RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/576462-schools-become-crucial-battleground-heading-into-midterms

Schools are emerging as the latest battleground for both parties ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Debates over coronavirus restrictions and curriculum in the classrooms have dominated campaign messaging, forcing candidates to address the issues head-on in key areas like the suburbs.

It’s also left parents and experts concerned that kids are on the front lines of a political battle that has turned highly contentious over the past year.

The battle has also turned highly personal for families and educators debating how much of a role parents should play in their students’ education.

Republican candidates have seized on conservative complaints about issues like critical race theory and LGBTQ issues in school curriculum, while Democrats have zeroed in on the importance of coronavirus restrictions in classrooms.

Both parties are looking to use the education-related issues to appeal to parents on issues that impact their children’s day-to-day lives.

“When it comes to issues like education, you can view that as a quality-of-life issue,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright.

While schools and classrooms have been at the center of some of the country’s most hot-button issues in the past, including racial integration and prayer in the classroom, the coronavirus pandemic has reinvigorated the education debate in 2021.

Republicans say conservative enthusiasm around education reached a fever pitch during the pandemic, when parents became more aware of their children’s curriculum when they were home during lockdown. The party also pushed back against coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions, arguing it negatively affected the learning environment.

Democrats, on the other hand, have argued that coronavirus restrictions are needed in schools to keep children safe and to stop the spread and mutation of the virus.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-10-15-how-to-be-a-conservative-student-on-a-university-campus-today

It gets harder and harder to be an independent thinker in the midst of one of those indoctrination and groupthink factories known as a university. Step out of line, and at any moment someone can claim to be offended or “triggered” by something completely bland that you may have said. Next thing you know, someone will have tattled on you to the administration. And you know exactly what the administration will do: They will simultaneously mouth platitudes about “free speech” while making every kind of threat, veiled or not, to bring you into line.

Is there any way for you to come out ahead? Within the last few days, a small number of students — one at Yale and two at Arizona State — have given tutorials on how to win at this game. To be fair, these students got a big assist from the fact that the crazy leftists who run these places have gotten so confident of never facing any pushback that they no longer hesitate to engage in conduct that is completely indefensible.

Example number one for today comes from perhaps the looniest of all the loony left schools, the Yale Law School. It all started with plans by the Native American Law Students Association to co-sponsor a Constitution Day (September 17) get-together with the Federalist Society. On the 15th, a second-year law student named Trent Colbert — who is a member of both organizations and, unlike Elizabeth Warren, is actually part Cherokee — sent out this email inviting NALSA members to the event:

Before reading further, see if you can spot what about the email may be offensive to the finely tuned antennae of an uber-woke Yale Law School “diversity” monger.

Aaron Silbarum, writing on October 13 at the Washington Free Beacon, recounts what happened next:

Within minutes, the lighthearted invite had been screenshotted and shared to an online forum for all second-year law students, several of whom alleged that the term “trap house” indicated a blackface party. “I guess celebrating whiteness wasn’t enough,” the president of the Black Law Students Association wrote in the forum. “Y’all had to upgrade to cosplay/black face.” She also objected to the mixer’s affiliation with the Federalist Society, which she said “has historically supported anti-Black rhetoric.”

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Whether the current Administration is the most corrupt in the history of our nation, I leave to those better qualified to decide. But, as we know from the influence peddling of Hunter Biden and the recent revelations of Merrick Garland’s son-in-law’s business ties to the teaching of critical race theory, there is no question as to its corruption. S.W.

Terry McAuliffe was correct in the sense that it would be impossible for a school to design individual syllabuses for each child. Nevertheless, the input of parents should be sought, not denied. As the NCPIE (quoted above) expressed, when parents do take an active interest in the education of their children they achieve higher grades, gain better social skills and more easily adapt to school.

It was once rare for any American of any political persuasion to deny the importance of parents in the education of their children. As educator and author Dorothy H. Cohen (1915-1979) once observed. “No school can work well for children if parents and teachers do not act in partnership on behalf of the children’s best interests.” Now, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s weaponization of the Justice Department has put that partnership at risk. In response to a letter to President Biden from the National School Boards Association, which likened parents’ protests to acts of domestic terror, Mr. Garland said he would use the Patriot Act against those parents who have “threatened” school boards for the teaching of critical race theory-type themes, adopting NEA New Business Item 39[1], cancelling history and tradition, distributing sexually explicit curricular materials, and allowing transgender bathrooms.

Violence against any person, including school board members, is a crime, but disallowing dissenting voices of parents is a violation of their First Amendment rights. As for the rights of public schools to teach what they choose, consider Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2011 dissent in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants: “The ‘freedom of speech’ as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors without going through the minors’ parents or guardians.” To arbitrarily ignore parents’ concerns is what one would expect of a totalitarian regime more interested in indoctrination than education, not from the world’s foremost and oldest constitutional republic.

In America, education flourished when it emphasized the basic elements or reading, writing and arithmetic, and, as students progressed, when it encouraged skepticism, inquiry and empiricism. Unfortunately, public school education today de-emphasizes education in favor of equity, to achieve graduation rates that reflect the racial composition of the student body. Standardized tests have been eliminated. The Regent Exams in New York have been watered down over the years, and in 2019 a commission was established to potentially eliminate the exams as a requirement for high school graduation. In this past year, New York’s Mayor de Blasio ordered the elimination of the city’s gifted and talented programs. In Oregon, Governor Kate Brown signed a bill ending a requirement that high school students prove they are proficient in reading, writing and math before they are granted diplomas.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/school_parents_will_save_america.html

Has the time for normalcy bias passed?  Domestic espionage scandals involving a presidential administration, Marxist race riots, stolen elections, global pandemic, none of these affairs are normal. Normalcy bias is the idea that any number of contemporary abnormalities that we’re experiencing as a society is just another in a series of oddities that will pass and that what life demands most is that we’re comfortable.  Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul often spoke of what it took to drive change in the public. Namely, he suggested that hitting people in their wallets and bellies would demand change. I submit that messing with the children is proving equally effective.

Since COVID-19 hit, the children have been inundated with unending fear of disease that largely doesn’t affect them.  They’ve been locked in their homes and out of the classrooms, muzzled with unscientific face diapers, and isolated away from their peers.  They’ve forgone youth sports and extracurricular activities. They’ve learned over a computer screen that has resulted in significant rates of academic failure, perhaps not seen in the history of our education system.  Perhaps worst of all, according to the CDC suspected youth suicide attempts increased by 31% during the pandemic. 

Not content with merely applying the stressors of a novel pandemic, the schools have been indoctrinating the kids with an onslaught of far-left activism.  From inappropriate and mature themes in children’s reading and television programming material to inappropriate interactions in protected spaces like restrooms and locker rooms, the parents have seemingly had enough.  Around the nation, angry parents are showing up to local school boards and county seats with a laundry list of grievances, and Hell hath no fury like a mother scorned. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/guilford-residents-accuse-pro-crt-school-board-candidates-of-illegally-mass-mailing-absentee-ballots/

Amid the heated school board fight over critical race theory that has roiled the sleepy town of Guilford, Conn., community members are alleging that Democratic and independent school board candidates mailed illegitimate absentee ballot applications to constituents.

Five parents new to the local politics scene are running on the GOP ticket for the school board after twice defeating three Republican incumbents, who they claim had earned a reputation for rubber-stamping the district’s equity and inclusion initiatives.

The five newcomers have made it their mission to recapture the progressive school board and restore education integrity in Guilford. Now, they face the challenge of besting a fusion slate of five Democrats and independents to win the vacant seats on the panel and secure a conservative majority to steer the district’s policies away from critical race theory.

On Wednesday, Deborah DeMusis and George Mack, who have lived in Guilford for decades, filed a complaint with the Connecticut State Elections Enforcement Commission requesting a cease and desist order to halt what they claim to be illegal absentee voting.

Appointed circulator by the town clerk to oversee the strict absentee ballot process, DeMusis first suspected malpractice when she learned that an anonymous individual in the town received an envelope filled with suspect materials. According to DeMusis, the envelope contained a disparaging letter targeting the GOP candidates, an absentee ballot guide directing residents to vote for the Democrats and independents, and an absentee ballot application that was pre-filled with voter information as well as signed, in violation of Section 9-140 of the Connecticut General Statutes.

Moreover, the envelopes that the Democrats and independents sent to voters were unsolicited, another illegality, according to DeMusis and GOP school board candidate Danielle Scarpellino. They said that multiple people came forward with their compromised applications, including the spouse of one of the Republican contenders.

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/10/15/educating_students_about_the_victims_of_communism_110650.html

Many Americans today assume that the threat of Communism subsided with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But “We continue to see Communist and socialist regimes pop up and spread not only in Latin America – for example, in Venezuela and Nicaragua – but around the world,” says Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC). “These regimes regularly kill their own citizens and have a devastating effect on human rights and their national economies.” In fact, over 1.5 billion people – including those living in Laos, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and, of course, China – currently live under oppressive Communist and socialist governments.

Founded in 1993 by a bipartisan, unanimous Act of Congress, VOC is “devoted to commemorating the more than 100 million victims of communism around the world and to pursuing the freedom of those still living under totalitarian regimes.”

Before coming to VOC, Bremberg served as the Trump administration’s Representative of the United States to the Office of the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva. During his time there, which he describes as a “profound and life changing experience,” he “became aware of the challenge of China,” which was “far worse” than he had realized. He notes that the U.N. International Human Rights Council made investigating the United States’ record on racism during the summer of 2020 its highest priority – putting it above China’s appalling human rights violations against Uyghurs, among other ethnic groups within its borders.

“Communist countries by far have the worst record on human rights, past and present,” Bremberg argues. “Their brutality is only outdone by their lies and obfuscations.” Seeing this moral imbalance up close convinced him of the “need to educate Americans about the dangers of Communism today.”

American civic education, Bremberg states, entails not only understanding the structure of our form of government but also the world around us. Pointing to the competing claims of the 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission, he notes that while we should be willing to “be self-critical and examine our past,” we also need to view our nation in comparison to others, especially ones existing under Communism’s iron fist.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/14/the-campus-diversity-menace-comes-to-yale/

It is increasingly obvious that modern Americans universities, which are less institutions of unfettered intellectual pursuit than they are “madrasas of wokeness,” to borrow from the Independent Women’s Forum’s Inez Feltscher Stepman, are unsalvageable in most present manifestations. Though there are notable exceptions, many American universities are actually worse than unsalvageable.

On-campus debauchery spoils matriculants’ lingering senses of virtue and propriety, and woke classroom indoctrination and divisive intersectional poison vitiates the mutually interdependent bonds of citizenry without which no people can cohere. As Arthur Milikh soberly concluded in a 2020 National Affairs essay, “Preventing Suicide by Higher Education”: “Universities that spread poisonous doctrines no longer believe in the purpose of the university.”

Pedagogical and curricular debasement aside, one concrete manifestation of this now decades-long corruption has been the engorgement of on-campus administrative bureaucracies tending to all sorts of “diversity” needs. As Heather Mac Donald’s 2018 book The Diversity Delusion helped demonstrate, the core university mission—ostensibly, to pursue truth and produce citizen-statesmen capable of advancing the national interest—has been steadily undermined by the university’s imbibing of various woke fetishes and “diversity” diktats like mother’s milk. Even hold aside the institutionalized racism of affirmative action, modern “diversitycrat” commissars rove campus for possible Title VI violations, enforce “equitable” faculty hiring quotas, and more generally seek to police and enforce intersectionality’s hierarchy of alleged victimhood.

An eye-opening recent report from the Washington Free Beacon‘s Aaron Sibarium reveals how this cancerous operation can play out in practice. At top-ranked Yale Law School, a second-year student and member of both the Native American Law Students Association and the conservative/libertarian Federalist Society sent an email inviting classmates to an event: “We will be christening our very own (soon to be) world-renowned NALSA Trap House . . . by throwing a Constitution Day Bash in collaboration with FedSoc.” The student added that the event would include “American-themed snacks” such as “Popeye’s chicken” and “apple pie.”

Within minutes of the email’s mass distribution, the student’s wokerati classmates were already signaling intense aggrievement. Some immediately concluded, with all the charity of Ebenezer Scrooge, that “trap house” necessarily connoted a nefarious blackface party. The president of the Black Law Students Association quickly wrote in an online forum available to all second-year Yale Law School students: “I guess celebrating whiteness wasn’t enough. Y’all had to upgrade to cosplay/black face.” We have fallen a long way from the stirring peroration of Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (conveniently available online via Yale Law School) about the imperative to maintain “malice toward none” and “charity for all.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/the_silver_lining_in_the_democrats_assault_on_kids_in_the_public_schools.html

A dark cloud is hovering over America’s K–12 public schools.  Look at the landscape.  Some school districts still mandate that kids wear face masks throughout the school day.  Not only don’t the masks prevent viral spread, but they’re unhealthy both a physical and a psychological standpoint.  Plus, the masks severely retard the learning process. This is the last thing the U.S. public schools need. They are academically low performing as it is.  Then there’s the Los Angeles School District.  It’s requiring its students to be vaccinated with the inadequately tested COVID vaccine.

Then there’s the Democrat war on parents and parental authority. 

Former Virginia governor and current Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe says parents should have no say in what their children are taught.  To top it off, the Department of Justice is threatening to label parents who complain at school board meetings about what’s going on in their schools as domestic terrorists and to sic the FBI on them.  As George Neumayr of the American Spectator puts it: “The Orwellian memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland in defense of public school boards stems from the view that public schools should have the right to miseducate children with impunity, free of any parental oversight.”  That nicely sums up the Democrat view. 

This is not America.  It’s a grotesque version of the country brought about by the actions of Democrats from the lowest level to the very top.  But like with every storm cloud, even this one has a silver lining.  In two ways, actually. 

One is that a record number of parents are abandoning the public school.  They are opting for private schools for their children or going the homeschooling route.  Either one is a better choice than public education.  Hopefully, this abandonment of the public schools will turn into a tidal wave.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/teaching-educators-necessary-lesson-court-richard-l-cravatts/

On September 29th, an association sent an impassioned and grim plea to President Biden’s office in which they “solicit[ed] the expertise and resources of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and its National Threat Assessment Center” be employed to address “threats  and  acts  of  violence [that] have  become  more  prevalent –  during  public school board meetings, via documented threats transmitted through the U.S. Postal Service, through social media and other online platforms.”

“These threats or actual acts of violence,” including by “extremist hate organizations,” the letter read, should even require “appropriate enforceable actions against these crimes and acts of violence under the Gun-Free School Zones Act [and] the PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism . . . “

Who were the extremists and terrorists the letter warned the President about? Islamist terror cells planning domestic attacks? MS-13 gang members who had penetrated the porous southern border and were marauding through American streets and committing criminal acts and murdering American citizens? No, incredibly, the letter was written by The National School Boards Association (NSBA) concerning school board meetings and the threat it described was purportedly coming from concerned parents attending those meetings and questioning, among other topics, critical race theory and mask mandates.

More remarkable, and troubling, is that, in response to the letter, Attorney General Merrick Garland outrageously issued an action plan designed, ostensibly, to suppress any further dissent from concerned parents—citizens whose taxes actually pay for public education. In his October 4th response, while Garland begrudgingly acknowledged that “spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution,” he, nevertheless, was “directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings [to] facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”

The warning was stern and the message, although it will likely (and hopefully) be ignored, is clear: parents should not even think of challenging the current ideology of public school educators, and their race-based, equity-seeking, social justice informed teaching in which white children are oppressors and black children the oppressed. Yet, even with this admonition from the highest level of law enforcement in the land and this naked attempt to criminalize dissent and weaponize the Justice Department, angered parents, students, and even teachers have refused to be bullied and ignored by truculent school boards and have turned to the courts for relief.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/gwendolynsims/2021/10/12/update-professor-canceled-by-woke-outrage-mob-has-last-laugh-n1523199

Last week I reported what happened when tenured University of Chicago Professor Dorian Abbot questioned his university’s Diversity/Equity/Inclusion (DEI) efforts in a series of YouTube videos and articles. The professor faced backlash immediately. Soon, a small group of leftist ideologues mounted a successful Twitter campaign against him resulting in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) canceling a distinguished science lecture Abbot had been invited to give simply because the woke mob disagreed with some of his political positions.

And what were Abbot’s “controversial” political positions that provoked the wrath of the Twitter mob? Abbot posited that university hiring and admissions should be based on merit not racial “equity.” Yes, you read that correctly. Abbot had the audacity to go against the leftist narrative that DEI are the most relevant considerations in hiring and admissions standards, you know, because of “systemic racism.” Of all the white privileged nerve or something.

That’s when MIT caved to the woke mob by canceling the prestigious Carlson lecture altogether “in order to avoid controversy.” That’s where we left the story last week, however, I’m happy to report that another prestigious school, Princeton University, has invited Abbot to speak.

In addition, I’m happy to report that not only has Princeton stepped in when MIT was too cowardly to face the mob, but the embattled Geophysical Sciences professor’s audience has grown exponentially.