RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/stinging_rebuke_to_woke_oberlin_college_.html

It might be said that an Ohio appellate court, March 31, struck a blow against woke-ism by upholding a multimillion-dollar verdict against Oberlin College. At issue was a tortious response by the college to a shoplifting incident, November 9, 2016, at Gibson’s Bakery in Oberlin. The incident led to protests by Oberlin students and administrators against the bakery, accusing the owners of racism and a history of racial profiling. (A black male student had been apprehended by a bakery employee for shoplifting and he and two black women were arrested in connection with the incident.  In August 2017 they pleaded guilty to lesser charges.)

The bakery and its owners, Allyn W. Gibson and his son David R. Gibson (both now deceased), sued the college and its dean of students for libel, interference with business relationships, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, winning  a jury verdict of $44 million, reduced to $31 million (comprising compensatory and punitive damages, and including attorney’s fees of $6 million).

In upholding the judgment of the trial court, the appellate panel affirmed that the attacks on the bakery were actionable, not opinion, and that the plaintiffs were not public figures.  A woke court, arguably, would have ruled that a flyer distributed by college administrators and students accusing the bakery of racism and racial profile was merely opinion  The appellate ruling noted, however, that the bakery and its owners had not voluntarily injected themselves into the controversy at issue, nor in the “extreme public criticism” that followed. This ruling rejected the claim of the college that the plaintiffs were public figures — and therefore the applicable standard for libel should have “actual malice” not negligence.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/08/college-degrees-are-a-bubble-and-a-collapse-is-on-the-way/

“Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.” — Mark Twain

In the field of economics, a “bubble” refers to something that is being absurdly increased in value, much more than its true worth. The classic examples are the tulip mania bubble and the South Seas bubble. One could even make the case the 1929 U.S. stock market was a bubble. The results of such bubbles are invariably disastrous.

College degrees are a bubble. Many, if not most, degrees being granted are geared to be circular, that is, they are required for an academic setting. There, college graduates can happily regurgitate what their former professors told them, who in turn, repeated what their professors told them, each academic at each level in the process feeling very intellectual and very original. The problem is that there is a limited number of institutions that employ people to work in those fields or teach in them. Some politicians are proposing to exacerbate the quandary by offering free tuition, with the slogan, “Everybody deserves [?] a college education.”

Third World countries are faced with a huge mass of college graduates who cannot find a job — any job. I do not exaggerate when I say that if one of those college graduates lands a job at a local MacDonald’s, that graduate feels lucky, indeed. As has been observed, this tends to radicalize the resentful, unemployed, graduates, since they feel they are owed a job and status simply due to having gone to a university.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/yale-law-school-recruits-and-trains-social-justice-michael-cutler/

If practitioners of any profession would be expected to understand and honor the notion of Free Speech it would be lawyers.  In years past this would be a reasonable conclusion.  However, in so many ways traditional American values have been turned upside down and inside out!

Consider that on March 17, 2022 Fox News reported, Liberal Yale Law students derail bipartisan ‘free speech’ event in chaotic protest; police called to scene.

 The report began with the following:

A bipartisan panel on civil liberties at Yale Law School was disrupted last week when more than 100 law students tried to drown out and intimidate the speakers, who eventually needed police to escort them out of the building, according to reports.

The school’s Federalist Society hosted the March 10 panel, which featured Monica Miller, of the progressive American Humanist Association, and Kristen Waggoner, of the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). About 120 student protesters showed up with signs attacking the ADF to shout down the speakers, with one reportedly recorded on audio telling a member of the conservative group that she would “literally fight you, b——.”

“It was disturbing to witness law students whipped into a mindless frenzy. I did not feel it was safe to get out of the room without security,” Waggoner told the Washington Free Beacon.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/revolt-of-the-parents-vol-3-wisconsin-waukesha-kenosha-oklahoma-school-board-election-11649280677?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

America’s fed-up parents on Tuesday sent another set of school board incumbents to the timeout corner to reflect on what they’ve done wrong. This time the elections were in Waukesha, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee. The races were nonpartisan officially, yet it was a win for a slate backed by the state and local GOP.

Three Waukesha school incumbents lost their seats, one in the primary, two on Tuesday. “Our children have endured an awful lot in the past two years navigating a pandemic that unleashed mandates, restrictive rules, remote learning and constant changes to their normal school routine,” one of the winning challengers, Mark Borowski, says on his website. He also criticizes—and he ran against—“equity initiatives” that “infiltrated district curriculum,” while dividing students and “espousing falsehoods about America.”

The incumbents protested that Mr. Borowski and the other challengers were running on national GOP talking points. But the arguments had local resonance.

Last year a Waukesha kindergarten teacher was suspended for a day after she refused to take down a gay and transgender pride flag she had hung in her classroom. The local teachers union urged staff to wear rainbows in solidarity. Parents could be forgiven for wondering about this seeming focus on ideological activism instead of education.

https://www.realclearpublicaffairs.com/articles/2022/04/06/parents_should_guide_their_childrens_civic_education_825557.html

What should parents look for in a K-12 civics curriculum for their children? I’ve been asked that question a lot since the release of “Learning for Self-Government: A K–12 Civics Report Card,” a report I wrote that surveys popular civics curricula. One short answer is the Curriculum Sketch. Another answer is Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum, which is the gold standard for civics in 2022. But here’s a longer answer – an answer that will help parents ask their own questions as they examine the civics curricula used in their children’s schools.

Parents should look for a civics curriculum that teaches the nuts and bolts of American government. Their children should learn what the Constitution is and how it works. They should learn how state and local government works. If they hear a politician say, “I’ll do this,” their children should know if he’d be breaking the law if he tried to do that.

Parents should look for a civics curriculum that teaches the moral beliefs of the American Founders, so their children can learn why and for what purposes the Founders created our government. The Founders believed in limited government, because they saw that individuals were fallible. They believed in free government, because they reasoned that people were best suited to choose their own happiness. Students need to know our republic’s moral foundations to be able to pass on the blessings of liberty to future generations.

Parents should look for a civics curriculum that gives students a vocabulary that accompanies being a free citizen. Their children shouldn’t rely on the paraphrases of teachers and textbooks. They should read the words themselves. They should study the Constitution and The Federalist, The Gettysburg Address and Brown v. Board of Education – all our documents of freedom. Children become citizens by reading the words of these key texts themselves, thinking about them, and acting on them.

Parents should look for a civics curriculum that instills pride in America without erasing Americans’ all-too-human faults. Our children should know that we are proud of our achievements – not least because we’ve struggled at times to follow our better angels.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/landonmion/2022/04/05/ohio-house-introduces-floridastyle-parental-rights-bill-n2605518

Two Ohio state representatives introduced legislation that mirrors Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill and also prohibits Critical Race Theory-inspired instruction.

State GOP Reps. Mike Loychik and Jean Schmidt on Monday introduced House Bill 616, which would ban public educators teaching grades kindergarten through third grade from teaching, using or providing any instruction or material on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Educators for fourth through twelfth grades will not be allowed to teach age-inappropriate content in accordance with Ohio’s “state standards.”

This comes after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill into law last week that bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in grades kindergarten through third grade and would limit age-inappropriate discussions of sexuality in other grades.

Dubbed by critics as the “Don’t say gay” bill despite there being no mention of a ban on the word, Florida’s legislation also allows parents to access their children’s education and health records and requires schools to inform parents of changes to their child’s mental, physical or emotional well-being. The bill exempts schools from disclosing information to their parents if a “reasonably prudent person” would be concerned that doing so could result in abuse, abandonment or neglect.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit-leads-the-way-in-reinstating-the-sat-admissions-policies-standardized-testing-college-students-11649185773?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

During oral arguments in a 2003 Supreme Court case about affirmative action at the University of Michigan law school, Justice Antonin Scalia told lawyers who were defending the school’s racially discriminatory admissions policies that they couldn’t have their cake and eat it too.

“I find it hard to take seriously the state of Michigan’s contention that racial diversity is a compelling state interest—compelling enough to warrant ignoring the Constitution’s prohibition of distribution on the basis of race,” Scalia began. “The problem is a problem of Michigan’s own creation. That is to say, it has decided to create an elite law school . . . [and] it’s done this by taking only the best students with the best grades and the best SATs or LSATs, knowing that the result of this will be to exclude to a large degree minorities.”

Scalia said that if Michigan wants to be an elite law school, that’s fine. But there are trade-offs involved if the school also wants to prioritize enrolling some predetermined percentage of underrepresented minorities for aesthetic reasons. “If [racial diversity] is indeed a significant compelling state interest, why don’t you lower your standards?” he asked. “You don’t have to be the great college you are. You can be a lesser college if that value is important enough to you.”

Last week, the highly selective Massachusetts Institute of Technology, faced with a similar dilemma, apparently chose to maintain its high standards. It became the first prominent school to reinstate the requirement that applicants submit SAT or ACT scores, a practice that MIT and many other colleges had abandoned during the pandemic.

https://amac.us/new-variant-of-the-crt-virus-social-emotional-learning/

Amid the national backlash over Critical Race Theory, gender theory, and other radical political and social doctrines being peddled in K-12 classrooms, parents are sounding the alarm over a new “variant” of left-wing instructional dogma: “social-emotional learning,” or SEL. While the term sounds innocuous enough, mounting evidence suggests that SEL curriculum is often simply a rebranding of the same dangerous and divisive ideologies that have dominated education headlines in recent months.

If you ask proponents of the concept, they’ll tell you that SEL is all about helping students grow into well-rounded adults who can manage their emotions and interpersonal relationships. Casel, one of the leading organizations that sells SEL programming to schools, defines it as “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.”

Much of the terminology that advocates of the doctrine use to promote SEL is drawn from the mental health field. The assertion is that when students are confident in themselves and their identities, they perform better in the classroom. As the Washington Post explained in a recent feature piece on SEL, “social-emotional learning seeks to treat children as human beings with feelings, life goals and even traumas, not just students learning to write essays and solve math problems.”