Category: education and schooling

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education and schooling government transparency

The Secret Teachings of Our Age

education, school, ideology, politics

The high school course was not “Logic and Semiotics in Western Culture” — or “Eastern.” It was not “Memes for Momes.” Or even “Cartoons from Cave Walls to Bathroom Stalls.”

It was “A History of Ethnic and Gender Studies.”

Do we dare ask what’s in it?

Doesn’t matter. Because we’re not allowed to see what’s in it.

“Michigan parents can’t request some school curricula under public record acts after the Michigan Supreme Court chose not to hear an appeal from a lower court,” explains the Michigan Capitol Confidential.

“On Sept. 25, the state’s top court denied an appeal filed by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy on behalf of a Rochester parent who requested the curriculum for a class held in the Rochester Public Schools district.” Using the “the state’s Freedom of Information Act, Carol Beth Litkouhi in 2022 sought course materials” for the class mentioned above. “Rochester Public Schools refused. The district argued that the law did not require it to provide records held by teachers.”

And so far — and barring a revision of state law — the public schools have won. 

Not a happy story, but even more than bad news for Michigan parents and (by extension) their children (the students in public schools), it demonstrates a mindset we’ve encountered before, and not confined to one school district or one state.

According to educators in public service, they have a right to teach your kids and not tell you what they are doing.

They are committed to doing this.

They are indoctrinators and not on your side.

They must be stopped. Politically. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights general freedom

Harvard, Hamas and Harassment

student protests, Harvard, Gaza, Palestine, antisemitism, Jews

Let’s assume that most Harvard University officials harbor no special animus against Jews.

Let’s also assume that the school’s willingness to ignore its own policies while Jewish students were the focus last year of what Judge Richard Stearn agrees was “‘severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive’… harassment” by Hamas supporters was motivated, rather, only by lack of courage.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, let’s say that Harvard officials were motivated only by craven unwillingness to go against one of the latest left-​wing ideological fads, that of letting anti-​Israel agitators run wild.

But a policy that protects students from harassment and assault only when this is easy or fashionable to do — while insisting on “freedom of speech” for persons pushing past obnoxious speech into criminal assault and battery — is not much of a policy.

Stearns’s ruling is not a binding decision on the merits of the plaintiffs’ lawsuit. He simply allowed it to proceed.

His refusal to dismiss means that he finds the plaintiffs’ argument plausible — the argument that Harvard has violated its contractual obligations by observing what pro-​Hamas students were doing to other students with supreme institutional indifference.

Indeed, he finds that the protests “were, at times, confrontational and physically violent, and plaintiffs legitimately fear their repetition. The harassment also impacted plaintiffs’ life experience at Harvard; they dreaded walking through the campus, missed classes, and stopped participating in extracurricular events.”

Peaceful protest ends when riot, assault, and intimidation begin. Institutions of both law and higher learning should always make that dividing line as clear as possible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

The Racial Land Mine of First Grade

BLM, Black Lives Matter, all lives matter, education, schools

You can’t let kids get away with anything.

Schools must apply some discipline. Otherwise, chaos would ensue. Talking out of turn, pulling pigtails, passing notes … and, not least, an epidemic of expressing benign thoughts inconsistent with the poisonous race-​conscious ideology that some schools seek to inculcate.

In March 2021, a little girl known as “B.B.” in court documents got into trouble for drawing a group of classmates of different races. She added the words “Black Lives Matter” and, below that, “any life.” She gave the drawing to a black classmate to try to comfort him, as she later explained.

Had B.B. been more attuned to the racial controversies of the day — does she not follow The New York Times and CNN? — she might have realized what treacherous waters she had dived into. 

As it was, she was surprised when the school forced her to apologize to her classmate and forbade her from drawing any more pictures while in school and from attending recess for two weeks.

The parents sued. A district court ruled in favor of the school, but the parents, helped by Pacific Legal Foundation, are appealing.

The district judge says that whether First Amendment protections of free speech apply here depends on whether such speech, however innocent, would “significantly interfere with the discipline needed for the school to function.”

The drawing could hardly have thus interfered unless part of the school’s “function” is to impose race-​conscious orthodoxy. 

And suppress even the slightest peep of unwary dissent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom too much government

The State vs. Homework

school, education, teaching, home work

Oy, the stress. Of doing stuff. It’s nonstop.

If a California lawmaker gets her way, it will stop, though, at least in the schools. Or at least slow way down.

Consider the pressure, the horrible grinding pressure of having to practice math problems, peer at chemical formulas, read assigned readings, summarize, spell, grammarize, memorize names and dates and Spanish vocabulary, and on and on and on … en casa.…

It’s the kind of thing that can curdle a kid’s physical and mental health. Not to mention cut into playtime.

So is the legislation AB2999 justified?

Is Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo warranted in hoping to require school boards to ponder the “reasonable amount of time spent on homework per student that should not be exceeded” or whether “homework should be assigned … in any elementary school grade, inclusive” or perhaps that homework be “optional and not graded,” et cetera?

Well, if we think about this, we must admit that there is one and only one reason to ever require students to spend time at home mastering what is introduced in class. Only to prepare them for earning a living and living life by helping them obtain knowledge and skills and realize their potential.

But that’s it. That’s the only reason.

Of course, individual teachers, if competent and conscientious, already think about what homework is appropriate to assign. They must, we hope, want their students to function capably in life. And maybe also to learn that learning is not torture.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling national politics & policies tax policy

Trump to Ax Tip Tax

Joe Biden, taxes, tipping, student loans, buying votes, debt

When Biden panders to his lower-​income supporters, he targets zeroing out their student debt and regulating credit card companies with further restrictions on their ability to charge for overdrafts and the like.

When Trump panders to his lower-​income supporters, he promises to exempt tips from income taxation, as he did recently in Las Vegas.

This may be the most obvious difference between left- and right-​styles in politicking to the masses, good-ol’-fashioned vote-​buying or its twin: leftists forgive debts and add regulations, rightists reduce taxes.

Like me, you may, at first blanch, prefer the latter form of pandering, but Eric Boehm, at Reason, offers some reasons not to look so kindly on Trump’s pandering. First, and most obviously: “Reducing revenue without identifying offsetting spending cuts means Trump is merely promising to borrow more heavily.”

A bigger challenge comes later: “On the surface, that sounds great. But there’s already one likely unintended consequence: A lot more income will suddenly be reported as tips. Any time a government gives preferential tax treatment to one type of economic activity, you tend to get a lot more of that type of economic activity. Does that mean we’ll have an entirely tip-​based economy?” The answer is a likely No.

Oddly, Mr. Boehm doesn’t address one obvious element: Tips aren’t wages and they aren’t profits. Tips are gifts. They aren’t determined by employers and they aren’t specified by employees. And gifts aren’t taxed as income like other income is.

So letting people who accept tips in the course of their labors not pay taxes on them is really, really hard to object to.

In fact, I don’t object.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom ideological culture

Lilly Loves Me

Starbucks, ideological culture, friendship, business

Lilly loves me. That’s the good news. 

I love her, too. Funny thing, though, I don’t even know Lilly’s last name. You see, she works at my local Starbucks. She makes a mean flat white. 

I do know how to say “thank you” in Vietnamese — sounds like “gahm un.” Her folks hail from Vietnam. One day a man spoke Vietnamese with her and she lit up. So I learned those two words in Vietnamese. 

The bad news — or the other good news — is that she recently hurt my feelings. 

You see, after my heart attack of a couple months ago, I scaled back my flat white drinking. When I first ordered a tall (that is, a small) instead of my usual venti (large), well, my Starbucks peeps thought there might be a tear in the universe. 

I explained that I wanted to cut down on my caffeine and milk intake post heart attack.* Which immediately got them onboard with my change.

But soon I backslid to a grande (medium). Then, with the price difference to move up to a venti size so enticingly small … well, I was back to venti. 

The other day when Lilly was delivering my drink, she saw its size and questioned, “You’re already back to a venti?”

Ouch! It felt like when I’ve disappointed my kids or wife or other loved ones. 

Because … Lilly is a loved one. I care about her — like so many of her workmates whom I’ve gotten to know. And she cares about me, a venti-​size concern! She wants me to live. More than the extra 20 – 30 cents her employer might make from the larger drink. 

When I mention Starbucks, many think about it being a liberal corporation.** I, however, think about the mostly young people I’ve met, working their butts off to advance themselves while being so kind and decent with customers; thoughtful in conversation. 

Young people these days … I love ’em. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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* For the record, this change wasn’t something my cardiologist specifically advised; just me trying to improve my diet to live a long time.

** Consider that back in 2020 Starbuck’s pioneering CEO Howard Schultz wasn’t “progressive” enough to be comfortable running for president in the Democratic Party.