The P C Madness thread.

nivek

As Above So Below

San Diego schools try untested radical agenda to push for mediocrity

San Diego Unified schools are facing a crisis of intentionally designed mediocrity. The desire to slash honors courses and upend traditional grading stems from the same bad philosophy animating its top leaders.

Their vision is captured by Marcia Gentry, director of the Gifted Education Resource Institute at Purdue, who claims that a test is "not really a raw ability test. Otherwise it would yield equal numbers among all groups of people." In this line of thinking tests are clearly racist because as of today there are outcome disparities associated with race.

In a recent article in the San Diego Union Tribune, Richard Barrera, trustee on the San Diego Unified School District argued that determining a student’s intelligence via a test is "silly." The paper paraphrased, saying he described the tests as "outdated and rooted in racism."

Barrera makes the argument that personal recommendations from parents and teachers are a better metric to judge a student’s educational capabilities than actual tests. Barrera is moving the district toward eliminating advanced honors courses, and toward a pass-fail based grading system, where nobody is allowed to fail, because nobody is allowed to excel.

This will prove disastrous if left unchecked. The argument that academic testing was created to institute a racial hierarchy is a flat-out lie. It is a lazy solution that will take us down the dangerous path of leaving our students unprepared for the challenges of the real world.  

Recently, Patrick Henry High parents were stunned to discover that some honors courses were no longer available to students. In the wake of public outcry this was amended and has since been seemingly resolved. However, I’m of the strong opinion that district leaders are going to try this again and try it everywhere. I don’t believe they are sorry they did it. I believe they are sorry they got caught and didn’t properly brand the agenda.


(More on the link)

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AD1184

Celestial
Their vision is captured by Marcia Gentry, director of the Gifted Education Resource Institute at Purdue, who claims that a test is "not really a raw ability test. Otherwise it would yield equal numbers among all groups of people."
This is reasoning from the flawed assumption that there should be equal test scores across groups. If you question the assumption, then other explanations are available. However, these people clearly are not in pursuit of truth but of a radical egalitarian agenda, and will distort reality to fit.

Culture is demarcated quite strongly along racial lines. If we assume that culture is the leading determinant of academic attainment within a group then that would explain a lot. Those from cultures which place a high value on learning (such as east Asian cultures), will perform the best, which indeed they do. Those cultures which place less of an emphasis on academic attainment will not do as well.

In a recent article in the San Diego Union Tribune, Richard Barrera, trustee on the San Diego Unified School District argued that determining a student’s intelligence via a test is "silly." The paper paraphrased, saying he described the tests as "outdated and rooted in racism."
This is Amero-centric thinking again, and I have commented previously that these American radical leftists ironically have a rather Amero-centric bias, believing that a) everything originated in America, and/or that b) the peculiar racial dynamic that exists in America has existed in all other countries at all times. Standardized testing is used in many other countries and originated ultimately in China, many such countries were mono-racial when examinations were introduced.
 
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nivek

As Above So Below

Elderly woman, 80, who has attended YMCA pool for 35 years is BANNED after demanding transgender worker leave women's locker room accusing them of 'watching little girls pulling down their suits'

Julie Jaman, 80, has been a regular for 35 years at the Mountain View pool in the City of Port Townsend, Washington state before her recent lifetime ban. She was made aware of the trans worker, Clementine Adams, being in the changing room while she was taking a shower and 'heard a man's voice'. 'I saw a man in a woman's bathing suit watching maybe four or five little girls pulling down their suits in order to use the toilet,' Jaman told KIRO. 'I asked if he had a penis and he said it was none of my business. I told that man to 'get out right now!'' Staff, however, said she was being discriminatory. Police were later called and took details of the incident in order to file a report. Pool bosses say Jaman was barred after several incidents, not just this one. Since her being banned from the pool, a protest was held outside the facility at which supporters of Jaman and trans activists both attended.

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nivek

As Above So Below

Marvel's Taika Waititi comes under fire for resurfaced anti-trans tweets and deadnaming Caitlyn Jenner after branding himself a 'gay icon'

Taika Waititi comes under fire for resurfaced anti-trans tweets

Marvel director Taika Waititi has come under fire for resurfaced anti-trans tweets and for dead-naming Caitlyn Jenner after branding himself a 'gay icon.' His name began trending on Twitter this week after it was revealed he and singer Rita Ora had got married, but for all the wrong reasons. Unearthed tweets from almost a decade ago, drew criticism for shaming trans women and beauty pageant contestants.

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AD1184

Celestial

Marvel's Taika Waititi comes under fire for resurfaced anti-trans tweets and deadnaming Caitlyn Jenner after branding himself a 'gay icon'

Taika Waititi comes under fire for resurfaced anti-trans tweets

Marvel director Taika Waititi has come under fire for resurfaced anti-trans tweets and for dead-naming Caitlyn Jenner after branding himself a 'gay icon.' His name began trending on Twitter this week after it was revealed he and singer Rita Ora had got married, but for all the wrong reasons. Unearthed tweets from almost a decade ago, drew criticism for shaming trans women and beauty pageant contestants.

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The Daily Mail is supposedly a conservative newspaper. However, it is one of the world's leading pushers of the left's crazy new gender ideology. It enthusiastically adopts all the buzzwords, promotes so-called 'transgender' celebrities, and goes after people who disagree with that stuff.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
However, it is one of the world's leading pushers of the left's crazy new gender ideology. It enthusiastically adopts all the buzzwords, promotes so-called 'transgender' celebrities, and goes after people who disagree with that stuff.
Yes it most certainly is, that media site doesn't hold back on publishing on that topic of gender ideology...There's too much of that content on Dailymail but mainly on the American and UK news sections, though I've noticed not as much on the Australian section...

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nivek

As Above So Below

Outgoing Whole Foods CEO John Mackey blasts young 'woke' workers and says he's worried 'socialists are taking everything over' from education to the military, threatening the 'liberties I've taken for granted most of my life'



John Mackey (left, top right at store opening in 1984), who co-founded Whole Foods 42 years ago, said there had been a shift towards woke principles in major Democratic cities, like New York City, where young people 'don't seem to want to work'. He accused youngsters of only wanting to work in jobs they are passionate about, arguing that they 'can't hope to start with meaningful work'. Mackey also said socialists are now threatening the 'liberties I've taken for granted most of my life'. Mackey, who is estimated to be worth around $75million, has been a vocal critic of socialism. In 2020, he claimed capitalism is the 'greatest thing humanity has ever done' and cannot be replaced by socialism, which he described as 'trickle-up poverty'. The libertarian grocery store boss (bottom right: first Whole Foods store), whose business is said to 'lead with love', said yesterday that unemployment benefits offered during the Covid pandemic put a strain on Whole Foods' ability to hire staff.

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nivek

As Above So Below

Minneapolis school district DEFENDS deal with teachers' union to lay off white staff first - regardless of seniority - saying it will 'remedy the effects of past discrimination'

Minneapolis Public Schools defends its upcoming contract that promotes laying off white teachers over teachers of color. It said it was a 'remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination.' The stipulation is part of a new agreement starting in spring 2023 between the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Minneapolis Public Schools. Part of the agreement was an attempt to re-format how the school district hires and keeps teachers of color. The new contract says that they may go outside the order to avoid layoffs to a teacher who is 'a member of a population underrepresented.' This prioritizing may apply to bring back teachers who were laid off should re-hires occur.

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Standingstones

Celestial

Minneapolis school district DEFENDS deal with teachers' union to lay off white staff first - regardless of seniority - saying it will 'remedy the effects of past discrimination'

Minneapolis Public Schools defends its upcoming contract that promotes laying off white teachers over teachers of color. It said it was a 'remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination.' The stipulation is part of a new agreement starting in spring 2023 between the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Minneapolis Public Schools. Part of the agreement was an attempt to re-format how the school district hires and keeps teachers of color. The new contract says that they may go outside the order to avoid layoffs to a teacher who is 'a member of a population underrepresented.' This prioritizing may apply to bring back teachers who were laid off should re-hires occur.

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You can tell the world has gone mad. Laying off white teachers? Best to find a new position or trade.
 

nivek

As Above So Below

Berkeley co-op bans WHITE PEOPLE from common areas to 'avoid white violence and presence' - and all students trying to sign in to building are asked to declare their race



An off-campus house at the University of California, Berkeley called the Person of Color Theme House has rules that state 'White guests are not allowed in common spaces,' but aims to have an 'inclusive' environment. A post on Reddit showed a picture of the house rules, which began by saying 'many POC moved here to be able to avoid white violence and presence, so respect their decision of avoidance if you bring white guests.' The house was created as part of the Berkeley Student Cooperative, a program designed to bring affordable housing to students in California's Bay-area.

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wwkirk

Divine

Berkeley co-op bans WHITE PEOPLE from common areas to 'avoid white violence and presence' - and all students trying to sign in to building are asked to declare their race



An off-campus house at the University of California, Berkeley called the Person of Color Theme House has rules that state 'White guests are not allowed in common spaces,' but aims to have an 'inclusive' environment. A post on Reddit showed a picture of the house rules, which began by saying 'many POC moved here to be able to avoid white violence and presence, so respect their decision of avoidance if you bring white guests.' The house was created as part of the Berkeley Student Cooperative, a program designed to bring affordable housing to students in California's Bay-area.

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True there was a long period of white violence against non-whites, but in there past 20-30 years I'd say there is far more non-white (black specifically) violence against whites than vice versa. At least in the US. (Of course they would reply that they aren't really talking about "violence-violence," but rather what existentialists characterize as the The Gaze.)

Anyway, the dumb loophole to the racist policy allows for experimentation. A white person can choose to identify as a POC, particularly when they are in the right mood.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Interesting that after all these years the Big Plan for Fix Everything involves segregation. Separate bathrooms, drinking fountains and bus seats next?
 

nivek

As Above So Below
A little long but a good read...
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Rise of the new Puritans: Once it was religious fanatics who sucked all the fun out of life but today it's joyless young social justice warriors, writes JULIE BURCHILL, as she reveals why she refuses to bow at their altar of wokeness

The American wit Gore Vidal once observed that, in the 17th century, the Puritans left England for America 'not because they were persecuted for their religious beliefs, but because they were forbidden to persecute others for their beliefs'.

Surveying the ever-growing pile-up that is wokery in Britain, it's hard not to recall these words. For woke is the first alleged social justice movement that seeks not to extend freedoms, but — in the manner of all vicious, bullying cults — to limit them.

The great progressive crusades of the 20th century — from women's liberation to civil rights for black and gay people — sought to increase the span of human dignity by making sure the same rules applied fairly and to everyone.

But as I pointed out in the book I published last year, Welcome To The Woke Trials: How Identity Killed Progressive Politics, the woke movement — that censorious, high-minded mob trying to force everyone else into following their narrow worldview — has nothing so liberal about it.

Instead, it has far more in common with the hysterical witch-hunting of the Middle Ages. Now two new books take up my thesis: that wokery has a quasi-religious nature, and it's only getting worse.

First, there's The Rise Of The New Puritans, by American Noah Rothman. And secondly there's Andrew Doyle's forthcoming tome, The New Puritans: How The Religion Of Social Justice Captured The Western World.

All three of us have been struck by the strange cultish quality of the modern 'social justice' movement. For a start, there's the magical thinking. To the woke, a penis can belong to a female if the owner dons a dress: trans-substantiation!

A starving, penniless drug addict living in a doorway has 'privilege' — as long as he's a white male.

Words mean the opposite of what they're supposed to. At the BBC, 'diversity' is parroting the same line on everything from the importance of breakfast to the folly of Brexit. 'Inclusivity' is cancelling anyone who doesn't mouth the platitudes of the mob.

Criticism of Islam is 'punching down', despite it being the world's fastest-growing religion. (Far safer to kick the Christians instead.) And so on.

The hierarchy of the new woke puritans, too, is strikingly similar to that of the old religions. There's a priestly caste who are never to be questioned: men in frocks and their aggressive 'allies'.

After a brief flurry of feminine freedom towards the end of the last century, once again men are the self-appointed experts on everything female.

The most recent and ridiculous example of this was Jason Grant, a young macho man — and former employee of Imperial Tobacco — who was appointed Scotland's first 'Period Dignity Officer'. Because nothing says 'dignity' like men telling women how to deal with their intimate body issues.

Just like so many primitive old faiths, children are being sacrificed to the woke religion — not the ritual child murders of the Aztecs or the child-raping of the Catholic Church, but rather stunting children's bodies with puberty blockers, sterilising them and maiming them with mutilating surgery.

And then there's the woke congregation. Look how the flock parade themselves on social media, as they swing between primly signalling their own virtue and baying for the blood of the sinners.

The witches of bygone times were mostly older women who dared to live independently of men, preferring cats. Younger women often denounced them to the authorities.

In an eerie parallel, today it's older feminists of my own vintage who are more likely to point out certain self-evident truths: that 'cervix-havers' are women, say, and that penis-havers are not. Yet it is we who are are traduced by our younger sisters as 'Terfs': trans-exclusionary radical feminists, the witches de nos jours.

Queen of the Terfs, of course, is J. K. Rowling, who has received death threats from the woke cult ever since she made fun of their language two years ago, saying: 'People who menstruate.' I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?'

As I say, most of the wokies savaging Britain's most successful author are young: but sometimes they're women old enough to know better. Joanne Harris, 58, mildly well-known for a single novel decades ago and now chair of the Society of Authors, was recently criticised by Rowling for, as Rowling saw it, insufficiently defending authors from attack following the monstrous attempted murder of Salman Rushdie in New York state.

With Rushdie himself still fighting for his life in hospital, Harris found it the ideal moment to post a jolly poll on Twitter: 'Fellow authors, Have you ever received a death threat (credible or otherwise)?'

After Rowling pointed out that she had 'received no communication whatsoever from Harris expressing sympathy for the death and rape threats I've received', Harris adopted a 'characteristic tone of martyred saintdom', in the words of Ian Leslie in The Critic magazine. She moaned how 'exhausting' was her endless fight for authors' rights.

But as Leslie also pointed out, only last year, authors including Ian McEwan had signed an open letter highlighting the abuse Rowling faced on social media. Like any woke adherent, Harris's response was not to praise free speech — it was to publish her own letter in defence of transgender rights.

As Leslie aptly wrote, the letter described itself as 'a message of love and solidarity' — evoking someone smiling beatifically as they spit'.

So much for publishing. But the woke puritans live up to their name in another sense: their utter, unending joylessness. Oliver Cromwell's 17th-century Puritans cancelled Christmas and exhorted the faithful to enjoy — paradoxically — 'sober mirth'.

Today, studies show that people in their twenties drink less — and have less sex — than their parents did. And their comedy is explicitly unfunny — and far more timid and prim than it was even a decade ago.

According to Noah Rothman — author of The Rise Of The New Puritans — the urge to police other people's fun is a feature of every puritanical movement, including the one that murdered 'witches' in Massachusetts in the 1690s.

In 2020, the height of socially approved comedy was Nanette, by the Australian so-called comedienne Hannah Gadsby. Hannah has autism and ADHD, and the show included po-faced discussions of her gender and sexuality. It seemed to me to be explicitly and deliberately not funny.

As Rothman notes: 'Perhaps nothing is as important to the promotion of a virtuous society as what you're allowed to laugh at.'

So on one side today there are heretics such as Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle: too big to cancel and spurred on to riffs of ever-more seditious glee by every cry of: 'You can't say that!'

On the other side are the 'comedians' that the BBC endlessly promotes, but who are comedians only in the way that the undead can be called 'alive': your Nish Kumars, Shappi Khorsandis and Josie Longs.

Then there's the ghastly Frankie Boyle. He jokes about rape and disabled children in a way that would normally get him banned from the woke airwaves for being too offensive — but since he's got the 'correct' views on Palestine, that's all right.

Meanwhile, in the manner of a maniacal Inquisition burning books instead of appreciating art for art's sake, British universities are today said to have more than a thousand 'trigger warnings' in place on their undergraduate reading lists.

Warwick University recently issued a spine-chiller describing 'upsetting scenes concerning the cruelty of nature and the rural life' in Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd. Hey, farmer — leave them pigs alone!

Becoming a rock star was always the working-class dream: many of my generation swerved university for it. Traditionally the music industry was so debauched that it made Hollywood Babylon look like Tunbridge Wells, and it would have been unthinkable a few years back that the wagging finger of woke would scold this last bastion of sleaze into submission.

But last Christmas, there were two versions of Fairytale Of New York played by BBC Radio — an unexpurgated one on Radio 2 containing the homophobic word 'f*****' and a censored one on Radio 1 for the lily-livered youngsters. If rock and roll were invented today, the young would be burning their parents' records.

The New Puritans are the type described by Aldous Huxley in his novel Crome Yellow: 'To be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.'

Religious mobs in the West — unless they are a bunch of bearded Islamist buffoons up in arms about a film they haven't seen or a book they haven't read — have been replaced by woke rabble-rousers and their cultish followers.

The idea that great — or even decent — art can ever emerge from such an intellectually frigid climate of fear and self-censorship is laughable. A quote from Andrew Doyle's forthcoming book, The New Puritans: How The Religion Of Social Justice Captured The Western World, sums it up: 'With its narrow perception of art and its prudish impositions, is it conceivable that the new puritanism will ever achieve anything of lasting artistic value?'

Doyle continues: 'This is the gang that would happily see Dionysus turn teetotal and Eros fitted with a chastity belt. Artists who are in the grip of this worldview tend to produce bloodless and dispensable plays, books, films and other creative works, which are interlarded with social justice boilerplate. So much of it seems interchangeable, like a mass frenzy of plagiarism. How could such a movement ever give us a Michelangelo, a Bach, a Yeats, a Marlowe, a Bronte? Their half-made bed will not admit such weighty occupants.'

But the Enlightenment, the separation of church and state and the rise of Protestantism have seen Christianity move from darkness into light. And it has also been a force for good — think of the crusade against slavery.


The new puritans will leave no beauty in the shape of songs, or buildings, or good works. They will simply leave a steaming pile of cultural debris — and generations yet unborn, like Charlton Heston at the end of Planet Of The Apes, will fall to their knees in the rubble, wondering how so many people could have become hoodwinked — and joined their terrible cult.

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