The ethnic studies requirement.

We've had if for years at the University of Wisconsin. Here's an upcoming event:

The roundtable will include a presentation on the history of the requirement, an open-mic portion where attendees will be asked to share experiences with classes and make suggestions, and smaller discussions led by ASM Diversity Committee members. Attendees will also be provided note cards on which they can leave comments about their class experiences.

The committee is considering whether the requirement should be able to be satisfied with classes that "incorporate facets of personal identity beyond race and ethnicity, such as sexual orientation" and whether students should be required to take their ethnic studies class in their first 2 years of undergraduate study to enable them "to apply knowledge from the class to their educational experience." There's an idea of "revamp[ing the] requirement to make the classes a 'game-changer' for students, providing them with greater insight into their identities."

That made me want to look up the word "identity." There are lots of different meanings, but one is (from the OED):

The sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances; the condition of being a single individual; the fact that a person or thing is itself and not something else; individuality, personality.

Another is:

Who or what a person or thing is; a distinct impression of a single person or thing presented to or perceived by others; a set of characteristics or a description that distinguishes a person or thing from others.

Among the early quotes the OED uses to exemplify the meaning of "identity," we have 2 of history's greatest philosophers:

1694   J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding (new ed.) ii. xxvii. 180   The Identity of the same Man consists... in nothing but a participation of the same continued Life, by constantly fleeting Particles of Matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized Body.

1739   D. Hume Treat. Human Nature I. i. 34   Of all relations the most universal is that of identity, being common to every being, whose existence has any duration.

If only a philosophy course could fulfill the requirement that has to do with gaining greater insight into one's identity! But perhaps students arrive at the university with a sense of identity that suggests different building blocks at the foundation of their higher education. Or perhaps — in the future — they have such as sense of their own identity that they do not arrive at all.

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"Schools train people to be ignorant, with style."

Frank Zappa, opining, years ago.

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"Opt Out of State Standardized Tests" — Facebook page run by a high-ranking NYC Department of Education official.

According to the NY Post, Lisa Nielsen is promoting truancy on test days.

On Thursday, she blogged that kids would learn more by cutting class on exam day instead of being “sentenced to sit and start [sic] into space.”

... [She] recommends that parents or volunteers plan group activities and "put together a fun pass book for testing days with discounts to local zoos, museums, theater, etc.... They’ll all be empty since most young people will be locked up taking tests."

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"American Diversity" class insufficiently heartwarming for some Wisconsin parents.

Daily Mail brings news of a local high school where kids were taught that "minorities had historically been oppressed by white people."

According to handouts..., 'white privilege' in the class was defined as a 'set of advantages that are believed to be enjoyed by white people beyond those commonly experienced by non-white people in the same social, political, and economic spaces...'....

[One] parent became alarmed after seeing the handouts provided to her 18-year-old son... “I felt it was indoctrination,” she said. “This is a radical left agenda and ideology that is now embedded in our school.”

I hate the use of schools for to indoctrinate children, but what exactly is the problem here? The students should be taught American history, and racial oppression is a big part of telling the story fairly and accurately. Maybe the name of the class — "American Diversity" — is misleading, in that it suggests a happy rainbow. That said, I'm not surprised to see parents fretting that the teachers are doing political indoctrination. I understand and share this mistrust.

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Court: "Although her pornography career has concluded..."

"... the ongoing availability of her pornographic materials on the Internet will continue to impede her from being an effective teacher and respected colleague."


Lawyer: "We were hoping we could show you could overcome your past.... I think she’s representative of a lot of people who may have a past that may not involve anything illegal or anything that hurts anybody."

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"More NYU and Columbia female students or 'sugar babies' are seeking 'sugar daddies' to pay for rising school costs."

"SeekingArrangement.com says NYU was the top school for new sign ups — Columbia is the only Ivy league school to make site's Top 20."

If you'd like all the satisfaction of sending a daughter to college, without that pesky incest taboo, there is a solution for you.

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Student with a shotgun fires up to 20 rounds and is disarmed by the teacher.

How did the teacher do it?

The teacher, Ryan Heber, was struck in the head by a pellet but was not seriously injured and refused treatment, authorities said....

Police said a school supervisor helped Heber distract the assailant. There were no security guards or police immediately on hand to help them: The school's armed police officer was not on duty....

Ryan Heber... said he was fine, but too exhausted to relate his experiences.

Here's a more recent story, saying that the teacher talked to the shooter:

Science teacher Ryan Heber calmly confronted the teenager after he shot and critically wounded a classmate, whom he claimed to authorities had bullied him for more than year at Taft Union High School.

"I don't want to shoot you," the teen gunman told Heber, who convinced the teen gunman to drop his weapon, a high power shotgun.

"This teacher and this counselor stood there face-to-face not knowing if he was going to shoot them," said Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood. "They probably expected the worst and hoped for the best, but they gave the students a chance to escape."

IN THE COMMENTS: Lots of questioning of "20 rounds."

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Yoga in public schools — an Establishment Clause problem.

NPR has trouble seeing the objection. This kids are stretching, readying their minds for learning, don't you know? But here's one mother's report:

"They were being taught to thank the sun for their lives and the warmth that it brought, the life that it brought to the earth and they were told to do that right before they did their sun salutation exercise"...

The woman, Mary Eady, was able to take her son out of the classes — which is an appropriate accommodation but insufficient to solve an Establishment Clause violation. (In the old prayer-in-school cases, excusing the students who chose not to pray did not suffice.)

The school's program was richly funded by the K.P. Jois Foundation, whose Hindu founders connected yoga to their religion.

"It's stated in the curriculum that it's meant to shape the way that they view the world, it's meant to shape the way that they make life decisions," Eady says. "It's meant to shape the way that they regulate their emotions and the way that they view themselves."

"And then the question becomes — if it is religious, which it is, who decides when enough religion has been stripped out of the program to make it legal?" [says Dean Broyles, president and chief counsel of the Escondido-based National Center for Law and Policy]. "I mean, that's the problem when you introduce religion into the curriculum and actually immerse and marinate children in the program."...

"It is the stated goal of both the Jois Foundation and the district itself to prove scientifically that Ashtanga yoga works for kids here in the district and then export it nationally," Broyles says.

The Jois Foundation has a director, Eugene Ruffin, who is himself Catholic and who says the values taught in the program aren't specifically Hindu. But making religion generic doesn't solve your problem. Consult the original Warren Court school-prayer case, Engel v. Vitale, which involved a prayer concocted by the state that stripped out all denominational specificity.

My position — explained here in the context of Kwanzaa — is that the government should not use schools for exercises that reach into the spiritual aspect of the child's mind. Quite aside from whether courts would see an Establishment Clause violation, it should be rejected as a policy choice. Even where you have trouble deciding whether something is religion or not, if it's a religion substitute, operating like religion, you should be revolted by the government intruding into the sphere that belongs to the individual, parents, and private organizations. And on this ground, I would object to all sorts of indoctrination and idol-worship. Public schools must be committed to teaching real substance of the secular kind. Think: math and science.

ADDED: Imagine if a Christian foundation were handing out huge grants to public schools to adopt a program based on its values, with generic prayer-like incantations led by the teacher. Would NPR and its devotees be nodding calmly at how nice it was?

ALSO: NPR quotes the mother's attempt at paraphrasing the prayer-like incantation. I'd like to see the actual text that the school uses! Here's some material at the Jois website, but it doesn't show the text I'm looking for.

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Professor who teaches a course called Culture of Conspiracy...

... is denounced for "inquir[ing] whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place — at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation's news media have described."

People these days seem to be so confused. If we hear about something terrible happening, it's as if talking about the details is equivalent to saying you don't care about the people who were hurt. This is a dangerous development, which itself ought to be examined as a possible conspiracy.

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"The Elvis Problem: Defining Religion Under The First Amendment."

Instapundit weighs in on the Kwanzaa question I brought up yesterday.

And I want to drag something I wrote in my own comments section up to the front page. The Madison School District portrays Kwanzaa as something that belongs in government-run schools because it's a "culturally relevant practice," but:

Religion is a "culturally relevant practice."

It just doesn't belong in public schools.

And:

I mean practicing it doesn't belong in public schools.

It's fine and even desirable to teach children about the various religious traditions. It's part of history and social studies, and it should be taught competently and with a fact-based approach, not infused with promptings to feel inspired and devoted.

I think this is such a solid point that the definition of religion — for these school-based Establishment Clause cases — should be built around the idea that the compulsory attendance coerced in the name of education should not be exploited to capture the part of the child's mind that turns to God when the child is religious. All human beings have this aspect of their minds, whether they are religious or not, and the state's power does not belong there. When we see devotional exercises in public schools we should be revolted.

Background note: In the most relevant Supreme Court case (which is in a somewhat different context), the Court spoke of religion as "a sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those [religions] admittedly qualifying for the exemption." (The context was conscientious objection from the military draft.) The value of the Court's definition was that it avoided making distinctions and favored equal treatment under the laws.

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Shouldn't the Freedom From Religion Foundation sue the Madison school district for the extensive celebration of a religious holiday?

From the Madison Metropolitan School District website:

Kwanzaa celebrated at two schools

Students and staff at Falk and Lowell Elementary Schools recently performed and displayed art projects that reflect the principles of Kwanzaa. The culmination of a semester’s work incorporating Culturally Relevant Practices, the celebration also featured the donations from the schools' service learning project to help build a school library in Ghana. Four MMSD elementary schools (also Hawthorne and Mendota) are working together to provide Culturally Relevant Practices and experiences for all their students.

Video of Madison teachers and children celebrating Kwanzaa at the link.

The school district will surely say that Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday, but what constitutes religion for Establishment Clause purposes? It's not an easy question. I say that as someone who has taught a law school class in Religion and the Constitution for many years.

I once gave an exam that challenged students to think about Establishment Clause problems inherent in an invented state program pushing environmentalism, defined by statute to mean "the belief in the importance of honoring and conserving the Earth’s resources, minimizing the impact of individual human beings on the Earth, and understanding one’s personal duty to inspire others to honor and conserve resources and to minimize human impact on Earth." In my hypothetical, schools were required to stage day-long Earth Day celebrations every year, praising nature and inspiring conservation, and teachers had to begin each school day with a "solemnification exercise" that included "a recitation enforcing the values of environmentalism along with a set of symbolic gestures," with this example, described in the state law:

On a small table, the teacher unfolds a green cloth to reveal a twig, a small stone, an egg, and a small box of good soil. The teacher opens the box, takes out a bit of soil and sprinkles it on the stone, egg, and twig, and says: "This is our Earth, which is given to us, to love and preserve, for all time." The students then repeat that phrase aloud, and the teacher carefully closes the box, rewraps the items, and puts them away.

My hypothetical environmentalism, like Kwanzaa, is at least a religion substitute, in that it attempts to capture the children's idealism and spiritual longings and to direct them into a particular ideology. It employs the devices of traditional religion: songs of celebration, symbolic gestures and rituals, incantations. In the case of Kwanzaa, based on what I've read, it was originally designed as an alternative to Christmas. And the 7th of the 7 principles of Kwanzaa is:

Imani (Faith): To believe with all our hearts in God, our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

Presumably the God part is watered down for school purposes, but watering down religion is a problem in itself.

ADDED: I see that at something called "The Official Kwanzaa Web Site" — what makes it "official"? — the "Imani/Faith" principle has no "God." It is otherwise word-for-word the same as what I've quoted above. Without God, the statement of faith is puzzling: believe with all your heart in our people and the righteousness of our struggle. That sounds like the worst of what governments have done grabbing at the hearts of young people.

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In discussing what makes a job the "least stressful"...

... consider that, in this context, the opposite of stress is control.

Is that true? For some, I would think, too much control would lead to stress. Let's say much was expected of you. You were supposed to be brilliant, high-achieving, and productive. But it was your responsibility to define your tasks, to figure out how to accomplish them, to set your own standards about what constitutes excellence, and to put time — any time, whenever you want, night or day, weekdays or weekends — into doing what you've decided is appropriate to do.

There is some reason to think that people feel best when they are in the psychological state called "flow," which is defined as having 8 components:

First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.

Can you get there within the "least stressful" job, university professor? Of course. But you'd better be good at defining realistic tasks that will look accomplished when they are accomplished. You'd better be able to get into the zone where you feel a sense of effortless expertise.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly's book "Flow" identifies surgery and rock climbing as 2 activities that produce flow for the people who have the appropriate expertise. There, the tasks are specific, and the feedback about whether you are doing them right is clear. Compare a scholarly book project, which might take years, where you might wonder whether what you are writing is too dull or too controversial or unsupported by the data you're trying to use or who knows what your colleagues — your rivals? — will say about it at some unknown point in the future if you ever get this damned thing done?

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Wisconsin state senator Glenn Grothman caught up in a flap about Kwanzaa.

CNN's Ashleigh Banfield and Roland Martin pile on.

Here's Grothman's press release — PDF. I had to wonder why a state senator was attacking a holiday that some people like to celebrate. What business is it of his? He talks about the origins of the holiday (which I haven't independently researched) and asserts that it's not a "real holiday." But so what? It's usually just not a very good idea to make pronouncements about the truth or falsity of other people's religions. He ends the press release with the statement: "Be on the lookout if  a K-12 or college teacher tries to tell your children or grandchildren it's a real holiday."

Okay, is something going on in public schools? Are they celebrating Kwanzaa? That would obviously be wrong — a violation of the Establishment Clause. But Grothman seems to be merely saying that teachers might be teaching about Kwanzaa in perhaps a social studies lesson about the various holidays that are celebrated. I suppose we should be alert to whether teachers are feeding schoolkids inaccurate lessons, but the characterization of Kwanzaa as a holiday isn't an egregiously incorrect fact.

We could go deeply into the subject of what makes a holiday a real holiday and debate about whether Kwanzaa is in or out. It depends on how you define holiday. Or we could debate about what constitutes a sound social studies lesson. We don't want kids to hear that white people celebrate Christmas and black people celebrate Kwanzaa or that Africans arriving in the New World brought a Kwanzaa tradition with them.

Grothman ought to give us the specifics about defective lessons in schools and aim the criticism right there. Don't just tell us to be on the lookout for teachers who might dare to refer to Kwanzaa as a holiday.

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