Childhood and children

‘Fairfax County Paging Kimberly Reicks!’ As Schools Stealth-Install “Equity Grading”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In the previous post, Ethics Alarms extolled appropriately-involved Iowa parent Kimberly Riecks as an Ethics Hero for getting in the faces of an irresponsible school board. Let’s hope there are some Kimberly Klones in Fairfax County, Virginia, my back yard, because internal Fairfax County Public Schools communications, obtained by local parents through a Freedom of Information Act request, show that officials have secretly implemented “equitable grading” at schools across the district.

[In the “Animal House” clip above, Otter represents public school administrators and Flounder stands for Fairfax County parents.]

“Equitable grading” is exactly what it sounds like. It is a progressive, social justice, crack-brained approach to education in pursuit of “antiracism” and to battle “institutional bias” despite there being no substantive research that supports such measures as anything but destructive to learning. The district’s officials denied the initiative when a suspicious parent inquired, but it has been proceeding in the shadows.

The Fairfax County District used federal coronavirus relief funds (hmmmmm..) to purchase a book for teachers titled “Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms,” though “equitable grading” has been creeping into classrooms since 2015. It picked up speed while the schools were shuttered due to Wuhan virus panic. “Equitable grading” removes grade penalties for late assignments and in class misconduct, and also allows students to retake tests and redo assignments, often on an unlimited basis. This is all a reaction to the continuing lag of minority students (except Asian-Americans—it’s a mystery!), especially blacks, in school achievement.

Since educators can’t figure out how to bring that group’s grades into the range of white students the old fashioned way–teach good study habits, hold them to high standards, recruit parents into providing a home culture conducive to learning and the love of it—the new approach, aka woke desperation, is to stop penalizing students for the counter-productive and toxic habits and behavior that have kept them failing.

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We Have To Talk About Velma…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I wish we didn’t.

I wouldn’t raise the issue except that the conservative blogs and commentators seem to be horrified by this most minor of pop culture developments—the sexual orientation of a five-decades-old Hanna-Barbara cartoon character?–and the usual progressive suspects are awash with joy. (Well, I guess you have to take your victories where you find them, however minuscule.)

The ethics issues are encompassed in the routine question, “What’s going on here?”

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“The Ethicist” On When Revealing Someone Else’s Secret Is An Ethical Obligation

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The latest installment of the Times Magazine advice column “The Ethicist” includes Prof. Appiah’s responses to two inquiries involving people, as they used to say, “sticking their noses into other people’s business” and revealing secret that could have a devastating emotional and practical impact on the party being enlightened. This issue comes up in the column frequently, and it has been discussed in Ethics Alarms as well, often under the categories “the duty to warn,” “the duty to fix the problem,” and most of all, “The Golden Rule.” Oddly, the latter provides the easiest and clearest route to both of the answers Appiah provides in the column, and yet he doesn’t mention it or allude to it anywhere.

I find that strange.

The first inquiry involves a man who discovered that his older brother was adopted but still doesn’t know it. His elderly parents, “not long for this world,” still adamantly refuse to tell him. “Do I have any obligation to tell my brother what I have learned about his life so he can learn more?,” asks “Name Withheld.”

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Would It Be Ethical To End Public School Education? Is It Ethical To Even Consider it?

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

The second question in the headline is based on an Ethics Alarms core principle: it isn’t ethical to propose policies and social changes that are impossible. Would it be possible to eliminate public school education, after it served the nation so well for so long? Still, another Ethics Alarms core principle is “Fix the problem!” Public school education is a serious problem for the nation, the culture, democracy and the future, and it is getting worse. If the problem can be fixed without eliminating public schools entirely, then it should be, though I am dubious about the practicality of that too. If the only way to fix the problem is to come up with a new model and fight for it, ethics tells us that it would be irresponsible not to make the effort.

I am thinking about this as a result of a few things. One is my own unshakeable conclusion that public education now is in a state of irreversible rot, and does more damage than good. I see evidence of this literally every day, and, as regular readers here know, we pulled my smart, curious, knowledge-hungry and authority-resisting son out of public school and eventually out of private school as well, having witnessed just how horrible the process of education was thanks to the institutions and the people who now provide it. Another thing is the now open embrace by schools, teachers and local governments of a deliberately anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Western culture indoctrination.

A third prompt comes from the recent writings of conservative science fiction novelist Sarah Hoyt, Glenn Reynold’s usual late night blogsitter for Instapundit. Sarah is a bit extreme for me most of the time—here’s her Ethics Alarms dossier—but I always take notice when a serious thinker starts thinking the same thoughts I’ve been thinking, or the equivalents thereof.

These are some of Hoyt’s trenchant thoughts in the post (Do read it all Sarah is always fun), “Let’s Separate State and Education”…

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Ick, Unethical, Or “YUM!”?

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Oh, settle down: this is an adult blog, after all.

I’ve checked: that is not a gag. A Lithuanian potato chip company has launched a line of flavored chips aimed exclusively at 18-year-olds and older. CHAZZ potato chips come in flavors like mussels, white wine, and Bloody Mary, but it’s the flavor above that is stirring up controversy. I’m not kidding!

I see no reason why someone won’t launch these chips or the equivalent here. Would that be unethical, vulgarizing the culture? Corrupting the young? Nobody accused Bertie Botts’ Jelly Beans of such an offense, and they have just about every flavor except sex-related ones. I presume conservatives would flip out over this product; Ron DeSantis would probably try to get it banned in Florida. Good luck with that.

I must admit, I’m shocked…shocked that Lithuania beat the good ol’ entrepreneurial U.S.A. in coming up with this.

Ethics Heroes: Davisville (RI) Middle School 7th Graders

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This story is simultaneously inspiring and horrifying.

A sixth-grade class in the Davisville Middle School in the North Kingstown School District in Rhode Island was being subjected to a teacher (so far, unnamed) who was cruel to the boys and sexually harassed the girls, leering at them, giving them pet names, and asking them to dance. The teacher was also a coach, and reportedly told the class that he had received complaints from parents in the past without any consequences. The continuing flirting and sexual innuendos made the girls in the class uncomfortable, so the next year, as seventh graders, some of the boys reported the teacher’s conduct to their parents and adminsitrator at the school. All the adults shrugged the complaints off, the boys say. Continue reading →

Stop Making Me Defend Disney!

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Disney has a tough job, trying to maintain its roles as a great middle class cultural icon and celebrator of Americana in the midst of social upheaval and culture wars. It couldn’t be doing a lousier, lazier, more destructive job of it, either, but that is, as they say, neither here nor there. The issue of the day is whether Disney deserves to be pilloried for its new teaser trailer for the live-action version of its animated classic “The Little Mermaid.”

It does not.

Conservative media is now resolutely anti-House of Mouse, so it is actively gloating over the detected (but inconclusive) negative reaction to the first look at the film scheduled to hit theaters in May of 2003. Ed Driscoll at Instapundit writes, “Disney in particular absolutely loves …to both gin-up hype, and wave away large scale fan hatred of their latest reboot.” But since fans haven’t seen the film yet, since it hasn’t been finished, “large scale hatred’ is an unwarranted assumption. At The Daily Wire, it is implied that there are widespread objections to the red-headed Ariel of the 1989 animated film being played by Halle Bailey, an African-American, and that fans of the original film who don’t like the color change are being called “racists” by the Woke and wonderful.

Ugh.

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Comment Of The Day: “The Little League Cotton Fiasco: Good Job, Everybody! Now U.S. Race Relations Are In Ethics Zugzwang!”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

In the Ethics Alarms post about this horrible example of how broken our race-relations are (I believe that the death-spiral was set in motion by Barack Obama, but that’s a topic for another day, when I get to him in the “Worst Presidents’ series), I did not sufficiently focus on one of the most disgusting aspects of the story.

As is usually the case, a reader was ready to remedy the omission. Here is E2’s Comment of the Day on the post, “The Little League Cotton Fiasco: Good Job, Everybody! Now U.S. Race Relations Are In Ethics Zugzwang!”

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Did it occur to absolutely no one that these are kids and kids do silly things? Emulating a Little League star is basically an innocent thing: expecting these same kids to equate pseudo-cotton balls to slavery and racism is asking more than is fair for their age. These are kids!

So no children can no longer be children, apparently And it is clearly up to the progressives to instill — from birth, I guess — a deep sense of guilt about America’s checkered history. That there many inspiring and admirable aspects to our history  are conveniently forgotten or treated as subordinate to the moral and ethical missteps.

If a kid wore his grandad’s WWII medal would that make him a little warmonger?

Kids live in the day, not in history as adults record and interpret it. And they remain innocent for an astonishingly short period of time. Can’t the Left just allow children to enjoy being kids before they are indoctrinated, brain-washed and turned against their nation and fellow Americans?

I guess not, as long as there are nasty, ill-intentioned, ultra-negative progressive adults out there.

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Ethics Villain Dr. Anthony Fauci

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Well, I don’t think it’s forever irreparably damaged anyone.”

—Dr. Anthony Fauci, architect of the disastrous Wuhan virus response, to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto’s question, “In retrospect doctor, do you regret that it went too far? … Particularly for kids who couldn’t go to school except remotely, that it’s forever damaged them.”

How Clintonian of the good doctor, picking up on Cavuto’s awkward “forever” and adding “irreparably” to make it seem especially extreme. Maybe the lockdown forever damaged people, but it didn’t forever irreparably damage people. The lockdown caused more than 200,000 small busineses to shut down during 2020 alone. Gee, is that “forever enough”? It murdered the economy, the arts, and sports; it was significantly responsible for the George Floyd riots. The education and social development of young children were indeed retarded permanently by the isolating experience of remote schooling, as increasing numbers of assessments indicate. The corruption of US elections in 2020 arising out of the lockdown did long-term damage to the public trust in elections; whether it is “forever permanent” is yet to be seen.

It wrecked our small business, our savings, and our development permanently.

What an asshole.

The Incredible Sabrina Caldwell Ethics Train Wreck, Part 2

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Now for the rest of the story begun in Part I.

The story of the rejected and abandoned Russian orphan haunted “48 Hours” reporter Troy Roberts after he bid the girl farewell  in the Russian hospital. He wanted to know what had become of her, and tried to track her down over the years, with no success. Then, after more than two decades had passed, Caralee reached out to him and they arranged to meet once again.

That supposedly homicidal little girl who was diagnosed as incapable of love now lives in North Carolina as Sabrina Caldwell. She is 33, happily married and has four young children. Roberts met with her near Sabrina’s home, and he spoke with her husband as well. Sabrina explained that she was depressed and even suicidal when she was with Crystal and Jesse, who she felt were more interested in her younger brother than her. When she was falsely accused of trying to kill Joshua, whom she says she loved, she told Roberts she “wanted out.” She agreed that she tried to kill him. She made up the claims that she was hallucinating. When she was abandoned by her adoptive parents in Moscow, she said she  felt like she was in jail, but now believes she was partially responsible, since she had agreed to her parents’ version of events and lied about hallucinating.

Then again, she was just a child at the time.

After two months in the mental hospital, Nina Kostina, who had helped arrange her adoption, rescued Sabrina and brought her back to the United States. Three years later she adopted by another family in North Carolina.  n 2008, Sabrina volunteered for the non profit Mercy Ships, spending two years providing medical care to the poor in Africa. That led to a job at a hospital when she returned to North Carolina. Two years later, she fell in love with  fifth grade teacher Phil Caldwell, whom she met through her church. Before she would agree to marry him, she made him watch the “48 Hours” episode about her first adoptive parents. He told Roberts that he was stunned at what she had gone through. They were married in 2014, and now have three daughters and an infant son.  Sabrina Caldwell has never been diagnosed with any mental or emotional illness, and takes no medication for such disorders. Continue reading →