Category: schools behaving badly

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

 

The Woke Kindergarten: an educational failure in California

February 4, 2024 • 9:40 am

This is absolutely unbelievable, but I suppose if you realize that the “Woke Kindergarten” program was implemented in the Bay Area of California, you can sort of believe it. In fact, according to the San Francisco Chronicle (article archived here), this is real, because the Chronicle story links to the woke website below.

“Woke Kindergarten” is just what it sounds like: a “progressive” program (hired by the school) that politically indoctrinates elementary-school students into dismantling nearly everything about America (in this way it comports with Douglas Murray’s thesis in his recent and recommended book, The War on the West.).  The program was implemented because the students, 80% of which are Hispanic, were performing below par in math and English.  But not only did this teacher training program not improve math and English scores, but they also dropped even more.  The school officials, however, claim that it’s a success because attendance rose and suspension rates dropped marginally. But what good is that if student performance dropped?

But read the article below (the headline links to the archived site), and then go to the Woke Kindergarten site and have a look around. Unless you’re Bernie Sanders or Rashida Tlaib, you’ll be absolutely appalled:

First, a summary from the Chronicle.

A Hayward elementary school struggling to boost low test scores and dismal student attendance is paying $250,000 for an organization called Woke Kindergarten to train teachers to confront white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression and remove those barriers to learning.

The Woke Kindergarten sessions train teachers on concepts and curriculum that’s available to use in classrooms with any of Glassbrook Elementary’s 474 students. The sessions are funded through a federal program meant to help the country’s lowest-performing schools boost student achievement.

But two years into the three-year contract with Woke Kindergarten, a for-profit company, student achievement at Glassbrook has fallen, prompting some teachers to question whether the money was well-spent given the needs of the students, who are predominantly low-income. Two-thirds of the students are English learners and more than 80% are Hispanic/Latino.

English and math scores hit new lows last spring, with less than 4% of students proficient in math and just under 12% at grade level in English — a decline of about 4 percentage points in each category.

Efforts to reach the organization were not successful, with an automated response saying the founder, who also provides the training, was recovering from surgery.

District officials defended the program this past week, saying that Woke Kindergarten did what it was hired to do. The district pointed to improvements in attendance and suspension rates, and that the school was no longer on the state watch list, only to learn from the Chronicle that the school was not only still on the list but also had dropped to a lower level.

Click below to go to the site and browse.  I’ll interpolate some of the “woke wonderings” and “teach palestine” (yes, it’s political!) in the Chronicle text, which I’ve indented.

Here are the links (don’t click below); just go to the site and browse:

Woke Wonderings from the program (pictures) with excerpts from the Chronicle interpolated:

Some anti-Israeli propaganda:

Defund the police!

From the paper:

The decision to bring in Woke Kindergarten, rather than a more traditional literacy or math improvement program, aligns with the belief by some parents and educators that the current education system isn’t working for many disadvantaged children.

The solution, these advocates say, is for educators to confront legacies of racism and bias in schools, and to talk about historic white supremacy, so that students feel safe and supported. As such anti-racism programs have spread, several more conservative state legislatures have moved to restrict or ban them.

At the same time, some education experts say struggling schools need research-based literacy and math interventions that ensure all students have the basic skills to succeed. Examples of success include San Francisco’s John Muir Elementary, which has piloted a math intervention program that has led to a more than 50% proficiency rate, up from 15% prior to adopting the coaching and student-led coursework.

That, of course, is the way to go: educationally rather than politically. As for which education programs actually work, well, that’s above my pay grade.

It is surprising that proficiency and math didn’t improve? The students are too busy being politically indoctrinated. From the paper:

Woke Kindergarten, aimed at elementary-age students, is founded on the relatively new concept of abolitionist education, which advocates for abolition, or “a kind of starting over,” said Zeus Leonardo, UC Berkeley education professor. The idea is that certain things can’t be reformed, tweaked or shifted, because they are inherently problematic or oppressive. It’s not about indoctrinating or imposing politics, “but making politics part of the framework of teaching,” Leonardo said.

But some Glassbrook teachers have questioned the decision to bring in the program, saying Woke Kindergarten is wrongly rooted in progressive politics and activism with anti-police, anti-capitalism and anti-Israel messages mixed in with the goal of making schools safe, joyful and supportive for all children.

This tension is reflective of the nation’s ongoing culture wars, where the right and the left battle to influence what happens in classrooms.

The Woke Kindergarten curriculum shared with schools includes “wonderings,” which pose questions for students, including, “If the United States defunded the Israeli military, how could this money be used to rebuild Palestine?”

In addition, the “woke word of the day,” including “strike,” “ceasefire” and “protest,” offers students a “language of the resistance … to introduce children to liberatory vocabulary in a way that they can easily digest, understand and most importantly, use in their critiques of the system.”

Teacher Tiger Craven-Neeley said he supports discussing racism in the classroom, but found the Woke Kindergarten training confusing and rigid. He said he was told a primary objective was to “disrupt whiteness” in the school — and that the sessions were “not a place to express white guilt.” He said he questioned a trainer who used the phrasing “so-called United States,” as well as lessons available on the organization’s web site offering “Lil’ Comrade Convos,” or positing a world without police, money or landlords.

If you look at the program, it appears to be aimed almost entirely at black people, so I’m wondering how it’s used in a school that’s 80% Hispanic.  Do the educators assume that both groups are equivalent in both how they identify with the curriculum and how they learn?

On to Woke Words of the Day:

You know what this next one is about:

From the paper:

Hayward Superintendent Jason Reimann said the decision to hire Woke Kindergarten, which was approved by the school board, was made by the school community, including parents and teachers, as part of a federal improvement plan to boost student achievement by improving attendance.

The school community, including parents, teachers and staff, identified a provider to help them do that, Reimann said. He noted a subsequent improvement in student attendance, with 44% of students considered chronically absent last year, down from 61% the year prior. A similar improvement  was seen districtwide.

Well, they boosted attendance a bit, but “student achievement” dropped. Is that a surprise?  And there are books in the curriculum, like the one below! (Never mind if it teaches the kids to dislike Jews). I’d like to see this one:

A video to introduce children to pronouns. Presumably the teacher explains this. Remember, these children are five years old and up (I gather this is for elementary schools, not just kindergartens.)

From the paper:

The superintendent said Woke Kindergarten wasn’t hired to improve literacy and math scores, but that “helping students feel safe and whole is part and parcel of academic achievement.” He added, “I get that it’s more money than we would have liked to have spent.”

Woke Kindergarten was founded by former teacher Akiea “Ki” Gross, who identifies as they/them and describes themselves as “an abolitionist early educator, cultural organizer and creator currently innovating ways to resist, heal, liberate and create with their pedagogy, Woke Kindergarten.”

Here is Gross, the sole identified person under the “who we are” link:

And the Chronicle‘s money quote:

Julie Marsh, a professor of education policy at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, cautioned that it can be “problematic when teaching strays too far into the political ideology realm. It’s just a big distraction from some of the bigger purposes of education and what we should be focusing on.”

Well, the school and Ms. Gross have obviously decided that what we should be focusing on instead is progressive ideology, including pro-Palestinian politics as well as abolition of the police, landlords, money and the military. Truly, the purpose of this program is to inculcate kids with a mindset to destroy much of America as it is and replace it with. . . . what?  Perhaps the “Capitol Hill Occupied Zone” (CHAZ) of Seattle, an area taken over by the woke in 2020 after the death of George Floyd? It adopted many of the precepts of Woke Kindergarten.  Since cops were prohibited, crime rose and there were several shootings. CHAZ lasted a month.

Woke Kindergarten shouldn’t last more than it’s already lasted. It’s a travesty and an embarrassment for Hayward, California.

All power to the little people!

Answer: Barter, I guess.
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

A New Zealand teacher writes the government protesting a proposed curriculum asserting the equality of indigenous “ways of knowing” with science

December 1, 2022 • 9:00 am

I’ve often written about how New Zealand’s government and school authorities are determined to teach the indigenous way of knowing,”Mātauranga Māori (“MM”), which I’ve often discussed, as coequal to modern science in science classes.  While many (like me) maintain that MM should be taught in sociology or anthropology classes as an important part of national culture, I vehemently object to it being taught as coequal to modern science.

That’s because MM, though some of the entire system contains “practical knowledge” taken from observation and trial and error, also contains many things that aren’t science-y at all: ideology, morality, religion, legend and superstition. Teaching the two systems as coequal would not only confuse students about what science is, but also confer coequality where it isn’t warranted. Even if you just teach the parts of MM that encompass practical knowledge, it’s important to show how this differs from the systematic methods and tools used by modern science to find truth. The efforts of the NZ government and schools will, in the end, doom science in New Zealand. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is my worry

(I’ll add that MM advocates, when they claim empirical knowledge, often do so unscientifically. Their remedies are often untested, and, regarding history they have claimed, falsely, that the Polynesians, ancestors of the Māori were the discoverers of Antarctica in the 7th century AD. [see also here]. This is untrue, and based on both legend and a mistranslation; Antarctica was first seen by the Russians in 1820.)

Because equating MM with other “ways of knowing” like modern science is a way of valorizing the indigenous people, and because there’s no government more “progressive” (in the pejorative sense) than New Zealand’s, efforts by me and others to stop the impending dilution of science with MM are almost surely doomed. It’s even worse, for criticizing what the government is doing is seen as anti-Māori racism. It’s not: it’s just distinguishing between a real way of knowing and a dubious “way of knowing”. As preacher Mike Aus said after he publicly renounced his faith at an FFRF meeting,

“There are not different ways of knowing. There is knowing and not knowing, and those are the only two options in this world.”

Thus, critics of teaching indigenous ways of knowing in science class critics are forced to shut up, for raising one’s voice not only leads to pile-ons and petitions, but has actually cost teachers their jobs. Today I’m posting a letter written by a critical teacher who dares not give their name for fear of being fired, but who’s sufficiently courageous to let their views be known, including a letter they wrote about the MM/science controversy to various government ministers (all anonymously, of course, as this person wants to keep their job!). The teacher was disturbed at a government lesson plan to equate modern science with Māori empirical knowledge, and I also show a bit of that lesson plane.

So. . . .

A friend of mine in New Zealand got a letter from a secondary school teacher who went to a meeting in they were given proposed government curriculum for integrating modern science (which they call “Western science”, abbreviated “WS”) with the indigenous “way of knowing”.  The curriculum, which you can have by emailing me, is for “year 9” students, who are 13 years old.

The curriculum tries (but fails) to take the superstition out of MM, so that the part of MM that’s supposedly co-taught with “western science” is actually “Mātauranga Pūtaiao” (“MP”)—practical knowledge related to the natural world. The plan, an outline of the future curriculum from which I’ve taken excerpts, demands that we must consider MP equivalent to Western science (though they’re also claimed to be different in ways that aren’t explained).  As you’ll see, though, they haven’t managed to keep the numinous bits out of MP, and they don’t attempt to show what’s unique about MP as opposed to WS.

Everything below is reproduced with the permission of the principals, and, as I said, I will be glad to send you the whole curriculum plan—an 11-page pdf—if you want to see it.

Here’s what the teacher wrote to my friend, who then forwarded the teacher’s letter to me with permission to see it and reproduce it here.

I have attached a curriculum unit plan to this email that was distributed last week to school teachers in my region during a teacher-only day dedicated to the curriculum re-alignment. It illustrates how a typical school is attempting to integrate mātauranga Māori in the science curriculum. Rather distressingly, it is quite political in how it presents the relationship of science to mātauranga Māori.

I have also included a letter I have written to government ministers that illustrates the potential for confusion to occur when local schools are left to interpret the implications of such integration without authoritative guidance from the Ministry of Education. I have written this anonymously, both for the benefit of the school from which the document originates as well as for the sake of my own career as a teacher. Within the teaching profession, there is considerable confusion over what mātauranga Māori is and how it relates to science.

Finally, here’s the letter the teacher wrote to government ministers (bolding is the teacher’s). It’s quite eloquent and clear.

Good day,

I am a science teacher writing from a regional city on the South Island. This past week, my colleagues and I attended a government-funded day of professional development, the purpose of which was to discuss the re-alignment of the new NCEA science curriculum with other teachers from the region. Among the topics discussed were mātauranga Māori and its integration into the science curriculum. As part of this discussion, the host school that was facilitating the meeting distributed resources outlining how they were teaching (or intended to teach) mātauranga Māori and science. I have included a copy of the unit plan that was distributed during the meeting to illustrate the concerns I will outline below. Of particular interest is how the realignment of the curriculum could enable epistemic relativism to be introduced into what should be a world-leading system of publicly-funded education. The highly decentralized nature of the NZ education system, coupled with the vague wording of the proposed curriculum by the Ministry of Education, introduces the possibility that local schools will ultimately be left to devise science programs based on faulty premises and questionable interpretations of the relationship of mātauranga Māori to science. I have attached the unit plan presented by the host school of this meeting as evidence of this potential.

First among my concerns is the presentation of science in this school’s unit plan as a “western” knowledge system. This is peculiar (to say the least), given that science is a global endeavor drawing on a toolkit with contributors from many cultures and ages. To call science a “western” knowledge system is to ignore the contributions of many cultures from places such as India, the middle-east, China, and the Maori themselves. For example, Arabic and Indian scholars made fundamental contributions to the development of mathematics, which is the decision-making language of science. Labeling science as “western” makes as much sense as dividing mathematics into categories of “Arabic,” “Chinese,” or “Roman.” It may be true that over the past century many contributions to science have originated from a few countries in the so-called “west;” but that point has more to do with economic forces and the vagaries of historical chance, rather than cultural “ownership” over a methodology. Moreover, the Māori themselves used aspects of science (observation, pattern-seeking) as part of their exploration of Aotearoa [JAC: the Māori word for New Zealand]. Why can’t we simply celebrate the varied contributions of humanity to science and our knowledge of the natural world, rather than create an ideological division that does not exist in the first place?

The unit plan also makes the claim that both “knowledge systems” have equal authority. Again, this statement is based on a faulty premise and false dichotomy. To teach children that science is a “western” knowledge system is to undermine the idea of what science is. Ultimately, science is a collection of methodological tools and approaches that allow us to reliably distinguish and relate cause, effect, and chance. Put simply, science has predictive power in how humans relate to the natural world. In everyday life, no one practicing science (or using its products) cares about cultural attribution or the so-called “knowledge system” it arose from. If an idea or technique works in practice and has predictive power, it is accepted as part of our understanding of the natural world. To take an example from history: Polynesian, European, or Chinese sailors from centuries ago would no doubt have told us that there are two types of navigation: the sort that gets you where you are going and the sort that gets you dead. No one cared where your technique came from: if it worked, it was adopted. Categorically, scientific knowledge is either descriptive of our objective reality or it is not.

I would also draw your attention to the first lesson in the attached unit plan, whose focus is the subject of Maori gods and “their powers.” Now, I assume that this is a lesson on how people in the past have explained natural phenomena by appealing to supernatural explanations. As mātauranga Māori is a living knowledge system and is intended to be taught within the science curriculum, it no doubt has replaced such concepts with ideas based on naturalistic explanations. However, I cannot confirm this because the Ministry of Education has not provided teachers with an authoritative reference on how these two systems are similar or different. The document presented by our meeting facilitator claims that no one system has “authority.” If that is the case, science teachers need a clearly articulated vision of how these differences are to be taught in the classroom.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I am sending you this letter and the attached example from a local school’s curriculum to illustrate the potential for confusion that has arisen from the inclusion of mātauranga Maori in the science curriculum. Is the Ministry of Education intending to publish and distribute a detailed and authoritative guide on how schools should integrate mātauranga Maori in relation to science? As illustrated by the material presented at the meeting I recently attended, there is considerable potential for disagreement without ministry guidance.I would ask that you raise this issue with the Minister of Education as a matter of urgency given the proposed timeline for the implementation of the new curriculum. Both teachers and students deserve clarity and a set of authoritative guidelines on how mātauranga Maori and science are to be taught together. Without such guidelines, teachers will be left to interpret how these systems relate and how to teach them as a single subject (as illustrated by the example unit plan I have attached to this letter).

It is unfortunate that I must write to you anonymously. In the present climate, my intent could be misconstrued or mischaracterized if I were to put my name to this letter. Furthermore, my career as a teacher could suffer if I were to air these concerns publicly.

Kind regards,

A concerned teacher

Below are a few screenshots from the 11-page proposed document.

Here’s how the lesson starts: a “warm up activity” that teaches the 13 years old about “the Maori Gods and their powers”. Are they going to mention that there’s no evidence for the existence of these gods? If not, then they shouldn’t be mentioned, for this is not science but religion. But of course they won’t do that. Thus the confusion between MM and science starts at the outset of the course. Do they warm up the students by teaching about the “Western gods and their powers.” Of course not! Science is a godless activity, so get this stuff out of the curriculum!

 

Part of the level 3 assessment on page 10 says: “Understands that Māori have always been scientists, and that MP and WS are different.” Are Māori unique in this regard, i.e., did they alone among indigenous peoples came up with science, or does this apply to all indigenous people? The former is rather racist, while the second dilutes science to only that derived from observing the natural environment.

Note as well that they explain differences and similarities between science and the empirical bits of MM, but don’t say what those similarities and differences are. Further, they don’t explain “the importance of multiple perspectives.” Any perspective that is empirically correct is part of science.  And just as not all “westerners” aren’t scientists, so not all Māori are scientists. This is gobbledygook in the cause of inclusion.

Week 5 includes the story of Maui and Aoraki, although it looks like the Youtube video link no longer works. The tale of Maui and Aoraki is in fact the creation myth of the Māori , describing how two of the several gods created the North and South Islands. Why is this in the curriculum? Is the curriculum also going to describe the Western Biblical creation myth as outlined in Genesis, complete with God, Adam, Eve, and a talking serpent?

“Whakapapa” is a numinous concept that relates to the connection of all things, both earthly and spiritual. That, too, doesn’t belong in a “science” curriculum, but in an anthropology class.

Below we see again the flat assertion—one that the teacher emphasizes above—that WS and MP, though not exactly the same (they don’t say how), are of equal “authority and status”. Can you imagine half of a 9th-form science class devoted to all of modern science, and the other half devoted to MP, which includes things like Polynesian navigation (not a Māori development) and when, exactly, the Maori pick their berries and catch their eels? Yes, the latter bits are “empirical knowledge” deriving from trial and error, but to give these things authority equal to all of modern physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics is a fool’s errand. But such is the government of New Zealand, heavily “progressive” and pressured by the Māori and their sympathizers to give local ways of knowing a status equal to what “Western” science has given us in the last four centuries. This includes the claim that untested remedies involving herbs and spiritual chanting are just as good as modern medicine (see here, here, and here). (I hate using the words “Western” science, as the term is meant to denigrate modern science by implying it’s a “colonialist” enterprise.)

Have a look. If you want the entire curriculum (and some of it is okay), email me.

I feel sorry for nearly everyone involved in this sad tale: the New Zealand government, in thrall to the indigenous people to the extent that it will destroy science education; the Māori themselves, who will be given not only a false view of science but an education that will hold them back; the teachers, forced to teach ludicrous propositions and must keep their mouths shut about it; and all the people of New Zealand, who will be shorted on science education. In the end, that will hold science back in one of the countries I love the most. And that is ineffably sad.

An ideology-infused paper on how to teach college biology

October 18, 2022 • 12:15 pm

If I could display one paper that vividly demonstrates the infiltration of ideology into biology education, it would be the one below, published last May in Bioscience.  The article tells instructors in college biology classes how to teach the subject so that teachers do not “harm” the students by making them feel “unwelcome”, by implying that their behavior—particularly that related to sex and their gender—is “unnatural”, or by failing to represent the students’ identities while teaching biology.

You can read the paper by clicking on the screenshot below, or get a pdf here.

The gist of the paper is provided by its abstract:

Sexual and gender minorities face considerable inequities in society, including in science. In biology, course content provides opportunities to challenge harmful preconceptions about what is “natural” while avoiding the notion that anything found in nature is inherently good (the appeal-to-nature fallacy). We provide six principles for instructors to teach sex- and gender-related topics in postsecondary biology in a more inclusive and accurate manner: highlighting biological diversity early, presenting the social and historical context of science, using inclusive language, teaching the iterative process of science, presenting students with a diversity of role models, and developing a classroom culture of respect and inclusion. To illustrate these six principles, we review the many definitions of sex and demonstrate applying the principles to three example topics: sexual reproduction, sex determination or differentiation, and sexual selection. These principles provide a tangible starting place to create more scientifically accurate, engaging, and inclusive classrooms.

The principles, which I’ll give below with quotes, are designed to buttress the appeal to nature (closely related to the “naturalistic fallacy”)—the idea that a person’s identity is good because it is analogous to what we find in nature.  Thus there is great emphasis on the diversity of sexual reproduction and a de-emphasis of generalizations (e.g. promiscuous males vs. picky females) that, the authors say, harm people.  (My answer, below, is to teach that the appeal-to-nature fallacy is fallacious for a reason: it draws moral principles from biological facts, which is a bad way to proceed.) Although the authors claim to be avoiding the appeal to nature, their whole lesson can be summarized in this sentence:

Human diversity is good because we see similar diversity in nature.

The explicit aim of this pedagogy is not just to teach biology but largely to advance the authors’ social program. As they say (my emphasis):

At their most harmful, biology courses can reinforce harmful stereotypes, leaving students with the impression that human gender and sexual diversity are contrary to “basic biology” or even that they themselves are “unnatural.” At their most beneficial, biology courses can teach students to question heteronormative and cisnormative biases in science and society. On a larger scale, by encouraging an inclusive and accurate understanding of gender and sex in nature, biology education has the power to advance antioppressive social change.

My response would be “at their most beneficial, biology courses teach students what biology is all about, to inspire them to learn biology, and to learn the methods by which we advance our understanding of biology.  It is not to advance antioppressive social change, which, of course, depends on who is defining ‘antioppressive’.”

Here are the authors’ six principles. The characterizations are mine:

1). Diversity first.  The authors strongly believe that educators should teach about the diversity of nature before giving generalizations.  So, for example, instead of discussing the prevalence of maternal over paternal care in animals, or of the preponderance of decorations, colors, and weapons in males of various species compared to females of those species, you should show the wonderful diversity of nature: you talk about clownfish that can change sex when the alpha female dies, about seahorses, in which females are the decorated se (but for good reasons that conform to a generalization), and discuss some groups of humans in which males give substantial parental care.

This is done explicitly to be “inclusive”:

 Recent work focused specifically on undergraduate animal behavior courses has demonstrated that presenting diversity first does not negatively affect learning objectives (Sarah Spaulding, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, personal communication, 9 April 2019).

That’s some reference, eh?

I would argue that the great generalities should be taught first, and the exceptions later, whose interests rests largely on the fact that they are exceptions.  Gaudy female seahorses are of interest mainly because in seahorse reproduction, the males get pregnant (they carry eggs in their pouches), there are more females with eggs than males to carry them, and therefore, in a form of reverse sexual selection, the males are choosy instead of the females, who compete for males to carry their eggs.  It makes little sense to me to teach the exceptions before the rules, or the diversity before the generalizations, unless you do so to advance an ideological program.

Although the authors say that teaching generalizations first itself perpetuating the appeal-to-nature fallacy by implying what is “normal”, they themselves perpetuate the same fallacy by pointing out exceptions that are said to correspond to biological phenomena, too. Here they are discussing their “teach diversity first” principle:

A second potential concern is that this principle, if it is simplistically applied, will perpetuate the appeal-to-nature fallacy—that is, the argument that anything found in nature is inherently good (Tanner 2006). This is problematic, because it can suggest that students need examples of specific behaviors or biologies in nature to validate human experiences or, alternatively, that anything found in nature is justified in humans. We emphasize that presenting diversity first should only demonstrate that we should expect diversity, including among humans, but this does not present a value argument. Rather, it combats the incorrect assumption that nonbinary categorizations, intersex characteristics, same-sex sexual behavior, transgender identities, gender nonconforming presentation and behavior, and so on are unnatural, which is, itself, often used against LGBTQIA2S + people in an appeal-to-nature argument (e.g., Newman and Fantos 2015).

Note that they are using the appeal to nature fallacy: diversity is good because it is seen in nature. Thus LGBTQIA2S+ should not be demonized because sexual diversity occurs in nature. But these brands of diversity are not are not comparable. As I wrote when reviewing Joan Roughgarden’s book Evolution’s Rainbow:

But regardless of the truth of Darwin’s theory, should we consult nature to determine which of our behaviours are to be considered normal or moral? Homosexuality may indeed occur in species other than our own, but so do infanticide, robbery and extra-pair copulation.  If the gay cause is somehow boosted by parallels from nature, then so are the causes of child-killers, thieves and adulterers. And given the cultural milieu in which human sexuality and gender are expressed, how closely can we compare ourselves to other species? In what sense does a fish who changes sex resemble a transgendered person? The fish presumably experiences neither distressing feelings about inhabiting the wrong body, nor ostracism by other fish. In some baboons, the only males who show homosexual behaviour are those denied access to females by more dominant males. How can this possibly be equated to human homosexuality?

So Zemenick et al. do advance value argument—an argument designed to shows “diverse” students that they are not abnormal and should not feel bad about themselves.  While I agree that we shouldn’t denigrate students for their sexual orientation or gender identity, or any other trait, you don’t need to teach in a way to validate the identity of all students  While the authors do give caveats about saying that teaching diversity first “does not present a value argument”, in fact it does.

2.) Present the social and historical context of science. This is another way to prevent students from being “harmed” by infusing biological history and data with ideological lessons. One example:

There are still numerous issues with testing for and reporting sex differences in scientific research, prompting calls for increased training in this area (Garcia-Sifuentes and Maney 2021). Furthermore, it is increasingly recognized that testing for only binary sex differences excludes and harms many others that fall outside this binary (Reisner et al. 2016).

Would that harm still be done if the teacher notes that more than 99.9% of individuals conform to the “binary sex difference”? We should not tailor what we teach to the goal of affirming everybody’s identity.  That is therapy, not biology.

3.) Use inclusive language while teaching. This has the same goal as above, to avoid words that make some students feel “excluded”:

Culturally loaded sex- and gender-related terms are often used in biology classrooms without careful thought and discussion. This is especially true of familiar terms, such as male, female, sex, paternal, maternal, mother, and father. Students and instructors alike may fail to notice that these terms imply and affirm cultural norms around sex, gender, and family structure that can be inaccurate and harmful. We therefore suggest, whenever possible, using inclusive, precise terminology that does not assume sex and gender binaries or traditional, nuclear family structures.

. . .Encouraging students to develop an inquiring attitude toward culturally loaded biology language may reduce the harm of these terms and help students develop important critical-thinking skills (Kekäläinen and Evans 2018).

For sex- and gender-related biology terms, we believe it is imperative to provide definitions that are as inclusive, accurate, and precise as possible.

They don’t mention that precisely defining terms like “biological sex” may not be “inclusive.” In fact, every time I give the biological definition of sex, based on gamete type, I get considerable feedback for having “harmed” people. But biology is not, and should not be, a form of social work.

4.) Show the iterative process of science. This is supposed to emphasize that science is “nonlinear and iterative”, though I’m not sure what they mean. Regardless, it has an ideological aim:

Showing the iterative process of science allows students to see how biological models often begin simple and general, to the exclusion of sexual diversity. As models are developed further, with more data and collaboration, they are often refined to encompass more complexity and diversity. For example, past sexual selection theory emphasized how sex differences in gamete size (anisogamy) and differential reproductive investment can drive the evolution of sexual dimorphic behaviors and morphology (box 4). Despite evidence suggesting that humans may be only weakly sexually dimorphic (Reno et al. 2003), early evolutionary models of animal behavior contributed to biological essentialist ideas about human males being inherently highly competitive and human females being driven primarily by the need to rear young.

Well, we may be “only weakly sexually dimorphic” compared to, say, gorillas, but we’re a lot more sexually dimorphic than chipmunks. The fact is that human males are indeed inherently highly competitive and risk-taking—a result of sexual selection in our ancestors—and human females more infant-rearing-oriented than males, largely but not entirely a result of natural selection (there is, after all,  social pressure for females to conform to those roles).

The solution to this whole mishigass is not to restructure biology courses in a Rawlsian way to avoid “harming” the most easily offended individual, but simply to teach the biology you think is important, point out that there is variation, that some of that (like the ornaments of female seahorses) actually proves the generalizations, but, above all, tell the students ONCE or TWICE that they should not draw any lessons about “right versus wrong” or “good versus bad” from biological knowledge, for that makes morality liable to change when biological knowledge changes. Yes, perhaps you can buttress the identities of gay people by saying that female bonobos engage in genital rubbing to strengthen bonds, but does it also buttress bullies and aggressors to tell them that chimpanzees also engage in deadly intra-group warfare? For every variant that buttresses someone’s identity, I can point out a variant that exemplifies something we don’t want people to do.

5.) Present students with diverse role models.  They mean “individuals from marginalized groups” here, presumably racial groups rather than individuals in the LGBTQ+ categories.  While I have no beef against role models, their absence is not the main reason why minority students drop out of STEM programs. The reason, for which we have plenty of data, is that those students aren’t well prepared for the courses, don’t do well, see a lack of success in their futures, and switch to other majors. But Zemenick et al. emphasize the “look like me” aspect:

One reason students from marginalized groups leave STEM majors is a lack of relatable and supportive role models (Hurtado et al. 2010). Role models inspire students, provide psychological support, and help them adopt a growth mindset about intelligence (Koberg et al. 1998). For students from marginalized groups in particular, relatable role models can help them perform better (Marx and Roman 2002, Lockwood 2006). Therefore, a simple way to support LGBTQIA2S + students—who leave STEM majors at higher rates than their straight peers (Hughes 2018)—is to expose them to relatable role models from diverse backgrounds and identities.

I suggest that you check out the Hurtado et al. reference to see the evidence for “relatable and supportive role models” playing a major role in minority students dropping out of STEM. I can imagine that students who feel supported might tend to stay in STEM, but what the authors are suggesting is to beef up teaching so that more importance is given to the work of minority scientists:

Despite the importance of relatable role models for marginalized students, most scientists featured in biology curricula are white, heterosexual, cisgender men, and, as a result, marginalized students often do not see their identities represented (Wood et al. 2020). Instructors should be intentional about introducing their students to biologists from diverse backgrounds and identities, and there are several approaches instructors can take to integrate this into biology courses. For example, instructors can complement or replace content about historical scientists with content about diverse contemporary scientists, or they can assign a small project in which the students research relatable role models.

What Wood et al. (2020) does show, as we’d expect from history, a lack of minority representation in the history of science. Though that representation is at odds with the kind of people doing science now, remember that textbooks concentrate on important discoveries of the past, and those involved mainly white heterosexual cisgender men. But that’s not because textbook authors are bigots. As the participation of minorities in science increases, so will their representation in future textbooks and instruction.

I wonder here, as I alluded to above, whether this problem applies to LGBTA+ people, also seen as “marginalized.” I doubt it, for gay+ people are pretty well represented in science (though I have no data on this issue!), and do we really want to talk about the sexual orientation of famous scientists as a way to avoiding LGBTQ+ people? The key here is that “represented” means “looks like”, and that directly implies race is the important factor, not other criteria for marginalization.

6.) Develop a classroom culture of respect and inclusion. I certainly think that all students should be respected in class: treated as future colleagues whose questions and views should be handled with respect, even when the students are wrong. As I tell my students, “There is no such thing as a stupid question.”  One should cultivate an atmosphere in which no student should be fearful of expressing their views, asking questions, or challenging the teacher. But this is simple civility in pedagogy.

But that’s not what the authors mean:

Instructors can work to make all students feel welcome by building professional relationships with students that are founded on respect and nonjudgement. To develop and nurture such relationships, instructors must confront their unconscious biases, such as homophobia, transphobia, or interphobia, through education and self-reflection. Consider attending LGBTQIA2S + sensitivity training, often offered by campus pride and GSA (gay–straight or gender and sexuality alliance) centers.

. . . By developing an awareness of how LGBTQIA2S + identity affects students’ experiences of the biology classroom and by engaging with students empathetically and authentically, instructors can create meaningful and inclusive learning experiences (Dewbury and Brame 2019).

Somewhere along the line, the authors of this paper have forgotten that the purpose of biology class is to teach biology as it is understood today, not to coddle the identities of students. My solution, once again, it simply to say at the beginning of the class, and perhaps reemphasize it, that we are to draw no moral or social lessons about humans from the facts of biology, though biological facts can serve to prop up or militate against some moral views (like those based on utilitarianism). To quote Hitchens, the teach-biology and denigrate the “appeal to nature” view  is enough for me, and I don’t need a second.  I don’t believe, and there is no evidence adduced, for statements like the following:

Biology classrooms represent powerful opportunities to teach sex- and gender-related topics accurately and inclusively. The sexual and gender diversity displayed in human populations is consistent with the diversity that characterizes all biological systems, but current teaching paradigms often leave students with the impression that LGBTQIA2S + people are acting against nature or “basic biology.” This failure of biology education can have dangerous repercussions. As students grow and move into society, becoming doctors, business people, politicians, parents, teachers, and so on, this misconception can be perpetuated and weaponized. Our hope is that this article helps to combat that scenario by stimulating the adoption of accurate and inclusive teaching practices.

Which professors are teaching in a way that makes students feel that they’re acting “unnaturally”? I would claim that the authors are offering a solution to a non-problem.

I agree that all topics should be taught accurately, but if some students feel “non-included” by facts taught in a civil manner in college biology, that is not up to the instructor to fix. Again, a two-minute explication of the fallacy of the appeal to nature is all that’s needed, not a schedule of “LGBTQIA2S + sensitivity training.”

The whole problem with this form of pedagogy is seen in the “author biographical” section of the paper, which I reproduce in toto:

Author Biographical

Ash T. Zemenick is a nonbinary trans person who grew up with an economically and academically supportive household to which they attribute many of their opportunities. They are now the manager of the University of California Berkeley’s Sagehen Creek Field Station, in Truckee, California, and are a cofounder and lead director of Project Biodiversify, in the United States. Shaun Turney is a white heterosexual transgender Canadian man who was supported in both his transition and his education by his university-educated parents. He is currently on paternity leave from his work as a non–tenure-track course lecturer in biology. Alex J. Webster is a cis white queer woman who grew up in an economically stable household and is now raising a child in a nontraditional queer family structure. She is a research professor in the University of New Mexico’s Department of Biology, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is a director of Project Biodiversify, in the United States. Sarah C. Jones is a disabled (ADHD) cis white queer woman who grew up in a supportive and economically stable household with two university-educated parents. She is a director of Project Biodiversify, and serves as the education manager for Budburst, a project of the Chicago Botanic Garden, in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. Marjorie G. Weber is a cis white woman who grew up in an economically stable household. She is an assistant professor in Michigan State University’s Plant Biology Department and Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, in East Lansing, Michigan, and is a cofounder and director of Project Biodiversify, in the United States.

Why is this there? What purpose does it serve except to signal the virtue (or social consciousness) of the authors? Most important, what on earth does it have to do with biology—or with this paper?

A Leftist schoolteacher tells us that things are at least as bad as we’ve heard

July 21, 2022 • 1:15 pm

Here are some stories from a Leftist schoolteacher, writing on Wesley Yang’s Substack site, telling us that in a “Blue city in a Blue State”, wokeness had gotten to the point where it’s damaging the very people that the Woke profess to be helping. This is just one person’s tale, of course—and the person is unnamed—but Yang says he checked the correspondence to and from this teacher and has no doubt that the narrative is true. As Yang says in the introduction,

There is something poignant about the dilemma he describes, about being unable to communicate to his fellow leftist peers the awful magnitude of the moral abdication to which he is witness and party precisely because it is so extreme that all will dismiss it as right-wing propaganda. It is a dilemma widely shared across a range of liberal institutions in which conscientious actors see destructive practices being entrenched and immunized against critique by the same dynamics which they find powerless to resist because the specter of right-wing reaction makes any self-criticism impossible.

Click on the screenshot to read.

Halfway through the article the teacher gives his liberal creds: he’s an anticapitalist leftist, supports abortion and demand, and “unironically use[s] phrases like ‘systems of oppression’ and ‘the dominant culture’.” As he says, he can’t be dismissed as a “conservative crank.”

The anonymous teacher reports that he was teaching eleven students enrolled in a public summer school course that recruited students between ages six and twelve. He was teaching at one grade level, and although the ethnicity of the students isn’t specified, the program apparently had a mix of both black and white students.

Eventually of the eleven students in his class, eight remained enrolled but didn’t show, and he wound up teaching just one.  One kid in the class! Amazingly, there was no penalty for non-attendance.

You’d think that the missing students could be kicked out and replaced with other students, including minorities, sitting on the waitlist, but you’d think wrong. Here’s the story/ What the teacher wrote for Yang is indented and the bolding is his (he’s identified as a man):

Early on, an administrator confessed that this sort of setup could lead to “attendance issues,” which I took to mean some kids showing up late or even skipping class once in a while. Nine of the eleven students in my grade level were absent the first day. The next day, it was ten. By the end of the week, I had one student consistently attending and a few who had been officially withdrawn by their parents – but there were still eight children on my roster who were technically enrolled while having never once shown up.

At this point, I took a look at the waitlist to see if there were any students I could bring in to replace them; the games and activities I’d planned needed more kids anyway, and I knew the waitlist was where families who actually wanted their children to attend usually ended up (students who were just referred by teachers had priority placement). On my lunch break, I walked into the administrator’s office and asked them when I could expect the half-dozen or so children on my grade’s waitlist to be let in.

Immediately, I was informed of something truly absurd: The district is not allowed to remove any student from the program on the basis of non-attendance. A child remains enrolled in my classes until a parent explicitly states they’d like them removed, even if they have never once actually shown up.

Now, when I say the district is “not allowed” to do so, I don’t mean they’re forbidden by some state law or local ordinance. Rather, the district actively embraced this policy as part of their larger equity and racial justice overhaul, and even bragged about doing so in public-facing materials. Their explicit position is that requiring attendance for any district program unfairly victimizes children of color, as does factoring in attendance to any student’s grades during the regular school year. The administrator I spoke to seemed baffled that I would even ask. “I’ll let you know if any parents pull their kids out,” he told me, “but otherwise, your class is technically full.”

How patronizing can you get than “requiring attendance unfairly victimizes children of color”. That is, of course, the soft bigotry of low expectations.

But it gets worse. The teacher had the good idea of dismissing the no-shows, who were clearly never going to come to class, and replace them with kids on the long waitlist, kids who (see above) presumably had a greater motivation to go to class.  The effort failed on both counts:

As an extra dose of insanity, we can’t even request that the parents of a non-attending student remove their child from the program; doing so, I was told, could “make them feel disrespected” and “communicate to them that their children are not welcome.” We just have to wait and hope they make that decision on their own, risking the occasional hint on a daily absence call that most don’t even pick up.

Over the past week or so, some of the chronically absent have finally been unenrolled. But as the program reaches its halfway point, the number of students who have never once attended but remain on the roster is still larger than the number of students on the waitlist. Today, as I write this, more than a dozen children whose families have actively sought out our help are still sitting at home, unable to attend “full classrooms” of four or five students – who are themselves struggling without peers to work with!

To most people, this sort of policy is absolutely inexplicable. How could it possibly benefit racial justice or equity to keep classrooms half-empty, excluding students who want to attend in deference to those who don’t? The whole thing sounds like the sort of outrageous Kafkaesque fantasy a conservative would invent to satirize the ultra-woke and their bigotry of low expectations. But that’s precisely the problem. After all, what options do you have when so many of the people in charge of our schools have priorities so disordered that merely describing them, no matter how dispassionately, will earn you accusations of strawmanning?

This is insane. It’s considered “disrespectful” to boot a child who never shows up to class? What kind of world is this? And, of course, as the teacher points out, the net result is that minority students in the school district get a poorer education than they would have otherwise. The tacit policy is that “avoiding disrespect” is more important than “giving kids a leg up in their education.”

It is things like these that apparently prompted the teacher to speak out. He recounts two other episodes that he considers equally “crazy”. I’ll give just one:

I once attended another meeting – lots of meetings when you’re a teacher! – where we were working to approve a new weekly schedule for students. When I said I was concerned that it would require leaving some sections of the curriculum untaught, a colleague said that might actually be a good thing, because most of our students are white and their test scores dropping slightly would help shrink the racial achievement gap in our state. Again, to clarify: I don’t mean my colleague had a a more nuanced approach to testing that a dishonest interlocutor could twist to sound like that. I mean my colleague literally spoke those words. (To be fair, one other teacher did speak up and challenge them this time, albeit very politely.)

And this is the problem with Woke initiatives that lower academic standards—for giving students credit for a course they don’t attend is just one way to lower standard.  Other ways are eliminating AP (advanced placement) courses, eliminating standardized tests, using “holistic admissions” that includes “personality scores” (the way Harvard kept out Asian students); the methods, both in practice and on tap, go on forever.

“But,” you might say, “These tactics increases the representation of minority students in schools.” Well, it can (though it didn’t in this case), but it also while lowers academic standards at the same time.

This, then, is a dilemma if you want both minority representation and standards that will provide a good education. I constantly ponder this dilemma, trying to think of forms of affirmative action that keep academic and professional standards high—ways to increase equity while retaining meritocracy.  The ultimate solution, of course, is what I call “equality of opportunity for everyone”, but that starts in youth, and by the time kids are in school, they’ve already missed it, for it depends on socioeconomic and cultural factors, as well as government policy. Solving this will take tons of will, money, and research, and there’s no quick fix. (There seems to be no will, either.) Even John McWhorter’s three-part solution (teach kids phonics, don’t assume that everyone has to go to college, and end the “war on drugs”) will work only very slowly.

It’s a tough problem and as I think through it I may post here from time to time. But this much I know: what the teacher describes above helps neither equity nor academic quality. And that is all this kind of performative effort does.  Its main accomplishment is to make a bunch of “elite” people feel better about themselves while actually ignoring the goals they profess to care about.