RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/05/childrens-library-association-pushes-gender-confusion-on-kids-with-pro-lgbt-summer-reading-list/

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) is pushing multiple LGBT recommendations in its 2022 Notable Children’s Books and Summer Reading Lists. Some of these books include a simple picture of a gay union, while other suggestions are fully centered around transgenderism, but in each case, these recommendations are meant to normalize and promote LGBT values and lifestyles to children. 

By the ALSC adding these books to the reading list, it communicates that these works are of “especially commendable quality, books that exhibit venturesome creativity, and books of fiction, information, poetry, and pictures for all age levels (birth through age 14) that reflect and encourage children’s interests in exemplary ways.” 

For example, children from birth to preschool are encouraged to read “The Pronoun Book” by Chris Ayala-Kronos to complete the summer reading list. As kids just begin to learn how to talk and read, they can also get a head start on trans pronoun propaganda. 

In this book, young readers are taught that they can’t know what people want to be called. A boy may want to be called a “she” instead of he. A girl may desire to use plural pronouns such as they/them or a “neopronoun” such as co, ey, per, or xe.

“Milo Imagines the World” by Matt de la Peña is another “notable” children’s book on the library association’s list, and while the book is not LGBT-centered, it slips in a picture of a same-sex wedding.

The story follows a young boy named Milo and his sister riding the train to see their mom. While on the crowded train, Milo looks at the faces around him. Notebook and pen in hand, he imagines and draws the lives of the people he sees.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/how_racial_literacy_erodes_education.html

As the country plunges deeper into Wokeland, the institutions of alleged higher learning continue to support and promulgate the ideology of the Left.

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) offers an online book titled “Racial Literacy” edited by Detra Price-Dennis.

Chapter titles include the following:

To Dismantle Racism, We Must Discuss It
Everyday Colorism: Reading in the Language Arts Classroom
Centering #BlackLivesMatter to Confront Injustice, Inspire Advocacy, and Develop Literacies
Reopening Racial Wounds: Whiteness, Melancholia, and Affect in the English Classroom
Tough Talking: Teaching White Students about Race and Responsibility
Antiracist Language Arts Pedagogy is Incomplete without Black Joy

Thus, “[t]his collection shows how teaching from a racial literacy perspective is in conversation with antiracist, culturally responsive, equity-oriented frameworks that uplift curriculum design and instructional strategies to help educators [.]”

In effect, “[t]he English language arts classroom provides a significant place to begin as English Language Acquisition (ELA) schol­ars and teacher educators are illuminating the ways white supremacy of language policies and practice devalue Black ways of knowing, being, and doing in schools.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/biden_sets_his_sights_on_k12_education.html

“Biden’s education council is a hyper-partisan packed court that is likely to dismiss any family input that differs from their progressive views.”

Few noticed or cared when U.S. education secretary Miguel Cardona announced on June 14 the launch of the National Parents and Families Engagement Council (NPFEC). The NPFEC “…will serve as an important link between families and caregivers, education advocates and their school communities. The Council will help foster a collaborative environment where we can work together to serve the best interest of students and ensure they have the academic and mental health support they need to recover from the pandemic and thrive in the future.” 

While this sounds promising, a journalist with Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council (FRC) in their Washington Stand newsletter took an interest and identified some major red flags; “Yet one look at some of the council’s 14 acknowledged members shows it represents a small segment of elitist, left-wing views.” For example:

The National Action Network started by Al Sharpton made an “LGBTQ Alliance” in 2015 “…to promote “the hiring or participation of gay/transgender people “in all areas of religious and public life.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/georgetown-promotes-former-chavez-regime-official-after-sidelining-ilya-shapiro/

At the prestigious university, poorly worded tweets can get you canceled, but working in a dictatorial regime can get you promoted.

Georgetown University recently promoted Angelo Rivero Santos, a former official in the regime of Venezuela’s late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez, to the role of interim director of its Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS). Between 2006 and 2013, Rivero Santos held various positions in the Venezuelan embassy in the United States, eventually serving twice as acting ambassador for the Chávez regime. “As of today, I am humbled to follow in the footsteps of those that have served as Directors of CLAS in the past by serving as your interim-Director for the academic year 2022–2023,” Rivero Santos wrote in a July 1 statement to the university department.

This is the same university that stirred controversy in January for placing Ilya Shapiro, who was set to lead its law school’s Center for the Constitution, on administrative leave during a four-month “investigation” for three tweets in which he questioned President Biden’s reliance on racial and gender preferences in promising to nominate a black woman — to the exclusion of all other possible nominees — to replace Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer. In the end, the law school reluctantly retained Shapiro, though it legitimized the tactics and concerns of the woke mob attacking him. Shapiro resigned days later, citing his belief that the school had “yielded to the progressive mob, abandoned free speech, and created a hostile environment.”

https://josephhmanson.com/2022/07/04/why-im-leaving-the-university/

I’m a professor, retiring at 62 because the Woke takeover of higher education has ruined academic life. “Another one?” you ask. “What does this guy have to say that hasn’t already been said by Jordan Peterson, Peter Boghossian, Joshua Katz, or Bo Winegard1?

There’s only one way to find out.

Defenestration of a Colleague

I’ve been a tenure-track professor since 1996 (tenured since 2000) in the Anthropology Department at UCLA. (My research, which I plan to continue doing, has spanned topics ranging from nonhuman primate behavior to human personality variation). For decades, anthropology has notoriously been riven by conflict between scientific and political activist factions, leading many departments to split in two, but UCLA’s department remained unusually peaceful, cohesive, and intellectually inclusive until the late 2000s. Gradually, one hire at a time, practitioners of “critical” (i.e. far-left postmodernist) anthropology, some of them lying about their beliefs during job interviews, came to comprise the department’s most influential clique.  These militant faculty recruited even more extremely militant graduate students to work with them.

I can’t recount here even a representative sample of this faction’s penchant for mendacity and intimidation, because most of it occurred during confidential discussions, usually about hiring and promotion decisions. But I can describe their public torment and humiliation of one of my colleagues, P. Jeffrey Brantingham. Jeff had developed simulation models of the geographic and temporal patterning of urban crime, and had created predictive software that he marketed to law enforcement agencies. In Spring 2018, the department’s Anthropology Graduate Students Association passed a resolution accusing Jeff’s research of (among other counter-revolutionary sins) “entrench[ing] and naturaliz[ing] the criminalization of Blackness in the United States” and calling for “referring” his research to UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Research, presumably for some sort of investigation. This document contains no trace of scholarly argument, but instead resembles a religious proclamation of anathema. As you won’t be surprised to hear, Jeff is not a racist, but a standard-issue liberal Democrat. The “referral” to the Vice-Chancellor never materialized, but the AGSA resolution and its aftermath achieved its real goal, which was to turn Jeff, who had been one of the most selfless citizens of the department, into a pariah. He taught (still teaches) a course, “The Ecology of Crime,” that consistently drew 150+ students and earned rave reviews. This course had a catalogue number that grouped it with sociocultural anthropology, and it fulfilled a sociocultural anthropology requirement for anthro majors. In an act of petty spite, ritual moral purification, or both (take your pick), the Woke faculty clique, which comprised a majority of the sociocultural anthro faculty, banned him from using (polluting?) any of their course numbers. Jeff continued to offer the course, just under a different kind of number.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/03/the-national-academies-have-abandoned-the-sciences/

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently held an event titled: “Structural Racism and Rigorous Models of Social Inequity.” The two-day conference seemed less of a workshop, as was advertised, and more of a struggle session against enemies of “equity.” The main takeaway from this event was that we must implement critical race theory (CRT) into every facet of science. This conclusion was not drawn from inference. Throughout the conference, multiple speakers advocated explicitly for the use of critical race theory. By doing so, however, one must ask: Have the National Academies abandoned the sciences altogether?

To answer that question, one must first answer another: Is critical race theory scientific and beneficial to the scientific community? CRT contends that race is a social construct, tracing that argument back to W.E.B. DuBois, and there are good reasons to accept this claim. After all, while it is observably true that people vary by the color of their skin and other immutable characteristics, it makes little sense to divide people into “races.” Biologists, for example, talk not of “races” but of populations, and those medical researchers find genetics a far more useful analytical tool than any abstract concept of “race.”

So far, it would appear that CRT is scientific and beneficial to the scientific community. However, one has yet to consider the applied postmodernism of the theory, and its concern with language. Critical race theorists focus on issues such as hate speech, microaggressions, and cultural appropriation. In fact, they believe that speech which may lead to “racial inequity” must be censored. Such an approach is antithetical to scientific progress, as free speech and open debate are necessary to challenge ideas. Censorship will only hinder that speech and debate, slowing scientific progress, if not stalling it completely.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/patriotism-starts-in-the-classroom/

Progressive doctrine is replacing traditional curricula in our K–12 schools. If not reversed, we could lose the next generation of Americans.

The effort to indoctrinate students in progressive, anti-American ideologies that pervades our universities is also ravaging K–12 education. State education departments issue standards that public and charter K–12 schools, and their teachers, must follow. Particularly in larger states, these standards determine the content of textbooks and standardized tests, influence private and homeschool curricula, and impact public-college admission requirements.

Traditional standards are aggressively being usurped by the principles of critical race theory, social justice, and “action civics,” which promotes student involvement in protests for progressive causes. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has identified at least 45 state education standards in 25 states that incorporate radical doctrine, including CRT, the 1619 Project, and other expressions of anti-American animus. More than twelve federal and 200 state bills have been introduced that would incorporate progressive civics education in K–12 schooling. By July 2020, more than 4,500 schools taught the 1619 Project as truth, despite its author’s admission that it is a parable. That number is likely considerably greater today.

Concurrently, states are eliminating or dumbing down tests and otherwise lowering standards, imposing, for example, “equitable grading,” which excludes factors such as class participation and returning homework on time. The motivations for doing so vary but consistently include an effort to reduce or obscure performance differences to promote “equity.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/supreme-court-decision-advances-educational-larry-sand/

Last week, the Supreme Court delivered three decisions that have the left in a snit of epic proportions. On Friday, the Court decided there is no Constitutional right to an abortion, and threw Roe v. Wade into the trashcan. The prior day, the justices made clear that the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. And on Tuesday, in Carson v. Makin, the Supremes asserted that if a state subsidizes private education, it cannot disqualify religious schools.

The latter case revolves around Maine’s town tuitioning law, which allows parents living in districts that do not own and operate elementary or secondary schools to send their children to public or private schools in other areas of the state, or even outside the state, using funds provided by the child’s home district. Until Tuesday’s decision, the school a parent chose could not be a religious one. But as Chief Justice John Roberts explains, “The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools – so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion. A State’s antiestablishment interest does not justify enactments that exclude some members of the community from an otherwise generally available public benefit because of their religious exercise.”

The Carson case was the fourth in a series that have involved the faux “separation of Church and state” argument. In the 2002 Zelman v. Simmons-Harris decision, SCOTUS ruled that because financial aid goes to parents and not the religious school, vouchers are indeed constitutional.

Then, in 2017’s Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley, a Missouri church that was operating a daycare and pre-school applied to a state grant program that helps non-profits pay to install rubber playground surfaces. The church’s application was denied because “the state constitution bars the state from providing funds to religious entities.” But Trinity Lutheran pursued the case all the way to the Supreme Court, where it prevailed. Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the 7-2 majority, stating, “The Court held that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protected the freedom to practice religion and subjects laws that burden religious practice to strict scrutiny.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/discrimination-at-brown-university/

In May, Brown University offered an online teacher-training course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) that ironically created a lot of stress among the population that was not allowed to take the course: whites and Asians. The course was only offered to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) students, and even to students who did not attend Brown. One anonymous student filed a complaint against the university on May 13 with the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR). According to the complaint, the professors of the class are only those who identify as BIPOC (supporting professors may be white).

The student wrote, “Brown is offering a RACE-BASED teacher training program that is ONLY open to certain demographics (black, latino, indigenous).” The anonymous student also pointed out the reality of the situation: “This is a return to educational segregation based on skin color.” The student claims in their complaint that only BIPOC students receive financial aid in the MBSR program, which the student rightly decries as “discriminatory.” The student has decided to unenroll from the MBSR program because of the school’s decision to engage in patent segregation:

As a student of the program, I find myself being unable to continue my training with this institution as I refuse to support educational segregation based solely on skin color as it violates my core principles, values, and the Buddhist teachings that which this program is based on.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/real-reasons-government-schools-are-evil-jason-d-hill/

Among many conservatives and opponents of public-funded education in general, there is the idea that government schools are bad because they are conveyor belts of indoctrination; that the state, by means of forcibly exercising a coercive monopoly in the field of education, conscripts the minds of children and stamps them with the insignia of state propaganda. In effect, the brains of children are cognitively nationalized. This is indeed true, but it is not just the case with government schools. The same propaganda and doctrinal philosophies which are simply idea pathogens also infect private education as well and, more importantly, private institutions that also receive government aid. Our private schools today are as WOKE and as progressive in the regressive sense as any left-wing public school that teaches hatred of and disdain for America, individualism, capitalism, self-reliance, and the religious traditions of others.

I would suggest that mind-conscription is incidental, and that it is made possible by a deeper philosophic issue that few grapple with in a consistent manner. The state can only have a coercive monopoly on education and, a fortiori, enforce doctrinal ideas on children if a basic idea is left unchallenged in our society. The idea is that we are responsible for the procreative choices that other people make. This idea codified into a principle results in the fiscal enslavement of people into supporting the reproductive choices others made for themselves which they then penalize others for as a natural right.

Public education is tax-funded education, which means that parents are made to understand that they are not responsible for educating their own children. Society as a whole shall assume the responsibility of paying for the education of your children. Why not pay for their cribs, diapers and birthday cakes? Why specifically should we support the reproductive choices others have made in the educational realm?