Leaked Audio Reveals How California Teachers Recruit Kids Into LGBTQ Clubs

BY BRAD JONES

 

November 20, 2021 Updated: November 20, 2021

A student walks on the campus of a school in Temecula, Calif., on March 23, 2016

A leaked audio recording revealed California teachers mocking parents over concerns about homosexual and transgender indoctrination at school, said a source who attended a recent teachers union conference in Palm Springs.

The recording, obtained by The Epoch Times, captured two seventh-grade teachers, Kelly Baraki and Lori Caldeira from Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, Calif., telling other teachers how to recruit students into LGBTQ clubs, also known as “Gay-Straight Alliance” (GSA) clubs, at school.

“It was horrifying to listen to not just one teacher but really all of the teachers in all of these seminars, excoriating parents,” said the source, who goes by the pseudonym Rebecca Murphy.

Murphy attended the California Teachers Association (CTA) conference in late October. She told The Epoch Times the teachers “mocked” parents for their concerns, and suggested they know better than parents about what’s best for their children.

“They laughed at the parents,” Murphy said.

The sold-out CTA conference, billed as the “2021 LGBTQ+ Issues Conference, Beyond the Binary: Identity & Imagining Possibilities,” was held Oct. 29 to 31.

The CTA has hosted similar “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” (SOGI) professional development training for at least the last two years, according to an event notice posted on the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) website, which asks teachers: “Do you have the courage to create a safe environment that fosters bravery to explore sexual orientation, gender identity and expressions?”

However, according to Murphy, the purpose of conference in Palm Springs appeared to be about teachers showing other teachers how to undermine the authority of parents and school administrators and conceal activities related to gender inclusion and sexual orientation from them.

The three classes Murphy attended were designed to recruit middle school students to GSA clubs, she said.

“The overarching theme of the classes that I attended were California Teachers instructing other teachers on how to sneak in the LGBTQ+ curriculum in a manner that does not alert parents,” Murphy said.

Caldeira and Baraki led a workshop called “How we run a ‘GSA’ in Conservative Communities,” and they described the obstacles they faced as activist teachers in concealing the activities of these clubs from parents.

In the audio clip, Caldeira advised teachers who lead LGBTQ clubs to maintain an air of plausible deniability so they can play dumb if they are questioned by parents.

“Because we are not official, we have no club rosters. We keep no records,” said Caldeira, who is also an LGBTQ club leader. “In fact, sometimes we don’t really want to keep records because if parents get upset that their kids are coming? We’re like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe they came?’ You know, we would never want a kid to get in trouble for attending if their parents are upset.”

Baraki backed up Caldeira’s advice, suggesting activist teachers to disguise the nature of GSA clubs by calling them something less obvious. Baraki provided an example of this deception, pointing out she avoided naming her LGBTQ club a GSA. Instead, she called it the “Equity Club” and later changed the name to the “You Be You” club.

The teachers bragged about spying on students’ online searches and activity as well as eavesdropping on their conversations to identify and recruit sixth-grade students into these LGBTQ clubs whose membership rolls are kept hidden from parents.

They suggested that parents who refuse to call their child by pronouns of the child’s choosing should be arrested and charged with child abuse, Murphy said.

Buena Vista Middle School falls under the jurisdiction of the Spreckels Union School District (SUSD). Another nearby district, Salinas Union High School District (SUHSD) has been a center of controversy over its mandatory ninth grade ethnic studies program, which teaches elements of critical race theory.

SUSD Board President Steve McDougall, Superintendent Eric Tarallo, and school board members did not respond to Epoch Times inquiries about the leaked audio. Neither did Caldeira and Baraki.

Anti-Bullying Presentation

Caldeira also discussed a yearly anti-bullying presentation she provides to students along with Baraki, and she said LGBTQ issues were not the only topics they discussed.

“We also covered religious differences, race, cultural backgrounds, family status poverty—everything that is listed in the Parents’ Rights handbook.”

However, when the kids went home and talked to their parents about the presentation, the parents complained about the LGBTQ content. Baraki suggested a different strategy to avoid resistance from parents.

“Next year, we’re going to do just a little mind-trick on our sixth graders. They were last to go through this presentation and the gender stuff was the last thing we talked about. So next year, they’ll be going first with this presentation and the gender stuff will be the first thing they hear about. Hopefully to mitigate, you know, these kind of responses, right?” Baraki said.

Baraki ridiculed a parent who complained she hadn’t planned on having a conversation about sexual orientation and gender identity issues with her middle-schooler but was pushed into it by the school.

“I know, so sad, right? Sorry for you, you had to do something hard!” Baraki told her audience. “Honestly, your 12-year-old probably knew all that, right?”

When a principal suggested to another parent to enroll their child in a private school over the controversy, Caldeira said, “We count that as a win.”

Controlling Morning Announcements

Caldeira also spoke about how she controls morning announcements at the school.

“That’s another type of strategy I can give you,” she said. “I’m the one who controls the messaging. Everybody says, ‘Oh, Ms. Caldeira, you’re so sweet, you volunteered to do that.’ Of course, I’m so sweet that I volunteered to do that, because then I control the information that goes out. And, for the first time this year, students have been allowed to put openly LGBT content into our morning announcement slides.”

She went on to boast about the students she recruited to help with the announcements.

“Three of the kids on the team, two of them are non-binary, and the other one is just very fluid in every way. She’s fabulous. So, it’s actually a nice group,” she said.

Caldeira pointed out more than once that she can’t be fired, and she thanked CTA for her tenure and for providing resources and tools.

“You can’t fire me for running a GSA,” she said. “You can be mad, but you can’t fire me for it.”

“CTA has made it very clear that they are devoted to human rights and equity,” she added.

Caldeira tells teachers, that she and Baraki have acted with “great integrity.”

“We never crossed a line,” she says. “We’ve wanted to, but we never have.”

School Response

After information about the leaked audio was made public this week, Supt. Tarallo, SUSD President McDougall and Kate Pagaran, the principal at Buena Vista Middle School, issued a letter Nov. 19 addressed to the “SUSD Community” that the “UBU You Be You” club has been suspended.

“Any future student clubs will be required to submit an outline of all activities and materials before being allowed to meet,” the letter states. “Student sign-in sheets will be maintained and parent/guardian permission slips will be sent home prior to a club holding a meeting.”

The letter states that “all messaging shared in the morning announcements” will be controlled and distributed by the principal, a practice that “will be in place permanently.”

“Teachers are prohibited from monitoring students’ online activity for any non-academic purpose.”

SUSD will follow state-approved standards and curriculum on all presentations involving “sensitive themes such as sexuality” and “materials of any sensitive themes will be shared with parents/guardians before being shown to students,” the letter states.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/leaked-audio-reveals-how-california-teachers-recruit-kids-into-lgbtq-clubs_4114896.html

 

The FBI seems to think ‘vocal parents’ are the new ‘domestic terrorists’

Robert Bridge

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist.

17 Nov, 2021 23:59 / Updated 1 day ago

 

FBI agent stands guard wearing an official jacket © Reuters

A whistleblower has revealed the FBI has been targeting parents critical of the curriculum in schools. This shocking overreach of power by authorities threatens the freedom of all Americans.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has gone on some wild goose chases in its time – from pursuing imaginary communists in Hollywood under the McCarthy era, to searching for proof that the Kremlin put Donald Trump in the White House. None of these flights of fancy, however, have been crazier than agents tracking suburban moms and dads, all for the ‘crime’ of being increasingly vocal at school board meetings across the country.

Yes, you read that correctly. The G-men have been activated to track parents who’ve had the audacity to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech ever since public schools started looking more like indoctrination camps than educational facilities. Not long ago, parents could rest at ease knowing their children were receiving a wholesome education by instructors who checked their political beliefs at the door of the schoolhouse. Those days have taken a long recess.

Today, parents are struggling to wrap their brains around the fact that their kids are receiving an ideological brainwashing on wildly misinformed ideas, like Critical Race Theory, which teaches, in a nutshell, that all white people (the very people, by the way, who supported passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965) are natural-born racists. And then there’s transgenderism, which preaches that the easily observable biological classification of ‘male’ and ‘female’ are mere figments of the imagination; every person, the theory goes, is able to determine their ‘true’ gender identity, of which there are said to be over 100 varieties. 

In response to this outpouring of public criticism, did school officials show some humility and rethink the curriculum being taught in the classroom? Did they consider the possibility that the views of the parents just might deserve some consideration? Dream on; ideologues rarely admit they are wrong. What happened instead is that the National School Boards Association called on the Biden administration to protect teachers and schools from the threat of – are you ready for it – “domestic terrorism.”Should anyone apologize that many parents are vociferously opposed to their children being educated on such unconventional subjects? This mounting frustration has turned once monotonous school board meetings into electrically charged shouting matches.

When asked to testify before the House Judiciary Committee last month over the reckless rhetoric, Attorney General Merrick Garland said that he “could not imagine any circumstance” under which parents complaining about their children’s education would be “labeled as domestic terrorism.” It appears that either Garland lied to Congress, or he is grossly unaware of madness happening on his watch. 

This week, an anonymous FBI whistleblower released an email from early October, showing that the FBI’s counterterrorism and criminal divisions created a “threat tag” to “track instances of related threats… against school board administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” To say that sends a chilling message to all Americans, who simply wish to have a say over what their children are learning, would be an understatement. But it gets worse.

In the very same week that the FBI email was made public, Jann-Michael Greenburg, the president of the Scottsdale Unified School District board, was allegedly found to have access to a dossier on school parents who had criticized the board and protested mask mandates. The file, which made a brief appearance online, contained the social security numbers, divorce records, financial data, Facebook comments, and photos of children of the targeted parents.

This sort of Stasi mentality makes one wonder what strange virus has contaminated the American mind? At what point in history, aside from our current cancel culture dark ages, has a meeting between parents and teachers – no matter how testy it got – ever been identified as a potential terrorism risk? Do these fragile wallflowers forget that democracy was never intended to be pretty? In fact, only a fool would be surprised if it occasionally resembles two fat guys mud-wrestling at the carnival fairground. Each individual has a unique way of looking at the world, so raw emotions will naturally rise on occasion. And here is where the situation takes on dark connotations.

The very fact that some parts of society are accusing others of being the equivalent of Timothy McVeigh for not wanting ‘White Fragility’ on the reading list does not bode well for the future of American democracy, nevermind school board meetings. Worse, it shows exactly how unrepentant and entrenched the left has become in its thinking, and I use the word 'thinking' loosely.

These ‘Cultural Marxists’, as these radicals have been called, view the political opposition not as fellow citizens worthy of debate and possibly even compromise. Rather, they see the other half of America as an enemy that must be identified, vilified, and liquified. These dedicated ideologues will do anything they can, even if it means enlisting the FBI, to impose their weird, cultural experiments on everyone, including schoolchildren. The only good news is that a whistleblower inside the agency spilled the beans, meaning there is still hope. Not everyone has been brainwashed by the radical progressive creed that would go so far as to deny parents the freedom of speech. 

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/540570-fbi-parents-domestic-terrorists/

 

Educated Idiots, Critical Race Theory, and Other Bad Ideas

A recipe for civilizational corruption and decline.

Wed Oct 6, 2021 

Bruce Thornton

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Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

“Educated idiots” is how my old man described college-educated people who were completely devoid of common sense and moral intelligence, or what Aristotle called “practical wisdom.” But what made them especially annoying was their arrogance, their assumption that because they were professionally credentialed in one area, they were equally knowledgeable about everything else.

This perennial character flaw was recognized by the ancients. Socrates in his defense speech noted this presumptuous claim among the Athenians he questioned during his search for someone wiser than he. The poets and artisans, for example, because they had many useful skills and technical knowledge, “thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom.” Nor were the highly educated immune: “There is nothing so absurd,” the Roman orator Cicero wrote, “that hasn’t been said by some philosopher.” Humans by nature are vain and crave recognition for being superior to their fellows, which make us vulnerable to this willful error of thought and character.

But over the last 150 years, the broadening of formal education to include the masses, the increase and hyper-specialization in university disciplines, and the prestige of the natural sciences from the technologies that improved material existence, have made this bad habit ubiquitous. Worse yet, the aggressive promotion during the last fifty years of “college for everyone”–– which necessarily required lower standards and a decline in foundational skills––multiplied the numbers of people with this affliction, even as the quality of their degrees was degraded.

Those trained in the humanities and soft “sciences,” that is, disciplines that lack the rigor and real-world accountability of real sciences, are particularly prone to this intellectual disease. This phenomenon explains why we see so many preposterous, unsubstantiated, politically biased, and just plain whacky ideas like Critical Race Theory or “white fragility” promulgated by self-styled “brights” with such arrogant certainty, and passed off as “science.”

The result of these changes is manifested in several ways. Human nature and human experience, once the province of religion,  philosophy, and traditional wisdom, became the objects of “scientism,” new disciplines like sociology and psychology that adopted the quantification and jargon of real science to disguise as “science” dubious philosophical claims about human and social reality. These disciplines proliferated in the universities, and their conclusions and “knowledge” trickled down into K-12 teacher-training and school curricula. The big leap in the numbers of those attending college distributed this false knowledge more widely throughout the culture, from movies and television shows, to newspapers, magazines, and web sites.

The story of “scientific racism” and eugenics during the first half of the 20^th century is a notorious example. The theories of Charles Darwin, particularly the “survival of the fittest,” and the false analogy with the cross-breeding of farm animals, were crudely applied to humans.

Darwin himself legitimized this practice in The Descent of Man: “At some future period . . . the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.” But misguided sentimentality, traditional religion, and short-sighted charitable impulses interfered with natural selection that culled out the unfit:  “The weak members of civilized societies,” Darwin wrote, “propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.” The positive and negative “traits” that were the object of natural selection were linked to the reductive notion of “race” to establish ethnic and racial hierarchies defined by biological superiority and inferiority.

These ideas were taught and studied in America’s most prestigious universities. Research centers like Cold Spring Harbor gathered immense troves of data purportedly documenting the transmission of “traits” through family histories. Newspapers and magazines ran stories about the impending “race suicide,” as Theodore Roosevelt called the failure of retrograde people to acknowledge the “settled science.” And books like Lothrop Stoddard’s 1920 The Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy, and Madison Grant’s 1916 The Passing of the Great Race –––Hitler called it his “Bible” in a fan letter––became bestsellers.

High-school biology courses and textbooks taught “scientific racism” and its application, eugenics. The famous 1925 Scopes “monkey trial” centered on a high-school biology textbook that featured a unit on Darwinian evolution. The next unit covered eugenics. The national publicity given the trial legitimized these dehumanizing ideas and established the dubious prestige that a knowledge of the latest “science” bestowed on people who thought themselves superior to uneducated rubes and superstitious people of faith.

The malign consequence of this pseudo-scientific fad was the practice of eugenics through the forced sterilization of thousands of women whose only crime was their race or poverty. But a more horrendous use of this fake knowledge had been foreshadowed in the late 19^th century by Francis Galton, who coined the word “eugenics.” Galton warned that the “unfit” must be kept from procreating, for “if these continued,” he went on, “to procreate children, inferior in moral, intellectual and physical qualities, it is easy to believe the time may come when such persons would be considered as enemies to the State, and to have forfeited all claims to kindness.”

Within decades Nazi Germany would take these speculations to their gruesome logical conclusion of exterminating “life unworthy of life.” But before then, legal eugenics ruined the lives of thousands of women, and legal segregation had been given a “scientific” justification.

These days eugenics has been discredited, at least publicly. But just in the last few years another idea passed off as evidence-based “science” has swept like wildfire through our politics and culture. Critical Race Theory, once the province of university cranks and law-school activists, is roiling our politics, corporations, and schools. The idea that “systemic racism” and endemic white “racism” permeate our economic, educational, and political institutions is based on a crude interpretation of disparate impact statistics.

For example, the number of black males arrested, killed during an arrest, and incarcerated beyond their proportion of the population is produced as evidence of “systemic racism,” while sketchy behavioral “research” allegedly demonstrates the prevalence of occult “racism” among an overgeneralized “white people.” Left out is the fact that black males are involved in crimes at a rate far higher than their representation in the general population. Critical Race Theory, like “scientific racism” and eugenics, is a consequence of racialist ideology and scientism, not empirical science.

Yet now feckless political decisions, such as defunding police forces, are being legitimized by appealing to Critical Race Theory; billions of federal and state dollars are being proposed for sustaining and spreading it farther; school boards and teachers are including it in curricula; popular culture reflects and celebrates its tenets, and corporations and the government agencies subject their employees to “training” in this divisive and destructive vision based on old-fashioned racist categories. And of course, question-begging activist screeds like How to Be an Antiracist and White Fragility become bestsellers and provide training materials in government agencies, including the military.

How can this happen? How can incoherent ideas that in the past would be produced by badly educated cranks, take such a hold on our cultural and political institutions? Political leverage and lucre, of course, are the eternal motivators of human mischief. “Systemic racism” has become a gold-mine for “diversity” consultants and manufacturers of training videos and programs.

But the old bad habit of people thinking they are smarter than they are, the feckless subjection of millions to an educational establishment corrupted by bogus scientism, and the fetishizing of “science” and an uncritical deference to its authority have all created “educated idiots,” people devoid of common sense, moral intelligence, and traditional wisdom––a recipe for civilizational corruption and decline.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/educated-idiots-critical-race-theory-and-other-bad-bruce-thornton/

CRT's insidious infiltration of South African elite schools

 

CRT's insidious infiltration of South African elite schools

Sara Gon | 

27 August 2021

Sara Gon says once again a toxic American racial ideology is being imported into SA

The IRR formally launched the website ‘Educate don’t Indoctrinate’ (Edonti) on Friday 20 August as a resource for parents, teachers and students, to inform them about Critical Race Theory (CRT), how to recognise it and how to respond to it. Through the site we also offer talks, presentations and circumstance-specific advice.

CRT theory holds that every society is divided into two absolute and unbridgeable, racially determined, groups. The first is black: its members are permanently disadvantaged victims of a society which is set up to enforce black poverty and underdevelopment. The second is white: its members are permanently privileged and perpetrate various crimes against the black group in order to secure their unearned privilege and maintain black poverty.

CRT also applies, though to a lesser extent, to issues of gender, women, sexual orientation, the disabled and other minorities. The inversion of the meaning of language and the adoption of ‘equity’ to mean the achievement of the equality of outcomes, point to a theory that, although it has ‘social justice’ as its aim, is just political indoctrination towards socialism. What we associate with ‘wokeness’ and ‘political correctness’ is suffused into the application of CRT.

Its origins lie in American academia and it is based on America’s 200-year history of slavery and its consequences. CRT has evolved in a country where blacks represent about 13% of the population and whites a majority (although ever shrinking).

Like much American academic theory it is being imported into South Africa wholesale, and although we come from an unimaginably cruel past, it is not the solution to race relations in a society where 90% of citizens are black and under 10% white.

Some comments in response to our site launch ask whether CRT actually exists in our schools. It does and although our early experience suggested that it was a private-school phenomenon, it is also emerging in government schools.

Fear

We have been made aware of about seven schools which are taking up CRT to a greater or lesser extent. Generally, teachers are not adherents of CRT, but fear losing employment if they challenge it.

We set out some examples of CRT that we have either heard about or been asked about.

School #1 has an ‘Anti-discrimination Policy’ which states: ‘Saying that you “don’t see colour” is an example of racial discrimination.’ ‘Not seeing colour’ is seen in the CRT context as being opprobrious since seeing colour is exactly what CRT determines a person must do. The contortion of logic required to regard ‘not seeing colour’ as a racist sentiment, rather than the CRT obsession with skin colour, is deeply counterintuitive. The school goes so far as to categorise the comment as ‘hate speech’.

‘Not seeing colour’ is not usually used literally; it simply means that a person doesn’t consider the colour of another person’s skin in interacting with them.

At school #2 the students are prohibited from using the word ‘monkey’ at all even though there are monkeys living in the vegetation around the school. They should rather refer to ‘vervets’. At the same school teachers may not address the students as ‘girls’.

School #3 is a school founded and run according to the precepts of a particular religion. Demands are being made to minimise if not desist from the particular ethos and replace it with ‘social justice’ and ‘inclusion’.

A review of the school’s practices found that interaction between students is racially divided. The review didn’t delve into the reasons for these divisions. Is it a natural division? Is it one engendered by one race or another? Is it possible that the long-standing, active addressing of issues of transformation and diversity are not constructive, but rather destructive of healthy interaction? Are the races so aware and self-conscious of potential racism that separation has grown rather than decreased?

Threatened to destroy careers

School #4 is also a school based on a religious ethos. The school was made aware of anonymous social media messages accusing teachers of racism. These messages threatened to destroy careers, yet no disciplinary action was taken against the students who could be identified, and nor were formal complaints lodged by the students. Nevertheless the teachers were suspended for months before any disciplinary action was taken against them and seven weeks before the charges were provided.

A protest against ‘racism, homophobia and xenophobia’ erupted in and around the school, with mainstream media in attendance. In an all-girls school a protest against homophobia and xenophobia is unlikely to be supported by evidence.

School #5’s transformation programme included the separation of black and white students. The white students have been expected to consider their ‘white supremacy’ and ‘white guilt’. Creepily, they are required to think about their racist thoughts and commit them to writing. It fits the CRT playbook that students are expected to develop guilt for the actions of some white people’s misdeeds in history. This is irrespective of whether their individual experience is in any way relevant to their forebears or their skin colour.

Disturbing has been the school’s recourse to a book as a textbook called Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad. We will discuss this book in more detail in a later article, but it’s worth noting some of the observations Saad makes:

White supremacy is an evil;

It is a system of oppression, which has been designed to give you benefits at the expense of the lives of BIPOC [blacks and indigenous peoples of colour], and it is living inside of you;

The process of examining it and dismantling it will necessarily be painful. It will feel like waking up to a virus that has been living inside of you all these years, that you never knew was there;

Raging against this process and denial is the response of the white fragility and anti-blackness lying within you;

The student must commit ‘to your own healing’.

Brainwashes

The above examples point to a cult which brainwashes the target into accepting guilt, but with no possibility of redemption.

The school’s workbook, which is based on Saad’s book, holds that ‘(this) workbook is for any person* who holds white privilege**.’

And ‘Who holds white privilege means “persons who are visually identifiable as white, white-passing, or holding white privilege”.’

School #6 has a hair policy that provides for a prohibition on the ‘cultural appropriation’ of hair styles.

School #7 which, when faced with one act of racism by a student, brought ‘consultants’ in to coach all the students. The children were separated by race and a consultant presented views on ‘whiteness’ to the white children. The views of the consultant reflected in some of her writings include statements that ‘South Africa’s rainbow nation is a myth that students need to “unlearn”,’ and that the ‘Democratic Alliance’s Federal Chairman, Helen Zille, should have been jailed for her tweets’.

The school set up a group for parents ‘to create a safe space to share knowledge, facilitate conversations and build relationships and sense of belonging’. The principal advised the parents who had complained about CRT in the school, that he had decided that they weren’t invited to join the group ‘until we feel that you are wanting to come on board to hear/listen and be heard’.

The first group newsletter recommends a podcast by Eusebius McKaiser, and the books White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and I’m still here – Black Dignity in a world made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown.

In 2020 an advert for a history teacher required applicants to teach from a ‘decolonisation perspective’.

CRT is in our schools and, given that its ultimate aim is to overthrow capitalism to create a Marxist state, such indoctrination must be resisted. It is not for schools to decide what political philosophy children adopt.

https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/crts-insidious-infiltration-of-our-elite-schools

EDUCATION Published 1 hour ago Black father tells board CRT keeps racism on 'life support', moments later they vote to ban it

 

Black father tells board CRT keeps racism on 'life support', moments later they vote to ban it

Colorado father who is a descendent of slaves slams CRT in classrooms

A father in Colorado Springs who is the descendant of slaves slammed critical race theory during a public school district’s board meeting, saying racism in America would "by and large be dead" if not for institutions such as the education system "keeping it on life support."

"I am a direct descendant of the North American slave trade. Both my parents are black. All four of my grandparents are black, all eight of my great great grandparents, and all 16 of my great greats. On my mother's side, my ancestors were enslaved in Alabama. On my father's side, we were enslaved in Texas," he said during a board meeting last week. 

"I am not oppressed. I'm not oppressed and I'm not a victim."

The unidentified father went on to say that "racism in America would by and large be dead today if it were not for certain people and institutions keeping it on life support."

"Sadly, one of those institutions is the American education system."  

The father of three went on to say that he "can think of nothing more damaging to a society than to tell a baby born today, that she has grievances against another baby born today, simply because of what their ancestors may have done two centuries ago."

"There's simply no point in doing that to our children, and putting critical race theory into our classrooms in part does that. Putting critical theory into our classrooms is not combating racism. It's fanning the flames of what little embers are left. I encourage you to support this resolution. Let racism die the death it deserves."

The Colorado Springs School District 49 school board voted 3-2 banning critical race theory from its classrooms last Thursday following parents’ testimonies. 

"The driving force behind CRT and antiracism is the acceptance of a worldview that encompasses specific notions about history, philosophy, sociology, and public policy," board director Ivy Liu and secretary Rick Van Wieren wrote in a summary of the ban. "By its own terms, CRT/antiracism excludes individuals who merely advocate for neutral principles of the Constitution, or who deny or question the extent to which white supremacy shapes our institutions."

The father went on to say in the video that his three children "are not oppressed, either, though they are victims."

"I taught my children they were victims of three things: Their own ignorance, their own laziness and their own poor decision making. That is all," he said. 

The video, which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on social media, comes after dozens of other parents have voiced outrage during board meetings due to critical race theory being implemented in classrooms.

One teacher in Kansas even recently resigned from his job over critical race theory and a mask mandate in his school district. 

"I can’t believe the lack of transparency with curriculums, teacher trainings, in class activities based on the trainings, and top-down regulations used as indoctrination tools," former teacher for the Shawnee Mission School District Josiah Enyart told Fox News last week. 

"As a teacher, I can see these things, but after talking to hundreds of parents, they can’t. Why wouldn’t the public school system want the parents to know everything that their child is being exposed to?  Why aren’t the parents being asked before these decisions are being made?  And when they do, why do the board decisions not match the data on the surveys? As a district that prides itself on being ‘data driven,’ they do not seem to be following any real data on any of the issues."

https://www.foxnews.com/us/black-father-slams-crt-colorado-school-board-meeting-video

 

Oregon governor signs bill removing reading, writing, & math requirements for high school kids, to help ‘students of color’

10 Aug, 2021 14:33 / Updated 1 day ago

Oregon Governor Kate Brown. © Reuters / Steve Dipaola

Oregon Governor Kate Brown quietly signed a bill last month that removed the requirement for graduating high school children in the state to be proficient in reading, writing, and math, in an effort to aid “students of color.”

Brown signed Senate Bill 744 on July 14, but did not issue a press release or hold a ceremony to mark the occasion, instead opting to pass the bill into law as quietly as possible, according to the Oregonian. The bill also wasn’t entered into a legislative database until two weeks after its signing – an abnormality, as bills are typically entered on the same day.

Though Brown was quiet about the bill, the governor’s deputy communications director, Charles Boyle, told the Oregonian that suspending the reading, writing, and math proficiency requirements would benefit “students of color” while the state comes up with a new set of “equitable” graduation standards.

Until then, the suspension will apparently help those who are “Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, [or] Tribal.”

Boyle said that “leaders from those communities have advocated time and again for equitable graduation standards, along with expanded learning opportunities and supports.” However, lawmakers reportedly have not passed any actual concrete support this year to help those groups.

Any new graduation requirements that do pass will reportedly not take effect until 2027, meaning five years of classes could graduate without needing to demonstrate proficiency in three basic areas.

Oregon Republicans attempted to push back against the bill, with Oregon House Minority Leader Christine Drazan arguing that it would “lower our expectations for our kids” at a time when “we have had this year of social isolation and lost learning” due to Covid-19. They were unsuccessful, however, as the Democrat-controlled legislature overwhelmingly supported the move.

Florida Republican congressional candidate Vic DeGrammont called the bill “insane,” while Oregon’s Senate Republicans wrote, “This was perhaps the worst bill that passed this session and Democrats can't come up with a good reason for it.”

Politician and commentator Barrington Martin II – who has been a Democratic Party candidate in several Georgia elections – said that while the bill was aimed at giving “struggling races a shot,” all it does is set them up for failure. “The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions,” he wrote.

https://www.rt.com/usa/531648-oregon-governor-signs-bill/