Tag: education
School bus

Right-Wing Scammers Are Targeting Public School Kids Now

The right's war on public education has reached its inevitable conclusion: fighting back against supposed liberal indoctrination in schools by empowering an explicitly right-wing organization to expose schoolchildren to flagrant conservative propaganda.

PragerU is creating partnerships with Republican-controlled states to put videos from its PragerU Kids offshoot — which it bills as a counter to ”the woke and anti-American leftist narrative taught in most schools” — in their classrooms. Oklahoma’s Department of Education announced on Tuesday that it will join Florida in treating PragerU Kids’ propagandistic work as legitimate educational content.

More states will likely follow — PragerU hosts a petition on its website whose signers support allowing its videos “in classrooms nationwide,” and state officials often mimic the policies they see implemented elsewhere.

This marks a new twist on an old con. Right-wingers regularly denounce nonpartisan institutions as excessively left-wing, then establish explicitly ideological counter-institutions as a purported balance. At its most effective, that strategy brings political benefits for Republican politicians and financial profits for their propagandists. With PragerU Kids, GOP officials are using their power to ensure that the grifters get paid.

Education is the next frontier for right-wing grifters and propagandists 

For more than two years, the right has conducted a nationwide campaign targeting the purported influence of the academic framework known as “critical race theory” in public school systems. Conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, and media outlets identify, exaggerate, or fabricate discrete instances of alleged left-wing excesses in discussions of race across the nation’s approximately 130,000 schools, then blow them up into national stories in order to focus the movement’s mostly white adherents’ racial anxiety into political energy.

Republican politicians have largely responded to the incentives created by this campaign by enacting legislation to limit discourse and teaching on race in public schools, at times through laws that courts have blocked as unconstitutional.

But the anti-critical race theory campaign also presents right-wing organizations with opportunities to access public school resources and their large, captive audience — and PragerU is taking advantage.

PragerU is a right-wing propaganda factory which claims to have generated “7 billion lifetime views” for its massive archive of videos targeting college-aged viewers. While its name conveys the imprimatur of a nonpartisan educational facility, the organization describes itself as “focused on changing minds” to be more conservative. Founded in 2011 by Dennis Prager, a right-wing talk radio host with an array of extremist views who has argued that “either ‘studies’ confirm what common sense suggests or that they are mistaken,” the organization has been heavily funded by Dan and Farris Wilks, the extremely religious GOP megadonors who also backed The Daily Wire.

PragerU rolled out its PragerU Kids line in 2021 in direct response to the right-wing frenzy over critical race theory. As with its videos geared toward college-aged viewers, PragerU claims its kids content is intended to counter the left-wing material purportedly taught elsewhere.

According to PragerU’s most recent report for its donors, its “kids shows are created to inoculate children against the woke and anti-American leftist narrative taught in most schools.” What that actually entails, as my colleague John Knefel reported, is “right-wing propaganda” that seeks to “render history and its inheritances invisible, inert, and incapable of inspiring young people to seek a more equal and more just world.”

By putting these videos in their state’s public school classrooms, Republican politicians can garner accolades on the right. PragerU, in turn, gets to tell the donors who gave more than $65 million according to its last publicly available tax filing that the organization has been successful in finding a new, captive audience for its content.

The losers are the students, and parents who don’t want their kids watching content explicitly designed to make them more conservative.

The right manufactures rage against institutions, then props up its own

PragerU Kids marks the latest iteration of a decades-old strategy. Grievance by grievance, the right has torn down nonpartisan institutions and businesses and constructed an alternate set of brands for “lifestyle conservatives” to purchase.

First came the press. Republican activists and politicians spent decades attacking mainstream news sources as excessively liberal. As rank-and-file conservatives lost trust in journalists, movement leaders launched new right-wing alternatives: talk radio in the 1980s, Fox News in the 1990s, and digital outlets in the 21st century.

Much of the content on these outlets focuses on attacking the mainstream press, both as a way to “work the refs” and encourage them to provide more favorable coverage of the GOP and its causes, and as a business strategy to keep audiences ensconced in a closed information environment where they only hear from right-wing voices.

Then came social media. The right ran the same playbook against the likes of Facebook and YouTube, trying to garner special dispensation to break the rules by claiming the platforms were biased against them. At the same time, they stood up (with varying degrees of success) explicitly right-wing alternatives in Trump’s Truth Social, Trump aide Jason Miller’s Gettr, white nationalist stomping ground Gab, and Rumble, a YouTube knock-off backed by fascist billionaire Peter Thiel.

Then came everything else. Over the last few years, right-wing propagandists have denounced an array of American corporations as exemplars of “woke capital” and called for boycotts. At the same time, right-wing entrepreneurs (often the same people promoting the critiques) have launched right-wing analogues to those disfavored brands.

Right-wing culture warriors are urged to drink Ultra Right Beer instead of Bud Light and Black Rifle Coffee instead of Starbucks, shave with Jeremy’s Razors instead of Harry’s or Gillette, make phone calls on Pure Talk instead of AT&T, and eat Jeremy’s Chocolate instead of Hershey’s. As other figures on the right attacked Disney movies and popular children’s books as excessively “woke,” they prepped right-wing options to replace them.

It’s a long con, one designed to channel culture war issues into Republican votes so the party can redistribute wealth upward, while also putting money in the pockets of the party’s hack class. And now, GOP politicians are putting the power of the state behind their grifters.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Supreme Court

How To Achieve Diversity Without Affirmative Action

I've never been a huge fan of affirmative action. There's something about objective standards — however arbitrary they may be — that gives kids from working-class backgrounds a fair chance to succeed against those who were to the manor born. The American dream story has been told many times over by good test takers like me without a dime to spare. By comparison, there's something about giving extra points to someone because of what group they happen to belong to that strikes many fair-minded people as unfair. Give points for overcoming obstacles or personal accomplishments, that I understand, but not simply for race alone.

The problem is that diversity is a compelling objective not only for a university classroom but also for our society as a whole. It is critical when I teach a criminal law class that I have students participating in the discussion who understand issues from different perspectives; it does change the educational experience. And it is critical that we educate and train lawyers who will serve all communities in our society.

I'm not trying to reargue the Supreme Court case. That conclusion has been coming for a long time. It has been state law in California since 1996. We have learned to live with it in our state university system, and so will you. What I'm arguing is that diversity is still just as important as it has always been, and the challenge is how to achieve it without resorting to race-conscious admissions and/or endless lawsuits. Especially not endless lawsuits.

What has happened in California is instructive. In the immediate aftermath of Proposition 209, banning affirmative action in public education, the number of Blacks and Hispanics at the most selective schools in the state system literally tanked. That's true.

But as my friend Erwin Chemerinsky, the Dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School, one of the jewels of the system, told me on my podcast, many of the schools in the system, including his, then developed new programs and approaches to achieve diversity without race-conscious admissions. They did it with broad outreach and aggressive recruitment, involving both faculty and alumni, without in any way lowering their standards. They did it by relying on a whole host of factors to define excellence rather than simply applying a straight numerical formula. They did it without lowering the ultimate quality of the class.

Is it easy? Absolutely not. But even apart from this decision, and not necessarily because of it, many universities have been moving away from reliance on standardized test scores and ranking systems that are based on them because, among other things, of the cultural biases that are inherent in them. Again, I'm the first to admit to being of two minds about the move toward more subjective admissions. I hope it will help to build more diverse classes, including some kids who may not be as skilled at test taking, without sacrificing those who may not have the connections to check enough other boxes (like alumni connections or donor potential or, as one former admissions dean used to call it, the "glitter factor") that otherwise command attention.

What happens next, unfortunately, is likely to be another round of lawsuits as the post-affirmative action world "shakes out." Is it OK to take account of the obstacles applicants have overcome? Almost certainly yes, so long as those obstacles are not solely defined in racial terms. Is it OK to take account of economic hardships? It should be, as long as the hardships are not measured solely by ZIP codes that are race-based. And so the challenges will go. Admissions officials should be given broad deference in fashioning admissions systems, but sadly much litigation should be expected, and in the short run, at least, the danger is that admissions officials will be afraid to be bold when they most need to be.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Why Do We Obsess Over Transgender Issues?

Why Do We Obsess Over Transgender Issues?

From the amount of discussion, you might think that a third of all fifth graders were transgender — that is, they don't identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. Actually, the transgender population is very small. Only 0.6 percent of Americans — far fewer than one out of every 100 — identify as transgender.

The fascination is fueled both by hyperactive LGBTQ advocacy and social conservatives using the "issue" to perhaps avoid tackling matters the broader public really cares about.

As for the news media, the conflict provides colorful imagery and is a lot cheaper to cover than a war. It has been most absurdly magnified by the drama surrounding Zooey Zephyr, a transgender lawmaker in Montana with a bent for exhibitionism. Zephyr was expelled from the state legislature for saying that colleagues who would restrict gender-affirming medical care for transgender kids would have "blood" on their hands.

Considerably more pointed things have undoubtedly been said in those chambers without prompting such radical sanction. But conservative legislators have their own show to put on.

We at home were arguing whether Zephyr was obviously a guy who dressed as a girl — or really a girl almost through and through. Let's just say it shouldn't matter how he or she identifies or dresses. And whatever pronoun he or she chooses to call him- or herself should probably be up to him or her.

I've known transgender men and women who were fine friends and co-workers. No one is saying that their life is easy. They deserve sensitivity and respect. But there are other things needing our attention. The states that are busy, busy, busy passing laws intended, they claim, to protect the larger society from their tiny transgender community seem unwilling to challenge the rights of lunatics to openly carry weapons of war in Walmart. So whom do we call strange?

Where might we stand on these questions? Let's start with gender-affirming medical treatments, such as puberty blockers and breast reduction surgery. We should be very very very careful about doing those interventions, particularly at the younger ages.

However, let's defer to the Montana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which called the bill under consideration "an overly broad blanket ban that takes decisions that should be made by families and physicians and puts them in the hands of politicians."

As for whether individuals born as males should be competing in women's sports, the answer should be "it depends." The Biden administration has sensibly proposed letting schools keep transgender students out of sports where they may pose unfair competition to women.

This would matter more in muscle-dominated sports like wrestling than, say, in volleyball. That's why the administration's proposal wisely rules against absolute bans. Let the schools decide.

It's true that hormone therapy can reduce testosterone levels, responsible for muscle mass, but that's a choice transgender women may or may not make. In general, people born as male have greater body strength — a reality that advocates may sneak around.

"The image of 'quote' trans women ruining the integrity of women's sports paints a false picture of life as a trans woman," Zephyr told the House Judiciary Committee. "It incorrectly claims that we have a competitive advantage. And it misses why trans people transition in the first place — which is to lead a happier life."

We call that "changing the subject."

As for whether transgender individuals born with male equipment should be allowed to use women's restrooms, I say, "Who cares." I'm sure I have shared those facilities with cross-dressers without my ever realizing it — and often.

In the end, I wish happy lives to transgender, and all other, people. Now let's change the subject.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Don Jr. Mindless Tweet

Twitter Derides Mindless Don Jr. Comments On School Safety

The eldest son of the former president is calling for the firing of “critical race theory” teachers in public schools and to use those funds to pay for armed guards. He also wants all “gender studies” teachers fired, and is calling for putting the hiring and firing of those teachers on state and local ballots.

Donald Trump, Jr., who, it appears, has no teaching degree, training in early childhood education (ECE), early child development, or any other education training, has a B.S. in economics.

Trump appeared to be specifically referring to elementary schools, after last week’s mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. 19 children and two teachers were shot and killed, and another 17 were wounded.

Most elementary schools, and in fact most public schools at the elementary, middle school, or high school level, do not have teachers dedicated to teaching gender studies classes, although some teachers may touch on the subject in conjunction with their regular classes.

A search by NCRM could find no critical race theory classes at the elementary, middle, and high school level public schools. Like many Americans, Trump Jr. appears to be misunderstanding what critical race theory (CRT) is.

Critical Race Theory, according to the law professor who coined the term, “is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced,” Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a law professor at the U.C.L.A. School of Law and Columbia Law School told The New York Times last year, “the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”

“It is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced,” she said, “the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”

As many know, it is a college-level method of investigating, not an elementary school class.

Donald Trump, Jr. appeared to disagree, and was widely mocked Sunday night:
























Reprinted with permission from Alternet.