Purdue hires a social justice warrior to head its engineering program.  

While overt sexism and homophobia are less common than historically, they still play out in ways that are subtle and, therefore, insidious and hard to combat. How do you see this happening in the sciences, and how do you deal with it?

One of the biggest sources of sexism and homophobia is lodged in the epistemology of science. How we think, and what we think, matter in determining what we know and don’t know, and affects our workplace interactions in very negative ways. We think that we eliminate bias by keeping our “personal lives” – some aspects of ourselves – out of the lab, classroom, or office. But actually this is how we allow implicit bias to seep in and saturate everything we do, because that which is male, straight, white, able-bodied, monied, is not left behind in the practice of science and engineering – it is just so normative that lots of us don’t notice.

The story came out on Saturday.  I can only hope it’s an April Fool prank – perhaps the most insanely brillaint one o al time.  

I’m not very hopeful.

On the one hand, I do believe that rehabilitation makes sense; once most people get out of their 20s and 30s, the small-brain hormonal impulsiveness behind a fair portion of crime starts to fade just a bit, and long-term prisoners need something to replace that part of their lives with.

So the prison college program hignlighted on NPR earlier this week would seem to make some sense.

On the other hand, the sound bite of one of the classes:

Professor Delia Mellis teaches a modern U.S. history class and, when I arrive, 18 men dressed in green jumpsuits are discussing sexual identity politics.

“I don’t think he’s saying that; I think he’s making a distinction between it being gay acts — homosexual acts — and it being a gay identity,” one student interjects.

Mellis responds, “That’s absolutely his central idea, right?”

 

…makes it clear that retribution and revenge would seem to be part of the goal, still.

The Shakopee School District had a flub in their budget, to the tune of almost $5 million:

According to Thompson’s email, the district found a $4.5 million discrepancy during a yearly financial review.

Finance Director Mike Burlager mentioned the error during the school board’s Truth in Taxation meeting Dec. 12, but did not mention the exact amount. Soon after, Thompson mentioned a $5 million shortfall.

Of course, if it were a charter school, the state would have SWAT team locking the doors by now.

Remember when Al Franken lit into Betsy DeVos over her school choice beliefs?

Some might have thought Franken opposed school choice.   He does, in fact, support school choice.

For those who can afford it.

…the Senator also has very little experience with public schools.

According to an interview with Harvard magazine, Franken was a math and science whiz as a boy. As he approached secondary school years, his parents wanted to find a better school for their gifted student. Franken ended up attending and graduating from Blake, one of the most exclusive private schools in the Minneapolis area, where the tuition for upperclassmen is currently $29,025 per year.

Franken’s two kids also avoided public school. Instead, his kids attended The Dalton School in New York City where tuition is $44,640 per year. Dalton is known for educating celebrities and children of royalty.

Forget about Franken; I sincerely doubt you find the children of many superstar superintendents toiling away in public schools.

Or…

…is it?

Bill Cooper, former chair of the Minnesota GOP and longtime CEO at TCF Bank, passed away earlier this week  at 73.

In addition to leading the MNGOP during the Carlson years, Cooper did two things that made him a hero to me.

Nick-Slapped:  Back in 2005, then-Strib columnist Nick Coleman wrote a deeply dumb column wondering how Scott Johnson of Power Line  managed to blog during his work day (Johnson was at the time TCF’s corporate counsel), and urging TCF customers to pull their money out of the bank in protest over employing an “out” conservative.

Cooper pulled TCF’s ad money from the Strib – $250K a year – and followed up by cutting off the City Pages as well.

And the whining and carping lulled me to a sound, happy nap.   I’d like to think that costing the Strib a cool quarter mill had a lot to do with Coleman’s retirement.   For that alone, we should thank Cooper.

Friends:  In a more serious and productive vein, Cooper was one of the movers and shakers behind “Friends of Education”, a chain of charter schools that were focused on specific communities and educational models.

Friends of Education schools were, and perpetually remain, among the top-performing charters in the state.  And that was in part due to Cooper’s business sense; “Friends” charters that didn’t succeed got shut down; the successful ones carried on.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is shopping for a generator at Menard’s.  As he pores over the spec sheet, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK steps around the corner.  

BIRKENSTOCK:  Merg!   The “christian” college, “Liberty University”, is building a gun violence range for its students.

BERG:   It’s a gun range.  And so what?

BIRKENSTOCK:  It’s weird.

BERG:   Hardly. It’s a conservative institution.  Many of its students are shooters.  The campus 2nd Amendment group is large and active, and shootings sports are popular among students.  It’s not unreasonable to assume that a shooting-sports-friendly campus is going to be a draw for students who are, like most Liberty students, to the right of center.

BIRKENSTOCK:  But guns on campus!  Isn’t that just kind of weird?  Shouldn’t school be a place of non-violence?

BERG:   Non-violence?   You mean like “gun-free” Virginia Tech?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Yes!

BERG:  Where a gunman killed 32 students and faculty?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Don’t confuse me with irrelevant details.

BERG:  Er, right.  So – why should Liberty not provide that facility, if it’s an obvious marketing spiff for them?

BIRKENSTOCK:  There should be no guns at places of higher learning.

BERG:  Question for you, Moonbeam:   should colleges teach abstinence only sex education?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Good heavens, no.  That never works!

BERG:  Because people naturally gravitate toward things they enjoy?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Yes!

BERG:   So abstinence only education can not work when it comes to sex, but is the only acceptable solution when it comes to guns?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Why do you hate women and minorities?

BERG:  Naturally.

And SCENE. 

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Students in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania took down a portrait of Shakespeare and replaced it with a portrait of that other one.  You know, that author whose works have passed-the-test-of-time, delighted billions around the globe.  What’s the name again? 

 Help me out here, it’s that famous writer.  The one you’ve heard of, whose books you read in school, everybody read them.  Dang, it’s on the tip of my tongue: Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Twain, Hemmingway . . . aw, I can’t believe this, how could I forget? 

 Look, it’s the English Department.  They put up portraits of the greatest writers of all time just like the mural outside Barnes and Noble.  They’re the most influential, most enduring, the authors whose literature is literally timeless.  I can’t believe I’m blanking on this one.

 Shelley, Proust, Solzhenitsyn, Homer?  Agggh.  You know, the greatest writer of all time, obviously, since the writings are deemed worthy to replace Shakespeare.  Practically the foundation of the entire canon of literature in western civilization.  Way more well-known than that famous black professor who every cop knows on sight.

 This is so embarrassing.  It’ll come to me.

 Joe Doakes

Got me.

On the one hand, it’s depressing that incoming college Freshmen need to be taught free speech.

On the other hand, at least one University president is doing it.  

BTW, Mitch Daniels 2020.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Why are families leaving St. Paul schools?  It’s a mystery.  Now that the staff member doing the survey has been let go, we may never find out.

 Looking at the chart, there appears to be some overlap in causes since the percentages work out to 114% and even under Common Core math, that’s not a reasonable answer.  But just looking at the top three responses, I think I detect a pattern.

 40% said “We moved.”  I wonder why they moved?  Better job outside the district?  Seems unlikely, the economy isn’t that robust.  Maybe they moved to GET outside the district?  But why would they do that? Who’d want to leave the vibrant diversity of Frogtown to live in monochrome, monoculture Woodbury?

 36% said “the school was unsafe.”  But St. Paul just adopted new discipline policies to let Children Whose Lives Matter run wild.  That’ll cut down on reported discipline statistics which will be a big help, won’t it?  After the news accounts of violence in the last two years and the “don’t-bother-to-catch-go-straight-to-release” policy in effect, why would families think schools would be unsafe?

 30% said “child was harassed/bullied.” Well that’s just whining.  All kids are harassed and bullied, especially kids with Privilege who deserve it.  That’s no excuse to leave the school. Pulling your kids out of our school costs us pupil-day money and that’s a racist hate crime.

 Yep, it’s a total mystery why parents are pulling their kids out of St. Paul schools.  Luckily, there are paid consultants to offer possible suggestions, some cited in the article.  More arts classes might help.  Different languages, smaller class sizes, better special education.  Maybe training, to teach parents not to expect so much from schools like order, discipline, learning. 

 I hope they figure it out soon.  A child’s education is not an experiment you can do over if it fails the first time, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to avoid a life of misery.  All those minds would be a terrible thing to waste on fantasy feel-good foolishness.

 Joe Doakes

Joe’s got some good ideas…

…but when you combine a “one size fits all” model of education, combined with a system that is designed to provide sinecures for the ruling political class’s care and feeding much more than “educating” people (despite the best efforts of a lot of teachers), what do they expect?

Or, more importantly, what do they expect you to expect?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Why are families leaving St. Paul schools?  It’s a mystery.  Now that the staff member doing the survey has been let go, we may never find out.

 

Looking at the chart, there appears to be some overlap in causes since the percentages work out to 114% and even under Common Core math, that’s not a reasonable answer.  But just looking at the top three responses, I think I detect a pattern.

 40% said “We moved.”  I wonder why they moved?  Better job outside the district?  Seems unlikely, the economy isn’t that robust.  Maybe they moved to GET outside the district?  But why would they do that? Who’d want to leave the vibrant diversity of Frogtown to live in monochrome, monoculture Woodbury?

 36% said “the school was unsafe.”  But St. Paul just adopted new discipline policies to let Children Whose Lives Matter run wild.  That’ll cut down on reported discipline statistics which will be a big help, won’t it?  After the news accounts of violence in the last two years and the “don’t-bother-to-catch-go-straight-to-release” policy in effect, why would families think schools would be unsafe?

 30% said “child was harassed/bullied.” Well that’s just whining.  All kids are harassed and bullied, especially kids with Privilege who deserve it.  That’s no excuse to leave the school. Pulling your kids out of our school costs us pupil-day money and that’s a racist hate crime.

 Yep, it’s a total mystery why parents are pulling their kids out of St. Paul schools.  Luckily, there are paid consultants to offer possible suggestions, some cited in the article.  More arts classes might help.  Different languages, smaller class sizes, better special education.  Maybe training, to teach parents not to expect so much from schools like order, discipline, learning. 

 I hope they figure it out soon.  A child’s education is not an experiment you can do over if it fails the first time, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to avoid a life of misery.  All those minds would be a terrible thing to waste on fantasy feel-good foolishness.

 Joe Doakes

I’m not saying “Making the schools crappy” was a diabolical DFL plot to make conservative-leaning people leave Minneapolis and Saint Paul, to consolidate control forever in the hands of the DFL.

But if it were their plan, how would it be working any differently?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“That means minor crimes that take place at school, such as trespassing, truancy, theft and drug use, she said, would be “dealt with more appropriately in other ways” that don’t involve arrest and prosecution.”

All crimes?  Or only crimes committed by Students Whose Lives Matter, to make the statistics come out better?

What a rude shock when you leave school and find out there are laws in place and people expect you to follow them. Thugs will encounter kindler, gentler police when police encounter kindler, gentler thugs.  Until then . . . .

I’ll differ with Joe in degree, here; we do have too many arrestable crimes in this country.  Truancy?  Marijuana possession?  Minor driving offenses?  Please.

  Joe Doakes

…then one can only hope that this is the needle.

A student  on a school bus, seeing another student pointing a gun at a third student, wrestled the would be shooter to the ground, almost certainly saving the intended victim’s life.

The school administration reacted… Well, you’ve read this blog for a few years, right? How do you think they reacted?

A Florida high school hero who wrestled a loaded gun away from a football player threatening to shoot a teammate was himself suspended for three days.
The 16-year-old, from Cypress Lake High School in Fort Myers, was punished for his part in disarming the boy who wanted to blast another student on the school bus ride home…

…But, instead of rewarding the heroic teen who put his own life at risk, school authorities suspended him “for his role in an incident where a weapon was present”.

Good is punished as if it’s evil.

And they say schools aren’t mindless indoctrination centers.

Detroit Free Press article calls for the murder of Republicans…

…for voting for school choice.

What was it that Gandhi said?  First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they attack you.  Then you win.

Or, in the case of Detroit, “win”.

Joe Doakes of Como Park emails:

The current Campus Crybaby Crisis is explained by Reynold’s Law:
“The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”
If fewer people were able to afford college, degrees would become valuable again. Plus, young people wouldn’t be saddled with a mountain of unpayable and non-dischargeable debt, so they could afford to buy houses and start families.
Student loans: end them, don’t mend them.
Joe Doakes

Along with making education about, well, education, rather than schooling (to say nothing of indoctrination).

Ohio State takes off the kid gloves with the campus crybullies:

It’s gonna take a lot to restore my faith in American higher education.

But it’s a start.

A Saint Paul substitute teacher who went to the press about having had the crap beaten out of her by a seventh-grader is being blackballed by the SPPS:

On Tuesday, Egan said, she was subbing at St. Paul’s Johnson Senior High School when her employer, Teachers On Call (TOC), called. A manager told her the St. Paul Public Schools had contacted TOC to say Egan could not sub for the district again.

Candice Egan, a St. Paul substitute teacher, said a student repeatedly shoved her, including into a wall, at a St. Paul school on March 22, 2016. (Courtesy photo)
Candice Egan (Courtesy photo)
“She claimed it was because I didn’t notify Teachers On Call about what happened and that no one at Creative Arts (High School) knew what happened, and that I had gone to the media about it,” Egan said. But Egan said none of that was true.

Egan said she had told plenty of people at Creative Arts what happened, as well as Teachers On Call. And she spoke with the Pioneer Press after a reporter initiated contact with her.

“I think this is happening because I talked about it,” Egan said. “I don’t know if it’s because I filed a (police) report or not.”

The SPPS is reacting to the collapse in discipline in the schools…

…by waging a PR campaign to convince everyone that there’s no problem.

There’s going to be a rally for better safety in the Saint Paul Public School, on Tuesday, 3/22:

RALLY FOR SAFE ST. PAUL SCHOOLS

Date: March 22, 2016
Time: 5:30 P. M.
Location: 360 Colborne Street, St. Paul
Link: http://www.mapquest.com/us/mn/st-paul/55102-3228/360-colborne-st-44.930979,-93.119580
Come join us in supporting Safe Schools in St. Paul and let our school board know that we demand Safe Schools in St. Paul.  So far this year 19 St. Paul Public School employees have been injured by students and two have had to hospitalized due to serious head injuries.  Enough is enough!  We are demanding revised discipline policies for the protection of our students and staff.  Our schools need have a safe learning environment for our children and the workplace needs to be safe for our teachers and staff.
Let’s show the SPPS school board that we care about having a safe learning environment for both students and staff!  Join us on March 22, 2015 at 5:30 P. M. at St. Paul Public School Board meeting and let them know that we want Safe Schools NOW!
Tell your friends and neighbors!
Sponsored by the St. Paul Republican Party

I’m gonna be there.  I hope you will too – whether you live in St. Paul or not.  It’s everyone’s tax money going into this cesspool.

Mark Kennedy – former Representative for Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District, and a longtime friend of this blog and the NARN – has been named president of the University of North Dakota.

Congratulations!

Macalester – at $47,195 a year – has made the list of colleges where alumni earn less than high school grads.

Now, to some extent these rankings are misleading; students’ earning potential is whatever they decide it’s going to be.

Provided they don’t think waving a degree about and saying “I want a job in  my field” is the way to do it.

Which, given the number of International Victimization Studies majors Mac turns out, may be a bigger problem than most places.

Saint Paul’s social justice mafia is baying for blood again.

A Saint Paul teacher, Theo Olson, made a perfectly legitimate observation:

“Black Lives Matter” of Saint Paul is threatening to – you guessed it – “close down” Como High School over the posting.

(Note to BLM; if you are a one trick pony, eventually people get bored with that one trick.  It might pay to learn a new one.  Just saying).

Now, if you’ve read this blog, you know I’m no huge fan of the public school system.   I’ve got my reasons.  I don’t cut public schools, least of all the SPPS, a whole lot of slack.

But Olson’s right.

And this is another example of a particularly ugly form of anti-intellectual know-nothingism that’s sweeping ” progressive” circles in “progressive” cesspools like Saint Paul; shaming and attacking and calling “racist” the very act of questioning BLM.

For any reason!

At all!

Of course, the SPPS’ leadership will be too pusillanimous to react as it should.  It’s sort of baked into their organizational DNA.

Minneapolis and St. Paul schools continue to fail.

Hundreds of school districts in the state are not making significant progress in closing achievement gaps, including the state’s largest urban districts, Minneapolis and St. Paul.

All Minnesota school districts and charter schools are required to improve reading and math test scores, boost graduation rates and cut achievement gaps for all students, under a state law passed in 2013.

But in its first progress report, the Minnesota Department of Education says that many are not meeting their targets.

If they do not meet their goals by the 2017-18 school year, some of their state funding could be in jeopardy.

(Not to worry.  They’ll find a way to keep the parts of the machine that matter – the parts that pay dues back to Education Minnesota and thence the DFL – funded one way or another).

In the meantime, the Minnesota media is parroting the schools’ line that graduation rates are “rising”, albeit slowly.   This, a year after they rapturously reported a big jump.

Unmentioned; we got a big jump after Minnesota dropped its graduation testing.   So of course we had a big jump one year, followed by a trickle of “improvement” since then.

In unrelated news that’s probably related?  They also lowered the standards to get a GED.  So that’s looking better now, too!

Oberlin College – which is sort of the UC Berkeley of small private schools, the school that spawned Lena Dunham, the place where the affirmative checklist for student sex was invented, which has led the academic world in “trigger warning” R&D, a place that makes Carlton or Macalester look like Hillsdale – has been on the “dodgy” list for it’s weaselly approach to free speech on campus.

But it’s nice to know they know where to draw the line, isn’t it?

Wanna feel depressed about society’s future?

The daughter of a Holocaust survivor interviews kids at a Louisiana vo-tech about the Holocaust:

Well, no.  The kids are at Drexel, and at Penn State – an “Ivy League” school that supposedly recruits the “best and brightest”.

“Highlights” – the Latina woman, Ivy Leaguer and future Leader Of Our Society at around 5:36 who lumped Jim Crow in with the Holocaust.

I’m afraid we’re one generation away from completely forgetting.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Everyone wants our children to be educated so they can achieve The American Dream.  But even in school districts run by Black administrators, Black students do poorly on reading and math tests.

According to the article, that’s because Black students lack White Privilege which consists of parental supervision, respect for teachers, education is valued, correctly spoken English at home, homework done and checked for errors, security from violence at home and teachers who have high expectations.

Of course, those are precisely the behaviors that constitute Acting White and which no self-respecting authentic Black youth would be caught dead doing, lest he be ridiculed as an Uncle Tom by peers and in the media.

Worse, the tests measure knowledge that might have been essential to success in 19^th Century Prussia, on which our educational system was based.  But is it knowledge essential to success as a 21^st Century American? What is “success?”  The Amish don’t define “success” the same as the Clintons and President Obama’s vision of being an American seems nothing like Ronald Reagan’s vision.  Do Blacks define “success” the same as Whites or Asians or recent Central American immigrants or African refugees?   What should schools teach when it’s obvious that students do not share the same definition of “success” and how can different measures of “success” constitute one American Dream?

Why should all students take the White Success tests? Maybe there should be a different tests to measure Black success?  I’m not talking about racist joke tests like “Jasper steals three watermelons . . .” but a serious inquiry into what constitutes “success” for modern Black Americans and what knowledge, skills and abilities are essential to achieve that success?

I’m asking for a serious inquiry:  what is The American Dream?

Joe Doakes

As we’ve discussed in this space before, “class” privilege is every bit as big an issue as “white privilege” – which is why BLM is protesting so furiously about the white variety.

But “class privilege” is exactly behind our current school system’s definition of “success”.