The Illinois Senate voted to require public schools teach LGBT history.
The Senate voted 34-18 Wednesday on the plan by Chicago Democratic Sen. Heather Steans. It would require schools to teach a history unit on the role in society and contributions of gays, lesbians and other LGBT individuals.
Agenda
Unlike others, I do not believe there is a gay-lesbian conspiracy to persuade people to become gays or lesbians.
Nor do I care what a person’s sexual preferences might be.
I do have a concern about the quality of education and why people flee Illinois.
Dismal Chicago Public School Stats
The Chicago Tribune reports a rising rising trajectory of CPS graduation rates.
Hooray, the CPS graduation rate is up to 74.7% vs. a national average of 83%.
The Tribune offered this caveat: “CPS has in the past been caught exaggerating its graduation figures. It has corrected those practices, we’re told. But a pinch of skepticism when it comes to CPS numbers is always warranted.”
Chicago Lags
Heartland.Org offers a more sobering CPS assessment.
The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (CSR) estimates only 18 percent of 2016’s ninth-graders in Chicago Public Schools will earn a bachelor’s degree by 2026, seven years after their anticipated high school graduation in 2019.
This is expected despite a significant increase in the number of high school graduates in the Chicago system, from 57 percent in 2006 to 74 percent in both 2015 and 2016, according to the CSR study The Educational Attainment of College Public Schools Students: 2016, released in October 2017.
Question of the Day
Of that alleged 74.7% graduation rate, how many cannot do basic math? How many struggle with English? How many are ill-equipped for a job?
Instead of wasting time on fluff courses, why not improve skills needed in the real world?
Better Ideas
- How about spending more time on math, trades, and speaking proper English?
- How about a course on why people are fleeing Illinois in droves and why more businesses leave than come?
- How about a course on how socialists and public unions ruined Illinois?
Instead, students who cannot read, write, or do basic math will waste time on something totally useless in the real world.
Lesson for Illinois
Here’s a lesson for Illinois: Goodbye California, New York, Illinois: Blue State Exodus Will Accelerate.
That lesson will certainly not be taught in schools.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
No real point in teaching kids anything when their jobs are being deported or immigrants imported to work cheaply for skilled positions or to get welfare/votes if they are unskilled
Reminds me of a “Simpsons” episode where they arrange to have a yo yo expert give a show to the students (have to do it in schools now that Ed Sullivan is long gone). One teacher complains the time could be used for more useful items while another points out in 20 years the kids will have a good memory of school when they are working in a gas station.
These types of initiatives are more about the introduction of identity politics and a Liberal agenda that emanates from that. While I am all for sensitivity, when it is taught by those who hate the haters, it becomes repressive. The Left gets its power from victimhood, so introducing it into school curriculum is a way for them to spread their ideology in a subtle way. Jordan Peterson does a great job of articulating the dangers associated with this type of paradigm at large and in the educational system.
The problem is, if they don’t do this, the schools will be flooded with 19 and 20 year olds. The kids don’t even have to go to school to graduate.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. In Prince Georges county MD and Washington DC, they secretly lowed the requirements to graduate and then bragged about how they were graduating more students. Obama praised them for their efforts. They got caught and now the superintendents were forced out or soon will be.
@2banana My point exactly. Refugees want to come here and always will. It is educated skilled labor who are less interested in USA. This is from actual conversations with actual upper class Indian families. They have concerns about whether this is a good place to make a life when that are other great western democracies that are friendlier to immigration and where thugs are not all charged up to commit violence. This is the kind of long term corrosive effect that does not get reported and analyzed until years after the fact. I am also very involved in business start up community and I can tell you that must entrepreneurship in USA is now immigrant to second generation driven.
What’s LGBBQ? I only learned about old fashioned stuff like calculus, binary math, BASIC and symbolic logic in high school.
I believe in Unionizing volunteers, it’s a great idea. Suppose you had a job and somebody said they would do the same job for nothing, and your boss said fine I am good with that? The pension system pays exorbitant benefits to employees, and they can afford that by using a free subterranean workforce? If you get a service PAY FOR IT! on a larger scale we have plenty of economic activity, done by volunteers, who should be counted and recognized. If you like prison labor move to China where there are no UNIONS
Over at the Catholic school they are telling the story of Adam and Steve
The State has no business instructing our children about sexual preferences, nor does a person’s tastes have any bearing on anything they do in life.
Mish, why don’t you give us an initial one immediately upon return from each trip as a ‘teaser’ for the rest. I vicariously enjoy the variety of your experiences in the ‘great outdoors’ while I tap away in a cube and hope to visit such places in the future.
CJ – it will take me a long time to edit those images. Have not even started looking at them yet. I posted MV pictures a bit ago. Still on Death Valley from well over a year ago. I have a ton of stuff from the midwest to post. Need to go to 2 posts a week or more. – In Moab, we are looking to rent.
Mish, if you are going to move to Moab, get a geiger counter and use it to check out any real estate you are thinking about there. If you are not sure why I’m suggesting that, read the history of Moab and the uranium there. I’m surprised you haven’t posted photos from that area yet. Did you go south of Moab and see Monument Valley? Incredible!
“for the first time the whole executive branch is just mixing business and government for personal gain.” Wow! The whole executive branch! So then it will be easy for you to give me some actual examples of that, I really want to know. You think Donald needs the money? BTW Comey the book promoter was not in the executive branch.
@ridderbos
Huh? 10 million illegals from central America disagree with this statement.
“US being a less desirable place for people with brown skin.”
+++
Double Huh? First time???
Hillary and Bill Clinton left the White house “broke” (her words). Today they are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And the only job either one of them had was Secretary of State in the Obama Administration.
The Obamas entered the White house as a jr. Senator and a Hospital Administrator. Today they are worth tens of millions and will be worth hundreds of millions in the near future.
“I would agree with the worse than Rome comment in the sense that for the first time the whole executive branch is just mixing business and government for personal gain.”
I would agree with the worse than Rome comment in the sense that for the first time the whole executive branch is just mixing business and government for personal gain. Ethics are dead. If we don’t straighten that out we are on a short road to a lot of trouble.
By the way, I am a white man married to a woman with brown skin. I see what brown skin gets you in this country. My wife makes six figures working for a major bank and yet is routinely treated second class out in society. Little stuff, like suspicion that when returning an item to the store you may have stolen it. Denying racism is its own ignorance.
I do find that the greatest ignorance is from lack of exposure to other countries, systems, values and lifestyles. So to that extent I support education that gets students out of their tiny bubbles of self reinforcement. That said, we need to teach practical things and rigorous skills. This will be even more important with reductions in skilled immigration and with US being a less desirable place for people with brown skin. I also am disturbed that schools now hang it up for the year about 4 weeks before the school calendar is over. They turn to testing, but exempt lots of kids from finals based on attendance or other stupid factors (which is to get more money from stingy states to maximize days in attendance). When kids are only in school a short year anyway, losing a month of teaching is insane.
Divide-n-conquer. LGBT is small potatoes in the grand scheme, which is why the pro/con debate is emphasized. Studies on why people and businesses flee Illinois? People might learn something from that line of questioning, and we can’t have that.
My grandfather, a great, righteous,
self-made man who rose up from nothing through incredible hard work, had this all nailed 40+ years ago. I can still hear him saying “Worse than Rome!”.
Yep, know of a friend who was severely scolded for trying to do a little cleanup in the yard, California obviously.
.
2Banana is correct – In many districts it is impossible for parents to volunteer to do anything for schools. You will be harassed, hounded, or sued for stealing jobs.
@Realist
You have no idea how powerful and evil public unions are in America.
California school union to parents: Stop volunteering! Parents volunteer to raise funds and hire PT teachers’ aides, who mostly come from ranks of parents themselves. The union wants the parents to fundraise, but send the money to the school district which will hire union employees to fill the part-time positions.
https://hotair.com/archives/2012/03/21/california-union-to-parents-stop-volunteering/
There is a reason why democrats/progressives/liberals will fight against school choice to the death.
And it is not because they think it is “unconstitutional”
Thimk – I had a property management agent over today discussing renting our house. We are probably not going to move to MT where we purchased lots. Instead, we liked Moab UT. That’s reasonably firm. Timeframe 1.5 years. Depends on my wife Liz.
The reason for this should be obvious. The legislature is powerless to fix the existing serious problems so it tackles problems that are spurious so they don’t feel completely unimportant.
Sooner or later, the brightest of thinkers in this country will arrive at the conclusion that there are no solutions to our most serious problems. A scary thought which I’m afraid portends a lot of violence.