Category: Education & Schools

Arkansas public school students will soon be required to take gun safety courses

act229

The Arkansas state Senate passed a bill to provide age-appropriate firearms safety instruction to students last week and the Arkansas Department of Education will be working with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to develop a plan.

Act 229, also known as House Bill 1117, will require public school districts and open-enrollment public charter schools to annually provide students with instruction on firearm safety.

The bill’s sponsors say the idea came from conversations among neighbors.

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The Schools Reviving Shop Class Offer a Hedge Against the AI Future
Hands-on skills are staging a comeback at leading-edge districts, driven by high college costs and demand for more career choices

In America’s most surprising cutting-edge classes, students pursue hands-on work with wood, metals and machinery, getting a jump on lucrative old-school careers.
School districts around the U.S. are spending tens of millions of dollars to expand and revamp high-school shop classes for the 21st century. They are betting on the future of manual skills overlooked in the digital age, offering vocational-education classes that school officials say give students a broader view of career prospects with or without college.
With higher-education costs soaring and white-collar workers under threat by generative AI, the timing couldn’t be better.
In a suburb of Madison, Wis., Middleton High School completed a $90 million campus overhaul in 2022 that included new technical-education facilities. The school’s shop classes, for years tucked away in a back corridor, are now on display. Fishbowl-style glass walls show off the new manufacturing lab, equipped with computer-controlled machine tools and robotic arms.
Interest in the classes is high. About a quarter of the school’s 2,300 students signed up for at least one of the courses in construction, manufacturing and woodworking at Middleton High, one of Wisconsin’s highest-rated campuses for academics.
“We want kids going to college to feel these courses fit on their transcripts along with AP and honors,” said Quincy Millerjohn, a former English teacher who is a welding instructor at the school. He shows his students local union pay scales for ironworkers, steamfitters and boilermakers, careers that can pay anywhere from $41 to $52 an hour.

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‘Americans got tired of being ridiculed for values like equality, color-blindness, and responsibility,’ and now it’s backlash time.

Schools and colleges have two weeks to stop discriminating on the basis of race, warns a Feb. 7 “Dear Colleague” letter from the Education Department’s acting civil rights chief. If they don’t dump DEI, they’ll lose federal funding.

Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision invalidating affirmative action in college admissions, the letter accuses educational institutions of embracing “repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination.” For example, DEI programs “frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not.”

“The law is clear. Treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.”

The anti-DEI backlash is “fierce,” because so many people were forced to suppress their real feelings, writes Rick Hess in Education Next.

“Over the past half-decade or more, I repeatedly heard K–12 and higher education faculty tell of sitting silently through professional trainings replete with politicized groupthink,” he writes. They used words such as “re-education,” “Orwellian,” and “McCarthyite.” But quietly.

He also heard from “livid parents with tales of 3rd graders saying they were ashamed of their ‘whiteness’ or tut-tutting their parents for using outdated gender norms,” such as “boys” and “girls.”

“People got fed up with the drumbeat of land acknowledgements, pronoun mandates, trigger warnings, language policing, and hypocrisy,” Hess writes. “Most Americans got tired of being hectored, lectured, and ridiculed for embracing old-school values like equality, color-blindness, and responsibility.”

People were accused of “bigotry” for questioning whether lessons about sexuality and gender were age-appropriate, he writes. “Broadly popular policies, like reserving women’s locker rooms and sports teams for biological girls and women, were denounced as ‘anti-transgender’ (rather than, say, ‘pro-biology’).

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Psychiatrist Says America Must ‘Dismantle the Cult of the Gun’

I’m often bemused when academics write about gun owners as if we’re some exotic species to be investigated and examined to see what makes us tick, as opposed to their friends, family members, and co-workers.

Dr. Tamir Rahman, an associate professor of psychiatry at Washington University is the latest to channel his inner Jane Goodall and unleash it on American gun owners. In a new piece at Psychology Today, Rahman says it’s time to shift our relationship with firearms.

America’s relationship with firearms has mutated into a paradox. What began as a practical right tied to hunting and self-defense has metastasized into a near-religious reverence, transforming firearms into sacred objects. For many, guns are no longer tools—they are symbols of identity, power, and defiance. While this cultural fixation has fostered community among gun owners, it has also exacerbated the nation’s inability to address the epidemic of gun violence. Reimagining this relationship is not merely an ideal—it is a necessity.

In contemporary America, guns are more than objects. They are badges of liberty, resistance, and power. This shift has been fueled by political rhetoric, cultural narratives, and media representation. For many, owning a firearm is a declaration of values, a statement that screams: “I am free. I am powerful.”

Rahman claims that in order to “address its gun violence epidemic”, the U.S. “must dismantle the cult of the gun”; reframing firearms from symbols of power to tools of responsibility. Rahman offers several suggestions on how to make that happen.

1. Empowering Parents, Educators, and Schools

Parents, educators, and schools are at the forefront of shaping how future generations perceive firearms. Instead of shunning discussions about guns, schools can foster informed and responsible attitudes by integrating firearm education into the curriculum. This approach does not advocate normalization but instead focuses on demystification and accountability.

Why not advocate normalization? After all, as sociologist and gun owner David Yamane says, gun ownership is normal and normal people own guns. Demystifying guns is important, and there’s nothing objectionable about Rahman’s call to integrate firearm education into the curriculum, so long as its not aimed at making gun ownership and responsible gun use taboo.

2. Bridging the Polarization Through Shared Values

The polarizing debate over gun ownership often pits gun rights against gun control, creating an impasse. However, addressing the extreme overvalued beliefs surrounding firearms can provide common ground. Both sides can unite around shared values: responsibility, safety, and the prevention of violence.

Can we really, though? The gun control lobby’s foundational premise is that guns are bad, fewer guns are good, and criminalizing basic aspects of our Second Amendment rights is beneficial to society.

In theory Rahman is right that both sides should be able to come together on policies and practices that don’t involve putting new gun laws on the books, but so long as gun control groups view firearms themselves as a problem that needs to be solved I don’t think there’s much common ground to be found.

Rahman is guilty of that himself. Even when he discounts the push for gun bans, he does so in a way that’s not going to draw much support from gun owners and Second Amendment advocates.

While discussions about banning firearms often arise, such measures alone are not conducive to changing America’s deeply ingrained gun culture. Prohibition risks intensifying polarization and deepening the symbolic power of firearms as emblems of resistance. Instead, the focus should shift toward reshaping attitudes through education, accountability, and responsible ownership.

Fostering a culture that values the ethical use of firearms over their glorification addresses gun violence without alienating lawful owners. This collective action acknowledges complexity, cultivating respect and responsibility to transform perspectives sustainably.

Yes, prohibition intensifies polarization and helps to turn firearms into “emblems of resistance”. Rahman, however, fails to address why that is: banning guns is an abhorrent violation of a fundamental civil right that should be resisted.

Rahman seems very invested in the idea of changing the attitudes of gun owners, but he should be equally or more concerned about changing the mindset of anti-gun activists. I’m not convinced that there’s a “cult of the gun” in the United States, but I know there’s a cult of the gun prohibitionists, and any effort to shift the American relationship with firearms has to start with those trying to eradicate that relationship altogether.

Time and time and time again, “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” and other similar words are being used as excuses to dumb down educational standards. Here are 24 examples.

By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)

October 15, 2024

Time and time and time again, “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” and other similar words are being used as excuses to dumb down educational standards.

Here are 24 examples:

1) The New York Times wrote, “The Board of Regents on Monday eliminated a requirement that aspiring teachers in New York State pass a literacy test to become certified after the test proved controversial because black and Hispanic candidates passed it at significantly lower rates than white candidates.”

Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/nyregion/ny-regents-teacher-exams-alst.html?_r=0

Archive: https://archive.ph/GzyQM

2) The New York Times wrote, “A 2009 Princeton study showed Asian-Americans had to score 140 points higher on their SATs than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics and 450 points higher than blacks to have the same chance of admission to leading universities.”

Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-unfair-advantage-in-admissions.html

Archive: https://archive.ph/MEDXn

3) Patrick Henry High School, San Diego’s largest high school, cited “equity” as its reason for removing some of its classes in advanced English, advanced history, and advanced biology.

Original: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2022-04-10/san-diegos-largest-high-school-quietly-eliminated-several-honors-courses-parents-are-outraged

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20220410124259/https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2022-04-10/san-diegos-largest-high-school-quietly-eliminated-several-honors-courses-parents-are-outraged

4) The Vancouver School Board cited “equity and inclusion” for why it got rid of its honors courses in math and science at its high schools.

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BLUF
Ultimately, there are no easy solutions to the complex problem of school shootings. But we can make our schools far safer without sacrificing our fundamental freedoms

The Best Way To Prevent School Shootings Is Armed Staff

In the wake of tragic school shootings like Apalachee High School in Georgia, our nation grapples with a critical question: How do we best protect our children?

Sadly, too often, the debate devolves quickly into partisan talking points. The Biden-Harris administration seized on this tragedy to call for more laws that would restrict Americans’ right to self-defense, but which would have done nothing to stop this shooting. In fact, at both the federal and state levels, it is already illegal for a 14-year-old to purchase and possess a firearm, but, neither those laws nor others, like the Gun-Free School Zones Act, deterred this evil.

More recently on the debate stage, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris attempted to amend her clear anti-gun record, despite previously voicing support for confiscating guns as a candidate in 2020.

It’s crucial to set politics aside and approach this debate with facts.

The reality is that many of our schools remain soft targets, vulnerable to those intent on causing harm. “Gun-free zone” signs offer false security, deterring only the law-abiding. We need a multifaceted strategy that hardens schools as targets while empowering responsible adults to protect themselves and those in their care.

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It’s nice we even have video for PID of an actual threat to the U.S.

Do We Need a ‘New Constitution’ to Protect Democracy™? Berkeley Professor Weighs in

Erwin Chemerinsky, Berkeley Law School dean and author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States,” is not a fan of the United States Constitution, which obviously makes him an ideal academic to teach the next generation of lawyers how to practice law.

Via Los Angeles Times (emphasis added):

No matter the outcome of the November elections, it is urgent that there be a widespread recognition that American democracy is in danger and that reforms are essential. No form of government lasts forever, and it would be foolhardy to believe that the United States cannot fall prey to the forces that have ended democracies in many other countries.

Although the causes are complex, many of today’s problems can be traced back to choices made in drafting the Constitution, choices that are increasingly haunting us. After 200 years, it is time to begin thinking of drafting a new Constitution to create a more effective, more democratic government.

Signs abound that American democracy is in serious trouble. Confidence in the institutions of American government is at an all-time low. The Pew Research Center has been tracking public trust in government since 1958. It has gone from a high-water mark of 77% in 1964 to our contemporary 20%.* A poll in September 2023 indicated that only 4% of U.S. adults said the American political system worked “extremely or very well.” A recent Gallup poll had only 16% of Americans expressing approval for how Congress is performing its job.

Especially individuals in their 20s and 30s are losing faith in democracy. A Brookings Institution study found that 29% of “young Americans say that democracy is not always preferable to other political forms.”

*These people never ask fundamental questions like: why is trust in government at an all-time low? Nothing is different about this guy’s analysis; he simply chalks it up to some vague failings of “democracy” without legitimizing the mistrust, which isn’t fit to be printed in the self-anointed guardians of Democracy™ like the Los Angeles Times.

**Here I feel compelled to offer the obligatory but necessary caveat that we don’t actually have a pure democracy. In generic terms, “democracy” means rule by the people. In practice, pure democracy is merely mob rule, which is not and has never been a foundation of Western civilization excepts for brief stints of upheaval like the French Revolution — and we saw how that story ended.


Continuing:

There is an alternative to a spate of separate amendments: starting fresh by passing a new Constitution. It does not take much reflection to see the absurdity of using a document written for a small, poor and relatively inconsequential nation in the late 18th century to govern a large country of immense wealth in the technological world of the 21st century.

It may seem strange and frightening to suggest thinking of a new Constitution at a time of great partisan division. But that existed in 1787; in many of the states, the Constitution was just barely ratified.

When Academics Tell The Truth

We’ve seen the state of gun research in this country. It’s an absolute laughingstock, or it would be if there was an ounce of intellectual integrity anywhere in the science community.

Social science research is always going to be a little bit wonky, in part because experiments are difficult to impossible to conduct. However, that just makes it that much more important to get what research options that remain open to you right. Yet with gun research, not only does that not happen, but those who screw it up are celebrated.

Meanwhile, one researcher got a finding that his field disagreed with and he’s being crucified.

For example, William English, an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, has been subpoenaed, attacked in The New York Times and accused of all sorts of breaches of professional conduct because he had the temerity to administer a huge survey on defensive gun use that was honest.

They are persecuting English in order to, as he put it in The Wall Street Journal, “warn off other academics thinking of doing similar research, and to influence courts where states are losing on the merits.”

English supervised the 2021 National Firearms Survey. Data from this survey of 54,000 American adults estimated that citizens use their guns defensively about 1.67 million times annually; indeed, the survey found that “in most defensive incidents (81.9%) no shot was fired.”

To gun-control activists in politics and the media, this finding had to be marginalized. They don’t want people to know that law-abiding Americans need their freedom.

English said that the “attorneys general of Illinois and Washington started issuing subpoenas” for his “documents and communications.” Meanwhile, members of the media contacted him “armed with politicized talking points identical to those used by the state attorneys general in their subpoenas.”

That is legitimately troubling.

I’ve seen some of the attacks against English, ironically coming from people whose “research” wouldn’t have been deemed acceptable for a middle school science project, and they’re ugly. They claim there are issues with his methodology, and that his research was flawed from the start.

This is funny considering this:

The media, however, could not find any actual problems with the research. English’s survey questions had been peer reviewed. He used a professional survey firm that is also “used by researchers at such institutions as Stanford, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

“My survey results are hard to refute because they line up with other independent surveys from Pew and Gallup at the national level,” said English.

In other words, he did everything the way his field demanded and came up with an answer they didn’t approve of, but rather than self-censor like so many others, he published them.

And for that, he’s being attacked by the anti-gun political establishment, the anti-gun media, and his colleagues who share the same sentiment.

It’s like they say, if you’re taking flak, you must be over the target.

English has most definitely been over the target because the truth is an enemy of the anti-gun agenda. We know criminals get guns from illegal sources, and those illegal sources obtain them through some degree of theft. Either they steal them personally or get them from someone who does. That doesn’t make it in the news reports despite that coming directly from the ATF. That’s the truth, but it undermines gun control, so it doesn’t get the headlines that some ridiculous study that claims hunting leads to shootings.

In showing what he did, English broke the cardinal rule of gun research: Thou Must Advance Gun Control

Uvalde Police Timid, Bungling During School Shooting, New Records Reveal
If you want something done right, do it yourself. That includes protecting family, friends, and neighbors.

Perhaps the greatest rebuttal to calls for confidence in police is the conduct of law enforcement officers at Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas. There, on May 24, 2022, almost 400 cops not only stood around while a lunatic murdered children and teachers, but they prevented parents from stepping in to do what those in uniform wouldn’t. Now, new reporting gives greater insight into the depths of the officers’ inaction that day, and just how unwise it is to rely on them for protection.
Documented Police Failures

The failures of police officers in Uvalde aren’t open to dispute.

“At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety,” concluded a report by the Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee on the Robb Elementary Shooting.

A U.S. Justice Department review similarly found “failures in leadership, command, and coordination.”

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The rise of academic hate.
Faculty have gone from professors to extremists

Nicholas Giordano is a professor of Political Science, the host of The P.A.S. Report Podcast, and a fellow at Campus Reform’s Higher Education Fellowship. With 2 decades of teaching experience and over a decade of experience in the emergency management/homeland security arena, Professor Giordano is regularly called on to speak about issues related to government, politics, and international relations.

 

There are far too many radical professors who dominate academia, peddle hate, and dehumanize those who dissent from their narrow-minded ideological views. For instance, Rutgers University has placed professor Tracy Budd under internal review for a post where she hoped the failed assassination attempt on former President Trump would “inspire others.” Since Campus Reform’s inception in 2009, we have spotlighted the escalating extremism infecting our college campuses.

While many college professors still cherish the institutional values of education – robust debate, free speech, and intellectual curiosity – unfortunately there are too many professors who have become even more extreme and unhinged. Not only does their rhetoric reflect poorly on our institutions and my profession, but the impact of their radicalism is undeniable and dangerous. How dangerous? Consider how five members of the student council at a West Bank university, which has direct ties to several American colleges and universities, were recently arrested for planning a significant terror attack.

How long will it be before the same extremism fosters a terror attack within the United States as radical professors indoctrinate students with their hateful ideology? From the October 7th Hamas terror attacks, which resulted in the grisly death of nearly 1,200 innocent men, women, children, and babies, to the assassination attempt on former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump to attacks on voices like the Leadership Institute’s Riley Gaines who was attacked by a student mob at San Francisco State University.

They have become so brazen that they don’t bother to conceal their extremism. What does it say about our institutions that some professors feel emboldened to openly promote hate, anti-Americanism, antisemitism, and even violence? For example, Columbia University professor Joseph Massad called the October 7th attacks “awesome” and a “stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance.” Professor Russell Rickford of Cornell University called the Hamas terror attacks “exhilarating.” Vanderbilt University’s Ayesha Khan stated that Hamas deserves “to resist their oppressors by any means necessary.” Professor Mike Tosca referred to Jews as “pigs,” and “excrement” that should “rot in hell.” Another Columbia University professor advised students to avoid mainstream media outlets because “it is owned by Jews.”

With regard to the Trump assassination attempt, the ideological zealots couldn’t control themselves. Berklee College professor Marty Walsh proclaimed, “Too bad the shooter missed. Maybe this will spawn copycat shooters.” Professor Martha Galindo from Ocean County College was also upset that the shooter missed. Morgan State University professor Stacy Patton likened Trump to Hitler in an opinion editorial and claimed that ‘Black people’ wish the assassin killed Trump because they are “wishing for the death of evil.” Some in academia, including Uju Anya from Carnegie Mellon University, suggested that the attempt on President Trump’s life was staged.

Regardless of political views, the fact that some in academia display support for terrorist organizations, express disappointment that the assassination attempt failed, and openly call for copycat attacks and genocide is deeply troubling. Their hateful rhetoric goes against the basic principles of decency and respect that should govern any academic environment.

With educators like these, is it any surprise that students support a terrorist organization like Hamas. Given the state of our education system, it shouldn’t shock people that 30% of Gen Z’ers believe that Osama bin Laden’s ideas were a force for good. Is it any wonder why some students chant ‘death to America’ and openly celebrate the attempted killing of a former President.

It is clear that these extremists have become a dangerous influence on our youth. As a professor, it demeans our profession, and it’s why so many Americans have lost faith in our higher education institutions.

These extremists stigmatize the quality professors who remain committed to genuine education and the responsibilities placed on us as educators. They undermine the integrity of our educational institutions by molding an anti-American mindset. The consequences of their radicalism should be painfully evident to anyone who has been paying attention to the increasing political polarization and social division within our country.