I as a student did NOT want to know about my teachers’ personal lives.

From the comments following this, in which Mr Jo Brassington, a teacher of small children, considers it “so important” to parade around the classroom, looking “cute,” in painted nails and make-up: 

Update, via the comments:

Mr Brassington is, he says – or they says, because pronouns, obviously – that he’s “working to make educational spaces more emotionally honest.” And so, we’re expected to believe that “queer” teachers everywhere are somehow being suppressed and robbed of their energy unless they can start cross-dressing at work and telling small children about how screamingly fabulous they are. Such are the struggles of the modern primary-school educator.

Readers will note that the exhibitionist tendency and self-preoccupation are presented as an identity, something to be affirmed and applauded. But it’s not clear to me how one might differentiate an identity of this kind from a kink, or a mental health issue. And when you’re talking about adults having influence and authority over small children, it’s not an entirely trivial matter.

I have questions, dear reader. Important, probing questions. Are you unenthused by hip-hop tracks about “police brutality and racialised oppression”? Does rapping about poverty and “the woes of Black Americans as artists” not render you giddy and enthralled? Do you not delight in endless repetition of the word nigga?

I ask because we’re told, by Dr Jeremy McCool and Dr Tyrone Smith, two devotees of “critical race theory,” that a failure to gush with enthusiasm is a result of “systemic bias and inherent prejudice,” and is suppressing such innovation. It is, they say,

The silencing of intellectuals in music.

This profound and damning revelation was uncovered by means of a “notional study” in which 310 participants, young adults, half of whom “self-identified” as black and the other half as white, were invited to listen to various tracks and read selected lyrics, before being asked whether they would be likely to skip said track if heard in the car, or would instead continue listening, mesmerised and ready to be educated.

In each instance, the white participants in the experiment rejected the messaging at a higher frequency than the Black participants.

Extrapolating with gusto – one might say wildly – our scholars promptly invoke “the silencing of Black narratives and perspectives.” It turns out that if a hundred or so white people are slightly less interested in rote racial narcissism expressed via the medium of rap, this could result in “artists who typically make thought-provoking music being shunned by the industry.” It’s all terribly unfair, you see. If true.

It remains unclear whether our mighty scholars considered the quality of the music as music, i.e., beyond any supposedly radical and “thought-provoking” content, those “deeper political implications.” Nor is it clear whether lyrical monotony, generic braggadocio and crass sexual references may have played a part in boring some more than others. To say nothing of many rappers’ own reliance on cartoonish racial stereotypes. Readers are, however, invited to ponder the intellectual heft of the following extract from one of the selected tracks, Da Baby’s Rockstar:

Currently doing the rounds and worth saving for posterity: 

Continue to practice social distancing by wearing a mask and by keeping a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household.

What to do when a thermonuclear device has been detonated nearby.

And because a cake needs icing:

Many people may already feel fear and anxiety about the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). The threat of a nuclear explosion can add additional stress. 

Consider this an open thread.

Be the ‘quit’ in equity.

Noah Carl has a proposal:

What we need is a “Resign for Diversity” campaign…

Any academic from an overrepresented group who advocates more “diversity” is directly contributing to the lack of “diversity” by remaining in his position. Assuming the number of jobs is relatively fixed, such an individual is effectively saying, “I want the percentage of academics who have the same demographic characteristics as me to go down, but I am not willing to give up my job in order to achieve that goal. Rather, I want other academics with those demographic characteristics to give up their jobs, or to lose job opportunities.” Needless to say, this is not a principled stance…

If you can’t explain why you haven’t resigned, then don’t expect others to partake in this foolish “diversity” charade.

The goal wouldn’t be to encourage mass resignations; since most people look out for themselves, we shouldn’t expect many to actually resign. Rather, it would be to “get the incentives right” – to internalise the externality of advocating “diversity.” At the moment, white academics who have jobs can go along happily, waxing lyrical about “diversity,” while white academics who don’t have jobs bear the consequences. If those incumbents were pressured to resign, they might start to rethink their ideology.

A longer, more detailed airing of the idea, with much to chew on, can be read here. 

Also, open thread.

The progressive San Francisco school-board president recalled by voters earlier this week claimed her ousting was a “consequence” of fighting for racial justice, and represents a victory for “white supremacists.”

Yes, those “white supremacists” for which San Francisco is famed – i.e., local parents, including hundreds of “non-citizen immigrants,” who happen to have skin of many different colours.

More than 70 percent of voters elected to recall [board president, Gabriela] López and two other progressive board members, Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga.

The trio’s history of mismanagement and self-indulgence is pretty much what you’d expect of leftist monomaniacs given power and a seemingly endless supply of other people’s money, with a budget deficit of $125 million, and two hours spent debating whether a gay white dad was sufficiently “diverse” to join a volunteer parent committee.

One of the ousted ladies, Ms Alison Collins, has of course been mentioned here before, when disdaining pupils of Chinese or Korean ancestry as “white” or white-adjacent, and therefore suspect, and when insisting that a parental preference for academic rigour is “racist,” and that the way to fight for “high-quality schools” is to abandon expectations of competence.

An educator, you see.

Andrew Gutmann and Paul Rossi on the woke indoctrination that parents aren’t supposed to see:  

In workshops such as “Integrating Healing-Centered Engagements Into a DEIA School Program” and “Racial Trauma and the Path Toward Healing,” we learned how DEI practitioners use segregated affinity groups and practices such as healing circles to inculcate feelings of trauma. Even students without grievances are trained to see themselves as victims of their ancestors’ suffering through “intergenerational violence.”

The next step in a school’s transformation is “inclusion.” Schools must integrate DEI work into every aspect of the school and every facet of the curriculum must be evaluated through an antibias, antiracist, or anti-oppressive lens. In “Let’s Talk About It! Anti-Oppressive Unit and Lesson Plan Design,” we learned that the omission of this lens—“failing to explore the intersection of STEM and social justice,” for instance—constitutes an act of “curriculum violence.”

Children of kindergarten age are defined, enthusiastically, as “natural social-justice warriors” and “small activists.”

Regarding the above, a professor of political science doesn’t want you to notice: 

Dr Tabachnick, above, also thinks that “critical race theory,” of which we’ve spoken many times, is being targeted with a “smear campaign.” As opposed to, say, being revealed as stupefying and pernicious, and its boosters and practitioners quoted verbatim.

Attention, lowly workers. I bring you cultural sustenance, courtesy of Finland’s creative powerhouse Iiu Susiraja.

Also, some chafing may have occurred. Previously, another double helping.

I’ve locked the doors, so don’t even try. And yes, open thread.

“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,

Further to recent rumblings in the comments, a tale about the perils of noticing things:

She describes the emails as “rather polite” and “relatively kind.” Her daughter had been a Girl Guide, and she herself had done some volunteering with the organisation. “I thought it was a really uncontroversial, uncontentious email,” she says. It expressed her view that “this person should not be in charge of young people.” (The Critic has seen the email and can confirm her description of it. It does, however, refer to Sulley as a “male”…)  

And that’s when a police officer appeared on her doorstep.

Also, open thread. 

In the comments, Mr Muldoon steers us to the latest mental rumblings of Ms Laurie Penny:

Ms Penny is, I think, referring to fellow feminist Julie Bindel, whose review of Laurie’s latest book is not entirely positive, and who chose not to refer to its author as a suddenly ungendered being. But the broader claim is perhaps worth exploring.

I can’t say that my own views on modish pronoun stipulation make me feel “cool and edgy.” If anything, they seem fairly self-evident and unremarkable, not the stuff of obvious scandal or sudden intakes of breath. And I doubt that anyone here is likely to feel “threatened… by the ideas of a more progressive generation.” Though Ms Penny’s tendency to self-flatter – her inevitable trajectory – does catch the eye.

Regarding rudeness, I’m generally polite by default, at least in person, and don’t go out of my way to needlessly put a kink in someone else’s day. I’ve had perfectly civil chats with people who regard themselves as transgender or gender-non-conforming or whatever. Nobody got upset. But what is often being asked – or demanded – is not a small thing, not in its implications.

Taken broadly, we are being asked to affirm, wholesale, a bundle of phenomena that includes not only actual gender dysphoria, whether the result of developmental anomalies or childhood molestation, but also autogynephilia, serious personality disorders, adolescent pretension, and assorted exhibitionist and unsavoury compulsions. The expectation seems to be that we should take these different phenomena, with very different moral connotations, as being one and the same thing, and then defer to them, habitually and uncritically. Which is asking rather more than can readily be agreed to.