Middle School Lesson Portrays Police Officers as KKK Members

I received correspondence from a number of Todd Starnes Show listeners who were rightfully outraged over a middle school lesson that likened police officers to slave owners and the Ku Klux Klan.

The lesson included a cartoon that showed a police officer kneeling on the neck of a black man who is saying, "I can't breathe." A progression of other cartoons show the officer morphing into a slaveholder and a klansman.

The assignment was presented to middle school students in the Wylie Independent School District in Texas. And it drew a strong rebuke from the Fraternal Order of Police.

“I cannot begin to tell you how abhorrent & disturbing this comparison is, but what is more disturbing is that no adult within your school thought better before sending this assignment to children," FOP National Vice President Joe Gamaldi wrote in a letter to the school district.

I write about this sort of radical classroom indoctrination in my new book, "Culture Jihad: How to Stop the Left From Killing a Nation." Public schools have become the engine driving the socialist revolution in America.

Gamaldi said his organization was alerted by concerned parents.

"What is more disturbing is that no adult within your school thought better before sending this assignment to children," Gamaldi said.

He said the Fraternal Order of Police would be glad to speak with teachers and students to explain what law enforcement is really about.

"Schools are supposed to be a place where the youth of America are taught acceptance and understanding, it is where we mold the future of our country, not indoctrinate them in the ways of division," Gamaldi wrote.

The school district issued a statement apologizing for the lesson and "any hurt that may have been caused."

“Wylie ISD is aware that a junior high social studies lesson taught at one of our schools included political cartoons that have been divisive in our community. These political cartoons portrayed in this lesson are not part of the district’s curriculum resources or documents. The assignment has been removed, and students will not be expected to complete it. We will continue to work with our staff to ensure content follows the state curriculum.”

An apology is not good enough.

The children have been indoctrinated either intentionally or unintentionally. Regardless, a great wrong has been done and it's going to take more than an apology to fix the problem.

The school district should launch an investigation to determine the teacher's true intent. And if the educator was attempting to teach the children that police officers are bad - he or she should be removed from the classroom.

Beyond that the school district should immediately invite the Fraternal Order of Police to lead a series of classes with the children to educate them on the role of law enforcement.

We must undo the anti-police brainwashing that occurred in the Wylie Independent School District.

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Who Is Ruining Our Universities? Administrators!

American universities are not having their finest hour, partly because of Covid-19. But even after the pandemic, they will be weaker and less consequential than they were a decade or even a generation or two ago. Why? Who is to blame?

First, what’s the basis for my negative assessment?

Enrollments have shown the longest decline in modern American history, and polling shows public support and respect has declined;

While data are somewhat contradictory, collegiate student learning appears embarrassingly low given resources expended;

America’s primacy in basic research is starting to erode, which likely will continue as other nations markedly increase research spending;

Universities are abandoning operating principles used since the Enlightenment, or example, restricting politically incorrect speech, emphasizing ideology and group status instead of discovery, individual merit and hard work;

Schools have become excessively expensive and often show little regard for student needs, making them a less desirable financial investment.

There are a myriad of other problems, outlined by me recently in a 400-page book. But who is to blame? Is the problem largely external—for example inadequate funding or inappropriate state or federal mandates constraining university behavior? Or is the problem mostly internal?

I assign some blame to external forces (mainly governments, especially the Feds through student financial assistance programs) but more internally, to people directly associated with the university. That includes students, faculty, administrators, governing boards, alumni and “friends” (donors). All these groups cause occasional problems. Faculty do silly, often embarrassing things, and their unions sometimes make unreasonable demands. Students occasionally gravely misbehave, causing their school serious damage. Governing boards are perennially clueless about what is happening and are too willing to rubber stamp whatever the president wants. Alumni and friends continue to support universities, sometimes imprudently allocating their donations, but generally are more helpful than harmful.

That leaves the administration. Here there have been dramatic changes over time. When I started teaching in the 1960s, there were typically around two faculty for every non-faculty support person. Faculty were often very powerful. The demand for professors was growing faster than the supply, so faculty were pampered and had power. Today, there are more administrators than faculty at most schools. Professors are, figuratively, a dime a dozen. More decisions are made by the bureaucracy. The instructional share of budgets has fallen substantially. And the bureaucrats are mostly not academics, sometimes not valuing such cherished academic values as a quest for knowledge, discovery of new truths, and a passion for civil discussion and debate. Some administrators disparage basic principles of intellectual ferment, preferring that schools enforce politically correct ideologies more reminiscent of medieval universities than of modern institutions that are true marketplaces of ideas.

Excessive bureaucracy interferes with teaching and research functions and wastes faculty time. At many University of California campuses, faculty take the equivalent of a diversity and inclusion loyalty oath, demonstrating their commitment to expanding opportunities for groups with low rates of university participation. They are evaluated partly not by faculty peers but by others far removed from their area of expertise, sometimes even having veto power over hiring and promotions.

At my university, budget woes forced us to lay off several hundred faculty, in addition to secretarial, janitorial and related personnel, but I think not a single highly paid administrator was dismissed. Classes must go online for health reasons, but the football team can still play (as of this writing) home games; football is too important to cancel, health risks be damned. We can do away with teaching Russian, but still must have an Office of Strategy and Innovation with two administrators making more than the state’s Governor—positions non-existent a decade ago.

I recently received a note from my department chair saying that if I wanted to teach this fall, I had to produce a copy of my college transcript—from 55 years ago, to see if I am qualified to teach a class that I have already taught dozens of times. I probably provided a transcript decades ago, but the university is too lazy to look for it or threw it away. Such idiocy interferes with professors’ main job—disseminating and expanding knowledge. God help the next generation of both students and professors, who ARE the university.

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COVID-19 Is Disrupting the Future of Higher Education

Over the last decade, higher education in America has faced an intense amount of scrutiny. Rising costs and increasing levels of student loan debt, coupled with falling academic rigor, have prompted some tough questions for America’s colleges and universities, but enrollment continues to climb.

Although alternative pathways to good-paying jobs have sprung up in recent years, most are still considered far outside the mainstream pathway of college as a route to a successful career. However, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to change different aspects of everyday life, one of its most lasting consequences could be how it changes the way Americans think about higher education.

The primary point of contention is the fact that the cost of attending a 4-year university has skyrocketed compared to the cost of attendance for previous generations. College tuition has more than doubled since the 1980s—outpacing any increases in the payoff graduates can expect from attending—and those rising costs have saddled millions with a substantial amount of debt.

Student loan debt now totals almost $1.6 trillion and is the second highest category of consumer debt, behind only mortgages. There are currently 44.7 million Americans paying off student loan debts and the median amount of debt is $17,000. Furthermore, unlike most other kinds of debt, student loan debt (often taken on in the late teens or early twenties) can rarely be discharged during bankruptcy proceedings.

Meanwhile, the academic rigor of the institutions has fallen precipitously. Grade inflation has increased unchecked for decades. A nationwide study of the history of college grading finds that an A grade was awarded in colleges nationwide 15 percent of the time during the early 1960s. However, an A is now the most common grade given and the percentage of A’s has tripled, to 45 percent nationwide. Currently, 75 percent of all grades awarded now are either A’s and B’s. This has meant that modern students rarely face incentives to work as hard as students from previous generations. According to economists Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks, compared to today’s students, “students in the middle of the 20th century spent nearly 50% more time—around 40 hours weekly—studying.”

The data are easily corroborated by frequent anecdotes from veteran college professors. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Ohio University professor Richard Vedder explained, “I’m part of the problem: I’ve been teaching for 55 years, and I assign far less reading, demand less writing, and give higher grades than I did two generations ago.” On a podcast, Brown University professor Glenn Loury described the distinctly different nature of grades and modern higher education compared to previous generations:

You can find an education in the university. You can find one at Brown. You can find one at Berkeley or Stanford. But you can also spend four years there and not learn a God-d*mn thing worth knowing and come out with a degree. Grade inflation. Grade inflation is a horrible corruption, in my opinion. ...

There’s no turning back, man. There is no turning back, but it’s–I now have to basically anticipate the possibility that a kid’s going to go home and take a bottle of pills or something if I give him a C.

You know, ‘You’ve ruined my life: I’ll never get in the law school, I’ll never get into medical school. Professor Loury, you can’t do this to me, you can’t do this,’ you know, whatever. And, I say, ‘Man, look at that paper that you wrote. You didn’t write a very good paper. I’m sorry.’ But, I end up with the B anyway, half the time, because I just can’t do it.

Despite these well-documented developments, the wage premium associated with obtaining a college degree remains high and millions of new students enroll each year. Furthermore, employers are increasingly requiring a college degree for positions that did not require one in the past (and likely do not require one now).

This phenomenon, known as degree inflation, severely and unnecessarily limits the potential for those without a college degree to access higher- or increasingly even middle-income career paths. Moreover, the practice is likely also disadvantageous for employers, who are both unnecessarily paying wage premiums for college educated workers, hiring workers who have disproportionally high turnover rates, and narrowing the field of potential employees. Relatively few employers have dropped these requirements, although there are some recent examples of top tier companies, such as Google and Apple, that have. Perhaps more will follow suit in the future, but for the most part, employers seem content to keep such requirements in place.

The result is a rather bleak status quo, with employers wasting resources, students saddling themselves with increasingly burdensome amounts of debt, and the institutions of higher education delivering less actual education to their students. All the while, the credential gap is fueling a deepening economic division between Americans. Rather than college delivering students a wage premium—as is often touted by proponents—a labor market penalty for non-attendance seems more accurate. But with employers insisting on a degree for desirable jobs and considerable government subsidies ensuring a seemingly endless supply of new enrollees, the cycle appeared unlikely to change anytime soon.

Then the coronavirus pandemic swept the nation. With (often very valid) concerns about spreading the virus and endangering both students and faculty, many colleges and universities are considering a transition from in-person classes to either entirely virtual classes or some sort of hybrid approach.

The Chronicle of Higher Education is tracking how universities intend to operate for the Fall 2020 semester and has compiled a database of nearly 3,000 colleges. As of this writing, only 23.5 percent of colleges are planning to conduct classes either fully or primarily in person, with 26.8 percent reporting they plan to conduct classes either fully or primarily online, and a substantial 27 percent reporting that plans are still “TBD.”

With many universities closed for the Fall 2020 semester, a greater number of graduating high school students are already considering taking a gap year. Complicating matters further, a recent survey of US college students finds that 93 percent say tuition should be lowered if classes are online. The same survey also found that “75% of college students are unhappy with the quality of online classes and 35% have considered withdrawing from school.” While some colleges have lowered their tuition in response to moving classes to an online format, many have been quick to point out that moving classes online does not translate to lower costs for the institution.

For smaller colleges that can’t afford even relatively small drops in enrollment, the changes brought by the pandemic could mean that closing their doors permanently. While it’s too early to make sweeping claims about how the pandemic will change the nature of higher education in America, these trends suggest that students are more open to alternatives to the 4-year college pathway to employment than they have been in recent memory.

Fortunately, several promising alternatives have been gaining ground over the past several years and the disruption in typical higher education could be the catalyst that pushes such alternatives further into the mainstream.

One of the most successful alternatives is Lambda School, an online school that trains students to become web developers or data scientists. It first became popular with its pioneering use of income share agreements (ISAs) to offer students a way to enroll and learn the necessary skills for a successful career without paying tuition up front. Instead, payments are only made after the student becomes employed and earns above a certain level of income (aligning the incentive for both the student and the school). Lambda School offers a 9-month full-time program or an 18-month part-time program and has successfully placed its graduates in well-paying jobs at top tier companies, earning a reputation for being a highly effective alternative to the traditional 4-year college model. In response to the ongoing pandemic, Lambda School has even reduced its upfront tuition by 50 percent.

Another promising alternative is Praxis. Rather than offering a degree, Praxis offers a one-year program that includes six months of hands on skill building followed by at least six months of time building skills and a track record in a job. Participants can either pay upfront or defer payment until after they have landed a job—and Praxis will even return the cost of tuition if a graduate of the bootcamp is unable to find a job within 6 months. The focus is on building skills and gaining real-world experience that result in a starting point for a successful career while bypassing the credential-focused approach of traditional higher education. Already well-suited to students interested in taking a gap year, Praxis is an interesting up-and-coming alternative for those unsure whether the traditional 4-year college route would be a good fit for them.

The typical career pathway of getting a degree at a traditional 4-year college is not likely to change anytime soon, not least because the institutions of higher education enjoy so much taxpayer support. But as the pandemic continues to push students toward alternatives, the pitfalls of the traditional approach to higher education will become increasingly difficult to ignore.

As the scrutiny on the institutions of higher education builds and more Americans become disenchanted with the model, there may come a tipping point that results in a range of interesting and effective alternatives. The decisions made by students in the midst of the pandemic could be a significant step toward that future.

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Segregation is back: NYU Students Demand Black-Only Student Housing on Campus

How many civil rights workers in the 1960s died trying to end segregated housing? It’s an academic question but very appropriate given what’s happened at New York University recently.

A couple of students circulated a petition that eventually got more than 1,000 signatures for NYU to designate racially-segregated housing for black and “black-identifying” students. Apparently, there are no “safe spaces” for blacks because NYU is “predominantly white.”

Fox News:

“NYU is a predominantly white institution, making it very difficult for Black students to connect or find community, especially when incidents involving racism occur,” Black Violets told Fox News. “It is not about exclusion, but rather creating a space where Black students can feel included.”

Simply saying it’s “not about exclusion” doesn’t mean it isn’t. If other races are not allowed to live there, it’s exclusion. It’s the very definition of exclusion. But we’re all supposed to pretend it isn’t? Sheesh.

The proposal proved to be too much, even for radical lefties.

Critics of such plans say such living arrangements would be akin to racial segregation.

“There is nothing progressive about the establishment of racially segregated housing at NYU,” Karsten Schneider wrote in a column for the World Socialist Web Site. “It is irrelevant whether the segregation being implemented is voluntary or mandatory. Racial segregation, in all forms, is entirely reactionary.”

Sixty years ago, the argument was a little less subtle: the races “don’t mix well” and whites and blacks would “feel more comfortable” living with their own race. How different is that from activists wanting to create “a space where Black students can feel included”?

The more things change…

Meanwhile, the milquetoast school officials needing to bend over backward to show how woke they are, said they would consider it.

“[Residential] Life staff have reached out to the authors of the petition to discuss how we might move forward with their goals,” an NYU spokesperson told Washington Square News, NYU’s student newspaper. “Given the COVID-related challenges to the student housing system for 2020-2021, these conversations would be aiming towards 2021-2022.”

A “themed engagement floor” for Black students is being pushed by a group called Black Violets NYU. “Marginalized groups” like queer students and international students already have access to such floors, Black Violets told Fox News in a statement.

Reason’s Robby Soave destroys the students’ argument for any kind of housing that separates the races.

But despite what the students said, the petition—which was signed by 1,000 people—inarguably uses the language of exclusion. It specifies that the housing must include “floors completely comprised of Black-identifying students with Black Resident Assistants.” If a proposal requires that certain floors only include back students, then it is a proposal for racially segregated housing.

Yes, but they’re not “excluding” anyone because they say they aren’t excluding anyone in their media statement. Doesn’t that count for anything? After all, there are no “quotas” in university admissions because we call them “targets” and “goals.”

Delusions on the left run very deep, For these students and, tragically, tens of thousands like them, they will go through life believing the world is one giant college campus, where people give a rat’s petunia about “safe spaces” and “marginalized groups.” They will remain oblivious to their own contradictions, their hypocrisy, and their biases.

And they will go into politics and the bureaucracy looking to impose their radical chic notions of race and class on the rest of us.

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