The Fifth Column Features Math Teacher Paul Rossi and Discussion of the Modern Racial Retrogression

"The Fifth Column" is one of my new favorite podcasts. It features interviews and commentary by hosts Matt Welch, Kmele Foster and Michael Moynihan.

The current episode (#200) does a deep dive into the Woke culture that drove math teacher Paul Rossi from his long-time job at a $57,000/year private school in Manhattan. I recently commented on Rossi's rejection of the school's curriculum because it was harming children.

Highly recommended. Here is a list of all prior episodes.

Continue ReadingThe Fifth Column Features Math Teacher Paul Rossi and Discussion of the Modern Racial Retrogression

Critical Race Theory Successfully Implemented

Gosh, what harm could it possibly do to a reasonably well-functioning society to divide people into colors and to treat them differently based on their looks? Tap on this image and behold. This woman is well educated and drives a very nice car. Presumably, she is a person of significant means, both educationally and materially. Listen to how she addresses this polite police officer in this traffic stop. This appears to be the end game of a society permeated with Critical Race Theory:

Perhaps some people will argue that this woman is an outlier, someone who misunderstood CRT, perhaps as it is taught in the school where she is a "teacher." To that, I would suggest that the doubter should consider what is being taught, coast to coast, as part of Critical Race Theory: Categorize all people into racial silos and obsess about these "identities." See here and here. Also, all police officers are racist and all of them are hunting down "black" people as a matter of doing their job on an every day basis. This motorist exemplifies these CRT teachings perfectly.

For more on the end game of CRT/Wokeness, consider the takeover of Evergreen State College.

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The Continuing Relevance of John Stuart Mill at Schools and Colleges

Last week I attended a seminar sponsored by Heterodox Academy. The title: Does Mill Still Matter? Among those featured at the seminar were Jonathan Haidt, Richard Reeves and Dave Cicirelli, co-creators of "All Minus One," an illustrated version of the second chapter of Mill's On Liberty. This new book can be downloaded for free.

I transcribed the following excerpts of Jonathan Haidt comments. What follows are Haidt's words at the live seminar, minimally edited for print.

What I think is happening on campus is that we've traditionally played a game in which somebody puts forth an argument and then somebody critiques it. And that's what we've done for 1000’s of years, until about 2015. And then, a new game came into town, where people weren't seeing this like tennis, a game we are playing a game together. They saw it more as a battle like boxing or something where it was a struggle for dominance and power. And when you think of it that way, yeah, it's hard work. And it's painful. But if you think about it as like, you know, playing tennis or a game together, you're expending calories. It's not exactly hard work. It's hard play. And that's what I've always loved about being an academy is that it always felt like hard play. Until 2015.

A common phrase that began in 2014-2015, which is, “you are denying my existence” or “If that speaker comes [to campus to talk], then he or she is denying my existence.” And, you know, it's suddenly came out of nowhere. And we're all talking about what do you mean, denying your existence? And it's because this new way of thinking, where it's all a battle for power, and it's all about identity. And so if there's an is there's a speaker who's critical that on transition-- doesn't accept the reigning dogma on the trans issue? Well, that person thinks, or you might think, that they're critiquing an argument about something. But critiquing the argument is critiquing the identity, which means you're denying that I exist. That really helps us understand why there's such incoherence on campus since 2015, because some people are taking any criticism of their ideas as an attack on their person. And therefore you think I don't belong here on campus. And again, you can't have a university like that.

I also just want to add in one of my favorite quotes I've found in the five or six years I've been working on this topic. This is from Van Jones when he spoke at the University of Chicago. He was asked by, David Axelrod, what he thinks about students who are demanding no platforming and safe spaces and things like that. And while this isn't exactly million in that he's not really talking about, like the benefit to truth, but he's talking about the way this actually makes you stronger and smarter. This is just so brilliant. He says, there's a certain kind of safety, that it’s safety from physical attacks. You know, of course, we care about physical safety. But then he says, I don't want you to be safe ideologically. I don't want you to be safe, emotionally, I want you to be strong. And that's different. I'm not going to pave the jungle for you put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity, I'm not going to take all the weights out of the gym. That's the whole point of the gym. This is the gym. And Richard and his friends protested outside as a political act. And then they went in because it was the gym, and they actually wanted to hear what he had to say. And that, I think, is the model of a politically engaged college student, or what it should do.

I was asked, What do you think is most fundamental question? And they say, Oh, you know, is there a god? Or what's the meaning of life? No, that's like, a big question. Fundamental means, basic, like the thing that everything else is built on. The fundamental question of life, is approach or avoid. That's it. As soon as life began moving, as soon as you get little tails on bacteria, you have to have some mechanism for deciding this way or that? Approach or avoid? And all of the rest of the billion years of brain evolution is just commentary on that question.

And so the human brain has these gigantic tracts of neurons on the front left cortex, specialized for approach. And then a frontal cortex specialized for avoid. And so all sorts of things go with this. So when we're in explorer mode, some features of it are, we're more, we're curious. We take risks. You might feel like a kid in a candy shop with all these different things to explore. You think for yourself. And the model of a student in this mindset would be whoever grows the most by graduation, or whoever learns the most by graduation wins. If that's your attitude, boy, are you going to profit from being in college for four years. [More . . . ]

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Real Life Public Schools That Are Enthusiastically Dividing Students By “Color” and Preaching False Biology

Critical Race Theory is winning the day in many public schools, as described by Erika Sanzi in her article, "The Monster Is in the Classroom Schools indoctrinate children as young as eight in race and gender essentialism."

The problem? Increasing numbers of public grade schools are teaching their students to see each other as color categories and to treat each other differently based on those "colors." In my own mind, I think of these poisonous approaches as neoracism, neosegregationist and racecraft. As I've often written, dividing people into colors is as absurd as believing in astrology, though much more pernicious given our country's long struggle with racism. With regard to sexuality, increasing numbers of schools are preaching to their students that it is bigoted to state that there are only two sexes, even though biologists universally hold that there are only two sexes of every other species of mammal based on the two types of gametes (and the organs that produce those gametes).  Schools are teaching that we should ignore this science when it comes to human animals because it is inconvenient. Schools are teaching that sex is "assigned" at birth by doctors and parents (rather than noticed). Today's institutional leaders of Wokeness, such as Planned Parenthood, falsely advise that 2% of people are intersex, mangling the scientific definition and rate of occurrence of intersex in the process (the actual rate of intersex conditions is about 0.018%).  These falsehoods are rampant among the Woke and these ideologically-laced teachings are now permeating classrooms, including public school classrooms.

[In the current social environment, I feel the need to add this: I'm writing about sex, which has a long stable scientific definition. And see here. And here. Over the past few decades, "gender," a non-scientific concept, has become mostly unhinged from sex. In modern times, "gender" can seemingly can mean anything, e.g., a bio female can "identify" as a woman, a man, something "fluid, or apparently anything at all.  I have no problem with any adult claiming any type of gender, but I also insist that people should get their biology right, especially when teaching grade school students. There are only two sexes and rare biological intersex conditions do not constitute a third type of sex. The elephant in the room is that these bankrupt ideas of sexual Wokeness are being encouraged by profit seekers.]

Here is Sanzi's main concerns:

American schools are teaching young children race essentialism: reducing them to identity groups, putting them in boxes labeled “oppressor” and “oppressed,” and often inflicting emotional and psychological harm. If this sounds extreme, that’s because it is. It is not happening everywhere—but it is happening enough to have juiced a multibillion-dollar, nationwide industry. Sometimes the source is a rogue teacher whom the principal and superintendent admit they are trying to rein in; but increasingly, it is simply public officials implementing approved policies.

She gives several examples of Wokeness in modern day public school classrooms:

Lexington, Massachusetts, where, in October 2019, fourth-graders were taught to “articulate what gender identity is and why it’s important to use nonbinary language in describing people we don’t know yet.” According to photos shared on Twitter by the district’s Director of Equity and Student Supports, students learned about “gender identity,” “gender expression,” “sexual orientation,” and “sex assigned at birth” by examining sticky notes on a “Gender Snowperson” who was drawn in magic marker on a large sheet of paper. The students were also taught that their pronouns had been “assigned at birth.”

.  .   .

This past February, students in Evanston, Illinois, listened to the book Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness. Parents were asked to discuss the book with their children at home. The book says that “whiteness is a bad deal” and “always was,” and that “you can be white without signing on to whiteness.” As Conor Friedersdorf reports in The Atlantic, Evanston schools ask kindergarten parents to quiz their five- and six-year-olds on whiteness and to give them examples of “how whiteness shows up in school or in the community.”

These examples described by Sanzi comprise the tip of the iceberg. I recently commented on Christopher Rufo's report on eleven additional public schools across the U.S., all of them preaching (not teaching) similar divisive poison to young children. In many schools, our children are being similarly indoctrinated, prepared to participate for the rest of their lives in the oppression olympics. We are enthusiastically producing adult-sized toddlers. And see here. We are creating a generation of students who are so emotionally fragile that they cannot bear the thought that other people think differently than they do. This theme was explored at length by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff in their 2017 book, The Coddling of the American Mind. Here is more on the concerns of Haidt and Lukianoff. And see here for the "Three Great Untruths."

Here is yet another recent example of Wokeness in the classroom, Grace Church School. 

With regard to sexuality, we are at a crossroads and the correct road is paved with scientific facts, not ideology.  As Heather Heying writes, we should be teaching biology, not ideology.  With regard to "race," the Woke endgame is Evergreen State College. 

If only there were healthy ways to teach people how to get along with each other . . . Actually, there are healthy approaches, including Chloe Valdary's "Theory of Enchantment," (urging that we treat people like human beings, not political abstractions). And see Christopher Rufo's advice here.  And here. And here is some advice by forty black intellectuals critical of the Woke permeated environment at Smith College.  Here's yet another alternative approach: Counterweight, which urges us to engage with each other as complex and nuanced human beings, not stereotypes. Consider also this detailed blueprint for reform by the President of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), Greg Lukianoff.  In summary:

10 Principles for Opposing Thought Reform in K-12

  • No compelled speech, thought, or belief.
  • Respect for individuality, dissent, and the sanctity of conscience.
  • K-12 teachers & administrators must demonstrate epistemic humility.
  • Foster the broadest possible curiosity, critical thinking skills, and discomfort with certainty.
  • Foster independence, not moral dependency.
  • Do not teach children to think in cognitive distortions.
  • Do not teach the ‘Three Great Untruths.’
  • Take student mental health more seriously.
  • Resist the temptation to reduce complex students to limiting labels.
  • If it’s broke, fix it. Be willing to form new institutions that empower students and educate them with principles of free, diverse, and pluralistic society.

For many more examples of Wokeness upon which I have commented, consider this DI collection of articles on Wokeness. 

Continue ReadingReal Life Public Schools That Are Enthusiastically Dividing Students By “Color” and Preaching False Biology