At Last, A Victory for Education: Maryland Governor Comes Through for Private Schools

The war over school reopenings has been raging for weeks as public school teachers and their unions refuse to go back to their jobs this fall. The CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics have both recommended that children return to the classroom for the new school year as long as social distancing requirements are met.

Progressive teachers' unions, however, have discovered that they may have leverage in achieving some political goals if they stay away, putting parents in a bind and leaving their pupils in isolation, strapped to feeble distance learning. Parents who have long sent their kids to public schools are seeking other options like private and charter schools, as well as smaller homeschooling pods. After all, freedom from the public school system would mean freedom from the political leveraging of the teachers' unions and the bureaucratic red tape wrapped public schools.

But the teachers and the school officials see the actual loss of their students as the opposite of their desired outcome by affecting a walk-out of their duties. One major union, backed by the ultra-progressive Justice Democrats PAC, even demanded an end of charter schools as one condition in which they would consider returning to work, a far cry from the chorus of safety and isolation they had been signing. Another, unsurprisingly, was defunding the police.

Taking a cue from the teachers, unions, protesters, and schools, officials from Montgomery County, a wealthy Washington, D.C., suburb, ignited a firestorm last week when they mandated the closure of private schools, overruling their independent educational systems that operate separately from county public schools.

Critics immediately noted that the rejection of official guidelines and overreach by county officials was tantamount to tyranny, and put children and families in jeopardy for no reason backed by science.

But the state governor, Republican Larry Hogan, stepped in at the last minute to say enough was enough.

"The blanket closure mandate imposed by Montgomery County was overly broad and inconsistent with the powers intended to be delegated to the county health officer," Hogan said. The governor's decree surprised many who considered him to be one of the strictest proponents of harmful lockdowns among all fifty states throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

But for parents fed up with their children's education being manipulated in the hands of political operatives, Hogan's order drew a firm line in the sand about the embedded power given to county officials. At least in Montgomery County, schools will be allowed to safely educate children this fall.

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Antifa Is the Natural Product of Our Educational System

Antifa or antifa—lower case a, if you prefer—may have gotten its start in Germany, but it’s flourishing here in the United States as never before.

This growth occurred even though truly achieving the movement’s stated goal—anarchy—would create chaos, leading to civilizational destruction of a likely unparalleled extent in human history in our industrialized and high-tech nation of almost 330 million.

The deepest causes of their violent and more than slightly deranged behavior are undoubtedly personal and psychoanalytic in nature. The story of the Seattle grandmother who identified her bomb-throwing grandson from video of a protective vest she bought him—he said he was “peaceful”—is a novel crying out to be written.

But whatever the psychological profiles of the individual Antifa members, almost all of them share one thing in common:

They went to American schools.

And those schools, with only a few notable exceptions, talked down and continue to talk down the United States of America to one degree or another from kindergarten through doctorate.

It is, to my knowledge, unique in history that the public and private educational systems of a country so thoroughly and consistently criticize the country itself. (The Chinese Cultural Revolution did it briefly, but Mao’s immediate central government was always supported.)

For decades, our schools have been self-replicating machines, preaching to college students, directly or indirectly, the left-wing gospel according to Howard Zinn (and the Frankfurt School and so forth) and sending them out in turn to preach this junior varsity, critical theory Marxism themselves as teachers at whatever level at all manner of institutions throughout the country.

The youngest of those levels is perhaps the most dangerous because it’s the most impressionable.

Antifa members are therefore only doing what they have been taught all along, getting rid of a cancer called the United States.

This connection between Antifa and the teaching profession is so profound that some insist the majority of those hidden behind the black masks are indeed teachers. Others, needless to say including the liberal media, have denied this.

It’s impossible to know for certain. Antifa, like some Islamic terror groups, doesn’t have a formal leadership structure; why would they need it? They also don’t keep records.

This, however, is probably a case where the cliché about smoke and fire applies. Whether Antifa is 50 percent teachers or 20 percent teachers, it’s a lot of teachers.

Any reader of websites such as The College Fix or Campus Reform can see the extent to which almost all our schools have their tentacles buried deeply into the supposed social justice causes espoused more militantly in the streets by Antifa.

The governors and mayors of the localities where the riots are taking place are themselves the products of the same educational institutions. This may account in part for their reluctance to crack down. Some part of them is identifying with the rioters.

They want to burn it down, no matter if the violent protests lead to the renaming of this country as New Venezuela, figuratively and literally.

Antifa is an excruciating public manifestation of a very deep infection that has metastasized throughout our society from the schools.

It will only get worse if we don’t change our educational system—pronto.

Ironically, the beginnings of this change are one of the few, perhaps the only, good things to emanate from the pandemic.

With schools shut or online, many are evaluating whether the system serves our young people, practically (in terms of careers) or ideologically.

What kind of education is it when 95 percent of college professors vote Democratic, and mostly left Democratic at that?

Viewpoint diversity, anyone? Shall I homeschool my child? Shall I send him or her to college, so they can come back at Thanksgiving in an Antifa T-shirt and accuse me of being a capitalist pig when I just spent 50 grand for their tuition?

Something is wrong with this picture.

Change is undoubtedly coming. As a wise man once said, “Faster, please.” I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of mush-brains throwing firebombs at police stations.

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Illinois Lawmaker Pushes for Schools to Abolish History Curriculum in the State

An Illinois lawmaker is seeking to remove school history classes in his state until a reformed curriculum is created that doesn't promote racism.

Rep. LaShawn K. Ford, a Democrat from Chicago, said in a Sunday press conference that current history lessons are miseducating children about the past, NBC 5 in Chicago reported.

According to a press release unveiled just before Sunday's event, Ford said the current history lessons in Illinois "unfairly communicate our history," and they should be replaced with civics until there is a proper representation of subject matter within the curriculum.

"It costs so much to print books and it costs so much of taxpayers to continue to pay for their kids and their children to be miseducated," said Ford at the press conference. "And not only does it cost when you pay your taxes, but costs us as a society in the long run forever."

He also said current history classes lead to "white privilege and a racist society," according to ABC 7 in Chicago.

Other speakers at the press conference noted that the current history instruction also fails to include Jewish and LGBTQ figures.

Evanston Mayor Steve Hagerty, also a Democrat, didn't comment on Ford's proclamation about the abolishment of history classes, but he did say he supports House Bill 4954.

The bill would change the school code to include commemorative holidays like Humanitarian Day (January 15), Violence Wholly Day (April 4), and Dream Day (August 28). It also would require elementary school lessons about the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s.

"Personally, I support House Bill 4954 because I am interested in learning more and believe the history of Black people should be taught to all children and include all groups, Women, LatinX, and Native Indians who helped to build America," Hagerty said in a statement. 

In February, Ford added an amendment to the bill to call for not only more teachings on civil rights, but also on the history of the African slave trade, slavery in America, and the vestiges of slavery in this country. There is no mention in the bill of the replacement of civics instead of history before the curriculum goals can be met.

As of late June, the bill was referred to the Illinois House Rules Committee.

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How we lost trust in our universities

Australian National University vice-chancellor and astronomer Brian Schmidt, who is the only university leader in the world to win a Nobel prize (for physics), made a telling point in his annual Foundation Day address this week. Australia needs universities more than ever amid the COVID-19 crisis, he said. But they have possibly never been more distrusted.

In an interview with Tim Dodd earlier this year, Professor Schmidt identified what families want universities to be. That is, a place where “Australian students can get an education as good as any place in the world but distinctively Australian”. That aspiration should serve as a model for our universities, which, since the days of the Colombo Plan in the 1950s, have attracted students from around the world for their quality and for the experience most students enjoy.

For decades the sector built on that reputation to the point where last year education had grown into the nation’s fourth-largest export, worth $40bn to the economy. For now, at least, the coronavirus has smashed the business model centred on international students. But that is only one of a range of problems facing the sector, as serious revelations reported in recent weeks have shown.

Most of these come down to the issue of standards, which university leaders must improve and defend if their institutions are to serve the nation and retain (or recover) their international reputations. Contentious cultural issues of academic freedom and censorship also loom large.

Suspicions that some institutions have “gone soft” in marking the work of foreign students have been rife for years. Alarm bells should be ringing among university leaders after confirmation that lecturers are being cowed into lowering academic standards by organised networks of overseas students. Academics admit they have “dumbed down” courses to ensure foreign students can complete degrees. Lecturers who refuse risk being targeted by official complaints signed by up to 100 students, as reported on Wednesday. It is even more alarming that such complaints are taken seriously by university executives and have the potential to derail academic careers. Language barriers are a major part of the problem, as local students know from experience. In defending standards, universities must insist on proficiency in English.

Recent scandals also show how far universities have strayed from what should be central to their raison d’etre — free speech and academic freedom. As Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven wrote recently, universities have two types of problems with freedom of academic expression. One is corporate, “where an academic writes something that could rile a major stakeholder: a sponsoring corporation, a government partner or — frankly — China”. Vice-chancellors understandably, but not heroically, Professor Craven noted, “feel for their institutional wallet”. The second assault on academic freedom is more insidious because it is internal. “An academic strikes trouble because he or she writes something counter to the accepted wisdom of their faculty or university as a whole.”

Despite an admirable policy on free speech, the University of NSW resorted to censorship when it withdrew a tweet quoting adjunct law lecturer and Australian director of Human Rights Watch Elaine Pearson criticising China’s miserable human rights record in Hong Kong. UNSW vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs, to his credit, has apologised for the decision to delete the tweet.

The suspension of pro-Hong Kong democracy student activist Drew Pavlou by the University of Queensland also smacked of repressive censorship. Both universities’ approaches were anathema to Western ideals of free speech. But Chinese Communist Party propagandist media, unsurprisingly, were deeply critical of both Ms Pearson and Mr Pavlou. Such erosion of intellectual integrity has compromised universities’ credibility.

The treatment of James Cook University physicist Peter Ridd by his employers also was indicative of an increasing hostility to debate on campus. The cardinal sin that brought about Dr Ridd’s demise was his questioning of the rigour of university-linked research on the health of the Great Barrier Reef under climate change.

Last year’s campus free speech report by former High Court chief justice Robert French made the point that university codes of conduct could be hostile to the freedoms they purported to uphold. That is particularly the case in relation to opinions that challenge progressive norms among academics. But when it suits them, some faculties prefer to turn a blind eye to empirical evidence. For instance, too many education faculties fail to prepare trainee teachers to use phonics in teaching children to read, despite impressive evidence about the method’s effectiveness compared with trendier “whole-word recognition” systems. Nor should promoting “cancel culture” be academics’ focus.

Regardless of such problems, universities remain our prime drivers of ideas and scientific breakthroughs. As Professor Schmidt said, few people realise how large and direct a part the ANU and other universities are playing in the fight against coronavirus. During the enforced interruption in their operations because of the pandemic, vice-chancellors and other leaders have a chance to raise academic standards, reinforce the value of free speech and improve accountability to taxpayers and to the Australian students who primarily fund universities. Doing so would rebuild trust and enhance their international standing.

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