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29 August, 2024
Ending the Leftist Think Monopoly on Campus
For learning and discovery communities to flourish, there has to be a diversity of ideas that are explored and debated, with multiple perspectives discussed civilly by veteran scholars—the faculty—as well as inquisitive young learners—the students. While campuses in recent years have obsessed over what are intellectually relatively unimportant dimensions of diversity, such as the skin color of participants in the scholarly enterprise, they increasingly have imposed a leftist monopoly on the exploration of ideas on many campuses, including the nation’s most prestigious ones. A progressive agenda reigns, and questioning it is increasingly rare as woke leaders impose their ideas on the campus community.
To be sure, there are exceptions: colleges like Hillsdale College and Ave Maria University offer a completely different scholarly environment compared to mainstream institutions like Harvard or the University of California. At a number of public schools, the legal owners of the institution, the governing board, and political leaders, along with alumni friends and major donors, are challenging the campus woke supremacy by forcing schools to create largely autonomous enclaves on campus, not vulnerable to attack or destruction by progressive faculty and administrators. The Hamilton Center was created at the University of Florida, and a new School of Civic Life and Leadership at the flagship University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill. These and several other centers, mostly located in relatively conservative states, were created in spite of faculty or administrative opposition.
Arguably, the biggest and boldest of these experiments in intellectual diversity is happening in a most unexpected place: Ohio. The Buckeye State seldom is first or last to adopt anything—it is boringly in the middle. It moves cautiously when new or fashionable ideas are advanced. But in the current legislature, the state agreed to create five new autonomous academic enclaves at five major state universities: Ohio State, the University of Toledo, Miami University, Cleveland State, and Wright State Universities. It appropriated $24 million for these ventures, the largest being a Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture and Society at Ohio State, which envisions having at least 15 tenure-track faculty. Its new director, Lee Strang, came from the University of Toledo Law School, where he was a senior professor.
Faculty groups like the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) are mightily annoyed since their quasi-monopoly control over hiring and the curriculum is imperiled. While the centers and their supervisory boards required university governing board approval, the legislation makes clear that the university bureaucracy—presidents, provosts, deans, faculty senates, curriculum councils, etc.—have no control over the centers. In a way, these new state university conservative enclaves are modeled on a famous old predecessor: the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a high-quality autonomous center amid that campus.
Two conservative Republican senators, Jerry Cirino and Rob McColley, cosponsored the legislation creating the Ohio centers. Cirino, a dynamic retired high-tech entrepreneur, also has authored a far-ranging bill mandating other requirements on state universities that have received Senate approval, doing such things as requiring an undergraduate study of some of the nation’s founding documents and important speeches—i.e., the Federalist Papers, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail—and some post-tenure review of faculty performance. Its final fate awaits House legislative action, probably after the election. University presidents seem unhappy but afraid to attack the proposal publicly, given low national public support for higher education.
One possible effect of both the Ohio legislation and efforts elsewhere is that, effectively, sanctuary centers are being established for fine conservative scholars who have been persecuted and dismissed for their political views. In Ohio, the prime example is Scott Gerber, by far the leading scholar in the Ohio Northern University Law School—a leading authority on the jurisprudence of Justice Clarence Thomas—and a fine teacher as well. His firing last year, initiated by law enforcement personnel escorting Gerber out of the classroom, was a national outrage leading to protests by leaders of organizations like the National Association of Scholars, AAUP, and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. While Gerber has been winning preliminary legal skirmishes over his dismissal in court, he is still without a job.
Like most professors, I have generally negative feelings about politicians’ heavy-handed involvement in university affairs. In the final analysis, however, academics are too important to be left solely to academicians.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=15040&omhide=true&trk=title
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University of Sydney professor Sujatha Fernandes to avoid serious punishment after ‘Hamas rape hoax’ lecture
A University of Sydney professor who told first-year students that Hamas’s mass rape and sexual violence on and after October 7 were “fake news” and a “hoax” concocted by Western media will avoid serious punishment, despite an internal investigation finding she breached the university’s code of conduct.
The university is refusing to reveal what disciplinary action – if any – it had taken against sociology professor Sujatha Fernandes, who made the claims in April during a sociology lecture, accusing Western media outlets of “peddling” the rape “fake news” to “shore up support for Israel”.
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Sources close to the investigation said it determined Professor Fernandes’s conduct “fell below the university’s expectations” and that disciplinary action would be taken, which would align with the enterprise agreement, together with measures to “mitigate risk of recurrence”.
Professor Fernandes declined to comment – citing thecase’s confidentiality – and a University of Sydney spokeswoman would not talk specifically on the matter or say what exact disciplinary action the university had taken. She said it now considered the matter “closed … following careful consideration in line with relevant policies and procedures”.
“While we are limited in what we can say, given our privacy responsibilities and obligations, we manage all matters in line with our enterprise agreement, code of conduct and other relevant policies, and have been very clear with our community about our expectations of behaviour during this challenging time,” she said.
“Our academic staff giving lectures must exercise their intellectual freedom according to the highest ethical, professional and legal standards and apply a best teaching practice approach incorporating evidence and analysis.”
According to the university’s enterprise agreement, Professor Fernandes’s conduct would not constitute a “serious” breach, which could lead to suspension or termination, and action would therefore likely be a written warning or counselling.
In April, Professor Fernandes said: “Western media has played the role of an ideological state apparatuses by suppressing coverage of the atrocities, peddling fake news (promoted hoaxes that Hamas beheaded babies and carried out mass rape, in order to shore up support for Israel), and distorting events”.
The claims were made after the UN found “convincing information” that hostages in Gaza had been – and likely continued to be – raped and subjected to sexual violence, and “reasonable grounds” that rape and gang rape happened during Hamas’s October 7 attacks.
Co-chief executive of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, one of multiple complainants to the university, Alex Ryvchin said it was in the public benefit for management to show how students would be “protected from trivialisation or denial of terrorist atrocities, including rape”.
“The comments were completely unacceptable, especially in a place of higher learning,” he said, adding that declaring the matter as “closed” did little to restore the institution’s credibility.
Liberal MP Julian Leeser said students needed to have confidence in the university's process and safeguards, reiterating the need for a judicial inquiry into anti-Semitism at Australian higher learning institutions. “Students should not have to be subjected to conspiracy theories being peddled in universities, particularly not by academic staff,” he said.
In March, a UN report found there was “clear and convincing information” hostages held in Gaza had been subjected to sexual violence, including rape and sexualised torture, and that it had “reasonable grounds to believe” sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, took place on October 7 in “at least three locations”.
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Smart politics sends Australia's university Group of Eight a clear message
The Albanese government has done what it was always going to do and will regulate international student numbers from next year.
This is smart politics, plus it is an improvement on existing ineptly managed immigration rules, and it sends vice-chancellors of old and rich universities a clear message – they can protest as much as they like (and they have) but their opposition is politically irrelevant.
It is also ordinary policy. The creation of international enrolment quotas for universities and vocational colleges demonstrates the government is back in the business of regulating higher education and training – there will be more of this very soon. It is also in the business of blaming universities for the national housing shortage and immigration rackets that bother voters.
The first is ridiculous – international students paying top rental dollar occurs in inner-cities and has nothing to do with skilled labour shortages delaying housing starts across the country.
The second is blame shifting – student visa rorts are mainly a problem in the training sector where bodgy colleges pretend they are educating so-called students who are actually in Australia to work.
While the new quotas rightly apply to training colleges, including universities demonstrates the government is on to immigration and housing problems. It is also why the opposition will be wise to wave the student caps bill through the Senate, unless it wants to give Labor the chance to blame the Coalition for both.
Yet all universities enrolling international students have their quotas and the losers are already complaining. There will be warnings of a collapse in Australia’s international research ranking as international student fees stop funding new science kit, and of job losses as casual teaching staff will not be needed.
It won’t occur all at once and not everywhere. The cash cut will hurt worse Group of Eight capital city campuses (the universities of Sydney and Melbourne are standout examples), which have used international student fees to fund opulent building programs and capital-intensive research.
Early estimates put their 2025 international quotas at around pre-pandemic numbers, but 20 per cent plus down on this year.
In contrast, there are vice-chancellors who hope their universities will pick up international students the big metro campuses cannot accommodate.
This is unlikely: students in China know about Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and that’s about it. Yet hope springs eternal and some universities have already supported the new scheme.
It’s one reason the government will get away with it – the higher education system is split on caps.
All up, this looks like an immediate win for the government with another to follow.
The government has a new agency, the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, ready to go. It would have powers to regulate Australian student admissions, allocate funding and create closer links with training. If vice-chancellors think international student caps is peak interference, they ain’t seen nothing yet.
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28 August, 2024
Critical Race Theory Is Still Plaguing Some K-12 Schools
Critical race theory gripped the nation’s attention after the summer of 2020 and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. According to Google Trends, the search term peaked in June 2021, then interest tapered off going into 2022.
But the radical philosophy has not disappeared from public life.
Rather, Americans are more familiar with this worldview that claims racism is the cause of every negative event in politics, education, economics, and culture.
More Americans can recognize that ideas such as diversity, equity, and inclusion; microaggressions; and white privilege are creatures of critical race theory and trace back to the Marxist claim that the world is defined by racial power struggles.
K-12 education remains a crucial part of the national conversation on how the theory is teaching young people to consider themselves victims instead of individuals responsible for their own choices and decisions.
For example, policymakers in California and Minnesota have made “intersectionality”—critical race theory’s idea that we are oppressed in intersecting ways, based on our race, sex, and other immutable characteristics—a central component of their states’ ethnic studies curriculum.
This feels strategic: The now-deceased critical race theory scholar Derrick Bell wrote that he hoped the theory would inspire academic “resistance” to America’s ideals of freedom and equality under the law, which would lead to wide-scale “resistance.”
The now-deceased Derrick Bell, the first tenured black law professor at Harvard University, is widely regarded as being the originator of critical race theory. (Neville Elder/Corbis/Getty Images)
Not all state lawmakers are allowing this radical movement to march through their educational institutions, however. In a review of the laws adopted in 14 states since 2020, we found staunch rejection of the use of critical race theory in K-12 schools.
The work is not finished, even in many of those states, however. Earlier this year, a federal judge overturned a law adopted by New Hampshire officials that was meant to prevent the theory from spreading racial discrimination in the state’s elementary and secondary schools. The judge said that key provisions in the law were not well-defined, sending lawmakers back to the drawing board.
State lawmakers should continue to pursue proposals that reject critical race theory, but they must be specific about what they are prohibiting.
State policymakers should prohibit the application of the theory in the form of compelled speech and mandatory racial affinity groups and other clear examples of racial discrimination.
Actions such as those and more have been widely documented in schools from Pickens, South Carolina, and Wellesley, Massachusetts, to Los Angeles and Seattle.
Some state legislation offers solid models to follow. Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen issued a binding opinion that prohibited compelled speech and said, “Compelling students, trainees, or anyone else to mouth support for those same positions not only assaults individual dignity, it undermines the search for truth, our institutions, and our democratic system.”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order that said “‘inherently divisive concepts’ means advancing any ideas in violation of Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964” and prohibited academic instruction that furthered such concepts.
Lawmakers should prohibit school officials from forcing students and teachers to defend, affirm, or profess ideas that come from critical race theory as a condition of enrollment, course completion, hiring, retention, or promotion.
State policymakers should also ban the sort of discriminatory conduct that critical race theorists deem appropriate—but that are, in fact, racist—to fulfill their discriminatory aims. For example, critical race theorists have advocated for racial preferences in college admissions, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 2023.
A law is on much stronger legal ground when it protects someone from being forced to say something than it is when it prohibits them from saying something. Instead of “banning” critical race theory from classrooms, state education officials should update K–12 academic standards to discuss the institution of slavery in 19th-century America, the failure of Reconstruction efforts after the Civil War, and the Jim Crow era. At the same time, educators should explain the significance of the end of systemic racism, both legally and culturally, through federal civil rights laws.
Critical race theory’s racist ideas—DEI, intersectionality, and more—are lessons from the “school of resentment” as literary critic Harold Bloom said. Children need to be taught to aspire to something, not resent everything.
Lawmakers’ rejection of critical race theory in schools is essential.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/27/heres-how-states-can-act-reject-critical-race-theory-schools/
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‘Career suicide’: the price of dissent in NZ universities
“We have become a corporate body concerned about brand image in a content marketing world in a climate of cancel culture,” lamented one academic.
“I feel my job is at risk if I question the direction the university is taking. The last round of redundancies was definitely about getting rid of those who were not boot lickers,” another reported.
A third warned, “Questioning anything about the radical current interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi is likely to be career ending.”
These are a few of the many statements from New Zealand academics presented in our latest report.
Unpopular Opinions: Academic Freedom in New Zealand, written by my colleague James Kierstead, paints a worrying picture of academic freedom.
The evidence Kierstead collected is compelling. He gathered 72 testimonies from academics, analysed five surveys, and documented 21 incidents from the past decade in detail. The pattern that emerges is clear: many academics feel unable to speak freely.
The sense that free speech and academic freedom are under assault spans all eight of New Zealand’s public universities. It encompasses issues ranging from cultural identity to scientific inquiry.
Kierstead identified three main threats to academic freedom. First, progressive radicalism within universities. Second, interference from the Chinese Communist Party. Third, a managerial, brand-focused approach to university administration.
The result? Academics bite their tongues. Many fear that speaking up could torpedo their careers. That fear is not unfounded, as several case studies in our report demonstrate.
The threat to academic freedom takes various forms. Sometimes, it is overt pressure or censorship.
Other times, it is subtler – a culture that discourages expressing certain views and asking certain questions.
The Treaty of Waitangi is the one area in which many academics report feeling the most constrained. Several testimonies in our report suggest that questioning current interpretations of the Treaty is seen as career suicide. The surveys found that over half of academics felt uncomfortable discussing Treaty issues.
Even science is not immune from these pressures, as the controversy over an open letter sent to magazine The Listener demonstrates. The seven professors who wrote it faced fierce institutional backlash for questioning the mixing of M?tauranga M?ori, the indigenous knowledge system, and science in school curricula.
This incident sparked a national debate about the nature of scientific knowledge and the role of indigenous wisdom. However, it also revealed a troubling intolerance for dissenting views within the academic community.
Gender issues present another minefield. Academics expressing views contrary to prevailing gender ideology report hostility and career threats. This is particularly concerning given the complex and evolving nature of gender studies.
Foreign influence adds another layer of complexity to these issues. Our report highlights the links between New Zealand universities and institutions tied to the Chinese military. This raises serious questions, not only about academic independence, but also about national security.
Financial pressures have exacerbated the situation. Government funding for universities has fallen by a fifth since 2012. This decline has forced institutions to chase international student fees and run themselves more like businesses.
The result is a corporate mindset that puts reputation ahead of rigorous debate. Universities increasingly view themselves as brands to be protected rather than forums for open inquiry. This goes along with the rise of managerialism in universities, which has shifted institutional power from academics to administrators.
As a result, many academics report pressure to avoid ‘controversial’ topics that might harm the university’s image. Others describe a culture of compliance that stifles creativity and critical thinking.
These pressures are particularly acute for early-career academics, who often lack job security.
The shift brings new dangers. One is an obsession with ‘safety’ from words and ideas. Treating intellectual challenge as a hazard stifles debate and undermines the very purpose of higher education.
Longer term, far from enhancing students’ wellbeing, this misguided idea of safety undermines it.
The erosion of free speech at our universities cuts deep. When academics cannot ask tough questions or challenge sacred cows, the whole university suffers. This damages not just New Zealand’s academic standing, but New Zealand’s wider social and political culture, too.
As Professor Grant Schofield of Auckland University of Technology warns in his foreword to our report: “If the university as it currently exists is to remain relevant, then nuanced, robust, and open debate must not only be defended, but encouraged.”
The issues we have uncovered are not unique to New Zealand. Universities worldwide, especially in English-speaking countries, face similar pressures. But New Zealand’s small, tight-knit academic community may be especially vulnerable to these trends.
So, what must happen for universities to recommit to their role as society’s critic and conscience? For a start, they must accept that part of being a university means being home to a contest of ideas that will not always be comfortable.
Academics, too, must step up to this challenge. They must be willing to defend not just their own right to speak, but others’ rights too – even when they disagree with the views being expressed.
Students have a role to play, too. They should demand exposure to diverse viewpoints, not protection from them. That said, the culture in which they were raised celebrates fragility, so they have hardly been prepared for the contest of ideas that higher education should be all about.
Perhaps the gravity of the situation is best summed up by one of the academics who contributed to our report: “For several years, my colleagues and I have preferred to meet off campus for fear that anything we say, anything we find funny, anything we question might be used against us.”
This chilling statement encapsulates the crisis facing our universities. If frank and fearless discussions can no longer happen within university walls, these institutions have lost a fundamental part of their identity.
Hopefully, it is not too late for universities to rediscover what they once were about.
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Sydney University accused of ‘gold plating’ campus with foreign enrolments around 50 per cent
Sydney University has revealed its proportion of international students is about 50 per cent this semester as it fronted allegations it was swimming in “rivers of gold” from foreign enrolment fees.
Vice chancellor Mark Scott’s comments came at a Senate hearing into the proposed international student caps, which university chiefs say amount to giving the government “sweeping emergency powers”.
Scott said the university’s senate had in 2021 determined that about 50 per cent should be the ceiling for the proportion of international students at the institution, which is heavily reliant on Chinese enrolments.
“Our era of solid growth in international students was drawing to a close,” Scott said
“At Sydney, for some years now, we have not planned to move further beyond where we are now.”
In a fiery exchange, Liberal senator Sarah Henderson said the institution was getting “rivers of gold” and told Scott he was “gold plating” the university from foreign students’ fees – pointing to a $650 million medical research project – while smaller universities were “on their knees”.
Scott said revenue from foreign fees – $1.4 billion last year – propped up teaching, research and infrastructure projects.
“I don’t think there is a magic number here,” he said. “I don’t think social licence disappears suddenly when you pass a certain threshold.”
International students have become central to Labor’s plan to slash net migration from 520,000 in 2023 to 260,000 by June next year.
The bill to cap international students, introduced to parliament in May, was a significant escalation of the government’s bid to reduce foreign enrolments, which rebounded strongly after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The proposed legislation would give Education Minister Jason Clare sweeping powers to cap international student numbers at both an institution and course level.
Universities and other higher education providers are expecting to be told this week what next year’s proposed caps are.
Treasury officials told the hearings they had not undertaken detailed modelling on the impact of the caps on Australia’s economy, but would do so after they are announced.
After the hearings, Group of Eight universities chief executive Vicki Thomson labelled this a “scandalous admission” that showed international education was the subject of a “reckless gamble” by government.
University of NSW chief Attila Brungs said the institution had been forced to halt enrolment for three popular degrees due to uncertainty about the caps.
“That will have long-term ramifications for those courses. They won’t come back for three to four years,” he said.
“The international education market is such a complex, such a large and long-term thing, making changes at this late stage is very problematic to Australia’s reputation.”
Western Sydney University vice chancellor George Williams, a constitutional lawyer, said the international student caps bill was poorly drafted and not fit to be passed.
“When I look at this bill it’s remarkable in many respects … the concentration of power is surprising,” he said.
“It’s unfettered, coercive and being concentrated in a minister in a way that you would normally associate, in my experience, with a biosecurity act or a piece of national security legislation.
“You would not expect it in a piece of industry policy, particularly something directed at higher education.”
Education Department deputy secretary Ben Rimmer said he was confident providers would “find it possible to live with” the caps when they received them
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25 August, 2024
Reading breakthrough in America
A new approach to teaching children how to read has been implemented in schools across the country, with educators seeing a dramatic improvement in scores.
Known as the 'science of reading,' this approach to teaching literacy emphasizes phonics, which breaks words down into their individual sounds, teaching children to decode words instead of memorizing them.
A recent National Assessment of Educational Progress report revealed that a significant number of U.S. fourth graders are struggling with reading comprehension. Specifically, 65% are unable to read at grade level.
This disparity is even more pronounced among students of color, with 80% of Hispanic fourth graders and 84% of Black fourth graders falling below grade-level expectations.
After decades of educational debates and experimentation with various literacy techniques outside of phonics, there is a growing consensus among researchers, educators, and classroom teachers that the science of reading is a promising solution to improve early literacy outcomes.
In addition to the Covid lockdowns exacerbating the decline in reading abilities, the push for a 'whole language learning' during the 1980s has contributed to the overall decline of reading comprehension abilities, per KHOU.
The 'whole language learning' is a method that encourages students to identify entire words rather than relying solely on sounding out individual letters. By using visual cues like pictures and analyzing the context of a sentence, students can determine the appropriate word to use
However, this way of teaching has been criticized for its limited effectiveness in teaching students to decode unfamiliar words.
Angelique Schoorens, a special education teacher who goes by the name Finally an EdED on TikTok, has taught for 14 years. She said she blames the widespread adoption of the Lucy Calkins' Units of Study model, which is based on the whole language approach, on the education crisis that exists today.
'The Units of Study almost completely eliminated the phonics and phonetic awareness components of reading instruction in favor of using visual queue,' said Schooners. 'What that looks like in practice is an entire generation of students who were never taught proper decoding, and therefore cannot properly read content-level words that are more than one syllable.'
'This manifests as a seventh grade student who can’t read a two or three syllable word from their science textbook because they don’t understand that EA together makes a long E sound.
'In turn, that affects their spelling skills and it also makes them reluctant readers because they don’t know how to properly decode.'
'Comprehension is super important, but you also have to know how to read the words that are on the page in front of you.'
The teacher concluded that the Units of Study model has harmed students by neglecting phonics instruction and leading to unnecessary special education referrals.
'Students who may not have required specialized instruction for reading if they were taught a phonics-based program have been referred to special education for years not because of a disability, but because of poor instruction.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13773759/teaching-kids-reading-phonics.html
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Teachers Union president says standardized tests are racist
Head of the Chicago Teachers Union, Stacy Gates: Standardized tests are “junk science rooted in White supremacy.”
Translation: Tons of Chicago students can’t read and can’t do math.
The tests measure the degree to which the students has mastered (or not) the materials taught in class.
So Gates needs to overhaul what’s taught in the classroom if she wants to avoid racism.
Let’s see what that looks like.
Instruction in cell phone and tablet use? How to set up a YouTube account? How to qualify for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria?
Maybe Gates is implying that students are learning in class, but the tests are deceptive. How so, SPECIFICALLY?
The students have to read and comprehend the test questions? That’s the problem?
The very idea that 37 plus 24 equals 61 on a test is racist? The sum is actually another number? Addition itself amounts to white supremacy?
I’m intrigued. I want to see Gates’ alternative curriculum and tests. With all the money teachers unions suck in from the government, they should be able to set up one classroom that offers a completely different form of non-racist education. Live stream it every day for the world to watch.
But no. We never seem to find out what these race-card players have in mind for school kids.
I happen to think literacy (the traditional version) is important. Being able to read a book. Being able to write an essay or a story.
If there’s a completely different way to learn how to do these things, I want to know about it.
Osmosis? Taping a book to your chest? Balancing it on your head? Rubbing the cover with your foot? Saying the word RACISM out loud 16 times a day?
When I taught math at two private schools for remedial students, I had 20 kids in a class, and they were all at different failing levels, and none of them wanted to be there. That was the problem I faced. I struggled to solve it every day.
It never occurred to me I could just cover the whole situation with a blanket word like RACISM and walk away.
It’s pretty amazing that the head of a teachers union can deploy the word to paper over a whole city school system. And free herself from the challenge of trying to teach straight ahead reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Congratulations. Chicago schools aren’t a failure at all. They look like they are, they test like they are, but really they’re just WHITE.
That’s quite a hustle. And how much is Gates making a year?
$289,000.
https://jonrappoport.substack.com/p/teachers-union-prez-standardized-test-are-racists
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Sydney school shows that old-fashioned teaching methods work best
Tracy Considine has made countless changes at Canterbury Public in her six years as principal, but she finds it easy to pinpoint those that have helped to lift the school’s maths and reading scores.
The latest round of literacy and numeracy exams shows the school has gained ground in both measures: the proportion of year 3 children above baseline standard in reading is up from 59 per cent to 87 per cent.
“We’ve targeted teacher practice with intensive professional development and making sure every teacher is trained in phonics instruction,” she said. “Parents have come along with us. We run workshops for families on core maths and reading concepts so they can help their kids at home.”
Considine said the school, which uses explicit teaching methods, had also worked hard to shift perceptions among teachers and parents that children “were either good at maths or they weren’t”.
“We’ve debunked myths and changed attitudes. We dispelled myths that only boys can achieve at the highest level in maths. Teachers now have high expectations of all students.”
The NSW Education Department has identified Canterbury for achieving significant growth in both reading and numeracy in the past year. About 80 per cent of year 3 students achieved proficiency in year 3 maths.
Last week’s release of the 2024 NAPLAN results painted a bleak picture of academic achievement across the country. One in three children in NSW failed to reach benchmarks in reading and maths. Ten per cent of year 9 pupils are functionally illiterate.
About 40 per cent of year 3 students did not meet expected standards in grammar tests, meaning they struggled to point out the correct location of a full stop or to identify proper nouns.
While Canterbury’s results are showing signs of bucking the statewide trend, outcomes nationally remain unchanged compared with 2023. The results once again lay bare the glaring gap between rich and poor students, and those in cities and remote areas.
The national scorecard has also intensified the fight between federal Education Minister Jason Clare and his state counterparts over the next schools funding deal.
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22 August, 2024
What Exactly Does Gay Pride Flag Signify?
This morning, as I was walking through Vienna’s Schillerplatz, I noticed a Gay Pride Flag flying on the roof of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Note its conspicuous position when one is standing on the Schillerplatz—that is, directly above the statue of the German poet and playwright, Friedrich Schiller and the facade of the Academy.
What does this signify? In my experience, a flag flying above a public building—and the Vienna Academy is a public institution, largely funded by the state—typically signifies a national, state, or municipal governing entity. Historically in Europe, flags often displayed heraldic symbols of the aristocratic or royal families that held title to different counties, duchies, and kingdoms. During the Age of Exploration, it was common for explorers or conquistadores to “plant the flag” of the king or queen who sponsored their expeditions.
The logic of these historic conventions raises the question: has the Gay Pride movement laid symbolic claim to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts? Or is the flag flying above the academy merely a gesture of sympathy or solidarity with the “LGBTQ+ Community?”
This question prompts deeper philosophical questions: Is receiving education and training in the fine arts somehow bound together with one’s sexual preference? Does being gay or lesbian make one more artistically skilled or creative?
Finally, does a single person in the West actually believe that gay men and women are persecuted or treated as second class citizens in domain of fine and applied arts?
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/what-exactly-does-gay-pride-flag
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Universal child care would only end up on Labor’s spending pyre
Judith Sloan
Anthony Albanese has foreshadowed on a number of occasions that universal childcare will be a centrepiece of his campaign for a second term in office. His stated intention is that universal childcare will become available midway through that term.
My strong advice to the Prime Minister is: don’t do it. It is ill-considered, badly targeted and unaffordable. And the biggest winners will be high-income earners who currently receive proportionately lower childcare fee subsidies than those on lower incomes.
It’s hard to see how that aspect will be a vote winner. The backdrop to this is the commissioning of a report, A path to universal early childhood education and care, from the Productivity Commission. A draft was released last year; the final report has now been sent to the government and is awaiting release.
One of the key findings of the draft report was that the U-shape that once characterised women’s workforce participation – there was always a dip during women’s early child-rearing years – has almost disappeared. To be sure, only a small proportion of children under the age of one attend childcare. But after that, the proportion rises significantly.
We can’t infer that this outcome is simply the result of the preferences of career-minded women. Rather the financial needs of most families to have two sources of income means a great many parents have no choice but to use childcare, particularly as cost-of-living pressures have escalated. This distinction needs to be borne in mind when thinking about policy options.
Another important distinction is between childcare and preschool. There are currently in place governmental agreements that guarantee 15 hours per week of structured preschool for three- and four-year olds. In many instances, these preschool programs are delivered by childcare centres, but there are still many dedicated preschools – around 4300 in 2022.
The developmental and educational benefits of childcare and preschool are not the same. Preschool does what it says – prepares little ones for school. The idea that there are developmental and educational benefits for one-year olds in childcare is much more fanciful.
The world’s leading academic in this area, James Heckman, has made the obvious point that the only real developmental and educational benefits for children attending childcare are for those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Chaotic family environments, inadequate income, an absence of consistent nutrition, a lack of books and being read to – these are contextual features of children who benefit from childcare.
For other children, however, there is no beneficial effect on average. Indeed, they can be worse off because they are deprived of the constant attention of at least one parent, which would greatly benefit them. When Albanese claimed there are educational benefits from childcare because he observed some children playing with lettered blocks, he was merely demonstrating his ignorance in this field.
But here’s a key point: the participation of children from disadvantaged backgrounds in childcare is low compared with other children. Out of every 100 children who take up a subsidised early childhood education and care place, only 23 are from low-income families. As the Productivity Commission notes, “early childhood education and care is positive for many children but those who benefit most are least likely to attend”.
The under-representation of children from disadvantaged backgrounds is the result of a number of factors, including the relative dearth of childcare centres in poorer areas as well as the activity test, which many parents fail to meet.
The reality is that the benefits of government-subsidised childcare are largely snaffled by the middle class. Note here that this government extended eligibility for childcare fee relief to those families earning up to $533,000 per year, although the rate of fee subsidy is scaled down as income rises.
Another interesting fact about childcare is the dominance of private, for-profit centres, a dominance that has increased over time as community-managed centres have either closed or failed to grow. Family daycare is a relatively small part of the mix, at less than 6 per cent of childcare places.
What this means is that government childcare subsidies are mainly directed towards private businesses, which must meet capital and labour costs as well as deliver a return to shareholders. This is a very different beast to government funding of public schools.
In its draft report, the PC recommended that 30 hours or three days per week of quality early childhood education and care should be made available to all children aged between up to five years.
A 90 per cent subsidy rate would apply across the board save for those families with income less than $80,000 for whom there would be no fee charged. The estimated cost of this exercise is more than $4bn per year or around one-third on top of current outlays. But the main beneficiaries “would be higher-income families, as many low-income families receive subsidies at 90 per cent or higher rates”. In other words, this feature of the policy should give the Labor government reason to hit the pause button.
No doubt, government ministers will point to the supposed broader economic benefits of further subsidising childcare, particularly greater workforce participation. The modelling is clear that any impact on participation will be modest, perhaps as low as an additional 17,000 effective full-time workers. There are a variety of reasons for this outcome, including the shift towards centre-based care away from other forms of care, as well as the fact cheaper childcare means parents can work fewer hours and achieve the same net income.
The cost of providing three full days of universal care works out at more than $200,000 per job created. This is a very poor use of taxpayer dollars. As for any impact on productivity, it would almost certainly be negative as the most productive workers are already working long hours.
In the meantime, the government has committed to spending even more taxpayer dollars topping up the wages of childcare workers in line with a potential ruling from the Fair Work Commission. The cost of this exercise is put at $3.6bn over two years and, in exchange, centres must agree to enter into union wage agreements as well as keep fee increases to 4.4 per cent for one year. Topping up wages is likely to become a permanent commitment.
The bottom line is that childcare is yet another area in which government spending is out of control. In 2018-19, childcare subsidies cost less than $8bn; this financial year, they are expected to come in at $14.5bn, before adding in the wage subsidy package.
There are very serious questions about both the effectiveness and fairness of the policy settings, both current and proposed. For private providers, however, it’s a lucrative industry.
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Supreme Court Upholds Injunctions Blocking Biden-Harris Admin’s Transgender Title IX Rewrite
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld two lower courts’ temporary injunctions blocking President Joe Biden’s rule applying federal civil rights law to transgender issues in education, including school bathrooms and women’s sports.
The Department of Education under the Biden-Harris administration issued new rules reinterpreting Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law that bars discrimination on the basis of sex in education. The changes force gender ideology on Americans in the name of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Tennessee and Louisiana are leading two lawsuits against the Education Department and its Biden-appointed secretary, Miguel Cardona, seeking injunctions to block the application of the law. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 5th and 6th Circuits granted preliminary injunctions, blocking the new rules from going into effect.
Cardona appealed to the Supreme Court, and the high court denied the emergency appeal Friday.
Cardona argued that, even if the courts granted an injunction blocking some aspects of the new rules, those aspects could be “severed” from the others, preserving the overall rules. The Supreme Court rejected that argument.
“In this emergency posture in this court, the burden is on the government as applicant to show, among other things, a likelihood of success on its severability argument and that the equities favor a stay,” the justices wrote. “On this limited record and in its emergency applications, the government has not provided this court a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts’ interim conclusions that the three provisions found likely to be unlawful are intertwined with and affect other provisions of the rule.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling halts the Biden-Harris administration’s rules in the states of Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia; and in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho.
Tennessee, Louisiana, and others who joined the lawsuits argued that the administration’s Title IX rules unlawfully redefine sex discrimination and violate students’ and employees’ rights to bodily privacy and safety. They argued that a definition of harassment based on the creation of a “hostile environment” violates the First Amendment by requiring students and teachers to use preferred pronouns.
All nine justices on the Supreme Court agreed that Tennessee, Louisiana, and the groups that joined their lawsuits are entitled to interim relief from the administration’s transgender rules. Yet four of the justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—dissented, saying that the injunctions blocking the entire Title IX rules are overbroad.
Alliance Defending Freedom, a prominent conservative Christian law firm, represents a West Virginia high school female athlete and Christian Educators Association International, which joined with Tennessee’s lawsuit. ADF also represents a Louisiana school board serving more than 20,000 students, which joined Louisiana’s lawsuit.
“The Biden-Harris administration’s radical redefinition of sex turns back the clock on equal opportunity for women, undermines fairness, and threatens student safety and privacy,” Jonathan Scruggs, ADF vice president of litigation strategy, said in a public statement on the ruling. “The Supreme Court rightly affirmed the 5th and 6th Circuit decisions to restrain the administration’s illegal efforts to rewrite Title IX while these critical lawsuits continue.”
“This administration is ignoring biological reality, science, and common sense,” Scruggs added. “Female athletes, students, and teachers across the country are right to stand against the administration’s adoption of extreme gender ideology, which would have devastating consequences for students, teachers, administrators, and families.”
The Education Department announced in April that it would redefine “sex” in Title IX rules to include “gender identity,” requiring schools to ignore the biological differences between male and female in favor of “an individual’s sense of their gender.”
These rules relied on a hotly contested interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), in which Gorsuch—writing for the majority—ruled that discrimination on the basis of sex in federal employment law entailed discrimination on the basis of gender identity. In that decision, Gorsuch clearly wrote that he did not intend this interpretation to apply to areas such as sex-segregated bathrooms or sports teams.
Yet Biden issued an executive order directing federal agencies to “apply Bostock” to all realms of civil rights law, in a flat contradiction of Gorsuch’s narrow ruling.
As Alliance Defending Freedom explained, the Education Department’s rules would force schools to “allow males who claim to identify as female to enter girls’ private spaces such as restrooms, locker rooms, and showers; to participate in girls’ physical education classes; and—despite logically inconsistent disclaimers saying otherwise—to play on girls’ sports teams.”
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18 August, 2024
Teacher Training Deemed Woefully Inadequate
Research shows significant lapses in teacher training, but plenty of ideological indoctrination.
Teachers are not trained properly to teach American students the academic skills they need to succeed, National Affairs reports. The teacher preparation system is broken, leaving inexperienced novice teachers to their own devices in the classroom.
In 2013, the National Council on Teacher Quality referred to the teacher preparation programs in the United States as “an industry of mediocrity.”
While studies have indicated a deficit in teacher preparedness, outcomes for children provide evidence of the failure. Regardless, teacher training programs have changed very little in the last several years.
Teachers are not given the tools they need to be successful, yet they are thrown into the deep end of the education system and expected to manage a classroom full of students with little or no management training.
“Veterans clap rookies on the back and assure them they’ll make it through, knowing that the first few years will be rough—for both the teacher and his students,” Daniel Buck writes for National Affairs.
The lack of competency has been compounded by the insertion of ideology. Although teachers enter the classrooms lacking training in the mechanics of teaching, they are well versed in woke ideology.
“Over the past few years, stories have surfaced about history-class materials celebrating communism, math lessons that focus on how we can use mathematics to advance activism, professional-development materials that teach educators about critical-race and whiteness theories, and a seemingly endless supply of similarly politically charged content for the K-12 classroom,” Buck writes.
“Our schools have been mediocre for decades; now they’re politicized, too.”
Parents have requested more transparency and involvement in reviewing curriculum as concerns about the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) and radical sexual standards have grown, as Heartland Daily News has reported extensively.
In some states, like Florida and Texas, conservatives have been elected to school board positions to represent parents and ensure that radical teaching is not allowed in the classroom.
Democrat-controlled states like California and Washington have pushed conservative school board members out of office.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) threatened to fine a school district for refusing to use state-mandated materials that they determined were sexually explicit and offensive.
Early in 2024, the Democrat-controlled legislature in Washington state passed two new laws mandating the teaching of LGBTQ+ curriculum and ensuring compliance by anointing the State Superintendent of Instruction as the sole authority over educational materials.
If parents and school boards have no control, teachers and education administrators are left to implement curricula and purchase or create their own teaching materials.
Many teacher training programs promote the fact that they are training teachers to be “change agents” rather than outstanding educators.
The University of Oregon promotes their teacher training program on their website.
“The Educational Foundations (EdF) program is for undergraduates who are committed to social change and are pursuing a future in elementary education or related fields,” the page states.
At Rutgers University, the teacher training program is recognized for its diversity.
“The Urban Secondary Education major is rooted in justice-oriented pedagogy and positions future teachers to address the needs of all students,” the website states. “This degree program provides students with significant support and mentorship to complete the certification requirements that disproportionately impact teacher candidates of color.”
Michigan State University requires 15 credits within their professional education courses and mandates that students take each course listed in this category without alternative. Students are required to take all the following classes:
Diverse Learners in Multicultural Perspectives – 3 credits
Social Foundations of Justice and Equity in Education – 3 credits
Pedagogy and Politics of Justice and Equity in Education – 3 credits
Teaching and Learning of (Bi)Multilingual Learners – 3 credits
Justice and Equity Seminar I – 1 credit
Justice and Equity Seminar III – 1 credit
Justice and Equity Seminar IV – 1 credit
While there is no shortage of social justice training, reading and math seem to be almost an afterthought.
“Only 28% of American teacher-preparation programs sufficiently address all components of reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension),” Buck writes. “Twenty-two percent do not adequately cover any of them.”
While the focus remains on preparing teachers to radicalize and indoctrinate children, students will suffer with inadequate education paired with an outsized sense of outrage and angst.
“At best, these institutions advance a politically neutral, albeit largely ineffective, approach to the classroom,” Buck writes. “At worst, they’re radical institutions instilling our country’s teaching force with a neo-Marxist worldview.”
“In neither case do they advance a clear vision for an education that might stir the mind, form the character, or enliven the soul, nor do they provide the practical training necessary to advance such an education.”
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/08/teacher-training-deemed-woefully-inadequate/
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Back to (Chaotic) Schools
In normal years, which were not that long ago, students would look forward to returning to or entering college as freshmen. After violent anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations on some college campuses, many fear this semester might see a repeat of the prior ugliness.
This is how bad it has gotten. Police in Montgomery County, Maryland, are investigating after antisemitic and pro-Palestinian graffiti was discovered outside Bethesda Elementary School Sunday morning. An elementary school! Rather than condemning the incident, the pro-Hamas lobby group known as CAIR issued a statement that sounded like “what can you expect,” given Israel’s justifiable attempt to wipe out the terrorist group in Gaza.
Columbia University in New York, where some of the worst rioting occurred last semester, is reportedly considering granting arrest powers to campus police, hoping it will curb the demonstrations. That’s fine, but it’s not just about the arrests, most of which have resulted in quick releases, it’s about prosecuting lawbreakers. In liberal New York that has become nearly impossible to do thanks to District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who often releases and fails to prosecute even violent offenders.
Columbia is also employing a “lockdown” system to keep “non affiliates, with bad intentions” off campus. Good luck with that. If current laws and regulations are being violated why should anyone believe new laws and regulations will be obeyed, especially when some professors agree with and encourage the demonstrators?
DePaul University in Chicago is preparing to reopen its campus Quad before students return for fall classes. Demonstrations last semester caused$180,000 in damages, resulting in the Quad’s closure for three months for necessary repairs. What’s to prevent a repeat performance?
Columnist Jason Riley wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this month that Penn suspended several students who were part of an illegal anti-Israel encampment that ended in May with the arrest of 33 people. Yet Penn looks to be an outlier. …
Harvard reversed an earlier decision to suspend students who participated in pro-Hamas demonstrations on its campus that violated school policy and local ordinances. The Harvard Crimson wrote that it was at least the second time administrators caved in to pressure from student activists and sympathetic faculty members.”
Jewish students wishing to return to certain college campuses don’t seem optimistic they will receive better treatment than last semester.
While some university presidents resigned after being accused of aiding and abetting the protests and antisemitism, the problem will remain so long as administrators allow students (and non-students) to dictate to those who are in charge and supposed to be enforcing the rules.
Here’s what might work. If students wish to demonstrate they should be assigned a secure area where their presence won’t impede other students from attending classes, visiting libraries, or exercising other rights. If professors encourage the demonstrators and make anti-Jewish remarks making Jewish students feel unsafe, they should be placed on leave or fired.
By following through on law enforcement and prosecution perhaps students will get the message that a criminal record will likely harm their prospects for future employment and a successful career.
When police in Boston went on strike in 1919, unleashing looting and other criminal activity, Massachusetts governor and later president Calvin Coolidge sent a telegram to American Federation of Labor founder Samuel Gompers which said in part: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”
The same should be said of rioting students who impede the rights of other students to feel safe and attend classes without mobs confronting especially Jewish students. They have a right to feel safe and protected from persecution.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/109366-back-to-chaotic-schools-2024-08-15
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University was supposed to prepare me for work – it did the opposite
Digging my nails into my palms, I got up from my desk and stumbled down the corridor.
Once I reached the privacy of the office loos, I finally let the tears stream down my cheeks.
Sadly, this had become a common occurrence. Two, maybe three times a day, I’d find myself crying in a toilet cubicle, or sometimes silently at my desk.
This particular upset was all because of an email my boss had sent. It read: ‘This isn’t the standard we expect – start it again.’
On the surface that might seem like a perfectly reasonable request between a manager and junior staff member. But all it did was reinforce how inadequate, useless and wholly unprepared I felt for the world of work.
Just a few months before, I’d left university feeling full of success, and eager for the future.
Now, with hindsight, I wish I’d never bothered with higher education at all and had instead taken a completely different path.
When I was in sixth form, university was seen as the only route to success.
No one ever talked about exploring other direct-to-workplace avenues – such as an internship – and in truth I never considered any alternative.
Going to university, studying a subject I was passionate about, and seeing which exciting career path that would eventually take me down was the dream to me. So I put my all into achieving it.
I worked evenings and weekends to ensure I got the grades I needed, and when I received an offer to study English at my first-choice university, I cried with happiness.
My time there was everything I’d dreamed of. I loved the newfound freedom, the friendships with people from around the world and studying a subject I loved at an advanced level. Above all, I enjoyed being at a prestigious institution having truly earned my place there.
But while it was fun spending three years in a haze of writing essays and drinking on the quadrangle lawn with friends, the only time anyone started to ask me what I wanted to do after university was as I approached my final year.
No obvious career path had presented itself to me in all this time and, in truth, I still had no idea what I wanted to do.
Desperate, I sought help from the careers centre at my university.
‘What are you good at?’ they asked. Writing was the only truthful answer. I was dismissed with a handful of leaflets on postgrad law conversion courses.?
Not convinced a career in law was for me, I spent the whole summer after I graduated applying for jobs for everything and anything, yet each description was peppered with buzzwords and language that were totally foreign to me though.
They all wanted ‘a motivated self-starter’, someone who was ‘able to spin multiple plates’ or could ‘report and analyse engagement effectively’.
All I could do was reason that I might learn to be all those things and more. I just needed to get my foot in the door.
However, rejection email after rejection email soon filled my inbox and I became increasingly disheartened.
The only comfort was knowing that my friends were having similar experiences, with some even attending multiple interviews in one day!
I reassured myself that the rejections didn’t matter – so long as I got one graduate job, everything else would fall into place.
Finally, four months after graduating, I got my first job working in PR.
I was so excited for my first day. I made sure to dress the part and was eager to learn.
But the change from the supportive academic environment to the relentless fast pace of the corporate world – where my skill set was totally impractical – was a difficult one to process.
Could I write an analytical essay comparing 18th century authors? Without a doubt. As for compiling a client report, writing a press release, or even scheduling an Outlook meeting, I had no clue.
Where I was used to having ample time to research and prepare work, I struggled with the new, seemingly impossible maxim of ‘we need this right away, and we need it to be perfect’. Simply trying your best didn’t count any more.
I realised then that university hadn’t prepared me for the workplace at all.
My repeated failure to achieve the job’s expectations only left me feeling more and more isolated from colleagues and too nervous to speak up in meetings for fear I would be wrong.
Far from wanting to explore new challenges, I saw every opportunity as potential failures to avoid at all costs.
As the days and weeks passed, I’d find myself breaking out in a sweat as I reached the office, my heart rate increasing, terrified of what that day was going to bring. My anxiety affected my ability to concentrate, and errors started creeping into my work, which only made matters worse.
Stuck in a vicious circle, the voice in my head roared louder every day: ‘You are a failure. You are useless. Everything you do is wrong.’
My friends and family noticed that I’d become more withdrawn, more anxious and skittish – very different from my usual sociable self. I started to dread work, terrified about what problems that day would bring. I felt trapped from the moment I started until 5:30pm.
It was during a work-from-home day, while still living with my parents, that my mum found me in tears in the study; until then, I’d been keeping up pretences. She turned my laptop off, took me downstairs and we had a discussion, which resulted in her suggesting a counsellor.
At my family’s suggestion, 10 months into my job, I started seeing a counsellor who specialised in career coaching.
Under her guidance, I began to learn how to successfully navigate the office environment, and most importantly to adapt the skills I had to the workplace. We worked on both ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ skills, from priority and diary planning to better manage workflows, to delivering presentations to senior colleagues.
The therapist also suggested I build on my love of writing and pitch features ideas (again and again, following many rejections!) until my first published piece helped build up my portfolio.
I left my job just after a year, in 2021. It took me time to learn to see my ‘failure’ as a learning experience, and to be able to work up the confidence to hand in my notice with pride.
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15 August, 2024
California rabbi puts colleges on notice after 'national failure' to protect Jewish students
Following months-long protests and unrest on college campuses around the country, the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles in California is asking universities to better protect students this upcoming year.
In an open letter obtained by Fox News Digital, Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of Jewish Federation Los Angeles, details how universities and their surrounding communities can protect Jewish college students as they head back to school.
Farkas said that as Jewish students prepare to go back to college, schools and administrators must acknowledge what happened on campus to Jewish students last year, calling it a "national failure and moral tragedy."
"The failure to uphold rules around protests, the slow and inept response by security, and the lack of uniform rules enforcement, led to students and faculty being harassed, doxxed, and denied entry to parts of campus just for openly identifying as Jewish," Rabbi Farkas wrote.
"Things have gotten so bad that Congress has stepped in to investigate and, in some cases last year, forced Jewish students to question their place on campus and create their own graduation. This must never happen again," he continued.
Farkas said just as the anti-Israel protesters have promised to return to disrupting campus life, their organization has been planning a strategy based on democratic values that will support local students and faculty and educate others.
The three-component strategy he outlined in the letter includes: supporting the campus Jewish community, uniting Jewish students across Los Angeles, and ensuring universities uphold their true purpose.
Former MLB star and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Garvey weighed in on this issue and told Fox News Digital that it was important for Jewish leaders to come out with this letter.
"In order to prepare students for what's to come, I think it was very important to educate the Jewish community on campus, uniting Jewish teams throughout Southern California, and then addressing leadership, as to what their responsibilities are and to protect these students. And now it's up to leadership on the campuses," Garvey said.
Garvey continued by saying that because the unrest started so late in the spring, we saw less of what could have happened if it occurred in the fall.
"It was clearly an attack on the Jewish students, the Jewish name. To treat these activities on campus as crimes and the attack on the Jewish students was essentially a hate crime. Nobody wanted to say that, but it's exactly what it was," Garvey said.
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Tasmania, the ‘drop out state’, promises more phonics, as NAPLAN failure fuels reform calls
Tasmania has vowed to use phonics to teach all children by 2026, after trailing national averages in NAPLAN numeracy, writing and reading results, amid demands for “root and branch” reform.
Labelled “the drop-out state” for its low year 12 attainment, Tasmania again performed badly in this week’s NAPLAN results, trailing the national average in numeracy, writing and reading across all year groups.
“If Tasmania wasn’t at the bottom of everything, (it was) in the bottom three in everything,” independent economist Saul Eslake told The Australian.
“This just underscores the need for root and branch reform of Tasmania’s school education system.”
Education Minister Jo Palmer defended the state’s performance but held out the promise of improvement from a rollout of “structured literacy” including phonics.
This would reach 25 per cent of all government primary schools in 2024. “By 2026, all students across all school years will be taught to read in a structured, systematic, and explicit way, within a framework that ensures every student gets appropriate additional literacy support when they need it,” Ms Palmer said.
“Schools are being supported to make transformational change to the way children are taught to read through professional learning sessions, resources and collaboration with educational experts and sectors.”
Under pressure to lift the state’s educational outcomes, the Liberal state government has promised to review the school system, which still sees some high schools end at year 10, forcing children to attend separate years 11 and 12 colleges.
There are fears the review will be not be independent, broad or resourced enough to deliver the reform needed and tackle vested interests identified as barriers to change.
Mr Eslake and others claim the Education Department, the education faculty at the University of Tasmania and the Australian Education Union are “blockers” of reform, claims rejected by the organisations.
Those advocating change want abolition of colleges in favour of all high schools going to year 12, a faster and better supported shift to structured literacy, a lower school starting age and more intervention to help struggling students catch up before they progress a grade.
Labor Opposition Leader Dean Winter called on the government to “get moving” with its inquiry, which appears yet to start but is due to report by year’s end, and reverse plans to cut $75m from education.
“Tasmanian students continue to be let down by the state government, with results below the national average across all areas. Young Tasmanians are not getting the opportunities they deserve to excel in learning and life,” he said. “After 10 years in government, the Liberals need to accept responsibility for these outcomes.”
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Adelaide University considers anti-Israel motion from pro-Palestine students
Adelaide University has become the latest tertiary institution to consider adopting an anti-Israel motion, as hundreds of pro-Palestine students urge it to sever ties with the Jewish state.
The vote for the motion coincided with the Jewish holy day of Tisha B’Av on Monday, which was condemned by leading Jewish representatives as a way to silence their voice.
Students associated with a pro-Palestine group organised a general meeting to sign on to the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
Just over 200 students unanimously voted to pass the motion, with the university saying it “supports lawful freedom of expression” in response.
“Following the meeting, the matter is now for the students, the Student Representative Council and YouX to consider. Should the matter progress, the University of Adelaide will give it due consideration,” a spokesperson for the university said.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said the motion would have “precisely zero impact on the lives of Palestinians”.
“The sole reason they do this is to send a message to Jewish students and academics that they are outsiders, unwanted and unwelcome,” Mr Ryvchin said.
“We fully expect the university to make a statement denouncing this behaviour and asserting its support for a peaceful and tolerant campus environment.”
Australian Jewish Association CEO Robert Gregory said BDS movements have no place in the Australian education sector.
“Boycotts of the Jewish state are the latest manifestation of an ancient hatred,” Mr Gregory said.
“It’s disappointing that this vote was scheduled for a Jewish holy day which prevented some Jewish students from attending. Jewish students are understandably concerned about their place at the University of Adelaide.”
Vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell said the ANU Council had agreed to update its policy, since “community expectations around what socially responsible investment means are evolving and expanding”.
Last week, up to 800 Sydney University students voted to support “one Palestinian state” and affirmed the right of armed resistance at a rare general meeting that caused the institute to seek police advice on the legality of the material used.
The university was strongly criticised by the ECAJ after it entered into an agreement to allow students to review their investments and security activities, as part of a deal to end encampments.
The students were inspired by a similar general meeting at the University of Queensland in May, which included up to 1500 attendees.
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14 August, 2024
Wealth really does improve health – and here's proof
The high correlation between all indices of wellbeing has been known since the work of Terman & Oden in the 1929s and 30s but is rarely mentionable today. Note that eve in the story below the role of hereditary IQ is overlooked
The story below makes much mention of the role of nutrition in health but once you control for poverty, most apparet nutrition effects fade away. Poverty is hugely important and its major predictor is IQ. It is actually the IQ that matters
I was born into the humblest of circumstances but was also born with a high IQ. And I prospered enough to retire at age 39 and get hundreds of academic journal articles published. And I am still alive at 81
Children who went to private school or a Russell Group university have better health in midlife, according to a new study.
The research, by University College London (UCL), found that those who were privately educated were more likely to have a lower BMI and blood pressure and to perform better on a cognitive task by the age of 46 than those who went to state schools.
It also found that people who went to Russell Group universities – such as Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, University College London and Exeter – performed better on memory and attention tests.
Published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, it reported a 14% lower BMI in those who went to private school versus state school. Studying at a Russell Group university was linked to a 16% better memory recall.
‘Both private school and higher-status university attendance were related to favourable health outcomes,’ wrote the researchers.
They added that, if the status of schooling is the cause of better health, future policies that look at reducing health inequalities need to look not just at qualifications and achievements, but also education quality.
Around 11.7 million people in the UK live in poverty, according to the latest stats. Meanwhile, private schools charge an average of £17,000 a year for day students and £40,000 for boarders, though there’s huge variety in costs.
And this disparity proves that there’s more to the health status of private school goers than just their education.
‘The contrast in the results in the study are concerning, but this is part of a larger problem the UK is facing,’ says Tina Woods, a social entrepreneur and the CEO of Business for Health, a business-led social venture supporting innovation and investment in preventative health and care.
How wealth improves health
According to the study, some reasons why private school and Russell Group educations may lead to better health outcomes include having more resources and facilities to support activity, improved job and financial prospects and being surrounded by people with different health behaviours and cultural norms.
‘Finally, higher-status institutions may have more cognitively stimulating environments through having smaller class sizes, more experienced teachers and high-achieving peers; this may benefit cognition in adolescence, across adulthood and ultimately health in midlife,’ they write.
But let’s not forget that, if you’ve attended private school, you likely grew up in a wealthier family – and money vastly improves health outcomes.
A 2020 study from the Journal of Gerontology, looking at data from over 10,000 people, found that being wealthy adds nine years to your healthy life expectancy, preventing disease and disability.
‘Health inequalities are linked to broader social determinants of health, including income levels, poverty, access to high-quality nutrition, jobs and housing, as well as levels of physical activity that vary across the regions,’ says Woods.
According to research from last year by The Food Foundation, the most deprived fifth of the population would need to spend at least 50% of their income to eat according to the Eatwell guidelines – an increase of 43% from 2022.
Meanwhile, the least deprived fifth would only spend 11% of their income. With the current average rental cost in the UK being around 30% of income, there simply isn’t enough money to spend on health-promoting foods and actives, says Woods.
‘Given the cost-of-living crisis and the rising prices of necessities including food and shelter, those living in more income-deprived areas are likely to suffer and in turn, their life expectancy and healthy life expectancy will suffer,’ she says.
She points to areas like Glasgow, which not only has the lowest life expectancy in the UK but also has in-city disparity. For instance, in Calton, one of the most deprived areas of Glasgow, male life expectancy is 54. In a more affluent area, such as Lenzie, life expectancy is 82, according to The Health Foundation.
‘It’s likely that many in deprived areas cannot afford to make healthy choices, suffer from vitamin deficiencies and are also impacted by unhealthy environments, such as those where dependency on fast food, smoking and alcohol is more prevalent,’ says Woods.
Accessing healthcare
The situation only worsens for those who develop illnesses. Research by the King’s Fund has shown that people in poorer areas are twice as likely to wait more than a year for NHS treatment compared to those living in the least deprived areas.
That’s likely because they have more access to healthcare and can also afford to go private for emergencies or to beat long waits.
The research also found that 42% of adults who had experienced a delay in their treatment saying it impacted their ability to work, meaning the knock-on impact on income can result in even worse inequalities.
The latest study on education’s role in inequality is also concerning given the pipeline from private school to Russell Group universities. Around 6% of children attend private or independent schools in the UK, yet 30% of Oxbridge students are from private schools, according to 2022 data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
It means that the privileged continue to benefit, while those without access to high-status education suffer more.
‘Without measures in place to tackle regional health inequalities, including preventative measures such access to education around nutrition and discounted schemes from employers, we face a continued downward spiral for the health outcomes of those living in lower-income areas,’ warns Woods.
‘There’s a big onus here for the government to work with all stakeholders involved in improving health outcomes in local areas to tackle health and wealth inequalities.
‘This means looking at ways to drive down rates of smoking, introducing measures to address obesity, improving access to preventative health and care services and measures to improve housing quality.’
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The ‘bizarre’ school uniform policy facing a huge backlash
Dress codes and rules about what students can wear as uniform are commonplace at high school, but one principal has made waves around the world after banning students from wearing a certain colour - black.
The school in El Paso, Texas has received backlash from parents and the wider community for the unusual clothing ban which the school says is to help with “depression and mental health issues.”
The Principal of Charles Middle School, Nick DeSantis, sent a letter to parents to clarify and explain the new uniform related rules.
“We are … eliminating a look that has taken over on campus with students wearing black tops with black bottoms, which has become more associated with depression and mental health issues and/or criminality than with happy and healthy kids ready to learn,” the letter read according to a story on KFOX14.
Norma De La Rosa, the president of El Paso Teachers Association, confirmed the school’s confusing policy for no ‘all black’ outfits in an interview with CBSTexas.
“They can wear black shorts to go to PE. And they can wear it on free dress day, but they just cannot wear it from top to bottom.”
De La Rosa also told KFOX14 that the updated uniform policy was initiated to “to enhance students' well-being and sense of pride. This decision, carefully considered and approved by the Campus Improvement Team — comprising parents, faculty, staff, and community stakeholders — aims to foster a positive self-image among students and more effectively showcase the school’s colours and pride.”
In response to the unusual ban, parents were unclear about what the ban would actually achieve.
One parent named Alex said, “The colour of clothing has nothing to do with your ability to do anything or feel any emotion."
With a mum adding, “...making students wear a different colour isn’t going to magically make them a completely different person.”
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Chatbots ‘making things up’, education department warns parents
Artificial intelligence will be used to plan lessons and set homework tasks in more Australian schools, despite concerns it is failing complex maths questions and “making things up’’.
Western Australia will follow NSW and South Australia in trialling the use of a generative AI “chatbot’’ to save teachers time planning lessons, assignments and homework.
But a trial of a Microsoft chatbot in NSW public schools – known as NSWEduChat – this year has revealed the technology can “struggle with subjects that require specific answers’’.
The NSW Education Department has advised teachers to double-check the chatbot’s answers to questions – especially in maths.
“The app responds best to questions that could be answered in many ways rather than one specific answer,’’ it states in a summary of early trials.
“Therefore, it will struggle with subjects that require specific answers. Users should review every output produced using generative AI to ensure accuracy.’’
The department has identified subjects where “extra caution should be taken’’ using the chatbot. “Currently, those subjects are Maths Extensions 1 and 2,’’ it says.
SA – the first state to trail AI in schools last year – has warned parents about privacy and exposure to “inappropriate content’’ from commercially available AI such as ChatGPT and Quill.
“Every school determines how their teachers and students can use AI,’’ it states. “Chatbots sometimes provide answers that can’t be tracked back to the source information.
“They can produce false references to support answers. They can also make things up, which is known as an AI ‘hallucination’.
“AI responses shouldn’t be taken as a source of truth.’’
SA Education warns parents not to let children enter personal information into AI chatbots, or to use any images or videos of students, staff or family members.
“Chatbots may produce inappropriate content for students based on the questions asked, because they’re trained using large data sets and they’re not fully moderated,’’ it states in advice to parents. “AI responses may hold biases against individuals or groups in the data.
“Image and video generators could be used to create offensive or inappropriate content, which may not be intentional.
“They could also be used to produce copyrighted materials.
“You shouldn’t use images or videos of students, staff, schools, family members or members of the community.’’
SA still allows teachers to experiment with different forms of AI, even though it trialled a custom-built Microsoft bot aligned with the state curriculum.
The federal and WA governments will spend $4.7m building a customised bot that gathers its information from the curriculum, for trial in eight schools, including the WA School of Isolated and Distance Education.
WA Education Minister Tony Buti said AI would save teachers time in preparing lessons. “We want our teachers to be teaching our kids,’’ he said on Monday.
“To do this, unnecessary administrative burdens must be reduced, and we hope this new pilot program can support our teachers and ease their workload.’’
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the federal government was giving schools across Australia $30m in a “workload reduction fund’’ for teachers.
“AI will never replace a great teacher, but it can help cut down the time they spend doing admin so they can spend more time in the classroom,’’ he said.
NSW Education Minister Prue Car called on the federal government to also support her state’s trial of AI in classrooms.
The NSW chatbot only responds to questions that relate to education-related content.
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12 August, 2024
Critical Race Theory Organizers Plot Their Return to the Classroom
The top practitioners of critical race theory just held a weeklong “summer school” in Nashville, Tennessee, to strategize, assess the movement, and debate how best to proselytize the next generation. It was an instructive six days of revolutionary agitprop.
Two things immediately stood out. The first is that, yes, despite its protestations to the contrary, the architects of CRT know they must focus intently on those who participate in the teaching profession. If CRT is a tool to be used for “revolutionizing a culture,” as its intellectual godfather, Derrick Bell, once put it, it must be implemented by teachers starting in K-12 and through graduate school.
K-12 teachers, along with students at all levels, were given special ticket prices to the CRT conference at a deep discount, as my colleague and friend Jonathan Butcher pointed out. K-12 principals also were given a special package, though at a smaller discount.
The other unmistakable takeaway is that CRT practitioners are aghast at the resistance they have encountered. The public, parents in particular, saw the attempted takeover of their cultural institutions that gathered speed four years ago and fought against it, much to the chagrin of the CRT elite and their followers.
And the summer school was indeed organized by the elite most wounded by popular rejection. It was led by Kimberle Crenshaw, a law professor at Columbia and UCLA. She is not just one of the key founders of the movement, but actually gave CRT its name at the discipline’s founding conference in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1989.
Crenshaw also invented the concept of “intersectionality,” by which the CRT founders mean that people can be discriminated against based on different attributes—their race, gender, able status, etc.
Also on hand to teach CRT was Cheryl Harris, another CRT founder and also a law professor at UCLA; Gloria Ladson-Billings, who perhaps has done more than anyone else to spread CRT’s ideas among the teaching profession; and Michael Eric Dyson, whose accomplishments do not equal those of the other three, but who’s much better known by the public because of his repeated media appearances. All in all, 40 academics, some very well known, were advertised to appear.
These CRT summer schools started in the long hot summer of 2020, when the whole country was aflame in the Black Lives Matter riots. It looked to the CRT folks then that the world was their oyster, as many leaders of cultural institutions were ready to surrender and accept many CRT principles.
But the oyster has gone bad and begun to stink up the room. In 2020, the summer school organizers saw the moment as a “great opportunity.” Those who led this year’s summer school, however, regard the present moment with a growing sense of dread.
In their triumphant 2020 announcement, the summer school organizers proclaimed that “the enduring racial inequalities laid bare by the casual murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery … have loosened the grip of colorblindness as the officially sanctioned anecdote to persistent racial injustice.” The 2020 summer school was held “to capture the significance of this opportunity.”
One must hasten to explain that, though most people think colorblindness is very much a good thing and an aspirational goal, it is anathema to CRT.
CRT is a body of work that depicts racism not as an individual act or attitude, but as a “systemic” problem. Racism, it preaches, is embedded in the ordinary business of society, and keeps the oppressor group (whites, males, Christians, heterosexuals, but also Jews, Asian Americans, or anyone else that generally meets with success) in power and wealth, while keeping members of victim groups subjugated. To reverse this dynamic—a goal derived entirely from Marxian concepts—CRT practitioners believe that government and industry must pursue color-conscious action.
Contrast the optimism in the summer of 2020 with this year’s foreboding summer school. The description to this year’s opening plenary meeting on July 28 said, “Our kick off plenary for CRT Summer School focuses on Tennessee ?as the ‘tip of the spear’ for the nationwide backlash against racial ?justice and democracy.” Every session revolved around this idea.
As Crenshaw said to radio host Kaye Wise Whitehead in a video advertising the event, “We started this in the middle of the summer of reckoning, recognizing that critical concepts, like structural racism and implicit bias and intersectionality were all part of the mobilization that we saw in 50 states across the country, demanding accountability. Well, now we are at a point where the backlash against 2020, the backlash against racial justice, has taken the form of suppressing our right to learn, our right to know, our books.”
All of that is hyperbolic, of course. Many, many people have developed antibodies against the attempted takeover of their country by Marxist academics, and their political leaders have responded by passing laws that make it hard to indoctrinate students and teachers with CRT and eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates from schools and universities.
These ideas are spread especially in schools of education, where unsuspecting and well-intentioned would-be teachers go to get their credentials.
I spoke to Beanie Geoghegan, co-founder of the group Freedom in Education, who has done a lot of work in this area. When I asked her if education students knew what they were being fed, she said, “Absolutely not.” The professors pushing this stuff “really prey on people who care about children,” she added.
It’s a good thing they are so discomfited at the moment.
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Elon Musk to Open Montessori School in Bastrop TX
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is opening up another experimental private school, this time in the small Austin-area town of Bastrop.
The school is named Ad Astra, Latin for “to the stars,” and plans to serve children aged three to nine by providing Montessori-style education, which focuses on self-directed and hands-on learning as well as collaborative projects.
According to its website, only 48 students will be enrolled in the school. Of those 48, 18 will be between the ages of three to six, and 30 will be between six and nine.
“Ad Astra’s mission is to foster curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking in the next generation of problem solvers and builders,” the website reads.
The school also hopes to “tailor learning experiences” to the unique needs of each child regardless of “any race, color, national and ethnic origin.” Its curriculum will center around science, technology, engineering, and math.
Parents can begin submitting applications now for their children to attend the school. Classes are set to kick off in September.
Musk had previously invested in a less formal Montessori school in Los Angeles for his five children and several of their friends. He got the idea after being disaffected with the instruction provided by his children’s prestigious private school.
In 2020, the former faculty and students of the school decided to continue the project as the more established Astra Nova School, which offers a similar curriculum structure but is entirely virtual.
Musk’s investment in Ad Astra adds to his growing presence in the Austin area. The school is only about one mile away from offices for Musk’s The Boring Company and SpaceX.
In addition, the Greater Austin metropolitan area features Tesla’s massive Texas Gigafactory—a 10 million square foot complex where electric vehicles are assembled domestically by around 20,000 workers.
Tesla was reincorporated in Texas in June, several years after Musk decided to move the company’s headquarters there.
The billionaire recently announced that he would move SpaceX’s headquarters from Hawthorne, California to Starbase, Texas as a result of Gov. Gavin Newsom attacking parental rights in new legislation.
In a later post, Musk confirmed that the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, will also move its headquarters to Texas.
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/08/elon-musk-opening-montessori-school-in-bastrop-tx/
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About 800 University of Sydney students vote to support ‘one Palestinian state’
Nazis
Almost 800 Sydney University students have voted for their student body to support “one Palestinian state” and affirmed “the right of Palestinians to armed resistance” at a rare student general meeting, as the uni seeks police advice on the legality of material used to promote the event.
Students overflowed into four lecture theatres on Wednesday night, voting against an amendment to “condemn Hamas” almost unanimously.
The pro-Palestine Student Representative Council will now “endorse the call for a single, secular democratic state across all of historic Palestine and affirms the right of Palestinians to armed resistance as an occupied people under international law”, after the motion by activist group Students Against War passed at the meeting with only a few votes against it.
Ahead of the SGM, SAW circulated pamphlets on campus with the Hamas triangle symbol on it, and their motion defended the views of a student expelled by Australian National University for saying Hamas deserved “unconditional support”.
Following the meeting, the University said it does “not tolerate any pro-terrorist statements or commentary, including support for Hamas - and any demonstration of support will result in disciplinary action and other possible legal consequences.”
“The University is investigating reports of inappropriate conduct at the meeting, and has sought police advice on the legality of certain material used to promote the event,” a spokesperson said.
The motion by SAW said to “win” the campaign for Palestine at Sydney University, student activists “must commit themselves to building a mass, militant student movement on campus” that “affirms the right of Palestinians to armed resistance, and backs the call for a single, democratic, secular state from the river to the sea”.
After hearing from two affirmative speakers, students elected to go to the vote without further debate due to a lack of time.
A separate motion by pro-Palestine encampment group Students for Palestine USYD repeated demands made throughout the student protests for the university to cut ties with Thales and weapons companies, and Israeli academic institutions, and divest from financial investment in the Jewish state.
An amendment raised to “condemn Hamas” was voted down.
Only two speakers in opposition were given the stage.
“We have just witnessed is this room voting against an amendment condemning a registered terrorist organisation and one of the worst attacks on Jews since the Holocaust,” the first speaker, who did not identify himself, said.
In response, a Students Against War representative in the front rows spat towards the speaker.
A second negative speaker, who spoke from the front of the lecture theatre draped in an Israeli flag was called a “Zionist” and told to leave the stage.
Following the event, organisers led students in a march on vice-chancellor Mark Scott’s office, and could be heard chanting “We don’t want your two states, we want all of ‘48”.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin told The Australian “this travesty disgraces the university”.
“It raises serious questions about the failure of its administration to stop this open support for terrorism.”
“Jewish students and academics should not be subjected to motions from fellow students effectively supporting the destruction of their national home and calls for Palestinian terrorism which has always targeted both Israel and Jewish targets abroad,” he said.
“The silence of the university leadership is beyond pathetic. It is negligent and a total abrogation of their duties to their staff and students. The fact that the vice-chancellor could not even issue a statement condemning these motions and reassuring the overwhelming majority of students who find this repugnant is astonishing.”
Wentworth MP Allegra Spender said the university administration needed to do more to provide leadership to their students.
“People in our community were horrified by last night’s student motion at Sydney University,” she said.
“Last night’s motion excuses the actions of Hamas and was passed without meaningful debate. No thoughtful person who considers the facts could support such a motion.”
“I urge the university administration to do more to create constructive and respectful conversations on campus. It is their responsibility to provide leadership to their students.”
A University of Sydney spokesperson said the student representative council did not represent majority of the student body.
“Less than one percent of our student population attended the SRC meeting yesterday - student representative and student-led groups are independent of the University and certainly don’t represent our institutional position nor do they represent the majority of our student body,” their spokesperson said.
“Their members are required to abide by our policies and codes of conduct and we don’t hesitate to take action if there has been a breach.”
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) wrote to the SRC president again on Thursday “reminding them of their obligations”.
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11 August, 2024
‘Marxist Professors Leaving’: DeSantis Explains How He Saved Education in Florida From Leftist Indoctrination
Taxpayer dollars shouldn’t fund education systems that seek to undermine American values, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday.
“We have a radical idea that the tax dollars that Floridians pay should not go to fund universities that are hostile to our freedoms and way of life,” DeSantis, a Republican, said at conservative commentator and radio talk show host Erick Erickson’s The Gathering conference in Atlanta.
The Florida governor said taxpayer funding instead should go to colleges and universities dedicated to pursuing truth, high academic standards, and preparing students to be good citizens of the republic.
DeSantis listed his efforts so far to improve Florida education.
He mentioned Florida’s Bright Future scholarship program, which allows students with good test scores to graduate college free of debt. The governor said he has sought to restore academic rigor in the Sunshine State and attract talented professors to teach at universities.
“We did a reform that all tenured professors must undergo review every five years and can be terminated,” DeSantis said in his speech at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead in Atlanta.
DeSantis discussed his overhaul of the New College of Florida, which he said he turned from a “Marxist commune” into a classical, liberal arts school. He appointed seven conservatives as trustees and hired a conservative president for the college who abolished a gender studies program.
“They were the first university in America to eliminate DEI,” DeSantis said, referring to the left’s emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. New College’s mission, he added, changed to becoming “the nation’s top publicly funded classical liberal arts college, similar to Hillsdale College.”
Some students and faculty left, but many more wanted to apply, the governor said.
“Let me tell you, if Marxist professors are leaving the state of Florida, that is good for the state of Florida,” DeSantis said to enthusiastic applause.
Parents who work hard to give their children a good K-12 education shouldn’t have to worry that a college or university will undermine their efforts, he said.
“You’re working hard to instill values. You do that for 18 years, and then your kids go to some university where they want to undo that with indoctrination,” DeSantis said. “That is not good. So I think this higher education issue is critical … because of what’s happened at Columbia and all this other stuff.”
Last spring, Columbia University had to cancel in-person classes and graduation ceremonies due to pro-Palestine, anti-Israel protesters who occupied the New York City campus. Police arrested more than 100 students.
“If we do not have a counter with higher education, we are ultimately going to lose a lot of the battles that lie ahead of us,” DeSantis said. “I’m just proud of Florida. No state has done more to reclaim the historic, traditional mission of higher education than the state of Florida.”
Many Minnesotans have fled to Florida because of Gov. Tim Walz’s radical agenda, DeSantis said.
Vice President Kamala Harris, now Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, chose Walz as her running mate Tuesday.
“Minnesota has lost population since he’s been governor, and so I think the policies have been very destructive when you’re driving out people,” DeSantis said.
Walz set up what DeSantis called a “COVID snitch line” so that Minnesotans could report their neighbors for leaving home during government-imposed lockdowns. Yet, the Florida governor said, Walz tells Republicans to “mind your own damn business.”
“He wanted you reported to the authorities,” DeSantis said. “That is not ‘minding your own damn business.’ That is a total abuse of government power.”
Walz repeatedly has used the word “weird” to describe Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, yet he is the one who put feminine hygiene products in boys’ restrooms at school, DeSantis said.
“This is a guy that used Minnesota tax dollars to put tampons in the boys’ bathroom,” DeSantis said.
Many of America’s maladies are rooted in leftist ideology, said the Florida governor, who challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination this year.
“We’ve seen them overtake K-12 education, [the] federal bureaucracy, even a lot of corporate America, all these different things,” DeSantis said of the Left.
Yet Florida is winning the culture war, he said.
“Florida shows not only did we fight these people, we beat them on issue after issue,” DeSantis said. “We beat the teachers unions when it came to being open during COVID or having universal school choice and even paycheck protections for teachers union dues.”
As of last summer, union dues no longer are taken directly out of paychecks in Florida. As a result, the teachers union in Miami-Dade County doesn’t have enough members and is going to be decertified, DeSantis said.
Although he is a conservative, the governor said, he doesn’t want to “conserve” the current state of the country.
“I think what Florida represents nationally is a great rediscovery and restoring [of] the timeless truths that have made this country great,” DeSantis said. “When we have fidelity to those founding principles, we do well as a country. … These are things that endure.”
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Teachers Unions Donated Over $135K to Walz. Parents Say ‘No Difference’ Between Their Far-Left Agendas
Teachers unions are among the largest donors to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Democrats’ vice presidential candidate, giving over $135,000 to his campaigns for governor and, before that, Congress.
Walz, who once taught high school social studies, sides with teachers unions instead of everyday Minnesotans, some parents say.
“When it comes to education, the policies of Tim Walz show that he has been beholden to the dictates of the teachers unions,” Minnesota mom of three Jeannine Buntrock told The Daily Signal.
The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s two largest teachers unions, are joined in Walz’s state to form the Education Minnesota PAC. Their political action committee contributed the maximum allowable donation of $4,000 to his campaigns for governor in both the 2018 and 2022 election cycles, according to campaign finance reports.
Teachers unions were among Walz’s highest contributors in his congressional campaigns from 2005 to 2018. He served six terms in the House representing Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District.
During those years, the National Education Association’s own political action committee contributed a total of $60,000 to Walz’s campaigns. The amount rises to $67,450 when counting donations from individuals who identified themselves as belonging to the NEA.
The American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, donated $60,000 to Walz’s congressional campaigns, according to an Open Secrets report. (The national branches of the NEA and AFT aren’t bound by Minnesota’s donation limits.)
Walz, 60, sided with the American Federation of Teachers on more than 90% of its issues before Congress, AFT President Randi Weingarten has said.
“There is no distinction between the policies and dictates that Walz has rubber-stamped during his time as governor and the demands of the teachers unions,” Cristine Trooien, a mother of three who is executive director of the Minnesota Parents Alliance, told The Daily Signal.
Neither the NEA nor the AFT contributed to the 2022 campaign of Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, who is former President Donald Trump’s running mate in the Nov. 5 election, pitting them against Harris and Walz.
Teachers unions likely support Walz politically because his policy objectives and priorities are aligned with theirs, said Andrew Holman, a policy analyst for the Commonwealth Foundation whose report on union finances was published in December 2023.
Walz, who was a member of both the NEA and AFT, taught and coached football at the high school level before running for office.
Walz expanded collective bargaining rights, which teachers unions use to negotiate higher salaries and benefits; opposed right-to-work laws, which allow teachers to choose whether or not to join a union; and opposed popular school choice initiatives in Minnesota, which unions claim “rob our nation’s public schools” of “scarce funding and resources.”
Walz agrees with teachers unions on abortion, transgenderism, and making sexually graphic books available in school libraries.
As governor, he signed a bill enshrining abortion with no limitations in Minnesota law. The AFT and NEA both support abortion on demand.
Walz also signed into law what opponents call a “Transgender Trafficking Bill” because it allows minors to travel to Minnesota and receive medical interventions to “transition” them to the opposite sex without their parents’ knowledge or consent. The NEA’s “Schools in Transition” guide says teachers should carefully hide a student’s gender identity from unsupportive parents.
In light of parental efforts to remove pornographic books from school libraries, Walz signed into law a bill barring Minnesota schools from complying with book removal requests “based solely on the viewpoint, content, message, idea, or opinion conveyed.” The NEA recommended that teachers assign “Gender Queer” as summer reading even though the novel, told in comic-book style, depicts gay sex.
The AFT lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to keep schools closed longer during the COVID-19 pandemic. As governor, Walz kept Minnesota schools closed intermittently throughout the 2020-2021 school year and into 2021-2022. Many students were subjected to intermittent online or “distance learning” for two full years.
Neither the AFT nor the NEA responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment before publication of this report.
The heads of America’s two largest teachers unions cheered Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee Kamala Harris‘ selection of Walz as her running mate.
“Inspired Choice!!! Gov Walz represents America,” Weingarten, AFT’s president, wrote in a post on X. “A social studies teacher and veteran from rural Minn.”
NEA President Becky Pringle called Walz an ally of teachers unions. “Gov. Walz is known as the ‘Education Governor’ because he has been an unwavering champion for public school students and educators, and an ally for working families and unions,” Pringle said in a statement. “As a high school teacher and NEA member, Walz is committed to uplifting our public schools.”
But Buntrock, whose children attend public schools in Minnesota, said Walz’s alignment with union dictates resulted in negative outcomes.
“The results have been plummeting test scores following the COVID shutdowns, increasingly unsafe schools as teachers and administrators are prevented from reasonably disciplining students, and more and more division between students as they are treated differently according to their identity silos,” Buntrock told The Daily Signal. “More and more, the focus in schools is on social [and] emotional learning and social justice as a distraction from the loss of academic rigor.”
Minnesota Parents Alliance’s Trooien, another mom, said Walz follows “the destructive hyperpartisan orders of union bosses.”
“Walz has been presented time and again with opportunities to unite and lead Minnesota out of the chaos of 2020, but instead continues to follow a very narrow and divisive set of policy directives set by state and national teachers unions,” Trooien said. “As a result, K-12 test scores are at all-time lows; crime, violence, and taxes are at all-time highs; and families are fleeing Minnesota in record numbers.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/09/teachers-unions-donate-thousands-walz-campaigns/
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Louisiana AG Defends Constitutionality of Ten Commandments in Schools
The Louisiana law requiring schools to display the Ten Commandments is constitutional, state Attorney General Liz Murrill argues in a legal brief filed this week.
House Bill 71 made Louisiana the first state to require public universities and K-12 schools to display the Ten Commandments after Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed it into law on June 17.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the law, asserting that it violates both U.S. Supreme Court precedent and the First Amendment.
“Our brief illustrates just a few of the countless ways in which schools may constitutionally implement H.B. 71,” said Murrill, a Republican. “Because the ACLU cannot carry their burden to show that the Ten Commandments law is unconstitutional in all its applications, this lawsuit must be dismissed.”
“I am proud to defend the law, and I very much look forward to seeing the ACLU in court,” she said.
The brief, submitted Tuesday, lays out a number of applications of the Ten Commandments law, which it says are plainly constitutional.
Those include a poster citing the now-deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s emphasis on foundational documents, including the Ten Commandments; a poster describing Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Ten Commandments of Non-Violence,” alongside Moses’ own Ten Commandments; and a poster featuring the late actor Charlton Heston in his most famous movie role as Moses.
Murrill filed the brief in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.
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8 August, 2024
What’s Wrong With Gov. Tim Walz’s Education Policies
In herdlike fashion, the media describe Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as “folksy,” suggesting that he is just a regular guy with whom Middle America can identify easily. Supporters on social media liken the Democrat to a cool grandpa.
Judging from his education policies, however, Walz would be like your folksy grandpa only if you are descended from radical critical race and gender theorists.
Walz may look like a regular guy, with a bit of a belly and thinning grey hair, but his policy record is so extreme as to place him outside the mainstream of American politics.
As governor of Minnesota, Walz championed creation of a so-called Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Center at the Minnesota Department of Education “to build toward an education system committed to anti-racism.”
For those who may be unfamiliar with the particular meaning of the term “antiracism,” it doesn’t just involve being opposed to racism, as most Americans are. Marxist activist and professor Angela Davis, also once a vice presidential candidate (but for the Communist Party), put it this way: “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.”
Boston University professor and anti-racism author-activist Ibram X. Kendi explains that anti-racism requires that we depart from traditional American support for treating everyone equally as individuals regardless of race, and impose government policies to discriminate with the intent to rectify past discrimination.
As Kendi describes it: “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
To teach Minnesota’s children that they must embrace anti-racist discrimination, Walz pushed for the creation of Ethnic Studies requirements.
Katherine Kersten, senior policy fellow at Minnesota’s Center of the American Experiment, writes:
The radical Ethnic Studies addition to Minnesota’s proposed social studies standards encourages students to disrupt and dismantle America’s fundamental institutions. … The model curriculum’s ‘guiding principles’ call for ‘transformative resistance’ and repudiate ‘forms of power and oppression’ that include ‘cisheteropatriarchy’ and ‘anthropocentrism’—the belief that human beings are superior to animals. The curriculum originally incorporated student chants to bloodthirsty Aztec gods, but recently dropped these following a legal settlement.
During Walz’s governorship, the Minnesota Department of Education stacked the Ethnic Studies drafting committee with radical activists, including Jonathan Hamilton of Education for Liberation Minnesota, who had denounced the state’s public education system as a “white supremacist puzzle that must be taken apart and exposed for the lie it is.”
Walz’s record is no less extreme when it comes to gender issues in education. One of Walz’s signature accomplishments as Minnesota governor was to sign an executive order that ensured minors could undergo surgical and pharmacological procedures that would alter whether they looked like a boy or girl.
Ignoring concerns about whether children could meaningfully consent to irreversible “gender-changing” drugs and surgeries, Walz directed state agencies “to refuse approval of health plans that do not cover gender-affirming care and to investigate any complaints about denial of gender-affirming care.”
Walz also signed into law what the LBGTQ rights group GLAAD calls a “trans refuge bill,” saying it “protects transgender people and their families from legal repercussions for traveling to Minnesota to receive transgender health care.”
The governor did so despite objections that the law might undermine parents in other states who disagree with these medical procedures by allowing one parent to abscond to Minnesota with the child.
Walz ensured that these pro-trans/anti-female policies were incorporated into schools. In particular, the governor fought to allow biological males to compete in female school sports, arguing: “I’m not concerned about making life more difficult for children who already have an incredibly high suicide rate—children and people who want to be who they are.”
The folksy grandpa had nothing to say about whether allowing boys in girls sports might make athletic competition dangerous for girls who have to compete against bigger, stronger biological males who say they identify as girls.
Walz also signed into law a bill that placed “free” tampons and menstrual pads in all school restrooms, including those for boys. As the bill’s sponsor explained: “Not all students who menstruate are female. We need to make sure all students have access to these products.”
In backing the bill, Walz endorsed the idea that boys could go into girls’ bathrooms and vice versa.
Walz used Minnesota’s schools to advance a radical agenda of turning our children into activists who would seek to tear down our institutions and embrace “anti-racist” discrimination.
He exposed schoolgirls to stronger males who “identify” as girls in athletic competition as well as in girls’ locker rooms and restrooms.
Tim Walz’s education record is not so folksy after all.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/07/tim-walzs-radical-education-record/
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Mobile phone bans
Educators have been working for years to get their pupils back on track after those devastating pandemic school closures. But correcting the dire learning situation has been a work in progress ever since students returned to in-person learning.
Nonetheless, there’s a recent school policy that has taken hold across the country, and it might improve the trajectory for those who are still behind, as well as improve the success of those who are in their early years of adapting to the classroom environment.
If you are a parent preparing for the upcoming school year, you likely received an email from your district regarding a new cellphone policy to go into effect for the 2024 school year. Communities across the country have decided to clamp down on cellphone usage and use of social media apps while on campus, instructing students to either turn their phones off or put them on silent.
While the proposal is new to the U.S., such restrictions have been in place in other countries and have delivered a positive impact on exam scores while boosting the overall well-being for all involved.
As Forbes reports, “In September 2018, the French government banned the use of mobile phones in schools.” The law says that “children cannot use their telephones inside school grounds, nor can they connect via any device to the internet,” while making exceptions for children with special needs who might need immediate contact with a parent, caregiver, or medical professional.
Research has shown “increasingly conclusive findings linking cell phone bans to improved academic performance, enhanced mental health and more equitable outcomes for students,” says Jill Haffley, vice president of the the Colorado Springs School District 11 board of directors. As less time is spent with eyes glued to a screen, an improvement in concentration and the ability to retain information while enhancing their real-life connection to other human beings might grant the wish that some of us have: that our kids have a school experience similar to the cellphone-free existence that most of us grew up with.
Other areas of school life that could be improved by a cellphone-free system include student-on-student bullying and student-on-teacher violence. It’s no secret that social media has created nightmarish bullying scenarios for far too many students. The use of these apps makes it impossible for victims to escape the harassment of others or find any relief from the challenges created by unkind peers. Teachers, too, may find themselves on better terms with their pupils if they don’t have to compete with TikTok or Snapchat for their attention.
It has become far too common on social media to see videos of teachers facing a threat or literal act of violence at the simple request for students to put their phones away, or after having taken them away when they refuse to comply. The risk would be significantly mitigated with a universal understanding that personal devices are not to be used during school hours at all.
Florida was among the first to adopt this phone-free approach last year, and districts across the country are taking similar action. Florida’s Martin County issued its notice this year to reinforce what had been successfully enacted in 2023 across the state.
In New York’s Lackawanna City School District, a no-cellphone/electronics policy was announced for grades 6-12. As Superintendent Nadia Nashir explained, “We need to do something and research has shown that schools that consistently restrict cell phones during the day, their students do better in every area academically, socially, and emotionally.”
Folsom Cordova Unified School District in California used even more specific language in its policy to include “cell phones, smart phones, smart watches, and other communications devices,” likely as a way to get ahead of those students who tell their parents that since their specific device wasn’t mentioned, it doesn’t count.
Though a cellphone ban may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to more pressing challenges, when we can find an issue that has support across the political spectrum — and when we can agree on its benefits for children regardless of background, ethnicity, or LGBTQ identity — we will take the win.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/109169-a-school-ban-we-can-agree-on-2024-08-08
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Fraud and sex slaves: blitz on dodgy training colleges in Australia
Dozens of dodgy training providers have been shut down over ties to organised crime, fraud and bogus qualifications, as cash-starved universities threaten to sack staff.
Home Affairs officials have revealed that sex trafficking and slavery among international students – along with housing shortages – are the main reasons the Albanese government is rationing enrolments of international students in Australian universities, training colleges and schools.
The admission came as the Australian Skills Quality Authority told The Australian it was “actively managing more than 170 serious matters’’ involving 140 private non-university training providers.
An ASQA spokeswoman said 33 providers had been struck off the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students during 2023-24.
ASQA is still investigating another 140 colleges, including 60 per cent that deliver training to international students. “More than 70 per cent relate to alleged fraud, including bogus qualifications, cash for (qualifications), fabrication of assessments and evidence, ghost colleges, funding fraud and visa/migration risks,’’ she said.
Half ASQA’s investigations relate to the “disruption of criminal networks’’.
These include Operation Inglenook – a Border Force initiative to rescue students brought to Australia as sex slaves – and Fraud Fusion, a multi-agency taskforce to stop National Disability Insurance Scheme frauds.
ASQA’s crackdown coincides with federal government plans to ration the number of international students who enrol in individual universities and training colleges.
University vice-chancellors on Tuesday demanded that federal Education Minister Jason Clare back down on plans to slash foreign student numbers by January 1. “They are draconian, interventionist and amount to economic vandalism on the day when we’ve seen Wall Street suffer its worst result in two years, creating massive global economic uncertainty,’’ Group of
Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson told a Senate inquiry into the draft legislation on Tuesday.
“Let’s be clear, the archetype of shonks and crooks is not representative of the university sector, and certainly not the Group of Eight.’’
Ms Thomson said universities supported the government’s plan to crack down on compliance in the higher education sector but not to cap the number of international students.
Mr Clare said the government’s reforms would “ensure quality and integrity’’ in international education.
“Once the legislation passes, the intention is to set limits for every university, higher education and vocational education provider that educates an international student,’’ he said.
Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy told the inquiry that 14,000 university jobs were at risk as a result of a 23 per cent drop in visas granted to fee-paying international students over the past year.
He said the reduction of 60,000 students due to start their studies next year “would represent a $4.3bn hit to the economy and could cost the university sector alone over 14,000 jobs’’.
The Home Affairs Department’s group manager of immigration policy, Tara Cavanagh, told the Senate hearing that two independent reviews had revealed exploitation of international students living in Australia.
She said there was evidence of “poor quality education products, false promises of pathways to permanent residence, sex trafficking, bonded labour and slavery-like conditions’’.
“Such activity and funding is supporting networks of criminal activity inside and outside of Australia,’’ she said.
“(The) reviews have shown there are large numbers of education agents and providers acting in collusion to lure young people to Australia with the promise of full-time work and not study.
“Those students have been found to have been enrolled in what are essentially ghost colleges.’’
Ms Cavanagh said Home Affairs had found unscrupulous training providers poaching legitimate students from universities.
“An (immigration) agent from another provider swoops on them, convinces them to change into a lower level course, channels them into full time work, puts in the system that the student is studying but in reality they’re enrolled in a ghost college and working often for very low wages,’’ she said.
The government’s legislation responds to growing public concern that soaring numbers of international students are pushing up rents in a cost of living crunch.
Immigration data shows that 780,104 international students are living in Australia – a 21 per cent surge in just 12 months, and 16 per cent more than pre-pandemic numbers.
The housing shortage is so severe that the University of Sydney is now appealing to its alumni to rent out their spare bedrooms to students struggling to pay commercial rents.
Alumni will be able to charge students $290 per week, without meals, or $360 a week for homestays including meals. Hosts will have to undergo criminal background checks and home inspections.
Chief University Infrastructure Officer Greg Robinson said the homestays could be a “rich cultural exchange of students and hosts’’.
“It’s essential our students can access safe and affordable housing,’’ he said.
The university announced its billeting program after it was exposed by National Union of Students national president Ngaire Bogemann during the Senate hearing in Canberra on Tuesday.
Ms Bogemman had described the rent-a-room scheme as a “horror story’’.
“At the University of Sydney, alumni have been asked to provide student accommodation in their own homes because there’s a lack of available beds close to campus,’’ she said.
“That is quite alarming and not something students should be pushed into.’’
National Tertiary Education Union public policy director Dr Terri MacDonald told the hearing that “bad actors’’ are cashing in on foreign students.
“International students are our second-largest group of migrant workers,’’ she said.
“They’re also most exposed to trafficking, wage theft and labour exploitation. With these factors in mind, many of the recent changes the government has made to international education are sensible and supported by the NTU
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7 August, 2024
VICTORY: U.S. Department of Education Makes Formal Finding That New Jersey School District Violated Parental Rights
Last week, America First Legal (AFL) secured an important victory for the parents of Cedar Grove, New Jersey, when the U.S. Department of Education decided that the Cedar Grove School District violated the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA). According to the Department, the district violated the law by failing to provide parents with lawful prior notice of and a meaningful opportunity to opt their children out of the District’s “equity” and “diversity” surveys.
The PPRA is an important federal law that protects public school parents and children by guaranteeing parents the right to review the curriculum used to teach their children at school and to have prior notice of and a meaningful right to opt out of intrusive and biased surveys and studies of their children. Among other things, the PPRA prevents public schools from collecting information about political affiliations oliefs, the sex behavior or attitudes, and “critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships” (i.e. anything related to “white privilege” or “anti-racism”) of a student or her family.
The PPRA’s regulations also address “socio-emotional learning” activities, covering any method of obtaining information, including a group activity, that is not directly related to academic instruction and that is designed to elicit information about attitudes, habits, traits, opinions, beliefs or feelings, and any activity involving the planned, systematic use of methods or techniques that are not directly related to academic instruction and that are designed to affect behavioral, emotional, or attitudinal characteristics of an individual or group.
In 2021, six parents filed PPRA complaints with the U.S. Department of Education challenging the Cedar Grove School District’s failure to provide prior notice and obtain parental consent before administering intrusive surveys. These “surveys” included questions about same-sex unions, religious affiliation, gender identity, and race/ethnicity, asking whether school is “a safe place” for the student’s “race/ethnic group,” whether “adults in your school are fair in dealing with your particular racial/ethnic group,” and whether “adults in your school are fair in dealing with people not in your particular racial/ethnic group.”
The Department sat on these complaints for over a year. Then, AFL intervened with a demand letter and multiple Freedom of Information Act requests. Two months later, the Department finally opened an investigation. After additional months of delay, AFL sued the Biden Administration, arguing that the government’s failure to investigate, process, review, and adjudicate the parents’ complaints in a lawfully timely fashion nullified the parents’ PPRA rights.
On July 26, 2024, the Department of Education finally issued its findings, concluding that the school district had violated the law.
Interestingly, the Department refused to determine whether questions about “gender identity” trigger parental rights under the PPRA.
Nevertheless, citing New Jersey law, the Department prohibited the District from asking “similar questions” in future surveys without prior written parental consent.
The Department’s decision is an important first step, but only the first step, in the battle to protect parents’ rights to know what woke public school bureaucrats are doing to our children. AFL will continue fighting relentlessly for parents and for the rule of law
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Australia: Early childhood education crisis deepening as 60 per cent of workers plan to leave
A solid majority of early childhood educators are planning to leave in the next three years, highl?ighting a deepening crisis in the sector.
A snap poll conducted by the United Workers Union also found 97 per cent of early learning centres had already lost educators in the past year.?
Unsurprisingly, 98 per cent of educators also reported feeling under pressure due to staff shortages, compared to 87 per cent of centres in 2023.
A total of 84 per cent of parents agreed that their child's educator is under considerable pressure.
In 2024, 70 per cent of rooms have been reported as under-ratio, with 25 per cent of these rooms under-ratio frequently.
Parents are also feeling it, with 76 per cent believing staff shortages and turnover are hurting the quality of education and care their child receives.
"Twelve months ago, we warned of a crisis in early learning: thousands of educators had left, rooms were shut, and families were being hit hard," UWU early education director Carolyn Smith.
"The new evidence today is unequivocal: 12 months on the crisis is even worse. Immediate action is required to tackle the growing workforce crisis."
She said a wage increase was "critical" for keeping workers.?
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Outdoor education teaches valuable life skills, but enrolments are declining due to academic pressure
Long, manicured nails are hastily clipped as sweaty palms clutch onto climbing ropes draped over sandstone, the students' lifeline on the cliff face.
Dangling in mid-air, their tears, screams and the odd expletive are eventually replaced by cheers, giggles and hugs.
These teenagers are climbing up and abseiling down a mountain for their outdoor education subject.
But despite the subject's benefits, students wanting to participate in it face increasing barriers.
These girls from Clonard College in Geelong have travelled nearly four hours to climb Mount Arapiles, a famed mountain in western Victoria that for decades has drawn rock climbers from around the world.
"I had a panic attack, but it wasn't that bad, my instructor was really good," year 11 student Kenzie Pinkerton says.
The day begins with a dozen girls sitting on wooden benches braiding each other's hair; their backpacks, shoes, helmets, and harnesses are tossed in the centre.
Scaling 100-metre cliffs is unlike anything the girls have ever done before. It is the practical component for their Victoria Certificate of Education (VCE) outdoor education, a non-compulsory subject that suits students who learn by "doing", by allowing them to plan and participate in outdoor activities.
"The thing outdoor education gives you, that other subjects don't, is life skills," says Shelby Hackett, the girls' outdoor education teacher.
"Life isn't just books and computers. Life is in the real world, where you've got to communicate with people, you've got to adapt and be flexible."
Ms Hackett believes the skills and experiences learnt in outdoor education better prepare young people for life after study, but students who want to participate are finding it harder because of increasing academic workloads.
Life outside books and computers
Ms Hackett explains that the girls learn to cook, set up camp, cooperate with others, manage their time, and negotiate study and work commitments.
"Communicating with [their] teachers to catch up on work — they're all important life skills that will most likely make them more successful at university, than if they just do straight study in a classroom," she says.
The girls also build confidence, independence, and resilience.
"In the middle of the cliff I was about to give up, but I pushed through it," says Alisha Rowe, a year 10 student. "I had to be responsible for the next person who came after me. Now, sitting at the top, I'm really proud of myself," says Bailee Bonanno in year 10.
"A big factor for them is getting them to be OK with being a little dirty … sometimes the toilets don't flush, and we don't have a shower, don't have a mirror," Ms Hackett says.
"Some of the things are uncomfortable, but part of the learning is being uncomfortable."
Year 11 student Katelyn Irvine says Ms Hackett showed her she could enjoy life outside without the need to be plugged in all the time.
"I wouldn't expect [to] have learned anything without my phone because it's got a whole bunch of information in it," she says.
"But being outside and seeing it all is just like, woah."
Growing academic pressure
Despite the benefits of outdoor education, Ms Hackett says students are finding it harder to attend camp while keeping up with the academic workload.
She says enrolment numbers are falling as students feel pressured to drop the subject in favour of more academic ones, like maths and English, the closer they get to year 12 exams.
Ms Hackett says one VCE cohort began with 20 students but dropped to seven by the end of the course.
And of the 77 outdoor education students she had last year, only 14 chose to continue with it as a VCE subject this year.
It's not yet clear how many of those 14 students will continue it next year.
She says many students fear missing class and school assessments that can only be done within strict time frames.
Another deterrent is that the subject attracts a penalty in the overall ATAR scores, which determine university entry.
Ms Hackett says outdoor education scores are scaled down, so a raw score of 35 for example, would only count as 28 towards their final ATAR.
"They look at the drop in the ATAR and they go, 'It's not worth my time'.
"But I think the life skills they get out of it and the challenges they overcome are worth more than the ATAR score they get at the end."
Between 2018 and 2022, data from the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority showed a decline in outdoor education enrolments the closer students got to finishing year 12.
Student enrolments fell as they progressed through each semester with the largest drop between unit 2 and unit 3, which traditionally coincided with students finishing year 11 and moving into year 12.
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4 August, 2024
What Makes Universities Speak Out on Some Issues but Not Others?
University presidents can be chatterboxes on world events, no matter how removed from the immediate operation of their institution. But when it comes to the attempted assassination of a former president who is a leading contender for a new term, the cat seems to have gotten their tongue.
We searched the websites of more than 40 universities, including those in the Ivy League and the Big 10, for statements by their leaders condemning this instance of political violence. We found only one. The president of Michigan State University, Kevin M. Guskiewicz, was unequivocal in declaring: “Today’s violence at a presidential political rally is a threat to our democracy. Violence has no place in American politics.”
Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, issued a statement to clarify that “the individual who attempted to assassinate former President Trump had no association with ASU.” But he had nothing to say about the attack beyond denouncing false rumors. Besides these two exceptions, university leaders were silent on the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump.
Yet they have plenty to say about other political events. Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia rushed to issue a statement on Jan. 6, 2021, responding to that day’s events: “These acts are reprehensible and have no place in our country. I strongly condemn these criminal attempts to undermine our republic.” Apparently, trying to kill a former president and current candidate is not reprehensible or threatening enough to our republic to warrant comment.
Then-Ohio State University President Kristina M. Johnson emphasized her institution’s opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, declaring that “Ohio State has always been, and always will be, an institution that celebrates diversity and stands for dialogue and diplomacy over violence.” On violence against a former president of the United States, Ohio State has nothing to say.
Harvard’s former leader, Claudine Gay, elaborated on her feelings in reaction to the killing of George Floyd, saying, “For some in our community, and I count myself among them, the events in Minneapolis, Brunswick, Louisville and beyond, feel anything but abstract.” When Ms. Gay struggled to express similar empathy for Jewish students in the wake of Harvard protests in support of an attack that slaughtered Jewish Israelis, she attracted critical attention that revealed an alarming pattern of plagiarism in her scholarly writing.
To avoid future charges of employing a double standard regarding whether and how Harvard issues official statements, a university-appointed committee recommended that “the university and its leaders should not, however, issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.”
Perhaps the silence from Harvard and hundreds of other university leaders on the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump was the result of this newfound commitment to institutional restraint on public comment. Despite having previously issued statements on the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, endorsement of LGBTQ pride and climate change, perhaps universities are determined to stay quiet on issues tangential to their regular operations—starting now.
It would be laudable if universities adopted and stuck to positions of institutional neutrality, such as the Kalven principles. No one could be blamed, however, for doubting the sincerity and continued practice of university restraint in issuing public statements. Even Harvard’s new policy emphasized that the university is not value-neutral and would speak publicly on matters when it really wanted to, stating that “the report’s carefully worded language also provides administrators with enough flexibility to issue statements when they deem necessary to do so.”
If Harvard or other universities were serious about their intent to refrain from public comment, they would retract all prior statements violating their newly issued policies. If we are to believe that Harvard’s silence on political violence against Mr. Trump is a matter of principle rather than an instance of selective mutism, they should retract their prior statements on George Floyd, climate change and other matters not directly related to the university’s core function. The fact that they have not done so makes us suspect that Harvard, like others, will suddenly find their voice again when leftist causes are at stake.
Silence on political matters is perfectly appropriate for universities. Hypocrisy and double standards are not.
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In Speech to Teachers’ Union, Harris Revives Culture War Against People of Faith
Vice President Kamala Harris spoke before the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) last Thursday in her first speech as a presidential candidate.
Rather than hiding the fact that the AFT has had a tremendous amount of power and influence on the Biden administration and the country, Harris proudly announced it, thanking AFT President Randi Weingarten for being a “great force” and “an incredible friend and adviser” to the White House. As Family Research Council’s Senior Fellow for Education Studies Meg Kilgannon explained on “Washington Watch” last week, “AFT was a key advisor to the CDC in developing the plans for school re-openings, which were actually plans to keep schools closed. And we all know the harm that that did to children and families.”
Harris Claims That Teachers’ Student Loan Debt Has Been Forgiven
Harris told the AFT teachers, “We see a future … where no teacher has to struggle with the burden of student loan debt. So, as an example, our administration has forgiven student loan debt for nearly five million Americans and twice as much for our public servants, including our teachers.” In reality, however, the Biden administration’s SAVE plan has been tied up in court, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June of 2023 that the administration doesn’t have the authority to forgive student loan debt.
Why should those hardworking taxpayers who decided not to go to college or who have worked hard to pay off their student loans be forced to pay for others’ student loan debt? A fairer, more ethical approach to alleviating student debt is to make college more affordable, transparent, and accountable for everyone. One way to do that is for Congress to pass the College Cost Reduction Act introduced by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) in January.
Harris Accuses Republicans of Attacking the Freedom to Vote
Harris also told teachers, “While you teach students about democracy and representative government, extremists attack the sacred freedom to vote.”
In reality, however, Republicans are working hard to strengthen election integrity while nearly all House Democrats voted against the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act (H.R. 8281) which would certify only U.S. citizens to register to vote in national elections.
Democrats are also opposing bills that would stop election fraud at the state level. In Michigan, for example, all Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against two bills that strip the power of local election officials to investigate allegations of fraud and double the fees of candidates who request ballot recounts, among other changes.
Harris Continues the Narrative that Republicans Are ‘Banning Books’
A mere 12 days after the assassination attempt on former President Trump, Harris used incendiary rhetoric as she talked to her passionate audience. (It is worth watching this part of her speech in full.) Harris declared, “And while you teach students about our nation’s past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation’s true and full history — including book bans. Book bans in this year of our Lord 2024. And on these last two issues … just think about it. So, we want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books.”
As Kilgannon explained, “We’re not about banning books. We are about having children protected from inappropriate material in their school libraries. And any book that’s not selected by a library can still be purchased at Barnes & Noble or any other bookstore, or Amazon or any number of places. So the book is in no way banned. We simply do not allow certain materials to be presented to children when they are incapable of understanding them, or they are inappropriate educationally. And so this charge about banning books just rings so hollow. Parents can see right through that, and it’s such a weak point for them. I’m surprised she brought it up, but I guess it must work with their base.”
Harris Urges Teachers to Continue Teaching Children LGBTQ Ideology
Harris went on to declare, “…[T]hese extremists also attack the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. They pass so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws. Now, I have to tell you, so many of you may know, in 2004, on Valentine’s Day weekend, I was one of the first elected officials in the country to perform same-sex marriages. So, here’s the thing: It pains me so to think 20 years later that there are some young teachers in their 20s who are afraid to put up a photograph of themselves and their partner for fear they could lose their job. … In this moment, we are in a fight for our most fundamental freedoms. And to this room of leaders, I say: Bring it on. Bring it on. Bring it on.”
While teachers (and all Americans) have the freedom to love whom they love, they should not disregard parental authority and families’ religious beliefs by pushing LGBTQ ideology (or Queer Theory) on students. The laws that LGBTQ activists call “Don’t Say Gay” laws actually protect elementary school students from activist teachers who want to indoctrinate kids on topics like gay sex, oral sex, gender fluidity, and other LGBTQ propaganda.
People of Faith Should Boldly and Lovingly Defend Truth in Today’s Culture Wars
Many of us fondly remember teachers that have had a significant, lasting impact on our lives. We are extremely grateful for the hard work, dedication, and attention that teachers pour into future generations. The nation’s largest teachers’ unions, however, including AFT and National Education Association, are deeply political and partisan. As Kilgannon explained, “They’re against vouchers, any kind of school choice. … They are all about using their union dues and their union members in Democratic Party politics, in terms of manning polls, turning out voters, all of the machinery around the Democratic Party is based on union people largely doing that work.”
Teachers’ unions are powerful political groups that hold leftist, Marxist views, seeking to fundamentally change America, as Kilgannon documents in FRC’s publications, “The SPLC’s Radical ‘Learning for Justice’ Program” and “A Concerned Citizen’s Guide to Engaging with Public Schools.”
It is essential for parents and all Americans to be aware of the power of teachers’ unions, the SPLC, and NextGen Marxists. The current culture war is one of NextGen Marxists vs. people of faith, traditional families, and freedom-loving Americans. It is also a spiritual war. We should not shy away from our faith or biblical values. We should continue to teach our children to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength by studying the Bible with them and teaching them to love their neighbors as ourselves — even when we disagree with them. We should teach them about the sanctity of every single human life from the moment of fertilization until natural death.
Finally, we should equip our children to recognize lies and defend truth by teaching them a biblical worldview, the truth about America’s history, and the principles upon which it was founded.
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Alarm bells over Australian universities’ financial dependence on international students
Australian universities’ dependence on international student fees has “fuelled a culture of revenue, profit and competition” and created an unstable business model, the head of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has warned.
Critics representing various interests in the sector joined in expressing anxiety at the position universities had found themselves in as the federal government aggressively tries to wind back the number of international students.
The chief executive of Universities Australia, Luke Sheehy, said tertiary institutions had “come to rely on international student revenue to fund everything we do in the face of declining government support in recent years – from teaching and research to infrastructure projects and employing people in well-paid jobs”.
In percentage terms, Australia has more international students than any OECD country bar Luxembourg – and well in excess of the UK, Canada and the United States.
The Group of Eight (Go8) institutions are particularly reliant on international student fees, with foreign enrolments making up 47% of the total cohort at the University of Sydney and more than 35% at the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, the University of Queensland and the University of Adelaide.
Universities earn nearly twice as much from overseas students as from domestic students. Average revenue per domestic full-time equivalent student was $22,996 in 2023, compared with $41,117 for an overseas equivalent student.
The president of the NTEU, Alison Barnes, said a growing dependence on foreign income had fuelled “corporatisation” of the sector.
“[International students] add a lot to our campuses, they’re an asset – but they’re seen as cash cows,” she said.
“There’s a systemic risk associated with relying on international student fees that was demonstrated during Covid – it’s not stable. But it’s inherently problematic beyond the associated risks.
“The aggressive pursuit of international student income has fuelled a culture of revenue, profit and competition for students.”
When the federal government released its strategy to fix Australia’s “broken” migration system late last year, international students were squarely on the agenda.
The education minister, Jason Clare, said the government was sending a “clear message” it would act to “protect Australia’s reputation as a high-quality international education provider”, announcing tougher minimum English-language requirements and targeted visa scrutiny of “high-risk” providers.
Since then, a series of levers have been pulled aiming to reduce the flow of international students into Australia, which reached record highs in February.
First, the commonwealth proposed a cap on international students, giving the education minister unprecedented powers to limit enrolments by institution and course.
Then it more than doubled the international student visa application fee from $710 to $1,600, a move described by the International Education Association of Australia as “death by a thousand cuts”.
Sheehy described the government’s approach to international students as “policy chaos” that could cost thousands of jobs. The sector needed “certainty, stability and growth”, he told Guardian Australia.
“International education is a great Australian success story and any changes to the policies that underpin this $48bn sector must be weighed carefully against its significant and far-reaching impact,” he said.
‘A victim of its own success’
Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary at the immigration department, has been lobbying the federal government to implement a minimum university entrance exam score in place of its proposed reforms. He said the score, similar to an Atar, would limit the incentive for institutions to put tuition fee revenue above academic excellence.
Rizvi has been a longstanding critic of successive governments’ approach to international education. He told the National Press Club in June that the “underfunded” sector had “long been chasing tuition revenue from overseas students and sacrificing learning integrity in the process”.
But he maintains that an increase in visa fees will simply mean more government revenue – not better quality students.
“We’re actually shooting ourselves in the foot,” he wrote earlier this year. “The people it will deter will tend to be good students with options.”
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1 August, 2024
In Brief: College Men and Patriotism
American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Samuel J. Abrams has noticed a growing and troubling trend in America, especially on our college campuses — the increasing political divide between men and women. Abrams points to the recent pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses as evidence.
The ideas shared by the fraternity brothers stood in sharp contradiction to those of the protesters. The brothers, full of patriotism and respect for American values and its institutions were juxtaposed by those who shouted vitriolic hate and anti-Semitic chants, led mostly by women.
Men and women are growing farther apart politically, especially on college campuses. College-aged men — a shrinking demographic — have become more conservative, while college-aged women are becoming more liberal. Young women are more likely to vote, care about political issues, and participate in social movements and protests than young men. A cursory look at the recent spring protests related to Israel-Hamas often had women leading the charge; women were at the center of hunger strikes and public statements that were divorced from factual reality and established truths.
This has resulted in a growing disparity in patriotism, wherein significantly more men are willing to stand up and fight for America than are women.
Adding an additional layer to the question of gender in America, I want to argue that there is now a clear patriotism gap among college and university men and women too and this should not be overlooked. A June 2024 survey of over 3,000 college and university students from The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) revealed that women would not fight for this country while men would if there were an invasion. ACTA asked if whether the United States were invaded by Russia as Ukraine has been, would respondents flee the country or stay and fight. About 60 percent of men reported that they would stay and fight compared to just 34 percent of women. 66 percent of women said that they would flee the country which is remarkable proof for just how little patriotism and loyalty so many women have to this country and its historic institutions. Moreover, the survey found other appreciable gender-based differences that cannot be overlooked. One is on the issue of the rule of law which ties in well with the recent protests — women (42 percent) are less likely to support the rule of law compared to men (52 percent) as a key civic principle. Moreover, women are less likely to accept free markets as a central component of civic life here as well (41 percent) compared to men (56 percent).
Harvard’s Institute of Politics annual survey of younger Americans — 18-to-29-year-olds nationwide in the spring of 2024 — captured similar gender differences regarding a love for America. When asked if they would rather live in America than any other place despite the nation’s challenges and imperfections, 66 percent of men compared to 48 percent of women — an 18-point difference — would still live in the United States and not want to live elsewhere. In the 2023 Fall edition of the survey, about 38 percent of men reported that they were hopeful about America’s future compared to a quarter (25 percent) of women.
This troubling gender gap in patriotism is a problem our nation needs to deal with for the future of America.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/108920-in-brief-college-men-and-patriotism-2024-07-31
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There Are Places Where Great Books and Ideas Are Still Taught
While leading public and private universities still seem to refuse to have students absorb the best parts of our history and traditions, there are, however, diamonds in the rough, places where great books and ideas, masterpieces and heroes, and beauty and sublimity are still imparted to young minds.
They are often found in lesser-known spots, certain small colleges, and independent centers at larger universities that maintain the wisdom and excellence of the past. At these places, education in civics, for instance, is done through the examination of ancient classics, the American State Papers, and crucial historical episodes from former times, not through activism in the service of ideological causes. English classes assign novels and poems that stand the test of time, not contemporary works that satisfy certain political tastes but have uncertain literary merit.
One example is the graduate program in the humanities at Faulkner University, a private Christian school located in Montgomery, Alabama. The doctoral track is “Rooted in the Great Tradition of the Western world,” the webpage says, with the materials understood within a Christian framework (there is also a Master’s track). Faculty have degrees from the University of Chicago, U of Wisconsin, U of Dallas, and Florida State, while most of the 64 students in the program come from the professional ranks, many of them working teachers in high schools and community colleges aiming to earn an advanced degree. The director of the program, professor Jason Jewell, tells me that the people who started it a dozen years ago did so with the explicit aim of maintaining the kind of traditional formation they themselves underwent years earlier.
It’s an online program well suited to part-time students with full-time jobs. The courses show exactly what a humanities education ought to be. One of them at Faulkner is “Historical Investigations,” which includes works by Thucydides, Plutarch, Augustine, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Marx. (People who criticize Great Books curricula as conservative or reactionary overlook the number of liberals and radicals in the canon—Marx, Voltaire, Rousseau, Nietzsche ....) Another course, “Examining Fine Arts,” has students study the aesthetics of Immanuel Kant, Hegel, Wagner, G. B. Shaw, and John Dewey. One course called “Literary Analysis: Great Ideas and Authors” runs from Plato and Aristotle to Cicero and Longinus to 20th-century literary theorists.
These are daunting syllabi, but the program is popular. Enrollments have more than doubled in recent years, Mr. Jewell says, and the unit pays for itself (in his words, it’s a “net revenue generator”). The webpage foregrounds “intellectual rigor and spiritual engagement,” tradition and greatness, which apparently appeal strongly to attendees.
We find none of the phony buzzwords so common in elite program descriptions such as “cultural logics” and “gender theory,” terms that indicate the low value those departments place on the acquisition of tradition. Indeed, some might regard the vision of Faulkner University and other traditionalist institutions as backward and closed-minded, the opposite of the cosmopolitan awareness to be found at elite colleges. I have heard the snobbery expressed many times during my own academic career. “Very well,” we might reply, “you do your thing and we’ll do ours.” As long as students come once we’ve built it, we need not care about what’s happening among the rich and famous.
I cite Faulkner University and Mr. Jewell as reassurance to people in despair over the decay of the humanities in higher education. If we base our judgment on what the elites say and do, we have good cause for dismay, to be sure. The situation at Faulkner is a strong rebuttal. It says that education free of 21st-century politics and committed to erudition and heritage still exists. As has been frequently noted, one of the big stories in K-12 schooling in the last few years is the growth of high schools committed to classical education. More and more kids are leaving 12th Grade with a little Latin and lots of ancient and modern philosophy, literature, religion, and history. They and their parents like the traditionalist approach.
If they wish to continue it after graduation, they should be encouraged to search for higher learning beyond the Ivies, large public universities, and expensive liberal arts colleges. We have prominent classical schools such as the University of Dallas and Hillsdale, and we have many more not-so-prominent institutions such as Faulkner, Belmont Abbey, Thales College, and many more. In those places, the humanities are thriving, and the kids are, too.
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It’s time for teachers to be given back control
It doesn’t take a university degree in education to recognise a connection between a dismal classroom environment and poor academic results, with the most recent OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) confirming Australia is seriously deficient in both.
The most recent PISA results reveal, incredibly, half our pupils failed to reach proficiency standards in maths and 43 per cent failed to reach proficiency in reading. Our students are now four years behind ladder-leaders Singapore in maths, and more than two years behind them in reading and science. At the same time, PISA also found the nation’s classrooms are among the most disruptive in the world, ranking 71st out of 81. More than 40 per cent of students confirmed there is ‘noise and disorder’ in their mathematics classes all or most of the time. Almost a third said the teacher had to wait a long time for students to settle, with one in five students saying this occurred in most classes.
In addition, school principals have been subjected to levels of physical violence, threats, and bullying never before seen in the history of a long-running national survey measuring wellbeing among school leaders. Of the 2,300 principals who took part in the Australian Catholic University’s annual principal safety survey, 48 per cent reported experiencing or witnessing physical violence, and about 54 per cent were threatened with violence.
Amid this measurable mayhem, what warrants close attention are the ‘student-centric’ teaching practices, long understood to be detrimental, which persist in many of our schools.
In recent decades the Australian education system has been dominated by a ‘student-led’ educational philosophy, where the teacher is seen not as the authority figure and responsible adult, but as a guide or partner in a child’s education – a friendly sidekick in the learning process and an all-embracing carer, sharing the student’s journey. This feel-good educational ideology is readily identified by a classroom where students – often with their backs to the teacher – are seated at tables bunched in groups, providing almost unlimited opportunity for distraction.
Discipline in such environments is viewed more as a counselling session. Misbehaviour is addressed with ‘round table restorative practices’, involving discussion of how one ‘feels’ about the situation, which the teacher must then document. When a student misbehaves, the underlying message is that the teacher has somehow failed to understand the student or failed to cater to their specific learning needs – and more teacher attention is required. It could be the lesson should have been more engaging because, naturally, a bored student will ‘act out’. Regardless, the ‘student-led’ education philosophy, by design or unintended consequence, lays the blame for an individual student’s poor behaviour largely at the feet of the teacher. Quick and at-the-ready punitive consequences for poor behaviour have more or less been removed from the teacher’s toolkit – viewed as old-fashioned, negative and inappropriate. The burden to ‘try harder’ to address student misbehaviour falls on the teacher – not the misbehaving student.
Students and parents today are demanding more of teachers than 20 years ago, and results have only gone backwards. At its core, the problem is the current and widely employed classroom practices which actively undermine teacher authority and morale, and adversely impact the teacher’s ability to deliver productive lessons of the highest possible quality.
Explicit teaching of phonics was demonised and, starting in the 1970s, was replaced with ‘student-led inquiry-based learning’ which relies heavily on strategies to guess words based on pictures and context. In a recent announcement, Victoria’s Education Minister Ben Carroll said, from next year, all government schools would employ the explicit teaching of phonics for a minimum of 25 minutes a day. Unsurprisingly, the mandate was instantly rejected by the Australian Education Union as evidence of the Minister displaying ‘breathtaking disregard for teachers’ and advised its members to ignore the announcement.
Teacher unions continually demand more funding, claiming this will address the decline in standards, and that the student-teacher ratio be reduced. However, experience demonstrates that more funding will not address the crisis in our classrooms. In Victoria, Institute of Public Affairs’ research shows while the state’s education budget increased by 30 per cent (from $10.73 billion in the 2013/14 financial year to $14.13 billion in the 2020/21 financial year), there was barely any improvement in student performance. Victorian NAPLAN scores in reading and numeracy today have improved less than 1 per cent since 2015. Excuses that the pernicious effect of social media is to blame ring hollow because all children in the developed world have access to social media.
The number one ranking in PISA scores is Singapore, where well behaved and respectful students respond to the encouragement of suitably trained and supported teachers, producing academic outcomes that put Australia to shame. There are, of course, important cultural and historical limitations to comparing Australian schooling with that of Singapore, and not all of their classroom practices should or could be adopted here. However, key to Singapore’s success is the notion that teaching is an honourable profession and that teachers will stay fast to the highest standards and ideals of their profession. Consequently, teachers are held in high esteem and students are taught and expected to demonstrate respect. Disciplinary consequences such as detention, suspension, and corrective community service are mainstream.
Another ‘old-fashioned’ educational model is England’s Michaela School, often referred to as the ‘strictest school in the UK’. At Michaela, students work in an atmosphere of sober scholarship. ‘Demerits’ are handed out for the slightest errors – forgetting a pen for example. Two demerits in one class result in an automatic detention. Every detail of the school environment is designed to maximise the amount of learning time. Unlike many Australian classrooms, Michaela students are expected to sit bolt upright, face turned to the front. Students are taught and expected to ‘track’ the teacher with their eyes to maximise concentration and minimise distraction. The emphasis is on the teacher and, importantly, there is no enquiry learning or group projects.
Michaela employs strict and explicit teaching methods that have seen a French class observed and described as indistinguishable from the level you might expect at an elite school such as Eton. But Michaela School is not an elite school, it is a community school with its pupils among the least privileged in London. Five years after first opening its doors to pupils, Michaela’s results placed it as one of the best non-selective schools in the country. In the GSE exams, more than half (54 per cent) of the students gained the equivalent to the old-style ‘A’ in at least five subjects, which was more than twice the national average of 22 per cent. 18 per cent of Michaela students achieved an overall grade 9 status, the highest grade, compared to 4.5 per cent nationwide.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/its-time-for-teachers-to-be-given-back-control/
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
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/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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