VIDEO: Mediocre Schools Breed Mediocre Workers

/in /by

We have been reporting the failure of America’s government schools who now follow UNESCO’s worldwide Common Core.  You read that right: Common Core is a UNESCO program, and is supported by Microsoft.

As a result, American government schools are failing our students.  Fifty percent of American graduates cannot read, write and do simple math. Bill Gates admitted its failure. More money is his answer.  We all know that the only thing that will affect change is a return of the curricula back to traditional education, WHICH WAS A HUGE SUCCESS.

OK, so the schools are failing, who cares? What does that mean to me?  Why should I care? 

Due to the extreme push for diversity, positions are filled following a racial quota, not ability. Our government positions are filled by diversity using racial lines not ability; therefore, the high standards and pride in work ethic are no longer important. Functionally illiterate people (people taught to be illiterate) are below average, so standard requirements are also lowered. Employers are finding workers are not qualified.  Too often, ignorant people make costly mistakes which could pose safety hazards or damaged products.  Instead of addressing the real issue, poor quality education, employers are forced to lower standards to meet population quotas often imposed by government through grants, subsidies or directives. Too often lowered standards pose a danger to the people they serve.

Eric Holder when AG lowered the standards of the police force. The DOJ ordered the Dayton Police Dept. to lower the passing score for an entrance exam when not many minorities.

Recently, Tucker Carlson reported that the Obama administration put diversity over safety in hiring for air traffic controllers. How enthusiastic will you be to travel by air? FNC: The FAA seems to believe that having diverse air traffic controllers is more important than having good one.

New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio wants to lower the standards for NYC’s elite high schools. Will they still be elite after quotas have changed their academic rating?

These are just a few examples. What we don’t see is what goes on in the actual office where common sense (no longer taught in school) does not exist, so porn now shown on government computers during work hours is acceptable.  Lying is acceptable, Emailing during work is acceptable. All of this amounts to billions of dollars lost due to incompetence.

According to the CDC, American suicide is up 25% since 1999. Instead of asking why more meds are given to depressed people—often causing more depression, while root causes are ignored.

Depression has multiple causes. Some are:

  • an individual forced into a controlled environment
  • not being able to express themselves as individuals
  • anti-depressants
  • ignoring natural psychological and physical needs
  • not belonging
  • loneliness (devices replacing friends)
  • lack of responsibility
  • lack of morality
  • life without meaning or purpose
  • lack of common sense
  • inability to logically draw conclusions in problem solving
  • inability to reason (thus drawing wrong solutions)
  • frustration having no future or destiny.

All of these are key triggers often leading to anxiety and depression.

Depression can lead to violence and or suicide.  Sadly all of these key skills have been eliminated from schools, which now teach our children what to think, not how to think.

Common Core forces a child to think in a box with little hope for a future not in line with the predetermined government goal. Common Core is based on the premise that people are stupid and the “smart academics know best”.  To rise against their desired response often causes a child to be bullied or act out just to make their ideas known. Drugs, massive piercing, drinking, murder, terrorism, suicide are often the result of feeling hopeless.  Common Core manipulates emotion and eliminates individualism, forcing a child into groupthink, not innovation and creation. Emotion become dominant with no logic reason balance.  A person can only think of one thought at a time. By forcing overuse of right brain function (emotion) the left brain (logic and reason)  become dormant from lack of use.   Today, aside from being functionally illiterate, too many people are motivated by a trigger that unleashes unbridled emotion too often resulting in violence or suicide.

Johann Hari full one-on-one interview with Tucker Carlson (2/9/2018)

Continuing to do the same thing over and over, expecting different results, is insane, as we have heard over and over. Common Core, Whole Word Reading, Eureka Math, Evolution all assist in diminishing the capacity of America’s future. Yet we ignore the facts and continue to push this horrid programs filled with errors, omissions and bias.

Have we learned nothing from years of failing grades?

Why are we forcing America’s children to follow a failed program?  Education based on collectivism not individualism, training not education and values not facts, according to the brilliant educator Shirley McCune, is to change and alter the society.  This is not education. It is indoctrination. She promotes outcome based education.  Our children’s destiny will now be chosen by a computer. How many more generations of Americans will we lose to this indoctrination called education?

According to Heather McDonald, Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, colleges are now forced to select students on the basis of Diversity.  This does not produce the best and brightest.  The danger in science she states is escalating as students study irrelevant subjects like diversity, race and minority affects on a variety of issues NOT SCIENCE.  If STEM students are selected by diversity not ability who will invent the next Widget, or cure?

I have a challenge.  Since Common Core was thrown at us without proper vetting (no test run) and violates many educational codes and statutes, why not have at least one school in each district teach traditional education?  You will be shocked at the results.

If nothing is done, how many more agencies and businesses will fail putting the public at risk?  Do we now get to choose our doctor, mechanic, air traffic controller, police based on color of skin or ability to do the job? The choice is ours.

What’s in your school?  Will you Join Floridacitizensalliance.com?

Will you check your school? Your child’s work? Correct mistakes challenge texts for bias? errors? omissions? Join Us.  America’s future is in our hands.

TMLC Agrees To Help Father In Fight With School Over Islamic Indoctrination Of 13-Year Old Daughter

/in , , , , , , /by

ANN ARBOR, MI – The Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced today that it has agreed to represent Richard Penkoski in his fight with the Mountain Ridge Middle School, located in West Virginia, over the Islamic indoctrination of his 13-year old daughter.

​Mr. Penkoski, an evangelist who hosts an online Christian ministry, “Warriors for Christ,” with an estimated 200K-300K followers, discovered the astonishing extent to which his daughter and her fellow classmates were being subjected to Islamic indoctrination under the guise of teaching about world religions.

On May 14 of this year, his seventh-grade daughter brought home a packet of lessons and assignments which included the following:

  • Write the Shahada, the Islamic conversion creed, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah,” in Arabic as part of “calligraphy” practice.
  • Fast for 24 hours and give lunch money and food to a food bank, to sympathize with Muslims going through Ramadan.
  • Read chapters from the Koran.
  • Learn the Five Pillars of Islam.

The lessons and assignments propagandized the students by downplaying the violent nature of Islam.

When his daughter brought home the packet of information, Mr. Penkoski told her she was not going to do the assignment and he immediately complained to the principal. He also asked the Thomas More Law Center to look into the legal aspects of the matter.

Mr. Penkoski felt that his daughter’s teacher dedicated much more time on Islam than any other religion.  He said “most of the faith aspects of Christianity and Judaism were stripped from the lesson plan by the teacher. Students were not given calligraphy writing assignments in Judaism, or Christianity, only Islam.”

Mr. Penkoski and his wife Amanda and 6 children refuse to shy away from the controversy. While it would be easy to remove his daughter from the school, Penkoski says, “We don’t back down during persecution.”

Richard Thompson, TMLC’s President and Chief Counsel, commented:

“This is typical of the public-school systems across the country.  Witless school officials have turned classrooms into Islamic indoctrination centers. They promote Islam in ways that would be unthinkable for Christianity or any other religion because they fear a lawsuit by the ACLU.”

Continued Thompson, “Teachers sugar coat Islam.  They don’t tell students about Islam’s barbaric brutality, where women and young girls are sold into slavery and used as sex-slaves, where men and women are stoned to death and burned alive—all in the name of Islam and the Koran.”

The case involving Mr. Penkoski’s daughter is one of several cases that the Thomas More Law Center has agreed to take on concerning Islamic indoctrination in American public schools.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Reuters.

Harvard’s Oppression of Minorities

/in , , , , /by

In 2015, the nonprofit group Students for Fair Admission filed a lawsuit against Harvard University that alleged Harvard directly discriminates against Asian-American applicants during the university’s top-secret admissions process. On Friday, documents previously reserved for attorneys’ eyes only were made public, providing substantial evidence of Harvard’s discriminatory practices.

In addition to pages of statistical evidence that show how Harvard’s admissions process is heavily biased against Asian-Americans, the documents show Harvard was aware of this discrimination for some time and deliberately chose to do nothing about it.

Harvard initiated an investigation into the accusations, but before these studies were even completed, members of its admissions staff, including Dean of Admissions William Fitzsimmons, contributed to a three-paragraph article that denied the school discriminated against Asian-Americans.

But evidence to the contrary soon emerged. In the first of two studies done by Harvard’s Office of Institutional Research, statistical models were created to predict what demographic admissions would look like under a varying set of circumstances.

In all models where race and ethnicity were not considered as factors for admissions, projected acceptance rates for Asian-Americans were substantially higher. In fact, in the model where only academic performance was considered, Asian-American applicants were projected to make up 43 percent of the school’s admissions, dominating all other demographic categories. When the current admissions model was applied, Asian-Americans made up only 19 percent of the school’s admissions.

When this information was presented to Fitzsimmons, he decided to neither share nor discuss the findings with anyone. When the second report from the Office of Institutional Research made abundantly clear that “being Asian American was negatively associated with the chance of being admitted to Harvard,” Fitzsimmons again neither shared nor discussed the findings.

The fact that race plays such a substantial factor in Harvard and other Ivy League schools’ admissions processes is alarming but far from surprising. Since 1989, there has been suspicion that Harvard and other Ivy League schools were actively limiting the number of Asian-Americans accepted into their institutions. Throughout the years, Asian-Americans have been instructed to avoid conforming to racial stereotypes in their extracurricular activities (regardless of their interests), and have even felt it necessary to refuse to disclose their race on applications.

For years, Asian-Americans have been cowed into hiding their race to improve their chances at attending an Ivy League school. Any serious advocate of civil rights should be outraged at such a blatant injustice. Aside from the fact that discrimination on the basis of race is patently illegal, it should be noted that schools such as Harvard often function as “pipelines” to positions of influence and political power.

As such, direct attempts to limit the number of Asian-Americans accepted into Harvard also are indirect attempts to limit their influence in the public sphere. Rather than being inclusive and fostering diversity, Harvard has decided to intentionally hide policies that play into a long history of political oppression of minorities.

Regardless of whether they are indicted in a court of law, the court of public opinion should hold our nation’s premier educational institutions to a higher standard, one that reflects the ideals of liberty and equality upon which America was founded.

COMMENTARY BY

Joseph Natali

Joseph Natali is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

Portrait of Mike Gonzalez

Mike Gonzalez

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, is a widely experienced international correspondent, commentator, and editor who has reported from Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He served in the George W. Bush administration, first at the Securities and Exchange Commission and then at the State Department, and is the author of “A Race for the Future: How Conservatives Can Break the Liberal Monopoly on Hispanic Americans.” Read his research. Twitter: .

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Brian Snyder/Reuters/Newscom.

VIDEO: Dangerous People Are Teaching Your Kids

/in , , , , , /by

Dangerous people are filling the heads of young people with dangerous nonsense.

Who are these people?

They are what Jordan Peterson calls “the post-modernists:” neo-Marxist professors who dominate our colleges and universities. And here’s the worst part: we are financing these nihilists with tax dollars, alumni gifts and tuition payments.

Time to wise up.

TRANSCRIPT

You may not realize it, but you are currently funding some dangerous people.

They are indoctrinating young minds throughout the West with their resentment-ridden ideology. They have made it their life’s mission to undermine Western civilization itself, which they regard as corrupt, oppressive and “patriarchal.”

If you’re a taxpayer—or paying for your kid’s liberal arts degree—you’re underwriting this gang of nihilists.

You’re supporting ideologues who claim that all truth is subjective; that all sex differences are socially constructed; and that Western imperialism is the sole source of all Third World problems. They are the post-modernists, pushing “progressive” activism at a college near you.

They produce the mobs that violently shut down campus speakers; the language police who enshrine into law use of fabricated gender pronouns; and the deans whose livelihoods depend on madly rooting out discrimination where little or none exists.

Their thinking took hold in Western universities in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when the true believers of the radical left became the professors of today. And now we rack up education-related debt—not so that our children learn to think critically, write clearly, or speak properly, but so they can model their mentors’ destructive agenda.

It’s now possible to complete an English degree and never encounter Shakespeare—one of those dead white males whose works underlie our “society of oppression.”

To understand and oppose the post-modernists, the ideas by which they orient themselves must be clearly identified.

First is their new unholy trinity of diversity, equity and inclusion. Diversity is defined not by opinion, but by race, ethnicity or sexual identity; equity is no longer the laudable goal of equality of opportunity, but the insistence on equality of outcome; and inclusion is the use of identity-based quotas to attain this misconceived state of equity.

All the classic rights of the West are to be considered secondary to these new values. Take, for example, freedom of speech—the very pillar of democracy. The post-modernists refuse to believe that people of good will can exchange ideas and reach consensus.

Their world is instead a Hobbesian nightmare of identity groups warring for power. They don’t see ideas that run contrary to their ideology as simply incorrect. They see them as integral to the oppressive system they wish to supplant, and consider it a moral obligation to stifle and constrain their expression.

Second is rejection of the free market—of the very idea that free, voluntary trading benefits everyone. They won’t acknowledge that capitalism has lifted up hundreds of millions of people so they can for the first time in history afford food, shelter, clothing, transportation—even entertainment and travel. Those classified as poor in the US (and, increasingly, everywhere else) are able to meet their basic needs. Meanwhile, in once-prosperous Venezuela—until recently the poster-child of the campus radicals—the middle class lines up for toilet paper.

Third, and finally, are the politics of identity. Post-modernists don’t believe in individuals. You’re an exemplar of your race, sex, or sexual preference. You’re also either a victim or an oppressor. No wrong can be done by anyone in the former group, and no good by the latter. Such ideas of victimization do nothing but justify the use of power and engender intergroup conflict.

All these concepts originated with Karl Marx, the 19th-century German philosopher. Marx viewed the world as a gigantic class struggle—the bourgeoisie against the proletariat; the grasping rich against the desperate poor. But wherever his ideas were put into practice—in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia, to name just a few—whole economies failed, and tens of millions were killed. We fought a decades-long cold war to stop the spread of those murderous notions. But they’re back, in the new guise of identity politics.

The corrupt ideas of the post-modern neo-Marxists should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Instead, we underwrite their continuance in the very institutions where the central ideas of the West should be transmitted across the generations. Unless we stop, post-modernism will do to America and the entire Western world what it’s already done to its universities.

I’m Jordan Peterson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, for Prager University.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Vadim Ivanov/Shutterstock.

Indiana Teacher Forced to Resign After Refusing to Kowtow to Transgender Policies

/in , , , , , /by

An Indiana high school teacher alleges that he was forced to resign because he wouldn’t ascribe to the school’s policy of calling transgender students by their chosen names and pronouns.

“I’m being compelled to encourage students in what I believe is something that’s a dangerous lifestyle,” former Brownsburg High School orchestra teacher John Kluge told NBC News. He alleges that compelling him to address students with pronouns that do not accord to their biological sex violates his religious beliefs as well as his constitutional right to free speech.

dcnf-logo

“I’m fine to teach students with other beliefs, but the fact that teachers are being compelled to speak a certain way is the scary thing,” Kluge also told NBC.

The school requires that teachers call students by their chosen name or pronoun provided that the student has a written note of consent from a parent and doctor. The school previously allowed Kluge to call students by their last names but changed the policies two months ago to mandate that Kluge call them by their chosen names and pronouns.

Advocates of queer inclusion at the school and in the community don’t see the requirement as an infringement upon Kluge’s rights but simply as a requirement of respect. “Using a trans student’s chosen name is an invaluable support. Educators need to lead by example with respect for students’ identities, names, and pronouns,” said GLSEN advocacy group education manager Becca Mui, NBC reported.

GLSEN is “a national network of students, educators, parents, & community leaders working to create LGBTQ-inclusive schools,” according to its Twitter handle.

“Everyone deserves to be called by their name, and in doing so teachers are able to effortlessly respect their students and enable them to live authentically,” the Trevor Project’s head of advocacy and government affairs, Sam Brinton, also said. The Trevor Project provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ youth.

A Brownsburg representative maintains that Kluge voluntarily resigned before the end of the school year, but Kluge claims he only sent in a resignation letter because the school threatened to fire him. “I’m pleading … I still want to work here,” Kluge explained.

Kluge has indicated he will appeal to the school board if he and the school can find no compromise that will allow him to continue teaching at Brownsburg High School.

COLUMN BY

Grace Carr

Grace Carr is a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter: @gbcarr24.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

We Hear You: Poor School Discipline, Hard-to-Fire Bureaucrats, Obstructive Democrats, and ‘Colluding’ Green Groups

Homeschooling Skyrocket

New Delaware School Rule on Gender: Reg-rettabl

San Diego Parents Pulling Their Kids From School Over Inappropriate Sex-Ed Curriculum

RELATED VIDEO: Ohio Teachers Union Presidents Defend “physical, sexual, verbal” Abuse of Children.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Getty Images: DONGSEON_KIM. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Homeschooling Skyrockets

/in , , , , /by

Until communities retake control of their local school boards, and until there are sweeping changes in the educational process so children are taught to read, write, and do arithmetic…oh, and write in cursive so their brains and neurological system can develop properly; and until the socialist agenda now rampant in our schools, including no longer teaching well or at any length about our founding as an exceptional nation, and what our founding documents truly mean, and why they came about in the first place; until Common Core and other  New-World Order crap is sponged from the educational system; until dollar numbers demonstrate beyond a doubt that our classrooms are properly prepared with all the needed manipulatives – and Kleenex and toilet paper; until parents (tax payers) begin to demand a full accounting of the never ending cycle of pay increases which never seem to trickle down into classrooms; until school boards once again become accountable to the citizens of that particular district, there will continue to be an exodus of students into private or charter schools.

It has taken time to gain momentum but parents are beginning to grasp the scam of continued and increased funding for education while the product being turned out is less than impressive.  One large school district in Arizona was excited to tell any and everyone who would listen that 80% of their senior’s graduate high school.  What about the other 20% that don’t graduate?!  And out of that 80% what is not told is that only 15-20% attend a university, with the remainder going on to junior college, but even then after a year many drop out.  Junior College is fine, and actually makes great sense helping to get lower division college courses out of the way before tackling those within your major.  Likewise junior college is less expensive than a university.  But beneath the smiles and all is right with the world, a bitter and hard truth remains.  A very large portion of students still matriculating cannot successfully work at the academic level they are occupying, much less at institutions of higher learning and taking challenging academics.

Additionally…the social reprogramming and social Marxism deliberately taught in our school systems is atrocious and getting worse. 

As parents pull away from the quickly deteriorating schools and systems, turning to either home schooling, charter schools, or private schools funding based on student enrollments will also deteriorate, and teachers will once again be out marching and protesting.

Parents truly need to confront local school boards about turning out a better product, one based on time honored traditional educational practices, versus the shift to New Age and New-World Order philosophy and thinking.  Parents are their child’s best advocate.  Many parents have found their voices in this regard, and it shows by the numbers of children withdrawn from schools.  Advocate on!  Pulling your student from a poorly functioning/performing school is another form.

Children are our best hope for the future…take a long and sober look and tell me what you see?

Homeschooling skyrockets as more parents get fed up with Left-wing social engineering and violence in public schools

by JD Heyes

(Natural News) Thanks to the incessant Left-wing counter-culture social engineering and increasing levels of violence and bullying, more American parents are pulling their kids out of failing government schools and teaching them at home.

Read more of this post

New Delaware School Rule on Gender: Reg-rettable

/in , , , , , /by

If there’s one thing the extreme Left is afraid of, it’s engaged parents. On everything from graphic sex ed to genderless bathrooms, moms and dads are becoming a force to reckon with in cities across the country. When school districts try to slip more indoctrination into the class day, parents have been up to the challenge.

In Delaware, locals could have given lessons on holding politicians accountable when the Department of Education tried to pass a regulation that would’ve let students choose their race and gender — without ever telling parents! The idea was so outrageous that complaints poured into state offices. “Literally,” Delaware Family Policy Council President Nicole Theis told Todd Starnes last year, “if a parent affirms their child’s biological sex, and now race, they are [considered] discriminatory through policies like Regulation 225. These policies are setting parents up as… unsupportive, even abusive, if they affirm their child’s biological realities…”

By state law, Delawareans had 30 days to comment on the proposal – and more than 11,000 did! Together with the more than 8,000 petitions collected by Theis, the governor got the message. To the cheers of parents, the governor backed off in December and asked the team to reconvene in January with new recommendations. This week, almost six months later, Delaware released the fruits of those meetings, a revised Regulation 225. Unfortunately, though, it’s only mildly better.

Delaware officials have made a better effort to include parents in the gender and race changes of their kids, but it doesn’t do nearly enough to involve moms and dads. Even in this version, employees of the school or state can still have secret conversations about a student’s gender without ever calling home. The rewrite also doesn’t do a thing to address the privacy concerns of so many parents. Under this latest draft, Regulation 225 doesn’t provide any relief for kids who feel pressured to undress, shower, or share an overnight room with students of the opposite sex.

Parents in the area have done an incredible job making their voices heard — and it looks like they’ll have to keep speaking up until Delaware gets it right. The public will have another 30 days to comment on the changes, so it will be up to the state to keep the pressure on about privacy and parental rights. Based on what they’ve accomplished already, there’s plenty of reason to hope! Although the fight isn’t over (yet!), be encouraged. Your involvement does make a difference!

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Soccer Star Keeps Ultimate Goal in Mind

Day of Heroes

School Board Fights to Preserve Bathroom Policy After Judge OKs Trans Student’s Lawsuit

/in , , , , /by

A Virginia public school district will pursue an appeal after a federal judge ruled that a transgender student can challenge the district’s bathroom access policies under federal civil rights law and the Constitution.

Gloucester County Public Schools asked U.S. District Court Judge Arenda Wright Allen to allow its appeal on Friday. Allen’s late May decision allowing the student to bring a case against the district was not a final judgement, meaning the district must secure Allen’s approval before filing an appeal.

dcnf-logo

Though appellate review before final judgement is limited to a narrow range of issues, lawyers for the district argue it is appropriate here, because the appeals court’s decision will essentially determine the outcome of the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the plaintiff, consented to the motion. If Allen agrees, the case will proceed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We think the vast majority of courts have already ruled that these sorts of discriminatory polices violate [federal and constitutional protections],” ACLU lawyer Joshua Block told The Associated Press. “And we’re confident the 4th Circuit would agree.”

Allen denied the district’s motion to dismiss on May 22, finding the student can sue the system for violating the Constitution’s equal protection guarantees and Title IX, which forbids sex discrimination in education.

The case was occasioned when a transgender student named Gavin Grimm began using the men’s restroom at his public high school. Grimm is a trans man. District policy provides that trans students must use the bathroom corresponding to their birth gender or an alternative all-sex bathroom.

Grimm’s case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016, but the justices punted on the dispute after the Trump administration withdrew Obama-era guidance that advised public schools that Title IX requires administrators to allow students access to the bathrooms of their choice.

RELATED ARTICLE: “BDSM” the next LGBT push on society. Depraved, dangerous behaviors are now taking place at major hotels across America. 

EDITORS NOTE: Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image of Gavin Grimm attending the Time 100 Gala in New York City on April 25, 2017 is by by Steven Ferdman. [Photo via Newscom]

Congressman Ron DeSantis Endorses School Board Term Limits in Florida

/in , , /by

In an exclusive op-ed for U.S. Term Limits, Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis has endorsed eight-year term limits for all school board members in Florida. DeSantis is widely known as a champion of “drain the swamp” policies in Washington, including term limits.

In the Op-Ed, DeSantis writes:

“In our oft-divided political climate, it’s vital to pursue reforms that bring people together and restore power to citizens— even when those ideas won’t win friends among the permanent political class.

I’ve found that no issue unifies like term limits. The people of Florida, regardless of party affiliation, have reached the same verdict Benjamin Franklin did centuries ago: rotation-in-office is the lifeblood of our republic. No elected office, whether federal or local, is ever better off when run by career politicians.

That’s why I support eight-year term limits for all school board members. I am confident this proposal would bring new energy and ideas to school boards, which too often suffer from the same untamed incumbency that paralyzes Congress.”

The full op-ed is available HERE.

Since his election to Congress in 2012, DeSantis has led the fight on congressional term limits. He is the lead sponsor of House Joint Resolution 6, which proposes a constitutional amendment limiting House members to three terms and Senators to two. DeSantis has also helped secure support from President Trump for this amendment.

In Congress there is no stronger advocate for term limits than Ron DeSantis. We are encouraged by Ron’s support for draining the Florida swamp as well as the one in Washington.

School board term limits will appear as Amendment Eight on the fall ballot.

ABOUT CONGRESSMAN RON DESANTIS

Congressman Ron DeSantis represents Florida’s 6th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy Reserves and a candidate for Governor of Florida in 2018.

San Diego Parents Pulling Their Kids From School Over Inappropriate Sex-Ed Curriculum

/in , , , , , /by

“We’re going to ask them to suspend this new curriculum because it’s not a curriculum for the adolescent brain, it’s an adult curriculum,” mom Angela Beaver says about a sex-ed curriculum in San Diego.

San Diego parents pulled their kids from school and rallied outside the district’s headquarters Tuesday, expressing anger and frustration over a sex-ed curriculum they allege is completely inappropriate for their young children.

The sixth grade curriculum includes lessons on gender identity, birth control, the stages of sex, STDs, HIV, and pregnancy. Parents are calling the material “too much, too soon” and age-inappropriate while San Diego officials defend the curriculum by arguing that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supports the lesson plans, CBS News 8 reported.

dcnf-logo

“We’re going to ask them to suspend this new curriculum because it’s not a curriculum for the adolescent brain, it’s an adult curriculum,” mom Angela Beaver told CBS 8 News.

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>

San Diego parents also loudly rallied in February, asking the district to change its sex-ed curriculum to make it age-appropriate, but the district board did not acquiesce. Parents also began an online petition asking the school district to abandon the curriculum.

“This is absolutely appropriate for our students,” said Isabella McNeil from the San Diego Unified School District, maintaining that the parents are getting upset over material that should in fact be taught to young students.

San Diego parents can opt their child out of the sex-ed curriculum if they choose, but no substitute curriculum will be provided.

Fort Worth schools have also been reeling after a sex-ed lesson for sixth-graders entailed gender transitions and sexual fluidity, according to the Star-Telegram.

Sex-ed programs in other states have also been causing chaos. A California school district told parents in February they can’t opt their kids out of a new sex education course covering abortion, homosexuality, and transgender issues. Despite California’s 2015 Healthy Youth Act, which lets parents opt their children out of sex-ed classes, the Orange County Board of Education decided parents don’t have that right.

Delaware is considering adopting a policy allowing young school students to choose whatever name, gender, or race they want under a veil of school protection mandating the parents not be informed of these decisions unless the student explicitly wishes the parent be included.

COLUMN BY

Grace Carr

@gbcarr24

Grace Carr is a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation.

EDITORS NOTE: Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image is by dolgachov/Getty Images.

Activist Judges Scrub Bathroom Complaint

/in , , , , /by

If you think it’s tough speaking up as an adult in today’s culture, try being a kid. Christian teenagers are swimming against a strong tide these days, but that hasn’t stopped Alexis Lightcap. The Boyertown student wants every classmate to feel safe — even if it means fighting school leaders to guarantee it.

Going to the bathroom at school shouldn’t be a life-changing experience – but that’s exactly what it became for Alexis the day she walked into girls’ restroom and saw a man’s face in the mirror. “My body went into immediate shock,” Lightcap writes in her new op-ed. “My first thought was to get out.” So she did. She raced down the hall to a teacher and didn’t look back.

“The teacher told me to tell the principal, so I did. And the principal did nothing.” Instead of listening to her concerns she said, “they made me feel like I was the problem for feeling uncomfortable, unsafe, and vulnerable with a boy in the bathroom.” Alexis couldn’t believe it. Neither could her parents — who, like most Boyertown families — had no idea the policy was in effect. The Lightcaps’ attorney, Alliance Defending Freedom’s Christiana Holcomb, explained that the only ones that did seem to know were a couple of students who identified as the opposite sex.

“It felt like a specific group of people were protected while the rest of the population was not,” Alexis said. And thinking about her little sister having the same experience made her realize: if the school didn’t care, she had to make them. “You have a say in this world, and you need to speak up,” she remembered her adoptive parents telling her. “In that moment, I knew I had to do something.”

That “something” was joining a high-profile lawsuit against the school. Months earlier, a male classmate – known only as Joel Doe — had taken Boyertown to court. He was just as horrified as Alexis had been when he walked into the boys’ locker room and saw a biological girl in a sports bra and shorts. The administrator he talked to told him to “tolerate it” — to “make it as natural as possible.” Did they really think everyone would enjoy the surprise and just embrace this idea, Alexis asked? “No one prepared us, warned us, counseled us,” she wrote.

According to the people on the blogs and at the microphones, those of us who object to finding ourselves in private spaces with people of the opposite sex must be bigots, or religious extremists, to deny our peers who identify with the opposite sex their choice of restroom. I guess it’s always easier to label people than to think about where they’re coming from.

Alexis could have fought the policy anonymously. Instead, she decided, “I have a chance to speak up. I’m a representative for all those people who don’t have a voice.” No other girl, she vowed, should have to go through what she did. “It’s common sense that boys shouldn’t be in girls’ locker rooms, restrooms, and shower areas. Every student matters and schools should put our privacy, safety, and dignity first.”

Unfortunately for Alexis and the other 1,649 kids in Berks County, the courts don’t agree. This week, her case with Joel Doe made it all the way to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where, to everyone’s amazement, a three-judge panel ruled unanimously that Alexis and Joel didn’t prove that school was infringing on their “bodily privacy.” In an unusual move — rare enough that every newspaper covering the story seemed to notice — the court took less than an hour to rule. A stunned ACLU attorney on the other side told reporters, “We were not expecting a decision when we walked in the door today.”

Thanks to our friends at ADF, it may not be the last one. Although Alexis and her co-plaintiff are weighing their options, odds are the group will appeal to the full Third Circuit court. “The school administrators failed her,” Holcomb said. “She reported her concerns. She brought it to the adults in the room — the adults who should have been protecting her — and they ignored her.” One of the biggest problems in districts like Boyertown, she explains, “is that the policies are tailored to a small group of students at the expense of every other student at the school.” What families want are policies that protect everyone’s privacy, everyone’s dignity.

Meanwhile, if you want to know why President Trump’s judicial confirmations matter, kids like Alexis are exhibit A. Back in November of last year, the Senate sent reinforcements to the Third Circuit in the form of Judge Stephanos Bibas, the first White House pick to fill a vacancy on that bench. Two more are waiting in the wings — Paul Matey and David Porter, both strict constructionists who are waiting for their turn on the fast track of Senator Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) committee. Once they make it through the process (which, given the lightning-quick pace of this Senate’s confirmations, could be any day) maybe they can help inject some common sense into Alexis’s case.

In the meantime, we applaud ADF and these courageous students, who may be half the school administration’s age, but they sure have twice the wisdom!

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Laying Down Their Lives for Their Friends

Watchmen: Standing on the Wall and in the Gap

‘Party Like It’s 1776’ Theme Too Offensive for New Jersey School Prom

/in , , , /by

A New Jersey high school principal apologized Friday for a “Party Like It’s 1776” theme at prom.

Dennis Perry, principal of Cherry Hill High School East, posted on his Twitter feed an apology for the theme printed on prom tickets, calling the decision “insensitive and irresponsible,” reported Fox News.

dcnf-logo

“I especially apologize to our African-American students, who I have let down by not initially recognizing the inappropriateness of this wording,” Perry wrote in a statement.

To make up for what he deemed an indiscretion, the principal said students would not need to bring their prom tickets in order to get into the event—they would instead only need to state their names to be matched up with a list of who bought tickets. Cherry Hill High School would also give every student attendee a “commemorative” ticket displaying a new design at the prom. Perry stated that a “diverse group of people” would review information distributed by the school prior to its dissemination in the future.

Lloyd Henderson, president of the Camden County NAACP East Chapter, saw the incident indicative of a school culture “where African-American students’ needs are not considered along with the rest of the school,” but mentioned that he appreciated Perry’s speedy response.

Cherry Hill High School made headlines in February when it suspended social studies teacher Timothy Locke after Locke told students to remember him if he died defending them during a school shooting.

COMMENTARY BY

Rob Shimshock

Rob Shimshock is a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter: @ShimshockAndAwe.

RELATED ARTICLE: Only in America’s Schools Could ‘Partying Like It’s 1776’ Be Offensive

EDITORS NOTE: Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image is by debbiehelbing/Getty Images.

Santa Fe, the Human Heart, and the Need for God

/in , , , , /by

It was one of the last pictures ever taken of Christian Garcia. With the sun on his face, the Santa Fe teenager leaned his head on the wooden slats that would one day be his bedroom. On the framing of the house he’ll never live in, Christian had taken a sharpie and written Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.”Today, those words echo across a Texas town in desperate need of the reminder that God is still there. For the 10 families who never dreamed they were saying their last goodbyes Friday morning, the pain of another school shooting is a raw and profound reminder of how desperately our world needs the Savior. Wrapped in a grief familiar to too many communities, a heartbroken Santa Fe turned, as it always has, to faith. Moments after the first shots rang out, phones started buzzing. “Please pray,” came one text after another. Cars started to pour into church parking lots; prayer chains sprang into action. In a city that just survived the worst of Hurricane Harvey, everyone knew what direction to look in tragedy — up.Now, as the first bodies of those eight students and two teachers are laid to rest, America returns to the question burned on everyone’s mind: why? Angry outsiders demand gun control. Others lay the blame at the feet of the NRA. And while the rest of the country debates what our country could have done differently, Texas’s top officials try to return the conversation back to the heart of the problem — the heart. “We have devalued life in this country,” Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said plainly. “We threw God out of school… We have families that are broken apart, no fathers at home. We have incredible heinous violence as a game, two hours a day in front of their eyes. And we stand here and we wonder why this happens to certain students.”

In Sunday services across Texas, teary parents seemed to have the same response. At Arcadia First Baptist Church, one grandmother’s eyes welled up just thinking about her grandson, who was supposed to be in the art room where the shooting started. “We need God back in our schools,” she said. For Santa Fe, where students still pray before football games and some teachers still hold lunchtime Bible studies, “thoughts and prayers” aren’t throwaway words when heartbreak strikes. They’re a way of life. “This is not,” Patrick insisted, “about guns. This is about us, as a culture and a nation. Who are we?”

Who we are is a broken country in dire need of the God we keep pushing away. “The world has never been a nice place,” Matt Walsh pointed out the Daily Wire, “but it got quite a bit meaner when we abandoned religion. That is no coincidence.” It’s human nature to want to blame something, but the problem has never been guns. Are there policies we could strengthen? Absolutely. But mankind has had instruments of destruction dating back to Cain and Abel. The real crisis is the moral vacuum left behind when society kicked religion — and with it, morality — out of the public space. Violence, relativism, promiscuity, and suicide didn’t get their start when God was expelled from school. But they’ve certainly been given a culture in which to thrive now that we’ve removed the Judeo-Christian foundation that anchored the country. Walsh warned:

“The nightmare we have lived since the turn of the previous century has been the direct result of the world’s rejection of God. We fled from His embrace and what we found out here in the wilderness, in our ‘freedom,’ is evil and despair on an unimaginable scale. We have become an empty country, an empty generation, an empty world. ‘They withdrew from me, went after emptiness, and became empty themselves,’ God says through the Prophet Jeremiah. He speaks as much to us as He spoke to the people of Jeremiah’s time.”

Of course, some liberals don’t want to have a discussion about the underlying problem, because it would mean acknowledging the fallen nature of man. That, not stricter gun laws, is what’s keeping us from finding real solutions as a nation. We can talk about limiting access to guns, but if we’re truly concerned about violence, let’s also talk about expanding access to God. Until we’re willing to address both — the instrument and the motivation – nothing will change. A spiritually sick society that embraces violence instead of values needs God.

Maybe a community as deeply sincere about their faith as Santa Fe can help the nation understand that. Looking across the rows of empty school chairs, they know better than anyone — Guns don’t steer men wrong, hearts do.

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

RELATED ARTICLE:

At Graduation, No Tassel without Tussle over Faith

A Pop of Colyer Protects Adoption in Kans.

St. Ambrose College’s Segregated Muslim Prayer Room Is A Chilling Reality

/in , , , /by

That St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa has opened a sex-segregated prayer room for Muslim students requires an explanation. On the surface, it seems totally bizarre. Why exactly do Muslims want to go to an explicitly Catholic college and why is that now-progressive Catholic college proudly violating normative standards of equal treatment for men and women?

The answer is found in why feminists have turned into crickets on select overt sexism when they howl outrages over only perceived slights against women. Muslims, feminists and most American progressives have a common enemy: America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, which they have been working to dismantle for generations.

This is the only way to make sense of the otherwise head-scratching alliance of religiously antagonistic progressives, feminists and devout Muslims. Their stated beliefs and goals should make them natural foes — and they are in Muslim run countries. But they are not in America. However, if you identify a common enemy, the reason for their alliance comes into focus. It also explains why these groups are so disdainful of American exceptionalism, of America’s heritage and specifically of the founding fathers and the Constitution they produced.

The hrumphing at this proposition will be loud. But it is undeniably a part of today’s Islam around the world. It is pretty easily a part of modern feminism that focuses on the demon of the patriarchy, denies differences in the genders and celebrates whatever the Bible decries. And it is patently manifest in pretty much all of the actions of modern progressives.

Judeo-Christian America is what modern feminism and progressives find to be an archaic, backward, gun-toting, Bible-clinging threat to the march of civilization — as they perceive it. And the Muslim march of civilization is basically all Muslim.

And what this decision by St. Ambrose College shows is that the college makes policy based on being progressive before being Catholic. That, it would seem, is unarguable.

Just listen to the very-pleased-with-himself college senior who designed the prayer room, in conjunction with the Saudi Student Association — because every Catholic college needs to have an association of the women-crushing, hand-cleaving, civil-rights-denying ruling House of Saud.

“It’s uniquely Ambrosian, and it just sort of shows our commitment to all different faiths,” Matt Mahoney said of the sex-segregated worship room he designed. “It is really outstanding.”

What might the early church father St. Ambrose think of this “commitment to all different faiths” — which rather sounds like a commitment to no faiths? Let’s look at who Ambrose was.

“A zealous preacher and valiant defender of the Christian Faith, Saint Ambrose received particular renown as a Church writer. In dogmatic compositions he set forth the Orthodox teaching about the Holy Trinity, the Sacraments, and Repentance,” according to Orthodox Church in America. “Saint Ambrose, defending the unity of the Church, energetically opposed the spread of heresy.” [Emphasis added.]

Ambrose converted many pagans to Christianity, from Germany to Persia (he lived before Mohammed founded Islam) and most famously, he showed a wayward young man named Augustine the way to God through Christ. Ambrose would most certainly have considered Muslims as pagans in need of conversion — not celebration.

It’s safe to say that Ambrose would be aghast at what was being done at a college named after him. And it’s further safe to say that when the young man said the sex-segregated Muslim prayer room is “uniquely Ambrosian” he was not referring to Ambrose the man, but the culture of the progressive college that appears to have turned its back on the legacy of St. Ambrose — and made alliance with those who actively seek to destroy the actual legacy of Ambrose.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act.

Muted Reaction to Student Presenting Thesis in Her Underwear Shows Corruption of Our Colleges

/in , , , /by

The most remarkable thing about the title of this column [“Cornell Student Presents Thesis in Her Underwear”] is that not one reader will think it’s a joke. That, my friends, is further proof of the low esteem in which most Americans hold our universities.

The left has rendered our universities, in the description of Harvard professor Steven Pinker, laughingstocks.

Letitia Chai

As reported in The Cornell Daily Sun and then around the world, this is what actually happened last week at Cornell University, one of our “Ivy League” universities: Senior Letitia Chai presented a trial run of her scholar senior thesis wearing a blue button-down shirt and cutoff jean shorts. Her professor, Rebekah Maggor, asked her, “is that really what you would wear?”

The professor went on to say that Chai’s shorts were “too short”—that as a speaker she was making a “statement” with her clothes. As reported in the newspaper, “The class does not have a formalized dress code, but asks students to ‘dress appropriately for the persona [they] will present.’”

Offended and hurt by the professor’s suggestion, Chai decided that she would present her thesis in even less clothing. She appeared before her fellow students in her shirt and shorts and then removed them. As she stripped down to a bra and panties, she explained:

I am more than Asian. I am more than a woman. I am more than Letitia Chai. I am a human being, and I ask you to take this leap of faith, to take this next step—or rather, this next strip—in our movement and to join me in revealing to each other and to seeing each other for who we truly are: members of the human race. … We are so triumphant, but most importantly, we are equals.

Twenty-eight of the 44 audience members followed suit, stripping down.

Chai’s presentation was livestreamed. It can still be seen on Facebook.

Eleven students who were present wrote a long statement defending both the professor—who apologized profusely—and Chai. It read:

As students who firmly believe in the tenants [that Cornell students do not know the word is ‘tenets,’ not ‘tenants,’ is not surprising] of justice and the commitment to fair representation, we feel that it is our duty to make the following statement. We support Letitia’s commitment to the cause of women’s rights. … We strongly support and identify with Letitia’s fight for equality in the treatment of all people, regardless of race, gender, color, creed, sexuality, or appearance. The majority of us are students of color, from multiethnic backgrounds, who very much relate to Letitia’s frustration with systemic oppression that is part of the fabric of this country. … Our recollection of that day is as follows:

Letitia stood up to give her speech. Before she began, our professor asked Letitia if she would wear ‘those shorts’ to her actual presentation on Saturday. Our professor regularly asks all of the students, male and female, such questions to clarify appropriate attire for public speaking. Our professor went on to say that what you wear and how you present yourself make a statement. She noted that if you were to wear jean shorts to your thesis presentation, that is a statement. Her focus on attire was a means of noting the importance of professionalism in certain public speaking situations. … Throughout the semester … We have also had several meaningful dialogues on privilege, discussed how to avoid [white] savior narratives. … Our professor … often illustrates the ways to us in which society can institute a socialized behavior (for females, acting apologetic for opinions) due to systematic oppression.

It’s hard to know which aspect of this story is the most ludicrous and the most disturbing. Is it the students stripping down to their underwear? That delivering a senior thesis in one’s underwear before fellow students, most of whom also stripped down, is acceptable—even honored—at Cornell University tells you just about all you need to know to understand the degraded state of Cornell and most other American universities. And if delivering a senior thesis in one’s underwear is a blow for women’s equality, why wear underwear? Why not deliver the thesis naked?

Is it the pervasive assumption of America’s “systemic oppression” of women and ethnic minorities? If there are luckier young women in the world than those who attend Cornell and other American universities, it is hard to imagine who they might be. Yet they have been so effectively indoctrinated by their left-wing instructors in elementary school, high school, and college they walk around thinking of themselves as victims of “systemic oppression” in what is probably the freest and most opportunity-giving society in human history.

Or is it the apparent absence of any criticism of Chai by even one of the 1,650 faculty members of Cornell University? It is inconceivable that even at Cornell, there is not one faculty member who found this young woman’s behavior an insult to Cornell and the once-exalted field of higher education. Yet they so fear their left-wing colleagues and left-wing students that they have said nothing.

This story reconfirms what I regularly tell parents: Sending your child to college is playing Russian roulette with their values.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager is a columnist for The Daily Signal, nationally syndicated radio host, and creator of PragerU. Twitter: .

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of the Cornell University campus is by Kickstand/Getty Images.