I remember how it was -- JR
Biden's Education Secretary Doesn't Even Know What Confucius Institutes Are
For more than two years, Miguel Cardona has been the United States Secretary of Education, supposedly advising President Joe Biden and overseeing a massive portfolio of student debt and seemingly bowing to teacher unions and woke culture warriors at any opportunity to the detriment of America's students.
This week, however, Americans learned again that Secretary Cardona is just as uninformed and unqualified as several other members of Biden's cabinet when the man in charge of America's education system admitted that he doesn't know about Confucius Institutes, one of the Chinese Communist Party's Trojan horses.
When asked by Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI) whether he's aware of any attempts by the Chinese Communist Party "to influence U.S. education," Cardona said he didn't have "any information around specific efforts" by the CCP.
Getting more specific, Moolenaar pressed Cardona on whether he was even familiar with Confucius Institutes.
"I don't have information on the Confucius Institutes now," Cardona said revealing his lack of knowledge on the subject. "But I can- I'm sure my team may be aware of it and we can look into that," he added trying to save face.
Here's the exchange in which Cardona struggled to come up with an answer to questions about the CCP's influence in American education:
While the U.S. Secretary of Education is apparently unaware of Confucius Institutes and therefore unconcerned about the Chinese Communist Party's reach within institutions of learning in the U.S., many Americans, think tanks, and academic associations have been warning about the outposts for CCP activity that permeate U.S. schools and universities.
The Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Scholars (NAS) have warned of the CCP's "soft power" being wielded within American institutions:
Founded in 2004, the Confucius Institutes are a global phenomenon, enrolling more than nine million students at 525 institutes in 146 countries and regions. More than 100 institutes have opened in the United States, including at prestigious universities such as Columbia and Stanford. They are mostly staffed and funded by an agency of the Chinese government’s Ministry of Education—the Office of Chinese Languages Council International, or Hanban. The Hanban also operates Confucius Classrooms in an estimated 500 primary and secondary schools in the United States.
A 243-page NAS report described in detail the many strings attached to the goodies offered by Confucius Institutes:
Intellectual freedom. Chinese teachers—hired, paid by and accountable to the Communist Chinese government—are pressured to avoid “sensitive” topics like the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the Cultural Revolution.
Transparency. Contracts between American universities and the Hanban are rarely made public. One university went so far as to forbid Rachelle Peterson from visiting their campus as part of her research.
Entanglement. Confucius Institutes cover all the expenses of classes and also offer scholarships to American students to study abroad. With such financial incentives, universities find it difficult to criticize Chinese policies like its genocidal treatment of Muslim Uyghurs in Western China.
Soft power. Confucius Institutes avoid discussing China’s widespread human-rights abuses and present Taiwan and Tibet as undisputed Chinese territories. As a result, writes Peterson, the institutes “develop a generation of American students with selective knowledge of a major country”—and a major adversary. Confucius Institutes are a textbook example of soft power that causes universities in receipt of Chinese largesse to stay silent about controversial subjects like China’s use of forced labor to pick cotton, a 21st century variation of the slavery of the ante-bellum South.
The Confucius Institutes pretend to be a Chinese version of cultural institutions like the Alliance Française or the Goethe Institute, but they are in reality a propaganda machine funded and directed by the Chinese government. Based on the findings of its 2017 report, the NAS recommends that “all universities close their Confucius Institutes.”
So, China has been running CCP propaganda operations — not to mention stealing intellectual property — on U.S. soil for nearly two decades, and the Secretary of Education doesn't know about it.
Even worse, shortly after taking office in 2021, the Biden administration quietly ended efforts launched by the Trump administration to track Confucius Institutes and root out their CCP-driven activities, meaning Confucius Institutes should be known to those serving in the president's cabinet. But Cardona, as demonstrated this week, doesn't have a clue.
With this "know-nothing" display, Cardona joins other Biden administration colleagues such as ATF Director Steve Dettelbach who couldn't define "assault weapon" when asked to explain the firearms he and Biden have demanded be banned.
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Brandon Johnson bad for education in Chicago
In early April, Chicago voters elected Brandon Johnson, a former Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teacher, to become the city's next mayor. Johnson, who is more progressive than outgoing mayor Lori Lightfoot, defeated former CPS CEO Paul Vallas.
Unlike Johnson, Vallas was at least willing to consider implementing a form of school choice in Chicago, seeing as how CPS is completely failing to educate Chicago's youth, let alone keep them safe while in school.
In Chicago, only 25 percent of elementary students tested at or above the proficient reading level, and only 21 percent did so in math. What's worse, those numbers generally go down, not up, as students "progress" through middle school and high school.
Chicago families are yearning for answers concerning the city's failing education system, as these shortcomings persist despite CPS spending $29,400 per student in 2023. For context, in 2013, CPS spent $13,200 per pupil. Evidently, more spending does not necessarily translate into better results.
On the other hand, increased competition in the education realm, in the form of school choice, wherein parents have the freedom to choose what schools their children attend, seems to be a commonsense solution to what ails CPS.
In fact, school choice seems to be the only solution to the endless cycle of corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse that has become endemic throughout CPS. At a bare minimum, school choice would offer a much needed alternative path for thousands of Chicago families who have no choice other than to send their kids to woefully underperforming public schools.
Not only does school choice seem to be a worthwhile solution, but it is vastly popular among nearly every demographic group. School choice is one of the few issues that is popular regardless of where one stands on the political spectrum. Moreover, as recent polling demonstrates, school choice is widely supported across racial, socioeconomic, and even generational lines.
Despite this overwhelming support for school choice, Chicago voters elected Johnson, a champion for CPS and dedicated to further empowering the already too powerful Chicago Teachers Union. Sadly, with the election of Johnson, the odds of a robust school choice program in Chicago are less likely than ever before
But the damage Johnson is prepared to inflict does not stop here.
Johnson has also made it clear that he will not do away with the practice of "social promotion," where students who fail to meet bare minimum grade-level requirements are pushed forward regardless and graduate despite never reaching proficiency in core subjects.
Further compounding the consequences of social promotion, Johnson has also pledged to dim the standards by which a school's success is rated.
Now, granted, I don't want to paint this as overly black and white. I do see some merit in a standard that is not uniform. However, reducing standards and student achievement just to make the schools appear better is a total disservice to Chicagoans, who deserve more from their public schools.
That being said, there needs to be some objective standards for parents and administrators to assess whether or not these schools are doing the job of educating students.
Submission to this principle of low expectations, combined with the practice of social promotion by which children with no business proceeding to the next grade are pushed forward, will be a travesty for the development of Chicago's next generation.
So, in short, the plan is fewer options for schooling, less incentive to improve schools, less incentive for student success, and less accountability for school failure. Check, check, check, and check. The Chicago Teachers Union got its way, on account of the more than $764,000 it forked over to Brandon Johnson's campaign. And it did so at the expense of the children who need help the most. Chicago voters have no one to blame but themselves.
Now, Chicagoans must live with the consequences of their choice to elect Johnson. For the time being, Chicagoans can only watch helplessly as the school choice movement in the Windy City comes to a screeching halt. Hopefully, next time around, Chicago voters consider someone who is more amenable to school choice.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/brandon_johnson_and_education_in_chicago.html
*****************************************************Zombie school rules prove COVID alarmism was ALWAYS a cult
Want proof COVID alarmism is a cult, pure and simple?
Look no further than the Elizabeth Anne Clune Montessori school in Ithaca. There, as chronicled by David Zweig at the Free Press, children must be masked, including outdoors, and are actually forbidden from speaking during lunch.
That’s right: In 2023,
long after the pandemic has receded
years after the data have established both that there is near-zero risk to kids from the disease and that interventions like masking (and monastic silences) are next to useless
Still, one tiny private school is clinging to hygiene theater with insane vigilance.
Zweig reports that the enforced silence at lunch drove the school’s children — like political prisoners in a Soviet gulag — to contrive secret hand signals as a way of communicating.
The school kept these restrictions in place after the end of New York’s mask mandate at the request of teachers.
Proving yet again that the discipline (even beyond the grasp of the state’s unions) is filled with left-wing fanatics who embrace COVID theater with the same blind surety they bring to arguments about race or climate change.
There’s zero real evidence that Clune’s policies made the slightest difference to COVID outcomes.
But that’s not what COVID alarmism is about.
It’s a ritualized system of power and political conformity, enforced by hurting the most vulnerable.
Yet it’s not unbeatable or inevitable.
Just look at Florida’s Centner Academy.
Equally dedicated to vague, hippy-dippy principles — it employs a “director of brain optimization” and hosts a dedicated space for failure — Centner from the get-go nonetheless took a common-sense approach to the insanities around COVID.
The school — correctly — opened for in-person study way ahead of the curve for Miami-Dade, reasoning — again correctly — that the virus posed little threat to students or its mostly young teachers.
And it went mask-optional in the fall of 2020.
As a result, its students suffered none of the pointless interruptions to learning that plagued kids nationwide for more than a year, egged on by union fatcats like Randi Weingarten, hysteria-mongering media like The New York Times and the cowardly political trimmers advising President Joe Biden on science.
Yes, Centner is not above criticism.
The state rightly slapped down the school’s deeply silly policy that vaccinated students needed to miss 30 days post-shot.
But there were no mass outbreaks at Centner. No apocalyptic virus waves or pediatric deaths.
Up north in Ithaca, change is supposedly on the way at Clune (possibly sparked by Zweig’s scrutiny).
But it’s too late for the kids — and parents — who suffered under the school’s regime.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/22/covid-alarmism-was-always-a-cult-zombie-school-rules-prove/
******************************************************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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