I remember how it was -- JR
In Woke Wars, Faith-Based Virginia Schools See Enrollment Jump
Schools rooted in a biblical worldview are seeing increased enrollment in Virginia, while public schools are faltering.
According to a recent report, Catholic schools in Northern Virginia have seen a 10% increase in enrollment since 2019.
The Catholic Diocese of Arlington covers the entirety of Northern Virginia, including Loudoun County, which has been at the heart of the controversy over gender ideology in schools. The diocese is home to 50 schools, ranging from pre-K through high school. Collectively, these schools have 18,488 students this year, a jump of nearly 2,000 since the fall of 2019.
Arlington’s bishop, Michael Burbidge, told The Washington Stand, “One reason for this change is, parents value the underlying philosophy of Catholic education, that parents are the first and primary educators of their children and that schoolteachers and administrators are there to support them in that journey.”
He continued, “[P]arents recognize that young people hear so many untruths and falsehoods in our world today. Thus, they look to enroll their children in schools that, in addition to excellence in education, assist them with the spiritual formation of their children, and teach them the truth in love.”
Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at the Family Research Council, further pointed to school closures as a key issue for parents.
“Catholic schools were among the first to reopen for in-person learning,” she told The Washington Stand. “Parents remember this well—Catholic or not. One of the reasons for the election of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) was disappointment over school closures in progressive counties that were too long and COVID protocols that were onerous and unsupported by research or even ‘the science.’”
“The debate over gender identity in Loudoun County added insult and very real injury,” she added. “The Arlington Diocese has been faithful to [the Catholic Church’s] teachings on sex and gender, so parents feel their children will be safe from queer-theory indoctrination, in addition to knowing the schools can be relied on.”
Since 2020, the Loudoun County Public Schools board has been a hotbed of controversy surrounding gender-ideology policies in schools.
Leesburg Elementary School gym teacher Tanner Cross was suspended in 2020 after citing his Christian faith and complaining to the school board of a policy requiring teachers to refer to students by “preferred” pronouns differing from students’ biological sexes.
West Point High School teacher Peter Vlaming was fired later that year, also for refusing to use a transgender-identifying student’s “preferred” pronouns. Another teacher was barred from including a Bible verse in her email signature.
The Loudoun County Public Schools board also ordered teachers to keep students’ gender transitions and “preferred” pronouns a secret from students’ parents and stocked school library shelves with LGBTQ+ propaganda and pornographic materials.
Other teachers complained of hostile and toxic working environments created by school board policies on gender ideology, critical race theory, and COVID-19, including threats to fire teachers for not wearing face masks.
Outrage against the Loudoun County Public Schools board culminated after the board attempted to cover up the rape and sexual assault of female students by another student.
In May 2021, a male student identifying as “gender fluid” sodomized a 12-year-old girl in the women’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School. School authorities reported the incident to the local authorities, resulting in criminal charges. The perpetrator was transferred to Broad Run High School in the same school district.
Shortly afterward, the Loudoun County Public Schools board voted to approve a new policy allowing students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that do not correspond to their biological sexes.
When confronted by the Stone Bridge victim’s father, who argued such a policy would only allow further sexual assaults, the school board told him there were no records of a sexual assault.
In October 2021, the same “gender fluid” male student sexually assaulted another female student at Broad Run High School. A state grand jury later declared that the Loudoun County Public Schools board “failed at every juncture” in protecting the two female students from rape and sexual assault, and Superintendent Scott Ziegler was indicted for covering up the rape and the sexual assault, even keeping the information from the school board.
Earlier this year, Youngkin mandated students use the bathrooms and play on the sports teams that correspond to their biological sexes and ordered teachers to inform parents of students’ gender transitions or “preferred” pronouns.
“This is about doing what’s best for the child,” he explained.
Loudoun County is just one example of gender ideology dominating school districts. Kilgannon commented, “The demand for alternatives to public school shows that parents want the best for their children, and they are increasingly skeptical that public schools are up to the task.”
Catholic schools aren’t the only evidence of this trend. Other biblically rooted schools in the area have also seen increased interest and enrollment.
Cornerstone Christian Academy in Middleburg, Virginia, opened its doors on Tuesday, welcoming 545 K-8 students, with plans to add high school grades every year, according to Cornerstone Chapel Senior Pastor Gary Hamrick. The faith- and family-oriented school received a reported 2,000 admissions inquiries the week the church’s plans were announced to the public.
According to its website, Cornerstone Christian Academy focuses on “instilling a Biblical worldview [in students] and forging a culture of excellence grounded in the Truth of God’s Word.”
Kilgannon stressed the importance of such educational institutions and the importance of maintaining the values they teach.
We need to pray that all faith-based schools remain true to their doctrines and values, while expanding in an effort to meet the needs of the community. Our faith-based schools must not turn into church-subsidized, cheaper-option progressive private schools. This is an opportunity to teach and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not conform to the whims of a world gone mad.
The increased enrollment in faith-based schools comes as nearby public schools see decreased enrollment. Between the fall of 2019 and spring of 2023, enrollment in Fairfax County Public Schools, the largest school district in the state, dropped by nearly 10,000 students.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/24/in-woke-wars-faith-based-virginia-schools-see-enrollment-jump
******************************************************Climate Brainwashing the kids
Hammering K-12 school children nonstop about the dangers of climate change in every class, even math, art and gym, is child abuse.
Barely one-third of fourth graders can read or do math at grade level, according to the latest national scores, but climate activists are demanding kids hear about global warming in every class. New Jersey mandates it, and now Connecticut is following suit as the school year opens. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams is requiring every public school participate in Climate Action Day.
The climate push is nakedly political, spearheaded in New Jersey by the governor's wife, first lady Tammy Murphy, a founding member of Al Gore's Climate Reality Project. Lessons link urban heat islands to tree placement inequities, redlining and racism.
New York City holds out activist Greta Thunberg as a climate hero and role model, telling kids to "get involved in the global student climate action movement" and "get to know community leaders and register to vote." Everything short of pre-enrolling kindergarteners in the Democratic Party. Parents should be outraged.
Climate change is the Left's religion. The messaging is as heavy-handed as catechism in a religious school.
It's also scary. Children are being told that global warming is killing their favorite animals. At Slackwood Elementary School in New Jersey, first graders are taught that transportation, heating, and raising livestock are "making Earth feel unwell."
The reality is that these children are too young to comprehend the trade-offs of moving to zero carbon immediately. A first grader doesn't know Mommy can't afford an electric vehicle -- average price $53,000.
Children should be taught about the wonders of nature, learning to identify mammals, reptiles, fish and birds, oceans, plants and deserts. They are too young to address the ethical and economic implications of eliminating fossil fuels.
First graders don't understand the impact on their family's budget when the Con Ed bill doubles to pay for the shift to wind and solar, which New Yorkers are warned will happen here.
The U.S. has already reduced emissions of the six most common pollutants by 78% since 1970, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But try explaining that to a first grader who doesn't know percentages and has no frame of reference for comparing the U.S. record with, say, the soaring pollution rates in China and India.
These issues are appropriate for high school students, and they should be presented as controversies -- with all viewpoints included.
Climate education advocates say they're just teaching "facts" everyone agrees on. Don't buy it.
The scientific community is divided about the urgency of eliminating fossil fuels. A poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University of 400 geologists, climatologists, meteorologists and other scientists found that 41% do not believe global warming will cause "significant harm" during our lifetimes.
A majority of scientists also disagree with the claim kids hear from teachers that we're facing a significant increase in severe weather like hurricanes and tornadoes.
Eliminating fossil fuels on the radical Left's green timetable will clobber ordinary people: costing jobs, raising living costs and weakening America's position in the world. Yet climate change educators oppose any discussion of the cost of getting to zero.
California, New York and Oregon are currently considering mimicking New Jersey's "every class is a climate class" curriculum. But some states are resisting.
Texas state education authorities are urging districts to present the pros and cons of fossil fuels and avoid textbooks that present only one side. That's smart, considering how many moms and dads there earn a living in carbon-related industries.
In Ohio, Republican state lawmakers want to require publicly funded colleges to present all viewpoints on climate change, "encourag(ing) students to reach their own conclusions," and not to "inculcate any social, political, or religious point of view."
Good luck enforcing that on college campuses. But it should be the rule in every public school.
Parents: Stand up to the indoctrinators. Ramming the same scary message into your child's head over and over again in class after class is brainwashing.
We live in America, not China.
https://townhall.com/columnists/betsymccaughey/2023/08/23/climate-brainwashing-n2627376
********************************************************In Australian universities there is no room for dissenting views on Indigenous issues
JAMES ALLAN
Some readers may harbour a sneaking suspicion that Australia’s universities have a serious problem with collapsing viewpoint diversity among their professors and lecturers, to the extent that whole departments on campus have become conservative-free zones. They also may suspect that many university students, as well as academics, self-censor and keep their dissenting views to themselves. Spoiler alert: these suspicions are well founded.
Let me use the upcoming constitutional referendum on the voice to illustrate. Recent polls show the No side has a considerable lead. I mention these polls of the wider public’s view simply to contrast it with the very different world on our campuses. Many Australian universities officially have come out in favour of the Yes side and have done so despite the two main political parties taking opposite sides in the referendum – thereby making this a party-political matter and so the taking of sides by any publicly funded university, in part, a choosing by them and their governing boards between the political positioning of the two main parties. The University of NSW even has lit up one of its main buildings with a big “Yes”, emblematically transmogrifying the institution’s name into “UNYesW”.
It’s bad enough when big corporations use shareholder money to support one side in this referendum (virtually always the Yes side, and to the tune of tens of millions of dollars), and likewise when charities do so (arguably calling into serious question whether they are straying outside their charitable purposes, and also huge amounts of money virtually all to the pro side). But when taxpayer-funded universities use your tax dollars to take a side on a crucial constitutional referendum issue that splits the country, well, that’s even worse. It’s not just a form of virtue signalling with other people’s money; it comes close to being an improper use of taxpayer money.
Now, truth be told, some of our universities have opted not to support the Yes side. They’ve opted to stay officially neutral. Needless to say, neutrality is the best we can hope for. You see, I don’t know of a single Australian university, not one, that has come out for No. And this despite plenty of our tertiary institutions breaking cover to support the Yes side. Heck, it’s despite the majority of polled voters being against this proposal.
Now move down to a more granular level, to what things are like on campus. As a longtime out-of-the-closet political conservative (and cards on the table here, an outspoken No proponent from day one), I get a fair few people calling me to tell me what things are like on campuses around the country. Get this: most universities seem to have decided to put on “information sessions” about the voice.
I do not know of a single university that is putting on one of these events where there are the same number of No speakers as those for Yes on these panels. By contrast, I do know of a good few where every single speaker is (or, if you look up the resume, sure seems likely to be) a Yes speaker.
Let that sink in for a moment. It’s wall-to-wall supporters of the voice supposedly giving students some sort of balanced information about the voice. It would be laughable, if it weren’t. And if you query this you get this sort of basic answer: “We’ve briefed one of the speakers to give the No side.” Got that? Because the great free-speech philosopher John Stuart Mill is rolling in his grave.
No one can seriously believe that a person strongly committed to one side of a highly contentious and moralised issue can do even a half-decent job of giving the other side’s case.
Moreover, when a university purports to be giving a disinterested information session to faculty and students where the views expressed cover the whole range of outlooks from A all the way still to A (“Getting to Yes”, as it were), students and faculty notice. Many will say nothing; they’ll self-censor; they’ll think about what is most prudential given the upcoming promotion application or essay to hand in. And they’ll keep shtum.
I’m going to be blunt. Today’s universities are not overly congenial places for those with conservative political views. There are myriad studies out of the US and Britain showing that viewpoint diversity is collapsing on university campuses – because maybe, for a start, those with right-of-centre views would prefer we flew just the national flag, that there be some respite from the incessant acknowledgments of country, and to see the paring back of the diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy that forces everything to be seen through the prism of identity politics.
US author Jonathan Haidt, himself of the centre-left, details this loss of diverging outlooks on campus chapter and verse, and greatly laments it. Because universities aren’t meant to be factories of monolithic orthodoxy and groupthink. But more and more that is exactly what we’re seeing. If you doubt me, maybe because your memory of university life goes back three decades or more, go and find out how your old university is handling the voice referendum issue. And realise just how much of the Yes case is being run by employees of universities (second spoiler alert: nearly all of it).
Of course, when the progressive-left orthodoxies become held by the preponderance of academics and near-on all the senior managers, that also affects free speech on campus. You won’t see it by looking at university codes of conduct, policies, statutory frameworks and the like. The collapse of viewpoint diversity works more indirectly and insidiously. Many dissenters and apostates from the university orthodoxy (students included) learn to self-censor, to keep quiet, to ride out the one-sided indoctrination sessions (aka, on occasion, voice “information sessions”). Or they quit and do something else. In the context of institutions supposedly dedicated to the free flow and competition of ideas it’s a sad state of affairs.
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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