Category: wokeness

The National Academies tell editors, authors, and reviewers not to be be bullies or harassers

March 8, 2024 • 12:15 pm

My colleague the troublemaker Anna Krylov sent me this announcement from the prestigious National Academies of Sciences (NAS). I quote her with permission: “I read the policy and it is super annoying — patronizing and overreaching.”

This is a new policy for those engaged in NAS activities. There is to be no bullying, harassment, or discrimination among editors, authors, and reviewers. Not threats or intimidation, either, or “coercion to dominate others,” whatever that means. And if you commit these behaviors at meetings, workshops, conferences, or social functions that involve the National Academies in any way, you can get reported (a helpful link is given).

Now the behaviors singled out are indeed uncivilized behaviors that people should obey, and some are already illegal. However, to spell them out under threat of punishment is something you do to a two-year-old, not a grown-up scientist. It is indeed patronizing and offensive. Also, “aggressive behavior” or “coercion to dominate others” are slippery terms, and could be taken to mean being “domineering”—a regular feature of any group of scientists.

At any rate, it looks as though the latest trend in science is to not only specify minutely how they must and must not behave, but also threaten them if they don’t behave that way.

I wonder why this is happening now? I would guess that one reason might be legal liability, but these behaviors are already verboten in most venues, and there are already ways to prevent them.  Your guess is as good as mine.

From ideologues: Why genetics education must be sociopolitical

February 27, 2024 • 9:30 am

The latest issue of Science contains three ideological articles on how teaching of science must be reformed to be more inclusive and antiracist. Most of the authors of all three pieces are affiliated with departments or institutes of science education, and this may explain the mission-oriented tone of the pieces. I’ll discuss one of them today and another one soon.

This article argues that genetics education remains systemically racist, and must be attacked, dismantled, and made explicitly antiracist.  In fact, the article could have been written by an Ibram Kendi—if he knew anything about genetics.  As usual with such pieces, the problems it raises occurred largely in the past and are not currently “systemic” in genetics education. The article gives no evidence that today’s genetics classes are rife with racism, white supremacy, advocacy of eugenics, and other bad behaviors that create divisions between people. On the other hand, the article nevertheless wants to emphasize divisions between people—most notably “races:—as they see these divisions, conceived as “socially constructed”, as groups having differential power that must be recognized and effaced.

Besides being divisive, my main objection to the piece is that it assumes genetics is taught today as it was seventy years ago, which it isn’t, and, most of all, it tries to turn a science class into a class in ideology: a course in “dismantling” modern genetics to eliminate its white supremacy and then re-infusing it with “antiracist” values.  Having taught genetics and sat in on other genetics classes, the authors are dealing with a non-problem, and their solutions will only make genetics education worse: turning out a generation of ideologues who know less about genetics than the previous generation.

Click on the title to read, and you can find the pdf here. Excerpts from the piece are indented

First, the problem, stated in postmodern terms. Note the jargon:

The methods of conducting genetics research and its outcomes are steeped in, and influenced by, power and privilege dynamics in broader society. The kinds of questions asked, biological differences sought, and how populations are defined and examined are all informed by the respective dominant culture (often Eurocentric, white, economically privileged, masculine, and heteronormative) and its predominant ways of knowing and being (3). Findings from human genetics and genomics research subsequently play into existing sociopolitical dynamics by providing support for claims about putative differences between groups and the prevalence of particular traits in particular groups (3). Historically, such research has been used in support of eugenic movements to legitimize forced sterilization and genocides.  [JAC: this happened in the past and is not happening now.[ Yet it would be a mistake to assume that such research is merely a discredited past relic, a stain on the otherwise objective and rational track record of genetic research. Rather, it was mainstream work conducted by prominent researchers and supported by major professional societies. The reality is that some modern human genetics is still informed by the same racist logic (4). [JAC: no examples given.]

I’m not sure what the “racist logic” is here. If you look up reference (4), you don’t find evidence of “racist logic” in modern science, but a description of its use in older teachings and then a discussion about how one should conceive “ancestry”.  In fact, that reference gives evidence that there are average genetic differences between “races” even though populations vary continuously with geography and there are no diagnostic and fixed differences between named “races” (I prefer to use the term “geographic population”, a claim that Duncan et al, deny.  Luana Maroja and I, in our recent paper on ideology and science, show that even in America, typological “races” of “white, East Asian, Hispanic, and black” (“Hispanics” aren’t normally considered a race, but in America are distinct because they’re largely from Mexico), are not sociopolitical constructs lacking biological meaning, but do differ on average in traits and constellations of genes. From knowing only an American’s genes, you can guess their self-reported ancestry with over 99% accuracy.

What these differences mean for traits, behaviors, and medical outcomes is only beginning to be explored, but they reflect the geographic distribution of ancestors, for geographic isolation leads to genetic diffrences via natural selection and genetic drift. This is why genetic ancestry companies can give you a pretty accurate view of your genetic ancestry (I, for example, am nearly 100% Askhkenazi Jew). This wouldn’t work if geographic populations were genetically identical.

The purpose of the paper, then, is to expose and then dismantle the systematic racism of modern genetics education.  You must be “antiracist” rather than “race-neutral”— something that Kendi emphasizes in his book on antiracism—and must at every turn deny that human races or populations differ biologically, for that leads inevitably to ranking and racism. In other words, it’s bad for society to even study genetic differences between populations:

Genetic distinctions between human populations are not natural; they are the consequences of categorizations developed by geneticists for the purposes of their research and the questions they pursue.

. . . The search for genetic differences among populations, even when not done using explicit racial categories, can still yield findings that are problematic in that they can make social hierarchies appear “natural”. , ,  [JAC: they then cite the caste divisions in India, and I know little about that. But the point—that differences equal ranking and racism—is the same.]

. . . . Our contention here is that successful genetic education has to be antiracist, it cannot be race-neutral. Therefore, a core learning objective for human genetics education should be understanding that neither the environment nor scientists’ definitions of genetic populations are neutral but rather that they are shaped by the historical, social, and political contexts in which they exist.

Actually, one can parse out genetic groupings using statistics alone, free from “historical, social, and political contexts.”  Now what you call these groupings—races, ethnic groups, or populations—is arbitrary.

Further, the goal of genetics education must be dismantling this racism, not so much teaching how genetics works:

First, if one wishes to dismantle racism (and other systems of oppression) in science and society, then one needs to understand the ways in which such oppression is woven into the fabric of genetics research and disrupt and counteract these practices early and often through education.

But, as I said, the evidence for the ongoing racism of genetics is nil, and, in fact, the authors have to resort to making doubtful statements like this:

In this sense, the Human Genome Project was developed in, and sustained by, a sociopolitical context that upheld (and still upholds) value-laden group differences.

So the “sociopolitical context” was supposedly based on showing group differences that could be the basis of bigotry (not the case), but this “fact” is even used to tar the Human Genome Project, which was supposedly not only developed in the context of bigotry, but sustains that bigotry! To wit:

To dismantle racism, you must first recognize that racial differences are purely a social construct, but at the same time must recognize them, probably because these socially-constructed differences are correlated with well-being. (I of course don’t deny that racism has lowered the well-being of minorities, but also recognize that even to practice racism, one has to somehow recognize different populations, and that’s partly genetic, even if the genetic differences we see were only used as platforms for historical racism and bigotry.

And so we must avoid color-blindness because recognizing color (which of course is largely genetic) is said to be the key to eliminating disparities between races. (The authors barely mention hardly anything about socioeconomic differences within populations; their entire focus is on race.):

The understanding that race is not genetic (or biological) does not automatically translate into an understanding that race is a social construct, or that it can, and does, shape our biology. Moreover, knowing that race is a social construct does not automatically explain racial disparities in health or any other arena because it ignores the systemic nature of racism and the resulting inequities. Solely countering beliefs in race-based genetic differences and focusing on the similarities between racial groups obscures the real and devastating differences in the well-being of minoritized racial groups. This can lead to racial “color blindness” of a genetic flavor that sees everyone as the same and turns a blind eye to the impact of racism on people’s biology.
Finally the authors give three recommendations of how to teach genetics in both secondary (middle and high school) and postsecondary (college) genetics classes.

 

1.) Emphasize the sociopolitical context of the environment

2.) Entangle environment and biology.

3.) Scrutinize the sociopolitical categorization of human populations.

Point 1 is made to emphasize the debilitating effect of racist environments on minorities, point 2 is to show how the environment, which imposes differences on people via racism, has biological effects on people, and point 3  is to show how the definition and use of races has served the political ends of gaining power over others. The authors recommend some textbooks that will help create “brave and safe spaces” for students:

 There are powerful exemplars of curricula at the high school level that engage students with ambitious science, its sociopolitical dimensions, and a focus on social justice (13, 14). There is a growing number of excellent books (15) and online resources for anti-racist genetics and biology education—for example, the LabXchange’s “Racism as a Public Health Crisis” curriculum, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center’s materials on “Race, Racism, and Genetics.” These resources include supports for teachers in creating brave and safe spaces for discussions about race and genetics. Funding and committed support of national and professional science and science education organizations will also be instrumental for these efforts.

Of course using these books turns a genetics course into a course in antiracist ideology, so that there is less time for students to learn “race-neutral” genetics. But the authors don’t really care how much genetics students learn; they are far more concerned with propagandizing a generation of students to create the kind of social change they see as salubrious:

In the short term, we see scientists’ role in the education of future scientists and teachers as one powerful lever for change. Undergraduate coursework in biology and genetics, often taught by faculty in those departments, is a space where we can begin “sowing the seeds” of sociopolitical awareness in genetics.

Now I think it’s great to work to rid the world of what racism that still exists, though I don’t see much of it in genetics courses.  And I see nothing wrong, when you teach human genetics, with revealing the flaws in the old diagnostic “big-genetic-difference” view of human races, and emphasizing instead that they are populations that now intergrade, so the delineation of specific races becomes arbitrary. But one has to also tell the truth: races are populations that evolved in ancient geographical isolation, and there are real biological differences between them.  And, of course, one should at least insert the caveat that the differences that do exist do not efface the moral dictum that members of different groups have equal rights and deserve equal treatment.

The worst part of this paper—and the two papers that accompany it (one here, the other here)—is that it’s part of a nationwide drive to turn education into propaganda, and of to change the purpose of all education from teaching students the truth to teaching students the temporary and political “personal truths” of their woke overseers.

The Harvard Crimson tells us that there are more than two sexes in humans

February 23, 2024 • 9:30 am

It’s been hard times for my alma mater in the past year. Harvard’s President was excoriated and then removed, there were protests and illegal sit-ins over the war, a Supreme Court decision came down ruling that Harvard’s admissions policies were racist, and now Jewish students have brought a Title VI lawsuit brought against the school for creating a climate of antisemitism. But surely, I thought, the students are still good.

Well, yes, maybe “good:, but also woke. One of these is E. Matteo Diaz, an opinion writer for the student newspaper Harvard Crimson. Diaz has taken on the burden of correcting generations of scientists who have lied to us, saying that in humans, as in other animals, there are only two sexes.  (Biologists define sex as binary, with males having small mobile gametes and females large immobile ones.)

It’s important to realize that some of the slant of the op-ed may come from the fact that Diaz is transgender, as he notes in the second paragraph, and so the article is likely written to buttress a gender ideology, one claiming that biologists promulgate a definitional binary of sexes because we’re a bunch of transphobes who want to erase transgender people or folks who identify as non-binary.

That is nonsense, of course, but once again I’ll show you not only how widespread is the false claim that sex isn’t binary in humans, but also that the reason for this lie is purely ideological. It is a prime example of how ideologues try to foist their nonsense onto nature, adopting what I call the “reverse appeal to nature”:  sayint that what is considered good and moral in humans must also be what we see in nature.

On to the piece:

Diaz pulls no punches, but gives at the outset why he thinks biologists see sex as binary:

“There are only two sexes.”

At a moment when transgender people face unprecedented visibility and vulnerability, this claim pervades the discourse surrounding our identities. We hear it everywhere: in the media, in our legislatures, and, yes, at our very own university.

Even when it is not being used to categorically deny the existence of trans people, this claim is weaponized to qualify our validity. The argument goes as follows: “Trans people can ask to be called whatever they want, but they can’t change the fact that there are only two sexes.”

The idea that sex is binary is presented as an irrefutable fact of life, the most natural truth in the world. Anyone who dares question this “fact” is quickly discounted as a “radical, woke ideologue” or an agent of the “liberal DEI agenda.”

This line of thinking is dangerous and deeply alarming. The truth of the matter is that sex is not a simple binary. To claim otherwise is overly simplistic, flawed, and harmful.

No, biologists have defined sex this way for decades for a reason: it’s a universal in plants and animals, and, moreover, it helps us understand a great deal about their behavior and evolution. No other definition of sex is either so universally applicable or so useful. And no, we don’t hold that definition because we want to erase trans people or those who identify as non-binary.  Neither of the latter two groups are somehow outside the purview of the sex binary, which, by the way, has only 0.018% of people as exceptions, not the “1.7%” mentioned by Matteo. (The higher figure was suggested by Anne Fausto-Sterling in a 2000 paper, and she later said her claims were wrong.)

After disposing of the sex binary as ideological, Diaz tells us why sex really is nonbinary:

Let us first clarify what the claim “sex is binary” actually means. This framework organizes the human sex into two distinct categories: male and female. These categories encompass a variety of biological characteristics. Males have a penis, testes, higher levels of testosterone, and XY chromosomes. Females have a vagina, ovaries, higher levels of estrogen, and XX chromosomes.

At least, that’s what they teach you in sex ed.

But this is not the full story. What about people who don’t fit neatly into one of these two categories? What about people with ambiguous genitalia, or those who have the genitalia typical of one sex but the chromosomes and anatomy typical of the other?

These are not abstract what-ifs. As many as one out of every fifteen hundred babies is born with ambiguous genitalia. Many more are born with another type of sex variation, though some are more subtle or late to manifest.

People whose sex falls outside of the binary are known as intersex, and experts estimate that they make up as much as 1.7 percent of the population.

Here Diaz conflates traits that are used as imperfect but pretty good diagnostics for biological sex in humans, but they’re not definitions of biological sex. This is the most common ploy to get around the sex binary. But of course the binary also holds in animals that don’t have chromosomal sex determination (turtles), have no external genitalia (corals), and in which sex is determined by haploidy/diploidy (bees) or environmental circumstances (fish). No matter which traits are used to diagnose sex in animals and plants, there are still only two sexes: one with sperm and the other with eggs. Diaz has yet to learn some biology. Instead, he says that sex is “socially constructed”! Either he’s referring to gender, or he’s simply wrong:

This is where the sex binary fails us. How can it be an undeniable, natural truth that there are only two sexes if we consistently observe a myriad of naturally-occurring variations in sex?

The answer? It isn’t. Saying there is only male and female is like saying there’s only blond and brunette — the sex binary is a social construct, not a biological fact.

. . . The sex binary is a human invention — one that is driven, at least in part, by political motives. As a society, we are deeply invested in this invention, having imbued the binary with immense power and influence. This raises several points of concern.

I won’t even bother to answer that ridiculous assertion. Readers who want to know why there’s really a biological binary of sex should watch this video by Colin Wright.  I guess birds and fruit flies are also deeply invested in the sex binary, since when it comes to mating time, you don’t see a male bird copulating with another male, or a male elephant courting another male. Reproduction in plants and animals occurs ONLY when a male gamete unites with a female one. Pollen lands on and fertilizes eggs—did plants also invent the sex binary? What are their other social constructs?

After dismissing the scientific definition of sex—and implying that humans have an infinite number of sexes—Diaz once again says, without any evidence, that the sex binary is “harmful”. Yes, trans people may be derided by bigots because they don’t fit the “norm”, but those who deride them are doing so based on what they see as the norm, not how biologists define sex, which few laypeople know anyway:

The sex binary is a human invention — one that is driven, at least in part, by political motives. As a society, we are deeply invested in this invention, having imbued the binary with immense power and influence. This raises several points of concern

First, it is bad science. Treating the sex binary as an immutable fact ignores the ample evidence that calls it into question, producing biased research design and results.

Peer-reviewed research contradicts a strictly binary interpretation of sex [NOTE: no references given.]. We have yet to uncover a precise causal mechanism that definitively and consistently guarantees an individual’s sex. [NOTE: a “cause” is not important when delineating a binary. And, as we know, there are many causes that result in the sex binary.]Though many suggest that chromosomes are the determining factor, science supports that sex differentiation is a much more complex process.

Second, in failing to account for the wide range of human variation, it harms anyone who does not fit neatly within it — namely, intersex and transgender people.

The presumed verity of the binary is weaponized to force conformity upon those who are different. This is what allows conservative politicians to pass harmful laws that ban gender-affirming care for trans people (under the guise of protecting children) while maintaining carve-outs allowing damaging “corrective” surgeries on intersex babies.

When you want to redefine scientific facts to conform to your ideology, just say that those facts are weaponized against marginalized groups.  And, in fact, there may be some misguided and bigoted politicians who try to pass laws trying to force people into conforming to gender stereotypes. But that’s a problem of morality, not of science. You might as well blame chemistry as being responsible for the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Poor Harvard! The misguided Diaz even claims that he’s promulgating the truth:

We must never stop striving for truth — even when it is difficult, even when it requires us to challenge the status quo. This should not be any different when it comes to sex.

Or math! Remember in Nineteen Eighty-Four when Winston Smith was forced, under torture, to admit that 2 + 2  =  5 because it was in Big Brother’s interest to have Smith believe lies?

h/t: Michael

Now the Pecksniffs want to change dinosaur names

February 22, 2024 • 10:30 am

Yes, it was inevitable. Now that birds and other animals are undergoing woke scrutiny to see which names are problematic (though scientific names cannot be changed), the Pecksniffs have begun to examine the names of dinosaurs, too. And according to this article from Nature (which contains a blatant misspelling), they have found some “bad” names, though not many. Click to read.

First, remember that the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature has decreed that, for purposes of scientific communication, the Latin binomial names of animals (e.g., Anas platyrhynchos—the mallard) cannot be changed, though “mallard” could be changed. (The equivalent plant group hasn’t yet weighed in.) Thus what has been at issue is “problematic” common names, seen as being non-inclusive and fostering bigotry and racism (example Wallace’s owlet, named after the supposed miscreant Alfred Russel Wallace). See all my posts on this fracas here).

The problem with dinosaur names is that the common name and the scientific name are often similar, like Stegosaurus, a genus containing three recognized extinct species of dinosaurs. That one isn’t named after a person (the Latin name, based on its dorsal plates, means “roof lizard”), so it’s not problematic. But if it were, I suppose the woke could cancel the common name and call it something other than Stegosaurus.

In fact, dinosaur names can be problematic for reasons other than the person after whom they’re named (eponyms).  And, sure enough, the Perpetually Offended are trawling through dinosaur names to find the bad ones. Nature carries the article, even though this effort hasn’t been published in the scientific literature.  Below (indented) are some excerpts of this risible endeavor. Note the common error, due to ignorance, that I’ve put in bold. Of course you know that it’s “free rein”, referring to letting go of a horse’s reins. It has nothing to do with kings and the like.

It’s been 200 years since scientists named the first dinosaur: Megalosaurus. In the centuries since, hundreds of other dinosaur species have been discovered and catalogued — their names inspired by everything from their physical characteristics to the scientists who first described them. Now, some researchers are calling for the introduction of a more robust system, which they say would ensure species names are more inclusive and representative of where and how fossils are discovered.

Unlike in other scientific disciplines — such as chemistry, in which strict rules govern a molecule’s name — zoologists have a relatively free reign over the naming of new species. Usually, the scientist or group that first publishes work about an organism gets to pick its name, with few restrictions. There is a set of guidelines for species naming overseen by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). These include the requirements that the name is unique, that it is announced in a publication and that, for dinosaurs, it is linked to a single specimen.

Screenshot proof before the journal wises up:

But I digress, simply because this kind of stuff irks me.  Examples of “problematic names” are few, and in fact they don’t give a single one. The Pecksniffs simply decry the lack of dinosaurs named after indigenous people or the places where the bones were found. Further, if there were gendered names, most were male—as one expects when the field was dominated almost exclusively, as was the case a while back, by men.

To explore how dinosaur naming has changed over the past 200 years, Emma Dunne, a palaeobiologist at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen–Nuremberg, Germany, and her colleagues analysed the names of all of the dinosaur fossils from the Mesozoic Era (251.9 million to 66 million years ago) that have been described, around 1,500 in total.

The authors wanted to know how much effort it would take to address what they saw as problematic names, which they describe as those “emanating racism, sexism, named under (neo)colonial contexts or after controversial figures”. They found several such names, equating to less than 3% of the dinosaurs they looked at.

Some of the names the team identified derive from the colonial names for lands where species have been discovered. Indigenous-language names of places or researchers are often not used or are mistranslated, the authors say.

For example, many of the dinosaurs discovered during a series of expeditions between 1908 and 1920 by German explorers in Tendaguru in Tanzania, which was then part of German East Africa, were named after German people rather than local expedition members, and the samples remain in Germany.

Now the ICZN says it’s not changing any of these names, though, disturbingly, its president says it could be open to “introducing different naming systems.”  But the article implies that this isn’t impending. And there aren’t that many dinosaurs that haven’t been found.

The main issue, of course, is whether changing 45 dinosaur names (3% of 1500) will make a substantial—or even a detectable—difference in the inclusivity of paleontology. Will people of color and women, previously repelled by the bigotry and patriarchy of dinosaur names, now come pouring into paleontology after 45 common names are changed?  If you believe that, I have some land in Florida to sell you. Regardless, the Pecksniffs think they’re doing a lot of good:

“The problem in terms of numbers is really insignificant. But it is significant in terms of importance,” says Evangelos Vlachos, a palaeontologist at the Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio in Trelew, Chubut, Argentina, who also worked on the study. He wants future naming systems to be more rigorous. “We don’t say that tomorrow we need to change everything. But we need to critically revise what we have done, see what we have done well and what we have not done well, and try to correct it in the future.”

Besides the redundancy of “it is significant in terms of importance,” the fact is that changing 45 dinosaur names won’t accomplish anything except enable the re-namers to feel good about themselves. And this is the problem of all the biological renaming initiatives. They apply only to common names, which aren’t the same from country to country, and it’s ludicrous to expect that changing some of the “problematic” ones will actually make a field of science more inclusive.

This kind of effort would be much better spent tutoring or giving lectures to underprivileged kids. But that’s too much work.

h/t: Alex

Texas professor fired, then reinstated after a lawsuit, for teaching that chromosomes determine human sex

February 21, 2024 • 11:15 am

In general, one can’t say that chromosomes “determine sex” in animals, as there are other genetic or environmental features that determine what sex an individual becomes.

As Coyne and Maroja (2023) note:

Different sexes can determined during development bybe based on different chromosomes and their genes (e.g., XX vs. XY in humans, ZW vs. ZZ in birds, individuals with like chromosomes being female in mammals and male in birds); different rearing temperatures (crocodiles and turtles); whether you have a full or half set of chromosomes (bees); whether you encounter a female (some marine worms); and a host of other social, genetic, and environmental factors.

But note that we’re talking about what “determines” sex—setting off the developmental program that results in a male or female—but the “definition” of sex, ubiquitous in animals and vascular plants, still depends on whether they make large immobile gametes or small and mobile ones.

Still, it’s true that the gene that sets off the sex-determining cascade in humans and most other mammals is based on chromosomes. In particular, if a mammal carries a Y chromosome, which harbors the sex-determining gene SRY, whose action initiates development of testes, that individual is a male. Without a Y, you nearly always develop female reproductive equipment.

All in all, it’s accurate to teach students that sex is determined (but not “defined”) by chromosomes: the normal karyotypes are XX for females and XY for males. Yet for teaching that simple fact, adjunct professor Dr. Johnson Varkey, was fired from St. Philip’s College in Texas in January of last year.  As the Fox News (where else?) article below recounts, Varkey has now been re-hired after filing a lawsuit against the Alamo Community College District.

 

Excerpts:

A biology professor who was fired from a Texas community college for teaching students that X and Y chromosomes determine sex has been reinstated.

First Liberty Institute, a law firm that defends religious liberty for Americans, announced in a Tuesday press release that St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas, had reinstated Dr. Johnson Varkey, a former adjunct professor, a year after he was terminated.

The law firm noted they had filed a charge of discrimination at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against St. Philip’s and the Alamo Community College District (ACCD) earlier this year.

Here’s what Varkey said that got him canned:

“When teaching the human reproductive system, Dr. Varkey also stated that human sex is determined by chromosomes X and Y, and that reproduction must occur between a male and a female to continue the human species,” First Liberty stated last June. “In the course of teaching Human Anatomy and Physiology, he made these statements in every class for 20 years, without any incident or complaint.”

Now you can imagine how some gender activists could get upset by that.  If it takes a man and a woman to make an offspring, what do you do with those who assert that “transwomen are women” or “transmen are men”? If the trans people aren’t sterile, they could still reproduce according to their biological sex, but an activist might assert that a woman and a woman could produce a baby. (I wouldn’t say that, of course.).  Further, activists might argue that sex is not determined by chromosomes, but by one’s inner feelings.  So a simple statment like Varkey’s would of course be inflammatory. It’s telling that he taught this same thing for 22 years, but only last year did it rile up the students:

Complaints against Varkey that ultimately led to his firing said he had engaged in “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter” and that his teaching “pushed beyond the bounds of academic freedom with [his] personal opinions that were offensive to many individuals in the classroom,” according to a letter from the law firm.

Here we have another example of the ideological erosion of biology: a simple fact about human reproduction gets a professor fired simply because it contravenes the ideology of gender activists. It surprises me even more because it’s happened in conservative Texas, and the college is historically black.

I’m glad the buck stopped after a year, but the professor still went a year without teaching (and presumably salary). And this example may chill other people from teaching the truth about human sex and sexuality as well. After all, look at what happened to Carole Hooven at Harvard.

Critic of “Woke Kindergarten” suspended

February 13, 2024 • 10:30 am

Remember “Woke Kindergarten”, a lesson plan for teachers to use in instructing propagandizing students in Hayward, California (see posts here and here)?  The program was designed by an extreme “progressive” named Akiea “Ki” Gross, who was given $250,000 in taxpayer money by the school.  And, lo and behold, performance in English and math actually dropped after the wokeness was sprayed on the students. (To see how completely bonkers this program is, go here or to the program’s website here.)  All power to the little people! Sadly, the program appears to be designed for black students and the students are 80% Hispanic.

After an article was published in the San Francisco Chronicle describing the program, there was a huge backlash from people who, properly, thought it was bonkers.  So what did the school district do? Did they drop the program? There’s no indication of that. Instead, they did what defies common sense:  they put one of the teachers who criticized the program in the article on leave (with pay) for unknown violations. They are actually defending Woke Kindergarten when they should be defunding it. I suspect, however, that we’ll see no more of the program. It’s simply too stupid, woke, and embarrassing.

At any rate, the Chronicle has a new article (click headline below, or find it archived here), discussing the firing and giving the school’s defense.

First, though, this is how the teacher critic was quoted in the first Chronicle article:

 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.

Craven-Neeley, who is white and a self-described “gay moderate,” said he wasn’t trying to be difficult when he asked for clarification about disrupting whiteness. “What does that mean?” he said, adding that such questions got him at least temporarily banned from future training sessions. “I just want to know, what does that mean for a third-grade classroom?”

And from the new piece, his punishment for such heresy:

The East Bay teacher who publicly questioned spending $250,000 on an anti-racist teaching training program was placed on administrative leave Thursday, days after he shared his concerns over Woke Kindergarten in the Chronicle.
Hayward Unified School District teacher Tiger Craven-Neeley said district officials summoned him to a video conference Thursday afternoon and instructed him to turn in his keys and laptop and not return to his classroom at Glassbrook Elementary until further notice.

 

They did not give any specifics as to why he was placed on paid leave, other than to say it was over “allegations of unprofessional conduct,” Craven-Neeley said.

District officials declined to comment on his status or any allegations, saying it was a personnel matter.

A defense of Woke Kindergarten from the original article:

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.

Defenses in the second article. Yep, they refuse to say that adopting it was a bad move:

District officials declined to comment on their social media posts, given Gross was paid using taxpayer-funded federal dollars.

“We cannot comment on her personal political or social views,” Bazeley said.

Some teachers have defended the Woke Kindergarten program, saying that after years of low test scores and academic intervention, they believed in a fresh approach. The training was selected by the school community, with parents and teachers involved in the decision.

“We need to try something else,” said Christina Aguilera, a bilingual kindergarten teacher. “If we just focus on academics, it’s not working. There is no one magic pill that will raise test scores.

“I’m really proud of Glassbrook to have the guts to say this is what our students need,” Aguilera said. “We didn’t just do what everybody expected us to do, and I’m really proud of that.”

Sixth-grade teacher Michele Mason said the Woke Kindergarten training sessions “have been a positive experience” for most of the staff, humanizing the students’ experiences and giving them a voice in their own education.

These are clearly teachers who want to keep their jobs.  Finally, a bit about how Craven-Neeley was treated by his colleagues:

The Wednesday staff meeting, however, was tense, Craven-Neeley said, as he tried to explain that before going to the Chronicle, he approached school and district staff as well as the school board to raise questions about the program and the expense, with no response.

“There was so much anger toward me,” he said. “I was explaining my point of view. They were talking over me.”

. . . . Craven-Neeley said the meeting grew tense about an hour in, when another teacher stood up, pointed a finger in his face and said, “ ‘You are a danger to the school or the community,’ and then she walked out of the room.”

Not long after, a district administrator asked him to leave the meeting.

“I was shocked. This is my school. I didn’t do anything inappropriate,” he said. “I left. I was very shaky.”

Another Glassbrook teacher, who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions at the school, confirmed that a staff member put a hand in Craven-Neeley’s face and called him a disgrace and a threat to the school.

Craven-Neeley then had a video meeting with school officials and was told he’d be placed on paid leave pending an “investigation”. The university also “denied the district’s actions were related to Craven-Neeley’s participation in the story or his complaints about the program. The district spokesperson added, ‘We would not put any employee on leave as any sort of retaliation or squelch anyone’s free speech rights,” [Michael Bazeley] said’.”

Well that sounds like a flat-out lie to me. What Craven-Neeley said to the Chronicle was indeed free speech, and there’s no other indication of anything else for which he’d be punished.  All I can say is that it looks as if Woke Kindergarten affected the teachers (if not the students). They’re all censorious and defensive!

Remember the “woke wonderings” that were part of the program? Here’s one:

The answer, of course, is “not much!”

Your tax dollars at work in “Woke Kindergarten”

February 6, 2024 • 9:45 am

Today we’ll have a group of short posts as I have things to do beyond this website.

Remember the story of Woke Kindergarten, a teacher’s lesson plan that was implemented in the elementary-school grades of Hayward,  California? (See the SF Chronicle story here. )

Below is apparently the sole person behind the project: Akiea “Ki” Gross. She got a quarter of a million dollars from the city so that they could use her lesson plan, which you can find here.  On the site she’s identified this way “Akiea ‘Ki’ Gross (they/them) is an abolitionist early educator, cultural organizer and creator currently innovating ways to resist, heal, liberate and create with their pedagogy, Woke Kindergarten.”

And the site has plenty of anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian propaganda, for Gross apparently is on the side of Hamas, or at least Palestine, and the lesson plan for teachers is meant to inculcate kids with hatred for Israel.  You can see some of her slides at the site, or in this morning’s Hili post.

Note the keffiyeh, and listen to her words saying that neither Israel nor the U.S. has a right to exist. She also utters the “from the river to the sea” trope.  Yep, she’s an anti-Semite, but also someone, as Douglas Murrey has emphasized, that hates the entire West and its productions, for we’re settler-colonialists who have committed genocide against native people.  The purpose of Woke Kindergarten is to propagandize children to hate the West.

Your tax money at work!

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