Florida to Teach Students About Evils of Communism. Some on the Left Aren’t Happy About It

Florida students will now learn about the evils of communist totalitarianism, thanks to the Florida Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis signed HB 395 into law on Monday, creating a “Victims of Communism Day” in which middle school students will receive at least 45 minutes of instruction every Nov. 7 on topics “such as Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, [Josef] Stalin and the Soviet system, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Revolution, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and Nicolas Maduro and the Chavismo movement.”

It’s a remarkably positive step.

Given the fact that the struggle against communism was the primary focus of American society and foreign policy for generations and that communism still threatens us today, isn’t it appropriate that high school students learn something about it?

Not according to some on the modern left.

University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato told me on Twitter that Florida’s initiative is just “political posturing.” Teaching high school students about the murderous regimes of Stalin, Mao, Castro, and other communists is “red baiting,” according to some in the media.

If that’s “red baiting,” then what would you call teaching students about Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust? Surely, young Americans should know about that.

A Miami Herald columnist, Fabiola Santiago, who is from Cuba, ranted that teaching a lesson about communism to students is itself just like communism.

Interestingly, we didn’t get those same comparisons when California mandated a full semester on ethnic studies for students to graduate high school. Some of the people and groups who spearheaded that initiative and shaped the model curriculum were Marxists.

Is it so ridiculous to set aside a single day each year—in a state with many refugees from communism—to talk about an ideology that has done so much harm in the world and has threatened to overthrow free societies around the globe?

Yes, according to Jezebel, which actually went with the line that “true” communism hasn’t been tried yet.

“For any impressionable Florida kids that may be reading this, please note that there have never been any ‘true’ communist countries, owing largely to violent intervention from the U.S. and other Western superpowers,” wrote Jezebel’s Kylie Cheung.

It would have all worked if not for that pesky United States!

Cheung also mocked the contention that communism has killed 100 million people. That’s some kind of right-wing fantasy pulled out of thin air, apparently.

To the contrary, historian David Satter wrote in The Wall Street Journal that communist regimes have killed on an “industrial scale.”

The numbers are staggering.

“In total, no fewer than 20 million Soviet citizens were put to death by the regime or died as a direct result of its repressive policies,” Satter wrote. “This does not include the millions who died in the wars, epidemics, and famines that were predictable consequences of Bolshevik policies, if not directly caused by them.”

When you count the victims not just of the Soviet Union, but of the various communist regimes it was linked to, “including those in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia,” Satter calculated, the number is about 100 million.

Even apart from communism’s lethality is the destructive nature of communism on the living. The ideology destroys economies, strips citizens of basic rights, saps them of their spirit, deprives them of religion and faith, and reduces them to slavery in the name of equality.

Just days after DeSantis signed the Florida legislation, Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen, a 90-year-old retired archbishop, was arrested by Chinese authorities for his support of democracy in Hong Kong.

The evil of communism is still very much with us.

Unfortunately, young Americans are woefully uninformed about communism and the Cold War. According to a poll conducted in 2016, about one-third of millennials thought that more people were killed under George W. Bush than under Stalin.

More recent polls show that Gen Z is also generally ignorant about communism.

One of the foundational reasons for publicly funded education in America is to cultivate self-governing citizens of a republic. Giving American students a basic understanding of the differences between a free society, like ours, and totalitarian societies is essential.

How can they even understand our own country’s flaws if they have nothing to compare them against or to contextualize them?

Students should learn about the history of slavery and racism in America. What the left-wing education establishment increasingly wants is to mandate teaching about those things to the exclusion of anything else.

Even more, it wants to inject lessons in history and even science and math with warped ideology—such as critical race theory—that actually make us more racist and less free.

Its initiatives create an extremely distorted picture of the United States.

Throughout its history, America has been a symbol of liberty. In the 20th century, after a remarkable rise in power, it played an active role in opposition to totalitarianism on behalf of free people.

First was the fight in World War II against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan—the triumph of which would have created a new dark age.

Next was the long, twilight struggle—as liberal President John F. Kennedy called it—against the Soviet Union and international Marxism. The goal of the Soviet Union, stated very plainly, was to bury the United States and free societies, to push Western civilization onto the ash heap of history.

History, the communists claimed, was on their side. To make sure of that, they imprisoned political dissenters en masse, starved their own people, directly killed millions more, and waged war on those who resisted around the world.

For a time, the United States was the only serious earthly counter to that threat. It was a symbol of hope for people living under the jackboot of fascism and communism.

Countless people abroad who live under the most direct threat of oppression understand what we stand for, at the most fundamental level.

Our own people should know that, too. Learning about communist tyranny and atrocities is a good place to start.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/05/12/florida-to-teach-students-about-evils-of-communism-some-on-the-left-arent-happy-about-it

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Striving for ‘Menstrual Equity,’ Oregon Puts Tampons in Men’s Bathrooms at Public Schools, Colleges

According to a new poll, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, is officially the least popular governor in America. And considering the law she just signed, it’s not hard to see why.

Thanks to the Menstrual Dignity Act that just passed, local taxpayers are now on the hook for thousands of new tampon dispensers in boys’ bathrooms. This latest madness, which affects every public school and college in the state, is expected to cost up to $400 a machine. And school custodians aren’t the only ones upset about it.

“This will show all of our youth, and especially our trans youth, that the bathroom they’re using, that affirms their gender, that it’s for them,” argued one Portland resident, “and it has the products there that they might need.”

Legislators agreed, expanding a bill that was originally intended to give female students free sanitary products at school. Now, in an absurd gesture, the state has decided to “affirm the right to menstrual dignity for transgender, intersex, nonbinary, and two-spirit students” by trying to “minimize negative attention that could put them at risk of harm … during menstruation.”

In the state’s guidance, school officials are told to use gender-neutral phrases like “menstruating students” instead of “girls.” When it comes to explaining the reproductive process, teachers are instructed to tell kids that “someone with a uterus and ovaries may begin to menstruate,” instead of girls. There’s no such thing as “female hygiene products,” the toolkit argues, only “menstrual products.”

Obviously, state leaders didn’t bother to consult their counterparts in Illinois, where a similar move has literally opened the floodgates to expensive plumbing issues and mischief. “When you give a grade-school boy something that’s adhesive, they’re going to put it in places,” Illinois Republicans argued during their debate.

“These products are not inexpensive, and they are going to be misused if they are placed in elementary school boys’ bathrooms,” Republican state Rep. Avery Bourne fumed last year.

Case in point: campuses like Loyola University, where janitors are dealing with all kinds of pranks, tampering, and vandalism. Sanitary pads “would end up on the mirrors, in the sinks, down the toilet, and completely thrown out,” one students group complained.

School administrators have also had to deal with the fallout of this lunacy in Illinois, admitting, “Operationally for our building, yes, it is creating problems … ” Huntley High Assistant Principal Tom Kempf said. “[T]he custodian has to spend an extra hour fixing something … ”

What’s next? Urinals in the girls’ restrooms?

“I’m telling you, there is no logic here,” Republican state Sen. Jil Tracy warned before the state ignored her and passed the bill. “We’ve got to quit playing these stupid silly games here and get real and get fiscally responsible.”

Unfortunately, “menstrual equity” is only scratching the surface of outrage in most states, where parents are fighting a much more sinister abuse of their authority. In Florida, mom January Littlejohn is actually suing her school district for helping her teenage daughter transition without her consent.

On “Fox & Friends,” she explained how she stumbled on a “transgender support plan” that school officials were working on behind Littlejohn’s back that included everything from preferred pronouns, overnight rooming situations for field trips, switching to boys’ restrooms, and other steps that they never called home to discuss.

“This is happening all over the nation,” Littlejohn warned. “This same protocol is in place in many, many schools across districts everywhere … So this is a very systematic way that parents are being excluded from important decisions occurring with their children—and, further, social transition is a medical intervention that schools are grossly unqualified to be taking these steps without parental involvement.”

Her attorney, Vernadette Broyles, pointed out that there’s a wave of lawsuits across the country from parents experiencing this same injustice. In places like Wisconsin, Maryland, Oregon, and California, she pointed out, moms and dads are starting to realize that “this is a national agenda … and they need to assert [their rights] with their school.”

President Joe Biden’s radical education secretary, Miguel Cardona, has been on the receiving end of a lot of angry letters from Republicans who see the president’s administration—and woke districts across the country—”withholding information from parents … at an alarming pace.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., were furious that a 12-year-old girl attempted suicide after the school pushed her to embrace her new gender identity “without notifying the parents.”

“There’s little to no accountability coming from this administration,” Foxx and Burr wrote to Cardona earlier this year. “How many more children will be put in harm’s way if school districts are not being held to account?”

In places like Missouri, state leaders are racing to keep this dangerous ideology at arm’s length. Right now, local conservatives are working against the clock to move a bill that would outlaw this radical gender therapy (including hormones and surgery) for children out of the Rules Committee and onto to the floor. So far, it’s been stalled by one man—the committee’s chairman, Republican state Rep. Philip Christofanelli

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/05/04/striving-for-menstrual-equity-oregon-puts-tampons-in-mens-bathrooms-at-public-schools-colleges

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Australia: Parents turned away as childcare centres don’t have enough staff

Queensland’s childcare industry is being crippled by worker shortages with many centres forced to turn parents away due to regulatory child and staff ratios.

The number of job vacancies in the early learning sector are at record highs across the country with one in 10 roles vacant nationally and 1371 in Queensland. Hiring difficulties are so dire fears grow that some centres will not survive and many have had to apply for a government waiver to legally operate as they have not enough staff.

The Australian Childcare Alliance in Queensland is deeply concerned by the job crisis and has been lobbying all parties in the lead up to the Federal Election to recognise the need for strategies to attract workers to the sector and in the long run keep more mothers, who need childcare, in the workplace.

“The workforce crisis in early childhood education has been on our radar for many years but this became even more of an issue during the pandemic when we had a significant number of educators leave our sector, either taking early retirement because they were simply exhausted, or due to vaccine mandates,” president of the ACA in Queensland Majella Fitzimmons said.

The ACA has been working with members on the most effective ways to find new staff.

“We highlight government programs for staff and businesses to support new entrants to the sector. There are some great packages and grants that bring new entrants to our sector and allow them to ‘earn while they learn’ through supported work placement programs,” Ms Fitzimmons said .

The early education peak body believes the government needs to look at reduced fees for qualifications in this field, and a boost in Skilled Visa Immigrants.

Lucy Schweizer Cook, general manager of a chain of Amaze early education centres across the state plus outside school hours care services, told The Courier-Mail that all but one of the Amaze centres are at capacity due to staff shortages.

“Parents are on waiting lists until we can meet the ratios to enrol more children. During Covid a lot of educators had a life reboot with many deciding they would stay home rather than work or looking for jobs with higher wages. We are doing all we can to make things more attractive for workers. We give loads of bonuses, pay four per cent above award wages, have staff childcare discount, flexibility, free uniform,” she said.

“It is such a rewarding career, who wouldn’t want hugs from babies and children every day,” she said.

Under The National Quality Framework there must be one educator for four children under 24 months in child care settings, two to three year olds require one staff member for five children and in outside school hours care and vacation care one educator for 15 children.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/parents-turned-away-as-childcare-centres-dont-have-enough-staff/news-story/54299fec1eec4ad3c6601e0bf8892833

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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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