments of language police will spend years to work on the problem. We’ll need to get rid of “master bedroom” and “master class” and “Master and Margarita.” We’ll need to ban “overalls” and “dungarees.” And “back” of course, which makes us think of “back of the bus.” We can’t have “back.” Oh, and “bus.” And “tree.” We can’t have “tree.” Do I have to draw you a diagram? Goodness, what work we have ahead of us. And not a moment too soon. Let’s be grateful to the hyper-vigilant people at the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work (USCSDPSSW) who led the way. And now we have a solemn duty to take what they’ve begun to another level.
Sheila Jackson Lee introduces bill that criminalizes criticism of a “non-White person” by a White
“The bill says any White person who criticizes immigration or vilifies any “non-White person or group” can be charged with committing a federal hate crime.”https://t.co/zAEijeigW9
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2023-01-17 09:27:562023-01-18 15:26:05The Graves of Academe: USC School of Social Work Bans ‘Field’
Social media users were shocked and outraged over a recent anti-Israel rally put on by pro-Palestinian protestors at the University of Michigan this week.
Clips of the protest depicted marchers, chanting “Intifada, Intifada! Long live the Intifada” a call to violent overthrow of the Jewish state inspired by Palestinian riots and rebellions against Israel in the late 80s, early 90s, and early 2000s.
“There is only one solution!” a female marcher was seen chanting, as the crowd behind her responded, “Intifada! Revolution!
Marchers, seen walking around the Ann Arbor campus screaming into bullhorns and waving Palestinian flags, were also heard chanting the infamous anti-Israel call to arms: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
Media reported that the antisemitic rally was held to protest Vice President Kamala Harris’ Thursday visit to the campus, where she gave a speech on climate policy, and student activism. The protestors appeared to be standing against U.S. government support for the state of Israel.
Another video depicted the marchers outside of campus building in which Harris was giving her speech, saying, “Not another nickel, not another dime, no more money for Israel’s crimes.”
The blatant call to overthrow Israel disturbed prominent Twitter users, who were stunned that such sentiment was expressed so freely on a major American college campus.
Jewish Journal columnist Blake Flayton tweeted, “At the University of Michigan, a call to murder Jews.”
Rep. Jared Moskovitz, R-Fla., spoke to the shocking nature of the rally, tweeting, “Using Hitler’s word ‘solution’ is intentional here. Israel has a right to exist. We will never compromise that. The Jewish people have a right to exist. We will ensure.”…
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2023-01-16 07:16:562023-01-16 07:16:56University of Michigan: ‘Palestinian’ jihad supporters call for destruction of Israel, ‘There is only one solution’
A Pennsylvania State University sociology professor reportedly instructed straight students to watch “gay or lesbian porn” to learn if they are bisexual, Fox News reported.
Sam Richards told students in SOC 119 that watching porn could make them realize that they are attracted to members of the same sex, according to Fox News. The Dec. 6 lecture was about “A Conversation on Trans Issues, [Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists], and The Binary.”
“If you’re straight, watch gay or lesbian porn and see how quickly you feel aroused,” Richards reportedly said. “And how you can’t control that. You’ll realize that, ‘Oh, d—, I could be sexualized by people who are like me.’”
He then reportedly said the everyone is “at some level non-binary” and “easily bisexual.” He also addressed, specifically, the straight and male students about watching porn.
“Watch gay porn. See if you feel that feeling. If you feel that feeling, look in a mirror, and say huh, maybe I’m just feeling some things that I’m just afraid to release,” he reportedly said. “And maybe you release that and maybe you’d be surprised that maybe you actually are fine being more bisexual.”
The lecture was reportedly uploaded to the class YouTube but now appears to have been removed.
Penn State reportedly defended the professor’s comment because of the importance of “academic freedom.”
“Professor Richards purposefully teaches in a manner designed to promote discussion across a spectrum of opinions. His class is not mandatory but is a popular elective that students choose to join,” Penn State told Fox News Digital. “Dr. Richards and his course colleagues take time to discuss opinions from many perspectives — from liberal to conservative—and delve into topics from different viewpoints to create conversation, challenge beliefs and encourage students to explore uncomfortable and complex topics.”
Richards also reportedly told female students how to urinate like men and told them to use a “a little piece of leather” to “go in the urinal or go outside.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-01-14 07:02:442023-01-16 12:17:27Professor Instructs Class To Watch Gay Porn To Learn If They Are Bisexual
A South Bronx elementary principal who publicly posted student test scores in the school lobby to shame low-achievers into improving was “unprofessional and arguably cruel,” an investigation found.
Victoria Najera, principal of PS 333, the Longwood Academy of Discovery, also held an assembly to announce a trip to Cirque du Soleil for the highest-scoring kids – calling each winner by name.
Struggling students excluded from the trip were crushed. One boy sobbed so hard he gasped for breath and a girl scrawled on paper that she wanted to kill herself, teachers recalled.
Beyond “cruel,” Najera’s actions “may also have violated the Chancellor’s Regulations as well as other state and federal safeguards” against releasing students’ records, the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools concluded in a Jan. 18 report to Chancellor David Banks and released to The Post.
Special Commissioner Anastasia Coleman recommended that the DOE “take appropriate action” with Najera, who is still the school’s principal.
Najera explained to investigators that during the 2019-2020 school year, she started “goal setting” for all students, and displaying their “progression” throughout the year, the SCI reports. Najera said she intended to “motivate” and give students “incentives” to improve.
A staffer told SCI that Najera believed students “needed to be embarrassed” to do better.
Last year, only 4% of PS 333 students taking the state math tests passed, and 10% passed the state reading tests.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-01-13 06:56:142023-01-13 06:58:58Only 4% of Students in South Bronx School Can Do Math
A Latina art teacher, a Shiite painting of Mohammed, and tolerance theocracy.
The decision by Hamline University to purge a minority art teacher for showing a Shiite painting of Mohammed has traveled from the outskirts of a few blogs, and a student paper of the small private college in St. Paul, to art sites, a PEN condemnation and finally the New York Times.
Erika Lopez Prater, an adjunct at Hamline, showed a Persian painting of Mohammed to her class. Aram Wedatalla, a president of the Muslim Student Association, objected. The MSA rallied to denounce her, along with its advisor, Nur Mood: the college’s Assistant Director of Social Justice Programs. The Latina professor was dumped and condemned as an Islamophobe. Jaylani Hussein, CAIR-Minnesota’s director came in to hold a session on Islamophobia. The MSA and CAIR have both been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
When a religion professor pointed out that Muslims have different views on paintings of Mohammed, Hussein described such Muslims as “extremists” and argued that, “You can teach a whole class about why Hitler was good.”
The New York Times then describes how “Ms. Baker, the department head, and Dr. Everett, the administrator, separately walked up to the religion professor, put their hands on his shoulders and said this was not the time to raise these concerns”.
After years of ridiculing warnings that an alliance with Islamists would require them to enforce sharia law, liberals did just that at Hamline University. And this time their targets weren’t white men, but a minority woman and Shiite Muslim paintings.
Minnesota liberals have embraced diversity. And sometimes diversity requires purging a Latina academic trying to teach students about Islamic art because she used works from the Shiite side of the spectrum, rather than the Sunni one that the Muslim Brotherhood belongs to.
One of the paintings comes from Rashid al-Dīn: a Jewish man who converted to Shiite Islam. His motives like those of the vast majority of converts was to avoid persecution and get ahead. The painting, like most Islamic pictoral art, is objectively terrible and could be improved on by a moderately talented six-year-old. The only reason Islamic art is ever taught is for diversity.
Islam was quickly tossed into everything after September 11 as a show of tolerance. Muslims, formerly obscure, became ground zero for diversity. A market for Islamic art heated up. Despite hard strictures against religion in the workplace, corporations and government offices felt the need to virtue signal with a show of support for Muslims. That meant posters with women wearing hijab and a lot of Koranic calligraphy in places that would never display a Bible.
Many Muslims were not happy to see Islamic scriptures displayed in ‘filthy’ places. Muslim groups had previously accused everything from a Nike sneaker to an ice cream swirl, and any set of curves, of blasphemously containing Allah’s name. They were enraged to see it being offered up for tattoos or hanging in the bathroom of a urologist’s office.
Islamists were never interested in “diversity”. What they wanted was for everyone to respect Islamic laws. In the name of tolerance, liberals became theocrats and Islamists used the grammar of diversity to eliminate any diversity. Confronted with objections, Hamline’s Islamists resorted to equating Shiite pictures of Mohammed with Hitler or the ‘N-word’.
Liberals, who accepted the premise that tolerance requires theocracy, are unable to navigate the issue. The New York Times interviewed a Persian Shiite professor at Duke who explained that he loves and shows pictures of Mohammed all the time. Yet the entire article never uses the terms, “Sunni” or “Shiite” or suggests that there are sectarian differences at work.. After having taken it on themselves to impose Islamic theocracy, they are reluctant to adjudicate it.
And yet, unlike Mohammed cartoons, what happened at Hamline University shows that the intersectional enforcement of Islamic theocracy alongside Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ and Planned Parenthood requires more than just banning criticism of Mohammed, but even suppressing other Islamic doctrines in favor of the supremacy of Sunni Islamists.
Anything else is a hate crime.
Hamline University’s social justice administration purged a Latina art teacher because she dared to show works from the Shiite canon which offended Sunnis linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Liberals found it very easy to support Islamic supremacism when it was a matter of banning conservative protesters from burning the Koran or mentioning that Mohammed was a child molester. But that was just the camel’s nose creeping into the tent. The rest of the camel requires that America be reordered thoroughly in line with Islamic law in every possible detail.
While liberals see a distinction between a defaced Koran, a Charlie Hebdo cartoon of Mohammed and a Shiite painting of Mohammed, to the Muslim Brotherhood there is no difference. And the Democrat political establishment and the leftist cultural affiliates that surrendered to the Brotherhood’s front groups have to decide where to draw the line.
Islam has been in a state of perpetual civil war for most of its existence. Muslim civil wars have killed far more people in the last decade than all our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And we’ve imported that civil war into America.
That’s not just idle talk or conspiracy theories. The worst series of Muslim murders in America were carried out by an Afghan Sunni targeting Afghan Shiites in Albuquerque. Importing Islam doesn’t just mean machete attacks in Times Square, it also meant three teens who were arrested in November for plotting to kill everyone in a Shiite mosque in Chicago.
The leftists who got into bed with Sunni Islamists thought that all they had to do was make Americans defer to Islamic theocracy, but getting schoolchildren to visit mosques or convincing our leaders to ban criticism of Islam was the easy part. The hard part is doing what the Muslims themselves were never able to do for any real length of time: maintain a unified theocracy.
Hamline University had a lot more Sunnis than Shiites. Its Islamic student organization is the MSA. And the leadership found it expedient to accept Sunni Islamic theocracy and denounce Shiite depictions of Mohammed. Nationally, liberals are less comfortable with that bargain. PEN has denounced Hamline and the New York Times awkwardly suggests it’s a complex issue.
It’s complex, but not in a way that the media or their party are willing to discuss or accept.
Islamists repeatedly tell us that there is “only one Islam”. What they really mean is that there’s only one Islam that they will accept. Sunnis, with their superior numbers and Muslim Brotherhood organizations financed by oil money, dominate. And it is now our job to help them enforce that “one Islam” in America. Sharia means that we are their religious police.
Intersectionality has outsourced the enforcement of Islamic theocracy to social justice groups, campus administrators, corporations, government offices and all the woke institutions.
Wokeness is sharia. That is the awkward reality playing out at Hamline which brought in its first black president, who denounced academic freedom for permitting the display of Mohammed art, where Islamists were appointed to administer social justice, and now faces a liberal backlash.
But the backlash carefully avoids the central issues, especially the conflation of theocracy with tolerance, which is at the heart of the post 9/11 dirty deal that liberals made with Islamists.
Until they’re ready to rethink that deal, they’ll have to enforce Islamic law in America.
The University of Southern California (USC) Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work will no longer use the world “field” in its curriculum or its practices as part of its anti-racist framework, according to an email reportedly sent Monday.
The school reportedly stripped the word from use due to alleged ties to “anti-Black” and “anti-immigrant” rhetoric, according to the email sent by the Practicum Education Department to the campus community, faculty, staff and students. The school informed that the word “practicum” would be used instead to “ensure [its] use of inclusive language and practice.”
“This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language,” the email reportedly reads. “Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.”
Today, @uscsocialwork sent out this letter announcing that they will no longer use the word “field” (as in “conducting field work”) because it’s perceived as racist. Is this with merit or empty virtue signaling? @elonmusk@IngrahamAnglepic.twitter.com/kgM9p4MAb5
— Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD (@houmanhemmati) January 10, 2023
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-01-11 07:26:262023-01-12 06:38:58Elite University Department Bans Use Of Word ‘Field,’ Claiming It’s Too Racist
Governments should focus on funding effective education.
What if we just cut through the morass of programs and take all the money being provided at the federal and state level and put it into individual student endowment accounts?
The late 1970s in the United States was a time of surprising deregulation. It was the beginning of the end for the telephone monopolies. Those inside the regulated industries, and the regulatory agencies, warned of doom and disaster if competition were allowed. The doomsayers were wrong. The free market provided solutions that were impossible to forecast. Competition and the profit motive brought out the best that humans can create.
Communications solutions today are employing far more people than the old phone monopolies, and are delivering services never dreamed of in that era. The forecasts of disastrous unemployment and system collapse if the phone monopolies were opened to competition were totally and completely wrong.
K-12 is the phone monopoly of our time.
This seems like the best time in years to truly reform K-12. However, the focus seems to be on charter schools, leaving behind thousands of students in poorly performing districts, and most proposed solutions leave out homeschooling.
The fundamental problem is the lack of competition. There is a simple way to introduce it.
Individualised investment
Instead of pouring money into the local school monopolies, the solution is to simply endow individual students. Open the door to the free market in a meaningful way.
We should create an individual educational endowment fund for each K-12 student. Student endowment funds would pay out annually for students who achieved minimum grade level knowledge, including to the parents of homeschooled students. The determination of minimum achievement would be through testing, with the tests also from free market providers.
Providers for students who did poorly would not be paid, leaving twice the annual amount available next year to educators who could catch them up. Seriously underperforming students would accrue several years of catch-up funding, providing extra incentive for the type of personalised attention that would benefit them. Military veteran servicemen and women teaching small groups of students, developing personal relationships, can change lost kids into enthusiastic young adults.
Opening educational services to the free market will allow for practical job-related instruction and college level courses to be included as providers fight for market share.
Competition among educational providers will make full use of technology, will provide useful training for actual jobs, and will deliver far more education for the same money. Gamification will keep students involved in ways that existing K-12 material can’t touch.
Instead of leaving dropouts to fend for themselves, the funds should remain on deposit indefinitely, allowing those who get their act together after some time in the adult world to get an education.
Modelling the idea will show that existing school structures and transportation fleets will be used, more than with charter schools. Most school systems will continue as they are, but a new element of potential competition will focus their efforts.
Essential pruning
A major early effect might be defunding some inner-city school systems, with the carry-over of endowment funds providing an incentive to corporate providers. These districts are a disgrace, but there is almost no way to change them now. Defunding poor performance in a way that will bring new providers could work.
The new providers will be renting space and transportation for their offerings in most cases from existing school districts. Just as with telecom deregulation, it will take several years to see the full impact, but requiring minimum accomplishment for payout will protect students and taxpayers as solutions evolve.
Homeschooling pods will explode, but those kids will still participate on local sports teams, and transportation to practice (and back) will also be rented from existing fleets by their parents.
Special needs students would still have extra funding, but at an individual student level.
Let’s end the monopoly. Let’s open the door to competition.
Unleash technology, but pay only for results.
Homeschoolers would be an unstoppable force for reform if a realistic plan to pay them existed. The endowment idea would do it.
Stark contrast
I was radicalised on this issue by an experience with a black tow truck driver. When I was in the Army during the era of the draft, my platoon had a bunch of black guys from inner-city Detroit. Our off-duty pastime in Germany with no English language TV was reading paperback novels. They were traded over and over, and it was common to see everyone on his bunk with his head propped up reading. The black guys read effortlessly.
Recently I needed a tow, and a black tow truck driver did a good job hooking me up and handling his equipment. He was a solid guy, the same type as the guys I knew in the Army. As we rode to the destination, he said he had graduated from one of the big inner city high schools.
When we got to the destination, he asked me to help him do the paperwork, and as we worked through it, I discovered that he could hardly read. This is ridiculous. These schools are a disgrace. Here is a guy who will probably never be able to read effortlessly because of terrible, crappy inner-city schools he was stuck in.
The black guys in my platoon from inner city Detroit went to schools that didn’t have unions in the 1950s and 1960s. School management was adequate at that time to produce acceptable results. They became the Motown generation that led to ending segregation and providing great music that I still enjoy.
Preference falsification among Democrat voters on K-12 has created a situation where explosive change can occur. The Overton Window can suddenly shift. K-12 seems to be that issue.
What is needed is a practical method. Endowment Accounts provide that method.
There is no way to fix the current K-12 situation beyond radical demonopolising. I can see a future where school infrastructure is owned by large competitive providers in much the same way Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. operate today, fighting for market share by providing educational services that work and that kids and parents want.
This is a great opportunity to apply technology and dramatically improve the way we educate our children.
Richard Illyes is a retired electronic designer and programmer in rural Texas south of Houston. He is an active pilot and flight instructor and flies off a grass strip at his place outside Alvin, where… More by Richard Illyes
The average American university has more than 45 individuals with jobs devoted to promoting so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI programs push divisive identity politics as well as distorted narratives about American history. But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is once again leading on this issue, taking a first step in clamping down on these counterproductive positions and administrative bloat.
In order to provide taxpayers and parents with transparency around what tax dollars are funding within the halls of state colleges and universities in Florida, the governor’s office sent a letter to the state Department of Education this week requesting that the agency, along with public universities, provide information on initiatives and expenditures associated with DEI programs and critical race theory.
Each institution must provide by this Friday, Jan. 13, a brief description of the program or activity, the number of full and full-time-equivalent employees involved, the total funding to support the initiative, and the amount of state funding spent.
It’s a welcome survey. Florida State University has at least 31 personnel dedicated to DEI efforts, and the University of Florida has at least 29, which is likely only the tip of the DEI iceberg on that campus. Numerous such staff members are on the payrolls of Florida’s 38 other state colleges and universities.
Getting a full accounting of costs associated with the many programs and initiatives will paint a fuller picture of just how much taxpayer money is funding DEI efforts—efforts that are counterproductive to fostering welcoming environments for all students and that cement divisive, identity-focused politics on campus.
On average across the country, universities employ four times as many DEI staff as staff dedicated to helping students with disabilities, according to research by The Heritage Foundation’s Jay Greene and the Educational Freedom Institute’s James Paul. Their research also found that universities employ 1.4 times as many DEI staff as history professors.
The problem is that this proliferation of DEI personnel and initiatives is not improving student satisfaction with their higher education experience. Rather, it is increasing bureaucratic bloat and “may be better understood as jobs programs subsidizing political activism without improving campus climate,” as Greene and Paul explain.
DeSantis’ most recent move follows other important measures his administration has taken to rein in the Left’s capture of academic institutions funded by Florida taxpayers, such as:
The Stop WOKE Act. This law prohibits public school districts and colleges from hiring critical race theory consultants and codifies Florida’s prohibition on the application of critical race theory in K-12 schools. It also prohibits employers from requiring employees to participate in DEI training. “In Florida we are taking a stand against the state-sanctioned racism that is critical race theory … We won’t allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other,” DeSantis stated when he announced the proposal in December 2021. While a federal judge paused aspects of the law in November, the governor is expected to appeal the decision.
The Parental Rights in Education Act. This law stipulates that “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” It puts parents—rather than public schools, which should be focused on teaching young children to read and write—in the driver’s seat on sensitive topics like sexual orientation and “gender identity.”
Senate Bill 7044. This law requires universities to periodically change accrediting agencies in an effort to reduce the “inordinate amount of power” held by accrediting bodies, DeSantis said. Requiring periodic changes in accrediting agencies may also mean colleges aren’t pressured to increase DEI initiatives in order to remain in good standing with the accreditation cartel. For example, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools released a DEI position statement that reads in part that it “supports and encourages the leadership role of its institutions in promoting and sustaining diversity, equity and inclusion in all arenas of higher education.” The law also requires professors to undergo “comprehensive post-tenure review” every five years to provide performance accountability.
Alternative Pathways Into the Classroom. In August, DeSantis announced changes to the Florida Administrative Code that provide a pathway for veterans and returning service members to obtain temporary teaching licenses. Downplaying or ending certification requirements to teach (including the requirement that teachers possess a teaching degree, with no consideration for real-world experience as a substitute qualification) would address purported teacher shortages while also weakening the power of ineffective and woke colleges of education.
From providing parents with more transparency relative to what their children are taught in schools and protecting children from the discrimination of critical race theory to weakening the accreditation cartel and shining sunlight on DEI, Florida is leading the way in weakening the Left’s capture of education institutions.
It’s a big reason—along with expansive school choice options for families and a good return on investment for taxpayers—the state ranked first on The Heritage Foundation’s inaugural Education Freedom Report Card.
As 2023 legislative sessions kick off across the country, it will be exciting to see what other states follow suit.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
Lindsey M. Burke is director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy and Mark A. Kolokotrones fellow in education. Read her research. Twitter: @lindseymburke
In what has become a familiar and dismal ritual, the Archbishop of Kansas City, released an apology for sexual abuse by Catholic clergy last week. He joined “bishops across the state of Kansas in offering his deepest apologies to the victims, their families, the faithful of the church, and the Kansas Catholic community at large”
He was responding to a report by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation which identified dozens of Catholic clergy suspected of committing sex crimes against children over the last 70 years.
… a six-member task force had interviewed 137 victims of abuse, initiated 125 criminal cases and distributed 30 affidavits to prosecutors for charging consideration. Investigators identified 188 clergy members suspected of committing various criminal acts from records that stretched to the 1950s.
Catholics should feel ashamed of these terrible crimes. One abused child is one too many. One hundred and thirty-seven, even over 70 years, is almost too painful to contemplate. And Kansas is a drop in the American bucket; other states have issued similar reports.
However, to eliminate the scourge of child sexual abuse, it’s important to know whether Catholic clergy are the principal perpetrators – as the media often assumes — or whether other institutions have the same problem – or worse.
The latter possibility is looking very likely.
Another scathing report about sexual abuse was released last week. It shone a spotlight on the Chicago Public Schools system. It wasn’t covered by Associated Press, or the Chicago Tribune, or the Washington Post, or the New York Times, or the Boston Globe. In fact, it was barely covered at all.
And yet it was horrifying.
Here is the way Chicago City Wire, a tiny news service, summarized its findings: “Hundreds of Chicago Public Schools teachers sexually groomed, assaulted and raped CPS students last school year.” It included several lurid stories.
A much bigger website whose focus is education in Chicago ran the news under the headline: “Chicago Public Schools’ watchdog flags unchecked overtime pay, lost students, sexual misconduct”. The sickening allegations were buried at the end of the article.
If the abuse chronicled in this report had happened in a Catholic diocese, it would have been on the front page of every newspaper in the United States – and possibly around the world.
Apparently this is just scratching the surface of the level of abuse in America’s public schools. The Chicago Inspector General’s report reassures readers that: “there is no indication that the frequency of these occurrences is higher within CPS than in other districts nationwide.”
How consoling!
The Inspector-General’s Sexual Allegations Unit (SAU) says that it is the only K-12 investigative unit of its kind in the US. It is also the only entity which publishes public reports. “Reliable statistics from other school districts are simply not available,” it admits.
The SAU reported that between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022, it opened investigations into 81 cases of sexual touching, 35 of grooming, 33 of sexual abuse, 26 of sexual acts, 25 of in-person sexual comments, and 14 sexual electronic communications. There were 243 cases of leering, “creepy” behaviour or other matters of concern. There were numerous cases of school officials who failed to report allegations of sexual misconduct.
And these happened in just one year. And these were only the reported incidents.
What is extremely concerning is that there were only eight cases of “outcry” about past abuse – victims who reported historic sexual abuse. The experience of the Catholic Church shows that there is often a dark cesspit of abuse dating back decades. Victims are often so traumatised that they delay reporting their abusers for years.
But Chicago Public Schools does not seem interested in investigating historic abuse. It has enough work to do in sweeping current abuse under the carpet.
To give a sense of perspective, here is the current status of sexual abuse in the US Catholic Church. According to the most recent annual report by StoneBridge Business Partners, an independent auditor, Catholic organisations received 3,103 allegations between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021– but only 30 related to the current period. And only six of those were substantiated.
Six cases of abuse by clergy in the whole United States in one year is six too many. But it is far fewer than the hundreds credibly reported in the Chicago Public Schools.
When will American parents see reports on other public school systems? When will the Governor issue an apology? When will the Chicago Teachers Union?
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2023-01-09 07:41:572023-01-09 07:43:31A horrifying report on sexual abuse in Chicago public schools sank without a trace last week. Why?
Public school officials caused harm to Asian students’ college applications by not notifying them of important academic achievements.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin began 2023 by asking the state’s Attorney General Jason Miyares to investigate the allegation that officials at Thomas Jefferson High School (TJ) intentionally withheld notifications of National Merit awards from the school’s students and families (most of them are Asians) in the name of “equity” and “inclusion.”
Asra Q. Nomani, a human rights activist and a proud mom of a TJ graduate, broke the latest scandal at the school right before Christmas. According to Nomani, the scandal was initially uncovered by another TJ mom, Shawna Yashar, whose son took the PSAT test. He was recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation “as a Commended Student in the top 3 percent nationwide — one of about 50,000 students earning that distinction.” It was the kind of honor that would have helped his applications for colleges and scholarships last fall had the TJ officials not withheld his award announcement. When the TJ officials eventually notified him of his award, the deadline for his college applications had already passed, which rendered the award useless.
Nomani learned that her son, a graduate of TJ’s class of 2021, was never told by school officials that he was a “Commended Student” in 2020. Even more infuriating is that these two young men’s experiences were not the result of some honest one-time mistake.
Nomani discovered that “the principal, Ann Bonitatibus, and the director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, have been withholding this information from families and the public for years, affecting the lives of at least 1,200 students over the principal’s tenure of five years.” These officials’ actions (or inactions) disproportionally hurt Asian students because the majority of the school’s student body is Asian. By intentionally withholding awards and eventually delivering them late and in a low-key way, these officials robbed the students and their families of chances to celebrate hard-earned achievements.
In addition, these officials caused undue harm to these students’ college applications and scholarships. For some first-generation immigrants with no other financial resources to fall back on, the damage caused by these school officials’ actions could have a lifetime effect, with some students having to settle for less prestigious colleges or be forced to take out more student loans.
After Nomani broke the story, TJ’s director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, justified her action by insisting, “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements.” Does she understand that celebrating someone’s achievement and acknowledging someone’s effort is an important part of recognizing students as individuals?
Meanwhile, Bonitatibus “still hasn’t publicly recognized the students or told parents from earlier years that their students won the awards. And she hasn’t yet delivered the missing certificates.”
TJ is a prime example of the woke left’s systemic racism against Asian Americans in our education system. Besides withholding awards, TJ’s woke officials and liberals of the Fairfax County School Board also canceled the school’s merit-based and race-blind admission exam to increase the student body’s “diversity,” which has become a code word for “purging qualified Asians.” The result speaks for itself: Asian students make up 54 percent of the class of 2025, a dramatic decrease from 73 percent of the class of 2021.
Another elite high school that followed TJ’s lead and canceled its merit-based admission in 2021 has experienced disastrous results. San Francisco’s Lowell High School, once the best high school in the city, dropped out of the top 100 ranking of high schools nationwide for the first time in the school’s history after woke officials canceled the school’s merit-based admission and replaced it with a lottery system. After Asian American residents in the city successfully recalled three leftist members of the school board, the new members reinstated merit-based admission at Lowell last year.
At TJ, a group of concerned parents organized a group called the “Coalition for Thomas Jefferson High School,” and they sued Fairfax County Public School District for the school’s “unconstitutional” and discriminatory new admission policy. A federal judge ruled in favor of the coalition last year, but an appeals court stayed the decision.
The coalition filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court last year, but the high court declined to block TJ’s new anti-Asian admission policy. The high court decided before it heard two cases challenging affirmative action-based admissions policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University. The oral arguments of the two cases have given much hope that the Supreme Court will uphold America’s principle of equality under the law by ruling in June this year that affirmative action-based admission policies are unconstitutional.
But Asian Americans cannot rest our hope in one court’s ruling alone. A lot more should be done at the state level. That is why Youngkin’s announcement of launching a civil rights investigation of TJ officials who withheld awards from students is welcome news. Youngkin said, “Parents and students deserve answers. … I believe this failure may have caused material harm to those students and their parents and that this failure may have violated the Virginia Human Rights Act.” Youngkin was spot on.
What these school officials did was a violation of students’ civil rights. Youngkin’s consistent focus on education and the clarity in his messaging explains why many Asian voters supported him during his gubernatorial race.
I sincerely hope Youngkin’s investigation will not only right the wrongs for affected Asian American students and their families at TJ but also become a rallying cry for all patriotic Americans. The most pervasive form of institutional racism widely practiced today in the United States is the anti-Asian hate in our education system. From eliminating gifted and talented programs in K-12, to canceling merit-based entrance exams to elite high schools, to dropping standard tests from college admissions, the objective is to reduce Asian American representation regardless of our qualification and effort because we are the “wrong” kind of minority.
