RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/06/how-alumni-established-a-beachhead-for-open-discourse-on-bucknells-campus/

The small, classically pillared bank building at the center of the little town of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, could be the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan in Bedford Falls from the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But it’s at the center of revolutionary new trends emerging in American higher education.

The new headquarters of the Open Discourse Coalition (ODC) was established this spring by Bucknell University alumni to support innovative programming for the nearby campus, and will feature seminar rooms, space for receptions and talks, and offices for student and faculty research. The goal: Encourage viewpoint diversity and civil discussion on campus about the “great books” of the liberal arts tradition, at a university where faculty and staff increasingly seem to many students to only advocate for one set of extreme ideological views.

“We want to open up higher education to new ideas and not let it stagnate in static ideology, to prepare students adequately for a dynamic twenty-first century ahead,” explains Allison Kasic, an alumna involved in the project, which has seen initial financial support from alumni in the seven figures since its launch in November 2020. The alumni involved include a former chair of Bucknell’s Board of Trustees, Judge Susan Crawford, and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone.

Among innovative projects underway sponsored by ODC:

A non-credit leadership seminar in the fall by a Bucknell professor emeritus and former Goldman Sachs general partner and naval officer, whose courses earned rave reviews from generations of alumni, with grants for students who successfully complete it.
Support for paradigm-shifting student research, faculty curricular development, and faculty work that comes under attack by colleagues for ideas at odds with conventional campus political wisdom.
Speaker programming featuring dialogues and thoughtful viewpoints on issues often excluded from campus.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/07/the-lefts-critical-race-theory-is-ruining-public-education-in-the-u-s/

A radical teachers’ union has a message for parents: We control your children, not you. And it means to prove it by shoving Marxist Critical Race Theory (CRT) down your kids’ throats, part of the union’s ongoing effort to “fundamentally change” America. If you want the best for your children’s education, you’ll say “hell, no!” to this pernicious, anti-American ideology.

Unfortunately, many centrist and conservative parents have looked the other way as our nation’s once-superior public schools have been taken over by leftist unions and their “educator” allies, using race-based Marxist CRT as their tool. It’s a pity.

Just last weekend, the 3-million-strong National Education Association, the largest labor union in America, stated its outright opposition to parents’ groups and state legislatures seeking to end CRT’s baleful influence on a whole generation of school kids.

Doubling down, the NEA announced not just its support for CRT, but also said it would encourage teachers to hold a “national day of action” each year on martyr George Floyd’s birthday to “teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.”

No parents needed. In fact, teachers are actively opposing parents who don’t like what they’re doing. The NEA last week, for instance, also voted to “research” (that is, spy on and politically attack) groups that oppose CRT in our nation’s schools.

“NEA will research the organizations attacking educators doing anti-racist work and/or use the research already done and put together a list of resources and recommendations for state affiliates, locals, and individual educators,” the union threatened.

Meanwhile, “More than 5,000 educators have signed a petition vowing to break anti-critical race theory laws being considered in multiple state legislatures – as the controversial curriculum faces a reckoning in districts across the country,” the New York Post reports.

And why is this so important to the left? It thinks it owns your children. Don’t you remember? “It takes a village.” So it has a right to push hateful CRT and the wholly specious 1619 Project on gullible students.

http://getinsight.pro/schools/intro_video.htm

My way of coping with this situation was to create an online curriculum to teach my children to question the propaganda that they learn in school and to expose them to information that is being left out by schools.  This online curriculum is free for everyone.  The lessons have condensed video clips by some of the best experts on the different topics and added explanatory texts.  I unexpectedly have learned a lot by doing this.  The lessons are full of history that I didn’t know.  Although the original intent was to counter propaganda a side benefit is that my children are learning a lot of science and history and most importantly they are learning to think critically about what they are being taught in school.

I asked my son what he thought would motivate children to learn the online lessons.   He suggested that I make a quiz for them to take on each page.  Once they take the quiz the computer will display a certificate that shows that they took the quiz and how they scored which they can show their parents.  Then their parents can reward them for it.  Of course he wants rewards every time he takes a lesson and I give one to him.  Usually it’s a dollar or a treat.  It’s cheaper than private school and a lot of private schools indoctrinate as much as the public schools do anyway. 

Regarding quizzes. There are two kinds of questions those with circles in front of the answers and those with squares in front of the answers.  The ones with circles have only one answer.  The ones with squares can have more than one answer but might only have one answer.  Lets say a question has 2 right answers and your child checks the correct boxes but also checks two boxes that are the wrong answer.  In that case your child will get a score of zero on the question even though 2 of the answers were correct.

The Lesson List of the web site lists all the pages on the site so children can make sure they didn’t miss a lesson.  If children learned a lesson the color of the link to that lesson in the Lesson List changes.  This only works if the child took the lesson on the same computer with the same browser.  Children can print the Lesson List and check off what quizzes they took to help them keep track.  If a child wants to look up a topic they learned in school, they can do a search on the Lesson List page for a keyword by typing CTRL F and entering the keyword.

The site is arranged by topic.  These topics were chosen to counter what my children are being taught in school.  For example my daughter was taught that voter ID wasn’t fair.  That falls under the topic of discrimination.  So there will be the topic Discrimination on the home page of the web site.  Clicking on it will take your child to a web page on some aspect of discrimination.  That page will in turn have a link on the bottom to another page about another aspect of discrimination which in turn leads to another until your child gets to the voter ID.  The fastest way to get to it is from the Lesson List page.  There is a link to that at the bottom of most pages.

Some of the words on the lesson pages are highlighted in yellow.  If your child places the cursor over those words the page will show the definition of the word.

This website is continually being improved and extended.

One of the challenges of a site like this is that children come in all ages.  Some of the material may be too difficult or advanced for some children.  I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible but some of the videos were made by adults for adults.  Sometimes I have put definitions of difficult words before the video to help the child understand what is being said.  My children often surprise me with how well they understand what they are reading but they are 9 and 12. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/stopping-k-12-indoctrination-is-right/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

A July 5 New York Times Op-Ed by Kmele Foster, David French, Jason Stanley, and Thomas Chatterton Williams argues that it is “un-American” for state laws to keep indoctrination in the tenets of critical race theory (CRT) out of the K–12 curriculum. While conceding that such laws may be permissible in the “narrow context of public primary and secondary education,” they argue that said laws are “antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression.” While the authors raise some legitimate concerns about specific provisions in bills that have passed to date, their conclusions do not follow. Many of the specific problems they point to can and should be fixed. The overall effort to prevent CRT indoctrination, however, is both necessary and justified. It is CRT that is un-American, not efforts to prevent the imposition of this pernicious orthodoxy on schoolchildren.

Let us begin with specific legislative language, then move to broader principles. I focus here on Texas House Bill 3979, inspired in significant part — but by no means entirely — by my model legislation published with the National Association of Scholars. That Texas bill has some technical flaws, which were well on their way to being fixed as the legislative session wound down. The flaws of which the op-ed complains can and should be addressed when House Bill 3979 is taken up soon in a special legislative session.

Texas House Bill 3979 initially passed the House. After it reached the Senate, a key fix was made. The original House version held that the various illiberal concepts listed (e.g., collective guilt by race or sex) should not be made “part of a course.” This phrasing could potentially prevent even discussion of the various concepts, which would indeed run afoul of our culture of free expression, despite being legally permissible. In contrast, my model legislation merely says that teachers should not teach the various illiberal concepts in such a way as to inculcate them. Anything can be discussed. The core concepts of critical race theory, however, should not be presented as worthy of assent and belief. In other words, students should not be indoctrinated with CRT.