I remember how it was -- JR
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
South Carolina teacher's CRT lesson accused of race-shaming against White people: 'I hope I don't get fired'
Mary Wood is an English teacher who was accused by some students of 'indoctrination studies' and making them feel ashamed to be White.
A South Carolina public school teacher has been accused by some of her students of "indoctrination studies" and causing them to feel ashamed to be White.
Mary Wood is an advanced English language teacher in Chapin High School located in Lexington-Richland County School District Five. This past year some students complained about lessons, which she had delivered in prior years, to school board trustee Elizabeth Barnhardt.
According to an opinion article the trustee wrote Saturday, Wood began her lesson by stating, "Hopefully, I don't get fired for this."
"Anyone who opens their remarks, including a teacher, with [those]… words already knows they are walking on shaky ground on whether what they are doing is right or not," Barnhardt said.
One of Wood's lessons included the book "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates which infamously called 9/11 heroes "menaces."
Coates wrote about 9/11 responders, "They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body."
In the same book, he referred to "White America" as a "syndicate" designed to "dominate and control our bodies."
A student reported that the teacher "prepared" them for the Coates book by introducing two videos which made them feel "uncomfortable."
One of the videos was titled "Structural Discrimination: The Unequal Opportunity Race." It was a metaphor of critical race theory concepts expressed using a track competition of White people racing against Black people. It showed White people gleefully winning, acquiring money, while barriers like rocks, red lights, cages and brick walls were presented in front of the Black runners.
In one instance, the White people condescendingly said, "Bye, bye" as they passed by the Black runners who were prohibited from competing. Another section showed a White person being advantaged by "Privilege," an "Old Boy Network" while a Black runner was blocked by a brick wall, which said, "Dead End."
The trustee responded stating, "The teaching and videos are part of what is also known as DEI, discrimination, exclusion, and indoctrination studies. This includes another tenet called ‘identity politics’ which makes one’s identity the focal point of any perceived or imagined discrimination, ie, race, sex (what many wrongly call gender today), sexual preferences, social status, etc."
Wood responded to the allegations on Sunday's "The Mehdi Hasan Show." "I had no concerns about teaching this lesson. I had vetted it before," she said.
"I think it's important to mention that the goal wasn't to say, ‘Read this and then agree with what is being presented.’ The goal was to say, 'Here is an argument. Now you research on your own afterwards and determine if what you have done is valid," she continued.
However, a student accused the teacher of "indoctrination" under the guise of presenting different points of view. Fox News Digital asked Wood about alternative views she presented vis-à-vis Coates but did not immediately get a response.
A student said, "This past week, my teacher presented two videos tiled 'The Unequal Opportunity Race' and ‘Systemic Racism Explained.’ Prior to showing these video clips, Mrs. Wood spent 20 minutes expressing her personal opinion, telling us she felt these videos to be true. Hearing her opinion and watching these videos made me feel uncomfortable. I actually felt ashamed to be Caucasian."
Critical race theory holds that America is systemically racist and puts people into oppressor or oppressed categories on the basis of their supposed privilege. Its founding theorists believed that discrimination against privileged groups can combat past discrimination.
The teacher was purportedly asked by the school to change her lessons.
The district released a statement to Fox News Digital, which said, "Daily operations of School District Five of Lexington and Richland Counties are governed by School Board Policies. These policies state that matters concerning academic freedom are to be handled between teachers and administration. As a result, School District Five has no further public comment."
Wood was contacted for comment and did not immediately respond.
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Pupils identifying as cats. Teachers too scared to speak out. And a bid to smash every rule and boundary... What we are witnessing is an all-out war on parental authority – but the ultimate victims are our children
Are we seeing the tide finally turn on gender madness in schools?
Hopefully we are, in view of the widespread reaction to shocking audio footage last week from a school in Sussex that revealed a teacher calling a teenage pupil ‘despicable’ for disputing the idea that a classmate could identify as a cat.
Other reports poured in, from multiple schools, of children identifying as dinosaurs, animals or even moons.
Of teachers afraid to challenge them for fear of being seen as discriminatory.
Now, leaked draft guidelines for schools on gender identity suggest the Government is creaking into action, with a ban on embracing pupils’ exotic ‘identities’ without involving parents.
But will this be enough? I think not. The roots of this madness are far more insidious, and far more widespread.
We are witnessing nothing less than an all-out war on ‘normal’. And it’s justified by a sinister body of thought known as ‘queer theory’.
Let’s be clear: most of us support gay and lesbian people living normal lives, free of unjust discrimination. But queer theory isn’t about including gay and lesbian people in normal society.
It sees normal society as the source of oppression. And that means dismantling normal society.
The doctrine has been smuggled into schools and institutions, on the coat-tails of gay inclusion.
It wants to smash every kind of rule, boundary, institution, and norm – all the way to the foundations of biology itself.
And it has set its sights on Britain’s children.
Evangelists of queer theory say there’s nothing natural about our bodies, or our desires.
The categories ‘male’ and ‘female’, they claim, are not facts of biology but cruel, oppressive fictions that cramp individual self-expression.
Nor is there anything natural about who we’re attracted to, or why.
According to queer theory, the normal pattern of attraction between men and women, and the benefit to society of stable couples raising children together, is ‘heteronormativity’, designed to lock us all in oppressive boxes.
Earlier this year, a report revealed just how far this doctrine has been embedded in schools, via largely unregulated private companies delivering lessons on Relationships and Sex Education (RSE).
According to the report, the RSE provider School of Sexuality Education says its aim is precisely not teaching children what’s normal.
Instead, it sets out to teach youngsters that there is no such thing as normal sexuality – or even normal sexed bodies. That sex doesn’t matter.
That humans can be any ‘gender’ they like. That there are no better or worse kinds of relationship or sexual practice.
That casual sex is just as good as marriage. Many leading advocates of such beliefs go further, attacking the idea of ‘childhood’ as another oppressive ‘construct’.
In practice, that means attacking the authority of parents.
It is no surprise, therefore, that the School of Sexuality Education wants to end parents’ right to opt their children out of such lessons.
None of these ideologues seem to acknowledge where this thinking leads. If you treat every norm or rule as oppressive, that means smashing even the norms and rules that protect vulnerable groups. Such as children.
This includes the sense that children aren’t mature enough to make irreversible decisions about their own ‘identity’.
Not to mention the equally obvious truth that, with rare, unfortunate exceptions, parents are best-placed to safeguard their children’s interests.
The fact is that this protective instinct is a product of human evolution, helping our slow-developing offspring survive into adulthood.
Sadly, there are already too many wanting to weaken that bond.
As seen in places such as Rotherham, where grooming gangs have targeted girls in care, the most vulnerable children are those without attentive, loving adults watching out for them.
Again and again, we discover that liberating children also creates opportunities for adults.
The earliest queer theorists were at least honest. Michel Foucault, often called the godfather of queer theory, argued for the abolition of age of consent laws.
(After his death, it was revealed that Foucault sexually exploited under-age boys in Tunisia.)
Other leading queer theorists sought to defend ‘boy-lovers’, or condone forms of incest.
Of course, not everyone who wants to ‘liberate’ children has nefarious intentions.
But the push to free young children from their parents’ protective authority ends up aiding and abetting those who do.
We should take heed of the horror stories percolating out of North America and Canada, where this ideology is rampant.
Take the chilling recent story of a 14-year-old American girl who was sex-trafficked by sadistic rapists, after her school hid her ‘gender identity’ from her parents and helped separate her from their care.
America is a global outlier in gender extremism. Thankfully, we in Britain are more moderate.
There’s still a chance of resisting this tide of madness. So we must welcome every signal, however weak, that Government Ministers still recognise that ‘normal’ exists.
Miriam Cates MP, who commissioned the RSE report, welcomed the proposed new guidance on sex and gender in schools.
But she added a note of warning, telling me: ‘It’s a positive step forward that the guidelines seem likely to ban teachers from “transitioning” without parental consent.’
She says this doesn’t go far enough – ‘we shouldn’t be transitioning children at all’.
None of this should even need saying. But while governments shy away from saying it, ideologue ‘educators’ are still busy in schools, teaching the exact opposite to our children.
Disgracefully, parents are not even entitled to see the lesson plans. Last week, a mother lost a court battle to get her 15-year-old daughter’s school to tell her what her daughter was being taught in class about gender.
It’s no use shoring up the roof if the problem is termites in the rafters.
In much the same way, there’s little gained from shoring up parents’ right to know that their child wants to change ‘gender’ in class, if unaccountable ‘educators’ can still use secret materials to indoctrinate that class.
The new gender guidance will be welcome – if it ever appears – but it’s not enough.
Of course, children should be taught about gay and lesbian inclusion, but as part of a wide education on what’s normally true about our bodies and our nature.
For the war on normal hasn’t changed the basic facts. None of us gets to choose the sex we are born.
Babies still arrive the same way and follow the same stages of development.
And children haven’t stopped needing love and protection from parents, just because some dodgy theorists decided they’d be better off liberated.
But we can’t defend these truths while the social norms that shore up society are being turned to dust, from the inside out, by sex and gender ideologues.
Every day we see new evidence of how their poisonous ideas have crept into schools, institutions, charities, and even the police.
This ideology has hidden behind a rightful and justified effort to protect gay and lesbian people from cruel bullying and discrimination. And now it’s waging war on normal itself.
And it must be stopped. It should be clear by now that the real winners of a war on normal are the kind of monsters who flourish in a world without truth, or rules, or consequences.
And its ultimate casualties? Our children.
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Australia: Cyber bullying, sexual content against teachers on the rise, eSafety commissioner warns
Teachers are experiencing escalating abuse from students and the eSafety commissioner warns the problem will get worse as generative AI technology becomes more widely used.
The commission has received reports of students taking photos of their teachers and rating their physical appearance, starting organised campaigns to have staff removed, making damaging allegations and creating sexualised abuse content.
“Some Australians are at greater risk of online abuse than others and sadly eSafety is aware teachers and principals are among them,” commissioner Julie Inman Grant said.
“We have received a number of reports of this form of abuse from across the community and we expect many more as generative AI technology becomes more widely dispersed.”
She said along with race, gender, sexuality and religion, perpetrators of abuse sometimes target specific professions, especially where their work is performed in the public eye, including teachers and principals whose work is sometimes known to “several thousand”.
While the commission has a good success rate in removing harmful content, Grant said social media platforms need to take responsibility for the “weaponisation of their platforms”.
“Teachers are incredibly vulnerable ... people don’t realise that feeling of being in a classroom with 20 or 25 or 30 young people.”
The commission is developing a social media self-defence program similar to other specific resources available for journalists and sportspeople.
Research from 2019 found 70 per cent of teachers reported being bullied or harassed by a student in the previous 12 months. Verbal abuse was the most common form, while 10 per cent said they had been hit or punched by a student.
Nearly 60 per cent reported they’d been bullied or harassed by parents. Women were more likely to be subject to abuse, while men were more likely to have students organise against them.
“Teachers are incredibly vulnerable. People don’t realise that feeling of being in a classroom with 20 or 25 or 30 young people,” said the study’s author, Dr Rochelle Fogelgarn – a lecturer in teacher education at La Trobe University and former teacher.
“[Teachers] are putting themselves out there for the services of the community. It’s not for the money.”
She said it was unrealistic to expect schools or teachers to crack down on abuse, especially as so much of it was anonymised online.
Psychologist and Headspace App mental health expert Carly Dober said bullying could have long-term impacts on teachers and lead to them dropping out of the industry.
“The lack of control that can really shake the person’s confidence, self-esteem and motivation to continue on in the role and to continue serving and giving as much as you do as a teacher,” she said.
“I’ve been hit, pinched, scratched, pushed, and sometimes come home with bruises on me.”
Liz Michelle, casual relief primary school teacher
“It can also leave people a bit paranoid, wondering who has seen this, and what do they think?”
Headspace App’s Workforce Attitudes Toward Mental Health Report found 34 per cent of people working in the education sector said they have felt extreme stress every day over the past 12 months, while 42 per cent reported an increase in violence or threats.
NSW Teachers Federation senior vice president Amber Flohm said the union was aware of the issue.
“Cyberbullying against teachers is not uncommon and reflects both the complexity and challenges of teachers’ work and ever-evolving technologies in classrooms and schools,” she said.
The parents who are driving teachers out of the classroom
“Platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram are frequently used to ridicule teachers which of course has a significant impact on teacher’s wellbeing.”
NSW Education Minister Prue Car said a mobile phone ban in state public high schools, which will be implemented from term 4 of this year, would help reduce opportunities for student abuse.
“Teachers have been through enough in the past few years without having to endure abuse, whether actual or online. There is no place for this sort of behaviour in our classrooms,” she said.
The department will review the former government’s suspension policy to ensure teachers have the “right tools” to manage student behaviour.
A draft will be released for consultation in the coming months.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said he met the eSafety commissioner last week, who will brief state and territory education departments on the issue.
“There aren’t many jobs more important than being a teacher, and they deserve to be safe at work,” Clare said.
The minister will meet with state and territory counterparts next month to discuss teacher safety and AI frameworks in schools.
Liz Michelle is a casual relief primary school teacher and runs a parenting blog called Teaching Brave.
She has been a relief teacher for nine months after leaving the early childhood care sector and said she was shocked at the level of abuse from young children she received.
“I’ve been hit, pinched, scratched, pushed, and sometimes come home with bruises on me,” she said.
“I get quite a bit of verbal abuse, so that comes in the vein of screaming, swearing, insults. Verbal abuse can be quite significant. Any expletive you can think of, it all comes out and gets screamed in my face.”
Some incidents she reported to the school, she said, but found most outcomes unsatisfactory. As a casual, she said she’s particularly vulnerable to abuse and has chosen not to work at certain schools.
Michelle said while she hasn’t experienced cyber abuse, she was aware of colleagues who had seen nasty posts written about them, had been cyber stalked and had students invade teachers’ personal privacy.
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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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