Category: schools and colleges

California parents file lawsuit against state for fostering antisemitism against schoolchildren

February 27, 2026 • 9:30 am

We Jews can’t catch a break, but that’s old news. Still, those of us in the tribe, even without belief in Yahweh, are distressed and enraged by the daily reports of antisemitism in the West. There’s no doubt that the bigotry and hatred are growing, that the Israel and Gaza war is just an excuse, and that the antisemitism is really based on Jew hatred, not the euphemistic “anti-Zionism.” This kind of stuff may lead to the kind of slaughter we saw on Bondi Beach (antisemitism seems quite common in Australia).

The Free Press reports on what they say is the first lawsuit brought against a state for antisemitism in a public school. It’s been filed against the state of California, not against the schools themselves (there are similar lawsuits against colleges like Harvard, UCLA, and Columbia)  Click to read the article.

Click below to see the 46-page lawsuit:

Some excerpts from the FP article are given below (indented), but you’ll have to read the whole piece with a subscription to see the many horrific examples. The Free Press doesn’t permit archiving of its pieces, the pikers.

A coalition of Jewish parents and civil rights organizations have filed the first antisemitism lawsuit against a U.S. state, accusing the California government of failing to protect Jewish students from a surge of antisemitic harassment, violence, and propaganda in the state’s public schools. The filing accuses the state of offering only “toothless remedies” to the scourge of antisemitism through a “glacial and opaque administrative process.”

The suit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Israel-advocacy group StandWithUs on behalf of several Jewish families. Defendants include a number of state agencies, among them the California Department of Education.

The lawsuit comes more than two years after the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, which the Brandeis Center alleges triggered an unprecedented wave of antisemitic incidents in California’s schools that has never been adequately addressed. In 2024, the most recent year for which data is available, antisemitic incidents reached their highest-ever recorded levels in the United States, with violent assaults on Jewish people increasing 21 percent compared to the previous year.

I presume the first paragraph below gives the reason why the suit can be filed against the state. I wonder if there can be similar suits in states lacking a constitutional provision, suits based on the American Constitution:

California is one of the few states with a constitutional provision explicitly guaranteeing an equitable and free education, according to Marci Lerner Miller, the director of legal investigations with the Brandeis Center. The lawsuit explicitly cites this provision in arguing that pervasive antisemitism in California’s public schools has “deprived [Jewish students] of equal access to educational benefits and opportunities.”

Some examples from several places:

In the last year there have been many lawsuits filed against universities, accusing them of failing to combat antisemitism and prompting the federal government to freeze billions of dollars in college funding. But now, concern is being raised that antisemitism originates earlier, before students even set foot on a college campus. Elementary school students in Brooklyn, for example, have been taught about the Middle East using a map that entirely excluded the state of Israel, as part of a classroom program funded by the Qatari government. In Queens, a high school teacher had to flee from a mob after her students discovered she attended a protest in support of Israel. In California, under the guise of “ethnic studies,” high school teachers are telling students that “Zionists,” or anyone associated with the state of Israel, are “oppressors” and settler colonialists. In one particularly shocking instance, students at a high school in Silicon Valley were asked to consider the “Effect of Israel’s Bombing of Gaza” on climate change as part of a physics assignment.

Apparently this lawsuit, in the link above (or here) has legs because the parents went through all the requisite channels before exhausting their nonlegal remedies. They complained to teachers, to principals, to the school districts, and so on—often for years—but got bupkes.  And the examples are horrible, especially because the bigotry is directed at kids.  I’ll give four examples from the lawsuit, quoted by the FP:

Example 1

One of the plaintiffs in the case, Melissa Alexander, said her 12-year-old son now “refuses to speak about his Jewish heritage and wear his Jewish star anymore at school” due to the way he was treated by one of his teachers.

The suit claims the teacher, whose public social media accounts were allegedly “filled with virulently antisemitic and anti-Israel content,” allegedly targeted the student with fabricated misconduct allegations because he wore Israel-related T-shirts and a Star of David necklace to school. The complaint also alleges that the teacher accused him of being too loud in class, telling the 12-year-old that he had done something “egregious and dangerous.” When Alexander asked what her son had done, the teacher allegedly told her “it did not matter.” Alexander’s son received “Unsatisfactory” grades in the class, and was told that he might not be able “to matriculate to eighth grade.”

“None of [the child’s] other teachers raised concerns about his behavior, and aside from the class with this teacher, [he] was a straight-A student,” the claim alleges.

The school never took action against the teacher, according to the complaint. “Watching my son navigate these challenges has broken my heart,” Alexander said.

Example 2

. . . a third-grade girl at Kester Elementary School in Los Angeles—identified in the complaint as Student B—planned to perform in the school talent show in 2024, singing a song by an Israeli Eurovision contestant and carrying a poster that included the Israeli flag. Before she could take to the stage, a teaching assistant allegedly stopped the 9-year-old and told her that “Israel is a racist apartheid state, and by supporting Israel, you are being racist.” The lawsuit claims she was barred from performing with her poster. The family has since moved her to a different school.

Example 3

Two more plaintiffs in the case, Dawn and Michael Rosenthal, allege that in 2024, their son, B.R., transferred to Daniel Pearl Magnet High School—named for the Jewish journalist murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002—specifically to escape antisemitism at his previous school, Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies. At Sherman Oaks, his peers allegedly called him “shitcan Jew,” and taunted him with “Heil Hitler” salutes. As a solution, administrators allegedly suggested he eat lunch alone in a segregated space rather than with his classmates. In November 2022, during a physical education class, a group of students chased him around the track yelling “Let’s get the Jew,” tripped him, and beat him until he lost consciousness. The school did not suspend a single attacker. Some were placed back in B.R.’s classes, according to the complaint.

Daniel Pearl Magnet was supposed to be a fresh start. Instead, the complaint alleges, it became another incubator of antisemitism. B.R.’s honors chemistry teacher repeatedly displayed a “Free Palestine” poster and refused a principal’s request to remove it. On October 7, 2025—the two-year anniversary of the Hamas massacre—the teacher allegedly wrote on the whiteboard: “Oy vey, it’s free,” with an arrow pointing to “FREE PALESTINE.” When the Rosenthals complained, the school offered to pull B.R. from the class entirely and enroll him in a solo online course through a credit-recovery platform, costing him both in-person instruction and his honors designation. The teacher was ultimately removed, but not for any of this—he was arrested on felony charges after stapling a student’s arm.

Example 4:  A case of what the lawsuit calls “antisemitic propaganda”.

The complaint focuses particularly on an unauthorized curriculum created by members of the Oakland Education Association, which was used in a December 2023 teach-in that reached students across grade levels, including kindergartners.

The curriculum’s materials included a read-aloud of the children’s alphabet book P Is for Palestine, in which “I is for Intifada,” and is defined in the book as “rising up for what is right, if you are a kid or a grown-up.” The complaint notes that the word intifada refers to two periods of sustained violence in which more than a thousand Israeli civilians—including children—were killed in suicide bombings of buses and cafés carried out by Palestinian terrorist organizations.

A worksheet included in the same curriculum asked elementary school children to draw “the Zionist leaders of Israel receiv[ing] money and support.” Another worksheet referred to “Zionist bullies” who are “”always scaring” and “arresting” Palestinian children.

Despite widespread public reporting about the teach-in at the time, and the Oakland Unified School District’s own statement that it was unauthorized, the complaint states that no teachers who participated were ever disciplined.

Some of the figures from that curriculum are reproduced below.

Note the lack of punishment of any of the Jew-hating teachers and the traumatic effect of bigotry on the students.

One quote from One Who Understands:

“The California education system is teaching the state’s children that Jewish Americans and Israelis are racists, white supremacists, oppressors, and baby-killers who should be shunned,” said Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center and a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights. “The result is not surprising: Jewish children and children perceived as Jewish are bullied and excluded by their peers and harassed by their teachers, who silence, mock, and even segregate them if they speak out.”

What does the suit want? There are a number of demands on pp. 44-45 of the suit, including documenting and listing all the complaints the schools have received, the formation of a committee to review the “ethnic studies” curriculum, and appointing a compliance officer to monitor any orders. The suit also calls for mandatory anti-semitism training for teachers, staff, and administrators, and quarterly compliance reports, as well as asking the state to cover all the costs of the plaintiff’s suit.

When do they want it? NOW!

One non-trivial effect of the actions documented above, besides demonizing and bullying Jewish students (and chilling their speech) is that the failure to punish the bigots simply encourages teachers and students to continue the behavior or even ratchet it up. And of course the non-Jewish kids, propagandized by schools at an early age, could grow up to be antisemites themselves, so that the hatred propagates across generations.

Governor Gavin Newsom, who’s hungry for the Presidency in four years, better tell his people to agree to the suit’s terms, or he’ll face some hard questions come 2028.  Since teachers unions in all “progressive” states are even more progressive and bigoted than the citizens themselves, this behavior may be hard to wipe out. Only a lawsuit, and perhaps fines, can efface the behavior, though not so much the Jew-hatred, which is now ingrained and ubiquitous.

Finally, here are some examples of how the kids were propagandized by the Oakland curriculum. First, a tweet (h/t Luana):

Two more figures you can see in the lawsuit. Lovely, aren’t they?

New Louisiana law requires display of Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms

June 21, 2024 • 9:30 am

There is a new law in the benighted state of Louisiana requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms, including colleges. It is an arrant violation of the First Amendment—indeed, it was intended to test whether it comports with the First Amendment—and it is motivated by religion.  The fact that the law is admittedly religious in origin and nature is pathetically masked by saying that the Commandments are really an important part of American history, and that three other secular documents like the Declaration of Independence may also be displayed alongside Moses’s Laws.

Click below to read, or find it archived here:

The NYT article above has a brief summary of the law and the motivations of its promoters, which I’ve excerpted below.

Gov. Jeff Landry signed legislation on Wednesday requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in every public classroom in Louisiana, making the state the only one with such a mandate and reigniting the debate over how porous the boundary between church and state should be.

Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, vowed a legal fight against the law they deemed “blatantly unconstitutional.” But it is a battle that proponents are prepared, and in many ways, eager, to take on.

“I can’t wait to be sued,” Mr. Landry said on Saturday at a Republican fund-raiser in Nashville, according to The Tennessean. And on Wednesday, as he signed the measure, he argued that the Ten Commandments contained valuable lessons for students.

“If you want to respect the rule of law,” he said, “you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses.”

The legislation is part of a broader campaign by conservative Christian groups to amplify public expressions of faith, and provoke lawsuits that could reach the Supreme Court, where they expect a friendlier reception than in years past. That presumption is rooted in recent rulings, particularly one in 2022 in which the court sided with a high school football coach who argued that he had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games.

. . .The measure in Louisiana requires that the commandments be displayed in each classroom of every public elementary, middle and high school, as well as public college classrooms. The posters must be no smaller than 11 by 14 inches and the commandments must be “the central focus of the poster” and “in a large, easily readable font.”

It will also include a three-paragraph statement asserting that the Ten Commandments were a “prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”

That reflects the contention by supporters that the Ten Commandments are not purely a religious text but also a historical document, arguing that the instructions handed down by God to Moses in the Book of Exodus are a major influence on United States law.

I’ve put the bill that became law below, and there’s a lot to unpack in it. But read for yourself; I’ll simply single out the highlights.

Click to read:

The bill begins with a long rationale trying to show that the Ten Commandments are an important part of American history, and therefore should be displayed because it’s not really promoting religion, but recounting our history. After all, some of the Founders mentioned God!  But doesn’t explain why, say, the Constitution or Declaration of Independence are NOT required to be displayed. No, the Ten Commandments is the only historical document required to be displayed; other documents are optional.  Here’s some of the rationale for making that display mandatory—the “historical context” argument that Christians use to push religion into schools (and put “In God We Trust” on our money):

Recognizing the historical role of the Ten Commandments accords with our nation’s history and faithfully reflects the understanding of the founders of our 9 nation with respect to the necessity of civic morality to a functional self-government. History records that James Madison, the fourth President of the United States ofAmerica, stated that “(w)e have staked the whole future of our new nation . . . upon  the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.”

. . .  The text of the Ten Commandments set forth in Subsection B of this 17 Section is identical to the text of the Ten Commandments monument that was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 688 19 (2005).  Including the Ten Commandments in the education of our children is part of our state and national history, culture, and tradition.

The Mayflower Compact of 1620 was America’s first written constitution and made a Covenant with Almighty God to “form a civil body politic”. This was the first purely American document of self-government and affirmed the link between civil society and God.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided a method of admitting new states to the Union from the territory as the country expanded to the Pacific. The Ordinance “extended the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty” to the territories and stated that “(r)eligion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

. . . .The Supreme Court of the United States acknowledged that the Ten Commandments may be displayed on local government property when a private donation is made for the purchase of the historical monument. Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summan, 555 U.S. 460 (2006).

The bill cites other religious statements by the founders, but of course the word “God,” while appearing in the Declaration of Independence, does not appear at all in the Constitution. The Founders barely believed in God, were not very religious at all, and it’s misleading to suggest that this nation was founded on the rules adumbrated in the Ten Commandments. (Or were there Eleven Commandments? See below.)

Note too that the Supreme Court ruled—and this too seems a First Amendment violation—that one could display the Ten Commandments on government property if the money for the display did not come from the public.  This, I suppose, is a lame attempt to avoid excessive entanglement of the government and religion vis-à-vis the Lemon Test, and, indeed, this bill requires that the money for the many classroom copies of the Ten Commandments must come from “donations”. That tells you right away that something fishy is going on.

Display of other documents is optional:

A public school may also display the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the Northwest Ordinance, as provided in R.S. 26 25:1282, along with the Ten Commandments.

The Northwest Ordinance? What about the fricking Constitution?

There is another requirement: the Ten Commandments must be displayed along with a “context” statement, to wit:

The History of the Ten Commandments in American Public Education

The Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries. Around the year 1688, The New England Primer became the first published American textbook and was the equivalent of a first grade reader. The New England Primer was used in public schools throughout the United States for more than one hundred fifty years to teach Americans to read and contained more than forty questions about the Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments were also included in public school textbooks published by educator William McGuffey, a noted university president and professor. A version of his famous McGuffey Readers was written in the early 1800s and became one of the most popular textbooks in the history of American education, selling more than one hundred million copies. Copies of the McGuffey Readers are still available today.

The Ten Commandments also appeared in textbooks published by Noah Webster in which were widely used in American public schools along with America’s first comprehensive dictionary that Webster also published. His textbook, The American Spelling Book, contained the Ten Commandments and sold more than one hundred million copies for use by public school children all across the nation and was still available for use in American public schools in the year 1975.

This is all more striving by the sweating lawmakers to show that, because the Ten Commandments were mentioned in early textbooks, they have become an integral part of American education and thus should remain so today. But since then the courts have tried erect and maintain a “wall of separation between church and state”, a metaphor used by Jefferson, who drew on earlier ideas of Roger Williams.

The enforcement of the Establishment Clause hasn’t been perfect: as I said, we have “In God We Trust” on our money; the Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase “0ne nation, under God”; and the Supreme court has allowed various First Amendment violations to slip through, including, as the NYT mentions, affirming a “Constitutional right” of a football coach to kneel on school property and publicly say a Christian prayer after football games.  Christians, it seems, cannot seem to keep their religion out of public schools. (That is, of course, why we have to eternally battle against creationism, which comes from the fictional narrative of Genesis 1 and 2.

Will this law stand?  It’s certainly going to be challenged by the ACLU and FFRF, and I’ve no doubt that these and other groups will take the law all the way to the Supreme Court. What happens then? The answer is murky. The court has allowed public prayer after public-school games, and a display of the Ten Commandments on public property if it’s funded privately.  The latter ruling may provide a precedent to uphold this law as well.

And we all know that the court is largely religious: 7 of the 9 justices are Catholic (I’m counting Gorsuch, who is “Anglican Catholic”), Jackson is a Protestant, and Kagan is the lone Jew. It’s not hard to imagine that most of the Supremes will be sympathetic to this law. And then. . . I’m worried about the resurgence of creationism.

By the way, as Steve Orzack pointed out, somehow the bill lists not ten but eleven commandments, to wit:

I count ELEVEN, right?  The authors of the bill have some revision to do!

California school tries to censor new documentary movie that shows some embarrassing stuff (attempts to remove A.P. classes, propagandizing of students, etc.)

April 8, 2024 • 12:00 pm

There’s a new 38-minute movie out, “Man of Steele”, made by filmmaker Eli Steele about diversity, the attempted removal of AP classes, and antisemitism in a ritzy California school district.  The movie, however, was was apparently removed from both YouTube and Vimeo—just for two seconds of video that someone claimed constituted “copyright infringement”. It appears to be fair usage, which isn’t really infringement, but fortunately you can still watch the movie. As Steele notes in the second headline below (click on each one to read):

The complainant was Menlo-Atherton High School’s newspaper, M-A Chronicle, and they objected to the inclusion of a two-second clip in the Killing America trailer. I checked the trailer’s YouTube page and, indeed, it had been removed.

Here’s are three Substack sites that explain the situation (the links to the movie are below, or you can click on the first headline).

I’ve watched the movie, and you won’t lose much more than half an hour if you do, but I have to say that it’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast, as it mixes together diverse subjects (removal of AP classes from a high school, equity, diversity, a school board’s musing over the advanced-placement classes, and the reaction of one parent whose son goes to the Bay Area school at issue).  Perhaps I was tired, but I didn’t find it particularly coherent. That said, it’s still worth watching to see the parents battle over whether “tracking” students creates inequities and is unfair, or whether it allows students to reach their full potential. It’s worth it to see the school board dissimulate, and it’s worth it to see the odious, antisemitic and pro-Palestinian lies that some teachers tell to their students. But the film fails explain clearly how equity is connected with anti-Semitism, although one can intuit that the connection is via a DEI mentality, which promotes equity and denigrates Jews at the same time (Jews are seen as white, oppressive colonialists). And the occasional insertion of Russian stuff, like their national anthem, baffles me. Is Steele saying that Marxism is behind some of this? Who knows?

In the end, one doesn’t know what happens in the school district, but perhaps because the school board hasn’t decided what to do.

Here, from one of the posts, is the creator’s explanation of why he wanted to get the movie out (I know him only by the name “Man of Steele”):

That is why I’m releasing the film now — to force the following issues to the forefront:

  • Free Speech — what are we teaching students at high school newspapers when we tell them to embrace censorship, not free speech, as their weapon of choice?
  • Artistic Expression — are we going to let documentaries and other art forms be censored by activists, especially those in wealthy, elite neighborhoods?
  • Hate/Antisemitism — Why has this school and district largely ignored the rising antisemitism on campus? We know if it was blacks who were on the receiving end, the response would be different. This double-standard must end.
  • Ideological Capture/Lowering of Education Standards — For too long these education activists, many from Stanford University and beyond, have been given free reign to impose their ideologies onto students. As a result, the quality of education has declined significantly.

People often ask why I made Killing America and Diana Blum, the film’s main subject, once said something that summed up my thoughts perfectly: “With this film, I wanted to give parents a voice because they’ve been silenced and ridiculed for so long by the school board, activist teachers, and the school authorities. This film is our way to get around that ideological resistance and be heard for once and for all.”

I don’t have to say it but the irony here is that it is these education ideologues that are trying to take our voice away once again.

To watch the movie, click on the headline below, go here (same place), or watch it on Steele’s tweet below.

Again, I emphasize that you should watch this movie, but realize that it’s not a fully-formed documentary. The fact that the school is trying to censor it on trivial grounds tells you all you need to know.

If you want to donate to Steele to support the movie, go here. I also found this on the donation page, which clarifies the film a bit.

THE STORY: In August of 2023, I was contacted by Bay Area parents who recently learned that Sequoia Union High School District had been removing honors classes for the past 8 years. Not only that, they were infusing other classes with liberated ethnic studies curricula. At first, I thought that this was an old story. We saw how Virginia and Manhattan parents fought over the schools for the past three years.

Then October 7 happened.

It quickly became apparent to us how the immediate and unapologetic rise in antisemitism in the Bay Area schools was related to the elimination of honors classes as well as the oppressor-oppressed model that ethnic studies brought into the classroom. We knew then that we had a film here and “Killing America” is the result.

h/t: Luana

 

Distortion of slavery in southern history textbooks

February 1, 2024 • 9:15 am

Reader Jim Batterson sent me this illustration from the textbook he used in his seventh-grade “Virginia History” class in Newport News, VA. He was about 13 years old at the time. And this is the kind of stuff that people have, for good reason, tried to purge from secondary-school education. Fortunately, this kind of distortion isn’t found in modern textbooks. But look at the picture below: a fanciful depiction of a slave family meeting “the master.” It implies that slavery was a good thing, and everyone was happy.

Here’s what Jim said:

Here in Newport News, I remember that the VA history we got was much like what is discussed briefly in the link with the drawing of a well-dressed slave family arriving to the warm handshake and greeting of his white master.  I think the illustration says it all.

I ran across the drawing in a book review last week.  Gov Linwood Holton helped get rid of these texts when he was governor in the 70’s; and the introduction of “standards of learning” with broader public input in the late 80’s and 90’s led to vast, though not perfect, improvements in presentations on how non-whites were treated if I recall correctly. Gov Holton, a moderate Republican, was Sen. Tim Kaine’s father in law and sent his kids to  desegregated public schools.  I thought that you would find the drawing to be of interest…it was taught through the 1960’s!

I was in elementary school only in the sixth grade in Arlington, Virginia, and don’t remember taking any Virginia history, and by the time I returned from Germany and went to school in Arlington for the 11th and 12th grades, they no longer taught Virginia history (it was taught in the 4th, 7th, and 11th grades).

But this drawing gives me the willies. Warm handshakes all around, a well-dressed slave with a hat and valise, and a well turned-out family. Now what are the chances that, after an Atlantic crossing in the hold of a ship, an enslaved person would look like that?

Source: Citation: Virginia: History, Government, Geography. F226 .S5 1957. Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
Original Author: Francis Simkins, Sidman Poole, and Spotswood Hunnicutt, authors
Created: 1957

See the text from the Encyclopedia Virginia below the picture.

From the Encyclopedia Virginia:

A well-dressed Black family is cordially greeted by a white man—presumably their enslaver—in this fanciful illustration above the chapter title,”How the Negroes lived under Slavery.” Given that the family was arriving via a sailing ship, the reality is that they had probably been recently sold at auction, forcibly transported by boat while being closely guarded, and then delivered to their new “owner.” This illustrated page is from Virginia: History, Government, Geography (1957), the state-sanctioned seventh-grade history textbook that was written with the express intention of presenting a Lost Cause view of slavery as a benign institution. The accompanying text claims that slave laws were “not strictly enforced” and that slave masters were kindly, since “they knew the best way to control their slaves was to win their confidence and affection.” The text goes on to portray the lives of the enslaved as being carefree and happy, as they were supposedly free to gather for dancing, singing, and celebrating religious events—and even, on occasion, having the right to own “guns and other weapons.” The brutal, de-humanizing institution of slavery was far from this gentle depiction; yet these sanitized textbooks remained in use in some Virginia schools until the late 1970s.

According to The Virginia History and Textbook Commission, which also reproduces this page, these textbooks were removed from schools only in 1972, a year after I graduated from college in Virginia:

The Virginia National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) opposed the textbooks, and the Virginia Teachers Association (VTA), a Black educators organization, successfully promoted an accurate telling of Black history that led to the adoption of Black history courses throughout the commonwealth beginning in the 1960s. By 1965, educators were widely complaining that the textbooks amounted to propaganda. Nonetheless, in 1966 the State Board of Education extended the use of the textbooks for another six years.

By 1972, of course, schools had been desegregated for 18 years, but there was still de facto segregation based on segregated neighborhoods—and no busing. I remember having black classmates in elementary or junior high schools, and only a few in my high school, Washington-Lee (now renamed) in Arlington, Virginia.  And that despite there being plenty of African-Americans in northern Virginia: they simply lived in completely different areas.

As Jim notes, many Virginia kids, weaned on a diet of this kind of segregationist pap, grew up thinking that slavery wasn’t so bad, and, in modern times, that it was natural to have a racial hierarchy, with white people being in positions of power over black people. (I can’t resist adding that Palestinian children grow up with similar kinds of supremacist textbooks, with theirs extolling martyrdom and calling for the death of Jews.)

Chicago mayor preparing to eliminate magnet schools. Is that a good thing to do?

December 16, 2023 • 11:15 am

We have a new “progressive” mayor, Brandon Johnson, and although one of his election promises was to keep our “magnet school” system in place, he’s preparing a resolution to end it.

“Magnet schools” are a form of student secondary-school tracking in which students can apply to go to any school, but the best schools, often specializing in subjects like science, are very selective. This is a form of “student tracking” in which students are grouped with others, in classes or in whole schools, of similar achievement.

The parents of high-achieving students are of course incensed at the proposal, and I initially opposed it as a misguided form of achieving “equity”. But after talking to a friend who was a long-time school principal and teacher in Boston, and whose school went from being a magnet school to a school any kid could attend, I’ve rethought my view.

This article from the Daily Mail (of all places) gives the details, and of course the paper is opposed. Click to read.

An excerpt:

Chicago’s progressive mayor has announced plans to axe the Windy City’s high-achieving selective-enrollment schools to boost ‘equity.’  

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Board of Education has proposed shifting back toward neighborhood schools – away from the system where kids compete for selective programs.

But when he was campaigning to become Mayor, Johnson put out a statement saying that he would not get rid of Chicago‘s selective-enrollment schools.

According to the Chicago Tribune, woke Johnson specifically said: ‘A Johnson administration would not end selective enrollment at CPS schools.’

Now, he is seen to be back peddling [sic] – by allowing a vote to stop gifted children from lower income backgrounds from academically competing to get into high-performing schools.

Selective schools cause a ‘stratification and inequity in Chicago Public Schools,’ according to the board’s CEO.

Chicago has 11 selective-enrollment high schools — Northside College Prep, Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, John Hancock College Prep, Jones College Prep, Lane Tech, Lindblom Math and Science Academy, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School.

Walter Payton College Prep, South Shore International College Prep, Westinghouse College Prep and Whitney M. Young Magnet School are also on the list.

The schools are not just the best in Chicago – but rank among the top high schools in the entire country.

Walter Payton College Prep is ranked 10th best school in the US. Northside College Prep is 37th. Jones College Prep ranks 60th.

Now, a resolution is up for a vote by the school board on Thursday.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez has prepared a resolution for ‘a transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.’

It would lay out a five-year ‘transformation’ to effectively get rid of selective schools in Chicago – which have been heralded as the gems of the city’s education system.

At first I was instinctively opposed to this plan on the grounds that it was aimed at making all students perform equally, presumably by lowering the achievement of the high-achieving students, creating a kind of “equity” in which all students would perform at the same middling level, pulling down high-achieving students and preventing them from reaching their potential. (It would, of course, elevate the learning environment of low-achieving students.)

But then I had a long chat with a friend who for many years had been a teacher and then a principal in a Boston area “magnet” school that later transitioned to an “anybody can come” school. His own experience was that magnet schools were a bad idea, and that they should be eliminated in favor of neighborhood schools, as Johnson proposed.

Why? For two reasons. First, magnet schools reduce opportunity for many students, for they attract students whose parents who are highly motivated to get involved in schools to improve their quality. Those parents tend to be better off and educated themselves, and so provide an environment that makes their kids high achievers as well, and more likely to get into magnet schools or be put in a higher “track”. (Advanced placement [AP] classes in schools are also a form of tracking that my friend objects to.  I myself refused to take AP classes in high school because I didn’t think I was smart enough.)

In other words, either tracking or using magnet schools gives kids an unfair advantage based on their parents and their environment. Highly motivated parents also intervene in schools more often to ensure that their kids are getting a high-quality education.

The second factor, according to my friend, is that when faced with a mixed class of students with different levels of motivation and achievement, many teachers respond by getting the students to learn in smaller groups, so that high-achieving students help low-achieving ones. This, he said, raises the level of everyone’s achievement. Of course, teachers have to be willing to do this, which itself is a matter of how the teachers are trained. But my friend said that he’s seen the “mixed-class” system work in two states, and remains convinced that tracking and magnet schools, by quashing opportunity and preventing students of different levels to learn collaboratively, creates, overall, worse outcomes.

Now this doesn’t mean that tracking shouldn’t be used in colleges; that is, we shouldn’t just have a lottery for all colleges so that it becomes no harder to get into Harvard that into Grunt State University. For one thing, many elite colleges are private and wouldn’t be part of such a system. Further, parental influence doesn’t work in college like it does in secondary schools.  But we should remember that there are plenty of “non-elite” colleges where you can get just as good an education as in the Ivies.  Having been to both Harvard and the College of William and Mary, and taught at both Harvard, the University of Chicago, and the University of Maryland, I’d prefer to send my kids—if I had any—to an education intensive William and Mary rather than a research-oriented school like Harvard. I’m convinced that the education I got in Virginia was better than the one I would have gotten at Harvard. After all, Williams College, which doesn’t have graduate students and concentrates heavily on teaching ability of its professors, is rated by Forbes as the best liberal arts college in America. It ranks #10 among all colleges and #8 among private colleges. (U.S. News and World Report also ranks it the best liberal arts college in the U.S.)

Further, getting rid of secondary-school tracking doesn’t mean you’d eliminate standardized tests or grades, either.  After all, you need some way to assess how students are doing, and these measures also help colleges select their students.

I don’t have the experience of my teacher/principal friend, but his argument seemed pretty sound. True, it’s based on one person’s experience, but there are ways of testing whether tracking is not a good way to go (granted, those tests would be hard, and parents would oppose them).

The update: according to CBS News in Chicago,  on Thursday the school board did vote to move away from magnet schools towards neighborhood schools:

The Chicago Board of Education took a key vote on Thursday that could alter the future of schools in the city.

The resolution moves away from school choice in favor of “elevating” neighborhood schools.

It is designed to guide engagement and development of the Chicago Public Schools’ five-year plan. CPS said it “outlines parameters that emphasize strengthening all neighborhood schools as a critical step toward supporting students and closing opportunity gaps.”

“This resolution declares a new chapter in CPS,” Chicago Board of Education President Jianan Shi said in a news release. “While the strategic plan will be developed in partnership with our entire CPS community, we are centering equity and students furthest from opportunity. As such, this moment requires a transformational plan that shifts away from a model that emphasizes school choice to one that elevates our neighborhood schools to ensure each and every student has access to a high-quality educational experience.”

Do you agree with the mayor and the school board? Weigh in below.

Florida teachers told to remove books from classrooms for ideological vetting lest they commit a felony

January 24, 2023 • 12:15 pm

Several readers sent me links to this news from Florida about on one county’s book-vetting initiative, designed to remove books from the classroom if they could corrupt students, turning them into Lefists or, god forbid, “grooming” them. But all schools in Florida, as per a new law, will eventually be experiencing this tsouris.

First, demarcated by the red dots, is Manatee County on Florida’s west coast. It’s not irrelevant to this story that Republican Ron DeSantis, who passed the “Stop WOKE Act” banning the teaching of CRT in Florida’s pubic schools, is the governor. (Though I suppose I could be described as “anti-woke,” I do not favor banning the teaching of CRT and certainly oppose this kind of censoring of schoolbooks.)

You can click on either story below. The first is from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and the second, which has more information, is from Judd Legum’s Popular Information website.  I’ll cite quotes as being from either SHT or PI.

From Popular Information by Judd Legum:

What happened here? To comply with a new Florida law, the Manatee County school district told all school principals in the county, including those heading both public and publicly-funded charter schools, that they couldn’t have any books in their classrooms that had not been approved by a “censor certified media specialist”.  Some of the books have already been approved by the schools’ libraries, but there may be other “dangerous” books in the classroom libraries. To have any book in the classroom, it has to be approved.

PI gives the criteria for approval (my bolding):

In Florida, school librarians are called “media specialists” and hold media specialist certificates. A rule passed by the Florida Department of Education last week states that a “library media center” includes any books made available to students, including in classrooms. This means that classroom libraries that are curated by teachers, not librarians, are now illegal.

The law requires that all library books selected be:

1. Free of pornography and material prohibited under s. 847.012.

2. Suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented.

3. Appropriate for the grade level and age group for which the materials are used or made available

Chapman says that school principals in Manatee County were told Wednesday that any staff member violating these rules by providing materials “harmful to minors” could be prosecuted for “a felony of the third degree.” Therefore, teachers must make their classroom libraries inaccessible to students until they can establish that each book has been approved by a librarian. 

Thus the teachers have to check every book in their classroom library to see if it’s already in the district catalogue of books that don’t purvey WRONGTHINK. That means that teachers have to go through each book to do this cross-checking. If the book is not on the already-approved list, it has to be individually checked out and approved by a censor media specialist.

Note that all three categories are subjective. Does pornography rule out The Catcher in the Rye? Who can tell students that they can’t read a book because they can’t “comprehend it” or because it’s not “appropriate for them”?

Granted, we don’t want classrooms full of Hustler magazines, but the criteria above, being almost completely subjective, demand that someone be appointed to judge the appropriateness of books for kids.  And the results will depend on the censor, of course. Would you want a censor for your kids’ books? If so, who you want, and what criteria should they use? Remember, public schools go up to twelfth grade in America, with the students being 18 years old. That’s old enough to handle almost everything. For crying out loud, I was reading all of this stuff at that age.

If someone’s going to decide, I’d prefer to leave it to each classroom teacher, for he or she knows their students and what they need.

It’s going to be a big job. Below we get an idea of who’s being the censor (from PI; my bolding):

Librarians in Manatee County are now expected to review thousands of books in classroom libraries to ensure compliance with the new law. Manatee County has 64 public schools and 3,000 teachers, many of whom maintain classroom libraries. Chapman said that every school in Manatee County has a media specialist but that the process could take a while because it is “one person” and “they are human.” Any book approved for K-5 students must also be included on a publicly available list.

Similar policies will be implemented in schools across Florida. Some Florida schools do not have a media specialist, making the process even more cumbersome.

That review must also be consistent with a complex training, which was heavily influenced by right-wing groups like Moms For Liberty and approved by the Florida Department of Education just last week. Any mistake by a librarian or others could result in criminal prosecution. This process must be repeated for any book brought into the school on an ongoing basis. But librarians and teachers are not being provided with any additional compensation for the extra work.

The teachers aren’t on board with this, of course. Here’s a photo of one classroom library that a teacher just covered up with construction paper rather than have every book vetted. Free the books!

Note that, according to the tweet below, the posters were made by the students, not by the teachers:

Here’s another classroom in a high school:

And a few statements from teachers:

From the SHT:

Jean Faulk, a history and journalism teacher at Bayshore High, had to remove books on democracy and writings from John Adams because they weren’t vetted in the district’s library system. Her bookshelves are now only lined with reference books, she said.

“This is totally a political move by the governor,” Faulk said. “It has nothing to do with the students.”

She said her school’s administration sent out a directive to teachers asking them to put away or cover up all books in classroom libraries. Faulk said the books from her classroom libraries would now go to other local libraries or Goodwill.

From PI, a future felon speaks:

One high school teacher in Manatee County told Popular Information that they would not comply with the new policy. The teacher has spent the year carefully curating books donated by parents or sourced from their personal collection. “I’m not taking any books out of my room,” the teacher said. “I absolutely refuse.” The teacher spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing that speaking out about the policy could put their job at risk.

and a book libertarian speaks:

Stephana Ferrell, a co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, said the new policy followed “a pattern of fear-based decisions that prioritize staying in good favor with the Governor over doing the right thing for our students.” Ferrell said she blamed “the Florida Board of Education that passed this rule change last Wednesday without an ounce of consideration for its impact.” Now, “thousands of students are without classroom access to fun and engaging literature.”

Ironically, Manatee County is making thousands of books inaccessible to students just in time to celebrate “Literacy Week” in Florida, which runs from January 23 to 27. Only about 50% of students in Manatee County are reading at grade level.

This is a good argument for freedom of speech. For now we see what happens when right-wing governments have the right to censor, and it’s not pretty.

What’s the alternative, then? Do we allow every book in the classroom? Clearly that wouldn’t be either appropriate or practical. But I trust these decisions to be made by teachers rather than ideologues like DeSantis. And books should get the benefit of the doubt.

One more teacher tweet from PI:

h/t: Ken

More news from New Zealand about the big science vs. indigenous “knowledge” ruckus

December 14, 2021 • 9:30 am

Suddenly I am inundated with emails from disaffected Kiwis who take issue with the New Zealand government’s and academia’s new push to teach mātauranga Māori , or Māori “ways of knowing” as coequal with real science in high-school and university science classes.  Many of these people are worried that the country is being swept with an ideology that “all things Māori are good” (tell that to the moas!), and that such an attitude is going to affect not just science, but many parts of life.  It’s one thing to recognize and make reparations to a people who were genuinely oppressed for so long, but that doesn’t mean that that that group should be valorized in every way, nor that their “ways of knowing”, which include creation myths and false legends, can be taken as coequal to science and taught in the science classroom.

I’ll divide this post into three bits.

A. Is mātauranga Māori really going to be implemented in this way, or simply taught as what it is: an agglomeration of practical advice (some of which can be considered “science construed broadly” if it’s verified), legends, myths, and statements now know to be outright false?

Documents suggest that yes, the coequality is indeed the plan.

You can find the general present-day NCEA curriculum here (NCEA is the National Certificate for Educational Achievement, which sets the standards for New Zealand secondary schools). I haven’t gone through all the standards for various areas, but I’ve looked at chemistry, biology, and “physical and earth sciences”.

This page, “What’s changing?“, details how the curriculum will be tweaked, setting out a list of changes that will be made (this plan was apparently approved in 2020, two years after a public consultation that apparently few were aware of).  I quote:

The NCEA Change Programme is a work programme led by the Ministry of Education to deliver the package of seven changes aimed at strengthening NCEA:

2.) Equal status for mātauranga Māori in NCEA – develop new ways to recognise mātauranga Māori, build teacher capability, and improve resourcing and support for Māori learners and te ao Māori pathways.

And if you click on the link “Equal status. . .”, you see this (my bolding):

It is vital that there is parity for mātauranga Māori in NCEA, and it has equal value as other bodies of knowledge.

What we’ve heard:

Māori respondents have told us that NCEA doesn’t do enough to open te ao Māori pathways through the qualification and disadvantages too many ākonga from experiencing success as Māori.

Key changes:

  • Integrate te ao Māori and mātauranga Māori into the new ‘graduate profile’ for NCEA, and into the design of achievement standards.

  • Ensure equal support for ākonga Māori in all settings, and equal status for mātauranga Māori.

  • Develop more subjects to make sure that te ao Māori pathways are acknowledged and supported equally in NCEA (e.g. Māori Performing Arts).

  • Ensuring that, where possible and appropriate, te ao Māori and mātauranga Māori are built into achievement standards for use across English and Māori-medium settings. That might mean:

    • Having Māori-centred contexts for exemplars and assessment resources (e.g. local iwi history).
    • Designing more inclusive standards and assessment resources that allow for diverse cultural perspectives on what’s important (e.g. considering community or hapū impact, not just individual user needs.

  • Build teacher capability around culturally inclusive NCEA and assessment and aromatawai practice that is inclusive of ākonga Māori.”

So yes, the parity between mātauranga Māori and real science is going to take place, and will be used in assessing student achievement.

As to what this might mean in particular, have a look at the goals in each of many academic areas as well as proposals for change and “Big Ideas”.

As one example, check out the “learning matrix” for “Physics Earth and Space Science”:

One of my correspondents singled out this goal (I quote):

” Explore how mauri is an essential part of the natural and human-constructed world and how it is essential to maintain or restore mauri.” – Mauri, insofar as I understand it at all, being a nebulous concept usually translated as “life force”.

The other alterations of physics, meant to fit into Māori “ways of knowing”, are obscure and worrying.

And on the chemistry and biology page, under “What is chemistry and biology about?” and “Big ideas and significant learning”, you will find not a single mention of evolution, the most important and most unifying area of biology. Why else would evolution be excluded unless to placate the Māori view, which is one of creationism? This omission is stupid and offensive.

 

B. What is the New Zealand Royal Society up to? As you may know if you’ve followed this, seven professors from Auckland University signed an innocuous (to rational folk) letter protesting the trend to make mātauranga Māori taught coequally with science in science classes, a move equivalent to teaching Biblical creationism in evolution class. You can see the letter, published in the weekly magazine “The Listener” here or here. Two of the signers, Garth Cooper and Robert Nola, are FRSNZs, meaning “Fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand”, a high distinction (Michael Coarbilis, another FRSNZ and signer, died on November 13).

The Royal Society, miffed by the claim that science should be defended as science, and not infused with myth and “other ways of knowing”, put up an objection to the letter and began an investigation of the two surviving FRSNZs.  Their statement, which makes the Royal Society look like a joke, is still up:

Note the insistence, by a body presumably dedicated to promoting truth, that “The recent suggestion by a group of University of Auckland academics that mātauranga Māori is not a valid truth is utterly rejected by Royal Society Te Apārangi. The Society strongly upholds the value of mātauranga Māori and rejects the narrow and outmoded definition of science outlined in The Listener.”

This would be funny if it weren’t a ridiculous implication that truth is what any group maintains is truth. Further, the RSNZ is insisting that mātauranga Māori is a “valid truth.” They really should take this statement down, for it’s an embarrassment.

Meanwhile, the RSNZ’s investigation of Cooper and Nola continues, itself an embarrassment. Read the letter the two signed and see if you think they should be shamed and punished for it by the very Society that lauded them as eminent scholars.

Richard Dawkins also wrote to the then head of the RSNZ objecting to their statement above; you can see Richard’s letter here and his letter to the New Zealand public here. This letter, as well as the ones I and other readers and Kiwis wrote, have had no effect. If I know the signers, Cooper and Nola will not truckle to the clowns who issued the RSNZ statement above. For its own reputation, the RSNZ should drop the investigation immediately.

 

C. What is the University of Auckland up to? There may be good news here. But let’s review history first. Earlier this summer, Vice-Chancellor Dawn Freshwater issued a statement explicitly criticizing The Listener letter and its seven signers, making their identities easy to find. Two of her statements from Freshwater’s official announcement of July 26:

A letter in this week’s issue of The Listener magazine from seven of our academic staff on the subject of whether mātauranga Māori can be called science has caused considerable hurt and dismay among our staff, students and alumni.

Note the “hurt and dismay claim”, which at the very outset puts her statement in a context of emotionality rather than reason. And there was more:

While the academics are free to express their views, I want to make it clear that they do not represent the views of the University of Auckland.

The University has deep respect for mātauranga Māori as a distinctive and valuable knowledge system. We believe that mātauranga Māori and Western empirical science are not at odds and do not need to compete. They are complementary and have much to learn from each other.

This view is at the heart of our new strategy and vision, Taumata Teitei, and the Waipapa Toitū framework, and is part of our wider commitment to Te Tiriti and te ao principles.

Now it’s not even clear if the University of Auckland even has an official view about science vs. mātauranga Māori, yet note that Freshwater characterizes the latter as “a distinctive and valuable knowledge system”, maintaining that “mātauranga Māori and Western empirical science are not at odds and do not need to compete.”  That is an arrant falsehood. For one thing, mātauranga Māori is creationist, which puts it squarely at odds with evolution. I won’t go on; you can find for yourself many other ways the two areas are “at odds” with each other.

 

The Vice-Chancellor should have said nothing about this issue, but chose to denigrate the letter and its signers. She got plenty of flak from the public and press for that announcement.

Since then, I guess she’s had second thoughts, as she’s just issued a new statement. Click on the screenshot to read it:

Here’s part of her statement, which in effect pretends that she never denigrated The Listener letter and its signers. Now she calls for calm and reasoned debate:

The debate that initially started as about the relationship between mātauranga Māori and science in the secondary school curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand has intensified and extended over recent weeks, with a number of overseas commentators adding their opinions.

Unfortunately, the debate has descended into personal attacks, entrenched positions and deliberate misrepresentations of other people’s views, including my own. This important and topical debate deserves better than that.

I am calling for a return to a more respectful, open-minded, fact-based exchange of views on the relationship between mātauranga Māori and science, and I am committing the University to action on this.

In the first quarter of 2022 we will be holding a symposium in which the different viewpoints on this issue can be discussed and debated calmly, constructively and respectfully. I envisage a high-quality intellectual discourse with representation from all viewpoints: mātauranga Māori, science, the humanities, Pacific knowledge systems and others.

I recognise it is a challenging and confronting debate, but one I believe a robust democratic society like ours is well placed to have.

In this commitment to action, I acknowledge the University of Auckland’s particular responsibilities in this debate as a custodian of academic freedom and free speech. Seven of our academics wrote the letter in good faith to The Listener in July 2021 that sparked the debate in the first place, and many of our academic experts have contributed to the discussion since then.

While the open-minded exchange of facts about “the relationship between mātauranga Māori and science” has potential to be a good debate, I am not optimistic. For one thing, the “indigenous way of knowing” can be slipperly, varying widely depending on who’s interpreting it. It would be lovely if they got Richard Dawkins to defend science along with some of the signers of the letter. And, as one of my Kiwi colleagues said, “I think this is good news, but productive discussion is unlikely unless [Freshwater] discourages the ongoing use of terms such as racism and cultural harm to describe those who challenge the notion of equivalence.”

Note that Freshwater criticizes the “personal attacks and misrepresentations” of views, including her own views.  She was probably blindsided and stung by the response to her “politically correct” statement, not realizing that, to rational and science-minded folks, comparing mythology to science is like kicking a wasp’s nest. I am guessing that she’s ascribing the attacks and misstatements to the “science” side alone; if she didn’t mean that, she should have said that there was bad behavior on both sides.  For example, here are two prominent academics who agree with Freshwater but who were not very polite.  Joanna Kidman is a well known sociologist of Māori descent who is a full professor at Victoria University at Wellington, NZ. Note that “OWG” stands for “Old White Guy”. As a commenter below notes, this is ageist, racist, sexist, and probably ableist.

Siouxie Wiles wasn’t very polite, either, characterizing her critics as “dinosaurs”.  Wells is a British microbiologist and science communicator who is now a professor at Auckland and was named the 2021 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year.

Todd Somerville, the Director of Communications at the University of Auckland, sent me a letter of complaint about my original post, saying that I characterized Freshwater as “a woke and fearful woman”, which he said was an ad hominem remark. I removed that characterization to lessen the rancor as well as to placate the angry Somerville, who defended Freshwater’s statement at great length (I suppose that’s his job). But I wonder if Todd Somerville has also written to Siouxie Wiles and Joanna Kidman, criticizing them as harshly as he did me for their own ad hominem remarks, including denigrating Richard Dawkins as an “Old White Guy”. You can’t get much nastier than that! Somehow I doubt that Wiles and Kidman have been chastised.