The US is 68% white - this varies a bit as to how Hispanics and others identify, but the gross comparison is valid.
Where some of the friction comes from is this: black Americans age 16-30 commit 62% of the felonies and 60% of the murders (more than half black-on-black murders) in the US and make up the majority of prisoners in our jails. Those facts are connected, of course.
Think about this when considering the font of "villians."
In his 1965 study on the black family, Labor Sec Dan'l Patrick Moynihan, later Senator, identified the 35% of black families without a male head of household as being a troubling phenomenon linked to crime and achievement.
That number is today about 85% - again dependent upon definitions and whose numbers you are looking at. The trend is obvious: it is getting worse, not better.
The conclusion is this - the magnitude of the social challenges presented by 13.4% of America - the vast majority of whom are law abiding and peaceful - is grossly out of proportion to their size in our society; and, we know the root cause - the absence of strong, male leadership in the family unit.
This is what we should be working on together, not racial warfare and victimhood.
Agree, and I think that school choice plays into the center of that argument. If you have a good school, you will see an opportunity and that will change the decisions you make in your life. Hopelessly bad school leads to hopelessness.
The problem is that the Left has decided that culture is now part of the educational process. And that there is a "good" culture (theirs) and a "bad" one (traditional norms to a large extent). They see education as the most effective tool to changing our culture, which is their number one goal.
The Right, on the other hand, views education as objective. It should teach skills and be unbiased. Let people decide, and leave culture to the centuries of traditions that individual families have built. Those things used to be sacred. As Americans we respected pluralism, were proud of it, in fact. The Left has now decided that those things can be bigoted, and they can't help but try to "fix it."
The anger comes from the Right feeling violated that other adults are attempting to change their own culture by back-dooring their children to be someone that reflects the Left's values, and not the Right. It's a fundamental intrusion into basic family rights and a violation of privacy and freedom.
I see that as why this is so heated, yet the Left doesn't understand it. They're just trying to "show us tolerance and what's right" after all. They think the Right is angry because it is bigoted or intolerant, when it's truthfully the intrusion that's driving it. Most people on the Right have a "live and let live" philosophy. Yes, there are extremes, but that exists on both sides.
In trying to change society, the Left is making cultural choices for your family, and that's infuriating. They are attempting to take away our essence, and that's a dangerous thing to try to do to someone.
Agree that the Left has decided culture is a part of education. Any deviation from their culture is met with cries of racism and intolerance, when in fact their culture BREEDS racism and intolerance!!!
I don't disagree that we have to stand up to the Left. Now is the time. But, it's awfully hard to find the courage to do it when your career and ability to provide for your family or yourself is on the line.
As usual, a top notch discussion. Bravo and well played.
Education is a measurable phenomenon. You can benchmark and test for successful outcomes in literature, math, science, and a myriad of such subjects.
Education at the high school level is preparation for life or college or trade school. There is a measurable objective and a destination at the end of the journey.
Today - in part due to the chaos of the Pandemic - US test scores are plummeting. American students are underperforming the world and our obvious long term economic competitors.
This entire discussion devolves into a basic, foundational question: "What is an education?"
Since we can catalog courses and test for outcomes, the question is also -- "Is the teaching of such material relevant to preparing a student for further education or to make their way in the world?"
I say it is not. I do not think becoming conversant on the use and operation of butt plugs will get you into college or land you a good job.
As to the level of outrage we all should marshal on both sides of this issue, I think it is time to unsheath the dirk and have at it.
The teacher's unions are not serving their teachers, the students, the parents, or the nation. Sorry.
They are woefully political and, yes, they are grooming students to adopt certain cultural positions through curriculum manipulation.
If I am asked to value butt plugs and their operation v advanced calculus or computer networking or software or learning how to run family finances, I go with the practical education.
Conservatives have a fatal flaw. In the pursuit of being judged as having an open mind, they let their bloody brains fall out.
This is total nonsense and a pox on any school that would see this as being part of their educational mission.
Agree with you on Teacher's Unions more than you agree with yourself. Also agree that we don't need to be teaching how to use sex toys to high schoolers. There is YouTube for that. I might disagree with standardized testing. I think there is a benefit to them. It's a measuring stick and while they can be gamed, it is something. Recognizing that they are gamed helps with analysis. How many kids do you know that went to a psychologist and got extended time on tests when they didn't really need it? I know a bunch. I also know I paid a lot of money for my kids to do test prep. It's not as if kids are sharpening #2 pencils and packing a lunch to take those tests cold like we did back in the day.
Also agree on the psychology of conservatives. I think we do need to throw the gauntlet down. At the same time, sometimes we throw it down when we probably needed more information before we decided to throw it.
Are we in danger of losing our culture and the American Dream? Yes, if the Obama acolytes take over. Let's put it to extremes. Who do you want to have lead you and death is not an option? AOC or Marjorie Greene. I will take Greene every single time.
We agree on Teachers' Unions. We agree on sex toys. We agree on YouTube.
I am not preaching standardized testing such as college admittance testing; I am talking about testing in history/physics class that supports the notion that the student is progressing and mastering the subject matter and that parents and the school can rely upon this testing to identify success and to underpin their financial investment.
In some ways, this is also a report card on the performance of the teacher.
Since COVID more and more schools are jettisoning the College Boards. Colleges admitted students long before the College Boards were invented.
There is nothing wrong with standardized testing per se. There is nothing wrong with test prep. If you are in the securities racket, you have to pass tests that ensure a level of competence and ethics.
Life is a graded exercise and there will be tests.
We are not just losing our culture; we are creating a replacement toxic culture that fails to reward achievement, redistributes success and wealth; and that diminishes the quality of life for the doers.
This toxic culture punishes achievement and values. It is a race to the bottom.
Here is what's tough to change. If I go to an Ivy, I am considered smart and I have the sheepskin for the rest of my life. Scan the rosters of professional firms, no one went to McNeese St. How do we change that?
In every continuum there are gradations. Not everyone gets to start on third base and think they hit a triple.
Not everyone gets to go to an Ivy League school.
In the end, considering startups, small companies, medium companies, larger firms -- there is room for everyone to have a good job, a good life, to reap the benefits of their hard work.
Sure there will be industries -- talking to you, venture capital -- that will be populated by a small number of prestigious schools. The Army and the military are populated by ring knockers.
We don't change it. We teach people how to compete, how to pursue excellence, to do the best they can with what they have as constrained by time. We deal with it.
And, not everybody will be tall, good looking, well bred, well married, and named "Jeff."
This might be the best thing I've seen you write, Jeff. I think that candidates - nationally and in state-wide races - will have immense success if they embrace school choice with the pluralistic language you show here. The only things that will moderate public schools (and private schools too) are money and market forces. When parents are allowed to vote with their feet and tax dollars, you'll see actual changes to shift public schools back toward the center.
This was a very good write-up. Especially bringing your knowledge of the people involved to your commentary. Most people, educators in this instance, whether left or right, really are trying to do good things for kids' education. The nutpickers like PV, LoTT, Proft have their place, but they frequently don't bring much humanity, nuance, or context to the discussion.
I agree with you about the specific issues that caused this flair up. I also agree that school choice is necessary, yet I also believe it is nowhere near sufficient. As I said in my comment on the other thread, so much of the nuttiness gets tied back to the education schools. That's where the kids get all the critical theories infused into their coursework. Normal kids who are trained to be teachers also get taught to be activists. Even if you have school choice these new teachers almost all come from this monocultural pool.
I, similar to your past, live in Chicago as a non-leftist with kids. I hate bubbles. I still mostly like it even as I agree with your assessment that it has gotten more difficult to avoid conflict. But it can be done! Not all lefty people are hyperpartisan nuts. When you interact with reasonable people it shouldn't be hard to avoid "them" vs. "us" language.
So much of the "current thing" among elites is just people following trends. As I also said in another thread, I think some of the people who see through a lot of the BS are the kids. So I guess I'm a bit more optimistic about the future than you or some of your other commenters. (That comment is about the broader education/culture. I have a hard time believing public schools in Chicago will ever get better, whether or not there is more school choice.)
Just think about how much better off horney 14 year old kids are now that they are taught the advantages of sticking it in with lube versus spit. Sure beats some backward ass fart telling them to keep it in their pants until marriage.
Agree very much that there is access to information that didn't exist years ago. It is not appropriate to educate kids on the use of sex toys. I do think it's appropriate to teach tolerance, but not create a victim class at the same time. Parker buys into the victim class approach today, and did yesterday.
I highly recommend Archbishop Samuel Aquila's commentary in today's WSJ. He touched on some of what you bought up, but focused on allegations by NYT and others that Catholics who oppose LGBTQXYZ indoctrination are "hateful" and violent. Here's the link:
I was recently introduced to Betsy Devos, who has been a children’s advocate for decades. As Education Secretary she pushed for tax dollars to follow the child, creating freedom of choice. The teachers unions, always advocates for themselves and not children, were unrelenting in opposition. She continues her advocacy and more should pay attention to her expertise.
I am interested to learn if Parkers kids have experienced the same decline in reading, math, and science scores as seen in the public schools. I find it outrageous that here in Wheaton about 50% of students fail to meet minimum basic education standards. Ted Dabrowsky at Wirepoints has pointed out similar failures throughout Illinois public education.
As for sex ed, a little bit of conservative discussion at home, and leadership by example, goes a long way.
Betsy is GREAT. It's a good question about Parker's academic performance. I don't know what it is. It is messy to tease out. For example, kids that go to Parker will get a lot of tutoring for standardized tests. The college placement office is incredible, and has relationships with "the best schools" so they get a ton of kids in them-not to mention a lot of alums/parents went to them too.
While I intellectually follow your arguments about Parker's value, it's hard for me separate that from the fact that kids at a very young age are being exposed to very complicated sexual issues in a manner like votech subjects. It's not just that all of these sexual options exist. It's also how to actually perform these sexual options, what tools to use, etc. It is possible that the sexualization of education has significantly increased since your kids went there as well. I think sex education in schools was a mistake made 40 decades ago and has led to where we are now. Parents should be teaching culture and values, of which sex is one. Schools should teach reading, writing, math, history, science, etc. This is an issue in which DeSantis has performed well. As did Younkin.
Oh, I 1000% agree very young and middle school age kids should not be exposed to any of this. These were 14-18 year old kids. Actually think my kids were sophomores....but I don't know what exactly is going on at Parker today. I do think that the Project Veritas videos should be released in their entirety so we can see exactly what was asked and what was said in full. Based on what we see, it certainly can be inferred that something wrong might have been going on. My guess is, it wasn't though putting actual objects in a class room and having a drag queen in a school goes way way way too far and it was poor judgement in even doing it.
While agreeing with you more than you do with yourself, I would offer the idea that this is not just "teaching," but advocacy.
Young persons are susceptible to working hard to obtain the approval of those in authority above them. This is true of parents, teachers, coaches, priests, and drill sergeants.
Having a "familiarization" shepherded by an individual in authority who is a practicing person of such conduct is a bastardization of the education process and results in hard core advocacy. This is marketing for goodness sake.
We have evolved from punishment and judgment to tolerance to legal protection to acceptance to approval to advocacy.
We are just a short distance from a bloody mandate.
The education system and its advocacy/mandate of DEI is literally the last stop on the train. This is also true of such nonsense as ESG.
Parents are increasingly speaking out about intolerance and bigotry in these schools to preserve what is left of teaching critical thinking.
Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School lost 20%+ of its enrollment after shell-shocked parents exposed that radical left activists replaced Judaism with progressive dogma as the primary religion in the classroom. G-D for Obama and AOC. We yanked our youngest out after two kids graduated, which given the fact my wife's grandfather was the founding Principal, should say something -- the school went off the rails so quickly and so radically it is a tragedy for the entire Jewish community in Chicago. And Parker, Latin, Lab and other "elite" Chicago schools are hiding declining college matriculation profiles under DEIJ.
To save these institutions it is critical to expose the bigotry and rebuild from a position that "all sides are welcome". Parker is and always has been a liberal place ... but liberal used to mean welcoming all sides versus cramming open the gullet and force feeding the geese to make social justice fois gras warriors. Data, debate and dissent are the bedrock of critical thinking and building analytical minds!
My own rules are as follow:1) No taxation without representation; 2) Offer solutions, counterpoints and alternative views; 3) Be in people's faces. Be fearless.
That's a great point, thank you for making it. My college coach was the President of Shipley or something like that for a couple of years a long time ago after he quit coaching basketball. He had a daughter/son in Philly. The one hook Parker (and schools like it) have with parents is their pipeline to selective schools. Anshe went to 8th grade, then the kids went other places. I knew a lot of parents and kids from Anshe and they were really great people. My kids are still friends with kids that went there. In my daughter's class I don't remember the exact number but in a class of 87, I would wager 20-30 went to Ivies and other elite schools. That is a big deal to a lot of parents. I think they are over rated today, where they probably were not 30 years ago.
Thank you for the walk down memory lane ... I think I may know who that headmaster was! As to Anshe, most of our best friends are parents we met there. Many parents agreed with us on what was happening when it was happening, but they were total sheep. When parents focus on a school as a community rather than the fact they are customers buying an educational outcome for their children, then caveat emptor! SEL(social emotional learning) at places like BZAEDS is not just cover for rubbishing academic standards; it's cover for the brainwashing of children and the elimination of critical thinking and debate. Taking our youngest out and putting him into an exceptional rigorous and non-political school was the best gift we could have given him educationally and academically, even if he complains about 3x the homework.
Coach Rich Maack. Great guy. In a world where everyone wanted to coach like Bobby Knight, he coached like John Wooden.....
I always thought places like Anshe were great. It gave kids from similar religious backgrounds a place to be religious without judgement, and learn. (Goes for Catholic, Lutheran, Christian, etc). We weren't in a religious denomination that had lower and upper schools (Presbyterian). At the same time, with the far left wing movement of my denomination, I haven't darkened the doors of a Presbyterian church in a long long time, and with Covid haven't gone.
The writer of this editorial has a disgusting tolerance for the perverted actions of the teacher / dean of students who taught students about dildos, butt plugs, and other inappropriate topics.
The writer states that the teacher / dean of students is a “nice guy,” but that is irrelevant. Having a pleasant demeanor doesn’t give one license to behave in a perverted, sexually inappropriate manner.
I’m sure that most of the Catholic priests who engage in child molestation are also “nice guys” with a pleasant demeanor, but that doesn’t justify their evil acts.
Evil done with a smile and courteous disposition is still evil.
Perverts and pedophiles often depend on having a pleasant and nice persona in order to ingratiate themselves to people which allows them to get away with their perverted behavior.
If the teacher / dean of students had an abrasive personality, he would likely have been fired or ran out of the school, which would have prevented him from engaging in his perverted behavior.
The writer of this editorial is wrong to be tolerant of presenting perverted, sexually explicit material to children. The writer is clearly trying to come across as magnanimous and tolerant, but in reality, he is just another enabler. People like him are partly how we got to this point in our culture.
This writer has absorbed some of the norms of the liberals that he clearly spends so much time around. I have no idea why any conservative would send their kids to that hellhole of a school, even before it went woke.
The writer claims to be a conservative, but he seems to actually be a small government, socially ambivalent libertarian who happens to have capitalistic and pro-life views.
No true conservative would support presenting sexualized material to children like this.
I don't agree with your assertions in the least. I don't think it is in anyway appropriate to have sex toys and talk about how they are used in a high school class.
I can guarantee that I am probably far more conservative than you in practice, and in belief. I don't claim to be conservative. I am conservative, trending toward classical liberal or libertarian. Think Milton Friedman.
However, if parents knew (and my experience is that they did), and the school is private, then you have to be tolerant of it. Tolerance is not acceptance or agreement. There is a big difference.
If you are for school choice, you will have to tolerate a lot of ways to educate children. If you aren't for choice you can try and change the existing government run education system and get it to hone to conservative beliefs, but you will be engaging in a fool's errand.
At the same time, "choice" is exactly that and I suggest you read the book Free To Choose by Milton Friedman.
A very thoughtful piece, and I'm glad it was delivered to my in-box.
I'm also a Chicago-area resident; I've seen the Chicago Teachers Union abandon education for communist indoctrination (I'm not kidding), suburban teachers despair over what they can and can't teach, children who are bright-eyed in first grade and depressed by ninth grade, and a community that, with but a few exceptions, has neither the knowledge base, interest, or moral fiber to fix things.
With specific regard to Parker: Mr. Bruno must be made to understand that the only thing a six year old boy needs to know about sex is that girls have cooties. There is a time for sex education; it is not in elementary school. Apparently this video is about (it's said) older children; even if in high school, is it an educational requirement that we teach them about kink? It should not have taken a surreptitious video by Project Veritas to bring this to light; concerned parents would have known and done something about this before now. There's your problem.
This illustrates the larger point about 'school choice' must be made: Parker is part of that choice. It is an elite private school, and it's been taken over by the multi-culti, gender-blender agenda without protest by either the parents or the larger community. It has a Dean that will talk to children about butt plugs. Most advocates of 'school choice' would suggest to you, Mr. Carter, that educating children about dildos is NOT the choice they want to see in schools. But those advocates aren't stepping up to enforce societal controls and boundaries (imperfect as these are as we'll all acknowledge).
School choice has boundaries. Our schools in general must have boundaries. A public that has been anesthetized by public life and media and has, for decades now, ceded education to others will not use 'school choice' well, precisely because they aren't willing to enforce those boundaries. They don't know what they're choosing.
We have choice -- the tax dollars don't follow the child but one can put a child into public schools, religious schools (as I did for my child) or a school like Parker. What we don't have is a public that is exercising oversight; until that changes, 'choice' doesn't mean very much. Those who want our schools to follow the progressive agenda dislike intensely when a few parents begin to ask what's going on in the classrooms, and we understand why (witness the confrontations at certain Virginia school board meetings). Most parents have been conditioned to shut up and go along. What 'choice' are they going to exercise?
The failure at Parker may be several things, but it's not a failure to choose.
Agreed! School choice is the answer! I had to be diligent with my son in our Chicago area suburban public school. He sadly had to learn to "keep his head down" in the Big Ten University where he did his undergraduate study. Keep quiet or it would affect your grade! Not the way we ever dreamed it would be back in the 60's-70's when we were aspiring to live Dr King's vision.
For another example about how far off the rails academia and education are, click this link: https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1599943691023835137?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1599943691023835137%7Ctwgr%5E69f854bc311c39be92225b5e003bf3a40b709694%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Facecomments.mu.nu%2F%3Fpost%3D402205 If you don't want to click the link, "Rutgers professor says that "white people are committed to being villains" and falsely claims that Africans arrived in North America before white Europeans.
"Whiteness is going to have an end date," she warns. "We gotta take these muthafuckers out."
Demographics are not opinions. They are facts.
The US is 13.4% black and mixed race.
The US is 68% white - this varies a bit as to how Hispanics and others identify, but the gross comparison is valid.
Where some of the friction comes from is this: black Americans age 16-30 commit 62% of the felonies and 60% of the murders (more than half black-on-black murders) in the US and make up the majority of prisoners in our jails. Those facts are connected, of course.
Think about this when considering the font of "villians."
In his 1965 study on the black family, Labor Sec Dan'l Patrick Moynihan, later Senator, identified the 35% of black families without a male head of household as being a troubling phenomenon linked to crime and achievement.
That number is today about 85% - again dependent upon definitions and whose numbers you are looking at. The trend is obvious: it is getting worse, not better.
The conclusion is this - the magnitude of the social challenges presented by 13.4% of America - the vast majority of whom are law abiding and peaceful - is grossly out of proportion to their size in our society; and, we know the root cause - the absence of strong, male leadership in the family unit.
This is what we should be working on together, not racial warfare and victimhood.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Agree, and I think that school choice plays into the center of that argument. If you have a good school, you will see an opportunity and that will change the decisions you make in your life. Hopelessly bad school leads to hopelessness.
School choice is and should be huuuuuuuuuge!
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Wow, these people do a lot of projecting. The racism is astounding, vicious, despicable. She does not even have a clue how messed up her bubble is.
Excellent article, thank you.
The problem is that the Left has decided that culture is now part of the educational process. And that there is a "good" culture (theirs) and a "bad" one (traditional norms to a large extent). They see education as the most effective tool to changing our culture, which is their number one goal.
The Right, on the other hand, views education as objective. It should teach skills and be unbiased. Let people decide, and leave culture to the centuries of traditions that individual families have built. Those things used to be sacred. As Americans we respected pluralism, were proud of it, in fact. The Left has now decided that those things can be bigoted, and they can't help but try to "fix it."
The anger comes from the Right feeling violated that other adults are attempting to change their own culture by back-dooring their children to be someone that reflects the Left's values, and not the Right. It's a fundamental intrusion into basic family rights and a violation of privacy and freedom.
I see that as why this is so heated, yet the Left doesn't understand it. They're just trying to "show us tolerance and what's right" after all. They think the Right is angry because it is bigoted or intolerant, when it's truthfully the intrusion that's driving it. Most people on the Right have a "live and let live" philosophy. Yes, there are extremes, but that exists on both sides.
In trying to change society, the Left is making cultural choices for your family, and that's infuriating. They are attempting to take away our essence, and that's a dangerous thing to try to do to someone.
Agree that the Left has decided culture is a part of education. Any deviation from their culture is met with cries of racism and intolerance, when in fact their culture BREEDS racism and intolerance!!!
I don't disagree that we have to stand up to the Left. Now is the time. But, it's awfully hard to find the courage to do it when your career and ability to provide for your family or yourself is on the line.
As usual, a top notch discussion. Bravo and well played.
Education is a measurable phenomenon. You can benchmark and test for successful outcomes in literature, math, science, and a myriad of such subjects.
Education at the high school level is preparation for life or college or trade school. There is a measurable objective and a destination at the end of the journey.
Today - in part due to the chaos of the Pandemic - US test scores are plummeting. American students are underperforming the world and our obvious long term economic competitors.
This entire discussion devolves into a basic, foundational question: "What is an education?"
Since we can catalog courses and test for outcomes, the question is also -- "Is the teaching of such material relevant to preparing a student for further education or to make their way in the world?"
I say it is not. I do not think becoming conversant on the use and operation of butt plugs will get you into college or land you a good job.
As to the level of outrage we all should marshal on both sides of this issue, I think it is time to unsheath the dirk and have at it.
The teacher's unions are not serving their teachers, the students, the parents, or the nation. Sorry.
They are woefully political and, yes, they are grooming students to adopt certain cultural positions through curriculum manipulation.
If I am asked to value butt plugs and their operation v advanced calculus or computer networking or software or learning how to run family finances, I go with the practical education.
Conservatives have a fatal flaw. In the pursuit of being judged as having an open mind, they let their bloody brains fall out.
This is total nonsense and a pox on any school that would see this as being part of their educational mission.
Butt plugs?
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Agree with you on Teacher's Unions more than you agree with yourself. Also agree that we don't need to be teaching how to use sex toys to high schoolers. There is YouTube for that. I might disagree with standardized testing. I think there is a benefit to them. It's a measuring stick and while they can be gamed, it is something. Recognizing that they are gamed helps with analysis. How many kids do you know that went to a psychologist and got extended time on tests when they didn't really need it? I know a bunch. I also know I paid a lot of money for my kids to do test prep. It's not as if kids are sharpening #2 pencils and packing a lunch to take those tests cold like we did back in the day.
Also agree on the psychology of conservatives. I think we do need to throw the gauntlet down. At the same time, sometimes we throw it down when we probably needed more information before we decided to throw it.
Are we in danger of losing our culture and the American Dream? Yes, if the Obama acolytes take over. Let's put it to extremes. Who do you want to have lead you and death is not an option? AOC or Marjorie Greene. I will take Greene every single time.
We agree on Teachers' Unions. We agree on sex toys. We agree on YouTube.
I am not preaching standardized testing such as college admittance testing; I am talking about testing in history/physics class that supports the notion that the student is progressing and mastering the subject matter and that parents and the school can rely upon this testing to identify success and to underpin their financial investment.
In some ways, this is also a report card on the performance of the teacher.
Since COVID more and more schools are jettisoning the College Boards. Colleges admitted students long before the College Boards were invented.
There is nothing wrong with standardized testing per se. There is nothing wrong with test prep. If you are in the securities racket, you have to pass tests that ensure a level of competence and ethics.
Life is a graded exercise and there will be tests.
We are not just losing our culture; we are creating a replacement toxic culture that fails to reward achievement, redistributes success and wealth; and that diminishes the quality of life for the doers.
This toxic culture punishes achievement and values. It is a race to the bottom.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Here is what's tough to change. If I go to an Ivy, I am considered smart and I have the sheepskin for the rest of my life. Scan the rosters of professional firms, no one went to McNeese St. How do we change that?
We don't.
In every continuum there are gradations. Not everyone gets to start on third base and think they hit a triple.
Not everyone gets to go to an Ivy League school.
In the end, considering startups, small companies, medium companies, larger firms -- there is room for everyone to have a good job, a good life, to reap the benefits of their hard work.
Sure there will be industries -- talking to you, venture capital -- that will be populated by a small number of prestigious schools. The Army and the military are populated by ring knockers.
We don't change it. We teach people how to compete, how to pursue excellence, to do the best they can with what they have as constrained by time. We deal with it.
And, not everybody will be tall, good looking, well bred, well married, and named "Jeff."
We few.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
"The anger comes from the Right feeling violated that other adults are attempting to change their own culture by back-dooring their children"
Literally, in this case.
This might be the best thing I've seen you write, Jeff. I think that candidates - nationally and in state-wide races - will have immense success if they embrace school choice with the pluralistic language you show here. The only things that will moderate public schools (and private schools too) are money and market forces. When parents are allowed to vote with their feet and tax dollars, you'll see actual changes to shift public schools back toward the center.
This was a very good write-up. Especially bringing your knowledge of the people involved to your commentary. Most people, educators in this instance, whether left or right, really are trying to do good things for kids' education. The nutpickers like PV, LoTT, Proft have their place, but they frequently don't bring much humanity, nuance, or context to the discussion.
I agree with you about the specific issues that caused this flair up. I also agree that school choice is necessary, yet I also believe it is nowhere near sufficient. As I said in my comment on the other thread, so much of the nuttiness gets tied back to the education schools. That's where the kids get all the critical theories infused into their coursework. Normal kids who are trained to be teachers also get taught to be activists. Even if you have school choice these new teachers almost all come from this monocultural pool.
One of the most prominent people who is very much on straightening out the higher education system is Jonathan Haidt. https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/when-truth-and-social-justice-collide-choose-truth Glenn Loury and John McWhorter do some great commentary. It's still an uphill battle.
I, similar to your past, live in Chicago as a non-leftist with kids. I hate bubbles. I still mostly like it even as I agree with your assessment that it has gotten more difficult to avoid conflict. But it can be done! Not all lefty people are hyperpartisan nuts. When you interact with reasonable people it shouldn't be hard to avoid "them" vs. "us" language.
So much of the "current thing" among elites is just people following trends. As I also said in another thread, I think some of the people who see through a lot of the BS are the kids. So I guess I'm a bit more optimistic about the future than you or some of your other commenters. (That comment is about the broader education/culture. I have a hard time believing public schools in Chicago will ever get better, whether or not there is more school choice.)
Just think about how much better off horney 14 year old kids are now that they are taught the advantages of sticking it in with lube versus spit. Sure beats some backward ass fart telling them to keep it in their pants until marriage.
Horny 14 y.o. kids have had access to the internet for over 20 years. One reason I think that showing this stuff in school is not of much value.
Agree very much that there is access to information that didn't exist years ago. It is not appropriate to educate kids on the use of sex toys. I do think it's appropriate to teach tolerance, but not create a victim class at the same time. Parker buys into the victim class approach today, and did yesterday.
Strong volley at the net. Well played.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
HA, I am going in dry.....bite the pillow.
I highly recommend Archbishop Samuel Aquila's commentary in today's WSJ. He touched on some of what you bought up, but focused on allegations by NYT and others that Catholics who oppose LGBTQXYZ indoctrination are "hateful" and violent. Here's the link:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacegoating-the-church-for-club-q-shooting-denver-post-catholicism-lgbt-evangelicals-catechism-11670525803?mod=opinion_lead_pos9
I was recently introduced to Betsy Devos, who has been a children’s advocate for decades. As Education Secretary she pushed for tax dollars to follow the child, creating freedom of choice. The teachers unions, always advocates for themselves and not children, were unrelenting in opposition. She continues her advocacy and more should pay attention to her expertise.
I am interested to learn if Parkers kids have experienced the same decline in reading, math, and science scores as seen in the public schools. I find it outrageous that here in Wheaton about 50% of students fail to meet minimum basic education standards. Ted Dabrowsky at Wirepoints has pointed out similar failures throughout Illinois public education.
As for sex ed, a little bit of conservative discussion at home, and leadership by example, goes a long way.
Excellent column. #KeepItUp !
Betsy is GREAT. It's a good question about Parker's academic performance. I don't know what it is. It is messy to tease out. For example, kids that go to Parker will get a lot of tutoring for standardized tests. The college placement office is incredible, and has relationships with "the best schools" so they get a ton of kids in them-not to mention a lot of alums/parents went to them too.
While I intellectually follow your arguments about Parker's value, it's hard for me separate that from the fact that kids at a very young age are being exposed to very complicated sexual issues in a manner like votech subjects. It's not just that all of these sexual options exist. It's also how to actually perform these sexual options, what tools to use, etc. It is possible that the sexualization of education has significantly increased since your kids went there as well. I think sex education in schools was a mistake made 40 decades ago and has led to where we are now. Parents should be teaching culture and values, of which sex is one. Schools should teach reading, writing, math, history, science, etc. This is an issue in which DeSantis has performed well. As did Younkin.
Oh, I 1000% agree very young and middle school age kids should not be exposed to any of this. These were 14-18 year old kids. Actually think my kids were sophomores....but I don't know what exactly is going on at Parker today. I do think that the Project Veritas videos should be released in their entirety so we can see exactly what was asked and what was said in full. Based on what we see, it certainly can be inferred that something wrong might have been going on. My guess is, it wasn't though putting actual objects in a class room and having a drag queen in a school goes way way way too far and it was poor judgement in even doing it.
I don’t know about this situation but PV used to post the full videos on their web site.
While agreeing with you more than you do with yourself, I would offer the idea that this is not just "teaching," but advocacy.
Young persons are susceptible to working hard to obtain the approval of those in authority above them. This is true of parents, teachers, coaches, priests, and drill sergeants.
Having a "familiarization" shepherded by an individual in authority who is a practicing person of such conduct is a bastardization of the education process and results in hard core advocacy. This is marketing for goodness sake.
We have evolved from punishment and judgment to tolerance to legal protection to acceptance to approval to advocacy.
We are just a short distance from a bloody mandate.
The education system and its advocacy/mandate of DEI is literally the last stop on the train. This is also true of such nonsense as ESG.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Parents are increasingly speaking out about intolerance and bigotry in these schools to preserve what is left of teaching critical thinking.
Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School lost 20%+ of its enrollment after shell-shocked parents exposed that radical left activists replaced Judaism with progressive dogma as the primary religion in the classroom. G-D for Obama and AOC. We yanked our youngest out after two kids graduated, which given the fact my wife's grandfather was the founding Principal, should say something -- the school went off the rails so quickly and so radically it is a tragedy for the entire Jewish community in Chicago. And Parker, Latin, Lab and other "elite" Chicago schools are hiding declining college matriculation profiles under DEIJ.
My own prep school (Shipley) is even putting content on the website about de-centering whiteness in the family (the school incidentally has a 30+ year history of discrimination against free speech and classical liberal viewpoints). https://blogs.shipleyschool.org/decentering-whiteness-at-home-and-in-your-family
You can't make this stuff up anymore!
To save these institutions it is critical to expose the bigotry and rebuild from a position that "all sides are welcome". Parker is and always has been a liberal place ... but liberal used to mean welcoming all sides versus cramming open the gullet and force feeding the geese to make social justice fois gras warriors. Data, debate and dissent are the bedrock of critical thinking and building analytical minds!
My own rules are as follow:1) No taxation without representation; 2) Offer solutions, counterpoints and alternative views; 3) Be in people's faces. Be fearless.
That's a great point, thank you for making it. My college coach was the President of Shipley or something like that for a couple of years a long time ago after he quit coaching basketball. He had a daughter/son in Philly. The one hook Parker (and schools like it) have with parents is their pipeline to selective schools. Anshe went to 8th grade, then the kids went other places. I knew a lot of parents and kids from Anshe and they were really great people. My kids are still friends with kids that went there. In my daughter's class I don't remember the exact number but in a class of 87, I would wager 20-30 went to Ivies and other elite schools. That is a big deal to a lot of parents. I think they are over rated today, where they probably were not 30 years ago.
Thank you for the walk down memory lane ... I think I may know who that headmaster was! As to Anshe, most of our best friends are parents we met there. Many parents agreed with us on what was happening when it was happening, but they were total sheep. When parents focus on a school as a community rather than the fact they are customers buying an educational outcome for their children, then caveat emptor! SEL(social emotional learning) at places like BZAEDS is not just cover for rubbishing academic standards; it's cover for the brainwashing of children and the elimination of critical thinking and debate. Taking our youngest out and putting him into an exceptional rigorous and non-political school was the best gift we could have given him educationally and academically, even if he complains about 3x the homework.
Coach Rich Maack. Great guy. In a world where everyone wanted to coach like Bobby Knight, he coached like John Wooden.....
I always thought places like Anshe were great. It gave kids from similar religious backgrounds a place to be religious without judgement, and learn. (Goes for Catholic, Lutheran, Christian, etc). We weren't in a religious denomination that had lower and upper schools (Presbyterian). At the same time, with the far left wing movement of my denomination, I haven't darkened the doors of a Presbyterian church in a long long time, and with Covid haven't gone.
This one made our family die laughing. Satire is hate in this crowd! https://www.chicagocontrarian.com/blog/famed-chicago-school-to-release-the-official-parker-handbook
OMG that is funny. Thank you for posting.
The writer of this editorial has a disgusting tolerance for the perverted actions of the teacher / dean of students who taught students about dildos, butt plugs, and other inappropriate topics.
The writer states that the teacher / dean of students is a “nice guy,” but that is irrelevant. Having a pleasant demeanor doesn’t give one license to behave in a perverted, sexually inappropriate manner.
I’m sure that most of the Catholic priests who engage in child molestation are also “nice guys” with a pleasant demeanor, but that doesn’t justify their evil acts.
Evil done with a smile and courteous disposition is still evil.
Perverts and pedophiles often depend on having a pleasant and nice persona in order to ingratiate themselves to people which allows them to get away with their perverted behavior.
If the teacher / dean of students had an abrasive personality, he would likely have been fired or ran out of the school, which would have prevented him from engaging in his perverted behavior.
The writer of this editorial is wrong to be tolerant of presenting perverted, sexually explicit material to children. The writer is clearly trying to come across as magnanimous and tolerant, but in reality, he is just another enabler. People like him are partly how we got to this point in our culture.
This writer has absorbed some of the norms of the liberals that he clearly spends so much time around. I have no idea why any conservative would send their kids to that hellhole of a school, even before it went woke.
The writer claims to be a conservative, but he seems to actually be a small government, socially ambivalent libertarian who happens to have capitalistic and pro-life views.
No true conservative would support presenting sexualized material to children like this.
I don't agree with your assertions in the least. I don't think it is in anyway appropriate to have sex toys and talk about how they are used in a high school class.
I can guarantee that I am probably far more conservative than you in practice, and in belief. I don't claim to be conservative. I am conservative, trending toward classical liberal or libertarian. Think Milton Friedman.
However, if parents knew (and my experience is that they did), and the school is private, then you have to be tolerant of it. Tolerance is not acceptance or agreement. There is a big difference.
If you are for school choice, you will have to tolerate a lot of ways to educate children. If you aren't for choice you can try and change the existing government run education system and get it to hone to conservative beliefs, but you will be engaging in a fool's errand.
At the same time, "choice" is exactly that and I suggest you read the book Free To Choose by Milton Friedman.
Well done. Again.
https://ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=072000050HArt.+11+Subdiv.+25&ActID=1876&ChapterID=53&SeqStart=19800000&SeqEnd=20500000 someone on Twitter alerted me to this. It could be an actual crime.
A very thoughtful piece, and I'm glad it was delivered to my in-box.
I'm also a Chicago-area resident; I've seen the Chicago Teachers Union abandon education for communist indoctrination (I'm not kidding), suburban teachers despair over what they can and can't teach, children who are bright-eyed in first grade and depressed by ninth grade, and a community that, with but a few exceptions, has neither the knowledge base, interest, or moral fiber to fix things.
With specific regard to Parker: Mr. Bruno must be made to understand that the only thing a six year old boy needs to know about sex is that girls have cooties. There is a time for sex education; it is not in elementary school. Apparently this video is about (it's said) older children; even if in high school, is it an educational requirement that we teach them about kink? It should not have taken a surreptitious video by Project Veritas to bring this to light; concerned parents would have known and done something about this before now. There's your problem.
This illustrates the larger point about 'school choice' must be made: Parker is part of that choice. It is an elite private school, and it's been taken over by the multi-culti, gender-blender agenda without protest by either the parents or the larger community. It has a Dean that will talk to children about butt plugs. Most advocates of 'school choice' would suggest to you, Mr. Carter, that educating children about dildos is NOT the choice they want to see in schools. But those advocates aren't stepping up to enforce societal controls and boundaries (imperfect as these are as we'll all acknowledge).
School choice has boundaries. Our schools in general must have boundaries. A public that has been anesthetized by public life and media and has, for decades now, ceded education to others will not use 'school choice' well, precisely because they aren't willing to enforce those boundaries. They don't know what they're choosing.
We have choice -- the tax dollars don't follow the child but one can put a child into public schools, religious schools (as I did for my child) or a school like Parker. What we don't have is a public that is exercising oversight; until that changes, 'choice' doesn't mean very much. Those who want our schools to follow the progressive agenda dislike intensely when a few parents begin to ask what's going on in the classrooms, and we understand why (witness the confrontations at certain Virginia school board meetings). Most parents have been conditioned to shut up and go along. What 'choice' are they going to exercise?
The failure at Parker may be several things, but it's not a failure to choose.
Agreed! School choice is the answer! I had to be diligent with my son in our Chicago area suburban public school. He sadly had to learn to "keep his head down" in the Big Ten University where he did his undergraduate study. Keep quiet or it would affect your grade! Not the way we ever dreamed it would be back in the 60's-70's when we were aspiring to live Dr King's vision.