#woke indoctrination

[ Source: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12503 ]

Transformative tales: The role of story videos on children's reasoning about transgender identities

Abstract

The current study explored whether positive contact through stories could influence how young children think about transgender identities and gender in general. A total of 174 children ages 5–6 and 9–10 were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: Jazz (participants watched a video regarding a transgender child named Jazz), Blue (participants watched a video regarding a marker that looked red on the outside but inside was really blue) and control (no video). Both videos described the main character as feeling different inside than outside, and their social transition to their preferred identity; researcher scaffolding supported the video messages. Children who viewed the Jazz video had: (a) greater understanding of transgender identities and (b) no overall differences in gender essentialism, but (c) lower gender essentialism on three specific measures (gender immutability, innate toy behaviours and innate preferences). Also, gender essentialism was lower in older versus younger children. In this study, a direct, realistic story was the only effective means of teaching children about transgender identities and reducing belief in gender immutability. Thus, stories can be a way to teach children about the social world and change essentialist beliefs, but the impact may be limited and greatly affected by features of the story.

Catechism, a manual of religious instruction usually arranged in the form of questions and answers used to instruct the young, to win converts, and to testify to the faith.

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If "gender" is not "immutable," why are we irreversibly medicalizing kids?

There are still some who insist this literally isn't happening and it's some QAnon-style paranoid conspiracy. Even though activists masquerading as "researchers" and "academics" are proudly and enthusiastically bragging about what they're doing.

Of course, when it becomes undeniable, the pivot comes swiftly: "It's good actually. It's just about teaching kids to be kind. Only bigots would oppose it."

During Homecoming, Josh Crockett gave his "State of the University" address.

He spent awhile on BJU's "ministry partners," mainly Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis. Naturally.

There's the new "enrollment team" led by Matthew Weathers, and the new "innovation team" led by ....

Nathan Crockett, of course!

And most importantly, Dr. Josh stressed UNITY! And what's unity?

Alumni "all agree" with the creed, Orthodox doctrine (that's different from the creed?), "Biblical marriage," and "Biblical gender."

Biblical marriage? Biblical gender? What does that even mean?

And, of course, he had to hit his battle against "woke indoctrination." I haven't even gotten to unravel that new nonsense yet. It's so much nonsense, that I wanted to take some time. It's so utterly meaningless.

By: Ron E. Hassner

Published: Dec 5, 2023

When college students who sympathize with Palestinians chant “From the river to the sea,” do they know what they’re talking about? I hired a survey firm to poll 250 students from a variety of backgrounds across the U.S. Most said they supported the chant, some enthusiastically so (32.8%) and others to a lesser extent (53.2%).

But only 47% of the students who embrace the slogan were able to name the river and the sea. Some of the alternative answers were the Nile and the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea (which is a lake) and the Atlantic. Less than a quarter of these students knew who Yasser Arafat was (12 of them, or more than 10%, thought he was the first prime minister of Israel). Asked in what decade Israelis and Palestinians had signed the Oslo Accords, more than a quarter of the chant’s supporters claimed that no such peace agreements had ever been signed. There’s no shame in being ignorant, unless one is screaming for the extermination of millions.

Would learning basic political facts about the conflict moderate students’ opinions? A Latino engineering student from a southern university reported “definitely” supporting “from the river to the sea” because “Palestinians and Israelis should live in two separate countries, side by side.” Shown on a map of the region that a Palestinian state would stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, leaving no room for Israel, he downgraded his enthusiasm for the mantra to “probably not.” Of the 80 students who saw the map, 75% similarly changed their view.

An art student from a liberal arts college in New England “probably” supported the slogan because “Palestinians and Israelis should live together in one state.” But when informed of recent polls in which most Palestinians and Israelis rejected the one-state solution, this student lost his enthusiasm. So did 41% of students in that group.

A third group of students claimed the chant called for a Palestine to replace Israel. Sixty percent of those students reduced their support for the slogan when they learned it would entail the subjugation, expulsion or annihilation of seven million Jewish and two million Arab Israelis. Yet another 14% of students reconsidered their stance when they read that many American Jews considered the chant to be threatening, even racist. (This argument had a weaker effect on students who self-identified as progressive, despite their alleged sensitivity to offensive speech.)

In all, after learning a handful of basic facts about the Middle East, 67.8% of students went from supporting “from the river to sea” to rejecting the mantra. These students had never seen a map of the Mideast and knew little about the region’s geography, history or demography. Those who hope to encourage extremism depend on the political ignorance of their audiences. It is time for good teachers to join the fray and combat bias with education.

Mr. Hassner is a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Just like Xians who've never read the bible, but believe it's all true. Worse, these people only discovered it as young adults at university, where they were lied to by activists masquerading as intellectuals, in an institution which charges five-figures for the privilege.

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“There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five.”

By: Bonnie Snyder

Published: Sep 15, 2021

[Excerpt from Bonnie Snyder’s new book, Undoctrinate: How Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools―and What We Can Do About It]

Gabrielle Clark was worried about her children. Something was off, but she couldn’t put her finger on the problem. Gabrielle was temporarily disabled and unemployed, so her son William worked as a fast food shift manager to help make ends meet while taking his high school senior classes remotely. As a single mom—William’s father died before he was old enough to know him—she had to figure this out alone.

One day, she decided to sit down and watch her son’s distance-learning classes from his magnet school. She tuned into a required course, “The Sociology of Change,” and what she saw on screen shocked her. Her son, unbeknownst to her, had been taught lessons that were completely antithetical to her family’s values...and common sense.

William’s deceased father was white, which means William is biracial. However, his light skin, light hair, and green eyes mean that some people assume he is white. He’s sometimes described as “the only apparent white boy in his class.”

Being “apparently white” was enough for his teacher to target him.

For years, schools have had “anti-bullying campaigns” to stop kids from picking on each other. But what if the bullying is coming from the teacher and school administrators? According to the family’s recently filed lawsuit, William was singled out and subjected to derogatory name-calling and hurtful labeling, based on his physical appearance. His teacher delivered regular “privilege checks” for William, which his mother described as “deliberate and protracted harassment” and “emotional abuse.” The classroom materials even implied that William’s white father probably physically abused his black mother, because—according to his lessons—that’s what white men do.

This is a far cry from Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a nation where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Gabrielle claims her son, as well as the other students, were forced to profess their identities which were then subjected to open, official scrutiny that assigned negative character attributes and worldviews based on unchangeable personal characteristics, such as race and gender.

When students, including William, attempted to object, discussions were terminated and their speech effectively chilled. However, William refused to complete certain “identity confession” assignments or to avow certain politicized statements he could not in good conscience affirm.

That was enough to earn him threats of a failing grade.

As a senior, that was bad news. He had planned to spend the year applying to colleges and dreaming about his freshman year in which he’d study music. But this bad grade would put all of that in jeopardy.

Gabrielle had her attorney write a letter to the school, which prompted a meeting. But Gabrielle didn’t feel the school was taking her concerns seriously. “That’s when I withdrew my daughter and got the lawyers for my son,” she wrote. “I’m not playing with these people.” She filed a lawsuit against the school, claiming they violated the mother’s constitutional due process right to “family integrity and autonomy” by interfering with her “right and covenant to guide and direct the upbringing” of her children.

This case may have some of you scratching your heads. Others of you—having experienced similar interactions at school—might be nodding at how sadly familiar that story feels.

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Our nation has a problem. Recently, in both urban and rural communities, young children are being indoctrinated, bullied, and harassed by their fellow students and teachers for not falling into line on various topics.

In Arizona, Roberto Sandoval, the son of a Mexican immigrant who worked hard to achieve the American dream, was alarmed when his teen showed him her high school homework. “I have an assignment that’s asking me how I am privileged,” she told him. The homework included statements such as “My skin color gives me privileges I didn’t earn … Your skin color gives you struggles you didn’t deserve,” and “No one is asking you to apologize for being privileged; people want you to stop using your privilege in ways that require an apology.” 

In Seattle, meanwhile, teachers explain that “Western” mathematics has been used “to disenfranchise people and communities of color.” Then, they attempt to “rehumanize” math by incorporating curricular content such as explaining “how math dictates economic oppression” and asking, “How can we change mathematics from individualistic to collectivist thinking?”

Third-grade students in Cupertino, California, were told to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, ranking themselves on the intersectional hierarchy from “oppressor” to “oppressed.” One scandalized parent objected, saying, “They were basically teaching racism to my eight-year-old.” When questioned, the principal acknowledged that the lesson was not part of the “formal curricula.”

The specific topics of parents’ complaints in the examples above change from year to year, or even from week to week. Over the past few years, the following issues have waxed and waned in intensity: global warming, Occupy Wall Street, weapons of mass destruction, voter suppression, immigration reform, the border wall, DACA, Black Lives Matter, gun control, same-sex marriage, reproductive rights, abortion, patriotism, election integrity, and the MeToo movement.

In all of these examples, well-intentioned people of good faith can agree on underlying problems, while disagreeing on what to actually do about them. Increasingly, however, children who are too young to have developed solid or informed opinions are being forced into premature ideological conformity with some teachers and administrators who seem intent on pushing their own particular worldviews in K–12 classrooms.

These kinds of transgressions are not limited to the political Left.

A Georgia teacher was yanked from class after telling the students that President Barack Obama was a closeted Muslim.

In Wisconsin, a high school social studies teacher was placed on leave after instructing students to watch a one-sided video questioning the integrity of election results. In a shared screenshot of the assignment, he also apparently made sure to inform students that he would be protesting what he saw as unfair election results because it was “too important” not to do so, in a pretty clear attempt to influence them on this issue.

In Alabama, a geometry teacher actually taught a math lesson by asking students to evaluate the best angles to assassinate Obama.

No matter the specifics of the heavy-handed ideological teaching, we should all be against it. “Citizens of both parties should adopt a legal corollary to the Golden Rule—fight for the rights of others that you would like to exercise yourself,” writes former president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and Persuasion advisor David French. “And one of the most important and vital of those rights is the right to speak and act in accordance with your deepest beliefs.”

In fact, I’ve noticed that liberal parents are—in some ways—even more alarmed over the rapid transformation of their children’s schools and surprised to find themselves opposed to it. If it ever was a partisan issue, the problem of school indoctrination has steadily worsened to the point that people across the political spectrum have found themselves allied against it.

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Many of you don’t want to think about this, and I understand. You’d rather send your kids to school and trust implicitly in the system, as your own parents probably did. After all, it worked out okay for you. However, this fight will come to you, whether or not you want it. It doesn’t matter if you live in a city or the rural South.

As frustrating as it can be to hear from people who disagree with us, this is part of the temperament that productive citizens need to develop in order to take their places in our society. In order to achieve this goal, our schools must be populated with educators who model and practice appropriate intellectual forbearance worthy of emulation by the younger generation. Remember, it’s an imperfect world and we are all imperfect people: practice forgiveness and give others the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.

All Americans, regardless of political persuasion or direct personal experience, should be alarmed at the path on which our nation is careening. We’re at a crossroads. It’s a good time—a necessary time—to see what is going on and to fight for the ideals our founders envisioned for us.

Bonnie Snyder is director of high school outreach at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the author of Undoctrinate: How Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools—And What We Can Do About It.

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