Tag: public schools

I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated

I am a teacher at Grace Church High School in Manhattan. Ten years ago, I changed careers when I discovered how rewarding it is to help young people explore the truth and beauty of mathematics. I love my work.

As a teacher, my first obligation is to my students. But right now, my school is asking me to embrace “antiracism” training and pedagogy that I believe is deeply harmful to them and to any person who seeks to nurture the virtues of curiosity, empathy and understanding.   

“Antiracist” training sounds righteous, but it is the opposite of truth in advertising. It requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race. Furthermore, in order to maintain a united front for our students, teachers at Grace are directed to confine our doubts about this pedagogical framework to conversations with an in-house “Office of Community Engagement” for whom every significant objection leads to a foregone conclusion. Any doubting students are likewise “challenged” to reframe their views to conform to this orthodoxy. 

I know that by attaching my name to this I’m risking not only my current job but my career as an educator, since most schools, both public and private, are now captive to this backward ideology. But witnessing the harmful impact it has on children, I can’t stay silent. 

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Melbourne Schools Encouraged to Stop Saying ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ in Favour of More Inclusive Language

Schools in Melbourne, Australia, have been called upon to abandon using words such as ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ in favour of more so-called gender-inclusive language.

As a part of the North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network’s #SpeakingUpSpeaksVolumes campaign, which aims to support ‘LGBTQI+’ children in schools, the advocacy group has suggested that schools in Melbourne fly rainbow flags, scrap single-sex bathrooms, and introduce non-gendered sports teams.

The campaign has also called for teachers, as well as pupils, to refrain from using words such as ‘boyfriend’, which they say should be replaced with “partner”. The group said that parental pronouns such as mum and dad should also be abandoned for the more inclusive “parent”, the Daily Mail reported.

The CEO of the North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network, Chris Carter, said that the #SpeakingUpSpeaksVolumes campaign aims to increase support for LGBTQI+ children.

“The simple act of openly showing support can be a catalyst for great change for the better and it’s often the less obvious moments that can be the most impactful to someone’s wellbeing,” Carter told the Herald Sun per the Mail.

Headteacher of the Elevation Secondary College in Craigieburn, Colin Bourke, said that schools in Melbourne have already begun adopting measures to make LGBTQI+ pupils feel welcomed, including “gender non-specific bathrooms and taking down some of the boys and girls signs”.

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BC teacher suspended after showing class ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ film

A British Columbia elementary school teacher was suspended this week after showing her students the 1962 American drama To Kill A Mockingbird.

The teacher, Andrew Michael Dennis, showed his Grade 6/7 students the film in September 2018, a resolution agreement by the BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation found.

The resolution states that the film dealt with themes too mature for students that age, such as sexual assault and racism, as well as racial slurs.

“In the B.C. curriculum, the book ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is listed as a secondary school-level resource for Grades 10 and higher,” the commissioner wrote in the disciplinary form.

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2+2=5: Oregon Department of Education Pushes Course Claiming Math is Racist Because It Requires a Correct Answer

The Oregon Department of Education is promoting an online course that claims math is racist because it requires a correct answer.

The class, called “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,” describes itself as “an integrated approach to mathematics that centers Black, Latinx, and Multilingual students” that provides “opportunities for ongoing self-reflection as they seek to develop an anti-racist math practice.”

“White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions,” the guide states. “Coupled with the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics.”

First reported by Campus Reform,  the“white supremacy culture” cited by the document include a focus on “getting the ‘right’ answer” and requiring students to show their work.

Campus Reform notes that the authors of the program state that “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so. Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”

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Portland high school’s choice of new mascot — evergreen trees — could be a problem due to lynching connotations, officials say

The school’s current mascot is the Trojans, but a committee consisting of students, staff, and community members arrived at the evergreens as the new mascot of what’s now called Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School, the Portland Tribune reported.

“Evergreens are characterized by the life-giving force of their foliage, the strength of their massive trunk, and the depth of their roots — in an individual tree and as a forest of trees,” Ellen Whatmore, a teacher at the high school and mascot committee member, read from a resolution, according to the Tribune. “They provide shelter and sustenance. They have histories that preclude us and will continue in perpetuity after we are no more.”

But the outlet said that just prior to last Tuesday’s vote by the Portland Public Schools Board of Education to approve the new mascot, Director Michelle DePass shared community concerns that evergreens could connote lynching — particularly since new namesake Wells-Barnett was a black activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote about and spoke against lynching.

“I’m wondering if there was any concern with the imagery there, in using a tree … as our mascot?” DePass asked the renaming and mascot committee, the Tribune noted. “I think everyone comes with blind spots, and I think that might’ve been a really big blind spot.”

School Principal Filip Hristic told the board that “we take this seriously, and I definitely want to follow that commitment to protect, preserve, and promote the legacy of Ida B. Wells,” adding that the committee hadn’t spoken to the Wells-Barnett family specifically about the mascot, the outlet reported.

“The focus and opportunity was really to marry this sentiment that we heard from a lot of our stakeholders during our naming process, which was the desire for a local connection,” Hristic said, according to the Tribune. “Ida B. Wells was somebody who stood strong and stood proud against what Woodrow Wilson and many others promoted.”

Martin Osborne — who is black and is one of the committee members — said the group discussed the potential lynching connection between Wells-Barnett and evergreen trees “but we were looking at the symbolism more as a tree of life than a tree of death. You could certainly take it either way, depending upon your position,” the outlet reported.

Osborne added that the evergreen choice “had nothing to do with the horrible history of lynching in the United States,” the Tribune noted.

“Lynching trees typically are not evergreens,” he also said, according to the outlet.

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Congress Plots Nationalization of Civics Education

If you thought Common Core was bad, hang on to your hats. Establishment politicians in Congress from both parties are plotting to nationalize the teaching of civics, all but ensuring that the unhinged obsession with indoctrinating children will be supercharged to dangerous new levels.

Experts are warning of disaster. Indeed, under the absurdly named “Civics Secures Democracy Act,” the lies, fake history, LGBT fanaticism and hyper-race-mongering that now permeates indoctrination centers in California and Illinois will soon be in every government school nationwide. 

History and civics are both in the cross-hairs. And despite the relatively innocuous-sounding language in the legislation, experts and analysts say it will open the door wide for Washington, D.C., to shove Critical Race Theory and “community organizing” into every government school in America.

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Teachers will be Sent to San Diego Convention Center to Provide In-Person Learning For Migrants While Schools in Same County Remain Closed

This is Joe Biden’s America.

Illegal aliens come first and Americans are second class citizens.

California – According to San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, the San Diego County Board of Education will be sending teachers for in-person learning for the illegal alien migrant children at the convention center.

The illegal aliens will be learning in person while many schools in San Diego County are still closed for in-person learning.

More than 500 unaccompanied minor migrants, most of whom are from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, were flown from Texas to San Diego over the weekend to take shelter at the San Diego Convention Center.

The first group of illegal aliens arrived on Saturday night after flying from Texas to San Diego airport.

They were then taken by buses to their temporary shelter.

The second group of 250 migrants arrived to San Diego on Monday, according to Fox 5.

The unaccompanied migrants will be provided “vital services” such as medical care, food, a place to sleep and showers.

The illegal alien children aged 13-17 will also be in-person learning while American children are forced to attend Zoom classes and fall behind.

It gets worse.

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California teacher suggests that parents who want their children to return to in-person learning are WHITE SUPREMACISTS who ‘bullied a board into making schools less safe for teachers and kids’

A California teacher appeared to suggest that parents who want to send their children back to school are white supremacists who ‘bullied a board into making schools less safe for teachers and kids’.

Damian Harmony, who teaches Latin at John F. Kennedy High School in Sacramento, made the remarks to the school board.   

He later posted the content to Facebook, but as of Tuesday morning, it has been deleted from his page. 

During his remarks, Harmony said: ‘I come to you as a grateful parent. I’m grateful that I kept my children home. And I’m especially grateful for what I heard from parents last week. Until then, the only way I could measure the level of white supremacy in my neighborhood was the Next Door app.

‘The people clamoring for a district to break its legally-negotiated MOU with teachers who are going to be teaching their own children, who treat the teachers’ efforts as though they’ve not been exhausting and ever-present, while also going through a pandemic themselves, made it much easier.’

Harmony continued: ‘I’m as disappointed as I am unsurprised that last week, we all had to hear all the cynical, pearl-clutching, faux-urgency, ableist, structurally White-supremacist, hysteria, even as teachers were moving forward with an MOU that already put them in harm’s way and was asking too much of a beleaguered group of professionals.’

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