A few days ago, I joined a discussion with Dr. Tim Slekar and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci about the current state of public education. It was aired on their show “Busted Pencils,” which is dedicated to teachers, students, and public schools.
We talked about charters, vouchers, testing, and how to get involved. Everyone can stand up for what they believe.
I think most educators would agree that they are tired of getting lectures from billionaires about how to teach or how to fix the problems of American education.
But Peter Greene reports that the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has decided it’s time for him to add his uninformed views to those of Bill Gates, Betsy DeVos, the Walton family, and a long list of financiers, all of whom use their wealth to change the schools.
Greene writes:
Elon Musk has some thoughts about education, and because he’s Very Rich, Fortune Magazine decided it should share some of those thoughts, despite Musk’s utter lack of qualifications to talk about education.
Reporter Christiaan Hetzner mostly covers business in Europe, so it’s not clear how he stumbled into this particular brief piece, which appears to be lifting a piece of a larger conversation into an article. I’d love a new rule that says every time an outlet gives space to a rich guy’s musings about areas in which he has no expertise, the outlet also publishes a piece about the musings of some ordinary human on the topic–maybe even an ordinary human who is an expert in the area.
Hetzner launches right in with both feet.
More than a century ago, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” Well, Elon Musk is a doer with a lot of children, and he’s reached the conclusion he doesn’t want his kids to learn from some has-been or never-was simply because they landed a job in a local school thanks to a lack of competition.
It’s not clear if Hetzner is editorializing or trying to channel Musk’s point of view (I think perhaps the latter), but somebody here is really full of it. I’m not going to argue about Musk’s doer qualifications, though his ability to profit off the work of others and his interminable botching of twitter leave me unpersuaded of his genius. But this characterization of teachers is some serious bullshit. And things aren’t going to get better.
Over his lifetime, teaching fundamentally remained the same experience: an adult standing in front of a chalkboard instructing kids.
Of course, I don’t know how they did things in South Africa when little Elon was a young emerald prince, but the “school has never changed” trope is tired and silly and a clear sign that someone knows little about what is happening in education.
But sure. There is still an adult in a classroom, much as cars are still four wheels, one in each corner. But perhaps that’s because Musk appears bothered that the shifts in tech that are “upending the labor force” haven’t yet touched teachers.
Musk calls for compelling, interactive learning experiences. His example is that, rather than teaching a course about screwdrivers and wrenches, have them take apart an engine and in the process learn all about screwdrivers and wrenches. I’m sure that my former students who learned about operating heavy machinery by operating heavy machinery, or learned about welding by welding, etc, would agree. I’d even extend his argument to say that instead of trying to teach students to read by doing exercises and excerpts, we could have them read whole works, even novels.
But just in case you’re not catching who Musk blames, Hartzen notes that Musk says that the system failed students because “the talents of the teaching staff tasked with imparting this knowledge to their students were sophomoric at best.”
Then Musk throws in an entertainment analogy. Teachers are like the “troubadours and mummers of yesteryear who traveled from one backwater to the next, offering their meager services to those desperate for their brand of amateur entertainment.” Education today is like “vaudeville before there was radio, TV, and movies.” Which compresses a variety of different developments, but okay.
Then along came Hollywood, and a critical mass of the most talented screenwriters, directors, and actors around joined forces to produce compelling and engaging content that can cost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
So, what? We’re supposed to inject hundreds of millions of dollars into education? And does this idea still work if we notice that the “content” cranked out by Hollywood is only “compelling and engaging” to some people.
Finally, Musk throws in a reference that Hertzen calls “bizarre”– thespians entertaining the locals in Small Town U.S.A. with a “low-budget rendition” of the caped crusader couldn’t compete with Christopher Nolan’s Batman.
To finish his article, please open the link.
Musk made a fortune as the owner of Tesla, but Tesla has the highest accident rate of any car on the road, says Forbes. Last year, two friends of mine were in a horrific accident: their car collided with a Tesla late at night on a highway. The Tesla burst into flames, and both cars were engulfed in an intense fire. When the firefighters arrived, they were unable to douse the flames. The lithium battery burned for two hours. All four people in the two cars died. The highway, more than a year later, still has the marks left by the fire.
Heather Cox Richardson wrote the following post on May 8 about President Biden’s recent visit to Wisconsin. She compares Biden to FDR. Under Trump, Wisconsin lost jobs. Under Biden, Wisconsin has gained jobs. That’s the heart of the Biden agenda: building a strong middle-class and creating good union jobs.
She writes:
Today, in Racine, Wisconsin, President Joe Biden announced that Microsoft is investing $3.3 billion dollars to build a new data center that will help operate one of the most powerful artificial intelligence systems in the world. It is expected to create 2,300 union construction jobs and employ 2,000 permanent workers.
Microsoft has also partnered with Gateway Technical College to train and certify 200 students a year to fill new jobs in data and information technology. In addition, Microsoft is working with nearby high schools to train students for future jobs.
Speaking at Gateway Technical College’s Racine campus, Biden contrasted today’s investment with that made by Trump about the same site in 2018. In that year, Trump went to Wisconsin for the “groundbreaking” of a high-tech campus he claimed would be the “eighth wonder of the world.”
Under Republican governor Scott Walker, Wisconsin legislators approved a $3 billion subsidy and tax incentive package—ten times larger than any similar previous package in the state—to lure the Taiwan-based Foxconn electronics company. Once built, a new $10 billion campus that would focus on building large liquid-crystal display screens would bring 13,000 jobs to the area, they promised.
Foxconn built a number of buildings, but the larger plan never materialized, even after taxpayers had been locked into contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars for upgrading roads, sewer system, electricity, and so on. When voters elected Democrat Tony Evers as governor in 2022, he dropped the tax incentives from $3 billion to $80 million, which depended on the hiring of only 1,454 workers, reflecting the corporation’s current plans. Foxconn dropped its capital investment from $10 billion to $672.8 million.
In November 2023, Microsoft announced it was buying some of the Foxconn properties in Wisconsin.
Today, Biden noted that rather than bringing jobs to Racine, Trump’s policies meant the city lost 1,000 manufacturing jobs during his term. Wisconsin as a whole lost 83,500. “Racine was once a manufacturing boomtown,” Biden recalled, “all the way through the 1960s, powering companies—invented and manufacturing Windex…portable vacuum cleaners, and so much more, and powered by middle-class jobs.
“And then came trickle-down economics [which] cut taxes for the very wealthy and biggest corporations…. We shipped American jobs overseas because labor was cheaper. We slashed public investment in education and innovation. And the result: We hollowed out the middle class. My predecessor and his administration doubled down on that failed trickle-down economics, along with the [trail] of broken promises.”
“But that’s not on my watch,” Biden said. “We’re determined to turn it around.” He noted that thanks to the Democrats’ policies, in the past three years, Racine has added nearly 4,000 jobs—hitting a record low unemployment rate—and Wisconsin as a whole has gained 178,000 new jobs.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act have fueled “a historic boom in rebuilding our roads and bridges, developing and deploying clean energy, [and] revitalizing American manufacturing,” he said. That investment has attracted $866 billion in private-sector investment across the country, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs “building new semiconductor factories, electric vehicles and battery factories…here in America.”
The Biden administration has been scrupulous about making sure that money from the funds appropriated to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and manufacturing base has gone to Republican-dominated districts; indeed, Republican-dominated states have gotten the bulk of those investments. “President Biden promised to be the president of all Americans—whether you voted for him or not. And that’s what this agenda is delivering,” White House deputy chief of staff Natalie Quillian told Matt Egan of CNN in February.
But there is, perhaps, a deeper national strategy behind that investment. Political philosophers studying the rise of authoritarianism note that strongmen rise by appealing to a population that has been dispossessed economically or otherwise. By bringing jobs back to those regions that have lost them over the past several decades and promising “the great comeback story all across…the entire country,” as he did today, Biden is striking at that sense of alienation.
“When folks see a new factory being built here in Wisconsin, people going to work making a really good wage in their hometowns, I hope they feel the pride that I feel,” Biden said. “Pride in their hometowns making a comeback. Pride in knowing we can get big things done in America still.”
That approach might be gaining traction. Last Friday, when Trump warned the audience of Fox 2 Detroit television that President’s Biden’s policies would cost jobs in Michigan, local host Roop Raj provided a “reality check,” noting that Michigan gained 24,000 jobs between January 2021, when Biden took office, and May 2023.
At Gateway Technical College, Biden thanked Wisconsin governor Tony Evers and Racine mayor Cory Mason, both Democrats, as well as Microsoft president Brad Smith and AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler.
The picture of Wisconsin state officials working with business and labor leaders, at a public college established in 1911, was an image straight from the Progressive Era, when the state was the birthplace of the so-called Wisconsin Idea. In the earliest years of the twentieth century, when the country reeled under industrial monopolies and labor strikes, Wisconsin governor Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette and his colleagues advanced the idea that professors, lawmakers, and officials should work together to provide technical expertise to enable the state to mediate a fair relationship between workers and employers.
In his introduction to the 1912 book explaining the Wisconsin Idea, former president Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, explained that the Wisconsin Idea turned the ideas of reformers into a workable plan, then set out to put those ideas into practice. Roosevelt approvingly quoted economist Simon Patten, who maintained that the world had adequate resources to feed, clothe, and educate everyone, if only people cared to achieve that end. Quoting Patten, Roosevelt wrote: “The real idealist is a pragmatist and an economist. He demands measurable results and reaches them by means made available by economic efficiency. Only in this way is social progress possible.”
Reformers must be able to envision a better future, Roosevelt wrote, but they must also find a way to turn those ideals into reality. That involved careful study and hard work to develop the machinery to achieve their ends.
Roosevelt compared people engaged in progressive reform to “that greatest of all democratic reformers, Abraham Lincoln.” Like Lincoln, he wrote, reformers “will be assailed on the one side by the reactionary, and on the other by that type of bubble reformer who is only anxious to go to extremes, and who always gets angry when he is asked what practical results he can show.” “[T]he true reformer,” Roosevelt wrote, “must study hard and work patiently.”
“It is no easy matter actually to insure, instead of merely talking about, a measurable equality of opportunity for all men,” Roosevelt wrote. “It is no easy matter to make this Republic genuinely an industrial as well as a political democracy. It is no easy matter to secure justice for those who in the past have not received it, and at the same time to see that no injustice is meted out to others in the process. It is no easy matter to keep the balance level and make it evident that we have set our faces like flint against seeing this government turned into either government by a plutocracy, or government by a mob. It is no easy matter to give the public their proper control over corporations and big business, and yet to prevent abuse of that control.”
“All through the Union we need to learn the Wisconsin lesson,” Roosevelt wrote in 1912.
“We’re the United States of America,” President Biden said today, “And there’s nothing beyond our capacity when we work together.”
Go to the post to read her footnotes.
Jitu Brown is running for the new school board in Chicago. Please join me for a virtual house party Monday at 6 p.m.
I have known and admired Jitu Brown for over a decade. For years, Jitu has fought for great neighborhood public schools in Chicago, even putting his health on the line by engaging in a hunger strike to keep Dyett High School open when then-Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel attempted to shut it down.
Jitu is one of my heroes and one of my teachers.
Jitu is not only an extraordinary warrior for educational justice and equity in Chicago but also the leader of a national organization, Journey for Justice, that networks public school advocates in all of our major cities fighting for excellent and equitable public schools. For years, Jitu served as a member of the NPE Action Board.
One of Jitu’s causes, fighting to restore elected local control of Chicago’s public schools, has now been realized.
I am delighted that Jitu is running for a seat on the newly formed local school board, representing the 5thDistrict Seat on the West Side of Chicago. However, to gain that seat he will need our help.
I am asking that you join me in supporting Jitu’s campaign by attending a virtual house party for Jitu this Monday, May 13, beginning at 7:00 pm EST./6 pm CST. The link to this important event is below. I hope to see you there!
Virtual House Party for Jitu Brown (Chicago’s 1st Elected School Board!) Time: Monday, May 13, 2024 06:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/82630667170?pwd=tB1A9KkDg8a9DXKgbBonCgqlRmUApU.1 (https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82630667170?pwd=tB1A9KkDg8a9DXKgbBonCgqlRmUApU.1) Meeting ID: 826 3066 7170 Passcode: JITU!
All of Trump’s children, with the exception of Ivanka and Barron, will be delegates to the Republican National Convention.
The Orlando Sentinel reported:
Leading the entourage to Milwaukee in July as delegation chairman will be Eric Trump. His big brother Donald Jr. and little sister Tiffany also were chosen as at-large delegates, along with half-brother Barron, who’s graduating from high school this month. Trump’s daughter Ivanka is not a delegate. [Melania Trump’s office announced after this story was published that Barron would not be a delegate due to “prior commitments.”]
Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée, was chosen to co-lead the party platform committee.
Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump leads the Republican National Committee. A total takeover.
But, says the story, family members of other presidential candidates were delegates:
It’s not uncommon for family members of nominees to serve as convention delegates. Donald Trump Jr. was a New York delegate in 2016 and former President Bill Clinton was named a superdelegate to the 2016 Democratic convention that nominated his wife, Hillary Clinton, that year.
Mike Miles, the superintendent imposed on the Houston Independent School District, announced major budget cuts and staff layoffs. Among those released: two principals of the year for 2023. Miles was trained by the Broad Superintendents’ Academy to disrupt, and he’s doing it.
Houston ISD alerted dozens of teachers and principals of both performance-based job cuts and budget-forced reductions this week, prompting parents across the state’s largest school system to plan another round of protests as the tumultuous school year under state takeover nears an end.
Among the dozens of teachers and principals asked to leave: both the HISD Elementary and Middle School Principals of the Year in HISD in 2023.
Neff Elementary Principal Amanda Wingard confirmed in a Facebook post Thursday that the school district asked her to resign.
“I have loved Neff and the Sharpstown community for the last 35 years,” wrote Wingard, who was honored at a banquet a year ago for her leadership.
Alongside her is 2022-23 Middle School Principal of the Year, Auden Sarabia, who told his staff at Meyerland Performing and Visual Arts this week that he was asked to resign or go before the Board of Managers, a teacher and parents confirmed. Saraba has worked for HISD for 18 years.
Crockett Elementary Principal Alexis Clark is also not returning to her visual and performing arts magnet campus near the Heights.
“I’m heartbroken. We’re all heartbroken. I’ve done my best to protect my kids — they’re young — from what’s happening,” said Liz Silva, PTO fundraising chair and incoming president. “Can’t really avoid the topic anymore with them…”
The Houston Chronicle is working to confirm other principal departures, and, in some cases it is unclear whether principals are resigning or being forced out. Even before this latest round of cuts, HISD’s principal turnover had been high under Miles.
The school district’s Board of Managers unanimously permitted job cuts Thursday night prior to the 2024-2025 school year. Positions subject to cuts include nurses; librarians; counselors; assistant principals; principals; reading, math and science teachers; and special education coordinators. It’s unclear at this time how many termination notices have been handed out and how many positions total will be cut.
Governor Abbott’s plans to wreck the district and destroy the morale of educators and parents are on track. Remember that the state took over the district because one school was not improving, although it did improve in the year before the takeover.
The takeover is a politically motivated sham.
Robyn Dixon and other staff of The Washington Post wrote a stunning account of the “new Russia” that Putin is determined to create. It’s worth subscribing to read it in full. The “new Russia” is militaristic; dissent is forbidden; women are encouraged to have eight children; LGBT people and symbols are stigmatized; Stalin is revered.
Here are some excerpts from an important and upsetting article:
Vladimir Putin is positioning Russia as America’s most dangerous and aggressive enemy, and transforming his country in ways that stand to make it a bitter adversary of the West for decades to come.
Over more than six months, The Washington Post examined the profound changes sweeping Russia as Putin has used his war in Ukraine to cement his authoritarian grip on power.
The Russian leader is militarizing his society and infusing it with patriotic fervor, reshaping the education system, condemning scientists as traitors, promoting a new Orthodox religiosity and retrograde roles for women, and conditioning a new generation of youth to view the West as a mortal enemy in a fight for Russia’s very survival…
Russia’s leader-for-life is working to restore his country’s global power of the Soviet era — not as a Communist bulwark but as a champion of Orthodox Christian values and an opponent of liberal freedoms in permanent conflict with the West, in a world redivided by big powers into spheres of influence where authoritarianism is an accepted alternative to democracy. Flouting global norms and thumbing his nose at international institutions, Putin is forging military partnerships with other totalitarian regimes that also view the United States as a threat, including China, Iran and North Korea.
The new Russia claims to defend Orthodox values against Western cultural influences.
In November 2022, Putin signed a decree defining Orthodox values, puritanical morality and the rejection of LGBTQ+ identity as crucial to Russia’s national security. Putin has outlined a messianic mission to save the world from what he calls a decadent, permissive West, an approach he hopes will resonate in socially conservative nations in the Global South. The highly politicized judicial system and media heavily controlled by the Kremlin are being used to crack down on nightclubs and parties, and new patriotic mandates are being imposed on artists, filmmakers and cultural institutions.
The new Russia is militarizing society and indoctrinating a new generation of patriots.
Harnessing the war in Ukraine, Putin has engineered a deeply militarized society, rewarding war veterans and their children with places in higher education; introducing military training in schools; and elevating those involved in the war into leadership roles. Telegram channels tell women how to be good soldiers’ wives (by not complaining or crying); schoolchildren make drone fins, trench candles and custom socks for soldiers with amputed limbs. The education system has been imbued with patriotic fervor. Liberal humanities programs are shut down in favor of programs that promote nationalist ideology, and partnerships with Western schools have been canceled.
The new Russia is glorifying Stalin and rewriting history to whitewash Soviet crimes
Some people who had close contact with Putin in his early years as president described his fervent mission to rebuild Russia as a superpower and his admiration not only for imperial czars but also for the Soviet dictator and wartime leader Joseph Stalin, who engineered the Great Terror, the purges of the mid-to-late 1930s, sent millions to the gulag system of prisons and forced labor camps, and had about 800,000 people executed for political reasons. At least 95 of the 110 Stalin monuments in Russia were erected during Putin’s time as leader.
The new Russia is crushing all dissent and restricting personal freedoms.
Putin has squashed the political opposition in Russia making protests illegal, criminalizing criticism of the war, and designating liberal nongovernmental organizations and independent media, journalists, writers, lawyers and activists as foreign agents, undesirable organizations, extremists or terrorists. Hundreds of political activists have been jailed. Tens of thousands of Russians have fled in a historic exodus, with some worried they would be cut off from the world by sanctions, some afraid of being conscripted and sent to the front, and others fearing they would be persecuted for opposing Putin or the war.
Robyn Dixon goes into detail in another article that is part of the series “Remastering Russia.”
MOSCOW — As Vladimir Putin persists in his bloody campaign to conquer Ukraine, the Russian leader is directing an equally momentous transformation at home — re-engineering his country into a regressive, militarized society that views the West as its mortal enemy.
Putin’s inauguration on Tuesday for a fifth term will not only mark his 25-year-long grip on power but also showcase Russia’s shift into what pro-Kremlin commentators call a “revolutionary power,” set on upending the global order, making its own rules, and demanding that totalitarian autocracy be respected as a legitimate alternative to democracy in a world redivided by big powers into spheres of influence…
To carry out this transformation, the Kremlin is:
“They’re trying to develop this scientific Putinism as a basis of propaganda, as a basis of ideology, as a basis of historical education,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “They need an obedient new generation — indoctrinated robots in an ideological sense — supporting Putin, supporting his ideas, supporting this militarization of consciousness.”
Kolesnikov, speaking in an interview in Moscow, added: “They need cannon fodder for the future…”
As he fractures global ties and girds his nation for a forever war with the West, riot police in Russia are raiding nightclubs and private parties, beating up guests and prosecuting gay bar owners. Russians have been jailed or fined for wearing rainbow earrings or displaying rainbow flags. Dissidents who were imprisoned in Soviet times are once again behind bars — this time for denouncing the war.
The Kremlin has defended the crackdown as responding to popular demand…
“In Russian families, many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven or eight children, and even more. Let’s preserve and revive these wonderful traditions,” Putin said in a November speech dedicated to “a thousand-year, eternal Russia.”
The emphasis is on a special and powerful state dominated by Putin, on centuries-old Russian self-reliance and stoicism, and the sacrifice of individual rights to the regime. Men give their lives in war or work. Women should give their bodies by birthing children.
Politico reported on Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ views about the Gaza War and the U.S. Presidential election:
It’s no secret that Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.) is not aligned with Biden on the Israel-Hamas war. “Privately, Sanders has felt less enthusiastic in recent days about making the political case on Biden’s behalf as the Gaza crisis worsened,”AP’s Seung Min Kim reports. But Sanders isn’t letting that get in the way of his support for the president: “I understand that a lot of people in this country are less than enthusiastic about Biden for a number of reasons and I get that. And I strongly disagree with him, especially on what’s going on in Gaza,” Sanders told the AP in an interview.
“But Sanders continued: ‘You have to have a certain maturity when you deal with politics and that is yes, you can disagree with somebody. That doesn’t mean you can vote for somebody else who could be the most dangerous person in American history, or not vote and allow that other guy to win.’
Our anonymous reader “Democracy” summarizes the legal and religious disputes over abortion, which center on the question, “When does life begin?” And a second question: “Should believers be allowed to impose their views on others?”
Democracy writes:
In Roe v. Wade (1973), Justice Harry Blackmun researched – and struggled with – the question, when does human life begin?
The majority decision in Roe noted this:
“The Constitution does not define ‘person’ in so many words. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains three references to ‘person.’ The first, in defining ‘citizens,’ speaks of ‘persons born or naturalized in the United States’” The word also appears both in the Due Process Clause and in the Equal Protection Clause. ‘Person’ is used in other places in the Constitution: in the listing of qualifications for Representatives and Senators, in the Emolument Clause, in the provision outlining qualifications for the office of President, and the superseded Fugitive Slave Clause 3; and in the Fifth, Twelfth, and Twenty-second Amendments, as well as in 2 and 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only POSTNATALLY. None indicates that it has any possible pre-natal application. [Emphasis mine]
In that case, the state of Texas made claim that human life begins at conception.
The Texas Court said this:
“Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”
The Supreme Court decision went on:
“There has always been strong support for the view that life does not begin until live birth. This was the belief of the Stoics. It appears to be the predominant, though not the unanimous, attitude of the Jewish faith. It may be taken to represent also the position of a large segment of the Protestant community, insofar as that can be ascertained; organized groups that have taken a formal position on the abortion issue have generally regarded abortion as a matter for the conscience of the individual and her family. As we have noted, the common law found greater significance in quickening. Physicians and their scientific colleagues have regarded that event with less interest and have tended to focus either upon conception, upon live birth, or upon the interim point at which the fetus becomes ‘viable,’ that is, potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid. Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks.”
This was where abortion rights and “the right to life” stood, until Samuel Alito and his Republican Taliban colleagues imposed their narrow religious beliefs on the rest of American in Dobbs v. Jackson (2022).
When Alito’s Dobbs draft leaked in the media, political analyst Ron Brownstein wrote thisi n May, 2022, in describing what the Supreme Court religious zealots were about to do:
“Alito’s draft, if finalized, would place the GOP-appointed Supreme Court majority firmly on a collision course with the priorities and preferences of the racially and culturally diverse younger generations born since 1980, who now constitute a majority of all Americans and who overwhelmingly support abortion rights…That shift, which Trump hastened with his overt appeals to the racial and social grievances of the most culturally conservative white Americans, has fueled the increasing volatility and belligerence of modern politics—and it only stands to intensify…For decades, a majority of Americans have supported legalized abortion in at least some circumstances. Opposition to overturning Roe v. Wade hit 69 percent in a CNN survey earlier this year, and 61 percent in a poll released by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute on Tuesday. In the PRRI poll, 64 percent of respondents said abortion should remain legal in all (28 percent) or most (36 percent) circumstances…The biggest exception to this trend: A large majority of white evangelical Americans, a cornerstone GOP constituency, oppose legal abortion.”
NPR reported this in early May, 2022:
“6 in 10 U.S. adults (61%) say that abortion should be legal in most or all cases…While the rate of abortions increased significantly in the decade after Roe v. Wade, it has since decreased to below the 1973 level…Pregnancy and childbirth are far more dangerous than getting an abortion, according to data from the CDC…Over 90% of abortions happen in the first trimester (by 13 weeks)…Medical researchers agree a fetus is not capable of experiencing pain until the third trimester, somewhere between 29 or 30 weeks…More than 60% of abortion patients have a religious affiliation.”
The Guttmacher Institute, “a leading research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights in the United States,” reports these data related to abortion:
“About 61% of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more children…The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner…Fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant.”
It would appear — from the data — that the conservative Supreme Court members AND the Republican Party are at war with women, and especially POOR women.
More Guttmacher data:
“About half of American women will have an unintended pregnancy, and nearly one-third will have an abortion, by age 45.
• The overall U.S. unintended pregnancy rate remained stagnant between 1994 and 2006, but unintended pregnancy increased 50% among poor women, while decreasing 29% among higher-income women.
• Overall, the abortion rate decreased 8% between 2000 and 2008, but abortion increased 18% among poor women, while decreasing 28% among higher-income women.
• Nine in 10 abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
• A broad cross section of U.S. women have abortions:
Republicans are finding out that the dystopian world they have created is not popular, and represents a clear and present danger to ALL civil liberties in the American republic.
Here’s how Margaret Atwood explained it in The Atlantic (May 13, 2022):
“When does a fertilized human egg become a full human being or person?…The hard line of today’s anti-abortion activists is at ‘conception,’ the moment at which a cluster of cells becomes ‘ensouled.”
“But any such judgment depends on a religious belief—namely, the belief in souls. Not everyone shares such a belief. But all, it appears, now risk being subjected to laws formulated by those who do. That which is a sin within a certain set of religious beliefs is to be made a crime for all.”
“It ought to be simple: If you believe in ‘ensoulment’ at conception, you should not get an abortion, because to do so is a sin within your religion. If you do not so believe, you should not—under the Constitution—be bound by the religious beliefs of others. But should the Alito opinion become the newly settled law, the United States looks to be well on the way to establishing a state religion…Massachusetts had an official religion in the 17th century. In adherence to it, the Puritans hanged Quakers.”
“The Alito opinion purports to be based on America’s Constitution. But it relies on English jurisprudence from the 17th century, a time when a belief in witchcraft caused the death of many innocent people. The Salem witchcraft trials were trials—they had judges and juries—but they accepted “spectral evidence,” in the belief that a witch could send her double, or specter, out into the world to do mischief. Thus, if you were sound asleep in bed, with many witnesses, but someone reported you supposedly doing sinister things to a cow several miles away, you were guilty of witchcraft. You had no way of proving otherwise.”
As Ben Franklin was to have said when asked what kind of government the Founders had created,
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
The “Science of Reading” is the panacea of the moment. Iowa’s Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill requiring the use of SofR in the state’s classrooms.
ADEL, Iowa (Gray Television Iowa Capitol Bureau) – Governor Kim Reynolds signed a new law Tuesday meant to boost literacy rates for Iowa children. It requires schools teach a specific reading method, called the Science of Reading, and develop individual plans for students not at grade level.
Last year, more than 30% of Iowa’s third and 11th graders weren’t reading at their grade level. Travis Wilkins with the Adel DeSoto Minburn Community School District said, “As an educator and in this profession, I think it’s important we recognize and name the fact that we are not meeting our mission.”
But ADM Schools found success. Three years ago it had one in four students not meeting reading standards. Then, it implemented a literacy strategy called the science of reading. “Our third grade through 11th grade scores now show 90% of our students are proficient in reading and writing,” Wilkins said.
Now, the Science of Reading is the law in Iowa. Tuesday Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill mandating schools implement the strategy and must provide personalized instruction for students who fall behind. “And for those who continue to struggle, the bill also ensures parents are informed of their right to request that their child be retained to repeat a grade level if that’s necessary,” Reynolds said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 