I remember how it was -- JR
Progressive SUNY Binghamton professor rebuked for race, gender policy
SUNY Binghamton officials have rebuked a professor who said white students should clam up in class and let others lead academic discussions.
A syllabus for Ana Maria Candela’s sociology class alerted students that she would be calling on non-white coeds first.
Candela wrote that “if you are white, male, or someone privileged by the racial and gender structures of our society to have your voice easily voiced and heard, we will often ask you to hold off on your questions or comments to give others priority and will come back to you a bit later or at another time.”
Student Sean Harrigan shone a light on the pigment-specific pedagogy after he filed a Title IX discrimination complaint to the school.
Harrigan told The Post Monday that Binghamton officials scrambled to revise the syllabus and later insisted that they opposed the practice.
“How am I supposed to get a full participation grade if I’m not called on because of the way I was born?” Harrigan, an economics major, said Monday.
A school spokesperson said that they cleansed Candela’s syllabus of the offending phrases.
“The faculty member has updated their syllabus, removing the section in question, and is now in compliance with the Faculty Staff Handbook,” the school stated.
Dubbed “progressive stacking,” Candela’s policy aimed to “give priority to non-white folks, to women, and to shy and quiet people who rarely raise their hands,” the syllabus read.
Candela extolled the strategy in the first draft of her syllabus, telling students that it yields “tremendous benefits for our society.”
Over time, the academic said, “those who feel most privileged to speak begin to take the initiative to hold space for others who feel less comfortable speaking first, while those who tend to be more silenced in our society grow more comfortable speaking.”
Harrigan said that Candela also routinely equates capitalism to slavery during lectures. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “The sociology department scares me.”
Harrigan said a professor in another class on “nonviolent compassionate communication” — also being offered through Binghamton’s rhetoric department — strongly encouraged him against choosing America as an example of a compassionate nation.
The student said campus opinion is generally split on progressive curricular trends — with some embracing them and others bristling.
“The Faculty Staff Handbook outlines principles of effective teaching, which include valuing and encouraging student feedback, encouraging appropriate faculty-student interaction, and respecting the diverse talents and learning styles of students,” the school said.
Candela’s syllabus “clearly violates those principles,” a school official said
https://nypost.com/2022/02/21/suny-binghamton-professor-rebuked-for-race-gender-policy/
*************************************************NYC schools need more opportunity — not race-based ‘redistribution’
New schools Chancellor David Banks last week basically apologized for the new “standards” for admission to the city’s screened middle and high schools — and rightly so.
“As I got here, there were a number of things that were already in motion,” Banks said at a Queens meeting. “For right now we’ve come up with this new admissions criteria. We had to make a decision because parents need to make decisions on admissions sooner rather than later,” saying he’d re-examine the issue next year.
In other words, he doesn’t endorse the changes; he just fears that another revamp at this late date would make things worse.
Maybe so, but parents are rightly outraged. Department of Education Chief of Enrollment Sarah Kleinhandler basically admitted the point was the racial re-engineering that obsessed the old regime: “When we modeled this, we saw that black and brown children had . . . the percentage of their access to these screened high schools [go] up 13 percent.”
To get there, the de Blasio folks created a complex algorithm with “buckets” that basically blur the kids’ achievements, so that children with grades averaging 85 have the same chance as those with 99s (among other anti-excellence moves). Then it’s just a lottery; luck, not your hard work, is the deciding factor.
Of course, all families should have access to high-standards public schools for their children, at every level. But right now the only sure way to get that is to manage to get them in as tots to a Gifted & Talented school that feeds directly into good schools all the way through grade 12 — or to win another lottery, for entry into a public charter system like the Success Academies.
Students who enter a Success primary school are guaranteed seats in the network’s middle and high schools — all of which work with children of all ability levels, including special-needs kids. Yet the network as a whole produces test scores better than those of Scarsdale’s public schools.
We’re not saying the entire public-school system should do the same: Some kids are better off on a vocational track at some point; a few really want a performing-arts program, and so on. And while other charters satisfy many of those desires, the regular system should too: The city’s large enough to offer the whole range.
What the city doesn’t need is gimmicks that aim to award seats on the basis of skin color, rather than ability. The race-obsessives don’t even want selective performing-arts schools to do auditions as part of admissions.
If Banks doesn’t manage to stamp out that thinking fast, the system he runs will continue its current rapid enrollment drop.
https://nypost.com/2022/02/21/nyc-schools-need-more-opportunity-not-race-based-redistribution/
**********************************************Racially Sensitive 'Restorative' School Discipline Isn't Behaving Very Well
The fight outside North High School in Denver was about to turn more violent as one girl wrapped a bike chain around her fist to strike the other. Just before the attacker used the weapon, school staff arrived and restrained her, ending the fight but not the story.
Most high schools would have referred the chain-wielding girl to the police. But North High brought the two girls together to resolve the conflict through conversation. They discovered that a boy was playing them off each other. Feeling less hostile after figuring out the backstory, the girls did not fight again.
This alternative method of discipline, called “restorative practices,” is spreading across the country – and being put to the test. Many schools are enduring sharp increases in violence following the return of students from COVID lockdowns, making this softer approach a higher-stakes experiment in student safety.
“Kids are getting into more fights and disturbances because they are struggling,” says Yoli Anyon, a professor of social work at San Jose State University. “So schools are relying on restorative practices as a way to help young people transition back to the classroom.”
Long pushed by racial justice groups, the method aims to curb suspensions and arrests that disproportionately affect students of color. It replaces punishment with discussions about the causes and harmful impact of misbehavior, from sassing teachers and smoking pot to fighting (serious offenses like gun possession are still referred to the police). The hope is that students, through apologizing and making amends, will learn from their misdeeds and form healthier relationships with peers and teachers, making school violence less likely as they continue their education.
Orange County, Calif., is spearheading an expansion of the program into 32 schools, and Iowa City just started its own. Many other large districts – including Baltimore, Chicago, Kansas City, Miami, New York City, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Washington D.C. – introduced the alternative in recent years.
Denver, which pioneered restorative practices more than a decade ago and inspired districts to follow its lead, seems a good place to ask: Is the kinder approach working? Yes and no, and often the answer depends on the eye of the beholder. Suspensions have fallen significantly, in keeping with the intent of the changed discipline policy. But fighting and other serious incidents have not meaningfully declined, the district says. Other cities have reported similar outcomes, according to evaluations and school leaders.
Critics point to the massacre in Parkland, Fla., as a chilling example of what can go wrong. Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 fellow students and staff members in 2018, was able to stay in school – and pass a background check to purchase the weapon he used – because the district tried to address his violent behavior before the shooting through counseling instead of referring him to authorities.
The reasons for the mixed results in Denver, where Latinos and blacks make up two-thirds of the students, and other cities are complex. Some teachers and administrations don’t buy the restorative philosophy. In schools struggling with low test scores and overcrowded classrooms, it seems like another time-consuming educational fad. And students who are demoralized by school sometimes see a restorative conversation as an easy way to escape suspension rather than a learning experience.
“Restorative practices aren’t a silver bullet that alone fix behavior problems,” says Don Haddad, the superintendent of Colorado’s St. Vrain Valley School District, which has used the program for years. “It only works as part of a comprehensive improvement of schools, with better academic programs that give students hope for the future. Otherwise, it has the potential to be just another feel-good program.”
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http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
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