Tag Archive for: education

We Trained a Generation Not to Think, Now We’re Paying the Price

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Another perspective about our K-12 schools… 

As faithful readers know, I occasionally repost another author’s column that I believe is consistent with my Critical Thinking objective.

This is a good example from K-12 education expert Dr. Jennifer Weber who is also an Adjunct Fellow at Manhattan Institute….

BTW, I’m embarrassed… She has fewer subscribers than I do but she got WAY more comments than I ever do: 208! What’s up with that?

Here is Dr. Weber’s good K-12 commentary…

I took a short pause from writing. Not because I ran out of things to say. I watched something unfold in real time: the very pattern I’ve been writing about, now playing out everywhere I looked. How people responded to breaking news. How easily outrage outpaced analysis. How slogans replaced sources. Speed, emotion, and certainty seemed to matter more than comprehension, accuracy, or depth. It all came into sharp focus: We are living in the full consequences of a generation never taught how to think.

Not how to question. Not how to verify. Not how to tolerate uncertainty or engage with complexity. And certainly not how to slow down long enough to ask: Does this make sense? This isn’t just an academic failure. It’s a cognitive crisis.

Thinking Is Behavioral—And We Never Taught It

One of the biggest lies we’ve told ourselves is that thinking is automatic. Critical thinking will emerge if we expose students to the right ideas. But here’s what behavior science knows to be true: Thinking is behavior. And like all behavior, it must be taught, shaped, and reinforced.

When we replaced phonics with guessing strategies, we weren’t just creating poor readers but reinforcing poor thought. Students learned to skim, not decode. To guess, not verify. To rely on pictures and context, not structure and precision.

Over time, those habits compounded. Now those same students are adults. And they’re responding to headlines, global conflict, and political discourse the same way they were taught to read—quickly, reactively, emotionally, and without analysis.

This isn’t just a problem in schools. It started there, but it didn’t stay there.

Reading without Comprehension

A generation taught to “get the gist” now treats news articles the same way: skimming, screenshotting, reposting without reading past the headline. A generation reinforced for looking engaged now confuses performance with understanding on social media, in the workplace, and even in policymaking.

We trained people to trust what feels familiar rather than ask whether it’s true. React to emotionally charged content over evaluating credibility. Accept repeated claims as fact just because they’re familiar.

This is how misinformation spreads faster than correction. This is how people fall for propaganda. This is how ideas go viral, not because they’re valid but because they’re easiest to process. And when true reading never happens, true thinking can’t either.

This Isn’t Just About Literacy Anymore: It’s About National Stability

The long-term effects are clear: we reinforced quick responses and surface-level engagement, not accuracy, depth, or understanding.

People who cannot imagine competing ideas pick a side and tune out the rest.

When people don’t read carefully, they rely on influencers to do their thinking for them.

People who are never reinforced for slowing down and checking learn that fast and loud wins. We didn’t just condition students to read poorly. We conditioned them to process the world poorly.

This is showing up in how we respond to war, policy, elections, and each other. And unless we rebuild the behaviors that support reasoning, it will only worsen.

So What Do We Reinforce Now?

We can’t just tell people to “think critically.” We have to build the skills that make it possible—and reinforce the behaviors that make it sustainable.

This means teaching students to decode, analyze, and verify from the start, not guess and move on. We need to reinforce comprehension, not just completion. We should reinforce classrooms where students are expected to think aloud, challenge ideas, and learn from corrections, not ones that prize silence, speed, and getting it “done.”

It also means extending that same logic to adults: Replacing “media literacy” buzzwords with explicit instruction in source evaluation, emotional reasoning, and cognitive bias. We need to reinforce pause as a habit. We need to make truth-seeking a skill, not just an ideal.

This Was Predictable. But It’s Not Inevitable.

We didn’t get here by accident. We got here because systems reinforced the wrong things for decades. And if we don’t interrupt those patterns, we’ll keep raising generations that respond to complex problems with shallow strategies—and wonder why nothing changes. But if behavior got us here, behavior can get us out.

We trained a generation not to think. Now it’s time to teach them how. Because reading isn’t just about decoding words, it’s about decoding the world. And if we want to change the future, we must start with how people process the present.

After reading this excellent piece, I had a nice chat with Jennifer. We are on the same page, and I hope to be working more with her.

I shared with her that the situation is actually worse than she says. The fact that there are few if any K-12 Critically Thinking graduates is not only a byproduct of things like poor reading methodology, it is also happening on purpose. The NGSS is specifically training children to be conforming adults (i.e., the direct opposite of Critical Thinkers). See here for a sample discussion.

So far groups like Heritage and AEI have not grasped what’s going on here…

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Victor Davis Hanson: The Danger of Dumbing Down American Students

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In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson explains why the ignorance of American students keeps him up at night more than the threat of radical Islam.

This content was created prior to Hanson’s major surgery on Dec. 30.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

JACK FOWLER: Yeah, we’re worried about the spreading growth of Islam versus the ignorance of America’s students. I mean, pure ignorance of, pure lack of knowledge, dumbness as products of our educational system.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: That’s another good question. I think it falls into the same category of overt versus insidious. And so, this time I’ll do the insidious.

Well, I’ll do the overt first because radical Islam can’t hurt the United States abroad.

They don’t have the technological wherewithal to do it. And every time that we’ve mistakenly gone into an Islamic country and not done well, whether it’s Afghanistan or Iraq, the reason is that there were necessary restraints or unnecessary, whichever way you look at it, that we didn’t use the full extent of our power.

In other words, we fought that battle on their terms, not ours. We didn’t do what the Russians did. When they wanted to subdue Chechnya, they just leveled Grozny.

So, what I’m getting at, if you wanted to get into an existential war with radical Islam, you could. And you could win it. And a cost of benefit analysis, maybe it wouldn’t be worth it. And a moral [war], maybe it would be questionable. But if you were an extremist, you could do it.

However, the other matter of our youth and not being able to … what was the word, delayed? Would you call it prolonged adolescence?

FOWLER: Well, you might not have prolonged adolescence and still not know what two plus two times three is, right?

HANSON: Yeah, I’m just trying to say it’s something about our young people that there’s not a code, an ethos, that says “I am 10, I’m 11, I’m 12, I’m 13, I’m 14, I’m 15, I’m going to go to school every single day.”

I can tell you that everybody screws—if I could use that word—around in high school, college. But there was, at least when I was in school, an idea that you did come to class, and you did turn in your homework, and you did learn something.

I was from a very poor school. I went to a rural school that was very poor, and I went to a high school that was rural and had not a lot of money. But I can tell you even there when I went to UC Santa Cruz with all these wealthy kids from prep schools in LA and San Francisco, they had a much better education, but I still was able to with hard work keep up.

And so, the education system was … there were no powerful teachers unions. And the teachers were, I would say half of them were excellent. And nobody attacked a teacher, nobody, and everybody did their homework. And there was no what I would call non-academic topics.

There was one class you had to take called senior problems, and they showed you World War II frightening syphilis movies. They showed you marijuana where you go crazy if you smell marijuana in a room.

And they showed you first aid, how if you’re driving—I remember the movie—you’re driving along and a guy’s in a wreck, and you jump out and tear your shirt into six different types of bandages and save his life.

And then how to write a check and how to shake a person’s hand. It was really good, valuable, I didn’t like it at the time, but I thought it was very valuable.

I think what’s happened is the therapeutic curriculum in the school, it demonizes men. It demonizes white people, white men. It does, because it’s DEI. It doesn’t approach minorities the way it used to.

And I know that people will get angry at this. When I was in fourth and fifth or sixth grade, Mrs. Evans, the speech pathologist, would come in. And I had a pathology. I would say W for R. I would say if you wanted to say, “a red rocket,” I’d say, “the wed wocket.”

And she would say, “You know, you’re not Elmer Fudd. You’re going to get in here,” and she would show me how to make my mouth. I can still remember how to make a round circle with my mouth. And then they had an old tape player, and then they would play it back. I was mandatory 20 minutes a week with her.

And everybody had that. And then if you had a strong accent, she would say, she would come to our class, “I have a stick shift Chevy.” And half the class were recent immigrants.

“I got a stick chip chubby.”

“No, you do not have a chubby. It’s called a Chevy. And I’m saying this because I want you to excel, and I want you to speak the King’s English without a trace of accent. And that goes for all of you.”

And it was very valuable. But you would be fired today for cultural appropriation or something like that. But you just have to look at the results.

I live in a town where I’m 72, and I think that almost everybody I went to high school with who’s still alive, who’s Mexican American, is an unqualified success. Everyone. Everyone.

I mean that sincerely. And I can tell you that the next generation below me was a success. But this new therapeutic DEI victim [education emphasis] is not working. Because again, commission and omission.

The omission is you waste time on these therapeutic studies classes, and you don’t give them math, analysis, logic, language, syntax, grammar, biology, and commission. You fill people’s heads that they can’t make it, that they have an enemy holding them back.

You don’t tell people, you wouldn’t dare tell people as we were told, “Well, you’re 18 and we would expect that you, if you’re going go to college or learn a trade by 20, you’re on your way. And we would expect all of you by 21 or 22 to have your house and by 23 at the latest to get married.”

I got married at 23 and I remember I saw a teacher, one of my old teachers, “Well, I was wondering when you were going to get married, what happened to you?”

FOWLER: Old man Hanson.

HANSON: Yeah. “What happened to you?” 23.

I mean, it’s prolonged adolescence. It’s the toxic masculinity. It’s the curriculum. It’s the therapeutic. It’s the DEI.

And the result is I get really tired of all these leftists that brag on themselves. “Look at what we’ve done. Look at what we’ve done. Look at the society we’ve created.”

I just say to them, do you really think that if you took people from 1965 out of a high school class versus today in any major high school they would be better or worse at algebra.

I can tell you they’d be a lot worse today.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

AUTHOR

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and host of “The Victor Davis Hanson Show.” His website, The Blade of Perseus, features columns, lectures, and exclusive content for subscribers. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com. VD on X: .

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Teaching Hate Breeds Hate, Teaching Love Breeds Love. What are you teaching your kids?

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Its that time of year when everyone should relax, enjoy family and friends and plan for the new year. I hope your holiday was wonderful and 2026 bring the life you are looking for. But remember, wishing doesn’t make it so only doing and your action will. Whether you love Trump or hate him, it really is time to stop the fighting and start being Americans again. President Trump has turned the tables and we can look forward to many changes.

Schools are teaching kids to hate. How many more will grow up only to become mass shooters or killers with a knife or gasoline or a car? It is up to us to pay attention to what goes on in school. Fill our children with love and truth.

Some changes we will like. Some we won’t. But one thing is for sure, we better hold people accountable for their actions. I heard this quote:

“Compassion without accountability equals corruption.

Corruption without oversight equals catastrophes.”

We should have learned that it is easier to make mega money scamming the government than doing the right thing. It is up to us to watch and report, not sit and complain.

I believe the Epstein files are a diversion being used by the opposition so we don’t pay attention to the real crises facing us in 2026. Below you will find some interesting articles and videos that highlight many of our pressing issues.

Remember: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

No one can have power over you unless you let them.

My guests this weekend are segment 1 we will hear from David Heavener, creator of the Last Evangelist. David’s books, films, podcasts and tv episodes speask out what the modern day religious system refuses to say.

In segment 2 we will hear from Bill Federer. Bill will teach us the history of Santa Claus. We must learn history or we will repeat it. Some history is not worth repeating

I believe the Epstein files are a diversion being used by the opposition so we don’t pay attention to the real crises facing us in 2026. Below you will find some interesting articles and videos that highlight many of our pressing issues.

Learn the past so you will be prepare for the future.

©2025 . All rights reserved.

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No meaningful education leads to troubled hateful kids who do heinous crimes. The teachers Unions have NOTHING to do with education.

President Trump can do an Executive order for anything. If we don’t conduct oversight, it will be ignored.

Economy – Doom and Gloom or Bright and Rosier. You decide.

https://mises.org/mises-wire/financial-bubbles-how-they-make-us-poorer

US economy unexpectedly surges 4.3% in third quarter — its strongest growth in two years

Economist Antoni to Newsmax: Democrats Wrong on ‘Affordability’

Allowing parents to educate their own children at home puts them at risk of all sorts of problems and abuses without massive state controls and “oversight,” declared an anti-homeschooling activist this week in the establishment mouthpiece of record. Home education is now firmly in the crosshairs of the educational totalitarians amid a push to create a p…

Economy is looking much better for 2026

Energy: After shutting Keystone and killing 50,000 jobs the Democrats complain about wind contracts being cancelled.

National Security: SCOTUS says no to Trump commanding the Illinois National Guard but left the door open for more explanation

Free Speech and Censorship

Who controls Florida water? Contact your legislator and tell them Hell NO

Land and Water Management: Prohibits counties & municipalities from adopting laws, regulations, rules, or policies relating to water quality or quantity, pollution control, discharge prevention or removal, or wetlands & preempts such regulation to the state; requires DEP to notify CFO of certain violations; requires CFO to withhold certain funds; repeals provisions relating to land management review teams.

Effective Date: July 1, 2026

Is America worth saving. It is up to We The People.

Guests: David Heavener, founder of The Last Evangelist

an American singer, songwriter, director, actor, composer, producer and writer, specializing in low-budget features and direct-to-video action. David aims to bring truth to religion.

David now has a dual mission: reaching those who might never step foot in a church while challenging believers to wake up from spiritual complacency and live out their faith boldly in today’s culture. His unique background bridges the church and entertainment industry, making him a compelling speaker for congregations ready to engage their culture with the Gospel.

Website: https://davidheavener.tv/

Guest: Bill Federer, author, historian with a fantastic collection of history

Website: americanminute.com

Have a wonderful Holiday

Karenbschoen.com

Radio Host: The Prism of America’s Education

americaoutloud.news

Here’s How Many Times Dems Sued To Stop Trump Education Agenda In Just One Year

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From university funding freezes to attempts to dismantle the Department of Education (ED), schools, teachers unions, and state leaders have attempted to halt the Trump administration’s education agenda at every opportunity.

Since taking office in January, the administration has faced about 70 lawsuits concerning education as of Dec. 22, many still ongoing, according to a review by Education Week. Most of the legal challenges stemmed from grant terminations, attempts to dismantle the department. and anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) directives.

Some of the grants ED sought to end included explicit mentions of prioritizing certain races and genders, such as the mental health grants originally meant to send more health care experts to schools. Yet a lawsuit pioneered by 16 Democrat-led states forced the department to renew the grants at the end of the year despite ED providing an alternative that fulfilled the same purpose without the discrimination.

Grant terminations spurred 11 lawsuits in 2025, according to Education Week.

At least 10 lawsuits were inspired by mass employee layoffs and similar actions ultimately meant to make the Education Department moot. A battle to fire approximately 1,400 staff made its way to the Supreme Court after blue states once again sought to hinder Trump’s agenda.

Harvard’s infamous battle with the Trump administration, which the Ivy League school ultimately won, is just one example of lawsuits generated from cuts and threats to university funding. Five legal battles this year revolved around this issue, and another five stemmed from general education-focused funding freezes.

Attempts to keep men out of women’s private spaces led to five lawsuits. Most notably, President Donald Trump and Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills got into a public spat in February during which the governor declined to comply with Trump’s ban on men in women’s sports. The resulting cut to funding was immediately met with a lawsuit.

Teachers unions were not particularly fond of the administration informing student loan borrowers that they are responsible for paying off the debt they took out. After former President Joe Biden took advantage of every loophole to forgive billions in debt, ED was forced to settle with the American Federation, promising to continue processing loan forgiveness under several programs.

Five lawsuits were focused on student loan repayments, Education Week found.

Another four lawsuits were brought on immigration-related issues. The Trump administration in July acquiesced to a challenge from 24 Democrat-led states and the District of Columbia to keep $7 billion in federal funding for adult education programs and after-school classes that went in part toward teaching immigrants English.

Administration efforts to deport foreign students studying in the U.S. who engaged in pro-Hamas protests were similarly met with lawsuits.

The majority of the lawsuits were filed near the beginning of the year, with April taking the cake at 18 new filings, and March in second place with 13, according to Education Week.

About 52 cases have already seen their day in court. Lower courts ruled in Trump’s favor 16 times, and against his administration 36 times, according to Education week. Higher courts were more likely to rule in Trump’s favor, siding with the president 24 times and against him 28 times.

AUTHOR

Jaryn Crouson

Education Reporter

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PROFESSOR FOR THE AYATOLLAH: Pro-Iran Professor Hijacked U.S. University to Defend a Regime Butcher

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For years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been playing a long game on American soil. While the regime chants “Death to America” in the streets of Tehran, their ideological foot soldiers have been quietly embedding themselves in the ivory towers of our universities. But at the University of Arkansas, the mask hasn’t just slipped – it has been ripped off.

The case of Shirin Saeidi, the now-demoted Director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies, is not just a story of a professor with “fringe views.” It is a chilling case study in how the prestige of an American institution was weaponized to serve the interests of a foreign terror state.

The ultimate betrayal in this saga isn’t just Saeidi’s rhetoric; it’s her use of American resources to lobby for a monster. Reports from the Middle East Forum (MEF) and the Alliance Against Islamic Republic of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA) have exposed a calculated abuse of office: Saeidi allegedly used official University of Arkansas letterhead to advocate for the release of Hamid Nouri.

Who is Hamid Nouri? He is a man with the blood of thousands on his hands. In 2022, a Swedish court sentenced Nouri to life in prison for his role in the 1988 mass execution of political prisoners in Iran – a purge ordered by the “Butcher of Tehran” himself, Ebrahim Raisi. Yet, while the Iranian diaspora cheered for a rare moment of international justice, an American professor was reportedly using the University of Arkansas logo to demand his freedom.

When a professor uses university stationery, they aren’t speaking for themselves; they are projecting the authority of the State of Arkansas and the United States of America. Using that authority to provide cover for a convicted war criminal is more than a policy violation – it is a slap in the face to every Iranian-American who fled that regime and every American patriot who believes our schools should be bastions of liberty, not PR firms for the Ayatollah.

The rot goes deeper than a few letters. Saeidi’s entire academic career is now under the microscope. Cambridge University Press has launched an investigation into her 2022 book, Women and the Islamic Republic, following allegations of academic fraud that have been deemed devastating.

Nasrin Parvaz, a brave survivor of the regime’s torture cells, has come forward to reveal a shocking betrayal. Parvaz alleges that Saeidi included an “interview” with her in the book that was either fabricated or used without authorization. For a scholar to allegedly twist the testimony of a torture survivor to fit a pro-regime narrative isn’t just “poor research” – it is predatory. It is the academic equivalent of stolen valor, profiting off the suffering of those the regime couldn’t break, only to use their stories to bolster the regime’s image.

The most telling evidence of Saeidi’s true allegiances is the reaction from Tehran. The moment the University of Arkansas stripped Saeidi of her directorship, the Iranian state media apparatus went into a frenzy. The Tehran Times and the Iranian Judiciary have issued “official condemnations,” framing her demotion as an attack on “academic freedom.”

The irony is sickening. This is a regime that hangs students from cranes for protesting, that blinds women for showing their hair, and that has purged thousands of its own professors for failing to parrot the Supreme Leader’s propaganda. For the Iranian government to lecture America on “academic freedom” proves exactly what Saeidi was to them: a high-value asset in the heart of the American South.

Why was Saeidi allowed to hold the keys to the King Fahd Center for so long? For too long, American universities have hidden behind the shield of “academic freedom” to ignore blatant foreign influence. Patriots and the Iranian diaspora are done with the excuses. We recognize that there is a massive difference between “diverse viewpoints” and active collaboration with a regime that is designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism by the U.S. State Department.

The University of Arkansas has taken the first step by demoting her, but the job is half-finished. As long as she remains a tenured faculty member, she continues to draw a salary funded by taxpayers and tuition dollars – dollars that are effectively subsidizing a mouthpiece for the Ayatollah.

To the Iranian diaspora: Your voices exposed this. Your refusal to let the regime’s apologists speak for you is working. To American patriots: Our universities must be reclaimed. We cannot allow our institutions to be used as launching pads for foreign propaganda.

The “Letterhead Traitor” case must be the turning point. It is time for a full audit of Middle East Studies departments across the country. We must demand transparency in funding and accountability for any academic who uses their position to lobby for war criminals.

The University of Arkansas must finish what it started. Tenure is a privilege designed to protect truth-seekers, not to provide a permanent paycheck for those who carry water for a murderous theocracy.

It’s time to clean house.

©2025 . All rights reserved.

Former Des Moines Superintendent allegedly falsified education record

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New information shows that former Des Moines superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts may have provided false information about his academic credentials when he applied for the job. The additional scrutiny comes at a time when Roberts faces several investigations into whether he has been living and working in the United States without legal authority, and whether he illegally possessed a gun at the time federal agencies apprehended him last Friday.

A Des Moines School District spokesperson confirmed to AP that Roberts claimed that he had a doctoral degree from Morgan State University. The university has confirmed that’s not the case.

The Des Moines Register reported MIT said it has no record of Roberts attending there, despite his claim. They also report that George Washington denies ever awarding Roberts principal of the year, as he claimed.

Roberts had been a historic figure as Des Moines superintendent, since he was the first person of color in the position. In spite of the apparent fraud, people have rallied in support of him ever since agents apprehended him on Friday. The brain dead leader of the Iowa NAACP, Betty Andrews, acknowledged what Roberts’ hiring had meant to the Black community. “Dr. Roberts was a strong voice in the community for education and students. And also was someone that many folks in the community were inspired by. And so our response is when we heard the news, it was definitely a challenge.” Andrews stated that the NAACP is monitoring the case closely to ensure Roberts receives due process.

©2025 . All rights reserved.

Brown University Under Fed’s Microscope Following Fatal Shooting

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The Department of Education (ED) on Monday opened a review into Brown University following the Dec. 13 fatal shooting on campus.

Brown is facing scrutiny for “potential Clery Act violations” after it was revealed the Ivy League’s surveillance system “may not have been up to appropriate standards,” ED said in an announcement. Two students were killed and nine others wounded after 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente opened fire in a Brown lecture hall.

The security failure allowed “the suspect to flee while the university seemed unable to provide helpful information about the profile of the alleged assassin,” ED claims. Emergency notifications during the shooting were also concerningly delayed.

“After two students were horrifically murdered at Brown University when a shooter opened fire in a campus building, the Department is initiating a review of Brown to determine if it has upheld its obligation under the law to vigilantly maintain campus security,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in ED’s announcement. “Students deserve to feel safe at school, and every university across this nation must protect their students and be equipped with adequate resources to aid law enforcement. The Trump Administration will fight to ensure that recipients of federal funding are vigorously protecting students’ safety and following security procedures as required under federal law.”

The Clery Act requires federally-funded schools to disclose crime data and security policies, including releasing a public Annual Security Report (ASR) to students and staff.

ED is requiring Brown to provide its ASRs from the past two years; all crime, arrest and disciplinary action referral records relating to weapons or drugs from 2021-2024; data relating to the university’s emergency notifications and copies of its policies and procedures.

Valente, who was found dead on Dec. 18 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, is also believed responsible for the murder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Nuno Loureiro. A motive is not yet known, but Valente reportedly has connections to both Brown and Loureiro, having attended the university in 2000 as a doctoral student before later dropping out and previously studying at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal with the MIT professor.

AUTHOR

Jaryn Crouson

Education Reporter

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RELATED VIDEO: FBI releases video showing the timeline of movements of the alleged Brown University shooter

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The War on Creation Has Reached Middle School

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This Isn’t About Gender. It’s About God. 

Eleven-year-olds are the target audience, and that is no accident.

A middle school in Bethesda, Maryland, chose children barely out of elementary school to begin teaching them that their bodies may be wrong and that the Creator who made them cannot be trusted.

The lesson was delivered to sixth graders at Westland Middle School during what administrators called “Transgender Awareness Week.”

The school insists the goal was awareness and respect. But what students were actually taught runs far deeper than manners or kindness.

Beneath the language of inclusion sits a message that strikes at the heart of creation itself and, by extension, at God.

The Lesson in the Classroom

According to materials obtained and reported by Fox News, sixth graders were shown a 12-page slideshow that instructed them on how to think about gender and identity.

Students were told that gender is “who you feel you are,” not something grounded in biology. They were taught to distinguish between sex and gender. They were introduced to the concept of nonbinary identity and given tips for identifying as nonbinary.

They were asked to discuss how people know whether they are a “girl” or a “boy,” and why the first thing announced about a newborn baby is the baby’s gender.

Videos were played during the presentation, including one from a nonbinary online creator who explained how to “bind” breasts. Binding refers to wrapping and flattening the chest to appear less feminine, a practice that carries real physical risks and is deeply controversial even among medical professionals.

This material was presented to children who are just entering puberty.

The Official Defense

School officials responded with the familiar script.

The lesson, they said, was about awareness, respect, and teaching students to support peers from different backgrounds and lived experiences. Middle school, they explained, is a time when questions come up, and schools must reinforce that bullying and harassment are unacceptable.

No parent disputes the need to teach kindness.

But kindness does not require instructing children to doubt their own bodies.

Respect does not require ideological coaching.

And preventing bullying does not require teaching eleven-year-olds that biological reality is optional.

The Hidden Message

This is where the real story begins.

These lessons are not neutral. They are not value-free. They carry a worldview, and that worldview has unavoidable theological implications.

Children are being told that the body can be wrong.

That creation can misfire.

That identity comes from feelings, not from design.

If God exists, this teaching implies He either makes mistakes or intentionally traps children in the wrong bodies. And if that is true, then God is not trustworthy. Or worse, He is cruel.

The alternative message is even starker. If there is no Creator at all, then there is no order, no purpose, no meaning beyond self-definition.

Either way, the conclusion is the same. Creation cannot be trusted. Authority does not come from above. Truth comes from within.

That is not education. That is theology.

Why Children Are the Target

Most adults can see through ideological language. Children cannot.

Eleven- and twelve-year-olds are still forming their understanding of reality. They are impressionable. They are vulnerable. They are searching for answers about who they are and where they fit.

When schools introduce radical identity concepts at this age, they are not merely offering information. They are shaping how children interpret their own confusion, discomfort, and everyday developmental struggles.

That concern was voiced plainly by Defending Education, which monitors ideological activism in schools.

Its communications director, Erika Sanzi, described the lesson as cult-like and warned that while some children will shrug it off, others may be pushed onto a path from which they may never fully return.

That warning should not be dismissed. Identity confusion introduced during childhood can echo for decades.

This Is Bigger Than One School

What happened in Bethesda is not an isolated mistake. It is part of a national pattern.

School districts increasingly frame radical gender ideology as compassion, while quietly introducing concepts that undermine family beliefs, religious convictions, and even basic biology.

Parents are told not to worry. God is never mentioned. Faith is never discussed.

But the message is unmistakable.

Your body is suspect. Creation is negotiable. Meaning is self-made.

That belief system does not come from science, but from ideology and how you feel.

And it is being taught to children who still need hall passes to use the restroom.

The Question Parents Must Ask

The question is no longer whether these lessons are appropriate.

The question is whether parents will accept a public school system that teaches children, implicitly or explicitly, that creation itself is a mistake, that God is cruel, that the Almighty cannot be trusted.

Because once a child is taught that their body lies, the One who created it is recast as a monster.

And that lesson, once planted, is tough to undo.

AUTHOR

Martin Mawyer

Martin Mawyer is the President of Christian Action Network, host of the “Shout Out Patriots” podcast, and author of When Evil Stops Hiding. Follow him on Substack for more action alerts, cultural commentary, and real-world campaigns defending faith, family, and freedom.

©2025 . All rights reserved.

Please visit the Patriot Majority Report substack.

How Epstein Used The Ivy League To Launder His Reputation

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Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein ensured that a Google search for his name would return several websites about his donations to science before any headlines about his 2008 conviction, new documents show — the clearest evidence yet that he courted the Ivy League to whitewash his sexual crimes.

Epstein had help amplifying links about his scientific largess in order to crowd out headlines about his exploitation of underage girls, emails released by the House Oversight Committee on Nov. 12 show. One aide to Epstein described the project as “wack-a-mole,” hammering headlines about his pedophilia into search engine obscurity with hyperlinks portraying Epstein as a benevolent booster of evolutionary biology and mathematics.

Though Democrats have used the Epstein case as a political cudgel against Trump, the new disclosures demonstrate that some of Epstein’s most powerful ties in fact stemmed from liberal Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The House documents shed light on Epstein’s relationships to Democratic powerbrokers like Harvard economist Larry Summers and LinkedIn cofounder and former advisor to the MIT Media Lab Reid Hoffman, whom Trump described as a “sleazebag” while answering questions from reporters on Nov. 19.

“I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT,” Hoffman said on X on Nov. 14.

“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” Summers said in a statement on Nov. 17. “I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.”

Harvard announced that it would initiate a new probe into its ties to Epstein on Nov. 19, and Summers announced he would leave his role as a Harvard instructor during the investigation. MIT has announced no such renewed probe.

Harvard added J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management CEO Mary Erdoes to the governing board of its endowment on Nov. 25, the Harvard Crimson reported. Erdoes was in constant contact with Epstein while he was one of JP Morgan’s wealthiest clients, according to a Nov. 19 Senate memo.

Harvard did not respond to a request for comment.

MIT spokesperson Kimberly Allen said the university has nothing to add to the 2020 report it commissioned on Epstein.

“Following that review, MIT took a number of steps, including enhancements to our gift acceptance processes and donating to four nonprofits supporting survivors of sexual abuse,” Allen said.

Hoffman could not be reached for comment. Summers did not respond to a request for comment sent to his spokesperson.

‘Profiles In Science’

The cyber scrubbing effort began in 2010 with two bespoke blogs.

Al Seckel — a leader of the “freethought” atheist movement and an author of books about optical illusions, including for MIT Press — helped create two websites portraying Epstein as the benefactor of an exclusive circle of luminaries at science’s frontier, the emails indicate. The websites, though now defunct, are available through the Internet Archive: www.jeffreyepsteinscience.com and www.jeffreyepstein.org. A third website, www.edge.org, documented the gatherings of researchers, science writers and Silicon Valley executives organized by John Brockman and underwritten by the Epstein-funded Edge Foundation.

A request for comment sent to an email for the Edge website did not receive a reply.

Many of the scientists with connections to Epstein also have connections to the Edge Group, a defunct, invite-only club for scientific lectures “at the edge of the world’s knowledge,” which in turn grew out of The Reality Club, scientific realists who met in the 1980s and 1990s, sometimes at the New York Academy of Sciences.

The Edge Group hosted an annual event referred to as “Billionaires’ Dinners” timed with the annual Ted Conference from 1999 to 2015. Attendees included former MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito, who resigned after his solicitations of grants from Epstein for the Media Lab became public; MIT artificial intelligence scientist Marvin Minsky, whom Epstein funded with a $100,000 grant to MIT and whose memorial prompted a visit by Epstein to the Media Lab; Santa Fe Institute theoretical physicist Murray Gell-Mann, whose research Epstein funded; and MIT quantum information scientist Seth Lloyd, whose research Epstein supported with a $225,000 grant to MIT and who accepted a $60,000 personal gift from the pedophile.

The academics brushed shoulders with other celebrity scientists and tech executives including Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Minsky died in 2016. Gell-Mann died in 2019. Ito and Lloyd did not respond to requests for comment. Lloyd acknowledged in a 2019 public apology letter that the donations amounted to “professional as well as moral failings.”

“By continuing to participate in discussions he had with me and other scientists and by accepting his donations, I helped Mr. Epstein protect his reputation, and I disempowered his victims,” he said.

The MIT Media Lab grew out of the earliest Ted Conference in 1984, according to a 2002 New York Times report. Ito resigned when his funding solicitations to Epstein became public in 2019.

Seckel also described “hacking on” Epstein’s Wikipedia page in order to highlight “philanthropic work, Epstein Foundation, promotion of scientists” and to downplay his pedophilia with “careful editing and wording” in a December 2010 email.

Seckel’s emails spell out the purpose of the blogs — replacing “toxic references” with “good ones.”

“It is constant wack-a-mole,” Seckel said in a Dec. 16, 2010, email.

“You have your active detractors out there. Just the way it is,” he said. “On the second page, we have replaced 8 toxic references with good ones, and there are four toxic ones left, which were pushed off the first page.”

The emails indicate Epstein may have paid anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000 for Seckel’s work. The documents do not indicate how much Epstein paid other publicists and consultants.

Seckel, who dated the sister of Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, Isabel Maxwell, died in 2015.

An archived version of Epstein’s “profiles in science” blog, www.jeffreyepsteinscience.com, shows very brief posts stating Epstein’s interest in subjects as diverse as digital currency, theoretical physics, cognitive neuroscience and “minimally invasive surgery,” many with Epstein’s name in the headline: “The Value of Complexity as Seen by Jeffrey Epstein,” “Jeffrey Epstein: Thoughts on Quantum Computing,” and “Why Evolutionary Biology Intrigues Jeffrey Epstein.”

The site features photos from a scientific conference organized by Arizona State theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss at Epstein’s Caribbean island, Little Saint James, in 2006, featuring three Nobel laureates.

The new emails include emails between Epstein and Krauss, who remained friends with the pedophile during his incarceration and for years afterward.

“Let’s do a men of the world conference. Kevin Spacey, Bill Clinton, Al Franken, Woody Allen,” Krauss wrote to Epstein in an April 2018 email.

Krauss did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2011, Seckel helped Epstein organize a conference he dubbed the “Mindshift Conference” on Little Saint James featuring several eminent scientists — then highlighted the conference on Epstein’s website, the archived site shows.

A second website, www.jeffreyepstein.org, also promotes Epstein as a science philanthropist, an archived version shows.

It prominently features Epstein’s support of Martin Nowak, the head of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED) at Harvard, whom Epstein’s website claimed he supported with $30 million in funding by 2010, though the university disputes that figure, placing it at $6.5 million. Summers, then the president of Harvard, helped Epstein establish the lab in 2003 alongside Harvard mathematician Benedict Gross, according to the program’s website at that time.

Epstein describes Nowak’s lab as “my istittue [SIC] at harvard” in an email released on Nov. 12.

“George church and i havng lunch at my istittue [SIC] at harvard sunday. join.?” he wrote to new age guru Deepak Chopra in a November 2018 email. Church is a Harvard Medical School geneticist and former dean of Harvard College who accepted an estimated $2 million from Epstein-connected donors.

Nowak and Church did not respond to requests for comment.

Epstein had an office space at Nowak’s lab, which was located steps away from Harvard Square. Epstein visited at least 40 times, often accompanied by young women, the university acknowledged in its 2020 fact finding report on Epstein’s relationship to the school.

The November 2018 visit revealed in the new documents is not reflected in Harvard’s 2020 report, which described his final campus visit as having occurred in October 2018.

According to that same 2020 report, a public relations associate for Epstein — again seeking to improve his Google search results — persuaded the lab to add a page dedicated to Epstein on its webpage, hosted on the search engine-optimizing harvard.edu domain. The page featured his photo, biography and links to the blogs created by Seckel’s team.

“It would be very helpful in terms of Google results if his name were attached to a Harvard.edu url,” a publicist told Nowak’s lab, per the 2020 report.

Nowak agreed.

The new documents show that this move came amid a 60-day sprint to boot negative headlines from the first page of Google.

“The [Program for Evolutionary Dynamics] set up a page called ‘Friends’ which is where they’ll place jeffrey. I’ll send you the URL when done,” the publicist for Epstein wrote in a 2014 email.

Like Seckel, the publicist recommended that Epstein’s team optimize the algorithm by linking his name to as many prominent scientists as possible, a separate December 2011 email shows. She also sought to fix Epstein’s Wikipedia page, which she described in an email to her boss as having “totally lopsided and damning content on you.”

“I think it’s worth seeing how people like Prince Andrew managed to create an stellar profile—or Bill Clinton for that matter,” she wrote. “You need to update your website immediately by adding the bio on you from The Edge if you can and adding a longer summary of science and scientists that you are/have worked with.”

She recommended using the service Reputation.com.

Epstein continued to direct funds to Harvard and MIT and continued to attempt to scrub Google by promoting these grants up until his 2019 arrest.

In 2017, Epstein positioned himself as a counterforce to Trump in science funding. Another publicist placed an opinion piece in the Huffington Post with the headline “Private Donor Helps Fund Scientists After Trump’s Proposed ‘Anti-Science’ Budget Cuts” featuring Epstein’s support of Nowak, Llyod, Minksy and others, generating yet another positive hyperlink.

The new documents show Ito raising funds for the MIT Media Lab from Epstein in May 2019, just weeks before his July 2019 arrest.

AUTHOR

Emily Kopp

Investigative Reporter

RELATED ARTICLE: Democrat Stacey Plaskett Admits Epstein Was Pulling Her Strings

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Former Des Moines Superintendent Allegedly Falsified Education Records

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New information shows that former Des Moines superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts may have provided false information about his academic credentials when he applied for the job. The additional scrutiny comes at a time when Roberts faces several investigations into whether he has been living and working in the United States without legal authority, and whether he illegally possessed a gun at the time federal agencies apprehended him last Friday.

A Des Moines School District spokesperson confirmed to AP that Roberts claimed that he had a doctoral degree from Morgan State University. The university has confirmed that’s not the case.

The Des Moines Register reported MIT said it has no record of Roberts attending there, despite his claim. They also report that George Washington denies ever awarding Roberts principal of the year, as he claimed.

Roberts had been a historic figure as Des Moines superintendent, since he was the first person of color in the position. In spite of the apparent fraud, people have rallied in support of him ever since agents apprehended him on Friday. The brain dead leader of the Iowa NAACP, Betty Andrews, acknowledged what Roberts’ hiring had meant to the Black community.

“Dr. Roberts was a strong voice in the community for education and students. And also was someone that many folks in the community were inspired by. And so our response is when we heard the news, it was definitely a challenge.” Andrews stated that the NAACP is monitoring the case closely to ensure Roberts receives due process.

©2025 . All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Blue-State School Board Member Frets TPUSA Chapter Will Cause Violence

‘No Critical Thinking’: Parents Sound Alarm As Tech Begins To ‘Replace The Teacher’

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Parents are growing increasingly concerned about the prevalence of technology in classrooms, and the negative side effects that change is fueling among children nationwide.

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic pushed schools to remote learning, many have only grown increasingly reliant on technology, shifting assignments into digital forms and handing every student a computer or tablet to aid their education in the classroom. But after seeing their kids become angrier, less sociable and less educated, parents are asking where the teachers have gone.

“What are we doing with an iPad all day, for eight hours a day in our kids’ hands?” Patricia McCoy, a mother of four in Wyoming, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Honestly, it’s disturbing. They give your kids worksheets on the iPad. There’s no actual critical thinking happening because they’re given apps to replace the teachers.”

Even when parents ask for additional help for their struggling children, the solution at some schools always comes back to more technology.

“If your kid is struggling in math, instead of giving them tutoring, they’re going to recommend to you that your child use this app on their iPad to help teach them how to do this math,” McCoy continued. “But that app doesn’t teach them how to do the math. They enter the problem and it gives them the solution all written out and worked out, so there’s no critical thinking being done. The answer is being given to them. They have ChatGPT at the ready, and other things similar to ChatGPT, which, again, does all the thinking for them. And all they have to do is show up, log into the iPad, get the answers from one app, put it into another app and get the grade.”

This has some parents wondering where the teachers have gone and whether they are teaching their students at all.

“THEY DON’T WANT TO TEACH”

“Covid did create a lot of this, and it made it a lot easier for some of the teachers now to just place these kids in front of a screen,” Mike Maldonado, a California father of five, told the DCNF. “And it makes it easier for some of these teachers because they don’t want to teach. They’re just there for a job.”

“We can’t ignore the fact that all this stuff makes it easier on the teacher, which actually, I think produces a worse result,” Jaime Brennan, member of the Frederick County Board of Education who spoke on behalf of herself and not the board, told the DCNF. “When a teacher can go online and make up an assignment using AI, now they haven’t thought. Now they’re not using their brainpower, and it’s like a trickle down effect. We’ve already introduced screens and technology to the level that as humans, I don’t think we were designed to use, and we haven’t adapted to it very well.”

Critically, Brennan said, the use of AI has prevented students from developing automaticity, the skill of memorizing basic solutions, such as simple addition, to the point that you do not even think about it, which is a foundational skill students carry on throughout their education and adult life.

McCoy told the DCNF that the digital learning environment has left her youngest son academically “two to three years behind” his siblings, who did not go through this new screen-based school system.

“He is drastically farther behind academically,” McCoy said. “He does what he needs to to pass, but intellectually and academically, he is years behind his two brothers and his sister at this age, and that is sad and heartbreaking as a mother to know that I probably failed my child because I went along with what the school said was going to help them.”

Despite being “years behind,” McCoy’s son is on track to graduate on time.

“We graduate kids who have to go to community college and take remedial math,” Brennan mentioned. “Our kids leave 12th grade and they go to 13th grade. So we’re putting out kids that are not ready to operate in the regular world.”

POSSESSED BY THE SCREEN

Not only is she worried about his education, the concerned mom has seen a noticeable shift in her son’s mood as he is forced to rely on more and more screen time.

“I tried to take my son’s phone away one time, and it looked like a demon was looking back at me. My son was not looking at me,” McCoy recalled. “His eyes were completely black and cold. It was like he was a totally other person, like a drug addict, and you’re taking their drug from them. And he was 15 at the time.”

Without his phone, McCoy said her son was a new person.

“That week, he was a totally different person. He wasn’t overly tired and drowsy all day. He was actually interacting with the family and spending time with us. Instead of being shut down and closed off in his room, he was playing with our dogs more,” McCoy said. (EXCLUSIVE: Parents Group Sounds Alarm On ‘Companion’ Apps Driving Kids To Suicide, Damaging Development)

Maldonado thinks these behavioral issues stem partly from the lack of human interaction children experience in increasingly screen-dependent classrooms.

“Part of the problem is that they’ve lost a lot of the interaction,” Maldonado said. “This is why some of these kids I think act out, because they don’t want to listen to the teacher. There has to be that communication between two people, two humans, and not a screen where they can’t really interact and get the tone, the voice inflection of a response.”

“That is a major issue,” Maldonado continued. “Without social skills, how do you function in society? And we see it all the time. Social skills are definitely learned, it’s a trait that you pick up from interacting with people when you’re young. And that’s the big thing, people don’t realize that if there’s no interaction, that person is going to be withdrawn, not just from the classroom, but from the home and from society.”

The issue is especially apparent in children who were younger during the Covid year, Maldonado said. The so-called “Covid babies” are typically “the ones who you can see have the majority of the behavioral issues.”

“It is hard to get some of these kids to actually look you in the eye and make eye contact. They don’t know human interaction,” Brennan concurred, adding that students today are not even dating as much as they used to. “I’m really concerned where that’s going to lead, and what our kids are going to be like. We’re already seeing negative impacts of kind of this disintegration, people are waiting till later to getting married. They’re not getting married.”

THE PRICE AMERICA IS PAYING

Meanwhile, as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) among youth increases, more data and stories are coming out revealing the tool often exposes children to inappropriate content, damages the development of critical thinking skills, and at times, drives kids to suicide by explicitly coaching them to do so. Brain scans from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) revealed that brain engagement was severely diminished under participants who used AI compared to those who used a traditional search engine, and memory recall following assignments completed with AI tanked.

Interestingly, schools that struggle with budget concerns and often fail to see promised district-wide staff raises somehow find funds to buy brand-new devices for every student — even when they already had slightly older, but still functional devices.

“Most of [the money goes] to administration and fees and other things that have nothing to do with the education of our kids, or they spend it on these expensive iPads and technology that shouldn’t even be in the classrooms, and then they go to the state and say, ‘You’re not giving us enough money. We need more money,’” McCoy told the DCNF. “Well, we keep throwing money at the problem, but the problem doesn’t get better or go away. It gets worse every year. So clearly, money isn’t solving the issue on why our kids can’t read, write and do math.”

“Stop spending the money on the iPads and put that money back in the classrooms instead,” McCoy continued. “Give it to the teachers.”

While Tina Descovich, co-founder and CEO of parental advocacy group Moms for Liberty, mirrors the concerns of many parents, she also told the DCNF there could be a place for technology in the classroom.

“I think they have to be used in a very responsible fashion,” Descovich said. “There’s so many wonderful teachers that would like to use AI in a way to help enhance their skills and teach their children better.”

Moms for Liberty signed a pledge with the White House in September to help foster innovation and interest in AI with America’s youth.

Brennan remains concerned that technology in the classroom prevents kids from thinking independently and may harm future skill building rather than facilitate an interest or expertise in technology.

“Are you trying to keep pace with the kids who are learning to use the technology, or are you trying to create the kids who are going to develop the technology? Because those are two different things,” Brennan said. “So if we’re just teaching our kids to be technology consumers, then sure, the easy way out is to do everything on the technology. If you’re trying to keep teach kids to be the technology developers, they need to learn to think and process away from the technology. They need to have other skills that are not technology based.”

PARENTS STILL HAVE POWER

For parents concerned about the technological takeover of their children’s classrooms who feel like their schools aren’t listening to them, Descovich said that along with helping their kids at home when possible, parents should “rally with like minded parents.”

“Start educating your community,” Descovich said. “I think when parents really understand what’s happening and what the concerns are and what the risks are, they will want to take action. And when you have enough parents showing up at school board meetings and speaking about an issue we have, as we know, you definitely can make an impact, and they will listen.”

AUTHOR

Jaryn Crouson

Education Reporter

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Leaked NEA Training Coaches Teachers To Fight Conservative Parents, Paint Republicans As Racist Threat

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The National Education Association (NEA) is training teachers to advance gender and racial ideology in classrooms, and to fight Republicans and parent groups who ‘harm us all’ by trying to stop that agenda, according to leaked materials for an upcoming training event.

Participant handouts for the NEA’s “Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice and Transgender Advocacy” training accuse the right of using an “arsenal of racist dog whistles” and “transphobic tropes” to “whip up fear” and cause harm, parental advocacy group Defending Education (ED) discovered. The materials coach teachers on how to indoctrinate children into progressive dogmas, including gender ideology and pronoun use, among other woke principles.

The workshop is scheduled for Dec. 2-6 and is meant to dismantle “systems of privilege and oppression as it relates to LGBTQ+ educators and students” and “deepen skills and strategies to confront implicit bias, micro-aggressions and stereotypes.”

“The right has exploited ignorance about transgender people and our lack of an affirmative, race-forward message to advance anti-trans attacks, further splinter and impugn the left, and sabotage progressives on a broad range of issues,” NEA said in the materials. “Over the last ten years, Republicans in state legislatures have increasingly turned to anti-transgender rhetoric and legislation as a powerful complement to their arsenal of racist dog whistles used to whip up fear and consolidate power.”

NEA went on to say Republicans have ignited “a moral panic over transgender youth” and mobilized the GOP base with “a potent mix of racist and transphobic tropes.”

The union also asserted teachers have a “right” to “provide inclusive curriculum.”

The documents include suggested language teachers should use to “activate more expansive attitudes towards our genders and transgender people” and a sample gender “Transition Announcement Email.” NEA recommends members use “genders” instead of “gender” to normalize the idea of endless gender possibilities and says participants should get in the habit of introducing their pronouns to groups and encouraging others to do the same, saying it “shifts people towards our worldview.”

NEA further encourages participants to “Name the villains who violate our values.”

“[C]ertain politicians are pushing laws that restrict our freedoms because of the color of our skin, what’s in our wallets, or because we are transgender,” NEA laments. “They exploit divisions and fears among us so they can get and hold onto power, denying us the basic rights, resources, and respect all people deserve.”

The union also tells people to villainize opponents of men playing in women’s sports by reframing their criticisms and painting them as discrimination against women, rather than advocacy for women.

“Our best-testing way to accomplish this was through a message that positioned supporting transgender women athletes as part of the broader fight for equality in girls’ and women’s sports,” NEA said. “By connecting attacks on trans women athletes to the long legacy of discrimination against all women athletes, this message both shifted our audiences from an individual to a collective mindset and disrupted transphobic conceptions of transgender girls and women as actually male.”

“[I]nstead of striving for equality in sports, certain politicians are distracting us from the real issue by blaming transgender women, instead of helping make sports a better place for all women,” the suggested talking point reads.

NEA did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

Jaryn Crouson

Education Reporter

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: School District Deploys New Dog Whistle To Keep Race-Based Hiring

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

No Going Back The AI Revolution in Higher Education

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Many educators and students view AI with skepticism, often associating it with cheating or a simplified search engine. This episode challenges that perception by introducing Jen Gillespie, an assistant professor who is actively embedding AI into her psychology curriculum at the University of South Florida. Her innovative approach focuses on teaching students to use AI tools, or “AI agents,” intentionally, emphasizing ethical citation and transparent collaboration. This proactive integration aims to move students beyond casual, undocumented AI use, preparing them for a world where AI is an indispensable tool rather than a forbidden shortcut.

A core aspect of Gillespie’s redesign is introducing students to tools like Google NotebookLM, which allows them to define and query specific sources, moving beyond the generalized prompting of tools like ChatGPT. She also requires documenting AI interactions, treating AI as a “living and breathing” tool that evolves with user input, much like in a commercial setting. This structured approach helps students develop deeper critical thinking skills, transforming how they interact with information and produce work. The goal is to cultivate an environment where students engage in their own inquiry while balancing it with course learning outcomes and gradability, even with hundreds of students.

The conversation also addresses the broader implications of AI for education, positioning it as a transformative force akin to the internet’s arrival. Gillespie believes AI will fundamentally shift how education is delivered and how learning outcomes are assessed, moving away from complacency and towards rapid evolution. By openly incorporating AI and teaching responsible usage, educators can empower the next generation to be creators rather than just consumers of information, equipping them with a “magical tool” for unparalleled innovation. This proactive stance on AI in higher education is crucial for preparing students for future employment and societal contributions.

Why should I listen?

You should listen to this episode to understand how AI is being ethically and effectively integrated into higher education right now. If you’re an educator looking for practical strategies, a student wondering how AI will impact your learning, or simply curious about the future of education, this discussion offers valuable insights into fostering critical thinking and responsible AI use.

10 Key Takeaways:

  1. AI integration in education focuses on intentional use, ethical citation, and transparent collaboration.
  2. Many students are familiar with AI tools like ChatGPT for everyday tasks but lack understanding of its documented use in academic work.
  3. AI should be viewed as a “living and breathing thing” that requires feeding information, training, and manipulation for robust outcomes, similar to commercial applications.
  4. Tools like Google NotebookLM enable students to define specific information sources for AI queries, moving beyond generalized searches.
  5. Documenting AI interactions, including workflows and prompts, is crucial for accountability and traceability in academic and professional settings.
  6. AI can assist in creating detailed rubrics for grading, even for large classes, helping manage the complexities of evaluation.
  7. Educational institutions face challenges with monitoring and evaluating AI use at scale, necessitating new strategies like public links and random audits.
  8. AI is a transformative force in education, similar to the internet’s impact, making traditional gatekeeping approaches unsustainable.
  9. The shift in education will emphasize critical thinking and guiding AI, rather than simply memorizing facts or obtaining answers directly from AI.
  10. AI can enable the next generation to become creators, offering a powerful tool for innovation and changing how people learn and start their careers.

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Raising Children Means Raising Citizens, Not Free Agents

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I occasionally repost another author’s column that I believe is consistent with my Critical Thinking objective.

This is a good example from respected parenting guru John Rosemond…

Folks often tell me they want their children to “think for themselves.”

Pardon me, but that’s nuts. I wanted my kids to think like me when it came to morals and life principles in general. That was, in fact, my primary purpose. I wanted them to accept that my values were the right values to hold, and I wanted them to eventually make every effort to pass those values on to their children.

But then, I don’t subscribe to the postmodern notion that all values are equal. I’m not a relativist. Quite the contrary.

But even in the case of a person who doesn’t think like I do and (therefore) doesn’t hold the values I hold, wouldn’t that person still want their children to think like they do? Wouldn’t a person who believes all values are equal, that right and wrong are relative concepts, want their kids to believe likewise?

It’s called a worldview, and there’s really little point in investing eighteen or more years of time, effort, and money in raising a child if one is not trying to produce someone who will subscribe to a certain, defined worldview and (therefore) champion certain values.

How do you pass your values on to your children? From the earliest possible time in their lives, you talk about your values and you explain how they comprise your code for living (see Deuteronomy 6:6 and 7).

Why do you donate the one-hundred-dollar bill you found blowing in the wind to the local homeless shelter? Why don’t you allow your children to have smartphones or watch certain movies? You explain to your children that your definitions of right and wrong, your decisions, and your opinions about various matters are based on certain core principles.

Your ability to articulate those principles clearly enough that a 5-year-old can understand them reflects your commitment. And you not only talk about your values, but you walk your talk. There’s no room for “Do as I say, not as I do” in an ethical worldview.

This is the process by which you shape your child’s character, the process by which you produce a good citizen, someone who will make the community a better place. Everything else—grades, athletic accomplishments, artistic talents, and so on—is secondary. Raising a mathematically and musically gifted and talented child who wins a scholarship to Harvard is fine, but when all is said and done, good parenting is simply an act of love for your neighbor.

But make no mistake, no matter how well you communicate your worldview to your children, they WILL think for themselves, and from a very early age.

They will even make decisions that will cause you to scratch your head in wonder or weep with sorrow. Parenting is an influence; it does not determine the outcome. Even the most well-parented (by whatever standard) child is capable, on any given day, of acting in ways that are completely inconsistent with his or her upbringing.

That fact, if not fully accepted, can generate lots of parental frustration, lots of parental guilt, or lots of both.

As your great-grandmother put it, “Every child has a mind of his own.”

Copyright 2025, John K. Rosemond

©2025 All rights reserved.

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‘That’s What Motivates People’: School Board Winners Say Gender Policies Drove Big Election Gains

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Conservatives saw major school board wins this election, proving that parents across the country are still actively working to get gender ideology out of the classroom, victors who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation explain.

Parental rights watchdog Moms for Liberty saw more than half of its school board candidates prevail on Nov. 4, with several winners attributing victory to concerns about inappropriate classroom content and issues related to gender identity policies. Moms for Liberty CEO and co-founder Tina Descovich told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the issue driving parents to the polls for school board elections is a lack of transparency with what is happening in the classroom.

“Parents feel like they don’t have access to schools the way they used to, or information about their children,” Descovich said. “And I would say parents on both sides of the aisle are concerned about transparency in education.”

Two school board winners who spoke to the DCNF strongly agreed with this notion, having both experienced attempted classroom indoctrination firsthand.

“That’s actually the reason that I originally ran for office four years ago, was because of the inappropriate material that was in our daughter’s classroom,” Danielle Lindemuth, who was reelected to the Elizabethtown Area school board in Pennsylvania, told the DCNF. “There is sexually explicit content in the books. There is a major theme of rape and incest in different ones.”

Brooke Richards-Patterson, elected to the Old Bridge Township Board of Education in New Jersey, told the DCNF she became aware of the school’s agenda to teach inappropriate content to children three years ago when a school board member began recruiting parents to speak out about the issue.

“The curriculum proposed by the state includes verbiage such as anal, oral sex, masturbation, as young as the second, third, fourth grade,” Richards-Patterson said. “My kid still believes in Santa Claus at that age, my kid’s waiting for the tooth fairy. Why is that appropriate?”

“I’m not trying to mother your kids,” Richards-Patterson continued. “If you want your kids to know all that stuff, have at it. I don’t, and a lot of us don’t. And the whole point is I should have the most say as the parent. That’s the bottom line. I want you to have that too.”

Lindemuth’s and Richards-Patterson’s districts have already seen some success with rooting out gender identity-based policies.

“We do recognize that it is something that is a parental choice. It is not a school district choice,” Lindemuth stated. “And so if a student chooses to identify as something other than their biological gender, then we have set data that the parents must be involved in the conversation, and so if they would like to change their name or their pronoun, then the parents must be the ones who sign off on that.”

“We also want to make sure that we are protecting all of our students, faculty and staff’s rights. And so within that, what we did was we made sure that if somebody has a strongly held belief that they cannot call somebody by something other than their biological gender, that they have alternatives to what they can do,” she explained. “They are not allowed to be rude and disrespectful to them, they must not use a name that the person doesn’t want to be called.”

Under the new policy, teachers are allowed to address students by “something a little more generic,” such as addressing students by their last names instead of their first names, as long as they address all students the same way. That way, “they are not using pronouns at all” while still being “very careful to make sure that they are respecting the students choice while so not infringing on their own rights.”

Richards-Patterson said her district was able to abolish a policy that allowed children to change their gender identity within the school system without their parent knowing after enough people spoke out about it.

“I wish I could hit every single door and speak to every single resident, because there are a lot of things that people are unaware of,” she told the DCNF. “Nobody knew that there was a policy that said if your child identifies as the opposite sex, they can change their name on the student portal. And you’d have no idea.”

Richards-Patterson believes her effort to inform parents of these issues is what got her elected.

“That’s what motivates people, when they feel like they’re learning more and that I want to educate them, they want to work with me,” she said.

Even when districts do not experience these issues directly, stories from other districts that make national news like the sexual assault cover-ups in Loudoun County and the registered sex offender frequenting school and public changing rooms in Arlington, Virginia make parents take a closer look at their children’s schools.

“We do absolutely see that,” Lindemuth said. “There are times where the parents do come to the school board meetings, or do contact us and say, ‘Hey, is this happening in our school? Is this something we need to worry about?’”

“It makes parents look under the covers a little bit,” Descovich said. “Take a look, parents. Wake up. Is this happening in your district?”

While Richards-Patterson’s victory shifted her district to a majority conservative board, most school districts aren’t as lucky. Despite Loudoun on Nov. 4 electing its second member who is willing to defend girls’ spaces from biological males, the rest of the board generally remains unfriendly to this idea.

Descovich, however, advises parents and school boards in similar situations not to lose hope.

“One school board member can make a huge difference if, at a very least, they are exposing what’s going on in the district, because they have access, they have a lot more access than the average parent in the community, if they are just sharing the information out and exposing what’s going on, it is so worth having just even one school board member, even if they’re getting outvoted,” Descovich said. “This isn’t a quick fix. We did not get into this mess in education in one election cycle, and we’re not going to get out of it and one election cycle. It’s just been decades of unions dominating school boards and education in America, and it’s going to take decades to fix it.”

Seventeen candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty won their school board races this election, making up a fraction of the 500 total races the organization has influenced over the last three years.

“We’re at a peak of education reform in this country,” Descovich said. “All of this really is going to lead to this golden age in America that we’re looking forward to, where we’re going to go from only a third of kids reading in America, only 22% of high school seniors being able to pass a civics test, to a place where our children can be enriched and they can be bold supporters of the good, the beautiful and the true, and they can be educated citizens again and have the ability to self-govern.”

AUTHOR

Jaryn Crouson

Education Reporter

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