Thursday, April 01, 2021


Teachers Union Boss: Sorry, But the Science Isn't Good Enough for Us to Reopen Schools

In recent days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finally adjusted its guidance about social distancing in schools to embrace three feet of separation between students as broadly safe, compared to the previous (mostly baseless) recommendation of six feet. In doing so, the CDC belatedly adopted the analysis its new director had offered to school officials in her own community last summer. Some teachers' unions were exploiting the prior "six feet" guidance as an excuse to further delay the return of full-time, in-person instruction, citing insufficient physical space to do so. That rationalization is no longer viable, so now what? More science denial, that's what. Here's a major national union boss flat-out rejecting the science in order to keep the ongoing anti-child racket afloat. CBS News reports:

The nation's second-largest teachers union sent a two-page letter to the Biden administration on Tuesday questioning the decision to reduce the recommended social distancing in schools to three feet between students...On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reduced its recommendation for social distancing within schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19 from six feet to three feet, citing studies of limited virus transmission and similar recommendations from the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics. "These updated recommendations provide the evidence-based roadmap to help schools reopen safely, and remain open, for in-person instruction," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement last week. But on Tuesday, Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.7-million-member American Federation of Teachers, told Walensky and Education Department Secretary Miguel Cardona that while she and her members "trust the CDC ... to provide them with accurate information," they have concerns about the recent changes. The letter was obtained by CBS News. "We are not convinced that the evidence supports changing physical distancing requirements at this time," Weingarten wrote. "Our concern is that the cited studies do not identify the baseline mitigation strategies needed to support 3 feet of physical distancing."

If anything, the CDC is overly cautious in its guidance. This change is supported by lots and lots of data, including data from the many schools that have been safely open for months – which the denialists obstinately avoid, as their widespread and successful existence crushes increasingly feeble and embarrassing arguments from the holdouts. But the union says they "are not convinced" by any of it, rambling about "baseline mitigation strategies." To repeat, millions of kids have been attending in-person classes, five days a week, since the fall – and have done so with an array of mitigation strategies that have worked well, in a wide array of facilities, in a wide array of environments. There is no excuse whatsoever to hold other students out of classrooms, and no basis for questioning this science. Weingarten and company are behaving as if all of this is still hypothetical and risky; it's neither. If the "we are not convinced" line isn't offensive or arrogant enough, consider this follow-up:

Incredible. The Democrats passed more than $120 billion in "school funding," pretending that it was necessary to re-open schools, hoping no one would notice that (a) tons of schools have managed to stay safely open without stacks of federal cash, (b) there were still roughly $60 billion in unspent dollars earmarked for schools sitting around from previous bipartisan relief bills signed by President Trump, and (c) within the new gigantic tranche of unnecessary money, the vast majority of it won't even start to be spent until 2023, and therefore plainly has nothing to do with getting schools open during the pandemic. Despite this, this union boss has the temerity to suggest that all of that money still isn't sufficient for the holdouts. Think of all the planning, and how "quickly" all of this is happening, she disingenuously laments. They've had months and months to plan. Many other schools figured it out over the summer and made it work, and their students are vastly better off for it. Weingarten's complaints are almost unbelievably insulting. This is accurate, if a bit too kind:

Noah Rothman points out that Weingarten embraced CDC recommendations when they supported her goals of keeping teachers out of classrooms (may I remind you this is a union comprised of people whose entire job is to be in classrooms), but is suddenly not so sold on the CDC science, now that it forecloses one of the remaining, flimsy excuses to keep schools from opening. This is anti-science hackery and anti-student abuse. Some anti-learning apologists continue to insist that parents aren't comfortable with a full return to in-person classes either. Actions speak louder than cherry-picked polls

Every parent should be given resources to choose an educational path other than union-dominated, anti-science, anti-child government school districts that have failed far too many families over the last seven months.

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California’s Education Department Chooses Critical Race Theory Over 100,000 Objections

The California Department of Education (CDE) voted to adopt the fourth version of an ethnic studies curriculum after four years, three previous versions, and more than 100,000 objections. The reason for so many objections? The curriculum continues to be founded on critical race theory (CRT), which is the view that our legal, economic, and social institutions are inherently racist and are exploited by some Whites to retain their dominance by oppressing and marginalizing others. The CRT-focused curriculum will foster divisions among students and will almost certainly not improve learning outcomes, as advertised by its proponents.

The focus on critical race theory has been severely denounced, including by the editorial staff at the Los Angeles Times and implicitly by California governor Gavin Newsom, who vetoed the second version of the curriculum. This led to the watering down of CRT over each successive revision to the point that the critical race advisors to the curriculum resigned after the second revision, complaining that—you guessed it—racist and White supremacist organizations were trying to hijack their turf.

These members wrote: “We urge the CDE not to give in to the pressures and influences of white supremacist, right wing, conservatives (‘Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies’, ‘Educators for Excellence in Ethnic Studies’, Hoover Institute [sic], etc.) and multiculturalist, non-Ethnic Studies university academics and organizations now claiming ‘Ethnic Studies’ expertise.”

CDE made a mistake by investing the curriculum in critical race theory. The CDE is unwilling to let go of this despite so many Californians believing that none of the fourth version of the curriculum is in the best interest of California students. At a time when diversity and inclusiveness are the coin of the realm within education circles, it should be apparent that ethnic studies is not an exclusive club formed by those teaching critical race theory, nor do they hold veto power in terms of who is and isn’t qualified to have a relevant idea about the subject.

In choosing to vote unanimously for the fourth version, the CDE has accepted a model curriculum with inaccuracies and omissions, as well as themes that will push students away from their own individualities and into group think that focuses on oppression and marginalization as the primary ills of today’s society. This passage from the opening paragraph says it all: “This coursework, through its overarching study of the process and impact of the marginalization resulting from systems of power, is relevant and important for students of all backgrounds.”

We should teach students world and American history honestly, openly, and with the opportunity for students to engage and understand the past with the hope that we will continue to do better, treating each other as the individuals that we are. We have had many successes in this enterprise, as no matter how flawed today’s world is, it is more democratic, civil, and peaceful than in the past.

But California’s ethnic studies curriculum differs sharply from this vision, because the narrative of critical race theory does not dovetail with a world that, on average, gets better each day. Some of the major principles of the curriculum are “critiquing empire-building and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, and other forms of power and oppression,” and “challenging racist, bigoted, discriminatory, imperialist/colonial beliefs and practices on multiple levels.”

The book refers teachers of ethnic studies to draw on the New York Times 1619 Project, which at this point has been completely discredited in terms of its arguments about capitalism, and which reflects historical errors pointed out by the Times’ own fact checker, which were ignored.

The curriculum is also flawed, and dangerously so, regarding its depiction of the War on Drugs in the 1980s and 1990s: “The dominant narrative of the ‘War on Drugs’ was that drug dealers and users were causing violence, poverty, and addiction in cities across the country. In actuality, this narrative was used to justify disproportionate arrests of communities of color, even though Blacks and Whites use drugs at similar rates.”

According to the curriculum, the War on Drugs was a racist tool to put non-Whites behind bars. Taking their argument one step further, it implies that mayors of cities, including Black mayors, chose to incarcerate non-Whites because they were . . . not White. Nowhere does the narrative describe how crack cocaine devastated poor neighborhoods in many major cities in the 1980s through the late 1990s, turning certain sections of Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Boston, Atlanta, New York—the list goes on—into war zones as competing drug dealers fought to control the sale of a toxic molecule that delivered enormously high profits.

Nowhere is it mentioned that the homicide rate of Black children between the ages of 14 and 17 more than doubled at the peak of these drug wars, nor that 14-to-17-year-old Blacks were 10 times as likely to be murdered than Whites during this period. Nowhere is it mentioned that the number of Black babies in foster care more than doubled, rising to a level more than six times that of White babies. How often is crack cocaine mentioned in the model curriculum? Never.

The War on Drugs did fail miserably in certain ways, including some drug sentences that were too long and inadequate prosecution of police corruption. But there are people alive today who would not be here had members from drug gangs not been arrested. Telling this part of our history—being honest and open about our country’s issues—does not fit with the narrative of critical race theory. And herein lies the major problem, and why a fourth version of the model curriculum remains unsatisfactory: because it is driven by a political and social agenda that omits the facts that inconveniently are at variance with its 24/7 narrative of oppression, imperialism, White supremacy, and exploitation.

But there is some good news. The pushback of more than 100,000 objections removed some of the most inappropriate material in earlier versions. This includes deleting positive role-model narratives about convicted murderers of police and changing the benign narrative that was originally presented about Pol Pot and the Killing Fields, where as many as 30 percent of Cambodians were murdered by his regime. The discussion of Pol Pot in earlier versions focused on how US imperialism in Southeast Asia facilitated his rise to power, not on how he was one of the of most heinous dictators of the 20th century. Go figure. Discussions about capitalism being racist, and a section that included several disturbing discussions about racial purity, also have been removed.

I doubt all these changes would have come about without the efforts of Elina Kaplan, of the Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies, Lori Meyers of Educators for Excellence in Ethnic Studies, and Tammi Rossman-Benjamin of AMCHA, all of whom have been powerful forces for providing positive directions for the curriculum. Like me, they have been called White supremacists by critical race proponents on the curriculum’s advisory committee. White supremacists? When facts and logic don’t fit the narrative, then play the race card and go right to Defcon 1: “White supremacist.” Even when they know next to nothing about any of us. But the positive here is that the alternative perspectives that Elina, Lori, Tammi, and I have been advancing are getting attention and hopefully moving the needle.

I hope these women continue to fight for California kids. We need them. And I hope that California’s school superintendent, Tony Thurmond, listens to them in the future. California schools have been chronically failing Black and Hispanic schoolchildren, as their math and reading proficiencies have been far below state standards for years. If we fix this, we will be able to fix so much more in our state, problems that will never be addressed by critical race theory.

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Woke Colleges

Did you take the SATs to try to get into college? Your kids may not have to.

More than 1,300 schools have become “test optional,” meaning students need not submit SAT scores. Some, like the entire University of California system, now won’t even look at scores.

There are seemingly legitimate reasons to oppose the tests. Richer kids often get tutoring that gives them an advantage.

Critics claim the tests are culturally biased and say that’s why Blacks and Latinos don’t score as well. But that doesn’t explain why Asians do so well. In fact, Asians get the best SAT scores.

I assume it’s more about culture and parenting. Kids raised in front of the TV do poorly. Those encouraged to read do better. Kids who spend time talking to adults do better.

Bob Schaeffer, executive director at FairTest, an advocacy group that helped persuade colleges to dump tests, says testing companies just want to make money.

“These are businesses selling products,” Schaeffer says in my new video. “The College Board is a billion-dollar a year business.”

I ask him what’s wrong with the tests themselves. He replies, “The SAT and ACT are inferior predictors of college performance.”

It is true that high school grades predict 33% of college grades, while tests predict 32%. But that is just barely “inferior.” Combining grades and SATs predicts 42% of college grades, which makes the tests useful.

Also, tests can help the smart student who, for whatever reason, doesn’t do well in high school.

“It’s the diamond in the rough argument,” Schaeffer responds. “There are actually very few examples of that being true.”

I believed him until I looked at College Board data. It shows that students with C grades in high school, but great SAT scores, do better in college than A+ students with low SAT scores.

Without tests, schools often choose students based on parental connections or donations.

Tiwalayo Aina, a Black student at MIT, got good SAT scores. He tweeted, “The SAT is fairer than the alternative: needing my parents to connect me with a … professor.”

I say to FairTest’s Schaeffer, “By eliminating tests, you’re screwing the minority student who is really smart, but goes to a lousy high school, has family problems and got low grades.”

“That student would have shown brilliantly in her high school classes,” is Schaeffer’s reply.

Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley says colleges scrapped tests to make it easier for administrators to control how many people from each racial group attend their college.

Without an objective standard, who’s to say an administrator’s admission picks are wrong?

“It really is about making these campuses look right. … It’s not about learning,” says Riley.

“If you want more diversity,” he adds, “Open up more of these charter schools (like the ones that are) able to prepare kids for these tests.”

Some charters, the Success Academies, do that well. Sadly, those charters are criticized and limited by politicians because they are not under the control of teachers unions.

Ending limits on charters and allowing school choice, says Riley, would do much more to close the race gap than dropping SATs. “Eliminate the test, you’re just going to delay where it shows up elsewhere in this child’s life. You’re not doing that child any favor.”

What’s wrong with these schools saying we want a more diverse student body?

“There’s this assumption,” says Riley, “We just get these kids in the door and they’ll be fine. No, they won’t! They’re being set up to fail. I see no progress in getting a bunch of Black kids admitted to MIT, and then having them flunk out or struggle. They don’t need to be struggling. They could go be going to another school and doing quite well.”

But woke educators want to eliminate tests.

And these days, what the woke want, the woke get.

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‘Deeply triggering’ board game on ‘white privilege’ part of new racism lessons

Children in Australia are being taught about “white privilege” with a board game that education bureaucrats admit “can be deeply triggering” for pupils and “create feelings of shame”.

A NSW Department of Education-run website called ‘Racism No Way’ has a collection of lesson plans to teach children about battling racism from Years 3-12.

The lessons have been blasted by a conservative think tank which says “children as young as four are now being indoctrinated with radical race theory”.

One of the lesson activities – which bureaucrats say may be upsetting to some students – is the study of a hip hop song by Illawarra rapper DOBBY called I Can’t Breathe.

The song talks about similarities between the deaths of Indigenous man David Dungay and African-American man George Floyd. “That’s bullsh*t! Write to your member tell ‘em what’s happening,” the lyrics read. “You gotta challenge the white settler narrative. “This sh*t’s as bad as it gets, cause some of these coppers really don’t know how to protect.”

Children are then asked to discuss the song in activities “created to examine empathy”.

“The activities may make you feel upset. If this is the case it may be necessary to speak to your class teacher or seek the help of a counsellor,” the student worksheet reads.

Another lesson activity involves a board game called “privilege for sale” which aims to give children an “understanding of privilege and oppression”. In it, the classroom is divided into small groups, who are then told to imagine living in a world where none of them have any privileges.

The teacher then hands out “money”, with each group being given different amounts ranging from $300 to $1400 in fake printed-out notes.

They are given a sheet that has a list of privileges on it, and they have to purchase these privileges from their teacher with fake money.

The students then discuss and decide which privileges they would like to buy. They are then asked to present to the rest of the class explaining how much money they were given and which privileges they chose to purchase and why.

The lesson plan explains: “For some people this is a new experience because they’ve never thought of privilege in this way, or in a list form like this.

“It can sometimes be a deeply triggering or frustrating activity because perhaps you don’t have access to a lot of these privileges and seeing all of the privileges in a list can be challenging.

“For others it can be deeply moving/emotional because they’ve never thought of all the privilege that they do have before. This can bring up feelings of guilt or even feelings of shame for taking things for granted.”

The lessons have been blasted as “indoctrination” by Bella d’Abrera, director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program at conservative think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs.

“There is absolutely no place for Critical Race Theory or Unconscious Bias training in Australian schools,” she told news.com.au. “Impressionable children as young as four should not be indoctrinated with radical race theory.”

“The ‘privilege for sale activity’ is based on the idea of white privilege which is not only demonstrably false, but also extremely racist, because it is tells white children that they are bad people because of the colour of their skin.

“Children need to be taught the basics of literacy and numeracy by their teachers, not turned into mini social justice activists who will grow up hating Australia because they believe it’s racist.”

She has called on the NSW Education Minister to do “everything her power to protect children from this rubbish by making sure that it is not taught in schools”

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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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Wednesday, March 31, 2021


College Debt & Military Service

An injustice against our military and veterans' communities is being prepared in the halls of Congress at the same time the men and women of the National Guard stand post outside the Capitol building to protect lawmakers from an unexplained threat.

Senator Chuck Schumer is demanding the President forgive up to $50,000 of student debt for some 43 million Americans who borrowed for college beyond their means. More than nine million Americans have defaulted on their education loans, and an estimated one-third of those who borrowed federal money for college never completed their course of study.

President Biden is willing to reward the failures of these students by forgiving up to $10,000 of their loans. He may even up the ante after he and Schumer agree on just how much to put toward this baccalaureate bailout.

It's bad policy, and morally tone deaf considering the sacrifices others have made for federal education assistance. Originally known as the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, the G.I. Bill was enacted to provide veterans with health care, low-interest mortgages, as well as farm and business loans. But it was the educational benefits that defined the World War II and subsequent versions of the bill.

In short, the G.I. Bill was enacted to help those who served and sacrificed for our country. When the troops returned from World War I – more than half of whom were drafted – little consideration was given to the combat scars they carried in their hearts and minds. Known then as shellshock, today it is referred to as Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS) which produces anxiety, stress, isolation, and creates an appetite for dangerous vices.

In crafting the G.I. Bill, the American Legion led the effort to ensure the veterans of WWII were better cared for than those who came home from “The War to End All Wars.” Whether it was through persuasion or conscription, the government's call to service produced hardship for veterans. There was a moral obligation to care for those who were seriously injured. But the G.I. Bill also implicitly recognized a "contractual" obligation to compensate veterans for lost opportunity or new adversities that resulted from their service.

In the January 1969 American Legion magazine, R.B. Pitkin wrote a detailed account of how the G.I. Bill came to be and why it was needed.

Upon completion of their military service, Pitkin explained, veterans "found the world changed, while those who hadn't gone to war were ahead of them in wealth, training, careers and social advancement." He noted an account from David Camelon of the Hearst newspapers who described "a shocking, incredible story of disabled men…their minds twisted, bodies torn in battle – shunted out of hospitals, out of the armed forces into a world of callous reality, of heartbreaking delay and neglect." The G.I. Bill attempted to financially reimburse this difficult reality.

Today's average college student, for whom loans may soon be forgiven, has made no such sacrifice.

But Brandi Anderson has. She graduated in 2019 at the top of her class from Stetson University in Florida and qualified for the Post 9-11 G.I. Bill’s Fry Scholarship because her father, Michael, was killed in Al Anbar province in Iraq on May 2, 2004. Brandi was seven years old at the time. The provision is named for John David Fry, a Marine Gunnery Sergeant who died in Iraq as he attempted to disarm an explosive to save the lives of his fellow Marines. It provides education assistance to the children and surviving spouses of service-members who died in the line of duty after September 10, 2001.

"I don't think it's fair," Brandi told me referring to Schumer’s proposal to broadly erase college debt. "I lost my father, and my mother lost her husband. I have friends who also lost their fathers. I'm grateful for the assistance I received, but it resulted from a loss that still causes great pain," she said. To ensure she graduated debt-free, Brandi also studied long hours to receive an academic scholarship from Stetson and worked her senior year and summers.

The Post 9-11 G.I. Bill also helps returning veterans, as previous versions did dating back to WWII. To qualify, an individual must have served at least 36 months of active duty; served and been discharged with a service-connected disability; or received a Purple Heart, i.e., been wounded or killed by an enemy action. That is how veterans qualify for the kind of assistance Senator Schumer wants to provide for tens of millions of borrowers who never served.

When he signed the original G.I. Bill, President Franklin Roosevelt said veterans "have been compelled to make greater economic sacrifice and every other kind of sacrifice than the rest of us, and are entitled to definite action to help take care of their special problems."

Chuck Schumer’s proposal insults the sacrifice of millions of veterans and children of fallen heroes.

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‘It feels very political’: Australian Principals sorry schools rushed to sign plan to tackle consent

One of the state’s longest-serving independent school heads says a cross-sector “statement of intent” to improve consent education was driven by political expediency rather than a desire for change, and she wishes her sector had not signed it.

Several other principals privately agree with her, with one saying “it feels very political”.

The statement, which has been signed by the public, Catholic and independent sectors, commits all schools to taking “concrete actions” to strengthen their students’ ability to form healthy relationships and prevent harmful situations.

However, it does not include parents’ groups as signatories as originally proposed by the Association of Independent Schools NSW, which came up with the concept three weeks ago. Parents’ groups told the Herald they would have signed it.

NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the statement was intended to be signed by the three school sector heads individually, with further collaboration with other key groups to follow.

“While this is a whole-of-society challenge, the statement signed by the three education heads acknowledges the key role schools and teachers, in partnership with parents and parent organisations, will play in supporting change,” she said.

But Jenny Allum, who has led SCEGGS Darlinghurst since 1996, said while she supported the ideals articulated in the statement – which included hearing the voices of students and basing decisions on evidence – parents should have been signatories even if their involvement delayed the process.

“I am very sorry that we rushed to sign the statement of intent after it had been made clear that some parent groups would also like to sign the statement,” she said. “The signing of the statement in such a rushed fashion has more to do with political expediency than any desire to actually affect change.

“There is no quick fix here, no short-term critical incident to manage and wait for it to go away.

“A better course of action would have been to have a continued dialogue about consent and sexual coercion, as well as sexual assault and abuse, violence against women, gendered stereotypes, sexualisation of girls and women, and so on.”

Ms Allum said parents were the primary educators of their children, and so needed to be involved in conversations about respect, consent and violence towards women.

“Why was it important to sign something by yesterday afternoon, except that either the minister wanted it that way, or the [school] systems could look like they were doing something?” she said. “From what I can tell it’s relatively cosmetic. What practical solution does it offer?

“If you can’t name a practical solution, you’ve got to think it was political.”

Another principal, who did not want to be named, said the problem of sexual assault ran much deeper than students’ understanding of consent. “I don’t think [the statement] is the answer,” she said. “I don’t know how a statement of intent even begins to address it.”

Another said the document was “full of motherhood statements” but signing it did no harm and sent a positive message.

Julie Townsend, from St Catherine’s School, said it was appropriate for schools to work together. “Parents’ organisations can similarly unite with a common intent,” she said. “Both the school sectors and parent organisations can work side by side.”

Other principals, who also did not want to be named, said they would have preferred to wait for guidance from the Australian Human Rights Commission, which consulted with the sector at a roundtable on Friday.

They believe that a firm set of guidelines or recommendations from the commission, which has also helped the university sector and defence force, would be the most likely avenue to create lasting and meaningful change.

The AISNSW board voted to sign the statement after discussing it on Thursday night, AIS chief executive Geoff Newcombe said. “The board noted that this should be seen as a first step in dealing with what is a whole-of-society issue,” he said.

“The association also is currently in discussions with the NSW Parents Council so that we can recognise the critical role that parents will play in trying to resolve this problem.”

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UK: Suspended teacher 'defended his right to freedom of speech in heated phone call with father of Muslim pupil' after showing cartoon of Prophet Muhammad to class - as petition to reinstate him passes 47,000

The RE teacher suspended over a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad is reported to have ‘defended his right to freedom of speech’ in a heated telephone call with the father of a Muslim pupil at Batley Grammar School, Mail Online can reveal.

The 'burly Yorkshire lad' in his 20s, who has not been named, is also disclosed as saying ‘British values allowed him to present a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad to his class of year nine students as part of their course work'.

The suspended teacher, who allegedly showed a caricature widely reported as taken from the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, telephoned the irate father after he had called the school and left a message to speak with him.

A petition started by students of the RE teacher has also passed 47,000 signatures today after police whisked him away for his own safety.

Meanwhile, a school governor is backing calls for the teacher to be re-instated, and is said to feel that the teacher is being 'unfairly blamed'.

Protestors gathered outside the school near Bradford, West Yorkshire, for a second day on Friday, with Headteacher Gary Kibble keeping 980 children at home.

It follows Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick saying the protests were 'not right', adding that suggestions the teacher was in hiding are 'very disturbing'.

The Muslim parent demanded to speak to the teacher after his year 9 son returned from school and reported the matter to him.

When the teacher returned the call he told the father that he had warned his pupils that some would find it offensive, but his aim was to pose a question to his class.

He believed he was ‘right’ to show the cartoon which has offended Muslims across the world. He wanted to discuss whether the cartoonist was to blame or the terrorists who had committed murder over it in France after the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo had published it.

The angry father said the teacher did not appear apologetic when told that showing the cartoon to his son was offensive and instead was ‘arrogant’. The teacher asked the father to voice his concerns to another staff member.

In a group Whatsapp message, shared among Islamic parents and protesters who have demonstrated outside the school and seen by Mail Online, the father said: ‘He should have known better.

‘I expressed I was not happy with his actions and he had caused offence to the community. He should have known better, after all these images caused international outrage.

‘He was not apologetic and was arrogant in his response that what he did was right. He stated that he knew some of the pupils would tell their parents.’

But the suspended teacher, who has apologised, has been forced to leave his home and into hiding with his family.

A source who is related to one of the school's governors told Mail Online: 'Intimidation all round is the feeling why few people are speaking out on the teacher’s behalf and asking not to be identified.

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Graphic Sexual Content Assigned To Texas Students; Dissenting Parents Harassed With Anti-Christian…‘D**ks’

Students as young as 13 in Leander Independent School District, Austin, TX, have been exposed to graphic sexual content as part of their course work, including graphic verbal depictions of gang rape and other sexual acts.

Much of the content is too explicit to post on this site, but a copy of an email sent to The Daily Wire containing extended passages can be found here (fair warning, it is nauseating).

A sample (and comparably “tame”) passage from a book featured on an 11th grade reading list for the district reads: “she reached inside his pants, then into his underwear, and wrapped her hand around him. He bit down hard on his bottom lip, closed his eyes and waited for what came next. He was terrified of what came next.”

You get the picture.

According to parent Emily Long, parents were initially alerted to the problem in August of 2020 when children told their parents how uncomfortable they were in class. Unsurprisingly, parents in the district complained.

According to one parent who spoke to The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity, their concerns were not received with tolerance by some involved in the process. Proponents of the pornographic content, including both teachers and parents, lashed out at the concerned parents, calling them “religious zealots, bigots” and “racists.” The harassment did not end at name-calling. There were also…“d**ks.”

Before we move on to the deranged behavior that ensued next, let’s just pause to appreciate that there are actually activists among us who defend pornography in K-12 schools.

“Some of the people speaking out have received anonymous cardboard penises in the mail with anti-Christian messages calling them names such as c**t,” one concerned parent told The Daily Wire. “Others have received dead animals on their porches.”

Photographs of the phallic cardboard cutouts were provided to The Daily Wire by Long, who has been at the center of the fight. Check out the “d**k pics” below and see if you can identify a theme.

One reads “He has risen” and includes a crown of thorns. “He is risen INDEED. Stay hateful your bigoted c**t” the back of it reads. The postal packaging reads “fondle with care.”

A more intellectually ambitious message accompanying a phallus festooned with glitter reads, “Hope this sparkling d**k calms your fear mongering you book hating philistine.”

The irony of decrying “bigotry” while simultaneously targeting a specific religion hardly requires commentary in 2021. Radical activists have been pioneers on the cutting edge of bigotry for at least a decade, which is why so many have abandoned the left, myself included.

While the mindbending degeneracy of these activists is mildly humorous, the situation in Austin is not. Parents in the district are desperate.

“We don’t know where to turn,” one parent told me. “We are stuck paying tax dollars to a district who refuses to listen and is rolling out their new social studies curriculum in the fall.”

According to one concerned parent, the district made only token efforts to accommodate parental concerns. In November of 2020 the district issued a (pseudo) apology, yet failed to remove the books from the classrooms or curriculum. As of Wednesday, March 23, 2021, the books were still in use in the classrooms, according to teachers at the school who communicated with the PTA.

In their utterly anemic public statement, the district attempted to blame the debacle on, you guessed it, Covid. The blame-shifting statement reads:

In Spring 2020, this review took place when we closed our buildings and all staff worked virtually from home due to COVID. We selected the specific titles after the Board of Trustees approved a framework for the adoption, not including the book titles or themes, during the March 12, 2020 Board of Trustees meeting.

We over-relied on written reviews and recommendations. We chose not to purchase the multiple copies of each title necessary to mail them to teachers. At the time, we were not allowing any non-essential employees in buildings and we were not distributing any supplies. Teachers were not able to thoroughly read each book. Some books containing passages not suitable for students made it through this flawed vetting process. We acknowledge this breakdown in the process and apologize for selecting inappropriate literature for the assigned students’ ages.

According to one parent I spoke to, the school district initially “put together a book vetting process to appease the parents. But the curriculum directors who chose the books are running [the process],” thus creating an evaluation process that is “completely skewed.” The contentious books are either “passing anyway or being moved to a different grade level or to the school library.”

Throughout the review process the books continued to be utilized in class for student assignments, with no changes to curriculum in the intervening 6 months.

According to Long, at the most recent school board meeting on March 25, 2021, it was determined that several of the books would be pulled from classrooms until the vetting process was complete. This was the first “win” for concerned parents in almost 8 months. As of publication, 36 of 140 “book club” books have been vetted, with several slated for removal. According to Long, teachers in the school have confirmed the books have, at long last, been removed from classrooms.

As of publication, the battle over the books in LISD remains contentious, with activist teachers allegedly recruiting students to protest in favor of the books

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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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