I remember how it was -- JR
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
New Zealand’s conservative education revolution
In New Zealand, one of the most exciting education reforms in the world is quietly getting underway. Erica Stanford, the country’s new Education Minister, is on a mission to overhaul the education system from top to bottom – and she is leaving no stone unturned.
Stanford, a rising star in Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s cabinet, has hit the ground running since taking office in late 2023. In just a few short months, she has announced a suite of reforms that promise to fundamentally reshape the way New Zealand children are taught.
At the heart of Stanford’s agenda is a return to knowledge-rich curricula and explicit instruction in foundational skills. It is a decisive break from the child-centred, competency-based approach that has dominated New Zealand classrooms for decades.
Under the reforms, primary schools will be required to dedicate an average of one hour each per day to reading, writing and maths. While it is doubtful that the requirement will be rigorously enforced, it sends a strong signal that the Minister is serious about improvement in these crucial skills. Not that an hour for each of these core subjects should be too hard a challenge for schools.
Mobile phones will be banned during school hours to minimise distractions. Schools will be required to assess student progress in core subjects twice per year and to report the results to parents. And the curriculum will be reviewed to specify in detail the knowledge students must master at each year level.
Now, one might say that these policy measures are hardly rocket science. In a way, one could rather describe them as common sense or a “back to basics” approach. But it is precisely that which makes Stanford’s policies so revolutionary. For decades, the education establishment has not focussed sufficiently on the basics, nor even displayed common sense.
Perhaps Stanford’s most consequential change is a requirement for all primary schools to use a “structured literacy” approach to teaching reading. Structured literacy systematically and explicitly teaches children the key components of reading, including phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
The structured literacy mandate marks a seismic shift for New Zealand education. For years, the prevailing approach has been based on “whole language” theory, which assumes children learn to read naturally through exposure to books. Phonics and other foundational skills have often taken a backseat.
The results have been disastrous. New Zealand’s literacy rates have declined steadily over recent decades. On international assessments like PIRLS, the country now ranks well below other advanced nations. A shocking two-thirds of students failed the writing component of a recent pilot assessment for NCEA, the national assessment system.
Stanford is determined to reverse this trend. Her structured literacy push is backed by a mountain of evidence from cognitive science and reading research. Study after study has shown that explicit, systematic instruction in phonics and other key skills is the most effective way to teach reading – especially for students who struggle.
Crucially, Stanford is putting serious resources behind the reforms. Schools will receive extensive training and support to implement structured literacy in the classroom. Teachers will learn the science of reading and how to use direct instruction techniques.
It is a comprehensive, evidence-based approach that has few parallels in the world. If implemented well, it could transform the literacy landscape in New Zealand and provide a model for other countries to follow.
But Stanford’s ambitions extend beyond reading. Across the board, she is working to re-orient New Zealand education towards a knowledge-rich curriculum that specifies the content students must learn in each subject, at each grade level.
The curriculum reforms mark a rejection of the “21st century skills” philosophy that has long dominated New Zealand education. For years, the emphasis has been on generic competencies like “critical thinking” and “problem solving” rather than mastery of subject knowledge. Traditional academic disciplines have often been sidelined in favour of “project-based learning” and “student-led inquiry”.
Stanford argues this approach has badly shortchanged New Zealand children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. On that, she can point to a wealth of research showing that knowledge is the key to reading comprehension, critical thinking, and academic success. Students need a broad base of background knowledge to engage with complex texts and ideas.
By contrast, the skills-focused approach has often left students with significant gaps in their knowledge. Many arrive at university lacking even basic facts about history, science, and literature. Even worse, many lack basic writing skills, having made it through school never having written more than a paragraph at a time. The consequences are particularly acute for disadvantaged students, who are less likely to acquire academic knowledge or literacy at home.
Stanford’s solution is to create a sequenced, content-rich curriculum that builds knowledge systematically over time. The goal is to ensure all students, regardless of background, have access to the key facts, ideas and concepts that underpin each subject.
Of course, there will be resistance from some quarters of the education establishment, particularly those wedded to child-centred, inquiry-based approaches.
But cognitive research backs Stanford’s approach. It has consistently shown that explicit instruction, regular practice, and a strong foundation of background knowledge are essential for learning. Students do not acquire skills like critical thinking in a vacuum; they need a rich base of content knowledge to draw upon.
Stanford also has the strong backing of Prime Minister Luxon. Education reform was a central plank of the National Party’s successful 2023 election campaign. Luxon has staked his government’s credibility on lifting academic achievement and closing equity gaps.
As Stanford presses ahead with her reforms, there will undoubtedly be bumps along the way. But if she succeeds, the impact will be profound, and not just for New Zealand’s students.
New Zealand could provide powerful proof that a knowledge-rich curriculum and explicit instruction work. In a global education landscape still largely dominated by skills-based, constructivist thinking, Stanford’s agenda would offer a compelling counter-narrative.
Other countries will be watching New Zealand closely in the years ahead. If Stanford can demonstrate that a knowledge-rich curriculum, coupled with explicit, research-based instructional methods, can lift achievement at scale, it could have far-reaching implications for education policy around the world.
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Yale Student Stabbed at Pro-Hamas Demonstration Describes How the Campus Is a Terror Snake Pit
There’s that saying: history repeats itself. And then, some liberals have zero grasp of this topic, which is why we’re seeing a nationwide Charlottesville-like protest but without the tiki torches. It’s not white supremacist agitators either—it’s young people. The alt-right yelled, “Jews will not replace us.” These leftist clowns chant “Long live the Intifada,” and other war cries that directly call for the destruction of Israel. It all means the same: kill all the Jews. The keffiyeh has replaced the swastika.
The Ivy League is reverting to its antisemitic roots. At Yale, these pro-terrorist thugs established an encampment this month, went on a hunger strike, and have now assaulted Jewish students. They’ve been captured trying to stop Jewish students from entering certain buildings. Sahar Tartak was stabbed in the eye, and there is significant doubt that she will get justice for being victimized simply for existing (via The Free Press):
I was stabbed in the eye last night on Yale University’s campus because I am a Jew.
I wish I could say I was surprised, but since October 7, Yale has refused to take action against students glorifying violence, chanting “resistance is justified,” “celebrat[ing] the resistance’s success,” and fundraising for “Palestinian anarchist fighters” on the frontlines of the “resistance.” In more recent days, the school has allowed students to run roughshod over their most basic policies against postering, time and place restrictions, disorderly conduct, respect for university property, and the rights of others, not to mention stalking and harassment.
Yesterday, I paid the price for their inaction.
[…]
By April 20, the students’ encampment had grown to roughly forty tents, sleeping bags, umbrellas, and a stereo. On Saturday night, a student in a Class of 2026 group chat encouraged Yalies to come and show their support for Yalies4Palestine. As a student journalist for the Yale Free Press, I went to check it out. Other reporters from the Yale Daily News were already on the scene.
I should say here that I am a visibly observant Jew who wears a large Star of David around my neck and dresses modestly. I went over with my friend Netanel Crispe, who is also identifiably Jewish because of his beard, black hat, and tzitzit.
When we approached the anti-Israel protest accompanying the tent encampment to document the demonstration, we were quickly walled off by demonstration organizers and attendees who stood in a line in front of us. No one else documenting the event was blockaded this way.
[…]
They pointed their middle fingers at me and yelled “Free Palestine,” and the taunting continued until a six-foot-something male protester holding a Palestinian flag waved the flag in my face and then stabbed me with it in my left eye.
My assailant was masked and wearing a keffiyeh, concealing his identity. He also wore glasses and a black jacket. I started to yell and chase after him, but the wall of students continued to block me as I screamed. Next, I went to the Yale police, but they offered little in the way of assistance. They told me that their orders came from administrators who weren’t present at the demonstration, and that there were only seven officers to handle a crowd of about 500. So I was checked out by an ambulance EMT, who recommended I go to the hospital.
The midnight demonstration, the encampment, the violence, all of it violates Yale policy. Some of it, like my assault, also violates state and federal law. Yet nothing meaningful seems to happen in response. Given Yale’s permissiveness, I had the sinking feeling that someone would get hurt. I just didn’t expect it to be me.
It’s a damning and unnerving account of how it’s open season on Jewish students at Yale. And if that wasn’t eerie enough, Tartak said this assault reminded her of how her mother was persecuted for being Jewish in Iran, being subjected to rocks that left her with a scar on one eyelid that remains visible to this day.
Why are college presidents and administrators endorsing these attacks? Why are they allowing the inmates to run the asylum? Is it fear, or do they agree with the vicious antisemitism and anti-Israel advocacy that’s veered into calls for genocide against Jewish people?
The signs that things could go off the rails at Yale were seen last year, too.
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Columbia University protests: students face ‘gut-wrenching’ abuse
It’s 8850km from Jerusalem to the grounds of Columbia University in New York, so Shoshana Aufzien hoped that when she left her home in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks, she would find some measure of peace.
Yet Aufzien, 17, who is set to attend Barnard, a liberal arts college for women attached to the Ivy League university, is starting to think twice.
For more than a week Columbia, which is one of the finest schools in the country, with alumni including Barack Obama, has become the leading battleground for a clash of cultures that has consumed campuses across America.
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters have been occupying the centre of the campus and refusing to budge. This has led to increasingly ill-tempered clashes with pro-Israel demonstrators and the police.
Aufzien said she decided to join the protests this week in support of Israel. She recalled waking up on the morning of the October 7 Hamas attacks to the “sound of sirens” before rushing to the bomb shelter where she spent the rest of the day, terrified.
“I’m a proud Jew,” she said. “I saw the pain and suffering of Israelis and to see self-proclaimed activists on campus [spreading] anti-Semitic rhetoric is gut-wrenching.”
Others, like Shai Davidai, assistant professor at the Columbia Business School, say the university has done little to protect Jewish students and teachers. At a protest this week he said he had been denied access to his workplace and that his staff pass had been deactivated.
The university has been approached for comment.
“They’re not letting me, a Jewish professor at Columbia, inside the main campus,” Davidai told a crowd of supporters and journalists at the university’s gates. “They’re willing to use Jewish brains but they don’t want to let Jewish people in.”
NYU Heightens Security Amid Slew of Protests
With armed police stationed at every corner and drones buzzing overhead, the increasingly tense environment has pitted friends against each other and divided colleagues.
One student at Barnard College said she had been called “disgusting” and “a terrorist” for wearing a keffiyeh, the distinctive traditional scarf that has become a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinians. She declined to share her name for fear of reprisal.
“[A woman] took photos of me and told me that she would send them to the university to get me expelled,” she said.
Pro-Palestinian activists argue they are peacefully protesting against the war in Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 34,000 people, according to the Hamas-run authorities. They say that the arrest of students violates their right to protest and insist that any anti-Semitic attack against fellow students are by an extremist minority and not representative.
Over the past week the unrest has spread quickly to other renowned universities and now threatens to derail plans for graduation ceremonies.
On Monday riot police swooped in to arrest more than 150 pro-Palestine protesters at New York University, and 60 people were arrested at Yale University.
Columbia University has announced that it would switch to hybrid learning for the rest of the term, so that students do not need to attend classes on campus.
Sadie, a political science major at Barnard, described the past week as the most chaotic of her four years at the university. The senior student, who did not share her last name, said she felt especially threatened by non-students with extremist beliefs who had hijacked what had been mostly peaceful protests.
“I have [felt unsafe]. Obviously the heavy police presence is a factor. Since entry to campus is so controlled, it’s really hard to feel comfortable,” she said, moments before an altercation broke out between a man blaming Israel for the September 11 attacks and a Pro-Israel individual threatening physical violence.
Student activists began occupying large parts of Columbia’s campus when Minouche Shafik, its president, was called to Congress to testify about how the university was addressing concerns about anti-Semitism and the perceived failure to protect students.
The former president of the London School of Economics and former vice-president of the World Bank failed to assuage the fears of Jewish students and faculty and faces growing calls to resign, as her counterparts at Harvard and Pennsylvania University have done.
She also provoked the anger of students and faculty after she called in the police to forcibly remove the tents last week, prompting clashes and leading to arrests.
Over the weekend 54 Columbia Law School professors sent a letter to the university’s leadership condemning the decision.
The chaos on campus has caught the attention of President Biden and Donald Trump, his probable rival in November’s election.
“I condemn the anti-Semitic protests,” Biden told reporters on Monday. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday as he entered a court in Manhattan for the second day of his hush-money trial, Trump labelled the protests “a disgrace” and “Biden’s fault”.
Despite fees of about $US90,000 ($140,000), Emily, a 19-year-old student, would rather stay at home.
“It just becomes unimaginably worse every single day,” she said. “I go to bed every night thinking, ‘How could this possibly get any worse?’ and then I wake up to that unimaginable reality.”
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Florida’s New ‘History of Communism’ Law Is a Model All States Should Follow
By Christopher Talgo
When it comes to sensible education policy, Florida has been at the vanguard in recent years. From the Parental Rights in Education Act to universal school choice legislation, Florida lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis clearly understand that prudent education reforms are sorely needed.
On April 17, DeSantis signed SB 1264, which will reinforce Florida’s education standards by requiring that students learn about “the dangers and evils of Communism.”
According to DeSantis, “We will not allow our students to live in ignorance, nor be indoctrinated by Communist apologists in schools. To the contrary, we will ensure students in Florida are taught the truth about the evils and dangers of Communism.”
“I know firsthand the evils that Communism brings, and I am proud to stand by Governor DeSantis as he signs this legislation to ensure Florida remains the bastion of freedom,” added Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz.
Like Diaz, I have firsthand experience, at least when it comes to educating students about the history and ideology of communism. For several years, I was a public high school social studies teacher, first in Illinois and then in South Carolina. I specialized in three subjects: U.S. history, world history, and American government, all of which touch upon the subject of socialism/communism in one form or another.
I completed my student teaching program at a very prominent public high school in the northern suburbs of Chicago, where I shadowed and eventually taught a semester of world history and U.S. history. I must say I was totally dumbfounded when I observed my “master teacher” give presentations on anything related to socialism/communism.
In short, he consistently went out of his way to whitewash the horrors of socialist regimes, from the Soviet Union to Cuba to China. He always framed socialism as morally superior to free-market capitalism. And he regularly echoed that the reason these socialist nations failed or didn’t deliver fully on their promises of utopian egalitarianism was due to meddling from the West.
I know it is difficult to believe, but my “master teacher” at this nationally recognized high school was far from the only social studies teacher with socialist leanings. In fact, it was the norm throughout the entire social studies department.
After I finished my student teaching program, I moved to South Carolina, with the hopes that a conservative state would have a less “socialist-friendly” teaching environment. Boy, was I wrong.
To my astonishment, after landing a full-time teaching position at a public high school outside Hilton Head, things were just as bad.
Like my experience at the aforementioned Chicagoland high school, the social studies department at my new school in South Carolina was chock-full of socialist sympathizers.
I spent five years teaching U.S. history, world history, and American government at this school, during which I chronically witnessed what I can only describe as “socialist indoctrination” from most of my colleagues. In many cases, blatantly pro-socialist ideology was being masqueraded as “giving both sides.” To my chagrin, this became nauseating after several years.
Such is why I decided to retire from the teaching profession and dedicate my life to speaking the truth about public policy in general, and socialism, in particular.
Many years later, I am a research fellow with The Heartland Institute’s Socialism Research Center (SRC), which is “devoted to informing the world about the dangers, including the moral dangers, associated with socialism, communism, and other forms of collectivism.”
The reason I bring this up is because the SRC has just published a book, Socialism at a Glance, which offers a concise history of socialism including an analysis of socialist ideology and The Communist Manifesto.
As a former teacher, I am well aware that there remains a giant void in accurate teaching materials on the subject of socialism. Socialism at a Glance was designed to fill that void, to serve as a resource for anyone interested in learning the unvarnished truth about socialism.
Now, back to the new Florida law. In a nutshell, the new law is designed to beef up the “existing Communist history standards with instruction on the history of Communism in the United States and the tactics of Communist movements,” “promote the importance of economic and individual freedoms as a means to advance human progress,” and prepare “students to withstand indoctrination on Communism at colleges and universities.”
Those are all noble endeavors, not to mention completely necessary, and should serve as the bedrock for socialism teaching standards in all 50 states.
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Largest Christian University in America Gets Fined $37 Million. Coincidence or Targeted Attack?
A dust storm of political madness is brewing in Phoenix as Grand Canyon University faces the continued threats of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
Christians have watched as the Biden administration attacks biblical views left and right, with a particularly vehement disregard for the sanctity of life and marriage. As such, it can’t be too surprising that Cardona, a part of this leftist administration, has vowed to shut down America’s largest Christian university.
In late October, Grand Canyon University was hit with “a $37.7 million fine brought by the federal government over allegations that it lied to students about the cost of its programs,” The Associated Press reported—an accusation that GCU President Brian Mueller described as “ridiculous.”
Around the same time, Liberty University, America’s second-largest Christian university, also was fined $37 million “over alleged underreporting of crimes.”
Grand Canyon University appealed its fine in November even though a hearing is not expected until January 2025. But the question Mueller has is one of integrity. Is this genuine consideration for the well-being of students, or is this a targeted attack against religious institutions?
“It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the two largest Christian universities in the country, this one and Liberty University, are both being fined almost the identical amount at almost the identical time?” GCU’s president speculated in a speech. “Now is there a cause and effect there? I don’t know. But it’s a fact.”
The House Appropriations Committee held a hearing early this month about the Biden administration’s decision to “crack down on GCU and other universities like it.”
During the proceedings, Cardona and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., made their disapproval of Grand Canyon University and similar universities obvious. “[W]e are cracking down not only to shut them down, but to send a message to not prey on students,” Cardona said.
Supporters of GCU agree that the fine seems unprecedented and motivated by ideological bias. American Principles Project Policy Director Jon Schweppe said: “The federal government’s education agenda is punishing schools that do not conform to their progressive ideology. It’s time we take a stand against this egregious abuse of power.”
Another conservative think tank, the Goldwater Institute, sued the Education Department for “refusing to turn over” public documents “that explain why” the agency fined GCU. The goal of the lawsuit is to unmask the reason behind the fine.
“With its motto of ‘private, Christian, affordable’ and its track record of graduating students into high-demand and high-paying jobs, GCU is a success story by any metric. And it stands apart from universities across the country that are facing declining enrollment, that are indoctrinating students with radical politics, and that are under attack for failing to defend the First Amendment,” the Goldwater Institute wrote. “So then why are the feds targeting GCU, a popular university that seems to be doing everything right? That’s exactly what we’re going to find out.”
Although immense uncertainty still surrounds this case, Grand Canyon University’s president took the time to share with The Washington Stand how his staff, faculty, and students are faring and how believers everywhere can help.
Mueller emphasized that GCU has faced various issues over the years. But despite the government’s action, he said he wanted people to know that “interestingly enough … it has had zero impact on anything that we’re doing.”
He continued: “The enrollments are just continuing to grow … [and] the morale is very high in terms of our faculty and staff. The campus is extremely vibrant. I mean, the students absolutely love this place. They’re extremely loyal to [the school] and so we just keep marching through it.”
And although the fine that Grand Canyon University was dealt by the Education Department is “a problem,” Mueller said, he is thankful that GCU remains optimistic.
Christian “mission, not politics, is our motivation and it is our hope,” he told The Washington Stand. As a university, Mueller explained, GCU exists to “pour into” the community around it.
“[O]ur reach into the neighborhood and caring for disadvantaged populations has been a way to live out our faith” in a way “that has risen above … political divide,” Mueller said. Ultimately, with support from “both sides of the aisle” in Arizona, he noted, “all the issues we have are with a very small number of people in Washington D.C.”
“We encourage people to be involved politically and vote,” Mueller said, adding: “But our faith will stand above the politics always, and our politics will never become our religion.”
Because, for “many people in our country today, their politics have become their religion, and that’s when things … go really bad in our society,” he said.
Mueller pointed out that Grand Canyon University is “trying to be an example of a Christian community that can rise above those things and focus on helping people” through service, as Scripture calls believers to do.
Mueller concluded with a request for prayer as the university works through these troubling times, and for “the hearts of certain people in Washington, D.C. to be softened.” He added that “it’s hard to make progress and resolve differences when people just … don’t want to talk to each other.”
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Teachers’ group to focus on Palestine on Australian war memorial Day
This is a lot of nonsense. The charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba and related action was against the army of the Ottoman Turks, not Palestinians. It was incidentally the last successful cavalry charge in history so is well worth remembering as an achievement of Australian troops. And there is no doubt that charging into the guns of 1,000 Turkish riflemen in an entrenched position was heroic, if heroism matters any more
A pro-Palestine teachers group has excoriated the Anzac legacy just two days before Australia commemorates its military history.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the Teachers and School Staff for Palestine group called for the Anzac legend to be “dismantled” and linked a slaughter committed by World War One Anzac troops to the current war against Gaza.
Secondary schoolteacher Lucy Honan said it was important for students to understand Australia’s role in the Middle Eastern conflict.
“It is so important that students know that the Anzacs left a long and violent historical imprint in Palestine and in Sarafand al-’Amar in particular,” Ms Honan said.
“The British created a prison camp for Palestinian activists at Sarafand al-’Amar.
“The residents fled or were evacuated in the 1948 Nakba, and the site then became one of Israel’s largest military bases.
“This is a legacy to dismantle, not to glorify.”
The group has developed an educational resource for classrooms, aiming to redress current Anzac narratives and “enable rigorous, critical and empowering education”.
Primary schoolteacher Bill Abrahams said it was important to use objective teaching resources rather than relying on information from parties with vested interests in Israeli weaponry.
“Rather than depending on teaching resources published by the Australian War Memorial — which is funded in part by weapons companies implicated in the genocide in Gaza, like Boeing, Thales and Northrupp Grumman — we will use resources that help us and our students reflect critically on Australia’s military involvement in Palestine,” he said.
Teachers have been encouraged to foreground the massacre of as many as 137 people in the Palestinian village, Sarafand al-’Amar, committed by ANZACs in 1918.
The booklet is a 40-page resource featuring explanations about how Anzac Day relates to Palestine, the British Mandate, the Sarafand al-’Amar massacre, the 1948 Nakba, and many primary and secondary historical sources.
The group has connections within hundreds of schools around Australia.
Secondary schoolteacher Pippa Tandy, a member of TSSP, said the booklet was in line with curriculum requirements and was age-adaptable for different grades.
“People talk about Anzac Day as being about Australian identity, but a lot of people are feeling that we want an identity arising out of truth and honesty, rather than lies and obfuscation,” Ms Tandy said.
“We actually find by looking at the curriculum, looking at the outcomes we’re supposed to be achieving in school, we’re finding that talking about Palestine is actually not something we should be prevented from doing.
“It’s quite legitimate to talk about Palestine in the classroom.
“Obviously, we’re not promoting a particular point of view, but we are committed to the idea that there is no neutrality in genocide.”
She said while it was possible there could be backlash from parents, criticism had always been outweighed by support.
“If parents raise issues with us, we talk to them – and that’s the only way through,” she said. “Ultimately, by informing students about this piece of history, all we’re doing is educating them.”
An RSL Australia spokesman said the matter was “more for education authorities” but emphasised the importance of commemorating the lives of veterans.
“Whatever the political, constitutional and international treaty obligations prevailing at the time (WWI), the RSL’s role is to represent our veterans and remember and honour their service, commitment and bravery, and encourage all Australians to do the same,” they said.
“We do this continually, but particularly on Anzac Day, Remembrance Day and on other key commemoration dates.”
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Monday, April 22, 2024
USC cancels speech by Crazy Rich Asians director amid uproar over barring of pro-Palestinian valedictorian
The University of Southern California has scrapped commencement speeches by Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M Chu and other honorees amid an uproar over the cancellation of a graduation speech by pro-Palestinian valedictorian Asna Tabassum.
On Friday (19 April), USC announced the decision in a letter posted to the university’s website.
That update came as a follow-up to an announcement earlier in the week calling off Ms Tabassum’s speech over a growing furore relating to the war in Gaza that had drawn in “many voices outside of USC” and had “escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption”.
“We cannot ignore the fact that similar risks have led to harassment and even violence at other campuses,” the statement continued. “As always, and particularly when tensions are running so high across the world, we must prioritize the safety of our community.”
Friday’s letter states that “given the highly publicized circumstances surrounding our main-stage commencement program” it was decided to “release our outside speakers and honorees from attending this year’s ceremony”.
It continued: “We’ve been talking to this exceptional group and hope to confer these honorary degrees at a future commencement or other academic ceremonies.”
Chu, a USC alumnus, was scheduled to deliver the school’s commencement speech at the main ceremony on 10 May in front of approximately 65,000 attendees.
In addition to Crazy Rich Asians, Chu has directed and produced a wide range of movies, notably In the Heights and the highly anticipated movie adaptation of the musical Wicked.
Also scheduled to attend and receive honorary degrees were tennis legend Billie Jean King, National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, and National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt.
King will still give the keynote speech at a separate ceremony for the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, The Los Angeles Times reports.
Ms Tabassum, a fourth-year biomedical engineering student from Chino Hills, California, was set to give a speech at the ceremony on 10 May.
Valedictorian is the academic title conferred upon the highest-ranked student among those graduating from an educational institution, typically based on the highest grade point average.
As well as her stellar academic record, Ms Tabassum was noted for having engaged in multiple community outreach and non-profit organisations during her time at USC, including helping to send medical supplies to Turkey, Syria and Ukraine.
In her social media bio, she also includes a link to a pro-Palestinian website. She describes herself as a first-generation South Asian-American Muslim.
USC stressed in its decision to call off Ms Tabassum’s speech: “To be clear: this decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech. There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period.”
USC’s decision has been met with outrage from advocacy groups, including CAIR Greater Los Angeles, which said it “empowers voices of hate” and violated the university’s obligation to protect its students
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‘That Is Not a Religion’: DeSantis Bars Satanists From Florida School Chaplaincy Program
The Sunshine State is now welcoming chaplains into public schools, but Satanists need not apply.
On Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a bill into law allowing chaplains to volunteer to offer counseling at public and charter schools. However, the Catholic governor warned that Satanists would not be accepted into the program, as some Christian and conservative groups had feared.
“Now some have said if you do a school chaplain program that somehow you’re going to have Satanists running around in all our schools,” DeSantis said in a press conference. “We’re not playing those games in Florida. That is not a religion. That is not qualifying to be able to participate in this. We’re going to be using common sense when it comes to this, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
The Florida Senate version of the bill was approved in February and the House version was approved early last month. The legislation’s text states, “Each school district or charter school may adopt a policy to authorize volunteer school chaplains to provide supports, services, and programs to students as assigned by the district school board or charter school governing board.”
The new law requires volunteer chaplains to pass a background check and would require school administrators to publicize each volunteer chaplain’s religious affiliation and obtain parental consent before a student begins counseling.
“Any opportunity that exists for ministers or chaplains in the public sector must not discriminate based on religious affiliation,” said The Satanic Temple’s “Director of Ministry” Penemue Grigori in February. “Our ministers look forward to participating in opportunities to do good in the community, including the opportunities created by this bill, right alongside the clergy of other religions.”
Ryan Jayne of the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Action Fund added, “I think there is a 100% chance you see satanic chaplains, and also of course other religious minorities that the majority-Christian population might not be a fan of. The Satanic Temple is a church, whether people like it or not.”
“It is wonderful to have such a strong statement denying the legitimacy of Satanism as a religion or church from Governor DeSantis. But I worry that appeals to common sense will not hold in the most ideological school systems, even in Florida,” Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for education studies, commented to The Washington Stand. “Regardless, this is an important step in acknowledging the role that faith plays in our lives and how important it is that the big questions students have about morality, life and death, and God’s plan for their lives are best answered by a parent or priest, pastor, or chaplain.”
DeSantis has criticized Satanism in the past, arguing that it is not a religion. In December, after military veteran and outspoken Christian Michael Cassidy toppled and beheaded a Baphomet idol erected in the Iowa State Capitol Building by The Satanic Temple, the Florida governor declared, “Satan has no place in our society and should not be recognized as a ‘religion’ by the federal government. … Good prevails over evil—that’s the American spirit.”
On its website, The Satanic Temple responds to the question “Do you worship Satan?” The organization states, “No, nor do we believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural.” The Satanic Temple adds, “Satan is a symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority, forever defending personal sovereignty even in the face of insurmountable odds. … Our metaphoric representation is the literary Satan best exemplified by Milton and the Romantic Satanists from Blake to Shelley to Anatole France.”
Now that it has been signed by DeSantis, Florida’s new law goes into effect on July 1.
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In maths, truth and knowledge can’t be mere matters of opinion
From an analytical philosophy viewpoint, mathematics is a set of conventions with useful properties. If you break those conventions, you destroy its usefulness
In universities across the world, humanities departments have, over time, come to reject the notion that there is such a thing as objective truth.
This nihilistic outlook was originally promoted by a small group of academics in the mid-20th century, but is now the dominant philosophy in a range of disciplines from literary criticism to gender and cultural studies. And while the doctrine has quietly swallowed the humanities, many thought it would never infiltrate the hard sciences. If one is engineering a bridge, for example, it would be reckless to reject the objective truth of gravity. If one is studying mathematics it would be foolish to deny that 2 + 2 = 4.
Yet the notion that postmodernism would stop at the walls of the hard sciences looks naive in retrospect. In recent years, efforts to “decolonise” the sciences have been successful in New Zealand with Maori “ways of knowing” to be taught alongside chemistry, physics and biology in science classrooms. Commenting on the New Zealand policy, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has described it as “pernicious nonsense”.
To understand Dawkins’ ire, it’s worth digging a little deeper into what “decolonising science” actually means. It is an outgrowth of a larger push to “decolonise knowledge” inside the universities. Academics leading this movement explicitly reject the notion there are objective facts that can be discovered via rational or scientific inquiry.
And, rather than being a method to discover how the world works, such theorists argue Western science has been used as a tool to subjugate others. Efforts to “decolonise” science are therefore efforts to undo this subjugation, by bringing into the fold other “ways of knowing” that exist outside scientific methodology. These might include local knowledge about land management, religious knowledge about cosmology, or traditional ways of healing.
Writing in The Conversation, academic Alex Broadbent, of the University of Johannesburg, argues: “There is African belief, and European belief, and your belief, and mine – but none of us have the right to assert that something is true, is a fact, or works, contrary to anyone else’s belief.”
But if we are to treat this claim seriously it takes us to some interesting destinations. It would mean ignoring modern medicine in favour of traditional healing practices when treating cancer or heart disease. It would mean denying the laws of physics that allow planes to fly safely, based on myths about human flight. And it would mean disregarding engineering standards for building safe bridges, roads and buildings, because such standards derive from colonial methods.
Of course, this would be highly impractical. In the real world, we do not recognise the opinions of flat-earthers are equal to those of astronauts, or the knowledge of a psychic is equivalent to an oncologist. We recognise that while everyone is deserving of respect and dignity, not all opinions – or indeed “ways of knowing” – are equal in standing. But recognising the validity of science does not mean we cannot respect or study Indigenous culture. A deeper understanding of non-Western cultures is important – and we have an entire academic discipline devoted to just that. Anthropology exists to study the practices, cosmologies and knowledge systems of Indigenous populations.
Yet decolonial thinkers will argue that by isolating the study of Indigenous ways of knowing the anthropology department is itself a form of oppression.
From their perspective, knowledge grounded in spirituality and folklore should not be seen as mere cultural artefacts, but as being equal to physics, chemistry and biology. Decolonial activists reject the hierarchy that places scientific rationality above superstition and intuition.
Australia is not immune to this line of thinking, and neither are the hard sciences at our most prestigious institutions. The Australian National University’s Mathematical Sciences Institute this month released a press statement about a special topics course in Indigenous mathematics. Course convener Rowena Ball is quoted as saying “Indigenous and First Nations peoples around the world are standing up and saying: ‘Our knowledge is just as good as anybody else’s − why can’t we teach it to our children in our schools, and in our own way?’.” The press release also states that “Numbers and arithmetic and accounting often are of secondary importance in Indigenous mathematics”.
What are some forms of Indigenous mathematics? The example given by Ball is directions in smoke signalling. “One interesting example that we are currently investigating is the use of chiral symmetry to engineer a long-distance smoke signalling technology in real time,” she says. Theory and mathematics in Mithaka society were systematised and taught intergenerationally. You don’t just somehow pop up and suddenly start a chiral signalling technology. It has been taught and developed and practised by many people through the generations.”
Commenting on her assertion that smoke signalling is a sophisticated form of mathematics, Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago, said bluntly: “I don’t find this at all convincing … patterns of smoke, like drumbeats, is a kind of language, and how to make the patterns and get them understood correctly is based on trial and error. Where does the math come in?”
In establishing a special topics course for Indigenous mathematics, the ANU is trying to serve two masters. On the one hand, universities such as ANU want to portray themselves as vanguards of social justice, in an attempt to attract students and placate activist staff. Yet on the other hand, these same institutions seek to justify collecting public funding and student fees on the premise that they provide a rigorous and substantive education.
But herein lies the irony – by indulging the decolonial activist agenda that rejects the existence of objective truths or a hierarchy of knowledge, universities undermine the very premise on which society deems them worthy of public funding. If we accept the decolonial notion that no form of knowledge can be deemed superior to any other, then what exactly are students paying for? What specialised skills or benefits do university graduates gain that non-graduates lack?
The contradiction is that the university as an institution exists solely because certain forms of systematised knowledge were historically elevated above others and deemed worthy of dedicated study, preservation and expansion. So why should the public continue to fund these multibillion-dollar organisations if the knowledge they offer is just as valid as any other “way of knowing”?
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Sunday, April 21, 2024
Majority of Catholic Women’s Colleges Enroll Men Who Identify As Trans Women
A majority of the Catholic women’s colleges in the United States allow men who identify as transgender women to enroll, according to a new report—despite church teaching on gender and sex.
The National Catholic Register reported on Friday that of the three dozen women’s colleges throughout the country, most are now admitting men. The publication notes that there are eight Catholic women’s colleges, all founded by Catholic female religious orders, and each of those colleges has an independent board of trustees that oversees them.
Five of the eight women’s colleges explicitly state on their websites that they allow men who identify as women to enroll in their institutions, according to the National Catholic Register. According to a pro-transgender organization, Campus Pride, two more of the colleges also allow trans-identifying students to enroll.
“We have a twofold identity crisis—both among young people captured by gender ideology, and among Catholic colleges that defy the Church and reject the Catholic teaching that is foundational to authentic Catholic education,” Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, told the National Catholic Register.
Some of those colleges go so far as to claim that their pro-transgender policies are inspired by Catholic teaching—although Pope Francis himself has explicitly rejected gender ideology. And only one of the bishops in the dioceses where these schools are located told NCR that his diocese is taking action on the policies.
1. Alverno College
At Alverno College in Milwaukee, for example, the college claims on its website: “In the Catholic tradition of caring and respect for each human person, we support students on their journey of self-discovery and recognize that gender identity may change over time.”
“Alverno has put guidelines and services in place to support transgender students as integral members of our diverse campus community. Specifically, Alverno College admits students who consistently live and identify as women,” the Alverno website states. “In addition, continuing students whose gender identity changes after admission are encouraged to persist through graduation, experiencing the personal and academic support each student deserves from an Alverno education.”
2. Mount Mary University
Mount Mary University, which is also in Milwaukee, similarly describes itself as a “Catholic university that believes and acts in accordance to the tradition of caring, respect, and educational access.” The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“As such, MMU strives to create an environment that is inclusive of all gender identities and intersectionality,” the Mount Mary University website explains. “At the undergraduate level, all individuals who identify as women (including cisgender and transgender women), intersex individuals who do not identify as male, and nonbinary individuals are eligible for admission to MMU.”
3. Mount Saint Mary’s University
Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles states that “any student who was born female or who identifies as female is eligible for admission to our traditional undergraduate women’s university.” The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
4. St. Catherine University
St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, “admits students of all genders and gender identities to the College for Adults and the Graduate College and admits all students who identify as women to the College for Women.” The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
5. College of Saint Benedict
College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, admits “applicants who were assigned female at birth, as well as those who were assigned male or female at birth but now consistently live and identify as female, transgender, gender fluid or nonbinary.” The college did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
6. Trinity Washington University
Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., reportedly allows men who identify as women to enroll, according to Campus Pride, an LGBTQ organization tracking women’s colleges’ admissions policies. The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
7. The College of Saint Mary
The College of Saint Mary in Omaha, Nebraska, is similarly reported to allow men who identify as women to enroll, according to Campus Pride. The college did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
8. Saint Mary’s College
The Daily Signal reported in November that Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, would allow men who identify as women to enroll at the college in the fall of 2024. That news was first reported by the Notre Dame student newspaper, The Observer.
In December, the college announced it was backtracking on that decision.
President Katie Conboy claimed in an email at the time the initial decision was viewed as a “reflection of our College’s commitment to live our Catholic values as a loving and just community”—but said that it is “increasingly clear” that “the position we took is not shared by all members of our community.”
The college did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Department of Education’s New Title IX Rule Just as Bad as Expected
The Department of Education just released its long-delayed Title IX rule—a rewrite of the 50 year-old civil rights law so vast that it promises to turn Title IX’s guarantee of sex equality in education completely upside down.
Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is all of a single sentence. It simply bars sex discrimination in any federally funded education program. It does not matter how much federal funding a school or institution of higher education receives. And it does not matter whether such funding from the federal government is direct or indirect. So yes, even the vast majority of private schools must comply with the rule.
But this simple longstanding prohibition on sex discrimination has been manipulated by the Biden administration to both undermine constitutional freedoms—like the freedom of speech—and erase the very women that Title IX was enacted to protect.
The Department of Education has unilaterally expanded the prohibition against discrimination based on “sex” to include a prohibition against discrimination based on: “sex stereotypes, sex-related characteristics (including intersex traits), pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
Under the Biden administration’s sweeping new Title IX rule, any K–12 school or institution of higher education that receives any federal funding would have to open girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, housing accommodations, sports teams, and any other sex-separated educational program or offering to biological boys who claim to “identify” as girls. Similarly, boys’ facilities would have to be accessible to biological girls who “identify” as boys.
And the law’s decimation of equality doesn’t stop there. The regulations also eliminate due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct (like the right to call witnesses, introduce evidence, or be represented by counsel during an investigation), and violates the First Amendment to the Constitution by forcing teachers and fellow students to use of a student’s “preferred pronouns.”
The regulations also require K-12 schools to accept a child’s gender identity regardless of biological sex without providing any notice to, much less seeking the approval of, the child’s parents.
And while the Education Department has punted, at least for the moment, on its second Title IX rule—one that applies only to athletics—the Biden administration’s representation that sports are not included in today’s rule is a complete head fake. By expanding the definition of “sex” to include “gender identity” and applying the rule to all “extracurricular activities,” male and female athletic teams will be a thing of the past. Indeed, the word “athletics” appears in the new rule at least 31 times.
Furthermore, the Department of Education’s reading of Title IX lacks any support in the text of the title, its implementing regulations, and the law’s congressional history.
Congress had a chance in 1987 to amend the Title IX “sex” definition to include “gender identity,” when it amended Title IX under the Civil Rights Restoration Act. But it did not.
Executive agencies are empowered only to promulgate “rules” or “regulations” that implement or interpret laws passed by Congress—not to create completely new laws.
Apparently, the Department of Education has forgotten that.
Now the question isn’t if legal challenges will follow, but how fast they’ll come.
The Independent Women’s Law Center has already indicated it is readying a lawsuit against the Department of Education. Others are likely to follow. Let’s hope so.
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Australian schools have been ordered to use this teaching method. Will staff comply?
This should be a non-issue. A good teacher will do both things: Get the kids thinking first then tell them what they need to know
Last month, every public school teacher across the state was told they would be getting some training.
On their first day back from the autumn holidays, a professional learning session would cover explicit teaching.
For some veteran educators, it meant revisiting what they had known for decades and covered in teachers’ college. For their younger colleagues, explicit teaching – where students are given clear, step-by-step instructions – represents the industrial-era model of schooling their university lecturers taught them to fear.
Explicit teaching typically involves telling students sitting in rows the steps required to perform a skill or task at the start of the lesson before allowing them to practice it. In contrast, inquiry learning means confronting students with a problem and asking them to try and work out the answers for themselves, similar to how a scientist might. Advocates say inquiry-based learning fosters more in-depth understanding and deep thinking. Explicit teaching adherents believe inquiry learning is ineffective, wastes time and unnecessarily confuses students.
While schools in NSW over the past two decades have adopted inquiry-based learning, conservative voices in the education sector have been increasingly agitating for the use of explicit teaching.
Backed by academics who had studied the science of learning, The Australian Education Research Organisation reviewed more than 328 studies and found explicit instruction was an effective teaching practice across a variety of contexts for different subgroups of students.
In the wake of that evidence, the NSW Department of Education told staff this month that teachers would be supported “to ensure explicit teaching strategies are embedded in every classroom”.
“Explicit teaching is effective when learning is new or complex because it is responsive to how the brain processes, stores and retrieves information,” an email sent earlier this month said.
At a recent meeting in Sydney’s CBD at the headquarters of the conservative think tank, The Centre for Independent Studies, University of Texas education researcher Sarah Powell gave a talk alongside Australian maths teacher Toni Hatten-Roberts. Both are explicit teaching proponents and believe students should rote learn certain facts, such as multiplication tables, in primary school.
Powell said when schools prioritised inquiry-based learning, they missed out on opportunities for children to learn their times tables.
“It ends up a lot of the time related to socioeconomic status – parents who have the time and the knowledge and the wherewithal are practising their [multiplication] facts, they’re doing flashcards, they’re singing the songs, and they’re doing this in the car as they go to soccer practice,” she said.
“There are other parents who don’t have the time. They’re working two shifts at the hospital and they maybe don’t even know that they should be practising [times tables] in the home. It ends up being the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”
Like the decades-long reading wars or the maths wars that have gripped US educators, the debate between explicit and inquiry learning has morphed into a kind of culture war in Australia, where academics’ views are pitted against right-wing think tanks.
While those who adhere to the inquiry ideology believe more in-depth learning happens when students work things out for themselves, those who see the value in explicit teaching believe students must have the ability to perform mathematical calculations using well-rehearsed procedures quickly and accurately.
Students should also be able to recall some facts, like times tables, to the point of automaticity. Doing so, they say, provides a strong foundation for higher-level mathematics skills needed for problem-solving, reasoning, and critical thinking, as well as real-world problem-solving.
In response to the department’s explicit teaching focus, university academics across the country rose into action to criticise it for overemphasising explicit instruction. They described it as unproven by research while undermining teachers’ professional authority.
Western Sydney University senior lecturer Dr Lynde Tan acknowledged a variety of skills could be taught and improved through explicit teaching, but research found the method was laden with inherent risks and required precautions.
The teaching style behind the state’s top-performing schools
“These risks include: students’ over-reliance on the teacher as the knowledge provider inhibits self-directed learning, which is a key 21st-century skill in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world. The rigidity inherent in explicit teaching prioritises recall of facts and rote learning over critical thinking,” she said.
Associate Professor Jorge Knijnik said the edict undermined teachers’ professional autonomy. He said explicit teaching, which was centred around the teacher who does most of the talking, could complement more contemporary approaches to maximise learning.
NSW Mathematical Association president Katherin Cartwright told the Herald that explicit teaching and inquiry-based learning were not mutually exclusive.
“It is not free-for-all when you see inquiry-based learning. It is a joy to see kids understand how something works and why it works,” she said.
“Death by PowerPoint seems to be returning. Now all these teachers are making PowerPoints for every single lesson. You might get immediate results on tests, but it is not giving them deep knowledge and skills in how to reason.”
But Dr Greg Ashman, a maths teacher, author and long-time proponent of explicit teaching said occasionally explaining a concept or skill to students was not the same as using explicit instruction in every lesson.
“As long as I have been arguing about explicit teaching versus inquiry learning, I have had people respond that their version of inquiry learning includes a lot of explicit instruction. What they mean is that they occasionally explain things to students,” he said.
“However, that’s quite different to a systematic approach where all concepts are explained, and all procedures demonstrated before students are asked to use these concepts and procedures. That’s what I mean by explicit teaching.
“I honestly have no idea how NSW is going to train all its teachers in explicit teaching in a day, especially given the entrenched inquiry ideology.”
The push towards explicit teaching is part of the NSW Department of Education’s plan for public education, which has a focus on reducing gaps in student outcomes, due to structural inequities.
NSW Teachers Federation deputy president Amber Flohm said explicit teaching was a valuable methodology but cautioned against making it mandatory.
“Explicit teaching must not be mandated. Ultimately, teachers will adapt and adopt when explicit teaching is critical, but there are other times when students demonstrate understanding of a concept, the teacher should be able to use their judgment.”
The Herald asked the department how it planned to monitor whether teachers were actually using explicit teaching in light of opposition from proponents of other methods. A spokesman did not directly answer that question, but said it could survey students and parents to ask them about their experiences of explicit teaching.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Thursday, April 18, 2024
Muslim student loses bid to take part in prayer rituals at ‘Britain’s strictest school’
A headteacher famous for her strict discipline has hailed a landmark High Court ruling which backed the school’s right to ban prayer rituals in the playground.
Katharine Birbalsingh, head of Michaela Community School in Brent, north London, said the outcome was a “victory for all schools” after a judge rejected a Muslim’s pupil claim that the policy interfered with her rights to religious freedom.
The pupil, who cannot be named, had claimed that the policy is discriminatory and “uniquely” affects her faith due to its ritualised nature.
But in an 83-page written ruling on Tuesday after a two-day hearing in January, Mr Justice Linden dismissed the pupil’s arguments and backed the school, which had argued its policy was justified after it faced death and bomb threats linked to religious observance on site.
Ms Birbalsingh, a former government social mobility tsar who co-founded the non-faith secondary state school with former home secretary Suella Braverman, said: “A school should be free to do what is right for the pupils it serves. The court’s decision is therefore a victory for all schools.
“Schools should not be forced by one child and her mother to change its approach simply because they have decided they don’t like something at the school,” she added.
The case will be seen as upholding the right of non-religious schools to make their own decision about whether to set aside time and space for pupils to pray.
Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said the ruling in the case, which was estimated to cost the taxpayer at least £500,000, should give all school leaders confidence in making the right decision for their school.
Secular campaigners, meanwhile, said the ruling serves as a reminder that claims of religious freedom “do not trump all other considerations”.
The head also suggested that the child’s mother had helped write the statements, even though the woman allegedly intends to send her second child to Michaela as well.
“The judge is clear that the child’s statements were not written by her alone,” said Ms Birbalsingh. “Indeed this mum intends to send her second child to Michaela, starting in September. At the same time, this mum has sent a letter to our lawyers suggesting that she may take us to court yet again over another issue at the school she doesn’t like, presumably once again at the taxpayer’s expense.”
The pupil who brought the legal challenge said in a statement provided by law firm Simpson Millar: “I am obviously very disappointed that the judge did not agree with me,” she said. “As is set out in the judgement, I do not agree that it would be too hard for the school to accommodate pupils who wished to pray in the lunch break.
“Even though I lost, I still feel that I did the right thing in seeking to challenge the ban. I tried my best and was true to myself and my religion.”
The pupil’s mother said she was “profoundly dismayed by the case’s outcome”, claiming that the “case was rooted in the understanding that prayer isn’t just a desirable act for us, it’s an essential element that shapes our lives as Muslims.”
“In our faith, prayer holds undeniable importance, guiding us through each challenge with strength and faith,” she said.
In another statement, headteacher Ms Birbalsingh claimed that Muslim pupils last year had been put under pressure “to pray, to drop out of the choir, to wear a hijab” while teachers faced abuse and intimidation. She said there had been a false narrative peddled that Muslims were the oppressed minority at the school.
“In 2014, 30 per cent of our intake was Muslim. It is now 50 per cent. We are oversubscribed. If our families did not like the school, they would not repeatedly choose to send their children to Michaela,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The pupil argued that the policy – which forbids her from praying for around five minutes at lunch time, on dates when faith rules required it, but not during lessons – was “the kind of discrimination which makes religious minorities feel alienated from society”.
The pupil’s lawyers previously said the “prayer ban” unlawfully breached her right to religious freedom, adding that it made her feel “like somebody saying they don’t feel like I properly belong here”. The court was told the pupil, referred to only as TTT, is making only a “modest” request to be allowed to pray at lunchtime.
The student also challenged allegedly unfair decisions to temporarily suspend her from school.
Mr Justice Linden, who heard the case at the High Court in London in January, said there was a “a rational connection between the aim of promoting the team ethos of the school, inclusivity, social cohesion etc and the prayer ritual policy”.
He said: “The disadvantage to Muslim pupils at the school caused by the prayer ritual policy is in my view outweighed by the aims which it seeks to promote in the interests of the school community as a whole, including Muslim pupils.”
He also upheld the student's challenge to a decision to temporarily exclude her from the school.
Ms Braverman said: “Michaela has always been a school which prioritises high achievement. And I know how hard Katharine [Birbalsingh] has worked to make it a success right from the early days when I was involved in helping to set up the school as chairman of governors.
“This is a victory for the children and their parents who want them to live happy and fulfilled lives.”
Dan Rosenberg, a lawyer at Simpson Millar, which represented the pupil, said the judge had noted the case raised “issues of genuine public interest in circumstances where the school’s approach has come into conflict with the religious perspective of an important section of society”.
“If a school wishes to uphold a secular ethos, it should be entitled to do so,” said Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society. “Schools should be environments where everyone feels welcomed and valued, but that doesn’t mean students have untrammelled religious freedom.
“Where the manifestation of religion is deemed divisive or disruptive, a balance must be struck. We’re pleased the school’s actions have been vindicated.”
The school’s lawyers had claimed that the governors and headteacher at the school of some 700 pupils, about half of whom are Muslim, had “a margin of latitude, discretion or judgement” over its policies.
The court was told that Ms Birbalsingh first introduced the policy in March last year, with it being backed by the governing body in May – allegedly “on the basis of misinformation and errors”.
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Bill Gates' money behind 'perverse' curriculum teaching math instruction is 'White supremacy'
Billionaire Bill Gates has invested billions of dollars in education over the years, notably bolstering far-left ideas, including assertions that mathematics instruction is "White supremacy" and children are born sexual.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a curriculum called "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction," which is run by The Education Trust-West. The organization listed the Gates Foundation under its acknowledgment section for the curriculum on their website stating, "We also wish to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their generous financial support of this project."
The curriculum from The Education Trust-West titled "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction" offers tips and tricks to educators to turn mathematicians in K-12 schools into "antiracist math educators"
It also offered "Exercises for educators to reflect on their own biases to transform their instructional practice."
Teachers have a central role in "deconstructing racism in mathematics" and "dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by making visible the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math," the group states.
Parents Defending Education's Nicole Neily told Fox News Digital that Gates' funding the math equity programs is "perverse," especially given the success he derived from proficiency in the subject.
"It's awful. I mean, [the part where it says] showing your answer in math class is White supremacy culture. I have to take a step back and think – the people who are teaching this, is that what they're teaching their own children? I have to think not," she said.
About 40% of Gates' K-12 education budget goes into math, according to Education Week. In 2022, the Gates Foundation announced over $1 billion in funds for math education.
In addition to funding math education initiatives, the Gates Foundation also provides funds for social and emotional learning (SEL), a billion-dollar industry in K-12 education which claims to develop students' self-awareness, self-control and interpersonal skills.
According to the Gates Foundation website, it provided $500,000 in November 2020 for a curriculum developed at Yale University, called RULER, with lessons probing into the student's emotions, personal relationships, traumas, beliefs and psychological triggers. The stated purpose of the grant was "to support the growth of RULER in the 2020-21 school year."
One section of the curriculum focused on teaching students to recognize societal norms and rules, and how those can be defied: "Make sure to explain that even though we call these patterns 'rules,' we do not need to follow them."
The curriculum encouraged kids to "see red" on their "mood meters," to be enraged by social justice issues and said educators should bring inflammatory images into the classroom to cultivate the rage among their students. It further asked teachers to "nudge" children into feelings of anger by using emotionally-charged imagery.
"[E]mploy strategies to nudge your students towards feeling red when you are preparing to discuss topics such as injustice. To shift your students into the red, consider showing them controversial photographs or news headlines, or consider prompting them with a thought-provoking topic where they are required to choose a side," the materials said.
Parents raised concerns the Gates-funded curriculum was turning kids into raging social justice activists through emotional manipulation. Neily said it was "like psychological experimentation on kids."
"Where is the evidence for this, right, that putting children into a state of emotional distress can make them learn better. I think it's sick that they're doing this to little kids," she told Fox News Digital.
The Gates Foundation has also funded $80 million to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) – a separate entity from the U.S. nonprofit – which wields significant influence on global sex education. The NGO comprises 120 independent organizations in over 146 countries and has received – including its European network.
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Columbia University President Says Calling for Annihilation of Jews Violates School’s Code of Conduct
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik said in a congressional hearing on April 17 that calling for the annihilation of Jews violates the Ivy League school’s code of conduct, as she came under fire over the university’s response to growing on-campus anti-Semitism since Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In the attack, Hamas killed and raped Israelis and took Israeli hostages, resulting in the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
At the House Education and Workforce Committee hearing, in response to the question by Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) of whether “calling for the genocide of Jews violates Columbia’s code of conduct,” Ms. Shafik—along with Columbia Law School professor David Schizer and Board of Trustees Co-Chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman—said, “Yes, it does.”
This was in contrast to a hearing held by that committee on Dec. 6, 2023, when then-University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill, then-Harvard President Claudine Gay, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth refused to unequivocally say that calling for the genocide of Jews is harassment or bullying, instead saying the issue is a “context-dependent decision.”
The question—whether calling for the genocide of Jews is harassment or bullying—came from House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).
On April 16, Ms. Bonamici was one of 44 lawmakers to vote against a House resolution stating that the Palestinian rallying cry of “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” is anti-Semitic and condemnable.
That slogan is a call for ”the eradication of the State of Israel, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea“ that ”seeks to deny Jewish people the right to self-determination and calls for the removal of the Jewish people from their ancestral homeland,” the resolution stated.
However, despite saying that calling for the genocide of Jews is harassment, Ms. Shafik sidestepped when asked whether mobs of people shouting “from the river to the sea” or “long live the Intifada” are being anti-Semitic. She said that she finds those phrases to be “upsetting” and that “it’s a difficult issue.”
Incidents at the 270-year-old university have included an unauthorized protest on April 4 of pro-Palestine students with signs bearing messages such as “Globalize the Intifada”—a reference to the periods of Palestinian terrorism against Israel during 1987–1993 and 2000–2005. Jewish students have complained of anti-Semitic graffiti and anti-Jewish verbal and physical abuse.
Other signs on campus have included the messages “Zionist Donors and Trustees Hands Off Our University” and “Zionism is Terrorism.”
The university suspended four pro-Palestine students for putting forth an unauthorized anti-Israel event in March titled “Resistance 101” that Ms. Shafik called “an abhorrent breach” of the university’s values. However, those students were still allowed to attend the April 4 demonstration.
A pro-Israel student was suspended after spraying “fart spray” toward pro-Palestine demonstrators. He has since sued the school.
Two Columbia professors—Joseph Massad, chair of the school’s Academic Review Committee, and Katherine Franke—are under investigation by the university, while Mohamed Abdou will no longer be a faculty member there, Ms. Shafik said. However, members of the House committee blasted the university over what they called its insufficient response to anti-Semitism.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) gave the university a “D” when it came to dealing with hatred toward Jews and Israel. Columbia has a history of anti-Semitism, including faculty members such as the late Edward Said.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Veteran Teacher: Here’s What’s Wrong with Traditional Schooling
For 19 years, I was a master of time. Down to the minute, I controlled time for others and used it to meet my and others’ ends, irrespective of the desires of those in front of me. In short, I was a public-school teacher, and controlling time was my talent. Although I and other adults often talked about helping students reach their potential and grow as learners, what we really did each day was control their time and force upon them ideas and subjects in which most of them had little to no interest.
What if there were a better way? A way to help each student learn the way he or she learns best, develop autonomy, explore passions, and take control of his or her own time? Thankfully, that way does exist in the form of alternative schools and learning programs that continue to increase in number each day.
For example, I remember Adam*, a bright and motivated senior with a passion for business. However, Adam felt pressured to attend college even though he felt no real drive to do so. He dutifully attended his classes and earned high grades, but he shared with me towards the end of the school year that he felt like college would be a waste of time and money. What he truly wanted was to enter the business world and gain experience, not sit in an intro to astronomy class to pad the college’s bottom line. What if Adam had known about Praxis, the college alternative that helps students develop professional skills and work alongside a mentor for a full year? Might such a program have been a better fit for someone like Adam than the one-size-fits-none college curriculum?
I also remember Bailey, a shy freshman who only sporadically turned in work but who often participated in our in-class discussions, especially those about contentious issues. One day after class, I asked her about her incomplete work, and she told me that everything she enjoyed was outside school and that she felt she wasn’t “good at school.” What if Bailey had known about North Star: Self-Directed Learning for Teens, an unschool that builds personalized curricula around students’ interests and strengths and eschews grades in favor of learning? Might she have felt differently about her days and about learning?
Finally, I remember Celine, an outspoken junior whose inquisitive mind often led to numerous questions each class period but also to a dissatisfaction with the perceived “mindlessness” and passivity of school. Celine’s parents had even considered homeschooling, but her father told me they were afraid to “mess things up.” What if Celine and her parents had known about Brooklyn Apple Academy, a “home for homeschoolers” that offers part-time classes, field trips, and camps, including a program called “The Works” in which students investigate the functioning of the city’s infrastructure? Might Celine have been more active in and excited about learning, and might her parents have felt more confident homeschooling knowing that they weren’t going at it alone?
The above examples are just three among hundreds I can recall from my work controlling students’ time, and I’m sure you are familiar with thousands more that all tell us the same thing: coercive schooling does not work and harms far more than it helps. However, what if children and their parents had alternatives to such a baneful system, and what if these alternatives were voluntary and focused on students’ actual needs and interests? Luckily for us, these alternatives are here, and more are opening each day. As a repentant master of others’ time, I implore you: seek out these alternatives and leave behind government schools’ coercion and disinterest. Children deserve nothing less.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/04/16/veteran-teacher-traditional-schooling/ ?
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Education Department’s Incompetence on Student Aid Hurts Millions
Millions of students each year rely on student loans and grants to afford the rising cost of college. This year, that’s about 17 million Americans.
They fill out the Federal Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA. But this year, the U.S. Department of Education is very far behind in processing the forms, and it has committed many major errors.
As a result, most colleges have no idea how much financial aid their students and applicants will get. The students don’t know either.
That’s no exaggeration. FAFSA forms from high school seniors are down about 27%, or about half a million students. It’s unclear whether those students will keep trying or will give up on college.
Some colleges might go under because of the drop in enrollment, with colleges losing not only tuition, but also income from room and board.
Meanwhile, only 7 million FAFSA forms have been transmitted to colleges, but 15% to 30% of them have errors, depending on which recent report one reads.
Observers who have a low opinion of government competence and capacities need to look even lower.
The litany of errors and the timeline of sheer incompetence provided in recent congressional testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee is jaw-dropping. Anyone interested in how we got here, and where to place the blame, should read this damning testimony.
All the while, as these financial aid experts note, the Department of Education has provided incomplete and contradictory information day by day, hiding bad news under false headlines of making progress.
A common deadline for students to accept their financial-aid packages and commit to enrollment is May 1. Colleges all over are extending their deadlines. But that’s not enough.
One college president told me:
It’s an actual disaster. And I’m worried it will have a large negative impact for our state. We can’t get our ISIRs [Institutional Student Information Records regarding financial aid eligibility], even for continuing students.
We can’t process summer awards. We can’t even see if new students have submitted their FAFSA for the fall to know if we’ll need additional documents for verification. … It will keep us from being able to award state aid because it’s contingent on federal aid.
The origin of these problems was a law with good intentions. The FAFSA form was long, and then-Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. (a former secretary of education), pushed successfully for simplification back in December 2020. It was something of a departing gift to the outgoing senator. But to get it done required a $1.6 billion payout to Historically Black Colleges and Universities—unmerited loan forgiveness to historically black colleges and universities under the HBCU Capital Financing Program.
The Department of Education had years to prepare for the simplified FAFSA. Instead, it launched its own unlawful, unjust, unpopular, expensive, and often regressive schemes for student loan debt transfers from borrowers to taxpayers.
If the Department of Education had prioritized the FAFSA rollout, more students would be seeing more financial aid. Instead, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s legacy will be one of a failed agenda that kept losing in court on the one hand and reduced college access on the other.
After the devastating testimony in the subcommittee, Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., remarked, “This sure doesn’t make arguing to keep the Department of Education any easier.” Quite right.
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Australia: Queensland Backtracks on Homeschool Curriculum Mandate
Under proposed education reforms in Queensland, home-schooled children will not have to follow the national curriculum but will instead have their progress checked by a new government advisory group.
Currently, there is no set homeschooling curriculum, but parents or caregivers are required to develop an educational program based on the eight core learning set out in the Australian National Curriculum, which includes English, maths, science, humanities and social science, arts, technology, physical education, and language learning.
In March, the government attempted to mandate the curriculum via a Queensland parliamentary committee tasked with drafting the Education General Provisions Amendment (EGPA) Bill, which proposed changes to homeschooling.
However, after consultation with education stakeholders, doubts were cast over whether such a mandate would alienate the stay-at-home students and their families.
As a result, Education Minister Di Farmer has announced that a new Home School Advisory Group will be established.
The government said it respects the right of parents to home-school, but the advisory group will check on whether children are receiving comparable learning.
“I will also be establishing a Home Education Advisory Group to consider in detail how we ensure children being homeschooled are receiving the high-quality education,” Ms. Farmer said.
“Additionally, a review will commence into the role of the Home Education Unit to how best it can help not only better regulate, but provide important support to families who choose to home school.
“All Queensland children are entitled to be safe wherever they live and learn and as a former child safety minister, I understand too well that this is not always the case.”
Homeschooling in Australia has been steadily growing in popularity as an alternative to traditional schooling, initially taking hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of children now staying home from the traditional classroom surged by nearly 300 percent in 2023.
Families choose homeschooling for a variety of reasons, including a desire for more flexibility in their children’s education, dissatisfaction with the schooling system, or a wish to provide a tailored education that meets their child’s individual needs.
Proponents of the method say one of the key benefits of homeschooling is the ability to customise the educational experience to suit the child’s learning style, interests, and pace.
Homeschooled children often have more freedom to explore subjects in depth and pursue areas of passion. Additionally, homeschooling can provide a more flexible schedule, allowing for travel, family commitments, or other activities.
Critics of homeschooling often point towards potential issues with a lack of social interaction with children the same age, hampering adult development, and failing to maintain a consistent schedule required when entering the workforce.
Response to the Homeschool Changes
Free2Homeschool campaign manager Patricia Fitzgerald, who is hosting a “peaceful picnic” at Parliament House in Brisbane to celebrate the withdrawal of the national curriculum, said parents and caregivers should be kept in the loop.
“Queensland Home Educators want to ensure they are recognised, supported and are consulted appropriately so that any legislation reflects the actual needs of home education in the community,” Ms. Fitzgerald said.
Shadow education minister Christian Rowan saw the backdown as a failure for Labor.
“Labor has descended into a government in chaos and crisis which utterly failed to consult and listen to Queenslanders on this issue and now has been forced to abandon its reckless plans,” Mr. Rowan said on April 15.
Queensland Premier Steven Miles disagreed with Mr. Rowan’s sentiment.
“I have always said I will listen to Queenslanders and act when I need to, which is why I worked with Minister Farmer to ensure we heard the concerns of teachers.”
“I look forward to seeing updated consultation proceed,” he said
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/queensland-backtracks-on-homeschool-curriculum-mandate-5630088
******************************************************My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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