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In April 2019, I stood with Virginias Governor, Secretary of Education, and State Superintendent to declare Virginia is for Learners. It was the crescendo of a multi-year education reform effort spanning two gubernatorial administrations, led by a host of state and local education leaders.

Since then, a growing group of nonpartisan education leaders have been working hard to deliver on that promise. This has included the establishment of the Commonwealth Learning Partnership, a coalition of more than 40 education groups and universities committed to modernizing Virginias public education system; the launch of EdEquityVA, the states roadmap to and trainings on education equity; and more recently, the formation of a statewide education foundation, Virginia Learns.

These education leaders have offered constant support to the education frontlines throughout the pandemic. Even so, extended crisis schooling gave rise to heated disagreements between parents and schools, put on full display at school board meetings and on social media. Virginia, like so many places, has culture wars dominating discourse about public education, which has taken attention away from school, educator, and student needs.

Its no surprise that education ended up being the hot-button campaign issue in Virginias recent governors race. The Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, campaigned on his record. Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, took a different approach, tapping into the fears and frustrations of his constituency. Youngkin won on the promise of more parental control in education, saying his first action would be to fire the states education chief, and that he would promote school choice.

While this was an effective way to win a race, it misses the complexity of the issues impacting education in COVID recovery. Beyond platitudes and promises, we need decision-makers who bring people together to work towards the common good of student learning, healing and recovery. Using education as a wedge issue to stoke anger, resentment and to deepen divisions will only make matters worse.

Youngkins win and the public conversation on education that took place across Virginia and the US leading up to his election, illuminates three problems we face in education: issues of trust, truth and trauma.

Pandemic experiences have made parents less trusting of their childrens schools. Campaigns and conversations have focused on who should have power over a childs education, when the reality is that parents and educators share that responsibility.

For many kids, the adults who support learning go beyond the household and school. Extended family, counselors, services providers and afterschool programs are also a part of the equation. Adults need to work in partnership to support childrens learning and well-being. Parental and family engagement, along with school-community partnerships, must be a top priority for states and schools. This requires professional development on effective engagement, working with parent groups and providing ways for parents and community partners to have a voice in education decisions.

Parents have their own role to play. This starts with taking a posture of empathy and openness towards the people running schools and teaching kids. The past two years have been hard for everybody, but the pressures and demands on educators have been extreme. Formal parent groups, like the PTA, and informal organizing groups, can establish and enforce a culture that upholds the dignity and worth of all people.

Exacerbating these trust issues are alarming disagreements over truth. Culture wars are getting worse. CRT and school curriculum debates reveal unsettling differences between what people view as truth in current circumstances and American history. We cannot move around this issue. We must work through it. Schools and communities need assistance from experienced facilitators and mediators to have difficult and necessary conversations about racism, inequity and our history. This is reconciliation work, and it is vital for the health, healing and well-being of students, families and communities. If we do not do this, then our kidsespecially those who are Black, brown, and Indigenouswill fall into the fault lines these culture wars have created.

Trauma has been an accelerant to trust and truth issues. We are nearly two years into the most disruptive period many of us have ever experienced, and trauma abounds. Left unaddressed, it will take a continued toll on student learning and mental health, educator wellness and community capacity for collective care. Healing from trauma takes time, training and focus. This is especially true in places and with people who already were experiencing trauma before COVID. It is time for leaders to prioritize and invest in mental health, to get trained on trauma-informed care and to work on improving systems of care.

The future of our schools and long-COVID education recovery is about more than power, advancement and choice. It will last longer than a campaign cycle, and even a gubernatorial term. Real recovery is about care, connection and healing. For students to learn and schools to function, we must work and heal together.

For nearly eight years, I have worked alongside Virginias most inspiring educators and education leaders. They know Virginia is for Learners is a promise that extends across political and community divides, and that it must hold true, even in times of disruption or disagreement. This is the path forward that supports students, builds great schools, and a future of learning where young people can thrive.

Original post:
How Schools Can Call a Truce in Educations Ongoing Culture War - EdSurge

The practical effect of the religious freedom bill which Prime Minister Scott Morrison presented to Parliament on Thursday remains unclear but its symbolic power in Australias culture wars is undeniable.

For religious conservatives who have lost a number of historic recent battles against progressives on social policy, it promises to turn the tide that has been flowing against them recently.

After it was overwhelmingly supported in a popular vote, the Federal Parliament passed same-sex marriage in 2017. After lagging other states, NSW legalised abortion last year and the Parliament is now debating a bill on assisted dying.

In this climate religious groups feel their views are being ignored. Presenting the bill, Mr Morrison three times referred to cancel culture which he says is driving people of faith from the public sphere. Many people from various religious traditions are concerned about the lack of religious protection against the prevalence of cancel culture in Australian life.

The Herald agrees with Mr Morrison that it is important to engage in civil debate and that discrimination on religious grounds is abhorrent. People of faith deserve the same respect as the 30 per cent of Australians with no religious beliefs. As Mr Morrison said, The protection of what we choose to believe in a free society is essential to our freedom. In a liberal democracy, it is like oxygen.

Yet, Mr Morrison fails to establish that religious discrimination is a significant problem here in Australia. By and large Australia already does guarantee freedom of religion. The constitution specifically bans imposing a state religion. Just ask any of the refugees from countries where real religious bigotry is rife if Australia is a free country. The bill is largely a solution looking for a problem.

Where it will make some difference is in cases where religious groups want more rights to breach anti-discrimination laws, especially in relation to LGBTQI people.

This is a difficult issue because the idea of giving a green light to discrimination justified on religious grounds terrifies LGBTQI people who remember that until only a few decades ago their very existence was illegal.

The draft bill Mr Morrison presented tries to please both sides but will likely end up pleasing neither.

For example, while the bill offers some protection for people making genuine statements of religious belief, employers have convinced the government to exempt cases involving workplace policies, including social media policies. They argued that if their employees were free to make inflammatory statements based on religion it could damage their companies public image and cause discord in the workplace.

Read the rest here:
Religious freedom bill is the latest front in the culture wars - The Sydney Morning Herald

The culture war doesnt take Thanksgiving week off, and its two main participants arent big on giving thanks, anyway.

The illiberal left wants to radically transform an inherently evil America that was founded on slavery and colonialism. The post-liberal right wants to forfeit the idea of liberal democracy, contending that modern America is weak, secular, and decadent.

Lets start with the left. On Tuesday, the Womens March issued an apology for sending out an email noting that their average donation this week had been $14.92. It was an oversight on our part to not make the connection to a year of colonization, conquest, and genocide for Indigenous people, especially before Thanksgiving, they said. This is stupidity that defies satire.

Meanwhile, MSNBC recently invited writer Gyasi Ross to talk about the mythology of Thanksgiving. Instead of bringing stuffing and biscuits, those settlers brought genocide and violence, he said. That genocide and violence is still on the menu as state-sponsored violence against Native and Black Americans is commonplace. And violent private white supremacy is celebrated and subsidized.

I get it! I get it! America sucks. And you need to be constantly reminded of that. We cant possibly have a day where we put aside the culture wars and just celebrate the blessings we have been given, right? Dont even think about celebrating Columbus Day, Presidents Day, or Thanksgiving Day without a proper finger-wagging lecture, just to make sure any lingering patriotism is replaced by guilt and shame. Enjoy your stuffing, you white supremacist scumbags!

The Rosses of the world dont want you to celebrate Americas history or traditions because the whole damn thing is tainted and conceived in sin. The National Broadcasting Company apparently endorses this worldview, since MSNBC aired this segment and proudly tweeted about it.

A good argument could be made that few Americans gathering to give thanks to the Almighty for their blessings are thinking primarily about Pilgrims and Native Americans. But even to the degree that the first Thanksgiving has become embedded in the American psyche, things are (as usual) more complicated.

Heres a short summation of what we know. In 1620, a group of English settlers known as the Pilgrims made an arduous journey across the Atlantic. In 1621, they signed a peace treaty with the Indigenous people living in the area, the Wampanoag Confederacy, that was honored by both sides for fifty years. After signing the treaty, Native Americans taught the settlers about how to fertilize the soil for growing crops, and also gave them hunting and fishing tips. This was vital to the Plymouth colonys survival (according to the History channel, by spring 1621, roughly half of the Mayflowers original passengers had died in their new home). Later that year, there was a Thanksgiving feast with the Wampanoags to celebrate their first autumn harvest. This became known as the first Thanksgiving. Its a true story that offers us hope, and one that almost everyone can be proud of celebrating.

Of course, theres a larger story. Theres the story of Europeans who arrived before the Pilgrims in 1620. And theres the story of how the treaty broke down when new arrivals of Europeans and subsequent generations of Indigenous people clashed, with provocations and atrocities being committed on both sides. And later, theres the story of what basically constitutes a horrific genocide of Native Americans during Americas westward expansion.

And then, theres the even larger story. The story of how Abraham Lincoln decided to declare a national day of thanksgiving during the Civil War, and how the union he helped preserve would later free the world from Nazi and Soviet domination, thus bringing more freedom and prosperity to more people than any force in the history of the world.

We should know the whole story, but which story defines us as a nation?

Heres the problem. Im not sure a country that doesnt believe in its own noble narrative can (or should) survive. Im not sure a nation that views its legacy as that of shameful and bloodthirsty oppressors, conceived in sin (not liberty, as Lincoln declared), can prevail over competing value systems.

Lets not kid ourselves. Every nation has done horrific things. But nations like Chinawhich is currently committing what many believe to be genocide against the Uyghurssuffer no such identity crisis. And few progressives are as outraged by the atrocities currently being committed against ethnic minorities, gays, and women by the Chinese Communists, the Taliban, or anyone else. Progressives should consider that their constant undermining of America might foster the rise of some regime like China that actually ends up ruling much of the world.

Would the world really be better off if Chinas values, not ours, became dominant?

Whats even sadder, though, is that the blame-America-first fixation is no longer the sole province of the left in America. An increasing number of voices on the right have given up on the American experiment, suggesting that the Founders vision was either inherently flawed or corrupted along the way. Some on the post-liberal right even pine for monarchy and serfdom as a supposedly superior (and more romantic) option. As Voxs Zack Beauchamp writes, Liberal ideals of individual rights, separation of church and state, and free markets have, in their view, created a society ever more solitary, ever more detached from ourselves, from our families, from our countries, and our God.

It could be argued that the reason this is happening on both the left and the right is that we are not thankfulwe are not gratefulfor the blessings of liberty and modernity. Empirically speaking, theres no better time or place to be alive than in 21st century America. We are freer, safer, and healthier than any people in the history of the world. And ironically, this gives us more time to dwell on how horrible we are and how bad we have it.

But while this is a bipartisan lament, the rights abandonment of Thanksgiving is arguably more concerning, because defending patriotism, tradition, and, yes, thanksgiving, are primary functions of conservatism. To my mind, conservatism is gratitude, says conservative intellectual Yuval Levin. Conservatives tend to begin from gratitude for what is good and what works in our society and then strive to build on it, while liberals tend to begin from outrage at what is bad and broken and seek to uproot it.

You need both, Levin concedes. But we can also never forget what moves us to gratitude, and so what we stand for and defend: the extraordinary cultural inheritance we have; the amazing country built for us by others and defended by our best and bravest; Americas unmatched potential for lifting the poor and the weak; the legacy of freedomof ordered libertybuilt up over centuries of hard work.

A healthy country is transparent about its past sins. We should not present a solely sanitized version of history. But we also must be proud of our country and believe that we are a force for good, because it happens to be trueand because we can then strive to live up to that truth.

When more Americans believe the nation is defined by its sins rather than its beneficenceas I fear is happening nowit seems to me that our goose (er, turkey) is cooked.

See the article here:
The War on Thanksgiving Is America at Its Worst - The Daily Beast

Winston W. Wiley| Telegram & Gazette

Happy Hannukah to the Jewish community as the 8-day observance of the Festival of Lights begins at sunset Sunday.

The winters religious and cultural holidays are always an exciting way to close out the year. They bring the needed space and environment for reflection and to connect with family and friends before embarking on the adventures of the coming year.

But I have to admit Im one of those people put off by Christmas encroaching on the fall season earlier and earlier every year. I dont want to hear Christmas songs, see Christmas displays or watch Christmas movies before the time is right. The period feels like a season unto itself and foreign when it strays too deep into other seasons.

Despite Christmas music blaring in area stores and advertisements on TV airwaves since at least two weeks before Halloween, the leftover Thanksgiving turkey signals the winter holiday season is underway in earnest. Christmas lights and decorations began dotting homes and businesses in early November and multiplied in neighborhoods across the city as the month progressed. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, starts the shopping frenzy that primes the economic engine of Christmas commercialism and Cyber Monday promises to rev it into high gear.

Such are the superficial trappings of Christmas. But, lets focus on the more substantive ones, the ones that symbolize the true meaning and spirit of the season and the ones that every year we manage to undermine through our disregard for one another.

In that spirit, I have a challenge for Worcester area residents. Lets try harder this year to emulate the person whose birthwere supposed to be observing. With political divisions growing wider and deeper by the day, the pandemic raging with no apparent end in sight, gas and consumer price increases straining household budgets and supply chain issues threatening to upend parents efforts to deliver on those coveted toys, lets strive to give our fellow Americans the gifts of civility and compassion. If a world at war could suspend hostilities for a Christmas truce in 1914, surely one month of peace among neighbors is possible.

I was struck by a Letter to the Editor I read the other day in which Scott Davis recounts a recent experience with a stranger at a Westborough coffee and sandwich shop. He said he held the door for a woman who had reached the entrance about the same time. Once through the first door, she offered to hold the second door to let Davis go so he would not lose his rightful place in line. He insisted she go ahead. When he finally reached the counter to place his order, he was pleasantly surprised to find she had left money with the cashier toward his order.

Kindness is contagious, but we seem to be mired in the opposite. With everything else happening, the mad pace of the holiday season is unlikely to help matters.

Here are a couple of ideas to consider and triggers to watch out for to help smooth some rough patches.

Recognize the annual War on Christmas battle cry for what it is: a myth. Christmas remains the countys favorite national holiday, celebrated by more than 85 percent of the nation. Among the obvious holidays in the Happy Holidays greeting, Christmas is the elephant in the room. What has been mischaracterized as a war is little more than a marketing strategy to be more inclusive and boost the bottomlines of corporations, not necessarily in that order.

And when individuals use the generic greeting, we mean no disrespect. Im specific only with people I know or when I have a reasonably good idea which holiday they observe. Most people I know would rather be greeted with a sincere, Happy Holidays, than an insincere Merry Christmas. If every Merry Christmas utterance is nothing more than a shot fired in a mini-battle against political correctness, than the greeting is really more for the well-wishers benefit than the person being wished well.

Santa Claus is another area of potential conflict in the Christmas culture wars. Can St. Nick be Black? Disney and Mondelez International seem to think so. Disney plans to feature a Black Santa Claus in Christmas celebrations at both its Disneyworld and Disneyland resorts this year. Mondelez, parent company of Nabisco and maker of the worlds most popular cookie, features a Black Santa in a U.S. television advertisement for Oreos.

Santa Claus is a concept, not a person, whose giving and caring qualities are found in people all over the world.

Were pretty good at the giving, as evidenced by the tons of gifts exchanged every year. Lets work a little harder at the caring. If we can get through this holiday season on our best behavior, a year-round Christmas season might be a good thing.

Go here to see the original:
Winston W. Wiley: Were pretty good at giving, but need to work harder at caring - Worcester Telegram

Happy Thanksgiving, folks! Today is legitimately a great day for sports. Were going to use this as our thread for erything, so feel free to chime in the NFL games, Bama Hoops, and some great evening college football (and both games should be great ones).

All schedules below are in Gods Right and Proper Central Standard Time:

Bears at Lions (11:30 Fox) Matt Nagy is allegedly fired after this game, win or lose. Maybe Da Bears will show some signs of life against the NFLs only winless team?

Raiders at Cowboys (3:30 CBS) I heard you like some Bama? The Raiders have about 81 Alabama players on their roster. Thats worth it, right?

Buffalo at New Orleans (7:20 NBC) Two defensive teams with some curious, bad losses and outright flirting with .500 and both were early Super Bowl contenders. Sigh, Buffalo gonna Buffalo.

No. 10 Alabama vs. Iona (4:30 ESPN) If the Ruggs-less Raiders make you sad, then definitely tune in to this one which you should do anyway. Rick Pitinos Iona Gaels are a far more athletic team this year than the one that Alabama faced just 8 months ago in the NCAA Tournament. The Tide havent quite gelled on defense yet, and the halfcourt offense needs more work, so this road trip is by no means a gimme, no matter that ranking beside Alabamas name. Another good quality opponent to test the Tide before it begins a brutal stretch against the likes of Gonzaga, Baylor, Houston, and Memphis. If you missed Parkers primer on the ESPN Invitational, and want a thorough preview, check that out here.

Turkey Day Classic (Tuskegee at Alabama State) ESPN+ 2:00 One of the most heated HBCU rivalries in all the land, and one of its oldest. This is the 97th meeting between the two central Alabama schools, less than 40 miles apart. The animus is very real. e

Fresno State at San Jose State (2:00 Fox/FSN) The surprising Fresno State Bulldogs have already claimed UCLAs pelt, damn near beat Oregon, are in play for the MWC title, and have been in and out of the Top 25 all year. Not bad for a team that was predicted to finish last in its division. Their opposite number was last years MWC surprise, also predicted to finish last, but also nearly winning its conference title and being ranked throughout the year. But this season has seen far more difficulties, as the Spartans have slid back towards a .500ish team with several close losses. Still, SJSU is a dangerous team, with one of the MWCs best secondaries, playing at home vs. a Fresno team that can and has turned it over in droves. This will be a very close contest, no matter the record. And, hey, enjoy DeBoer (FSU) and Brennan (SJSU) now theyll almost certainly be at bigger gigs soon.

Egg Bowl (6:30 ESPN) You cant hype this one much more than its being hyped, and for good reason: Lane Kiffin vs. Mike Leach, both teams ranked, Ole Miss at No. 10, both looking at major bowls. And, my god, the hate. The Iron Bowl, the Red River Rivalry, Cocktail Party, and The Game (OSU/Michigan) may get a lot more press, but I honestly dont think Ive ever seen two teams and two fanbases that legtimately hate one another every day, all day (with such a stark difference in the student body and everyday fan), as much as State and Ole Miss do. There are culture wars, then theres this disaster of loathing.Its always good for the improbableAnd, if youre around on Twitter, Egg Bowl meltdowns are amazing.

Dig in!

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Thanksgiving Sports Schedule and Open Thread Bama Hoops, Egg Bowl, and NFL on tap today - Roll 'Bama Roll