I remember how it was -- JR
College launches '1776' Curriculum to Counter Critical Race Theory
In response to the push toward Critical Race Theory by many schools and universities, the private, conservative Hillsdale College has released a K-12 curriculum aimed at teaching what college officials describe as "a more patriotic approach to American history."
Since its launch late last month, the college's new "1776 Curriculum," as it's named, has been downloaded more than 26,000 times, according to Dr. Kathleen O'Toole, assistant provost for K-12 education at Hillsdale.
The educational program covers American history, including the nation's founding, the Civil War era and other topics related to civics and government. Its creators, who include teachers and professors, say it's designed to depart from The New York Times' 1619 Project, which reframes the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the center of the national narrative.
"The inspiration for this curriculum springs from a since admiration and respect for America's founders and the principles they expressed so beautifully in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence—the recognition that all men are created equal, that our natural rights pre-exist government, and that governments are formed to protect the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of all citizens," O'Toole told Newsweek. "This curriculum seeks to tell the entire grand narrative of the American story—the promises, the perils, the tragedies, and triumphs."
The curriculum offers nearly 2,400 pages of materials, broken down into grade-specific lessons and includes comprehensive lesson plans, homework assignments, quizzes, tests, study guides, and supplementary primary and secondary resource recommendations for teacher and student use.
O'Toole said it highlights both the moments when the United States has fallen short of its founding principles and when it's nobly met them.
"It's an unabashed, candid look at the fullness of American history, rather than cherry-picking a story to tell students," said O'Toole, noting that before the year is out, the curriculum will expand to include the entirety of American history, including units on Colonial America, the Early Republic, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the Great Depression, the World Wars, the Cold War, and Modern America. "The curriculum represents a culmination of decades of forming and honing curriculum at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale Academy, and its dozens of associated K-12 charter schools.
Founded in 1844 by abolitionists known as Free Will Baptists, Hillsdale College is a liberal arts college located in Hillsdale, Michigan. Its curriculum is based on the Western heritage as a product of both the Greco-Roman culture and the Judeo-Christian tradition.
The curriculum's release comes as the debate over and push by many school districts and universities to incorporate Critical Race Theory continues.
Just last week the Colorado Springs School District 49's school board in Colorado banned CRT from being taught in its schools while the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District in California's Central Coast also banned it.
That's while others embrace CRT and some educators endorse the 1619 Project, which has gained popularity at some schools as a movement toward more race-based education. While Newsweek reached out to Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work on the 1619 Project, she did not respond by the time of publication.
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Why I’m Suing Over My Employer’s Vaccine Mandate
I have natural immunity, so there’s no justification for a coercive violation of my bodily autonomy.
In a few weeks I will begin my 24th year as a law professor at George Mason University. Last year I volunteered to teach in person, even though I’m in my 50s. Teaching law is my job and I owe my students my best. I also knew I could do it safely. During the spring of 2020 I contracted and recovered from Covid-19, which I later confirmed through a positive antibody test. Multiple positive antibody tests have since confirmed that I continue to have a robust level of immune protection.
But now my employer, a state institution, is requiring Covid vaccines. In my case, vaccination is unnecessary and potentially risky. My only other options are to teach remotely or to seek a medical exemption that would require me to wear a mask, remain socially distanced from faculty or students during, say, office hours, and submit to weekly testing.
It would be impossible for me to perform my duties to the best of my ability under such conditions. The administration has threatened those who don’t submit with disciplinary action, including termination of employment. This week the public-interest lawyers at the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed suit on my behalf, challenging the university’s mandatory vaccination requirement for those with naturally acquired immunity. This coercive mandate violates my constitutional right to bodily integrity for no compelling reason.
Clinical studies from Israel, the Cleveland Clinic, England and elsewhere have demonstrated beyond a doubt that natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 provides robust and durable protection against reinfection comparable to or better than that provided by the most effective vaccines. Examining the evidence this May, the World Health Organization concluded: “Current evidence points to most individuals developing strong protective immune responses following natural infection with SARS-CoV-2.”
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13714&omhide=true
*****************************************Marxist Minnesota Principals ‘Making Good Trouble in Education’
By Chris Talgo
There was once a time when school principals’ principal concern was the academic achievement of their students.
Sadly, in many places, that is no longer the case.
Take Minnesota for example, where 162 principals have signed onto the Marxist-minded “Making Good Trouble in Education” anti-education, social justice movement.
According to its website, “We are a loose collection of local principals bound together by a commitment to changing our nation's future by engaging in better, more equitable educational practices. We have constructed this site as a gathering place for Good (Trouble) Principals. It is a safe place to rest among like-minded leaders. It is a place where your convictions about educational justice in our country can be fortified and your view of education as a transformative social force can be reinforced.”
At this point, you may have a few questions, such as:
What are more equitable educational training practices?
What is educational justice?
And, since when has public education become a social force?
Lucky for you, the principals at Good Trouble have answers to these pressing questions.
In terms of equitable training practices, the misguided Minnesota principals plan to enact this by, “De-centering Whiteness. Understanding that traditional organized whiteness ensures domination through forms like PTAs and Unions. We purposefully call out and lift up historically non-represented voices of color in our spaces to hold weight and power.”
Sorry, but implementing discrimination to allegedly address past discrimination is flat-out wrong.
To achieve what they deem “educational justice,” the Minnesota principals support, “Dismantling practices that reinforce White academic superiority like bias in testing and the labeling, tracking and clustering that reflect an Americanized version of a caste system in our schools.”
As a former high school teacher, I can personally attest that there absolutely is no caste system in America’s public schools. To declare that a modern-day caste system exists in today’s public schools is literally ludicrous.
Regarding their quest that public schools become a social force, instead of an academic institution, the Minnesota principals plan on, “Reconstructing ‘school’ upon our full in-person returns where business-as-usual, like schedules and staffing, are open to drastic changes.”
To meet this nonacademic goal, the principals also propose, “Speaking truth to power. Where our commitment to holding ourselves and those who serve under us accountable to this work is just as importantly extended to those who serve over us.”
Yet, that is only the half of it.
Consider. “We declare that we are not leaving white children behind by lifting Black, Brown and Indigenous children up. But that we, not only have the collective capacity to hold all of our children up and into the light, but our White children have been done a great disservice by sustaining white-centered schools in America over all these years. And it is to their equal benefit to thrive in schools where they are not spoon-fed the poison that they are better because of their skin color, where they have principals and teachers who boldly lead them to both humility and pride, and where they have the beautiful privilege of thriving while their classmates of color thrive as well.”
So, according to the Minnesota Good Trouble principals, America’s public schools are havens for white supremacy propaganda. Of course, that is a total farce.
Moreover, the notion that America’s public schools cater almost exclusively to white children, and thereby do not allow minority students to thrive, is demonstrably false. How would these people explain that Asian-Americans, for example, outperform their white peers across the board in education metrics?
It is rather obvious that the Minnesota Good Trouble principals, all 162 of them, have an agenda.
Unfortunately, that agenda does not include ensuring that every student is held to the same standard, and that every student, regardless of race, is treated as an individual.
Instead, the Minnesota principals who signed onto this Marxist indoctrination program are most concerned with pitting students against one another based on nothing but their racial attributes.
Sadly, this is becoming the new normal in America’s public schools.
On the other hand, we are witnessing quite a backlash against many of these absurd programs. Throughout the country, parents and students are rising up against the critical race theory craziness and Marxist-oriented curricula that are seeping into far too many public schools.
Still, the question remains: Will the education-industrial complex, with their Marxist leanings, triumph, or will parents pushing commonsense education policies, including school choice, win the battle in the end? The future of America is at stake.
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Is School Choice Racist?
The Chicago Teachers Union recently posited that school choice has racist roots, therefore implying it shouldn’t be a valid means of getting a good education for your child.
The 1964 Supreme Court case Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County is sometimes cited as an example of these so-called “racist roots.” In Prince Edward County, Virginia, school vouchers were given only to white students and used to close public schools completely and open white-only private schools. The Supreme Court overruled the county’s practices and reopened the public schools. This was indeed an example of racism, but not at all about school choice.
With school choice, parents of every race and creed are allowed to use government education funds to put their child in a school of their choosing. School choice encompasses a wide variety of options: public, charter, private, vocational, and homeschool. For parents, some of these options are more doable than others, but again, it should be about freedom of choice.
Lack of a good education is shown to be a big factor in holding children in a cycle of poverty. It also breeds a contempt for education itself. How can poorly educated students love something that is given to them so begrudgingly? Or when they are just a number in a classroom? Or when instruction is delivered to them shoddily by incapable, burnt-out teachers?
School choice would also break the stranglehold that the teachers unions have on our education system. It is a mafia-like game where the unions support the politicians who can give them the most power and protect bad teachers.
If school choice is such a racist idea, then why do minorities overwhelmingly support it? One poll states that 81% of Democrat primary voters, and 89% of black voters, would support a proposal for more school options. Another poll reported that “85% of voters are in favor of education savings accounts (ESA), which let families access money typically funneled to school districts to spend on education-related expenses for their children. 78% of African Americans and 79% of Hispanic respondents were in favor of ESA programs as well.”
This second poll was particularly interesting because the pollsters made the claim that the desires of parents didn’t align with the realities of their living situations, which is a rather insulting statement. By and large, when it comes to a good education that parents value, they tend to do all they can to give their kids the best that is available to them.
At the end of the day, what is more racist: keeping children trapped in failing schools, where they are forced to suffer the bigotry of low expectations, or giving parents and students the choice to freely pick the education they want? The answer is clear — give students and parents a choice.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/82091-is-school-choice-racist-2021-08-20
***********************************My other blogs: Main ones below
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)
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