I remember how it was -- JR
Lawmakers Fume After Biden Sides with 'Radical' Chicago Teachers Union
The Chicago Teachers Union continues to stage a standoff with City Hall after the union voted to reject in-person learning on Monday. The Board of Education had required K-8 teachers to return to schools so they could be prepared for a return to in-person learning on Feb. 1. But because the CTU didn't comply, the city has announced a delay to the teachers' start date to Wednesday in order "to resolve our discussions without risking disruption to student learning.”
Chicago Public Schools explained how remote learning is putting strains on students, both in terms of their education and finances. The delay, they explain, has been most detrimental to minority communities.
“Students in over 130 private and parochial schools and over 2,000 early learning centers across the city have been safely learning in their classrooms since the fall, and we must provide that same option to our families who, through no fault of their own, have been unable to make remote learning work for their children,” Chicago Public Schools said. “We’ve seen grades, attendance, and enrollment drop significantly for many of our students in recent months, and the impact has been felt most by our Black and Latinx students.”
President Biden, who initially said he wants to reopen schools soon, appeared to backtrack on Monday and said he wants to reopen schools as soon but as safely as possible.
"I believe we should make school classrooms safe and secure," Biden said at his press conference. "Teachers want to work, they just want to work in a safe environment, and as safe as we can rationally make it, and we can do that."
"I believe that we should make school classrooms safe and secure for the students, for the teachers, and for the help that's in those schools, maintaining the facilities," he added. "We need new ventilation systems in those schools, we need testing for people coming in and out of the classes, we need testing for teachers as well as students, and we need the capacity, the capacity to know that the circumstance in the school is safe and secure for everyone."
Republican lawmakers are disappointed that the president appears to be caving.
While the union argues this doesn't amount to a full strike, the CTU is no stranger to strikes, having staged one in 2019 that lasted two weeks.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board sounded off on the CTU's behavior in a new op-ed this week.
"The union," they write, "is taking kids hostage to extract more money from Congress with no guarantee that it will release them if it does."
Schools have already taken several precautions to make in-person learning as safe as possible. There's "no excuse" for teachers not to get back in the classrooms, the WSJ writes.
Parents Who Opt Out of Public Schools Don't Deserve Smears From Teachers Unions
Marta Mac Ban is not a revolutionary. Ashley Ekpo is not disgruntled. And Brooke Hunt does not consider herself better than others. All three women just want the best education possible for their children.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, that has meant taking matters into their own hands. Rather than settling for public school solutions that put students in front of laptops all day, the parents have pulled their kids out of the system and tried alternatives.
The empowerment scares teachers unions, which have a long history of attacking choice. Normally when parents try homeschooling or other options, union allies brand them as weird or extreme. The newest smear is even uglier.
Parents who bring their children together in small learning groups during the pandemic not only get labeled as eccentric, but also as segregationists guilty of promoting racial division in a nation with an ugly history of "separate but equal."
The National Education Association lays out the talking point in a recent policy paper, and industry insiders have repeated the claim on dozens of platforms. Using loaded terms like "radical" and "unqualified," they have sounded the alarm about a massive parental revolt.
Popular targets include families that have organized themselves into pandemic pods and microschools—two variations of homeschool co-ops that allow in-person instruction to continue in residential settings while brick-and-mortar classrooms remain closed or restricted.
Union leaders blast the innovation not because it fails, but because it works. They argue that the proliferation of home study groups will widen opportunity gaps and worsen school segregation because well-resourced families will benefit disproportionately. New York University sociologist R. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy says pod parents engage in "opportunity hoarding."
Gregory Hutchings, superintendent of Alexandria City Public Schools in Virginia, warned about the opportunity gaps during a summer meeting with parents. Yet his concern that nobody get ahead during the pandemic applied only to others. Shortly after his lecture, he pulled one of his own children out of the district and enrolled her in a private Catholic school.
The pressure campaign is powerful, but many parents are no longer listening. Rather than worrying about the name-calling, they are reclaiming control.
Marta Mac Ban, an Arizona parent who started homeschooling her 6-year-old daughter during the pandemic, says the jolt from COVID-19 is exactly what the school system needed. "The shakeup has reminded district leaders who their customers really are," she says. "If you don't give your customers what they want, they go elsewhere."
She and her husband did that in 2019 when they moved to Cave Creek, a small community north of Phoenix. They liked the local district, so they relocated as a form of school choice. Then they enrolled their daughter in kindergarten and got involved. Mac Ban volunteered as "room mom," creating classroom decorations and participating in parties. She also stayed active in the parent-teacher organization, compiling and sending monthly newsletters.
Everything went well until March, when classes switched to Zoom. Mac Ban, who tries to limit her daughter's screen time, quickly opted out. "She's not going to sit still for hours at a time staring at a computer," Mac Ban says.
She and her husband previously had considered homeschooling but were unsure if they had sufficient resources to pull it off. "We were already on the fence," Mac Ban says. "COVID was the push." Now she teaches at home, while teaming up with neighbors one day per week in a learning pod.
Despite the switch, Mac Ban does not oppose public schools. She sees many good things in her local district and continues to serve in the parent-teacher organization. What she supports is more choice. "One size does not fit all," she says. "It's ironic that they say, 'No child left behind' because so many kids are left behind when everyone is forced to go just to the one school."
Surprised by Success
Prior to the pandemic, Ashley Ekpo and her husband also relocated to find better schools. They switched from Prince George's County to neighboring Howard County in Maryland. The move extended the work commute for both parents, but they accepted the extra drive time as a sacrifice for their children.
Things went well until the pandemic. The parents initially jumped on board with distance learning through their public school, but soon found themselves overwhelmed with three school-aged children and two younger ones at home. "They were all lined up at the dining room table, and it was basically a nightmare," Ekpo says.
After a few weeks, she noticed a drop in educational quality, so she started researching options. When she and her husband decided to try homeschooling, they initially saw it as a temporary solution until they felt comfortable sending their children back to the classroom. Now, the parents aren't sure what they will do in 2021 and beyond. "We're staying open-minded because we're having a really good experience with it," Ekpo says.
A Place for Everyone
Brooke Hunt and her husband like choice so much that they let their older children decide for themselves what they wanted to do during the pandemic. All three opted to remain in public schools, while two younger ones started homeschooling in Mesa, Arizona. "We just made the big, brave decision in August," says Hunt, who has a degree in early childhood education.
Critics complain that homeschooling can cut children off from diverse classrooms, but Hunt sees the opposite in the co-op that she runs with two other families. Unlike public schools, which segregate students by age, the homeschooling group brings children together at different stages of development. This represents a type of diversity.
Participants in Hunt's group also come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. "Lack of diversity is never an issue," she explains. Her only regret is that she cannot help more families in her little operation. "I wish I could open my home to everyone where there's a need," Hunt says.
Teachers unions could benefit from the same inclusive mindset. Parents like Mac Ban, Ekpo, and Hunt are not segregationists. They are innovators who should be celebrated, not smeared.
UK: Can Chaucer survive the woke purge?
Leicester University plans to swap The Canterbury Tales for modules on race and diversity.
Managers at Leicester University have called for classic texts, including The Canterbury Tales and Beowulf, to be dropped from English courses in favour of a ‘decolonised curriculum’.
If these proposals are implemented, all literary works written before 1500 would be ditched. All English language courses would end and ‘a selection of modules on race, ethnicity, sexuality and diversity’ would be brought in.
According to the Telegraph, university management said the move was intended to ‘provide modules which students expect of an English degree’. And president and vice-chancellor Professor Nishan Canagarajah said the plans were necessary for the university to ‘compete on a global level’. Meanwhile, academics teaching the soon-to-be-forbidden subjects are no doubt fearing for their jobs.
Universities are under considerable pressure to change their curriculums. In 2019, Sheffield University released a video featuring a sequence on ‘decolonising’ the syllabus. The video painted academia as a ‘white-dominated space’. And it suggested major writers like Chaucer and Shelley were only on the curriculum because they ‘simply better fit into an academic culture that’s affected by the same racial biases that we see in the rest of society’.
In June, the vice-chancellor of Oxford University, Louise Richardson, announced plans to ‘decolonise’ Oxford’s science and maths degrees. The plans mean the courses must cover issues like race and empire.
Those who demand the ‘decolonisation’ of the curriculum like to pretend that they are expanding what students are taught. But deleting countless classic texts from the curriculum will do nothing but leave a gaping hole in students’ knowledge. Education is in serious trouble.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/01/21/can-chaucer-survive-the-woke-purge/
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