May 2024 — Ed Reporter Monthly Email Edition

For 52 years, the regulation known as Title IX has been subject to political winds and judicial rulings, but observers say the Biden Administration’s new attack on the law will sound the death knell for its alleged original intent: the fostering and protection of women’s sports at institutions that accept federal funds. The new regulation is slated to take effect this August.

A five-minute Prager University video on Title IX’s changes shows former Trump Administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos lamenting that “the celebrated law meant to promote opportunities for girls and women has, thanks to progressives, been turned against them.” DeVos points out that Title IX’s 37 words affirming that women “cannot be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial aid, are being twisted to mean something entirely different.”

In 2011, the Obama Administration used Title IX to address alleged problems of sexual assault on college campuses. But DeVos notes in her video that “rather than focusing on prevention, it decided to focus on punishment. The administration used Title IX and its language about preventing discrimination against women as the basis for discriminating against men.”

She explains that Obama-Biden accomplished its goal by requiring schools to assume that the accused in sexual assault cases — mostly men — were guilty until proven innocent. “Students were accused and convicted of sexual assault by their schools without a fair chance to defend themselves.” They had no opportunity to confront their accusers who, as presumed victims, were “shielded by school authorities.”

Traditional Catholic newspaper, The Remnant, reported that “since 2022, Biden’s woke Education Department has been cracking their brains to find ways to widen Title IX to permit transgender athletes to play on female sports teams and to use private spaces for women, including restrooms and locker rooms, as long as these spaces align with the ‘gender identities’ of these gender-confused athletes.

“By dismissing the self-evident reality of biological sex and replacing it with the personal and subjective sense of ‘gender identity,’ the Biden administration is effectively enshrining the lie that ‘you are whatever you think you are or claim you feel’ into federal diktats.”

Liberal spin

According to numerous sources, the new set of Title IX rules encompassing some 1,500 pages will gut the due process protections put in place by the Trump Administration while preserving sexual orientation and transgender identity. But rather than bemoan the Biden assault on Title IX as the threat to women’s sports that many insist it is, liberals are spinning it as the righting of Trump Administration wrongs.

For example, USA Today opined that the Trump-era rules “gave more rights to alleged perpetrators of sexual assault and harassment,” and that they “prevented people accused of sexual harassment, assault, or discrimination from facing repercussions.” But as DeVos detailed in her video, the Trump-issued regulation affirmed that “we must both protect victims of sexual assault and ensure that due process rights are protected. Again, the Biden Administration moved swiftly to undo what we had done, returning to the guilty until proven innocent approach.”

To counter the charge that the Biden regulation will destroy women’s sports by allowing wholesale intrusion by men, liberals rejoice that it is the “first-time prevention of sex discrimination based on gender identity.”

The new rule will also “extend the definition of ‘sex-based harassment’ to include pregnant people on campuses.” [Emphasis added.] While it’s safe to assume this reference is to pregnant women pretending to be men, it’s unclear how it pertains to women playing sports.

As may be expected, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) applauded the new regulation for including “young people who identify as transgender.” The ACLU is apparently unfazed by the harm already being done to young women by transgender men who are stealing their awards and medals and causing them physical harm, which in some cases has proven debilitating.

Instead, the organization’s deputy legal director Louise Melling said: “At a critical time, when trans youth are being used by politicians as a punching bag, the final rule issues an important reminder that schools cannot discriminate based on gender identity, transgender status, or sexual orientation.”

The Biden rule does not specifically dictate that “transgender and nonbinary” students can play on the sports teams that are consistent with their chosen “gender,” but neither does it ban them from doing so. The new rule goes so far as to include in its definition of “harassment” the use of “incorrect pronouns.”

States file suit

On May 6, The Epoch Times reported that “Republican-led states are suing the Biden administration and advising schools to ignore the new federal Title IX changes that expand sex discrimination protection to students who identify as the opposite sex, or transgender.”

The number of states that have filed suit continues to grow, and as of this writing has risen to 22, with Missouri and Arkansas most recently entering the fray. Also fighting back are Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Indiana, which sued the Biden administration on April 30.

As Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti wrote in a statement: “The U.S. Department of Education has no authority to let boys into girls’ locker rooms…. In the decades since its adoption, Title IX has been universally understood to protect the privacy and safety of women in private spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms.”

Oklahoma and Texas have also initiated litigation. The Times quoted Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters as stating: “I’m going to be really clear. President Biden deciding to rewrite Title IX is one of the most radical and illegal moves we’ve ever seen from the federal government.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent a letter to Biden challenging his power to rewrite the law, calling it an “abuse of authority.” He stated: “I am instructing the Texas Education Agency to ignore your illegal dictate…. Your rewrite of Title IX not only exceeds your constitutional authority, but it also tramples laws that I signed to protect the integrity of women’s sports by prohibiting men from competing against female athletes.”

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton says the Biden Administration has not merely broken the law, but “has also interfered with Texas sovereignty.” He charges that the administration has “radically distorted the meaning intended by Congress when the law was made.”

Along with many other states, Florida is refusing to comply with the new regulation ahead of its effective date later this summer. Governor Ron DeSantis posted on X (formerly Twitter) that his state’s response is “we will not comply.” He added: “We are not gonna let Joe Biden try to inject men into women’s activities. We are not gonna let Joe Biden undermine the rights of parents, and we are not gonna let Joe Biden abuse his constitutional authority to try to impose these policies on us here in Florida.”

Some states require parental notification if a child identifies as transgender, and some have banned schools from requiring teachers to use students’ “preferred pronouns.” All these laws run afoul of Biden’s new Title IX rule. See for example Education Reporter’s Title IX in the Crosshairs, June 2022 and Legal Recourse for Saving Kids, March 2024, among other articles.

Legal experts believe the new Title IX rule usurps the power of Congress. Attorney Jonathan Hullihan, who represents the Texas chapter of Citizens Defending Freedom (CDF), told The Epoch Times: “Changing the meaning of sex, and thereby changing the meaning of the law Congress passed, will impact almost every child in America, meaning it would fall under the major questions doctrine.”

The Times explained that “the major questions doctrine is a principle applied in U.S. administrative law cases, which states that courts will presume that Congress does not delegate issues of major political or economic significance to executive agencies.” According to Hullihan, the real issue in the Biden Title IX rewrite concerns “the separation of powers.”

Title IX’s intent

From the time it became law in 1972, the intent of Title IX was trumpeted as providing women an equal opportunity with men to play sports in federally funded education programs. But some conservatives, including the late Phyllis Schlafly, believed other motives were involved; namely, that Title IX was intended to advance women’s sports at the expense of men’s sports, particularly at the college level.

Over the years, Phyllis wrote extensively about Title IX, and in 2008, she addressed its impact on the participation of U.S. athletes in that year’s Olympic summer games in Beijing, China, pointing out that the regulation “crippled our national competitiveness.” She explained:

• Title IX regulations have forced educational institutions to eliminate men’s teams until the number of men and women on sports teams is the same ratio as the number of men and women enrolled in academic classes. In the numerous colleges that are now 60 percent female in academic enrollment, Title IX requires that men’s teams be eliminated until only 40 percent of the athletes are men.
• Title IX quotas have caused the elimination of all but 19 men’s college gymnastics teams. This deprives boys of the scholarship incentive to take up gymnastics as a sport in high school and takes away the competition needed to improve their skills in college.

Phyllis’s report went on to note that Title IX forced the elimination of 467 college wrestling teams, which she contended had little to do with a lack of funding and much to do with feminist ideology “that demands eliminating macho sports in order to meet the foolish Title IX quotas.”

She astutely observed that the downsizing of men’s sports on many college campuses, including men’s swim teams in addition to wrestling and gymnastics teams, likely contributed to the diminished interest of young men in going to college. “Why bother attending college if you can’t play the sport you love?” she asked.

Phyllis further noted that “the devastating outcome in the 2008 Olympics was predictable. America won only one wrestling medal, which was in men’s freestyle wrestling’s lightest-weight class, and it was won by the son of illegal aliens who did not wrestle in college.”

She demonstrated that the other medal winners “did not benefit from any school athletic program,” including female cyclist Kristin Armstrong, who won a gold medal for the U.S. but attended school in Japan where her military family was living. Star gymnast Nastia Liukin, who won five medals, “was born in Russia and trained at her family’s private gymnastics club.” While Liukin attended Southern Methodist University in 2007 and the college bragged about her achievements on its website after the 2008 games, the college had dropped its small women’s gymnastics team and instead had a large women’s rowing team, and so had nothing to offer Liukin. Renowned swimmer Michael Phelps, who won eight gold medals in Beijing, trained privately and didn’t compete on a college team.

Today, Phyllis would recognize the irony in the Biden Administration’s shredding of Title IX. The same school of voices that trumpeted the importance of providing equal opportunity for women in sports are now demanding that biological men be allowed to destroy those opportunities.

Former competitive female swimmer Riley Gaines, who famously lost her NCAA Division I medal to transgender swimmer “Leah” Thomas, sagely pointed out that sex and gender are now equal, and that men will not only be allowed to compete against women but also take academic and athletic scholarships from them. What she failed to note is that only men who pretend to be women are permitted to do this; and that genuine manhood and men’s sports remain under attack by the Left.

As The Remnant article stated: “The recent Biden-administration changes to Title IX are not entirely surprising, given the White House’s recent declaration of Easter Sunday to be ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’ on Good Friday, March 29, besides Biden’s other religiously offensive gaffes.”

And as most Christians would agree, “only the condescending mercy of Jesus Christ, ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life,’ can rescue this beautiful country, and the rest of the world, from falling into ‘the bottomless pit.’

“Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68)

As a result of social and emotional learning (SEL) standards, mental health interventions for school children have become accepted practice among mental health experts, school health centers and personnel, and some parents. For those unfamiliar with the term, SEL involves the manipulation of students’ minds “to embrace CRT, LGBTQ, and other leftist agenda items.” (See Education Reporter, September 2023). It has also opened the door to a whole spectrum of mostly unnecessary mental health diagnostic tests and treatment for schoolchildren.

SEL notwithstanding, this push to diagnose, treat and/or medicate virtually every child is the logical conclusion to decades of government meddling in students’ psyches (as described by Phyllis Schlafly in her March 2005 report). As usual, Phyllis was way ahead of her time in predicting that all children would ultimately be subjected to mental health screenings and that the “pharmaceutical corporations [were] gearing up for bigger sales of antidepressant and psychostimulant drugs.”

A brief Google search on mental health for young people results in a plethora of sites advocating for increased mental health awareness and interventions. The CDC, for example, offers a few common-sense sentences on the topic, e.g., “Being mentally healthy during childhood means reaching developmental and emotional milestones and learning healthy social skills and how to cope when there are problems. Mentally healthy children have a positive quality of life and can function well at home, in school, and in their communities.”

But then the CDC cuts to the chase:

• Mental health is not simply the absence of a mental disorder. Children who don’t have a mental disorder might differ in how well they are doing, and children who have the same diagnosed mental disorder might differ in their strengths and weaknesses in how they are developing and coping, and in their quality of life. Mental health as a continuum and the identification of specific mental disorders are both ways to understand how well children are doing.

This paragraph may be construed to mean literally anything; from finding excuses to medicate rambunctious students to unfairly labeling those who resist political indoctrination or struggle with reading because their schools won’t teach the phonics method. The process now is to diagnose most kids with some type of malady, be it ADHD, anxiety, depression, or another behavioral disorder.

A May 6 New York Times (NYT) headline asks “Are We Talking Too Much About Mental Health?” after which the article acknowledges the growth of mental health services for children and teens. It notes that teens often “narrate their psychiatric diagnosis and treatment on TikTok and Instagram,” indicating that such diagnoses have become something of a badge of honor to be flaunted by kids on social media.

The NYT reports that school districts alarmed by students’ anxiety and distress “are introducing preventive coursework in emotional self-regulation and mindfulness.” A logical question might be what further academic lessons will be sacrificed on the altar of leftist agenda items, now including “preventive coursework,” and how much lower will the already compromised NAEP assessment scores fall as a result?

Researchers sound alarm

The NYT reported that some researchers in the United Kingdom and Australia found that “awareness campaigns” about mental illness help some who truly need treatment but negatively affect others, “leading them to over-interpret their symptoms and see themselves as more troubled than they are.”

According to these researchers, trials of school-based mental health interventions showed that students “who underwent training in the basics of mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy did not emerge healthier than peers who did not participate, and some were worse off, at least for a while.”

New research in the U.S. shows that “self-labeling” among young people as depressed or anxious “is associated with poor coping skills like avoidance or rumination.” In other words, students who believe or are led to believe that they have mental illnesses such as depression or acute anxiety may actually have less serious problems that nonetheless need to be addressed, preferably by their parents.

Essentially, the cited research found that creating awareness of mental health issues, symptoms, and the implication that students could be suffering from such maladies only served to contribute to an increase in their frequency.

University of Oxford research psychologist, Dr. Lucy Foulkes, believes mental health awareness campaigns create “this message that teenagers are vulnerable, they’re likely to have problems, and the solution is to outsource them to a professional…. It’s possible that something very well-intended has overshot a bit and needs to be brought back in.”

Ultimately, the NYT comes around to the prevailing wisdom that mental health interventions for young people are nonetheless necessary. Among others, the article quotes Dr. Andrew J. Gerber, president and medical director of Silver Hill Hospital and a practicing child and adolescent psychiatrist as stating: “Really, if you think about almost everything we do in schools, we don’t have great evidence for it working. That doesn’t mean we don’t do it. It just means that we’re constantly thinking about ways to improve it.”

Therapy causing misery

Abigail Shrier, author of Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up (see Book Review, this issue), told Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade: “No one’s had more therapy than the rising generation.”

An article on Bizpac Review.com described Shrier’s March interview with Kilmeade, whose show appears on the Fox News Channel. Shrier said:

• No one’s had more psych meds. No one’s had more talk about feelings … No one has had more therapeutic parenting and therapeutic intervention in school, social-emotional learning, and you know what? It’s not doing them any good. In fact, I would argue it’s counterproductive. It’s making them worse.

Shrier believes even well-intentioned therapists aren’t helping. She calls them “arsonists” who claim they’re “just the firemen responding to the fire” that the mental health community contends is the crisis situation facing today’s youth. “We have let these kids become so frantic and so worried, and then we bring in these mental health experts … supposedly as the solution,” Shrier said. “They’re not the solution. They are the worry-makers, and they’re creating the problem.”

Although perhaps not surprising, Shrier found in researching her book that the political leanings of parents have an impact on their children’s emotional wellbeing. She found that while teen girls from liberal families “do the worst in terms of mental health” regarding anxiety and depression, studies show that teen boys from liberal families “have worse mental health in terms of anxiety and depression than teen girls from conservative families.”

Schrier assured Kilmeade that therapy and medication are necessary for some kids, but that “every medical intervention, every drug — even Tylenol — comes with risk, and therapy does too.”

Apparently, the unconventional billionaire Elon Musk shares Shrier’s misgivings about psychological manipulation. He posted this directive on X (twitter.com) in February: “Put ‘Never Went to Therapy’ on my gravestone.” Musk is the father of 11 children and claims to have never graced a psychiatrist’s couch. It may be fair to speculate that his children are being spared mental health interventions as well.

Plying kids with nosy questionnaires

In her 2005 report, Phyllis Schlafly described the “New Freedom Commission on Mental Health,” which was created by an executive order of President George W. Bush in 2002. The report that followed in 2003 decreed: “Schools must be partners in the mental health care of our children. Schools are in a key position to identify mental health problems early and to provide a link to appropriate services.”

The Commission’s report called for “‘routine and comprehensive testing’ and mental health screening of every child in America, including preschoolers,” and recommended “linkage” of these tests with “state of the art treatments.” Phyllis pointed out that this meant “prescribing more expensive patented antidepressants and psychostimulant drugs such as Ritalin.”

A key part of the screening program was what she called “nosy questionnaires,” which were little more than the data mining of a child’s personal attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. For years, Phyllis warned about these intrusive surveys, and her 2005 report provided as an example a Columbia University program called “TeenScreen,” which featured a survey containing leading questions about students’ feelings. A few sample questions included:

• Have you often felt very nervous or uncomfortable when you have been with a group of children or young people, say, like in the lunchroom at school or at a party?
• Has there been a time when nothing was fun for you and you just weren’t interested in anything?
• Has there been a time when you felt you couldn’t do anything well or that you weren’t as good-looking or as smart as other people?

Over the years, these questionnaires grew ever more inappropriate, with questions about children’s sexual habits and views, practices, and experiences becoming standard fare, as well as intrusive questions about family life, religious beliefs, etc. All this data ends up stored in vast government and private sector databases that will be linked together, with the goal of following (and controlling) kids throughout their lives. (See Education Reporter, September 2022.)

As Phyllis noted many years ago and experts like Abigail Schrier echo today, the reality is that parents’ rights are being sacrificed on the altar of mental health. Phyllis wrote in 2005:

• The real issue is the fundamental right of parents to decide what medical treatment is appropriate for their own children. Coerced mental health screening programs have no place in a free society. Neither does coerced medication. The government does not own you or your children, and it has no legitimate authority to interfere in your family’s intimate health matters.

But purveyors of mental health awareness campaigns, including so-called “mental health fairs,” justified psychological intervention and treatment to the NYT: “It’s not ‘You need it, and you don’t.’ We want everyone to have it, because you just never know.” [Emphasis added.] And so the juggernaut rolls on.

In April, the journal Educational Psychology Review published the results of a new study showing that private schools, and especially religious private schools, are more likely to turn out students better educated in civics.

University of Arkansas Professor Patrick Wolf and M. Danish Shakeel, a professor at the University of Buckingham in the U.K., along with several graduate student assistants, conducted the statistical meta-analysis. According to the researchers, such analyses have seldom been done to verify [or refute] claims that “government-operated schools are more effective than private schools at promoting such civic values as political tolerance, political participation, civic knowledge and skills, and voluntarism and social capital (i.e., community engagement).”

Private school proponents have consistently rejected these claims, pointing out that their schools are “voluntaristic community institutions responsive to parents,” and as such do better than government-run public schools in promoting positive civic outcomes. This study effectively refutes the claims of government school proponents and affirms those of private school supporters.

Encouraging evidence

The meta-analysis identified “the average association between private schooling and measures of four central civic outcomes: political tolerance, political participation, civic knowledge and skills, and voluntarism and social capital.”

The researchers explained that they identified 13,301 initial target studies, ultimately yielding 531 effects from 57 qualified studies drawing from 40 different databases. “Using Robust Variance Estimation,” they wrote, “we determine that, on average, private schooling boosts any civic outcome by 0.055 standard deviations over public schooling,” which is “statistically significant” with a “greater than 99 percent confidence.”

The study concluded that “religious private schooling is strongly associated with positive civic outcomes. Claims that private schooling imperils democracy are inconsistent with this empirical evidence.”

In an April email commenting on the study’s findings, the Foundation for Economic Education’s (FEE) Kerry McDonald wrote: “This study is particularly timely, given the continued expansion of private school-choice programs across the U.S. ….” She singled out Iowa’s 2023 approval of a universal school choice program as a shining example of what states can do in response to parents’ demands for alternative learning opportunities for their children. “That [program] provides each student with an education savings account (ESA) of about $7,500 per year,” she explained.

McDonald observed that educational entrepreneurship is already ramping up in Iowa, using as example the Empigo Academy, “a faith-based high school focused on career technical education (CTE)” which will open in Des Moines in fall 2024. Supporters of the Iowa choice program posit that more options will follow which otherwise may not have been feasible prior to passage of the Education Savings Account (ESA) program.

Empigo’s website states that it is “an independently accredited high school that prioritizes Career and Technical Education (CTE),” emphasizing that the school will use technology, build with a framework of entrepreneurship, all of which will be “rooted in biblical truth within a Christ-centered environment.” The school is partnering with the Iowa Association of Christian Schools and Christian Schools International. Parents may fill out an enrollment request form online.

Champions of civics

One organization that is championing the cause of sound K-12 social studies standards in U.S. schools is the Civics Alliance, “a coalition of individuals dedicated to reforming civics education.” The organization’s mission is to “preserve and improve America’s civics education.”

Convened by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), the Alliance brings together education reformers, policymakers, and ordinary citizens interested in preserving a civics curriculum that teaches students to take pride in their exceptional heritage of freedom. They believe a proper civics education should include “all of America’s foundational ideals,” starting with “how our constitutional order was framed to secure Americans’ liberty within the framework of an enduring republic.”

The Alliance acknowledges that the teaching of American civics today faces a grave risk, which is the subordination of traditional civics education to the progressive left to be turned into “a recruitment tool.”

In facing this threat, the Alliance works to influence and help formulate civics education policy at the federal, state, and local levels, and they periodically issue updates on their progress.

Civics Alliance updates

The Alliance’s current update reports that Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds recently signed into law House File 2545 (HF 2545), which directs the Iowa State Board of Education to review and revise the state’s social studies standards. The revisions will “focus on United States history, government, founding philosophies and principles, important historical figures, western civilization, and civics.” The Alliance further notes: “HF 2545 details at length what Iowa social studies standards should look like. In doing so, it sketches a necessary and wonderful strengthening of Iowa’s public K-12 social studies education.”

Both the Civics Alliance and the NAS provided model legislation that helped in the formulation of the new Iowa standards, including the Social Studies Curriculum Act, the Civics Course Act, the Western Civilization Act, and the United States History Act, which Iowa policymakers adapted to suit their state.

The Iowa State Board of Education is now tasked with putting the law into effect, which the Alliance urges not be delegated to Department of Education administrators. “Entrusting the Department of Education with this revision is an invitation to bureaucratic noncompliance with the spirit of HF 2545,” they cautioned.

Additionally, the Alliance has submitted public comment on new social studies standards in Oregon and Idaho. As may be expected, the Oregon standards are “terribly radical,” while Idaho’s are “reasonable — not too politicized, could be more rigorous, but like night and day compared with Oregon’s.” The Alliance advised its supporters to “look at Oregon’s social studies standards to get a sense of what the radical template is; they should look at Idaho’s to get a sense of what’s okay, even if it could be improved.”

Conservative parents and activists may find comfort in the fact that an organization like the Civics Alliance is working at various levels of government to reform civics and social studies standards and curricula, including providing “Constitution Week” lesson plans, model legislation, and toolkits for federal, state, and local policymakers.

The Alliance now has affiliates in ten states: Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas, and invites interested persons who would like to form such an organization in their states to contact David Randall by email at randall@nas.org.

(Fourth in our series of recommended reading lists for children of all ages. We will continue this feature in Education Reporter until all our lists have been republished. — Ed.)

Classic children’s books are scarcely to be found in school classrooms and libraries today, so parents must ensure that their kids are reading books that educate, absorb, and entertain in a manner that stimulates curiosity and increases the child’s eagerness to learn about the world.

The following list displays the title, author, year published, and a short content description of each book. This list originally appeared in the May 1997 issue of Education Reporter.

Additional Education Reporter suggested reading lists:

• A Child’s Reading List (February 2024)
• The Ultimate Reading List — Classics that Endure (Part 1) (March 2024)
• The Ultimate Reading List — Classics that Endure (Part 2) (April 2024)
• Children Will Love Discovering Lost Classics (May 2024)
• Bennett’s Reading List (Part 1) (June 2024)
• Bennett’s Reading List (Part 2) (July 2024)
• The Best Children’s Classics (Part 1) (August 2024)
• The Best Children’s Classics (Part 2) (September 2024)
• Recommended High School Reading List (October 2024)

NOTE: Most books on this list can be ordered online through booksellers including:

• Lost Classics Book Company
• ThriftBooks
• Amazon.com : vintage books classics
• Project Gutenberg (Free Archive, eBooks only) Choose (EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle))
  > > > > Send to Kindle to upload ebooks to your Kindle device downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

Children Will Love Discovering Lost Classics

Click the image below to open as a (printable) PDF document

Encouraging state-level news includes Louisiana’s approval of a bill requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in every classroom throughout the state, and Tennessee’s nod to criminalizing adults who help children access gender transition procedures without their parents’ consent. Local news source KJAS.com reported on May 17 that Louisiana “could be the first state” to enact the Ten Commandments legislation. The Louisiana State Senate approved the bill by a majority vote of 30-8, and Governor Jeff Landry is expected to sign it. Utah lawmakers are reportedly considering similar legislation. In Tennessee, an uproar followed the passage of SB 2782, sponsored by state Sen. Janice Bowling. According to multiple news sources, this bill provides that “any adult found recruiting, harboring, or transporting ‘an unemancipated minor’ in Tennessee for the purpose of receiving a prohibited medical procedure related to gender transition would face criminal penalties.” Violators would be charged with a “Class C felony,” which carries a penalty of 3-15 years in prison and fines of up to $10,000. The bill further allows civil action against violators. Phyllis Schlafly Eagles President Ed Martin said: “This is a great law, and we need more laws like this that protect our kids from the terrible leftist insanity and transgender predators.” A companion bill has also been approved that will penalize adults who help minors obtain abortions without parental consent. Its language “mirrors the language in SB 2782.” The only other state to criminalize what some call “abortion trafficking” is Idaho, but pro-life leaders like Martin hope more red states will draft similar bills. In other positive news from Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee has banned public-school employees from keeping secret from parents the information that a child is identifying as a different gender. While his pro-parent, pro-life actions have prompted disgruntled liberals to whine that Governor Lee “will sign anything … just put it in front of him,” conservatives are applauding his courage.

With all the emphasis on mental health screenings and interventions, one organization has a novel idea for de-stressing schoolchildren and encouraging them to be kids. The Child Mind Institute believes youngsters spend too much time indoors on their electronic devices and social media. Instead, they say, kids need to spend more time in nature. Writer Danielle Cohen points out that recent studies show the benefit—even necessity—of spending time outdoors, both for kids and adults. While there is disagreement among researchers as to what constitutes the best outdoor environment, some studies show that “just a picture of greenery can benefit mental health.” And most studies agree that kids who spend time outdoors “are smarter, happier, more attentive, and less anxious than kids who spend more time indoors.” While it may seem obvious why being outside is more beneficial given that past generations of children spent a good deal of their time outdoors, Cohen specifies some of the benefits: “Nature is good for kids minds,” she writes, because the lack of structural play builds confidence, promotes creativity and fuels the imagination, teaches responsibility for protecting nature, gets kids moving rather than sitting on a couch or at a desk, provides a different type of stimulation, and makes kids think. All these factors can naturally reduce stress and fatigue. Finally, says Cohen, “while screen time is the easier, more popular choice, it’s important to set aside time for outdoor play.”

The Satanic Temple (TST) is vowing to place “chaplains” in Florida’s public schools after a new program was signed into law on April 18 by Governor Ron DeSantis allowing volunteer chaplains to act as counselors. HB 931 goes into effect on July 1st, and entitles school districts and charter schools to adopt a policy “to authorize volunteer school chaplains to provide support, services, and programs to students as assigned by the district school board or charter school governing board.” The chaplains must be screened, and students’ parents or legal guardians must provide written consent before a child can receive counseling. While school districts and charter schools aren’t mandated to implement the program, they must provide a list of their volunteer chaplains and include the religious affiliation of each on the school’s website if they decide to participate. Supporters of the law say the chaplains can help students “navigate difficult emotions and situations” and expand available school resources. In lockstep with the governor’s signature was the pledge by TST to provide volunteers, despite DeSantis’s insistence that the Satanists would not be allowed to act as chaplains because “that is not a religion” and does not qualify for participation. The TST disagrees, citing its status with the IRS as “a tax-exempt church.” A similar bill, SB 36, is under consideration in Oklahoma. According to Fox News, when the satanists pledged to place ministers in public schools if SB 36 becomes law, Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters said: “In Oklahoma, we have conservative values. President Joe Biden and the National Education Association want Christianity out of the classroom and are advocating for our kids to have zero morality and faith. Let me be crystal clear: Satanists are not welcome in Oklahoma schools, but they are welcome to go to hell.” More controversy and, potentially, litigation, are almost certain to follow.

A Bill Gates-backed math curriculum called “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction” teaches kids that traditional math education is “White supremacy,” and shows teachers how to become “antiracist math educators.” According to Fox News, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded the curriculum through The Education Trust – West, the California arm of a national organization based in Washington, DC called The Education Trust. The curriculum’s teacher workbook, aptly subtitled “Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction,” provides educators with “exercises to reflect on their own biases to transform their instructional practice.” A review of the 82-page document fails to show any guidance to usable math instruction, such as actual problem solving resulting in fact-based answers. Instead, teachers are told they will learn “essential characteristics of antiracist math educators and critical approaches to dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by making visible the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math.” The workbook asserts that “a focus on getting the ‘right’ answer equals white supremacy” and instead the focus should be on “understanding concepts and reasoning.” How such understanding can happen without ever arriving at a single correct answer in a mathematical problem is not explained. Spokesperson for Parents Defending Education, Nicole Neily, told Fox News that “Gates’ funding the math equity programs is perverse, especially given the success he derived from proficiency in the subject. It’s awful” she continued…. “I mean, [the part where it says] showing your answer in math class is White supremacy culture.” A sobering and frightening statistic for concerned parents and math educators is that, according to Education Week, about 40 percent of Gates’ K-12 education budget goes into math. In 2022, this translated into more than $1 billion in funding for so-called math education. In reality, this mode of “education” is little more than leftist indoctrination which has as its goal the creation of social justice warriors rather than students who are in any way proficient in math.