And story after story as to what teachers and school board honchos are doing to our kids keep rolling in. And it just never stops as the Left is intent on accomplishing its goals. And that means eliminating parents out of their way. Funny, isn’t it – we pay their salaries and stipends and they turn our children away from us. And it is clear that age is no problem for them:
An early childhood educator in California reportedly admitted to using an “age-appropriate” “gender unicorn” to teach toddlers about sexual orientation and gender identity. Danita McCray works as a child development teacher at an elementary school in Sacramento, California, according to Fox News Digital. During a presentation at the 2021 California Teachers Association (CTA) conference, which is linked to the National Teachers Association union, McCray gave an informational presentation on how to implement sexual orientation and gender identity curriculum into young children’s education.
McCray reportedly said that the workshop was to “provide you with positive strategies to support transgender and gender non-conforming children.” When a teacher asked McCray when children were too young for these lessons, McCray touted “I’ve done research” and “have got my doctorate degree. Children are not too young at five years old. Children understand gender as early as three years old,” McCray added. McCray’s classroom library reportedly includes books like “I am Jazz” to discuss transgenderism to young children and has “no boy bathroom, no girl bathroom” in order to “set the tone” that “everything is open” to the students.
Ph.D – She certainly is lending credence to the phrase “Piling Higher and Deeper”. Sorry, I don’t believe that a 3 year old understands the Woke definition of “gender” between the biology of their physical sex. And of course, the main question that she won’t answer is “And are your employers, Parents, ok with this?”. And the second question is “Whose kids are they anyways?”.
And how DARE you subscribe that the words gender and sex are interchangeable that they both mean the same thing instead where Wokeness says they aren’t? Your backwards stance will not be allowed to be held:
A student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania has been barred from attending a religious studies class required for graduation after pointing out that there are only two genders. “Later this week I will be defending myself and my FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS in front of the Academic Integrity Board (AIB) of the Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania (IUP) against allegations of Classroom Conduct violations,” Lake Ingle stated in a Facebook post, which was deleted after Ingle retained legal representation. “The decision made by the AIB that day will determine whether I will be able to continue participating in my full course load, as well as graduate this May as scheduled,” Ingle continued, adding, “This is not transgender, woman’s rights, or wage issue. This is about free speech and the constant misuse of intellectual power in universities.”
Charges were brought up and if you go to the link, I think you’ll agree with me that it feels like the Chicom’s Red Guard “Name and Shame”/Re-education of wrongthink” Star Chamber show trial. This isn’t about learning, this is indoctrination. Even if this is for a Religious Studies degrees, it seems that the Professors and Administration have forgotten about a major part of a major religion – that duality of Grace and Forgiveness. In this case, the college has turned into the Spanish Inquisition and is hellbent on obtaining a confession.
Back to public schools – and no, they aren’t underfunded.
Don’t believe me? Calculate at the teacher payrate per actual in-classt teaching hour and not just the annual salary. The cost of education (based on almost 10 years watching my District’s budget soar) is totally disconnected from expenditure and student achievement.
And transgender surgeries are big business with lots of profit – don’t talk to me about “altruism:
A new study of nationwide hospital databases found that at least 1,130 adolescents between 2016 and 2019 received “gender-affirming” chest surgeries in the U.S. The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, saw a 389% increase in adolescents (ages 12-17) obtaining chest surgeries from 2016 to 2019. An overwhelming majority (1,114) of the adolescents seeking this surgery were female (98.6%), and just 16 were male (1.4%).
…JAMA included only procedures performed in hospitals, not by plastic surgeons in private settings,” said Sapir. “Because these procedures yield around $10,000 per patient, many mastectomies take place outside of hospitals in surgery centers owned by plastic surgeons themselves.”
…The median total charges for chest reconstruction were $29,886 ($21,285–$45,147), a number that was adjusted for inflation, the authors note. Most of the chest surgeries (61.1%) were covered by private health insurance, 16.5% used public health insurance including Medicaid, 15.8% paid out of pocket, and 6.7% indicated “other.”
As always, follow the money.
And back to the indoctrination – those mandatory classes that college students have to take. Twist that a bit: college students are being forced to pay for their own “mind-forcing”.
- THEY KNOW IT’S JUST MANDATORY BS: Syracuse students not interested or engaged in mandatory diversity course: report.
Requiring students to talk about ‘identities’ and ‘stereotypes’ not a big hit at Syracuse. Syracuse University students are not interested in a mandatory diversity course, with some criticizing it as too focused on finger pointing and singling out individuals. “While Syracuse University structures its First-Year Seminar 101 course around students sharing their experiences with their cultures and identities, students taking the course said nobody wants to speak,” The Daily Orange reported. “In some classes, students said they don’t know each other’s names.”
One student raised concerns that the focus on privilege and identity alienates students. First-year finance major Julia Moreno said many of the ways the course attempts to engage experience-based discussion end up having a negative effect. Questions revolving around exploring identities can make students feel singled out, she said.
Except for those “wanting to belong to something”, I can only believe that the weak-minded/spirited would go along with it. If I was there, you can bet that I’d be rebelling against having to pay for something that doesn’t improve me. Paying to suck my soul out of me? No thanks.
So, a quick backtrack that started this whole series – Critical Race Theory (CRT) whose main manifestation is “Whites are always Oppressors and everyone else is Oppressed by them”. It’s still around and there are “for hire” evangelists are still trying to infest K-12 curriculum – just not quite as blatantly.
There may be nothing more cringe-inducing than reading what a group of education professors, especially those specializing in “equity,” have advised educators regarding parental communication and critical race theory (CRT). That’s just what Education Week featured last week, apparently because parents and parents’ rights groups have been successful in challenging the loathsome concept. While making use of the talking point that CRT is “typically in a college-level course,” a new Kappan report does concede that “elements” of CRT can appear in K-12 lessons as they help students “unpack and rethink the social construct of race that divides so much of U.S. society.”
The report offers a trio of ideas for “effective responses” to (parental) inquiries about CRT-related matters:
- Open by describing a shared value.
- Use active voice to name an antagonist (e.g., the people who are trying to divide) and call out divide-and-conquer tactics.
- End with a strong, positive call to action that affirms common values. Instead of being race-neutral or colorblind […] talk about making education better for students of different racial and ethnic groups.
Reminds me of a modified Delphi technique combined with good old Leftist “Othering”…which means THEY are targeting YOU as being obstacles in the way in getting to YOUR kids. The educational version of how Trump is being made unelectable. The difference is to make you TOXIC for any conversation you may wish to engage in.
So, should Conservatives now view the American Library Association as we do the NEA and AFT?
These books likely are in every school library in the country. In Virginia where I live, the school board, school administrators, and school librarians have pointed to the American Library Association to defend their book selection policies. Many think that the ALA is a neutral organization that uses clear standards of literary merit to select the books that receive awards and that they recommend to readers. But a deeper dive will show that this is not true.
The ALA claims 54,000 members. This year less than 10% of the membership elected a “Marxist lesbian” as its president. The vote was 5410 for her and well over 4622 for her opposition. It is clear that a radical minority has co-opted the ALA much as other institutions have been co-opted. Is it any wonder then that an ALA president who advocates the “queering” of school libraries would support, with her radical allies, the adoption of library materials that advocate for materials that could not be shown in a movie theater to anyone under 18.
A woke fourth-grade teacher at William Penn Elementary in Utah, placed on paid leave after bragging that she built her classroom for “non-white students,” will get to keep her job. The teacher issued an apology for her video, in which she proudly stated, “If you look around and interact with some of the materials I have, you’ll notice that there’s, like, no white kids represented.” “For the first time in my life, I’m going to be teaching at a majority white school, and I’m kind of interested to see how students and parents react to my classroom — because it’s built for non-white students,” the teacher said in a video posted to social media.
…The teacher, who has not been identified, said that she made sure “no white kids” are “represented” in her classroom materials. “If you look around and interact with some of the materials I have, you’ll notice that there’s, like, no white kids represented,” she said. “Same with my coloring pages, I have big stack of coloring pages that students can use, and not a single one with a person on it depicts a white person.”
The school district, however, noted that it reprimanded the teacher for her behavior. “We have disciplined the employee as appropriate and consistent with the findings of the investigation,” Granite School District representatives said. The principal of William Penn Elementary School also reportedly called the teacher’s comments “very disconcerting,” adding, “It is inappropriate for any employee to make students feel unwelcome in any way, shape, or form.”
And when there are no real consequences, you will get more of it. And following teaching fads means kids don’t learn. Perhaps that tide is changing.
Phonics, Failure, and the Public Schools
But increasingly parents and teachers are pushing back against “whole language” and “balanced literacy” theories. They cite decades of research on how children actually learn to read and write. In 1997 Congress instructed the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development to work with the Department of Education to establish a National Reading Panel that would evaluate existing research and evidence to find the best ways of teaching children to read. The panel reviewed more than 100,000 reading studies. In 2000 it reported its conclusion: That the best approach to reading instruction is one that incorporates:
- Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness
- Systematic phonics instruction
- Methods to improve fluency
- Ways to enhance comprehension
And yet more than a quarter of American school districts use this one particular curriculum that doesn’t reflect those conclusions. Other districts use other curricula built on similar principles. A 2019 investigation by American Public Media revealed “American education’s own little secret about reading: Elementary schools across the country are teaching children to be poor readers — and educators may not even know it.”
And another little secret is that most teachers come from the lower third of SAT scores. I doubt that any of them have training to evaluate how whether a new curriculum is better, the same, or worse than the present one. My last year on the BudComm, I ran into this with then Gilford Curriculum Director Steve Tucker who then failed upward to be the Laconia Superintendent – go here for the whole thing.
TMEW has said that she doesn’t want to homeschool the Grandson. Yet, almost every day during the summer, during vacations, and after school, back to the dining room table the two of them go to do writing, spelling, and math. Later on in the evening, it’s book reading time. Already, this first grader is reading books meant for second grade and sometimes, third (the latter with some prompting). Back to basics, she does. In addition, because he is also Spec Ed enrolled, she works with his specialists with homework sent home. Phonics, phonics, phonics. Syllable disection. Sounding it out. Yes, drilling on sight words. Letter combination sounds. Look ahead processing. Practice, practice, practice. Now he’s reading in the truck as we travel. Fluidly.
Basics matter. Basics count. Fads need to be thrown away.
While she’s foremost right now, my time is coming for science and more advanced math. And of course, civics and history. That said, we’re slowly turning everything into a learning time and lesson. It works.
She’s homeschool whether she wants to acknowledge or not. We’re invested.