RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/578391-feehery-critical-thinking-theory

Education is the top issue in the Virginia governor’s race.

That’s usually not a good topic for Republicans, because the Democrats typically make it a referendum on spending more money.

But this year, this issue is not how much money is being spent on education; it’s how the money is being spent in the public schools.

Last year, parents got a better glimpse into how local schools spend taxpayer dollars. It wasn’t pretty.

If money wasn’t being wasted on critical race theory, it was being wasted on critical gender theory. Parents watched in horror as their kids were taught less about math, science and critical thinking skills and more about how they were either racist or victims, about how they may not be either boys or girls, and worse, about how evil and corrupt America truly is.

One thing has become readily apparent over the last year and a half in the United States.  Everybody needs more critical thinking skills and the courage to apply those skills to everyday life. We might as well start teaching them to the children.

You can’t believe everything you read in the paper these days. In fact, you really can’t believe anything you read in the paper. When our politicians say something, don’t take it face value.  They may not be willfully lying to you, but they are not telling you the whole truth. When health experts like Tony Fauci say something, get a second opinion. Fauci is not infallible. And for God’s sake, be careful with the internet. There is a lot of nonsense being spewed forth on social media.

The fight over our nation’s schools is long overdue.

Our education establishment has been failing our children and our nation for far too long.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/27/the-kids-most-definitely-are-not-all-right/

On the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or “nation’s report card,” test scores in both reading and math declined for 13-year-old students, the first drop registered in 50 years. The test showed that the decline was concentrated among the lowest performing students. Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, who has been working with these data for 28 years, was shocked to see the decline. “I had to ask the question again of my staff. Are you sure?’ I asked them to go back and check,” she said.

It’s important to note that this test was given in early 2020, right before the pandemic-related shutdowns in the spring. At that point, then Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos granted a blanket, one-year “accountability waiver.” But in February 2021, with the Biden Administration in place, new Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he’d “require states to administer the federally mandated tests in the spring, with an asterisk: They had the option of giving shorter, remote, or delayed versions.”

Bad idea. Per researcher Dan Goldhaber, “Using different versions of tests makes the results less comparable across different years and school districts.” And shorter tests produce less “actionable” information about individual student achievement in the short term. Nevertheless, the trend to disparage, eviscerate and ultimately do away with standardized tests is all the rage these days.

It’s also happening on the college level. Brandon McCoy, education policy expert at the Manhattan Institute, reports that the standardized test “has slowly lost its pride of place in college admissions over the past decade. By 2019, the number of schools going test-optional had risen to 1,050. The pandemic has catalyzed this trend, with at least 1,400 colleges in 2021 making the move to test-optional. College systems around the country are now permanently eliminating the requirement for the SAT and ACT; the University of California system is doing away with the tests altogether.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/uc-berkeley-study-explains-why-its-wrong-defend-robert-spencer/

In American colleges and universities today, marginalization is privilege and victimhood is power, so it should come as no surprise that a study conducted by – of course! – two researchers at the University of California, Berkeley has discovered that women are being oppressed not by the systemic and institutionalized misogyny of Islamic law (Sharia)—which devalues women’s testimonies and inheritance rights and sanctions the beating of women—but by “Islamophobia.”

According to the San Francisco Examiner, which reported this ludicrous nonsense with a straight face, Elsadig Elsheikh and Basima Sisemore of UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute (which must be a barrel of laughs to work in) conducted a national survey of “people living with Islamophobia, documenting their collective experiences and registering their voices.”

This makes it sound as if “Islamophobia” is some sort of disease; it’s actually a propaganda neologism that conflates two separate and distinct phenomena: vigilante attacks of innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology behind jihad terrorism, which is always necessary. Those who use the term refer to both of those things under the rubric of “Islamophobia,” which has the effect of intimidating people into thinking that it is somehow wrong to speak about the root causes of jihad terror and Sharia oppression of women.

The study is an exercise in exactly that kind of intimidation. Elsheikh and Sisemore discovered that “most Muslims in America believe women are more at risk of experiencing Islamophobia than any other group. That stands to reason as Muslim women, particularly those who wear the hijab (a headscarf covering hair and neck) or niqab (covering head and face but not the eyes), are seen more obviously as practitioners of the Islamic faith.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/totalitarian-tenderfoots-bruce-bawer/

You don’t hear a heck of a lot about Oberlin College, the liberal arts college in Ohio, but on Wednesday Hugh Fitzgerald wrote here about an esteemed member of its faculty, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, who has enjoyed the unanimous support of Oberlin’s top administrators. Mahallati, reported Fitzgerald, served as Iran’s ambassador to the UN in the late 1980s, where, among other things, he promoted “genocidal antisemitism,” denounced the Baha’i people (hundreds of whom “have been executed or murdered” in Iran), and helped cover up the mass execution of political prisoners. At Oberlin, he teaches Religion, Islamic Studies, and Middle East and North African Studies.

This wasn’t Oberlin’s first time in the spotlight this month. A couple of weeks ago the college got a good deal of social-media attention after Peter Fray-Witzer, one of its 3,000-odd students, took to the Oberlin Review to pen an ardent j’accuse. You see, an e-mail had gone out from Josh Matos, “the area coordinator for Multicultural and Identity-Based Communities,” informing students that radiator installations were scheduled to take place in the “Women and Trans Collective,” a dorm in which Fray-Witzer resides. Being “very averse to people entering my personal space,” especially when those people are “strangers” and “cisgender men,” Fray-Witzer was rendered “angry, scared, and confused” by the news of this unwanted intrusion, which would damage the “feeling of safety and protection” ordinarily provided by the Collective. Why, asked Fray-Witzer, couldn’t the installation have been scheduled during the summer?

Three score and seven years ago, men Fray-Witzer’s age stormed the beaches of Normandy. Now this. American colleges once taught young people to deal with challenging ideas and experiences. Now the most expensive of them – Oberlin is America’s 11th costliest college, beating Yale at #18 and Stanford at #50 – are padded playpens where their pampered students, the presumed leaders of tomorrow (is Fray-Witzer, by any chance, the child of Harvard law professor Sharon Fray-Witzer?) expect to be protected from the slightest hint of distress. And when they graduate they become – well, they become those totalitarian tenderfoots who were protesting Dave Chappelle’s latest comedy special outside of Netflix the other day.

No wonder Fray-Witzer’s tantrum went viral. “Ponder the rotted roots of an ideology,” commented Glenn Greenwald, “that convinces highly privileged and wealthy students at elite colleges that the guys who come to fix their radiators are their oppressors, and that the ones whose family is paying $80k/year are the oppressed.”

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/10/27/the_contretemps_at_yale_110658.html

Recent events at Yale Law School reveal that it’s all too easy for administrators to condemn a student for perceived racist statements, even in highly ambiguous circumstances – but much harder to undo the implications for admission to the bar. To put it plainly, a law school’s “discrimination and harassment coordinators” cannot denounce a student for racism and then withhold that information from its bar certifications. If the condemnation is warranted, it must be reported; if it is not warranted, it should be retracted. To do otherwise would violate the administrators’ own obligations under the Rules of Professional Conduct.

According to Associate Dean Ellen Cosgrove, the YLS Office of Student Affairs “tries to help students talk to one another and resolve their disagreements within the community,” even about the most difficult issues. That’s a noble objective, but it doesn’t describe what recently happened when nine law students complained that a classmate had engaged in harassment and discrimination by circulating a “triggering” email. The offending message was in fact an invitation to a Constitution Day celebration jointly sponsored by the Native American Law Students Association and the Federalist Society, to be held at the jokingly described “world-renowned NALSA Trap House,” with a menu that included “Popeye’s chicken,” apple pie, cocktails, and soft drinks.

Trent Colbert, the second-year student who issued the invitation, was called in for a meeting with both Dean Cosgrove and YLS diversity director Yaseen Eldik, who patiently explained the racial overtones of the term “trap house,” as well as the troubling implications of “the fried chicken reference.” This came as news to Colbert, who thought that “trap house” was an innocent reference to a place where young people held parties, “like a frat house without the frat” (and Popeye’s was just a nearby fast food joint). He said he would stop using the term, but that was not good enough for the administrators, who urged him to issue a written apology for any “harm, trauma, or upset” his email had caused, along with a promise to “educate myself” to do better.

When Colbert balked, Eldik cautioned him about potential damage to his reputation, and ominously pointed out that “there’s a bar you have to take,” which of course would include a character and fitness assessment. That bit of not very friendly advice started Yale on a damaging course from which it will be difficult to withdraw.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/has-america-been-overtaken-by-creeping-credentialism-college-jobs-requirements-11635282885?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Editor’s note: In this Future View, students debate “credentialism,” the ever-expanding requirement of college degrees.  Very interesting responses….read them all…..rsk

https://www.wsj.com/articles/about-those-domestic-terrorists-national-school-boards-association-merrick-garland-memo-fbi-11635285900?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

It took a few weeks, but the National School Boards Association has apologized for sending a letter to President Biden suggesting that “threats and acts of violence” at school board meetings might be “domestic terrorism.” The NSBA now admits there was “no justification for some of the language included in the letter,” which could have parents investigated under the Patriot Act for trying to influence what their children are taught.

The retraction comes after tremendous blow-back. First came parents at school board meetings with T-shirts saying “Parents are not domestic terrorists.” Then 21 state school board associations distanced themselves from the letter. The Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania state associations cut ties altogether.

It turns out that when Chip Slaven, the NSBA interim executive director and CEO, and president Viola Garcia sent the letter, they did so without consulting their own board. But according to one of Mr. Slaven’s emails, they did work with White House staff.

The NSBA has owned up to its mistake, but what about the Biden Administration? Days after the NSBA letter was sent, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI and U.S. Attorneys to intervene—without spelling out the federal authority or hard evidence for what the AG called a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence.” This directive still stands.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17892/schools-indoctrination

Every expert who came in indicated that the most important thing in a child’s learning was the presence of a caring adult in that child’s life. We learned that schools most connected to their community were most likely to be successful. And that schools that focused on the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic achieved the best results.
Hillary Clinton once famously said it takes a village to raise a child. It is hard to disagree with that statement on its face until you realize the village Clinton had in mind is the government and not the parents and families who make it up.
While the media may portray this as a battle about COVID mandates, American history, or the teaching of sexuality, those are just the scrimmages that we are witnessing. The real battle is for who the teacher will be in our children’s lives — parents and loving local individuals who know our children’s names, or faceless government bureaucrats hell-bent on indoctrinating our children with their particular worldview.
McAuliffe, Garland, and the NSBA would have you believe that parents are domestic terrorists, but it is time for them to realize how their way of thinking poses a real threat to American rights. Put me in the category of those that believe parents are the ones who should be raising our kids.

The discontent at school board meetings across America is hard to miss. It is showing up in the news and social media feeds that people are watching and reading in their homes. Many people, however, are missing the major driver of this discontent — the major transformation that the White House, National School Boards Association (NSBA) and others are trying to impose on our government schools.

The recent debate statements by Terry McAuliffe, the Democrats’ Virginia gubernatorial candidate, and actions by Attorney General Merrick Garland following a letter from the NSBA clearly signal they believe that government schools are a tool to be used to indoctrinate children. They also believe the force of the federal government should be used to back them up.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/25/columbia-law-professor-explains-why-public-schools-are-tearing-america-apart/

Smearing parents fed up with their kids’ schools as “domestic terrorists” seems to be a wild, incendiary charge with little basis in reality. Yet it’s the basis on which the U.S. attorney general has convened an FBI task force to surveil and intimidate parents who object to what their children are being taught, and how they are being treated, with public tax dollars. The organization that colluded with the Justice Department to create the pretext for chilling voters’ speech has backed down, but the FBI threat remains.

School lockdowns have clarified and accelerated the deep, irreconcilable differences among American parents and citizens about how to educate children. Americans want completely different things from their kids’ schools, often opposite things. It’s simply impossible to teach both that there’s a hierarchy of races and that all humans are created equal, let alone to teach “both sides” of other education flashpoints, such as whether to teach social justice or actual math in math class. Schools have to choose.

K-12 schools are largely choosing the political establishment over the wishes of the people who elect them and provide their children as the pretext for schools’ public funding. The political establishment that benefits from public schools’ monopoly on teaching future voters what to think is being increasingly direct about this arrangement.

In 1996, Hillary Clinton told Americans “it takes a village” to raise a child. That was the soft sell. Today, we’re getting the hard sell: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” said Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe in a September debate.

As Democrats were forcing millions of American children to stay home for yet another school year while their international peers were safely learning in person, a Harvard University conference suggested banning at-home education. One of its organizers, a Harvard Law professor complained that homeschooling is “a realm of near-absolute parental power. . . . inconsistent with a proper understanding of the human rights of children.”