Assault on education

[China]

Alabama puts 'Read Me a Story, Stella' children's book on 'watch list' because the author's last name is 'Gay'

 

A children's book has been removed from the shelf and put on the watch list in Alabama because the author's last name is 'Gay.'

 

Marie-Louise Gay is the author of the picture book 'Read Me a Story, Stella', which is about a brother and sister who read books together and build a doghouse. 

 

It was put on the list of 'sexually explicit' books by Huntsville-Madison County Public Library, reported AL.com. The contents of the book depict nothing about sex. 

 

Gay's publicist Kirsten Brassard said that the author's books have never been 'mistakenly censored.'

 

'Although it is obviously laughable that our picture book shows up on their list of censored books simply because the author's last name is Gay, the ridiculousness of that fact should not detract from the seriousness of the situation,' Brassard said. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[PeterMP]

On 9/25/2023 at 10:22 PM, Destino said:

What I’ve gathered is that Administrators need kids to pass because of funding and teachers don’t want to stigmatize a kid over what maybe something like a tragic home life. Would you say that fair?

 

I don't teach at the K-12 level, but I have some family members that do and generally read the education literature regularly and wanted to come back to this:

 

"What I’ve gathered is that Administrators need kids to pass because of funding and teachers don’t want to stigmatize a kid over what maybe something like a tragic home life. Would you say that fair?"

 

No, that's not fair.  Even reading the post you responded to, it should have been clear that's not fair:

 

"Now, as far as the whole idea of holding kids back if they don't pass, the problem is that it doesn't work.  It doesn't matter whether we want to think it should work, or whether it feels fair or appropriate, it just doesn't work.  Educational research has borne this out again and again."

 

The primary reason schools have moved away from holding kids back/failing kids is that (at least the way it was historically done in the US) it doesn't work.  School funding does matter and avoiding stigmatizing a kid might play a role.  But fundamentally and statistically, the way we did it when I was a kid didn't work.   

 

It would be like saying schools have moved away from corporeal punishment because they don't want to deal with lawsuits or stigmatize kids while ignoring the whole body of research that shows it doesn't work.  Schools moved away from corporeal punishment primarily because studies showed it didn't work.

 

Not relevant for every grade but every state that I know of does have mandatory (standardized) tests built into the system that the student must get at least a certain score on or they are shunted into a program for remedial work at certain points in the education system.  They aren't held back in the traditional sense where they are in classes with kids that are younger than them, but efforts are made to catch them up.  In the states I'm familiar with, the test is run/graded by the state (or really an entity contracted by the state) and so the local teachers and administrators don't have much control.  The teachers practically administer the test (today that I know of the tests are on computers), but they don't pick the questions or grade them.  There have been some cases of the teachers coaching/helping students in ways that were against state policy (there was a big scandal in Atlanta a decade or so ago where that was happening) so that's an issue.  But other than paying independent proctors to go into every school across the country to conduct these tests, I'm not sure how you deal with it directly.  The Atlanta scandal was uncovered by looking at what questions kids got wrong and right and finding irregular/improbable combinations (e.g. missing easy questions but than getting much harder questions right).

 

But the states that I know of have a system in place to at least determine if kids are learning the things they should be learning along the way independent of grades.  Whether a high school diploma indicates a kid can read a book will depend on the state and the test they require kids to pass before graduating from high school.

Edited October 9, 2023 by PeterMP

[China]

Teacher fired after saving up his 'milky lactose intolerant' farts for students

 

A teacher in Kansas was fired after joking on TikTok about ‘saving up’ his farts for the classroom and farting on students.

 

Stephen Taylor, who has worked as a teacher for six years alongside his career as a stand-up comedian, was fired from Olathe’s Mill Creek Campus alternative school in September.

 

Taylor made a series of videos on TikTok, often joking about farting in the classroom.

 

“I save up big milky lactose intolerant farts. And I drop bombs silently because I’m an adult and I know my body,” he says in a video, before adding, “and then I just let it stew.”

 

In the clip, the teacher also says he “crop dusts” his students regularly. According to Urban Dictionary, ‘crop dusting’ is “the act of breaking wind as you walk past a group of people or through a room, thereby leaving a trail of gas behind you.”

 

He also describes messing with his students and even teaching them the wrong information.

 

“I tell my students the wrong thing all the time when they annoy me. I tell them Abraham Lincoln invented the car, that’s why it’s named after him,” he laughs.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Captain Wiggles]

Quote

He told reporters he feels sorry for his students

 

Same. Poor kids had an immature ignoramus for a teacher. 

 

I imagine his stand up routine is a lot like Principal Skinners. 🤣

 

https://youtu.be/aZh9kkDCUWI?feature=shared

[China]

On 2/14/2023 at 5:56 PM, China said:

More than half of Republicans support Christian nationalism, according to a new survey

 

Long seen as a fringe viewpoint, Christian nationalism now has a foothold in American politics, particularly in the Republican Party — according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution.

 

Researchers found that more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation, either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21%) or sympathizing with those views (33%).

 

Robert P. Jones, the president and founder of the nonpartisan PRRI, has been surveying the religious world for many years now. Recently, Jones said his group decided to start asking specifically about Christian nationalism.

 

"It became clear to us that this term 'Christian nationalism' was being used really across the political spectrum," he said. "So not just on the right but on the left and that it was being written about more by the media."

 

Christian nationalism is a worldview that claims the U.S. is a Christian nation and that the country's laws should therefore be rooted in Christian values. This point of view has long been most prominent in white evangelical spaces but lately it's been getting lip service in Republican ones, too.

 

During an interview at a Turning Point USA event last August, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said party leaders need to be more responsive to the base of the party, which she claimed is made up of Christian nationalists.

 

"We need to be the party of nationalism," she said. "I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists."

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Oklahoma education leader claims church/state separation is "state-sponsored atheism"

 

I sincerely hope that all of you, one day, find something you are as passionate about as Ryan Walters is when it comes to becoming the King of Christian Nationalism.

 

Walters is Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, and he’s used that position to push religion and right-wing propaganda in public schools as much as the law will allow… even when the law doesn’t allow it. (Especially when the law doesn’t allow it.)

 

He was a driving force in getting state officials to approve the nation’s first religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic Charter School—a move that has already resulted in a major lawsuit. He approved the use of PragerU materials in public school classrooms. He claimed the Tulsa Race Massacre had nothing to do with race. He’s falsely insisted that President Joe Biden “wants to destroy our Christian faith.” He formed a faith committee to examine prayer in public schools; the committee, full of conservative Christian pastors, soon recommended putting the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

 

On Wednesday, he even sent out a “sample prayer” for teachers to use for the people of Israel (and definitely not the innocent people living in the Gaza Strip).

 

It’s all stuff you might expect from a graduate of fundamentalist Harding University in Arkansas. But not something that a responsible government official would ever do. Walters, however, isn’t a responsible guy. He’s a religious zealot who wants to use the government to advance his religion.

 

Here’s a perfect example of that.

 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation recently learned that a public school teacher in Tulsa put up a display in the classroom featuring John 3:16 (“For GOD so loved the world that he gave his only SON that whoever believes in him should not perish but have ETERNAL LIFE”).

 

Another classroom, FFRF said, had a sign referencing a different Bible verse: “He is still good.”

It’s all obviously inappropriate and the group wrote a letter to the school district saying as much. The letter worked. The school district acknowledged the problem and removed the Christian symbols:

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Wrong thread.

Edited October 15, 2023 by China

[The Evil Genius]

 

[China]

Moms for Liberty’s Extreme Agenda Gets Pushback From Pennsylvania Community

 

Community members and parents in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County, which is north of Philadelphia, are mobilizing to defend diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools from the conservative group Moms for Liberty.

 

Moms for Liberty, a group that has been referred to as an anti-government extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has been a leading actor against the rights of students, espousing anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and challenging inclusive curricula and LGBTQ-themed books.

 

Residents have accused the conservative majority on the school board of shadow-banning books and adopting a curriculum that could foster an environment of discrimination and harassment, Salon reports.

 

Books acclaimed for their exploration of race, gender, and sexuality were allegedly taken off the shelves through a “weeding” process, which has riled up parents and local activists. This supposed attempt to sanitize school libraries of progressive ideas is viewed as part of a broader scheme to influence local politics toward conservative ideologies.

 

The Ridge Network, a collective of parents and community members in the Pennridge school district, has emerged as a formidable force against attempts by conservative factions to censor certain books and alter the school curriculum to reflect a more conservative viewpoint. They have continually filed right-to-know requests to unearth the details surrounding the censorship of books and to shed light on the school board’s opaque operations.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Why many Republicans would prefer students never learn the truth about American history

 

The story of how America became involved in, fought, and emerged victorious in World War II has by now been solidified from generation to generation. This has been done in near-canonical fashion, focusing mostly on the strategic battlefield contests, personalities, and alliances that culminated in the resounding Allied victory in 1945 over German fascism and Japanese militarism. 

 

That focus obviously makes sense on one level, but as the war itself becomes further and further consigned to the distant past, with the last of its actual participants disappearing from the stage, the risk is that its remembrance loses some context in the gauzy recall of history. At a time when this country still struggles with many of the same internal pathologies that were present when our involvement in World War II began, the reality shouldn’t be overlooked that we entered that war as a racially divided nation, even as we proceeded to eradicate a racist-inspired tyranny from the face of the planet. 

 

The importance of acknowledging one of the war’s more neglected aspects—such as the racial discrimination within the ranks of our military at the time—becomes more acute as efforts by so-called conservatives to sanitize or whitewash this nation’s racist history become more prevalent in our schools. Their proponents claim such efforts are intended to instill a more “patriotic” (read, less discomfiting) sensibility among our young people, implying that such indoctrination will somehow redound to the nation’s benefit. But teaching an incomplete, self-serving narrative of American exceptionalism at the expense of a frank acknowledgement of racism’s profound impact on the development of this country does nothing to serve the national interest; rather, it only serves the interests of those who look to benefit from fomenting continued ignorance.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Does your kid know cursive? It's coming back as a requirement to CA schools

 

Traditional handwriting is making a comeback in California schools.

 

On Friday Governor Newsom signed a bill that will require cursive instruction in first through sixth grade.

 

Abigail Soriano-Lentz is the English Language Arts Curriculum Coordinator for the East Side Union High School District.

 

Soriano-Letz said if you were to ask educators, there's a wide range of points of view on cursive.

 

Research shows there are benefits.

 

"Handwriting actually activates different parts of the brain that do not get activated when printing block letters or typing," Soriano-Letz said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[The Evil Genius]

About ****ing time. 

[The Evil Genius]

Eddie Bauer allegedly changed their logo because a generation of shoppers couldn't read Eddie Bauer in cursive.  😄

 

https://www.fastcompany.com/90963252/eddie-bauer-new-logo-ditches-script-and-adopts-a-goose#:~:text=After 59 years%2C outdoor outfitter,in all-caps block lettering.

[China]

GOP congressman claims the Bible has been banned in America for 60 years

 

Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) appears to believe that the Bible has been banned in the U.S. since 1963. The congressman made the wild claim Thursday morning during a House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education hearing about banning “explicit” content from school libraries.

 

“Some say that we are here today to talk about so-called book burning in K–12 school libraries. One of our nation’s most consequential books, banning was done by Supreme Court in 1963, when officially it mandated the Bible reading, this book, is banned from all of us,” he said holding up a copy of the Bible. “Anything to do with federal, it’s no longer, can see it, can no longer read it.”

 

“As a matter of fact, some people probably think this is totally unconstitutional that I can even hold it up,” he claimed. “Due to the banning of this book, generations of Americans today have no knowledge of the tenets upon which this country has been founded. Tenets based on the belief that with God and time we can truly become a more perfect union.”

 

Presumably, Burgess was citing the Supreme Court’s 1963 ruling in Abington School District v. Schempp. But contrary to his claim, that decision simply declared that school-sponsored Bible readings were unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It did not ban the Bible from schools.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

[GhostofSparta]

Imagine being the kind of person who is proud of getting books like 1984 or Farenheit 451 banned. Total lack of self awareness and irony. If ignorance is bliss, these must be the happiest people on earth (j/k. We all know they're miserable 24/7 and can only be happy when they can make others suffer)

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Destino]

Here are some teachers talking about the effects of NCLB and just passing students in their class rooms.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/s/xiSE0kpmbT

 

this is what “works” best?

[China]

Parents like private school vouchers so much that demand is exceeding budgets in some states

 

In some states, higher-income families can now use taxpayer money to cover private school tuition -- and more people than projected are taking the offer, which might force scrambles to shore up state budgets.

 

It’s especially an issue in states like Arizona and Iowa, where at least some families whose children were already in private school can now take advantage of public funding.

 

“It busts the budget because it’s taking on as a public expense what’s previously been a private cost,” said Josh Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Parents allege Orlando church employee whipped their children

 

Some local parents are outraged and demanding criminal charges against a church employee for allegedly whipping their children at the church's private school.

 

“Supposedly, they beat our kids,” the mother of four students at St. Mark Preparatory School on Bruton Boulevard in Orlando said.

 

Her 9-year-old daughter is in a fourth grade class, where the alleged beating took place.

 

“They were hysterically crying and calling parents,” a mother of three students, including a fourth grader that was also in the classroom in question, said.

 

Both mothers want to remain anonymous, and both removed their children from the school Friday.

 

They’re among the parents of more than a dozen fourth graders who say a male staffer at the school whipped them Thursday afternoon.

 

The kids told their parents another student was caught writing on a desk.

 

The teacher told an assistant to get the male staffer, who WESH 2 News is not identifying because he has not been charged with any crime.

 

When the male staffer returned, students told their parents that the man “slammed his things down on the desk, took off his belt, and (told them to) line up, and he beat them three times apiece. But she did state, that I believe it was three or four kids that did not get a spanking,” the mother of the 9-year-old girl said. “He took his belt off, his personal belt."

 

Corporal punishment is still legal in Florida, and among public schools, each individual district is responsible for administering it.

 

No Central Florida public schools allow it.

 

Private school rules on discipline can vary.

 

Both parents we talked with said they never agreed to corporal punishment, and neither of them ever signed a document permitting it for their children.

 

The mother of the 9-year-old girl added, “No, I haven't. And it's not in the student handbook either.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Renegade7]

On 10/17/2023 at 8:42 PM, The Evil Genius said:

Eddie Bauer allegedly changed their logo because a generation of shoppers couldn't read Eddie Bauer in cursive.  😄

 

https://www.fastcompany.com/90963252/eddie-bauer-new-logo-ditches-script-and-adopts-a-goose#:~:text=After 59 years%2C outdoor outfitter,in all-caps block lettering.

 

I'd like the hear why cursive should be a priority while our national math and reading scores are continuing to fall behind other countries...

[The Evil Genius]

2 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

 

I'd like the hear why cursive should be a priority while our national math and reading scores are continuing to fall behind other countries...

 

Why not both? (jk math joke)

 

Fwiw, I have been told that cursive activates a different part of the brain than printing and also improves fine motor skills in young children. 

 

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by The Evil Genius

[Renegade7]

14 minutes ago, The Evil Genius said:

 

Why not both? (jk math joke)

 

Fwiw, I have been told that cursive activates a different part of the brain than printing and also improves fine motor skills in young children. 

 

 

Open to buying that along with believing there's better ways to achieve that in context to how infrequent cursive is used once it's taught.  It just doesn't seem efficient.

[China]

THIS 11-YEAR-OLD BROWNSVILLE ISD HONOR STUDENT WAS PUT IN SOLITARY

 

Eleven-year-old Timothy Murray has many trophies displayed in a row by the wall of his room. During a video call, he shows me what he’s won from science projects, chess competitions, and coding programs, and ends with the largest one in his collection—a three-tiered, star-studded trophy he won as grand champion of the Brownsville Independent School District Elementary Science Fair in November 2022. It seems almost as tall as his 4-foot-1-inch frame. He explains that the project measured safety factors when driving over the Golden Gate Bridge by changing variables of speed, mass, and the size of a vehicle. 

 

It’s hard for me to keep up as Timothy speaks and gestures excitedly at his project’s colorful tri-fold board. 

 

The project was the last one Timothy worked on with his father before his father died in April from multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. His dad had been sick since Timothy was two, and family outings were often trips to the hospital. As his cancer spread, Timothy’s dad never tried to hide his sickness. Rather, he demystified the disease, explaining the causes and the symptoms, and preparing Timothy for his possible death. 

 

Timothy says that because of his father, he wants to be an oncologist when he grows up, although his mom laughs about how everyone else thinks her son should be a lawyer since he likes to argue so much. His father taught him how to speak up and advocate for himself. 

 

“My dad taught me what is wrong and right. Do this. Don’t do that. Finish projects as soon as I can. Because if I’m late, it can hurt my grades,” Timothy said. “My grades are very fragile right now: I have an 84 in spelling, the rest are in the 90s.”

 

But Timothy’s efforts to speak out and request counseling for himself at the start of his fifth-grade school year at Palm Grove Elementary School led to what the family calls retaliation by Palm Grove Elementary School Principal Myrta Garza. 

 

On September 8, school administrators told Timothy—who had irked the principal with requests for counseling and for clarification on school dress code policies—that another student alleged that he made threats against Garza. Timothy denied the allegation, but Garza called law enforcement, who detained him and placed him in solitary confinement for three days at the Darrell B. Hester Juvenile Detention Center in Brownsville.  

 

Cameron County prosecutors pushed for Class C felony charges of “terroristic threat” and argued for two more weeks of detention. Instead, Judge Adela Kowalski-Garza ordered a safety risk evaluation and conditional release home until his hearing November 8. 

 

Juvenile justice experts interviewed by the Texas Observer say the Brownsville Independent School District and police seem to have violated state laws and other rules in Timothy’s case that are intended to protect such young children from excessive law enforcement actions. These include a law that requires a school to undergo a fact-based, systemic threat assessment involving the parent to determine if there is an imminent threat warranting a referral to law enforcement and a Texas Supreme Court order that prohibits the handcuffing and shackling of young children. State law allows a minor to be placed in solitary confinement for 24 hours; staff at the detention center told Rincon her son was further isolated for COVID precautions.

 

“This was the choice of the school to refer to law enforcement, the choice of the law enforcement to detain the child, the choice of the prosecutor to charge him and try to trump up the charges,” said Renuka Rege, policy advisor at Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit that researches and advocates on many issues, including juvenile justice. “All of these things are failures in serving young kids.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Destino]

14 hours ago, The Evil Genius said:

 

Why not both? (jk math joke)

 

Fwiw, I have been told that cursive activates a different part of the brain than printing and also improves fine motor skills in young children. 

 

 

Cursive is a plague that should be eradicated from human existence. It’s a joy to write but it’s an unholy terror to read. I’m unmoved by some part of the brain being tickled by the most elegant illegible option. Surely we can find a way to activate this magic sector of the brain that doesn’t force society to feign gratitude and understanding while staring at indecipherable birthday cards.

[Destino]

9 hours ago, China said:

THIS 11-YEAR-OLD BROWNSVILLE ISD HONOR STUDENT WAS PUT IN SOLITARY

I know that schools are desperate to avoid suspending and expelling kids because that sort of discipline must be reported. What I’d like to know is do they have to report calling the police on students? Feels like there’s an alarming increase in police being involved, and I don’t think it’s because people just suddenly want to call police. 

 

it certainly seems to be a consequence of police being in schools which grew after school shootings. I suspect there’s more to it though, because I’ve been told by several teachers that unless parents call the police schools will choose to do nothing when their kids are assaulted. I’ve also heard from teachers that if they are assaulted by their students the choice is similar. Either call the police or admin will largely do nothing at all.  What is calling the police on children become such common practice? Has calling police become policy? Maybe an unwritten rule?
 

I’d very much like to see police interact far less frequently with 11 year olds (and kids in general).