Friday, October 14, 2022



Harvard's Data Undercuts Its Affirmative Action Defense

They trumpet inclusion and practice exclusion. They claim diversity while creating a monoculture. America's leading university has completely lost touch with their own reality. Poor reality contact is the leading sign of psychosis. With such incompetent intellectual analysis, have they forfeited any respect as a university?

Every year since 2013, usually during the first week of September, the Harvard Crimson publishes survey results profiling the incoming freshman class, including their political and social orientations. These feature-length reports have consistently shown that a dominant majority of Harvard’s incoming students identify as politically and socially progressive, with ever-fewer students identifying as conservative. This year, however, the Crimson didn’t publish the feature and didn’t reply to my inquiry about whether they would do so. Harvard may have good reasons for wanting to delay such a report, given an upcoming Supreme Court case.

In Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Supreme Court will reexamine a half-century-old justification for race-based university admissions—namely, that racial diversity generates viewpoint diversity on campus and contributes to the lively exchange of ideas. Past results of Harvard’s freshman surveys, which detail growing racial diversity but diminishing viewpoint diversity, discredit this justification. Of the Class of 2025, for example, only 1.4 percent identify as very conservative; only 7.2 percent identify as somewhat conservative; and only 18.6 percent identify as moderate. By contrast, 72.4 percent of freshmen identify as predominantly liberal. Yet this class is the “the most diverse class in the history of Harvard,” according to William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid.

Other survey responses drive the point home. Of members of the Class of 2025 who supported a candidate in the 2020 presidential election, 87 percent backed Joe Biden. Meantime, 82 percent said they supported the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, which resulted in at least $1 billion in damages and numerous deaths, while nearly half (49.8 percent) said that they supported defunding the police. This doesn’t sound like viewpoint diversity to me.

Without viewpoint diversity as a justification, race-based admissions—that is, affirmative action—may not survive. Since 2014, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a nonprofit group of more than 20,000 students, parents, and others, has argued that affirmative action violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which prohibit public and private universities receiving federal funds from discriminating based on race, color, and national origin. This straightforward legal argument is likely to play well with a Supreme Court that leans toward originalism, but this doesn’t mean that the justices’ decision will rest on that philosophy alone. In fact, the Court’s jurisprudence on race-conscious admissions has centered predominantly not on the legality of the policy but on its implications for higher education.

In his landmark opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Lewis Powell argued that the use of race as a factor in college admissions ought to be permitted because it would (presumably) lead to greater student-body diversity. This was a laudable goal for a university, he said, for it would allow it to achieve “a robust exchange of ideas.”

Sandra Day O’Connor recapitulated Powell’s argument in her opinion for the Court in Grutter v. Bollinger, upholding the University of Michigan Law School’s policy of intentionally favoring applicants from certain racial groups over others with similar qualifications. O’Connor justified the decision largely by appealing to its supposed policy implications. She cited several amicus briefs submitted by left-wing academics, corporations, and professional organizations, all of which alleged countless studies showing that racial and ethnic diversity guaranteed greater viewpoint diversity and, in turn, increased tolerance of differing opinions.

But is this true? Has the use of racial preferences in higher education admissions achieved the “robust exchange of ideas” on which it was originally justified by the courts?

In an amicus brief supporting SFFA’s challenge to race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the Legal Insurrection Foundation (LIF) says “no.” In the years since Grutter was decided, “the American university campus,” LIF argues, “has become less ideologically diverse and more intolerant of ideas challenging campus dogmas.” The group cites several nonpartisan surveys to support the claim. A 2021 survey of 37,104 students conducted jointly by the College Pulse, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and RealClearEducation found that more than 80 percent of students reported some amount of self-censorship.

Similarly, LIF notes that a Knight Foundation-Ipsos study released in January showed that 65 percent of college students felt today’s “campus climate prevents people from saying what they believe for fear of offending someone.” What’s more, less than half of all college students “said they were comfortable offering dissenting opinions to ideas shared by other students or the instructor in the classroom.” And 71 percent of students who identified as Republican “felt that the campus climate chilled speech.”

The Court now seems likely to strike down the use of race-conscious admissions in higher education next June. Given the originalist-bent of the Court’s majority, the decision will rely most heavily on the text of both Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause, which prohibit racial discrimination. But it may also have something to say about the faulty premise underlying race-conscious admissions all these years. Contrary to what O’Connor claimed in Grutter, affirmative action has not led to greater diversity of thought on America’s college campuses.

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Jewish students face vile abuse on campus as 'unacceptable' rise in anti-Semitism is recorded at UK universities

The findings come amid an ongoing investigation into the National Union of Students (NUS) over anti-Semitism allegations.

Robert Halfon, Commons education committee chairman, said: 'Universities and unions trumpet their so-called ''inclusion and diversity agenda'' but when it comes to anti-Semitism, it seems that those of the Jewish faith don't count.'

A record 111 incidents of anti-Semitic abuse at universities were reported in 2020-21 to the charity Community Security Trust (CST).

Last year it recorded three incidents of swastikas or anti-Semitic messages graffitied on campus.

Earlier this year at Manchester students reportedly told someone at a Jewish Society stall which displayed an Israeli flag that she was 'worse than Hitler'.

An NUS spokesman said it could not comment due to the KC-led probe but added: 'We will take appropriate action in due course.'

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Oregon Spends $90M on Practically Empty Pre-K

The Oregon Department of Education’s Preschool Promise Program has given nearly $90 million in grants to early learning facilities. Many of these facilities are under enrolled, including some with fewer than 10 students, one with a single student, and another with no students.

Oregon’s Preschool Promise program was launched in 2016 to provide publicly-funded preschool for 3-4 year-olds for families at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $53,000 for a family of four. It assigns "slots" to 268 select childcare providers — each one representing one student and being worth approximately $14,000 per year. By comparison in-state tuition and fees to attend the University of Oregon is $14,420.

The program has suffered from well-below expected enrollment, but still spent the money: $90 million for school years through February 2021 and February 2022.

The overspending in under-enrolled schools has more than a few examples, according to Fox News.

One such school, Village Childcare was paid $600,000 for 33 preschool slots in 2020-2021, and 20 preschoolers in 2021-2022. But the center reported fewer than ten students enrolled in the program during that time, Fox News reported.

All Families Welcome was paid to fill 18 slots in 2020-2021, but had no students enrolled. In 2021-2022, just one student was enrolled. Yet the center was paid over half a million dollars — $300,000 one year, and more than $220,000 the next year, Fox News reported.

Neighborhood House was awarded 36 slots both years, but had fewer than 10 students enrolled. They were awarded $448,000 in the 2020-2021 school year, and $370,000 in the 2021-2022 school year.

All awarded facilities were paid for expected, not actual, enrollment. Why no cutback to match attendees?

An Oregon Department of Education spokesperson told Fox News that the Preschool Promise funding is mostly for fixed costs, including staffing, utilities and facilities.

Centers “require that programs be ready to serve eligible families as soon as they are referred, which means programs must be prepared at all times to serve the full number of funded slots,” the spokesperson said.

In the midst of these lower-than-expected numbers, the Early Learning Division said it’s “examining protocols to review enrollment and direct programs to reduce operations until enrollment increases.”

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/10/12/oregon_spends_90m_on_practically_empty_pre-k_858233.html ?

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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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Public School Fires Substitute Teacher for Raising Concerns Over Book Depicting Same-Sex Couples

Lindsey Barr was fired from her substitute teaching job after expressing concern over the content of a book in the school library.

Barr is a mother of three boys. All her children attend public school in Bryan County, Georgia, about 30 miles southwest of Savannah, where she also works as a substitute teacher.

In August, Barr learned that McAllister Elementary School, where her first- and third-grade sons attend and where she sometimes works, planned to have the book “All Are Welcome” read during a “read aloud” story time in the school library.

“I actually thought that the theme of the book was great, kindness, … including everyone,” Barr, 37, told The Daily Signal during a phone interview Thursday, “but the images, the illustrations, are contrary to what we believe for traditional marriage and families.”

The book’s colorful pictures include depictions of same-sex couples taking their children to school and two lesbian mothers, one of whom is pregnant.

“I want to be able to instill [in my own children] what I think is biblically correct for marriage and family. And [the book] was against those beliefs,” said Barr, who previously worked as a full-time teacher for a decade in Bryan County public schools.

On Aug. 16, Barr spoke with her 6-year-old son’s teacher and asked that he not be a part of the story time where the book was to be read. The teacher said that was not a problem.

Later that day, Barr emailed Heather Tucker, principal of McAllister Elementary School, and asked to talk with her. The two had a phone call the following day, and Barr expressed her concerns over the pictures in the book.

Barr says she explained to the principal that she and her husband would like to be the ones having conversations with their kids about issues such as same-sex marriage, rather than the school. The mother says she was clear that she wasn’t asking for the book to be removed from the school, only that her children not be exposed to the content.

The principal agreed that her sons didn’t need to participate in the story time, Barr recalled. The call ended and Barr said she felt like everything “was fine.”

Not long after the conversation, Barr said, she tried to log into the online portal the school uses for substitute teachers to pick up more work. She could not do so. She emailed the principal, asking whether she had been removed as a substitute teacher, but did not hear back.

“The next thing that I heard from the school was from the human resources director asking me to come in for a face-to-face meeting in regard to my role as a substitute teacher,” Barr told The Daily Signal. Barr met Aug. 23 with the principal, Tucker, and Debi McNeal, director of human resources for the school district.

“I’m gonna start by just saying some of the comments that I’m gonna say are difficult, they’re gonna be difficult to hear, they’re difficult for me to say,” Tucker told Barr at the beginning of the meeting, according to a transcript. The principal went on to explain to Barr why she was no longer allowed to be a substitute teacher in the school district:

So last week you accused McAllister [Elementary] of pushing a propaganda campaign … with liberal extreme worldviews. That’s inaccurate. That is not something that we’re doing. However, every educator that walks into this building, regardless of personal views, they have to drop their biases at the door. It just has to be done. We have to be willing to support every child that comes into this building.

Tucker said she was concerned about Barr’s bias “against same-sex couples,” according to the transcript. “It is very real that we could have a student that identifies as gay, or that has parents that identify as gay,” the principal said, “and I have concerns on how you would be able to support that student since those biases are still entering into the workplace as well.”

Barr responded that she brought her concerns to the principal as a mother, not as an employee of the school district. “I wasn’t sharing a bias with you. That isn’t a personal bias. I said, ‘As a Christian mother of children, young children, I don’t think that we should be pushing same-sex marriage on my children,’” Barr told Tucker.

The two told Barr that she no longer would be allowed to be a substitute teacher in the Bryan County school district.

Philip Sechler, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal aid organization, sent a letter Sept. 13 to Trey Robertson, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning at the Bryan County Board of Education.

In the letter, Sechler demanded that the school system “immediately reinstate Mrs. Barr so she can resume working as a substitute teacher at McAllister [Elementary], and that it refrain from any future retaliation against Mrs. Barr for her protected speech.”

Sechler asked for a response from Robertson or the school district by 5 p.m. Sept. 16, explaining that if Barr was not reinstated, she would be “forced to pursue other legal options to vindicate her rights.” Neither Robertson nor any other Bryan County school district official responded, Sechler says.

Attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit Sept. 30 against McAllister Elementary School and Bryan County Schools with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Savannah Division.

“Parents shouldn’t be bullied and intimidated by public schools who don’t want to hear their views,” Sechler told The Daily Signal. “Lindsey [Barr] expressed concerns to protect her own children and they fired her … and that’s wrong.”

Barr said she is taking a stand to protect her constitutional right to free speech. Public schools, she said, “can’t retaliate against parents for expressing genuine concern about their own children’s education.”

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NYC schools struggle to cope with influx of 5,500 migrant kids

A Manhattan public school with just one certified bilingual teacher is reeling under the weight of a sudden influx of migrant students who don’t speak any English, The Post has learned. “We’re overwhelmed,” one frustrated teacher at PS 33 Chelsea Prep said Tuesday.

“We’ve all got migrant students in our classrooms. The teachers don’t speak Spanish. There’s no resources helping us out right now — it’s a very challenging situation.”

One outraged mom said migrant kids — easily identified by lime green ID tags that hang from their necks — have swelled the size of her daughter’s class from 15 to 20 kids.

“She’s in the third grade. Her teacher is giving her lower-level work due to the immigrants. They’re making the curriculum easier,” said Maria, a 29-year-old fashion designer. “The work is too easy for my daughter. There’s first-grade, second-grade and third-grade levels in her class. It’s ridiculous.”

The burden has some furious parents preparing to pull their kids out and send them elsewhere.

Maria said she’s “been looking at a private school on 42nd Street” where she’s planning to enroll the girl.

Another parent, Cooper, a 45-year-old chef, said he’s also “trying to change schools” for his 7-year-old son, who’s in second grade.

The alarming situation offers an example of how the flood of migrants to the Big Apple — now nearly 19,000 strong, with no sign of stopping — is straining the city’s ability to provide them with housing, education and social services.

On Friday, Mayor Eric Adams said that 5,500 migrant kids have been enrolled in the city’s public schools, revealing the startling number as he declared a state of emergency over the migrant crisis.

An official tally by Community Education Council District 2 lists 50 migrant students PS 33, which enrolled 555 children in 2020-21, the most recent school year for which the Department of Education has data posted online.

But a PS 33 teacher said that the count was far too low. “There’s way more than 50 migrant students. It’s at least 90 right now,” the teacher said.

Other official totals include a combined 120 at PS 111 and MS 933, which share a single building, 65 at PS 51 and 15 at MS 297, with an unknown number at PS 11.

Earlier this month, The Post exclusively revealed that the influx of migrant kids swelled some classes at PS 111 to 38 students, leading to the transfer of 15 to PS 51.

The DOE decides where migrant kids can attend school, based on factors including the proximity of the shelters where their families have been placed by the city and the availability of seats in area schools.

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University of Florida students protest Ben Sasse, say he poses a 'threat' as president due to his 'anti-gay marriage, anti-transgender and anti-abortion record'

University of Florida students are protesting their school's nomination of Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse as the new president given his conservative views.

Several student groups, including the UF Young Democratic Socialists of America, UF Communists and UF College Democrats, organized a protest during three Q&A sessions between the Republican and the student body on Monday.

Sasse, who's served as a senator for Nebraska since 2015, is poised to be the school's new president when he is expected to resign from office in December.

Many of the university's liberal students, however, claim Sasse poses a 'threat' to the student body as they held protests over his looming appointment.

'Ben Sasse is on the record anti-gay marriage, anti-transgender people and anti-abortion,' one student who joined the protest told Fox News. 'He poses a threat to all students that may be queer or non-men. 'I'm worried that it might be even harder for students to get an abortion.'

As students chanted and yelled against the Republican, he could be seen rushing out of the school following three Q&A sessions

The protesters, who were staged outside the ballroom where three forums with students were held, could still be heard inside as Sasse took questions from students.

The senator was grilled on his prior stances, including his condemnation over the 2015 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing same-sex marriage.

Sasse has also been on the record celebrating the high court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and defended former ESPN commentator Curt Schilling when he was fired for sharing a meme about transgender bathrooms.

Despite his right-leaning views, Sasse has taken a stance against his GOP colleagues. The Nebraska senator often criticized Donald Trump when he was president and even vowed not to vote for him in 2016.

The Florida students were heard chanting: 'Hey, hey. Ho ho. Ben Sasse has got to go,' with others shouting, 'We don't want you here.'

The school's socialist group also cheered on after Sasse rushed out of the university in a police car amid the protest. 'We ran Sasse out of our swamp,' the group wrote on Instagram. 'Today we showed the university that we will not let bigots enter our halls of power so long as we have a voice.'

Several of the protesters told Fox that Sasse's appointment as president would hurt the school's reputation. 'If this goes through, I'm not going to be proud to be a Gator, and I'm worried that this might affect our rankings.' one student said.

The University of Florida said Sasse was the sole finalist chosen by its search committee to replace outgoing president Kent Fuchs, who served for eight years and will become a teacher next year.

After beating out 700 candidates, Sasse is expected to take the helm of the school in February.

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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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Wednesday, October 12, 2022




Britain’s ‘strictest headmistress’ gets a nod in Australia

At the Michaela Community School near Wembley, in north-west London, there are no mobile phones, detentions are given for the slightest misdemeanour and a disused car park is the no-frills playground.

The high school is famed for being Britain’s strictest, and its headmistress, Katharine Birbalsingh, pulls no punches.“We have the same issues that you have in Australia: poor behaviour and poor learning outcomes, in particular for disadvantaged children,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Birbalsingh espouses traditional teaching and believes in military-style discipline: students walk the corridors in silence and get detentions for forgetting a pencil case, ruler or not turning in their homework. Times tables are taught by rote. Progressive education methods are shunned. Gratitude is practised and expectations are high.

“I’m not wandering up and down the corridors with whips and chains, obviously,” she says. “People say [discipline] is mean. I’d say what is mean is keeping a child illiterate and innumerate.”

Birbalsingh, who was recently appointed chair of the UK’s social mobility commission, was thrust into the spotlight after giving a speech at the 2010 Conservative Party conference where she warned the education system was “broken because it keeps poor children poor”. Four years later, after battling a barrage of detractors and critics, she opened the Michaela school in a dreary converted office block based in the disadvantaged borough of Brent.

The school’s explicit teaching methods, no-excuses behaviour policy and direct instruction style divide opinion. Tough-love behaviour systems (slouching in class is off-limits, toilet breaks are timed) has attracted controversy and critics.

However, it has also drawn praise from experts including Programme for International Student Assessment boss Andreas Schleicher who has described the school as creating “discipline created through structure, predictability and ownership. The children I met appeared happy and confident.” And its results place it well above average when compared to other similar schools, with graduates going off to universities including Oxford and the London School of Economics.

Birbalsingh, labelled Britain’s strictest headteacher, is firm that the school’s behaviour policies, including the silent corridor rule, minimise bullying and maximise teaching time.

“In schools with disadvantaged children sometimes you can find poor behaviour, and it can be constant disruption. As a disadvantaged child school is your one route out, your way of being able to be socially mobile. And if school lets you down, then that’s it.”

“We expect everyone to do their homework. If standards are lowered for certain children, who will inevitably be the disadvantaged children, then those children will never succeed.”

She rejects “progressive” teaching methods, where desks are grouped and students “lead the learning”. Teachers at Michaela have a single voice in the classroom and there is silence for reading, writing and practice.

“You have got to have lots of knowledge about something to think differently about it. When you teach children as a traditionalist you can still break up explanations and have a bit of turn to your partner work and class discussions.”

Tight rules around smartphones and social media are also critical, she says. At an education conference this year she told the audience: “If we genuinely want things to be fairer, and we want our disadvantaged children to be socially mobile, the best thing is getting them not to have a smartphone.”

Students are encouraged to hand over their mobile phones where they are put in a school safe for days, weeks or months.

Michaela, one of about 600 “free schools” in the UK, was singled out last month by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet in a speech for the James Martin Institute as a school with a “rigorous culture of high expectations, high behavioural standards and back-to- basics teaching that [has] propelled disadvantaged students to extraordinary achievement. I want the same outcomes for our kids.”

“When students are held to reasonable standards of behaviour and respect – they perform better, and they are happier,” he said. It came after NSW announced a global recruitment search for a chief behaviour adviser, as schools across sectors battle worsening student conduct.

This month, Birbalsingh, who was a teacher for more than a decade in inner-London schools before starting Michaela, will appear at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney on a discussion about building world-class schools.

She emphasises that her school, next to the jubilee and metropolitan line (the train can be heard rattling loudly in the bare-bones schoolyard), looks “quite simple”.

“We’ve not covered the walls with lots of pictures and things. People don’t realise, when I was a younger teacher, I spent all of my time decorating. I use my fire engine red paint for the border around my bulletin board and would put up lovely dark blue paper with a golden border around it and I would pay myself to create big laminated sheets with instructions.

“I should have as my time planning better lessons... I shouldn’t have been spending my time on that. And sometimes we all spend our time on things that don’t have as much impact.”

Oliver Lovell, a Melbourne-based maths teacher who visited the school last month, said while it was hard to overstate the positive impact of Michaela’s instruction on disadvantaged students, there were potential costs when a particular educational approach is passionately pursued.

“Some have argued that highly structured instructional methods reduce learner independence which has negative impacts when the structure is removed at university and beyond. I’m glad that we have a diversity of schools, including Michaela, so that we can begin to gain clearer answers to these important questions.”

Lovell said one of the most striking aspects to the school was seeing how the lack of student disruptions “frees up teacher time”.

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Woke University of Southern Maine students demand education professor be fired after she told class that there are only two sexes

A group of students at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine are calling for their professor to be fired after she said in class only two sexes exist.

Christy Hammer, a professor of education, allegedly made the statement during a heated debate about gender identity in her 'Creating a Positive Learning Environment' class, causing an uproar among the graduate students.

Only one student agreed with the educator. The rest maintained both biological sexes and social genders are on a spectrum.

The point was first made during class on September 7, but was repeated a week later after student Elizabeth Leibiger, who is non-binary and was absent the previous week, brought up the topic again.

She then said she felt 'under personal attack' after the professor again said only two sexes exist. 'I asked [Hammer] how many sexes there were,' Leibiger said. 'She said, 'Two.' I felt under personal attack.'

Biologically, there are only two sexes. Men have XY chromosomes, while women have XX chromosomes. Progressives say gender can have a broader spectrum than sex.

But anti-woke campaigners warning that the fixation on denying the biological reality that only two sexes exist is absurd, and potentially puts people's health at risk.

Almost the entire class of 22 students walked out, all except one demanding a meeting to be held with the university's School of Education and Human Development.

'I let her know I didn't think she was qualified to teach a class about positive learning environments. It's the ultimate irony,' Leibiger said to Fox News.

A restorative justice meeting was held, but Professor Hammer's position didn't change.

Two dozen graduate students in the class continued to demand that the university replace Hammer, believing her to be transphobic.

Students are now refusing to return to the classroom in which she teaches and will only attend class if a new educator be appointed. The class is a requirement to complete the graduate-level Extended Teacher Education Program and become a certified teacher in Maine.

'We are aware of this situation and are taking steps to provide students with the support needed,' Interim Provost Adam Tuchinsky told the Bangor Daily News.

Another student suggested Hammer either undergo diversity training or simply retire.

The university has now suggested that an 'alternative' section for the class will be created but that the professor will not be removed.

'We have developed an alternative plan for this class and will be opening a new section of this course for those students who would like to move. The original section taught by professor Hammer will continue for any student who wishes to remain in that class,' a university spokesperson said.

University officials have not revealed how many students will be moving to the new class.

'It's our job as educators to grow and change, address our biases, and above all else, protect every one of our students,' Leibiger said. 'I think that the next step USM needs to take is being clear what accountability will look like for Christy Hammer.'

There appear to be plenty of people happy to support Hammer's position with almost 2,000 people signing a petition for her to keep her job.

Wrangles over sex and gender issues continue to roil campuses across the US. Transgender rights supporter say they wish to boost visibility and equality for a small, vulnerable section of society.

Critics have likened the issue to a mania they say is eroding women's rights, and convincing youngsters to seek potentially irreversible medical treatments it is feared they could one day regret.

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A hate-filled curriculum in Australia

It has not taken long for Prime Minister Albanese to weigh into the culture wars, even though the lefty progressive types insist that they are a figment of our imagination. Last week, our new PM sent up a rallying cry for what he termed as ‘fair dinkum’ history to be taught in Australian schools. By ‘fair dinkum’ he meant that children need to be taught about the atrocities committed by people of British descent upon indigenous people.

It is clear that the PM has not read the latest version of the national curriculum. If he had, he would have known that according to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority ‘Indigenous’ or ‘Aboriginal’ are now verboten because they are terms of oppression. We now must use ‘First Nations Australians’ or ‘Australia’s First Nations Peoples’. Keep up, Albo!

He would also know that the singular narrative currently taught to Australian children in the history syllabus is that Australia was founded on racism, and that the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 resulted in dispossession and genocide.

In Year 3, teachers will explain that ‘people have different points of view on some events that are commemorated and celebrated; for example, some First Nations Australians regard “Australia Day” as “Invasion Day”’. In Year 4, students will learn about the ‘effects of contact with other people on First Nations Australians and their Countries/Places following the arrival of the First Fleet and how this was viewed by First Nations Australians as an invasion’.

As part of a classroom activity, they will look at ‘paintings and accounts by individuals involved in exploration and colonisation to explore the impact that British colonisation had on the lives of First Nations Australians; for example, dispossession, dislocation and the loss of lives through frontier conflict, disease, and loss of food sources and medicines, the embrace of some colonial technologies…’.

In Year 9, they will study ‘the impact of colonisation by Europeans on First Nations Australians such as frontier warfare, massacres, removal from land, and relocation to “protectorates, reserves and missions”’. They will also investigate ‘the forcible removal of children from First Nations Australian families in the late 19th century and 20th century (leading to the Stolen Generations), including the motivations for the removal of children, the practices and laws that were in place, and experiences of separation.’

We are all for talking about the mistakes of the past. Nobody is suggesting that they should be ignored. No one is saying that there was no violence between white settlers and the indigenous populations. Quite the contrary. These are important aspects of the history of modern Australia that all children should know.

But this discussion has nothing to do ‘fair dinkum’ history, or even unfair dinkum history for that matter. What Australian children are being introduced to in the classroom is pure post-modernist theory, specifically post-colonial theory. They are being schooled in the ‘settler colonialism genocide’ paradigm which sprang from the febrile imagination of Australian historian Patrick Wolfe in the 1990s.

Wolfe famously declared that settler colonialism was a structure, not an event and that it was premised on the elimination rather than exploitation of the native population. According to Wolfe, how settler colonialism disrupted the indigenous relationship to land was a profoundly violent attack on their very being, which violence continues with every day of ‘occupation’.

Our education bureaucrats are motivated by the belief that European expansion was a capitalist and racist attempt to replace indigenous people with more productive non-indigenous populations, even at the cost of genocide.

Wolfe’s paradigm has been embedded into every single subject of the national curriculum, not just history, via the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Cultures and Histories cross-curriculum priority. The ‘organising ideas’ of this priority are worth reproducing in full. Namely, that:

First Nations communities of Australia maintain a deep connection to, and responsibility for, Country/Place and have holistic values and belief systems that are connected to the land, sea, sky and waterways.

The occupation and colonisation of Australia by the British, under the now overturned doctrine of terra nullius, were experienced by First Nations Australians as an invasion that denied their occupation of, and connection to, Country/Place.

The First Peoples of Australia are the Traditional Owners of Country/Place, protected in Australian Law by the Native Title Act 1993 which recognises pre-existing sovereignty, continuing systems of law and customs, and connection to Country/Place. This recognised legal right provides for economic sustainability and a voice into the development and management of Country/Place.

If Prime Minster Albanese was really concerned about truth-telling in history, he would make sure that the history syllabus desists from propagating historical inaccuracies, such as the mythical notion that the British were warmongering, genocidal invaders. He would make sure that the positive aspects of how modern Australian history came into being were taught to children. He would start explaining to young Australians why this country has been the safe haven for millions of people fleeing from all over the world.

But the Prime Minister is not interested in a true account of history, he is interested in spin and politics. The left wing of the Labor party, of which Albanese is a product, sees power in the division of society, which is why it so strongly believes in multiculturalism and in undermining unifying symbols such as the Crown, Australia Day and the parliament.

Right now, the Albanese government is committed to dividing Australians by race by way of creating a parallel system of representative government comprised of indigenous Australians to the exclusion of all other Australians. Albanese and the left-wing political parties will use education to continue to inflict guilt and shame upon the nation until such a time that their ideas are accepted as fait accompli.

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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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Tuesday, October 11, 2022


Arizona families keep winning on school choice and more states need to follow our lead

Arizona families will now be able to freely choose any school of their choice and have state tax dollars follow their child to that school. Our new universal Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) law is in effect for all Arizona students after radical opponents of school choice failed to submit the minimum required signatures to put the law on hold and refer it to the 2024 ballot. This is the first legislation of its kind and is now the gold standard in the United States. Every state in the nation should also follow our lead in freeing students from undesirable educational settings.

After the Arizona legislature passed this legislation and when Governor Doug Ducey signed it into law on July 7, a union-backed organization (Save our Schools - SOS) immediately started organizing a campaign to gain enough signatures to refer it to the ballot. That would have temporarily denied school choice to thousands of Arizona students. Arizona provides for laws to be referred to the ballot before going into effect if enough valid signatures are gathered on legal petitions by opponents of those future statutes.

This group began their efforts by setting up tables around the state to attract individuals to sign their petitions. On Saturday, July 9, I first encountered a couple working for SOS. They misrepresented the petition by saying untrue things about ESAs, upsetting me. I would have been fine if they were gaining signatures from Arizona voters on the proper merits of the policies, but I was not going to stand for lies — especially since my family greatly benefited from this program over the past decade. In a respectful way, I verbally countered two of their volunteers for over an hour on their misrepresentation, and that is when I decided I wasn’t going to stand by and watch this happen to our state and to our families.

I went on the group’s social media accounts to find out where they were collecting signatures in my community and began countering them one after another. I would position myself nearby on public sidewalks in 110-degree heat, waiting for unsuspecting Arizonans to approach the SOS signature gatherers so that I could give them the truth before they signed. I quickly found that voters would look through the legislation, which was attached to the petitions, after hearing my arguments to find out for themselves what was inside this legislation.

SOS repeatedly lost support because they could not persuade reasonable people once the truth was exposed. After doing this for two weekends in a row, I realized I couldn't do this by myself and started to call people to help me. Four friends came out to help me the third weekend, which grew the following weekend to 61 friends, and then to 107, and more each week. We ended this little campaign with over 1,000 families helping statewide — a huge achievement and commitment for everyone involved.

Our children were flipped off, cursed at, and assaulted while we peacefully protested. The union-backed group tried to bully and intimidate our families in the hope that we would just go home. Instead, our peaceful band of parents prayed for them, ignored them, and pushed on with our mission. All of us were united to ensure every voter in Arizona fully understood the ramifications of what they were signing.

Thanks to our tireless efforts to educate voters and counter the lies of the anti-school choice movement this summer, SOS fell well short of the minimum requirement for petition signatures, which was around 120,000.

This organic movement started with a mom, a private citizen, and remained a grassroots, collective effort from start to finish. The union-backed group tried their best to paint a bad picture of us to the public, but these attempts flopped.

When you have hundreds of individual citizens standing up for their freedoms, it is impossible to blame one person. SOS should look in the mirror if they want someone to blame for the huge pushback they experienced. If they didn't lie to voters to gain their signatures, we might have never been motivated to counter them.

Parents want options for their children's education, and that is why ESAs have been popular among a lot of Arizona families for years. However, since the universal ESA application went online mid-August, more than 23,000 new students have applied for this new-and-improved scholarship, surpassing a lot of expectations - and it's still early on in the process. The unions behind SOS know that they are immediately losing control of thousands of Arizona families, and that is why they worked so hard to stop this legislation. Thankfully, they came up short with their referendum attempt.

Parents are the first and primary educators of their children, and they want to be able to have their children attend a school that allows them to thrive and become the people they were created to be. The world will be a better place when parents are freely directing their child’s education with no obstacles in their way. And now, in Arizona, that educational freedom is our way of life.

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Do Oxford students really need trigger warnings?

It is freshers’ week on campus [at Oxford]. Brand new students get to make friends, get drunk and find their way around university. The excitement culminates with freshers’ fair, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to find your tribe by joining everything from the paragliding club to the Mao appreciation society. Who cares if you never attend a single meeting? For one brief moment, you can flirt with the person you might become.

Freshers’ fairs offer new students a glimpse of the intellectual and political possibilities on offer at university. But sadly not at Oxford. This year, Oxford University’s freshers’ fair comes with a big fat trigger warning. Apologies. I should of course have prefaced that sizeist statement with ‘Trigger Warning: body shaming.’ And to be totally accurate, it is not one big fat trigger warning on the whole fair but a multitude of little warnings, one for each stall deemed to be promoting activities or ideas those in charge think new students might find distressing.

It is unlikely to be the bungee jumping club or the competitive vodka-drinking society that gets slapped with a trigger warning. It is not physical risks that students are being advised to avoid but emotional distress. The fashion for warnings has taken off following a row over the presence of an anti-abortion, pro-life group at last year’s fair.

Whatever your view on abortion, the application of a trigger warning suggests that the mere presence of pro-life campaigners is potentially so distressing that students should steer clear altogether. But what is the point of a university if not to confront difficult ideas? Presumably, medical students need to think about how they might counsel pregnant women; philosophy students may ponder the point at which human life begins and history students might look at how women’s rights have changed over time. Badging these topics as potentially distressing helps no one.

The focus on anti-abortion campaigners reveals the political motivation that lies behind trigger warnings. Whatever the rhetoric, they have nothing to do with protecting people suffering from trauma. Repeated studies have shown that trigger warnings are not only ineffective but may actually be counterproductive when it comes to helping psychologically vulnerable students. But they continue to be useful for activists who want to flag up people or ideas they consider politically dangerous. Trigger warnings highlight challenges to the current consensus on campus.

Spraying trigger warnings around universities like disinfectant has a devastating impact on free speech. Students learn that university is not a place for exploring ideas but a place to be protected from anything controversial. They learn that debate is not an exciting chance to hone your arguments or change your mind, but something best avoided for your own emotional safety.

With this in mind, Oxford’s freshers’ fair also has a ‘wellbeing zone’ where students who feel ‘uncomfortable’ can go to relax and chat with members of the ‘advice and wellbeing team’. Presumably there will be colouring books, bean bags, milk and cookies. This is not university but play school.

I have been writing about campus censorship for more than a decade. Back at the start, I was at pains to point out that few students arrived at university itching to no-platform controversial speakers or sign petitions to have books removed from the library. I argued it was activist academics and university administrators who taught students to see themselves as vulnerable and ideas as dangerous.

Things have changed since then. Often, it is the students’ unions, like the one at Oxford, that are now pushing for trigger warnings. The freshers’ fair organisers have justified their plans on social media, explaining that they are no longer able to ban societies outright because of freedom of speech legislation. We can only imagine their frustration. The trigger warnings, then, are a ‘mitigation’ put in place ‘to support the welfare of students’.

It is now students who want to stick red flags on ideas they find distasteful. This is peer-to-peer censorship by young adults firmly wedded to a perception of themselves as mentally and emotionally vulnerable and in need of psychological protection from dangerous ideas. The form-wielding bureaucrats and rainbow lanyard-clad lecturers can stand down. Their work is complete.

In truth, students’ unions have always attracted busybodies wanting to boss their fellows into organised activities and carefully-controlled fun. The difference is that today, their main concern safeguarding the fragile mental health of their peers and opposing political views they find distressing. We have to hope that Oxford’s latest intake will ignore the trigger warnings and turn the wellbeing zone into a space for ferocious debate.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/do-oxford-students-really-need-trigger-warnings/ ?

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One of Australia's most prestigious universities to crack down on students who claim to be Aboriginal without ANY proof

About time. Malcolm Smith has a graphic commentary on the matter. I put up a similar gallery in 2020

One of Australia's most prestigious universities has been praised for a crackdown on students 'rorting the system' by falsely claiming they are Indigenous or Torres Strait Islander.

The University of Sydney has drafted a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Status Policy which means undergraduates can no longer simply sign a statutory declaration to prove they have a First Nations background.

Instead, the university may force students to supply a 'letter of identity' from a local Aboriginal Land Council and complete the Commonwealth Government's three-part identity test.

Radio 2GB host Ben Fordham praised the university for introducing the measures and called on others to follow suit.

'Other organisations should introduce stronger checks too, because what we're seeing is wrong and it's fraudulent,' he said.

The changes come after lobbying from Aboriginal land councils which allege there has been a significant increase in people applying for the benefits.

The latest Census results released in June 2021 found a 25 per cent increase in Australians identifying as Indigenous.

Indigenous groups said the way the current system is being abused is 'embarrassing'. 'It's open fraud. We say to academic students: can they pass a paper without citing a verified source?' Aboriginal Land Council CEO Nathan Moran told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Michael Mansell, Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman, said poor white people were falsely identifying as Indigenous in a move he called 'identity seeking'. "They don't attribute any value to their identity as a poor white person in Tasmania, so they are searching to attach themselves to something that has greater value and I think many of those people believe that's in being Aboriginal,' he said following the release of the Census results.

Fordham said students abusing the system for places in courses or more affordable degrees was 'wrong and fraudulent'. 'They are attending schools, they're getting jobs and taking away opportunities from people who grew up Indigenous,' the 2GB host said.

'People are falsely identifying as Indigenous when they're not - there are Indigenous voices calling out a fraud, and we should be listening to them.

'Sydney Uni should be congratulated and other organisations should be following suit. Because it's wrong and it's fraudulent. Some of the so-called First Nations people receiving benefits are as genuine as a three dollar note.'

A spokesperson for Sydney University said its review was not motivated by fraudulently claimed scholarships, but the institution wanted to ensure its program was 'in line with current community expectations'.

'[The review] was initiated in response to multiple expressions of community concern, particularly in relation to the use of statutory declarations, rather than any specific concerns about fraud,' they said.

'We are seeking feedback and further input from members of our own and the broader community, representative organisations and other universities on this culturally significant matter.'

The university has an enrolment of 0.9 per cent Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander students, which is below the national sector average of 1.72 per cent.

Students however believe the change in policy could result in at-need Indigenous people missing out on places because of the red tape around new enrolment.

'This new policy is likely to disproportionately affect Indigenous people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds,' a group of Indigenous students opposing the change said in a statement.

'In some circumstances students may come from abusive families, have been in foster care or for other reasons not be able to get family documentation to undergo the process that has been proposed.'

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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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Monday, October 10, 2022



Can Public Schools Be Saved?

For decades conservatives have decried the erosion of standards in our taxpayer funded public schools, but we now recognize that in addition to being ineffective at teaching children the basic skills they need to be functional adult citizens, the public schools are also the source of much of the cultural rot that is destroying the moral underpinnings of American civilization.

This has caused many parents, grandparents, and taxpayers to conclude that our public schools are beyond saving. The only answer is to pull children out of the cesspool many public schools have become and to homeschool kids or enroll them in privately funded religious schools.

Our friend E. Ray Moore, Chairman, Christian Education Initiative (www.Christedu.org) and Chairman, Public School Exit (www.publicschoolexit.com), is one of the leaders who says “promoting the school reform idea after so much hard evidence that for decades shows public schools are harmful to children, do not educate but rather indoctrinate, and that public school reform does not work.”

Pastor Moore, an Air Force Reserve Chaplain, says we are now at a once in a one-hundred-year moment for a new K-12 Christian education and homeschooling awakening with millions of children entering the safe sanctuary of free-market and private Christian education, and he asks “How much longer do we need to wait until the conservative movement sees the utter futility of conservative public-school reform?” State-sponsored public education must be abandoned by Christian and conservative people if we are to win the hearts and minds of our youth, he concluded.

Now, Pastor Moore’s Christian criticism of public education has been joined by a powerful voice on the more secular Right – that of Michael Reagan, the prominent syndicated columnist and political commentator and eldest son of President Ronald Reagan.

In a column for NewsMax, “Best Way to End Depraved Curriculums, Take Your Kids Out” co-authored with Michael R. Shannon, Michael Reagan revealed that the New Jersey Board of Education has issued rulings on a variety of degenerate activities that must be taught in the state’s public schools and it’s worse than you can imagine. (Emphasis by CHQ.)

Everything the "church ladies" warned of when sex education was introduced into schools (and some no one could have imagined) has painfully come true, wrote Messrs. Reagan and Shannon. Depravity, grooming, obscenity and innocence theft are all now a feature of government-mandated public school pornography exposure.

According to the research documented in the article, New Jersey education "experts" think 13-year-olds are emotionally ready for this: "according to the New Jersey standards, students should 'describe pregnancy testing, the signs of pregnancy, and pregnancy options, including parenting, abortion, and adoption;’ and 'Define vaginal, oral, and anal sex.'"

Once they’ve mastered all the sexual techniques the Bible warns against, the same students should "develop a plan to eliminate or reduce risk of unintended pregnancy and STIs (including HIV)."

That plan is easy enough and contains only a single word: Abstain. But we think the demon-possessed state Board would find that approach to be not "inclusive" enough, observed Reagan and Shannon.

In the unlikely event a New Jersey local school board is run by adults who don’t think the role of education is to act like evangelists for sexual license, the options for sanity are limited, wrote Reagan and Shannon. One educrat — who was happy to emphasize there is no hope for normal parents — boasted that opting not to indoctrinate students is impossible.

"If we do not, we do not pass New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (NJQSAC) monitoring. If the district fails this process we may become ineligible for state and even federal funding."

We are happy to commend the parents who opted their children out of this disgusting curriculum, but the bad news is, it’s not enough, the authors observed. The children whose parents didn’t opt them out will be happy to share all the titillating details and graphic illustrations with children whose parents did opt out, noted Reagan and Shannon.

Once this teacher transmitted virus enters the school system there is no isolation strategy that will work. The only real choice is to get your children out of public (read government) schools, concluded Messrs. Reagan and Shannon.

Can public schools be fixed, even by electing more conservatives to local school boards and state legislatures? You can't fix socialism, says E. Ray Moore, and public education fits the definition of socialism where government owns the means of production, property and services.

Many conservative leaders, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who has invested a lot of political capital in electing conservatives to Sunshine State school boards would disagree.

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UK: Student union BANS white students from attending Black History Month events - sparking accusations of racial segregation

A student union has come under fire after it banned white students from Black History Month events, sparking accusations of racial segregation.

Students at the University of Westminster were told by its union in an email that some of the events would be 'reserved for black students to encourage a safe space for discussions and honest conversations'.

But social anthropology lecturer at Edinburgh University Dr Neil Thin hit back and branded the move 'tragic', accusing the London university of copying racial segregation 'previously seen in South African and USA education systems'.

The University of Westminster students were not told which events which they would be banned from during a month specifically celebrating black history through talks, dance nights and film screenings, the Telegraph reports.

Dr Thin said: 'It is bitterly ironic to see the rhetoric of 'safe spaces' abused to justify racial segregation.

'Nothing is more likely to make social spaces unsafe than this kind of wilful sowing of interethnic suspicion and division.'

But just yesterday, the student union's most recent social media post emphasised that all students were invited to an event with Zoe Garsh, founder of Ms Independent which runs career courses for young women.

The caption said: 'This is a Black History Month event but ALL students are welcome! Be sure not to miss out'.

Leader of the Free Speech Union Toby Young has also weighed in to the debate as he labelled the group 'zealots' who were failing to see the bigger picture.

'At some point, you’d think it would be clear to these zealots that you’re not going to reduce racial discrimination by discriminating against people on the basis of their race, but they’re so blinkered by ideological groupthink they cannot see this glaring contradiction,' he said.

Tory MP Sir John Haynes has called for an investigation to see if there was any potential discrimination.

He also voiced concerns over the 'sinister' nature that 'such ideas can be propagated in a free and open society'.

The Westminster Students' Union declined to comment.

Meanwhile a spokesman for the university said: 'One of the university's key Black Lives Matter commitments was to eliminate all gaps associated with success measures for all BME students. Black History Year Create, an intensive career-defining programme aimed at addressing disparities among black students, does exactly that.

'Equality of opportunity does not always mean giving everyone access to the same thing; it means creating a level playing field by offering some programmes to those who are underrepresented or those who have had less access to opportunity.'

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Australia: How left-wing teachers have taken schools 'back to the Middle Ages', according to ex-PM Tony Abbott - and conservatives are 'too polite' to stop it

Left-wing teachers have taken Australian schools 'back to the Middle Ages' as dogma replaces learning and 'heretics' are hunted down, according to former prime minister Tony Abbott.

The radicalisation of education by the left was so 'pervasive' and 'destructive' the damage done would take generations to fix, the firebrand conservative said.

And he warned conservatives were not without blame in the rise of left-wing ideology - saying they were often too polite to call out the 'palpable nonsense' of activists.

Mr Abbott made the remarks on stage with fellow staunch conservative, former Liberal senator Amanda Stoker, at the right-wing CPAC convention in Sydney.

He said nowhere had 'the long march of the left through our institutions... been more pervasive and destructive than in our educational system'.

'It’s almost like we have gone back to Middle Ages where there is dogma - only it's not Christian dogma, it’s anything but Christian dogma - with modern day inquisitions hunting out modern day heretics (and) if not burning them at the stake at least cancelling them,' Mr Abbott told the October 1 conference.

Mr Abbott admitted he was out of step with the core beliefs of left-wing dogma. 'I don't like the climate cult, I don’t like the virus hysteria. I can't understand the gender fluidity push,' he said.

He warned that repairing the state of the schools would be a 'multi-generational' task that would require a cultural shift. 'It took us a long time to get into this deplorable position and I fear it's going to take a long time to get back to where we should be,' Mr Abbott said.

Mr Abbott called for more parental involvement in schools, greater attempts to attract the 'best and brightest' people to teaching and 'above all more academic rigour'.

He believed that education should be about the 'disinterested pursuit of truth'. 'There's got to be this insatiable curiosity, what more can we know? How better can we be,' he said.

Mr Abbott said he believed activists had taken advantage of the 'good manners' of people who knew their left-wing beliefs were 'palpable nonsense' but were too polite to say so.

'One of the things I often say is the majority that stays silent will not long remain the majority for very long,' he said. 'Good people have been too polite in the face of things that defy common sense. 'We can't let politeness stop us from expressing ourselves and contradicting in a polite and respectable way stuff which is palpable nonsense. 'Sometimes we have been unduly deferential. We have been remarkably shy of being the adults we should be.'

The former prime minister, who won office in 2013 but was deposed by Malcolm Turnbull in 2015 after a run of poor polls, also argued strongly against the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament, calling it 'discrimination'.

'Just because there may have been institutionalised discrimination in the past that’s no reason to institutionalise discrimination in the present and the future' Mr Abbott said to a round of applause from the CPAC crowd at Sydney's Darling Harbour.

The Albanese government has promised to hold a referendum on amending the constitution to create the special 'Voice' body, which would advise federal parliament on matters important to Indigenous Australians.

Mr Abbott argued the Voice to Parliament was being pushed with bullying tactics. 'We should never allow ourselves to be morally bullied into changing what works and if something doesn’t work let's fix it,' Mr Abbott said. 'What we shouldn’t do is forsake the important principles that made our country special and precious in an attempt to apologise for bad behaviour in the past.'

He said if Indigenous people weren't sufficiently represented in parliament they should be elected 'in the normal way'.

'Likewise the emissions obsession will eventually end when weather-dependent power can't keep the lights on. 'And the cultural self-loathing will stop when people have to choose between liberal democracy and its alternatives. 'That’s our task, to fight the good fight, to stay the course and keep the faith.'

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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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Sunday, October 09, 2022


Elon Musk blames woke colleges for turning his transgender daughter Vivian, 18, against him and accuses America's elite institutions of teaching 'full-on communism'

Elon Musk has blamed America's woke colleges for turning his transgender daughter Vivian against him.

In a new interview with the Financial Times, the world's richest man blamed 'neo-Marxists' in elite schools and universities for the estrangement between him and his daughter. He added: 'It's full-on communism . . . and a general sentiment that if you're rich, you're evil.'

It is unclear where Vivian goes to school, and Musk offered no further details on his allegation. Woke students seeking to ban and censor views they consider offensive have gained a foothold in many liberal schools and universities across the US.

The long-form interview was part of the newspaper's Lunch with the FT series. During the Q&A, Musk also touched on issues relating to Donald Trump's social network and politics in general.

Musk, the father of nine, appeared to shrug off having a relationship with Vivian by saying: 'It may change, but I have very good relationships with all the others. Can't win them all.'

Vivian, who was born a biological male and given the name Xavier Alexander Musk, submitted a legal petition to change her name and her gender back in April.

She told a California court she wanted to be known as Vivian Jenna Wilson, in part to distance herself from her father, who is worth close to $272 billion. That petition was granted in June. Her mother is Canadian writer is Justine Wilson.

Musk once famously tweeted: 'I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare.' And: 'Pronouns suck.'

Later in the FT interview, Musk said someone who is twice the age of the average age of the United States should not be in charge, a not-so-thinly veiled jab at President Joe Biden.

Musk also spoke about his behavior on Twitter, saying: 'Aren’t you entertained? I play the fool on Twitter and often shoot myself in the foot and cause myself all sorts of trouble . . . I don’t know, I find it vaguely therapeutic to express myself on Twitter. It’s a way to get messages out to the public.'

Speaking about politics, Musk said he was considering launching his own political action committee that will support candidates who are more moderate known as the Super Moderate Super PAC.

The Tesla founder earlier hinted support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if the Republican ran for the presidency in 2024.

Musk spoke about the other favorite for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump, in the Financial Times feature.

He called the former Apprentice host's social platform Truth Social 'essentially a right-wing echo chamber. It might as well be called Trumpet.'

Musk previously made it clear that he did not hate Trump but said he hoped the former president would 'hang up his hat and sail into the sunset.'

In July, during a rally in Alaska, Trump called Musk a 'bulls*** artist.'

When talking about his proposed deal to buy Twitter, Musk said: 'I'm not doing Twitter for the money. It's not like I'm trying to buy some yacht and I can't afford it. I don't own any boats.'

He went on: 'But I think it's important that people have a maximally trusted and inclusive means of exchanging ideas and that it should be as trusted and transparent as possible.'

Musk continued: 'Twitter is certainly an invitation to increase your pain level. I guess I must be a masochist.'

He previously stated that he would reinstate many of those who had been banned from Twitter if he took over, a move that would hurt the relevancy of Truth Social.

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NYC's private $57,000-a-year Barnard College will offer abortion pills to students as a result of Roe v Wade being overturned

Barnard College, a private women's university in New York City where tuition goes for $57,00 a year, will offer abortion pills to students by next year.

School officials announced Thursday that Barnard will work to ensure students' access to abortion health services in response to the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

In a statement to students, college officials wrote: 'Barnard applies a reproductive justice and gender-affirming framework to all of its student health and well-being services, and particularly to reproductive healthcare. 'In the post-Roe context, we are bolstering these services.'

The school is the latest to provide such services to its students after Massachusetts and California enacted laws to do the same their public colleges by 2023.

Although New York continues to provide access to abortions, 22 states have enacting laws banning the procedure.

A majority of the laws were put into place immediately after the Supreme Court's decision over the summer, which removed women's federal rights to abortion.

Bernard President Sian Beilock said that the university's move was to prepare for any possible barrier to access in the state in order to stand by its student's reproductive rights.

'I think we're putting a stake in the ground that we believe that health and wellness is really the institution's responsibility for students, and we want to do everything we can to support our students,' she told the New York Times.

Marina Catallozzi, Barnard's chief health officer, said the new program would ensure students more privacy at the campus, which already has a vending machine for emergency contraception.

'With every reproductive health decision, but particularly around a pregnancy,' she told the Times. 'We want to make sure that students have all of the options: if they want to continue a pregnancy, if they want to continue and go on to adoption, if they want to terminate.'

The chief health officer added that the option could help students if New York abortion services were ever to become overcrowded by out-of-state residents looking for the procedure because it was banned in their state.

While New York has not enacted any laws for public schools to provide this kind of service for their students, Massachusetts and California have.

Over the summer, Massachusetts passed a law requiring public colleges to submit plans to provide abortion pills to students by November 2023.

California passed its own law to do the same in 2019, with the legislation set to be enforced by January.

Conversely, at the University of Idaho, officials sent a memo to all staff about restrictions at the school following the states near-total ban on abortion.

Employees were warned not to counsel patients about abortion or refer them to any abortion services at the risk of being charged with a felony, fired and permanently barred from working for the state.

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Gender Ideology Is ‘Half-Baked, Incoherent,’ Filmmaker Matt Walsh Tells Full House at Catholic University

Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh spoke to a full house about his documentary film “What Is a Woman?” on Tuesday at the Catholic University of America. (Photo: David Keith/Young America’s Foundation)

Despite efforts by a leftist group to prevent it from taking place, conservative commentator Matt Walsh, producer of a documentary film questioning the legitimacy of transgenderism, spoke Tuesday at the Catholic University of America.

Nearly 750 people attended the event in Washington to hear Walsh discuss his controversial new documentary “What Is a Woman?” One leader of the hosting group told The Daily Signal it had the highest turnout of any political event in the school’s history.

“In the film, I talked to a therapist who was ready to affirm me as a woman because I confessed to enjoying scented candles,” Walsh said at the event, hosted by the university’s Young America’s Foundation chapter.

He told his audience that, while making the film, he was most surprised to learn how pervasive gender ideology really is. He found that was the most common observation among his audience as well.

“This is not strictly the province of gender studies professors and weirdos on TikTok, many of whom are gender studies professors,” explained Walsh, who is also the author of a children’s book, “Johnny the Walrus,” that pokes fun gently and indirectly at transgenderism.

The basic tenets of gender ideology … that gender is fluid, that people can decide for themselves whether they’re men or women, that transgenderism is a valid and healthy state of being, which should be affirmed and encouraged, that sex is not binary, that there are dozens, if not … an infinite number of valid identities outside of man and woman … . All of these beliefs, however, half-baked and incoherent they may be, can be found everywhere in the country.

He recalled interviewing an administrator at a school where students identified as cats, and teachers affirmed them as cats. Walsh also interviewed a man who identifies as a wolf—and also as a woman.

Another thing Walsh said he learned was the confusion regarding biological sex that he encountered really seemed to be an affectation driven by fear.

One woman he interviewed seemed to be genuinely confused, Walsh said. She was so committed to a relativist view that when he asked her, “What would happen if it was my truth that she no longer exists?” she looked him straight in the eye and said: “Well, then, I don’t exist.”

“I knew that women were being erased in our culture. I didn’t realize that some of them were so eager to erase themselves,” Walsh said.

Often people would give vague and evasive answers to the question, “What is a woman?” said Walsh. “They’re afraid to speak basic biological truths.”

“Gender ideology paves the way for itself with intimidation, threats, coercion,” he explained. “Fear is a big part of the story.”

But, Walsh said, that’s nothing new. “The roots of modern gender ideology could be traced all the way back to the 19th century—arguably even earlier than that,” he explained. Gender ideology as we know it today really began to take shape in the mid-20th century, Walsh noted, “thanks to the work of two hideous and evil crackpot degenerates named Alfred Kinsey and John Money.”

Kinsey and Money, 20th-century psychologists and pedophile activists, pioneered the medical castration of children through gender-reassignment surgeries and hormone treatment.

“I learned that the ultimate goal of the gender ideology agenda goes far beyond gender,” Walsh said. “The ultimate goal is to undermine, destroy, and erase truth itself.”

Walsh added:

The final thing I learned from spending a year staring into this abyss is that we can win this fight … . Gender ideology is insane, destructive, pervasive, ubiquitous. I believe [it’s] the greatest evil that the world has ever seen. It’s also beatable.

“We can win because the other side can be crushed under the weight of simple questions,” he added. “The experts crumpled and collapsed and panicked in front of me.”

Noting those on the Left who have accused him and others of advocating violence and terrorism, Walsh responded: “The only thing we’re coming armed with is a spine and questions.”

Attendees asked Walsh questions following his remarks. Stacy Langton, one attendee, commented that she was the mother who exposed what she considers pornographic material in the libraries at her children’s school in Fairfax, Virginia. Even before she asked her question, the audience gave her a standing ovation.

One Catholic University student asked Walsh how to better help those who experience the pain of gender dysphoria. Walsh said he would treat gender dysphoria by addressing the underlying confusion. “We see the confusion itself as the problem,” he explained. “You’re not the problem. Your body is not the problem. There’s nothing wrong with you as a person … there’s something going on in your mind.”

That’s the problem with the “gender-affirming” model, he said, contending that therapists are affirming the feelings of kids who hate themselves and hate their bodies, in effect saying, “You really should hate yourself.”

“It’s abominable. It really is,” Walsh remarked. “I would advocate an approach of true self-acceptance.”

Catholic University’s new president, Peter Kilpatrick, shared in a Tuesday email to the student body that one group of students asked him to cancel or censor Walsh’s event. The group, which Kilpatrick did not identify, claimed Walsh’s appearance would make its members feel unwelcome and unsafe.

“The argument made an impression on me because it came from a sincere desire, which I share, to create on this campus an inclusive and welcoming atmosphere for all students,” Kilpatrick wrote.

The president said he could not agree to the group’s request, however, while adding he did “not want any student to feel unwelcome or unsafe.”

A week before the event, Catholic University’s Progressive Student Union released a statement, which it posted on its public Instagram account. The progressive students group claimed Young America’s Foundation is “contributing to a campus culture which promotes division over unity, discrimination over inclusivity, and fear over hope.”

A Progressive Student Union spokesperson told The Daily Signal in an email that the group has nothing further to say following the event. “We are focusing our energies on supporting workers at the Catholic University of America and building a better, more unified campus, for all people,” the spokesperson wrote.

The LGBTQ student group CUAllies, which remains unsanctioned by the university, also sent an email to its members urging them not to attend the Walsh event.

The email, shared by Young America’s Foundation member Nick Baker, stated: “We want to let you know that this is happening and that you SHOULD NOT go to the event.” CUAllies board members explained they were concerned about “the rhetoric that Matt Walsh spreads, and the message that the university is sending by allowing him to come to campus.”

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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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