If you want to know what some teachers are inflicting on children to confuse them about gender and sex, here’s your dose of reality from right here in Utah, brought to you by these two fine ladies you should vote for in upcoming election races:

Laurel Fetzer (running for state school board seat 5 covering Murray, South Salt Lake, Glendale, and part of West Valley)
https://www.votelaurel.org/

April Wilde Despain (running for Murray school district seat 3)
https://www.aprilformurray.com/

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

With permission from Dr. Sandra Stotsky, below is an article she wrote that appeared in the New Boston Post about solving Common Core in Massachusetts (or any state).

Utah needs to replace the standards and what Dr. Stotsky outlines below is great for a broad statewide base. However, in my view, it would be better if school districts and charter schools were allowed to set their own standards and just have the state issue broad graduation guidelines. Instead of the SAT/ACT/SAGE/RISE/Aspire tests have students take the Classical Learning Test. When teachers teach to that test, it will be a higher level of learning with more quality materials used to ensure their students perform better. And stop all the database tracking of students. It’s insane and a violation of privacy.

Now Dr. Stotsky:

With the onset of Common Core, Massachusetts’s education standards for public schools have declined. How can the state regain lost ground?

It’s actually not that hard. Solid standards already exist. What’s needed is the will to implement them.

Massachusetts can again develop effective non-Common Core standards for mathematics and English/reading if the state legislature requires either a return to the state’s pre-Common Core standards in English language arts/reading, science, or mathematics, or the development of K-12 standards in mathematics and in English/reading with the following features and guiding policies.

In mathematics:

1.  Standards for all basic arithmetical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, short and long division) and standard algorithms should be taught at the same grade levels as in Singapore Math’s original series for the elementary grades. The four operations should be learned with all the real numbers, positive and negative, and fractional forms like common fractions, decimals, and percents.

How do we know Singapore Mathematics works? Three Massachusetts public elementary schools in the North Middlesex Regional School District (which serves Ashby, Pepperell, and Townsend, all along the New Hampshire border) began teaching it in 2000. The results were encouraging, as articles here, here, here, and here show.

2.  Standards that enable all children in public elementary schools to be prepared via their mathematics curriculum to enroll in and complete a traditional Algebra I course in grade 7 or 8 before going on to advanced science and math in high school. Before 2010, about half of all grade 8 Massachusetts students had completed a traditional Algebra I course before entering grade 9. It sets them up for success in science, which depends on math.

3.  Standards/lessons from Dolciani-authored or co-authored mathematics textbooks in grade 8 and above, where possible. Mary P. Dolciani and the publisher Houghton Mifflin were known as the “king and queen” of secondary mathematics texbooks — from the 1960s to the 1990s. Dolciani died in 1985. Many, perhaps most, secondary algebra teachers in this country were trained on Dolciani-authored textbooks and continue to value them for their structure and method.

As one teacher commented:  “The books were literate in their context, never watered down, but not so abstract that a high school student couldn’t read and follow. What makes this book so unique is the fact that mathematical induction is introduced in Chapter 3 and is carried throughout the book. Normally mathematical induction is included at the end of a precalculus text and is never covered. No other precalculus book prior or since has used this approach. Mathematical induction is a proof-driven treatment for the topics which follow. It makes the students think in a logical manner and enables them, by proof, to understand the full argument of why certain ‘things happen’ in math as they do.”

4.  Standards for Euclidean geometry (with proofs) addressed in separate units in grades 6, 7, and/or 8 (as in Singapore Math), along with standards for separate algebra units, or in a full course in grade 9.

5.  Standards that enable high-achieving math students to enroll in and complete a traditional Algebra II course in grade 10 or 11 and to study trigonometry or a pre-calculus course in grade 11 or 12.

In English/reading:

1.  In the primary grades, explicit reading instruction with systematic phonics/phonemic awareness.  Usage/grammar/roots and prefixes/suffixes, as well as sentence structure and spelling (in other words, writing mechanics) should also be taught.

2.  Standards in grades 3-8 that require about half of what all elementary students read in whole-class history or language arts lessons to come from the excellent series of informational books on historical people and events in U.S. and world history published in the 1950s and 1960s by Random House Publishers.  See this link.

3.  Standards in grades 9-12 that require all high school students to become familiar with historically and culturally significant whole works from the following ten Literary Periods: Classical (1200 BCE–455 CE); Medieval (455 CE–1485 CE); Renaissance (1300–1660): Restoration and 18th Century (1660–1790); Colonial and Early National (1600–1830): Romantic (1790–1870): Realism and Naturalism (1870–1910); Modernist (1910–1945); Post World War II (1945–1980); and Contemporary (1980-2020). (“BCE” here refers to “Before Common Era,” often rendered “B.C.” elsewhere; “CE” here refers to “Common Era,” often rendered “A.D.” elsewhere.) Most of these Literary Periods are spelled out in an appendix in the latest version of Florida’s English language arts standards (page 165), together with the names of authors whose works illustrate their features and a list of the features themselves.

4.  Standards for a coherent literature/reading curriculum for K-12 that address, as did the Massachusetts pre-Common Core English language arts/reading standards, all four major types of literature:  poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic literature.  See the appendices in the latest version of Florida’s English language arts standards for lists of recommended titles and authors, from K to grade 12, for poetry, fiction, and dramatic literature.

5.  Reading lists showing titles or authors of well-known informational texts in these literary periods that serve as historical context for the literary works selected by the English teacher for classroom instruction. Appendix A and Appendix B in the 2013 version of the Massachusetts English Language Arts Curriculum Framework (which is a condensed version of the 2001/4 English Language Arts Curriculum Framework, composed by Sandra Stotsky) contain lists of recommended authors for K-8 informational reading (vetted by The Horn Book editors and listed under “essays” or “nonfiction” or “historical documents”), as well as recommended authors for 9-12 (vetted by a diverse group of literary scholars).

6.  Reading passages for test items for each tested grade that come from works by authors in these literary periods. As a committee of Massachusetts secondary school English teachers recommended after the first edition of its English standards in 1997, about 60 percent of the passages should be literary, and 40 percent non-literary. Passages from well-known speeches or biographies may be literary or non-literary. (Again, for lists, see the appendices of the recent Florida English Language Arts standards.)

For teacher licensure or certification in Massachusetts:

1.  All elementary, early childhood, and special education teachers (grades K-6) should continue to be required to pass the Reading Licensure Test (MTEL 90) developed in Massachusetts in 2001/2 (or its equivalent). This licensure test helped all teachers of young children to teach beginning reading so effectively that Massachusetts students on average earned first place on National Association of Educational Progress tests in grade 4 and grade 8 in reading and in mathematics from 2005 on. (Reading is crucial in mathematics because of word problems.) Massachusetts students still have the highest state averages in the country, probably because many teachers use the methods they learn to pass the test.

For a description of the Reading Licensure Test’s  development, see here.

2.  All prospective elementary, early childhood, and special education teachers should be required to take and pass the Bay State’s elementary mathematics licensure test (MTEL 53). The skills the test forces teachers to learn helped Massachusetts students earn first place on National Association of Educational Progress tests from 2009 on. This test has a relatively low pass rate overall.

3.  All cut-off scores for performance levels on all student or teacher tests should be set by Massachusetts parents, grade 11 or 12 teachers, and state legislators — instead of using the cut-off scores the state is given from outside the state and/or from the United States Department of Education.

4.  The state’s board of higher education and governor need to require the mathematics, science, and English teaching faculty at each public college or university in the state to analyze the state’s current high school standards for grades 9-12, and issue a signed public report containing their analysis.

5.  The governor and state secretary of education need to ask the math and English teaching faculty at each public college in the state to recommend in writing what standards should be added or changed to make sure that Massachusetts high school students are prepared for freshman and sophomore credit-bearing courses at that college if they plan to attend college in Massachusetts.

Stopping the Nonsense, and Strengthening Public Education

The chief purpose of a standards revision committee would be to strengthen public education in Massachusetts in order to remedy recent federal and state policies designed for low achievers. All students once learned that, regardless of academic achievement, they were politically equal to each other in our civic culture, with a shared civic identity. Yet, policy makers and philanthropists have led low achievers to believe they haven’t succeeded in school because of bigoted educators and communities.

As my last four books try to make clear, all parents and educators must revive the civic mission of their own public schools, and actively help to restore educated citizenship as the goal of K-12 public education. They will also have to help the state legislature to nullify the four-year state “plan” in education that was submitted to the U.S. Department of Education in 2016 for approval under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act without state legislative approval.

Academic standards in public schools aren’t hopeless, but they need help. It starts with the will to do something about them.

Sandra Stotsky, former senior associate commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, is professor of education emerita at the University of Arkansas.

Originally posted at https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2016/09/15/common-cores-role-in-hot-state-school-board-race/. Posted with permission.

Senate President Niederhauser and House Speaker Hughes

The State School Board race has never drawn much attention before. But this year, the Salt Lake Tribune reported, businesses and even top-tier elected officials are personally campaigning and fundraising for and against certain candidates.

Yesterday’s headline was: “Niederhauser and Hughes ask Business Leaders to Help Defeat UEA-Backed School Board Candidates“.  Yesterday, too, business organizations such as the Utah Technology Council and the School Improvement Association joined Niederhauser and Hughes in a fundraising webinar that promoted a slate of pro-Common Core candidates who happen to be not favored by or funded by national teacher’s unions.

I understand why someone with a conscience would campaign against out-of-state big UEA-NEA money buying Utah’s state board election.  So they should.

But I don’t understand why these groups have chosen to campaign against both the anti-Common Core candidates (in blue) as well as against the UEA-backed candidates (in red) as they showed in this slide at yesterday’s insider fundraising webinar:

Nor do I understand why our House Speaker and Senate President don’t see the hypocrisy in speaking against big money buying votes (NEA) while both of them are personally funded by big business money (Education First).

But my bigger questions are: how do the Speaker and the Senate President dare to campaign for Common Core candidates, thus going directly against Governor Herbert’s call to end Common Core alignment in Utah?

How do they dare campaign against the resolution of their own Utah Republican Party that called for the repeal of the Common Core Initiative?

Have they forgotten the reasons that their party is strongly opposed to all that the Common Core Initiative entails?

Have they forgotten Governor Herbert’s letter that called for an end to Common Core and SAGE testing just four months ago? (See letter here.)  For all the talk about wanting to move toward local control and to move against the status quo, this seems odd.

Next to the governorship, there aren’t more powerful offices in the state than those held by House Speaker Hughes and Senate President Niederhauser. So what does this powerful endorsement of a certain slate of candidates signify?

First, it signifies what is probably a sincere concern for (partial) local control: In the fundraising webinar held yesterday (by Hughes, Niederhauser, the School Improvement Network and the Utah Technology Council) the following slide was displayed:  Out of $308,512 raised for the political action of the Utah UEA (teacher’s union) $300,000 of it came from out of state.  Hughes and Niederhauser are right in being alarmed at that money’s probable effect on local control.

(What they didn’t highlight is this: all of the anti-Common Core candidates’ funding, combined, doesn’t come close to what even one of the UEA-funded candidates are spending because none of them are backed by corporate or political powers.)

Secondly, it signifies Utah leadership’s alignment with Obama’s vision for education, which among other things mandates sidelining certain subjects in favor of others. Niederhauser told the Tribune that he didn’t want any board member’s vision to “dominate the board” which, to  him, meant to “supplant business and technology representatives.”  So he wants to make sure that business and technology is at least as dominant as any other interest.   The School Improvement Network is of the same opinion.

We could ask why. Why, specifically, would legislators be endorsing the fields of business and technology over the fields of languages, medicine, history, social work, the arts or any other thing?  And where’s the idealogical division between what NEA wants and what Niederhauser-Hughes want?  Is it fair to speculate that NEA corporate funders are in competition against the Education First corporate funders, and all of this is just an economic struggle pretending to be a struggle for the children’s best interests?  Utah tax dollars are, after all, the passionate pursuit of multiple players in the now $2 Billion per year ed tech sales industry.

Many people know that both Hughes and Niederhauser’s political campaigns are heavily funded by Education First, a Utah political action committee for Prosperity 2020 that puts businesses first.

Not voters first.  Not education –broadly– first; this is education as defined by the ed-tech sales industry and by Obama’s 2020 vision. Read it in their own words.  In an Tribune op-ed taking credit for passing legislation that Education First had lobbied for, you’ll see little focus on funding for paper and pens, school basketballs, violins, gluesticks, old-fashioned books, or heaven forbid, large teachers’ salaries– no, ed funding to Education First means to fund the priorities that precisely (coincidentally?) match Obama’s 2020 vision:  early childhood education (which competes with free enterprise/private preschools), workforce development (China-styled central planning) “community schools” (Obama’s vision to integrate healthcare with academics and with socio-political movements “using government schools as a hub”) and standardized personalized learning (an oxymoron that cements Common Core academics and its data tags).

Don’t mistake this as a fight between tech lovers and tech haters.  None of the candidates for state school board are anti-technology, though the smart ones are pushing for improved laws governing student privacy in this modern age.

So what are Hughes and Niederhauser really saying when they say they’re for the pro-tech candidates?  What does that really mean?  That Utahns should sit back and let the ed tech sales industry, or businesses, sit in the driver’s seat for educational decision-making?  That’s the stated aim of Education First (in Utah) and of Obama’s 2020 (nationally) and, according to his Tribune quote above, it’s also the aim of President Niederhauser.

Education First doggedly, directly, lobbies citizens, governments, and school districts, to strong-arm their narrow vision, that businesses should “help” direct education.  They refer to my child and yours as the economy’s.  They call children “human capital” on their website.  This is, when ripe, the 1992 Hillary-Tucker dream coming true, with the collective economy dictating to the individual on the assembly line.

Education First wants a high “concentration of science and engineering occupations” in Utah, which you may or may not agree with; what I hope you do agree with is that this new, business – public ed partnershipping governance system, with business being handed power to influence schooling, when taken to the extreme, is fascism.  In fascism, there’s no distinction between government and business.  And the voter has no say.

Do we want to walk down that slippery slope?  Do we want the Education First business community to be given power in schools?

Whether promoting science and engineering at the expense of other subject and careers is the will of the people, or not, really doesn’t come in to the discussion. Prosperity 2020 has said that businesses will “provide a business oriented plan to improve results” for schools.

If Hughes or Niederhauser would respond to my emails to them, I would ask them this:  how is it any more helpful toward Constitutional local control–  if that is what you really want– to let businesses take over the driver’s seat for educators, as your financial backers aim to do, than for out of state (NEA) funding to call the same shots?  Either way, students and schools and voters lose personal freedoms to self-appointed experts who think they know best.

So when Niederhauser worries that “big money groups effectively buy the election,” he is right.  The hundreds of thousands of dollars pouring in to NEA-UEA approved candidates’ purses should raise eyebrows.  But shouldn’t the same eyebrows rise too, seeing in-state big money groups like Education First and Prosperity 2020 now, as in the past, funding the pro-Common Core candidates –and funding Hughes and Niederhauser themselves– effectively buying the election in the very same way?

Meanwhile, none of the liberty-first, anti-Common Core candidates,  Alisa Ellis, Lisa Cummins, Michelle Boulter or Dr. Gary Thompson, are richly funded.   All they really have to stand on is true principles of liberty –and word of mouth.

Many voters know that Common Core is anti-local control.  The Governor almost lost in the primary to anti-Common Core challenger Jonathan Johnson because of this.  The Governor was repeatedly booed at political conventions this year because he had been such a promoter of the Common Core, prior to his turnaround.  What will the governor say about Niederhauser’s and Hughes’ current effort?  More importantly, what will voters say?

Dr. Gary Thompson, a district 10 candidate for state school board, said today:

“I was pleased the that the Speaker of the House and Senator Neiderhauser identified who the “anti common core” education candidates are in this election. I was pleased to be labeled as one of them. This provides a clear choice for members in the community to chose from as they please.  Comments made by the Speaker in regards to the UEA did not receive a prior endorsement by this campaign.  I look forward to having a professional, cordial discussion with my UEA endorsed opponent on September 28th regarding education issues that will affect our children in District 10″

For anyone wanting to watch the debates between state school board candidates, please check that schedule here. 

Pictured below are the candidates for state school board that I endorse, whom the UEA, NEA, UTC, SIN, Senate President and House Speaker do not:

For true local control of education:

Alisa Ellis, Michelle Boulter, Lisa Cummins, Dr. Gary Thompson.

Lately we’re hearing a lot about America’s teachers leaving their beloved profession.  Utah’s State School Board is answering this problem, not by restoring local control over education, but by doubling-down on federal initiatives that dismantle local control over curriculum.

Here’s what every parent and local school board member needs to know about the teacher shortage:

Believe it or not, the teacher shortage was a pre-planned effect of the Common Core testing initiatives. Yep. As we’ve learned from the history of nations, governments create the problem and then step in with the solution (or noose).

And, now that Utah is losing teachers, guess who is already there to help us train more teachers?  Yep. The good old Feds and their Global partners. This racket is part of federal STEM initiatives.

Utah’s State School Board will begin giving licenses to teachers who receive training from “Master Teachers.” But, ask yourself this, “Who will be training the Master Teachers and who will the Master Teachers be?”

In July 2012, the Obama administration called for funding for its STEM Master Teacher Corp. The  goal is to train (and give federal stipends to) 10,000 Master Teachers in STEM fields—with the end-goal being to train 100,000 STEM teachers in 10 years.

An early announcement for this STEM Master teacher workforce was at the Clinton Global Initiative’s 2011 meeting in Chicago. Here’s what 100Kin10 (a group that answered—after helping create—the Obama administration’s call to build the STEM Master Teacher pipeline) said about itself in July 2016,

“100Kin10 was launched five years ago at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) America Meeting in Chicago in June 2011, with 28 initial partners pledging to go above-and-beyond their existing strategies to help secure 100,000 excellent STEM teachers for America’s classrooms.”

Then, 100Kin10 announced that President Obama was a full partner:

“President Obama Announces 100Kin10 Has Commitments to the Full 100,000 New STEM Teacher Goal”

Utah Teacher Shares Insights about State Approved Online Curriculum that Goes Against Family Values

reposted from www.ReturnToParentalRights.com

A Utah teacher deserves a BIG thank you from parents for taking time to document some of her concerns with the online curriculum used in her high school. The curriculum was approved by the State of Utah. Please take the time to read and share this excellent blog with your family, friends, school board members and legislators.

I would like to preface her blog with this:

In May 2014, conservative columnist George Will asserted that Common Core represented the “thin edge of an enormous wedge” and that “sooner or later you inevitably have a national curriculum.”

What George Will may not have known at the time was that the Obama administration was already using several levers to get states into online curriculum that essentially nationalizes curriculum. One such lever is the #GoOpen Initiative. Utah is a partner (see here and here) in the first consortium of states in the Federal Initiative that are collaborating on online curriculum content. Just as states were incentivized by Waivers and Race to the Top to rubber stamp Common Core standards and assessments, they are being incentivized by the #GoOpen Initiative to rubber stamp curriculum, and to sanction it based on its ability to increase children’s test scores on Common Core-aligned daily, online assessments in learning platforms.

The #GoOpen Initiative is part of a larger global and federal initiative to advance the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). In fact, the US Department of Education appointed a new advisor to help school districts transition to Open Educational Resources. The more states that adopt open-license, no-cost, online curriculum, the more teachers’ curriculum choices can be tracked, and steered, by the Federal Online Learning Registry. The Registry operates like a curriculum filter and ratings system. The Utah Education Network (UEN)—also called the Utah Education Telehealth Network (UETN)— houses online curriculum for Utah schools and is named as the entity implementing Utah’s Master Technology Plan. They are partnered with the Federal Online Learning Registry.

The above realities make it likely that few parents and teachers will know just how anti-family their children’s/students’ curriculum have gotten. We need more teachers to investigate the online curriculum in their schools (as opposed to just using teacher data dashboards to assign curriculum that they don’t see) and to be willing to share what they uncover for the sake of helping parents protect their children’s hearts and minds.

Thank you, Suzan Barnes! You are a hero to us and our children!

• • • • • • • • • • •

Online Learning: A Wise Choice for Utah Schools?

Originally posted by Suzan Barnes on June 7,  2016 at:
https://standwithme.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/online-learning-a-wise-choice-for-our-nations-schools/

Today online learning is encouraged more and more in our country. Proponents of this method say that computers help students learn better because 1) kids love screens and 2) learning is personalized allowing students to move at their own pace. In this essay, I will show that both of these presumed advantages can turn out to be liabilities. Other liabilities include lack of teacher involvement, lack of real-life experiences, lack of balance in content (specific to Edgenuity online curriculum), and lack of knowledge of content by teachers and parents.

Too Much Screen Time

Yes, kids love screens, and many parents complain that limiting screen-time at home is difficult. Regrettably, extensive use of screens in the classroom only increases screen-time. According to an article by Victoria L. Dunckley, M.D. in Psychology Today, multiple studies have shown that too much screen time causes atrophy in the brain’s gray matter where “planning, prioritizing, organizing, and impulse control” originate. Other areas affected are the striatum where socially unacceptable impulses are suppressed, the insula which provides the capacity for empathy and compassion, and the white matter which enables “communication within the brain and from the brain to the body and vice versa.” Dr. Dunckley concludes,

“In short, excessive screen-time appears to impair brain structure and function. Much of the damage occurs in the brain’s frontal lobe, which undergoes massive changes from puberty until the mid-twenties. Frontal lobe development, in turn, largely determines success in every area of life—from sense of well-being to academic or career success to relationship skills. Use this research to strengthen your own . . . position on screen management, and to convince others to do the same.”

As shown above, children may be eager to learn in front of a screen, but the damage that occurs is likely to have a negative overall effect on their ability to learn.

Online Learning Is Not Personalized

Proponents of online learning say it is personalized to meet the individual needs of each student. In actuality, during an online lecture, the student and the virtual teacher are unable to communicate which essentially precludes personalization and makes online learning better suited to disseminating a single, subjective view of the world.

Lack of Teacher Involvement

When a teacher delivers a lecture, both the students and the teacher are meaningfully engaged in the lesson content. The students must digest the information and demonstrate their understanding of the subject in order to complete subsequent assignments.

By contrast, the teacher’s involvement in online lessons occurs mainly through use of the dashboard. The dashboard alerts a teacher that an action, such as unlocking a quiz, is needed in order for a student to move forward. The teacher can review a student’s scores on assignments leading up to a quiz, or unlock the quiz without looking at the scores. In either case, familiarity with the lesson material or thoughtful review of the students’ work is not required.

One problem that arises from the lack of thoughtful review is that students can copy material from the lesson content and paste it into the response box to get a score of 100% since the computer merely looks for matching or related words.

Every day I see students who scored 70% to 100% on assignments, score 20% to 50% on the quiz that covers the same material. It is likely that the copy-and-paste feature combined with the lack of teacher/student engagement is responsible for this. For these students, the goal is not to learn but to finish as quickly as possible, and teachers who spend much of their time as dashboard monitors have little time to invest in any individual student’s educational experience.

Lack of Real-Life Experiences

Pediatricians recommend zero screen time for children under 2 years of age. An important reason for this is that looking at a ball on a screen is not the same as looking at, touching, and playing with a real ball. Similarly, students learning from pictures and videos are merely gaining static information which is easily forgotten. Much more effective teaching occurs when students interact with real people who respond to them in real-time and with real interest, tossing ideas back and forth to explore a subject. Should teachers wish to facilitate a group discussion of online curriculum content, they would encounter the following difficulties as a result of different stages of their students’ progression: 1) students who are ahead have already moved on and may feel they are wasting their time with repeated information, and 2) students who are behind may have insufficient background to understand the material.

Lack of Balance in Curriculum Content (Specific to Edgenuity)

As I work with students, I encounter essay assignments that prompt me to look into a particular lesson’s content. For example, an essay topic such as, “Do you think that the Founding Fathers were justified in rebelling against the British government?” makes me wonder what in the lesson might prompt a student to answer in the negative. An essay topic such as, “Write an argumentative editorial that argues for or against young people’s ability to initiate positive change in their communities,” makes me wonder if the curriculum’s definition of “positive change” is the same as my own.

To help readers determine whether or not their values align with the Edgenuity curriculum, I have included the following examples of common themes. My experience is mostly in Language Arts, so it is this subject from which these examples are taken.

Racism

Language Arts 9 semester 2 contains a unit called “Fighting for Equality.” Rather than encouraging students to become “color blind,” the curriculum creates division by presenting readings where whites are aggressive or oppressive toward other races, thus encouraging all other races to view themselves as victims.

Feminism

In Language Arts 11 semester 2, repeated references are made to Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles.” These works lead young women toward dissatisfaction with the role of wife and mother and disrespect for those who fulfill that role. The following themes are drilled into the minds of our young people through repetitious quiz questions.

From “Trifles” –

• Women face abuses and injustices in a male-dominated society as symbolized by a bird with a broken neck
• Women are “confined” by the duties of wife and mother
• Women often feel pressured to conform to society’s expectations

From The Feminine Mystique –

• Women frequently go unheard in a male-dominated society
• Women can feel suffocated and trapped by society’s expectations
• Women who are “stuck” at home often have feelings of dissatisfaction, desperation, and hopelessness.

After students read all the excerpts about how women are suffocated by men, an excerpt from Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway ends with the idea that girls are nice to look at, but not worth making the effort to court or marry. This excerpt encourages the boys to objectify women.

While awareness that some women have experienced oppression has some value, and knowledge of how our culture has evolved is an important part of learning about our nation’s history, the Edgenuity curriculum presents no point of view outside of that cited above. No discussion occurs about the benefits that society in general, and children in particular, receive from women who choose to raise their own offspring and provide well-managed homes for their families. Rather than empowering women to use their talents in whatever way they prefer, young women are encouraged to feel like vengeful victims who must continue “the fight” to overcome the abuses perpetrated by men.

Environmentalism

Humans are portrayed as enemies of the earth. One article, “Save the Redwoods,” written by John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club,* compared cutting down a sequoia tree to make wood products with passing General George Washington “through the hands of a French cook [to make] good food” (Language Arts 9 semester 1). The Middle School Reading Course semester 1 contains an entire unit called “Environment: Extreme Weather” which presents global warming as a fact illustrating its consequences through articles such as “Global Warming in Siberia,” “Global Warming and Superbugs,” and “Weather of Tomorrow.”.

Video gaming

Middle School Reading semester 1 also includes multiple units on “The World of Gaming” in which students are assigned to read a “Persuasive Essay against ESRB Labeling Restrictions.” The essay assignment is, “What game do you like to play and why?” While helping a student with a quiz, I came upon a reading informing students that gaming helps develop quicker reflexes and suggesting that they could use that as an argument the next time their parents told them they were spending too much time playing video games. Targeting parents who struggle to limit their children’s game time and suggesting that parents do not know best pits young people against their parents rather than encouraging respect and obedience.

A negative world view

Edgenuity is replete with stories and excerpts depicting conflict and oppression. Some examples from Language Arts 10 semester 1 follow:

• “Diary 24” from “The Freedom Writers Diary” by Erin Gruwell (A homeless black girl starts 10th grade at a school where racial tensions are high)
• “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan (Mother/daughter conflict)
• “Identifying Conflict” (A young girl’s experience in a Nazi camp)
• “An Interview with Marielle Tsukamoto: A First-Hand Account of Japanese Internment”
• “Night” by Elie Wiesel (A boy’s experience in a Nazi camp)

As stated earlier, knowledge of historical events is a valuable part of an education.  However, when students move from one depressing excerpt to another without class discussions which might offer solutions, parallels, and/or opposing viewpoints they can come away with a negative view of the world in which they live. Without class discussions, lessons generally proceed as follows:

• Students watch a lecture preparing them for a reading
• Students read the text
• Students watch another lecture guiding their interpretation of the readings
• Students complete at least one assignment pertaining to the material
• Students are quizzed to make sure that their interpretation is “correct.”
• The process is repeated

Lack of Knowledge of Content by Teachers and Parents

Ideally, teachers would listen to all the lectures and review the entire curriculum frame by frame and gain first-hand knowledge of the material presented. However, keeping up with dashboard alerts creates a fast-paced situation, and since they trusts the curriculum to cover all Common Core requirements, and this step is not required for students to progress and finish the courses, gaining more than incidental knowledge of the curriculum is generally not a priority. If teachers happen to discover a concept with which they do not agree, they can present an opposing viewpoint in a lecture or during a group discussion. But as mentioned above, group teaching presents its own set of difficulties when students are all in different stages of progression and possibly even studying different subjects altogether. Sharing opposing views with each student separately is too time-consuming and could be construed as pushing the teacher’s person values on an individual, so it is not a viable option.

As for parents, if no textbook ever comes home, they have limited access to the ideas being presented to their children. A parent must be aware of an objectionable teaching before they can counter it.

Many factors make it difficult for online learning to deliver a quality education. Quality learning is facilitated by real people exploring ideas and exchanging views through real-life activities and personal interactions. Through online learning, students are lead to accept the point of view put forward by the makers of the program, and as I have shown, much of the content of Edgenuity presents a divisive agenda promoting racism, feminism, and environmentalism along with a generally negative world view.

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* Denigration of human life should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Sierra Club. David Brower, a founder, suggested the following: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.” He further stated, “The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope.”