I remember how it was -- JR
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Parents Question Why Virginia High School Staging Drag Musical, Brunch
Rather sickening
A high school theater troupe is staging the risque musical “Kinky Boots” just outside the nation’s capital “in collaboration” with a leading Virginia school system’s “Pride” programs, prompting concern and questions from some parents.
The Beyond the Page Theatre Company at West Potomac High School in Alexandria, Virginia, will perform “Kinky Boots” eight times between Thursday and May 4, according to emails obtained by The Daily Signal.
A “drag brunch” and a “talk back” session on the need for more “LGBTQ+ plays/musicals” are scheduled in connection with the production, spurring concern among parents.
In a letter Tuesday to the high school’s principal, parents wrote that “it is our belief that such content does not belong on school property, especially when it involves minors.”
The 2013 Broadway musical “Kinky Boots” tells the story of a struggling shoe factory owner who partners with a local drag queen to save the factory by dressing all of the male employees in drag for a show.
An email from the West Potomac Theatre Boosters does warn that the musical, a collaboration between pop singer Cyndi Lauper and actor-playwright Harvey Fierstein, “contains strong language and mature content.”
The eight performances of “Kinky Boots” aren’t the only planned events. A “Talkback [sic] with FCPS Pride”—or Fairfax County Public Schools Pride—is scheduled Saturday to “explore the significance of producing LGBTQ+ plays/musicals, delve into drag history, and explore ways to support the LGBTQ+ community.”
And on May 4, a “drag brunch” will be held before the 1 p.m. show, featuring “some of D.C.’s most fabulous performers: Dixie Crystal, Pirouette, and Orpheus Rose.”
Fairfax County Public Schools serves just under 180,000 students in northeastern Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.
Some local parents are outraged by the staging of “Kinky Boots” at a high school and voiced “strong objection” to both the content of the musical and the associated events in a letter Wednesday to Jessica Statz, principal of West Potomac High School, which includes grades 9 through 12. They wrote:
We understand that artistic expression comes in various forms, but we must tactfully express our view that ‘drag’ is not merely an art form but often associated with adult entertainment and, in some contexts, sex work.
Therefore, it is our belief that such content does not belong on school property, especially when it involves minors.
Some Fairfax County parents also asked that Statz clarify any minimum age to attend the musical and associated events; requirements for parental accompaniment and parental notice; and the educational value and financial cost of the musical.
Some parents also want to know whether Fairfax County Public Schools has completed background checks of the drag performers. The school system’s policy requires background checks for adult volunteers who are in contact with children.
Fairfax County Public Schools, West Potomac High School, and Statz did not respond to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment before time of publication.
Shelly Arnoldi, one of the parents who signed the letter of protest to the principal, described the production of “Kinky Boots” and the associated events as “glamorizing sex work.”
Drag shows, in which men wear women’s makeup and clothing (often lingerie) and sing or dance in a sexually provocative manner, have been a form of adult-oriented entertainment as long as it has existed.
In 2015 in San Francisco, however, many LGBTQ+ activist groups began arguing that drag is an essential part of “expression.” Those first readers at “drag queen story hours” claimed they wanted to make reading to children less “heteronormative.”
The encouragement of inherently sexual drag shows open to minors by LGBTQ+ activist groups has stirred national outrage and condemnation, especially after incidents in which performers behaved sexually in front of or directly to underage children.
In 2022, a drag queen gyrated next to a small girl while singing derogatory, sexual lyrics at a drag event for “all ages” in Texas. Also that year, a nearly naked drag queen at an “all ages” drag brunch in Miami paraded a young girl around a restaurant full of cheering patrons.
And last year, a North Carolina community college increased the age requirement for attending drag shows after a drag queen straddled a minor at a campus event.
A Wisconsin drag queen, a member of the anti-Catholic group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, was arrested in February and charged with four counts of exploiting a child and four counts of possessing child pornography.
“Drag by definition is sexual,” Arnoldi, one of the parents protesting the production, told The Daily Signal. “They wouldn’t do a show on a girl being a stripper—that wouldn’t be appropriate either.”
Opposing the staging of “Kinky Boots” at a high school “isn’t about being gay or straight,” she said. “This is about normalizing the sex business to minors.”
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'Grading for Equity': Promoting Students by Banning Grades of Zero and Leaving No Class Cut-Ups Behind
Joe Feldman has faced many tough crowds in the course of successfully selling his “Grading for Equity” program to school districts across the nation. During the consultant’s presentations, teachers concerned that his approach lowers standards have rolled their eyes, questioned his understanding of students, and worse.
Despite the frequent resistance from teachers, dozens of districts from California to Massachusetts are giving the consultant’s ambitious project a shot. As schools face a series of crises, including a spike in chronic absenteeism and sharp academic decline, grading for equity offers a path to better grades and higher graduation rates. Its practices include the removal of behavior in calculating grades, the end of penalties for late assignments, allowing students to retake exams, and a ban on zeros as the lowest mark.
Since the pandemic, districts have been lowering standards by making grading more lenient to help struggling students, according to several studies. But Feldman insists that his sweeping overhaul isn’t part of that controversial trend. He says the practices he promotes are a matter of fairness and accuracy in an educational system that’s stacked against blacks, Latinos and other disadvantaged students.
Grading for equity, however, stirs enough dissent among teachers and parents that some districts have dropped the difficult revamp in mid-stream. They say Feldman’s reforms are a form of leniency that brings out the worst in some students, hurting the very kids he wants to help.
“What’s most troubling are the practices that lower expectations, like giving a 50 percent grade instead of a zero even when a student doesn't attempt the assignment,” said Meredith Coffey, a former teacher and now a researcher at Thomas B. Fordham Institute who co-wrote a report on grading for equity. “If students know that they could do nothing and get 50 percent, why would they work hard? Many would do nothing.”
In some districts, grading for equity is part of the controversial agenda that’s taken hold in urban areas and seeks to wash away perceived “systemic racism” in classrooms in the wake of the George Floyd murder in 2020. In Fairfax County, a district that’s embraced grading for equity, leaders have also pushed “anti-racist” education for students and paid author and crusader Ibram X. Kendi $20,000 to give a one-hour Zoom presentation, telling staff that anti-racism means working to achieve equitable outcomes.
Like critical race theory, cops in schools, and transgender bathrooms, grading for equity is galvanizing divisions in the cultural conflict over public education. Progressives support it as a path to closing the stubborn achievement gap between rich and poor students while conservatives fear it further undermines high expectations that encourage all students to strive to improve.
A savvy promoter, Feldman frequently posts on X, expressing his excitement to schools and conference organizers who tap his expertise. He likes to plug his book, too. “Grading for Equity,” with a second edition in 2023, has sold 175,000 copies, a top-five bestseller from publisher Corwin.
Grading for equity, a term coined by Feldman, isn’t a fringe movement. Some districts adopted pieces of the program before the pandemic undermined the ability of many students to keep up academically. Since then, many more districts have embraced it.
Last year, with Feldman’s help, Boston Public Schools approved a shift to equity grading. In Oregon, Portland Public Schools is making plans to implement similar grading reforms by 2025, and thousands of New York City and Los Angeles teachers have been trained in equitable grading practices. Smaller districts in California, Nevada, New York, and other states have also adopted the program.
Zenaida Perez says half of the teachers in her Fairfax district, the largest in Virginia, oppose grading for equity but are afraid to speak up because they fear retaliation. “At least 30 percent of my students definitely make less effort,” said Perez, who has taught in the district for 16 years. “Sometimes they do not come to school and I still must give them a 50%. That is absolutely ridiculous.”
In some ways, Feldman’s biggest roadblock are the students, who like all humans procrastinate if given the chance. DePaul University psychologist Joe Ferrari, who has written extensively about the condition, says 20% of people are chronic procrastinators. If schools remove deadlines with penalties, he says most students would likely also delay and delay doing their work. “People will always gravitate to the easiest path,” he said. “Humans seek pleasure and avoid pain.”
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Antisemitic Protests on College Campuses Represent ‘Anti-Western and Anti-American Movement,’ Professor Says
Pro-Palestine protests on the campuses of some of America’s most elite colleges have resulted in hundreds of arrests and led Columbia University in New York to move classes online for the remainder of the semester.
The pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, Yale, and New York University aren’t just representative of an “antisemitic movement,” but a “fundamentally an anti-Western and anti-American movement,” Bill Jacobson says.
Jacobson, a Cornell University law professor and the founder of Legal Insurrection and the Equal Protection Project, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain who or what is driving the antisemitism on America’s college campuses.
Jacobson points to the activist organization National Students for Justice in Palestine as the organizing force behind the current protests.
“They are an organization I have followed and written about for well over a decade,” Jacobson says of the pro-Palestine group. “They support terrorists. They honor people like Rasmea Odeh, who killed two Jewish students in Jerusalem.”
Jacobson points to the ideology of critical race theory, which has spread across college campuses, for this rise in antisemitism. The related push for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI, is fundamentally anti-colonialism, Jacobson says, explaining that Israel is viewed by antisemites as “colonial occupiers.”
The anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment likely will continue on college campuses, he says, because “unless you are going to change the faculty at these schools, unless you are going to change the fundamental ideologies which drive them, removing students from the courtyard isn’t going to change a thing.”
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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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