Donald Trump threatens to defund California public schools that implement The New York Times' 1619 project which reframes US history around slavery after he canceled 'un-American' federal racial sensitivity training

Donald Trump threatened to defund schools in California that use the New York Times' 1619 Project in the public school curriculum.

On Sunday Trump retweeted a message from an unverified account saying the project would be taught in schools and shared: 'Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded!'

The Pulitzer-Prize winning collection of essays, photo essays, poems, and short and short fiction pieces published last year seeks to reframe American history as starting on 1619, when the first slaves from Africa arrived to Virginia, rather than 1776, when the founding fathers declared independence from Britain.

Trump’s comments come after he banned federal agencies from conducting racial sensitivity training related to 'white privilege' and 'critical race theory' on Friday.

Critical race theory asserts that 'institutions are inherently racist and that race itself... is a socially constructed concept that is used by white people to further their economic and political interests at the expense of people of color', according to Texas A&M University professor Tommy Curry.

Russell Bought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, ordered heads of federal agencies to alter racial sensitivity training programs for employees in a two-page memo where he called such training 'un-American propaganda.'

That memo said: 'Employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend training where they are told that "virtually all White people contribute to racism" or where they are required to say that they "benefit from racism"'.

He continues: 'These types of "trainings" not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce.'

Vought subsequently states: 'The President has directed me to ensure that federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions.'

The banning of the 1619 project is the latest effort by Trump against new progressive interpretations to history that he deems un-American.

Following the project’s publication the Pulitzer Center was named an education partner for the project and announced its education team would develop education resources and curricula for teachers to use, which is online for free through the center.

Some schools said they wanted to use the 1619 Project into their curriculum but some efforts have been thwarted.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican, introduced legislation that would ban schools from teaching the 1619 Project through the Saving American History Act of 2020

In August 2019 the New York Times Magazine published the 1619 project, a collection of essays, photo essays, short fiction pieces and poems aimed to 'reframe' American history based on the impact of slaves brought to the US.

It was published to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans in the English colonies.

It argues that the nation's birth was not 1776 with independence from the British crown, but in August 1619 with the arrival of a cargo ship of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans at Point Comfort in the colony of Virginia, which inaugurated the system of slavery.

The project argues that slavery was the country’s origin and out of it 'grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional.'

That includes economic might, industry, the electoral system, music, public health and education inequities, violence, income inequality, slang, and racial hatred.

However, the project is debated among historians for its factual accuracy.

In March 2020 historian Leslie M. Harris who served as a fact checker for the project said authors ignored her corrections, but believed the project was needed to correct prevailing historical narratives.

One aspect up for debate is the timeline.

Time Magazine said the first slaves arrived in 1526 in a Spanish colony in what is now South Carolina, 93 years prior to the landing in Jamestown.

Some experts say slaves first arrived at present-day Fort Monroe in Hampton, instead of Jamestown.

Others argue the first Africans in Virginia were indentured servants as laws on lifetime slavery didn’t appear till 17th century and early 18th century, but worked essentially as slaves.

The bill would 'prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts. Schools that teach the 1619 Project would also be ineligible for federal professional-development grants.'

The legislation is unlikely to gain any traction in the Senate but voices political opposition to the reframed history.

Trump has in the past defended Confederate statues, called the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' a symbol of hate, and threatened to withhold funding for liberal cities that saw civil unrest and protests decrying police brutality and racism.

He and Attorney General William Barr have said they don’t believe systemic racism exists in the US.

The 1619 project was an effort led by the New York Times and black writers to highlight the importance African slaves and black Americans had in building the US into the superpower it is today.

Some people believe the nation’s birth and the notion of slavery started in 1776, when the founding fathers declared independence from Britain.

But the project argues it started in late August 1619 with the arrival of a cargo ship of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans at Point Comfort in the colony of Virginia, which inaugurated the system of slavery.

The project argues that slavery was the country’s origin and out of it 'grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional' including economic might, industry, the electoral system, music, public health and education inequities, violence, income inequality, slang, and racial hatred.

Essay titles in the project include 'America Wasn't a Democracy Until Black Americans Made It One', 'American Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the Plantation, 'Why Is Everyone Always Stealing Black Music?', and 'Why Doesn't America Have Universal Healthcare? One word: Race.'

However, the project is debated among historians for its factual accuracy.

Time Magazine said the first slaves arrived in 1526 in a Spanish colony in what is now South Carolina, 93 years prior to the landing in Jamestown.

In March 2020 historian Leslie M. Harris who served as a fact checker for the project said authors ignored her corrections, but believed the project was needed to correct prevailing historical narratives.

SOURCE






Teachers’ Union Won’t Go Back to School -- But Will Go to Sharpton's march

The American Federation of Teachers union boss Randi Weingarten claimed at the union's annual convention that teachers were so terrified of going back to school that they were "quitting in droves" and "making their wills".

The AFT threatened that its members would go on strike if they were expected to go back to actually doing their jobs and teaching in a classroom.

In New York City, the United Federation of Teachers, which is affiliated with the AFT, marched with cardboard coffins and fake body bags. Some union teachers wore skeleton t-shirts.

A Halloween skeleton attached to a garbage bag held a cardboard sickle and a message written next to dripping blood, "Welcome Back to School". "I can't teach from a cemetery," one sign claimed. Another declared, "We Won't Die for the Department of Education."

Despite their claim that they feared for their lives, the march had little social distancing.

A few weeks after the death march, the AFT’s teachers took a break from making out their wills to get on buses and travel to Washington D.C. to take part in Sharpton’s 50,000 person rally.

The AFT was described as “mobilizing” for the Get Your Knee off Our Necks Commitment March in Washington D.C. which included lots of hate, but few coronavirus precautions.

Photos showed staffers from the country’s second-largest teachers' union holding signs in close proximity to each other. Randi Weingarten tweeted a photo of herself embracing two other union bosses, elbow bumping Martin Luther King III, posing with the head of the Human Rights Campaign, and then with Al Sharpton, who has one arm loosely draped across her body.

Unless the AFT head shares a household with Sharpton, that’s not social distancing. But photos repeatedly show Sharpton in tight groups of people, sometimes without a mask.

And then Weingarten mounted the podium, and with her mask down, and a huge crowd to her side, began shrieking, “How much pain must black people endure?” However much pain black people have endured, the white union boss’ shrieks could only have added pain and saliva.

At one point, she screamed, “180,000 people dead of COVID” so loudly while flailing her arms that a march volunteer standing next to her stumbled backward.

If Weingarten were infected, she might have killed more black people than the police ever did.

Meanwhile the UFT was "advising members to not enter school buildings for anything other than retrieving classroom materials and supplies" because it's too just dangerous.

Weingarten had claimed that teachers were so scared of going back to work that they were, “writing their wills.” But there was nothing to be afraid of in a mob of Sharpton’s racists.

While Sharpton’s National Action Network had claimed that the D.C. rally would be socially distanced, photos repeatedly show that was not true with participants clumped closely together.

As I demonstrated in my original expose of the rally plans, it would take an area the size of 300 football fields to allow for a socially distanced rally of 100,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The NAN reduced its projected number to 50,000 when filing for a permit with the National Park Service. But that’s still way too many football fields to fit into that space.

The Get Your Knee off Our Necks Commitment March’s pandemic precautions consisted of theater like temperature checks and sanitation areas. A mobile testing tent appeared to be unused while in the 90 degree temperatures many attendees dropped their masks and gulped air and water in equal measures. The barriers made things worse with a huge crowd being confined to the area around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool packed cheek to cheek.

Some waded into the water to cool off and get a better view of the stage set up on the steps.

While yellow banners attached to the barricades ordered people to stay 6 feet apart, few were listening or could even do it. In the intense heat, some marchers passed out and crowds gathered around them. Things weren’t much better at the podium with a large number of family members of deceased criminals crowding around and people walking past them to take selfies.

Despite that, and Sharpton’s racist history, the rally included a taped message from Senator Kamala Harris, the Democrat VP nominee, and support from Governor Andrew Cuomo.

And there was plenty of participation from teachers who claim they’ll die if they go back to work.

The coffin and body bag parades are being brandished by unions to terrorize parents, even while the unions cheer on tens of thousands of black nationalists squeezing together in D.C.

The Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association had made their own coffins of children to terrorize parents into keeping schools closed. The ghoulishly vile messages on them included,  “Here lies a third grade student from Green Bay who caught COVID at school”

The union's Twitter claimed that, "It isn't a matter of if students and staff at in-person schools will get sick, it's a matter of when", even while it kept on promoting Black Lives Matter rallies.

It even retweeted a photo of the massive crowd for Sharpton's 50,000 "Get Your Knee off Our Necks Commitment March" rally where everyone was closely crowded together.

"This is how many people showed up to the #MarchOnWashington today," the tweet read.

Teachers’ union members claim that every single one of them will die if they have to set foot in a classroom, and will take all the children and their grandparents with them just like Jonestown. Meanwhile, they aren’t making out their wills when they head off to a Black Lives Matter rally.

The union’s own protests have repeatedly involved teachers crowding into small spaces to protest against school leadership and elected officials, even while claiming they’re about to die.

If the AFT’s boss and its staffers can head out to D.C., pal around with Sharpton, and then speak to a crowd of tens of thousands, its members can go back and teach school in-person.

You can’t travel around the country, crowd into protests, and then claim teaching will kill you.

The American Federation of Teachers, which has been holding school districts around the country hostage, doesn’t care about safety. It isn’t holding out because it cares about students, but because it wants power and it has the ability to shut down the entire education system.

This corrupt system, in which the Democrat activists of the AFT claim that they care so much about the kids that they refuse to teach them every time they want more money, has hit its peak.

Parents around the country are paying a fortune in taxes to subsidize the salaries of AFT hacks. They’re no longer even paying for a miserably substandard social justice education. These days they’re often paying for an online session even as the unions and the districts want higher taxes.

Sharpton’s March on Washington once again exposed the lie that the Democrats shut down the country because they care about social distancing. And it exposed the lie that the American Federation of Teachers has been threatening school districts because it cares about safety.

If Randi Weingarten can hug Al Sharpton in person, AFT’s hacks can go back to school.

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Are College Campuses Becoming Inhospitable to Jewish Students?

What is happening to Jewish students and Jewish institutions on college campuses throughout the United States is truly alarming. America in 2020 is not the same place I grew up in and as an American Jew, it is sadly becoming one for which I fear for my children and future grandchildren.

A friend recently told me something very disturbing. After her 20-year-old daughter was reading Instagram posts on @jewishoncampus, this young woman wondered whether it would be safe for Jews to live in the U.S. in the near future. Before the pandemic hit, her daughter had plans to partake in an internship in Jerusalem. While she had once thought living in Israel was merely an enjoyable opportunity to learn more about Israeli culture, she now wondered if the United States, where she was born and has been a proud citizen for her entire life, would be a safe place to raise Jewish children in the future. She now pondered whether Israel will be the safer alternative.

On @jewishoncampus, Jewish college students from all over the country are posting personal accounts of anti-Semitism on college campuses. The things they are reporting are shocking and many are coming from mainstream schools with large Jewish populations including Rutgers University, Northwestern University, Tufts University, and countless other well-regarded institutions of higher learning.

A student from Columbia University wrote, “I had a professor tell the class, (in Israeli Sociology), that anti-Semitism didn’t exist anymore in America...one week later, a temple shooting happened.” The student proceeded, “Students who believe in the Israeli state’s existence are spat on at my university. Literally and figuratively. I’ve been called a murderer publicly when walking to class for being a supporter of Israel…the girl yelled so loudly that everyone stopped to look at me. We are humiliated like that on a daily basis.”

Unfortunately, for many years, American Jews have been naïve about or taken for granted their safety and security in the United States. Since being expelled from Israel 2,000 years ago, Jews have, at first, been welcomed into countless countries where they have settled and excelled, only to be murdered or expelled. This happened throughout history and across the globe including such enlightened lands such as England, Spain, Portugal, Poland, France, Germany, in addition to those who settled in Arab lands.

In recent years it has become much more obvious how critical a Jewish homeland is for our people. Unfortunately, not only is this concept being lost on many Jewish youth in America and Europe today, but they are also failing to appreciate that Israel must continually be strengthened to ensure that it remains a safe haven for Jewish people now and for the future when our host nations become inhospitable for Jews.

Part of the issue is that many young Jews and non-Jewish Americans think of anti-Semitism as a historical issue that faded following the Holocaust or think of anti-Semitism as a threat in other countries. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Despite comprising less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, nearly 60 percent of hate crimes were targeted against Jews in 2018 according to the FBI’s hate crime statistics. Online platforms have made it easy for anti-Semites to organize and radicalize, as was most glaringly seen by white supremacists’ chants in Charlottesville in 2017 or in the current protests under Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Back in early 2017, the Women’s March on Washington brought together millions of women across the globe, yet blatantly ostracized and attacked Jewish women, regardless of their political affiliations. In fact, in 2019, three of the four founders of the organization ultimately stepped down, in large part due to their anti-Semitic history.

Jews are being attacked both physically and verbally from all sides. Of course, in many ways, we’ve always been our own worst enemies and today is no exception. As examples, Jeremy Ben-Ami, Peter Beinart and Ariel Gold have become darlings of the anti-Israel left for their nearly universal condemnation of Israel and especially anything pertaining to the democratically elected government of Israel led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And since they are all Jewish, they are feeding a narrative that if Jews show that they care less about the importance of there being a homeland for the Jewish people and more about other groups, especially the Palestinians, they will be more accepted by others. This is far from the truth.

There have been remarkable movements with broad public support over the past few years, and especially right now, for all Americans to stand up and speak out against racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and homophobia in our society. However, anti-Semitism, the leading driver of religious hate crimes in America, is purposely overlooked.

Anti-Semitism is often referred to as the world’s oldest prejudice, and yet it is alive and well in our society, especially on college campuses, which often preview where the general society is headed. A student from Ithaca College posted on @jewishoncampus, “I was hanging with a few people in a dorm room one night and one of the guys in the room mentioned how his sports team should throw a ‘Holocaust theme party’ and use the showers as gas chambers. He wanted people to dress up as SS guards. I had never felt more uncomfortable than in that moment, but I had to remain silent because I knew Ithaca College wouldn’t care.” Holocaust-themed parties? Showers doubling as gas chambers? Proudly dressing up as murderer-SS guards? Is this 1940 Nazi Germany or 2020 America?

Was this student wrong to assume that Ithaca College wouldn’t care? That I cannot say. However, I do know that these posts should serve as a wake-up call for why there must always be a refuge for the Jewish people in the State of Israel. We also must begin speaking up about what is being taught in our schools and, by extension, the homes which are raising the next generation. Creating Holocaust-themed parties can only be linked to the feeble education, if any, that our youth are receiving in school. If we don’t stand up and demand change, it will only get worse and then, and I write these words with great trepidation, we Jews in America may need Israel more than we ever thought possible.

I contemplated writing about this topic for many weeks. Frighteningly, as I sat down to begin writing, reports of another unprovoked, confirmed arson attack at the Chabad House on the campus of the University of Delaware is just coming to light. I pray these attacks cease but I’m not the one who is naïve to history.

When so many choose to focus their ire on Zionism instead of anti-Semitism, it becomes clear that their discomfort with the former is bred by the comfort with the latter.

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Australia: International Baccalaureate develops higher critical thinking skills than state programs

From what I hear, it is Leftist critical thinking that is taught

Australian high school students who sit the International Baccalaureate diploma develop significantly higher critical thinking skills than those taking a state-based equivalent such as the HSC.

New research conducted by the University of Oxford shows the difference in critical thinking was more pronounced for students in year 12 than in year 11, suggesting skills increase over the IB's two-year duration.

Founded in Switzerland in 1968, the IB diploma is a globally recognised senior school credential offered as an alternative to the Higher School Certificate in about 20 NSW independent schools.

It has slowly expanded its footprint over the past 30 years, with Cranbrook becoming the latest Sydney school to offer the IB diploma from next year.

While the HSC offers a flexible curriculum where students study any combination of units, the IB locks students into six streams: they must study one subject from the sciences, humanities, arts, mathematics, English and a foreign language.

Students must also write a 4000-word essay on a topic of their choice and complete a 100-hour course in the theory of knowledge, as well as participate in co-curricular creative, physical and service activities.

"Those are some of the reasons I chose the IB," said year 10 Cranbrook student Max Lindley, who will be in the school's first diploma cohort and hopes to write his major work on paleontology.

"Understanding how information is spread, what makes a good source – I find that very interesting."

The Oxford research used critical thinking tests to assess differences in samples of IB and non-IB students in Australia, Norway and England. They tested students’ skills in induction, deduction, evaluation, and credibility assessment of given statements.

The findings showed IB students "exhibit significantly higher levels of critical thinking in comparison with matched non-IB students, with the effect more pronounced towards the end of the program".

In qualitative interviews, students said they believed the IB diploma better prepared them for future studies than other school systems and suggested the teaching of critical thinking made them better learners.

Cranbrook headmaster Nicholas Sampson said those skills would give students an advantage in university and the workforce.

"The level of academic breadth keeps open so many options at university and beyond. We think the IB is accessible to most students, the key is attitude: you've got to be committed and organised," he said.

But he concedes the IB is not the most suitable course for all students. “For some the greater specialisation offered by the HSC is invaluable and we understand that," Mr Sampson said.

Year 10 student John Coleman struggled to choose between the courses for that reason: he would like to focus on the social sciences in his final year, and the IB would force him to drop either modern history or economics. "It's a tough decision and I don't want to do it," he said.

While the IB is studied in government schools in other Australian states, a spokesman for the NSW Department of Education said it did not support any IB programs in state public schools.

"The Higher School Certificate is a world-class qualification that is available to all NSW school students," he said.

The Australian component of the Oxford University research took place in four independent schools, with sample students from each course matched according to socioeconomic status, sex, age and cognitive ability.

An IB spokeswoman said it brought forward “important findings” about the program's impact on students’ critical thinking.

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