Critical theory in schools (links)

As I have mentioned before, we attended Baylor University, a Baptist school in Texas. We had segregated men’s and women’s dorms, which I believe is an excellent policy for all colleges for many reasons that have nothing to do with religion. (I’m old enough to remember the valid concern over “rape culture” on college campuses. Alas, that has now been subordinated to woke culture.)

It would seem the Biden administration is trying to force religious institutions to give up gender-segregated dorms to comfort nonconforming students who somehow want to attend universities that emphasize biblical attitudes toward sex and marriage:

A Christian college is taking the Biden administration to court over a directive mandatingthe college to end its single-sex dorms and bathrooms.

A Biden executive order signed in January requires colleges to open up single-sex facilities to members of the opposite sex depending on the person’s gender identity. The College of the Ozarks—a Missouri Christian college with an enrollment just over 1,400—alleges that this requirement violates its religious right to practice and enforce its beliefs about sexuality.

“By promulgating a Directive imposing liability on colleges with religious objections to sex before marriage or to transgender theory, Defendants have targeted the College’s religious beliefs and practices and shown hostility toward them,” the lawsuit, filed Thursday, states. “The Directive, and Defendants’ enforcement of it, imposes impermissible burdens on the exercise of religion in violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

The Biden administration has also filed a federal regulation for approval that would allow federal taxpayer dollars to be used to make payments to contractors that specialize in critical race theory so they can work their theories on how the country is built on systemic racism and oppression into every subject taught in public school. (Read: Any BLM activist who can use PowerPoint can now be a Marxist multimillionaire off of taxpayers.) Biden’s people have specifically cited the use of the New York Times‘ 1619 Project, which has been panned by historians as riddled with inaccuracies and nonsensical agendas. So our country is borrowing money from China to finance government spending at multiples of the federal budget so they can, among other things, teach young children that their families are racist and math, logic, and good grammar are racist.

A nonprofit has set up a website that will allow parents of children in North Carolina public schools to report teachers and staff who try to force their radical political ideologies on students. Before the pandemic, North Carolina had the highest rate of homeschooling families in the country, by far, as their education system is absolutely nuts and they allow a lot of unqualified people to function as teachers. (I think the latter is becoming a trend in public education countrywide, however, as the covid bullshit prompted a lot of retirements, career changes, and defections to private education. Our district here says they need to hire hundreds of new teachers, and their “goal” is to have a certified teacher in every classroom at the beginning of the next year. I thought, “Goal?” – as opposed to what, random people off the street.) And back in February, the North Carolina Board of Education revised its education standards to include critical race theory in K-12 curriculum. Suffice it to say, that website is probably going to be on the receiving end of some interesting whistleblower complaints. Folks should set these up in every state.

Christopher Rufo at the Manhattan Institute has published a long series on woke education in schools. Many of these stories are quite horrifying. There seems to be a big push to reach children at as young an age as possible, so they are talking about police shootings (for example) to kids as young as 4 and 5. This mimics the like of Drag Queen Story Hour in public libraries, which was plagued by convicted pedophiles. Most parents I know think this age is way too young for such conversations, which is a feature, not a bug for these programs. They want to get to the kids before their families and communities do.

This is an interesting piece in the National Review, which suggests that to make our K-12 classrooms healthy again, concerned parents and politicians need to start holding the Schools of Education at colleges and universities accountable. I absolutely agree that it is a real problem college faculties are no longer ideologically diverse and are now staffed up with political zealots who think recruiting children into their jihad is the main point of education.