It is the most wonderful time of the year!
It’s also busy. The pace quickens as we prepare for Christmas: the gathering of family, extra baking, special meals, gifts to share, and, most importantly, preparing our hearts to celebrate the Lord’s birth. The two-week break from Christmas through New Year’s Day is a national time of respite, a time schoolchildren and grown adults look forward to.
If you work retail or hospitality, or are clergy, you are likely busier than normal at work. Hopefully, the season will result in healthy profits and extra tips – tips that won’t be taxed at the federal level but will be taxed in a number of Grinch states, including Illinois.
The Ives family is excited to have most of our children and three grandchildren, aged three and under, visiting. The house will be full of laughter and likely some crying. We’re looking forward to it all.
Christmas is a season of hope and promise. That hope and promise for Christians is seen in the Christ-child. Similarly, parents see hope and promise in their own children, and a nation sees its future in the strength of the generations coming up.
Accordingly, nations have recognized the need to educate their youth long before public education became accessible and free for all in most countries. Even before the United States became a country, education was deemed important for building up men and women of good moral character and discipline and for teaching civic responsibility.
The public education experiment, though, has been upended by a progressive agenda that denies biological truths, eschews traditions, and has lowered standards for many students.
For example, it’s been quite a few years now that “Christmas Vacation” has been changed on public school calendars to the sterile “Winter Break” to satisfy the agnostics who want to pretend a break centered on December 25th, which has been celebrated as Christ’s birth for centuries, is really a planned break to celebrate the beginning of Winter.
It’s just one of many small ways the elite in education are replacing tradition in a world where Wokeness and equity reign.
While the federal government and numerous other states have stopped Woke indoctrination, Illinois hasn’t. Fortunately, though, the courts and GEN Z are pushing back.
In case you missed it, Illinois recently ended its minority teaching scholarship program. They had no choice but to do so after being sued last year over the program that has been in existence for 33 years. The scholarship was blatantly racist, literally describing exactly which races were allowed to apply for the scholarship. If you were white – don’t bother. The scholarships were substantial – $7,500 for each of four years for any teaching student at any school, public or private, in Illinois.
Chalkbeat reported on the lawsuit,
The Pacific Legal Foundation, the conservative group that brought the lawsuit against the scholarship program on behalf of the American Alliance for Equal Rights, sees the changes as “positive.”
“Our whole goal was to eliminate these kinds of racial qualifications for grants from the government,” said Samantha Romero-Drew, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation. “We’re pleased to see that Illinois changed this law so that it’s open to everyone.”
A new law changes how the scholarship is awarded, using geography in place of race.
We all agree that education is important. We want the best instructors, regardless of race, to be in the classroom teaching our nation’s hope and promise for a bright American future.
But the instruction of our future instructors is now tainted with Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards.
The University of Illinois is receiving national attention after a student exposed the lesson plans she was forced to listen to in a teacher preparation class. FOX News was given the exclusive story from the student, and they published some of the slides presented.
According to the article, the professor is Gabriel Rodriguez. She teaches EDUC 201, a first-semester freshman year class for teaching majors.
The WOKE class covered everything from race-based teaching to how to be a LBGTQ ally.
Slide nine of the presentation makes a blunt admission.
“Remember: Schools are a part of a larger political system. As such, education, at its core, is inherently political,” the slide says. “School is a political place because so many adults (e.g., educators, policymakers, parents) have a vested interest in the future generation.”
FOX News noted that “The PowerPoint presentation for week 12 of the education course is titled, “Supporting LGBTQ+ Students in Schools.”
The end of the presentation is geared towards queer and transgender teachers, and features quotes from a letter to those teachers written by Harper Keenan, a professor of gender and sexuality research at the University of British Columbia.
“Those who now call themselves queer and trans people have been teaching the world since before those words even existed – the acceleration of queer language development and reclamation over the last century is but one example. You have important knowledge to bring to the work of education,” says a quote attributed to Keenan.
The student, according to the news report, “slammed the school’s teaching on gender, saying that the university preaches ideas like ‘gender assigned at birth,’ instead of recognizing binary sex, and places an emphasis on not assuming gender.
“They really want you to use pronouns. That’s a big thing. You can’t assume gender. You have to ask for pronouns,” the student said.
Week Five slides from the course focused on racial identity. The lesson is titled “Embracing Asset-Based Practices.”
“What does it mean to help students understand their privileged identities?” one question asks.
“What does it mean to help students understand and embrace their minoritized identities?” asks another.
Teaching social justice was another component of the class.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign told Fox News Digital that it “complies with all applicable federal and state laws governing equal access and nondiscrimination in its programs and activities, including classroom instruction.” And said:
“This course, Identity and Difference in Education, (EDUC 201) examines how identity, power, and privilege impact equity in education, focusing on socially constructed identities and asset-based frameworks,” it said. “Understanding differences in identities is important to improve educational outcomes for all students.”
NO ONE should be surprised that this is what is being taught to teachers who will eventually be teaching our very young, impressionable children.
This curriculum, in fact, was mandated in 2021 by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules on a party-line vote, with the Democrats voting in favor of Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards.
They had a four-year phase in period as the specific curriculum was developed. This year is the first year of implementation.
Here’s a sample of the standards teachers are expected to adhere to when instructing students in a Culturally Responsive way. Look at the entire CRTL standards here.
To no surprise, similar DEI training is mandated for school board members in Illinois, and that has translated into schools setting goals to hire minorities.
D211 is the largest high school district in Illinois, and it has adopted just such a goal.
A look at their target goals for strategic hiring says they want to increase minority applicants by 40% year over year over year. And the actual hiring of minorities by 5% each year.
One more note – City Journal did its own college rankings of the top 100 most notable colleges and universities. They looked at 68 different metrics, including analysis of free speech and actual tolerance of others. Their report is linked HERE, and this is the opening:
College shapes a student’s mind and character—for better or for worse. It forms the person you become. It educates—or miseducates. Yet rankings typically focus on factors that say little about how a school will influence your future. They tell you almost nothing about the content of the education, the campus environment, or the institution’s core values. With higher education in crisis, you need the most relevant information in order to choose the right college.
In the City Journal report, the University of Florida ranked first, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ranked 59th, below Iowa and the University of Alabama.
This is Illinois, so of course, education isn’t the only WOKE area where identity indoctrination is taking place.
Libs of TikTok obtained the mandatory LGBTQ and DEI training slides for the Illinois State Police (ISP). Personnel must complete the training or risk being fired.
The Certification Slide has the participant acknowledge:
“My failure to comply with the laws, rules, policies, and procedures referred to within this training course may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination of State employment.”
Those policies would presumably include showing any LGBTQ prejudice, which they defined as
Inferring that LGBTQ people are
– Bad parents
– Dangerous
– That LGBTQ is a mental illness
– That LGBTQ is a trend
Outright LGBTQ discrimination and microaggressions are noted as
– Prohibiting a transgender person from using the bathroom of their choice,
– Repeatedly using the wrong pronoun,
– Using slurs or derogatory language,
– Not inviting LGBTQ colleagues to social functions,
– Implying a trans colleague is not a real woman, man, or nonbinary person
ISP personnel are also directed to “Demonstrate commitment to providing an affirming space for LGBTQIA+ colleagues or clients by using ally symbols
They also must examine their privilege
And their racist tendencies
And go through a mental guilt walk that includes “learning scenarios.”
I believe these trainings and the policies, at both our teaching schools and the state police, are unconstitutional and illegal. They compel speech. They violate Trump’s EO that there is only the sex binary. And they violate his DEI executive orders, which specifically end race-based indoctrination.
Back to the University of Illinois student, who gives me hope, she warned parents, as reported by FOX News, that:
“People need to see the side of the liberal party,” the student said. “Parents need to know this is how far they’re going, like they’re going so far to push their agenda on children. And I don’t even know for what, like a little bit of political gain? They’re literally willing to hinder a child’s education.”
“They’re going to be pointing at your White child and call them an aggressor, or they’ll point at your Black child and convince them they’re a victim. People get mad at this but [children] don’t see color. Children don’t think like that. They don’t have any sort of biases. Nobody’s born with a bias against someone. Children genuinely just don’t see that.”
This young teacher can and is making a difference by speaking out. But she is rare. Our schools are infested with the Leftist ideology. That ideology killed Charlie Kirk. It is creating a threatening environment for our children in grade school, high school, and college. Read Laurie Higgins article below, where she discusses the vile statements made against teens at a high school in Orland Park who wanted to start a TPUSA Chapter. The pro-Palestinians came after them viciously. She also mentions the threats made against TPUSA members at Olivet-Nazarene University. Where are the administrators? Likely, helping indoctrinate the children, threatening others, or turning a blind eye to it.
We have work to do.
I do have hope that the DEI and LGBTQ nonsense will stop when I hear of students standing up and see a record attendance at AmericaFest. But hope isn’t a plan, and it is going to take all of us to stop the insanity of the Left and create a future where our children are ready to lead our nation with the same moral discipline and values of our founding fathers.
IN OTHER NEWS
IL Energy Report Shows Problems Ahead
Read More Here: https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/a-power-shortage-could-be-in-northern-illinois-near-future-new-report-warns/3865652/
Illinois Republican Congressmen Urge President Trump to Reject a Pardon of Madigan
Da Bears – Great Job Winning in Overtime as they consider a move to NW Indiana.
Taxpayers may not want to subsidize Da Bears, but Governor JB Pritzker should be ridiculed for his obstinance in doing so, considering he committed/spent taxpayer money on the following:
– $2 billion on illegals
– $827 million to Rivian, which has never turned a profit on a vehicle
– $536+ million to CCP-backed Gotion
– Billions to NGOs that produce nothing
This is a huge fumble for the Governor. And even whispering a Bears move to Indiana tells you how bad the business environment is in Illinois.
Read More Here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/chicago-bears-threaten-move-to-indiana-with-arlington-heights-stadium-plan-held-up/ar-AA1SySho?ocid=BingNewsSerp