James Lindsay knocks it out of the park in this 15-minute talk on how Maoism is being forced upon us through the "politics of compliance."
If you have been told that you have to adhere to a narrative of non-partisanship, that you have to be positive in all interactions with the opposition, that you can't say certain things even if they're true, then you are a victim of the politics of compliance. Watch to the end for Lindsay's antidote:
The Politics of Compliance, or how Maoism works in practice, as given at the fifth International Crisis Summit in Washington, D.C., at the end of February. It should feel uncomfortably familiar and gratefully clarifying.pic.twitter.com/PobU0qqczR
— James Lindsay, number one Gay Studies author (@ConceptualJames) March 12, 2024
James Lindsay explains how Marxists take over organizations and transform them, cutting you the citizen out of any say in how your local libraries or schools are run.
Here's a link to the book he recommends. Charles Pincourt, who authored the book with Lindsay, says this about his book Counter Wokecraft:
"The second part of the book analyzes the collection of principles,
strategies, and tactics used by the Woke to entrench their
perspective—in other words, wokecraft. The success of the Woke relies
primarily on three things: First is the weaponization of
positive-sounding, commonly understood words that have double meanings,
or Woke Crossover Words. These words (e.g., critical, diversity,
inclusion) are brandished like Improvised Explosive Devices. They are
slipped into documents and decisions, justified by their commonly held
meanings, but are later used to justify Woke interventions based on
their radical Woke meaning. Second, there is a general insistence on
informality, which is then exploited to manipulate decision-making by
preventing, for example, secret ballot voting. Third, there are a number
of woke bullying tactics that are used to prevent people from resisting
Woke advances. These range from coercion through consensus to
cancel-culture attacks. Together, these tactics are used to exaggerate
support for, and quell dissent against, Woke advances."
According to Pincourt, the latter part of the book teaches readers how to counter the revolution. "The first column seeks to sow doubt in participants about the Woke
perspective, particularly its prescriptions. The second involves
amplifying and enabling dissenting opinions, while at the same time
instituting the formalization of decision-making processes that allow
all participants to voice their opinions."
Wouldn't it be nice if school boards and library boards actually gave citizens more than three minutes to expound (five minutes would be helpful), and then actually responded to them? Instead, they use wokecraft to shut down a free exchange of ideas, and steal citizens' recourse to public dialog with public servants.
The video is only 20 minutes long. Well worth viewing.
To most parents the International Baccalaureate program is a
highly-respected organization that seeks to educate the brightest
students with a world-class education, readying them for higher
education and broader career opportunities. That perception
could not be further from the truth.
The IB program is an
organization that provides students with an education in Globalism
and Marxism through a SEL (Social Emotional Learning) system that delivers indoctrination to every student
enrolled. Just like many of the woke non-profit educational
organizations that “serve” the government schools, the IB program
is indoctrinating students (and their teachers) in a political system
that is anathema to the values of our Republic.
James Lindsay describes SEL as, "...composed of psychological and social work–based interventions on
children performed by teachers and other non-professionals (in
psychology and social work) in uncontrolled, non-therapeutic spaces in
order to teach them “right” and “wrong” answers to socially and
emotionally relevant circumstances. Some, such as your humble
encyclopedist, have suggested that the intentional implementation of
Social-Emotional Learning in schools should be a felony and involve the
relevant administrators going to prison. Some states in the United
States, such as North Carolina, seemed to preemptively anticipate this
potential issue with the implementation of SEL and proactively granted
immunity to teachers and school faculty administering SEL against
charges of practicing psychology on children without a license."
HISTORY OF THE IB PROGRAM
According to the IB organization’s website,
the seeds of the IB program began in 1962 with the founding of the
Atlantic College, one of the first educational institutions with an
international curriculum. Founded by German educator, Kurt Hahn, the
college as originally conceived was meant to bring understanding and
cooperation among students in order to overcome Cold War hostilities
among nations.
According to an article
on Wikipedia, “Drawn from all nations, the students would be
selected purely on merit and potential, regardless of race, religion,
nationality and background.”
Remember that point,
because if true, the IB program has largely abandoned that
selection process in favor of the racist policies of Diversity,
Equity, and Inclusion.
“KEY INFLUENTIAL EDUCATIONALISTS”
The IB organization names four individuals who were key to helping
form the program’s ideas on curriculum: John Dewey, A.S. Neill,
Jean Piaget, and Jerome Bruner. Three of the four were psychologists.
Let’s take a look at socialist psychologist John Dewey.
According to author Samuel L. Blumenfeld in a 1985 Imprimis
article¹, “In
1894 [Dewey] became professor of philosophy and
education at the University of Chicago where he created his famous
Laboratory School. The purpose of the school was to see what kind of
curriculum was needed to produce socialists instead of capitalists,
collectivists instead of individualists. Dewey, along with the other
adherents of the new psychology, was convinced that socialism was the
wave of the future and that individualism was passe. But the
individualist system would not fade away on its own as long as it was
sustained by the education American children were getting in their
schools. According to Dewey, “…education is growth under
favorable conditions; the school is the place where those conditions
should be regulated scientifically.” In other words, if we apply
psychology to education, which we have done now for over fifty years,
then the ideal classroom is a psych lab and the pupils within it are
laboratory animals.”
Also, according to Blumenfeld, “Dewey’s joining Cattell
and Thorndike at Columbia brought together the lethal trio who were
literally to wipe out traditional education and kill academic
excellence in America. It would not be accomplished overnight, for an
army of new teachers and superintendents had to be trained and an
army of old teachers and superintendents had to retire or die off.”
John Dewey also felt that literacy was overrated. According to
Blumenfeld, “But it was
Dewey who identified high literacy as the culprit in traditional
education, the sustaining force behind individualism. He wrote in
1898:
My proposition is, that conditions—social,
industrial, and intellectual—have undergone such a radical change,
that the time has come for a thoroughgoing examination of the
emphasis put upon linguistic work in elementary instruction…
The plea for the predominance of learning to read in
early school-life because of the great importance attaching to
literature seems to me a perversion.”²
Dewey and his Progressive colleagues managed to introduce the “whole word”
and “look say” methods of teaching reading, which were originally
used to teach the deaf to read. The widespread implementation of
these methods in public government schools has contributed to the
drastic decline in literacy among our children. And it was done on
purpose by one of the “key influential educationalists” the IB
program touts.
Further, according to Aliya
Sikandar in
the Journal
of Education and Educational Development,
“Dewey
was largely inspired by Marx’s theory of social struggle and
conflict between classes. Marx’s theory of conflict is that the
society is stratified and layered with different strata and there
is a competition within these different classes. Marx stresses that
social analysis should focus on class structure and relations. Dewey
had an inspiration from Habermas’s thoughts, which are in the
traditions of Kant, and emphasize the role of education to transform
the world into a more humane, just, and egalitarian society.”³
Sikandar writes, “Dewey’s
main concern was a disparity between the experiences of child and the
kind of concepts imposed upon him. He believed that this gap curbs a
child’s natural experiences and abilities, forcing him to follow
the dictates of a formal education. Dewey is equally critical of the
progressive education which imposes concepts, such as the right of
free expression or free activity as these tenets of education also
impose ideas upon a child. Dewey was deeply inspired by the vision of
a liberal free society and realized the pressing need of freedom and
equality, emancipation from social bounds to liberate individual and
society from the structures of power.”⁴
These
and other Progressive and Marxist
ideas have morphed into the systems of delivery we see in today’s
International Baccalaureate program, as well as public schools all
over the nation. Hidden in the form of SEL and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), these same
pernicious ideas have been working to undermine and control the
intellect of students.
In
its slide presentation on the history of the IB, the organization
compares and contrasts traditional and progressive educational
trends. Traditional methods such as memorization are compared to
“critical analysis.” Testing goes from objective IQ
tests to a
“range
of skills testing.” A
didactic or moral-based teaching becomes “constructivism,” in
which
a child develops his/her own moral
understanding
through experiential methods of learning.
Machine-scored tests become criterion-referenced tests.
In
a nutshell, these progressive trends mean that objective testing for
IQ and content
mastery,
a shared curriculum that all students should master, and a moral base
for knowledge is all thrown out the window in the service of
indoctrinating children into a globalist, Marxist world view.
Indeed,
a great deal of the IB program is designed for this end.
Recently, the IB put out a DEI statement to read in part:
“Diversity,
equity and inclusion statement:
We aim to live these values through these commitments:
The IB will embrace diversity,
equity, and inclusion practices in our work—and reflect this
commitment as we develop our policies and procedures—both as an
employer and as an educational organization
We commit to promoting human
rights and the idea of one shared humanity in all our work, both as
an employer and as an educational organization
The IB commits to promoting
justice—social, economic and ecological—in our work, both as an
employer and as an educational organization
Alongside our community, we will
work to help protect the environment and the local ecosystems that
form it
The IB will foster a sense of
agency and enquiry in both the people we work with and the young
people we help to educate
We embrace learner variability so
that our learners are not excluded on the grounds of any of their
characteristics, and so that our stakeholders can develop and thrive
in a culture of equal opportunities for learning, personal growth,
and developing the ability to make positive change
The IB commits to act supportively
and with consideration for young people affected by difficult or
adverse circumstances, their own changing personal histories or
contexts, or other challenges affecting their life as IB students
We will work to promote the
voices, identities, and leadership of marginalized people in our
work, both as an employer and as an educational organization. We
will be transparent in all our policies relating to the people we
work with and as we work with our educational programmes and
resources through a diversity, equity and inclusion lens
We will explore new ways to open
our programmes and our work to new languages, cultures and contexts
The IB commits to being fully focused on the needs of our
staff, IB World Schools and their educators and students, as we
challenge ourselves to become a more diverse, open, inclusive, and
accepting organization, standing against racism, prejudice,
discrimination and marginalization wherever we can. “
It
is clear that a political persuasion is of utmost importance to the IB.
Words like diversity, equity, inclusion, promoting human rights,
justice, protecting the environment, promoting the leadership of
marginalized people, etc., are all the wording of today’s Marxist
lexicon. Cloaked in benign-sounding wording, these concepts mean
something very different to those imposing them on our children. And
unfortunately, many public schools have fallen for the IB program,
including the Ozark School District.
OZARK
SCHOOL DISTRICT AND THE IB
At
the Sept.
21, 2023 Ozark School Board meeting, the IB program (a part of
the school since 2012), was evaluated. The presenters, Ozark High School Principal Dr. Jeremy
Brownfield and IB coordinator Stacie Moran, spoke in favor of the program. The slide presentation can be found here.
Video prompted to the IB presentation:
The
slide
presentation, as clever as it was in attempting to downplay the
actual IB cost versus AP cost (in purely financial terms), could not
hide the taxpayer dollar waste as compared to the Advanced
Placement program. What wasn’t readily seen in the slides is
that the IB program for 2024 will cost taxpayers $228,246.80 for a
total of 74 students (the majority of whom will not be in the diploma
program). The diploma program currently has a total of 28 students,
both seniors and juniors. Dividing the total cost by the number of
students comes out to $3,084.42 for the IB program, while the AP
program calculation is a total of $871.64 per student.
What
Dr. Brownfield did in his calculations was to compare total “student
seats” (how many classes were taken by each student), instead of
program cost per student. And when one compares the policies of
colleges regarding both the AP and IB programs (see slide 12 of the
presentation), the cost to taxpayers cannot justify the IB program.
The ROI (return on investment) is not there.
Slide 12 of OSD IB Presentation
Later
in the presentation, the call is for expanding the IB program to the
Middle
Years Program, hiring additional staff and training. The purely
financial aspects of the IB program should see it dropped by the
Ozark School District. However, the political indoctrination alone
should be the stake in the heart of the IB program.
IB
STUDENTS SPEAK AT TOWN HALL
At
an Ozark School District Town Hall meeting on December 7, 2023, a
student in the IB program got up to speak. It starts out well. The
student describes her involvement at school and asks a great question
of the school board: What is the best form of education? Board member
Patty Quessenberry launches right into the progressive view of
student-directed education. She pays lip service to a “baseline,”
but then affirms that what interests the student is the most
important avenue of learning.
Next, board member Guy Callaway says
nearly the same thing. He mentions that his niece had been in the IB
program. Board member Christina Tonsing requests input from the
students about the
Academies program (read about them here,)
and shares that educational trends tend to come and go.
Then
Don
Currence, the mayor of Ozark, speaks
about some controversial opinions
that had been shared on a
Ozark community Facebook
page. Another
IB student gets up to speak. She wants more money for the arts. She’s
already spoken to Principal Dr. Jeremy
Brownfield, but she “wants more
details.” Partnerships with local arts organizations is mentioned
as a possible solution. School board member Amber Bryant shares that
a cost analysis is being done.
It’s
wonderful up to this point. But at the
40-minute mark one of the two
IB students gets up again to ask
about the
Ozark community page
on Facebook previously mentioned by Mayor Currence.
She wants to get rid of it. She wants to censor free speech in order to protect her teachers and fellow students. Later at
44 minutes in, a woman gets up and
suggests teaching
“media literacy,” which is a form of censorship masked as
educating
students how to discern mis- and disinformation.
WHAT
IS MEDIA LITERACY?
John
D. Sailor of the National
Association of Scholars describes
it this way: “But what,
exactly, is this pedagogy? The Critical Media Literacy Guide, a book
by UCLA professors Douglas Kellner and Jeff Share, offers a broad and
influential summary. Kellner and Share cite Marx’s observation that
“in every epoch, the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling
class” to argue that media literacy should be taught through the
lens of power and identity groups. Critical media literacy seeks to
undermine what it sees as the dominant institutions of Western
capitalist society—or, to use the academic jargon, to foster
“counter-hegemonic alternatives.”⁵
In
the video, which I urge you to watch from the prompt onward, then
Interim-Superintendent Lori Wilson,
and Curriculum
Superintendent
Craig Carson both admit that media literacy is being taught to very
young students up through high
school.
Towards
the end of the meeting, one of the IB students asks a question
regarding helping recent immigrants from Ukraine and Russia by
“growing” curriculum to make it “less of a culture shock.”
Perhaps
the globalist perspective taught in the IB curriculum is what prompted the remarks
in favor of
censoring free speech on Facebook (hardly known as a bastion of free
speech anyway), and concern for recent immigrants’ cultural
sensibilities.
THE
UNESCO CONNECTION
Also during the meeting Ozark School Board Member Christina Tonsing asked about UNESCO (the
United Nations Educational
Scientific and Cultural Organization), which has been historically associated with the IB program. According
to J. P. Singh in “United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization: Creating
norms
for a complex
world,”
“Auguste
Comte’s (1798–1857) “Religion of Humanity” ascribed to
science the basis of society and global solidarity that would replace
God as its ordering principle. Comte’s positivist theory of
humanity reflected science to be not just a source for Enlightenment
ideas of progress, but also to be its spiritual core. Comte provides
a precursor to the ideas of scientific humanism that became popular
in the 1930s. Julian Huxley, UNESCO’sfirst
director- general (1946–48),
tried to provide a similar manifesto in his pamphlet UNESCO: Its
Purpose and Its Philosophy:
“Thus
the general philosophy of UNESCO should, it seems, be a scientific
world humanism, global in extent and evolutionary in background.”8
The
thrust of Huxley’s
ideas was toward human perfection rooted in natural selection,
evolution, and one dangerously close to eugenics.”⁶
Kimberly
Ells writes about UNESCO in her article “The endgame of
Social and Emotional Learning programs the UN is pushing is to shape
all children to meet the needs of a global society.” Ells says,
“[A]ccording to the global
purveyor of SEL standards, 27 states so far have adopted K-12 SEL
competencies, and all 50 states have adopted SEL competencies for
pre-K students. But where is this massive push for SEL coming from,
and what are the motives behind it? The answer to this question is becoming clear: The United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
is a primary force behind the SEL movement worldwide.”⁷
Later in the
article, Ells asserts that UNESCO is ultimately concerned with making
global citizens who, “In short, proponents of the sustainable
development goals and SEL want to instill “pluralistic thinking”
in your child in the name of global peace. They want children to be
taught to value the “collective good” over individual liberties,
rights, and property despite the fact that the freest, most
prosperous nations in the world are founded on individual liberties,
rights, and property.”⁸
WHAT CAN WE DO?
This is the crux of
the matter with organizations like the International Baccalaureate
program and UNESCO. They are not in unity with the laws, values, and
culture of the United States of America. In fact, through deception
and clever wording, these organizations and many like them have been
subverting our educational institutions for decades.
The hour is quite
late. These organizations have not just a toehold, but a stranglehold
on our institutions. Parents and taxpayers should insist that
programs like the IB be dropped from the curriculum at the Ozark
School District. Teachers should be retrained if needed.
A must read by James Lindsay at his New Discourses site. Lindsay lays out how the DIE (or DEI) industry manipulates our goodwill to push dangerous agendas into our schools and businesses.
FTA:
"Among these manipulations at the very core of these consultancy projects
are three seemingly anodyne and now sacrosanct words: “Diversity,”
“Inclusion,” and “Equity.” These are what they’re selling to us to a
tune of untold billions of dollars a year in return for a society that
gets increasingly dysfunctional as a result, and we have a right to know
why. We have a right to see how we’re being lied to and manipulated by
these three words. We actually do have to understand the terms
“Diversity,” “Inclusion,” and “Equity” in their proper “Critical” meanings—because that’s what they’re really selling—to understand what’s going on. All of these represent political agendas,
not something helpful, useful, moral, or anything remotely close to
what people should think is warm, fuzzy, and worth getting behind.
Speaking corporately, it would be better to set our money on fire than
to spend it on these programs because they don’t just waste money but
will cause increased costs more or less perpetually afterward."
Chances are your school is infected with Social Emotional Learning (SEL). The Ozark School District certainly employs it, claiming it is teaching children how to be kind or collaborative or empathetic or resilient, etc. Seems very innocuous and it is sold that way by the school district. It is, however, a method of indoctrinating children to think and act in ways that lead to an acceptance of DEI and CRT, gender ideology and so on--social and political ways of thinking that many parents do not approve of.
The video below is instructive because it tells the story of how one instructor became concerned about SEL in her school district. According to Jennifer McWilliam's website, "In 2019, Jennifer was working as a “Reading Intervention Instructor” when she became very concerned about the education transformation unfolding at her school and across our nation. As she began to research what was causing the shift in focus from academics to ideology, she learned about the driving force behind the change: Social Emotional Learning.
In September 2019, she started to inform parents and citizens about the concerning changes in the education system. In February 2020, Jennifer was fired for exposing the SEL program at her school."
🚨This 4th archived video was the first time I ever spoke about Social Emotional Learning (SEL). I hope this brings Courage to everyone joining the fight to protect children & save America. Video 1. Brief explanation / Video 2. recorded on 12/17/2019 #ExpelSELpic.twitter.com/dcEintP4P1
In the Ozark School District, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Craig Carson included in his December Board Narrative several instances where SEL is being implemented. On page 1 is a planned future "Curriculum Conversation" titled, "How Ozark teaches emotional regulation and socialization between peers."
On page 4 under Training is, "Academic Behaviors - POG in conjunction with SEL." Additionally, on page 7, Dr. Carson shares a consulting visit by Cassandra Erkens of Solution Tree, a company that pushes SEL as part of its efforts to "help" schools:
Here is a short and very helpful graphic from Courage is a Habit that explains SEL. Here is another one that explains the cycle of indoctrination. Lastly, here is a video from James Lindsay of New Discources, in which he exposes SEL. It is well worth the time it takes to listen to his podcast. Around 16 minutes in Lindsay explains how many leading educators are completely ignorant of SEL, its true purpose and how widely it is implemented in schools. As Lindsay says, it is a pretty package with something horrible inside.
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, commonly known as DESE, is accepting public comment until September 15, 2023 on the proposed adoption of "K-12 Learning Standards, Glossary, and Student Indicators for Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) developed by the SEL work team."
SEL is being sold as a way to help students with self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness. While these skills can seem beneficial and benign, they are really a model of indoctrination with the ultimate goal of directing and controlling the thoughts and behaviors of students.
Moms for Liberty has a helpful packet on SEL that sums it up: "The ultimate goal of SEL is to shift the values, beliefs, attitudes, and worldviews of students. The goal is to psychologically manipulate students to accept the progressive ideology that supports gender fluidity, sexual preference exploration, and systemic oppression."
Go here for a quick quiz that gets parents up to speed on SEL.
The site Courage is a Habit also has helpful information to explain via graphics what SEL is. The graphic below is an example of how student surveys--data collection--is the process method of indoctrinating students through categorizing them by race and gender. Go here to download the full 3-page infographic.
How did Missouri get to the point of adopting SEL into schools statewide? According to Local Control Missouri, on "Tuesday, August 15th, Missouri State Board of Education approved to
start the process of the Rule-Making change to add SEL (Social Emotional
Learning) for K-12 mental health training."
And further, "It was snuck into the Ed Omnibus Bill of 2022 (SB 681/662) carried by
the team of Senator Cindy O’Laughlin (R) and Senator Lauren Arthur (D). That progressive 2022 Ed Omnibus Bill had a lot snuck into it.
And now they are coming after our kids with SEL with their new authority
given to them under RSMo 170.307."
Missouri Republicans strike again to implement radical agendas along with their Democrat counterparts.
Below is a video class on "SEL101" that is very informative and eye-opening. The first speaker, Jennifer McWilliams, was fired for refusing to teach SEL in her small, rural Indiana school. Go here for more videos from McWilliams that expose SEL. And go here for SEL information from another speaker, James Lindsay.
When educators use the language of Social-Emotional Learning, they mean something else than what most people understand the words to mean. In the tweet below, a teachers' union representative says the quiet parts out loud:
And now it’s on a new mechanism to enter the school through SEL.
The public comment page on the DESE website is several pages and somewhat tedious. It is important, however, that citizens speak against SEL by commenting. There is a lot of verbiage and edu-speak, but once you see the purpose behind SEL, the language of indoctrination becomes simple to decipher. Again, the comment period ends Sept. 15.
