CALL TO ACTION: Stop Critical Race Theory in Florida’s Schools

We need your help. We have an important call to action this week to protect our children in our school systems against Critical Race Theory. Additionally, we wanted to thank all of your for attending our National Virtual Summit and have some interesting details to share, along with an instant replay in case you missed it.

Stop Critical Race Theory in Our Schools

Below is an open letter to Governor DeSantis.  What he is doing so far is amazing, but his rhetoric must be followed with Executive Orders and Florida Department Of Education (DOE) actions to stop CRT in Florida.

On Friday we are doing an Action Alert to the Governor and Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran. Please participate by downloading this letter, adding your signature and sending it to the governor!

Action: Please download this letter and add your signature. Send it to Governor DeSantis (contact information below) Many of you belong to multiple grassroots groups, Churches, etc. They are welcome to participate. You will realize the real sense of urgency reading the OPEN Letter.  School districts are buying the Critical Race Theory infused English Language Arts (ELA) text books right now.

Contact Governor DeSantis at: governorron.desantis@eog.myflorida.com

Office of Governor Ron DeSantis
State of Florida
The Capitol
400 S. Monroe St.
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001
(850) 488-7146
(850) 488-7146
(850) 488-7146
(850) 488-7146
(850) 488-7146
(850) 488-7146
(850) 488-7146(850) 488-7146


Download & Sign Letter Now


©Defend Florida. All rights reserved.

DEMOCRAT CHILD ABUSE: White House Balks At Reopening Schools

COVID presents no threat to children. There hasn’t been one case of a child giving COVID to a teacher. COVID is the club which Democrats mean to beat us down, into submission. Once the children are under their complete, insane control, the rest is child’s play.

The Democrats have already destroyed the Millennial generation, now the final blow, the death stroke, will be the Coronialls — a paranoid, panicked, generation of socialist zombies. That is the goal.

White House Now Not So Sure About Reopening Schools

From the CNN tweet: Anita Dunn, an adviser to the President, says that schools should probably reopen in September if people continue to get vaccinated, adding that it is not absolute because “it’s an unpredictable virus” (Twitter). From Mark Hemingway: Kids have been in-person at private schools all year. We know plenty about the risks. This is about teachers unions, not kids (Twitter). From Karol Markowicz: While much of grown-up America moves on, our children are trapped in the forever pandemic. She goes on to blister the dishonesty coming from many of the so-called experts (NY Post). From Tim Carney: I think the lockdowns and Trump broke millions of brains. We know solitary confinement is crazy-making. We know being too online is bad for mental health. The outdoor vaccinated masking is an insanity symptom caused by this (Twitter).

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Idaho State House Passes Legislation Banning Anti-White ‘Critical Race Theory’ in Schools

Stand up and fight against this vicious racist indoctrination of our children.

Idaho State House Passes Legislation Banning Anti-White ‘Critical Race Theory’ in Schools

By: Shane Trejo, Big League Politics, Apr 27, 2021:

Legislation to ban the teaching of Marxist Critical Race Theory in Idaho schools has passed in the state house by a 27-8 vote.

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo made the announcement in a Twitter post:

The bill, House Bill 377, will now be considered in the state senate after being approved in the house. If approved and signed into law, the legislation would ban schools from teaching “that any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior.”

“The Idaho legislature finds that tenets…often found in “critical race theory”…exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho and its citizens,” the bill states.

Big League Politics has reported on other states, including Florida under the stewardship of Gov. Ron Desantis, taking aim at critical race theory:

Critical race theory will not have a place in any public schools in the Sunshine State.

Governor Ron DeSantis announced on March 17, 2021 that Florida’s curriculum will “expressly exclude…Critical Race Theory.”  DeSantis declared,“There’s no room in our classrooms for things like Critical Race Theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.”

In his announcement, DeSantis unveiled a $106 million proposal to promote civics education and civics literacy in public schools.

“Our schools are supposed to give people a foundation of knowledge, not supposed to be indoctrination centers, where you’re trying to push specific ideologies,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Naples, Florida.

Under this proposal, the Florida Department of Education will be instructed to set up the Florida Civic Seal of Excellence, which according to News4Jax, is “a new professional endorsement for civics education.” DeSantis announced that teachers who finish the training will be able to receive a $3,000 bonus.

Former President Donald Trump has viciously attacked critical race theory, describing it as “toxic propaganda” that will“destroy our country”. In the final months of his presidency Trump instructed all federal agencies to halt all funding to any training that “teaches or suggests” that America is an inherently racist country. 

DeSantis believes that critical race theory is capable of fostering division.

“They’re trying to make people view each other based on race, I want to do the opposite, I want to treat people as individuals. I want to treat people based on character, but when you put this curriculum in, it ends up creating more divisions,” he commented.”

Republicans are finally getting serious about fighting back against Marxist indoctrination in schools. However, it may be too little, too late; Black Lives Matter terrorists are already on the march, with institutional backing, to devastate Western Civilization.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permenently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadowbanned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on social and with your email contacts.

Stalin was a ‘Cancel Culture’ Pioneer: The Inside Story on How He Cancelled ‘Hamlet’

William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is considered by some to be the single greatest story ever written.

Hamlet has it all: ghosts, sword fights, suicide, revenge, lust, murder, philosophy, faith, manipulation, and a climactic bloodbath worthy of a Tarantino film. It’s a masterpiece of both high art and sensationalism, the only play I’ve seen performed live three times.

Not everyone likes Hamlet, of course. One of its detractors was Soviet premier Joseph Stalin.

Stalin’s hatred for the play has almost become a thing of legend, in part because it’s unclear precisely why Stalin hated the play. Entire academic papers are dedicated to answering the question.

In his autobiography Testimony, the famous Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich suggests that Stalin saw the play as excessively dark and potentially subversive.

“[Stalin] simply didn’t want people watching plays with plots that displeased him,” Shostakovich wrote; “you never know what might pop into the mind of some demented person.”

Stalin didn’t ban the play, however. He merely let it be known he disapproved of Hamlet during a rehearsal at the Moscow Art Theater, Stalin’s favorite theater.

“Why is this necessary—playing Hamlet in the Art Theater?” the Soviet leader asked.

That was all it took, Shostakovich said.

“Everyone knew about Stalin’s question directed at the Art Theater and no one wanted to risk it. Everyone was afraid,” Shostakovich observed. “And for many long years Hamlet was not seen on the Soviet stage.”

Hamlet is safe in the United States today, fortunately. Yet today’s “cancel culture” has purged many works of art—from Dr. Seuss books and Gone With the Wind to Disney movies like Peter Pan and Dumbo.

These works of art are not being banned by state censors; they are being pulled or restricted by content providers, online stores, and publishers on the grounds that they are culturally or racially insensitive.

“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told the Associated Press upon announcing it would no longer publish six Dr. Seuss books, including And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and If I Ran the Zoo.

Whether these works of art are culturally insensitive is a subjective matter, as is the question of whether Hamlet is a morally subversive play. Now, there are those who deny that Dr. Seuss is actually being canceled at all.

If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion.

“We can debate whether doing this was the right thing, but it’s important to point out a few things,” the film critic Stephen Silver wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “The decision was made by the company that owns and controls the books, not by the government, or by a ‘mob’ that pressured it.”

Silver is correct to note there’s a difference between government censorship and self-censorship. But his claim there was no pressure behind the decision warrants scrutiny. (More on that in a moment.)

In any event, while there are differences in government censorship and self-censorship, both are dangerous, George Orwell observed.

Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship… but the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the [government] or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves. (emphasis added)

What Orwell was saying is that fear of public opinion can also result in censorship.

Now, to be clear, we don’t know for certain the motivations of publishers who decide to stop publishing certain Dr. Seuss books. Just like we can’t know for sure why Spotify suddenly dropped 42 Joe Rogan episodes down the Memory Hole. But it’s not unreasonable to suspect the impetus driving the canceling of today’s works is not unlike that which drove Hamlet out of the Soviet Union: fear.

Stalin’s canceling of Hamlet showed government bans aren’t the only ways to suppress free expression, or even the most effective. As Shostakovich observed, Stalin’s ability to cancel Hamlet with a mere word was a far better demonstration of power than an official state ban. It required no law or formal announcement. All it took was a quiet word and fear, an emotion that Americans today are familiar with.

A recent Cato study shows self-censorship is surging in the US, with two-thirds of Americans saying they are afraid to share ideas in public because of the political climate, which is increasingly dominated by “wokeism.”

Fear lurks behind the disappearance of art and the suppression of free expression. For that reason alone, such efforts should be resisted.

These fears are not irrational. The examples of Americans fired, shamed, and canceled for being on the wrong side of woke culture are legion. The phenomenon last year prompted a letter in Harper’s Magazine signed by dozens of leading academics that condemned the intolerant climate of ideas.

“Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes,” the letter read. “We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.”

This climate doesn’t end with writers and academics afraid to offer certain opinions, however. It extends to corporate boardrooms and executive committees, where individuals are being pressured to decide which art is acceptable and which opinions are fit to be shared on platforms.

To be on the wrong side of the debate invites personal destruction. It’s simply easier to agree to remove “harmful” art or fire that employee who raised the ire of the Twitter mob.

“People are afraid to challenge them,” Robby Soave of Reason told John Stossel last year in an interview on cancel culture.

Like in Orwell’s 1984, in today’s culture you don’t even have to utter Wrongthink to be condemned for it.

“Everyone was afraid,” Shostakovich said.

Just ask Dr. Howard Bauchner, who in March was removed as editor-in-chief of the prominent medical journal JAMA. Bauchner’s crime was that, during a podcast the previous month, his deputy editor questioned the existence of structural racism.

“Structural racism is an unfortunate term,” said Dr. Edward H. Livingston, who is white. “Personally, I think taking racism out of the conversation will help.”

To be sure, in America today one doesn’t risk liquidation for refusing to bow to pressure to self-censor works of art. That cannot be said of the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Yet there is a common thread that runs through both cases of censorship: fear

“Everyone was afraid,” Shostakovich said.

These same words can be applied to those bowing to cancel culture today.

This isn’t to say that Dr. Seuss’s works are or are not culturally insensitive, or that Hamlet does or does not contain themes harmful or subversive.

It’s simply to say that fear lurks behind the disappearance of art and the suppression of free expression. For that reason alone, such efforts should be resisted.

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines:… More by Jon Miltimore.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Administration Prioritizes “Wokeism,” Critical Race Theory In Schools

There is no constitutional role for the federal government in education.


The Biden administration is taking new steps to promote Critical Race Theory and The New York Times’s controversial 1619 Project in US education programs. In a proposed federal rule issued on Monday, the US Department of Education indicated that it will be using taxpayer funds to award millions of dollars in American history and civics education grants that prioritize the belief that America is systemically racist.

The grant program seeks “projects that incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives into teaching and learning,” and refers to President Biden’s Inauguration Day executive order that explains how our country is plagued by “systemic racism” and “deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda” to address this issue.

The new federal proposed rule refers to the 1619 Project and related curriculum resources as a “landmark” model for US history and civics education, despite its agenda-driven hostility against capitalism, its flawed historical analysis that many scholars have deemed false, and the Times’s own correction of the project.

The grant prioritization also pushes for greater emphasis on “anti-racism” training in schools, and quotes the work of Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist.

Successful applicants will demonstrate how their projects emphasize “systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history,” and promote “identity-safe learning environments.”

When former President Trump issued his call for a “1776 Commission” last September to advocate for widespread “patriotic education” in schools across the country, I warned that this was a bad idea. There is no constitutional role for the federal government in education. If one president decides to use the power of the federal government to push one particular educational paradigm, then another president could use the same power to push a different one. In my FEE article, I wrote:

“Emboldening the federal government to execute education policy may seem appealing when your preferred politician or party is in power, but that power remains when leadership inevitably sways to another politician or party. If you wouldn’t support a Biden ‘1619 Commission,’ then you shouldn’t support Trump’s ‘1776 Commission.’ If you wouldn’t support mandatory ‘critical race theory’ taught in your local schools, then you shouldn’t support mandatory ‘patriotic education’ either.”

But, here we are.

Decentralizing power away from the federal government and towards the state and local levels allows for greater taxpayer influence over public policy. It also makes it easier for citizens to choose where to live based on policy. For instance, if parents in Illinois don’t like the new teaching standards that the legislature recently passed to incorporate Critical Race Theory into state teacher training programs, they can always move to another state. If the federal government passes such a law, parents have far fewer options.

The Founders’ belief in federalism, or avoiding the concentration of power at the federal level, is crucially important. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, no. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” States can make education policy. The federal government cannot.

While the federal government should not be involved in education policy, there is much to debate at the state and local levels in terms of curriculum and learning standards. Critical Race Theory is penetrating classrooms across the country, and parents and teachers are increasingly speaking out against this leftist ideology of “wokeism,” even if it costs them their job.

We should absolutely celebrate diversity, show tolerance for difference, and acknowledge the deeply racist parts of American history, including government-sponsored racism through Jim Crow laws and redlining. We should also recognize that racism still exists today.

But Critical Race Theory seeks to view all social and cultural issues through the lens of race and racial identity, and to cast all human relations in terms of power structures related to that identity. It is a collectivist notion that puts the group above the individual and pigeonholes people as either oppressor or oppressed.

Indeed, the history of Critical Race Theory is rooted in Marxist thought and began to gain traction in academic circles in the early to mid-20th century through the “Frankfurt School” before spilling over into the broader culture near the turn of the millennium.

Last fall, FEE’s Dan Sanchez, Tyler Brandt, and Brad Polumbo wrote an excellent, in-depth explainer article on Critical Race Theory (CRT), discussing how it threatened the important progress made by the Civil Rights Movement. “The pre-CRT Civil Rights Movement had emphasized equal rights and treating people as individuals, as opposed to as members of a racial collective,” they wrote. “In contrast, CRT dwells on inequalities of outcome, which it generally attributes to racial power structures.”

They argued that the Civil Rights Movement was in line with the broader classical liberal movement, whose harmony-oriented vision stands in stark contrast against the Marxian conflict-oriented view of Critical Race Theory.

“The classical liberal ‘harmony doctrine,’” they explained, “was deeply influential in the movements to abolish all forms of inequality under the law: from feudal serfdom, to race-based slavery, to Jim Crow. But, with the rise of Critical Race Theory, the cause of racial justice became more influenced by the fixations on conflict, discord, and domination that CRT inherited from Marxism. Social life was predominantly cast as a zero-sum struggle between collectives: capital vs. labor for Marxism, whites vs. people of color for CRT.”

The antidote to this Marxist framework is to prioritize individualism over collectivism, in both schools and society more broadly. It’s to focus on the content of one’s character rather than the color of one’s skin, as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. urged.

Critical Race Theory does the opposite. “‘Antiracist’ training sounds righteous, but it is the opposite of truth in advertising,” math teacher Paul Rossi wrote last week in his letter objecting to the adoption of Critical Race Theory at his elite private school in Manhattan. “It requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race.”

As more parents and teachers speak out against Critical Race Theory and “wokeism” in their schools, education policy and pedagogy will hopefully reject group antagonisms and embrace individual liberty and social harmony.

COLUMN BY

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019). She is also an adjunct scholar at The Cato Institute and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly newsletter on parenting and education here.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Parents need to create alternatives to politically correct education

Parents are starting to push back. Here’s what we should do to empower them.


More parents are waking up to the “woke” ideology that is seeping into their children’s classrooms and curriculum. Increasingly, they are speaking up and opting out.

Last week, Andrew Gutmann, a father of a student at the elite, US$54,000-a-year Brearley School in Manhattan, wrote a scathing open letter to the school community. He stated that he wouldn’t be re-enrolling his daughter this upcoming academic year due to the school’s singular focus on “anti-racism” efforts that, according to Gutmann, are overtly racist and exclusionary.

“I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as ‘equity,’ ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusiveness,’” wrote Gutmann in his 1700-word letter, which was published on Friday at journalist Bari Weiss’s website.

“If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called ‘equity,’ it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets,” the letter continues. “If the administration was genuinely serious about ‘diversity,’ it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and freedom of thought.”

“And if Brearley really cared about ‘inclusiveness,’ the school would return to the concepts encapsulated in the motto ‘One Brearley,’” Gutmann concludes. “Instead of teaching the extraordinarily divisive idea that there are only, and always, two groups in this country: victims and oppressors.”

The Brearley School’s headmaster responded to the letter, calling it “deeply offensive and harmful.” But more parents are coming forward to speak up against these initiatives that are rooted in critical race theory, the push to view social and cultural issues through the lens of racial identity and, in particular, power structures related to that identity.

In an article last month at City Journal, Weiss described many of the parents who have come forward from prestigious private schools in major cities to criticize what they see as indoctrination of their children into a leftist ideology of “wokeism.” In an article last week, Weiss shared a letter from a teacher at one of these prep schools who is no longer willing to be silent about this ongoing indoctrination of students.

“As a teacher, my first obligation is to my students,” wrote Paul Rossi, who teaches mathematics at the posh Grace Church High School in New York City. “But right now, my school is asking me to embrace ‘antiracism’ training and pedagogy that I believe is deeply harmful to them and to any person who seeks to nurture the virtues of curiosity, empathy and understanding.”

“‘Antiracist’ training sounds righteous, but it is the opposite of truth in advertising,” Rossi concludes. “It requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race.”

Grace Church High School made headlines in March for releasing an “Inclusive Language Guide” that, among other recommendations, urged the school community to become more “welcoming and inclusive” by avoiding words such as “mom and dad,” “parents,” and “boys and girls.”

As more parents and educators feel emboldened to speak out against the rising tide of wokeism in their children’s schools, it offers opportunities for change.

Some of that change might come from schools reining in their woke rhetoric if enough parents object, but much of the change will likely come from parents opting out of these private schools for other options. As more independent schools realize there is a market for focusing strictly on teaching and learning without political indoctrination, they will be able to differentiate themselves from schools seeped in critical race theory.

Similarly, more parent demand for alternatives to woke education will lead to more entrepreneurial efforts to build new learning models that focus on individual development over group affiliation.

I recently received an email from an Asian mother whose child attends a private school in the Boston area and who is fed up with the school “trying to ‘brainwash’ kids.”

“The social pressure to conform with what the schools define as ‘moral compass’ is enormous and exhausting,” she wrote. “The underground chattering is bubbling and I wonder where the parents would ultimately draw the line and declare enough is enough. I personally feel time may be ripe for more innovative and balanced models to challenge the status quote of the existing learning institutions.”

The demand for non-woke education truly is skyrocketing and it presents a moment ripe for “creative destruction” in the education sector.

The term creative destruction was popularized by economist Joseph Schumpeter in his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, to describe the dynamic process of new business models and organizations replacing outdated or inadequate enterprises. He explained that capitalism is “the perennial gale of creative destruction,” fueled by entrepreneurship and innovation.

Parent demand may spur the private sector to offer alternatives to woke education through free-market capitalism, but what about the children forced to attend government schools that are much less responsive to market signals? Like many elite private schools, public schools are also embracing woke ideology at alarming rates.

In February, Illinois legislators voted in favor of enacting new “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards” in the state’s teacher education programs. These programs must begin to reflect the new standards that focus on “systems of oppression.” Illinois teachers-in-training will be expected to “explore their own intersecting identities,” and become “aware of the effects of power and privilege and the need for social advocacy and social action to better empower diverse students and communities.”

Around the same time the Illinois standards were passed, a group of educators released a document criticizing objective math education as being racist, and called for “dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by visibilizing the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math.” States like Oregon seem to be taking note.

And last month, the California Board of Education passed an ethnic studies curriculum for K-12 students that focuses primarily on four ethnic groups, including African Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latino Americans, and Native Americans. While the new statewide ethnic studies curriculum is not a high school graduation mandate, as California legislators and the state’s teachers union originally proposed before California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill last fall, the new school curriculum emphasizes group identity over individualism.

Ahead of the governor’s veto, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about the state’s proposed ethnic studies curriculum: “This is ugly stuff, a force-feeding to teenagers of the anti-liberal theories that have been percolating in campus critical studies departments for decades. Enforced identity politics and ‘intersectionality’ are on their way to replacing civic nationalism as America’s creed.”

Many parents may disagree with the woke ideology their children are exposed to in schools, or they may simply prefer that these schools focus on academics, not activism. But too many families have too few options beyond a mandatory public school assignment. Expanding education choice policies, as more than two dozen states are currently attempting to do, will enable more families to choose their preferred educational setting.

Private school parents are courageously pushing back against the ideology of wokeism that is invading their children’s schools, and they are using their resources to find or build different learning models. Education choice policies will allow public school parents the same opportunity of exit and innovation.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

COLUMN BY

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019). She is also an adjunct… More by Kerry McDonald.

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘Dark Diversity’ in America’s Public Schools


Our schools choose their teaching staff by the color of their skin, not the content of their character or the extent of their knowledge, and the advantages that may be gained for the socialist-democrat party.


In a small, but vibrant, Middle-America community, there exists a public high school with a wall that proudly displays the achievements of past graduates, so that I welcomed reading the community’s magazine that boasted the school’s latest successes, cited as “diversity.”   But it soon became clear that the diversity refers to the staff’s complexions and sexual dispositions.  We search in vain for references to interests served, classes offered, careers sought, talents developed, and ingenuity encouraged, and we realize that another order of business is afoot.

America’s first schools, established in the 17th century in the thirteen original colonies, were designed to educate for literacy and arithmetic, but students under 17 were soon studying Greek, Latin, geometry, ancient history, logic, ethics and rhetoric.  Law and medicine were introduced in the 18th century, followed by mathematics and philosophy. The academies provided a rigorous curriculum that stressed writing, penmanship, arithmetic and languages, and the children were successful; they and their progeny contributed to the makings of a magnificent republic.  Horace Mann established that education should be free, universal, and non-sectarian, to aim for social efficiency, civic virtue, and character.  Graduates were to be disciplined, judicious citizens, continuing the American desire for liberty, inalienable individual rights, and sovereignty.  We were successful like no other but, sadly, we appear to have lost our way.

Diversity in America once meant that one could follow one’s dream by studying and working in any field of endeavor, unhindered by local or federal government.  Beyond the basics defined by parents and state, the student was encouraged to forge ahead in any field, even in apprenticeship, with diligence and determination.  Individuality was fortified as the only way one could strive and succeed.

Today’s diversity is designed to destroy that free will, as it identifies the students by race and assigns a victimhood that conditions toward societal conformity, known as Critical Race Theory.  It is part of the Cultural Marxism that is already destroying our Judeo-Christian values and ethics so that the youth are immersed in racial differences, sexual immorality, dissension, and rebellion against authority.   These include the delinquent youths, sociopaths who rage with Black Lives Matter, destroying property, our historic monuments, our morale and morals, and law and order – and conform to the new culture of revolution.

Consider the new tactics that have resulted in mass obedience – the coronavirus that has people paranoid about masking and social distancing; the politically correct speech that replaces rebellion with uneasy compliance; a belief system that forces impossible genders; the slur of “white privilege” that pardons one group for not succeeding while blaming the other for succeeding, shamed into curbing their efforts.  The motive is to demolish western civilization by destroying all that defines America – religion, morality, respect for the other, work ethic, ingenuity, and success – and replacing it with a totalitarian ideology.

By indoctrinating the “of color” students that they cannot succeed because of whites and are consequently entitled to special privileges, the underclass is created.  Undermining two-parent households, enacting affirmative action and other accommodations feed into the victim mentality.  When they are encouraged to unite, they make more demands, such as  acceptance into colleges and universities that would otherwise be closed to them.  Once there, of course, these students are confronted with their deficiencies, but not with the causes.  Crying foul encourages them to blame the privileged whites (read western civilization), but it also results in the schools’ downgrading the schoolwork.  This is equity, reducing standards to mediocrity for all, a planned mediocrity that results in undereducated graduates unqualified for the job market.  However, being of one mind, they are now ripe to be dedicated members of the socialist party.

The magazine article details the school’s diversity based on the inconsequential differences among the teaching staff and the children, contrary to Martin Luther King, Jr’s dream, that they would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”  The interviewees actually compared the 72% white population of ten years ago with today’s 49%, the 15% black students with today’s 20%; the rise in Asians from 8% to 21%, and other groups. Never addressed is how the skin color and variable sexual preferences will help the children function in their adulthood, to form new families, to hold jobs and become responsible, creative, and innovative citizens to contribute to America’s growth.

As the staff were introduced, none spoke of what they hoped to bring to the classroom academically, or how their particular expertise would help the children flourish.  No longer based on merit, they were hired on the basis of race, thereby emphasizing cultural sensitivities and preferential treatment.  No one addressed the students’ learning skills, their personal growth, their exposure to better literature and music, their future pursuits, and the basics of civic responsibility.  Our entire country has been made to focus on race, the main political strategy and indoctrination of the next generation.  Lest we forget, racism was the official state ideology of Nazism – the superiority of the Aryan race uber alles. – and the cause of death for many millions of people worldwide.

The staff’s repeated focus on their own irrelevant attributes will affect the students’ judgments.  Academia’s leftism sows discontent and creates their social warriors, but cheats them of a bona fide education.  Students across America are deficient in reading, math, the arts and sciences, world and American history, our founding documents and, most importantly, critical thinking skills to analyze their world and succeed throughout life.  Only 24% of high school seniors have proficient writing skills.  Meritocracy and unity are forfeited for resentment, disunity, and obedience to the socialist party.

The director of Equity and Community Engagement duplicitously speaks of equity, which passes as equality to the underinformed.  It ignores individual skills and acumen in the name of conventionality and equal outcome.  Racism is the key to accomplishing this chicanery, as the children of color are infused with ideas that they’ve been victimized by the entire Caucasian race.  Their individualism and freedoms thus stifled, their discomfort level heightened, the stressed children blame their parents for their genetic makeup, the whites for their history, and the school because they are aware of their own illiteracy and undereducation.

When Bill Gates recently declared that math is racist, and that correct sums are unnecessary, he is intentionally forcing the damaging obsession with racism.  Although research shows that Asian students generally outperform other students in math, the leftist agenda is to accuse white students of excelling at the expense of children of color, further debilitating the latter.  An obliging academia vindicates them, justifies their defeatism, and confirms that they will never succeed, which, in turn, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that also fuels their fury.  When they are accepted into universities based on their victim credentials (race, heritage, sexuality), but fare poorly because they were unqualified, these groups turn against the better students. Their emotional, intellectual, and social development is reduced to the common denominator – their basic instincts to blame others based on race.  These are the triggers used by all totalitarian regimes to inflame the children into violent warriors – Islam, Nazism, Marxism.

The head of Human Resources speaks of hiring teachers by their skin tone and comfort level, and his need to hire one more LGBTQ teacher to negate the first teacher’s “lonely feeling.”  Is this a school environment or a squirrel’s larder?

Another teacher believes she is qualified to teach social studies by virtue of her skin color.  How is that valid?  As this teacher is African-American, should her class also be 100% color coded?  And how long before the schools completely exclude the whites from the classroom, as the Nazis did the Jews, as this becomes an all-too-possible threat in universities across America?

The Middle School guidance counselor alleges a goal of teaching children to be proud of who they are, but not that we are all humans with the same needs and citizens of the same school, state, and country.  This is but more reinforcement to their differences as they are further marginalized and intolerant of others.  Colleges are already breeding grounds for radicalism, and the high schools are beginning the indoctrination sooner. In fact, racism, sexuality, pornography – even depravity – have already been introduced to Kindergartens and libraries.

Identity politics should never be underestimated, as it is how the Nazis conducted their hate campaigns and the communists their class struggle.  The schools are engaging in social engineering, psychologically manipulating the students so that racism becomes the chief consideration.  The victims, a coalition of all the minorities, are to become the dominant culture, always morally right, never challenged, and entitled to sympathy and concessions.  The previously dominant culture becomes the new victims, but never to rise again.  The insidious bigotry has been sown.  Under the careful tutelage of complicit personnel, the students have been frightened, demeaned and demoralized, the ideology ingrained.  Marxism survives, waiting in the wings for the throes of our decline.

In the words of George Orwell, “You will be hollow.  We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

Parents still have time to fight the schools’ hold over their children or remove them from the schools entirely. Start yesterday, because these ideologies never end well.

©Tabitha Korol. All rights reserved.

My name is KAREN and I approve this message.

This morning I got up and took my dog out. He was acting funny. He wouldn’t listen. I said walk. He ran. I said sit; he stood. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

The I opened my computer to check my emails.  After scrolling through them I came across an article that explained everything. I am being cancelled.

It is bad enough my friends, ex-friends actually and most of my family don’t talk to me since I made fun of them for parading around in pink vagina hats supporting abortion for all, at any time. Worst of all, I live in Florida. I don’t wear a mask. I support MAGA. I expose the communists. I recognize we have a border crisis. I don’t believe that man can control the weather.

As a former teacher, I want our kids to learn reading, writing and math not how to have sex, become a trans or hate their families, friends and America.  I want them to be taught how to think, not what to think.  I want the students to learn common sense, to excel not be mediocre and get a participation trophy.

But I am being cancelled.  Who do I call?  Did the administration set up a new division The Cancellation Police? Do I tell my hubby I can’t help on the farm?  I tried that it didn’t work.  When I told him I couldn’t pull the weeds because I was cancelled, he said,  “nice try Karen.  Sorry you will always be my Karen.”

What do I do?  Am I now a victim of name supremacy racism?  Will my SSI be cancelled?  My Medicare?, My mortgage? My credit cards?  My job? Who will help me as my identity is being erased?   ACLU?, SPLC? Who do I sue? Will SCOTUS take my case?

Wait a minute.  I took a deep breath.  I went over to my CD player.  Turned up the volume and played “I Will Survive,” by Gloria Gaynor over and over.  I followed it up with “We are the Champions,” by Queen.    I reinforced my personal inner strength, I looked in the mirror and said, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never harm me.”

The cancel culture fanatics don’t know me.  They never met me so why on earth should I pay the least bit of attention to their stupidity. Besides, people who cancel others are mostly jealous and have no successful lives or accomplishments on their own.  They get their kicks by trying to destroy someone they don’t even know.  Why should I care what they think? They certainly don’t care about me.

So to all the cancel culture freaks out there who have nothing better to do except let their insecurity, helplessness and envy run their lives, because they are not a Karen, I cancel you. I will not comply.

My name is KAREN and I approve this message.

Action items:

Join your local precinct and take back the GOP.  precinct strategy https://theprecinctproject.wordpress.com/

Run for School Board stop leaving education in the hands of the communists.

According to CNN they will now instill fear about the climate. Fear sells. Students no longer learn science. They learn environmental justice, whatever that is.

Simple Tips for your kids and grand-kids,  from my days teaching science:

  1. Cold soda contains co2, You can read it on the label.  As the soda warms the co2 is released until warm soda is flat (no co2) .  Therefore, co2 is released as a result of warming and can not be the cause of warming.
  2. Remember communists want depopulation – less people to control.

No co2, plants will not produce food.

No food, no people.

“No people no problems.”  J Stalin

Mission accomplished. He who control the food controls the people.

3. When a report on data came out about 2018 being the hottest year on record, I called the FSU author .  I asked for the data from 1818.  He told me his data only went back 150 years.  I then ask how old was the earth. I got silence.

4  At beginning of class, I put a glass of ice and water on my desk.  I colored the water and put a line on the water level. .  I asked how many think the water will overflow the glass when the ice melts. They were shocked to find the water level remained the same.

At a news conference in Brussels in 2015, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.   “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.

Mask Mandates for Children:  Commissioner Richard Corcoran said face masks should be voluntary for the 2021-22 school year and not required. 

According to Dr. Joe: “The public health data show that children are not super-spreaders, have a negligible incidence of full-blown infection, are rarely hospitalized, and have recorded few deaths in the past 14 months.  Unacceptable consequences of the mask mandate parents report are mask mouth, asthma infection and psychological impacts, including suicides.”

Joseph T. Doyle, MD, EdS, MBA, MPH, MPA

Board Certified in Public Health & General Preventive Medicine

Thank you Karen Bracken (also not cancelled) Naomi Wolf Exposes Vaccine Passports – Naomi Wolfe, author, feminist, Rhodes Scholar came out with a 15 minute testimony on the real agenda behind vaccine passports.  She is working with states to enact anti-vaccine passport legislation.  Her website is:  https://dailyclout.io/    15 min.  VIDEO

My radio show: Prism of America’s Education, can be heard every Saturday and Sunday from 1-2PM ET and 9-10PM ET on https://americaoutloud.com/the-prism-of-americas-education/

Articles and podcasts are located at karenschoen.com

This is our chance to make our voices known regarding the new Florida Curricula and standards.   There is an online public comment survey for Civics and Government, Holocaust Education, and Character Education standards. The department encourages all stakeholders to participate in the review process through the online surveys, which will be open when the draft standards are posted through April 23, 2021.

  • Civics and Government survey: https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/6176659/CivicsStandards1.
  • Holocaust Education survey: https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/6240586/HolocaustEdStandards1.
  • Character Education survey: https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/6240369/CharacterEdStandards1.

Events:

Interested in running for school board?

Back to the Future Conference presented by Freedom Speaks Coalition

4/ 30/ 2021, 8:30AM, Rosen Plaza Hotel, 9700 International Dr, Orlando, FL

For More Information: https://freedomspeaks.regfox.com/2021-annual-conference

Online Event – “How Communism Crushes the Human Spirit” 4/28

You Are Invited – Registration Required – Share with Trusted Networks Only

Not for Public Distribution or Social Media

ACAT Presents “How Communism Crushes the Human Spirit”

Imagine living in a country where you cannot speak your mind, where party bosses expect young women to become their mistresses, and terrorists do not hesitate to kill to get their way.  This is the human toll of communism. How America – the beacon of liberty – must look to you then.

Please join us the evening of April 28th as three survivors of Bulgarian communism from the Anticommunism Action Team recount their experiences and offer hope for the future.

Program – Intro + Socialism 101 (Chris – 6 mins)

Lilia Slavova – The Arts Community and Sexual Harassment (12 mins)

Boyko Antonov – Communist Terrorism in Bulgaria (12 mins)

Nora Clinton – The Differences between Communism and American Values (12 mins)

Announcements (Chris – 3 mins),  Q &A / Discussion (15 mins), End of Program – Informal Discussion (30 mins)

The event is FREE – YOU MUST REGISTER TO ATTEND to mail@spider-and-the-fly.com

SPACE IS LIMITED – first come, first served

WHERE:  GoToMeeting videoconferencing

(registrants will be sent a nontransferable meeting link the day before the event)

WHEN: Wednesday, April 28th at 8:00 – 9:30 p.m. ET

Our speakers:

  • Lilia Slavova – teacher and very active in theater as an award-winning actress, director, choreographer, puppeteer, producer, and published and produced playwright
  • Boyko Antonov – computer scientist currently working for the Library of Congress, co-founder of Botev Academy teaching Bulgarian language and culture
  • Nora Clinton – PhD in classics from Cornell, author of Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds, co-founder of a nonprofit organization dedicated to academic cooperation and American values

©Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

Why America’s Founders Didn’t Want a Democracy

In his book “Liberty in Peril,” Randall Holcombe challenges the presumption that liberty and democracy are complementary.


When I took history and government in school, many critical issues were misrepresented, given short shrift, or even ignored entirely. And those lacunae undermined my ability to adequately understand many things. Randall Holcombe’s new book, Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History, fills in some very substantial gaps, particularly with regard to American constitutionalism and how it has morphed from protecting liberty to advancing democracy at the expense of liberty. It does so with a host of novel and important insights rather than the disinterest generated by the books I suffered through in school.

The Role of Government

Holcombe gets right to the main point:

The role of government as [America’s founders] saw it, was to protect the rights of individuals, and the biggest threat to individual liberty was the government itself. So they designed a government with constitutionally limited powers, constrained to carry out only those activities specifically allowed by the Constitution. This book describes how the fundamental principle underlying American government has been transformed from protecting individual liberty to carrying out the will of the people, as revealed by a democratic decision-making process. (p. xxii)

Holcombe begins by laying out the case that “the Founders had no intention of creating a democracy, in the sense of a government that would be guided by popular opinion,” (p. 5) in sharp contrast to current “understanding.” And what makes the transformation from a central focus on liberty to a central focus on democracy that routinely invades liberty particularly significant is that

the powers embodied in America’s twenty-first-century democratic government are those that eighteenth-century Americans revolted against to escape. (p. 7)

Since I do not have the space to dissect all of the issues in Liberty in Peril, I would like to highlight a few particularly noteworthy things.

Holcombe starts with John Locke, which is a common place to start for those interested in advancing liberty. But he also calls attention to Cato’s Letters, which was one of the most influential—but now almost completely ignored—influences leading to the birth of the American Revolution. I have long been struck by how many of the insights our founders are credited with that actually trace back there (see the first major chapter of my book Lines of Liberty), and I echo Holcombe’s invitation for more people to discover it.

Liberty in Peril challenges the typical current presumption that liberty and democracy are complementary.

The principle of liberty suggests that first and foremost, the government’s role is to protect the rights of individuals. The principle of democracy suggests that collective decisions are made according to the will of the majority…The greater the allowable scope of democracy in government, the greater the threat to liberty…In particular, the ascendency of the concept of democracy threatens the survival of the free market economy, which is an extension of the Founders’ views on liberty. (pp. 14-15)

This is reflected in the changing nature of elections.

At one time, elections might have been viewed as a method of selecting competent people to undertake a job with constitutionally-specified limits. With the extension of democracy, elections became referendums on public policy. (p. 20)

The book also challenges commonly held presumptions that our Founders wanted democracy. But while “the Founders wanted those in charge of government’s operations to be selected by a democratic process,” they “also wanted to insulate those who ran the government from direct influence by its citizens” because “[b]y insulating political decision-makers from directs accountability to citizens, the government would be in a better position to adhere to its constitutionally-mandated limits.” (p. 15)

“Thus, the Constitution created a limited government designed to protect liberty, not to foster democracy.” (p. 16) But the United States “consistently has moved toward more democracy, and the unintended side effect has been a reduction in liberty.” (p. 25)

Holcombe lays out issues of consensus versus democracy, with consensus illustrated by market systems in which all those whose property rights are involved agree to transactions, (p. 29) but in government, “a group is able to undertake more extensive collective action if it requires less consensus to act.” (p. 30) And the slippery slope is that

[t]he more citizens want to further national goals through government action, the less consensus they will demand in the collective decision-making process. (p. 33)

Another notable aspect of Liberty in Peril is how far beyond the typical discussion of constitutional issues it goes, substantially expanding readers’ understanding in intriguing ways. For instance, how many Americans know of the Iroquois Constitution, which focused on unanimity? How many are aware of the Albany Plan of Union, drawn up in 1754, or how it was influenced by the Iroquois Constitution? How many know that a “clear chain of constitutional evolution proceeds from the Albany Plan of Union to the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution of the United States”? (p. 43)

How many have noticed that “when compared with the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution clearly less constraining than the document it supplanted…the Constitution did not limit the powers of government; it expanded them”? (p. 48) Yet,

[w]hile the authors of the Constitution did deliberately expand the powers of the federal government, they just as deliberately tried to prevent the creation of a democratic government. (p. 52)

How many are aware of what the Confederate Constitution tells us about the US Constitution and the drift from its principles since its adoption, especially because “the problems that the authors of the Confederate Constitution actually did address were overwhelmingly associated with the use of legislative powers to impose costs on the general public to provide benefits to narrow constituencies”? (p. 107)

The Constitution often is portrayed as a document that limits the power of the federal government and guarantees the liberty of its citizens…When compared to the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution places less constraint on the federal government and allows those who run the government more discretion and autonomy and less accountability. The adoption of the Constitution enhanced the powers of government and laid the foundation for two centuries of government growth. (pp. 66-67)

Holcombe’s section on “The Elitist Constitution” is fascinating. It lays out the case for why “[t]he Constitution devised democratic processes for collective decision-making, but the Founders had no intention of designing a government that would respond to the will of the majority,” (p. 70) as illustrated by the fact that citizens “had almost no direct input into the federal government as the Constitution was originally written and ratified.” (p. 70)

The section on the Electoral College is even more striking, as it stands in sharp variance from the presumptions behind almost the entire current debate over the National Popular Vote compact:

[A]t the time the Constitution was written the Founders anticipated that in most cases no candidate would receive votes from a majority of the electors. The Founders reasoned that most electors would vote for one candidate from their own states…and it would be unlikely that voting along state lines would produce any candidate with a majority of the votes. (p. 75)

Consequently,

The Founders envisioned that in most cases the president would end up being chosen by the House of Representatives from the list of the top-five electoral vote recipients…Furthermore, there was no indication that the number of electoral votes received should carry any weight besides creating a list of the top five candidates…The process was not intended to be democratic. (p. 76)

I found the issues discussed above to be of particular interest. But there is far more in the book to learn from, and often be surprised by, in comparison to what history courses usually teach.

Such issues include the evolution of parties, the influence of Andrew Jackson, who “fought for democracy, but, ironically, the result of making the nation’s government more democratic has been to expand the scope and power of government in response to popular demands for govern programs,” (p. 91) which “the Founders foresaw and tried to guard against by limiting the role of democracy in their new government,” (p. 91), the War Between the States (“the single most important event in the transformation of American government,” (p. 93) including the elimination of state succession as a real possibility, the Reconstruction Era amendments, the origins of interest group politics, the evolution of federal regulatory power, the evolution of the incentives of civil servants, the Sixteenth Amendment (income tax) as “a response to the demand for a larger federal government,” (p. 149) a different take on the 1920s, in which “[f]ar from representing a retreat from progressivism, the 1920s extended the now-established orthodoxy, (p. 154) added insight into the New Deal and the courts, Social Security as the “one New Deal program for the responsibility for fundamentally transforming the historical, constitutional role of the federal government,” (p. 175) how “The Great Society represents the ultimate triumph of democracy, because for the first time a major expansion in the scope of government was based on the demands of the electorate, with no extenuation circumstances” (p. 205), and far more.

In sum, there are very many good reasons to recommend Liberty in Peril. In it, Randall Holcombe provides not just a powerful and insightful look into crucial aspects of America’s evolution away from the principles of the revolution that created it but also an important warning:

Unfortunately, many Americans do not appear to fully understand these dangers as they continue to push the foundations of their government away from liberty and toward democracy. (p. 225)

COLUMN BY

Gary M. Galles

Gary M. Galles is a Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University and a member of the Foundation for Economic Education faculty network. In addition to his new book, Pathways to Policy Failures (2020), his books include Lines of Liberty (2016), Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014), and Apostle of Peace (2013).

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Arizona community college must pay $155,000 to professor it forced to apologize for criticizing Islam

A slight pause on American academia’s out-of-control-freight-train rush to submit to Sharia. But the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is still flogging this case in court, hoping to use it to destroy the freedom of speech and criminalize criticism of Islam.

Arizona community college to pay $155K settlement for directing professor to apologize for Islamic terrorism quiz question

by Katlyn Patton, FIRE, April 13, 2021:

Maricopa County Community College District will pay professor Nicholas Damask $155,000 in exchange for his agreement not to sue district personnel, who last year violated his expressive rights in an attempt to quell criticism of his quiz questions on social media. The district also pledged to strengthen its commitment to academic freedom.

Damask, who teaches political science at Scottsdale Community College, came under fire on social media last May after a student complained that quiz questions in Damask’s world politics course were offensive to the student’s religious beliefs. Damask said the college suggested it would require him to meet with an Islamic religious leader to review the content of his course because a student complained that three of Damask’s quiz questions about Islamic terrorism were “in distaste of Islam.”

In response, the college directed Damask to issue an apology — pre-written for him by a communications staff member — and implied that he would be investigated. The college ultimately backed down after an urgent letter from FIRE.

Now, the district is finally paying for SCC’s unconstitutional knee-jerk reaction to online criticism….

lawsuit brought by the Council on American-Islamic Relations remains pending in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. (A district court judge dismissed the lawsuit in August for failure to state a claim, and CAIR appealed.)…

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden Quotes ‘Holy Qur’an’ in Ramadan Greeting, says ‘Muslim Americans Have Enriched Our Country Since Our Founding’

UK: Muslim migrant rape gang members who were ordered deported six years ago launch another appeal to stay

Sweden: Almost 700,000 migrants are receiving state benefits

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Public Kindergarten Enrollment is Plummeting—Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing

Children not enrolled in public kindergarten are not ‘missing.’ Their parents know exactly where they are.


Public school enrollment has consistently declined across most states this academic year, and there are new signs that the trend will continue this fall. On Thursday, New York City’s education department reported that kindergarten applications for the 2021/2022 school year dropped 12 percent, from 63,000 to under 55,500 applications.

Overall New York City kindergarten enrollment was down 9 percent this year and down 4 percent districtwide. Nationwide, an NPR poll found that public school kindergarten enrollment was down an average of 16 percent this academic year, and public pre-kindergarten enrollment fell substantially as well.

The further drop in fall public kindergarten enrollment applications in New York City suggests that this is more than a temporary pandemic response. Parents may be indefinitely pulling their kids from public schools, at least in some large districts where a return to full-time, in-person schooling has been elusive.

Headlines have emerged to suggest that parents choosing not to enroll their children in public pre-kindergarten or kindergarten programs this year and next are endangering their children’s academic outlook.

“These drops raise serious concerns for children’s early learning,” researchers wrote at the Brookings Institution in February. “These early-grade enrollment drops are troubling given the importance of early learning experiences for children’s school readiness.”

Calling the young children who are not currently enrolled in public schools “missing children,” the Brookings writers advocate for taxpayer-funded summer programming and heavy investments in public schooling to “assess the wide-ranging developmental needs of children and to target a host of needed supports” resulting from delayed or disrupted early schooling.

These children may be “missing” from public schools, but they are hardly “missing children.”

Many of the parents who have chosen to avoid enrolling their children in public pre-K or kindergarten programs have either delayed their child’s formal school entry or placed them in private schools that have been more likely to be open for in-person learning than district schools. Others have created pandemic learning pods with nearby families. Millions of parents decided to homeschool their kids this year, especially black families and those with lower incomes.

The real tragedy over the past year has not been that children are not in school, but that lockdowns and other pandemic policies have disconnected them from their larger communities, activities, peers, and extended family, leading to rising incidences of youth depression, deteriorating childhood mental health, and poor physical health through juvenile weight gain from inactivity. Lifting restrictive public health policies will improve children’s well-being, whether or not they attend a conventional school.

The push toward early school attendance has been so vigorous in recent years that many now think it’s a calamity if young children aren’t enrolled in a formal school setting. Democrats, in particular, have long embraced expanding taxpayer-funded, universal pre-kindergarten programs, including President Biden whose proposed multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure spending plan would funnel billions of taxpayer dollars toward these efforts.

As I wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2019 encouraging parents to delay or forgo formal schooling for their children: “The trend over the past two decades has been toward more time in school, beginning at earlier ages and with an increased focus on academics. Schooling consumes more of childhood than ever, yet the benefits of early schooling remain unclear.”

Indeed, the Brookings Institution warned back in 2017 that the often-cited studies showing positive gains from pre-K programs are inadequate and that more in-depth studies of the lasting impact of public pre-K programs, including the Head Start Impact study and the Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K study, reveal that any short-term benefits were gone by the end of kindergarten.

More alarming, by third grade the academic performance of children in the Tennessee Pre-K program actually lagged behind the control group of children who did not participate in the program. Similarly troubling, by third grade the children in the Head Start program were found by teachers to have more behavioral and emotional issues than the control group of children who did not attend the program.

At worst, early school enrollment could be harmful to children’s immediate and long-term well-being. A 2008 longitudinal study concluded that “early school entry was associated with less educational attainment, worse midlife adjustment, and most importantly, increased mortality risk.”

A 2018 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found additional disturbing results of early school enrollment. In the study, researchers at Harvard Medical School discovered that, in states with a September 1 five-year-old kindergarten enrollment cut-off date, children who were born in August were 34 percent more likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), than their same-grade, but nearly six-year-old, peers who were born in September.

As every parent knows, a year can make a big difference in early childhood development. Putting young children into academically-focused schooling environments before they are developmentally ready can cause them to be misdiagnosed with, and even medicated for, learning and behavioral issues that might not appear if they enrolled in school later.

Sign Up for Kerry’s weekly parenting and education email newsletter!

As the recent Brookings Institution article suggests, there is sure to be a strong push in the coming months to invest heavily in the “missing children” whose parents have delayed formal school entry or opted for private options during the pandemic response. This rhetoric, along with ongoing progressive advocacy for universal, taxpayer-funded prekindergarten programs, will attempt to persuade the public that early schooling is crucial for childhood and societal well-being and that “missing children” need particular help.

Don’t believe it.

Children who do not enroll in public pre-K or kindergarten programs are not “missing.” Their parents know exactly where they are. These parents are choosing to delay formal school entry, or they are selecting private education or homeschooling options for their children.

Given that the impact of early childhood public schooling programs is lackluster at best, and that delayed school entry may have positive results, many of these allegedly “missing children” may actually outperform their peers in the years to come. Rather than lamenting another academic year of lower public school enrollment, we should support the parents who are reassuming control over their children’s education from government bureaucrats and teachers unions, and applaud them for choosing alternatives to an assigned district school.

WATCH: 4 Myths About Homeschooling (DEBUNKED!)

COLUMN BY

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019). She is also an adjunct scholar at The Cato Institute and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly newsletter on parenting and education here.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

New Census Data Show Homeschooling Tripled During the Pandemic—And One Key Group is Driving the Surge

Once they experience the full freedom and flexibility of homeschooling, many parents and children won’t ever want to return to a coercive classroom.


My daughter had a friend over this week whose parents just took her out of public school for homeschooling, and my neighbor recently unenrolled her child from public school to homeschool for the rest of the academic year. These families are much more than local anecdotes—they are representative of a national trend.

New Census Bureau data show that 11.1 percent of K-12 students are now being independently homeschooled. This is a large uptick from 5.4 percent at the start of the school shutdowns last spring, and 3.3 percent in the years preceding the pandemic.

These new homeschooling families are also reflective of surging homeschooling numbers in certain parts of the country. Here in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH area designated by the Census, homeschooling increased from 0.9 percent last April-May to 8.9 percent in September-October. In Massachusetts more generally, the homeschooling rate soared from 1.5 percent in the spring of 2020 to 12.1 percent last fall.

In its Household Pulse Survey, the Census Bureau counted homeschoolers as students whose parents had officially removed them from a school or never enrolled them to begin with. This distinguishes independent homeschoolers from the millions of students doing home-based remote schooling during the pandemic response.

In addition to massive overall growth in homeschooling, the survey results also revealed increasing homeschooling rates across all races and ethnicities.

While the homeschooling population has become more demographically diverse over the past decade, the Census Bureau found that the number of black homeschoolers increased nearly fivefold between spring and fall of 2020, from 3.3 percent to 16.1 percent. This black homeschooling rate is slightly higher than the approximately 15 percent of black students in the overall K-12 public school population.

The new Census data confirm what previous surveys have shown while also suggesting a tripling of the homeschooling population from its pre-pandemic levels.

In August, Gallup reported that 10 percent of families expected to homeschool their children this academic year. And in November, Education Week estimated the number of current homeschoolers at nine percent. Prior to the pandemic, approximately 1.7 million students were homeschooled, according to the most recent federal data from 2016. The Census data now puts that number at over 5 million homeschooled students, which is comparable to the number of K-12 students typically enrolled in private schools.

This year’s new homeschoolers are also more likely to come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The Education Week survey last fall found that more lower-income families were choosing homeschooling during the pandemic response than higher-income families, challenging the myth that homeschooling families are more affluent than others. The New York Times pointed out this myth in July, explaining that “the population of home-schoolers — before the pandemic — was less affluent than average.”

Despite this evidence to the contrary, critics continue to assert that it’s affluent parents who are pulling their children from school for homeschooling, or gathering together with other families to create “learning pods.” These pods emerged last summer, as parents sought creative ways to provide safe social interaction for their children. Pods created an engaging learning environment that included parents rotating homes and taking turns teaching, or collaborating to hire an educator to facilitate a curriculum.

A modern twist on time-honored homeschool co-ops, learning pods can be a low-cost schooling alternative for many families.

For Allison Fried in Fairfax, Virginia the private homeschooling learning pod she organized in her home’s basement with five other families has been “amazing”—and much less expensive than her child’s previous preschool.

“The cost per family and what we would be paying out of pocket was literally 50% of what we were paying the year before for private preschool,” she recently told Marketplace. Her pod costs $1,000 a month per family for the teacher, learning supplies, and cleaning.

These homeschooling learning pods are an innovative, parent-driven response to pandemic policies and school closures. They are an ideal example of spontaneous, decentralized, free-market education solutions that meet current demand. They involve free people coming together in a process of voluntary association and exchange to provide value that benefits everyone involved in the arrangement.

Exasperatingly, many states were quick to slap on regulations that curtailed or prevented these small enterprises. Some states required the pods to be registered with government officials and limited their size and scope. Some required pods to be fully licensed as daycare providers. Others forbade pods from collecting fees.

Policymakers are starting to push back against these regulations. In Pennsylvania, a comprehensive school choice bill is making its way to the legislature that, among other things, protects learning pods throughout the state. Specifically, the bill would “exempt Learning Pods from state, local, and district regulatory activity,” and make certain that parents and children who participate in learning pods “are not subject to undue surveillance, reporting, regulatory demands or harassment.”

“Parents will go to great lengths to get their children the best education possible,” says Colleen Hroncich, a senior policy analyst at the Commonwealth Foundation in Pennsylvania. “With around 86% of Pennsylvania districts still hybrid or fully remote, learning pods have been a life saver for many families. Parents should not need permission from the state to get together to improve their children’s academic or social experiences.”

Learning pods and other examples of education entrepreneurship should be cheered and championed. We should encourage more visionary parents and educators to design new learning models that provide alternatives to our entrenched and outdated government-controlled education system. When free from the fetters of government oversight and regulation and guided by the free market, these innovators will build educational solutions that are better, cheaper, more creative, more personalized, and more successful than coercive government schooling.

FEE’s founder, Leonard Read, predicted what would happen in a free market in education, with parents empowered to guide their children’s education and innovative entrepreneurs free to serve both parents and children. Writing in 1964, before the rise of the modern homeschooling movement, Read said:

“While one cannot know of the brilliant steps that would be taken by millions of education-conscious parents were they and not the government to have the educational responsibility, one can imagine the great variety of cooperative and private enterprises that would emerge. There would be thousands of private schools, large and small, not necessarily unlike some of the ones we now have. There would be tutoring arrangements of a variety and ingenuity impossible to foresee. No doubt there would be corporate and charitably financed institutions of chain store dimensions, dispensing reading, writing, and arithmetic at bargain prices. There would be competition, which is cooperation’s most useful tool! There would be a parental alertness as to what the market would have to offer. There would be a keen, active, parental responsibility for their children’s and their own educational growth.”

Today’s learning pods and diverse homeschooling approaches show how such an uplifting vision could come true, especially if the government would get out of the way.

Rising homeschooling rates and innovative learning models have been bright spots in an otherwise bleak year.

Parents and educators responded to school shutdowns and related pandemic policies with individual effort and ingenuity. With many schools still closed this spring, and the strong probability that remote schooling will continue into next fall in many districts, homeschooling rates are likely to remain high. Once they experience the full freedom and flexibility of homeschooling, many parents and children won’t ever want to return to a coercive classroom.

COLUMN BY

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019). She is also an adjunct scholar at The Cato Institute and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly newsletter on parenting and education hereSign Up for Kerry’s weekly parenting and education email newsletter!

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Are Schools The Beacon of the Destruction of America?

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes, the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.”   – Thomas Jefferson


It is very difficult to understand the deep roots of communism in our Florida schools because the “educators” are very careful not to use word communism.  The American approach to education uses the scientific method of deductive reasoning where by many theories are tried until the unknown outcome emerges.  The communist approach uses the Pavlov/Skinner method whereby the desired outcome is known and theory is designed to fit the outcome.  This process is called Outcome Based Education (OBE)  aka Mastery Learning aka Training.  We see this communist method used in Critical Race Theory, 1619 project and BLM curricula where the outcome must be: America is racist and “Whiteness” is the problem.

All of America’s problems today can be traced back to the 45 Goals of Communism read into the Congressional Record on Jan 10, 1963. by Rep Herlong (D-FL).  The purpose of this reading was to serve as a reference and reminder showing the intent of the communists in their constant quest to transform America into a communist country.   The Goals are from Cleon Skousen, researcher and author of “The Naked Communist.”  These goals have been adopted by the Democrat Party and have been implemented across America.  Goals 17-32 are a direct assault on American history, values, culture and religion using the public school system as the transmitter of this propaganda. Communist Goals – 1963 Congressional Record.

The purpose of this shift to communism was to ensure an underclass.  Communists will  not tolerate competition and free thinking. All products, distribution, and activity must belong to the state. This is accomplished in the name of fairness.  “Dumbing” the population is the objective.   In the 1989, education was changed from educating students for life to training students to work, from individualism to collectivism, from fact based to feelings and emotions. Nov 2, 1989 Governor Association on Education – Gov Bill Clinton presiding, GWH Bush 41 President a presentation was given by Shirley McCune from the McRel Foundation.  Shirley believed that students were human capital and must only be trained to work. Individual life in not important only the group matters.

Whistleblower, Charlotte Iserbyt documented her findings when she was Senior Policy Analyst under President Reagan and wrote about the process to be used to accomplish this goal called Outcome Based Education, aka Mastery Learning.

The implementation of these goals in Florida schools is in violation of Florida Statute 876.01.

Communism forces humans to be the same which is totally against natural human instincts. Sameness eliminates natural instincts of curiosity, innovation and exploration.  Humans are reduced to objects.

Will we soon follow the Nazi method of Tattooing numbers on their captives to track them. FYI: The tattoo registry was created and tracked by IBM.

Nameless, faceless individuals become property to be used and abused.   The group not the individual is dominant.  When individual destiny is chosen by the government, humans need a replacement to fill the need to feel important.  Drugs, tattoos, piercing, drinking, and sex are used for replacement. How do you normalize this behavior – school, (Goal #17, 26,27)?   Instead of sex ed being focused on hygiene and biology, and loving relationships,  texts now teach explicitly how to have sex – with any age person or any gender. If used outside of school, these books and methods would be considered pornography.

The Obama administration through SOE Duncan gave grants to local media centers to include pop culture.  Instead of including Pop Culture, Classics were replaced by POP Culture pornography which can be viewed by any age student.  Today the communists proudly proclaim “WAP” by Cardi B,  performed at the Grammy’s is the Best song of 2020.

In 2018, the Florida Citizens Alliance conducted a review of this objectionable  material which did nothing more than “normalize” inappropriate sexual activity under the guise of “Sex-Ed” in violation of Florida Statutes.

  • English Language Arts
    • Pornography (violations of 847.012)
    • FL DOE Sunshine Reader List criteria (effectively bans classical literature)
  • Social Studies
    • Reconstructed History (violations of FS1003.42)
    • Religious Indoctrination (promotes Islam vs. Christianity FS 1002.206)
    • Political Indoctrination (violates FS 1006.31 factual, balanced and objective)Science (2017-2018 current adoption cycle–work in progress)

By shifting the focus of the 3 R’s, learning facts, individual responsibility, and deductive reasoning (the scientific method)   to sight,  feelings, collectivism, and outcome based responses students are ill prepared for the challenges life demands.  Due to the “grading on a curve” system adopted by many Departments of education, parents are often fooled by the letter grade their district receives.  Depending on the curve,districts can receive an “A” grade when only 55% of the students are proficient in reading or math.  Graduating students now enter college or the work place needing remediation and are often unable to follow simple directions. Mediocrity is evident throughout government and business decisions. When everything in your life is preplanned by someone else the human desire to be important, or successful becomes so frustrating that students often turn  to drugs, sex or suicide.    Students now trained to fit a particular job become apathetic while learning to shine by having sex any place, any time, with anyone.    Enough sexual indoctrination will start a dangerous trend of sexual addiction and lead to more rape and sexual abuse.

The man accused of killing eight people at three Atlanta-area spas on Tuesday allegedly confessed to the slayings and told police he has a sexual addiction.

As Communist Goals #17,25,26 are practiced and sex is “normalized” in school will sex addiction become the new excuse for horrific behavior?

When student feel their lives have no purpose, because they can’t control their own destiny, they feel hopeless and must replace that feeling with something.  Because factual information aka truth is missing, and students are no longer “educated” to be able to make common sense decisions they turn on their emotions. Students are taught to be victims and focus their anger visually and emotionally on race. These curricula changes encourage students to blame someone else for their plight while turning to school sanctioned sex and hatred. Sex “feels” good, drugs “feel” good and brilliant minds are hopelessly lost.  The destruction of American values through culture shifts  from Freedom and Liberty as laid out in the US Constitution, and through the teaching of morality by belief in family, G-d and Country are initiated. By knowing history we learn that if not stopped, the transformation of America to hatred, rioting, racism, drugs and sex will follow.   We have the right statutes in Florida to put a stop to the degradation. I support Gov DeSantis and his effort to implement them.

What’s in your school?

©Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: The Marxist Agenda Infiltrating Our Schools.

Florida Republican Rep. Says Gov. DeSantis Is Right To Ban Critical Race Theory From Schools

Republican Florida Rep. Byron Donalds reaffirmed his support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ critical race theory ban from the state’s new civics curriculum.

“There’s no room in our classrooms for critical race theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money,” DeSantis said during a press conference this week.

“Governor DeSantis is absolutely correct,” Donalds said Friday on “Fox News Primetime.”

“Yes, we have dark spots in our history. I’m the first to acknowledge that, but we also have to understand that our country is the great story of redemption in world history,” Donalds said. “We are a far better country than we were 100 years ago, 200 years ago. And, we need to embrace our history, but also understand and embrace the country we are today and the country we continue to become every single year going forward. So I applaud the governor and his decision. We need to see more of that in the other 49 states.”

“[Critical Race Theory] underpins identity politics, an ongoing effort to reimagine the United States as a nation riven by groups, each with specific claims on victimization,” the Heritage Foundation said in December.

DeSantis said Florida will instead focus on an “actual, solid, true curriculum and we will be a leader in the development and implementation of a world-class civics education,” Fox News reported.

DeSantis pledged to spend $106 million to support civics education in Florida after receiving additional funding from President Biden’s coronavirus stimulus package that was signed into law last week, according to Fox News.

COLUMN BY

CHRISTOPHER TREMOGLIE

Contributor.

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Gov. DeSantis: ‘There Is No Room In Our Classrooms For Things Like Critical Race Theory

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: DeSantis slams critical race theory and says it will have no place in Florida classrooms — ‘Not worth one red cent’

Watch. If America’s voting system is not federalized by the Democrats, then Governor Ron DeSantis can be elected POTUS in 2024.

DeSantis slams critical race theory and says it will have no place in Florida classrooms: ‘Not worth one red cent’

By Washington Examiner, March 17, 2021

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed critical race theory and pledged there is no room in his state’s classrooms for the controversial curriculum.

“There’s no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory,” the Florida Republican said Wednesday. “Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.”

DeSantis pledged that Florida’s curriculum will “expressly exclude” the teaching.

DeSantis also said he is proposing a $3,000 bonus for Florida teachers who complete a civics education program that focuses on “foundational concepts” rather than the critical race theory that has been spreading nationwide.

The critical race theory movement, energized by the New York Times’s recent 1619 Project, deviates from a traditional curriculum and teaches that racism is embedded in the founding of the United States.

Earlier this year, government employees in San Diego County, California, were forced to take part in critical race theory training, including a lecture stating that only white people are capable of being racist.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moved forward last fall with critical race theory training despite an executive order from former President Donald Trump instructing government agencies to halt the practice.

“The President has directed me to ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions,” former Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said about the executive order at the time, adding that “these types of ‘trainings’ not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce.”

RELATED ARTICLE: DeSANTIS: ‘Teaching Kids to Hate Their Country and Each Other’ Not Worth ‘One Cent from Taxpayers’

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