Posted on 04/06/2020 6:44:38 AM PDT by Kaslin
Schools are likely to continue home e-learning efforts in the upcoming weeks as we continue through the pandemic. Parents, use this time to find out what your kids are studying.
“Mom, can you look at this assignment?” A few weeks ago, before the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic forced my school-aged children home, I looked at the homework sheet my high school-age child was referring to and quickly realized what prompted the question. The freshman world history reading assignment was about parents raising “theybies.”
Scratching my head, I read through the assigned article, which included definitions such as “gender is a social construct” followed by leading questions asking students to regurgitate gender theory. The next day, my child received an assignment that taught him about critical race theory before he read an article about when black singer Lil Nas X’s song “Old Town Road” was kicked off the country music charts. The class? Physics.
Needless to say, now with my kids home and me overseeing their daily e-learning, this is a great opportunity to take a deeper look at the left-wing theories on race and gender, not to mention climate change, that public schools are pushing on my children.
My 11-year-old middle school son was assigned the following two videos for “Integrated Global Studies” class. The first is an alarmist video that promotes donations to a bogus fund. The second has countless grammatical errors and lacks any sort of sourcing.
Before Halloween last fall, the same school sent out this memo regarding cultural appropriation, sharing a Teen Vogue video and explaining that cultural appropriation is “defined as the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another.” (So I guess the school’s annual “Luau Madness” party is also off).
Over the last several years, my children’s schools have pushed for “equity,” which usually starts with a survey or audit about “school climate.” Of course, the ideologues hired to do the surveys always find that certain groups feel oppressed, and thus interventions are necessary to create what they deem as safe learning environments where everyone feels welcome. But only certain dimensions of identity politics, particularly race, gender, and sexuality, are measured. If you are shy or not cool, you are on your own to figure out how to feel welcome.
Schools also push equity agendas by targeting any disparity between racial groups. These disparities are generally blamed on systemic racism and subsequently require an equity intervention through training programs, such as those offered by Pacific Educational Group, Corwin, or any number of consultants in the multimillion-dollar equity consulting industry.
These groups typically provide courses on how to “address the complexities of dismantling white supremacy” or how to use “critical race theory to establish cultural relevance between teachers and students in the racially complex classroom.” Our neighboring Chicago-area school district even used federal Title I funds — earmarked for low-income students — to send school board members to this type of training.
My children’s high school defines equity as, “[E]very student should have access to the resources and educational rigor at the right moment in their education regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, language, disability, family background or family income.” At first glance, this looks good. Any decent parent would be horrified if the school were denying kids the resources they need to succeed.
But if you read further, you find language that states equity “confronts systems of advantage and disadvantage based on race, cultural background, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, socioeconomic status, religious belief, and other forms of identity.” If that sounds like Marxist identity politics, it is.
Equity at its core is based in left-wing critical race theory that assumes institutional racism and oppression pervade every corner of society and necessitate the redistribution of resources based on “oppressed” status. It is sold as a warm, fuzzy idea of helping kids succeed, but it serves as a gateway for training teachers on how racist they are, reducing academic standards, exchanging traditional curriculum with more “culturally relevant” material, and fomenting resentment between groups rather than promoting the safe school climate these equity plans say they so desire.
Equity is even being used as an excuse not to teach during the coronavirus pandemic, such as in Washington state and Philadelphia. If you can’t teach all kids equally, don’t teach at all? Thankfully, these schools are rethinking their strategies after the Department of Education issued this memo. They could look at the KIPP Academies, a leading charter school network, which serves low-income and rural students. It is distributing Chromebooks and even using buses to distribute and pick up paper-based assignments where students lack an internet connection.
The worst failure of equity programs is that they do not improve student performance. Neighboring Evanston district student performance dropped after the school board introduced its radical equity program. This is the same district where teachers heard a presentation on why “meritocracy is a myth.” How does that benefit a child trying to climb the economic ladder?
Schools are likely to continue e-learning efforts in the upcoming weeks as we continue through the pandemic. Parents, use this time when your children are home to find out what they are learning. It will be interesting to see how many parents discover that kids do not have to be in a classroom to learn, and that they have options, especially if the curriculum in their schools is pushing fringe race and gender theories on their kids.
From what I saw of parental involvement, that might be a pipe dream. Of course, with people being housebound in quarantine, they might actually look over what pap is being foisted onto their kids as "education". I didn't see tremendous amounts of parental involvement before I retired from teaching. Of 150 students in my grade book, in a very good year, I might see 35-40 parents on Parent-Teacher Night. In a bad year, I might see 15 parents--and many times, it was a grandmother or sibling of the student who showed up, not a parent. Either the parent(s) had to work or they didn't care enough to show up. Many didn't even know that report cards had just been issued or that their student had poor grades and an even poorer attendance record. Some didn't even know whether their kid was attending school or not.
Perhaps, in a bizarre way, being quarantined is a wake-up call for parents to pay more attention to the libtards' stranglehold on curriculum and teaching methods. When you consider that the libtards have insinuated themselves into public education like an invading cancer, getting into positions of power as well as the classroom for several generations now, warping young minds with the kind of utter nonsense discussed in the article, then the election of utter idiots like AOC, "Boinie", Odungo, etc. can't be a surprise. Propaganda is what makes up much of public education now, certainly not critical thinking. Might be time to examine other options, now that you know.
The Left has taken over pretty much everything.
“K-12 “education” is a deep swamp of political correctness.”
It has been progressive indoctrination by government since the 1910’s with John Dewey (of Dewey Decinmal System fame) and Pres. Wilson.
In the 1950’s, minions of The Frankfurt School began infesting education deeply with cultural Marxist dogma. Them they moved on to unions, Hollywood, the D’rat party, MSM, churches and most lately the web and SJW groups.
CPUSA embraced college students in the 1960’s.
Bump
Public schools are full on left wing indoctrination factories... anyone who believes otherwise hasn’t looked their kids school work in over a decade.
I have two teens in CA public high school—supposedly a “good” district by CA standards. Other than math, they are basically taught racism (English and History) ad nauseum and global warming (Science).
The funny thing is that they are taught it so often and so relentlessly, year after year, that it becomes a joke to them.
They end up “secretly” conservative (so far they seem so) because kids know when they are being indoctrinated.
And watching movies all the time. One assignment last week was to watch “Invictus.” A good movie no doubt, but we are watching enough movies during our quarantine. Instead, I taught her about Winnie Mandela and “necklacing.”
My grandchildren--so far--have resisted the nonsense. So have my children.
They also know that I demand that they reject all the Decadence of Western Civilisation with which we are all constantly barraged.
They know that I abhor all the vulgarity--but that I will discuss anything with them honestly and forthrightly, never dodging a question--and that I expect the best of them.
I have told them that I do not want them to think what I think but that I expect them to think and find and accept truth for themselves, wherever it presents itself.
I have told them that one of the few things that will make me furious with them is if they do something self-destructive! "Like drugs?" they said. "Yes. Like drugs," I replied.
They think I'm some sort of paragon or superman, but I make sure that they understand that they can do everything I have done and insist on from them, that I am human just like they are, and they believe me.
I have pointed out for them that there is no limit to the depth of depravity to which humans can allow themselves to sink but that there is no limit to the heights of goodness and saintliness to which humans can soar, that millions soar to such heights every day, and that the choice is that of each of us. That's our free will.
I have also told them to trust God and trust themselves and be the best that they can be.
I have taught them that the greatest truth I know is this: God.
I have taught them that doubt of God is the voice of the blind King Dhritarashtra and that all that is good is the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Excellent points. Shame on the parents of these kids for not knowing until now what they’ve been “learning” in school. Whether one sends their kids to public school, private school, or homeschools, every parent has a responsibility to be informed and involved in their children’s educations.
Later
Disband the d o e immediately
My son went through the California public school system in a ‘good’ district also. He is somewhat Conservative (from his home upbringing) and somewhat Libertarian.
A few years, he happened to mention to me that during his Jr Hi years, they were required to ‘be Muslim’ for a day. I could have picked my jaw up from the flow. I was a working Mom so I guess I wasn’t paying good enough attention. This was also during the Clinton ‘it depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is’.
At this point, I am sure that Common Core and Arne Duncan have destroyed ‘good education’ for a generation. The repercussions of the politics of the Obama Years will be felt for a long time to come.
One silver lining in all this dire communist virus BS, is that a lot of things that the communists have been up to are now brought out into the open for all to see.
This is a very serious eye-opening example for millions of parents.
“Equal opportunity is a good thing. But that’s not what the Left wants.”
Striving for enforced equal opportunity inevitably devolves into a demand for equal outcomes.
How can a poor person have the same opportunity as a rich one? How can a low IQ person have the same opportunity as a smart one?
Equal opportunity can be as problematic as equal outcome.
The genesis of the equal opportunity laws was the egalitarian notion that we’re all equal, races are equal, genders are equal, etc. Therefore, the logic goes, if there were different outcomes for different people, it must be because they did not have the same opportunities.
So let’s give everybody the same opportunities. After decades of that the outcomes are still not the same, they’re probably worse as a result, hence the egalitarian mongers have to find new villains to blame - institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobes etc and a shriller demand for equal outcomes.
Buttom line, forcing “equality” in any field is asking for trouble, because underlying that notion is the lie (delusion) that we’re all equal.
This crap is everywhere. I recently bought a new financial accounting book - college level. I wanted to update/recall my knowledge about handling depreciation and owner’s equity among other topics. My education goes back to pre-computer, double-entry accounting systems done on paper. Anyways, the concepts are they same today as they were back then, but the book was loaded with crap that had nothing to do with accounting. It had sidebar articles and then assignments associated with the crap. There was HR bullshit, what an F’n joke of a profession, littered through out the text. Then there was a heavy dose of ‘business ethics.’ I had a course in college on business ethics, but it didn’t water down any other subject. I seriously have to wonder how focused children/young adults can be in learning any topic when everything, including progressive tripe, is part of every topic.
The picture shows modern Poland on the screen. I’ll bet the question they are being asked is, “Identify all the provinces that had Polish death camps in them.”
LOL. I noticed same.
Also if you look at the text on the screen, it’s definitely in Polish.
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