I remember how it was -- JR
School Principals Call on Federal Government to Allow Them 'Ban Hostile Parents'
The national organization of public school boards is calling on the Biden administration to protect its members from “angry mobs” of parents who protest against COVID-19 restrictions placed on students and the teaching of critical race theory, characterizing the protests as “domestic terrorism.”
The National School Boards Association (NSBA), which represents more than 90,000 school board members in the United States, wrote in a Sept. 29 letter (pdf) to President Joe Biden that the federal government must “deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation.”
The letter moves on to cite incidents of “threats or actual acts of violence” against school leaders, alleging that parents who sought to express their opposition to mask and COVID-19 vaccination policies have been “inciting chaos” during school board meetings. It also denies critical race theory is being taught in classrooms, and describes parents’ attempts to hold school board members accountable by posting watchlists online as “spreading misinformation.”
“As these threats and acts of violence have become more prevalent,” the letter claims, “NSBA respectfully asks that a joint collaboration among federal law enforcement agencies, state and local law enforcement, and with public school officials be undertaken to focus on these threats.”
Specifically, the NSBA asked that federal agencies such as FBI, the Secret Services, and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security “investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence” by whatever “extraordinary measures” necessary.
“As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime,” the NSBA argued in the letter, encouraging the federal agencies to use laws designed to target domestic terrorism, such as the PATRIOT Act, to address the issue.
The group also asked Biden to direct the U.S. Postal Service to filter “threatening letters” and intervene in “cyberbullying attacks” that target students, teachers, and school leaders.
The call for support comes days after the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) made a similar request, arguing that the federal government needs give school leaders the authority to expel “threatening individuals” from their schools.
“At the very least, we need the U.S. Department of Education to issue specific guidance on the authority school leaders have to protect themselves and our ability to remove or ban hostile parents and individuals from school grounds who threaten our safety,” said NASSP CEO Ronn Nozoe in a Sept. 16 statement.
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UK: Professor who called for ‘end of Zionism’ is fired
A university professor accused of anti-semitism has been fired after claiming Jewish students and societies who complained about him were part of a campaign of censorship “directed by the State of Israel”.
David Miller, a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, was accused of bigotry after footage emerged of him calling for “the end of Zionism” and saying that Israel “is trying to exert its will all over the world”.
The university has been under pressure for months from students, academics, Jewish leaders, MPs and government ministers.
Miller, who quit the Labour party last year after claiming that Sir Keir Starmer took “Zionist” money, is a member of the self-styled Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media
The university launched the investigation into Prof David Miller’s conduct in March. The case divided the campus between staff and students who accused him of spouting antisemitic tropes in lectures and online, and those who worried that sanctions would stifle sensitive research.
In a statement released on Friday, the university said the decision to terminate his employment with immediate effect was prompted by its duty of care to students and the wider university community.
Bristol said that although a QC found that the comments Miller is alleged to have made “did not constitute unlawful speech”, a disciplinary hearing concluded that he “did not meet the standards of behaviour we expect from our staff”.
Miller said the university had “embarrassed itself” with its decision and accused it of bowing to a pressure campaign against him directed by Israel.
Miller, whose research specialises in how power self-perpetuates through lobbying and propaganda, added that he would challenge the decision before the university, and would escalate it to an employment tribunal if unsuccessful.
He added: “It has run a shambolic process that seems to have been vetted by external actors. Israel’s assets in the UK have been emboldened by the university collaborating with them to shut down teaching about Islamophobia. The University of Bristol is no longer safe for Muslim, Arab or Palestinian students.”
The president of Bristol Jewish Society, Edward Isaacs, thanked the university for its decision in a tweet. He wrote: “The fight against antisemitism is vast, but I hope today’s news goes a long way to showing positive change can be made and that we should never settle for anything less than a society free from all forms of hatred.”
Miller’s comments initially whipped up controversy in 2019 when he cited the Zionist movement as one of five sources of Islamophobia in a lecture on the subject, and showed a diagram linking Jewish charities to Zionist lobbying. Complaints were made that this resembled the antisemitic trope that Jews wield secretive influence on political affairs, but they were dismissed by the university on academic freedom grounds.
Since then, comments by him in online lectures describing Israel as “the enemy of world peace” and a statement sent to the student news outlet the Tab that described the Jewish Society as an “Israel lobby group” that had “manufactured hysteria” about his teaching have further inflamed tensions.
The scope of Bristol’s investigation and the exact reasons for its conclusion are confidential, though they are understood not to cover the lecture content.
The investigation resulted in a febrile atmosphere on campus, which one academic characterised as “toxic”. The Conservative MP Robert Halfon said it resembled “1930s Nazi Germany”, citing reports from Jewish students that they felt “unsafe”. He urged the universities minister, Michelle Donelan, to take the unprecedented step of sacking Bristol’s leaders and cutting the university’s funding.
The case garnered the attention of hundreds of academics across the world, who signed rival letters, one of which described Miller’s views on Zionism as a “morally reprehensible” conspiracy theory that jeopardised community relations on campus, while another warned that the investigation was fomenting a “culture of self-censorship and fear”, and urged the university to defend freedom of speech.
Bristol said in its statement that academic freedom was “fundamental” to the university and that it “take[s] any risk to stifle that freedom seriously”.
The statement added: “We recognise that these matters have caused deep concern for people on all sides of the debate, and that members of our community hold very different views from one another.”
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Urgent action required as Australian kids get left behind on writing
Kids can think. They just can’t write. The same applies to teachers. No wonder we’re in a mess.
When you look at educational benchmarks – including NAPLAN results, back when the Queensland Government bothered to publicly release them – it’s clear that writing is not students’ strong suit.
Children are slipping further and further behind as they struggle to string a sentence together, and now schools are forking out big bucks on rescue packages.
Writing coaches are being brought in to show teachers how to do their jobs.
Schools, both private and state, are spending up to $100,000 a year on the Writer’s Toolbox program, which includes in-house workshops for teachers on the basics of writing and how to integrate them across the curriculum, not just in English lessons.
The program’s founder Dr Ian Hunter, a New Zealand historian, author and former university lecturer has pretty much struck gold.
The real question is: how was it allowed to come to this?
Sometime in the “free loving” 1960s, Education Queensland took its eye off the ball. It let the teaching of explicit writing skills slip in favour of encouraging individual expression.
According to Dr Hunter, “the rules of grammar went out the window”, and writing became about the process, one’s personal creative journey. “The mantra in Education Queensland at that time was ‘language is caught not taught’,” he tells Qweekend today.
“So we now have these generations of young teachers who have never been taught the rules of writing.”
I can’t count the number of times my son, then in primary school, would show me a teacher’s “corrections” on his homework, scribbles in red pen that were actually wrong.
Then there were the official letters home from school that were riddled with errors, using “less” when it should have been “fewer”, “me” when it should have been “I”, and my personal pet hate, the sign-off where they say, “please don’t hesitate to contact myself”. It should be “me”, and teachers should know this, but a good many don’t.
How, then, can we expect our kids to understand?
Writing is not some outmoded skill – even in this age of emojis, abbreviations and short, sharp text messages. It is essential to expressing our thoughts and consolidating ideas.
As prolific American writer Joan Didion, now 86, once said, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” The very act of writing, including choosing the right words and structuring sentences, pushes us to think more, to analyse, to discover.
And unlike other things we learn at school but never use afterwards, writing remains relevant. Written communication is high on the list of 21st century skills that employers seek and understandably so.
Some of the most influential people in the world sparked change through their writing. Consider Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution informed modern science studies, or Simone de Beauvoir, who gave voice to global feminism.
Alarmingly, Dr Hunter says proper writing instruction – once the hallmark of good schooling - stops around Year 7.
From then on, kids are left free-wheeling and largely clueless about how to express the thoughts in their head.
When more sophisticated thinking is required as they move into the higher grades, they flounder, and by the time they get to university – if they make it that far – they really struggle.
It was while teaching business history to tertiary students in New Zealand that Dr Hunter realised just how compromised young people were, and it inspired him to write a book on essay writing.
Schools then asked him to write a version for younger audiences, and his Writer’s Toolbox took off from there.
What his experience shows is that two things need to drastically change.
Universities must sharpen teacher-training programs to include the essentials of good writing, and the government must strip back the curriculum to allow schools to once again put a laser focus on core skills.
We can’t expect kids to pick up writing by osmosis.
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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)
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