RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/philly-suburbs-schools-adopt-critical-race-theory

Lower Merion Township’s beauty and wealth belie its proximity to the impoverished neighborhoods of West Philadelphia, which borders the township just east on Route 30. Being the first suburb on the Main Line, Lower Merion is home to many of the region’s wealthy residents. With a median income of nearly $140,000 per year has come an extraordinarily well-funded, high-achieving public school district.

The 83-percent-white township is also unabashedly progressive. The town has about 2.8 times as many registered Democrats as Republicans. The school board is run exclusively by Democrats. Local church lawns are filled with colorful T-shirts emblazoned with the names of black people killed by police. And shoppers at Suburban Square, a high-end local shopping center, are enveloped in the pride flags that decorate shops and sidewalks every few steps in the month of June.

But despite the town’s progressive vibe, a battle over local schools’ embrace of critical pedagogy is burgeoning. To try and understand this cultural conflict in a place where “wokeness” is part of the atmosphere, I spoke with public and private school parents and a person with experience on the school board, and I attended a meeting of local residents and Republican Party officials. All involved requested anonymity.

When local Republicans hosted a meeting in late June at a home not far from Lower Merion High School, about two dozen people stood in the living room, Rolls-Royces and Honda Civics alike parked along the ornate stone curb. Following a brief overview of local budget issues and political polling came the main issue of the evening: the school district’s left turn. Such terms as “race essentialism” and “transgenderism” were tossed around. Still, agreement on the origins and shape of the ideology that these people found themselves contending with remained elusive.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/soviet-jewish-schools-yeshiva-yevsektzia-schneersohn-yaffed-antisemitism-first-amendment-11630613080?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Mr. Margolin is a senior editor at Chabad.org.

After the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks launched a harsh war on religious education throughout the Soviet Union, with devastating consequences for Judaism. To avoid accusations of anti-Semitism, Soviet attacks on traditional Jewish schools, known as cheders or yeshivas, were led by the Yevsektzia, the militant Jewish sections of the Communist Party, whose members were often more ideologically zealous than their gentile counterparts. In an effort to win Jewish hearts and minds, in January 1921 the Yevsektzia organized a particularly grotesque episode called the Trial of the Cheder.

Held in Vitebsk, the six-day show trial was similar to the medieval disputations with which Jews had contended for centuries. “Experts” on education and hygiene testified that the cheder was backward and dirty. The spectacle quickly devolved into a blatant attack on Judaism.

Despite a valiant defense by Vitebsk’s Jewish community, the verdict was a foregone conclusion. Every cheder in Vitebsk was ordered to close. In the early 1920s, more than 1,000 cheders were closed in the U.S.S.R.

My grandfather’s Jewish education was terminated at a second-grade level by this crackdown. Born in Ukraine in 1920, my great-grandparents wanted him to receive authentic Jewish schooling. Even as communism destroyed their world, they persisted and sent their young son to a cheder.

“I barely got past alef beis”—the Hebrew alphabet—“and it was closed,” my grandfather told me shortly before his death last spring at 100. “Some teachers were arrested or shot, others scared away. Before long it was all gone.”

https://quillette.com/2021/07/12/almost-four-decades-after-its-birth-the-diversity-industry-thrives-on-its-own-failures/

JULY 2021

Campus diversity advocates have pulled off their greatest coup to date: They have declared “diversity” to be a freestanding academic discipline, thus injecting their bureaucracy-heavy apparatus into the very heart of the academic enterprise. As of this month, Bentley University, a business-oriented liberal arts school in Waltham, Mass., will offer a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Sciences degree in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). By all accounts, this is the first undergraduate major dedicated to churning out more diversity bureaucrats and consultants. It will not be the last.

The BA track in DEI studies will prepare students for non-profit and community-based work by focusing on “theoretical approaches to social justice,” according to Bentley. The “sciences” track emphasizes the “importance of DEI in organizational strategy,” for students heading into the private sector.

Designing the new major was relatively easy, and would be easily replicable at other schools, its architects said. Bentley created just one new “foundational” course, while repackaging Bentley’s existing social justice-themed offerings under the DEI banner. “You may be surprised to find that your campus is already well on its way to forming a DEI major,” said sociologist Gary David. That is an understatement. Bentley is relatively conservative compared to other liberal arts colleges, yet was already awash in courses such as “Race and Racism in U.S. History” and “Gender and the Law.”

Bentley offers pragmatic justifications for this new academic field. The diversity-consulting business is white hot, having been turbocharged by the death of George Floyd. Any large corporation that had not yet hired an in-house diversity manager rushed to correct that omission in 2020. Other firms, already supplied with internal inclusion specialists, brought in outside diversity outfits to double down on their efforts to root out their own institutional racism.

“Diversity and inclusion roles have increased 71% globally over the last five years, with median salaries ranging from $84,000 to $126,000,” notes a Bentley communications staffer. “The racial justice movement has further accelerated demand, and industry experts predict continued exponential growth well into the future.” And Bentley’s newly minted diversity graduates will be well-positioned to meet what the school describes as “this burgeoning business need.”

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/08/31/some_american_students_can_only_spell_f-a-i-l-u-r-e_791974.html

The U.S. Department of State is giving $275,000 in grants to organizations in Bolivia and Guatemala to teach people English.

The United States has a vested interest in having more people around the world speak English and the $100,000 for Bolivia and $175,000 for Guatemala isn’t exorbitant. However, many students in America can’t pass remedial reading tests.

The national average for fourth graders in public schools in 2019 is having 65% of students reading at or above basic levels and 34% at or above proficient.

Not exactly a high bar, students in 28 states test above the national average.

That includes in New York, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island, where 66% of students read at or above basic levels and in Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina and Indiana, where 67% of students read at or above basic levels.

The lowest levels of basic reading skills are seen in Alaska and New Mexico (53%), Louisiana (55%), Washington D.C. (57%), Alabama (58%), West Virginia (60%), and Texas, South Carolina, and Arizona (61%).

No state tops 45% of fourth graders reading at or above proficient.

Alaska, New Mexico, Louisiana and Alabama all have below 30% of their fourth graders reading at proficient levels.

Eighth graders fared better, with the national average being 72% of eight-grade students reading at or above basic levels. The national average for proficient dropped to 32%.

While 32 states have eight-grade students reading above the national “basic” average, only one state, Massachusetts, enters the 80 range (81%). Again, no states exceed 45% of students reading at proficient levels.

It should be an embarrassment that American children are struggling in reading.

https://www.city-journal.org/dc-prep-schools-embrace-diversity-equity-and-inclusion?wallit_nosession=1

In August 2020, the faculty and staff of Sidwell Friends, the Washington, D.C. area’s top private school, convened to hear a special talk hosted by the school’s director of Equity, Justice, and Community. The speaker was Ibram X. Kendi, no stranger to the podium at posh private schools. “We’re either educating our children to be racist, or we are educating them to be anti-racist,” Kendi said. According to the school’s press release, Kendi charged teachers with the task of creating “an anti-racist world, both in the School and in the world at large, because to not do so is to be complicit in maintaining racist policies.” A few weeks later, Kendi gave another talk for the students at Sidwell, who, like the teachers, had read his book in preparation. “Kendi emphasized that change can—must—happen on a personal level,” the press release says.

Private schools around the nation have adopted Kendi’s message, and Washington is no exception. The top five D.C.-area private high schools—Sidwell Friends, Georgetown Day, Holton-Arms, the National Cathedral School, and St. Albans—committed to this vision in the form of strategic plans. Similar plans may have generated backlash in New York, but so far, the D.C. schools have embraced diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) without notable dissent. D.C.’s top schools now require every corner of their institutions—from chemistry classes and athletic departments to boards of trustees—to demonstrate fealty to “antiracism.”

Some of the pressure for change has come from the students. Last summer, on “BlackAt” social-media accounts that emerged at nearly every top private school in the country, anonymous students alleged incidents of racism and demanded action. Similar accounts sprang up at all five of the top D.C. schools, and their strategy proved successful. A June 2020 letter from Georgetown Day School’s head of school and DEI director thanked the students running the “BlackAt” account for raising awareness, called for feedback to help the school effectuate “institutional and ideological change,” and concluded with a quote from Kendi: “What other people call racial microaggressions I call racist abuse.” Two months later, Georgetown Day’s administrators made good on their promise with a 14-point plan. Meantime, National Cathedral School explicitly cites the “blackatncs” account in its DEI plan overview. And in a letter in November, the head of school at Holton-Arms said she was grateful for the “Black@HAS” account.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/academia_reaches_its_terminal_stage_of_rot.html

“Those who can do; those who can’t teach.”

Most people who were born prior to the socialist infestation and eventual takeover of our education system probably remember that quote.  It was written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903, a line from his four-act drama Man and Superman.  It has been upsetting teachers and professors ever since, many of whom had a valid complaint about being included among the alleged non-achievers. 

Many fine teachers throughout history have helped positively shape young minds — there’s no doubt about that.  But some educators who whined about the quote were mediocrities who inspire few if any students; others are subversive ideologues who spend their entire careers indoctrinating impressionable kids in their relentless pursuit of a utopian fantasy.  The effort is ongoing, and the warning signs have been there for decades.  But anyone who sounded the alarm was ridiculed and called a conspiracy nut, a wacko, or a Nazi.  Some things never change…especially in the tried-and-true Marxist playbook.  Saul Alinsky would be proud!

Sadly, we are now on the cusp of seeing that twisted dream become a reality.  Orwellian doublespeak, a socialist staple, is a Democrat favorite: those who brazenly violate the Constitution accuse the opposition of violating the Constitution…those who loudly decry racism pound race-hatred into the minds of our children…tyrants who twice impeached President Trump without a scintilla of evidence support the delusional hack in the White House while he commits numerous impeachable offenses…apparatchiks rant “follow the science,” all the while encouraging troubled children to pretend they’re members of the opposite sex.  I could go on, but you get the point.

The federal government encourages and often mandates the indoctrination in our schools, the primary tool for destroying young minds.  There are myriad reasons why this cancer continues to metastasize, but even a cursory look at who controls the reins of power in the federal behemoth provides a good part of the answer.

– Janet Yellen, secretary of the Treasury, has had a lengthy career as a “public servant and educator,” according to her bio on Wikipedia.  In fact, it appears that she has done nothing except lecture at the academy and work for various bureaucracies.  She is lauded as a great economist but has never really worked in the private sector.  Yellen did serve as chair of the Federal Reserve, but the Fed is a quasi-government institution that manages currency supply and interest rates about as well as Congress manages the budget.  Hyper-inflation, anyone?

– Miguel Cardona, secretary of education, taught fourth grade through college, then worked as an appointed bureaucrat at the state and federal levels.  Period.  Apparently, he has never worked a day in the private sector.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/critical-race-theory-suicide-whites-crt/

Some things in this world go so beyond the pale that it becomes absurd to weigh and measure them upon the cool, dispassionate scales of reason. Critical race theory (CRT) is one.

There are different definitions of CRT, most of which contain cute elisions. Sharif El-Mekki, CEO at the Center for Black Educator Development, offers a typical one. ‘Critical race theory is a legal framework,’ he says. ‘It’s a lens for people to be able to apply to law and see how racial injustice and how racism has been baked in many laws in the history of America’. That is partly true about some of CRT’s applications. But the political activist Susan Sontag, not known for mincing words, provided a fuller picture.

‘The white race is the cancer of human history,’ Sontag wrote in Partisan Review; ‘it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself’.

The purpose of CRT is to ‘prove’ why this is and how it affects nonwhites, not only as applied to law but every aspect of life. Healthcare, classical music, climate change, dating markets, the great outdoors, botanical nomenclature and math class — all are touched by the stain of racial bigotry. In a world where everything is racist, CRT is the cipher disk that reveals the how, why, and who.

The real reason CRT is intolerable, then, is also the one many people have trouble saying aloud: it is explicitly anti-white. For people like me, this is not merely a game of semantics.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/24/the-woke-crusade-against-western-civilisation/

Cambridge University’s archaeology museum is to display signs explaining the apparent ‘whiteness’ and lack of ‘diversity’ among its ancient sculpture plaster casts – all as part of an anti-racism campaign.

This sounds like satire, but it’s not. Cambridge University’s Classics faculty really has chosen to focus on ‘the role of classical sculpture in the history of racism’. In effect, this ancient seat of learning is undertaking an act of cultural vandalism. It is seeking to recast Greek and Roman civilisation as the cradle of modern racism.

The museum says the sculptures give a ‘misleading impression’ of the whiteness and ‘absence of diversity’ in the ancient world. Aside from the philistinism of this approach, the important question to ask is why it is being adopted now.

It seems that all it took for the Classics faculty to decide ancient sculptures were a bit racist was an open letter to the faculty chair, written in 2020, from students, alumni and staff. This letter called for a ‘public acknowledgement of the problems of racism within Classics and… for active anti-racist work within our discipline’. And, just like that, this august institution gave in – it effectively said that the ancient world is something of which we should be ashamed.

The Classics faculty has since declared it will ‘turn the problem into an opportunity’. This will entail drawing attention to ‘the diversity of those figured in the casts’, and to the ways that the sculptures’ ‘colour has been lost and can be restored’.

In addition to all this, the Classics faculty has now published an action plan showing how it will deal with racism in Classics more broadly. This includes providing training for Classics tutors on how to discuss sensitive topics, and a review of all the language used in course titles and materials.

For some, the decision of Cambridge’s Classics faculty to portray Classics as racist is just another example of the dominance of identity politics in universities. But there is much more at stake here.