I remember how it was -- JR
Friday, December 10, 2021
NYC is Doubling Down on Strict Vaccine Mandate Measures to Go After Private and Religious Schools
It wasn't enough for New York City to require all of its public school teachers and staff to get vaccinated against the Wuhan coronavirus. Now, the city is requiring teachers and staff at private schools, as well as religiously-affiliated Catholic schools and yeshivas to get vaccinated, as Emma G. Fitzsimmons reported on Thursday for The New York Times.
Fitzsimmons noted it is "believed to be the largest effort in the nation to force religious schools to adhere to a vaccine mandate." The mandate will affect approximately 930 schools and 56,000 employees.
The announcement from Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat with less than a month in office who is known for some particularly stringent coronavirus measures, was immediately met with backlash. As Fitzsimmons reported:
But the decision to include religious schools and not allow religious exemptions faced immediate opposition from some Jewish and Catholic leaders, who sent a letter to Mr. de Blasio on Thursday urging him to reconsider.
“This is an area where government should be using its bully pulpit to persuade, not its regulatory arm to coerce,” said the letter from Rabbi David Zwiebel, the chairman of a group that represents religious and independent school leaders.
It is unclear how the city will enforce the mandate against schools or staff members that refuse to comply — a problem that could fall to Eric Adams, the mayor-elect who takes office on Jan. 1.
The mandate requires teachers and staff to receive at least one of the vaccines by December 20, less than three weeks away. As opponents have highlighted, it could be particularly devastating in the way it impacts students and teachers midway through the school year:
Dr. Thomas Chadzutko, the superintendent of the Diocese of Brooklyn’s schools, signed on to the letter with Rabbi Zwiebel. At Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Queens, the vaccination rate for teachers and staff members is about 88 percent, his spokesman said.
The letter argued that the mandate could be “devastating to our schools and the children they serve” if teachers who are not vaccinated lose their jobs during the middle of the school year. “Some schools may even be forced to close because of the severe shortage of teachers,” it said.
While Fitzsimmons writes that de Blasio "has longstanding political ties to the ultra-Orthodox community," it's also worth highlighting that the mayor has faced criticism over how he targeted the Jewish community during the pandemic last year in a series of tweets that he doubled down on.
It's not merely the city where residents are subject to strict measures against the virus. New York is just one of three states without religious exemptions for vaccines, the others being Rhode Island and Maine.
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Students at Maryland High School Shown Thanksgiving Video Depicting Pilgrims as Oppressors
The Howard Zinn-ification of American history has now been fully embraced by America’s institutions.
It’s not just on college and university campuses where the late Marxist professor’s anti-American history is popular.
An anonymous tip to The Daily Signal on Monday revealed that a video depicting the Pilgrims as one-dimensional oppressors was shown to students at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland, before Thanksgiving.
The Daily Signal reached out to Walt Whitman High School for comment, but there was no response.
Bethesda, an unincorporated area of Montgomery County, is a suburb of Washington and one of the wealthiest places in the United States. Whitman High is part of Montgomery County Public Schools.
D.C. Public Schools did something similar, issuing a statement to students on how to “decolonize” their Thanksgiving and to acknowledge stolen land at their holiday dinners.
The video shown to Whitman High students was narrated by activist and former United Nations delegate Larissa FastHorse, whose Thanksgiving message was that “we are all complicit in standing on stolen land.”
The historical tale being told here is nonsensical. It requires one to have a narrow and shallow sense of history, where groups of people are forced into silos to fit modern political notions of oppressors versus oppressed.
In FastHorse’s narrative, the Pilgrims’ only notable traits were that they “robbed graves” and “took land” of people who were living in what is today the United States. The origin of the Pilgrims, their ideas and motivations, are entirely irrelevant in her telling.
There was nothing about the Mayflower Compact or how the Pilgrim tradition was a key element in the formation of the United States as a self-governing society.
Any context for their actions is brushed aside. What matters is that they are portrayed as white European oppressors, who showed up and shattered a presumed utopia, where people did not seize land, spread disease, or brutalize their fellow man.
Were the Pilgrims and Puritans sometimes brutish and unjust in how they dealt with the tribal people they met in the New World? Yes, some certainly were. Were the Pilgrims a uniquely rapacious people, devils in human form who came to terrorize and plunder the people they met in the New World? Hardly.
One could say the same thing about the Native American tribes of the New World, too.
The simplistic story of unique European oppression leaves out how some tribes were eager to enlist European newcomers in their wars to eradicate other Native American tribes in continuation of conflicts that long predated Europeans’ arrival.
The Wampanoags that partook in the first, famed Pilgrim Thanksgiving wanted a new ally to gain an edge against the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, a rival set of tribes in the Northeast region of what became the United States.
In the 1640s, the Iroquois waged a war of annihilation against the Huron and other tribes in the Great Lakes region in the so-called Beaver Wars. Just as various tribes, kingdoms, and nations went to war with each other in Europe, so too did the various peoples of the New World wage war on, enslave, and obliterate their neighbors.
The settled civilizations of South America, such as the Aztecs, used neighboring tribes as sacrificial cattle. Their downfall at the hands of Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes came only with the help of those formerly oppressed tribes that hated the Aztecs more than the newcomers.
The world the Pilgrims arrived in at the Plymouth Colony was both blood-soaked and had changed hands many times long before they arrived.
If we really want to view history as some grand morality tale to find out who the angels and who the devils are, why should Native American Indian tribes get a pass as we condemn the Pilgrims?
The takeaway from the woke Thanksgiving video isn’t a historical one. It’s not created to give students a deeper or more complex understanding of the world or to teach them the details of history. Instead, it’s made entirely to fit a modern political agenda.
Unfortunately, the narrative weaved by the video shown to students at Montgomery County’s Whitman High is becoming common in K-12 schools, perhaps even more so in elite ones. That’s in part what the battle over critical race theory is about and why parents around the country are getting angry and organizing in opposition to its teaching.
Parents are catching on that critical race theory has nothing to do with teaching accurate history or creating better-informed citizens of a republic. Instead, it’s creating the foundation to divide ourselves into distinct classes of people separate from one another, based on the alleged crimes and grievances of our “ancestors,” who may or may not be our real ancestors at all.
This poison is being poured into schools and into the minds of young Americans to an alarming degree.
As former New York Times editor Bari Weiss laid out in City Journal, elite public and private schools are going all in on critical race theory and social justice. This is in part because they know this is the language and ideology of the ruling class.
Embracing stilted and narrow, almost absurdly negative and typically inaccurate tales about American history is how one now identifies with the new managerial elite that carefully excludes and silences all who don’t embrace “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
At city council meetings across the U.S., the traditional Pledge of Allegiance to the flag is being replaced by “land acknowledgement” to various Native American tribes that passed through the area in times past.
In a sense, this is a new pledge of allegiance to woke ideology. And don’t be fooled by the talk of “reparations” or giving the land back. Those who promote this ideology have no intention of relinquishing their cultural, economic, and political power. If anything, their ideology sustains and justifies it.
Despite the name, this new class will not be inclusive, equitable, or diverse. It will uniformly conform to the ideology set by the institutions they control.
Their right to rule, as they see it, comes from being on “the right side of history”—whether that history is true or not.
Generations of Americans have now been raised with ideas like what was peddled in the video shown at Whitman High. But now instead of it just being a slice of education, it’s devouring everything. What was once a trickle is now a torrent.
Our country is drowning in a flood of wokeness that is corrupting our institutions, eroding merit, and pulling us apart as a people.
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Australia: Soaring numbers of university students, unregistered teachers fronting classrooms to plug shortages
This reminds me of the Whitlam era in the 60s and 70s when there was another big teacher shortage. At that time I got a job teaching in a NSW High School despite having no teacher qualifications at all. But I had a degree
In 2021, 320 teachers were granted Permission To Teach (PTT) approvals by the Queensland College of Teachers (QCT) — an increase from 211 in 2020 and 178 in 2019.
Of the 320 approvals this year, 272 were for pre-service teachers in Queensland, with 222 working in state schools and 98 in non-state schools.
A PTT application can be considered when a school is unable to find an appropriate registered teacher for a specific teaching position and can be granted for up to two years.
QCT director Deanne Fishburn said the majority of PTTs were granted for one year or less.
"Teachers approved under PTT are restricted to teaching specific subjects and year levels in the nominated school only," she said.
"Importantly, applicants must also be suitable to teach and have the knowledge, qualifications, skills or training reasonably considered by the QCT to be relevant to the position."
Ms Fishburn said pre-service teachers who were granted PTT were generally in the final stages of their teacher education program and were continuing their studies while teaching.
A Department of Education spokesperson said the number of PTT applications represented a small fraction of the broader teaching workforce.
"The majority of approved PTTs engaged by the department are in the final stages of their Initial Teacher Education programs, and about to graduate as a qualified teacher," they said. "This is a normal occurrence each year."
Queensland Teachers' Union president Cresta Richardson said using PTT to fill shortages should be a last resort. "We really should be producing enough quality candidates — and I'm not saying they're not quality people — but we really should be attracting enough people to universities, getting them through and supporting them as teachers," she said.
It comes amid concerns of further workforce shortages due to the Queensland government's vaccine mandate for any staff entering an educational setting, including schools.
Independent Education Union QLD/NT branch secretary Terry Burke said both schools and employees were waiting on clarity regarding the health direction arrangements and advocated for consultation.
Ms Richardson said the union was working with the department on understanding how the directive would be implemented.
"If we apply what's happened in Victoria and New South Wales, we would assume that there will be a very small proportion of people who may choose to remain unvaccinated," she said.
"Where there are numbers or support required, we'll be working with the department on how best to support those school communities to ensure teaching and learning can continue for students in those schools."
Contingency plan
An Education Department spokesperson said all Queensland state schools had contingency plans in place and were well prepared for any disruptions that might occur.
"Principals and their school teams have been planning for these scenarios for almost two years, and are ready to deliver programs that best meet the needs of their school communities," the spokesperson said.
"The department will continue to follow advice from Queensland's Chief Health Officer and Queensland Health to help manage the impacts of COVID-19 on students, staff, and their families."
Soaring demand for relief teachers
This year, the department increased the number of casual relief teachers available to schools to meet rising demand.
"The department continues to track the number of offers made to relief teachers to fill short-term demand within schools to cover the impacts from seasonal cold and flu, as well as managing public health advice, such as 'Feel Sick, Stay Home, Get Tested', which is now a standard practice in the workplace," the spokesperson said.
"The department continues to work towards offering more full-time and permanent employment to teachers within a school, or cluster of schools. and remains consistent with the government's commitment to employment security for public servants."
The spokesperson said the department had managed more than 200,000 relief teacher requests, filling 95 per cent.
"The requests that were not filled can be attributed to late notice of the request by school, geographical location and availability of the relief teacher for that day," the spokesperson said.
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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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