I remember how it was -- JR
How Equality Act Could Become Classroom Bully With Biased, Unscientific Curriculum
The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings Wednesday on the so-called Equality Act, a piece of legislation unparalleled in its hostility to religious liberty and that elevates sexual orientation and gender identity to protected-class status alongside race, sex, and national origin in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Equality Act also expands the definition of “public accommodation” under federal law, and recipients of any federal funding—such as schools—would be directly affected by the act if it becomes law. It has already passed the House of Representatives.
Plenty of ink has been spilled on the disastrous consequences the Equality Act would have on the administration of school sports, locker rooms, and bathrooms.
But what of the curriculum the Equality Act might force schools to teach? Could it compel teachers to peddle unscientific notions that gender is “fluid,” or that a student’s subjective self-identity is superior to the biological reality of his or her chromosomal makeup?
Unfortunately, due to some legal sleight of hand, the answer is very likely “yes.”
As a general matter, the federal government is prohibited from meddling with school curriculums, something better left to local and state education associations as part of the 10th Amendment’s assurance that the powers not specifically delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states.
The federal Department of Education Organization Act states:
No provision of a program administered by the Secretary or by any other officer of the Department shall be construed to authorize the Secretary or any such officer to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system … except to the extent authorized by law.
However, federal courts have recognized that in certain circumstances, federal involvement in education is warranted. To remedy past segregation, for example, some federal courts have required schools to remove educational materials considered racially biased, or to expand curricula to include black history. Both are reasonable means to meet the congressional goal of eliminating discrimination against blacks as articulated in the Civil Rights Act.
Those cases stem from a body of law focused on “equity jurisdiction.” Under this principle, once the legal right of an individual (or class of individuals) and a violation of that right have been proven, a federal court’s power to remedy past wrongs is quite broad.
It can include (and has included) changes to curriculums and teaching materials in order to eliminate both actual (“de facto”) and legal (“de jure”) segregation of school students.
In United States v. School District 151 (1968), a federal district court concluded it had the power to decide all issues concerning alleged discrimination in public education, including school board policies, the allocation of faculty and staff, the location and construction of schools, the transportation of students, and the general educational structure and process.
In order to remedy ongoing discrimination, another federal district court judge in Hoots v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (2000) “ordered that remedies for the constitutional violation proceed along several fronts … [and] ordered a comprehensive redesign of curriculum and testing, so that the curriculum would be appropriate for heterogeneous, multicultural, detracked classrooms and that the effectiveness of [the] redesigned curriculum would be carefully monitored through proper assessments.”
While—thus far—federal courts have yet to flex their “equity” muscle within the context of LGBTQ students and rectifying ongoing discrimination, the Equality Act would amend Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to give sexual orientation and gender identity the same legal protections as immutable characteristics like race, sex, or national origin. Those have been historically recognized as nothing more than due to an accident of birth, and therefore deserving of heightened protection and stricter analysis.
Now substitute the words “gender identity” for “race,” and there’s nothing to prevent a court from ordering the same kind of equitable remedy—curricular or otherwise—with respect to what a student might argue is a discriminatory educational setting.
Neutral education policies don’t always cut it, either. In Adams v. United States (1980), the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sitting en banc held that a “racially neutral” assignment plan proposed by school authorities was inadequate, because it failed to “counteract the continuing effects of past school segregation.”
Organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign have cleverly drawn unflinching parallels between LGBTQ and black youths, using the buzzwords of American jurisprudence on anti-discrimination law, likening the struggle of pre-Civil Rights Act segregated blacks to LGBTQ individuals who are themselves segregated and denied equal protection under the law.
In so doing, they’ve teed up a post-Equality Act legal challenge for students whose educational environment isn’t sufficiently desegregated. (That is, it still teaches the “discriminatory” scientific notion that male and female are unchanging biological distinctions.)
In a pre-Equality Act era, educational dissenters—who, like millions of Americans holding faiths that dictate a gender binary and heterosexual marriage as a societal ideal—would have had the right to object to forced action or offensive curriculum pursuant to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Indeed, Congress expressly applied the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to all federal law, statutory or otherwise, whether adopted before or after its enactment—including all laws governing education programs, such as Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and the Higher Education Act.
However, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act contains a critical exception: It does not apply if the statute explicitly excludes its application.
As is all too evident now, the Democratic drafters of the Equality Act took careful measures to make sure that under the bill, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could not be used as a shield by the millions of individuals—whether teachers, students, parents, or school administrators—holding sincere objections of conscience based on their religious beliefs.
How about religious schools? Surely, students in parochial schools won’t be subjected to dogma eliminating any recognition of male and female, right?
Wrong again. The Equality Act could very well steamroll propaganda touting the political agenda of sexual orientation and gender identity advocates through the schoolhouse doors if the religious schools accept any funding under federal law.
Take, for example, free and reduced-price lunch programs for low-income students, or admission of students on federally funded scholarships according to Title VI.
Therein lies another Equality Act “gotcha.”
Liberal University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock (in whose class I once sat) has recognized the breathlessly slim religious liberty exemptions that could still be maintained by religious schools post-Equality Act:
Schools would still have the ministerial exception … which should protect them with respect to teachers teaching a religion class, or leading chapel services, but courts have generally held that other teachers are not ministers for purposes of the exception.
Think a federalized sexual orientation and gender identity curriculum would be too hard to implement?
Arne Duncan, secretary of education under President Barack Obama, used a carrot-and-stick funding approach to incentivize states to adopt the Common Core state standards and oversaw development of two testing consortia to assess whether uniform standards were being met. The result? Equivalent teaching geared toward the same outcomes across the country.
The Equality Act doesn’t just rewrite the entire canon of American law on discrimination. It takes a swing at long-standing protections for religious liberty and local control of education.
Just like the bully it is.
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Grammar school head issues 'unequivocal apology' and suspends 'RE teacher who showed class Prophet Muhammad cartoon'
The headteacher of a grammar school which suspended a teacher who allegedly showed a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson on blasphemy issued a grovelling apology today.
Dozens of furious Muslim parents protested outside the historic Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire for seven hours today and chanted 'shame on you' as they called for the teacher to be sacked.
A West Yorkshire Police officer read out an apology to mothers and fathers from headteacher Gary Kibble, but this provoked even more fury from those gathered as they called the teacher a 'danger'.
Parents have claimed that the teacher, who the school have not named, showed students a cartoon of the Prophet during a religious education class - and had predicted he would face a controversial reaction.
In posts to Facebook, the teacher is said to have accepted that pupils at the co-educational free school would tell their parents about the image before then displaying the cartoon to the class.
An angry crowd first gathered outside the grammar school at 7.30am today, causing the establishment to delay its opening and tell pupils to stay home amid chaotic scenes at the gates.
The parents were still protesting at lunchtime, as police began threatening them with Covid-19 fines and shut a road in both directions. Police later said there were no arrests or fines issued.
It took until 2.30pm for the demonstration to be cleared by police, a spokesperson for West Yorkshire Police confirmed. MailOnline has asked the school a series of questions, including about what images were shown.
Mr Kibble, headteacher of the school founded in 1612 by the Reverend William Lee, said the RE teacher has been suspended, and went on to issue a 'sincere' and 'unequivocal' apology. He called the image 'totally inappropriate' and said the school had 'immediately withdrawn teaching on this part of the course'.
In a televised statement, he added: 'It is important for children to learn about faiths and beliefs, but this must be done in a respectful, sensitive way. The school is working closely with our governing body and community leaders to help us resolve this situation, and we continue to do so.'
The RE teacher, who lives with his partner a short distance from the school, was not home today and his car was not parked at the property.
A neighbour told MailOnline: 'He's a nice man. I see him go off to school, but not today or the day before.'
He was described by another neighbour as a 'local lad' who studied close to home and decided to teach in the area he was born and raised.
The neighbour said: 'He's a good, honest Yorkshire lad. Likes his rugby and always had a smile for us.'
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Silenced by the Sheep: Academia’s New Censorship
The nation’s cultural elites have been gripped by an intense wave of moral panic since the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol. That panic has found expression in higher education in renewed efforts to curtail the speech rights and academic freedoms of the already near-extinct members of the campus community who dissent against woke orthodoxies.
Attempts by activist faculty at Stanford University to curtail the independence of scholars at the Hoover Institution, for instance, reflect this new sense of empowerment. Clearly, the academic left has taken on a mission to eliminate all conservative and classical liberal critique, now described as “mob intimidation,” “harassment,” and “incitement.”
In a new report, titled The New Censorship in American Higher Education: Insights from Portland State University, the Oregon Association of Scholars, the state chapter of the National Association of Scholars, traces the emergence of this “New Censorship” at Portland State University, one of Oregon’s three major research universities.
What should concern Americans about New Censorship, the report argues, is its explicit attempt to redistribute basic freedoms of speech and publication on the basis of “anti-racist” credentials. (And it extends well beyond higher education.) Portland State President Dr. Stephen Percy refers to this policy shift approvingly as a “new status quo” in which fundamental liberties and one’s status before the law are determined by one’s professed zeal for anti-racist activism.
Similar rumblings have been heard in American higher education since the first wave of moral outrage took hold of the academy following the death of George Floyd in May 2020. This is evident, for instance, in the proposal by radical faculty at Princeton for a new commissariat to seek out and crush any research deemed “racist.”
Perhaps one of the few benefits of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has imposed a “digital transparency” on many events that previously took place in secret and now can be recorded using conferencing technology such as Zoom. This is the case with a March 1, 2021 meeting of the Portland State faculty senate, at which an egregious example of the New Censorship occurred. [Editor’s note: The recording of the faculty senate meeting has been removed from Youtube after Portland State officials complained.] The senate passed a resolution banning the criticism of faculty, departments, and programs and also planned additional restrictions on the academic freedoms of the “unwoke.”
The resolution arose because some disgruntled students posted a set of course slides from a mandatory teacher preparation class at the university’s College of Education that amounted to little more than indoctrination and agit-prop for “social justice.” Styling the posting of the slides as akin to the Capitol Riot, activist faculty called for all students and faculty who shared the slides to be punished. The resolution redefines such normal criticism of faculty, teaching, and programs as “harassment” and “bullying,” thus making an assault on academic freedom in the name of academic freedom.
Going further, however, faculty senators agree that the whole concept of academic freedom is little more than a smokescreen for “settler-colonial genocidal” institutions of oppression.
Thus, what is initially presented as a defense of academic freedom rapidly transforms through the group dynamics of revolutionary ferment into a rejection of the concept itself. Since the resolution and the subsequent discussions are endorsed by President Percy and reiterated in a message to the campus community joined by the provost, it is not clear where this leaves the basic institutions of the university nor how administrators are expected to enact this new revolutionary program.
While it is easy to dismiss the follies at Portland State as a late-night comedy in a comedic city, the university has been at the forefront of the emerging New Censorship, and, as a tenured professor with nonconforming ideas, I have been forced to be an unwilling participant in the school’s drive to eliminate free inquiry.
While it is easy to dismiss the follies at Portland State as a late-night comedy in a comedic city, the university has been at the forefront of the emerging New Censorship.
For example, in December of last year, the PSU-AAUP “voted overwhelmingly” to officially condemn my research on colonialism. In a bizarre twist of logic, the PSU-AAUP justified its action by declaring that it “stands for academic freedom” but does “not stand for hostile work environments created under the guise of academic freedom.” In other words, by conducting research according to accepted methods and publishing my findings, I have somehow created a hostile work environment for my colleagues who have repeatedly attempted to censure me.
More important than my personal situation is the way that the basic thrust behind New Censorship rules enacted on my campus by the faculty senate has become pervasive in higher education. Consistent with the denial of liberal equality that has been at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement, this New Censorship abandons once and for all any pretense of reasonable disagreement among viewpoints and ideas on campus, much less in wider society. In a two-step knock-out punch for basic freedoms, the New Censorship first defines all criticism of wokeness as a form of mob violence and incitement and then denies any scope for the communication of unwoke viewpoints, now deemed likewise as acts of incitement and mob violence.
While ordinary Americans get on with their productive lives raising their families, working hard to support themselves, and contributing to their communities, this New Censorship is taking shape in a way that will soon become a fait accompli. The reading of Plato and Dr. Seuss, as well as discussions of voter fraud and uncertainties about climate change, are now being proscribed in the name of wokeness in a mass movement that is finding its foundations in higher education and then moving outward.
This new Oregon Association of Scholars report should enlighten—and perhaps outrage—all those concerned about our intellectual freedoms and the education of the next generation.
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2021/03/silenced-by-the-sheep-academias-new-censorship/
********************************************UK: The END of school uniforms? Ministers are told traditional attire is 'repressive' and should be abolished to let pupils 'find their own style'
School uniforms are 'repressive' and should be abolished to allow pupils to 'find their own style', ministers have been told.
Peers offered their support to a new law which aims to make uniforms more affordable in England by legally requiring schools to keep branded items, such as blazers, to a minimum and to make arrangements for second hand items to be available.
The Earl of Clancarty told the Lords he supported the proposals to cut costs, contained within the Education (Guidance About Costs of School Uniform) Bill, before adding: 'Better still, get rid of school uniforms.
'They're an outmoded idea, ultimately a repressive aspect of the educational system itself, designed to keep children in line and indeed, in effect, part of the wider educational policy working against a child-centred approach to education. No school has to have a school uniform.
'Nevertheless the Government does not take a neutral stance on this, strongly recommending that schools do have one.
'Moreover, in their guidance, the department states that a school uniform policy 'flows from the duties placed upon all governing bodies by statute to ensure that school policies promote good behaviour and discipline amongst the pupil body'.'
He said his 16-year-old daughter attends a school with no uniform.
Lord Clancarty went on to read a quote from his daughter, in which she said: 'Thank God I don't have to wear a school uniform. I wouldn't be able to express myself every day.'
The independent crossbench peer also said of school: 'It is the right place for teenagers in particular to test out what to wear and find their own style, and that is itself an important part of education.'
Lord Clancarty added he believes uniforms make it 'particularly easy' to identify the poorest children and are 'not a means of levelling up', noting: 'Whereas over 90% of schools in England insist on school uniforms, a much lower percentage of parents - around 67% - are in favour of them.
'There is increasing school uniform scepticism and the Government and schools should listen to those voices.'
But several peers disagreed with the Lord Clancarty. Liberal Democrat education spokesman and former teacher Lord Storey recalled working in a school in a deprived community where the headteacher and governor did 'not believe in school uniform'.
He explained: 'It led to competition for the latest designer clothes, the latest sweatshirts, t-shirts, trainers or whatever it was.
'This created great upset amongst the pupils and those who couldn't afford the latest 'gear', as they called it, often were name-called and bullied.'
Education minister Baroness Berridge said: 'The Government does encourage schools to have school uniform because of how it can contribute to the ethos of the school and create a common identity among pupils.
'As many Lords have said, it is a social leveller so I have to also disagree with Lord Clancarty.'
On the Bill, Lady Berridge said the guidance is expected to be issued to schools in the autumn and they should begin thinking about making changes, with peers calling for a phased introduction.
The legislation would make guidance given to schools about cost of uniform policies legally binding, with the minister saying schools will be expected to limit the use of branded items to low-cost or long-lasting pieces of uniform.
Lady Berridge added: 'The guidance will also provide information to schools about ways they can achieve the benefits of a branded item while also keeping costs to parents low... this might involve the use of sew-on or iron-on logos, amongst other approaches.'
The Bill received an unopposed second reading and will undergo further scrutiny at a later date.
One MailOnline reader said: 'No I don’t think school uniform should be abolished. Coming from a deprived area myself it would put too much pressure with children turning up in designer clothes and those children that can’t afford designer wear would be teased and bullied. Also it’s respect for the school as well.'
Another said: 'I was in a school where we had uniforms but we would occasionally have free dress day. I hated free dress day as it highlighted I was poor. 'While it was noticeable I wore a second hand uniform - I rarely got remarks on it but on free dress day then I had to put up with the teasing.
'At least with a second hand uniform I did not have to worry that I was so poor that I did not own a pair of jeans, or that my style was clothes were really "uncool". 'For those who want to express themselves - you can express yourself after school and weekends but being poor is 24/7.'
Sharing their opinion, another reader said: 'School uniforms were designed to stop the poor being singled out from the rich. It’s all very well being able to express yourself if you’ve got loads of outfits to choose from but if you’re a parent with no money how do you afford different outfits for your children to choose from?
'School uniform allowed me the dignity to blend in and not be singled out. It gave me a cover, a unity, a way to feel equal.'
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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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