I remember how it was -- JR
Tuesday, September 06, 2022
How New Orleans School Vaccine Mandate Is Affecting Students
New Orleans requires all students older than 5 attending public school to be vaccinated against COVID-19 unless a parent signs an exemption form.
Parents may claim an exemption to the mandate on philosophical, religious, or medical grounds and submit the form to their child’s school to avoid having to vaccinate their child.
Those exemption forms appear to be a formality, as any parent who applies for an exemption likely will get it.
In an email to The Daily Signal, Taslin Alfonzo, director of media relations for New Orleans Public Schools, said:
For students who are unvaccinated, the policy is for schools to work with families to fill out the form, if their child has not been vaccinated. All students, teachers, and staff–and particularly those who may be unvaccinated– are strongly encouraged to participate in routine, weekly molecular testing.
The New Orleans school system “does not deny an education to any child,” Alfonzo added. “All unvaccinated students are required to fill out an exemption form, if they don’t get the vaccine. Our schools work with families to fill out the form.”
According to New Orleans Public Schools, that requirement went into effect Feb. 1 and applies to the ongoing 2022-23 school year.
Data from the New Orleans Health Department website shows that, as of Aug. 30, only around 53% of school-age children have completed their vaccine regimen. Around 66% have initiated the vaccine regimen.
In the District of Columbia, about 40% of black students ages 12-17 are not fully vaccinated, as The Daily Signal previously reported.
Like the District, New Orleans is a majority-black city; the U.S. Census Bureau reports that nearly 60% of New Orleans is African American. On top of that, most public school students, 85%, in the Big Easy are black, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Unlike in the nation’s capital, virtual learning exists in New Orleans as an option for unvaccinated children, but only in certain cases.
The school system’s Alfonzo said: “Remote learning is only available to students requiring the option due to health conditions as documented by a physician and provided to their respective school for approval.”
In a separate phone interview, Louisiana State Superintendent of Schools Cade Brumley said he fought for the exemption forms so that parents could make health decisions for their own children.
“I have respected local control and I have fought for that throughout the pandemic. But at the same time, government doesn’t own children,” Brumley said, adding:
Children belong to their parents and children are supported by their parents. And whenever it comes to a health decision such as a vaccine, I just want to make sure that our parents in the state of Louisiana have access to the dissent form if that aligns with what they feel is best for their family.
*******************************************
Concerned parents take Welsh government to court to stop 'extreme ideology' gender identity and sex education being taught to children as young as three
Parents have taken the Welsh government to court to stop gender identity and sex being taught to children aged three to 11 in primary schools.
Campaigners against the new Relationships and Sexuality Education curriculum, which is due to begin next week, are seeking a High Court injunction to prevent the policy.
They want a temporary ban until a judicial review to the curriculum is heard later this year, or an opt-out for parents to remove their children from the mandatory classes.
The legal challenge has been brought by Public Child Protection Wales who say the curriculum is inappropriate for primary age children.
Paul Diamond, representing the claimants, acknowledged the seeking of an injunction at the eleventh hour was an 'uphill task' but was 'one of those exceptional cases'.
'It cannot be more important, and the issues cannot be more fundamental to our society involving the rights of families, the rights of children and the rights of fundamental liberties under the common law,' he told the High Court.
Mr Diamond said the claimants, who were not identified in court, are four mothers and one father and were 'fighting for their children as any parent would'.
'They feel weak, powerless and believe it is a David versus Goliath conflict, but children are often their only legacy in life,' he said.
'And never stand in the way of a mother who would protect their child.
'There are a number of wider questions that will come before the substantive hearing.
'There has been a shift in the liberal order, the right of individuals to choose their own good life without state interference to now a requirement that people and individuals and private organisations must have the same views endorsed by the state.
'The question is whether we have a free, open tolerant society? Or, we say, an extremist, intolerant, almost totalitarian society imposed by the state.
'We say the extremism and intolerance is by the Welsh ministers and this cannot only lead to injustice and the seeking of uniformity.
'It will result in societal breakdown and will result in authoritarianism and that is why this case raises wider issues.
'We say it is the claimants who are the moderate, tolerant, decent citizens who seek the protection of the court and why this is an important case.
'Our society is consumed with irrational ideologies, a lack of tolerance and cancel culture. There is an atmosphere of fear and lack of free speech and a culture without freedom.'
Mr Diamond told Mrs Justice Tipples during a remote hearing that 'matters of moral, ethical, religious, conscience and sex' have always been treated as 'unique prerogatives of parents'.
'Religious education has been a standalone subject and so has sex education,' Mr Diamond said.
'This has been the standard position of education in the UK that education laws should be limited to non-political, non-ethical subjects conveyed by schools in a neutral fashion.
'Individuals are able to determine their own view of the common good.'
The judge questioned why the injunction was only sought earlier this month when the legal challenge was launched in April.
Mr Diamond said the parents were only informed at the end of the June by letter that the curriculum was going to be implemented in September but acknowledged they 'could be criticised for not moving faster'.
'They don’t want to do this. You are not dealing with Spanish shipping owners or city firms with solicitors,' he said.
'They don’t want to go to court, they don’t want to go down this route, they just want to protect their children.
'We are talking about the most extreme ideological imposition on children in this country and it is considerably worse than what the English legislation provides, which still effectively provides for opt outs.
'This is highly controversial and is not even scientific and is totally aggressive ideology - a man cannot be a woman.
'They believe their children and other children would be irreparably damaged - especially vulnerable children.
'It is a question of children and parents’ rights. It is going to shift the balance between the state and parents. This is just the beginning. Who runs the children? The parents or the state?'
Emma Sutton, representing the Welsh Government, opposed the application and said what the claimants were seeking was impractical as the curriculum would be woven into all classes, regardless of subject.
'In terms of the timescale, it is wholly significant that what is being suggested is to stop a process that has been in effect for a considerable period of time - a number of years,' she said.
'Less than a week is to pass now before the curriculum is going to be implemented. It is a late hour and it is too late for the claimants to come to the court in the way that they have.
'RSE will be a mandatory element of an entirely new comprehensive framework for the curriculum in Wales.
'The purpose of RSE is to help pupils to develop as healthy, confident individuals by providing them with developmentally appropriate teaching that will give them a proper understanding of relationships and sexuality.
'It has an emphasis on rights, equality, equity, and it seeks to enable pupils to understand and respect differences and diversity.'
Miss Sutton said there was no legislation to excuse pupils from attending lessons and the Welsh Government was not acting unlawfully.
'The Welsh ministers have no power to suspend RSE teaching and the court should not order the Welsh ministers to do something that they have no power to do,' she added.
Mrs Justice Tipples said she would adjourn and given an oral ruling on the application on Thursday morning.
The judicial review hearing will take place over two days from November 15 before Mrs Justice Steyn.
************************************************
Million Australian ‘teen robots’ on path to illiteracy, OECD warns
A global education leader has criticised Australia’s shallow school curriculum for producing “second-class robots’’, as damning new data reveals a million teenagers are on a track to illiteracy over the next five years.
Andreas Schleicher, education and skills director with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has warned that Australia has “made learning often a mile wide, but just an inch deep’’.
“I would say that is one of the real challenges in Australia,’’ he says in a speech prepared for the National Catholic Education Conference next week.
“The challenge is to teach fewer things at greater depths.
“If you look at the top-performing education systems, that’s what they do. They often focus more on deep conceptual understanding rather than just surface content.’’
Mr Schleicher called for more rigour in the curriculum to teach children to think for themselves and collaborate, instead of educating “second-class robots, people who are good at repeating what we’ve told them’’.
“We have made students passive consumers of a lot of learning content,’’ he said.
Mr Schleicher oversees the world’s biggest comparative school test, the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which has revealed a startling slide in achievement among Australian 15-year-olds compared to students from 75 other industrialised countries over the past decade. Since 2003, Australian students have dropped from 11th place in maths to 29th, from eighth place in science to 15th, and from fourth to 16th in literacy.
Criticism of the national curriculum – which was simplified and “decluttered” in April following a two-year review – coincides with warnings of alarmingly low literacy levels among students.
The most recent PISA test, involving 14,000 Australian students in 2018, found one in five teens reads at the lowest of seven levels of proficiency – a level the OECD regards as “too low to enable them to participate effectively and productively in life”. Only 60 per cent read at a “proficient standard’’ of level three.
Learning First chief executive Ben Jensen has extrapolated the data to calculate that 800,000 Australian students have substandard literacy levels. He predicts that will soar to a million by 2028, unless they are given help to catch up with reading and writing.
“Translated across the school system, that means a million students, out of just over four million, who cannot read well enough to have a productive career and a full life,’’ he writes in Inquirer on Saturday. “The evidence shows that when students who are behind are taught clearly identified and sequenced knowledge appropriate to their grade level, using high-quality instructional materials, they can accelerate … learning and make up huge ground.’’
Dr Jensen also criticised the new national curriculum, which the Australian Primary Principals Association has declared “impossible to teach”. He said Australia’s curriculum is “not high-quality and knowledge-rich’’.
“It does nothing to guarantee the knowledge students are supposed to learn,’’ he said.
“It fails to provide teachers with comprehensive, high-quality instructional materials.’’
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which released the new curriculum in April, has withheld the 2022 NAPLAN results until year’s end. Last year’s testing of a million children found one in five teenage boys is semiliterate, with one in 10 girls and one in five boys failing to reach the minimum standard for writing in Year 9.
Mr Schleicher, a physicist and statistician who studied in Australia for his masters in science from Deakin University, is special adviser on education policy to OECD secretary-general Mathias Cormann, Australia’s former finance minister and special minister of state. He said that in PISA’s reading literacy tests, “Australia has gone backwards’’.
“I’m not saying that Australian students learn less necessarily but when it comes to those advanced knowledge management skills, this is where they increasingly struggle,’’ he said.
Mr Schleicher said the curriculum must teach children to out-think robots, and “think for themselves and collaborate with others’’. He said top-performing education systems “look at the realm of human knowledge, the realm of ethics and judgment, the realm of political and civic life, the realm of creativity, aesthetics, design, of physical health, natural health, economic life’’.
“(They teach) those fundamental concepts that make us different from the artificial intelligence that we have created in our computers. Teaching fewer things at greater depths is really one of the key challenges.’’
Mr Schleicher said the most successful countries in education used “rigour, making sure that students are challenged in every moment of their learning’’.
“It’s about focus, teaching fewer things at greater depths.
“Success is about remaining true to the disciplines, helping students understand the ideas, the foundations of a discipline.’’
***********************************
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)
*******************************
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment