Friday, May 13, 2022



Exposing the Left’s Destructive Education Agenda: They’re ‘Coming for Your Children’

Beginning with the 2021 gubernatorial election in Virginia—in which Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe for all practical purposes vowed to keep parents out of the classroom, saying, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach”—parents began to realize the Democratic Party wanted to leave them behind.

President Joe Biden echoed that sentiment April 27 while speaking to a group of Teachers of the Year, when he told them: “They’re all our children. … They’re not somebody else’s children. They’re like yours when they’re in the classroom.”

Politics aside, the issue at hand is protecting our children from radical ideologies and preserving a parent’s right to be a parent. But the left wants to have a stranglehold on education, to keep parents on the sidelines, and to force them to co-parent with the government, while driving a wedge between parent and child.

When we push back on—and call out—those policies, its true motives are revealed.

To see that displayed firsthand, look no further than Florida, where a former House colleague, Gov. Ron DeSantis, recently signed a bill to reinforce parents’ fundamental rights to make decisions regarding the upbringing of their children because parents should be able to send their first grader to school without worrying he or she will be taught radical sexual orientation and gender identity ideology.

The “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which Democrats and the LGBT lobby falsely dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill simply prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, prohibits classroom instruction that is not age-appropriate for students, and requires school districts to adopt procedures for notifying parents if there is a change in services from the school regarding a child’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being.

Florida’s new law exists to ensure parents’ rights and protect young children from being exposed to sexually explicit indoctrination, and contains nothing outside the realm of common sense, but the firestorm from the liberal media, Hollywood, leftists, and woke corporations like Disney (a company that profits from creating content for children) was astonishing.

Just as an aside: Why has Disney shifted from founder Walt Disney’s vision of providing family-friendly entertainment to essentially being the lobbying arm for the left’s LGBT agenda?

My question is: Do the opponents of the law really think children (ages 5 through 9) should receive sexually explicit instruction in school regarding sexual orientation and gender identity ideology and that parents should have no say in what goes on in the classroom?

If the answer is yes, then we really do have reason to be concerned.

Perhaps you remember the chilling lyrics of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus’ “parody” song that made waves last year: “You think that we’ll corrupt your kids if our agenda goes unchecked. Funny, just this once, you’re correct. We’ll convert your children—happens bit by bit, quietly and subtly, and you will barely notice it. … We’re coming for your children. … The gay agenda is here.”

What’s scary is that the “coming for your children” song disguised as parody doesn’t seem as much of an outlier when you consider the left’s vitriolic reaction to the passage of DeSantis’ Parental Rights in Education law; a Disney executive producer’s admission of the company’s “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” released in a leaked video; the Biden administration’s push for mutilating “gender reassignment” surgeries and life-altering puberty blockers for minors; and the doxxing of the Libs of Tik Tok Twitter account created to expose the degeneracy of predators and the horrors of the LGBT agenda by reposting content posted by the radicals themselves.

The truth is, the Biden White House, liberal media, woke corporations, and Democratic elites are playing politics at the expense of children’s lives and well-being. Unfortunately, this is nothing new, as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Democrats and teachers unions forced young children out of the classroom to protect them from a disease that poses little or no risk for healthy young people and kids.

The number of children who have suffered mentally, physically, emotionally, and developmentally from the onslaught of these ineffective and unscientific COVID-19 policies is heartbreaking. But the left doesn’t seem to care.

From unscientific social isolation measures and unproven mask mandates in schools to exposure to sexually explicit material in the classroom and a pro-abortion agenda, children suffer the most from the woke ideologies of the radical Democratic elites.

We even see this with the Senate confirmation of federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Democrats—and some Republicans—hail her as a hero despite the fact that she has a long history of leniency in sentencing in child pornography cases. That should have raised a red flag on both sides of the aisle, not a speedy confirmation.

Where does it stop for progressives when it comes to promoting their radical ideologies? It doesn’t. Give them an inch, and they will take a mile, all at the expense of those who deserve the most protection.

The reality is this: Conservative policies are pro-child, pro-family, pro-parent, and most importantly, pro-life. Democrats, however, promote policies and ideologies that ultimately impair children in the long run, vilify concerned parents as “domestic terrorists,” and attack the most vulnerable.

Conservatives believe that parents, not the government, should have the primary say in their child’s life and that a child’s rights must be protected first and foremost. For conservatives, when it comes to protecting children, that is the hill to die on.

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The NY Legislature’s hostage-taking on mayoral control of schools

With bare weeks left in the legislative session, state lawmakers are torturing Mayor Eric Adams by holding hostage the renewal of mayoral control of the city’s public schools, now set to expire June 30.

Chaos would ensue if the city actually had to re-establish the old Board of Education, potentially ousting Chancellor David Banks as the system’s boss and utterly derailing Adams’ and Banks’ efforts to repair the damage wrought in the de Blasio era, including all the ground lost during the pandemic.

It’s far more likely the Legislature will do an extension of two or three years, while also undermining mayoral control by adding new strings. The only winner will be the school unions (whose power grows as accountability is diffused) and the lawmakers eager to take Adams down a peg.

Meanwhile, it’s all just one more thing for parents to worry about. In a sane world, mayoral control would be permanent until lawmakers decided to replace it. But that would leave Albany powerbrokers less able to indulge themselves at the kids’ expense.

This, when the Adams-Banks agenda is so promising: Lose the woke ideology, support and expand the parts of the system that work (the test-in-only specialized high schools and Gifted & Talented programs), prune the bureaucracy and increase accountability, do more for kids with learning disabilities such as dyslexia and return to phonics as a proven method of teaching children how to read.

In a tell of who’s really calling the shots, Albany is aiming to demand smaller class sizes, requiring more teachers (the United Federation of Teachers’ perennial goal: more members) even as enrollment declines.

State Senate Education Committee chief Sen. John Liu (D-Queens) also wants to dilute City Hall’s influence on the Panel for Education Policy by adding another parent representative and making City Comptroller Brad Lander (a relentlessly pandering de Blasio-style progressive likely hostile to the interests of Liu’s own constituents) an ex officio member.

Mayor Adams held a rally with union leaders for mayoral accountability on the steps of City Hall on Monday, May 9.
Mayor Adams held a rally with union leaders for mayoral control on the steps of City Hall on Monday, May 9.
NYC Mayor's Office
Yes, Adams erred in failing to set up an effective Albany lobbying team, instead naively relying on the Legislature to simply do what’s right. As a former state senator, he should’ve known better. And relying on the weak reed of Gov. Kathy Hochul was another huge mistake.

But the major blame belongs at the door of Liu, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bx.) and others in the city’s Albany delegation whose first loyalty is clearly with the special interests, not the families they supposedly represent.

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Australia: Seven surprising changes to the way Qld. children will be taught at school in 2023

Students will be taught about tax and superannuation, Australia’s women’s movement, domestic violence and how to “make active choices” as part of a curriculum overhaul being rolled out next year.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority on Tuesday unveiled its new “stripped back and teachable” curriculum coming in 2023.

Mathematics and STEM programs were given a vast overhaul while English and physical education programs will have sweeping changes.

A “Deep Time indigenous History” has been added to the curriculum as a compulsory component of Year 7.

The new curriculum will include the rollout of “making active choices” lessons in classrooms to probe Australian students to strategise how they can increase physical activity in their day-to-day lives as well as reduce sedentary behaviour.

The lessons around healthy choices regarding activity and inactivity will be introduced from Year 5 onwards.

The changes come off the back of alarming data in recent years by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare which categorised 1 in 4 Aussie kids, 24 per cent, as being overweight or obese.

Here are seven surprising additions to the curriculum you may have missed.

Physical education

By the end of Year 1, students will have explored how to seek, give or deny permission respectfully when sharing possessions or personal space.

By the end of Year 8, students will examine how roles, levels of power and coercion and control within relationships can be influenced by gender stereotypes.

By the end of Year 10, students will have investigated how gender equality and challenging assumptions about gender can prevent violence and abuse in relationships.

History

By the end of Year 7, history students will understand more about the early First Nations Australians, their social organisation, cultural practices and their continuity and change over time.

By the end of Year 10, history students will have learnt about the significant events, individuals and groups in the women’s movement in Australia and how they have collectively changed the role and status of women.

Business and social science

By the end of Year 8, students will be taught about the importance of Australia’s taxation system and how it affects decision-making by individuals and businesses.

By the end of Year 10, students will have learnt about the importance of Australia’s superannuation system and how it affects consumer and financial decision-making.

Mathematics

Leading changes to mathematics and STEM, designed to prepare Aussie kids for the jobs of the future, was Year 1 students being taught to connect numbers to 20 – up from 10 – and order numbers 120, up from 100.

Percentages will also be introduced at Year 5 instead of Year 6 and line graphs will be taught in Year 5 science classes instead of Year 10.

But Year 1 kids will no longer learn to tell time on an analog clock, with fractions – including ‘time telling’ – pushed back to Year 2.

English

Under changes to the English components of the new curriculum, by the end of Year 10, students will no longer be required to “consolidate a personal handwriting style that is legible, fluent and automatic and supports writing for extended periods”.

By the end of Year 4, students will understand past, present and future tenses and their impact on meaning in a sentence.

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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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