New Year’s Jeers

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Now that the holiday season hoopla is behind us, a look at the latest doings in education is in order. To begin with, the sex cultists are still alive and well. In fact, according to The Heritage Foundation, there are 16 states that force transgender lessons on children.

Heritage’s “Gender Ideology as State Education Policy” report highlights the education standards and frameworks of states that encourage gender ideology, which is defined as “the subordination or displacement of factual, ideologically neutral lessons about biological sex with tell-tale notions such as ‘gender identity,’ ‘sex assigned at birth,’ and ‘cisgender.’”

Not surprisingly, only one of the states—Wyoming—is of the red persuasion. In deep blue Oregon, the state’s health standards include “heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer, asexual, two-spirit, and pansexual.” in their definitions of sexual and romantic orientations.

In a similar vein, New Jersey’s learning standards state, “Gender assigned at birth means the gender that someone was thought to be at birth, typically recorded on their (sic) original birth certificate. The gender someone was assigned at birth may or may not match their (sic) gender identity.”

Hence, with the onslaught of misinformation and proselytizing, it becomes understandable that 5.1% of adults younger than 30 claim to be transgender or nonbinary, per a Pew Research poll, and this social contagion is being used as a political cudgel by many with a perverse agenda.

In reality, according to UCLA’s Williams Institute, an LGBTQ advocacy group, a staggering 99.4% of the population does not have the physical traits that cause someone to become transgender.

Also, Brown University physician and researcher Lisa Littman released a study in 2018 that showed “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” in young people may be driven by “social and peer contagion.” She stresses that nearly 70% of the teenagers were involved with a peer group in which at least one friend had identified as transgender.

When it comes to being sex-crazed, California, which maintains that “some children in kindergarten and even younger have identified as transgender,” is in a leadership role. One of the myriad laws that took hold in the state on January 1 is AB 1955,the so-called “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth (SAFETY) Act.” This haughtily titled law specifically forbids schools from adopting any policies that force them to disclose “any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person—including parents—without the pupil’s consent.California also now mandates public schools with classrooms for grades 3 to 12 must make free menstrual products in “all women’s restrooms and all-gender restrooms, and in at least one men’s restroom.”

The Golden State is also ground zero in the ethnic studies wars.While each school district has the right to decide on content,many are going with the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. The LESMC is infused with Critical Race Theoryand employs every CRT buzz term imaginable to get its indoctrination across. For example, it asks students to “critique imperialist/colonial hegemonic beliefs and to critique empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.”

Jews, especially, don’t do well in the LESMC. The curriculum claims that Israel is a colonialist and settler state created through “genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.”

While many government-run schools nationwide are mired in the promotion of sex and politics, traditional standards have taken a backseat. As a way to divert attention from its miseducation, Massachusetts has become the latest state to ditchstandardized tests.

For over 20 years, Massachusetts high school students have had to pass a standardized test to graduate—a requirement that is at least partially responsible for the state’s reputation for excellence in education. Passing Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) in 10th grade became a graduation requirement starting with the high school class of 2003. In November, however, a teacher union-backed ballot initiative to end the graduation requirement was voted in.

At the same time, yet another state has scrapped basic educational skills tests for teachers. Effective January 1, public school teachers in New Jersey no longer must pass even the most basic educational skills test. The exam did not include weighty areas like calculus but rather very basic subjects:reading, writing, and calculating simple math problems.

Similarly, California has abandoned its California Basic Education Skills Test (CBEST) for K-12 teachers. The CBEST website asserts that it is “no longer required for most teaching credentials if one has a bachelor’s degree.” It is worth notingthat it is an 8th-grade level exam. But considering what our colleges are stressing these days, passing it could indeed be a problem for prospective teachers.

In other ugly news, the Modern Language Association is having its yearly gathering from Jan. 9-12. The MLA bills itself as “a leading advocate for the study and teaching of languages and literatures and serves as a clearinghouse for professional resources for teachers and scholars.”

Just a few of the subjects at this year’s meeting are indicative ofMLA’s real agenda:

I can’t help but wonder how many schools will adopt this loopy drivel and force it on students.

Also, as reported by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, while one session and one presentation are dedicated to Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway, three sessions and four presentations are concerned with “whiteness.” Of the nine sessions or presentations that take Shakespeare as their topic, “at least five pair the Bard with an obnoxious progressive preoccupation (e.g., ‘Disability and Homonationalism in Shakespeare’s Pericles’).”

After Luigi Mangione’s cold-blooded murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, it was revealed that the Ivy League-educated killer had felt “ill will” towards corporate America and that Thompson “had it coming.”

Emerson College conducted a poll right after the horrific incident and found that young people broadly supported Mangione’s act. A startling 24% of those aged 18-29 found it“somewhat acceptable,” and 17% of that group found it completely acceptable.

Given the radical ideology rampant in our schools these days, the results are hardly surprising.

The above is just a small sampling of the current issues pervasive in our wayward schools. However, not all the news is bad, and I will soon report on some positive turns.

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Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.