The NY Posts wants to tell us about "Pornography Literacy: An intersectional focus on mainstream porn" — a health and sexuality workshop at Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School.

I'm trying to read "Columbia Prep students and parents reel after class on ‘porn literacy.'"

This article is written in a cutesy style that obscures the subject and prods us to become outraged before we can even understand what exactly this class was. As you can tell from the title, the emphasis is on how the students and their parents reacted to something that they had trouble understanding. It's pretty irritating to read the news in the form of trying to understand something through the lens of other people's incomprehension and outrage. 

We do learn in the third paragraph that the students were juniors — that is, they were 16 and 17 year olds. Presumably, they've all seen plenty of pornography and have either engaged in sexual intercourse already or encounter a great deal of pressure to do so. It seems to me that "pornography literacy" is a good educational topic for this group. Kids can get a lot of distorted notions from pornography, and pornography can turn them away from real relationships or make them harmful or dangerous within relationships. 

I'm imagining an idealized class on this subject, and it seems easily defensible. But what did this particular teacher — Justine Ang Fonte  — teach? 

[The class included] how porn takes care of “three big male vulnerabilities”; statistics on the “orgasm gap” showing straight women have far fewer orgasms with their partners than gay men or women; and photos of partially-nude women, some in bondage, to analyze “what is porn and what is art.”

I'm going to guess that some of the slides showed nudes in what was conventionally "high art" — Gustave Klimt, perhaps. The high/low distinction is one of the great intellectual topics. It's impressive if you can get 16 and 17 year olds to think about it seriously. I have no idea how well that topic was presented, of course. I'm just saying this list of topics isn't outraging me.

Fonte’s presentation, some of which was seen by The Post, included a list of the most searched pornographic terms of 2019, including “creampie,” “anal,” “gangbang,” “stepmom” and more. One slide cited various porn genres such as “incest-themed,” consensual or “vanilla,” “barely legal,” and “kink and BDSM” (which included “waterboard electro” torture porn as an example).

“We were all like, ‘What?'” a female student said. “Everyone was texting each other, ‘What the hell is this? It’s so stupid.'"

That sounds like a 16-year-old at school: "What? What the hell is this? It’s so stupid." Whether it's actually stupid is another matter. I would guess that the teacher's idea was that human nature combined with an internet search engine takes you in a dark, sad direction and not where one might find love and happiness.

One part of the porn presentation involved something called the “marketability of Only Fans,” the hot new app used mostly for sex work. One slide included a photo of a pretty young woman who appeared to be promoting OnlyFans-type work. “I identify as non-binary,” she is quoted as saying, “but because that hasn’t hit the general consciousness of the adult industry, I say ‘girl,’ because that’s what people who want to buy my content will be looking for.”...

Again, I have to guess what the teacher was attempting to do with this material. The obvious answer is to help young people see how awful it is to take your life in this direction — how awful and how easy. Do the readers of the NY York Post understand how many very young women are engaging in this kind of activity?

[One] parent of a middle-schooler at the pre-K-12th-grade school said, “It’s outrageous that the school is introducing pornography into a mainstream classroom and starting to indoctrinate kids. The goal of this is to disrupt families...."

Junior year is not middle school, so why is this comment in the article? The parent seems to be swinging wildly: The goal of this is to disrupt families. How? Isn't it the pornography and the Only Fans app that are disrupting positive human relationships? What's the point of pretending pornography and sex-work apps are not right there for all those teenagers to see and use?

"For the first time in nearly three decades, Alabama will allow yoga to be taught in its public schools, but..."

"... Teachers will be barred from saying the traditional salutation 'namaste' and using Sanskrit names for poses. Chanting is forbidden.... Some conservative groups had called for the prohibition to be preserved, contending that the practice of yoga is inseparable from Hinduism and Buddhism and amounted to a religious activity.... [Amendments added to the bill] require parents to sign a permission slip for students to practice yoga. They also bar school personnel from using 'hypnosis, the induction of a dissociative mental state, guided imagery, meditation or any aspect of Eastern philosophy.'... The [1993] ban was enacted after parents in the state raised concerns not only about yoga, but also about hypnotism and 'psychotherapeutic techniques.'... [O]ne mother in Birmingham said her child had brought a relaxation tape home from school that made a boy 'visibly high'...."

The NYT reports.

I've told you my opinion before. Back in 2016, I had a post, "WaPo seems surprised that people regard yoga in school as an Establishment Clause problem":

The headline is: "Ga. parents, offended by the ‘Far East religion’ of yoga, get ‘Namaste’ banned from school."

In my opinion, it's cultural appropriation and otherizing not to perceive that this is religion.

Commenters [at WaPo] pick up the cue and say things like "Georgia hicks object to 'mindfulness.' Why am I not surprised?"/"They opt for 'mindlessness.'"

Wow. Double otherizing.

"This sounds pretty terrifying to me. It's a country full of alienated people, broken communities, and estranged families. Instead of fixing the broken social fabric..."

"... we are further retreating into our anxious selves and the mental health crises will undoubtedly worsen. Except for the tiny minority of students who can truly benefit from this, the effects of a broad move to online learning on the socialization of young people would be profound and I'd rather not imagine them."

Says one highly rated comment at "Online Schools Are Here to Stay, Even After the Pandemic/Some families have come to prefer stand-alone virtual schools and districts are rushing to accommodate them — though questions about remote learning persist" (NYT). 

Another comment: "If this last year has taught me nothing else, it's that the 'digital world' is not a life worth living, and I am an introvert. I did not exactly have a successful social life in school, but I would still never trade the experience for being a hermit at home. People need to learn to get along with each other now more than ever before. Online school is an acceptable back up for times when in-person schooling is not possible such as when a student is sick, what would otherwise be a snow day, pandemics, travel demands and the like, all of these are better than the prior alternative of no school. But that's all it is, a mediocre substitute for the real thing and real people."

It's worth clicking through to see the photography at the top of the article. I really can't decide what feelings and ideas the NYT meant to highlight. It's a mother enveloping her 11-year-old son in a hug. The sun is on his face and he looks blissful. The text says he suffers from some sort of mental condition that makes him "apprehensive around other students" and that he's loved the on-line school program. But, we're told, he's going back to school, so I'm going to say that the NYT means to say all-encompassing motherly love cannot be the end point. That boy needs to get back into the real world of other kids. Which is what the commenters are saying.

"By intent or blunder, the left and right are colluding to undermine the noble, elusive goal of giving American children the ability to think and argue and act together as citizens."

Concludes George Packer in "Can Civics Save America?/Teaching civics could restore health to American democracy, or inflame our mutual antagonisms" (The Atlantic). 

Civics is at the heart of the struggle to define the meaning of the American idea. Think of the battle lines as 1619 versus 1776—The New York Times Magazine’s project to reframe American history around slavery and its legacy, and the Trump administration’s counterstrike in the form of a thin report on patriotic education....

[O]n April 19 the Department of Education published a proposed rule [citing] “the New York Times’ landmark ‘1619 Project,’” as evidence of a growing acknowledgment of the importance of teaching “both the consequences of slavery, and the significant contributions of Black Americans to our society.” The same discussion praises schools for “working to incorporate anti-racist practices into teaching and learning,” citing the historian and Atlantic contributing writer Ibram X. Kendi.

The rule states that grant applicants must “take into account systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history,” “support the creation of learning environments that validate and reflect the diversity, identity, and experiences of all students,” and “contribute to inclusive, supportive, and identity-safe learning environments.”...

Inclusion” is an uncontestable value, but “validation” and “identity safety” are not the proper goals of education—in certain contexts they might even be in opposition to it.... You don’t have to be Stanley Kurtz of National Review to see progressive orthodoxy in the new rule.

MacKenzie Scott — the unfathomably rich ex-wife of Jeff Bezos — has married again. The new husband is a high school science teacher .

WaPo reports. 

The news of the marriage came out after he signed onto her "giving page," pledging to give away most of his money in his lifetime.  

He writes: 

It is strange to be writing a letter indicating I plan to give away the majority of my wealth during my lifetime, as I have never sought to gather the kind of wealth required to feel like saying such a thing would have particular meaning. I have been a teacher for the majority of my life... And now... I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know—and joining her in a commitment to pass on an enormous financial wealth to serve others.... I have been lucky to find my closest friends in people very unlike me in distinct ways: religion, sexual orientation, race, gender identity, socioeconomic background, you name it. Kindness and a willingness to find commonality despite differences has brought me together with them and changed me for the better....

Who would you marry if you were a woman who not only had absolutely no use for extra money but only for a partner — companion — to help or stand by while you give your massive money away? 

At WaPo, which is owned by MacKenzie Scott's ex-husband, the article has this in the comments:

MacKenzie Scott married a teacher. Just when I didn't think your star could rise any higher.... Please, both of you, show us how it's done. And, I say this with heartfelt gratitude: thank you for your service-minded contributions. (Bezos? You, not so much.) 

Somebody else steps on the sentimentality:

Uh, don't get too excited. Lakeside is the most expensive private school in the Seattle area ... its campus looks like an elite university. The students are some of the most wealthy and privileged kids in the nation. So, I mean -- yeah, great, he's a teacher, but let's not pretend that he's toiling away in the public schools with low-income black kids.

"It's maddening to watch the liberals who insisted for months that we should 'follow the science' reject the overwhelming scientific evidence that schools can reopen safely."

"Conservatives have argued for years that liberals don't actually care about science and only pretend to when it's convenient for the advancement of their political agenda. It appears that they had a point." 

A commenter named Jadon writes, at "School Closures Have Failed America’s Children As many as three million children have gotten no education for nearly a year" by Nicholas Kristof (NYT).

Why are college students ever trusted to run their own lives?

I'm reading "Expecting Students to Play It Safe if Colleges Reopen Is a Fantasy/Safety plans border on delusional and could lead to outbreaks of Covid-19 among students, faculty and staff" by Laurence Steinberg (a psychology professor who wrote a book called "Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence').

Most types of risky behavior — reckless driving, criminal activity, fighting, unsafe sex and binge drinking, to name just a few — peak during the late teens and early 20s.... Under calm conditions, college-age individuals can control their impulses as well as their elders, but when they are emotionally aroused, they evince the poor self-control of teenagers.... But it’s hard to think of an age during which risky behavior is more common and harder to deter than between 18 and 24....

My pessimistic prediction is that the college and university reopening strategies under consideration will work for a few weeks before their effectiveness fizzles out. By then, many students will have become cavalier about wearing masks and sanitizing their hands. They will ignore social distancing guidelines when they want to hug old friends they run into on the way to class. They will venture out of their “families” and begin partying in their hallways with classmates from other clusters, and soon after, with those who live on other floors, in other dorms, or off campus. They will get drunk and hang out and hook up with people they don’t know well. And infections on campus — not only among students, but among the adults who come into contact with them — will begin to increase....

[U]niversities must be informed by what developmental science has taught us about how adolescents and young adults think. As someone who is well-versed in this literature, I will ask to teach remotely for the time being.

We need to keep these little monsters locked up until they're 25. Who knows what they will do with their freedom? They might party in their hallways and become cavalier about wearing masks and sanitizing their hands. There's no end to the dangers of freedom. You really cannot trust people to put safety first, week after week, month after month. At some point, they will hang out and hook up.

"What does all of this mean for colleges suddenly forced to move online because of the coronavirus pandemic?"

"The only thing they can create right now is distance.... They do not have the time or resources necessary to map out the rest of their courses and build online versions on the fly that can accommodate large numbers of students. They will not be able to train their teachers how to teach or their learners how to learn. There will be little personalization.... [I]t’s a mistake to say that colleges will be 'moving to online education.' All they’ll really be doing is conducting traditional education at a distance. That will be hard enough."

From "Everybody Ready for the Big Migration to Online College? Actually, No/One consequence of coronavirus: It will become more apparent that good online education is easier said than done" by Kevin Carey (NYT).

Carey is the author of "The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere" (2016). He's for on-line education.

"Singapore, which has been heralded for its response to Covid-19, decided that closing schools would do more harm than good."

"Political leaders and health officials there have addressed concerns about Covid-19 through clear, consistent and transparent communications about their response to the virus. If schools remain open, officials could enact measures to limit any potential spread among children and staff. All students could be checked daily for fever, a possible sign of Covid-19 infection. Even more attention should be given to hand washing and reminding children not to touch their faces. Children should be taught to sneeze into their sleeves. Schools can consider changing seating arrangements to keep children six feet apart.... Nonetheless, government officials may feel pressure to close schools. For true effectiveness... [c]hildren couldn’t gather in other settings, which would be very difficult to enforce. If schools close, child care programs will likely close too and working parents may have to stay home to watch their children. Health care and critical infrastructure workers would not be able to do their jobs for the same reason...."

Writes Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in NYT.

Are classrooms big enough to put all the children 6 feet away from any other child? That strikes me as absurd, but the main message I'm seeing from this column is that schools are better than families at keeping an eye on children and controlling them. And also schools are childcare facilities, and if they shut down, vast numbers of adults won't be able to go to work, and that will have a terrible effect not just on the economy but on the provision of health care services.

Smart kids

 

“The smartest kid in class, by contrast, is not an expensive problem. A boy or girl who finishes an assignment early can be handed a book and told to read quietly while the teacher works on getting other children caught up. What would clearly be neglect if it happened to a special-needs child tends to look different if the child is gifted: Being left alone might even feel like a reward, an acknowledgment of being a fast learner.”

When I came across that in a recent Boston Globe pieceon educating gifted kids, I had to laugh. Having once been the smartest kid in my public school class, I was anything but a cheap problem to fix; in fact, my parents ended up sending me to a private school to finish high school. I’m a great example of high intellect swamped by low expectations.

Fast-forward a generation to my own kids’ educations. You would think it would be better, but it’s not. Gifted and talented programs—all the rage before No Child Left Behind—have (if they still exist at all) become shock troops in the military boarding school approach to education we’ve adopted. More seat work, more homework, no time for things like art and music.

Busy work is the bane of the bright child’s existence. It teaches him to blow off his homework and rely on test-taking skills to get by. Moreover, it ignores developing the synthetic, intuitive parts of his brain, which are developedby studying art and music, and, yes, by daydreaming.

I have a friend who’s a classicist, living in penury as an adjunct professor. I’ve often thought that our school district should send three kids to her and pay her the roughly $65,000 it gets for educating them for a year. After four years, they would know history, music, the arts, Greek and Latin.

And before you tell me that’s not enough, America was built by people with exactly that education.

Message me if you want information about next year’s classes and workshops.