Biased Education

Yeonmi Park: My Terrifying Escape from North Korea (#Merica)

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea and that I escaped from North Korea. Both of these events shaped me, and I would not trade them for an ordinary and peaceful life. — Yeonmi Park

UPDATED VIDEO INTERVIEW: exactly one year from original posting

Yeonmi Park, North Korea defector and author on her defection from North Korea and how Columbia University has echoes of her past on ‘Kudlow.’

  • Kudlow: “…somehow God was looking after you”
  • Park: “Yes”
  • Kudlow: “Really.”
  • Park: “He did.”
  • Kudlow: And, it’s a great story” [….] “It’s a blessing you made it through.”

Amen. (Concordia has a good posting on Yeonmi)

One commenter on the Fox Business’ YT channel says it all:

  • I feel so embarrassed for our country when a foreign warrior comes here for freedom and still can’t escape the war.

Her accent is hard to follow, but you get a rhythm going as you listen to understand here | “GOD and North korea – Why the North Korean Christians Face the Most Extreme Persecution” (YouTube). She mentions the “real God” in the video speaking of the Judeo-Christian faith.

ORIGINAL POSTING

Born in North Korea, Yeonmi Park shares her harrowing journey to escape the hunger, thought control, and violence she experienced living under authoritarian regimes. Grateful to have found acceptance and justice in the United States, she cautions Americans to see the early warning signs—here in America—of the communist nightmares she fled in North Korea and China.

Virginia Magnet School Withheld National Merit Awards (#woke)

Published by Papa Giorgio

A top-ranked Virginia high school is accused of depriving students of National Merit awards because “they didn’t want to hurt the feelings of other students who weren’t being honored.”

More via ACE OF SPADES:

  • “Top Virginia Math and Science Magnet School Refused to Tell Students They Were National Merit Finalists, Preventing Them From Putting That on Their College Applications, For the Sake of Racial ‘Equity'”

It’s Harrison Bergeron all the way down.

Virginia parents are outraged after a top-ranked high school allegedly delayed notifying students of national academic honors in the name of “equity,” making them unable to account for the recognition in some college applications.

Fairfax County parent Asra Nomani joined “Fox & Friends First” on Wednesday to discuss why the school delayed the awards and the importance of meritocracy in the classroom.

“This year the entire controversy just blew up because the kids got their certificate, weeks after early college application deadlines, just dropped on their desks as if it was just another piece of paper,” Nomani told co-host Todd Piro.

“And this amazing mom named Shawna Yashar started asking questions, just like every parent’s got to do,” she continued. “From issues of the drag queen story hours to indoctrination in the schools, this is another form of this race to the bottom that the schools are going through right now.”

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) in Alexandria, Virginia, allegedly delayed academic awards for years, according to Nomani, because of its ploy to advocate “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.”

The school has even implemented a policy awarding students a 50% just for showing up to class, and administrators have eliminated zeroes entirely.

The delayed awards in question are given by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which recognizes top-performing high schoolers nationwide. TJ received the 2022 honors in October but did not distribute them to students until a month later, after early-application deadlines had passed, according to Nomani. Nomani’s son, a 2021 TJ graduate, was honored as a Commended Student in September 2020 but was never notified, she wrote in City Journal.

When Yashar, the mother who originally sounded the alarm on the school’s delay, brought the issue to the forefront, she was met with pushback from the school, Nomani said.

“The school wanted to recognize students as individuals, not their achievements, as if the two had to be separated,” she said.

Nomani wrote about this bizarre — and highly litigable — practice at City Journal.

For years, two administrators at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) have been withholding notifications of National Merit awards from the school’s families, most of them Asian, thus denying students the right to use those awards to boost their college-admission prospects and earn scholarships. This episode has emerged amid the school district’s new strategy of “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.” School administrators, for instance, have implemented an “equitable grading” policy that eliminates zeros, gives students a grade of 50 percent just for showing up, and assigns a cryptic code of “NTI” for assignments not turned in. It’s a race to the bottom.

An intrepid Thomas Jefferson parent, Shawna Yashar, a lawyer, uncovered the withholding of National Merit awards. Since starting as a freshman at the school in September 2019, her son, who is part Arab American, studied statistical analysis, literature reviews, and college-level science late into the night. This workload was necessary to keep him up to speed with the advanced studies at TJ, which U.S. News & World Report ranks as America’s top school.

Last fall, along with about 1.5 million U.S. high school juniors, the Yashar teen took the PSAT, which determines whether a student qualifies as a prestigious National Merit scholar. When it came time to submit his college applications this fall, he didn’t have a National Merit honor to report–but it wasn’t because he hadn’t earned the award. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation, a nonprofit based in Evanston, Illinois, had recognized him as a Commended Student in the top 3 percent nationwide–one of about 50,000 students earning that distinction. Principals usually celebrate National Merit scholars with special breakfasts, award ceremonies, YouTube videos, press releases, and social media announcements.

But not at TJ. School officials had decided to withhold announcement of the award. Indeed, it turns out that the principal, Ann Bonitatibus, and the director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, have been withholding this information from families and the public for years, affecting the lives of at least 1,200 students over the principal’s tenure of five years. Recognition by National Merit opens the door to millions of dollars in college scholarships and 800 Special Scholarships from corporate sponsors.

I learned–two years after the fact–that National Merit had recognized my son, a graduate of TJ’s Class of 2021, as a Commended Student in a September 10, 2020, letter that National Merit sent to Bonitatibus. But the principal, who lobbied that fall to nix the school’s merit-based admission test to increase “diversity,” never told us about it. Parents from earlier years told me that she also didn’t tell them about any Commended Student awards. One former student said he learned he had won the award through a random email from the school to a school-district email account that students rarely check; the principal neither told his parents nor made a public announcement.

…

“Keeping these certificates from students is theft by the state,” says Yashar. Bonitatibus didn’t notify parents or the public. What’s more, it could be a civil rights violation, says local parent advocate Debra Tisler, with most TJ students in a protected class of “gifted” students, most of them racial minorities, many with disabilities, and most coming from immigrant families whose parents speak English as a second language….

In a call with Yashar, Kosatka admitted that the decision to withhold the information from parents and inform the students in a low-key way was intentional. “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements,” he told her, claiming that he and the principal didn’t want to “hurt” the feelings of students who didn’t get the award.

Sue them. Sue them personally, if possible.

The Sexualization of Children

Published by Papa Giorgio

Who should decide when and how to discuss issues like sex and gender with young children? Just a decade ago, this was thought to be the sole purview of parents. But that is no longer the case. Why is this shift happening, and who’s behind it? Karol Markowicz addresses these important questions.

Did I Harm Students By Asking This Question? (Peter Boghossian)

Published by Papa Giorgio

[Editor’s Note: I do wish to note what Dennis Prager does, that is, the driving force of this view and its “advocacy” is women. Especially white progressive women.]

Following the unexpected cancellation of our Reverse Q&A at Brown University, we created an ad hoc event on the streets of Portland. Here, we are exploring the reasoning behind agreement or disagreement with the claim: “There are only two genders.” We were approached by a group of students and here’s what happened.

This video was filmed on May 11, 2022 outside a Portland State University building that houses the department of social work.

Is “Social and Emotional Learning” (SEL) Good or Bad?

Published by Papa Giorgio

In this excerpt of ARMSTRONG AND GETTY, the reading of and commentary about an article by Frederick Hess goes a long way to uncover an aspect of education that is the “new” product to push via the “educational industrial complex.” The article is entitled, “How Social and Emotional Learning Became a New Front in the Culture Wars” (AEI).

Here is an excerpt from Mr. Hess’s article:

…..There’s much about SEL that appeals. It’s stuff that good schools (and parents) have always done, and it’s been a healthy course correction for an education system that’s been test-obsessed in recent decades while giving short shrift to character development and civic formation. As CASEL board chair Tim Shriver and I noted a few years ago, “Since the dawn of the republic, teachers and schools have been tasked with teaching content and modeling character,” and, pursued responsibly, SEL can help with all of that.

In fact, while SEL can seem like a new idea, it’s more of a variation on a historical theme—that educators cannot focus only on academic mastery but must also develop the “whole child.” Readers who are so inclined can trace this impulse to John Dewey, Rousseau’s Emile, and all the way back to Plato’s Republic.

Given all this, SEL’s surging popularity is no great surprise—especially after the dislocations of the pandemic. In fact, SEL was already flying high in 2019 when that Aspen commission issued a blockbuster report, backed by an impressive array of funders and endorsees. The research on persistence that fueled Angela Duckworth’s New York Times best-seller Grit? That’s SEL. So is psychologist Carol Dweck’s influential research on “growth mindset.” And two years of pandemic, during which kids were lonely, isolated, and suffered walloping blows to their social and emotional well-being, have only turbocharged SEL’s ascent.

But as with so many well-meaning education reforms, SEL has a Jekyll-and-Hyde aspect. As has been true with the Common Core and “anti-racist education” (née critical race theory), SEL can be reasonably described both as a sensible, innocuous attempt to tackle a real challenge and, too often, an excuse for a blue, bubbled industry of education funders, advocates, professors, and trainers to promote faddish nonsense and ideological agendas. The latter is why SEL invariably comes up as a justification for doing away with traditional grading, eliminating advanced math, subjecting students and staff to “privilege walks,” or teaching first-graders about gender identity.  

[….]

Should parents be concerned about SEL? Well, look. If you’re getting sensible notes from the principal suggesting that teachers are making a concerted effort to promote tolerance, cultivate relationship skills, and encourage better decision-making, that’s generally a terrific thing. But if school SEL missives are dotted with talk of microaggressions and implicit bias, parent-teacher night features a pitch for eyebrow-raising disciplinary strategies, or classrooms are cluttered with feeling thermometers and privilege maps? I’d say concern is in order.

Yet again, as with Common Core or “anti-racist education,” an idea that makes some intuitive sense gets sucked into our roiling culture war by the smug aggression of woke reformers and the inevitable counterpunching from the right. Teachers and parents wind up trapped in between. And something that can and should be useful, when employed wisely and well, instead gets used clumsily and carelessly, sparking yet another radioactive shouting match.

READ MORE ABOUT IT HERE:

FLIPSIDE:

 

 

Narcissists Use Government To “Act Out” Their Malcontent

Published by Papa Giorgio

This first part is really a set up to add context to the more important aspect of the conversation I listened to between Scott Adams and Dr. Drew. While I do not subscribe to everything discussed herein, I believe that what is discussed can help pastors and people who disciple others better note and respond to our cultural “rumblings.” The Bible calls it pride, but yes, “everyone else is to blame and the battle is not me and my sin nature.” Excellent conversation. (The full Dr. Drew episode can be found HERE)

I would not have uploaded that portion to my RUMBLE if it weren’t for this “2nd PART” I isolated by itself. This is a major explanation in my mind’s eye and even the noting of the majority women is something Prager notes that it is predominantly women destroying education and leading the #WOKE mobs.

(THE PIC IS JUST FOR LAUGHS, IT ADDS NO INSIGHT OR CONSTRUCTIVE VALUE OTHER THAN AN LOL — THE LINK IN THE PIC IS SERIOUS HOWEVER)

….Feminist groups describe the state of American women in dire terms. Young middle-class and upper-class women, many attending the most expensive universities — paid for by their parents — are among the greatest malcontents in American life.

In fact, women today, including young women, who lead lives the very opposite of those described in “The Feminine Mystique,” are about twice as likely to be depressed as men. And that statistic is true for women across all economic, racial and ethnic groups.

So, then, what was my big and troubling thought?

If women are as likely — perhaps more likely — to complain about being oppressed today when they aren’t oppressed as they did when they were oppressed, and if women today are nearly twice as likely as men to be depressed, and if women at elite colleges — where they are pampered and more assured a financially successful future than most men living now or who lived in the past — are particularly angry and malcontented, simple logic suggests two choices: Either women remain as oppressed as in the past, or women tend to be malcontents.

Given that the reality is that American women — especially the ones who do the most complaining — are not oppressed, we are left to conclude that the female of the human species may tend toward being malcontents. The simple-minded will respond to this exactly as they were indoctrinated to respond — not by asking, “Is it true?” but by accusing the person who offers this suggestion of sexism and misogyny.

So, allow me to respond in advance: This is no more an attack on women than describing men’s nature as aggressive is an attack on men. Each sex has built-in issues that an individual has to overcome in order to develop into a mature and good person. Men have to deal with aggression and the sexual predatory aspect of male nature in order to develop into mature and good men. Women have to overcome the power of their emotions and their chronic malcontentedness in order to mature into good women. But in our disordered society — a society that has rejected wisdom — in raising their children, two generations of Americans have told only their sons, not their daughters, that they had to fight their nature. The feminization of society has brought with it the destructive notion that only males have to suppress their nature. Feminists really believe females are superior, so why would women have to fight any aspect of their inherently beautiful nature?……

(DENNIS PRAGER, “Are Women Malcontents?”)

SEE MORE HERE:

Adrienne Johnson: Why I Am No Longer an Atheist

Published by Papa Giorgio

PragerU Chief of Staff Adrienne Johnson was once a cynical atheist, struggling to find meaning and purpose in ways that left her feeling even more adrift and alone. After hitting rock bottom, she learned that it’s never too late to take responsibility and change your life. Adrienne shares her powerful personal story of how finding faith in God gave her a second chance at life.

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.

Blaise Pascal (Pensees 10.148)

Public Schools Are Grooming Children… Sexually

Published by Papa Giorgio

In October, a shocking report claimed that teachers at a Salinas, California, middle school secretly recruited students into a pro-LGBT club disguised as a “gender equality club” without their parents knowing.

Aztec Prayers/Chants Taught In Public School (RUFO)

Published by Papa Giorgio

(JUMP to drawings/pics) The following is me breaking out the graphics from a March Twitter Thread by Christopher Rufo regarding the Salinas Union High School, School District.

The Salinas Union High School, School District is brainwashing our children. This is what your neighbor’s children, your cousins, your nephews, and nieces are being indoctrinated into for over 6 hours every day—in English, Math, and even sports. 

The Salinas Union High School, School District has introduced “The Matrix of Social Identity and Intersectional Power.” This is why our children are becoming unhappy, violent, soulless, and gender-confused Leftists. 

— TPUSA

As and aside, anything surrounded in RED is linked or enlargeable. Here are all the sites or my past posts that helped in the below:

Here is the thread with his graphics added — 1st one is stylized by RPT:

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

ELEVEN

TWELVE

IAN RESPONDS

Drawings and Pictures

 

Totalitarian Ideology Taking Hold of Portland (via Educatoors)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager reads from an exceptionally long, but well-worth your full attention, article by Christopher F. Rufo entitled “The Child Soldiers of Portland” via THE CITY JOURNAL.

Some other recent uploads via Armstrong and Getty confirm this craziness:

Racist and Bigoted Teacher Unions of Los Angeles

Published by Papa Giorgio

Firstly, at the very end of this upload, Maryam Qudrat, a parent who called out the teacher union’s almost fascistic obsession with race mentions they are trying to create a race war. Thomas Sowell as well mentions this in a 2013 National Review article: “Early Skirmishes in a Race War”

Larry Elder discusses the latest regarding Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), L.A.’s largest teachers union. This woman is a radical Marxist. She pushed the self-admitted Marxist organization Black Lives Matter onto teachers and children. She has close ties to Bernie Sanders, and is really a racist at heart.

(Remember, you can change the quality of the video in the settings icon)

This is really FASCISM proper. Dennis Prager explains:

More from BREITBART:

…Following Schumer’s quota-based logic, Prager asked if the share of Jews within the judiciary should be reduced in pursuit of proportionate ethnic representation:

I wonder, if [Chuck Schumer] thinks [the judiciary] should look like America — I’m just curious, since I’m a Jew, I can ask this question, because if a non-Jew asked this he’d be accused of anti-Semitism — so I would like to know, I’ll bet you that the proportion of judges who are Jewish is greater than the proportion of Jews in the society. Would Chuck Schumer like to see fewer Jews in the judiciary so that the judiciary looked like the American population? Is that an unfair question? I’m serious, is it unfair? If he’s serious about what he said, does he think Asians overrepresent? Does he feel this way about sports?

Having members of one’s race represented politically or within the government does not afford one tangible benefits, said Prager:

So what does that mean exactly? The judiciary is supposed to racially reflect the racial composition of American life? And why, exactly? Why is that a ideal that it looks like the American people? What benefit is there? [The left] speaks constantly of a racist society and the problems of the black underclass — which is a problem worth speaking about, incidentally. So I always ask, “Name me one benefit that having all the black mayors and all the black congressmen that we have has accrued to black life.” I would like to know one single tangible benefit.

There are virtually — I’ve always pointed this out — no Asian congressmen, Asian governors, Asia judges — well, maybe some Asian judges — and they are the most successful community in the United States of America. … There is zero correlation between having your race represented in Congress or the judiciary and benefits to your race. Zero. This is all a fraudulent appeal to pure racial thought in the United States. The left is the most racist movement since the Nazis. I’m not comparing the left to Nazis, they’re not opening up death camps, they’re not rounding up people to send to gas chambers, I’m totally aware of that, and nothing in imputed in what I just said to suggest that. I’m merely stating a fact. The most racist doctrine since Nazism is modern leftism. That’s it. This is how they think. They think in terms of race.

Prager regularly describes the left as subscribing to a political trinity of race, gender, and class.

Here is a good short noting of the above via FREEDOM WIRE:

…In Los Angeles, a radical socialist who spoke at a national socialist convention last year has taken over as the head of the teacher’s union in the nation’s second-largest school district.

Cecily Myart-Cruz is a major player in the Black Lives Matter Movement and intends on forcing LA schools to bend to the will of BLM.

The Daily Wire reported her statements as follows: “‘We need to have a set of demands that dovetail with Black Lives Matter,’ Myart-Cruz continued. ‘We have to have massive political education. People will say, ‘Not all police are bad,’ but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about racism as a social construct, systemic and institutional racism, and wrapped on top is white supremacist culture, which is the dominant culture. So as educators, how are we going to equip ourselves to become anti-racist, not for ourselves but for our students? We serve a school district with a 90% free-and-reduced lunch student population. We have to move the needle. It’s imperative to move the needle around racial and social justice.’

‘I see teaching as a revolutionary act, just the way I see organizing,” Cecily Myart-Cruz, who captured almost 69% of the vote, has said.”…

Other Resources used for this upload are as follows:

  • LA teachers’ union refuses to budge on school reopenings: ‘Structural racism’ (FOX NEWS)
  • Black Parents Plan School Reopening Rally After Teachers Union Claims White, Rich People Are Behind Push To Reopen (DAILY WIRE)
  • Afghan-American mom slams ‘racist’ LA teachers union for asking her ethnicity when she pushed to reopen schools – after they said only ‘white wealthy parents’ want children to return classrooms (DAILY MAIL)
  • South LA parents say they want schools to reopen, disagree with UTLA president’s remarks (FOX 11 LOS ANGELES | YOUTUBE VIDEO)
  • Mom accuses UTLA of conducting racial opposition research on parents pushing for in-person classes (FOX 11 LOS ANGELES VIDEO)
  • Black parents slam Los Angeles teachers’ union boss for blaming push to reopen on white, wealthy parents (POST MILLENNIAL)
  • ‘Propagating structural racism’: LA teachers union head blasts state’s school reopening plan — and ‘white, wealthy parents’ for rushing return (THE BLAZE)
  • Lee Ohanian: Inflation Is the Cruelest Tax (THE LARRY ELDER SHOW YOUTUBE)