I remember how it was -- JR
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Majority of Catholic Women’s Colleges Enroll Men Who Identify As Trans Women
A majority of the Catholic women’s colleges in the United States allow men who identify as transgender women to enroll, according to a new report—despite church teaching on gender and sex.
The National Catholic Register reported on Friday that of the three dozen women’s colleges throughout the country, most are now admitting men. The publication notes that there are eight Catholic women’s colleges, all founded by Catholic female religious orders, and each of those colleges has an independent board of trustees that oversees them.
Five of the eight women’s colleges explicitly state on their websites that they allow men who identify as women to enroll in their institutions, according to the National Catholic Register. According to a pro-transgender organization, Campus Pride, two more of the colleges also allow trans-identifying students to enroll.
“We have a twofold identity crisis—both among young people captured by gender ideology, and among Catholic colleges that defy the Church and reject the Catholic teaching that is foundational to authentic Catholic education,” Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, told the National Catholic Register.
Some of those colleges go so far as to claim that their pro-transgender policies are inspired by Catholic teaching—although Pope Francis himself has explicitly rejected gender ideology. And only one of the bishops in the dioceses where these schools are located told NCR that his diocese is taking action on the policies.
1. Alverno College
At Alverno College in Milwaukee, for example, the college claims on its website: “In the Catholic tradition of caring and respect for each human person, we support students on their journey of self-discovery and recognize that gender identity may change over time.”
“Alverno has put guidelines and services in place to support transgender students as integral members of our diverse campus community. Specifically, Alverno College admits students who consistently live and identify as women,” the Alverno website states. “In addition, continuing students whose gender identity changes after admission are encouraged to persist through graduation, experiencing the personal and academic support each student deserves from an Alverno education.”
2. Mount Mary University
Mount Mary University, which is also in Milwaukee, similarly describes itself as a “Catholic university that believes and acts in accordance to the tradition of caring, respect, and educational access.” The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“As such, MMU strives to create an environment that is inclusive of all gender identities and intersectionality,” the Mount Mary University website explains. “At the undergraduate level, all individuals who identify as women (including cisgender and transgender women), intersex individuals who do not identify as male, and nonbinary individuals are eligible for admission to MMU.”
3. Mount Saint Mary’s University
Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles states that “any student who was born female or who identifies as female is eligible for admission to our traditional undergraduate women’s university.” The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
4. St. Catherine University
St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, “admits students of all genders and gender identities to the College for Adults and the Graduate College and admits all students who identify as women to the College for Women.” The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
5. College of Saint Benedict
College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, admits “applicants who were assigned female at birth, as well as those who were assigned male or female at birth but now consistently live and identify as female, transgender, gender fluid or nonbinary.” The college did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
6. Trinity Washington University
Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., reportedly allows men who identify as women to enroll, according to Campus Pride, an LGBTQ organization tracking women’s colleges’ admissions policies. The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
7. The College of Saint Mary
The College of Saint Mary in Omaha, Nebraska, is similarly reported to allow men who identify as women to enroll, according to Campus Pride. The college did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
8. Saint Mary’s College
The Daily Signal reported in November that Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, would allow men who identify as women to enroll at the college in the fall of 2024. That news was first reported by the Notre Dame student newspaper, The Observer.
In December, the college announced it was backtracking on that decision.
President Katie Conboy claimed in an email at the time the initial decision was viewed as a “reflection of our College’s commitment to live our Catholic values as a loving and just community”—but said that it is “increasingly clear” that “the position we took is not shared by all members of our community.”
The college did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Department of Education’s New Title IX Rule Just as Bad as Expected
The Department of Education just released its long-delayed Title IX rule—a rewrite of the 50 year-old civil rights law so vast that it promises to turn Title IX’s guarantee of sex equality in education completely upside down.
Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is all of a single sentence. It simply bars sex discrimination in any federally funded education program. It does not matter how much federal funding a school or institution of higher education receives. And it does not matter whether such funding from the federal government is direct or indirect. So yes, even the vast majority of private schools must comply with the rule.
But this simple longstanding prohibition on sex discrimination has been manipulated by the Biden administration to both undermine constitutional freedoms—like the freedom of speech—and erase the very women that Title IX was enacted to protect.
The Department of Education has unilaterally expanded the prohibition against discrimination based on “sex” to include a prohibition against discrimination based on: “sex stereotypes, sex-related characteristics (including intersex traits), pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
Under the Biden administration’s sweeping new Title IX rule, any K–12 school or institution of higher education that receives any federal funding would have to open girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, housing accommodations, sports teams, and any other sex-separated educational program or offering to biological boys who claim to “identify” as girls. Similarly, boys’ facilities would have to be accessible to biological girls who “identify” as boys.
And the law’s decimation of equality doesn’t stop there. The regulations also eliminate due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct (like the right to call witnesses, introduce evidence, or be represented by counsel during an investigation), and violates the First Amendment to the Constitution by forcing teachers and fellow students to use of a student’s “preferred pronouns.”
The regulations also require K-12 schools to accept a child’s gender identity regardless of biological sex without providing any notice to, much less seeking the approval of, the child’s parents.
And while the Education Department has punted, at least for the moment, on its second Title IX rule—one that applies only to athletics—the Biden administration’s representation that sports are not included in today’s rule is a complete head fake. By expanding the definition of “sex” to include “gender identity” and applying the rule to all “extracurricular activities,” male and female athletic teams will be a thing of the past. Indeed, the word “athletics” appears in the new rule at least 31 times.
Furthermore, the Department of Education’s reading of Title IX lacks any support in the text of the title, its implementing regulations, and the law’s congressional history.
Congress had a chance in 1987 to amend the Title IX “sex” definition to include “gender identity,” when it amended Title IX under the Civil Rights Restoration Act. But it did not.
Executive agencies are empowered only to promulgate “rules” or “regulations” that implement or interpret laws passed by Congress—not to create completely new laws.
Apparently, the Department of Education has forgotten that.
Now the question isn’t if legal challenges will follow, but how fast they’ll come.
The Independent Women’s Law Center has already indicated it is readying a lawsuit against the Department of Education. Others are likely to follow. Let’s hope so.
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Australian schools have been ordered to use this teaching method. Will staff comply?
This should be a non-issue. A good teacher will do both things: Get the kids thinking first then tell them what they need to know
Last month, every public school teacher across the state was told they would be getting some training.
On their first day back from the autumn holidays, a professional learning session would cover explicit teaching.
For some veteran educators, it meant revisiting what they had known for decades and covered in teachers’ college. For their younger colleagues, explicit teaching – where students are given clear, step-by-step instructions – represents the industrial-era model of schooling their university lecturers taught them to fear.
Explicit teaching typically involves telling students sitting in rows the steps required to perform a skill or task at the start of the lesson before allowing them to practice it. In contrast, inquiry learning means confronting students with a problem and asking them to try and work out the answers for themselves, similar to how a scientist might. Advocates say inquiry-based learning fosters more in-depth understanding and deep thinking. Explicit teaching adherents believe inquiry learning is ineffective, wastes time and unnecessarily confuses students.
While schools in NSW over the past two decades have adopted inquiry-based learning, conservative voices in the education sector have been increasingly agitating for the use of explicit teaching.
Backed by academics who had studied the science of learning, The Australian Education Research Organisation reviewed more than 328 studies and found explicit instruction was an effective teaching practice across a variety of contexts for different subgroups of students.
In the wake of that evidence, the NSW Department of Education told staff this month that teachers would be supported “to ensure explicit teaching strategies are embedded in every classroom”.
“Explicit teaching is effective when learning is new or complex because it is responsive to how the brain processes, stores and retrieves information,” an email sent earlier this month said.
At a recent meeting in Sydney’s CBD at the headquarters of the conservative think tank, The Centre for Independent Studies, University of Texas education researcher Sarah Powell gave a talk alongside Australian maths teacher Toni Hatten-Roberts. Both are explicit teaching proponents and believe students should rote learn certain facts, such as multiplication tables, in primary school.
Powell said when schools prioritised inquiry-based learning, they missed out on opportunities for children to learn their times tables.
“It ends up a lot of the time related to socioeconomic status – parents who have the time and the knowledge and the wherewithal are practising their [multiplication] facts, they’re doing flashcards, they’re singing the songs, and they’re doing this in the car as they go to soccer practice,” she said.
“There are other parents who don’t have the time. They’re working two shifts at the hospital and they maybe don’t even know that they should be practising [times tables] in the home. It ends up being the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”
Like the decades-long reading wars or the maths wars that have gripped US educators, the debate between explicit and inquiry learning has morphed into a kind of culture war in Australia, where academics’ views are pitted against right-wing think tanks.
While those who adhere to the inquiry ideology believe more in-depth learning happens when students work things out for themselves, those who see the value in explicit teaching believe students must have the ability to perform mathematical calculations using well-rehearsed procedures quickly and accurately.
Students should also be able to recall some facts, like times tables, to the point of automaticity. Doing so, they say, provides a strong foundation for higher-level mathematics skills needed for problem-solving, reasoning, and critical thinking, as well as real-world problem-solving.
In response to the department’s explicit teaching focus, university academics across the country rose into action to criticise it for overemphasising explicit instruction. They described it as unproven by research while undermining teachers’ professional authority.
Western Sydney University senior lecturer Dr Lynde Tan acknowledged a variety of skills could be taught and improved through explicit teaching, but research found the method was laden with inherent risks and required precautions.
The teaching style behind the state’s top-performing schools
“These risks include: students’ over-reliance on the teacher as the knowledge provider inhibits self-directed learning, which is a key 21st-century skill in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world. The rigidity inherent in explicit teaching prioritises recall of facts and rote learning over critical thinking,” she said.
Associate Professor Jorge Knijnik said the edict undermined teachers’ professional autonomy. He said explicit teaching, which was centred around the teacher who does most of the talking, could complement more contemporary approaches to maximise learning.
NSW Mathematical Association president Katherin Cartwright told the Herald that explicit teaching and inquiry-based learning were not mutually exclusive.
“It is not free-for-all when you see inquiry-based learning. It is a joy to see kids understand how something works and why it works,” she said.
“Death by PowerPoint seems to be returning. Now all these teachers are making PowerPoints for every single lesson. You might get immediate results on tests, but it is not giving them deep knowledge and skills in how to reason.”
But Dr Greg Ashman, a maths teacher, author and long-time proponent of explicit teaching said occasionally explaining a concept or skill to students was not the same as using explicit instruction in every lesson.
“As long as I have been arguing about explicit teaching versus inquiry learning, I have had people respond that their version of inquiry learning includes a lot of explicit instruction. What they mean is that they occasionally explain things to students,” he said.
“However, that’s quite different to a systematic approach where all concepts are explained, and all procedures demonstrated before students are asked to use these concepts and procedures. That’s what I mean by explicit teaching.
“I honestly have no idea how NSW is going to train all its teachers in explicit teaching in a day, especially given the entrenched inquiry ideology.”
The push towards explicit teaching is part of the NSW Department of Education’s plan for public education, which has a focus on reducing gaps in student outcomes, due to structural inequities.
NSW Teachers Federation deputy president Amber Flohm said explicit teaching was a valuable methodology but cautioned against making it mandatory.
“Explicit teaching must not be mandated. Ultimately, teachers will adapt and adopt when explicit teaching is critical, but there are other times when students demonstrate understanding of a concept, the teacher should be able to use their judgment.”
The Herald asked the department how it planned to monitor whether teachers were actually using explicit teaching in light of opposition from proponents of other methods. A spokesman did not directly answer that question, but said it could survey students and parents to ask them about their experiences of explicit teaching.
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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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