More “equity” news from the world of Canadian high-school teachers, where pretending is everything, and acknowledging reality will result in agitation and possibly punishment:

On Monday, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation announced that their rules would be changed so that each non-white union member would have his/her vote weighted more than white members.

There are instructional slides and everything. It’s all very jolly.

Attendees were assured that they were “eliminating racism” by endorsing a policy that is itself unambiguously racist and in which one’s leverage very much depends on the colour of one’s skin. You see, building woke utopia requires a little contortion.

Note that objections to the policy were denounced by scrupulously progressive educators, including local union president Cindy Gage, as “harassment” and “harmful language,” and thereby a basis for disciplinary action. To point out that the policy in question is explicitly racist against people with pale skin is, we’re told, “offensive” and “not acceptable.” Those who objected, on grounds of disliking racism, were subsequently accused of “privilege,” which in this case seems to mean an ability to recognise the glaringly obvious.

Please adjust your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Update, via the comments, where [+] quips,

Today’s word is madhouse.

Well, indeed. Readers are invited to imagine working in a supposedly highbrow environment, among supposedly clever people, in which politely pointing out a basic logical and moral error – one resulting in actual institutional racism, as opposed to the imaginary kind – results in gasps of indignation, accusations of “harassment,” and many of your peers reporting you for “privilege” and “harmful language,” with a view to getting you punished in some way. And then being told that your intent, however clear and carefully articulated, has absolutely no bearing on whether you’ll be found guilty. It’s positively surreal.

But it does, I think, offer a glimpse into the strange, unhappy world of woke psychology.

Via the comments:

I just want to let glit know that thon is valid, that vir pronouns are valid, and that seir identity is valid.

Cody wishes to educate you about what is valid.

And must therefore be respected. Indiscriminately, it seems. When not talking about her mental health issues and visits to psychiatrists – and, of course, talking about herself, or themself, repeatedly and at length – our non-binary being tells us that,

The times I feel most masculine are, like, when I’m wearing heels and in full make-up.

Not entirely unrelated: You will include your pronouns, or your grades will suffer. 

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

He’s 30, by the way. And a teacher, obviously.

When not telling the world that “professional dress codes are inherently racist, sexist, and rooted in white supremacy,” and failing to grade papers on time, a shortcoming that crops up repeatedly, Mr Segal likes to paint his nails, play dress-up in class, and talk about the state of his mental health. A topic also revisited more than once. 

Update, via the comments, where Alice asks,

Are there any actual grown-ups left in the teaching profession?

I’d imagined that one of the functions of dress codes and broader expectations of workplace professionalism is that they help to filter out the delinquent narcissists. People who just can’t get over themselves. Say, 30-year-old men who like to bemuse 12-year-olds by playing dress-up in class, announcing how “non-binary” they are, and painting their nails.

And not, in fact, to bolster some phantom “white supremacy.”

And again, as so often, the above does make one wonder about Mr Segal’s focus on the task at hand and his priorities, which seem to extend no further than himself. Or themself, I suppose. It doesn’t seem unfair to wonder if the children – the children he’s employed to educate – exist primarily as a captive and uncritical audience, there to applaud his self-preoccupation. The hashtags #tiktokteacher and #teachersoftiktok feature prominently, however, the only video I could find in which Mr Segal speaks of what the children in his care have learned in class – a topic you’d think might be mentioned occasionally – involved the children feeling obliged to regurgitate his contrived pronouns.

Readers may wish to reflect on what it must be like to be a man in his thirties whose regular purchases still include blue and green hair dye. Or a man in his thirties who regularly films himself miming to pop records and who uploads the results to TikTok in search of approval. As not-at-all-arrested educators do.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

I want to share with people why I didn’t know I was white. Because I think a lot of people don’t know they are white.

I bring thrilling news from academia:

Professor of education and human development at George Washington University, explains how she needed “somatic embodied training” to “learn that she was white”.

These people are responsible for training new teachers. pic.twitter.com/yXBv2KV7VW

— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) October 18, 2021

The speaker quoted above is Dr Julia Storberg-Walker, an associate professor of education at George Washington University. A teacher of teachers, of those who will in turn shape young minds, or try to, anyway. Our educator’s realisation of her own “whiteness” – and thus innate wrongness – was, we’re told, a result of “somatic, embodied training,” which is essential, apparently. In order to struggle with one’s “positionality” as a White Devil, a doer of “harm,” a devourer of souls.

Dr Storberg-Walker’s academic biography tells us,

Her activist/scholar work…

Because one can’t not be an activist, obviously.

is generative and aims to develop equitable and compassionate frameworks, models, and processes for the purpose of catalysing whole planet interdependence and flourishing.

Whole planet flourishing. Goodness. This feat is to be achieved by drawing on,

quantum field theory, and wisdom traditions spanning diverse cultures and historical moments.

Readers are invited to speculate as to exactly how quantum field theory might bear upon such topics as “critical race activism,” or “colonised words,” and how it might inform “deep learning” about the seemingly endless pathologies of being pale. Alas, Dr Storberg-Walker remains coy on the subject, merely teasing us, and instead offers the following:

The new student counselling director at Middlebury College has vowed to use “more inclusive” methods to treat student mental health, including a focus on white supremacy and social justice.

Ah. I think I see the problem.

Alberto Soto, who received his PhD. in counselling psychology from Brigham Young University, told the Middlebury Campus newspaper that… “The body and mind cannot be healed solely by self-care and focusing on surviving… At some point we must address and identify the source of all our psychic suffering, which is whiteness, heteronormativity, patriarchal systems, etc.”

When not using the word “whiteness” as a modish pejorative and “questioning Eurocentric ideas surrounding mental health,” Mr Soto plans to “challenge the historically-dominant whiteness” of the campus and thereby “create a more open environment for students.” This heavenly state of openness and resurgent mental wellbeing will be rendered upon the Earth by telling students at an upscale and statusful liberal arts college how oppressed they are and by invoking racial conspiracy theories, the aforementioned “whiteness” and “white supremacy,” as the root of all distress.

Readers will recall that Middlebury College is where students suitably gorged on “inclusivity” and “social justice” display their righteousness and mental stability by physically menacing elderly scholars, trying to trample them underfoot, and assaulting female staff, such that they require a hospital visit and, subsequently, a neck brace.

The Middlebury campus has spent the past few years cultivating its persona as one of the most active antiracist campuses in America… Yet at the same time schools have ramped up their antiracist efforts, mental health among students has only gotten worse.

Readers may wish to speculate as to why that might be, and why the phenomenon – a surge in students reporting “anxiety and depression” – predates the pandemic.

Annual tuition at Middlebury is a mere $56,000, excluding books and housing.