I remember how it was -- JR
Biden’s School ‘Reopening’ Blueprint Is An Unscientific Mess
Parents across America are rightfully expressing their outrage at the Biden’s administration’s latest guidance regarding school reopenings. The president’s unrealistic list of requirements for sending students back to the classroom were heavily influenced by teachers unions rather than science, even as studies have established that schools aren’t “super-spreaders” of COVID-19.
While President Biden insisted on the campaign trail that he would ensure school buildings around the nation were quickly opened upon his entry into the White House, this is proving to be another empty promise. Biden has shamefully given false hope to the millions of parents counting on his declaration to reopen schools in his first 100 days, most of them concentrated in blue states where citizens have languished under draconian lockdowns.
It’s clear that Biden is ignoring the wishes of parents who want to see their children return to the classroom. Millions of Americans have rightfully demanded that schools open five days a week for in-person learning, and for school districts to offer a high quality, at-home learning option for parents who don’t yet feel it’s safe for their children to return. President Biden’s latest plan — which would open just half of schools for one day a week by the end of April — is a slap in the face for parents who have counted on the White House to get their kids safely back to the classroom.
Sadly, President Biden’s eagerness to play politics with the education of American children doesn’t stop there. The newest demand of teachers unions, which was included in the White House’s school “reopening” plan, mandates six-foot spacing between student desks. The Biden administration’s desire to dictate unscientific school reopening requirements to states is troubling, especially considering that many state and local governments have already opened school buildings safely without federal intervention.
Even more dangerous is the potential for retribution from the White House, directed at school districts that don’t want to be crushed under the thumb of federal mandates. It is possible that President Biden will place contingencies on additional education funding from the CARES Act, mandating that schools follow the nonsensical guidelines issued by his administration if they wish to receive federal assistance.
If the Biden White House decides to do this, the president would not only ensure that closed schools remain shut; but that many schools which have reopened safely would be unable to remain open.
It is clear that Biden’s administration and their supporters in the teachers unions “aren’t letting a good crisis go to waste,” in the words of Churchill. After Biden assailed former president Trump for allegedly “putting politics over science,” his administration forced the CDC to parrot the talking points of his allies in the teachers unions. While school board members and state legislatures have formerly resisted calls for smaller class sizes and other modifications due to the financial impracticality of making these happen, they may now be forced to enact such changes if they want to keep receiving federal support.
If schools are forced to adopt Biden’s proposed measures even as COVID-19 case numbers plummet and the vaccine becomes more widely available, when will schools ever be able to return to normal?
Experts have insisted for months that three feet between desks is ample spacing for kids, and anything more would create the need to drastically reduce in-person attendance. In urban areas with high student populations, it is unlikely that schools will be able to comply with the six-foot spacing mandate; meaning that parents should expect their children to remain out of school for at least the remainder of the school year. This is unsustainable.
Meanwhile, school districts know that the status quo is a disaster, which is why many are refusing to assess online learners; because they know that these students have fallen far behind their peers who are learning in person. It’s crucial that the gap between online and in-person learners be quantified, so that politicians who mandated school closures can be held accountable for the disparity they created.
As the Biden administration politicizes school reopenings, parents are waking up to the fact that their children have become political pawns for the White House and teachers unions. For the sake of our kids, American parents everywhere must demand that schools reopen for in-person instruction.
https://dailycaller.com/2021/02/23/zorc-bidens-school-reopening-blueprint-is-an-unscientific-mess/
*****************************************The Crumbling Foundation of Academic Freedom
American colleges and universities are more hostile today than ever toward those who don't embrace progressive ideology.
More and more, sending your kids off to college is like paying big bucks to take them to an outrageously overpriced restaurant despite knowing that you’re going to get food poisoning, and despite knowing that the waitstaff are going to try to make your kids hate you.
Why on earth do we keep doing it? Well, because our kids need to show the receipt for that terrible dining experience to prospective employers if they want to land a job. It’s madness.
Things aren’t getting any better at the academy, either. In fact, they’re getting worse. Eric Kaufmann ought to know. He’s a professor of politics at the University of London’s Birkbeck College and a board member at an organization called the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology.
As Kaufmann writes in The Wall Street Journal, “Academic freedom is in crisis on American campuses. Last year, the National Association of Scholars recorded 65 instances of professors being disciplined or fired for protected speech, a fivefold increase from the year before.”
And just who are the targets of these attempts at cancelation? You guessed it: conservative academics and graduate students, the most endangered of species on college campuses. He reports that roughly one in three of them has been disciplined or threatened with disciplinary action, as an increasingly strident progressive authoritarianism attacks what was once the crown jewel of the Western university: academic freedom. (For tangible evidence of this malignant illiberalism, one need only consider a pair of incidents from 2017: the mob violence directed toward professors Charles Murray at Middlebury State College and Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State University.)
On Monday, Kaufmann published an exhaustive 195-page report on the topic titled “Academic Freedom in Crisis: Punishment, Political Discrimination, and Self-Censorship,” which he says is the first of its kind to investigate these topics while relying on survey responses from both the perpetrators and the targets of discrimination.
Fortunately, he also published a much more manageable executive summary, whose graphs, charts, and main findings show just how hostile an environment the traditional university has become for non-leftists and free-thinkers generally, with routine discrimination in hiring, promotion, grants, and publications. Among the findings:
More than 4 in 10 U.S. and Canadian academics wouldn’t hire a Trump supporter, and 1 in 3 British academics wouldn’t hire a Brexit supporter.
Gender-critical feminist scholars (those who believe there’s a biological basis for womanhood) have a really hard time. Only 28% of American and Canadian academics would feel comfortable having lunch with someone who opposes the idea of “transgender” women accessing women’s facilities.
In the U.S., over a third of conservative academics and Ph.D. students have been threatened with disciplinary action for their views, while 70% of conservative academics report a hostile departmental climate for their beliefs.
More than half of North American and British conservative academics admit self-censoring in research and teaching.
Younger academics and Ph.D. students (think: Mao’s Red Guards), especially in the U.S., are significantly more willing than older academics to support the dismissal of controversial scholars, indicating that progressive authoritarianism is likely to get worse in the coming years.
“The result of this hostile environment,” writes Kaufmann, “is conformity to a culture that is out of alignment with the nation’s. As in previous studies, I find a low level of political diversity, with only 5% of American scholars in the social sciences and humanities identifying as conservative. In the U.S. and Canada, academics on the left outnumber those on the right by a ratio of 14 to 1.”
Fourteen to one? Clearly, today’s colleges and universities value all manner of “diversity” and “tolerance” except one.
What’s the solution? “At this point,” concludes Kaufmann, “only a proactive approach can work, such as the policies recently announced in Britain, in which public universities are to be audited and potentially fined for academic freedom violations each year by the government. In the U.S., state or federal authorities must regulate public universities to ensure they protect the First Amendment rights of staff and students and don’t discriminate against political minorities.”
Where might the momentum for this proactive approach come from? Economic pressure, perhaps. But unless we consumers stop throwing our money at these leftist indoctrination camps, they’re unlikely to get the message.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/78124-the-crumbling-foundation-of-academic-freedom-2021-03-03
************************************The Myth that Americans Were Poorly Educated before Mass Government Schooling
Early America had widespread literacy and a vibrant culture of learning.
Education Public Schools Schooling America Learning
Parents the world over are dealing with massive adjustments in their children’s education that they could not have anticipated just three months ago. To one degree or another, pandemic-induced school closures are creating the “mass homeschooling” that FEE’s senior education fellow Kerry McDonald predicted two months ago. Who knows, with millions of youngsters absent from government school classrooms, maybe education will become as good as it was before the government ever got involved.
“What?” you exclaim! “Wasn’t education lousy or non-existent before government mandated it, provided it, and subsidized it? That’s what my government schoolteachers assured me so it must be true,” you say!
The fact is, at least in early America, education was better and more widespread than most people today realize or were ever told. Sometimes it wasn’t “book learning” but it was functional and built for the world most young people confronted at the time. Even without laptops and swimming pools, and on a fraction of what government schools spend today, Americans were a surprisingly learned people in our first hundred years.
I was reminded a few days ago of the amazing achievements of early American education while reading the enthralling book by bestselling author Stephen Mansfield, Lincoln’s Battle With God: A President’s Struggle With Faith and What It Meant for America. It traces the spiritual journey of America’s 16th president—from fiery atheist to one whose last words to his wife on that tragic evening at Ford’s Theater were a promise to “visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footsteps of the Savior.”
In a moment, I’ll cite a revealing, extended passage from Mansfield’s book but first, I’d like to offer some excellent, related works that come mostly from FEE’s own archives.
In 1983, Robert A. Peterson’s "Education in Colonial America" revealed some stunning facts and figures. “The Federalist Papers, which are seldom read or understood today even in our universities,” explains Peterson, “were written for and read by the common man. Literacy rates were as high or higher than they are today.” Incredibly, “A study conducted in 1800 by DuPont de Nemours revealed that only four in a thousand Americans were unable to read and write legibly” [emphasis mine].
Well into the 19th Century, writes Susan Alder in "Education in America," "parents did not even consider that the civil government in any way had the responsibility or should assume the responsibility of providing for the education of children." Only one state (Massachusetts) even had compulsory schooling laws before the Civil War, yet literacy rates were among the highest in our history.
Great Britain experienced similar trends. In 1996, Edwin West wrote in "The Spread of Education Before Compulsion in Britain and America in the Nineteenth Century" that “when national compulsion was enacted ([in 1880], over 95 percent of fifteen-year-olds were literate.” More than a century later, “40 percent of 21-year-olds in the United Kingdom admit[ted] to difficulties with writing and spelling.”
Laws against the education of black slaves date back to as early as 1740, but the desire to read proved too strong to prevent its steady growth even under bondage. For purposes of religious instruction, it was not uncommon for slaves to be taught reading but not writing. Many taught themselves to write, or learned to do so with the help of others willing to flout the law. Government efforts to outlaw the education of blacks in the Old South may not have been much more effective than today’s drug laws. If you wanted it, you could find it.
Estimates of the literacy rate among slaves on the eve of the Civil War range from 10 to 20 percent. By 1880, nearly 40 percent of southern blacks were literate. In 1910, half a century before the federal government involved itself in K-12 funding, black literacy exceeded 70 percent and was comparable to that of whites.
Daniel Lattier explained in a 2016 article titled "Did Public Schools Really Improve American Literacy?" that a government school system is no guarantee that young people will actually learn to read and write well. He cites the shocking findings of a study conducted by the US Department of Education: “32 million of American adults are illiterate, 21 percent read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates are functionally illiterate, which means they can’t read well enough to manage daily living and perform tasks required by many jobs.”
Compulsory government schools were not established in America because of some widely-perceived failure of private education, which makes it both erroneous and self-serving for the government school establishment to propagate the myth that Americans would be illiterate without them.
As Kerry McDonald wrote in "Public Schools Were Designed to Indoctrinate Immigrants," the prime motivation for government schooling was something much less benign than a fear of illiteracy. Her remarkable 2019 book, Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom, explains the viable, self-directed alternatives that far outclass the standardized, test-driven, massively expensive and politicized government schooling of today.
If you’re looking for a good history of how America traveled the path of literacy to a national education crisis, you can find it in a recent, well-documented book by Justin Spears and associates, titled Failure: The History and Results of America’s School System. The way in which government short-changes parents, teachers, and students is heart-breaking.
I promised to share a passage from Stephen Mansfield’s book, so now I am pleased to deliver it. Read it carefully, and let it soak in:
We should remember that the early English settlers in the New World left England accompanied by fears that they would pursue their “errand into the wilderness” and become barbarians in the process. Loved ones at home wondered how a people could cross an ocean and live in the wild without losing the literacy, the learning, and the faith that defined them. The early colonists came determined to defy these fears. They brought books, printing presses, and teachers with them and made the founding of schools a priority. Puritans founded Boston in 1630 and established Harvard College within six years. After ten years they had already printed the first book in the colonies, the Bay Psalm Book. Many more would follow. The American colonists were so devoted to education—inspired as they were by their Protestant insistence upon biblical literacy and by their hope of converting and educating the natives—that they created a near-miraculous culture of learning.
This was achieved through an educational free market. Colonial society offered “Dame schools,” Latin grammar schools, tutors for hire, what would today be called “home schools,” church schools, schools for the poor, and colleges for the gifted and well-to-do. Enveloping these institutions of learning was a wider culture that prized knowledge as an aid to godliness. Books were cherished and well-read. A respected minister might have thousands of them. Sermons were long and learned. Newspapers were devoured, and elevated discussion of ideas filled taverns and parlors. Citizens formed gatherings for the “improvement of the mind”—debate societies and reading clubs and even sewing circles at which the latest books from England were read.
The intellectual achievements of colonial America were astonishing. Lawrence Cremin, dean of American education historians, estimated the literacy rate of the period at between 80 and 90 percent. Benjamin Franklin taught himself five languages and was not thought exceptional. Jefferson taught himself half a dozen, including Arabic. George Washington was unceasingly embarrassed by his lack of formal education, and yet readers of his journals today marvel at his intellect and wonder why he ever felt insecure. It was nothing for a man—or in some cases a woman—to learn algebra, geometry, navigation, science, logic, grammar, and history entirely through self-education. A seminarian was usually required to know Greek, Hebrew, Latin, French and German just to begin his studies, instruction which might take place in a log classroom and on a dirt floor.
This culture of learning spilled over onto the American frontier. Though pioneers routinely moved beyond the reach of even basic education, as soon as the first buildings of a town were erected, so too, were voluntary societies to foster intellectual life. Aside from schools for the young, there were debate societies, discussion groups, lyceums, lecture associations, political clubs, and always, Bible societies. The level of learning these groups encouraged was astounding. The language of Shakespeare and classical literature—at the least Virgil, Plutarch, Cicero, and Homer—so permeated the letters and journals of frontier Americans that modern readers have difficulty understanding that generation’s literary metaphors. This meant that even a rustic Western settlement could serve as a kind of informal frontier university for the aspiring. It is precisely this legacy and passion for learning that shaped young Abraham Lincoln during his six years in New Salem.
Not bad for a society that hardly even knew what a government school was for generations, wouldn’t you say? Why should we blindly assume today that we couldn’t possibly get along without government schools? Instead, we should be studying how remarkable it was that we did so well without them.
When I think of the many ways that government deceives us into its embrace, one in particular really stands out: It seeks to convince us how helpless we would be without it. It tells us we can’t do this, we can’t do that, that government possesses magical powers beyond those of mere mortals and that yes, we’d be dumb as dirt and as destitute as drifters if we didn’t put it in charge of one thing or another.
When it comes to education, Americans really should know better. Maybe one positive outcome of the virus pandemic is that they will rediscover that they don’t need government schools as much as the government told them they do. In fact, we never did.
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Australia: Dysfunctional Aboriginal school
The low socioeconomic level of the school makes high expectations of it pretty unrealistic
Senior student Nerrissa Leitch should be concentrating on her studies, but she says she is often exposed to racism at school that makes her feel "subhuman".
"Many of my friends come from different backgrounds, different nationalities, and they've been told to go back to their own country. Things like the n-word," said the 17-year-old Yorta Yorta and Gunaikurnai woman.
Ms Leitch is in her final year at Greater Shepparton Secondary College (GSSC), which was found to be "a picture of systemic racism" in a scathing report obtained by the ABC.
Commissioned by the Department of Education and Training after a series of race-related incidents, the independent report found the workplace was "complicit" in racism experienced by students.
Ms Leitch said she had encountered racism over a number of years at the school.
"It's not only the students with racist opinions, it's also the teachers and the staff," Ms Leitch said.
"I really think the staff also need cultural awareness training, and to be more culturally inclusive."
The same recommendation was made in the report, written by cross-cultural consultant Georgia Birch, which was presented to the school in November but has not been publicly released.
Among the report's 47 recommendations is for the school's all-white leadership and all-white teaching teams to take part in "ongoing cultural intelligence training".
The report found "a high number of racist incidents" experienced by students had involved teachers.
It also said some teachers were reluctant to report racist behaviour for fear of being isolated or bullied by colleagues.
There are approximately 575 students from multicultural backgrounds enrolled at Greater Shepparton Secondary College, and more than half are Aboriginal.
Other students come from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Congo, Malaysia, Philippines, Samoa and Tonga.
Suzanna Sheed, the independent member of state parliament for Shepparton, said aspects of the report were "obviously very concerning," and that resourcing in the area was an ongoing issue.
"We have high levels of disadvantage in Shepparton and we have to fight for resources," she said.
"And we've been doing that for so long with so many groups in our community, all addressing issues, putting out fires, treating things as a crisis when they arise.
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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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