Because I’m in a giving mood, some items from the archives:
On the ideological gratification of thwarting clever children.
The practised doublethink in play, in which precocious interest in advanced material is actively discouraged, and in which “access” is invoked while gleefully denying it, has been noted here before…
As in California, where differences in “school experiences,” i.e., differences in ability and achievement, are something to be eliminated by holding back high-achieving students, with curriculum guidelines based on “social justice,” and educators who are visibly “committed to social justice work.”
And so, we have California’s Department of Education actively discouraging gifted maths students from taking calculus any earlier than their less gifted classmates. As if this were a good thing with no conceivable downsides. Because frustrating clever kids, boring them and demoralising them, is, like, totally progressive.
And likewise, we have Jennifer Katz, a professor of education at the University of British Columbia, scolding parents who question the conceit that bright children will somehow flourish if taught more slowly and in less detail in a more disruptive environment. While implying, quite strongly, that any parents who complain must be racist.
And then there’s San Diego, another bastion of progress, where teachers are instructed that in order to be “anti-racist,” they must “confront practices” deemed inegalitarian and which result in “racial imbalance” – say, norms of classroom behaviour, a disapproval of tardiness and cheating, and oppressive expectations of “turning work in on time.”
Your Guilt Has Been Determined By Pantone Colour Chart.
Welcome to our School of Dental Medicine, you filthy white racist.
More a series of begged questions, whereby some people can be deemed guilty or complicit by virtue of their skin colour.
The Put-Upon And Marginalised Finally Get A Word In.
Come, let us peek at the Culture pages of the Guardian.
“Queer stories are so seldom told in museums,” says Jennie Grady, who has worked on the exhibition.
Regarding the aforementioned seldomness, I briefly scanned recent listings and found that the museums and galleries busily “queering” their content include the British Museum (“Desire, Love, Identity: Exploring LGBTQ Histories”), the Victoria and Albert Museum (“A Queer History of Art”), Tate Britain, Tate Kids, Queer Britain (“A riot of voices, objects, and images from the worlds of activism, art, culture, and social history”), Brighton Museum, the London Art Fair, the Glasgow Women’s Library, the Museum of Transology, the Museum of London, National Museums Liverpool, National Museums Scotland, and the National Portrait Gallery.
So seldom. So terribly seldom.
Other vigorously “queered” content can be found at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art; the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; and the Wellcome Collection, London, which among other things offers a “queer life-drawing workshop… focussing on queer bodies.” I have, due to space concerns – and the fear that readers may lose the will to live – omitted many more.
Rendered Tearful By The Undertakings Of White People.
Minority students are being crushed by historical landmarks. No, not literally.
In short, on a par with other recent efforts to “decolonise” degree courses, to purge them of the “inequities” of “white knowledge,” and thereby exterminate any trace of “white supremacy.”
As when the Quality Assurance Agency, an organisation that boasts of being “trusted by higher education providers and regulatory bodies to maintain and enhance quality and standards,” demanded that computing courses address “how divisions and hierarchies of colonial value are replicated and reinforced” within the subject.
I’ll give you a moment to ponder that one.
If the particulars are unclear and the reliance on verbiage unconvincing, and if readers are unsure of what “neoliberal systems of power” might be, and how they might bear upon musical notation or the Royal Veterinary College, at least the antipathy towards things deemed “white” is hard to miss and evidently relished.
Progressive parenting, with bonus crack and badger.
It must be quite strange to go through life feeling a need to boast in print of some pointed behaviour – specifically, “showing my sons what a real woman’s body… looks like” – as if this feat of not wearing knickers were somehow radical, empowering, and a basis for applause. And to then have to justify this lifestyle affectation in ways that are somewhat contradictory and not particularly convincing. As if no-one would notice. It seems a lot of effort.
For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.
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