US education

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      GOP state senator walks back comments on Nazi history in schools

      by

      GOP state senator walks back comments on Nazi history in schoolsScott Baldwin faced backlash after his comments during a hearing on Senate Bill 167, which would ban ‘concepts that divide’ in schools An Indiana state senator has backtracked on his remarks that teachers must be impartial when discussing nazism in classrooms after he sparked widespread backlash.During a state senate committee hearing last week about Senate Bill 167, a proposed bill that would ban “concepts that divide”, Republican Senator Scott Baldwin, who co-wrote the bill, said teachers should remain unprejudiced when teaching lessons about fascism and nazism.“Marxism, nazism, fascism … I have no problem with the education system providing instruction on the existence of those ‘isms’,” Baldwin said, adding, “I believe we’ve gone too far when we take a position … We need to be impartial.” He went on to say that teachers should “just provide the facts” and that he is “not sure it’s right for us to determine how that child should think and that’s where I’m trying to provide the guardrails”.Texas school official says classrooms with books on Holocaust must offer ‘opposing’ viewsRead moreBaldwin has since walked back on his remarks. In an email to the Indianapolis Star last Thursday, he said that his intention with the bill was to make sure teachers are being impartial when discussing and teaching “legitimate political groups”.“When I was drafting this bill, my intent with regard to ‘political affiliation’ was to cover political parties within the legal American political system,” Baldwin said. “In my comments during committee, I was thinking more about the big picture and trying to say that we should not tell kids what to think about politics.”He went on to denounce the aforementioned ideologies, saying, “nazism, Marxism and fascism are a stain on our world history and should be regarded as such, and I failed to adequately articulate that in my comments during the meeting. I believe that kids should learn about these horrible events in history so that we don’t experience them again in humanity.”SB 167 was filed in recent weeks in response to the fierce debates that have emerged across Indiana and the rest of the country in the past year regarding the ways schools should teach children about racism, history and other subject matters.The bill prohibits kindergarten through 12th grade schools from teaching students that “any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation” is inherently superior, inferior, racist, sexist, oppressive. Teachers would also be prohibited from making individuals feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, responsibility or any other form of psychological distress” when it comes to meritocracy and the notion that it was created by one group to oppress another.The bill also prohibits teachers and curriculums from teaching that Indiana and the United States was founded as a racist or sexist state or nation.The midwest chapter of the Anti-Defamation League has criticized Baldwin’s apology, arguing that it “doesn’t change the deep harms of using ‘impartiality’ or ‘neutrality’ as tools to sanitize history”.“This is part of the continued efforts by some to try and rewrite history and characterize extremism, racism, and genocide as somehow legitimate That is dangerous and despicable. It should be categorically, universally, and loudly rejected,” the organization added.The incident comes less than three months after a north Texas school official said that classrooms with books on Holocaust must offer “opposing” viewpoints.TopicsUS educationNazismRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 213 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      It’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working class | Robert Reich

      by

      OpinionUS politicsIt’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working classRobert ReichResults in Virginia and New Jersey do not make Republican dog-whistle politics the future. The left must do more to help Sun 7 Nov 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 01.03 EDTAfter Tuesday’s Democratic loss in the Virginia gubernatorial election and near-loss in New Jersey, I’m hearing a narrative about Democrats’ failure with white working-class voters that is fundamentally wrong.Is this a presidency-defining week for Biden? Politics Weekly Extra – podcastRead moreIn Thursday’s New York Times, David Leonhardt pointed out that the non-college voters who are abandoning the Democratic party “tend to be more religious, more outwardly patriotic and more culturally conservative than college graduates”. He then quotes a fellow Times columnist, the pollster Nate Cohn, who says “college graduates have instilled increasingly liberal cultural norms while gaining the power to nudge the Democratic party to the left. Partly as a result, large portions of the party’s traditional working-class base have defected to the Republicans”.Leonhardt adds that these defections have increased over the past decade and suggests Democratic candidates start listening to working-class voters’ concerns about “crime and political correctness”, their “mixed feelings about immigration and abortion laws”, and their beliefs “in God and in a strong America”.This narrative worries me in two ways. First, if “cultural” messages top economic ones, what’s to stop Democrats from playing the same cultural card Republicans have used for years to inflame the white working class: racism? Make no mistake: Glenn Youngkin focused his campaign in Virginia on critical race theory, which isn’t even taught in Virginia’s schools but comes out of the same disgraceful Republican dog-whistle tradition.The other problem with this “culture over economics” narrative is it overlooks the fact that after Ronald Reagan, the Democratic party turned its back on the working class.During the first terms of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. They scored some important victories, such as the Affordable Care Act and an expanded earned income tax credit.But both Clinton and Obama allowed the power of the working class to erode. Both ardently pushed for free trade agreements without providing the millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their jobs any means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.They stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the working class. Both refused to reform labor laws to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violated them or enable workers to form unions with simple up-or-down votes. Union membership sank from 22% of all workers when Clinton was elected to fewer than 11% today, denying the working class the bargaining leverage it needs to get a better deal.The Obama administration protected Wall Street from the consequences of its gambling addiction through a giant taxpayer-funded bailout but let millions of underwater homeowners drown.Both Clinton and Obama allowed antitrust to ossify – allowing major industries to become more concentrated and hence more economically and politically powerful.Finally, they turned their backs on campaign finance reform. In 2008, Obama was the first presidential nominee since Richard Nixon to reject public financing in his primary and general-election campaigns. He never followed up on his re-election campaign promise to pursue a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United v FEC, the 2010 supreme court opinion that opened the floodgates to big money in politics.What happens when you combine freer trade, shrinking unions, Wall Street bailouts, growing corporate power and the abandonment of campaign finance reform? You shift political and economic power to the wealthy and you shaft the working class.Adjusted for inflation, American workers today are earning almost as little as they did 30 years ago, when the American economy was a third its present size.Biden’s agenda for working people – including lower prescription drug prices, paid family leave, stronger unions and free community college – has followed the same sad trajectory, due to the power of big money. Big Pharma has blocked prescription drug reform. A handful of Democratic senators backed by big money have refused to support paid family leave. Big money has killed labor law reform.Resilience: the one word progressives need in the face of Trump, Covid and more | Robert ReichRead moreDemocrats could win back the white working class by putting together a large coalition of the working class and poor, of whites, Blacks and Latinos, of everyone who has been shafted by the huge shift in wealth and power to the top. This would give Democrats the political clout to reallocate power in the economy – rather than merely enact palliatives that paper over the increasing concentration of power at the top.But to do this Democrats would have to end their financial dependence on big corporations, Wall Street and the wealthy. And they would have to reject the convenient story that American workers care more about cultural issues than about getting a better deal in an economy that’s been delivering them a worsening deal for decades.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDemocratsUS CongressVirginiaNew JerseyRaceUS domestic policycommentReuse this content More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Republican contender in Virginia avoids Trump’s campaign event

      by

      VirginiaRepublican contender in Virginia avoids Trump’s campaign event
      Glenn Youngkin to give Trump’s ‘tele rally’ a wide berth
      Opinion: Republican racial culture war reaches new heights
      Martin Pengelly@MartinPengellyMon 1 Nov 2021 14.36 EDTFirst published on Mon 1 Nov 2021 10.39 EDTDonald Trump was to host a Virginia campaign event on Monday for Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor in a race headed down to the wire. But Youngkin was not planning to participate, as he attempted to balance appeals to the former president’s supporters with a semblance of independence.Why this governor’s race is shaping up as a referendum on the Biden presidencyRead moreTrump hoped a phone-in “tele rally” would hoist Youngkin past his Democratic opponent, the former governor Terry McAuliffe.The contest is seen by many as a referendum on the Biden presidency and a bellwether for midterm elections next year. On the day before polling day, the realclearpolitics.com polling average had Youngkin ahead by less than two points. Fivethirtyeight.com put the Republican up by one.McAuliffe had scheduled rallies in Roanoke, Virginia Beach and Richmond and in northern Virginia. Youngkin was to rally in Roanoke, Richmond, Virginia Beach and Loudon county.In Richmond, Youngkin addressed “an energetic crowd of what his campaign said was around 800 people” at a small airport, the Associated Press reported.“This is a moment for Virginians to push back on this left, liberal progressive agenda and take our commonwealth back,” he said.McAuliffe, who has called himself a “pro-business pro-progressive”, is a close ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton and has campaigned with President Joe Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris, former president Barack Obama and other high-profile Democrats. Nonetheless he has struggled to generate enthusiasm in a state Biden won by 10 points.Youngkin, a businessman, has not appeared with Trump. On Saturday, he told reporters: “I’m not going to be engaged in the tele-town hall. The teams are talking, I’m sure.”Youngkin has however comfortably dealt in Trump-esque attack lines, most prominently and potentially fruitfully focusing on how race is taught in schools. In return McAuliffe has sought to tie Youngkin firmly to Trump, not a tough task in the debate over education.Youngkin has repeatedly raised the subject of critical race theory, an academic discipline turned into a bogeyman by Republicans nationwide. CRT examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. It is not taught in Virginia public schools. Regardless, Youngkin has treated it as a genuine threat, stoking anger on the right, and has promised to ban it.Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, McAuliffe said Youngkin had gone too far. Citing a meeting with a voter in Hampton, he said the former school board member told him “our school boards were fine. Soon as Glenn Youngkin got nominated, all of a sudden, these people started showing up, creating such a ruckus, calling such obscene things”.“This was an African American woman,” McAuliffe said. “I can’t repeat on air what they’ve said about her. This was last night, up here in northern Virginia … we just lost a school board member … She said, ‘I was getting death threats. But when they said they were going to rape my children, I can’t take it anymore.’“That’s what Glenn Youngkin has done here in Virginia. He’s created hatred and division just like Donald Trump, and that’s why Donald Trump, his final campaign is going to be for Glenn Youngkin here in Virginia.“We don’t want Trump. We don’t want Youngkin. We don’t want the hatred and division.”In a statement on Monday, Trump freely demonstrated his willingness to exploit hatred and division.Lincoln Project members pose as white supremacists at Virginia GOP eventRead moreTaking barely veiled shots at the Lincoln Project – anti-Trump Republicans who have campaigned against him in Virginia, sometimes controversially, and who Trump referred to only as “perverts” – the former president said his enemies were “trying to create an impression that Glenn Youngkin and I are at odds and don’t like each other.“Importantly, this is not true. We get along very well together and strongly believe in many of the same policies, especially when it comes to the important subject of education.”Trump reiterated the need for Republicans to vote. He also sought to thread the needle between his insistence on mass voter fraud against him and the need for high Republican turnout – a trick he failed to pull off in Georgia in January, when Democrats won two Senate runoffs.If enough of his supporters voted, Trump said, they would overcome the fact that he was “not a believer in the integrity of Virginia’s elections”.TopicsVirginiaUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsRaceUS educationnewsReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Abolish Trump-era ‘China Initiative’, academics urge, amid racial profiling criticism

      by

      US universities Abolish Trump-era ‘China Initiative’, academics urge, amid racial profiling criticism Stanford University professors say the programme is fuelling racism and harming US competitiveness, rather than uncovering spies in universities Vincent Ni China affairs correspondentTue 14 Sep 2021 22.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 14 Sep 2021 22.02 EDTCalls are growing to abolish a controversial Trump-era initiative that looks for Chinese spies at US universities, which critics say has resulted in racial profiling and harmed technological competitiveness.In a letter sent to the Department of Justice, 177 faculty members across 40 departments at Stanford University asked the US government to cease operating the “China Initiative”. They argue the programme harms academic freedom by racially profiling and unfairly targeting Chinese academics.The letter follows the acquittal last week by a US federal judge of a researcher accused of concealing ties with China while receiving American taxpayer-funded grants. “We understand that concerns about Chinese government-sanctioned activities including intellectual property theft and economic espionage are important to address,” the Stanford academics wrote. “We believe, however, that the China Initiative has deviated significantly from its claimed mission: it is harming the United States’ research and technology competitiveness and it is fuelling biases that, in turn, raise concerns about racial profiling.”The Guardian view on anti-Chinese suspicion: target espionage, not ethnicities | EditorialRead moreOn Thursday, a federal judge in Tennessee acquitted Anming Hu, an ethnic Chinese nanotechnology expert at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, who had been accused of concealing his ties to Beijing while applying for research funding to work on a Nasa project. The judge said the US government hadn’t proven its case.“Given the lack of evidence that defendant was aware of such an expansive interpretation of Nasa’s China funding restriction, the court concludes that, even viewing all the evidence in the light most favourable to the government, no rational jury could conclude that defendant acted with a scheme to defraud Nasa,” US district judge Thomas Varlan wrote in a 52-page ruling.Responding to the decision, the Department of Justice said “we respect the court’s decision, although we are disappointed with the result”, according to US media. Hu’s attorney, Phil Lomonaco, said the academic was focused now on recovering his tenured position at the University of Tennessee.“Many universities should have learned from the experience that professor was forced to endure,” Lomonaco said. “The Department of Justice needs to take a step back and reassess their approach on investigating Chinese professors in the United States universities. They are not all spies.”‘There’s a better way’The high-profile trial came after a series of arrests of US-based researchers who had been accused of not properly disclosing their work in China in recent years. After a jury deadlock, Hu’s case ended in mistrial in June. An FBI agent admitted that he had “used false information to justify putting a team of agents to spy on Hu and his son for two years”, according to local news reports.Confronting hate against east Asians – a photo essayRead moreThe Trump-era China Initiative began in 2018. In justifying such an operation, Department of Justice said on its website: “The Department of Justice’s China Initiative reflects the strategic priority of countering Chinese national security threats and reinforces the president’s overall national security strategy.” It also publishes a list of successful prosecutions – with the latest one on 14 May.But critics say while it is necessary for the US to protect its national security, such a programme that targets an entire ethnic group would end up in discrimination against Asian Americans – in particular those who are of Chinese origin.On 30 July, 90 members of the US congress urged the Department of Justice to investigate what they called “the repeated, wrongful targeting of individuals of Asian descent for alleged espionage”, in a letter to attorney general Merrick Garland.Last week, Democratic congressman Ted Lieu demanded the Justice Department apologise to Hu. “You should stop discriminating against Asians. You should investigate your prosecutors for engaging in what looks like racial profiling. If Hu’s last name was Smith, you would not have brought this case,” he wrote.Hate crimes in US rise to highest level in 12 years, says FBI reportRead moreThe recent round of calls came in the wake of growing violence against Asians in the US. According to an FBI annual report last month, the number of reported crimes against people of Asian decent grew by 70% last year, totalling 274 cases.Margaret Lewis of Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey, who has been calling on the US government to rethink its approach to research security, said: “I understand the need to be concerned about the Chinese government’s behaviour that incentivises violations of US law, but the US should first not engage in rhetoric that fuels xenophobia and racism.“It worries me that people with certain characteristics might fall under suspicion,” she said. “Let us not pretend there’s no concern about Beijing, but there’s a better way to do it. Getting rid of the name is the first step.”TopicsUS universitiesChinaDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS foreign policyAsia PacificnewsReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans threaten our children’s freedom as well as their basic safety | Robert Reich

      by

      OpinionUS educationRepublicans threaten our children’s freedom as well as their basic safetyRobert ReichAttacks on mask mandates expose children to Covid. Attacks on the teaching of history expose them to dangerous ignorance Sun 29 Aug 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 29 Aug 2021 01.01 EDTMy granddaughter will go to school next week. So may your child or grandchild. For many, it will be their first time back in classrooms in a year and a half.On Covid and climate we can achieve change – but we’re running out of time | Robert ReichRead moreWhat do we want for these young people? At least three things.First and most obviously, to learn the verbal, mathematical and other thinking tools they’ll need to successfully navigate the world.But that’s not all. We also want them to become responsible citizens. This means, among other things, becoming aware of the noble aspects of our history as well as the shameful aspects, so they grow into adults who can intelligently participate in our democracy.Yet some Republican lawmakers don’t want our children to have the whole picture.Over the last few months, some 26 states have curbed how teachers discuss America’s racist past. Some of these restrictions impose penalties on teachers and administrators who violate them, including the loss of licenses and fines. Many curbs take effect next week.These legislators prefer that our children learn only the sanitized, vanilla version of America, as if ignorance will make them better citizens.Why should learning the truth be a politically partisan issue?The third thing we want for our children and grandchildren heading back to school is even more basic. We want them to be safe.Yet even as the number of American children hospitalized with Covid-19 has hit a record high, some Republican lawmakers don’t want them to wear masks in school to protect themselves and others.The governors of Texas and Florida, where Covid is surging, have sought to prohibit school districts from requiring masks. Lawmakers in Kentucky, also experiencing a surge, have repudiated a statewide school mask mandate.Why should the simple precaution of wearing a mask be a politically partisan issue?Paradoxically, many of these same Republican lawmakers want people to have easy access to guns, even though school shootings have become tragically predictable.Between last March and the end of the school year in June – despite most elementary, middle and high schools being partially or entirely closed due to the pandemic – there were 14 school shootings, the highest total over that period since at least 1999.Since the massacre 22 years ago at Columbine high school near Denver, more than a quarter of a million children have been exposed to gun violence during school hours.How can lawmakers justify preventing children from masking up against Covid while allowing almost anyone to buy a gun?The answer to all of this, I think, is a warped sense of the meaning of freedom.These lawmakers – and many of the people they represent – equate “freedom” with being allowed to go without a mask and to own a gun, while also being ignorant of the shameful aspects of America.To them, personal freedom means taking no responsibility.While Delta spreads, Republicans deflect and resort to Trump demagoguery | Robert ReichRead moreYet this definition of freedom is precisely the opposite lesson our children and grandchildren need. To be truly free is to learn to be responsible for knowing the truth even if it’s sometimes painful, and responsible for the health and safety of others even if it’s sometimes inconvenient.The duty to help our children become responsible adults falls mainly on us as parents and grandparents. But our children also need schools that teach and practice the same lessons.America’s children shouldn’t be held hostage to a partisan political brawl. It’s time we focused solely on their learning and their safety.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS educationOpinionUS domestic policyUS politicsFloridaTexasKentuckyRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      School apologizes for stating falsely in yearbook Trump was not impeached

      by

      A school principal in Arkansas has apologized for “political inaccuracies” in a yearbook falsely stating that Donald Trump was not impeached and that last year’s racial protests in the US were “Black Lives Matter riots”.Josh Thompson, principal of Bentonville’s Lincoln junior high school, admitted that some of the contents of the yearbook, which also included a photograph of the deadly 6 January insurrection in Washington DC captioned: “Trump supporters protest at the Capitol,” were “both biased and political”.In a letter sent to students and parents, Thompson said the yearbook “does not represent our values nor meet LJHS and Bentonville Schools’ standards for quality and excellence.”The letter did not address how the false statements and political opinions came to be published, but promised the school would “evaluate its vetting process for all yearbook content to ensure future publications are of the highest quality”.In many US schools, yearbooks are produced by students under the supervision of teachers, often during journalism classes.The Lincoln yearbook featured a photograph of an unidentified group next to an overturned car, with the caption: “Black Lives Matter riots Started in Minneapolis in may of 2020 [sic]”; and a separate photograph of the former president with his fists clenched and the caption: “President Trump WAS NOT impeached.”In reality, Trump was the first president to be impeached twice, in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and again this year for inciting the Capitol insurrection.“We can and will do better to provide a quality yearbook to students that can be a cherished item as they reminisce about their time at [the] school,” Thompson said, offering his “deepest apologies” and a refund to parents who had bought one.A spokesperson for the Bentonville school district declined to answer questions from the Guardian, stating that the principal’s letter would be its only comment.The Arkansas controversy follows another yearbook scandal earlier this week in which a Florida high school was criticized for digitally altering dozens of images of female students to hide their chests and shoulders.A teacher at Bartram Trail high school in St Johns admitted manipulating 80 photographs of girls she considered inappropriately dressed, while leaving images of male students, including one of a swimming team attired only in bathing trunks, untouched. The school also offered refunds. More