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Over at Reason, Robby Soave has a really interesting story about a high school English teacher from Salinas, California, a district with a large Hispanic population. After the start of the pandemic, teacher Kali Fontanilla noticed that a bunch of students seemed to be failing a new ethnic studies class. Fontanilla herself wasn’t teaching the class but she taught English to many of the students who were inexplicably failing. She became curious about why, so she went into the online portal where teachers kept their lesson plans to see what the class was about. She was shocked by what she...

Ahead of the country’s Sept. 11 general election, the agency was created on Jan. 1 to fight against disinformation and undue election influence, The Associated Press reported. “We defend our open and democratic society and free opinions by identifying, analysing and responding to inappropriate influences and other misleading information directed at Sweden or Swedish interests,” the agency’s website states. The group says it will “offer support to agencies, municipalities, regions, companies and organisations and contribute to strengthening resilience within our population.”

Parents in the Austin, Texas, area expressed outrage after a technology teacher read a Dr. Seuss-style poem mocking “evangelicals” and parents who have expressed concerns about books they call pornographic. Krista Tyler, instructional technology specialist at Grisham Middle School in the Round Rock Independent School District (ISD) read the poem at the Leander ISD school board meeting Dec. 16. “Everyone in Leander liked reading a lot/ but some evangelicals in Leader did not,” Tyler begins. “These kooks hated reading, the whole reading season./ Please don’t ask why, no one quite knows the reason./ It could be perhaps critical thinking causes...

Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a significant majority of Russians continue to feel nostalgia for their country’s communist past, according to a recent survey from the country’s leading independent polling agency. In the Levada Center’s poll, published on Friday, 63 percent of Russian respondents expressed regret over the breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991. The sentiment was strongest among Russians aged 55 and older, 84 percent of whom described the dissolution as a tragic event. By contrast, a mere 28 percent of respondents said that they did not regret the demise...

Unvaccinated people could be paid a visit by Covid jab teams hoping to get more people protected from the virus, according to reports. Government Ministers are set to be considering a plan where door-to-door visits would be made in areas with low uptake of the vaccine, as another way to tackle soaring infection rates. The tactic would also help encourage people who may want to get jabbed but who don't have easy access to vaccine centres. A Cabinet Minister told the Mail on Sunday: "I think anything that encourages the vaccine-hesitant is sensible. "The mood in the country is hardening...

Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA vaccines and RNA as a drug, discussed the “mass formation” phenomenon during an interview last month. “Matthias Desmet, he’s a psychologist. He’s also a statistician. He’s at the University of Ghent … I think Matthias is on to something and he calls it ‘mass formation psychosis’. So, when he says ‘mass formation’ you can think of this equivalent to ‘crowd’. So, it’s crowd psychosis,” Dr. Malone said.Professor Dr. Mattias Desmet is professor of Clinical Psychology at Ghent University, Belgium. He says mass formation is a type of mass hypnosis and has a huge...

President Biden on Monday described the omicron variant of COVID-19 as a "cause for concern" but not a cause for panic, saying Americans getting vaccinated and getting their booster shots is the best defense against the virus. He also said officials would release more guidance on how they plan to fight the spread of COVID-19 this winter, but promised it wouldn't include lockdowns. "This variant is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic," Biden said in prepared remarks at the White House. "We have the best vaccine in the world, the best medicines, the best scientists, and we're...

<p>Penn Jillette, the tall half of the hugely successful magician duo Penn & Teller, is one of the entertainment industry’s most outspoken atheists. For decades, Jillette has smugly condemned all manner of religious, psychic, and pseudoscientific irrationality. He also has a fan base on the right, because as a self-described libertarian, Jillette’s often mused about how “taxation is theft” and government compulsion is bad.</p>

A Virginia mother yanked her children out of public school after her 6-year-old asked if she was “born evil” for being white — something the young girl purportedly picked up in her history class. The Loudoun County woman, whose identity wasn’t immediately clear, detailed her concerns against critical race theory during an impassioned plea at a Loudon County Public Schools board meeting on Oct. 26, video shows. “My children are now in private school and are thriving,” the woman told the board, claiming the “swift and uncompromising” political agenda of the district’s former and current administration forced her hand.

DC Comics announced on Monday that the new Superman — the son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane — will have a boyfriend and will let other superheroes battle evildoers while he battles climate change.If ever there were a more perfect representation of the liberal culture’s idea of a superhero, Jonathan Kent will be it.Jonathan, who will be known by his metrosexual nom de guerre “Jon,” is not your daddy’s Man of Steel. No doubt because making steel causes pollution and other evils. Perhaps DC Comics could rename Superman “Man of Jello,” which would be much more appropriate and far...

A university is encouraging students to stop using the words manmade, mastercopy and civilisation because it believes they have sexist or racist connotations. Sociology undergraduates at Aston University in Birmingham have been advised to find replacements for words that could be seen to reinforce prejudices. Offending words include immigrants, third world, tribe, civilised and, in some contexts, native, all because of their colonialist or racist overtones. Language deemed to be sexist includes one-man show, old masters, forefathers, seminal and masterful....

Newsom still hasn't put his bill signing pen down. After more than five years of intense scrutiny and effort, California on Friday became the first state to make ethnic studies a required class for high school graduation to help students understand the past and present struggles and contributions of Black, Asian, Latino, Native/Indigenous Americans and other groups that have experienced racism and marginalization in America. Although critics from across the political spectrum remain, the bill garnered overwhelming support in the Legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had vetoed a nearly identical measure last year. At...

America is more secular than ever before, that’s a fact. America is ALSO less free than ever before. Is there a correlation? How would you react if there was? Dennis has his thoughts. See if you agree.

Charlotte, NC — Words are powerful tools that can control our thoughts and beliefs in more ways than people realize. Men can be easily trained to respond to various catchphrases that guide the nature and direction of a conversation. Joseph Stalin wrote in Concerning Marxism in Linguistics that certain sounds and tones can produce predictable reflexive reactions in people. A good example is watching how those on the left are easily triggered by words they have been, for a lack of a better term, conditioned to respond too in a frantic manner. Another good example is the word brainwashing. Like...

An Iowa teacher shared how she circumvents her state's ban on teaching critical race theory by telling students what she can't teach them - then encouraging their questions about the subject. Petra Lange, who described herself as 'a secondary educator at a predominantly white high school in a suburban district' and an adjunct professor at Simpson college, first told students: 'We need to take a look at HF-802.' 'I literally put the law in front of them,' she said at the online forum titled UnBan Anti-Racism Education In Iowa. The HF-802 law was signed into effect by Iowa Gov Kim...

Facebook has been quietly experimenting with reducing the amount of political content it puts in users' news feeds. The move is a tacit acknowledgment that the way the company's algorithms work can be a problem. The heart of the matter is the distinction between provoking a response and providing content people want. Social media algorithms—the rules their computers follow in deciding the content that you see—rely heavily on people's behavior to make these decisions. In particular, they watch for content that people respond to or "engage" with by liking, commenting and sharing. As a computer scientist who studies the ways...

It's a matter of what they've been taught. "No one ever washes a rented car." This old cliché explains much of what is happening in both politics and society today. The entire CRT/BLM/wokist sentiment in the country — epitomized by what is happening in a sizable majority of high school and college classrooms — highlights what is arguably the most dangerous issue currently facing America: we are raising — encouraging, even! — an entire generation of people who feel no ownership of, loyalty to, or obligation to the country in which they live. The woke movement is the predominant force...

This past weekend, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd added another column to the myriad irrational and hysterical pieces about the "existential threat" climate change allegedly poses to human life. As I do after almost every piece I read on the internet, I read comments submitted by readers. One provided me with an epiphany. It was a comment submitted by New York Times reader "Sophia" of Bangor, Maine: "I have one child, a daughter, who told me age 8 that she would never have a child because of global warming. She's now 34 and has never changed her mind. So...

Several King County, Washington, activist teachers revealed to Crosscut how they inject race and “equity” lessons into their elementary classrooms. Kent teacher Joanne Barber took advantage of violent Black Lives Matter protests last year “to teach more about race” in her second grade class. “I am willing to be that teacher that has those hard conversations,” she said. “I would be doing a huge disservice to my students if I didn’t give them information that they could see themselves in.” She told Crosscut learning that “racial history” is “just as important as reading or math.” Barber teaches children 7- and...