BC trade school reverses bigoted anti-Israeli policy

The Island School of Building Arts (ISBA) is a trade school established on Gabriola Island, BC as a "Training Provider for the Log and Timber Frame Construction Industry".

Who knew that BDS bigotry would have, like termites, infested a woodworking trade school in the backwoods of BC?  I certainly wouldn't have but for the Jerusalem Post and the Canadian Centre for Israeli and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).

From this morning's JPost:

A Canadian trade school reportedly turned down an Israeli student applicant simply for being Israeli.

[The school, foolishly assuming the moral high ground,] wrote ... that "It is sad that decisions being made halfway around the world impact us here as we have had a number of students from Israel attend the school in the past." The email continued: "This is a question of staying in line with our moral compass, which will always be important to us. We are still inclusive and cannot support that which is not inclusive."  

Following the CIJA's intervention later today they were able to report :

"We are pleased to announce that the ISBA has reversed its decision."

That was fast work! Good show, CIJA.

FWIW, the incident garnered a fair bit of attention on Twitter.

Private school gender politics, Part II - Names are named

Christie Blatchford: Posh Vancouver school places staff under gag order after teacher fired

Fraser Academy, the expensive Vancouver private school where last month a teacher was fired after making allegedly “triggering” remarks to a Grade 12 law class, has put its staff under a gag order.

Maureen Steltman, the school head, told Postmedia in a brief emailed statement the school “does not comment on personnel issues, even when we take issue with public inaccuracies.”  ...

Christie documents a history of similar abuses by this tyrannical school head-mistress, closing with:

... As for the teacher who was dismissed last month, he received a notice this week from the Teacher Regulation Branch, telling him the Fraser Academy has “provided a report about your conduct.”  He is so crushed and distraught, he said, he may voluntarily surrender his teaching certificate.

Nice! I hope that teacher can summon the nerve (and cash) to take Fraser Academy to court for wrongful dismissal and publicly expose their insanity.   If he identified himself perhaps he could get some crowd funding from, say, The Rebel.  I'd be willing to chip in.  Or, (I hate to even suggest such a thing) failing that take the bastards to the BC Human Rights Tribunal (no cost for complainants) - on second thought, those 'social justice' morons would likely side with the school.

Gender politics infecting private schools

Christie Blatchford: B.C. teacher fired for having the wrong opinion

A teacher at a posh private school in British Columbia was fired last month after making an innocuous comment about abortion to his Grade 12 law class.

Though there is no way of knowing, since discipline matters are shrouded in secrecy, it may be the first time a Canadian teacher has been fired not amid allegations of impropriety, but for having the wrong opinion.

... Before classes even started last fall, teachers underwent serious “gender training” given by QMUNITY, an organization for LGBTQQ2S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning and two-spirit) people. Teachers were told in no uncertain terms, for instance, that “no one is 100-per-cent male or female” and that everyone is somewhere on the “gender spectrum.”

... Unsurprisingly, students at the school, where $30,000-a-year tuition buys small classes, regularly say “I’m so triggered” and are allowed to walk out of class. 

... What happened to the teacher over the ensuing few days sounds like something out of the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China, where people were subjected to what were known as ideological struggle sessions, forced to “confess” to various imagined sins before large crowds, and roundly denounced.  

... Postmedia is not identifying the school at the teacher’s request. “They torched me,” he said, “but I’m reluctant to damage the brand … So many kids who would otherwise fall through the cracks … are valued and helped here,” he said.

That teacher should be encouraged to name names.  The school and it's administrators need to be identified, named and shamed. This idiocy needs to be put down. The student who complained sounds like she suffers a mental illness - an illness likely contracted in her Queer studies classes. Given that the school is in Vancouver it is highly possible that much of the gender identity nonsense originates with the likes of Dr. Mary Bryson, the radically queer UBC "gender studies" professor who Christie wrote about in connection with Jordan Peterson's troubles .

And, as it stands, if anyone needs a "safe space" in that school, it's the regular teachers. They need protection from sick students and their enabling administrators.

Why are there more male scientists and mathematicians?

The Factual Feminist explains:



Well, that seems pretty reasonable.  But maybe the Factual Feminist hasn't caught up with the latest gender theories.  For example, that "there's no such thing as biological sex."

[via]

Universities - "Day care for millenials"

HOBOsexuality studies at UVic (just for example):



University 'liberal arts' faculties (and increasingly K-12) are institutions of indoctrination that produce graduates who are dumber and lower in productive potential than when they entered. Who in their right mind would knowingly pay big bucks to put their offspring into day care like that?

Also: Blazing Cat Fur, Powerline and a poem.

Mandatory indigenous studies at Canadian universities

Jason Agnew notes the absurdities and the exciting possibilities:



Since what's good for the goose must be good for the gander, let's force indigenous students to take mandatory courses in the foundations of Western civilization, say, in CAPITALISM. That would do them a hell of a lot more good than "indigenous studies" would do us.

And while we're at it lets make that course in capitalism mandatory for all non-aboriginal students as well. They won't get it any other way. That might help offset the brain damage being done by those studies in the-rosy-side-of-Marxism that most of them are getting now.

The low moral and intellectual state of the left

Dennis Prager recently wrote a column in the Jewish Journal expressing his concerns:

"... about the Torah and the current unprecedented attempt to blur male-female distinction in biology and society."

It ignited a firestorm of hatemail from the Jewish left.

To which Prager responded "The hate is all in one direction":

... Virtually every one of them is shameful. If you care about the moral nature and intellectual viability of American Jewish life, they are actually frightening.

... I am accused of cruelty, intolerance, bigotry, hate, publicly humiliating someone, ignorance and more.  Yet, there is not a hint of any one of these things in my column.

... Other letters and comments accuse me of intolerance, bigotry, ignorance, transphobia, maligning, defamation, slander, xenophobia, foolishness, mean-spiritedness, inflicting “spiritual violence,” lacking compassion, anti-knowledge and more — all without providing a single example.

... It is these letters and comments that are filled with hate; it is these writers who intend to humiliate; it is these people who are intolerant of any view but their own.

And, yesterday he followed up with: "The moral and intellectual state of the Jewish left."

First, the low intellectual state. ... Bret Stephens ... succinctly put it recently in his Wall Street Journal column, “American academia is, by and large, idiotic.”

... characteristic No. 2: Instead of intellectual discourse, what we have is the dismissal of the decency of the left’s opponents. If you oppose the left, you are rarely debated. Instead you are dismissed as sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted and spewing hatred.

Third, and finally, there is a willingness to make up falsehoods in the service of progressive ideals.

Of course this isn't a problem just with the American Jewish left on the issue of male-female blurring, but with the left throughout the entire West over a wide range of issues.


[Via Blazing Cat Fur]

Universities as institutions of "higher learning loopy indocrination"

Further to my post below on Cultural Marxism, comes this related video essay (via sda) on the death of the liberal arts at our institutions of  higher learning indoctrination in loopy ideas:

BC school curriculum - an overdose of aboriginal culture

Alongside the article on the "massive shift" in BC school curriculum (previous post) is a related article - Aboriginal perspectives help shape new B.C. school curriculum:

With the new curriculum comes one notable and significant shift ...

Not only will students in B.C. be learning about the history of residential schools, starting in Grade 5, but they will also have aboriginal perspectives embedded into all parts of the curriculum in what the government hopes will be a meaningful and authentic manner.

In the specific lessons about B.C.’s history, topics will include discrimination, inequality, oppression and the impacts of colonialism. The changes are part of the B.C. government’s response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report on the residential school system. [That was fast! Wasn't that report just published?]

Wonderful! A school system that wasted so much time, money and energy on the highly dubious notion that "self esteem" was a paramount consideration in educating students has now shifted in the opposite direction.  Now it is of paramount importance that students (at least the non-aboriginal ones) be indoctrinated with the equally dubious notion that they should feel guilty for their ancestors' supposed sins.  Perhaps for "progressives" that's progress.

I don't know how many aboriginal children attend BC public schools but those who do will be subjected to this curriculum.  What effect will such an unremittingly negative indoctrination on the "history of residential schools" have on their young, immature minds? Will it not reinforce a sense of victimhood?  Will it not make them feel bitter?  How will it affect their relationships with their fellow non-aboriginal students?

Then, how about the children of immigrants who had no role whatsoever in residential schools?  What will this indoctrination do to them?

Indoctrination (not "education") that induces feelings of guilt, victimhood, bitterness and God knows what other negative effects seems not just a little misguided.  This curriculum needs some serious re-thinking.

As for "having aboriginal perspectives embedded into all parts of the curriculum" -  why, other than to demonstrate "sensitivity" and, perhaps, boost aboriginal self-esteem?  Given the limited time available for more valuable learning, it is a massively unproductive exercise to subject everyone to an overdose of aboriginal culture. This stuff should be strictly optional for anyone who might have a "passion" for it.

First Nations Mathematics
Also discussed in the article is how the mathematics curriculum might embed learning about First Nations:

"... difficult to imagine how math ...  could have learning about First Nations embedded into its curriculum  ... building a canoe is a good example of how to think about it. ... Math ability has always been important for First Peoples.   ...There are some fantastic resources out of Haida Gwaii that show how math was embedded in the creation of a canoe ...

  Well, "math" in this sense has no doubt been important for all human beings at all stages of development.  It's not difficult to imagine that all humans, even at their most primitive stage, were capable of thinking logically about how to measure and compare quantities for various purposes.  How societies  throughout history actually thought about and used these capabilities would be part of the disciplines of "Cultural Anthropology" and  perhaps "History of Mathematics".

So the rather esoteric "Haida mathematics" of building a canoe should not be embedded in the "Mathematics" curriculum.  It would be a possibly interesting but probably confusing distraction that interferes with learning the modern mathematics necessary to survive and get ahead in the modern world. And suggesting that it is comparable with or relevant to the study of modern mathematical concepts is delusional.

While "First Nations mathematics" may be of great interest, even importance,  to aboriginals (for self esteem?) or historians or anthropologists, for everyone else it should be strictly optional. 

"A massive shift"in BC school curriculum

Vancouver Sun:

"... it is clear that schools will have to move away from a traditional model where all students read the same book at the same time, answer the same questions and write the same test.

There is a massive shift underway, and as students go back to school next week, a new optional curriculum will be in place for students up to Grade 9. It will be mandatory next year. Grades 10 to 12 are next, with a draft curriculum expected this week. ...

The need for "a massive shift" becoming "clear" seems to be based on an assumption that the internet, iPads, iPhones, etc have suddenly changed how kids learn what schools are responsible for teaching. Sure, the internet is neat and there some nifty new tools for accessing information but it is highly doubtful that kids' brains have evolved measurably since their invention and that what they need to know and how they learn it has radically changed.  But what the heck, an Education Minister has to make his mark, doesn't he?

Then there's this interesting assertion:

The shift will also bring in new methods of assessment that could see traditional report cards and letter grades disappear. A bit further off are new graduation requirements, which could mean the end of every student passing the same basic courses and exams in order to get a diploma.

Haven't teachers' unions been pushing these ideas for some time?  Students learn whatever strikes their fancy at their own rate with no tests and no report cards.  Also, no more measuring student progress and so no more accountability for their success or failure.  What could go wrong?

Then, if nothing else, this should be a huge alarm:

"there are no global examples to follow and this education transformation is untested."

Yikes! But why am I not surprised?  This seems to be the case for so many grand new educational schemes.  While there are no doubt some reasonably decent ideas in it, this "massive shift" appears to be yet another giant social experiment involving every child in the province as a guinea pig.  It's an experiment to test the latest radical progressive "thinking" coming out of academia.  And it'll take a generation before we have any inkling of how big a flop it is.

Evolution, not revolution, should be the rule in bringing about change in large crucial systems like education.

Universities "are mutating into thought-suppressing machines"

Rex Murphy:

Lighthouses of reason, or beacons of  folly? 

... Literally, you could multiply the instances of silly thinking and foolish actions by the hundredfold that now burden universities across the West ... have surrendered to every passing fad and fancy of ever-more trivial and mentally bankrupt causes.

... The universities, under the banner of hollow diversity and the even more hollow and self-contradictory banner of tolerance, are mutating into thought-suppressing machines.

... The universities are running a risky race. The more they quiver before the onslaught of the cause-mongers, refuse to take clear and bold stands against protest intimidation tactics, the more they lose their centuries-old prestige. It is a situation that should concern everybody. 

 

The myth of the "power of diversity"

Minding the Campus:

... Based on a 2007 book The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies by Professor Scott Page ... the idea that diversity trumps ability has become widely accepted. It is often given as a justification for continuing and even expanding “diversity” programs.

... With a chorus of believers singing this tune, it too attained the status of conventional wisdom. Hardly anyone bothered to question it – until now. ...  

... Mathematics professor Abigail Thompson ... tears Page’s work apart. She says that Page’s analysis is an example of the misuse of mathematics in the social sciences. It is something that merely gave “a scientific veneer to the diversity field,” she writes.  

... Another mathematics professor ... Aaron Robertson of Colgate University ... derided the findings of Page and Hong as “vacuous or at best highly trivial statements.”...

"It is difficult to conceive a more retrograde idea ..."

Rex Murphy:

.... it is with more grief than anger that I caught the story of an Ottawa “vigil” this week, held after a Missouri grand jury said it would not charge police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Ferguson teenager Michael Brown. Organizers of the rally asked “white/non-black allies” to “refrain from taking up space” and “never be the centre of anything.” 

That last phase “never be at the centre of anything” is particularly troubling. It is so defiantly categorical and universally — “anything” — dismissive.

The phrase and the other gibberish attending it should serve as a motto for every meeting and seminar dedicated to diversity as the governing motto for how not to engage with social issues, how not to bridge the real differences that can exist between people. ...

Rex's column is a very thoughtful take on a good example of what our universities are churning out these days.  Humanities faculties at virtually every university, against all logic, embrace  hare-brained, radical, po-mo social theories as if they were established scientific fact.  It has become what most "progressives" accept unquestioningly as mainstream thought.  The damage done to students' brains, society at large and to tax payers' wallets is enormous.

Vancouver School Board's idiotic gender policy

Kelly McParland:

... B.C., it is clear, does not view schools as a place in which children are taught the basic tools necessary to navigate life – math, science, geography – but as petri dishes for social experimentation in which teachers are lab technicians with unwitting children as their mice.

... On Monday, the Vancouver School Board approved a policy change aimed at accommodating gender identity and sexual orientation.

... Parents who questioned the change argued, quite reasonably, that six-year-olds aren’t qualified to understand all the intricacies of identity issues. ... Nonetheless, the school board forged ahead, even deciding to adopt new pronouns

... A last-minute amendment mandated that “xe, xem and xyr” may be used in place of “he/she” or “him/her”.

... B.C. teachers will presumably be the ones to add this social minefield to the other developmental issues they are already expected to shoulder ... In this case it appears they may be expected to actively keep parents in the dark about a critical element of their child’s growth.  ...

Sun News' Anthony Furey and Ada Slivinsky:


Such idiocy follows naturally from the decades of indoctrination in radical social theory that many of these VSB members received in their UBC Women's Studies and Gender Studies courses.

Do Canadian university professors lean left?

Do fish swim?:

... A 2011 study found that Canadian university professors were left leaning but were not "hugely different in this respect from the Canadian university-educated population."

So, for left leaning professors - "mission accomplished".

"Nothing says 'inclusive' like racial segregation"

David Thompson on liberal arts indoctrination at an elite university:

Diversity and Inclusion - To be cultivated, obviously, with racial segregation: 

In order to create a safe space, this programme is open to people of colour only. A similar conversation for white students, faculty and staff is planned for the spring semester.

You see, it’s a “conversation,” one that’s all about “healing and mutual respect” and “engaging with diverse views.”

I’m actually rather tickled by the notion of students needing a “safe space” at Hamilton College, an elite New York liberal arts college with an endowment of around three-quarters of a billion dollars and where tuition is a mere $46,ooo, excluding room and board. This, after all, is one of the most cossetting and exquisitely PC environments on the face of the Earth. ...

If it were only Hamilton College infecting young minds with this kind of insanity it might be funny.  But nearly every university and college in North America has similar programs doing similar damage to millions of students and wasting untold $billions.  It's an unmitigated disaster.

Common sense education - how to fix an education system ruined by "romantic progressives"

Brian Lilley at Sun News' Byline has been running Michael Zwaagstra's excellent series of videos on Canada's totally botched public education system.  Some of the main culprits in the education debacle are the university faculties of education which Zwaagstra exposes in video number IX (of X):



Here are all ten videos in the series.

Last year Mr. Zwaagstra gave a comprehensive talk covering the whole problem (an education system that has been ruined by "romantic progressivism").   It's a hour long but well worth the time. 

Zwaagstra's website - all good stuff.

Related, from David Thompson:

Slate’s Allison Benedikt stands at the altar and demands sacrifice: 

You are a bad person if you send your children to private school… I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental… If every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good.

Dumb-assed BC court OKs teachers' pushing politics in the classroom

In a 3-0 ruling the BC Court of Appeals OK'd teachers pushing their politics in classrooms:

Teachers who wore campaign buttons to school five years ago and posted political messages on classroom doors were exercising their right to free expression in a way that did not detract from their students’ education ...

... “There was no evidence in this case of any actual or potential harm to students from being exposed to the materials about educational issues, nor any facts from which an inference of harm could be drawn, Madam Justice Risa Levine says in a 3-0 ruling that sided with the B.C. Teachers’ Federation (BCTF)...

... “Open communication and debate about public, political issues is a hallmark of the free and democratic society the Charter is designed to protect. Children live in this diverse and multicultural society, and exposing them to diverse societal views and opinions is an important part of their educational experience.” ...

What utter bullcrap!  No 'evidence of harm to students'? How would that be measured with any credibility? And, invoking "Charter" rights, "democracy" and "diversity of opinion" is little more than bafflegab to justify teachers pushing their politics on students to further their own self-interest.  If "diversity of opinion" is a legitimate "reason" for their ruling, maybe the judges could have explained from whom the students would be getting an opposing point of view.

In the classroom teachers have, for many hours each day, a captive audience over which they exercise adult authority and influence.  Teachers should be absolutely barred from pushing their politics on students.  It's an abuse of their position of power and influence.  Teachers have ample opportunity to exercise their "right to free expression" outside the classroom.  Besides being able to do it personally, the BCTF does it on their behalf, year-round, day-in, day-out.

A more dumb-assed ruling is hard to imagine.

The new three Rs - racism, reproduction and recycling

George Will:

The three R’s — formerly reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic — now are racism, reproduction and recycling. Especially racism. ... “instruction” synonymous with “propaganda,” which in the patois of progressivism is called “consciousness-raising.”

...tens of millions could be diverted from progressive gestures to academic purposes by abolishing on every ... campus every administrative position whose title contains the words “diversity,” “equity,” “race,” “ethnicity,” “sustainability,” “green,” “gender,” “inclusion,” “identity,” “interconnectivity,” “globalization,” “climate,” “campus climate,” “cross-cultural” or “multiculturalism.”

Check out the comment thread to Will's column at the WaPo. It's loaded with nasty reaction from  progressives.

University of Waterloo does it again

Pro-abortion loons prevent MP Stephen Woodward from speaking at the University of Waterloo.



Once again bigotted, fascistic bullies are permitted to shut down speech by someone they disagree with.  Once again pathetic, useless, cowardly police allow it to happen.

And once again we are offered proof that universities are wasting mountains of taxpayers' cash "educating" these fools.