I remember how it was -- JR
The Primary Stakeholder in Schools: Parents or Educrats?
Someone I know from California told me recently that he has decided to pull his child out of public school and enroll him instead into a private, Christian school.
Why? Because during some of the Zoom instruction during the coronavirus pandemic, this concerned parent discovered some of the lessons they were trying to foist on his child. In this case, it was the anti-American historical revisionism that disgusted this parent.
Multiply this story many times over, and we are seeing a very important development right now---many parents are finding better ways to educate their children, including homeschool and home-school co-ops, than the failing public schools.
But the left is pushing back. Perhaps the most galling thing about this debate is the arrogance of the educrats who think they are the ones who should be responsible for the education of the children---not the parents.
Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe let the cat out of the bag. The Democrat is currently running for governor again, and he said in a recent debate: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."
Unfortunately, McAuliffe is not alone in these sentiments.
Writing in wnd.com(10/3/21), Art Moore points out that parents are supposedly “not the ‘primary stakeholder’ in their children's education”---even though they are “important stakeholders.” Who says this? Some leftwing nut job on a TicTok video? No, Joe Biden’s education secretary Michael Cordona said this.
What’s more, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) asked the Biden administration to treat concerned parents at school board meetings as essentially domestic terrorists. They write, “Now, we ask that the federal government investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials through existing statutes, executive authority…to preserve public school infrastructure and campuses.”
They add: “Further, this increasing violence is a clear and present danger to civic participation.”
Apparently, President Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland agrees. He is now claiming that concerned parents protesting at school board meetings are guilty of “domestic terrorism.”
In his End of Day Report (10/5/21), Gary Bauer of American Values responds, “So, let's get this straight: The radical forces indoctrinating your children are trying to shut you up by utilizing the same agency, the FBI, that the left used to smear Donald Trump with the fake Russia collusion hoax.” He observes that the Biden administration is “turning the FBI loose on soccer moms.”
Critics note that Garland has a conflict of interest here. Bauer says: “His son-in-law is the president of a consulting firm that makes millions of dollars contracting with school boards to push the left's radical agenda.”
If you look at the videos of the unruly school board meetings, what you see are parents visibly upset that their children are being taught a bunch of lies. They are not resorting to “violence.”
The most prominent areas of curriculum conflict include:
* Critical race theory (CRT), where by definition whites are oppressors and blacks are the oppressed. Little children who have done nothing wrong are being vilified for the color of their skin.
* Historical revisionism, which turns American history on its head. The settlers and founders of America were far from perfect. But they created a nation with unparalleled freedom and prosperity. Now political correctness has turned America’s founders into villains. One can only wonder why those would-be American immigrants trekking through Central America are currently risking their lives to come to this supposedly evil country.
* The dogmatic LGBTQ agenda. Many children (mostly girls) are questioning if they were born in the correct gender. Because of this fad that is sweeping through many of the schools and is being promoted by teachers and the school administrators, many young people are undergoing “irreversible damage” as puberty blockers and even surgery are administered to try and resolve a conflict that usually resolves itself in puberty. The fallout is horrible. Journalist Abigail Shrier wrote a book documenting this dangerous trend---Irreversible Damage.
The schools and teachers unions are acting as if they own the children. They do not. Children are on loan by God to the parents. Indeed, who is responsible for children’s education? Parents or educrats?
Who knows better than the parents what is in the children’s best interest? To whom have the children been given? Hasn’t God given the parents the responsibility of teaching their children, even if they delegate that teaching to others? Traditionally, teachers have been described as “in loco parentis”---acting on behalf of the parents, not against them.
Our current education crisis could actually prove to be a good thing---if we handle it correctly. This could be the time when many Americans seek to rescue their children from leftist and false indoctrination promoted by too many of our public schools.
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Liberals are now going after smart children for being smart!
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is becoming WOKE these days, in the name of racial equity they want to remove advanced courses for talented kids. Are they even thinking? Seriously?
VDOE is attempting to walk back its equity-focuses math program in a way that conflicts with previous statements it has made and materials it has promoted on acceleration.
They want to eliminate gifted and talented programs, removing advanced courses, and overhauling admissions processes to achieve equity across racial categories.
According to Harry Jackson, president of the Thomas Jefferson High School Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA), “removing gifted and advanced courses is a no-cost way to cover up the racial achievement gap while ignoring its root causes.”
Here’s what Jackson told the Daily Caller News Foundation:
“Gifted programs and advanced courses provide a mechanism for low-income households to achieve a stellar education for their children and serve as a ‘great equalizer’ to those families that opt for private education. By eliminating gifted programs and advanced courses in the name of equity, they will create greater inequities.”
According to a Fordham Institute study:
Black students make up 15% of the student population and 10% of the gifted student population, while Hispanic students make up 27.6% of the student population and 20.8% of the gifted student population, according to a Fordham Institute study.
Those student groups are 49% and 23% less likely to participate in Advanced Placement programs than their peers, respectively, according to the Fordham Institute.
This pressure on public schools to resolve racial disparities coming from parents started after George Floyd’s death – public interest in racial inequities increased from activist groups, school board members, and officials in the U.S. Department of Education.
In October 2020, the competitive entrance exam from Thomas Jefferson High School (TJ), the top-ranked public high school in the U.S. has been removed. This happens after a Fairfax County School Board vote and replaced it with a more subjective admission process which includes geographic quotas.
The Fairfax County School Board had been lobbied by the TJ Alumni Action Group, which was formed in light of the events surrounding Floyd’s death, and the release of TJ admissions statistics revealed fewer than ten black students had been admitted to the school’s class of 2024, Washington Post reported.
TJ’s incoming freshman class in 2021 included more white, Hispanic, and black students than in previous years, while Asian student representation fell by 19 points, the Associated Press reported.
New York City is eliminating its gifted and talented program following a March lawsuit which alleged the program – which was 75% white and Asian – exacerbated racial inequalities. The program will be replaced by a maximum of 2 hours per day of advanced courses for gifted students, to be determined by teacher evaluation of students’ capabilities (rather than a standardized test).
The California Department of Education is considering proposals to “de-track” math, meaning that students of all aptitudes would learn math at the same level in the same classes, and advanced math courses would not be offered. Students in the 11th grade could opt to take Algebra II and Pre-Calculus at the same time in order to take Calculus their senior year, according to the Washington Post.
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) proposed a plan in January to eliminate traditional mathematics courses in favor of an equity-focused framework that places students in homogenous grade-based courses regardless of aptitude until the 11th grade. “[T]his initiative will eliminate ALL math acceleration prior to 11th grade,” Loudoun County School Board member Ian Serotkin said, according to Fox.
https://theinformedamerican.net/liberals-are-now-going-after-smart-children-for-being-smart/
************************************Education ministers must act on Australia's woke national curriculum
In a matter of weeks, Australia’s nine education ministers will decide the fate of the revised national curriculum released earlier this year for public consultation. The document was roundly condemned for prioritising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and spirituality to the detriment of learning about Western culture and Judeo-Christianity.
The history framework, in particular, was criticised for presenting a black armband view of Australia’s origins and development as a nation, with European settlement described as an invasion leading to genocide and society and its institutions as inherently racist.
There is no question about the importance of studying Indigenous history and culture. Of all the lessons to be learned from Australia’s oldest settlers, top of the list must surely be a profound respect for passing on the knowledge and wisdom of the elders. The Indigenous tradition of oral history epitomises the sense of belonging and purpose that humans gain from understanding the past, particularly as they deal with the present and make decisions about the future.
Such is the significance of these links across the ages that Australia’s national curriculum includes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures as one of three cross-curricular priorities that all teachers must emphasise in the classroom.
All teachers are instructed to provide “opportunities for all students to deepen their knowledge of Australia by engaging with the world’s oldest continuous living cultures” and learning about “the significant contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ histories and cultures on a local, national and global scale”. These opportunities are reinforced in every learning area (English, Mathematics, Science, History and so on) across the curriculum.
Where the revised curriculum is flawed and open to attack is its failure to provide a similar sustained focus on the nation’s Western heritage. There is no equivalent cross-curricular priority requiring primary and secondary teachers to ‘engage’ with the evolution of Western culture since ancient times, ensuring that all students develop a shared, objective understanding of the origins of Australia’s liberal democratic values and practices.
On the contrary, the lack of curricular alignment and intellectual cohesion of the key elements of the curriculum that reflect Western civilisation – English, History, Civics and Citizenship, the Arts and others – is striking. In addition, while students are asked to study Indigenous spirituality in detail, the curriculum ignores the enduring significance of Judeo-Christian traditions, especially where these have uniquely and powerfully informed our modern concepts of equality, tolerance, justice and the rule of law, and individual freedom.
One of the key documents guiding the current review states the Australian Curriculum “must ensure young people have a good understanding of the nature of Australian society within which they will be living and working as adults. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and perspectives are an important part of the development of our nation, as are the traditions and values of what is often referred to as ‘Western society’.”
Not only does the phrase “what is often referred to as Western society’” signal a qualified and uncertain view of what constitutes the West’s culture and way of life, it also reduces thousands of years of extraordinary philosophical, creative, scientific, religious, economic and other developments to a minor event in history. It is difficult to see how the proposed curriculum can fulfil the goal of producing ‘active and informed’ citizens.
The move to de-colonise the curriculum and cancel what Woke activists describe as ‘Eurocentrism’ and ‘whiteness’ partly explains why the curriculum is so jaundiced and politically correct. Also influential is the ever increasing emphasis on 21st Century learning given the increasing rate of technological, medical, scientific and societal change.
The panel responsible for investigating Australia’s senior school (Years 11 and 12) curriculum and pathways has produced a report titled Looking to the Future. The Chair, Dr Peter Shergold, says “the panel’s view is that we have to design our education system to prepare young people for their future rather than for our past”.
To justify the argument that studying the past is of declining value, those responsible for the report quote American educationalist John Dewey’s assertion that “The world is moving at a tremendous rate; going no one knows where. We must prepare our children, not for the world of the past, not for our world, but for their world – the world of the future”.
The OECD’s Education 2030 Program, to which Australia’s national curriculum body ACARA contributes, puts a similar case about cancelling the past and prioritising the future. The world is “rapidly changing” and we now live in a world characterised by “a new explosion of scientific knowledge” and “complex societal problems”.
The globalist groupthink pushed by the Paris-based bureaucrats purports to prepare students “for jobs that have not yet been created, for technologies that have not yet been invented, to solve problems that have not yet been anticipated”.
Associated with this futurist perspective is the argument that knowledge acquisition is secondary to developing 21st century skills and competencies such as critical thinking, working in teams and embracing diversity and difference. Students are encouraged to see themselves as global citizens dedicated to “transforming society and shaping the future”.
This worldview is strongly represented in the draft Australian Curriculum. It holds that all students should take on responsibility for solving problems in an unprecedentedly uncertain and volatile global environment.
The net effect is that nation-building is no longer emphasised, a concept diminished by a curriculum that fails to give students a clear idea of what it means to be an Australian citizen and what is most valued about our institutions and way of life.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/10/education-ministers-must-act-on-our-woke-national-curriculum/
***********************************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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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