I remember how it was -- JR
Colorado Teachers Continue Flirtation With Communism
What’s happening in Colorado is precisely what the U.S. Supreme Court tried to prevent decades ago.
In 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to uphold a New York state law prohibiting communists from teaching in public schools. Dubbed the Feinberg Law — the New York statute banned from the teaching profession anyone who called for the overthrow of the government.
The 6-3 decision, specifically crafted to keep communism out of the classroom, supported the belief that “(T)he state had a constitutional right to protect the immature minds of children in its public schools from subversive propaganda, subtle or otherwise, disseminated by those ‘to whom they look for guidance, authority and leadership.’”
Even then, the New York Teachers Union vowed to fight the law. Decades later, teachers’ unions are still fighting to put communism in the classroom.
During an event earlier this month organized by the Colorado AFL-CIO, the parent organization of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second largest teacher’s union, a Colorado teacher took the stage to call for a “forceful cultural revolution."
Tim Hernandez is a teacher at Aurora West Preparatory Academy in the Aurora Public Schools District, according to its website. He announced in his speech at the Colorado AFL-CIO event that he advocates for Marxism-Leninism to be taught in schools, admitting that he teaches radical communist doctrines in his classroom.
The Colorado teacher has published his radical anti-white views on his public social media accounts, calling for white people to “distance themselves from their whiteness.”
Imagine the civil rights uproar if a public school employee with a taxpayer-funded salary called for blacks to “distance themselves from their blackness.”
This wildly racist suggestion would surely have resulted in the teacher being fired and facing legal action for racial discrimination and/or hate speech. But when it’s white students being discriminated against, Hernandez’s actions are not only overlooked but endorsed by teachers’ unions across the country.
The Colorado Education Association (CEA), the largest teachers’ union in the Mountain State, with more than 39,000 members, has gone even further to advocate for communist ideology by passing an anti-capitalism resolution at its 97th annual delegate assembly last month.
The resolution asserts, “(T)he CEA believes that capitalism requires exploitation of children, public schools, land, labor, and/or resources and, therefore, the only way to fully address systemic racism (the school-to-prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy (gender and LGBTQ disparities), educational inequality, and income inequality is to dismantle capitalism and replace it with a new, equitable economic system.”
The director of communications at CEA, Lauren Stephenson, claimed the resolution “reflect(s) the views of the union’s 39,000 members.”
This radically anti-American ideology is being championed by teacher’s’ unions and written into lesson plans all over the state.
Colorado State Sen. Mark Baisley (R-Roxborough Park) has alerted Colorado Attorney General John Kellner about Hernandez’s public rhetoric, warning “history has shown us how violent this movement can become.”
“This radical teacher’s call for a forceful revolution against the people may very well be a crime,” he said. “And adding a racial motivation may also make this a hate crime.”
Baisley continued, “It’s unconscionable that any school in Colorado, let alone a preparatory Academy, would employ a teacher who uses such a primeval call to arms.”
Hernandez’s contract with the Denver Public School was not renewed after he was placed on administrative leave for helping students organize a walkout, which resulted in police helicopters surrounding the school. Hernandez claims his contract was not renewed because, “(W)hite school leaders did not appreciate the ways (he) advocated for students.”
After being placed on administrative leave by Denver Public Schools for organizing a student walkout that was planned off-campus at the home of an Aurora Public School principal, Hernandez was offered a position at Aurora Public Schools, where the Aurora principal told him, “I’ve already seen everything that you can do. I’ll let you teach whatever you want. You can come to our school. Please help me transform our school.’”
And so he has. Just not in the way the district’s parents would approve of.
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Parents Sue Maryland School Board After Kids Allegedly Forced to Read 'Pride Books'
Last Tuesday, a group of six parents from Maryland took a stand for parental rights and filed a lawsuit against the Montgomery County Board of Education.
These parents, from diverse religious backgrounds including Islam, Catholicism, and Orthodox Christianity, are pushing back against what they see as an overreach by the school board.
They allege that the board has violated their parental rights by mandating books promoting a one-sided view of transgender ideology and same-sex relationships without prior notification to parents.
Last fall, the board introduced a list of 13 new books, branded as “LGBTQ-inclusive,” aimed at students from pre-K to eighth grade.
The inclusion of these books in the curriculum, however, has sparked controversy, as they are viewed by the parents as pushing a particular narrative around gender identity and sexuality that is inconsistent with their religious beliefs and principles of sound science.
One of the contested books, “Love, Violet,” intended for children as young as kindergarten, explores the theme of girls developing romantic feelings for other girls.
Another book, “Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope,” aimed at kindergarten-age children as well, introduces the idea that a girl could actually be a boy.
A third book, “Pride Puppy,” designed for children aged three to five, serves as an introduction to Pride parades.
The lawsuit also mentions that these books invite children as young as three to search for images related to LGBTQ activism and specific symbols like the “intersex flag,” amongst others.
The parents’ legal team, led by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a conservative law firm with a focus on religious freedom, argues that the school board’s actions violate Maryland state law, which requires school boards to notify parents about any curriculum material related to “sexuality” and permits parents to withdraw their child from such lessons.
The lawsuit further claims that the board has breached one of its own policies, as it has allegedly informed parents that they can no longer opt their children out of this particular curriculum.
Eric Baxter, Vice President and Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund, voiced the parents’ concerns, stating, “Children are entitled to guidance from their own parents, who know and love them best, regarding how they’ll be introduced to complex issues concerning gender identity, transgenderism, and human sexuality.”
He further added, “Forced, ideological discussions during story hour won’t cut it, and excluding parents will only hinder, not help, inclusivity”.
The lawsuit is the latest example of parents nationwide asserting their rights in the face of school decisions that they believe conflict with their values and beliefs.
The parents are seeking an immediate injunction against the school board’s policy of no parental notice or opt-out option.
Named in the lawsuit are school board members and Superintendent Monifa McKnight of Montgomery County Public Schools, an affluent district located just north of Washington, D.C..
What does this mean for you as parents, educators, and concerned citizens?
It’s a call to action to remain vigilant and involved in our children’s education, to ensure that our values and beliefs are respected, and to fight for our rights to guide our children’s understanding of complex issues.
After all, as Baxter puts it, “When it comes to kids, it’s still ‘mom and dad know best.’ Schools can best help kids learn kindness by teaming up with parents, not cutting them out of the picture”.
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Woke judges say there are topics high school kids CAN’T debate
My four years on a high school debate team in Broward County, Florida, taught me to challenge ideas, question assumptions and think outside the box.
It also helped me overcome a terrible childhood stutter.
And I wasn’t half-bad: I placed ninth my first time at the National Speech & Debate Association nationals, sixth at the Harvard national and was runner-up at the Emory national.
After college, between 2017 and 2019, I coached a debate team at an underprivileged high school in Miami.
There, I witnessed the pillars of high school debate start to crumble. Since then, the decline has continued, from a competition that rewards evidence and reasoning to one that punishes students for what they say and how they say it.
First, some background.
Imagine a high school sophomore on the debate team.
She’s been given her topic about a month in advance, but she won’t know who her judge is until hours before her debate round.
During that time squeeze — perhaps she’ll pace the halls as I did at the 2012 national tournament in Indianapolis — she’ll scroll on her phone to look up her judge’s name on Tabroom, a public database maintained by the NSDA.
That’s where judges post “paradigms,” which explain what they look for during a debate.
If a judge prefers competitors not “spread” — speak a mile a minute — debaters will moderate their pace.
If a judge emphasizes “impacts” — the reasons why an argument matters — debaters adjust accordingly.
But let’s say when the high school sophomore clicks Tabroom, she sees that her judge is Lila Lavender, the 2019 national debate champion, whose paradigm reads, “Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist. . . . I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging. . . . I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments. . . . Examples of arguments of this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.”
How will knowing that information about the judge change the way she makes her case?
Traditionally, high school students would have encountered a judge like former West Point debater Henry Smith, whose paradigm asks students to “focus on clarity over speed” and reminds them that “every argument should explain exactly how [they] win the debate.”
In the past few years, however, judges with paradigms tainted by politics and ideology are becoming common.
Debate judge Shubham Gupta’s paradigm reads, “If you are discussing immigrants in a round and describe the person as ‘illegal,’ I will immediately stop the round, give you the loss with low speaks” — low speaker points — “give you a stern lecture, and then talk to your coach. . . . I will not have you making the debate space unsafe.”
Debate Judge Kriti Sharma concurs: under her list of “Things That Will Cause You To Automatically Lose,” number three is “Referring to immigrants as ‘illegal.’ ”
Should a high school student automatically lose and be publicly humiliated for using a term that’s not only ubiquitous in media and politics but accurate?
Once students have been exposed to enough of these partisan paradigms, they internalize that point of view and adjust their arguments going forward.
That’s why you rarely see students present arguments in favor of capitalism, defending Israel or challenging affirmative action.
Most students choose not to fight this coercion.
They see it as a necessary evil that’s required to win debates and secure accolades, scholarships and college acceptance letters.
On paper, the NSDA rejects what Lavender, Gupta and Sharma are doing. Its rules state, “Judges should decide the round as it is debated, not based on their personal beliefs.”
https://nypost.com/2023/05/26/woke-judges-say-there-are-topics-high-school-kids-cant-debate/
******************************************************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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