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Academia Anthropology Politics

They Feed On The Young

February 5, 2024 101 Comments

From the San Francisco Chronicle, one for the Everything It Touches pile:

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

Now, now. We must resist the urge to pre-judge.

But two years into the three-year contract with Woke Kindergarten, a for-profit company, student achievement… has fallen, prompting some teachers to question whether the money was well spent.

Though they ain’t making it easy.

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.

Take that, barriers to learning.

District officials defended the programme this past week, saying that Woke Kindergarten did what it was hired to do. The district pointed to improvements in attendance and suspension rates, 

Achieved, one assumes, by not bothering to suspend pupils who are seriously disruptive or habitually violent, a policy embraced by other progressive fiefdoms. And a new, improved rate of chronic absenteeism – 44% – isn’t entirely heartening.

[District Officials also said] 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. 

Clearly, these are the people we should put in charge.

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?” 

Apparently, San Francisco’s elementary-school children are expected to have, or at least regurgitate, strong opinions on the Israeli military.

Many young children are of course accustomed to being given a “word of the day,” though I would guess that such highlighted words don’t usually include “strike,” “ceasefire,” and “protest.” Nor, I suspect, would third-graders often be tasked with “disrupting whiteness,” which seems somewhat ambitious and just a tad question-begging, or with imagining “a world without police, money, or landlords.” Yet here we are.

Woke Kindergarten was founded by former teacher Akiea “Ki” Gross, who identifies as they/them.

A shocking twist, I know,

Ms Gross, who claims to re-shape “big concepts for little people,” is pretty much the kind of creature you’d imagine, and her views on, for instance, Israel and the United States are similarly unsurprising. Specifically,

I believe Israel has no right to exist. 

And,

I believe the United States has no right to exist.

Ms Gross goes on to declare her “unwavering love and care and compassion for children.” Which would doubtless explain her indifference to whether those children can read or have mastered basic arithmetic. Instead, our loving and compassionate educator propagates racial animosity, by invoking the evils of “whiteness,” and rails against a small country in the Middle East, whose influence on the illiteracy of schoolchildren half a world away is, shall we say, somewhat unclear.

Referring to her critics, with a self-satisfied smirk, she adds:

Y’all are the villains. We’ve been trying to end y’all… And we are going to continue to do that. 

By undermining the life chances of other people’s children.

Again, a familiar pattern.

Update:

If you draw attention to our degeneracy, you will be suspended.

I paraphrase, of course. But not, I think, unfairly.

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Written by: David
Academia Anthropology Media

Elsewhere (321)

February 4, 2024 91 Comments

At our glorious state broadcaster, that beacon of human progress:

A senior BBC employee branded Jewish people “Nazis” and white people “parasites” in a string of social media posts. The BBC has been informed of statements made online by Dawn Queva, who is a scheduling coordinator at BBC Three…

Posts made on her Facebook page include calling Jewish people “Nazi apartheid parasites” that funded a “holohoax”. Her posts repeatedly attack white people, calling them a “virus” and “mutant invader species.” […] Other posts state that white people have disturbed the natural order of the planet, and that they are a “barbaric bloodthirsty rapacious murderous genocidal thieving parasitical deviant breed”.

Hiring the very best, I see. Ms Queva has also denounced her employer as the “Bigoted Broadcasting Company.” Don’t worry. I’ve hired a truck to help shift the pile of ironies.

Peter Saunders on forgotten knowledge, now all but taboo:

For the best part of thirty years I’ve been trying to explain to governments, educationalists, journalists, and other opinion-leaders that our system is to a large extent meritocratic, and that the social class gap in educational and occupational achievement is largely down to differences of ability rather than differences of opportunity. But… politicians don’t want to know. They feel much more comfortable telling people that the system is unfair than explaining to them that some kids are simply brighter than others, and maybe their kid isn’t one of them. 

Noah Carl on the “diversity” trilemma:

Basically, you can pick two out of the following three: social stability, civil liberties, non-selective immigration. If you want social stability and civil liberties, you have to be picky with immigration. If you want civil liberties and non-selective immigration, you won’t get social stability. And if you want non-selective immigration and social stability, you’ll have to infringe civil liberties.

Since social stability is paramount for most governments (winning re-election is hard when people are rioting in the streets), there are really only two ways to “solve” the diversity trilemma: by being picky with immigration, or by infringing civil liberties. To date, Britain has opted mainly for the latter. 

And in technological news:

A professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh recently expressed concern over the lack of diversity among the robot population.

The educator in question, Mark Paterson, worries that black children “could end up interacting with white robots.” Specifically, “robots with reflective white surfaces.”

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

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Written by: David
Reheated

Reheated (86)

January 29, 2024 314 Comments

I’ll be busy for a few days, and so, some items from the archives:

Let’s Do It, But In A Way That’s Less Likely To Work.

In which we turn for wisdom to the Guardian’s parenting pages.

Providing the sperm. A joyous and maternal turn of phrase. Also of note, the idea of wanting a baby, but with only a third or a quarter of the responsibility. A kind of low-commitment parenting. Bodes well.

But Can You Not See How Fascinating I Am?

A tale of vomiting, tears, and unrelenting pretension.

Again, as so often, one has to ask – exactly which player in this drama is doing the misgendering? The unnamed presenter who sees a young woman named Julia and refers to her as she; or the young woman named Julia who expects to be perceived as something other than she is? Indeed, as something that doesn’t exist. The kind of young woman who tells us, with an air of triumph, “I had been thinking about my pronouns daily for over two years.” As one does, when one’s mental wellbeing is not at all in question. […]

I suppose the drama above – all that time on the verge of vomiting – is what happens when you spend your formative years steeped in the Progressive Identity Hierarchy, in which straight white woman is somewhere near the bottom, barely above the universally disdained straight white man. Inventing some modish gender nonsense – and then publicly complaining about other, less sophisticated people failing to defer to it – may boost your social standing a little. And that does seem to be what these things are very often about. 

Terrifying Objects.

Ferris State University’s Museum of Sexist Objects.

Objects deemed sexist and reprehensible – sorry, “artefacts of intolerance” – include a child’s ironing playset, a set of false eyelashes, a joke sign about beer being better than women, a glamour calendar featuring pneumatic ladies in minimal lingerie, a “Hillary Sucks” poster, and, bizarrely, a signed publicity photograph of Dr Condoleezza Rice.

Visitors In The Night.

A Guardian contributor finds her home being burgled, cue mental convolutions.

It occurs to me that a person breaking into someone’s home in the middle of the night and stealing their possessions is sending a pretty strong signal about who they are. And about how much concern, or how little, the rest of us should have for that person’s wellbeing. […]

Readers may also wish to ponder the implicit conceit that the burglars – the ones brandishing carving knives – are the real victims and should therefore be spared any meaningful consequence of their own chosen actions, their own sociopathy. Because, apparently, one should sympathise with the people breaking into one’s home and driving off with one’s stuff. In one’s own car. Perhaps these are skills only available to Guardian columnists.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (708)

January 26, 2024 164 Comments

The robot did my lash extensions. || Transgender head-tilt, level nine. || When your local stores start closing because of looting, excusing the looters is the progressive thing to do. || Today’s word is mentor. || Modernity is a helluva thing. || Nostalgic coffee table of note. || Bach’s Coffee Cantata, 1735. || Identify birds and mammals with smart binoculars. || Be careful who you let in. || Canine dispute. || For the disabled, a tongue-operated trackpad. || Sheep relocation. || He is, I’m told, an associate professor of psychiatry. || The perils of dining on squid. || Own a piece of history, they said. || Whatever happened to the Hitlers? || Timing is important. || Probably best not to, I think. || Not unfair. || Fool me once. || And finally, in sports news, she’s the women’s world champion, you know.

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Academia Anthropology Free-For-All

Your Host’s Idea Of Hell (5)

January 23, 2024 96 Comments

In the nightmare, I’ve been found guilty of something terrible – it was only a matter of time, I suppose – and am sentenced to an eternity of listening to this:

Teacher candidates in Ontario are receiving top-notch training. Not. pic.twitter.com/CBGPLzdJ9k

— Chanel Pfahl 🇨🇦 (@ChanLPfa) January 18, 2024

The speaker above, our bringer of deep and hidden wisdom, is Dr Andrew Campbell, an “educator, facilitator, storyteller and author,” and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. His areas of expertise – and naturally, they are numerous – include “educational change,” “radical leadership for social change,” “diversity,” “equity,” and painting his nails.

In return for his scholarly expertise, and his heroic struggles with basic grammar, Dr Campbell is paid a mere $169,272 – excluding speaking fees, obviously. Oh, and our educator’s response to scepticism and gentle mockery, expressed via social media and immediately blocked, is pretty much what you’d imagine. From a thirteen-year-old girl.

His mission is to challenge stereotypes.

Update, via the comments:

Dr Campbell also insists, loudly and with much flailing of arms, that “representation” and “diversity” do not, ever, entail a lowering of standards. “How dare you,” says he.

At which point, I’m tempted to peer over my spectacles.

Via Jonathan Kay. Previously in Hell.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.