The ACLU tweets, quoted in "The ACLU Suddenly Reverses Its Support For Transparency/The long-time civil liberties organization continues its partisan transformation" (Inquire).
The ACLU tweet links to this NBC News article, "They fought critical race theory. Now they’re focusing on ‘curriculum transparency.' Conservative activists want schools to post lesson plans online, but free speech advocates warn such policies could lead to more censorship in K-12 schools." From that article:
[T]eachers, their unions and free speech advocates say the proposals would excessively scrutinize daily classwork and would lead teachers to pre-emptively pull potentially contentious materials to avoid drawing criticism....
“It’s important we call this out,” said Jon Friedman, the director of free expression and education at PEN America, a nonprofit group that promotes free speech. “It’s a shift toward more neutral-sounding language, but it’s something that is potentially just as censorious.”
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95 comments:
The level of bizarre in their position shows you how extreme the left is. You don't even have to accept that parents have the right to dictate curriculum to reject this secrecy. How can you argue with a straight face that parents shouldn't even know what is being taught? My view is that requiring all classes be streamed to parents is appropriate.
Thinly veiled is sexist.
This is the issue the Republicans win on. Everything else ( Afghanistan, inflation, crime, etc) just reinforce the anti-Dem argument. This touches everyone and is so obviously stupid that one wonders if there will be a desperate attempt to rein this in before Peter Doocey asks Biden in a press conference whether parents should have a say in their kid’s education. I would pay good money to see how Biden answers that question. The mind reels at the possibilities of a word salad of historic proportions.
There are too many instances of admins telling teachers & teachers telling students "don't share this [potentially contentious material] with parents". One school district required parents not be present when their children were receiving zoom instruction ... in their own house!
1A works both ways, honey.
[T]eachers, their unions and free speech advocates say the proposals would excessively scrutinize daily classwork and would lead teachers to pre-emptively pull potentially contentious materials to avoid drawing criticism...."
Yes, because we wouldn't want teachers have to, you know, actually teach kids how to read, write, and do arithmetic. The teachers have a platform, just like LeBron, and damnit they're going to use it to introduce students to social justice concepts, parents be damned. Or, like LeBron, audience be damned.
Potentially contentious materials, indeed.
What sort of creature runs under the furniture when the lights are turned on? Add to this, even more than the curriculum and ideology issues, the behavior of the teaching profession through this pandemic will burden them for at least a generation.
They were called on by events, if not their leaders, to show courage and were found wanting. Parents understood that only they could save their own children. They got a look at what was really going on behind the curtain, and discovered how much of that dedication to learning was lip service. The whole profession is about to be roiled by the aftermath.
These kids will likely never forgive us for what has been done to them by this thing. As facts leak out over time, who thinks that the people in charge will look better, not worse?
Thinly veiled is sexy.
So much gaslighting ….
Let the “Money goes with the student” age begin.
Soon the students who have been so well "served" by public teachers' unions and their members will start voting. College students who have been held captive in their dorms, with less freedom to gather than prisoners walking the exercise yard, can already vote. Will they go Stockholm Syndrome, or vote out the bastards?
How can more transparency be a bad thing? Who would be harmed? It seems that those arguing against transparency must have something to hide, or at least worried about loss of control -- which may not be a bad outcome.
At my Jesuit high school, one of my classmates’ dad sat in on the sex education class. He was a big time wine distributor in Omaha.
If the Democrats have decided this is the hill they are going to die on, then they really are in big trouble in the coming election. They usually have enough sense to run away from issues like this. How anyone can argue against transparency in what our kids are being taught is beyond imagining for me. I really am getting the feeling that the Democrats never intend to have free open elections again.
Why on earth would Tyler Kingkade (the author of that NBC Article) think that someone's having incentives to avoid drawing criticism is a BAD THING?
Oughtn't all professionals comport their activities so as to avoid criticism?
Just generally speaking, don't we do a good job at least partly to AVOID criticism?
Just another example of Americans losing trust in their basic institutions. Public K-12 education is dying by its own staggering incompetence and corruption. It's less about CRT and more about the arrogance of schools treating parents as the enemy.
And it's taking place after two years of Zoom classes where parents saw that the Chemistry teacher didn't know sh!t about chemistry.
Thinly veiled? No, it's the whole point! Parents are sick of their children getting fed crap about race and gender, but still unable to ready properly or know any actual history.
They- the teachers unions merged with far left Marxists- have had free rein over our children for decades now. They have directed the course of education and the results are in. We're among the least learned of any industrialized nation. 'Is are kidz learning?' is a phrase that came out years ago- not to slam the kids, but those overseeing their education.
The ACLU left its mooring for good a few years ago and now drifts along with the leftist currents, dropping their original mission and taking up that of random Marxists. That's their right, but they should not again be regarded as a beacon for free speech. They've showed us multiple times over the last 20 years, they are no longer interested in anything other than the Democratic Party marching order of the day. They've aspired to and succeeded in making themselves irrelevant.
We have spent decades, particularly when it comes to the Black community, bemoaning the lack of parental involvement with their kids eduction. The lack of a two parent home is a discussion that includes helping your kids to stay in school, to study, to do their homework. To change their lives. We always hear the sighs from Big Education about how we need the parents to be more involved with their kids schoolwork.
So now they are. Parents got a good look at just what was being taught to their kids over the last two years of the government shutting things down. And guess what parents saw? Government schools doing what government schools do. And now parents understand they need to not only work with their kids at home, but work with the schools- that they pay for- to ensure the proper education.
Remember this- and if I insult anyone, accept my apology here. Those in the education curriculum at any college or university are typically among the least 'gifted' in that college or university- strictly based on SATs, IQ tests, etc. (various studies on this). They are not evil people- at least not at the beginning. And many of them are brilliant, but as a whole, the education curriculum at any university or college is the least rigorous on campus, and those entering it are the least striking. Period. This is a known known. (and old, but great book on this subject is "Inside American Education", by Thomas Sowell, 1992).
So why would you blindly put the item of greatest value to you, your kids, into the hands of these people without overseeing just what they hell they are doing?
Tim said...
I really am getting the feeling that the Democrats never intend to have free open elections again.
I don't think it's that. For the past few decades progressivism has slowly come to dominate the left, and to become dominant in the "managerial" class of mid-level corporate and government bureaucrats. When Obama won in 2008, the Dems took it as a sign that they no longer needed the white working class base which had been the backbone of Dem politics for about three generation. Instead they thought that they could win with a coalition of minorities, urban millennials, professional women, and gays.
The problem for the Dems now is that the progressive base is too radicalized thanks to internal factors (namely a need to outdo each other in order to position themselves in the in-group) and too powerful (since the donor class have largely shifted from blue-collar unions to govt employee unions and tech donors) to ignore. Dem politicians have to perform for the radicals, no matter the political cost. See also: Schumer holding a vote on the filibuster despite knowing that it would fail.
If I had young kids, I would be doing whatever it takes to get them out of the public school system which is corrupted. Why would you WILLINGLY send your kid off to get brainwashed to hate you??
this Just Makes Sense!
How, can we expect teachers to be able to corrupt our youth,
and convert them into skirt-boys and sterile freemartins, If parents are allowed to Know about it?
Many parents Don't Want their sons turned into Chix with Dicks
Many parents Don't Want their daughters turned into bearded ladies (Sterile bearded ladies)
Since Many (MOST? (Nearly ALL??) people do not support these policies, the policies Must remain secret
Teachers always told us not to listen to our parents (Class of 75) The are great people, salt of the earth but, they just haven't seen much. This is a small rural school, so lots of farm families. Maybe 8% farm or one generation from the farm.
I guess the WWII vets experiences. fell short of a teacher degree. My mom was an Army nurse in Europe during WWII, My best friends dad was a German POW.
But way back then the teachers colleges were working to subvert parents.
My friend’s college aged daughter announced that she wants to have a career as an activist. Is that even a thing? I wouldn’t think the income would be anywhere near stable, but here we are.
The government (teachers) believe utopia is just around the corner once they get the "right" morals instilled in students.
The govt cant instill morals. Its worse than that. An attempt is worse than nothing.
"Curriculum transparency bills are essential to chilling teachers and students from learning and talking about religion in schools." - What the ACLU used to be for.
Critical Race Theory is about shafting Black Americans as perpetual victims who need government help to even function. White Americans are casted as the evil oppressors who keep Black Americans in poverty. White Americans then must be shamed for their evil role as oppressors. This is just a different way for the Democrat Party to keep Black Americans in chains.
Kendy X. Ibrahim, the ACLU and the Democrat Party are neobarbarians. Always undermining our society so they can benefit as the lords of creation.
This really hits home for me. I belong to FAIR and I support not only transparency but the absolute right of the state to ban CRT, since states are in fact responsible for EVERYTHING in school curricula. It is no more censorship for them to exclude CRT from the classroom than it is to insist on its inclusion. It is their responsibility to make such choices.
These two statements you post are deranged, plain and simple, and must be seen as such. It "hits home" for me because since the early 1980s I have been producing history curriculum supplements for the schools. I have created and the company I work with has marketed dozens and dozens of lessons on race, slavery, the civil war, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, civil rights, the whole ball of wax and schools have been inundated with such materials now for decades. The idea that the rising anti-CRT movement has a thing to do with censorship of such topics is either madness on the part of those saying this or sheer dishonest malevolence. What FAIR and many many other groups oppose is itself propagandizing imposition of points of view most Americans thoroughly detest and rightly so. It is all but unstoppable in any case, and I hope and pray these pompous finger wagging idiots will in time have had their day. It will be a long time coming, but the day must come.
The teachers don't want you to know what they're teaching?
Creepy.
Before the Virginia elections: "We're NOT teaching critical race theory in schools! Get that through your ignorant heads!"
After Youngkin's inauguration: "How dare you try to ban teaching critical race theory in schools! You're racist for wanting to keep it out of schools!"
"My friend’s college aged daughter announced that she wants to have a career as an activist. Is that even a thing?"
Reminded me of this Gary Larson cartoon,
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/28/21/e7/2821e78db0738fffb48806c162c6dea2--the-far-side-blue.jpg
I can remember when the ACLU used to quote Justice Louis Brandeis on this subject all the time:
"Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
Too late.
The long march through the educational institutions is complete. Too many still hold the romantic notion of 50 years past that teachers love children and want them to succeed in society.
Bad enough they can't teach the basics, worse they teach them to hate their skin color, and the skin color of others. Worse yet, they teach them their biological self does not exist. If fact, they are probably the opposite of what they think they are.
Destroy the children you destroy the family, destroy society.
Transvestite story hour is a barrel of laughs, isn't it?
Who taught the teachers?
The phrase "hill to die on" was mentioned above. In this forum you can still use words like that but maybe less so in the outside world. You'd be accused of being insensitive to school shootings or some such.
But it is apt. You don't turn and fight against overwhelming odds (see popularity of parents having an active role in public school curriculum) unless you Have No Choice.
The other term for this is Last Ditch. If the current loony philosophy of the left regards education falls, so also falls the power of the teachers unions.
You pick a hill to die on because you have a small chance of not dying. Clamber out of the Last Ditch and run for it and you are done for.
T
Free speech, honesty and transparency are problems for the LEFT.
The ACLU is neither civil nor interested in individual liberties.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Does anyone care what the misnamed schizophrenic ACLU says today when they cannot explain holding the opposite position as a matter of conscience just a few short years ago? Really? Who and why?
In elementary school and in high school, no teacher should conduct any classroom discussion about why the Black students perform worse academically than the other students.
In particular, there should be no classroom discussions along the lines that the worse performance is caused by racism against Blacks.
Of course, the history classes should teach about slavery, the Reconstruction, Jim Crow and so forth. Such teaching is not the controversy.
If I had young kids, I would be doing whatever it takes to get them out of the public school system which is corrupted. Why would you WILLINGLY send your kid off to get brainwashed to hate you??
I am a public school teacher. If I had kids, I would send them to a private school, or home school. I am not alone. I have known dozens of public school teachers who send/sent their kids to private schools.
And it's taking place after two years of Zoom classes where parents saw that the Chemistry teacher didn't know sh!t about chemistry.
I am constantly amazed at how ignorant some of my fellow teachers are.
Vouchers would solve most of this, which is why teachers' unions fight vouchers with passion.
Breezy said
"My friend’s college aged daughter announced that she wants to have a career as an activist. Is that even a thing? I wouldn’t think the income would be anywhere near stable, but here we are."
The rise of Obama was a major inflection point leading to "community organizer" (aka "activist") as a viable career path.
If there is a lesson to be learned in the past 5 years or so, it's this: Give a Progressive discretionary authority over anything, and they will go straight to tyranny. Every. Single. Time. Or, so it would seem. It doesn't matter if it's a Facebook administrator, a Twitter supervisor, an election monitor, a newsroom editor, a public health authority, a newly-elected District Attorney, or a public school educator. They're going to lose on this one. In fact, I would predict that, having now understood just how unreasonable and intemperate this class of people is, I think they're going to lose on most of them. The American people mostly tend toward conservatism, and telling any parent that they are not implicitly in control of the upbringing of their kids is suicide by stupidity. People who address the public they serve in this way are not qualified or suitable to be in charge of anything.
Cameras in the classroom. For the safety of the students. Also, will result in the end of government schools. If you have seen it, you can't support it.
Just let the teachers show the students, but not the parents, the inside of their trench coat.
Problem with that approach, however, is you must swear the students to secrecy and non disclosure.
That comes next.
Teachers, or at least teachers' unions, are the new clergy. Do as I say. Hide behind the veil of secrecy. Don't tell your parents what just happened here.
Jefferson's Revenge: "This is the issue the Republicans win on."
Correct.
This is such a sure fire political "winner", because you can't keep telling parents what they see happening isn't happening (helllllloooooo typically liberal asian parents that usually vote democratical but went heavily for Youngkin) without significant voter erosion.
This is such a slamdunk that all the usual lefty tactics are powerless in terms of narrative setting and persuasion impact....which is why the lefties are panicking.
You still see the lefties clinging to the ONLY 2 tactics they have available that they think might work, though neither really is effective:
1) Define CRT!! Go Ahead!! Define it!! And you can't, can you Stupid Trumper!! (shut up, they explained)
and,
2) So, you want to teach white nationalism don't you racist!! (this is what the original "why don't you want to teach about slavery" ploy evolved to after everyone told the stupid leftists everyone is taught about slavery so that lie wasn't going to fly).
To think that "sunlight is the best disinfectant" used to be a progressive slogan. A lot has changed.
""Curriculum transparency bills""
-----
why do this at legislative level?
why not school board level? isn't local easier? or more difficult?
I don't pay subcontractors without a complete, itemized invoice and proof that the ordered goods & services match what was delivered.
Why do teachers think standard business practices don't apply to their industry?
But way back then the teachers colleges were working to subvert parents.
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heirs to John Dewey and [William James?]
The ACLU has completely lost it.
These are the same folks who once defended Nazis.
They have been wholly absorbed into the Democrat Collective.
Resistance in futile...
Nowadays, they could be seen as thinly veiled attempts to get teachers to talk about something other than race or gender ...
The ACLU was leftwing from the beginning, but they were leftwing Brahmin types who had read their John Stuart Mill. Like Mill himself, they were embedded in a culture that wasn't going to change very fast, so they embraced liberty of expression as something valuable within the existing order -- as a spur for social change in a world that was hostile to it.
Today's ACLU recognizes how much society has changed and is comfortable with government using power to force further change, when such change is amenable to them. They are more comfortable with laws regulating speech and the press in the interest of the social order they want.
But would the old ACLU have favored laws against teaching Critical Race Theory? I think they probably would have, but for me the point is that such laws weren't needed a century ago, because schools weren't teaching anything like what they are teaching now. In earlier times, the ACLU was trying to protect the lone individual speaking his mind in a hostile community. Now they are trying to enforce what the bureaucratic order wants.
Confused said...
To think that "sunlight is the best disinfectant" used to be a progressive slogan. A lot has changed.
--------
we need to remember Trump asked about sunlight [UV] into lungs for COVID and was incinerated?
If only there were already local level oversight of curriculum. Some sort of elected board, perhaps?
If only there were already local level oversight of curriculum. Some sort of elected board, perhaps?
I hope this demand for transparency applies to all schools taking government money. If vouchers are the solution, let the same level of transparency apply to everyone.
Cameras in all classrooms where state money goes, public and private.
"Curriculum transparency bills are just thinly veiled attempts at chilling teachers and students from learning and talking about race and gender in schools."
It tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the public schools approach to "race and gender", that the supporters of it are convinced that letting the public know what they are doing would force them to stop doing it.
That argument against transparency is the strongest argument for transparency that one could ever find
I don't have kids so those that do help me out. Wouldn't parents have access to their kid's lesson plan anyway - via hard copy? Can't they just ask their own kids: "let me see your lesson plan?" I don't understand how not uploading it onto a website is such a controversial thing but as I said, don't have kids so must be missing something.
This doesn't bother me as much as the fact that in some school districts around here, kids can't have sunscreen on them without *** a prescription ***. For sunscreen. SMH.
Daniel12 said...
If only there were already local level oversight of curriculum. Some sort of elected board, perhaps?
The voters can't have oversight over the elected words, if the voters aren't informed as to what is going on.
When the elected boards (mostly controlled by the teachers unions) conspire with the teachers to hide what they're doing from the parents and the other voters, that's a strong indication that what they're doing is wrong.
But I'm guess you know that. but you like that wrong, which is why you're throwing up BS smoke screens.
A law that forces transparency isn't forcing the schools to do anything, or change anything. Unless they know that what they're doing is wrong, and will change when transparancy comes
Daniel12 said...
If only there were already local level oversight of curriculum. Some sort of elected board, perhaps?
I'm curious, Daniel, what do you think about Federal rules being imposed on schools?
Let me guess, you're perfectly fine with that, so long as the President is a Democrat.
And you're perfectly fine with State level rules, when they're passed by Democrats.
it's only when GOP State Legislatures get involved that you discover that local control is sacrosanct
NO ONE who wants the ability to teach children in secret is a good person. It does not matter which “side” you are on or what your ideology is. If you can not have what you are teaching other people’s children exposed to all than IT IS WRONG. Morally wrong and likely factually incorrect.
Mark said...
I hope this demand for transparency applies to all schools taking government money. If vouchers are the solution, let the same level of transparency apply to everyone.
When vouchers are used, the parents are supplying the oversight. But for you, that's the problem.
Because your whole goal is to block parents from having any influence over the education of their children
Blogger Narayanan said...
""Curriculum transparency bills""
-----
why do this at legislative level?
why not school board level? isn't local easier? or more difficult?
The teachers unions focus a lot of money and effort on controlling the local school boards. This is a way to get around their near monopoly
ALP said...
I don't have kids so those that do help me out. Wouldn't parents have access to their kid's lesson plan anyway - via hard copy? Can't they just ask their own kids: "let me see your lesson plan?" I don't understand how not uploading it onto a website is such a controversial thing but as I said, don't have kids so must be missing something.
Nope, because the kids don't get copies of the lesson plans
The parents can ask to see the kids written homework. They have no access to what is said in the classroom
Blogger Mark said...
I hope this demand for transparency applies to all schools taking government money. If vouchers are the solution, let the same level of transparency apply to everyone.
OK with me. How about you ?
One more piece of evidence that sending a child to public school today is child abuse. And it won't stop until large numbers of parents withdraw their consent by taking their children out of the public schools. The monster can't be tamed by electing school boards. A 50% reduction in attendance will begin to get their attention.
Greg The Class Traitor said...
Blogger Narayanan said...
""Curriculum transparency bills""
-----
why do this at legislative level?
why not school board level? isn't local easier? or more difficult?
The teachers unions focus a lot of money and effort on controlling the local school boards. This is a way to get around their near monopoly
-------
won't the unions pool their money at state level then? >>> your argument does not hold
if parent cannot convince parent your country is lost and the younger generations.
R's are trying to get ahead of themselves and screwing parents in the process
Dumb Lefty Mark: "I hope this demand for transparency applies to all schools taking government money. If vouchers are the solution, let the same level of transparency apply to everyone.
Cameras in all classrooms where state money goes, public and private."
Nope.
Government run schools only as parents/guardians have already conducted the due diligence required for private schools and have the power to pull their funding from the private institutions.
But your over the top and desperate need to keep parents completely in the dark to facilitate further leftist indoctrination is duly noted.
1) Define CRT!! Go Ahead!! Define it!! And you can't, can you Stupid Trumper!! (shut up, they explained)
CRT is the new route to keep Black Americans enslaved by the Democrat Party. It tells Black Americans that they are not good enough and will never be good enough. It tells White Americans that the problems of Black Americans are the White Americans fault and will always be their fault. That White Americans are oppressors and Black Americans are victims, into perpetuity.
To paraphrase Ace of Spades, the ACLU is declaring that the government has free speech rights that cannot be questioned. So as a taxpayer you have to pay for the schools, and you have to send your children to the school or pay extra to educate them elsewhere, but you have no rights as to what those schools teach or even knowing what the schools teach. That's a very un-American position.
The masks keep dropping. What is underneath is ugly.
ALP said...
I don't have kids so those that do help me out. Wouldn't parents have access to their kid's lesson plan anyway - via hard copy? Can't they just ask their own kids: "let me see your lesson plan?"
Minnesota student says she was not allowed to tell parents about school 'equity survey'
"When vouchers are used, the parents are supplying the oversight"
How are they having oversight if the same amount of transparency is not being provided.
If requiring this transparency is not a burden or asking top much, why shouldn't every school provide this in order to receive accreditation?
What are they so scared of that they wouldn't also want this level of community oversight?
How dare those taxpaying terrorists demand to know how their money's being spent.
The gall of some people.
And as I've said before, if there's one, good thing to come out of this COVID mess, it's parents finally recognizing our public education system is crap.
Dumber Than Usual Dumb Lefty Mark: "How are they having oversight if the same amount of transparency is not being provided."
LOL
Did you really think before hitting "submit"?
The "amount of transparency" for parents, as well as input into the curriculum by parents, for private schools vastly exceeds that of Dumb Lefty Marks Super Secret But Trust Us Government Indoctrination Institutions.
And that will ALWAYS be the case since the private schools must operate on market principles, not monopolistic principles.
Which is why Dumb Lefty Mark and his/her/xers white liberal pals will never, ever, willingly allow the parents of poorer minority students to obtain vouchers which would enable those poor families to leave the liberal plantation schools and why Dumb Left Mark has to construct fantastical hypotheticals that will never remotely approach reality.
Mark said...
"When vouchers are used, the parents are supplying the oversight"
How are they having oversight if the same amount of transparency is not being provided.
Because parents can threaten to pull their children out of the school if the school doesn't give them teh information that they want, when they want it.
"My child said he was taught X in class today. is that what you teach?"
"No, we don't teach that"
"Then I'd like to know what's happening in my child's classroom"
"No, we won't tell you that"
"Then I'm going to be looking for a new school for my kid, and telling all the other parents what you are doing"
That doesn't work at a public school with unionized "teachers". it does work at a private school with teachers who can be fired
If requiring this transparency is not a burden or asking top much,
Transparency IS a burden. The fact that you all are screaming like gelded pigs about it tells us it's a necessary burden.
What are they so scared of that they wouldn't also want this level of community oversight?
Because it's a PRIVATE school, not a PUBLIC one
What is teh mental deficiency the makes you unable to understand teh difference?
How dare those taxpaying terrorists demand to know how their money's being spent.
& How dare the taxpaying terrorists have knowledge of and information about what their OWN children are taught.
Narayanan said...
Greg The Class Traitor said...
Me: The teachers unions focus a lot of money and effort on controlling the local school boards. This is a way to get around their near monopoly
won't the unions pool their money at state level then? >>> your argument does not hold
if parent cannot convince parent your country is lost and the younger generations.
R's are trying to get ahead of themselves and screwing parents in the process
School board elections are low turnout elections, which means a smaller bit of money and tight focus matter more
The Teachers unions are already focusing at the State level, for many reasons. In the places where they've lost those fights, teh correct and appropriate thing to do is to use that power to reign them in
Your argument appears to be based on extreme ignorance, if you believe that the public sector unions are not currently doing all that they can to affect State races
This kind of thing is why were need transparency in schools:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/fairfax-schools-tell-children-of-military-members-that-they-have-privilege
Greg, isn't the problem that they are taking public money and failing to provide transparency?
Whether the school is public or private, transparency is good when it's our tax dollars. Vouchers are tax dollars too.
Once tax dollars are supporting private schools, they clearly raise the same red flags regarding stacking school boards and installing chosen candidates ... just the same as unions.
"No, we won't tell you that"
"Then I'm going to be looking for a new school for my kid, and telling all the other parents what you are doing"
That doesn't work at a public school with unionized "teachers". it does work at a private school with teachers who can be fired
My middle daughter (like all my kids) went to a private school. St Johns Episcopal in Rancho Santa Margarita. The year she graduated 8th grade the school hired a new Headmaster who announced he would be introducing "Outcomes Based Education," in other words, every kid got the same grade. The parents rebelled. My kid had moved on to high school but I followed what happened.
A member of the board met with the parents. They explained their opposition. She said, "We have decided but you are welcome to take your kids elsewhere if you don't like it." The following fall, the school was advertising in the local supermarket throwaway.
High parent involvement in schools is a sign of effective schools, correlating with higher student achievement. Promoting parent involvement with complete openness and transparency should be a major goal of quality schools. When I was a high school teacher from 1966-1972, teaching in two different high schools, we had to host twice yearly open forums with parents about our classes to explain and describe our courses and assignments. Parent attendance and interest was very high, and we were required to be open and also entertaining. I had many fascinating discussions with interested parents. They knew all the books that we used, the nature of our assignments, and they often recommended other materials that we might use. Most people viewed these activities as normal. One school was an inner city Catholic all boys high school, while the other was an affluent suburban school, but both schools promoted transparency and parental involvement. Moreover, both schools had high achievement scores and college acceptances. In fact, the inner city school in a very rough area had a college acceptance rate of 93%. Public schools should post their curricula online just as colleges and universities do with their online courses and faculty websites. Public schools in many areas were better in the 60's than they are today. Back then our faculty unions confined their activities to collective bargaining and avoided political activities. Public education has definitely devolved in the last 50 years. The leftist teachers unions simply enforce the current political agenda and then give union dues to the democrats.
It's not only schools. Mainline churches have been obsessed with race and gender for decades. Not so much the rank and file, but certainly the denominational leaders and seminary professors. In the last few years, anti-white rhetoric has grown especially sharp and relentless. There are church publications I cannot read any longer. I have long felt that the only way to harmony is to focus on our common humanity, but this is not the path they are choosing.
And if so, what's the problem?
Schools should not be for ideological indoctrination.
Had any employee of mine ever told me "I'm not showing you that because you wouldn't like it", they'd have been fired immediately.
Under no circumstances does “free speech, entail a right that one person or group’s speech not be met with countering speech. The notion is formally absurd.
Most any action will have some unintended consequence. When the teachers unions decided it was too dangerous to teach your kids in person and switched to zoom classes, the parents got to see the dreck their kids were being fed. Hence the revolt.
It couldn't happen to a better bunch of tyrants.
I accept the proposition that the govt (State and local) has an obligation to provide (pay for) education for all children in the community. Are "public schools" the only way to fulfill that obligation? Clearly, No. Can a system be created in which families can choose the form and content of the education their children will receive? Clearly, yes. Will that system be better than we have now? The Magic 8-Ball says "Vision cloudy. Ask again."
Mark said...
Greg, isn't the problem that they are taking public money and failing to provide transparency?
Whether the school is public or private, transparency is good when it's our tax dollars. Vouchers are tax dollars too.
No, the problem is that they're taking public money under false pretenses, pretending they're taking it to educate kids, and in reality merely indoctrinating them.
No vouchers re NOT "tax dollars", which is why vouchers can be sent to a religious school in situations where "tax dollars" can not".
Now, SCOTUS may be changing the second half of that this year, but vouchers are the parents "spending" for legal purposes.
"...free speech advocates warn such policies could lead to more censorship in K-12 schools." Wait, what?
The ACLU not only defended American Nazi's, they married them.
bobby said...
Had any employee of mine ever told me "I'm not showing you that because you wouldn't like it", they'd have been fired immediately.
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or retire on huge pension benefits
... The IRS official who heads the tax-exempt division at the Internal Revenue Service exercised her right to not testify as a witness against herself at a House Oversight committee hearing on the IRS' past targeting of conservative groups.
Lerner on Wednesday insisted, however, that "I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee."....
"Once tax dollars are supporting private schools, they clearly raise the same red flags regarding stacking school boards and installing chosen candidates ... just the same as unions."
Not the same at all. Go open a dictionary and review the entries for "focused" and "diffuse". The tax dollars that parents would be using to send their kids to a school would be diffuse, while teachers unions and ed schools are very, very, very focused.
It was only once the parents in Loudon County were given a clarion call to the illegal malfeasance of their "representative" school board that they were sufficiently focused to counter the harms that the school bureaucrats and their allied teach unions and "representative" board were doing to the kids in the district.
Too many school boards are captured by the government educrats and no longer see that their responsibility is to the citizens whose interests they are supposed to represent, not to the educrats they purportedly oversee.
The ACLU has ALWAYS been a partisan organization dedicated to advancing left-wing causes. Any appearance to the contrary, or reference to principles, has ALWAYS been cover for their real purpose.
You needn’t take my word for it. Co-founder Roger Baldwin said the quiet part out loud in an essay published in
the Sept. 1934 issue of Soviet Russia Today, titled “Freedom in the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.” There’s a pdf at https://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/blog/baldwin.pdf. Or you can go to an academic library and look up the original. I did, and can testify that the pdf is not altered in any way.
Really, I have to admire the way the ACLU managed to pretend they actually cared about civil liberties for so long, fooling so many people. A con-man’s work of art.
Aggie said...
If there is a lesson to be learned in the past 5 years or so, it's this: Give a Progressive discretionary authority over anything, and they will go straight to tyranny.
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Quite correct. It’s because imposing tyranny is what “progressivism” is all about. Various things are said to disguise it, but the secret heart of “progresivism” has always been “They’ll take orders!”
M said...
NO ONE who wants the ability to teach children in secret is a good person.
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It’s more than just teaching. Over on substack and twitter, “Holly Math Nerd” has been writing about child molestation, from personal experience (she claims). One of the key things for protecting children is to tell them that any adult who wants them to keep a secret, except temporarily, is out to harm them. See How to Protect Your Kids From Pedophiles and On the Push to De-Stigmatize Evil
Holly is correct. They want the classrooms opaque because they are grooming the children. Mostly political grooming, but the sexual is part of it too.
Mark said
Once tax dollars are supporting private schools, they clearly raise the same red flags regarding stacking school boards and installing chosen candidates ... just the same as unions.
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Fine. Impose exactly the same standards on schools that accept vouchers as on the public schools. No problemo.
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