Education

Ethics Quiz: “Oh No! It’s HITLER!!!”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

My ethics alarms just don’t ring very loudly on this incident. Maybe yours do.

A pregame trivia video before a Michigan State football game included a photo of Adolf Hitler on the Spartan Stadium scoreboard. (The question asked where Der Fuhrer was born.)

Though I have seen no record of whether there were complaints, the school felt it necessary to issue a profuse apology:

Really? Displaying a photograph of a historical figure who appears in hundreds of movies, is spoofed in multiple comedies and film classics, as part of a bland trivia question (It’s not like the question was about the Final Solution) requires an apology and results in a contract cancellation?

Your Ethics Alarms “Please explain this to the ethicist” Ethics Question of the Day is…

Is this a fair, competent and responsible reaction by Michigan State?

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Oregon Again Proves You Always Hurt The One You Love…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

…at least you do if wokeness has eaten your brains and you have the common sense of a shallot. This is just tragic, nauseating news. (Spike Jone’s rendition of the 40’s hit, in contrast still makes me laugh, and that’s why I need to hear it right now…)

The Oregon Board of Education decided unanimously—unanimously!—that high school students won’t need to demonstrate basic skills in reading, writing or math to graduate from high school until at least 2029. The state instituted the elimination of the basic graduation requirements in 2020. The pandemic, you know. It justified wrecking everything, and the more infected with the Great Stupid a state is, the worse its carnage.

Many Oregonians submitted public comments insisting the standards should be reinstated, arguing that pausing the requirement devalues an Oregon diploma. 1) Gee, ya think??? 2) NONONONONO. The reason for an education is not “the value of a diploma,” but the value of being educated.

ARRGGH. The delusion that the credential is what matters and not what the credential should signify is how we end up with policies like this.

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When Is The Best Apology The Worst Apology?

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

One of the few benefits of the Hamas premeditated murder strike on Israeli civilians and Israel’s perfect response to it (‘OK, enough. You’re toast.’) is that it simultaneously ripped the masks off the corruption and the ethical vacuums in our two most ideologically compromised professions, journalism and education. Of course, the former will do its utmost to avoid reporting on the latter, but who knows? Maybe the truth will finally permeate the walnut shell-sheathed brains of the gullible and apathetic public.

Nah. What am I thinking?

Several professors have announced, often in truly disgusting terms, their belief that the Hamas terrorist attack was justified, and that it is “murder” for Israel to respond with deadly force. One poisoned school, CUNY, apparently has a faculty stuffed with such anti-Semitic fools: here’s a letter signed by over 80 professors and lecturers, including the celebrity ethics dunce Marc Lamont Hill, asserting the whole panoply of anti-Israel talking points. Any parent who allows their children to be indoctrinated at a college that would employ such intellectually dishonest activists as these as teachers is incompetent and irresponsible.

But I digress. Mika Tosca, an associate professor with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, went way, way beyond CUNY’s credentialed leftists in a rant on Instagram:

Yikes. Israelis are pigs, savages, and shit, disgusting and grotesque, and should rot in hell. How do you really feel, professor? Apparently, based on her subsequent post on the matter, she really feels completely differently:

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I’m Shocked…SHOCKED!… To Learn That DEI Policies Harm Black And Hispanic Students!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Back when the Great Stupid was really picking up steam in 2020, the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD), the second largest school district in California with over 106,000 students, announced that it would be overhauling how students will be evaluated as part of a larger “a larger effort to combat racism.” The school board voted unanimously to eliminate yearly grade averages. Meeting deadlines for assignments and classroom behavior would not affect academic grades. The district decided to de-emphasize discipline and penalties for cheating.

This crack-brain approach to education, essentially rejecting everything that had been learned over centuries about how students learn, was justified as way to eliminate the accumulated deficits of “systemic racism.” Soon “Diversity Equity Inclusion” budgets exploded and almost every school system jumped on board the latest fad. This was reparations, not education; no respectable research supported the theory that holding minority kids to lesser standards would help them succeed, but never mind: Fact Don’t Matter to ideologues and race-hustlers.

Now come Jay P. Greene and Madison Marino of the Heritage Foundation’s Center on Education Policy with a study suggesting that black and Hispanic students had “significantly greater learning loss during the pandemic in the school guided by diversity officers than those schooled in districts without one.” Minority students lost more ground than their white classmates, especially in math, the researchers found. “Racial achievement gaps went from bad to worse in these districts.” Of course they did: having an official directing policy who insists that black and Hispanic students not be held to the same standards of behavior or academic achievement as other students—must combat that structural racism!—was guaranteed to undermine minority student success.

The news gets worse: nearly half of the school districts with at least 15,000 students employ a chief diversity or equity officer, and the number is 89% for districts with more than 100,000 students, the study found.

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Comment Of The Day (1): “Perplexed Ethics Thoughts On This Video…”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Michael R authored the first of three Comments of the Day on this disturbing video, and I could easily add a few more: it was a terrific thread, and one that few other sites around the web could produce (if I do say so myself).

I must admit, as I have been featuring posts about my biases of late, that I have a massive bias against anyone who behaves like the woman above no matter what the provocation. It was suggested in the comments to the original post that this was staged. I considered that, and maybe it was, but in the end the ethics issues remain the same. Her conduct is still an accurate presentation of the reaction of the entire Woke World mob to one imagined offense after another, from Donald Trump’s election and Hillary’s defeat, to the replacement of swing vote Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court with Bret Kavanaugh, to the long-deserved reversal of Roe v. Wade and the rejection of affirmative action as the unconstitutional discrimination it always was. It is all hate, intolerance and emotional fury now, even from the office that is supposed to represent and serve us all….

That was as close to a Presidential primal scream as we are ever likely to hear. (Nope, I’m not letting that go. I will never let that go, and I will never forgive it.)

Here is Michael R’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Perplexed Ethics Thoughts On This Video…”

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This seems like the perfectly reasonable result of college campus culture from the last 30 years now demanding that society become a college campus. How many videos can you find of conservative speakers being shouted down by the dominant culture (the ‘tolerant people’) on college campuses? In how many cases was this tolerated by the administration, the police, the government?

After being trained by ‘higher education’ for decades that the way to deal with opinions that differ from the official orthodoxy is to shout them down, use bullhorns, and scream at them, why would you expect this not to happen?

This isn’t the only video of a woman doing this; it seems fairly common.

Here is how I see liberals dealing with heretical ideas in today’s society:

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Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Consequences For Endorsing Terrorism”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I am way, WAY behind in posting deserving Comments of the Day, and I apologize to all, both the authors of these excellent posts and EA readers who have not had the opportunity to read them. I’m going to try to post them in chronological order, oldest first, but don’t hold me to that: I have a sinking feeling that this COTD by Sarah B. came after one or more that I intended to post last week. Her comment (I hope I’m not misgendering her!) is actually one of many superb ones on this Ethics Quiz, including those by Michael R, Curmie, and Chris Marschner, among others. I highly recommend reading the entire exchange.

Now here is Sarah B.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quiz: The Consequences For Endorsing Terrorism”:

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Actions have consequences. Speech has consequences. We can talk all we like about the Freedom of Speech (or Religion or Right to Assemble, etc), but while the government cannot punish us for our speech, our fellow citizens can and will make judgements about us despite that.

There needs to be some determination of how to decide what to do with adults who proclaim stupid things in an institute of learning while respecting the value of free speech. I propose that for professors, lecturers, administrators, and those in positions of power,they required to give a two hour session on their position, open to all. The first 45 or so minutes would be reserved for what they have to say, with the remaining time being devoted to questions A moderator (or perhaps two of opposing positions) should be present to step in when the speaker does not answer a question. Ex. “Why do you believe that is is fair to intentionally target and behead young children and the elderly non-combatants?” “Well, Israel doesn’t belong there so it doesn’t matter.” Moderators can point out that this is not an answer and require a real answer to the tough questions before continuing. On the other hand, “Does this mean you deny the Moon Landing?” would be thrown out by the moderator as completely stupid. Of course, anyone, teacher or student, who tries the heckler’s veto or shouts down another person should be immediately escorted out. Professors who support the heckler’s veto should be immediately terminated.

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Harvard Just Sent Me This Video. What Do You Think? Here’s What I Think…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

1. Words are cheap. Harvard, as I noted last month, has been singled out by The Fire as the worst university in the nation regarding free expression and free speech. Is Gay, as a newly installed president, just mouthing convenient platitudes, or will she make a genuine effort to reverse the culture at her institution? We shall see.

2. This episode exemplifies what Harvard’s version of open discourse is, or at least was just 8 months ago.

3. Gay’s lament for people trying to protect their families and just trying to survive is code for “those cruel Israelis will be injuring and killing civilians and children as they set out to wipe out Hamas.” The citizens of Gaza elected a terrorist organization to run their territory. They are not innocent in what has transpired. They are fully complicit. If they were so dedicated to their children, they would not have intentionally placed their fates in the hands of violent anti-Semitic extremists.

4. Now Harvard is opposing hate and division, perhaps because, finally, a lot of that hate is being focused on Harvard. As recently as its position in the affirmative action case before the Supreme Court, Harvard has been an enthusiastic force for division—racial, political, and more.

Ethics Quiz: The Consequences For Endorsing Terrorism

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

The revolting response of students and other members of campus communities to the Hamas attack and subsequent barbarism inflicted on Israeli citizens has launched a full-fledged ethics train wreck:

  • Zareena Grewal, a professor of American Studies at Yale, tweeted out “There is no question who the oppressors are who the oppressed are. And somehow people are confused about this. White supremacy never stops being shocking to me.” Then she wrote,  “Israel is a murderous, genocidal settler state and Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle, solidarity.”

  • Derron Borders, a diversity administrator at the Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management, wrote on Instagram in support of the Hamas terrorists who killed more than 900 people, “When you hear about Israel this morning and the resistance being launched by Palestinians, remember against all odds Palestinians are fighting for life, dignity, and freedom — alongside others doing the same — against settle colonization, imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, which the United States is the model.”

Meanwhile, the students in the 31 Harvard campus organizations that famously announced that Israel was fully responsible for all the violence erupting in and out of Gaza, are facing organized efforts to ensure they are punished:

  • Bill Ackman, the billionaire founder of hedge fund giant Pershing Square Capital Management, has demanded that Harvard release the names of the students who belong to the 31 organizations, so that corporations know not to hire them. “I have been asked by a number of CEOs if Harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel, so as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members,” Ackman, a Harvard alum, wrote on “X.” “If, in fact, their members support the letter they have released, the names of the signatories should be made public so their views are publicly known. One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists, who, we now learn, have beheaded babies, among other inconceivably despicable acts.”  So far, at least a dozen company heads  have endorsed his campaign.
  • Two trucks circled Harvard Square yesterday with LED screens that flashed the names and photos of about a half dozen students known to be involved with the pro-Hamas groups.  The billboard trucks were funded by the conservative news group Accuracy in Media, showed the Harvard students under the words, “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites” and linked to a website, HarvardHatesJews.com, which directed users to send messages to Harvard’s board of trustees. “Tell them to take action against these despicable, hateful students,” the website states. “Each and every one of these students should be expelled and their student organizations should be kicked off campus.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

What constitutes a fair and responsible response to the campus supporters of the Hamas terror attacks?

Two thoughts: 1) The consequences facing professors, administrators and students should be different, 2) College is a time to make mistakes.

The First Amendment’s principles and academic freedom must apply. I believe the primary negative consequences should fall on the institutions who hire fools like Borders, allow political ideologues like Grewal to indoctrinate students, and who are negligent in teaching their charges in history, ethics, and critical thinking.

How Can Parents Be Expected To Trust Schools And Teachers When This Could Happen?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I’m not referring to the sexual predator teachers who deflower boys, or the LGBTQ indoctrinaters who see it as their mission to initiate kids into the joys of alternate sexuality, or the social justice warriors who teach kids to hate whites, the Founders, and the United States of America, or even the teachers whose intellectual skills, judgment and knowledge base better qualify them for work at a bait shop than in a Kindergarten-12 school.

No, the topic today is the Miami Springs math teacher employed by The Academy of Innovative Education, a charter school, who showed his fourth grade class of 9-year olds “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey,” the trailer for which you can see above, if you dare.

You know. Math.

The so far unnamed teacher showed the class about 30 minutes of the horror movie. His defense was that the class chose it, probably misled by its title. I suppose he also would have shown the kids “Piranha 3DD” or “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” if they asked for those films.

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Confronting My Biases, Episode 3: Illiterate People

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

An infuriating story yesterday reminded me of a long standing bias, which is in truth not my greatest problem with the tragedy that occurred in Oregon, Ohio.

Police responded to a call about a 4-year-old boy outside, apparently alone except for a dog. When they they found the child and returned him and the dog back to their home, the police learned that the mother had been asleep. They reminded her of “safety measures that need to be taken to ensure the well-being of her children,” the news accounts say.

Somehow, I don’t think this is sufficient when a mother allows a toddler to wander out of the house unmonitored. Good dog, though…

For some reason, the mother never mentioned to the officers that her younger son, 2-year-old Marcus Hall, had also apparently wandered off. Why wouldn’t she do that? Was she afraid of getting in trouble, as she should have? Did she forget she had two boys? Was she stoned?

About 45 minutes later, sleepy mom called 911 to report that Marcus was missing. Again officers arrived, began a search, and found the little boy dead—drowned— in a neighbor’s above-ground pool directly behind the Hall family’s property. The pool was not fully enclosed. “Police noted that Marcus’ unidentified 4-year-old brother was unharmed in the incident,” the news story says.

That’s nice. I wonder for how long he’ll remain unharmed.

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