Oklahoma Public Schools: Bibles, not Competence

While Oklahoma fights to put Bibles in all of its classrooms, it's worth noting that almost every quality assessment ranking that one can find puts Oklahoma public schools at or near the bottom. They are worse than the states that traditionally had the worst schools in the country: Alabama and Mississippi.

One has to wonder why the state school administrators are engaging in culture wars instead of doing the hard work of ensuring that their charges receive a quality education.

But we know the answer to that. Engaging in culture wars impresses the mouthbreathing anacephanic MAGAs. Giving their kids a quality education might mean teaching them to think and evaluate on their own, rather than accept the intellectual bilge being shoveled out by their parents and pastors. And we simply can't have that, can we.

Why Bother With Getting a Pesky Edjumacation?

In Louisiana, you can just claim to be home-schooled, fork over some cash and get a diploma. Your folks can send you to work at the local fast-food emporium, garage, or industrial operation and say that you got an education at the School of Hard Knocks.

Colleges and employers are going to need to be keeping lists of states (most of them southern) from which diplomas are worthless.

The Christian Grift

The country’s largest Christian university is being fined $37.7 million by the federal government amid accusations that it misled students about the cost of its graduate programs.
Grand Canyon University, which has more than 100,000 students, mostly in online programs, faces the largest fine of its kind ever issued by the U.S. Education Department. The university dismissed the allegations as “lies and deceptive statements.”
...
As far back as 2017, the university told students its doctoral programs would cost between $40,000 and $49,000. The department found that less than 2% of graduates completed programs within the range, with 78% pay
ing an additional $10,000 to $12,000.

They're a for-profit school, Christian-based and most of their instruction is done online; three factors that pretty much assures that they are sketchy as fuck.

Mandatory Viewing for Those Who Attend School in Florida

It might help counteract the shit they've been fed from Meatball Ron's curriculum (and other states where it is now illegal to upset fragile white people).

It's named "Calling Bullshit".

America's Self-Perpetuating Oligarchy

Elite colleges have long been filled with the children of the richest families: At Ivy League schools, one in six students has parents in the top 1 percent.

A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes. They tended to have higher SAT scores and finely honed résumés, and applied at a higher rate — but they were overrepresented even after accounting for those things. For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in.

It is nothing short of affirmative action for rich people. The inescapable conclusion is that the elite schools don't want to sully their hallowed halls with lower-income people.

The schools tilt things by taking into account recommendations from guidance conselors, which pretty much are available only to kids from private schools. They accept atheletes from sports played mostly by rich kids. They give credit for volunteering; kids from lower-income familes aren't volunteering, they're working to help their families out.

And this, mind you, doesn't even bring into play the legacy admissions or those kids who got admitted because their relatives made huge donations to buy their way in.

All this is coming to the fore because the Supreme Grifters don't like affirmative action based on race or ethnicity. So now people are looking at where affirmative action is in operation for rich people. And, surprise, surprise, surprise, at the Ivies, they're finding just that.

Hate Doesn't Always Carry the Day

High school theater kids in Ft. Wayne, IN wanted to put on a play, Marian or the True Tale of Robin Hood. This is what the play is about:

A gender-bending, patriarchy-smashing, hilarious new take on the classic tale, adapted for performance by teen actors for family audiences. Robin Hood is (and has always been) Maid Marian in disguise, and leads a motley group of Merry Men (few of whom are actually men) against the greedy Prince John. As the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, who will stand for the vulnerable if not Robin? What is the cost of revealing your true self in a time of trouble?

One parent protested, claiming that the play was immoral and against her religion. The kids pointed out that the school district claims to promote tolerance and says that they are against bullying, to no avail. The cowards in school administration and on the school board caved to Christian Karen.

The kids were undeterred. They obtained permission from the company holding the rights, found adults to act as the producer and to run fundraising. They rented a 1,500 seat theater, hired security (which ultimately had nothing to do), packed the house and they put on the show.

For one night, hatred and bigotry did not prevail in Indiana.

Lesson Learned: The College Board Can be Bullied by Politicians Pushing a White Nationalist Agenda

The official curriculum for a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies downplays some components that drew criticism from conservatives including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had threatened to ban the class in his state.

In the framework released on Wednesday, topics including Black Lives Matter, slavery reparations and queer life are not part of the exam. They are included only on a sample list states and school systems can choose from for student projects.

Republicans love closing their eyes to reality. They love pretending that the best time in this country was the 1950s, when, to their recollection, women were in the kitchen, minorities knew their place (and didn't vote), gays were in the closet and nobody ever heard of a trans person. They like pretending that slaves were "immigrant workers".

Of course, the one thing they don't like about the 1950s that such things as interstate highways and strong defense were paid for, in part, by high taxes on rich people and that there were heavy taxes on generational wealth. Nope, they didn't like that at all.

The takeaway here is that the College Board has the spine of overcooked linguini and will cave to even a smallish pressure campaign.

In other news, as DeSantis purges the state universities in Florida, look for "Jewish science" to be banned. Which is essentially science that is not in accordance with the Bible. for any professor, tenured or not, who dares to each anything not approved by the Christian Taliban will be fired.

Florida has long had a reputation for shitty-ass public schools. Now their public universities will be equally shitty.

Waylon Bates Hates Freedom

He is the principal of the Parkway high school in Bossier City, Louisiana. Mr. Bates has banned taking a knee at sporting events.

It's pretty clear that such a protest is permitted by the Constitution.

The school is a public school--- it is a governmental entity.

It is unconstitutional for Mr. Bates to have issued his little fiat.

So ask yourself: What lesson is Mr. Bates teaching the kids if he, as a government official, can ban free expression just because he doesn't like the message?

Why does he hate freedom?

Yoda Signed the United Nations Charter

That image made it into a Texan Saudi high school textbook.