Archive for the ‘Political Correctness’ Category

(Editor’s note: This is the first of many posts on LFR by Rambling Rose.)

Academic Balance: Education vs. Indoctrination

No one need be surprised when educational topics are discussed/debated that there are divergent views. “Controversial” is the term chosen by the Pioneer Press to describe a bill (SF 2487) introduced by State Senator Carla Nelson (R-Rochester). She states “it is necessary to protect students from being forced to express political viewpoints, to require that teachers present a variety of opinions on curriculum and to prohibit discrimination based on political or religious beliefs.”

The need arose following a lawsuit by high school students against the Edina school district as reported by the Star Tribune. The high school’s Young Conservative Club charged that their free speech rights were violated when they protested …. and the district revoked their status as a school-sponsored organization (denied by the school district). Five students exchanged private chats about the students who refused to stand for the national anthem at a Veterans Day program. A YouTube video was produced by an anti-fascist group demanding an apology. The district denies any evidence that the video was produced by Edina students. The lawsuit was dropped in early March without the district admitting guilt or paying damages. However, the Young Conservative Club may be re-instated as a school-sponsored club, or not, but has assurances that they may organize “with the ability to exercise free speech without consequence.” However, they are denied the possibility of future legal actions against the school district.

Edina’s school district has also sparked controversy with its “All for All” program for the past 4 years. While touted to increase student learning, the state-wide test scores reveal different results.

While black students’ reading scores did increase from 45.5% to 46.6%, that is still less than 50% and their scores in other academic areas, according to state assessments, declined. Scores for all students declined. Data from the Minnesota Department of Education reveal that Edina has dropped from 5th to 29th in reading proficiency scores and from 10th to 40th in math. The Edina program bespeaks an ideology of indoctrination and not one of creative and critical thinking.

With the revisions approved last session by the Minnesota Legislature for teacher licensure requirements, this type of leftist, progressive ideology will be the norm across all schools in Minnesota. The label is “cultural competency.”

The statute is 8710.0310 DEFINITIONS AND GENERAL RULES FOR TEACHING LICENSES, Minnesota Statutes, section 120B.30, 1.23 subdivision 1, paragraph (q). (q) For purposes of statewide accountability, “cultural competence,” “cultural competency,” or “culturally competent” means the ability of families and educators to interact effectively with people of different cultures, native languages, and socioeconomic backgrounds is non-offensive and an admirable goal for all classrooms. However, the application of the training as defined in Subpart 1. D. is not producing the declared goals. It targets problems by turning cultural competency into programs of indoctrination rather on the focus of improving student learning and test scores.

D. “Cultural competency training” means a training program that promotes self-reflection and discussion on all of the following topics: racial, cultural, and socioeconomic groups; American Indian students; implicit bias; systemic racism; gender identity, including transgender students; sexual orientation; language diversity; and individuals with disabilities.

Democrats on the Senate Education Policy Committee in response to Senator Nelson’s bill claimed that it would restrict district’s local control. Please refer to the preceding paragraph and study the topics to be required by the State in K-12 curricula.

Take a look at some of the materials included in Edina’s program. The Weekly Standard reported in early February, 2018 that Black Lives Matter posters and gay-pride rainbow flags are common in the schools. An ABC book for small children is entitled A is for Activist (F-feminist; T-trans, for example). A required English course for 10th graders focuses not on literature and improved communication skills but rather on the themes of colonization, immigration, race, class and gender. An 11th grade literature and composition class lists applying Marxist, feminist, post-colonial and psychoanalytical lenses to literature.

It is their stated policy to hire teachers who are willing to implement such a curriculum. “The Edina school district’s All for All plan mandated that henceforth ‘all teaching and learning experiences’ would be viewed through the ‘lens of racial equity,’ and that only ‘racially conscious’ teachers and administrators should be hired. District leaders assured parents this would reduce Edina’s racial achievement gap, which they attributed to ‘barriers rooted in racial constructs and cultural misunderstandings’.” (Weekly Standard)

Not all parents agree with these policies and materials. They have lost their voice.

One parent reported “… teachers routinely pushed politicians and political positions they favored, shamed and browbeat students with dissenting views, and forced them to defend themselves against baseless allegations of racism. According to his son, he says, classroom discussions were often ‘one-sided indoctrination sessions,’ and students feared their grades would be penalized if they spoke out.” (Weekly Standard)

Parents agree that controversial topics should be included in class discussions and critical thinking skills promoted, but indoctrination is not to be tolerated. Following Donald J. Trump’s election, one teacher told the students that a Trump presidency was worse than 9/11 and the Columbine massacre. (more details, data and parental reactions: Thinking Minnesota, Issue 9, Fall 2017)

In other institutions of learning (PreK-20), teachers are typically mandated to refrain from the inclusion of personal political and religious views when working with students, parents and the community where they are seen as teachers. Neither students or teachers are allowed to display the Bible. Students have been suspended for praying in the cafeteria. Coaches have been fired for praying privately in the locker room or on the playing field. Faculty have lost their positions for having the Ten Commandments hanging above the desk in a private office. Unfortunately, double standards are now the norm!!

While some may think that charter or private schools, or even homeschooling, may be an alternative, it may not be so. The extreme ideologies are also the foundation of the ACT and SAT college entrance exams. Young people will be admitted to higher education on their ability to regurgitate the political and cultural views of the leftists. This is an echo of Common Core. It did not die with the change of administration and the Secretary of Education. The previous administration carefully moved it to the states before leaving office.

Testimony last Thursday included views on both sides of the bill (SF 2487).

Katherine Kersten, senior policy fellow for the conservative Center for the American Experiment, argued in favor of the bill, pointing to the indoctrination practices of the Edina schools. “Events in Edina make clear what happen when school officials and a core group of teachers, bent on imposing a narrow ideological framework on public education, are allowed to proceed unhampered…Today in Edina, students are under intense pressure to adopt and express a very specific set of social and political views.”

Teacher and education advocates opposed the bill. Josh Crosson, senior policy director for the education equity advocate Ed Allies, challenged the belief that equity programs were the same as indoctrination and disputed the claim of lower student achievement. He added that this type of legislation will produce unintended consequences if passed. The report did not include what he defines as “unintended consequences.”

Senator Eric Pratt (R-Prior Lake), chair of the committee, summed up the current status of the debate between conservatives and liberals on many societal issues. “Sometimes as conservatives we often feel as if we’re being asked to be empathetic to one side and one side is never asked to be empathetic to us.” Unfortunately, it’s true.

Years ago, I heard a phrase that’s become a cliché. It said “There’s no sense making something idiot-proof. They’ll just build a better idiot.” After reading this article, I think we’ve found the article that’s a perfect match for that cliché. The article I’m talking about is about ESPN’s decision to pull college football play-by-play announcer Robert Lee from working the University of Virginia-William & Mary game.

ESPN issued a statement to explain why they’d made this decision. ESPN said “We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name. In that moment it felt right to all parties. It’s a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play by play for a football game has become an issue.”

In Sports Illustrated’s article, they wrote “White nationalists gathered in Charlottesville, Va. on Aug. 12 to protest the taking down of a statue of Robert E. Lee. White nationalist marched on Virginia’s campus with torches, chanted racial slurs and intimidated counter-protestors. One woman was killed when a white supremacist drove a car into a group of counter-protestors.”

All of which has nothing to do with play-by-play announcer Robert Lee.

David Whitley’s article speaks for lots of people when it says “ESPN apparently thinks its audience is full of dopes”, adding “In other words, you have to be a complete dope or Al Sharpton to be bothered by the fact a sports announcer in 2017 has a name that sounds like that of a Confederate General in 1863.”

This interview by Tucker Carlson is spot on:

Tucker’s opening exchange of Tucker’s interview with Fox Sports’ Clay Travis say everything:

TUCKER CARLSON: There are reports tonight that ESPN has pulled a football announcer from an upcoming game because of his name, which is Robert Lee. The twist: Lee is an Asian man not exactly your vision of an unreconstructed confederate. Clay Travis is a journalist for Fox Sports and he joins us tonight. Clay, thanks a lot for coming on tonight. We saw this floating around the internet right before air time and my instinct was that this has to be a hoax because it’s too crazy so we wanted to talk with you directly. What do you know about this?
CLAY TRAVIS: It’s 100% true. And, in fact, ESPN has just issued a statement to me.

When you watch the video, watch Tucker’s eyebrows when Travis says “it’s 100% true.” My impression was that Tucker thought this story had to be something from The Onion, that it wasn’t a legitimate article.

Towards the end of the interview, Travis supplied a shocking tidbit of information when he said “Tucker, there’s always a lot of discussion about how liberal the political media is. Recent studies -you’re gonna be blown away by this — do you know what percentage of people in the sports media voted for Donald Trump in this most recent election? 4%, Tucker, 96% of them voted against Donald Trump. This is how decisions like this get made. You have all these left wing people sitting around saying ‘Ohmigod, I’m gonna offend somebody and you don’t have a reasonable, rational person saying ‘Wait a minute. Are we really making the right decision’?

Carlson finished the segment, saying “Clay, I was telling my producers we can’t air this because it can’t be real. I’m just grateful to you for confirming it — I’m serious — Thanks a lot for coming on.”

Technorati: Charlottesville, Political Correctness, ESPN, Robert E. Lee, Civil War, White Supremacists, White Nationalists, Confederate General, The Onion, Parody

Yesterday, Janeé Harteau resigned as Minneapolis’s police chief. Embattled Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges has picked Medaria Arradondo to replace Harteau. The next question is whether Arradondo is the right pick to succeed Harteau. According to this MPR article, Chief Harteau was “the first woman, first Native American and first openly gay person to serve as chief in Minneapolis.”

R.T. Rybak was the mayor that picked Harteau to be his police chief. Now that Hodges is picking Harteau’s successor, it’s fair to ask whether she’s picking the right person for the job. This article suggests that she’s picking the wrong person. It says “Linea Palmisano, a city councilwoman who represents the ward where the shooting happened, told The Associated Press on Saturday that she’s known Arradondo for some time, relying on him to explain police initiatives and working with him during community meetings such as one introducing ‘implicit bias training’ for officers a few years ago.”

The fact that the Minneapolis Police Department has “implicit bias training” tells me that politicians are interfering too much. The National Initiative for Building Community Trust & Justice explains that implicit bias “can distort one’s perception and subsequent treatment either in favor of or against a given person or group. In policing, this has resulted in widespread practices that focus undeserved suspicion on some groups and presume other groups innocent.”

It’s important that Minneapolis gets this decision right. They’ve had problems for quite some time. Focusing on politically correct training isn’t wise. Apparently, that’s what Minneapolis has focus on. If you want the right results, you have to have the right training.

The point is that picking the right PC isn’t as important as putting the officers through the right training. At this point, the training emphasis needs to improve.

Saying that this Aaron Sorkin op-ed sounds like a liberal that’s unhinged is understatement.

Sorkin’s op-ed starts by saying “Sorkin Girls, Well the world changed late last night in a way I couldn’t protect us from. That’s a terrible feeling for a father. I won’t sugarcoat it—this is truly horrible. It’s hardly the first time my candidate didn’t win (in fact it’s the sixth time) but it is the first time that a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn has.”

It’s hard to read that, then think it gets more unhinged after that. That’s what happens, though. Sorkin continues, saying “And it wasn’t just Donald Trump who won last night—it was his supporters too. The Klan won last night. White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons. Angry young white men who think rap music and Cinco de Mayo are a threat to their way of life (or are the reason for their way of life) have been given cause to celebrate.”

I won’t pretend that I think Mr. Trump is a policy wonk. Clearly, that isn’t fact. Further, it’s indisputable that the KKK endorsed Mr. Trump. That doesn’t mean Trump is a bigot.

Apparently, Sorkin didn’t have a problem voting for a corrupt woman who lied repeatedly to Congress and to various judges.

Mr. Sorkin has the constitution right to make these statements. He should consider, though, that it’s Trump voters’ rights to ridicule him for being this unhinged. It’s also within the Trump voters’ constitutional rights to boycott his products.