“The kids don’t even want this stuff,” says [high-school English teacher, Kali] Fontanilla, noting that the ethnic studies course replaced a much more popular health class – in the midst of a pandemic, no less. “Most of them are just like, ‘Why do we have to take this class?’”

Robby Soave on when classroom race-hustling doesn’t impress the kids. 

As the classroom in question is in Salinas, California, where the children in question are overwhelmingly Hispanic, and therefore supposedly oppressed, and supposedly hungry for “critical race theory,” you can imagine the complications. It turns out that when Hispanic children turn up to learn English as a second language, they’re not overly thrilled to find their time being spent on “institutional, internalised, ideological, and interpersonal oppression.” Or at being told that, on account of not being white, they may suffer from “intergenerational trauma.” Or spending class time on a “privilege quiz,” in which they must rank their imagined victimhood, while comparing “intersectional rainbows.”

However, the disaffection of supposed beneficiaries seems unlikely to deter adult enthusiasts.

Beginning with the class of 2030, all public high school students in California will now have enrol in the same sort of course that Fontanilla’s students already took.

Ms Fontanilla, who happens to be black, isn’t impressed either. Cultivating victimhood and racial resentment is not, she feels, an ideal use of her students’ time, or indeed her own. Believing that parents had a right to know exactly what their children are being taught, she wrote a letter of protest to the school board. It was read aloud during a meeting at which parents were present:

“I do not appreciate constantly being pandered to and treated differently because of the colour of my skin, especially since I did not have the freedom to not go along with it,” Fontanilla wrote, warning that the curriculum was an attempt at left-wing indoctrination. The statement elicited cheers from other parents attending the meeting. In response, the school board prohibited anti-CRT comments at its next public gathering.

And if the air of somewhat creepy condescension isn’t sufficiently obvious,

Goldfish are capable of navigating on land, Israeli researchers have found, after training fish to drive. The team at Ben-Gurion University developed an FOV – a fish-operated vehicle. The robotic car is fitted with lidar, a remote sensing technology that uses pulsed laser light to collect data on the vehicle's ground location and the fish's whereabouts inside a mounted water tank. A computer, camera, electric motors, and omni-wheels give the fish control of the vehicle.

Hey, I’m just reading what it says here. And yes, there’s video. 

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Over at The College Fix, Dave Huber ponders the complications of being woke while simultaneously having a good time:

In [Swarthmore College student paper] The Phoenix, economics major Sameer Halepoto points to a pre-Thanksgiving party, hosted by the Swarthmore Queer Union, Swarthmore African Student Association, Swarthmore [Hispanic and Latino organisation] ENLACE, and the Swarthmore African-American Student Society, which had filled up rather quickly.

Filled up quickly. Must be the fun crowd.

Halepoto says “typical [Swarthmore] parties include an outsized number of white students (many of whom are athletes), making it harder for marginalised groups to feel welcome.” As a result, party organisers blared a repeating electronic message through speakers which warned that white people had to leave.

Vibeslayer. Or, as Mr Halepoto, our fretfully woke student columnist, puts it,

As the number of students at the party swelled, however, the organisers decided to clean house over fears of overcrowding. Specifically, it was time to kick out the white people. What followed was a message blaring through the speakers from Google Translate that looped for several minutes on end — telling white students to leave. By the time the message stopped playing, the party’s racial demographics had shifted significantly.

Mr Halepoto goes on to share his fashionable (and fashionably unsubstantiated) belief that being gay or brown or sort-of brown is a state of being “marginalised,” even on a modern, upscale, super-progressive campus, where annual tuition fees are north of $70,000. Being so cruelly downtrodden, such put-upon persons are, we’re told, entitled to “safe spaces.” In contrast, “white people” are defined, rather breezily, as a “non-marginalised group,” all party-going to the contrary. How white students who also happen to be gay should navigate student parties without risking looped and amplified racial scolding, and subsequent ejection, is not made entirely clear.

The dishonesty, I mean.

Speaking of which, he’s doing it for the students, you know. And he sometimes turns up to class in full drag. To make it a “safe space.”

Homeschool pic.twitter.com/ZJFj0TvxAi

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 6, 2021

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the second item, Jen quips, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Ah, but you see, it’s “a place for them, by them,” while clearly being all about him and entirely his idea, and entirely dependent on his preferences on any given day. So, sometimes it’s full drag, and sometimes just big earrings, nail polish and wacky tart shoes. To make the children feel “safe.” I somehow doubt that any pupils or parents who find this educator’s behaviour, shall we say, distracting or not entirely reassuring, will be indulged anything like as much as he expects to be.

Update 2:

I suppose the above raises the question of whether you think schoolchildren should be compelled to participate, daily, as a captive audience, in a teacher’s gender-bending psychodrama. Complete with beard, make-up, and ‘fuck-me’ hooker shoes. What matters, we’re told, is that he gets to “look how I wanna look” during office hours, on other people’s time, while teaching other people’s children, and while supposedly setting an example of adult behaviour. And, luckily for him, farcical self-indulgence is just so woke, baby. “I’m here to recruit you,” quips he.

According to our progressive educator, the spectacle of him parading around the classroom in clownish make-up and women’s clothes, his beard offset with stiletto heels – which he just happens to enjoy wearing – will somehow create a “safe space” for gay schoolchildren. All of whom, apparently, aspire to be narcissistic cross-dressers with terrible taste. As someone who was once a gay schoolboy, back in a darker, more primitive age, I have to say, the sight of my chunky, rather stern German teacher striding about the classroom in Joker makeup and five-inch stilettos would not have been particularly affirming, no matter how many Pride flags he waved about while doing it.

Update 3:

Noah Carl ponders wokeness and women: 

So, why would the influx of women into academia have contributed to its leftward shift, and to the rise of woke activism in particular? As the psychologist Cory Clark notes, women are consistently less supportive of free speech than men, and consistently more supportive of censorship. Compared to men, they’re more likely to say: that hate speech is violence; that it’s acceptable to shout down a speaker; that controversial scientific findings should be censored; that people need to be more careful about the language they use; and that it should be illegal to say offensive things about minorities…

Women are disproportionately represented in Grievance Studies (i.e., disciplines like Gender Studies and Critical Race Theory), which are often little more than a vehicle for left-wing activism… Almost 80% of bachelor’s degrees in “Ethnic, Gender, and Cultural Studies” are awarded to women… [Academia’s left-wing skew] appears to be greater among female academics than among male ones. In a 2016 paper, Mitchell Langbert and colleagues analysed voter registration data on approximately 4,000 US academics. As the table below indicates, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was “only” 9:1 among men, but it was almost 25:1 among women.

Thanks to Mark Horowitz and colleagues, we also have detailed surveys from two of the most left-leaning disciplines: sociology and anthropology. The table below shows the proportion of male versus female sociologists (from a sample of 479) who agreed and disagreed with various items. Compared to men, women were more likely to say that “Sociology should be both a scientific and moral enterprise,” and that “Sociology should analyse and transcend oppression.” They were less likely to say that “More political conservatives would benefit [the] discipline,” and that “Advocacy and research should be separate for objectivity.”

Needless to say, there are links and charts aplenty.

Update, via the comments, which you’re reading of course: 

Some ladies of the left aren’t happy about Mr Carl’s article. Apparently, he could only have written it because he’s “intimidated by intelligent women.” At least, according to a woman who seemingly didn’t find it necessary to read the piece that she’s dismissing, or to rebut any of its particulars, even in passing. As intelligent women do, of course. I’ve yet to see a substantive reply. So far, there’s been lots of glib, self-flattering toss about how noticing certain things can only be explained by a fear of women, or a hatred of them, some rather dishonest attempts at reputational sabotage, and rumblings about the alleged “fragility” of the “straight white male.”