(Assignment: click through to stories by clicking pics) Here is another 4th-grade crayon written assignment:
Biased Education
Social Sciences Skewed by `Lifestyle Liberalism` ~ Dennis Prager Discusses George Will`s Column on Same-Sex Marriage
From George Will’s column which Prager cites in the audio above:
…A brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the California case by conservative professors Leon Kass and Harvey Mansfield and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy warns that “the social and behavioral sciences have a long history of being shaped and driven by politics and ideology.” And research about, for example, the stability of same-sex marriages or child rearing by same-sex couples is “radically inconclusive” because these are recent phenomena and they provide a small sample from which to conclude that these innovations will be benign.
Unlike the physical sciences, the social sciences can rarely settle questions using “controlled and replicable experiments.” Today “there neither are nor could possibly be any scientifically valid studies from which to predict the effects of a family structure that is so new and so rare.”
Hence there can be no “scientific basis for constitutionalizing same-sex marriage.”
The brief does not argue against same-sex marriage as social policy, other than by counseling caution about altering foundational social institutions when guidance from social science is as yet impossible. The brief is a pre-emptive refutation of inappropriate invocations of spurious social science by supporters of same-sex marriage. For example, a district court cited Dr. Michael Lamb, a specialist in child development, asserting that the “gender of a child’s parent is not a factor in a child’s adjustment” and that “having both a male and female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted.”
The conservatives’ brief notes that, testifying in the trial court, Lamb “had conceded that his own published research concluded that growing up without fathers had significant negative effects on boys” and that considerable research indicates “that traditional opposite-sex biological parents appear in general to produce better outcomes for their children than other family structures do.”
The brief is replete with examples of misleading argumentation using data not drawn from studies satisfying “the scientific standard of comparing large random samples with appropriate control samples.” The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a distinguished social scientist, said the “pronounced” liberal orientation of the social sciences is “well established” and explainable: “Social scientists are frequently caught up in the politics which their work necessarily involves” because social science “attracts persons whose interests are in shaping the future.”
This helps explain why “Brandeis briefs” have shaped American law. Before joining the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis defended constitutional challenges to progressive legislation by using briefs stressing social science data, or what purported to be such, rather than legal arguments. He advanced his political agenda by bald assertions inexcusable even given the limited scientific knowledge of the time. For example, in his 1908 defense of an Oregon law restricting the number of hours women could work, he said “there is more water” in women’s than in men’s blood and women’s knees are constructed differently.
Since Moynihan wrote the above in 1979, the politicization of the social sciences has become even more pronounced, particularly in matters of “lifestyle liberalism.”
Hence the need for judicial wariness about social science that purports to prove propositions — e.g., that same-sex marriage is, or is not, harmful to children or society — for which there cannot yet be decisive evidence.
Stanford Professor Terry Moe Identifies Teachers Unions As Major Cause for School Failure
`School Made Me Do It`? Convicted Killer Says He Shot 3 White Women Because of Ideas Learned at University
(H/T Christian Huber) Via The Blaze:
Former security guard Nkosi Thandiwe was found guilty of murdering a woman and wounding two others during a shooting spree in July of 2011 and has been sentenced to life without parole, CBS Atlanta reports.
He confessed to the crimes during his testimony last week, adding some chilling details about his motivation. And prosecutors argued that Thandiwe was fueled by racist hate against whites.
“My mind was blank at the time,” he said — but he still remembers what prompted the violence by his own twisted rationale. He cited anti-white ideas he learned at university.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has all the information:
During his testimony Wednesday, Thandiwe suggested that his reason for even purchasing the gun he used in the shootings was to enforce beliefs he’d developed about white people during his later years as an anthropology major at the University of West Georgia.
“I was trying to prove a point that Europeans had colonized the world, and as a result of that, we see a lot of evil today,” he said. “In terms of slavery, it was something that needed to be answered for. I was trying to spread the message of making white people mend.”
He said the night before the shooting, he attended a so-called “Peace Party” intended to address his concerns about helping the black community find equal footing, but two white people were there.
“I was upset,” Thandiwe said. “I was still upset Friday. I took the gun to work because I was still upset from Thursday night.”
He even admitted to earlier that day getting angry enough on the job to shoot his supervisor.
“What my boss said to me …,” he told the jury, “that rage almost made me pull out my gun on him.” [Emphasis added]
Moonbattery comments on this case:
…Thandiwe took the liberal propaganda the entire country has been marinating in for decades at face value. Like Colin Ferguson, he was sufficiently unstable to be set onto a maniacal killing spree by the vile poison of politically correct ideology.
A Marine Capt., Timothy Kudo, Obfuscates Ethics/Just War as Well As Moral and Biblical Categories ~ Dennis Prager
Video Description:
Of course higher education and the legacy media play a damning role in this Marines fallacious thinking. But ultimately the onus is on him to look into this matter. I wish it were before the article, but better late than never, let us hope. Capt. Kudo’s article can be found here: — no “kudos” for him however.
For more clear thinking like this from Dennis Prager… I invite you to visit: http://www.dennisprager.com/
Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate by Whiteboard Videos
Video Description:
For over a generation, shocking cases of censorship at America’s colleges and universities have taught students the wrong lessons about living in a free society. This video explains how higher education fails to teach its students to become critical thinkers by supercharging ideological divisions, promoting groupthink, and encouraging an unscholarly certainty about complex issues.
For more on this issue, read Greg Lukianoff’s new book Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate.
Dennis Prager Comments on Heather Mac Donald’s Article About Racism In Education
In a must read article, “Undisciplined: The Obama administration undermines classroom order in pursuit of phantom racism,” Heather Mac Donald lays out how teachers are being blamed for racism rather than the parents and students and culture for misbehavior.
———————————————–
…Black elementary and high school students are disciplined at a higher rate than whites are. To Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, that disparity can mean only one thing: schools [teachers] are discriminating… (The fact that white boys were over two times as likely to be suspended as Asian and Pacific Islander boys was discreetly ignored, though it would seem to imply antiwhite bias as well.)…
…The feds have reached their conclusions, however, without answering the obvious question: Are black students suspended more often because they misbehave more? Arne Duncan, of all people, should be aware of inner-city students’ self-discipline problems, having headed the Chicago school system before becoming secretary of education. Chicago’s minority youth murder one another with abandon. Since 2008, more than 530 people under the age of 21 have been killed in the city, mostly by their peers, according to the Chicago Reporter; virtually all the perpetrators were black or Hispanic. In 2009, the widely publicized beating death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert by his fellow students sent Duncan hurrying back to the Windy City, accompanied by Attorney General Eric Holder, to try to contain the fallout in advance of Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics (see “Chicago’s Real Crime Story,” Winter 2010). Between September 2011 and February 2012, 25 times more black Chicago students than white ones were arrested at school, mostly for battery; black students outnumbered whites by four to one. (In response to the inevitable outcry over the arrest data, a Chicago teacher commented: “I feel bad for kids being arrested, . . . but I feel worse seeing a kid get his head smashed on the floor and almost die. Or a teacher being threatened with his life.”) So when Duncan lamented, upon the release of the 2012 discipline report, that “some of the worst [discipline] discrepancies are in my hometown of Chicago,” one could only ask: What does he expect?
Nationally, the picture is no better. The homicide rate among males between the ages of 14 and 17 is nearly ten times higher for blacks than for whites and Hispanics combined. Such data make no impact on the Obama administration and its orbiting advocates, who apparently believe that the lack of self-control and socialization that results in this disproportionate criminal violence does not manifest itself in classroom comportment as well….
The following comes from a post on Trayvon Martin, via Larry Elder:
….True, black men, especially young ones, stand a much greater chance of being murdered than white males. But almost all murders involve a victim and a killer of the same race. Yes, instances of black-white murder — as, for example, when James Byrd, a black man of Jasper, Texas, was dragged to his death by three white men — do exist. But nationally, according to the Department of Justice, 53 percent of known homicide suspects in 2010 were identified as black – although blacks comprise only 13 percent of the population. And in murders involving a single black victim and a single offender, 90 percent of the time it is a black perpetrator who murders the black victim. Similarly, 83 percent of whites are murdered by other whites.
What happened in Sanford, Fla. — a white person killing a black person — is extremely infrequent, occurring in 8 percent of black homicides. In saying “blacks are under attack,” Jackson paints a picture of whites targeting and hunting down black males….
Teacher Who Threatened Student About Even Mentioning Negative Material About Obama in Her Classroom, Temporarily Suspended (Student Interviewed)
The Full Video can be seen here. Partial transcript can be found at Gateway Pundit:
David Horowitz` Freedom Center and the Wednesday Morning Club Invites Andrew Breitbart to Speak (Q&A Included)
Californias Battle for Normalcy (SB48)
Here is another example of the left in California, which is effectively in control of the body-politic. Older battles include SB777 and the like. Fox News reports on this newer challenge:
The California Legislature could soon pass a bill that would require school textbooks and teachers to incorporate information on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans into their curriculum.
The Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful Education Act, or SB48, which mimics a bill previously vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, made it one step closer to becoming law Tuesday after being approved by the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee.
The bill, introduced by state Sen. Mark Leno, could have a nationwide impact if passed because California is such a big buyer of textbooks that publishers often incorporate the state’s standards into books distributed to other states.
Supporters say that’s a good thing because it will help prevent gay students from being harassed or bullied by their classmates.
But critics say SB48 is just an attempt to brainwash students into becoming pro-gay political activists and ensure that government, not parents, has the final word on teaching kids about moral values.
[….]
Critics object to the bill on several accounts, saying it undermines parental authority, promotes gender confusion and experimentation, inappropriately classifies LGBT as a cultural ethnic group, and aims to brainwash children into adopting the LGBT community’s political agenda.
“This is teaching children from kindergarten on up that the homosexual, bisexual, transsexual lifestyle is something to admire and consider for themselves,” Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com, a group advocating against the bill, told FoxNews.com.
Thomasson said teachers should teach about homosexuals’ historical accomplishments but should not be forced to mention their sexual orientation.
“Teach them about the good behavior, the noble things that people have done, but you don’t have to go into what they do sexually… True history focuses on the accomplishments of people; it doesn’t talk about what they did in the bedroom.”
[….]
Leno said the SB48 “will get to the floor of the Senate by late May; we hope that it will make its way to the assembly for similar review and to the governor’s desk by late summer.”
The Pacific Justice Institute adds some clarifying thoughts to the goal of the bill:
A bill recently introduced in the California senate seeks to mandate that all public schools in California teach history and social studies with a deliberate slant toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons (LGBT).
The bill, SB 48, was introduced in the new legislative session by longtime LGBT activist Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), who has also authored a number of bills in past sessions designed to attack traditional marriage. Among other things, SB 48 states, “Instruction in social sciences shall include the early history of California and a study of the role and contributions of … lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, and members of other ethnic and cultural groups, to the economic, political, and social development of California and the United States of America, with particular emphasis on portraying the role of these groups in contemporary society.”
Most California schools teach California history in the fourth grade. Current law points students to the contributions of “both men and women, black Americans, American Indians, Mexicans, and Pacific Island people.” SB 48 adds LGBT and changes the names of most of the other ethnic groups to sound more politically correct, although it eliminates “Mexicans” entirely, without adding back in any other Latino designation.
Pacific Justice Institute will be officially opposing SB 48. PJI president Brad Dacus commented, “Increasingly, we are seeing bills like SB 48 disguised as anti-bullying measures, when in reality they do not even mention bullying. Instead, SB 48 mandates that history be sexualized for elementary-age children, to please a special interest group. At a time when our students are falling behind their peers from other countries, more political correctness is not the answer.”
And SaveCalifornia.com mentions these two quotes:
- “California government schools are no longer morally safe for impressionable children,” Thomasson said. “Because of the raft of sexual indoctrination laws already in force, promoting homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexuality under the guise of ‘discrimination’ and ‘harassment,’ the social engineers are already having their way with more than six million boys and girls, with or without SB 48. That’s why we strongly urge parents to rescue their children by permanently removing them from government schools and placing them in the safe havens of church schools or homeschooling.” (Source: RescueYourChild.com)
- “This week Governor Jerry Brown turns 73 years old,” Thomasson concluded. “When he was a boy, public schools were good and didn’t push sexual indoctrination. Now public schools aren’t so good, yet homosexual activists are pushing their non-academic agenda without regard to parents or logic or the best interests of children. We call on Governor Brown to prepare to veto this bad bill that greatly disturbs parents, confuses kids, and would flush public schools farther down the toilet.”
(Emphasis Added)
Dinesh D’Souza zeroes in on the roots of Obamas Rage
(Click the above graphic to hear Obama fulfill what Beck and D’souza talk about below.) Dinesh D’Souza has a new book out that I highly recommend. It pulls together many avenues of thought into the origin of Obama’s goals and worldview. In these two short Glenn Beck segments you have Beck and Dinesh talking about a topic that I think is just fascinating. I think D’Souza is one of the better thinkers out there of the semi-younger crowd. Great author to say the least.
By the way, the short clip of the video of the history of things Beck shows is refuted quite well below. I will post links to the other parts of this critique… in case you do not know, many schools play the original video… thus in a sense “brainwashing” these vulnerable minds. The part where it is mentioned that we spend 50% of our tax money on the military is just so, so false:
SEE THE REST OF THE CRITIQUE HERE
Chris Matthews Admits Educational Bias~this president has done what we were all taught in graduate school to do
Newsbusters catalogs an admission by Chris “Saul Alinsky fan” Matthews knows about higher educational bias:
A frustrated Chris Matthews, on Tuesday’s Hardball, chided the left for being disappointed in Barack Obama as he essentially told them, he’s the best they’ve got and are going to get. During a segment in which the Salon’s Joan Walsh and Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall wondered why Obama and Joe Biden were admonishing their base to stop whining, Matthews took up for Team Obama as he tried to calm down the lefties: “This president has done what we were all taught in graduate school to do, what progressives have believed in from years and years, decades ago…You compensate for the loss of consumer spending and business investment with government spending…No one has had a better idea since the 1930s. Number two, The Wall Street crowd needed governing. They didn’t have any, now they’ve got some. Number three, he’s pushed for progressive taxation, he’s going after the rich. He’s not giving them their tax cut.” [audio available here]
MATTHEWS: Let me tell you, here’s my view, in response to what you both said and I think it’s smart, both of you have said, I respect those views from everybody, anybody who’s passionate about politics I believe in. But I know this, this president has done what we were all taught in graduate school to do, what progressives have believed in from years and years, decades ago. One, you deal with an economic downfall with Keynesian economics. You compensate for the loss of consumer spending and business investment with government spending. That’s what you do. That’s what you’re supposed to. No one has had a better idea since the 1930s. Number two, The Wall Street crowd needed governing. They didn’t have any, now they’ve got some. Number three, he’s pushed for progressive taxation, he’s going after the rich. He’s not giving them their tax cut. I think on all three – he’s put people like Eric Holder in at Justice. He’s done a lot of things on the environment, he’s tried to do. He has done what a progressive should have tried to do. And we can argue about tone and degree of successful politics and personality, but I don’t know how a liberal or progressive can turn their back on this guy and say they’ve got something better waiting in the closet, ’cause I don’t know who that person is!
WALSH: I couldn’t agree with you more, Chris.
MATTHEWS: And nobody talking does. Anyway, there ain’t nobody out there but this guy, and certainly nobody no more progressive who can win election for sheriff. Anyway, thank you, Josh Marshall — maybe I’m getting mad — Josh Marshall and Joan Walsh.