INDOCTRINATING OUR TEACHERS

There’s a movement in public schools across the country from Maine to California which purports to improve race relations. To this retired teacher, however, it’s more likely to make them worse.

A week ago the Washington Free Beacon reported: “The San Diego Unified School District required teachers to attend a ‘white privilege’ training session in which they had to say they were racist and ‘confront' their privilege.” And it’s not just in California that teachers are being instructed like this. Similar things are happening right here in Maine. “Diversity Trainers” from several places across the country are becoming millionaires as they collect enormous fees for telling teachers they’re racists and “You [teachers] are upholding racist ideas, structures, and policies.”

The Free Beacon article didn’t say whether any teachers objected. Nowhere could I find reports that any San Diego teachers spoke up in opposition to this “training.” I certainly would have spoken up. When I was subjected to previous politically-correct “in-service training” regimens and the presenter asked: “Are there any comments or questions?” I always had some — and I was always the only one. Public school teachers are not what anyone would call courageous. Never was a I forced to say I was racist though, because the “training” hadn’t regressed to that point ten years ago. It has now.

A typical response to today’s inservice indoctrination would be this one from North Carolina teacher Laurie Calvert who said: “I was a racist teacher and I didn’t even know it.” I did multiple searches looking for “teachers object to anti-racist training,” and all I got were hits from teachers who endorsed the brainwashing and self-flagellated the way Laurie Calvert did in 2017.

Ever since the George Floyd video went viral, however, this brand of “diversity training” has become a big money-maker for “Diversity Trainers.” According to a November report in Realclearinvestigations:

“The nation's K-12 schools have been incrementally adopting multiculturalism and ethnic studies for decades, but such courses have been the exception rather than the rule. This summer’s Black Lives Matter protests have sparked new level of commitment, a newfound urgency, and a new trend: anti-racist pedagogy.”

Here in Maine, SAD 51 Superintendent Jeff Porter attended a diversity session run by Boston-based Community Change, Inc. which is another money-making “diversity training” institution where Maine resident Shay Stewart-Bouley works as executive director. Superintendent Porter had attended one of her workshops, was troubled by the rhetoric at first, but then thought it was wonderful and wanted all his teachers to take it He budgeted $30,000 to pay Steward-Bouley’s organization, until there was a community backlash last June.

The fallout began when the Cumberland/North Yarmouth district’s “Equity Committee” sent out a statement to the community last June. It read, in part:

“As a majority white school district, we stand in solidarity with Black Movement leaders… In a culture that continually reinforces white supremacy, justice can only be achieved when we confront and repair the anti-Blackness woven through every aspect of society—in our homes, schools, workplaces, communities, places of worship, and government… We cannot move forward until we reconcile the intentional barriers white people have built to harm black people… Black people experience violence every single day because of our white supremacist society….We will work to assess our curriculum, educate our community within and outside of our school campus, dismantle the anti-Blackness all of us have internalized by living in a society built on white supremacy, and provide tools to interrupt anti-Black racism.”

On her Facebook page called: “Black Girl In Maine,” Steward-Bouley declares: “Racism is not just about personal feelings; it is woven into the fabric of this nation,” and “White women benefit from the status quo… Change would require burning down that system and building a new one — one where [white women] and their children might lose the shared superiority and protection they get by being attached to powerful White men.” Steward Bouley claims her movement is world wide and “Wherever there are Black people, there is a fight.”

She capitalizes White and Black and that’s clearly how she sees the human race: Whites are racists and Blacks are victims. That’s quite different from Martin Luther King’s dream of not judging people by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. It’s also pretty clear why some SAD 51 taxpayers objected to paying Steward-Bouley tens of thousands to “train” their teachers. They don’t want students trained to believe themselves racist if they were born white.

According to a November 23rd Portland Press Herald article, the SAD 51 School Board has decided to drop Steward-Bouley’s organization, Community Change, Inc. and will instead hire the University of Southern Maine for its “equity work.” To that, Steward-Bouley said: “I am entitled to my own opinions that I can share on my personal social media.”

True enough, Ms. Steward-Bouley, but you shouldn’t be “training” teachers.

LEFT & RIGHT SHOW WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2020

David Jones, history teacher at Fryeburg Academy and instructor at Granite State College, sits in the left chair this week. I invited him on the show after he wrote a letter to the editor criticizing one of my columns. His letter is one of our topics.

As usual, we open with a question from the producer concerning recent arrests by federal officers protecting federal property in Portland, Oregon. It asks whether we agree that federal officials should be there to quell protests, and questions their tactics, allegedly including arrests without informing those arrests of the charges against them.

I’m against quelling protests, but believe strongly that resulting riots, arson, and looting must be quelled. Local, Democrat mayors and governors are sanctioning these crimes and that’s dangerous. If, as claimed, people are arrested and held without being informed of the charges, it’s a violation of their due process rights. Federal officials are constitutionally allowed to protect federal property no matter where it is.

David believes Trump might be playing to his base in this election year by deploying federal officials to confront rioters. It remains to be seen if that is politically efficacious for him. Citing effectiveness of the sixties civil rights protests in swaying public opinion, he suggests today’s swing voters are with Black Lives Matter protestors. 

From there we opine about President Trump and his policies, with me supporting the latter and David supporting neither.

At the end of the show we address David’s letter about my column’s claims that college professors are overwhelming leftist. I cite various sources including a wide-ranging statistical study indicating that the Democrat to Republican ratio of college professors and their political contributions in an election year is as high as 95:1.

David counters that the National Association of Scholars who did the study favors traditional study of western civilization. He asserts the more important question would be: does that bias manifest in biased teaching?

I cite the books used most in our prestigious graduate schools of education (like Columbia) as being overwhelmingly leftist. The best-selling book of them all is by Bill Ayers, an unapologetic, radical revolutionary who is proud of bombing banks and military installations during the sixties and seventies. He teaches teachers at the University of Illinois Chicago and he advocates “teaching for social responsibility” which he believes means turning out little revolutionaries across the country in our public schools.

David suggests that part of academic inquiry is reading those books that are on the fringe. He takes issue with the terms “anarchist” and “radical Marxist” and says there are no working definitions for them.

I say a Marxist is an anti-capitalist at least before we run out of time.

Request to Require -- Tolerate to Mandate

In its early days, what we now know as the “LGBT Community” begged society for tolerance of “alternative lifestyles.” Then it asked for acceptance. After gaining some measure of political clout, it demanded “rights.” Lately, it is imposing conformity by legislating civil penalties against people who adhere to biological facts and religious beliefs about LGBT issues. How soon before it criminalizes dissent? How soon will we discover as Cool Hand Luke did that if you don’t, “Get your mind right,” you’ll “spend a night in the box.”

Last week I saw two stories alerting me that it’s just around the corner. The first was in National Review about a former 30-year Emergency Room doctor in the UK who didn’t have his mind right and was fired. His offense? He said he wouldn’t use a “preferred pronoun” when treating a hypothetical “transexual.” He’d refuse to call a man who claimed he was a woman “she.” He said — as a scientist — that it’s impossible for a man to change into a woman. “If somebody has male XY chromosomes and male genitalia,” he said, “I cannot in good conscience call them a woman.” As a Christian, he believes God created humans: “Man and woman he created them,” he said, citing Genesis, Chapter 5: Verse 2.

Dr. Mackereth

Doctors in the UK, however, work for the government and the LGBT lobby mandates conformity from all government employees. It determined that Dr. David Mackereth didn’t have his mind right and could no longer practice medicine. At fifty-five, he was out of a job. Government would force him to ignore science, deny his religious faith, and lie in order to continue practicing. “I knew it could be the end of my work as a doctor,” he said, “but I could not live with myself if I didn’t speak up. It would be dishonest — and I didn’t want to live a lie.”

The second story was in The Federalist: “Starting July 1, 2020, all Illinois public schools are legally required to teach children LGBT history and only buy textbooks that include the topic. NPR affiliate Illinois Public Radio labeled Christian and conservative opposition to this law while it was being considered as stemming from ‘hate groups.’”

According to government-sponsored radio in Illinois, Catholics who believe Catholic doctrine that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered belong to a “hate group.” How long before Catholics are charged with “hate crimes” and imprisoned?

I’ve watched the steady advance of leftist control in public education ever since my own career began in 1975. In 2000, I had to pick out a textbook for 8th graders, but all texts by the standard publishers contained a pronounced left-wing bias and they were costly. I told the principal if I could pick save him money and purchase two cheaper texts for each student: leftist A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn and conservative: A Patriot’s History of the United States by Schweikart & Allen — I could get both for far less the price of one standard text. I could then compare and contrast perspectives in each of my lessons. He said that would be fine if I were to continue teaching, but what if I retired? What was the likelihood that whoever replaced me could do that?

I had to admit it wasn’t likely and had to pick one of the standard, leftist texts: Prentice Hall’s The American Nation, the most-used text in the country at the time. I didn’t like it but figured I would offer students contrasting perspectives from other sources when the bias got too strong. As bad as The American Nation was, it seems middle of the road now compared to what is mandated in Illinois — as well as in California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Oregon where similar laws have been passed. The left controls education thoroughly now, kindergarten to graduate school, and the LGBT lobby is riding high.

Illinois teachers' guide from Human Rights Campaign

Illinois’ Evanston/Skokie schools adopted a curriculum like what will be mandatory next year across the state. The equal sign logo of the Human Rights Campaign — the nation's largest, most powerful LGBT lobby — is stamped all over the materials. Children 3-5 are told about Jazz, a boy who wanted to be a girl. They see a video in which he reads from a book about his transition that made him happy. At the end, Jazz says: “To all the kids out there who are seeing this book for the first time, I just want to say that you can be like Jazz. You can be your true self.”

Illinois teachers' guide from Human Rights Campaign

The left insists homosexuals and transgenders are born that way, but what if they aren’t? Research at Brown University strongly suggests that: “‘Rapid-onset gender dysphoria’ [transgenderism] may be a social contagion linked with having friends who identify as LGBT, an identity politics culture, and an increase in internet use.” Are public schools turning into laboratories for LGBT identity culture?

Curb Your Judgement?

Mrs. H. is a strong-willed woman who likes to stay in shape. While living here in western Maine, she fought off a man who tried to assault her sexually as she was jogging. She avoided rape but emerged bruised, battered, and traumatized, which is why she wants anonymity. She lives in Florida now where she is suing Planet Fitness for revoking her membership after she complained about a man ogling women in the locker room. She contacted me recently about the situation.

Attorney Mathew Staver describes the case: “‘Mrs. H.’ is a survivor of a violent rape attempt. On May 29, 2018, staff at the Leesburg location revoked ‘Mrs. H.’s’ membership after she was intimidated by and complained about the behavior of Jordan Rich in the women’s locker room. Rich claims to be ‘transgender,’ but is obviously a man and his behavior indicates he derives enjoyment from depriving women of privacy.”

Eric Stagno

Planet Fitness declares itself a “judgement-free zone” which has been problematic in at least two other cases. Last month, Eric Stagno was arrested in the Plaistow, New Hampshire Planet Fitness facility and charged with indecent exposure, lewdness and disorderly conduct because he was walking back and forth and doing poses on a yoga mat in the nude. The Lawrence Eagle Tribune reported: “The only statement police said Stagno made during the arrest was that he thought the gym was a ‘judgement free zone,’ apparently referencing the workout chain's slogan.”

CNN reported that Yvette Cormier of Michigan lost her Planet Fitness membership after warning other women about a man who called himself “Carlotta” in the locker room. “If you have male parts you don't need to be in the women's locker room,” said Cormier. “I don't care what you are; I don't care if you're gay lesbian, transgender or transvestite. I am uncomfortable with you as a male in my locker room, in my restroom.” Planet Fitness got support from the Michigan ACLU and the Human Rights Campaign — a national homosexual lobbying group, as well other LGBT pressure groups. Cormier’s lawsuit was dismissed in two lower courts but then upheld by the Michigan Supreme Court last month.

Cormier and "Carlotta"

Jordan Rich is a man who says he’s a woman and Mrs. H. was uncomfortable changing while he watched her in a big locker room mirror two feet away. She politely asked him to leave, but he refused. When she left, he chased her into the parking lot, then called 911 as she drove off to report that she had sexually harassed him. Police responded, but evidently didn’t take Mr. Rich’s charge seriously.

Jordan Rich

Mainstream media habitually champion “transgenders” who say they feel uncomfortable in the locker rooms or bathrooms corresponding to their actual sex. Such people comprise less than 1% of the population but don’t seem to mind making others uncomfortable when they take either their clothes off in the presence of women, or watch women undress in women’s locker rooms. Yvette Cormier won her case in Michigan, but will it be appealed to federal courts? Will Eric Stagno sue the Plaistow, New Hampshire police who arrested him? Will Jordan Rich file suit against Mrs. H. for sexual harassment? Will more women file suits like these?

Planet Fitness is a private company and they can make any policies they want, but they should state them in their contracts so women who are joining know that men are allowed in women’s locker rooms. As stories like that of Mrs. H. and others get out there, profits may decline and they might consider changing their policies.

Meanwhile, government schools have been allowing girls in boys’ locker rooms — and mandating that boys and parents accept it. A group of parents filed suit in federal court against an Oregon school declaring the presence of a girl in the boys’ locker room was causing their sons “embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, intimidation, fear, apprehension, and stress.”

Obama-appointed Judge Marco Hernandez threw out the suite last month declaring that: “High school students do not have a fundamental privacy right to not share school restrooms, lockers, and showers with transgender students whose biological sex is different than theirs.” He said the stress the boys felt was not "comparable to the plight of transgender students who are not allowed to use facilities consistent with their gender identity.”

Hernandez’s ruling will stand unless it’s overturned in a federal court of appeals, and that won’t likely be quick if it happens at all. What can we expect when schools open this fall? Will boys be allowed in girls’s shower rooms? After that ruling, public schools won’t be able to stop it. It’s one thing for private entities like Planet Fitness gyms to allow it; people can go to another gym — but now the federal government can force it on public schools.

I don’t believe I have to ask Mrs. H. what she thinks of this development.

Delinquent Disability

How was Nikolas Cruz able to buy a gun after so many reports to both school officials and law enforcement that he was “dangerous” and “about to blow”? The short answer is that even though Cruz had likely broken the law, he had no record. Why? Because schools and law enforcement cover up crimes by kids like Cruz in Florida and elsewhere. Why? Because it keeps budgets down and they get awards for doing it.

Juvenile delinquents aged 14-18 were my first students in 1975, but weren’t called that. Under the Massachusetts’ first-in-the-nation special ed law “juvenile delinquents" were re-labeled “emotionally disturbed.” They had a “disability.” That didn’t make them any less delinquent, but it signaled a new approach with lots of tax dollars to implement it. The special ed bureaucracy was born and eventually grew into the national behemoth it is now.

My “disabled” students were habitually absent Mondays because they were being arraigned after getting arrested over the weekend for shoplifting, drug possession, breaking and entering, purse-snatching, and other crimes. When I asked if they were afraid of going to jail they said, “They can’t do anything to me until I’m eighteen. I’ll stop then.” Massachusetts had closed all its county reform schools as part of its new approach. 

Special ed law gave my students a legal right to a free, appropriate education to “meet their needs” in the “least restrictive environment” no matter what the cost. Mine was a private day school with 100 students and 36 professional staff. Tuition was expensive, but not as costly as a residential school which would be the next step on the restrictive environment continuum. Those could cost $80,000 per year in 1980 dollars — much more now I’m sure.

At such prices, school systems kept residential placements to a minimum. My day school clearly wasn’t “meeting their needs” if students were arrested so often, but “evaluation team” meetings were confidential, inclined to smooth things over with little or no oversight. Only rapists and murderers went to residential placement. The rest avoided punishment because they attended our special school, but unlike in today’s Florida, their crimes were on record at least. 

In spite of all the money spent during my two years there, I saw little evidence of rehabilitation. After obtaining a graduate degree I became a special ed director for a Maine school district for another two years before going back to the classroom to teach history.

Years later a “disabled” boy came into my history class mid-year with a full-time aide assigned just to him. I knew his family and suspected the district was babysitting him to avoid the cost of residential placement. He reminded me of the worst delinquents I taught in Massachusetts and he didn’t stay long. I wasn’t told where he went or why. Later, he was the prime suspect in the murder of his father, was arrested with someone who slit the throat of a cab driver, and was jailed for assaulting a local woman in a home invasion. I don’t know what he’s doing now.

The “new approach” I saw forty years ago has “progressed” in Florida and probably explains why Nikolas Cruz could buy a gun. Conservativetreehouse.com, reported that schools and cops in Dade County and Broward County began covering up their crimes, including those by Trayvon Martin, allegedly to circumvent the “school-to-prison pipeline” for minority male students, It was supposed to remain confidential, but word leaked out. An Internal Affairs investigation didn’t look into the cover-ups, only the leaks. Mainstream media gave that story a good leaving alone.

Then came federally-imposed quotas on how many minority students could be suspended during the Obama Administration which accelerated coverups of juvenile crime. According to conservativetreehouse.com: “Initially the police were excusing misdemeanor behaviors. However, it didn't take long until felonies, even violent felonies (armed robberies, assaults and worse) were being excused.” 

The Miami Herald reports that Nikolas Cruz was transferred six times in three years because of his extremely disruptive behavior. If my experience is any guide, it’s likely the district was trying to cut costs. “Under federal [special ed] law, Nikolas Cruz had a right to a ‘free and appropriate’ education at a public school near him. His classmates had a right to an education free of fear. Their rights often collided,” said the Herald.

No kidding.

Some media erroneously reported Cruz was expelled. He wasn’t. That is illegal for someone with a “disability.” Cruz was sent back at Douglas High School and whatever he might have done remained confidential under federal law. Without a criminal record, he could pass an FBI background check and buy a gun because whatever crimes he may have committed would have been covered up by school resource officers — like the one who cowered outside as Cruz murdered his classmates.

Organizing Knowledge

Most students came to me unable to fix themselves in space or in time. They had little idea of what the world looked like beyond their neighborhood and their school. They could not point to Maine on a world map, or to their town on a map of Maine. Neither did they have much idea of world and national events during the lives of their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and other ancestors which shaped their families and the culture into which they’d been born.

It took me a while to realize what an impediment those deficits were. I had a curriculum to deliver and try as I might, results of my labors were sporadic at best. Information I delivered went in one ear and out the other because there was no context, no net, no web in students’ minds onto which it might attach. Some did have those contexts. They comprehended everything and progressed. Most, however, did not.

My first target was geographic ignorance, so I passed out maps of the world with no labels anywhere. Depicted were continents and the blue water surrounding them. On the continents were tannish mountain ranges and blue rivers. That’s all. Next I passed out a list of names — continents, mountains, rivers, seas, bays, gulfs, straits, channels, deserts, isthmuses — about one hundred fifty of the earth’s most important physical features. Their task was to find them and label them the same way cartographers did on the atlases in the back of their textbooks. They had to find and label each, then print the name on a horizontal plane except when labeling rivers and mountain ranges. Most of them gasped.

“Get to it,” I said. “You’ll be tested the end of next week. I’ll pass out the same blank map and a list of fifty places randomly selected from that one hundred fifty that you must label correctly without looking at your atlas.

“Which ones will be on the test?” they asked.

“I’m not telling. You’ll see when I pass it out.” We drilled in class for about ten days and played various map games. Ultimately most did fairly well on the test. Those who didn’t were allowed to take it again until they did. They had begun building a physical context — a net between their ears. To their surprise, they actually enjoyed it.

Then came a respite, after which came another blank world map with another list of one hundred fifty countries and major cities. They had to label each and outline political borders between countries (which were already lightly drawn), and locate cities with a dot. Then came more drill, more games, and another test. Again, most did fairly well.

The goal was for each student to be able to conjure up the world map in their mind’s eye whenever they heard one of the three hundred places mentioned — then see exactly where in the world it was. Standing before a pull-down world map they would need less than five seconds to point to it. For the rest of their lives, whenever they heard something about one of those places, there was a framework in their minds to which it might stick before it went out the other ear. It was a way to begin organizing knowledge.

After that we’d take another break from map drills, but only for a month or so. Then I’d pass out a blank map of the United States and another list of one hundred fifty place names — and they’d do the same drills. Then came another blank USA map and they were tasked with finding all fifty states, all fifty capitals, and dozens of other major cities. After appropriate intervals would come blank maps of Europe and the Middle East. For the last several years of my career, I was determined that no student would leave my class geographically ignorant. Some did anyway, but not many.

Every day we’re bombarded with information from electronic media in our pockets, in our living rooms, in the car. Most of it doesn’t stick in our minds because far too many Americans are like my students were. They cannot fix themselves in space or time. For them there’s only here and now. Ask them when the Civil War was fought and they cannot answer. World War I? Forget it. Even World War II is hazy in America’s collective mind. When they hear of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), can they point to either Iraq or Syria? I doubt it. North Korea? Iran? Probably not. 

All during my thirty-six-year teaching career, America’s access to information increased manyfold while our ability to retain and make sense that information went in the other direction. Worse, it appears that decline is accelerating. Why? There’s no construct, no context in which to arrange global information so it can even be understood, much less acted upon.