I remember how it was -- JR
With Biden, teachers unions are getting what they paid for
President Biden has made abundantly clear that he cares more about the teachers unions than he does about the parents and students they’re hurting. For an explanation, all you have to do is follow the money.
In 2020, the unions spent a total of $43.7 million, more than any previous year, with much of that going toward outside spending on ads, campaign materials, and political action committees backing Democratic candidates. In fact, 98% of the unions' political spending went to Democratic campaigns, according to OpenSecrets.
Nothing could better explain Biden’s recent decision on school reopenings. He originally promised to push for the vast majority of public schools to reopen for in-person learning by the end of his first 100 days in office. But his administration has since backtracked, setting a much lower goal that most parts of the country have already met.
“His goal that he set is to have the majority of schools, so more than 50%, open by day 100 of his presidency, and that means some teaching in classrooms,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “So, at least one day a week.”
One day a week? Most private and charter schools are already open five days a week, and several metropolitan public school systems, such as New York City’s, have been open on a hybrid basis for at least two or three days a week. And none of these schools have experienced significant coronavirus spread.
Biden’s “goal” has no basis in science or basic common sense. Study after study has shown in-person learning can take place safely with next to no transmission of the virus. Biden’s own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director said vaccination does not need to be a prerequisite for teachers to get back in classrooms. But instead of heeding CDC Director Rochelle Walensky’s guidance, which is what he promised to do, Biden’s White House dismissed her entirely and said she was just speaking in her “personal capacity.”
Personal capacity or not, facts are facts — unless, of course, those facts upset one of your major political donors. In that case, one day of in-person school per week will have to do.
Biden seems to think placating the teachers unions will help him convince them to get back to work. He’s even tried to throw in an additional $130 billion in funding. But Biden is discovering what city officials and parents have spent the past year learning the hard way: The unions do only what the unions want to do.
Take, for example, Chicago's debacle. The city has spent the past few months fighting with the teachers union over its plan to reopen public schools. Things escalated when the teachers union threatened to go on strike if Chicago moved forward with its original reopening date.
Now, the two sides have reached a “deal,” which seems to have been pulled straight from the union’s playbook. K-8 students will return for limited classroom instruction in early March, but high school students will continue distance learning for the foreseeable future. The city has not said how many K-8 students will get to return to the classroom, or what “limited classroom instruction” will look like.
In other words, Chicago barely squeezed a partial reopening out of the teachers union. And when the time comes for public school teachers to return to work in early March, the union will almost certainly find another excuse because it knows it’ll get away with it.
Biden could threaten to withhold funding from school districts that cave to the unions’ demands, lend his support to the city officials who do what’s right and stand up to union ultimatums, and encourage other Democrats to do the same. Or, at the very minimum, he could be setting the goal as opening all schools for in-person instruction — rather than half of them for one day a week. But it's clear he has no plans to confront his benefactors.
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NYU Study's Ludicrous Claim: No Bias Here
The title itself tells us it must’ve come from either The Onion or The Babylon Bee: “False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives.”
Except it came directly from neither satirical source. Instead, it came from the NYU Stern School of Business. But why would an ostensibly respectable business school — a school ranked fourth worldwide in one recent survey of MBA programs — defile itself with a claim that on its face is thoroughly ridiculous?
Search us. Maybe for the money? Because NYU certainly can’t be arguing — at least not with a straight face — that the industry that colluded to block the sharing of a bombshell influence-peddling story about Joe Biden’s son just days before the election, and then colluded to silence a sitting U.S. president shortly after the election, isn’t guilty of censorship bias.
Please, NYU, tell us you don’t think your audience is that stupid.
As Fox News’s Tucker Carlson rightly noted, “[The paper] almost reads like a press release from Silicon Valley, and that’s because it is. This so-called academic study was, in fact, paid for by Big Tech. It was funded by a man called Craig Newmark [founder of the online marketplace Craigslist], one of the many Silicon Valley billionaires who paid for the Joe Biden for President campaign. Now he’s paying for this.”
The study’s lead author is Paul Barrett, the deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights — an entity whose very name ought to arouse suspicion among those paying big bucks to learn about business at NYU. “In September,” as Carlson points out, “Barrett released another study on why we should be very nice to Big Tech, as well as deeply respectful and always obedient. That study was also funded by Craig Newmark as well as by George Soros.”
Of course, it’s merely a coincidence that these studies, both funded by Big Tech, arrive at conclusions favorable to Big Tech.
To read the 24-page paper is to be force-fed the word “disinformation,” which appears 14 times in the document. Each time, it’s accompanied by a stylistic sneer, like this one: “The false bias narrative is an example of political disinformation, meaning an untrue assertion that is spread to deceive. In this instance, the deception whips up part of the conservative base, much of which already bitterly distrusts the mainstream media. To call the bias claim disinformation does not, of course, rule out that millions of everyday people sincerely believe it.”
Going forward, those of us who rail against the censorship of Big Tech and Big Media can expect to see the word “disinformation” used against us almost reflexively. After all, who could possibly be against reducing the amount of disinformation out there?
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley points to a passage that exposes the paper’s folly: “The question of whether social media companies harbor an anti-conservative bias,” the authors write, “can’t be answered conclusively because the data available to academic and civil society researchers aren’t sufficiently detailed. Existing periodic enforcement disclosures by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are helpful but not granular enough to allow for thorough analysis by outsiders.”
Ah, so buried on page 20 of the paper, under the header of “Conclusions and Recommendations,” the authors call on Big Tech to “release more data for researchers.” And yet despite this dearth of data, the paper’s authors have nonetheless concluded that the claim by conservatives of censorship bias is without merit.
As Turley concludes, “This study is neither conclusive or particularly compelling. It read more like an extended, 20-page opinion editorial. It does seem itself to have a pronounced bias, particularly in declaring allegations of bias as ‘false’ and ‘disinformation’ while quietly noting that it cannot conclusively say whether there is bias.”
It’s not for nothing that, since 1996, we’ve been labeling the propaganda produced by the mainstream media — and now social media — as the real dezinformatsiya.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/77572-nyu-studys-ludicrous-claim-no-bias-here-2021-02-08
************************************Cancel Culture Comes for Chaucer
Another week, another Dead White Male toppled off his perch in the classics canon by university administration milquetoasts pandering to the woke, anti-intellectual mob. This time the DWM in question is medieval literary giant Geoffrey Chaucer of The Canterbury Tales fame, courses on whom are being eliminated at the University of Leicester in England because the man often called the Father of English Literature doesn’t match the current “enthusiasms” of students there.
Last month, the University announced its intention to remove courses in The Canterbury Tales and replace them with courses centered on – what else? – sexuality, diversity, race, and ethnicity. “We want to offer courses that match our students’ own interests and enthusiasms, as reflected in their own choices and the feedback we have been hearing,” a university spokesperson explained to MailOnline. Students’ “interests and enthusiasms” apparently now are dominated by an obsession with the power dynamics of skin color and genitalia, and thus Chaucer is no longer relevant.
And not just Chaucer’s works, but anything written prior to the year 1500. Also potentially on the chopping block, reportedly, are courses on: Beowulf, the heroic epic considered to be the earliest work of English literature; John Milton’s magisterial Paradise Lost; the works of poet John Donne and playwright Christopher Marlowe; the chivalric romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, the 15th-century chronicle of the legend of King Arthur.
Leicester University management emailed the English department to notify them of these changes, stating, “The aim of our proposals [is] to offer a suite of undergraduate degrees that provide modules which students expect of an English degree.” Apparently a familiarity with Chaucer and other medieval authors is no longer what students expect of an English degree, but race-mongering identity politics is.
The new “modules” promised to be “excitingly innovative” and would cover “a chronological literary history, a selection of modules on race, ethnicity, sexuality and diversity, a decolonised curriculum, and new employability modules,” the email continued. Sri Lankan-born Vice Chancellor Nishan Canagarajah, reportedly at the center of the diversity push, said it was part of a long-term strategy “to compete on a global level.” And how is such wokeness, which has been in progress for some time now, working out for Leicester University? In just ten years, the school has plunged from 17th on the Guardian University Guide’s ranking of English universities to 77th.
Leicester’s University and College Union (UCU), one of Britain’s largest academic unions, complains that these proposed cuts to English literature not only would infringe upon academic freedom and degrade the learning atmosphere, but cost the jobs of as many as 150 academics. This prompted many academics to lash out in panic and outrage.
In a surprisingly principled response from one academic, Professor Isobel Armstrong, a fellow of the British Academy, returned her honorary doctorate “in protest at the egregious attack on the integrity of English at Leicester and the attempt to eradicate 1,000+ years of language and literature from the curriculum.” Exactly, bravo. A letter from 18 other medieval studies fellows at the British Academy decried the proposed “decolonisation” of the literary canon: “The 14th century, at the boundary of modernity, while still concretely medieval, is one of the most remarkable periods in all of literature… How can anyone seriously claim that an English degree wouldn’t be materially impoverished by excluding so much literature?” the letter asks.
How naïve. Materially impoverishing the Western canon, and ultimately Western civilization itself, is precisely the goal of the people behind this so-called “decolonization.”
Dr. Christine Rauer, a lecturer at the University of St Andrews, suggested that the new could coexist with the old. She told MailOnline optimistically, “It's hard to see why race, ethnicity, sexuality and diversity can't be taught alongside Chaucer and Beowulf.” But they’re not being taught alongside these classic works. They are replacing them. “Bring in the new topics while also keeping the medieval!” Dr. Rauer enthused. Again, the problem is that the new topics subvert the very validity of “keeping the medieval” works, or of keeping any courses honoring unwoke art, literature, or thought.
Chaucer and Beowulf didn’t make the cut, but the university spokesperson assured the Daily Mail that “students at the University of Leicester will continue to study some of the best-loved authors in the English language, from Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens to Keats, Shelley and Byron, to Woolf, Toni Morrison and Colston Whitehead.” But for how long? How long will it be before the woke mob demands the cancellations of those authors too (with the exception of black authors Morrison and Whitehead, neither of whose works have stood the test of time long enough to legitimately be described as classics)?
“There is absolutely no truth to the suggestion that certain modules are being eliminated for being ‘too white,’” the spokesperson denied. No? Let’s be honest: the woke mob doesn’t come for non-white authors unless those authors are unwoke about their victimhood, like America’s remarkable slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The Progressive mob targets white authors because they represent the colonialist oppressors and exploiters of identity groups purportedly “marginalized” in Western culture. Meanwhile, explicitly anti-white “antiracism” programs are metastasizing like a cancer all over America – not just in colleges, but from pre-K classes on.
The purging of icons of the classical canon from educational curricula in the Western world has become so routine that the targeting of Chaucer and other medieval authors should come as no surprise. One of the problems here is that too many institutions of higher learning in the West have abandoned their missions to open the minds of students and expose them to the best of the true, the good, and the beautiful that has come before us; instead, they view their students as consumers whose narcissism must be catered to. Molding a curriculum around student feedback about their “interests and enthusiasms” means the field of Humanities will degenerate to the level of unchallenging offerings like Beyoncé Studies (already happening) and/or intellectual perversions like the “antiracism” ideas being hyped on bestseller lists and talk shows.
But the deeper source of this movement is that Progressive activists throughout Western schools now are hell-bent on dumbing us down, disconnecting us from our history and from the extraordinary intellectual and artistic legacy of our civilization, and molding younger generations into social justice activists instead of educated patriots. Erasing our historical consciousness and cultural roots, as well as our ability to think critically and to reject a mob mentality, is a prerequisite for totalitarian control of the population.
In The Sun Also Rises, one of Hemingway’s characters explains how he went bankrupt: “Gradually, then suddenly.” The same explanation applies to the intellectual bankruptcy of Western education that has been underway for over half a century, and which is now accelerating. Enough of us have to find the righteous courage to draw a line in the sand and say “No more” before it is too late.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/cancel-culture-comes-chaucer-mark-tapson/
**********************************San Francisco Ends Merit-Based Admissions at Top-Rated Public High School
San Francisco’s Board of Education voted unanimously last October to set aside longstanding merit-based admissions at Lowell High School for one year. This decision was allegedly due to the pandemic, but the board had a bigger target in mind. As Katy Grimes now reports in the California Globe, the board has just “voted to end merit-based admission” at Lowell High school, the city’s top-rated public high school.
Board commissioners Gabriela Lopez, Alison Collins, Matt Alexander, Faauuga Moliga, and Mark Sanchez voted in favor of the resolution, along with student delegates Shavonne Hines-Foster and Kathya Correa Almanza. Commissioners Kevine Boggess and Jenny Lam voted against the measure. Opposing the decision was Wenyan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights.
“Lowell’s success to educate and lift up its students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds, has relied on a competitive, merit-based process of admissions based on standardized testing, middle school GPA, essay writing and extracurriculars,” Wu told reporters. “This politicized resolution is wrongheaded and divisive, which would in turn harm all student groups and the school’s long-standing academic track record.”
In merit-based admissions, a school admits students based on their academic record. Giving preference to students on the basis of race or ethnicity is contrary to California law, based on the voter-approved California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209 on the 1996 ballot. Proposition 16 on the November 2020 ballot would have repealed Proposition 209, but the measure lost by more than 2.3 million votes, a 57-43 percent landslide.
Merit-based admissions put power in the hands of students and parents. Admissions based on race and ethnicity empower bureaucrats and politicians. So no surprise that California politicians are slow to question the legality of the San Francisco move against merit. Admissions based on academic merit are also under fire in in New York and Virginia, where last year Fairfax County Schools eliminated the entrance test for the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
For those opposed to such moves, there is a solution. Restore the right of parents and students to choose the independent school that best meets their needs. True reform and higher achievement will only come when every parent can choose the schools their children attend, as a matter of basic civil rights.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
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://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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