(*Note to readers: first, due to a massive backlog of “Dumb and Dumber” content that I’ve accumulated over the last two months, I’m combining two issues in one (and will continue to do so for a few weeks); and, second, some of the content will be restricted to paid subscribers only. For access to ALL content, please consider a paid subscription. It’s only $5 a month or $50 for 12 months.)
DUMB AND DUMBER (No. 12)
K-12 EDITION
NICE: “Teacher Turns Heads with 'Handle with Care' Message Sent to Parents.”
VICTORY: “Virginia Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Teacher Who Refused to Use Transgender Pronouns.” And speaking of victory, this is what winning looks like in Loudoun County:
THAT’S PUTTING IT DIPLOMATICALLY. “Woke New Direction of Public Schools Is a Nightmare for Kids.”
ACCOMMODATIONISM IS A LOSING STRATEGY: “Many teachers care about viewpoint diversity; we need to support them.”
TOLD YA SO: “Colorado teachers sign pledge to teach Critical Race Theory even if banned in classroom.”
A project in the name of the late, self-proclaimed socialist college professor Howard Zinn has gathered thousands of signatures of teachers nationwide, including about 100 from Colorado, pledging to teach the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in their classrooms despite any bans by any state government or a local school district. . . . All of the signatures, which now total more than 7,300 nationwide, can be found on the organization’s website, which warns all signers that their names will be public. It is assumed that most of the signers of the pledge are teachers.
NO SIREE BOB. To quote from the Buffalo Springfield song:
There's something happening here
But what it is ain't exactly clear
These moms (aka “domestic terrorists”) are in a revolutionary state of mind. They’re not going to tolerate it anymore.
EGALITARIANISM IS IMMORAL. It’s also a tool by which the wealthy and powerful rule the poor and weak. “By getting rid of grades and honor rolls, NYC’s education department will hurt the kids it claims to want to help.”
The New York City Department of Education hates competition for two reasons: One, the teacher mafia is a gang of ultra-woke progressives who bemoan the visible inequality that results from the invisible inequality that is the distribution of intelligence and skill. Two: competition exposes how bad the schools are at their jobs. This year especially, the teachers are terrified of any mechanism that might quantify just how badly they flunked in the last year and a half.
Solution: do away with honor rolls and other competition-based stamps of excellence.
“Recognizing student excellence via honor rolls and class rank can be detrimental to learners who find it more difficult to reach academic success, often for reasons beyond their control,” states the new grading guidance being sent around to DOE schools.
If your children are in the NYC government schools, it might be time to #JustWalkAway.
THE SEEN VS. THE UNSEEN: “The Culture War Against the Little Man.”
FACT: there have been hundreds and hundreds of similar cases over the course of the last twenty years. This is a thing. Ironically, no self-respecting14-year-old girl would want to date a 14-year-old boy, and yet we have innumerable instances of married female teachers in their 30s and 40s who are engaging in sexual relationships with 14-year-old boys. I promise you, this will not be the last time I post on this. “Married California teacher, 39, is arrested 'for raping boy, 14, three times during independent study sessions'.”
ADRIAN VERMEULE: CALL YOUR OFFICE. When everyone has their own definition of the “common good,” this is what you get. “CA Encourages Students to Pray to Bloody Aztec 'Gods' But Says No to Christian Prayers: Lawsuit.”
WHO SHOULD WE BELIEVE? “Study: Long COVID in Children Much Less Dangerous, Widespread Than Previously Feared.”
HIGHER EDUCATION
ONLY IN CALIFORNIA, YOU SAY!!! Yup, only in CA—for now. There is some form of karma in this. “In California, College Students Are Now Officially Considered an Environmental Menace.”
A CULTURE THAT HATES ITSELF CANNOT STAND. “EXCLUSIVE: UNC course says WWII was 'Japan's attempt to roll back Euro-American colonialism'.”
LEFT WITHOUT COMMENT: “Study promotes 'princess culture' for boys as way to combat society's idea of 'masculinity'.”
THE NUMBERS JUST DON’T ADD UP: “The Proposed California Mathematics Framework Lacks Research Evidence.”
WOW! JUST! WOW! An interview with the head of United Teachers Los Angeles. “Exclusive: Cecily Myart-Cruz’s Hostile Takeover of L.A.’s Public Schools.”
“There is no such thing as learning loss,” she responds when asked how her insistence on keeping L.A.’s schools mostly locked down over the last year and a half may have impacted the city’s 600,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade students. “Our kids didn’t lose anything. It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.”
This comes down to one question: do your children deserve better?
HISTORY RECLAIMED. A great new website with historians doing real history. Check it out.
INDOCTRINATION ALERT—PRINCETON EDITION. There are a few Princeton professors, such as the co-authors of this article, who are fighting indoctrination and censorship: “Profs: Princeton diversity office’s ‘nihilistic’ attack on university’s history and anti-woke dissidents.”
The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office of Princeton University has a message for incoming students: It wants them to participate in “tearing down” the very institution they have worked so hard to attend. And to drive this message home, the office is more than happy to tear down those who dissent from its official orthodoxy. . . .
An official video freshmen are required to watch presents an utterly one-sided and negative picture of Princeton’s history. . . . The video/site includes a two-minute discourse in which classics professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta characterizes free speech as a “privilege,” rather than a right, and in which he disparages the speech of others with whom he disagrees as “masculine-ized bravado.” Padilla Peralta goes on to extol “free speech and intellectual discourse that is [sic] flexed to one specific aim, and that aim is the promotion of social justice, and an anti-racist social justice at that.”
No!!! Free speech is a right—an unalienable right. Period.
WE’RE NOW REACHING PEAK EGALITARIANISM AND NIHILISM. First it was the pronouns and now it’s an assault on uppercase letters. “LOWERCASE MOVEMENT: Canadian Professor Won’t Use Capital Letters Because of Indigenous Struggles.” Next up: punctuation marks. And after that, we eliminate spaces between words. Then, as the ultimate act of self-abnegation, we eliminate words and just stare like Zombies at the blank page and grunt.
DECOLONIZE TIME AND SPACE. It’s a thing. And while you’re at it, decolonize the concept “individualism.” “Colorado University-Boulder Conference: ‘Decolonize’ Yourself But Not With a ‘Sense of Urgency’.”
DUMB AND DUMBER (No. 13)
K-12 EDITION
TO ALL OF AMERICA’S MOMS WHO HAVE SONS: ARE YOU OK WITH THIS? “New study promotes 'princess power' for little boys as a way to combat toxic masculinity.”
FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU. FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME. #JustWalkAway. “Teacher Tells Second Graders NOT to Use the Word ‘Girl’ to Describe a Girl.”