I remember how it was -- JR
Texas Conservatives Mobilize Against New Social Curriculum Adding Gender, LGBT, and CRT Ideology
Texas conservatives are revolting over proposed State Board of Education changes that will eliminate teaching the U.S. Constitution and founding principles in some grade levels while including ideologies on white supremacy, LBGT pride, and gender.
Parent groups and conservative groups have mobilized to attend a public hearing at the Texas State Board of Education in Austin Tuesday in opposition to changes that they feel do not accurately reflect the accomplishments of Texas and America. The board could vote on the changes this week.
Left-leaning groups praised the first draft of the social studies curriculums proposed last month as more inclusive and progressive than past education standards.
Melissa Martin, a board member of Innovative Teachers of Texas, a conservative teacher’s group, told The Epoch Times the changes were “disappointing.”
“Texas is an exceptional state, and our students need to learn about our rich Texas history,” she said via text. “Rather than focusing on a globalist agenda, the curriculum should motivate our young Texans to develop into citizens who value family and citizenship of our great state and nation.”
Republican groups sent out a call to action identifying the removal of numerous Texas Education and Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) educational standards about America’s founding principles and the family to be replaced by more liberal ideas aligned with globalism.
Some of the high school level changes include removing “E Pluribus Unum” and “God We Trust” from the U.S. History curriculum.
Significant American government figures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan were removed from U.S. Government studies.
A working committee drafting the rules said in notations about the deletion that the standards would be a better fit for middle school or moved into other lessons on executive power concerning government figures.
Other social studies curriculum standards that were part of a draft were just as problematic for critics.
In the 7th Grade, a standard claims that the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s practice of federalism influenced the writing of the U.S. Constitution as a nod to diversity inclusion.
However, some scholars have debunked that connection.
The confederacy is also known as the League of the Iroquois, consisting of up to six upstate New York-based Native American tribes.
An 8th Grade standard on the intersectionality of (gay) pride, civil rights, and other movements was included.
The comment section mentioned Angela Davis, who advocates Critical Resistance Theory for abolishing the prison system. Also, Texas Rangers, an elite law enforcement group, were listed as “an instrument of oppression” during the clash between Texas Rangers and Mexican Americans and immigrants during the Mexican Revolution.
On the high school level of World Geography, the new standard included the “Gender Inequality Index” and the “World Happiness Report.”
Various citations of the “history of white supremacy” were included in the middle and high school level, where one standard analyzed the effects of “the New South” on diverse populations including, “sharecropping, convict leasing, Black Codes, white supremacy, and the creation of the Ku Klux Klan.”
Julie Pickren, a Republican running for State Board of Education in District 7, told The Epoch Times the state board sped up the process of deciding the TEKS for the next 12 years.
With more conservatives likely to take seats on the board in January, the process was fast-tracked. Work groups were put in place that produced “woke content,” including the use of the 1619 Project as the foundation of the African American Studies course, she said.
Pickren said other educational standards remove the family and focus on community instead. She noted that other states with conservative governors, such as Florida, Virginia, and South Dakota, have experienced similar moves but stopped them.
State Rep. Steve Toth (R-Woodlands), who championed banning Critical Race Theory in schools, told The Epoch Times the 1619 Project is not historically accurate and prohibited by state law.
“This is a concerted effort, a uniform effort all across the United States,” Toth said.
Potentially six statutes will be violated if the revisions go through, including those required by the Celebrate Freedom law highlighting America’s founding principles and one banning CRT, Pickren added.
Pickren is concerned that if the current board, which includes nine Republicans and six Democrats, passes the new educational standards, there will be no way to correct it.
“The board’s attitude, she said, is to “pass it to see what’s in it.”
Pickren believes the National School Board Association is pushing rewrites of social studies curriculum across the country. The NSBA wrote a letter to President Joe Biden’s administration led to the Justice Department targeting parents speaking out against CRT.
Toth said he intends to fight educational curriculum changes that break Texas law. He called for Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott to get involved.
State Rep. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston), chairman of the Texas Freedom Caucus, wrote in a news release Aug. 29 that the proposed changes were unacceptable and, in many cases, illegal.
The release noted that a letter objecting to the changes had been sent to the SBOE.
“The proposed standards also eliminate Texas history as a standalone course, in favor of intertwining Texas history with other historical subjects, in effect watering down our heritage and putting it on the same level as all other cultures,” he wrote.
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Former bullied teen wins $1M lawsuit against California school district
A California school district was ordered to pay $1 million for failing to protect a middle school student who was “bullied, tormented and verbally assaulted” by fellow teens who started a petition to end her life.
A jury ruled that the El Segundo Unified School District was negligent in training and supervising its workers, who then failed to safeguard 13-year-old Eleri Irons from three bullies between November 2017 to June 2018, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.
A lawsuit filed in 2019 reportedly alleged Irons “suffered PTSD, cut herself and sought refuge in the school nurse’s office nearly every lunch break.”
The torture began when teachers failed to act after finding out about a petition that was circulating in school entitled “Let’s kill Eleri Irons.”
When Irons’ parents did ask school officials for help, they “dismissed the concerns as drama over a teen love triangle,” the teen’s attorney Christa Ramey told the paper.
Former El Segundo Middle School principal Principal Melissa Gooden, who is now an executive director of human resources with the district, allegedly lied about calling police as soon as she learned of the death threat in June 2018, Ramey reportedly said.
“She didn’t call the police that day. She attempted to make it seem like they did everything they could, but in reality, during the entire year, they didn’t do anything,” Ramey said, according to the article. “They never investigated a single claim of bullying made by my client.”
A police report was filed a day after the petition came to light and moments before administrators met with Irons’ parents, according to the article. No one was arrested and the students involved were reportedly suspended.
“Every teacher, counselor and administrator who touched this case failed not only my client, but also the aggressors and every other student at the school,” Ramey said in a statement published by the LA Times. “Bullying is to be taken seriously and the administrators are culpable when they don’t stop it.”
El Segundo Superintendent Melissa Moore said the district, which enrolls about 3,500 students, added two new student safety positions at two elementary schools and implemented a district-wide safety plan.
“As a school district, we respect the ruling of the court and acknowledge the findings of the lawsuit,” Moore said in a statement to The Post.
“The next steps are up to our legal counsel. As we move forward, we are committed to self-improvement and doing everything we can to prevent bullying in our schools.”
Irons, now 18, reportedly said in a statement that she remained traumatized but has forgiven her main bully.
“I am so thankful that I have been able to share my experience and to actually be taken seriously so that the next time a child asks for help, the school will address it the way they should have for me.”
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Mother demands Texas education board ban teaching about Gandhi as part of CRT crackdown
A Texas mother identifying herself as Jenna told the State Board of Education that its first graders should not be learning about Mahatma Gandhi because she considers such instruction part of critical race theory.
“This revision wants to teach a first grader whose still putting notes to the Tooth Fairy under her pillow about following Gandhi’s lead to a peaceful protest,” Jenna said. A first grader! CRT is already rampant and baked into our curriculum and we don’t want to be good little global citizens where our borders are considered a military zone.”
State Board of Education member Marisa Perez-Diaz quickly noted that Jenna had not identified a specific Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standard that she was upset about — after which Jenna accused the board member of “belittling” her.
“These parents are confused and we don’t know,” Jenna said. “So I’m sorry — I’m up here testifying because we don’t understand. But I know the result.”
The State Board of Education is currently considering a new social studies curriculum for K-12 students. Elsewhere in her testimony, Jenna said that the current revision of TEKS looked to her like “collectivism” at the expense of “individualism” and said falsely claimed that the US-Mexico border is “open.”
The fight against CRT, or critical race theory, has been a central feature of Texas Republican politics over the last several years. Critical race theory is a decades-old academic concept holding that race is socially constructed and that racism is a systemic power structure, but conservative activists and Republican politicians have broadened that definition to include all manner of teaching about the effects of race and racism in the US.
In 2020, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning federal employees from taking trainings including “critical race theory” or “white privilege”. The next year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill banning the teaching of CRT in Texas schools — strictly limiting how teachers can teach about current events, banning teaching of The New York Times’ 1619 Project, and prohibiting students from recieving course credit for participating in civic activities.
That bill has not been the only threat to academic freedom in the state’s public schools. Last October, State Rep Matt Krause sent a letter to the Texas Education Agency asking if schools in the state had any of a list of 850 books on a range of subjects including human rights and gender that he felt could be objected to. Some school districts in Texas have removed books from their libraries or classrooms due to challenges from parents.
Now, as the state considers a new social studies curriculum, many of those parents are again making their voices heard.
Challenged again later on by Ms Perez-Diaz to provide a specific example or examples of TEKS standards she took issue with, Jenna was unable to do so. Instead, she said that an indeterminate had dedicated their lives to the fight against so-called critical race theory.
“We parents quit our jobs,” Jenna said. “We left our careers. And we have gone to school board meeting after school board meeting, and we have spent hours and thousands of them ourselves trying to ask questions, as you’ve suggested, digging for information... I’m here because the school boards won’t answer.
https://au.yahoo.com/news/mother-demands-texas-education-board-211559843.html
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