I remember how it was -- JR
Female Athletes, Coaches Take on Biden’s War on Title IX
The Biden administration is waging war on Title IX and, in response, a group of female athletes, coaches, and sports advocates have spent the month of June touring the country to sound the alarm.
Title IX has long served to protect girls’ and women’s education and sports opportunities. The 1972 federal education amendment requires there be equal opportunities for men and women in schools across the country, but President Joe Biden is working to undo those protections by unilaterally rewriting Title IX.
“The Biden administration has decided they want sex to be equivalent to gender identity; meaning, anyone that identifies as a woman, aka men, can take female opportunities,” former collegiate swimmer Paula Scanlan says.
Scanlan was forced to compete with a male athlete who identifies as a woman on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team. Now, she is speaking out against Biden’s attempted changes to Title IX because, by redefining sex in Title IX to include gender identity, Biden is swinging the door wide open for girls and women to be relegated to the sidelines in their own sports.
Scanlan says she thought it was a prank when a male swimmer, William Thomas, announced in the fall of 2019 that he would be competing on the female team the following season.
“I thought that someone was going to come out with a camera crew and say, ‘Pranked you! We’re starting a new prank TV show,’” Scanlan said, explaining that a male competing on the women’s team just sounded “so unreal.” But it was real, and soon Scanlan and the other University of Pennsylvania female swimmers were sharing a locker room with Thomas, who now goes by the name Lia Thomas.
After she graduated, and after watching Thomas take medals and opportunities from female athletes, Scanlan joined other defenders of women’s sports, among them Riley Gaines, and began speaking out about her experience.
Scanlan is one of the many female athletes who have participated in the Independent Women’s Forum Take Back Title IX Summer Bus Tour to inform Americans of the Biden administration’s bid to change Title IX, which not only threatens women’s sports, but throws open restrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories.
Scanlan and Kim Russell, the former head women’s lacrosse coach at Oberlin College, join the “Problematic Women” podcast to discuss the fight to keep women’s sports female only.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/06/27/female-athletes-coaches-take-bidens-war-against-title-ix/
***************************************************Virginia’s Fairfax County Weighs Teaching Elementary Schoolers About ‘Gender Spectrum’
A Northern Virginia school board will vote Thursday on a proposal to add lessons on the “gender spectrum” to elementary school curriculum—despite opposition from a majority of parents and community members.
The Fairfax County School Board reviewed recommendations from the 2022-2023 Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee that it had not yet acted on. That included a proposal to add instruction on the so-called gender spectrum at the elementary school level and “a more inclusive curriculum overall.”
“The exclusion of gender identify at the elementary level does not create an environment that is open and accepting of all students or provide a safe space for students to learn about themselves and others,” the recommendation reads. “Students who do not ‘see’ themselves in the curriculum do not feel valued and may feel that there is something wrong with them or they are being dismissed.”
Fairfax County Public Schools also proposed teaching kindergartners about families with “two moms” or “two dads.”
“This recommendation broadens examples of family structures to be more inclusive of the many different families in our schools,” the Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee recommendations say.
The district proposed teaching 10th graders to “recognize the development of sexuality and gender as aspects of one’s total personality.”
“Why is there such an obsession in K-12 schools to waste hours on discussing issues that have nothing to do with academics?” senior adviser for Parents Defending Education Michele Exner asked.
“Schools are still lagging behind because of [COVID-19] closures, and Fairfax County was one of the slowest school districts to reopen,” Exner, a mother of two and a Fairfax County resident, told The Daily Signal. “It is unconscionable that the School Board continues to push social and political topics instead of focusing on children’s core educational needs.”
Most parents and community member do not support adding lessons on gender identity in elementary schools, the district admitted in a summary of the comments submitted.
The Family Life Committee conducted a community review of the proposed changes from May 10 to June 10. More than half of the 2,539 people who commented were local parents of students in Fairfax County schools. Other respondents included community members, school staffers, and students.
Parents shared concerns about lessons on gender identity not being age-appropriate for elementary schoolers, and expressed the belief that they should be the primary educators of their children on such topics, according to the district’s summary of comments.
Some parents said they were afraid that lessons on the so-called gender spectrum would confuse their children and cause misunderstandings.
“Instruction should focus on facts about sexual development and limit instruction on sexual-orientation and gender-identity terms,” said one of the surveyed residents of Fairfax County, located in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. “Gender identity and gender spectrum are not needed in elementary school.”
Many community members called on the school district to focus on improving academics instead of focusing on the Family Life Education Curriculum.
“Trying to normalize ideas like ‘gender is a spectrum,’ and ‘not everyone has a gender,’ is harming many of our kids and society,” another respondent said.
The changes to the Family Life Education Curriculum focus on sexualizing children, rather than family or education, Katie Gorka, chair of the Fairfax County Republican Committee, told The Daily Signal.
“They introduce mature sexual ideas at too young an age and push transgender ideology, which is deeply destructive to children,” she said. “The Fairfax County School Board needs to listen to Fairfax parents and put their radical ideology to the side.”
Fairfax County spokeswoman Julie Allen told The Daily Signal that parents can opt their children out of the Family Life Education Curriculum.
“If you wish to opt your child out of all or some of the Family Life Education lessons, please complete this form and return it to your child’s classroom teacher prior to FLE instruction,” a message on the school district’s website reads.
Virginia law requires schools to notify parents when instructional material contains “sexually explicit content” and allow parents to opt into non-explicit material.
The proposals under consideration have no neutral educational benefits, said Gorka of the Fairfax GOP.
“What the School Board is proposing is obviously a part of the broader, politically motivated move to indoctrinate America’s children and to insert radical sexual ideology into our classrooms,” she said.
Fairfax County mom of three Stephanie Lundquist-Arora said she is most concerned about the district’s “obsession with pushing early exposure to age-inappropriate and otherwise controversial topics.”
“What is their hurry to introduce young children to these issues and why are they so insistent on doing so despite substantial community and parental opposition?” she wonders. “The consideration of these absurd recommendations also raises larger questions about the purpose of public schools and demonstrates how far they’ve strayed from their actual mission in Fairfax County.”
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Australia: Physics students in catastrophic decline in senior high school
A catastrophic decline in the number of students studying physics in senior high school is ringing alarm bells, with one eminent scientist fearing Australia will lose the expertise it needs to be competitive as an advanced economy.
The University of Western Australia’s David Blair, who won a Prime Minister’s science prize for his role in the discovery of gravitational waves, said if school physics enrolments continued to fall at their current rate there would be no female school leavers qualified to study physics at university by 2032 and no males by 2035.
“We are on track to having no young medical physicists, no physicists to become tomorrow’s astronomers, no physicists to support the energy transition, no physicists to support the nuclear industry – not just submarines but crucial medical products – and no climate scientists,” he said.
“Hospitals employ medical physicists who are essential for producing the short-life radioactive isotopes for medical diagnoses and PET scans.
“Our mineral industry depends on a huge number of physicists.”
Data from WA, which Professor Blair said was representative of Australia as a whole, shows year 12 physics enrolments fell from 3868 in 2015 to 2436 in 2023. The number of girls studying physics fell even faster over the period. Girls made up 42 per cent of the year 12 physics cohort in 2015 but only 31 per cent by 2023.
Professor Blair and a fellow Prime Minister’s science prize winner, Susan Scott from the Australian National University, are pushing for a rethink of school science to keep children interested so more choose to study science in their senior years.
The pair are leaders of the Einstein First program which, backed by UWA, now operates in 55 schools, teaching year 3 to year 10 students modern physics topics that engage their interest, such as black holes.
Figures show that 14-year-olds are far more interested in physics after doing Einstein First. Before the course, only about a third of the girls and half the boys found physics interesting. After the course about 80 per cent of both girls and boys were interested.
A $1.5m Australian Research Council grant for the Einstein First team was announced on Friday for them to revitalise school science education and improve the training of teachers to teach modern science.
Einstein First and UWA have also just launched 12 Quantum Explorer STEM clubs, which are particularly aimed at sparking the interest of girls.
The Australian Academy of Science is also part of the push to improve science and maths education in schools, and on Tuesday launched two free online “toolboxes” for primary school teachers to help them teach these subjects.
Academy CEO Anna-Maria Arabia said that the science kit (Primary Connections) and the maths kit (reSolve) catered for teachers at whatever level of science understanding they had and helped them teach in effective ways regardless of where their students were at.
“We would love all teachers to be trained in science and maths but that is long-term,” Ms Arabia said.
The academy’s secretary for education and public awareness, Lyn Beazley, said the new resources were needed to fill a gap.
“Today’s teachers work so hard, but they are extremely time – poor, with many competing demands. This can lead to teachers preparing for what their students need to know, rather than designing how students will best learn,” Professor Beazley said.
Launching the new toolboxes at Hughes Primary School in Canberra, federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the resources were designed to take the load off teachers and engage students and help them to fall in love with science and maths.
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http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
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