Category: Top Stories

This content was originally published here.

This content was originally published here.

I always struggled with math. It was something that just seemed to be a roadblock for me. My parents never understood why I didn’t get math. My Dad is a genius at math and can do complex mathematical equations in his head. My mum is an elementary school teacher and took it personally that I never memorize my multiplication tables. They saw how I was intelligent and gifted in many other things but didn’t understand how I could just not get math. I was constantly being accused that I was just being lazy, that if I tried harder and practiced I would get it.

In high school, I was able to pass my math classes with the help of a lot of tutoring and completing homework assignments. But when it came to the tests, I failed most of them. When I started college I had to take a placement test. Because I have trouble with math, especially without using a calculator, I was placed in the lowest math class. I had to take math classes for three years before I was able to reach college algebra and I swear to this day that the teacher took pity on me and gave me just enough points on my final to pass the class with a C.

When I graduated from college with my BA in English, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. I eventually decided that I was going to try and get into teaching. I wanted to teach English in a high school setting. To do this, I had to take the California standard test which they call the “CBEST.” The CBEST test determines your ability in math, English, and writing. I got a very high score on my English and writing, however, I missed passing my math portion by a couple of points. The math portion had to be done without a calculator and I always seemed to make simple mistakes on the exam. The numbers seemed to always switch on me and it would take me forever to do a problem due to counting on my hands or trying to do multiplication or fractions. I felt so insecure, like everyone was judging me.

I tried taking the CBEST two more times in the course of about 10 years. As I watched my peers move into their careers and life, I continued to fail. I wasn’t even able to apply for grad school and a teaching credential program without passing the CBEST, even though I was going for a single-subject English credential. During that time, I worked in a high school as a paraeducator, never quite making enough money to move out of my parents’ house. I felt “stupid” and stuck in my education and career.

It wasn’t until I was getting diagnosed with autism as an adult that I found out about dyscalculia. Dyscalculia is a specific learning disability in math. It’s associated with significant difficulty understanding numbers and working with mathematical concepts. It’s kind of like math dyslexia. Dyscalculia often co-occurs with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia. Some of the symptoms include difficulty with:

• memorizing math facts
• planning and being on time
• counting backward
• reversing or transposing numbers
• spelling issues
• directions or knowing left from right
• remembering names and dates
• calculating tips at restaurants
• fractions and place values

When I saw this list, I had never felt more seen. I had trouble with all these things and always felt like I was “stupid” because of it. I never thought it was because of a learning disability.

My story isn’t the only one like this. Dyscalculia can often be a big barrier and hold people back when pursuing higher education. It can affect being able to pursue career paths that aren’t focused on math just because of certain testing requirements. It is not realistic to not have a calculator when doing math. Even in retail jobs, when using “simple math” such as making change, you often have a computer to tell you what change to give back. If the computer does not tell you, often calculators are available to help.

Yes, math is important in our society. However, having a learning disability in math shouldn’t hold you back when pursuing a career, especially if math is not the focus or will not be used in the position. There should also be accommodations for these tests, such as the ability to use a calculator, and being provided certain math formulas and extra time.

This past year, due to the teacher shortage, I was able to get my CBEST waived due to the college classes I had taken. I am finally able to start furthering my education and get into the career I’ve been wanting for many years. While I’m extremely thankful that a math test will no longer determine my future, I’m also upset because of all the years I lost trying to pass a math test that wasn’t designed for people like me.

Do you have dyscalculia? How has it affected your access to higher education or a career?

This content was originally published here.

What H.L. Mencken thought was the case in his day likely remains the case today: Public schools have “done more harm than good.” How could they not, Mencken asked. Having taken the “care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs,” the politicians of his day had “thrown” the entire matter into the hands of “irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.”

Our current battles over public education, while very intense, are not necessarily new. The same might be said of the concerns expressed and questions raised by critics and skeptics of our public school system. Well, almost the same things might be said, but not quite.

Both “almost” and “not quite” must be emphasized when one of the critics/skeptics was none other than that ultimate wordsmith/curmudgeon, H. L. Mencken. Nearly a century ago Mencken let it be known that he had had it with what passed for education in our public schools.

At issue for Mr. Mencken was both the raid on the taxpayer and the content of the schooling. The “greatest hold up of them all” was the cost, which he estimated had been “$5 per capita per annum” in 1880, but which had skyrocketed to $100 as of 1933. In no other field of government, he railed, had “expenditures leaped ahead at such a rate.” The only possible explanation, was that “pedagogues” and their public schools had gone on a “joy ride.”

What was even worse was that the “true aim of the pedagogue” was to force their “victim into a mold,” rather than awaken in their charges anything approaching “independent and logical thought.”

Besides, every fall there arrives a “craze for some new solution to the teaching enigma.” Why? Because there is “no sure cure so idiotic that some superintendent of schools will not swallow it.” And the result? Teaching becomes a “thing in itself, a thing separable from and superior” what was to be taught.

And then what? Mastery of the teaching process becomes a “special business, a sort of transcendental high jumping.” The whole idea was to get a teacher so well-grounded in this business that he could teach any child anything, “just as any sound dentist can pull any tooth out of any jaw.”

In addition, what Mencken determined to have been a very sensible practice had long since been abandoned: “There was a time when pupils who proved to be too stupid to stand up under this machine process were simply dropped from the rolls—at which point they were either apprenticed to a hod-carrier or became a bartender.” But no more. The current practice was to “hang on” to every one of their charges for as long as possible.

Of course, this entire effort to “nullify the plain will of God,” otherwise defined by Mencken as “educating the uneducable,” was quite expensive. After all, it inevitably required a “great array of expensive buildings, a huge horde of expensive quacks, and an immeasurable ocean of buncombe.”

All of this “waste” had to be justified; hence the determination of those in charge to convert teaching into an “elaborate hocus-pocus.” This, in turn, led the “pedagogues” into thinking of themselves as “high-toned professionals, comparable to gynecologists and astrologers.”

And the student, here defined as the “victim” or the “prisoner”? There was a time when he received the “humane treatment accorded other prisoners.” But no more. Now they are treated as “guinea pigs in a low comedy laboratory.”

To add injury to insult, the youth of America were “thrown in” with adults they neither liked nor respected. The average boy of Mencken’s youth—and adulthood—would have much preferred to spend his time with a ballplayer or a boxer. In any case, the notion that students in school are happy was of a piece with the notion that the “lobster in the pot is happy.”

As far as Mr. Mencken was concerned, “cats and dogs do better by their young. So do savages.” Besides, everything taught in a grammar school could be imparted to an “intelligent child in two years”—and all without any “cruelty” worse than that involved in (guess what) “pulling a tooth.”

Did Mencken have a remedy in mind at a time when it had already become an “axiom” that public schools were “beyond challenge, beyond suspicion, and beyond reach of all fact and reason.” Actually, he did.

His solution, such as it was, was direct and draconian: simply declare that there was no money left in the treasury. This, he conceded, was a “desperate remedy,” but he could summon no other.

Is there a remedy today when the “axiom” of Mencken’s day no longer applies—and yet when our public schools are still what Mencken once declared them to be, namely “vast machines for grinding up money” while out to “ram” our young into very different, very damaging “molds” (to borrow once more from Mencken).

Rather than declare today’s governmental treasuries empty, why not offer vouchers to parents instead? Let state legislatures determine what it might cost to educate, say, a seventh grader, which likely will work out to be a good deal more than $5 or even $100, and then let parents choose where to apply that voucher. Who knows, they might even decide to teach their children at home, where they no doubt could cover the material in a lot less time, leaving more time for ballplayers and boxers.

Mencken, I doubt, would have objected. What he thought was the case in his day likely remains the case today: Public schools have “done more harm than good.” How could they not, Mencken asked. Having taken the “care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs,” the politicians of his day had “thrown” the entire matter into the hands of “irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.” What, pray tell, might he add to that today?

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image (detail) is a photograph of H. L. Mencken taken in 1928 and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

This content was originally published here.

This content was originally published here.

This content was originally published here.

Operation Varsity Blues, the recent college admissions scandal that has rocked the nation, has raised many debates around ethics in college admissions. While media attention surrounding this scandal has faded somewhat from the headlines, the negative racialized experiences of Black students (e.g., such as seeing nooses and Confederate statues around campus, having one’s status as a student being called into question by police and culturally insensitive fraternity and sorority functions) remain a prevalent yet under-reported issue.

Several psychological studies suggest that these experiences may cause Black students to question the legitimacy of their success and the extent to which they belong on majority-White college campuses. These aspects of self-doubt are key elements of what is known as the impostor syndrome, the tendency of high-achieving individuals to discount and question the validity of their success. Despite objective markers of achievements, individuals who experience impostor syndrome often attribute their accomplishments to factors beyond their control as opposed to their actual intellect, and work extremely hard to refute fears of failure and phoniness.

Indeed, impostor syndrome is not specific to the experiences of Black college students. However, recent research suggests that Black students may be more vulnerable to experiences of impostor syndrome, particularly in the context of negative racialized experiences, given their minoritized and marginalized status both within academia and society. It is essential that administrators begin to implement strategies to proactively combat impostor syndrome among Black college students within higher education. Left unchecked, impostor syndrome can lead to a myriad of negative consequences, including social isolation, increased burnout and inappropriate career choices.

To this end, we offer three suggestions for administrators to consider relating to impostor syndrome within areas of mental health, academics and campus experiences.

First, impostor syndrome is important for administrators to address, in part because of the wide range of negative mental health consequences associated with internalized beliefs of being a fraud. For example, among students of color, scholars have found impostor syndrome to positively predict a range of negative mental health outcomes, including symptoms of depression, anxiety and interpersonal sensitivity.

Of course, experiencing impostor syndrome does not mean that an individual will develop mental health problems. However, a growing body of research has documented that impostor syndrome may uniquely and disproportionately influence students of color, especially within the college context. Despite this evidence, significant disparities exist to the extent that students of color pursue and utilize mental health services that may serve to reduce impostor syndrome.

Administrators are encouraged to evaluate how their respective campuses are proactively working to minimize gaps in treating students of color. For example, in addition to working to dispel stigma against Black students seeking counseling, consider what efforts are being made to make students of color familiar with services being offered on campus. Moreover, administrators should reflect on how the demographics of counseling staff reflect the diversity of the student body being served.

Second, while impostor syndrome is important to consider because of its relationship with mental health, administrators should also be aware of its negative academic implications. Impostor syndrome has been shown to decrease academic self-concept and self-esteem among White and Black college students.

Administrators can counteract such feelings by providing educational spaces where Black students can feel they have appropriate levels of challenge and support. High levels of challenge (e.g., encouraging students to take advanced classes or participate in new experiences such as study abroad) and high levels of support (e.g., frequently checking in with students to determine their specific needs) may positively impact student outcomes in terms of persistence and degree completion.

When administrators hold students to high academic standards, they must also be willing to hold themselves accountable for helping students meet those goals. Perhaps relatedly, experiences of impostor syndrome may also lead some Black students to avoid pursuing new intellectual opportunities due to a fear of failure. These experiences are a particularly important consideration for first-generation students who may be more unfamiliar with the collegiate context.

Administrators should consider developing initiatives and workshops to address impostor syndrome among Black students. Such programming can specifically focus on helping students to internalize confidence in their intellectual abilities and help them to understand that instances of failure do not equal fraudulence. Moreover, these workshops can dispel negative societal messages that may lead Black students to believe that they are intellectually inadequate and do not belong.

Third, given research to suggest that a sense of belonging among students of color may positively impact their academic success, it is plausible to assume that fostering an inclusive campus environment may help to reduce impostor syndrome. Across the country, Black college students voice feelings of disconnectedness within universities and have discussed how the explicit and implicit institutionalization of racism may create feelings of isolation and rejection from their White peers and professors and within the colleges they attend. Therefore, it is necessary for administrators to prioritize developing culturally engaging campus environments and establishing a welcoming and supportive climate for diverse student groups.

For example, creating opportunities for students to access holistic support from faculty and staff might eliminate the stress of trying to find resources on their own. Also, administrators can humanize their educational environments by developing meaningful relationships with their students and embodying an ethic of care. Ensuring the well-being of Black students requires paying attention to their unique needs or circumstances and responding appropriately at an individual and institutional level.

Although the attention around national scandals may wane over time, feelings of inadequacy remain an everyday reality among Black students. Indeed, impostor syndrome is something all students experience; however, there are specific experiences and implications that administrators need to consider specifically for Black students and other students of color within higher education.

The strategies presented here are just a few of many that administrators can use to positively influence the mental health, academic self-efficacy and campus experiences of Black students. Engaging in such measures is critical to ensuring their academic success and well-being.

Donte Bernard is a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a predoctoral intern at the University of Miami Center for Child Development. Tracie Lowe is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis and a Public Voices Fellow.

This content was originally published here.

Free speech has been under attack for a long time on college campuses. Now more than ever, students and parents need tools to navigate the woke culture within education. 

“I think we see college administrators giving themselves huge powers because … they have these speech codes, where they ban ‘hateful’ speech, ‘offensive’ speech, and sure, that sounds fine, but let’s think who’s defining those terms,” Nicole Neily says. “It’s not a constitutional scholar. It’s some petty tyrant with a huge amount of discretion to pick winners and losers.” 

Neily, the founder of Speech First and Parents Defending Education, two organizations fighting for civil liberties and education in America, joins the podcast to discuss her storied career and commitment to the fight for free speech on college campuses.  

Neily also discusses why she’s sued some of the nation’s largest universities, and the turning point we find ourselves in in America’s education system. 

Listen to the “Problematic Women” podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript:

Lauren Evans: Welcome back to “Problematic Women.” I am blessed to be here with always problematic Nicole Neily in Nashville [Tennessee] at the Heritage Resource Bank. Welcome, Nicole.

Nicole Neily: Thank you for having me.

Evans: So, you have started not one, but two organizations, which seems like two lifetimes worth of work. So, before we even get into the specifics of these organizations, where did this passion for education and civil liberties come from?

Neily: So, funny enough, I have never really liked education. When I worked at [the Cato Institute] many years ago, it was the one issue that I did not want to work on. And so, there is a little bit of self-interest, because I have kids now, and so, that’s one issue.

But also, I mean, personally, my passion for civil liberties comes from the fact that my grandparents on my dad’s side met in an internment camp. They’re Japanese Americans. They were both born in California, and they were imprisoned by the federal government [during World War II]. That saying, “a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it all away.” That, I mean, rings very true to me. And that’s why, one reason, I have really been committed to upholding the rule of law, because I know what happens when that is taken away.

Evans: And so, I want to start with Speech First. This is an organization that you’re still on the board of, but you founded [it], and it really focuses on college campuses and free speech there. What was kind of the inception of that organization and how has it changed throughout the years?

Neily: Sure. So, prior to launching Speech First, I actually ran a group called the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, and it was a state-level investigative journalism organization. And as the president-fundraiser, I was the person who, I’d have to figure out what articles resonated, what topics people were interested in. And the education beat in 2016, 2017, it was when all the shoutdowns were starting to happen, and speakers being disinvited from graduations, etc. And that, really, that resonated with our audience. And I thought that was really interesting. And so, I thought there’s something there, there. And so, I thought, “Let’s go for it.”

And I thought there was an opportunity to be a little bit more aggressive in this space, which played out when we filed our first lawsuit against the University of Michigan. And they hate being sued. And I think so many college campuses, college administrators, they’re used to getting a heads-up. They’re used to getting endless “nasty-grams” from a lawyer. “Don’t do this.” And then, “Sorry, my bad.”

They’ll create a carve-out for a student. They’ll create an exception. They’ll change the policy when people are looking and then change it back when people aren’t looking. They’re not used to being held accountable.

And so, I thought, like, “Let’s just swing first.” I mean, you don’t deserve a heads-up. Your heads-up is a Constitution. And in many cases, schools have consciously sacrificed the First Amendment on the altar of programs like Title IX, and that stinks. We expect our children to go to school and to have their rights upheld, not to have them violated and not to live in fear. And that is unfortunately what’s happening.

And to me, the biggest problem on college campuses these days is chilling. It’s that students are just not having conversations. I mean, when you and I went to college, it’s part of the fun, right? Of being exposed to new people, and you have late-night discussions and debates, and you try to persuade somebody or maybe somebody changes your mind, because you’ve never been exposed to that point of view.

But students are not having that experience on campus today because there are so many topics that are absolutely radioactive, taboo. You can’t talk about abortion. You can’t talk about race. You can’t talk about affirmative action. You can’t talk about gender issues. You can’t talk about Israel. I mean, what is the fun of going to a school like that? And also, I mean, insult to injury, it’s like $50-, 60-, 70,000 a year to not learn to think for yourself, and our children deserve better than that.

Evans: Yeah, no, it’s so important. And especially on college campuses, like you said, where this is where students are supposed to really explore these and really push the boundaries. And Speech First actually just won a lawsuit in April against my alma mater, [the University of Central Florida]. And I think it’s great because I was huge into college activism back at the day.

And you would love this. So, what we used to do is, we used to stand in the “free speech zones,” and we’d stop kids as they were walking by. And then I would say, “Hey, would you mind just walking like 10 feet over.” And we’d walk outside the free speech zone. I’d be like, “I just want to let you know, you’re violating university policy now by being outside.” But that was kind of the extent of it, right? It wasn’t what you were saying, it was where you were saying it.

But now the University of Central Florida was really restricting what kids were saying because it was quote-unquote “hateful.” So, can you explain what that lawsuit did, and why in the 10 years since, has this problem gotten so much worse?

Neily: Sure. I mean, yeah. I think we see college administrators giving themselves huge powers because like you said, they have these speech codes where they ban “hateful” speech, “offensive” speech and sure, that sounds fine, but let’s think who’s defining those terms, right?

It’s not a constitutional scholar. It’s some petty, petty tyrant with a huge amount of discretion to pick winners and losers. And surprise, surprise, what ends up, who ends up being the loser in that situation? It’s the College Republicans, it’s Young Americans for Freedom. It’s Young Americans for Liberty. It’s Students for Life. Those are the views that are unwelcome on campus.

And then you encourage students actually to rat on each other through programs called “bias-response teams.” At [the University of Central Florida], it was called the “Just Knight” response team. But these are programs that we see on college campuses across the country, where universities will have an online reporting portal, where you can anonymously report on the speech of your fellow students. And so, not only can you get in trouble for saying pretty much anything. I mean, when we sued the University of Michigan, they said, “The best indication of bias is your own feelings.” And so it’s super-subjective.

But you can’t even challenge somebody. I mean, you can’t even say, “Well, that’s not true, here’s the context.” And so, if you can get in trouble for saying anything, anytime, anywhere, just out of an abundance of caution, it makes sense to keep your mouth shut, because nobody wants to go through the bureaucratic hassle of going to this star chamber, where it’s made up of a bunch of terrifying college administrators, the campus police, the Title IX office, the provost. That’s a scary thing. And students, I think rightfully fear, “How will this information be used against me in the future? Will I not get a letter of recommendation for law school or med school?”

And so, most students, I think just keep their head down. They keep their mouth shut, and they try to get through the four years without rocking the boat. And that’s unacceptable. And it intentionally chills students’ speech. I mean, it is done with the express purpose of trying to prevent those conversations on campus and that’s flagrantly unconstitutional, which is why we sued [the University of Central Florida].

I mean, if it makes you feel any better, I sued both my alma mater and my husband’s alma mater. They still ask us for money. It’s super-awkward. But when they call, I say, “You know what? I know how much you spent on legal fees last year. That’s a hard no.” And it’s the poor, whoever, student sophomore making $10 an hour through a work-study [job], is like, “OK, thank you.” But I want them to know, and I want that, because they have to write up why people don’t give money, and I want them to know, “I’m disappointed in you for violating civil rights.”

Evans: So, if our listeners are, let’s say, looking at colleges or in college right now, what should they look for in a university that will protect their free speech? And then if they’re already in these colleges, what can they be doing to protect free speech on their campuses?

Neily: Sure. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education [now the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE] has something called their stoplight index. They evaluate about 500 schools every year, looking at their Title IX policies, at their speech policies. And so, I would start there. I mean, it’s a pretty easy ranking system, green are schools that have good policies in the books. Yellow is kind of proceed with caution. Red is obviously very bad.

And then there are private schools, too. I mean, I got my master’s degree from Pepperdine, and Pepperdine makes no bones that they place the tenets of their faith above civil liberties. You know that going into it. There’s a giant 200-foot glowing cross on the campus. Not a surprise.

But I think parents owe it to their children to do due diligence on those schools. Figure out whether there have been incidents on campus. Google, I mean, go to … Campus Reform or College Fix, go to FIRE. Speech First actually just released a big report looking at bias-response teams and how FIRE actually did a report about this in 2017, and they identified 231 schools that have bias-response teams. Speech First found that there are almost 800 at this point. And so these programs are proliferating like mushrooms.

And it’s sad because, I mean, during, at the beginning of COVID, we saw schools realize, well, we have this built-in reporting system, and we’ll just add masks to it. We’ll add vaccines to it. And so it’s, they’re encouraging students snitching on each other, and that’s not a society we want to live in. I mean, that’s East Germany. That’s like Communist China. That’s not America.

And so, I definitely encourage people to do your homework and don’t just go with the school that, in-state tuition or this is great aid package. I mean, you are throwing your child to the wolves if you don’t do the research at the beginning.

So, and if students are in school, public schools, students in public schools have a different set of rights than students in private school.

But that being said, I think, figure out, see something, say something. I mean, if you see that your campus has a crazy policy or something like that, tell people about it, tell FIRE, tell Speech First, tell the Campus Reform so that people can dig into it and ask questions.

I mean, I think bureaucrats, they hate when people actually know what they’re up to. They love to operate behind closed doors and undercover of darkness. And so, when they get questions from outlets like The Daily Signal, it makes them like, “Oh, gosh, this is going to turn into a thing.”

And sometimes they do change policies, and sometimes it’ll take a lawsuit. But don’t be quiet, just to try and get through. You deserve better, and your colleagues deserve better, your friends deserve better, and future students deserve better. And so, don’t let them get away with it, because we know what they’re trying to do, and it’s not OK.

Evans: And one thing I really loved about Speech First, the website is so cool. You could just see a college student going on there and just being so excited. Can you let our listeners know how if they wanted to reach out to Speech First, how they can do that?

Neily: Yeah. The website is speechfirst.org, and they can email info@speechfirst.org. But yeah, we’re very easy to get in touch with, because yeah, we want to help people. I mean, I end up talking, when I ran it, and now Cherice Trump who runs it, talking to students about knowing what their rights are.

I think a lot of students don’t even know what their basic rights are. They enter an institution, and they’re told, “This is how things are,” and they sort of take it, and you shouldn’t take it.

And so just walking through people and empowering them with that knowledge so that when they speak to a campus administrator, when they speak to a state legislator, they’re speaking from a place of knowledge, and that is power in and of itself.

Evans: Well, Nicole, you are so impressive because I don’t know if most people know the amount of work that it takes to get a organization off the ground between the paperwork with the IRS, creating the branding, really building up. So, you not only did that with Speech First, you also did that with Parents Defending Education. How did that start? And what was the pivot from Speech First to Parents Defending Education?

Neily: Sure. So, one thing, a data point that really stuck with in my mind when I was running Speech First, is how few students actually understand the First Amendment. You see polling every year from the Knight Foundation, from Gallup, student support for free speech is decently low. People feel like, “Oh, yes, of course offensive speech should be banned, or hateful speech.” And that’s scary.

And I realized that part of the problem was that students never receive a proper civics education in most cases. And so, if the first time you hear about the First Amendment is, well, this is why Richard Spencer can come to campus. Well, yeah, you’re going to kind of hate that. But if you realize, this is how disenfranchised groups throughout history have been able to persuade others and defend and expand their rights.

It’s how suffragist were able to earn the right to vote. It’s how we were able to defeat slavery. Martin Luther King wrote letters from a Birmingham jail because he had violated a gag order. I mean, that is hugely powerful. And so, once you understand the majesty of that, I think that’s something that is impressive, but the fact that students are not receiving that in K to 12 troubled me a little bit.

And then for me, at the beginning of lockdown—I’m from Chicago, if you can’t tell for my accent, and a lot of my friends, they’re Chicago Democrats. When the schools started to shut, I had people reach out to me because my husband used to do school choice litigation. They’re like, “How do I make my school listen to me? I don’t want the school to close.” And we would sit in our backyard with a glass of wine, like, “Ha, ha. ha. Bless your heart. They don’t care about you.”

“You know what? It was really interesting to me to see my friends realize—”Oh, my gosh, the system is not set up for me. You don’t actually care about my input.” And so that was kind of another data point of seeing how kind of disenfranchised families were.

And then in the wake of George Floyd, we saw district after district around the country send these all district emails to all families. “We are so systemically racist. We commit to being an anti-racist education.” And I think a lot of parents were like, “What the heck is this? Did you just call me racist? What is going on here?”

And I think, I mean, when you and I were growing up, we didn’t get emails like that. I mean, I remember, I was in, I’m old, I was in college during 9/11. And I remember emailing a teacher that morning, and I was like, “I assume class is canceled today.” And that I got a tart response back that said, “Class is on. And if you do not show up, your grade, your grade will reflect accordingly.” But we didn’t get some like University of Illinois-wide email.

And now every district feels the need to weigh in after everything, after school shootings, after the Atlanta spa shooting, after this, after that, the George Floyd verdict, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, “Why are you wading into these issues? Can’t you actually just focus on educating my children?” And so that was kind of just another data point.

And for me, the thing that really flipped the switch, when I said I have to do this, is a district in Chicago. The Wall Street Journal did an interview with the superintendent in Evanston [Illinois], and he said he was going to reopen schools. He was going to allow black and brown children to go back for in-person education before white children, because of anti-racism. And I remember screaming at my computer saying, “Ah, you can’t do this. That’s unconstitutional.”

And I went to a friend, I said, “I want to start Speech First for K to 12. I want to sue these bad guys.” And my friend was like, “Awesome. Yeah, we’re in. But this is kind of like ‘Jaws.’ You’re going to need a bigger boat.” It’s going to have to be bigger than—I mean, Speech First was me, a PR firm, and a law firm.

I look back at our initial business plan and I was like, OK, well, I’ll have maybe two people that I work with. And I bet these school districts don’t even know that they’re violating students’ rights and so, my terrifying law firm will send letters to these school districts, and they will say, “Oh, mea culpa, sorry, we didn’t know that we were doing the wrong thing. We’ll fix it.” And that is not what has happened whatsoever.

I mean, these guys are so dug in on these bad policies. And again with having worked at Cato, my husband doing school choice litigation, I always knew the teachers unions were bad, but I did not understand the extent and the power of the school choice or of the education blob. I mean, I would never have thought two years ago that the national PTA was a captured entity. The School Nurses Association, the School Counselor Association, the Secondary School Principals, what we saw with the National School Board Association, I mean, every single organization in this space is, they’re obsessed with money and power. And our children are just collateral damage in that, but they’re not giving this up without a fight. And so we have had to rise to the occasion.

So, it is one of my colleagues [who] calls herself an accidental activist. And I think that’s kind of what it is like, well, this is the fight that we’re in, and if the schools are not going to put my kids first and it looks like I’m the only one who is going to do it, and let’s help people. And so we started trying to figure out, I assumed again, I’m married to a constitutional lawyer. We have dinner parties where we talk about the 14th Amendment. We are deeply boring people. But I realized most people are not like that. Most people are normal. And so I assumed that there was information out there about your rights and family rights.

And as I kind of did internet research, I thought it really interesting that there’s not a lot of information out there for parents about free speech, about Title VI, about Title IX. And if you look up that information, it is largely actually in the campus setting. I mean, you think about free speech in schools, it’s campus free speech. You think about Title IX, it’s Lea Thomas and collegiate swimmers, or it’s schools getting rid of a wrestling team because we’re not a girls’ wrestling team, but we don’t think about those in the K to 12 setting.

And part of it, I mean, I’m a child of the eighties. I used to watch “GI Joe” cartoons. And they used to end every episode with, like, a little life lesson, like don’t play with downed power lines, but there was this saying, and it was like, “Knowing is half the battle.” And that’s it. If people know what their rights are, then they know where the red lines are. So that if, and when—and unfortunately now, it’s really just a case of when,—when the school crosses those lines, families then know that something has to happen.

And so I want people to feel that they can make a difference, and that they can stand up, and they can be an effective advocate for their child. And part of that comes with knowledge, right? And you’re more empowered.

But then, how do we get people engaged? I mean, I have worked in think tanks in D.C. for a long time. And I think everybody in Washington and kind of the … corridor, we think about like, OK, well, I’ll write it op-ed. And I’ll pitch myself to radio, and I’ll go on TV.

And I mean, for me, my target audience is Bob in Omaha, like a guy who’s making $50,000 a year working a 9 to 5 job, after two years of school closures is trying to not smother his kids or get a divorce, but doesn’t scroll through new discourses on a Tuesday night to read about the Marxist roots of critical race theory. He just sees his kid’s homework assignment and thinks, “What the heck is this? I don’t like it,” but is a little bit scared to do something about it because you say the wrong thing on a hot mic at your school board meeting, and you are the neighborhood Q-Anon quack for the rest of your life.

And so, how can we make it easy for people to get involved? Just very basic things. What is a school board? Why should you run for a school board? How do you write a letter to the editor? So let’s on-ramp these people and meet them where they are. I mean, with big tech throttling all of us, and let’s just email people. Let’s get in their pocket. So, when they’re standing on the side at their kid’s baseball game, they can read through, and they can figure out, “OK, well, it sounds like this is pretty easy.” I can file a public records request.

But we want to empower parents, and we want to give them the confidence to actually speak up for their kids. And I think that’s what we’ve seen over the past few years. And it’s really exciting. I mean, there are now, we now work with over 250 local parent organizations across the country. And these are groups that didn’t exist two years ago. Parents are rising to the occasion because they have realized that the system is not out for them, and it has failed them. And if not me, then who? If not now, then when? And so, it’s really exciting.

Evans: Yeah, that is really exciting. And with the universities, I mean, there’s hundreds of universities around the country, but there’s tens of thousands of schools. So, your organization, I love the way that it is really so decentralized. And it’s such a federal model, where the parents have to be the one who finds these things. So, if you are a parent and something doesn’t pass the sniff test, what can they expect that the next steps with Parents Defending Education would be?

Neily: Yeah, so we have a tip line, and we, since our inception, have been receiving 50 to 200 tips a week from across the country, which is astonishing. And so, I mean, it makes me think of that line, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” We have people who send us stuff with, they can check a box that they want to be anonymous. Almost everybody wants to be anonymous. People are scared. I mean, and I think they rightly fear retaliation both against themselves and their children. And so, we tell their stories. We are the voice for the voiceless, and we shine a light on it.

I mean, like, as the hacks at The Washington Post say, “Democracy dies in darkness.” But the bad guys love, they love to operate behind closed doors. They don’t want people digging into their business, knowing what’s going on.

And so, I don’t know what’s going on in Taos [New Mexico], but a parent there, they’re reading their local paper, and they see something that’s weird, and they can just send us a link. We ask people to send us backup. We don’t want to put hearsay on our website. I’m not super into being sued for defamation. But we ask for a URL or a PDF or a screenshot or something. And then we put it up there.

We don’t need to editorialize. The stuff that our children are being taught or not being taught is horrifying. And reasonable people are appalled by what they see. And then we put it all up on our website, and we pitch it out to the press, because Bob in Omaha doesn’t know how to get something to Tucker Carlson [on the Fox News Channel], but we can.

But once that information is out there, it gives people a reason to act. It gives them a reason to go to a school board meeting and speak up. It gives them a reason to, for a state legislator to say, “Well, this kind of garbage is going on in our state. Let’s do school choice.” And so families have more options.

But the first part is just knowing what is going on. And so, we encourage people just to give us the tips so that we can share with outlets like The Daily Signal or The Daily Wire or places like that. And really, it’s so funny how many districts say, “Oops, that was a mistake.” So many mistakes happening across the country. And it’s largely, they’re caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and they’re embarrassed.

And we love to file public records requests. I mean, after there’s some incident, I like to sometimes just find out how is the district talking about this? They freak out when they get an email from a reporter at The Daily Caller, much less Fox News, or anywhere else. And it makes them think twice.

And I think it’s forcing a level of accountability into the system that is missing for so long. I have a 7 year old and an 8 year old. They come home from school. I ask them what they learned. How was their day? And they say, “We had pizza. It was amazing.” Right? That’s all I get from them. They don’t tell me what they’re learning in science class or math class, or what, so parents, I think, in many cases, are kind of operating in a black box.

And so the fact that now every teacher, before they hand an assignment out, has to think, am I going to get in trouble for this? Is this going to be on a local news tonight? That changes behavior. And same thing for principals. They have to know what is going on in their building, because they’re the ones who are going to get the call from the media. So, it encourages them to keep a closer eye on what their teachers are doing. Same thing with superintendents and school boards. The buck stops with you. You’re going to be voted out of office. Your contract is going to be canceled if there is garbage taking place in your schools.

And so it’s, I think, starting to change the incentive structure for a lot of the bad actors. And then back that up with, we filed two lawsuits over the past year, one in federal court, in Wellesley, Massachusetts. And then we have, we just theoretically won a case in New York, except the bad guys are going to appeal it. And so, to back it up with the threat of litigation. We will hold you accountable for this, and you’ll be dragged through the mud. You’ll be all over national media and yeah, that scares them, and it should scare them because they should be ashamed of what they’re doing.

Evans: And this has been such a slow creep for years, decades even, and it’s really accelerated in the past two years since, since COVID and George Floyd. Do you think the tides have officially turned, and now parents have really woken up and are ready to take back education?

Neily: Yes, I think it’s still an ongoing process. And it’s funny because, it’s like I said, it’s such a developing ecosystem. One thing that we’re trying to be mindful of is all of these activists, they’re not, this is for many of them, it’s their first rodeo. Somebody from Moms for Liberty told me that only about 40% of their moms were even registered to vote two years ago. And so there’s, I think a huge education process going on.

But also we want to be mindful of not having our activists burn out. It’s scary, and it’s hard. I mean, my college roommate unfriended me because of something I, because of my work. I mean, people, people, it’s tough. And so we want to keep people’s spirits up. And we want to show them you’re not alone. This bothers people across the country. This transcends racial lines. It transcends political lines. People across the country are fed up for a number of reasons.

I mean, we have tons of first-generation Americans who reach out to us. They’re mad about the war on merit. I mean, that’s what we saw in the San Francisco school board recall, is like, “How dare you tell my kid that showing your answer in math class is ‘white supremacy’ culture? Teach my kid calculus so he can apply to MIT and have a better life for himself.”

I mean, we have teachers who reach out to us and they’re like, “I don’t want to teach this garbage. I want to get back to the basics. My kids are not at grade level in proficiency.” We have Democrats who reach out to us. They’re like, “I don’t even recognize this. What is going on in schools right now?”

And so there’s this amazing opportunity because there’s so many new audiences that are so, yeah, I think the scales have fallen from their eyes, but I think there’s a lot of work to be done still, because I mean, we are consistently gaslit by the media, right?

We saw in the Virginia election [for governor in 2021], “[Critical race theory] is not being taught in school.” And we would just throw, I mean, the receipts at them. These are, “Well, here are 20 examples of ways that children are being taught to identify themselves based on race and sex.” Call it magical unicorn theory if you want, you’re teaching kids to identify themselves on amenable characteristics and to treat other people differently. That’s evil, and that’s wrong, and that’s unconstitutional.

And so, just to be able to break through that and break through. Yeah, I mean, the kind of mainstream media coverage of this stuff, I think is, it’s an ongoing battle. And also the battle lines are shifting. Last year, almost everything we got in was related to race. This year, in 2022, 50% of what we have this year is actually on gender issues. And, I think, looking at in the wake of the Uvalde [Texas school] shooting, I think we’re going to have an increased push for mental health interventions in school and social emotional learning. And that is a Trojan horse for a lot of the CRT and identity- and bias-education stuff.

And so, the battle’s changing, but it’s not going away, but fortunately, the parents are not going away either. I think, so many people are so fired up now. They get the bit in their teeth. I mean, we have moms who are like, “I found the diversity director’s Twitter feed, and this is what she said.” I mean, there’s like a nation full of little investigative journalists who are keeping an eye on things, which is so exciting because at the end of the day, it’s their backyard, but they’re motivated to clean it up.

And, I think, even for conservatives, so many of us for so long have focused exclusively on the federal government, and COVID really showed us over the past two years, how much power your state and your city have over your day-to-day life. I mean, I went on a business trip from Florida to California to Los Angeles. It was like a tale of two cities. I mean, literally, because what the restrictions were.

I think people are realizing your local government matters, and you have to show up if you don’t like what’s going on. And so, I think that trend is not going away, and so, it’s an exciting time to be involved in all these things.

Evans: Nicole, I could talk all day about education and free speech. This is amazing. But last question, before I let you go, a “Problematic Woman” favorite question, and that is whether or not you consider yourself a feminist and why?

Neily: OK. So, yes, but my definition of feminism is this: I think feminism is not being dependent on anyone, not a husband, not a father, and not the federal government. And so, to me, that is being an empowered feminist. Unfortunately, I think, obviously, the word has been stolen and bastardized by the bad guys, but I think, I want women to be, women are equal, and they can and they should, stand on their own two legs.

I mean, years ago when, I think it was the Obama administration had that whole video, “The Life of Julia,” right? Like we’re going to take care of you from cradle to grave. And it was so super-creepy. That’s dependency. That is the absolute opposite of empowerment. And nobody should want that. That is anti-feminist in my mind. So, the answer is yes, but I realize I’ll probably get in trouble with Inez Stepman. (Stepman is a senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Forum and vocal about her view that conservatives should let go of the word “feminist.”)

Evans: I love that. I love, too, anytime you can be anti-government and pro-feminist at the same time. That’s amazing. Nicole, thank you again. She is founder and former president of Speech First and currently with Parents Defending Education. Thanks, Nicole.

Neily: Thank you.

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This content was originally published here.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, made waves last fall when it announced the so-called metaverse. In a few years, this metaverse could be interoperable networks of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) that blend physical and digital spaces. The technology is not quite there yet, but VR and AR uses have already been entering some higher education classrooms, raising questions about both their major potential and challenges.

“The question boils down to what is the educational value of the technology—and a lot of factors go into that,” said Dr. Jeffrey Pomerantz, an associate professor of practice and online program coordinator at Simmons University. “I really do believe that VR and AR and simulations are potentially very valuable educational technology, but it’s not universal. I would encourage campus leaders to keep the focus on the educational use cases than on the technology.”

Meta Immersive Learning is supporting a “metaversities” project as part of its $150 million commitment to build up this technology. Through this initiative, Meta partnered with VictoryXR, a VR education software company, to launch 10 digital twin campuses. These digital twins are replicas of real campuses that are built in spatial 3D, hosted on a platform called Engage.

“Remote learning is growing and on-campus enrollment is declining, so if the trend is that we will have more remote learners, then we will have to find something better than Zoom, especially for classes like biology, chemistry, and even history,” said Steve Grubbs, CEO of VictoryXR. “Number two is when you think about equity in education, how do you deliver a superior higher education course? Even if the student can’t afford to travel across the country? Over time, we’re confident that this will create more affordable options for students to attend class with great professors in the metaverse.”

Among the 10 metaversities is , a private historically Black men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta. Morehouse representatives were not available to comment in time for this story. With a digital twin campus, students could log online as an avatar and connect with each other socially or in classrooms. Some medical schools have already been using VR or AR to help train students how to operate without at first needing to use a cadaver. Dr. Jeremy Bailenson

Recently, Dr. Jeremy Bailenson, the Thomas More Storke Professor of Communication at Stanford University and founding director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab there, researched what it was like to teach using virtual reality in a college class. His team published a in May looking at group behavior in virtual reality through a longitudinal study in the metaverse, which the paper defined as “the promise of experiences in immersive digital worlds.”

“VR is an incredible medium, but one that requires a large amount of maintenance and attention, compared to a traditional tool such as Zoom,” said Bailenson. “It will remain my medium of choice for teaching about VR, but for other topics, I’d recommend treating VR as a source for field trips (i.e., walking around a sculpture) as opposed to the main infrastructure of a course.”

In a 10-week Stanford course about VR, 81 students in the study were broken up into eight groups and met eight times on a networked platform using VR headsets. Participants filled out questionnaires about their experiences after each session. The researchers found time played a key role.

Qualitative and quantitative data pointed to how the more exposure students had to VR during the study, the more comfortable they became not only with the VR technology but with each other. Bailenson added that the syllabus from this VR course is free online. The syllabus links to assignment details, grading schemes, and other resources for educators to get started.

“We are about to publish a paper on the effect of context–how where you learn changes how you learn, for example indoors versus outdoors, and open spaces compared to constrained ones,” said Bailenson on what research questions his team is exploring next. “In VR one’s location can drastically shift at the touch of a button, and we are testing hundreds of different classroom designs in VR.”

To Dr. John Preston, a professor of sociology at the University of Essex, the metaverse in higher education with Facebook, or Meta, involved brings much darker possibilities. He is the author of Artificial Intelligence in the Capitalist University Academic Labour, Commodification, and Value, and he has written about how Meta’s metaverse could further intensify and exploit the work of instructors.

“I’m really dystopian about the metaverse not because I’m anti-technology,” said Preston. “But because it’s a way to open up universities to further capitalization and increase the exploitation of lecturers—and to use diverse representation in a cynical way in marketing to sell these commodities that actually mostly benefit white executives.”

Preston noted that if lectures are delivered in Meta, for example, those lectures could be the intellectual property of the university or even Meta. And if the lectures are recorded through Meta, surveillance could create conflicts around academic freedom. Class discussions could shift among professors and students if their every move or facial expression is being watched by not only the university but a giant tech company.

“The most revolutionary pedagogies happen in the real world, not online because we can have real-world, sustainability relationships over time to build trust and learn about people’s perspectives,” added Preston.

Dr. Nir Eisikovits is an associate professor of philosophy and director of the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He also raised accessibility questions, particularly how the metaverse could solve problems of the digital divide, which the pandemic highlighted with Zoom instruction.

“You could also end up seeing a three-tiered system where people with more means do the brick-and-mortar education, those in the middle do VR and AR, and those with less means end up with what is called online education,” said Eisikovits. “But what I do think is interesting about this technology is that if these kinds of problems are addressed, it has the potential to revolutionize both online and brick-and-mortar education.”

Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, the Stanley and Debora Lefkowitz Professor of Psychology at Temple University, pointed out that educators should be involved early and often in the development of new metaverse technologies. She noted there is great potential in VR and AR’s uses to foster active learning, though more educators should be in the room when VR design decisions get made.

“The most important nuance to me with the metaverse and education is that learning is not a solo sport,” said Hirsh-Pasek. “This will require professors to be guides and knowledgeable tour-givers of the information that they impart. And it will require us to allow for the variability in student responses so that we can more fully speak to the whole classroom. What we are not asking for is for you to replace professors with an avatar. And I think that is the risk.”

Rebecca Kelliher can be reached at rkelliher@diverseeducation.com.

This content was originally published here.