Wednesday, September 21, 2022



A Canadian school district is defending a transgender teacher who instructs students while wearing large, exaggerated prosthetic breasts

The Halton District School Board in the province of Ontario confirmed Saturday that it’s “standing behind” the teacher in response to an inquiry from the Toronto Sun.

Imagery of the teacher in question reveals his use of outrageously large artificial breasts — with “nipples” clearly visible.

The teacher’s getup has spurred backlash from the community and on social media, and the school board has felt the need to create a “safety plan” at Oakville Trafalgar High School in response to potential protests, according to the Toronto Sun.

“There will the protesters and the anti-protesters,” said Margo Shuttleworth, chairwoman of the Halston school district, according to the Sun. “I do know there have been phone calls made to the school that haven’t been the most pleasant in nature.”

This individual began sexually “transitioning” last year, according to the Sun. However, he only began presenting himself as a female with exaggerated breasts at the start of the 2022 school year.

Shuttleworth said the school has no problem with the situation, according to the Sun. “The teacher is completely accepted and welcomed into the school community as far as the staff is concerned,” she said, according to the Toronto Sun.

The district is identifying the teacher as an industrial arts teacher.

Some have questioned whether the individual’s exaggerated “breasts” represent a safety hazard in an environment in which minors are using circular saws and other potentially dangerous tools.

The teacher’s prosthetic “nipples” are also prominently visible through his clothes, raising the question of potential dress code violations in an environment intended for minors.

Controversy over the shop teacher’s bizarre appearance spurred the school district to send a letter to parents defending the individual’s rights to “gender expression”:

“We would like to take this opportunity to reiterate to our community that we are committed to establishing and maintaining a caring, inclusive, equitable and welcoming learning and working environment for all students and staff,” the statement said.

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GOP AGs Scorch Biden Education Department Over Free Speech, Due Process And Constitutional Rights

Our friends at the Title IX Coalition and SAVE have alerted us that the Attorneys General from 18 states have submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), in response to a proposed Title IX regulation that has stimulated widespread debate and opposition from conservatives and civil liberties advocates. The Attorneys’ General comments represent a tutorial on the meaning and application of First and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees in the higher education setting.

1. The first letter, signed by the Attorneys General of MT, AL, AR, GA, IN, KS, KY, LA, MS, NE, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, and VA, first analyzes the DOE proposal to vastly expand the definition of sexual harassment. This change would “chill the free exchange of ideas,” which would “intimidate students and faculty into keeping quiet on controversial issues.”

The letter then deplores the rule’s plan to remove or modify important due process safeguards, including advance disclosure of evidence, impartial investigations, key written notice provisions, and live hearings. Cumulatively, these changes are “reminiscent of Star Chambers” that “stacked the deck against accused students.” The 37-page letter concludes, “In many instances, moreover, the Department’s Proposed Rule conflicts with the text, purpose, and longstanding interpretation of Title IX.”

2. The second letter charges the draft regulation lacks a clear statement of authority from Congress, and highlights the proposed rule’s unlawful attempt to preempt state laws that protect the rights of females. Signed by the Attorneys General of IN, AL, AZ, AR, GA, KS, KY, LA, MS, MT, NE, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, and WV, the letter concludes simply, “The Proposed Rule threatens to destroy Title IX.”

3. Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas flatly charges the Biden proposal will “destroy constitutional rights.” (4) AG Paxton’s letter to the DOE concludes tartly, “the Proposed Rule promises to repeat the mistakes of the Department’s ill-advised 2011 Dear Colleague Letter.”

All three letters sharply criticize the DOE plan to expand the definition of “sex” to include “gender identity.” Noting that the draft policy lacks definitions of “sex” or “gender identity,” the first letter notes that the Department of Education “simply waves its hand and—by regulatory fiat—alters a fundamental term, as if its novel definition was axiomatic.”

The first letter also highlights the role of Catherine Lhamon, who served as the DOE Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights from 2013 to 2017 and was re-appointed to the same position in 2021. During the earlier period, the letter notes that Lhamon played the lead role in creating a “constitutional and regulatory mess.”

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Educational apartheid in Australian schools?

Retired school principal Chris Bonnor thinks so. See below. His basic beef is that children from affluent homes do better at school. He ventures no explanation of why that is so. He simply says that it is deplorable. But is it changeable? He seems to think that it obviously is but he makes no argument to that effect. He is enclosed in a warm cloak of his own righteousness that frees him from any obligation to justify his views.

He does not at all consider the very well attested fact that higher IQ kids do better at school and that IQ is mainly hereditary. Findings to that effect have emerged repeatedly for over a century. So there never will be an equality of educational outcomes.

Chris could probably live with that but what really burns him up is that the kids who do well also come from more affluent homes. And -- horrors! -- they even go to private schools!

Again Chris fails to ask why that is so. It's a pretty obvious deduction that smart people will in general be smart at making money too. So the smart parents of smart kids will be able to give the kids concerned comfortable homes and a good educational experience. That dastardly IQ is behind the high SES background of the more successful students too!

But no evidence or reasoning will have any impsct on our Chris. He is a rigid bigot who believes what he wants to believe and damn the evidence. That educational inequality must always be with us is incomprehensible to him. He is good at hate, though. Calling natural inequality "apartheid" is scurrilous. He is at best a buffoon


If we sat down 40-plus years ago to write a prescription for a social/academic apartheid system of schools operating on an unlevel playing field, we couldn’t have done it better. It is a structural oddity which has placed Australia as an outrider on the OECD stage.

In the process, it effectively discounted one of the key findings of the Gonski Review, something that seems to lie at the heart of our problems. This problem isn’t hard to find. Anyone can go to the My School website and easily discover that the NAPLAN results coming out of the schools tends to match the socioeconomic status (SES) of the students going in each day.

But there’s more. Gonski reported – and other research confirms – that the collective impact on student achievement comes even more from the SES of each student’s peers, than from their own family. In the world of schools, negative peer effects are associated with students from disadvantaged social backgrounds; positive effects with students from advantaged backgrounds.

Parents and teachers know about this peer effect and that knowledge drives our enrolment shift from low to higher SES schools. School principals certainly know, and competition between schools too often degenerates into an unseemly competition to get preferred students.

The combination of such peer impacts on student outcomes in an already segregated system of schools calls out for a review of how our school system is structured and what we should be doing to create a more inclusive system and socially diverse schools.

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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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