Ohio Catholic classical school sues city to protect civil rights, religious freedom

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing a small, Catholic college preparatory school filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to challenge an Ohio city’s ordinance that requires the school to violate its religious beliefs in employment, admissions, and other policies or risk fines and jail time.

The Lyceum provides its students with a faith-integrated, classical education and seeks to form “lifelong learners in a joyful pursuit of the Truth, who is Christ.” As a faith community, the school seeks to abide by and convey the teachings of the Bible and the doctrine of the Catholic Church, including their teachings on marriage and sexuality. But in 2018, the South Euclid City Council passed a sweeping ordinance that could force the school to hire teachers or enroll students who disagree with its mission and teachings.

“Religious schools like The Lyceum must be free to operate consistently with their faith without fear of unjust government punishment—that is their right under the First Amendment,” said ADF Legal Counsel Christiana Holcomb. “But the city’s ordinance threatens this small school with criminal penalties simply for selecting faculty and students who share its religious convictions. The Lyceum’s parents, students, and faculty have agreed to live by community standards rooted in Catholic teaching. The city’s hostile regulation not only threatens the school, it also undermines the rights of parents and students who deliberately seek out this unique, faith-based education.”

Initial drafts of the South Euclid ordinance contained an explicit provision that allowed religious organizations to act consistently with their mission and teachings, but the city council removed those protections from the final text. The ordinance is also vague, making it impossible for The Lyceum’s administrators to know whether the school’s policies are in violation of the law.

Although the school has made multiple attempts to obtain clarification, the city twice illegally refused to answer the school’s public records request. And when the school directly asked the city whether its ordinance applies to The Lyceum, the city refused to say. So the school’s leaders are left with no other option but to proceed to federal court, reasonably fearing that living out and articulating their faith would directly violate city law and put them at risk of an up to $500 fine, restitution, or up to 60 days in jail per occurrence.

“The First Amendment doesn’t allow government hostility, targeting, or discrimination against religious schools because of their beliefs,” said Holcomb. “Unfortunately, South Euclid is threatening to crush The Lyceum because of its beliefs. The U.S. Supreme Court has recently made it clear on at least two occasions that the First Amendment continues to protect the belief that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. That’s why we’re asking a federal court to stop the city from enforcing its flawed and hostile law.”

The lawsuit, The Lyceum v. The City of South Euclid—filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division—argues that the city’s ordinance violates the First Amendment, the 14th Amendment, and the Ohio Constitution. Matthew Nee, one of more than 3,300 attorneys allied with ADF, is serving as local counsel in the case for the church.

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British Schools Removing Analog Clocks From Exam Halls Because Kids Can’t Read Them

I looked to see if this was datelined April 1 but it is not

Apparently, younger generations in Britain have been spending so much time on their digital devices that they can no longer tell time on analog clocks, reports Inspire To Change. So, rather than educate kids to properly read an analog clock, schools have elected to remove the clocks entirely from exam halls.

"In the UK, many educators are phasing out analog clocks in favor of digital ones," reports the outlet. "Students taking the GCSE and A-level exams were complaining that they couldn’t read the time. In order to make everything 'as easy and straightforward as possible,' they are making the switch to digital time reading."

Not only that, the clock removals are happening in northwest London at schools like Ruislip High School, a city known for its gargantuan clock. Stephanie Keenan, Head of English at the high school, said teachers are "removing analog clocks from examination halls because teenagers are unable to tell the time."

Since students are under strict time limits during aptitude examinations, analog clocks will be swapped in favor of digital ones. Often the students will interrupt the test to ask the proctor how much time is left. The digital clocks will not only allow the students to keep track, they will lead to less interruptions.

Malcolm Trobe, deputy general secretary at the Association of School and College Leaders, simply said that the new generation cannot read a traditional clock due to the presence of digital technology. "The current generation isn’t as good at reading the traditional clock face as older generations," he told The Telegraph in 2018. "They are used to seeing a digital representation of time on their phone, on their computer. Nearly everything they’ve got is digital so youngsters are just exposed to time being given digitally everywhere."

Trobe added that teachers want the kids to feel as relaxed as possible during their exams without interruption.

"You don’t want them to put their hand up to ask how much time is left," he said. "Schools will inevitably be doing their best to make young children feel as relaxed as they can be. There is actually a big advantage in using digital clocks in exam rooms because it is much less easy to mistake a time on a digital clock when you are working against time."

To put it more bluntly, that means students taking tests to measure their intelligence cannot so much as perform the basic task of reading a piece of technology that has existed for several centuries ... And. The. Schools. Are. Enabling. This.

Sally Payne, a pediatric doctor, told The Telegraph that excessive use of digital technology is making it difficult for students to so much as hold a pencil.

"To be able to grip a pencil and move it, you need strong control of the fine muscles in your fingers. Children need lots of opportunity to develop those skills," she said. "It’s easier to give a child an iPad than encouraging them to do muscle-building play such as building blocks, cutting and sticking, or pulling toys and ropes. Because of this, they’re not developing the underlying foundation skills they need to grip and hold a pencil."

This tyke-tock illiteracy extends beyond the shores of Britain and into the United States where teachers have also suggested that analog clocks be swapped for digital ones. School curriculums, however, have not dropped the ball.

"In 2014, an Arizona teacher suggested that it may be time to retire the analog clock," said the Inspire To Change report. "However, currently United States schools are still keeping analog clocks. Learning to read the hands of a clock is part of the core curriculum in many schools."

Carol Burris, executive director of the advocacy Network for Public Education, told USA Today that children benefit tremendously by learning analog time due to the mathematics involved. "The skills that you need to read an analog clock are skills that kids when they’re young begin to learn," she told the outlet. "There’s a lot of very complex mathematical manipulations that are involved in being able to tell time with an analog clock. It takes some of the math skills students are learning and gives them an important real world context."

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‘Phallic’ slur on teaching methods by two Australian feminists

They are so full of hate

A row has erupted in education circles over a push for rigorous scientific research to inform classroom teaching practices, after a prominent education academic described it as a “masculinist fantasy” that would create a workforce of “phallic teachers” obsessed with “data, tools and … probes”.

Lucinda McKnight, who educates trainee teachers at Melbourne’s Deakin University, has called for “an urgent halt to the imposition of evidence-based education”, arguing that “pretending teachers are doctors … leaves students consigned to boring, standardised and ineffective cookbook teaching”.

The extraordinary claim, which follows bipartisan political support for the establishment of an independent national evidence institute to evaluate best practice in Australian schools, has provoked a swift backlash. Academics and teachers described it as “deeply flawed”, “bizarre” and “insulting”.

In an article on the Australian Association for Research in Education website, Dr McKnight and her co-author, Monash University academic and doctor Andy Morgan, takes aim at the push for education to embrace randomised controlled trials (RCTs), which are used in medicine to test the efficacy of a new drug or health intervention.

According to the article, encouraging teachers to be like doctors seems like a good idea but is “problematic” and ignores the fact evidence-based medicine is itself in “crisis”.

“Teaching is a feminised profession, with a much lower status than medicine,” the authors wrote. “It is easy for science to exert a masculinist authority over teachers, who are required to be ever more scientific to seem professional.

“They are called on to be phallic teachers, using data, tools, tests, rubrics, standards, benchmarks, probes and scientific trials, rather than ‘soft’ skills of listening, empathising, reflecting and sharing.” The article, based on a paper in the latest Journal of Education Policy, has been shared widely on social media and has sparked robust debate.

Pamela Snow, an expert in language and literacy at La Trobe University, described as “insulting” the assumption that “poor feeble women … would not be able to cope with the rigours of science’s analytic tools”.

“There is no connection ­between genitalia and the tools of scientific inquiry,” she said.

Dr Snow said teachers had an obligation to be aware of the latest research studies. “No one is pretending teachers are doctors but if they want to be afforded at least some professional autonomy then they have to accept professional accountability.”

Teacher and education blogger Greg Ashman, who has published a book about evidence-informed teaching practice, said the authors had taken legitimate criticism to launch an attack on the “entire concerto of evidence-based education”.

“Clearly, not all evidence is equal. Some randomised controlled trials are better than others. Some correlational studies are better than others,” he said.

“As teachers, it is time to build the expertise to evaluate these claims ourselves.”

Dr McKnight declined to speak to The Weekend Australian. On social media she claimed she had been “misrepresented”.

“I would like to emphasise that we are calling for scrutiny, not for ­rejecting scientific evidence.”

Dr Morgan said the medical industry had learned hard lessons about the application of evidence, including that an approach proven effective in a large population group might still be unsuitable for a particular patient, that should be heeded by educators.

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