Teachers Are Now Performing Monthly Mental Health Exams on Your Child

On paper it reads like a not-so-vague attempt to socially engineer your child’s behavior. In reality, teacher-led mental health assessments coming to a growing number of public schools are a bureaucratic nightmare. One that will no doubt further clog our nation’s public education system with increased paperwork and administrative costs while putting your child's future at serious risk.

Thanks to Dr. Aida Cerundolo's piece in The Wall Street Journal, we are beginning to understand the real-life ramifications of these dangerous educational ideas. Want the Cliffs Notes version? Head over to the excellent summation by Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins, detailing the ramifications of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a federal bill focused on the buzz-phrase “Social Emotional Learning” (SEL), the latest craze in public education. Schools in states that have ESSA legislation on the books can use the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA) to fulfill ESSA paperwork requirements.

...every month the teacher must answer 72 questions about each of the perhaps dozens of students in her class. She must assess whether the student “carr[ies] himself with confidence,” whatever that means for a 5-year-old, and whether he can “cope well with insults and mean comments.”

… Dr. Cerundolo’s alarm at the imposition of DESSA is shared by at least some New Hampshire teachers. One of them contacted Ann Marie Banfield, Education Liaison for Cornerstone Action in New Hampshire, to express her objections to completing the DESSA forms on her students. The teacher was especially troubled that the school neither sought parental consent nor even notified parents that their children were being screened by amateurs for mental-health issues. As the mother of public-school students, she worried that other teachers were completing this assessment on her children.

You read that right: if you live in an ESSA state, your child’s mental health will be assessed by a non-medical professional in a non-medical context. The paperwork will not be protected by HIPAA laws, which means that the school district can share a teacher’s assessment of your child’s mental health with literally anyone. Parents are not asked for permission before the DESSA is administered, nor do they have any say over where the records go once they are obtained.

The company that sells DESSA has a deep financial stake in SEL. As Ann Marie Banfield found out:

DESSA is there to rate students on their behaviors but then to offer intervention to improve their scores. Social awareness is one of the key competencies to ensure the students are aware and accepting of race and diversity. These software programs profit 3 rd party vendors when they sell the program to your school district. The [vendor] then collects non-academic data on your child, rates your child’s behaviors and attitudes, then makes more money by selling products to correct them.

In other words, your child isn’t just learning facts, he’s learning how to interpret and communicate those facts in a socially acceptable way that is sensitive to the feelings of others. Facts may not care about your feelings, but school administrators held under the Fed's thumb do. I wonder how George Orwell makes these folks feel? Perhaps like “two legs are good, but four legs are better”?

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California University Hit With Lawsuit Alleging 'Hostile Anti-Jewish Environment'

San Francisco State University (SFSU) was hit by a lawsuit last week by Jewish students and community members who allege that the school foments a “pervasively hostile anti-Jewish environment.”

While colleges across the nation have seen a near exponential rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents, the lawsuit contends that SFSU is a particularly hostile school, which started with the founding of the College of Ethnic Studies (COES) in 1968, a social justice-themed school that focuses on minority issues.

Since the founding of COES, anti-Jewish sentiment has only gotten worse, as administrators have rushed to support anti-Jewish student groups and departments, such as the General Union of Palestine Students and the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative.

The lawsuit contends that these groups have “doggedly organized their efforts to target, threaten, and intimidate Jewish students on campus and deprive them of their civil rights” and their ability to be “safe and secure” as they pursue their education at SFSU.

While the administration has been mostly silent on the issue, in 1997 the then-president of SFSU, Robert Corrigan, did note that his school fostered “the most anti-Semitic campus in the nation,” according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs include the former president of Hillel at SFSU, two current students, and three community members — all of whom were in attendance at a 2016 lecture given at SFSU by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

The lecture was deliberately hijacked by anti-Jewish student groups, whose members shouted down the speaker and allegedly made threats to members in the audience, yelling that Israel is an “Apartheid state” and “Long live the Intifada!”

Mayor Barkat did not finish his speech, nor did he accept a second invitation to speak at SFSU, as The Algemeiner reported.

The Lawfare Project, the nonprofit representing the plaintiffs, noted that there have been numerous other high-profile incidents of anti-Semitism on campus, dating back to 1994 when a 10-foot mural was painted on campus that portrayed yellow Stars of David intertwined with dollar signs, skulls and crossbones, and the words “African Blood.”

Other incidents show that both SFSU administrators and students have been complicit in perpetuating hostilities against Jewish students, such as in May of 2002, when Jewish students were told “Get out or we’ll kill you” by other students, and in 2009, when the SFSU administration hosted numerous events calling for the elimination of Israel.

Leftist Anti-Semitic Fliers Appear on College Campus
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gives the plaintiffs standing in court, according to Brooke Goldstein, the director of The Lawfare Project.

"Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the underpinning of the modern American ethos of equal protection and anti-discrimination. This case isn't about Jews, it's about equal protection under the law," said Goldstein. “If we refuse to enforce anti-discrimination law for Jews, if we say Jews don't deserve equal protection, it will erode constitutional protections for everyone.”

Amanda Berman, also with The Lawfare Project, noted that Jewish students have been left with no other choice but to sue.

“Since the faculty and administration is entirely unwilling [to make campus safer for Jewish students], Jewish victims of this pervasively hostile environment have been left with no choice but to ask a federal court to compel it."

The lawsuit seeks monetary damages for the plaintiffs and injunctive relief, ultimately in hopes of improving the climate for Jewish students at SFSU.

So far, no other American colleges have been successfully sued for creating a hostile climate for Jewish students.

San Francisco State University has consistently been considered one of the worst colleges for Jewish students, according to The Algemeiner, which curates an annual list of the 40 worst colleges for Jewish students.

Columbia University, Vassar College, New York University, and Rutgers University are among the many other schools where Jewish students also face threats and intimidation from peers and administrators, The Algemeiner has found.

San Francisco State University did not respond to a request for comment from PJ Media.

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It’s All Over For UK Science: University Professors Afraid To Teach Controversial Subjects For Fear Of Being Sacked

Students are now so powerful that university professors are afraid to teach controversial subjects for fear of being sacked, an academic conference was told on Thursday.

Professor Dennis Hayes, a co-founder of “Academics for Academic Freedom” said that universities were now ruled by a “culture of censorious quietude” where academics were not able to discuss “anything difficult.”

Speaking at the University of Buckingham yesterday, Prof Hayes added: “There’s an interesting turn today, it’s not that people are abusive, it’s just that they don’t say anything at all in universities.

“There’s so many things that could be discussed that you dare not say. And the consequences of arguing anything difficult is potentially that you could be sacked.

“These are mainstream views, of the state, institutions and particularly universities. Gay rights, feminism, gender fluidity, fear of Islamaphobia‎, the belief that we are all unwell, identity-based politics, are not views that challenge conventional thinking in the way that every university has in its charter.

‘These are conventional thinking. You dare not say you’re against gay marriage. Just discussing any of these things can get you in serious trouble if not the sack. What exists in universities is a culture of censorious quietude.

“Try arguing ‘there are boys and girls’… or as McEnroe has found out, that there are male and female tennis players.

“Things are simply not discussed. Academics and student… they go silent. They may even take delight in people who stand up and get beaten for their views.”

Discussing his decision to found a pro-free speech group in 2006, Prof Hayes added that he wanted academics to feel “free” to discuss controversial subjects on campus.

“The cry of offence, the fear of personal emotional hurt, is now the greatest threat to academic freedom,” he continued.

His warning came as the Universities Minister Jo Johnson warned that the erosion of freedom of speech on campus jeopardised Britain’s standing as an “intellectual powerhouse”.

SOURCE