Wednesday, November 16, 2022



Kayla Patrick’s Not-So-Soft Bigotry

Being a Democrat means never having to say you’re sorry — even for being a racist. And nowhere is that more clearly the case than with Kayla Patrick, who works for Joe Biden in the Department of Education’s Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development.

Patrick, who has a master’s in education policy from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in political science from Wellesley College, and has been with Team Biden since February, said this last year during her keynote address at an event called Policy Pathways’ 3rd Annual Fall Celebration: “School discipline is a symptom of a racist and punitive system that often fails to see children as children. … So black girls are more likely to be disciplined, frankly, because black girls experience race- and sex-based discrimination in classrooms. They are disciplined often for simply being black.”

There’s more where that came from. “In other settings, we would consider self-advocacy or assertiveness a leadership skill,” she said. “But when black girls do it in schools, they are often suspended for being loud, defiant, or talking back.”

“These aren’t just consequences,” Patrick said of the belief that good order and discipline are necessary components of an orderly classroom. “These are actions that leave too many black girls stuck in the school-to-poverty pipeline. And this doesn’t just happen because black students inherently behave different than white students. They absolutely don’t. This happens because racism is baked into school discipline and dress code policies.”

What’s sad here is that eight years ago, the Obama administration was making the same rotten raced-based arguments. As the great Thomas Sowell wrote then:

Attorney General [Eric] Holder’s threats of legal action against schools where minority students are disciplined more often than he wants are a much more sweeping and damaging blow to the education of poor and minority students across the country.

Among the biggest obstacles to educating children in many ghetto schools are disruptive students whose antics, threats and violence can make education virtually impossible. If only 10 percent of the students are this way, that sacrifices the education of the other 90 percent.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Kayla Patrick, though, is not only an opponent of discipline; she’s also a fan of racial quotas — at least where education is concerned. “So in this country,” she complains, “nearly 80% of the teachers are white. And sometimes their mindsets are based solely in whiteness. So that means when they come into school, they have predisposed mindsets about who black children are, what they need to wear, and how they need to behave. And so instead of celebrating their identities and cultures, schools often erase them.”

Thus, Patrick seems to be making a segregationist argument — one that harkens back to the Jim Crow Democrats of the pre-Civil Rights era: Blacks are better off being taught be blacks, not those whose “mindsets are based solely in whiteness.”

We’re not sure what counts as “white” with Patrick, but given that blacks represent around 14% of the U.S. population, that would make for a quota of around 86% non-black teachers. Interestingly, Patrick didn’t complain about the fact that blacks represent 70% of the NFL’s players and 75% of the NBA’s players. Where’s the quota-driven outrage?

If we’re going to start calling for racial quotas, we should be consistent, right?

As for maintaining color-blind order in the classroom, this isn’t so much racism as it is commonsensism. And any call by excuse-making educational bureaucrats like Kayla Patrick to administer discipline with respect to the color of a student’s skin reminds us of what George W. Bush referred to more than two decades ago as “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

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Parental Rebellion Pays Off: Conservatives Win School Board Seats

The midterm elections didn’t quite sweep Democrats out of power. However, some positive developments occurred, especially in noteworthy state and local elections.

The parental rebellion against wokeness, radical gender ideology, and misguided COVID-19 policies continued, producing some solid results in school board elections across America. Again, it wasn’t a red tidal wave, but commonsense candidates found success in an arena long dominated by the Left and public sector unions.

Unions still dominate at the local level—in both organization and money—but the landscape is changing.

Though they are often “nonpartisan,” school board elections have become a serious battleground in debates over K-12 education. Nonpartisan does not mean that there isn’t a serious debate about ideas. As local schools—even in “red” districts—increasingly promoted critical race theory and radical gender ideology alongside stringent COVID-19 lockdowns, parents began organizing in earnest.

What we’ve seen in the past few years is organized parental groups insisting on having their voices heard in school board meetings—much to the consternation of Attorney General Merrick Garland. They’ve put forth candidates to transform school boards from the inside too.

A few national organizations, such as the 1776 Project PAC and Moms for Liberty, added much-needed support and financial backing for citizens to step into the arena to save their local schools.

For instance, Bridget Ziegler, a Florida mom who not only won her Sarasota County School Board election back in August, now helps educate other potential candidates as the Leadership Institute’s director of school board programs.

This kind of organization and institutional support has proved invaluable and means that campaigns once dominated by left-leaning insiders are now open and competitive.

Over the past year, the 1776 Project says it has flipped more than 100 races nationwide.

And some big wins came during the midterm elections. These groups helped flip school board elections in Florida, Maryland, Indiana, and Michigan, according to The Daily Caller.

“Of the 67 candidates Moms for Liberty supported in Florida school board elections, 41 won,” the Caller reported.

An impressive record, especially given that many of the group’s candidates are political neophytes, running for office for the first time in their lives.

The Left has taken notice. Big, left-wing media outlets are starting to write lengthy hit job pieces on Moms for Liberty. The message: The notion that critical race theory has embedded itself into K-12 education is a right-wing fantasy, but trying to stop it is racist.

The New Yorker, for instance, said that such efforts were a “manufactured culture war over critical race theory.” If the culture war is manufactured, why is the Left so concerned about it? Maybe left-wing activists are just nervous that someone is fighting back and not simply ceding schools to them without a fight.

Here’s how the New Yorker described victories for education freedom—a phrase it put in scare quotes—in the midterms:

A clown-car school board race in Charleston, South Carolina, ended with five out of nine seats going to Moms for Liberty-backed candidates. Governor Ron DeSantis—the maestro of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ legislation and a home-state hero to Moms for Liberty—endorsed six school board candidates, all of whom won their races; Moms for Liberty endorsed a total of 12 in Florida, winning nine. In Texas, 10 out of 15 spots on the state school board appeared to be going to Republicans, including three seats in which GOP incumbents either lost or dropped out of their primary when facing opponents who took a harder line against CRT.

Bad news for The New Yorker is good news for America.

Saving education in this country is a multifront battle. Of course, school choice opportunities for parents and students are essential. Florida, for instance, has by many measures, one of the best set of school choice programs in the country.

But plenty of students continue to attend public schools. Despite what the Left says, parents have every right to shape education in those schools too.

Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos had a great response Monday to the National Education Association, the largest public sector union in the United States, after the NEA’s Twitter account suggested that teachers know what’s best for children.

That parents are participating in school board elections is a great thing for self-government in America. Those who are so insistent that “democracy” is under threat apparently are upset by this development.

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The disturbing Australian school environment today

As described by a 13 year old girl -- below

School is a great place to be with friends and learn new skills. I am a student in Year 7 and I want to tell you about the stressors I have been finding at school and in every day for those who would like to listen.

Firstly, living through Covid, lockdowns and new vaccines has been a scary time. There was a lot of talk about Covid, with adults often scaring us kids with the things they told us. A teacher in primary school told us that we could die from getting Covid. After that, I was worried about my family and I thought I would die if I got sick which made me scared to go to school.

The vaccines came out for people who were working. My mum got vaccinated for her job, but she got really sick after and it has changed her and now it feels different. I don’t think people understand how much stress we have been through in the past year. I didn’t get vaccinated in case I got sick too.

One of my friends was so worried about me not being vaccinated that she begged me to wear a mask even when I was eating, which is a pretty tricky thing to do. She has since had Covid and said sorry for being so worried about catching it from me.

At school, masks were required to be worn no matter how hot it was. We would have problems breathing and felt like we would pass out. I felt like I would gasp for air when I was allowed to take it off and so did my friends. How is getting Covid any different from getting the flu before? We used to get really sick before, but no one was forced to wear masks at school. We just practiced good hygiene and stayed at home when we were sick to stop the spread.

Lockdowns were really hard on all us kids. We worried about our families and friends and also missed them a lot. One thing that affected me the most was working from home. I know the teachers were trying their best, but they were unprepared and we didn’t get to learn as much due to the technical issues. I felt stressed because I wanted to catch up with my learning before Year 7, but I am still finding gaps in what I should know.

Secondly, cultural discrimination. Learning about Aboriginals and their culture is so cool! But the information is now a weapon of discrimination. When I was younger, teachers guilted me because of my skin colour, making me think it was my fault that half-blood Aboriginals were taken from their families. I cried and felt ashamed to be who I am. This year, when I entered Year 7, I met this girl whose grandmother is half-Aboriginal and looked similar to me. She called me European and excluded me by saying hurtful comments about ‘European people’ followed by ‘no offence’. I felt hurt.

Another lesson the teacher taught us ‘white people’ was that only Aboriginals could do Aboriginal art. They also said that only Aboriginal people could have a deep connection with their land. I felt hurt. Growing up in the bush and loving the flora and fauna of my area had become so much part of my life. I felt like a local connected with the land. I appreciated the Aboriginal culture, but felt that we were being pushed away like we were not good enough to appreciate where we live or the culture of the Aboriginal people.

I have always loved Australia, where I feel I belong. I had an assignment about Aboriginals and my thoughts. In my response I wrote, ‘I feel a connection with this land, I was born here and raised here and lived here.’

If I don’t belong here, then where do I belong? I know this place I call home is a home to all no matter what race. If someone shames me for the people of my ancestry, I feel I should stand up for who I am and what I experience.

My father was not a good person. He did bad things to me. Thankfully he is not in my life anymore and I am loved and cared for. That makes me ask though, am I to blame for his actions? I am not my father and I am not my ancestors. I should not be blamed for anyone else’s actions. I can only be the best person I know how to be.

In a class at the beginning of the year, my teacher was very political and made me feel uncomfortable to be around her. She would voice her opinions in class. She stated ‘women are much smarter than men, and that’s why more women were at university and women are the key to our future’. She also said men are abusive to women and said women should have more rights than men. It didn’t make sense to any of the students. We were all extremely uncomfortable. I found it rude and unjust to state her views with such anger. I felt sad for the boys in my class and also felt angry because I have a brother who I love and don’t like people pulling him down because he is male.

I believe that equality for men and women would mean no one pulls down the other sex, and that we appreciate the differences and similarities between each other. I hope that we can all find a place to appreciate both men and women and not criticise each other because of skin colour, ancestry, sex, or sexual preferences – where we can learn to be kind to one another instead of judging and lumping everyone into a category.

Sexualized themes are being pushed into very young people. I am in Year 7 and over 50 per cent of girls believe they are bi, pan etc. 100 per cent of the boys in my class believe they are gay. I have no problems with what they want to do, but I am in Year 7… Why are so many people worried about their sexual preferences? I have felt pressure to identify my sexual identity at school and I am just a kid. I was bullied because I was not interested. I thought school was about Maths, English, History, Art, Science etc. I feel that there is so much talk about this stuff that kids are being pushed into something they don’t understand. Shouldn’t that be for when they are older and ready to date? I’m only 13-years-old.

My cousin has two friends who are very particular about their pronouns and get angry when my cousin accidentally gets them mixed up. One prefers she/them and the other they/them. I thought pronouns are referring to another person and not to the person directly, so why are they offended, unless the person is saying mean things about them. I feel really confused. Going from primary school to high school has been difficult with all these changes and I feel I have needed to grow up before I am ready. I think the kids are too worried about things that don’t matter. People get my name wrong all the time and I don’t mind. I just don’t understand why it wasn’t an issue in primary and now it is?

Since starting high school, I’ve been really stressed with all of the things that I have been talking about affecting me daily. I have developed high anxiety. I struggle every day. I feel unsafe and uncomfortable and I don’t want to go to school anymore. I am a good student. I work hard and want to learn, but now I feel under attack. I feel excluded and constantly worried that I will say the wrong thing or be judged because of my ancestry, and not wanting to be involved in gender or sex talk. I just want to learn and feel safe and included. My Mum has decided that I need to change to distance education due to my anxiety.

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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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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