RUTHFULLY YOURS

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

Usually, revolutions start at the bottom, with ordinary people pushing back against the tyranny of the powerful, either to create liberty (as happened in America) or to establish their own tyranny (as happens with all socialist revolutions). In America, though, we’re seeing a revolution of the powerful against the little people. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the way powerful people are seeking to impose three revolutions on children: Transgenderism, masks, and Critical Race Theory. Parents are beginning to push back, but more of them need to do so and they need to push harder.

On the transgenderism front, the left still seems to have the upper hand. Children’s television is saturated with transgenderism, whether it’s Disney using the Muppet Babies to push transgenderism or Nickelodeon having the venerable Blue, of Blue’s Clues, and tuneless drag queens engage the same three-to-eight-year-old set in the wonders of imaginary sexual identities.

Worse, the American Academy of Pediatrics (“AAP”) – that is, your child’s doctor — is actively pushing transgenderism despite the absence of any scientific basis for doing so. Abigail Shrier, who has bravely spoken out about the huge pressure on girls who once were tomboys to take hormones and slice off their breasts, now notes that the American Academy of Pediatrics is stifling all dissent:

Is it safe for adolescents to undergo gender “transition”? Is it wise for children to take hormones that block puberty? The American Academy of Pediatrics not only has answered these questions in the affirmative but is determined to stifle any debate. On Friday the AAP told an international consortium of more than 100 clinicians and researchers who doubt the reigning orthodoxy that they couldn’t set up an information booth at the association’s national conference. The cosmetics company L’Oreal and the National Peanut Board will be there, but not the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine.

When it comes to masks and children, the AAP is also uninterested in either evidence-based thinking or dissent. The same organization that boasts Pfizer as one of its supporters insists that all children over two should be masked. This is despite a study showing that children suffer instant oxygen deprivation (as we all do) when masks are stuck on their faces, only they suffer more.

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/339522/eyes-wide-shut-ab-101-bill-poses-danger-for-california-students/

“High school students want to see themselves reflected in history,” said Assemblymember Jose Medina, as he introduced his signature ethnic studies graduation requirement bill, AB 101, to colleagues on the Assembly floor.

Several of the bill’s numerous co-authors expanded on Medina’s sentiments in championing the bill: “It’s important that our students have every opportunity to learn about the history, accomplishments and contributions of diverse communities and leaders that call California home,” stated Assemblymember Robert Rivas. “It’s going to strengthen the diversity in our state,” affirmed Assemblymember Evan Low. “This bill,” promised Assembly member David Chiu, “is the next step to a more inclusive society, one that is reflective and supportive of students of all backgrounds and communities in our state.” And after noting that California is the most diverse state in the nation, Assemblymember Akilah Weber pleaded, “Let us prepare our children for a better future by empowering them with the knowledge of their history and the history of their classmates.”

After hearing these impassioned and moving speeches, one could hardly disagree with Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, who wondered incredulously “why anyone would vote against this bill.”

What gives many Californians pause, however, is that the multicultural and inclusive vision of ethnic studies praised by lawmakers and embraced by the vast majority of Californians—one that celebrates the state’s diversity and offers students a non-politicized, fact-based understanding of the history, accomplishments and challenges of all Californians—is a far cry from the vision of ethnic studies proposed by the educators responsible for developing the curricula most likely to be used in schools.

No one understands this better than AB 101’s own author. In August 2019, after an enormous controversy erupted over the first draft of the state-mandated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC), Medina immediately joined 13 members of the Legislative Jewish Caucus in publicly opposing this draft. He stated that its antisemitic bias would “marginalize Jewish students and fuel hatred and discrimination against the Jewish community.” He understood that the first draft, which included overtly anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist material, would inevitably incite bigotry and hostility, especially antisemitism, in California classrooms. He also decided to postpone his graduation requirement bill, the precursor to AB 101, in the hope that a re-do of the ESMC would be consistent with the author’s desire for “a curriculum that is inclusive of all of our cultures and backgrounds.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/critical-race-theory-roundup/

Over the last year, teachers and administrators nationwide have weaponized K-12 education, injecting progressive politics into classrooms, and indoctrinating students with novel social justice dogma, including theories that call for racialized curriculums and reverse discrimination to achieve racial equity.

Mainstream media outlets and left-wing commentators have accused conservatives of demonizing critical race theory, and turning an obscure academic theory into a rightwing “bogeyman.” But there sure are a lot of examples of it turning up in schools across the country, from big city Democratic strongholds to suburban districts in red America. The following are summaries of just a small number of the fights that have erupted in the last year.

Fairfax County Schools Sent Second Graders a Video Vilifying Police: ‘I Feel Safe When There Are No Police’

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) sent second-graders a “summer learning guide” in July which included a Youtube video titled “Woke Kindergarten” that vilified the police.

Centered around the importance of “feeling safe,” the video, which was obtained by Parents Defending Education, presents a slideshow of photos featuring groups of young African Americans, some of whom are holding Black Lives Matter signs.

“We deserve to feel safe in our homes… I feel safe when there are no police. And it’s no one’s job to tell me how I feel. But it’s everyone’s job to make sure that people who are being treated unfairly……feel safe too,” a narrator says.

The “suggested texts” section of the summer learning guide also recommends students listen to “Good Trouble by Ki,” which instructs students on the merits of civil disobedience.

The narrator of another video, intended for seven-year-olds, tells students, “sometimes it’s good to get into trouble.” The video also presents a sequence of photos depicting social justice demonstrations, some from the modern day and some taken during the Civil Rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.

In a reference to Representative John Lewis’ 2020 speech in Selma, Alabama commemorating Bloody Sunday, the video adds, “John Lewis was a freedom fighter who got in a lot of good trouble.”

“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America,” Lewis declared at the 2020 event.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-people-vs-critical-race-theory/

There won’t be a second chance to take back hijacked American schools.

With a speed that has astonished ordinary Americans, a vocal minority of “critical race theorists” has blitzed K-12 education with sweeping changes of law and policy. The New York Times’ 1619 Project has been the tip of the spear of their movement to put anti-American narratives of race and power at the heart of American curricula.

Even at the very highest levels of prestige, the examples now are legion. At the Dalton School in New York City, faculty signed a letter with a long list of recommendations, including: yearly anti-racist training for employees, an expanded diversity bureaucracy with at least 12 positions, and employee anti-racism statements. Prestigious exam schools predicated upon admitting excellent students and outstanding staff have been pushed to abandon entrance tests in the name of equity (not to be confused with equality).

Not to be outdone, the Illinois Board of Education recently amended a rule to establish “culturally responsive” teaching standards. The regulations require educators to recognize that there is no one “‘correct’ way of doing or understanding something”; to acknowledge that “systems of oppression…in our society…create and reinforce inequities”; and to “work actively against” those systems in order to “understand how the system of inequity has impacted them as an educator.” The amendment mandates that teachers adopt a narrow political ideology that includes a view of American history, society, and law that most citizens reject. The prioritization of this agenda comes at a time when many students are not even in the classroom.    

Majority Report

The spirit that moved the Illinois Department of Education saturates social media and is omnipresent on elite college campuses. But there is also good news. Despite what the media and the academy would have you believe, the American people think that free speech, equal opportunity under the law, and the principles of the founding should still govern the day-to-day lives of citizens. A recent survey of 800 Illinois residents sponsored by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) strongly suggests that efforts to politicize public education do not align with the values of the majority of citizens. Rather than imposing a partisan agenda through rules and regulations from an agency, citizens should have an informed debate about public school curricula and teaching standards.   

To judge from Illinoisans’ assessment of their K-12 schools, the conversation is overdue. Forty-eight percent of respondents think that schools are doing a “worse than good” job (6 percent answered “excellent”). To improve that number, schools would be well served by focusing on preparing students for lifelong success rather than imposing policies and advocating a socio-political position that is at best controversial. 

https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/04/scoop-california-ymca-hosts-pornographer-to-teach-children-art-holds-youth-only-events/

This article features explicit material unsuitable for all readers.

On July 20th, the Burbank, California YMCA’s Social Impact Center, which also hosts “youth only” events, hosted an all-ages event called “Pop Art,” where Blake Rodriguez, whose work features pornographic depictions of characters from popular children’s shows, delivered a “painting workshop.”

The Social Impact Center, which touts itself as “Burbank’s first and only LGBTQIA+ Resource Center, posted an advertisement for the event and directly tagged Rodriguez’s art account @blakerodart, which prominently displays a number of deeply disturbing images, including a painting titled “Disney Orgy” that features various Disney characters engaged in group sex. 

One piece of Rodriguez’s work depicted characters from the children’s show “Teletubbies” viewing pixelated pornography. Another painting featured a young boy holding a condom and the words “Fuck Boy” above him. 

All of these disturbing images, as well as many more that also depict nude characters from children’s shows, some of them engaging in sexual acts, were posted before the Social Impact Center tagged his art account and organized this event, indicating the YMCA was completely aware of the type of “art” Rodriguez specializes in before deciding to host him for an event with children. 

https://www.city-journal.org/african-american-viewpoint-diversity-in-academia

Has this ever happened to you?

You proudly embrace your individuality and freedom of speech, but you work in an environment in which people who neither know you nor agree with your viewpoints are responsible for representing you solely because they look like you. The world treats these “spokespeople” as the de facto experts on what you are all about; when you express a viewpoint that does not align with theirs, they and their listeners see you as an aberration or a misguided soul. Then people start to see you as inauthentic or a cautionary tale of what can happen when someone does not abide by the rules and mandates of the spokespeople.

It is currently happening to me. I’m black, a professor of rhetoric, my environment is academia, and the aforementioned spokespeople are those who insist that they speak for all black academics, if not all blacks, generally. Though such keepers of black authenticity can be found in many places, they present themselves in my field, rhetoric and composition, as proponents of “black linguistic justice.”

What is “black linguistic justice?” It’s the idea that making black students write in standard English is inherently racist. Black students should be allowed to write in “black English.” A manifesto, titled “This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a Demand for Black Linguistic Justice!” seeks change that it insists will liberate black students from the tyranny of thesis statements and the third-person point of view. The manifesto declares:

As language and literacy researchers and educators, we acknowledge that the same anti-Black violence toward Black people in the streets across the United States mirrors the anti-Black violence that is going down in these academic streets.

The hyperbolic statements and dramatic metaphors (academic streets?) don’t stop there. In a separate preface, a prominent black scholar in my field writes about black linguistic justice immediately in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd:

For too long, our field has tolerated and even supported (tacitly or worse) writing programs and literacy teaching, particularly writing instruction, that accede to linguistic racism, to white linguistic supremacy, a supremacy that has kneed the necks of Black speech and Black writing forms through such pedagogies as code-switching or contrastive analysis or write-this-way-here and yo-own-way-there.

 https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/08/04/americas_re-education_camps_788419.html

We rightly criticize and condemn China for sending more than one million Uighurs – Muslims – to “re-education” camps. At the “camps” the Uighurs are “educated” in a process their Chinese elders describe as “washing brains, cleansing hearts, strengthening righteousness and eliminating evil.”

Again, this is sick and wrong, a human rights abuse, something that should disgust us all.

But we have our own, milder, version of “re-education” camps that indoctrinate, all for a supposed good, evolved cause. We call our re-education camps public schools.

Here is one example, from Evanston, right outside of Chicago, of what first and second graders are now “taught” in school:

DEEMAR V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF EVANSTON/SKOKIE

This is not a one-off or a rogue teacher. This is the curriculum, endorsed by the superintendent and school board. 

Likewise, teachers are forced to acknowledge that “white identity is inherently racist.” They are actually separated by race during training. And if teachers object or question the practice, the district brands them “racists.”

Students are also separated at times by race. During “Black Lives Matter Week,” the science department is required to teach a lesson called, “Black Women and Unapologetically Black.” Fifth grade teachers are even required to indoctrinate – I mean “teach” – that “color blindness helps racism.”

Teachers are instructed “to disrupt the Western nuclear family dynamic as the proper way to have a family” and instead to promote the “Black Village,” which is a “collective village that takes care of each other.”

Again, this is the curriculum for teaching seven year olds. It covers more than 7,000 kindergarteners through eighth graders attending 15 schools.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/when-antiracist-manifestos-become-antiracist-wrecking-balls/617841/

After George Floyd’s killing last spring, protests have flowered on many campuses, and so have manifestos demanding that the schools fully commit themselves to an anti-racist agenda. More are likely as the school restarts and we move into spring. Some may feel that the enlightened course is to simply satisfy these demands out of a commitment to America’s ongoing racial reckoning. However, just as many will see a mismatch between actual conditions on these campuses and the nature and tone of the manifestos, as well as the protest actions usually accompanying them. Administrations must decide where racial reckoning becomes racial wrecking ball, even amid a sincere commitment to addressing racism both open and systemic.

At Princeton last summer, 350 faculty members signed an anti-racist manifesto that described the school as founded upon the pillars of its oppressive past, requiring an overhaul of faculty, curriculum, and admissions procedures to fumigate the campus of an all-permeating racism. Its nearly 50 demands included “exponentially” increasing the number of faculty of color; mandatory anti-racist training focused on identifying participants’ “vulnerability” and fostering “productive discomfort”; rewarding the “invisible work done by faculty of color with course relief and summer salary;” and most controversially, the formation of “a committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty.”

At Bryn Mawr College, anti-racist activists accused of intimidating students and faculty not actively involved in the protest essentially shut down the school last semester. Here, the claim was that Bryn Mawr is infested with a climate of racism that threatens Black students’ survival, and the “strikers,” as they titled themselves, demanded additional funding for the Black student center, a halt to evidently systemic “violence” against disabled students, and payment (as well as grade forgiveness) for protesters’ anti-racist “work” during the “strike.” President Kim Cassidy gave the “strikers” leeway, allowing some professors to cancel their classes or reformulate them into tutorials on anti-racism. Cassidy apologized for characterizing the strikers and their actions in a negative light.

At New York City’s Dalton School, an elite private K–12 prep school traditionally a conduit to the Ivies, 129 faculty and staff members this summer signed a letter circulated among faculty, staff, and parents that was later leaked to the Naked Dollar blog. The letter recommends, among other things, redirecting 50 percent of donations to New York City public schools; the hiring of 12 full-time diversity officers, as well as a full-time supporter of Black students with complaints; the elimination of tracked courses by 2023 if Black students don’t perform as well in them as white students; public anti-racism statements from all employees; and an overhaul of the entire curriculum to reflect diversity narratives.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/private-schools-are-indefensible/618078/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

This article was published online on March 11, 2021.

Updated at 7:42 p.m. ET on March 26, 2021.

Dalton is one of the most selective private schools in Manhattan, in part because it knows the answer to an important question: What do hedge-funders want?

They want what no one else has. At Dalton, that means an “archaeologist in residence,” a teaching kitchen, a rooftop greenhouse, and a theater proscenium lovingly restored after it was “destroyed by a previous renovation.”

“Next it’ll be a heliport,” said a member of the local land-use committee after the school’s most recent remodel, which added two floors—and 12,000 square feet—to one of its four buildings, in order to better prepare students “for the exciting world they will inherit.” Today Dalton; tomorrow the world itself.

So it was a misstep when Jim Best, the head of school—relatively new, and with a salary of $700,000—said that Dalton parents couldn’t have something they wanted. The school would not hold in-person classes in the fall. This might have gone over better if the other elite Manhattan schools were doing the same. But Trinity was opening. Ditto the fearsome girls’ schools: Brearley, Nightingale-Bamford, Chapin, Spence.

How long could the Dalton parent—the $54,000-a-kid Dalton parent—watch her children slip behind their co-equals? More to the point, how long could she be expected to open The New York Times and see articles about one of the coronavirus pandemic’s most savage inequalities: that private schools were allowed to open when so many public schools were closed, their students withering in front of computer screens and suffering all manner of neglect?

The Dalton parent is not supposed to be on the wrong side of a savage inequality. She is supposed to care about savage inequalities; she is supposed to murmur sympathetically about savage inequalities while scanning the news, her gentle concern muffled by the jet-engine roar of her morning blowout. But she isn’t supposed to fall victim to one.

In early October, stern emails began arriving in Best’s inbox. A group of 20 physicians with children at the school wrote that they were “frustrated and confused and better hope to understand the school’s thought processes behind the virtual model it has adopted.” This was not a group with a high tolerance for frustration. “Please tell us what are the criteria for re-opening fully in person,” they wrote. And they dropped heavy artillery: “From our understanding, several of our peer schools are not just surviving but thriving.”

Shortly after the physicians weighed in, more than 70 parents with children at the lower school signed a petition asking for the school to open. “Our children are sad, confused and isolated,” they wrote, as though describing the charges of a Victorian orphanage. They were questioning why “everyone around them gets to go to school when they do not.”

Parents at elite private schools sometimes grumble about taking nothing from public schools yet having to support them via their tax dollars. But the reverse proposition is a more compelling argument. Why should public-school parents—why should anyone—be expected to support private schools? Exeter has 1,100 students and a $1.3 billion endowment. Andover, which has 1,150 students, is on track to take in $400 million in its current capital campaign. And all of this cash, glorious cash, comes pouring into the countinghouse 100 percent tax-free.