I remember how it was -- JR
Prominent Black Poet Laments ‘Ban’ on Her Inaugural Poem by Florida School
One problem with the poet’s claim — it isn’t true. Poems are a dime a dozen anyway. There are fat books full of them. Only one in a million is widely memorable
A prominent American poet, Amanda Gorman, has riled up liberals across the country by falsely claiming that the poem she read at President Biden’s inauguration in 2021 has been banned by an elementary school in Florida.
In a public letter posted to Twitter, the 25-year-old Ms. Gorman — the youngest poet to ever read at a presidential inauguration — claimed that a book that features one of her poems, “The Hill We Climb,” was banned by an elementary school at Miami Lakes, Florida. “I’m gutted,” Ms. Gorman wrote. “Robbing children of the right to find their voices is a violation of their right to free thought and free speech.”
Ms. Gorman posted a copy of the complaint that led to her poem being banned, which was filed by an unnamed parent in late March. The handwritten complaint stated in broken English that a book containing the poem was “not educational” and carried “indirect” hate messages.
“Unnecessary bookbans like these are on the rise and we must fight back,” Ms. Gorman said. “And let’s be clear: most of the forbidden works are by authors who have struggled for generations to get on bookshelves. The majority of these censored works are by queer and non-white authors.”
She ended her screed with a plea for people to donate to PEN America, a free-speech nonprofit based in New York that has been fundraising in recent months to fight what it believes to be an epidemic of book bans across the United States. As of Wednesday morning, Ms. Gorman had raised more than $50,000 for PEN America.
The social media post generated howls of protests from very online liberals and spawned dozens of headlines in American media outlets repeating her claim that the poem had been banned by the school. In an appearance on MSNBC, PEN America’s chief executive, Suzanne Nossel, blamed Governor DeSantis for creating an “enabling environment for book bans” in the state of Florida.
“There’s an election on the horizon and there’s a notion that certain people can get energized and motivated by this and they are going to play to that segment and rile them up and it’s up to us to mobilize the rest — the majority,” she said.
The only problem with the narrative being pushed by Ms. Gorman and other activists, however, is that it isn’t true. After the uproar, the Miami-Dade school district released a statement saying that it felt “compelled to clarify that the book titled, ‘The Hill We Climb’ by Amanda Gorman was never banned or removed from one of our schools. The book is available in the media center as part of the middle grades collection.”
The district explained to the Miami Herald, which first reported the incident, that following the parent’s complaint a panel consisting of teachers, administrators, a guidance counselor, and a library media specialist at the Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes decided that Ms. Gorman’s book and a handful of others were more appropriate for middle-school-aged students than elementary ones and were placed on a different shelf in the same library.
On Wednesday morning, the mayor of Miami-Dade County, Daniella Levine Cava, extended an invitation to Ms. Gorman to visit South Florida. “Your poem inspired our youth to become active participants in their government and to help shape the future,” she said in a post on Twitter. “We want you to come to Miami-Dade to do a reading of your poem.”
Following the uproar, Ms. Gorman also attempted to explain the discrepancy between her original complaint and subsequent reports about the ban. “A school book ban is any action taken against a book that leaves access to a book restricted or diminished,” she said. “This decision of moving my book from its original place, taken after one parent complained, diminishes the access elementary schoolers would have previously had to my poem.”
https://www.nysun.com/article/prominent-poet-laments-ban-on-her-inaugural-poem-by-florida-school
************************************************Texas Set to Give Boot to Leftist DEI Offices at Public College Campuses
Texas may soon become the second state to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs from public colleges.
In early May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation to prevent colleges and universities there from using federal or state funds on DEI programs. Like on many other issues, Florida and DeSantis have demonstrated that just a few men with courage can reveal a majority.
It turns out that by following through with a clear and directed agenda, Republicans in the Sunshine State have made themselves more popular with more people. Other red states are following in the wake of that success.
On Friday, the Texas House of Representatives voted 83-60 to pass legislation that would ban DEI programs and offices in state colleges and universities.
After the Texas Senate originally passed the bill last month, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick issued a statement:
The Texas Senate has now passed the strongest pushback on woke policies in higher education nationwide. For far too long, academia has been poisoned by woke policies and faculty seeking to indoctrinate our students.
Professors did not believe we would push back on their advances, but they were wrong. Students should be taught how to think critically, not what to think.
Democrats got some concessions in the House. For instance, the final text of the bill, according to the Texas Tribune, “requires the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to conduct an annual study into the impact of banning DEI offices, allows universities to make ‘reasonable efforts’ to re-assign employees in DEI offices to new positions with similar pay, and shifts the day the bill goes into effect back by three months to Jan. 1.”
The bill will now go back to the Senate for approval of the House amendments to the legislation.
Unsurprisingly, Democrats are apoplectic.
“Diversity is not a threat. Equitable access to education is not a threat. Inclusion is not a threat,” state Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, D-Dallas, said during debate on the bill on Friday, according to the Austin American-Statesman. “We turn our cheek away from the real threats that our communities face—the threats of gun violence, threats of poverty, housing insecurity, the threat of illiteracy.”
The idea that these DEI administrative cliques at schools aren’t just another way to promote and enforce ideological conformity is laughable. What they promote is a threat to our free society.
So, thanks to the Texas Legislature, a small but significant bastion of indoctrination will soon be eliminated. It’s a good start, but there’s a long way to go before declaring “victory.”
Even without these programs, left-wing cultural values will continue to be dominant among the college-educated elite. However, every time one of these institutional gatekeepers is defunded, disempowered, and defanged, a streak of light comes through for those still seeking the truth.
This is how you win.
Over a dozen other states are considering similar legislation.
Almost uniquely in the West, our system of federalism—frayed as it is—provides a staging ground for a serious counterrevolution to the great awokening. As we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s in the states where representative self-government remains closest to how it was originally intended to be in this country.
Sure, some states will sink into idiocy, like California and Illinois. But others are showing that there’s another way.
The Biden administration is doing everything it can to maximize the power of the DEI machine—not that the federal bureaucracy needed much coaxing. But the fact that states are taking charge of their own destiny and nipping the woke cultural revolution in the bud is a good sign.
Our colleges and universities are the woke Left’s equivalent of religious institutions. Too long have public universities been given a blank check to do as they please. We’ve unwittingly created a kind of established secular church. They won’t reform from within, so now higher education must be pressured from without.
The Left obsesses over the notion that every public institution must “look like America.” We the people need to insist that our schools think like America, or at least represent the diversity of thought that exists here. DEI offices currently function to inculcate ideological conformity and promote the pernicious identitarianism that’s destroying free thought, free speech, and civil society.
Why are we surprised that generations of the American elite, taught in our schools to think that the ladder of success requires conformity to left-wing cultural values, carry those values over to their jobs in government and the boardroom?
In most cases, wokeness doesn’t survive when put to a vote. The Left likes to tout “democracy,” but they ultimately fear it. They fear what will happen when people wake up and find that they have the power to do something about the noxious changes happening in our country.
That should be encouraging, even though we can’t lose sight of the fact that the Left still has disproportionately enormous and lasting institutional, elite cultural strength.
The best—and perhaps only—way to counter that power is through careful, incremental policy change and a direct counteroffensive through elected representatives.
Florida is leading the way, Texas is following suit, and a wave of other states will likely join after seeing success.
The counterrevolution is building. We aren’t done yet.
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Australia: Qld schools accused of covert gender counselling without involving parents
Queensland parents have come forward to accuse school guidance officers of advising students as young as 12 on how to go about changing their names, pronouns, and gender – without including parents.
School guidance officers are advising students as young as 12 on how to go about changing their names, pronouns, and gender – without including parents.
Two Queensland families say they were cut out of the process for weeks, with one claiming a guidance officer encouraged their child to lie to support a potential case to cut ties with their parents.
The Department of Education said consent is needed for students to receive ongoing guidance officer support, but officers can judge whether a child be considered a “mature minor” – a legal test of a child’s intelligence and understanding – and consent to services themselves.
The allegations come after The Courier-Mail revealed teachers are being forced to deceive parents when a student asks the school to help them change their gender, pronouns or name.
In fresh claims, a mother to two daughters who both changed to male names and pronouns, said her younger child was “groomed” by the guidance officer at her Queensland state school.
The mother said her daughter – referred to as “Claire” – was groomed into believing her home was not safe if her parents did not affirm her new identity.
The mother claims Claire was encouraged by the guidance officer to make a false allegation against her mother’s husband, to support her case if she wanted to be considered a “mature minor” and move out of home in the future. In the end, Claire withdrew the allegations.
“It is telling anxious kids that their mother and father are not safe because they will not affirm (their new identity), they’re being exploited by these school counsellors,” Claire’s mother said.
Meanwhile, a father said his daughter spoke to her state school in late 2020 about changing her name and pronouns. Plans were made for this change to take effect in Term 1, 2021.
But the father was only informed by the school days before it resumed about his daughter’s planned name and pronoun changes and that she would wear a boy’s uniform.
The father believes his daughter spoke to the guidance officer for three months before he was informed. He said his daughter did not want him to know.
“They were going to put it (new gender identity) in place without telling me initially, just a flick of the switch. There was no communication and no support plan,” he said.
“I felt that the school took over that parental role.”
A Department of Education spokeswoman said guidance officers may refer students who require specialised support, for a range of reasons, to external support services.
“Consent for students to receive ongoing support from a guidance officer must be obtained,” the spokeswoman said.
“The Department provides comprehensive information to assist school staff, including guidance officers, in making decisions that ensure gender diverse students receive appropriate support, tailored to their individual needs.
“While consent is often provided by parents, guidance officers use their professional judgment to determine if a student has sufficient maturity and understanding to be considered a mature minor and therefore consent to services.”
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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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