But I bet they know all about systemic racism and the impending climate change apocalypse….
Education
Comment Of The Day: “That Bomb ‘Finger Gun’ Should Have Never Been Made At All: How Did We End Up With ‘Finger Gun 4’??”
I’m pretty sure EA has touched on the topic of anti-male student discrimination by teachers in grade school, but not recently and not often enough, because it is a serious cultural and societal problem. The Atlantic wrote about “The War Against Boys” in 2000 before it became a complete propaganda vehicle for radical wokism—I wonder if such an essay would get published today?
2000—let’s see, that was right around the time my wife and I started becoming aware of how normal little boys were being expected to act like good little girls in school, as our authority-resisting, intrepid and energetic son was being routinely abused by boy-hating teachers to such an extent that he was permanently alienated from formal education. The finger gun nonsense is symptomatic of the trend, and crella makes the connection in this, the Comment of the Day on the post, “That Bomb ‘Finger Gun’ Should Have Never Been Made At All: How Did We End Up With ‘Finger Gun 4’??”
Here it is….
The New York Times Mourns The Likely Loss Of Kangaroo Courts For Male Students Accused Of Rape
Back in June, I wrote about the Connecticut Supreme Court deciding that a student accused of rape and expelled by Yale University could sue the female student who accused him for defamation because the hearing that resulted in his expulsion lacked due process, including the ability to cross-examine witnesses. Today the New York Times bemoans the development as the lawsuits by Saifullah Khan against his accuser and Tale can proceed. Khan was found guilty by Yale in a process that did not permit him to face his accuser, a female student who had graduated, as she gave a statement by teleconference to a university panel. Nor could his lawyer, under the rules of the hearing, cross-examine her. Yet before the hearing, Khan had been found not guilty of the crime in a criminal proceeding where his accuser was cross-examined sharply.
In June, I wrote in part, “The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled 7-0 that a former Yale student is not immune from being sued for defamation by the male student she accused of raping her. Saifullah Khan was found not guilty in a criminal trial of raping “Jane Doe” in her dorm room in October 2015 in what Khan insisted, and a jury agreed, was an incident of consensual sex. Yale had expelled Khan using the “preponderance of the evidence” standard forced on educational institutions by the Obama Department of Education. The court determined that because Khan had fewer rights to defend himself in university proceedings, which, again prompted by the Obama administration, provided limited due process protections, his accuser should not benefit from the civil immunity granted to witnesses in criminal proceedings. “Statements made in sexual misconduct disciplinary proceedings that are offered and accepted without adequate procedural safeguards carry too great a risk of unfair or unreliable outcomes,” the unanimous opinion held….
“The Connecticut ruling is likely to be an influential one, cited in future cases. Nonetheless, it comes too late for many students caught in the trap Obama’s DOE “Dear Colleague” letter set. The elimination of fairness and due process protections from college and university disciplinary proceedings after sexual assault accusations led to hundreds of lawsuits and egregious injustices. If the result of this decision is that female students take special care that their claims are legitimate and provable, it will restore much needed balance and fairness to process that was warped by the destructive “Believe all women” fixation.” Continue reading
The Chicago Teachers Union President Scores A Jumbo, Among Other Accomplishments….
…like Unethical Quote of the Month, Ethics Dunce, “It Isn’t What It Is” Master, “Biggest Hypocrite of 2023” frontrunner…oh, lots of Ethics Alarms awards. Plus, she outed herself as a rhetoric-challenged idiot who has no business teaching children, much less presuming to lead those who do. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Stacy Davis Gates has been an vociferous opponents of parents who advocate for the ability to eschew public schools (which, as we know, are terrible educationally and politically) for other options via school vouchers. Here are some of her publicized comments:
- “School choice was actually the choice of racists. It was created to avoid integrating schools with Black children. Now it’s the civil rights struggle of our generation?”
- “I’m also a mother. My children go to Chicago Public Schools. These are things that help to legitimize my space within the coalition.”
- “‘Segregation Academies’ …Call them private schools supported by taxpayer funds-vouchers-so your norther cousins understand better.
- “I can’t advocate on behalf of public education without it taking root in my own household.
…and more. You know what I’m going to write next, don’t you? Surely you’ve seen this kind of set-up before. Yes, Gates recently placed her own teenage son in a Catholic high school located in Chicago’s South Side. This was so outstanding an example of hypocrisy by a politically involved public figure that even a CNN Democratic flack talking head was moved to challenge her on it.
Ethics Dunces: Too Many People To Count Who Were Responsible For This:
Yes, it’s Bluto’s (John Belushi) now iconic gaffe in “Animal House” come true: “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” Those are German planes on the cover of Michael J. Clark’s history book for young readers about the sneak attack that brought the U.S. into World War II.
Just think about all of the careless, irresponsible boobs, including the author and the cover artist, who had to breach the ethical values of competence, diligence and respect for that book to be published and put on the market. How many must it have been? Then you can add to that List of Shame our pathetic, ruinous education system, which has produced such a nation of dolts that not even a humble secretary or passing clerk had the knowledge to point out, when they saw the book as it made its way through production, “Uh, aren’t those German planes?” Anyone who did, thus preventing this epic embarrassment, might have received a promotion or a bonus. Or at least someone would have bought him or her a nice lunch.
And this is one more example where cultural literacy rot matters. If you can’t learn your American history, at least know your classic films.
Here’s Bluto:
That Bomb “Finger Gun” Should Have Never Been Made At All: How Did We End Up With “Finger Gun 4”??
The first stunned Ethics Alarms story about a cabal of idiots with education degrees persecuting a little boy for making a crude imaginary gun out of his fingers was in 2013, just as the Post Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck got rolling and the anti-gun hysterics were going off the rails (to which they, obviously, have never quite returned). I wrote of the first incident, which was in Montgomery County,
The NBC story concentrates on “whether the boy understands the implications of the gesture.” What implications of the gesture? That he is about to shoot bullets out of his finger? That he intends to kill someone with all the firepower an unarmed 6-year-old can muster? That he is making a mimed reference to a Connecticut school massacre he probably doesn’t know a thing about? Why should it matter what his “intent is? It’s a hand gesture! It isn’t vulgar or threatening except to silly phobics in the school system.
I concluded that it was child abuse by the school, and that “such irrational fearfulness, bad judgment, panic, disregard for the sensibilities of the young, lack of proportion and brain dysfunction forfeits all right to trust, and such fools must not be allowed to have power over young bodies and minds.”
But the finger gun lunatics struck again the next year, as Ohio crazies punished a 10-year-old boy for wielding an imaginary gun without a license. This time I figured out what was really going on—political and cultural woke indoctrination— writing in part,
The radical gun-hating progressives who disproportionately occupy administrative positions in the schools are willing to endure some ridicule as well as to victimize some children if it helps make guns and gun-related play less attractive, thus pointing to a Nirvana where the NRA is a shadow of its former self, and the only ones who own guns are criminals, the police and the government….Is public school political indoctrination more sinister than the proliferation incompetent teachers and administrators? Yes.
I also should have realized that this was the dawning of The Great Stupid.
The NYT Provides A Preview Of Its 2024 Campaign Toadying Strategy, Part 2: The Return Of Levitsky and Ziblatt
One of the most referenced tropes among the Big Lies used by the “resistance”/Democratic Party/mainstream media alliance to de-legitimize Donald Trump’s Presidency was that he was uniquely willing to discard tradition, established practice, and “democratic norms.” The alleged authorities appealed to by such Trump-bashers as the Times and the Atlantic were Harvard political science professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who wrote a pure partisan screed masquerading as scholarship called “How Democracies Die.”Ethics Alarms discussed it and them here, here, here and here (Big Lie #6). In the last I wrote,
The exact conduct being engaged in by the “resistance” and the Democrats is projected on their adversaries, accompanied by the false claim that they are endangering American democracy. In truth, the calculated efforts to de-legitimatize the President, his election, and the Supreme Court by “the resistance”(and in this group we must include unethical academics like Levitsky and
And, of course, the New York Times gives the two a platform for their distortions. Of course.
Well, Biden’s in trouble, so the Times has summoned Levitsky and Ziblatt again to make the same untenable and intellectually dishonest argument. This time it is, if anything, more spectacularly hypocritical and insulting than their earlier efforts. Their latest is headlined, “Democracy’s Assassins Always Have Accomplices”—you know, like Levitsky and Ziblatt?—and illustrated by the drawing of the boot-licking dog above, as the two Harvard professors dutifully try to paint Joe Biden as democracy’s champion…this uniting figure!…
and Donald Trump as an existential threat to liberty who is being blandly supported by those dangerous fascist MAGA Republicans. In advocacy, one should always lead with one’s strongest argument, and the two partisan boot-lickers think this is their most persuasive:
What Does It Say About The State Of Higher Education In The U.S. That Its Oldest And Most Prestigious Institution Is The Nation’s Most Hostile To Free Speech?
It’s a rhetorical question. What this says is that the culture of the United States of America, which has been nurtured for centuries to embrace personal liberty and pluralism, is being threatened by its elite educational institutions and the indoctrinated citizens they graduate.
I suppose I should take some satisfaction that I began blowing the metaphorical whistle on my alma mater years ago, and felt sufficiently embarrassed by the ethics rot overwhelming the ivy there to turn my diploma face to the wall and to explain in my class notes that I would be boycotting the class reunion. Simply put, the American college long considered the exemplar for higher education cannot become fascistically woke without dire consequences to the nation. Harvard alumni, many, maybe even most, of whom recognize this, have been negligent in allowing matter to reach this point. But that point has been reached.
When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring: The Education Secretary’s Play List
Wow. What an idiot.
Here are some sample lyrics from the songs our Education Dept. Secretary loves:
“Out o’ town, put it down for the Father of Rap And if yo’ ass get cracked, bitches, shut your trap. Come back, get back, that’s the part of success.”
“Fuck all you hoes. Get a grip, motherfucker!”
“My my, I’m big huh, I rip my prick through your hooters I’m sick, you couldn’t measure my dick with six rulers”
Secretary Cardona can listen to, read and love whatever he chooses, but his tweet—he quickly deleted it, of course, after multiple social media commenters explained to him that the tweet called into question his priorities and judgment—is a red flag to parents who don’t want their children to be immersed in a sexually-obsessed culture when they need to learn academic skills. This is the official who is overseeing U.S. education policy, and he saw nothing inappropriate about endorsing songs with lyrics like “Fuck all you hoes.”
Comment Of The Day: “I Don’t Feel I Can Trust The Teachers,” Says A Colorado Parent. Gee, Lady, What Was Your First Clue?”
In “Free Fall,” a novel by William Golding of “Lord of the Flies” fame, the narrator searches through his past to try to learn when he lost control of his life. I think about that relatively obscure novel, an odd addition to a college course reading list, frequently, but not in relation to my own life (which has either always been out of control or, depending on how you look at it, entirely within my control). I think about in relations to topics like what Here’s Johnny is writing about in his Comment of the Day.
When did teaching professionals lose control of their common sense, professional ethics and respect for parents? It isn’t just them, of course: politicians, lawyers, judges, academics, doctors, journalists, prosecutors, corporate executives and more have all jumped the metaphorical rails during the Great Stupid, and even before. What did it? What was the tipping point?
That’s a topic for another day, I suppose. Right now, this Comment of the Day is a concise, clear statement of what was once an uncontroversial truth. But what the hell happened???
With his Comment of the Day on the post, “I Don’t Feel I Can Trust The Teachers,” Says A Colorado Parent. Gee, Lady, What Was Your First Clue?,” Heeeeere’s Here’s Johnny!….
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I taught high school students for 20 years, a second career for me, and up through the time I retired from that 14 years ago, I never encountered this kind of thinking, that parents must be kept in the dark when it comes to a dramatic life-changing situation for their child. As OB asks [I paraphrase], ‘What the hell is it with gender ID anyway?’
It was true when I was teaching and it is true now that teachers have a special role in helping kids through those many difficult years of growing up. Are there things a kid might tell a teacher that they wouldn’t tell their parents? Yes, of course. Are there parents who would react in a way not in the best interests of the child? Yes, or course. And, responsible teachers have to know the difference, when to tell the kid that, ‘This is something I cannot keep in confidence; I have to discuss it with your parent(s)’, or, alternatively, “This is something that you will have to think about very seriously, maybe do some reading, maybe talk to a guidance counselor, maybe meet with the school psychologist’, and so on.
Ethics Alarms 