Remind Me Again: All Cultures Are Equal
A Teacher’s Farewell Treatise
Paul Bianco, Counter-Currents, August 15, 2024
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It has been said, “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism”, and it is. I just retired from education after thirty-plus years as a high school teacher. I brought tremendous creativity, energy, and a little irreverence to my teaching, and students would tell you mine was one of their most enjoyable classes. Now in my 60s, I just don’t have the same enthusiasm I once did. My optimism for what is trending in public education is also running on fumes. Like a skilled party guest, it’s important to know when to leave.
It is said that you only need a sip of wine to know if the bottle is any good. What about three decades of “sips” in many classrooms? My first public school teaching position was in an “urban” Nevada school that was so gang-infested that one vice principal wore a kevlar vest under his button down shirt. I once asked a Hispanic student in one of the gangs, “Why don’t you warring gang kids band together and become a united group? You have so many of the same struggles.” He said, “Because if we’re better than at least one other gang at least we’re better than somebody, Holmes.” Telling.
By and large I genuinely liked the Spanish-speaking kids mostly because they interacted with me (as a bilingual) differently than they did with other teachers who weren’t. For the most part I found them friendly enough so long as you gave them a fair shake and never ‘dissed’ them. Hispanics are one-on-one reciprocal in interpersonal assessment, something I liked about them. That said, once you get beyond a percentage tipping point, they’re just as “our race over yours” as blacks.
The impact of illegal aliens on America’s schools is tectonic. The tax dollars spent to serve illegals (and feed and provide them health care) in our schools is obscene. Federal costs alone come to nearly seven billion dollars. In my state of Tennessee there is about $383 million in education spending on undocumented students (2017 figures.) Certainly it’s more now. Educating/serving children in foreign languages is twice as much per person as native born children. What do we get for this cash hemorrhage? Staggering truancy, a spike in discipline issues, low test scores and a high school dropout rate three times the white rate and twice the black rate. They receive free education, free meals, often free day care, and free medical services in school, yet, as with blacks, they loudly demand more rights, privileges, and entitlements. Mainstreaming these students into the regular classroom doesn’t serve them very well and results in a lower common denominator that puts a drag chute on higher performing students. (Much more on this to follow.)
What’s the impact of non-English speaking illegal alien students in America’s schools? You will find no research on this vital question, absolutely none. A significant number of our urban schools are a Third World culture that does not value education, accepts their children becoming pregnant and dropping out, and adamantly refuses to assimilate. You’re paying for that.
The main reason for the present day mess is the 1982 Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court (5-4) decision. This judgment upheld that “A state cannot prevent children of undocumented immigrants from attending public school unless a substantial state interest is involved.” (It is undeniable that today, 45 years later, a very substantial state interest is involved when it comes to screening students for their legal citizenship status.) The court determined that to deny enrollment to such children violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Fast forward. We need a new assessment of “equal protection” in 2024 to factor in the protection of children born to American citizens who have the right to self-actualize, deserve freedom of association, and must be safe in the schools where their families’ taxes underwrite those schools with their tax dollars.
Here’s the immigrant net-net: nearly one out of four (23 percent) students in public schools come from immigrant-headed households, both legal and illegal (2021 statistic.) This is double the 11 percent in 1990 and more than triple the 7 percent in 1980. About 90 percent of all immigration inflow has been non-European since 1970, and the 3rd World/PoC floodgates are wide open. You do the math.
The black kids at the Nevada school weren’t “simpatico” with the Hispanics (typical), and showed open hostility towards them during any Hispanic heritage event while insisting on special recognition for anything, everything, black. Both groups shared a generally apathetic attitude towards bettering themselves through education, though the Hispanic kids were very hard working at their manual labor jobs outside of school. A notable point of difference was that the Hispanic kids still seemed to listen to and had a modicum of respect for their mothers. The family orientation for them was strong to the point of them being truant for the slightest family reason. The black kids showed mostly eye-rolling tolerance for their mothers despite the volume and bluster they generated. Black mothers did more shouting and hitting than any other race that I taught. Dad was mostly nowhere to be found.
My experience with both groups of students “of color” was the same in several other school systems across the country where I worked. The most dysfunctional school I taught in was in the inner city of a major Southern city that was overwhelmingly black. Ironically, it was the highest paycheck I’d ever earned as a teacher with the most massive budget of any school system I’d ever experienced, and the most spectacular waste of time and tax dollars I’d ever been party to.
My average day there was teaching mostly kids with no want, need, or use for education except as a place to go during the day to do anything but learn. Drug dealing was common, bullying was everywhere, fights happened nearly every day. The school had a day care for teenagers’ children, themselves babies, who had their own babies. My classes were stocked with few kids who were there to really apply themselves (though there were some, and I deeply respected their dedication.) Standards were low, and administration pressured teachers to not write up kids for “minor” things that disrupted the learning in the classroom (read: short of a full-on brawl in your classroom, don’t burden us with your problem). The subtle imperative there was: keep the kids in your room, out of the halls, don’t bother Admin with whatever they do short of needing crime tape. Some teachers rolled with it and allowed their rooms to become little more than loitering spaces with the unspoken understanding that students could do anything they wanted so long as they were relatively quiet about it. I wasn’t one of them.
Once I called out a student who was carrying on in the back of my room during a lesson. The student’s posse swarmed me with objection to my asserting control in my class. I telegraphed an I’m-not-having-it tone. My response to them was, “I seriously doubt she’s going to need psychological help over this situation that is, by the way, none of your business.” Thirty minutes later I was summoned to the principal’s office and told that four girls in my class stood as witnesses that I had told the fifth that “she had psychological problems.” I stood on what really happened. The principal urged me to “take one for the team” and sign an already drafted reprimand that would go in my personnel file. “Nobody sees these things, anyway,” he told me.
The principal wasn’t going to have my back, so I wasn’t going to remain there. Several months later, that spring, all five new hires in my department resigned. The department chair, a kindly older white woman, who was more mother to them than teacher, remained. Mrs. X was imbued with white savior complex to the point of having a washer and dryer in her classroom for students to use. The whole place was more of a health and human service mini mall than a school. A few years later President Obama visited the school and told students, “I’ve heard great things about this high school and all of you.”
Without this knowledge, you can’t make sense of the 20th Century.
What’s it all about?
SNEAK ATTACK: Trudeau just appointed a transgender extremist to the Senate — from Alberta!
On the Labour Day long weekend, when no-one was paying any attention to politics, Justin Trudeau thought it was the perfect time to make a sneak attack on Alberta — and on children.
- By Ezra Levant
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- September 01, 2024
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- News Analysis
Justin Trudeau just made the most atrocious appointment to the Canadian Senate he’s ever done — giving Alberta’s most extreme transgender activist, Kris Wells, a Senate appointment that will last more than 20 years.
Wells is the most extreme Senate appointment Trudeau has ever made.
Activism Around Transgenderism for Children
Kris Wells has spent twenty years promoting transgenderism, especially to children in schools where they’re away from their parents.
His life’s work has been to get kids, when they’re at school, to join sexuality clubs called gay-straight alliances, and to keep what happens in those clubs secret from parents. They encourage kids start changing their pronouns; to start identifying as non-binary or trans.
And here’s the most terrifying part: they encourage these kids to medically transition — that is, to take hormones or even surgery to cut off their body parts.
These are minor children, in high school or even junior high. And all of this happens without any notice to parents.
That has been Wells’ life’s work in Alberta. Targeting children for transgenderism and fighting against giving parents any notice of what’s going on.
And now Trudeau has just appointed him to the Senate where he will surely try do the same to parents and children across the country. This is a very dark sign that Trudeau intends to ramp up his transgender activism in the remaining time he has in office.
Anti-Christian Bigotry
Wells is not just a transgender extremist. He’s an anti-Christian bigot, too.
He’s spent years trying to roll back the rights of Christian schools in Alberta — largely because they don’t agree with his transgenderism.
If it were any other religion he hated, he’d be immediately disqualified from public life. But Trudeau hates Christians, too, so Wells is a perfect fit.
Skirting Democracy
There are other odious things here. As you may know, for decades Alberta has had elections to choose its own senators — as opposed to just accepting the personal friends of the prime minister.
It’s an Alberta tradition to elect Senators. There are democratically elected senators-in-waiting in Alberta right now, and there are two Senate vacancies from Alberta.
But instead of appointing the winner of those legitimate elections, Trudeau just spat in their faces, and in the faces of the hundreds of thousands of Albertans who voted for the legitimate senators.
Alberta has been electing senators for decades — that’s how Senate reformer Bert Brown was appointed. Trudeau wants to erase that democratic tradition
Do you think for a moment that Albertans — or anyone — would have voted for this anti-Christian, anti-family, pro-trans extremist?
How To Fight Back?
We’ll be able to throw out Trudeau at the next election, but by putting this dangerous man in the Senate, he’ll be there for more than 20 years trying to poison our children.
And because Trudeau made the appointment on the long weekend, he’s hoping to get away with it.
Sounds Like Hate of Whites but That’s Okay
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The Lady of Tradition
I thank you all from my heart all those who commemorate the tragic day 20 august 2022 when my daughter Darya was brutally killed by Ukrainian terrorist woman.
| ALEXANDER DUGINSEP 2 |
Dear Friends!
I thank you all from my heart all those who commemorate the tragic day 20 august 2022 when my daughter Darya was brutally killed by Ukrainian terrorist woman. I thank all my friends and friends of Darya for Your condolences and sharing my deep sorrow. I also thank you for publishing the different books written by Dasha or dedicated to her memory.
Dasha was first and foremost a woman of the Tradition. And Tradition for her was all – sacredness, philosophy, politics, family, friendship, the past together with the future – Eternity itself…
Dasha was very straightforward in this loyalty to the Tradition. Until her brutal death… She was assassinated returning from the “Tradition” festival on 20 August 2022. This cannot be pure coincidence. This is the sign of God.
Only that for which people are willing to sacrifice their lives possesses the real value. Tradition is the highest value. For Darya. For me, for my wife Natasha, for my family, for my people. It is what makes the Motherland the Motherland, the people the people, the Church the Church, the culture the culture.
Dasha was the embodiment of creativity, she was a launch into the future, she lived in faith and hope. She was always only looking forward and upwards. Wrongly, she took it too steeply, as far as ‘upwards’ was concerned…. But her message lives on among us and becomes ever more distinct, collected, clear. His message is an invitation to the Russian future and to a truly European future. A future that has yet to be realised. By you, by us.
Dasha has always thought of herself as of a project, as a launching of creative will. She burned with philosophy, religion, politics, culture and art. She lived so richly, so fully, precisely because she was interested in everything. Hence the variety of her interests, her texts, her speeches, her creativity, her endeavours. During her lifetime, she strongly wanted the Russians to get going, to move our country and our culture from a standstill and take off.
She considered it to be her mission to live for Russia and, if necessary, to die for Russia. This is what she wrote in her Diaries, “The Heights and Swamps of My Heart”, which we recently published in RUssia. Dasha’s second philosophical book, ‘Eschatological Optimism’, will be published in Russia soon. And it is great that it is already published in English. Dasha is remembered and loved throughout the world by those who are faithful to the Tradition even in the darkest times, even when the Tradition itself no longer exists, by those who remain faithful to God even when He is dead.
Living for Russia is her message, which must be conveyed over and over again.
We have many wonderful true heroes, warriors, defenders, people with deep souls and pure hearts. Some of them gave their lives for the Motherland. Some of them live with us now. The memory of every hero is sacred. And so is the memory of Dasha.
But the fact is that Dasha is not only a model patriot and citizen, she is also the bearer of incredible spiritual potential (even if she has not had time to fully unfold it – she was killed too young in her 29 years). She has endeavoured to embody the grace of imperial Russia, the Silver Age style of early 20th century Russian culture and was pervaded by a deep interest in the philosophy of Neoplatonism. Orthodoxy and Russian geopolitics. Modern avant-garde art – in music, theatre, painting, film – and the tragic understanding of the ontology of war. Sober and aristocratically restrained acceptance of the fatal crisis of modernity and an ardent will to overcome it. All that is an eschatological optimism. To face the misfortune and horror of modernity and inspite of horror to maintain a radiant faith in God, in His Mercy, in His Justice.
I wish the remembrance of Dasha would not be so much to keep the focus on the images of her life as a lively, charming girl, full of pure energy, but rather to be the continuation of her ardour, the realisation of her plans, her pure and far-sighted imperial dreams.
Today, it is clear to many that Dasha has objectively become our national heroine. Poems and paintings, cantatas and songs, films and universities, plays and theatre productions are dedicated to her. Streets in towns and villages now bear her name. A monument is being prepared for installation in Moscow and perhaps other cities.
A girl who had never taken part in hostilities, who had never called for violence or aggression, who was deep and smiling, naive and well-educated, was brutally murdered in front of her father’s eyes by a heartless, ruthless enemy, a Ukrainian terrorist woman who also took part in the ‘Tradition’ festival and did not hesitate to involve her small 12 years old daughter in the brutal murder. It was the authorities in Kiev and the secret services of the Anglo-Saxon world, staunch enemies of Tradition, who sent her to do this deed. Exactly one year ago, on 20 August 2022, I gave a lecture on the ‘role of the devil in history’ at the Festival of Tradition. Dasha listened. The murderer also listened. The devil was listening to what I was saying about the devil, preparing to do his devilish work.
And Dasha certainly became immortal. Our nation could not remain indifferent to this. And my tragedy, the tragedy of our family, of Dasha’s friends, of all those who communicated and collaborated with her, became the tragedy of all our people. And tears began to choke people, both those who knew this girl and those who hear about her for the first time.
And these are not just tears of pain an sorrow. They are the tears of our resurrection, of our purification, of our coming Victory.
Dasha has become a symbol. She already is a symbol. But now it is important that the essential meaning of this symbol would not disappear, would not dissolve, would not vanish. It is important not only to preserve Dasha’s memory, but to continue her work. Because she had the Cause. Her Cause.
There are saints who help in certain circumstances: one helps in poverty, another — in sickness, third in pilgrimage, fourth in captivity. Individual Russian icons are also distributed in such a way as to patronise people in various difficult, sometimes desperate situations. ‘Placate my sorrows’ is the name of one of the images of the Mother of God. And there is a canon that is read when it becomes impossible to live and everything falls apart…..
The heroes and heroines are also different. One embodies military valour. Another — sacrificial tenderness. Third — fortitude. Fourth — the pinnacle of political will. All are beautiful.
Dasha embodies the soul. The Russian soul.
If there is no soul, there will be no Russia, there will be nothing.
Many good people have volunteered to carry Dasha’s memory.
There is the ‘Daria Dugina People’s Institute’.
There is the ‘Daria Dugina Classes of Courage’.
There is a new series from the excellent Vladimir Dal publishing house ‘Dasha’s books’.
There are various prizes and other initiatives.
And we let people do what their hearts tell them to do.
The important thing is to do everything with the soul.
Send Them Back
City Hall dumped 140-year-old Christopher Columbus artwork in woods
Bureaucrats ordered the stone carving to be hidden in a forest and all references to the artifact to be scrubbed from the internet
Author of the article:
(TORONTO SUN, Aug 30, 2024) • Last updated 22 hours ago • 4 minute read
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City bureaucrats ordered a 140-year-old stone carving depicting Christopher Columbus to be removed from display and hidden in a wooden area in Scarborough’s Guild Park in 2021, the Toronto Sun has learned.
According to emails obtained in a freedom-of-information request, the decision came at about the same time that a volunteer group was directed by city staff to scrub from the internet any of its references to Columbus or the stone that depicted the 15th-century explorer.
“They are setting it in the ‘forest’ a few metres from the base,” Barb McLean, of the city’s economic development and culture department, wrote to colleagues in an October 2021 email. “There was not enough time to change the plans without delaying the removal.”
McLean added that a member of the Friends of Guild Park group suggested taking down a monument can be “an emotional thing for people,” but she replied that she wanted it “removed with little fanfare.”
McLean also expressed concern that dumping it far into the woods, as was ultimately done, would require the permission of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority or the city’s forestry officials.
“We don’t want it to look like it was removed by vandalism,” McLean added. “If it is found in the trees on its own even years from now, it might cause a stir.”
Guild Park, near the Scarborough Bluffs, is billed by the city as a “sculptural sanctuary” where old architectural treasures are put out to pasture, such as stone depictions of the pre-amalgamation Toronto coat of arms recently featured in the Sun.
The Columbus artwork is part of a series of 17 stones that also features depictions of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII, as well as other prominent figures such as the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. The stones were featured for decades on the exterior of what was called the Richmond Building in London, Ont., which was torn down in the late 1960s.
While the stones have long been in the park’s collection, they only began to be put on display in October 2020, starting with the Columbus, Victoria and Edward stones. Complaints followed about Columbus, the emails state, but the single example cited in the documents did not specify a problem with the stone, simply saying it should be “replaced with work by an Indigenous artist.”
McLean, then a senior project co-ordinator for the city’s capital assets unit, wasn’t much more detailed in her criticisms of Columbus, saying “the concept of ‘discovery’ is highly problematic” and predicting some would be “hurt” by the sight of the artifact.
McLean has since retired, a city spokesman confirmed.
In a statement this week, Russell Baker, the city’s manager of media relations and issues management, told the Sun the stone was “temporarily removed from its base” three years ago “and relocated to another location in Guild Park while city staff take steps to add an interpretative plaque with the stone structure.”
“While details are still being finalized, the city is planning to consult with the Guild Park stakeholders group to develop an interpretative plaque. Once the plaque has been installed, the stone portrait will be returned to its original location,” Baker added.
But the 2021 emails make no mention of the move being anything but permanent – and they show City Hall wanted the Columbus stone out of sight both at Guild Park and on the internet.
Julie Frost, manager of arts and culture services at the economic development and culture department, directed the president of Friends of Guild Park to take a video off the internet and restore it only after any mention of Columbus had been cut.
In a brief statement to the Sun, Friends of Guild Park referred all questions to city staff.
Interestingly, Frost had months earlier appeared to minimize any concerns about the Columbus stone.
“With the city’s emphasis on decolonization, I hope we don’t find ourselves faced with a situation where we’re asked to remove profiles of historic figures like Victoria, Edward and Columbus. It’s hard to predict the response to this content in 2021,” Frost’s colleague Jo Ann Pynn wrote in July of that year.
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