I remember how it was -- JR
Library Group Recommends ‘Pronoun Book’ for Infants
“Children’s entertainment” is no longer guaranteed to be appropriate for children. With Disney vowing to promote sexual perversion, and a drag queen story hour targeting children in every city, this conclusion has become increasingly obvious.
Yet, somehow, the Association for Library Service to Children has managed (or is it womanaged?) to up the ante yet again, aiming woke propaganda not at kindergartners, but at infants.
According to Amazon, “The Pronoun Book” is “for children aged 5+” and “gently encourages children to learn pronoun etiquette and educates them on they/them pronouns, trans and non-binary identities, misgendering and neo-pronouns such as xe, zir and hir.”
According to the Association for Library Service to Children’s 2022 Summer Reading List, the book is for children aged “Birth-Preschool” as well.
He might be drooling all over their onesie, but at least he’s got their made-up pronouns memorized—just kidding, he still calls his mother “dada” because that’s the only sound he has learned to make. In reality, this book is only useful for teaching toddlers what sound a duck makes.
Also Association for Library Service to Children-recommended for the “Birth-Preschool” crowd is “Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race.”
The Amazon description for “Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race” does say the book is for “toddlers on up.” It continues, “research shows that talking about issues like race and gender from the age of two not only helps children understand what they see, but also increases self-awareness, self-esteem, and allows them to recognize and confront things that are unfair, like discrimination and prejudice.”
After all, before a child learns the difference between red and blue, they should know that a few shades of difference in skin pigmentation tell them all they need to know about a person. Instead of enjoying a care-free playdate with her minority friend, that 3-year-old should be apologizing for her white privilege and giving away all her toys.
In fact, much of the list, which was “compiled and annotated by members of the ALSC’s Quicklists Consulting Committee” gives evidence that the committee members neither remember what it was like to be a small child, nor spend much time caring for infants and toddlers.
The books the association recommends range from potentially disturbing (“a story about a cat so adorable that anyone who sees her explodes”) to overly mature (“Jeff has eaten breakfast, watered the plants, and tried on the underwear his grandma gave him”—exactly what does a tot in size 3 diapers know of such things?), but mostly not appropriate for these tender ages.
Where are the likes of “Go, Dog, Go!,” “Fox in Socks,” “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom,” or even “The Adventures of Peter Rabbit”? Where are the books about how much Mommy loves them, sharing, or what sorts of things you can find in a supermarket?
Maybe, somewhere, there is a small child with a long enough attention span to sit through “100 Animals,” but a book on fake pronouns? Little Johnny’s going to squirm right out of your lap.
There are books on the association’s infant list about urban light pollution, lost mail, and traffic congestion—real world problems of which the 4-and-under crowd is blissfully unaware. Learning to walk, talk, and share is hard enough without someone who is miserable writing books to make you miserable, too.
The list contains “a primer on spatial awareness,” a “book about personal boundaries and consent,” “the complexities of emotion,” a “primer for little ones on color theory,” updated “nursery rhymes from a feminist perspective,” and other abstract concepts far beyond the grasp of little ones who can’t yet tell time, count money, or sing their ABCs.
Why the obsession with forcing woke gender and race theory into kids like they’re mashed peas? Likely because the left understands what George Barna’s research has uncovered. “Between 15 to 18 months of age is when most children start forming their worldview,” he said. “By the age of 13, it’s almost completely in place.” For the left, indoctrination must begin with baby books.
That’s why children must absolutely be protected from such poisonous contaminants at such an early age.
When, Lord willing, my wife and I welcome our first child into the world later this year, it will be our duty as parents to love him, clothe him, feed him, care for him—and, yes, to teach him, too. That will look like singing the ABCs with him in the car, reading Bible stories at bedtime, warning him about electrical outlets and busy streets, and habitually thanking God for every meal.
But it will also involve—in a way that was unthinkable 20, 10, or even five years ago—carefully curating the baby books we read to him to guard against the harmful content that is promoted even by the so-called Association for Library Service to Children.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/13/library-group-recommends-pronoun-book-for-infants
*******************************************Those destroying public schools don’t want you thinking about alternatives
What comes after the end of public schools? Anyone who cares about the education of children should be asking that question. So of course it’s one that the teachers unions don’t want us to discuss.
New York City schools are in trouble. As The Post reported Friday, “the city Department of Education expects to enroll roughly 28,100 fewer students this fall.” Enrollment at the city’s regular public schools already fell during the pandemic, and this new projection suggests it’s not improving any time soon.
And New York leads a large pack: California, Illinois, Oregon, Mississippi and Michigan have all seen serious losses of students departing their public-school systems.
Why? A Gallup poll last week showed only 28% of Americans have “a great deal or a lot” of “confidence in U.S. public schools.”
Much of this is tied to long closures during the pandemic. Teachers unions, with people like American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten leading the charge, pushed hard to keep schools closed for far too long. The shutdowns (and the travesty of remote learning) smashed public trust and it simply isn’t that easy to rebuild. Researchers at the American Enterprise Institute found that the longer a school district stayed remote, the larger its enrollment drop.
But parents tell me they have many reasons for saying “enough.”
New York City’s crushing of merit-based admissions under Mayor Bill de Blasio pushed people out, as did general woke nonsense replacing academics. Other parents pulled their kids when toddlers stayed masked after the rest of the city had stopped.
Mayor Eric Adams isn’t mincing words: “We have a massive hemorrhaging of students — massive hemorrhaging. We’re in a very dangerous place in the number of students that we are dropping.” But the City Council (clearly lobbied by the teachers union) is pushing for schools to retain funding at the old enrollment numbers. That’s crazy: These schools aren’t meeting families’ needs; they shouldn’t be rewarded for this failure with cash.
Especially because money is so often set on fire in the New York City system. Schools Chancellor David Banks and over 50 other staffers attended a conference last week “at a swanky hotel near Universal Studios in Orlando,” The Post reports. Kids had to zoom to get an education for over a year, but the grownups need to meet up near theme parks to discuss their education plan? Ridiculous.
Public schools are in a serious downward spiral. The options are fixing them, which hasn’t worked for decades, or letting parents get their kids out.
Public charter schools are, understandably, booming despite getting far less funding. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently pointed out, “Charter schools educate 7% of all public-school students, yet they receive less than 1% of total federal spending on K-12 education.”
On average, charters have higher math and reading scores than traditional public schools; Bloomberg notes, “Research has found that the benefits are especially pronounced for Black, Latino and low-income students.”
But the teachers unions hate charters. They hate when parents have choices for their kids.
They also hate outspoken parents fighting for their kids. Weingarten called parents showing up to school board meetings “racists” and has argued that school vouchers, which would give parents a way to get their kids out of failing schools, are “the end of public education as we know it.” To which we all should say: good.
Public education shouldn’t exist to serve Weingarten. It’s our money paying for our children to get an education.
School-choice activist Corey DeAngelis always asks, “Why would giving families a choice ‘end public schools’?” That’s the exact right question.
If parents are finding that the public-school system doesn’t serve their children, we need to give them an option to exit. If they all take that exit, that means their children have been failed by our current public-education model — and that’s a travesty we can’t ignore.
Politicians shouldn’t preserve this failing model because Randi Weingarten wants them to. They should remember: The last time they listened to her, public schools across the country lost over a million students.
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Australia: Queensland’s most in-demand public schools continue to be flooded with thousands of out-of-catchment students despite strict enrolment requirements
State High is selective. Out-of-area students have to pass a type of IQ test. That raises the standards of the school generally, which makes it popular: A virtuous circle
Queensland’s most in-demand public schools continue to be flooded with thousands of out-of-catchment students despite strict enrolment requirements and even threats of police action.
An exclusive Courier-Mail analysis can reveal more than 50 schools across the state have at least 500 out-of-catchment students enrolled this year.
Despite using private investigators and even threatening police involvement over catchment fraud, top public school Brisbane State High School still saw more than 1564 out of catchment students enrol in 2022, comprising about 46 per cent of its total student population.
According to the school’s enrolment management plan, BSHS – the country’s largest high school – still accepts more than 1000 kids into its selective entry program.
This is despite the state government building a brand new high school, the $153m Brisbane South State Secondary College, just three kilometres away.
Brisbane State High School has seen its percentage out-of-catchment students barely shift over the past three years with 48 per cent of students’ out-of-catchment in 2020.
Other major and in-demand public high schools also saw large numbers of students enrolled from outside the catchment zone.
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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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