indoctrination

Ethics Dunce (Again): Georgetown Law Center Dean William Treanor

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

[Psst! It’s Georgetown University Law Center, not “school.” The Hill and other lazy publications keep calling it the law school, which was what the institution’s name was before it moved from the Georgetown campus (in Georgetown, a picturesque section of D.C.) to Capitol Hill near all the courts, including the Supreme Court. If you saw the place, you would know that “center” is an appropriate description. The name was the inspiration of then Dean Paul Dean, visionary, a respected lawyer and talented fund-raiser. He was also a good friend of mine as well as a cherished mentor]

William Trainor has been criticized on Ethics Alarms before notably during this fiasco, when he punished an incoming faculty member, Illya Shapiro, for daring to question Joe Biden’s wisdom of narrowing his choice of Supreme Court nominees to fill a vacancy to women of color, the same criteria that worked out so, so well with Kamala Harris. Following the lead of his radically indoctrinated students (it’s supposed to be the other way around), the GULC dean suspended Shapiro pending…well, something, and then after letting him twist slowly in the wind for months, finally let him back into the fold whereupon Shapiro quite properly told him to take his job and shove it, as I would have under like circumstances.

There were other instances when Trainer allowed his institution to be more woke than responsible; he is largely the reason my Law Center diploma is turned face to the wall in my ProEthics office. Here is an episode that didn’t directly involve the Dean but that occurred on his watch.

Now comes another skirmish. Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin sent a letter to GULC last month asking if the Law Center had eliminated its commitment to DEI. “At this time, you should know that no applicant for our fellows program, our summer internship, or employment in our office who is a student or affiliated with a law school or university that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered,” Martin wrote.

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American Students Are Falling Behind In Basic Academic Skills: How Can This Kind of Curriculum Be Justified?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

A news article in today’s New York Times [Gift link!] begins thusly:

“Late last fall at the Hugo Newman School in Harlem, two social studies teachers handed out pages of hip-hop lyrics to their seventh graders, and then flicked off the lights. The students appeared surprised. They had been studying ancient matriarchal societies, including Iroquois communities that had women as leaders. Now, their teachers were about to play the song ‘Ladies First’ by Queen Latifah and Monie Love. The teachers instructed their students to highlight any lyrics that reminded them of the Iroquois women, who were known as the Haudenosaunee Clan Mothers. Although they did not know it, the middle schoolers were in the midst of their first lesson of ‘Black Studies as the Study of the World,’ a curriculum that rolled out in September and is now available to every New York City public school.”

“In New York, we are trying our best to be Trump-proof,” the Times quoted Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the New York City Council, as saying in a recent interview. “We are doing everything we can to protect the curriculum.”

The obvious question is “Why?” Protect the curriculum from straightforward standards that ensure that the average student leaves high school with the core skills necessary for success in work and life? By its very nature, bombarding middle school students with lessons on “matriarchal societies”—an elective college course if there ever was one—is political in both nature and intent.

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Is “The Three Amigos” Really Racist, or Have I Just Been Brainwashed?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

I am proud to say that I thought “The Three Amigos” was a largely unfunny and lousy movie when I saw it the first time…this, despite the fact that I generally admire John Landis as a director of comedies (he will always have a place dear in my heart for directing “Animal House”), and although I generally appreciate the talents of the movie’s stars, Steve Martin and Martin Short (Chevy Chase not so much). For some reason it has been showing repeatedly on MGM+ of late, and upon re-watching the thing after my sock drawer was in order, I found another reason to hate it other than its annoying tone and its predictable gags. This time around, the film seemed egregiously racist.

Oh no! Have 40 years of relentless bludgeoning by political correctness, hyper-sensitivity and wokism taken over my brain? When I first viewed the film (which Wikipedia tells me was ranked 79th on Bravo’s list of the “100 Funniest Movies,” a factoid that only reaffirms my long-standing belief that Bravo is useless), that thought never occurred to me for a second.

One of many films that borrows heavily from the Western classic (and ethics movie) “The Magnificent Seven,”—others include “A Bug’s Life” and “Battle Beyond the Stars” along with a pretty bad remake, with Denzel Washington standing in for Yul Brenner—“The Three Amigos” (the film’s score is by the same composer who scored “The Magnificent Seven”) tells the tale of three incredibly white silent movie stars who end up rescuing a town of substantially helpless and poor Mexicans. The town’s tormenter is “El Guapo,” the evil leader of the most ugly, stupid, dirty and brutal band of Mexican bandits in silver screen history. All right, maybe the Mexicans in “The Wild Bunch” are worse, but the white guys in that bloody film are hardly what you’d like to see your daughter bring home to meet the family either. Naturally the three white guys prevail, despite their collective IQ of about 210, for an average of 70 each (it actually breaks down to 85 for Martin’s character, with Short at 70 and Chase at 65).

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Ethics Dunce: The Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

If the administrators at the insanely expensive school (the parents of 1,700 students pay tuition for all grades of $65,540 a year) are not embarrassed by that headline, they should be. Morons.

The school told families this week that “students who feel too emotionally distressed” after the election can get excused from classes, and—I find this incredible—psychologists will be available during the week to provide counseling for the tender souls who have presumably been told by their teachers and parents that they will be sent off to work camps and their parents will be executed in Trump wins.

The message to parents “acknowledges that this may be a high-stakes and emotional time for our community. No matter the election outcome will create space to provide students with the support they may need.” Excused absences will be allowed on Wednesday or whatever day the election results are announced for those students who are unable to “fully engage in classes.”

Any student who doesn’t immediately recognize this as a “Get Out Of School Free” ticket is too dim-witted to be in school.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Why does a public school herd its students into campaign events — replete with student musicians repurposing the school’s fight song to support a political candidate? It’s compulsory schooling and compulsory participation in politics. The purpose is openly political.”

Bloggress Ann Althouse, criticizing a Harris campaign stop at a high school in Georgia.

I am inclined to agree with Althouse and see this as totalitarian-ish indoctrination, but only because the public schools have been tending increasingly that way in recent years. It’s possible, I think, that the motivations of the teachers and the school were not partisan but educational. In a healthier era when parties didn’t try to demonize each other, a chance to experience a Presidential campaign up close would have been regarded as unique teaching opportunity. I know that in 1960, when I first began my obsession with U.S. Presidents, I would have loved to be in the middle of a candidate’s visit, and which candidate would have mattered to me not one whit.

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I’m Curious: What Would You Call The Results of This Newsbusters Study In Addition To “Unethical”?

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

Newsbusters has the results of a study it performed to examine the political orientation of Late Night TV Guests. It isn’t a surprise to me in the least, yet seeing the results still gave me a jolt. As I write this, I am trying to figure out what this obviously intentional practice of the networks and entertainment industry is, exactly. But first, the study…

It tallied the guest appearances on five daily late night comedy shows: ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. The period examined was the nine months from October 2, 2023, to June 27, 2024.

In that period, progressive/Democrat guests outnumbered conservative/Republican guests 137 to 8, or 94% to 6%. If you just count partisan officials, the count was 34 Democrats to 5 Republicans.

Colbert—naturally—had the greatest cumulative discrepancy at 14-1. The Jimmy Kimmel balance count was 7-0. Seth Meyer’s was 3-0, and Jimmy Fallon, who is mostly apolitical (except in his monologues) was 1-0. Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show came in at 9-4.

In the category of journalists and celebrities, the slant was 104 progressives to 3 conservatives.

Colbert was again the most biased at 34-0. The Daily Show was second in bias at 29-1. Meyers had a 21-0 progressive imbalance, Fallon’s was 11-1, and Kimmel’s was 7-1. No journalists from conservative publications or platforms were allowed: here are the outlets represented:

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Hey Douthat! How About Coming Right Out and Stating That U.S. College Students Are Indoctrinated into Radical, Progressive, Marxist Ideology?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Talk about burying the lede.

Sort-of conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat issued what might have been a useful column, What Students Read Before They Protest, about the reasons why students at Columbia and other “elite” educational institutions are demonstrating in favor of Hamas, terrorism, anti-Semitism, and wiping Israel off the face of the earth. But Douthat, who can write clearly and forcefully when he wants to (or, I suppose, when his woke and biased editors let him) instead buries his own objective in foggy rhetoric, Authentic Frontier Gibberish and equivocation to such an extent that 1) few will have the patience to read it and 2) the importance of his point is diluted and lost.

This is how Jonathan Turley used to write until he was red-pilled.

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Public Education Indoctrination Update…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

1. On Legal Insurrection, Ramona Bessinger blows the whistle on a program she participated in, a Department of Homeland Security funded training program for teachers to combat “disinformation” as part of a “media literacy” effort called Courageous RI. offered through the University of Rhode Island. “The idea of Media Literacy made its way into K-12 schools as a solution to combat perceived “disinformation” and “violent extremism,” she writes. “Both terms are defined as a result of children being exposed to ‘disinformation’ while at school….But who should judge what is mere opinion vs “disinformation”? This sort of subjective judgment is exactly what public school teachers should never do.”

“[W]hat happens once a child is identified as “extremist”?  Well,” she explains, “naturally, any child identified as an extremist would want to please their teachers, therefore abandoning their pattern of “disinformation” and “violent extremist” views for the accepted viewpoint.   The student then becomes a member of the accepted in-group and may in fact help in identifying other children and teachers that are seen as extremist.”

“In fact, we are seeing this play out in K-12 schools across the nation,” the teacher writes. “Students are encouraged to identify peers or, worse, their teachers who they feel represent extremist views, then report that individual to other adults…In some cases, teachers are protested, harassed and bullied, while in other cases, peers may be  singled out and bullied.”

She relates her experience of seeing “the Courageous RI facilitators [pointing] to Trump as the root cause of all social media and media disinformation. They blamed  Trump for influencing “MAGA Republicans” to commit violence and more. During the weekly online training sessions, I asked for evidence to support their claims that violent extremism and disinformation existed in K-12 schools.  I was quickly dismissed or directed to chat conversations where conservative voices were singled out and suppressed.”

“Any student or faculty member with opposing political view-points on controversial topics like climate change, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) agendas, race-based narratives, and more could be identified by a media literacy teacher or student, then referred to thought partners who would set out to correct said student’s line of thinking or to persuade the child to abandon their point-of-view.”  Worse case, peers and friends would report on each other and in some cases teachers like me would be protested and singled out for conservative view-points.”

In addition to the troubling tale she tells, I was bothered by the poor grammar, syntax, spelling and punctuation in her post. She is a high school teacher, after all. I had to make several edits to make her post comprehensible.

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Woke Kindergarten

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

I honestly thought this story was a parody when I first read about it. Horrifyingly, Woke Kindergarten is real: a genuine dead canary in the mine of U.S. culture. On the company’s website, it boasts, “Woke kindergarten is a global, abolitionist early childhood ecosystem & visionary creative portal supporting children, families, educators and organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-Black and queer and trans liberation.” The babber on that page shouts, “Power to the little people!”, a direct call-out to Marx, and what that really means is “Power to radical anti-American ideology through the programming of its children.”

Claiming that the schools are more dedicated to indoctrinating children than in educating them is another one of those conservative conspiracy theories people catch from Fox News like the flu, I keep reading. The next time someone tells you that, send them the Woke Kindergarten link right after you respond, “Bite me, you useful idiot.”

Wandering through the site is like visiting Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, early education version. “Woke Words of the day” include “Ceasefire,” “Protest,” Strike,” “Abolish” and “Anti-Racist.” The kids are introduced to the wonders of censorship. How are children introduced to poetry, its meter, its rhyme schemes, its beauty? Here’s one of Woke Kindergarten’s “teachable poems”:

Sure, it doesn’t doesn’t scan and is incomprehensible, but there’s a leftist message in there somewhere. On most of the site, the communist aspirations are hardly hidden. “Lil’ Comrade Convos” is one section. Under “Woke Wonderings”, described as “unconventional questions rooted in liberatory thought” that teachers and parents are supposed to pose to 4 and 5-year olds, who, as we all know, are well equipped with the experience and critical thinking skills to evaluate them, we have these loaded queries…

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Comment of the Day: “Now Here’s A Scary Poll Result…”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Ethics Alarms post regarding the Harvard-Harris poll showing that Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 had wildly diverging beliefs from the rest of the population in supporting “woke values and victim culture” ended with the plaintive query, “Now what?”

Michael R, in his Comment of the Day to “Now Here’s A Scary Poll Result…,” answered the question thusly:

***

Hmm… So, maybe you CAN’T allow people who hate this country and what it stands for teach the children. Maybe you CAN’T let them control the media including the news. Maybe you CAN’T let them be hired by the government and take over the 4th branch. We have allowed this for 50 years and now we are surprised by the results.

Who could have predicted this would be the outcome?

Of course, everyone with a brain predicted this at least since the 1970’s. Now, the problem is what to do about it? You can’t fix the education system.

  • You can’t hire teachers that aren’t fixated on spreading the woke mind virus because the people doing the hiring only hire people who have appropriate brain washing.
  • You can’t become a teacher if you don’t support the woke mind virus because the education faculties will throw you out otherwise.
  • Even if the faculty don’t want to throw you out, the professional standards call for DEI, pronoun usage, etc. It is a requirement of the program that you believe these things.
  • If you don’t pledge allegiance to the woke agenda, you don’t meet the requirements of the teacher ed program. Even if that is ignored, the accreditation body would remove the department’s accreditation if they allowed an outsider to become a teacher.
  • Even if you somehow overcame that, the teacher’s union would eliminate any teacher hired who didn’t conform.

There are a couple obvious options.

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