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Tech-Groomed Totalitarians
As always, Google is data-mining personal information — in schools across America.
Big Tech wants control of your kids.
“An estimated 80 million students and teachers are now signed up for free ‘G Suite for Education’ accounts (formerly known as Google Apps for Education); more than 25 million students and teachers now use Google Chromebooks,” columnist Michelle Malkin reveals. “A Google logon is the key to accessing homework, quizzes, tests, group discussions, presentations, spreadsheets and other ‘seamless communication.’ Without it, students and teachers are locked out of their own virtual classrooms.”
As always, Google is data-mining personal information. Yet when children are the target? Over the past few years, Great Britain has been rocked by a series of “child grooming” scandals. Because many of the predators involved were Muslim men, government investigations — when there were investigations — were filtered through a politically correct lens. Charges of “racism” trumped concerns for sexually exploited children.
Google epitomizes the political correctness that makes it equally impervious to serious scrutiny. “Local administrators, dazzled by ‘digital learning initiatives’ and shiny tech toys, have sold out vulnerable children to Silicon Valley,” Malkin writes. “Educators and parents who expose and oppose this alarmingly intrusive regime are mocked and marginalized. And Beltway politicians, who are holding Senate hearings this week on Big Tech’s consumer privacy breaches, remain clueless or complicit in the wholesale hijacking of school-age kids’ personally identifiable information for endless data mining and future profit.”
British Muslims were grooming sex slaves. Google is grooming totalitarians.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who refused to show up for an initial round of questioning by Congress earlier this month, met last Friday with Republicans — behind closed doors. Republicans want to talk to Pichai about “bias in its search results, violations of user privacy, anti-competitive behavior, and business dealings with repressive regimes like China,” stated Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). In the previous meeting, politicians expressed similar indignation toward Facebook and its data mining, censorship of conservative content, etc. The same Facebook that had 50 million user accounts hacked last month.
Inquiries about one of the most pernicious data heist in the history of the nation? Nowhere to be found.
Why not? Because the politicians are co-conspirators, and have been for quite some time. Common Core was created and copyrighted by two Washington, DC, lobbying organizations “without any input from state legislators, local school boards, teachers or parents,” wrote columnist George Guynn Jr. — five years ago.
The program was sold to individual states coercively: governors were promised large sums of money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a.k.a., the “stimulus” to sign on, and enticed by waivers relieving them of the requirements demanded by No Child Left Behind legislation. If they resisted, they were threatened with a loss of funding. As a result, Common Core was adopted by 46 states.
As of January 2017, some 22 states were revising their curriculums, due in part to parental resistance.
One suspects that resistance would be far more intense if parents were aware that data mining was part of the equation as far back as 2009. While the feds can’t create a national database of student information, stimulus funding also enabled individual states to develop State Longitudinal Database Systems (SLDS), cataloguing data generated by Common Core testing. Two years later, the Obama administration’s Education Department concluded that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act was to be “reinterpreted” to allow the dissemination of that student data to virtually anyone — without written parental consent. A year after that, 24 states and territories reached a deal to proceed with data mining in exchange for grants.
It get worse. A 2010 technical brief released by the National Center for Education Statistics that served as a guideline for the SLDS, noted that “Sensitive Information” would also be extracted — as in the intimate details of students’ lives. Details such as the political affiliation of their parents; mental problems of the student or family; sex behavior and attitudes; religious practices; and anti-social, self-incriminating, and demeaning behavior.
Common Core was followed by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that further enabled government collection of this data. “The racket includes Facebook’s Digital Promise partnership with the U.S. Department of Education and the social/emotional behavior tracking system of TS Gold (Teaching Strategies Gold) targeting preschoolers,” Malkin explains.
Moreover, parents are left out of the loop. “In many districts, school information officers usurp your family authority and are logging on your sons and daughters en masse without your consent or knowledge,” Malkin adds. “You don’t get to see the terms of service, the privacy policy or the G Suite agreement between Google and your school.”
What about logging off the system? Two parents who were also school employees told Malkin that even if they logged out of their G Suite accounts, “their personal passwords, bank account information, parents’ personal data, spouses’ sensitive data and children’s browsing habits were being stored on district-issued Google Drive accounts.” Accounts that allow “the collection and archiving of non-education-related information across the extended family’s devices,” Malkin reveals.
College admissions testing services, such as the ACT and the College Board, are scammers as well. Students are offered optional surveys they fill out under the assumption they’ll gain knowledge about colleges and college scholarships. In reality they’re signing away personal information that both entities sell to universities and scholarship organizations looking to profile prospective students. ACT’s ad spiel gushes that purchasing data about minorities “is a great way to increase diversity at your campus.” And Scholarships.com “asks students for their name, birth date, race, religion, home address and citizenship status and whether they have ‘impairments’ like H.I.V., depression or a ‘relative w/Alzheimer’s,’” The New York Times reveals.
And as Malkin noted, even toddlers are data-mining targets. The aforementioned Teaching Strategies Gold system advertises itself as a “Birth Through Kindergarten Assessment Toolkit,” and TS Gold assessors at a Colorado public pre-school recorded data about a child’s bathroom trips, hand-washing habits, and ability to pull up his pants. “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted,” stated Vladimir Lenin.
Including pre-school and kindergarten, America is giving tech titans like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook etc., 14 years to sow progressive seeds that embrace the social-justice agenda, in coordination with the collection of data regarding a person’s values, habits, mental health, political affiliation, etc. Data we’re supposed to believe would never be used for nefarious ends by the very same companies — even when Google has already decided to help Communist China maintain its totalitarian regime.
America is besieged by political polarization and increasing levels of fascist behavior, most amply demonstrated by Democrats’ orchestrated destruction of the Supreme Court nomination process. But unless we’re going to address the contemptible combination of indoctrination and potential data-based coercion precipitated by tech companies and their government enablers, the nation is doing little more than rearranging Titanic deck chairs.
All while the totalitarian iceberg remains dead ahead.
SOURCE
High Cost of Free College for All
During the 2016 Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders advocated a new federal entitlement making U.S. public colleges and universities tuition free. Since then, Democratic Socialists and some mainstream Democrats have begun supporting such a proposal. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx, NY candidate running on a socialist platform who became a media star after unseating a senior House Democrat in a primary upset, has made it one of her central campaign issues.
Sanders argues that countries like Germany, Finland, Norway and Sweden have successfully made college free, but there are some major differences between the education systems of continental Europe and those of the United States that make Sanders’s proposal impractical.
Everyone has access to higher education in the United States
According to data collected by the U.S. Census, 90 percent of adults between ages 25 and 34 have a high school degree or its equivalent, and after high school about two-thirds of adults went on to one of America’s more than 4,500 institutions of higher education.
While many people’s archetypal idea of “college” is a selective private university or liberal arts college or a flagship public research university, academically selective institutions only serve a small segment of the population. Only about ten percent of the total number of US colleges and universities are ranked on the US News and World Report lists of “Best National Universities” and “Best Liberal Arts Colleges.” The majority of institutions, including about 1,700 two-year colleges, are much less academically selective or have open enrollment and accept anyone with a high school diploma.
Americans believe everyone should go to college, and public policy supports that belief with heavy subsidies, in the form of grants for low-income students and military veterans and government-guaranteed subsidized loans for everyone else.
America’s 65 percent college matriculation rate is high by global standards, even when compared to countries where tuition is free. But universal access isn’t entirely beneficial. The percentage of U.S. students who go to college substantially exceeds the percentage of U.S. students whose academic records suggest that they are capable of doing college-level work. The 35th percentile composite score on the SAT, based on a nationally-representative sample, is a 930. The College Board, which administers the SAT places its college-readiness benchmark at a 480 verbal and a 530 math, or a 1010 composite score, which places a tester at the median of the sample. Meeting that benchmark means that the student has a 75 percent chance of earning a C or better in first-year college reading and math classes.
This measure roughly predicts student outcomes; 46 percent of 25 to 34-year-old Americans have at least a 2-year degree, and 36.5 percent earned a four-year degree. However, about 19 percent of Americans enrolled in college but never earned a credential of any type—that’s nearly a third of all students.
As an institution’s admissions selectivity drops, so does its graduation rate. Overall, 60 percent of students who matriculate at a 4-year college as freshmen graduate within six years, according to data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics. At schools that accept fewer than 25 percent of applicants, 88 percent of students graduate, and at schools that accept fewer than half of applicants, 70 percent graduate. However, at schools that take 90 percent of applicants, fewer than half graduate, and at open enrollment schools, only a third of freshmen complete their degrees. At community colleges, only 39 percent of all students earn a two-year degree within six years. Full-time community-college students have better odds; 55 percent of them graduate. But only about a quarter of part-time and mixed-enrollment students complete their degrees.
Colleges with low graduation rates criticize the methods by which these statistics are measured, because part-time students often take longer than six years to graduate, and the set of students who matriculate at an institution and do not graduate from it includes both students who drop out and students who transfer to other schools, some of whom earn degrees elsewhere. Swayed by these arguments, a federal committee convened to study low college graduation rates resulted in the Education Department changing the way the government measures graduation rates in 2017 so that the numbers look better. But no amount of finessing the data can change the fact that 19 percent of all 25-34 year olds went to college and didn’t earn a degree.
Like less-selective colleges, the US military requires a high school diploma or its equivalent to enlist, but it also makes prospective soldiers take a test called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), and, while each branch has a slightly different cutoff, about a third of enlistees are rejected due to low test scores. By comparison, any US citizen with a high school diploma or its equivalent can currently qualify for student loans, without regard for other factors, such as the student’s credit history or test scores. The hitch is that student loan debt can carry high-interest rates, and, unlike other debts, it cannot be discharged in bankruptcy proceedings.
In other words, college is so accessible in the United States that it’s easier to get student loans and enroll in college than it is to enlist in the armed forces.
The cost of dropping out
While much media coverage of high college costs focuses on the debt loads taken on by students at selective and elite schools, those students are actually managing their debts well. For example, New York University is one of the most expensive private schools in the country, and students there borrow significantly more than average. After four years, an average NYU graduate has about $29,000 in student loans.
But despite that burden, three years after leaving school, only two percent of borrowers at NYU had defaulted on their student loans, compared to a nationwide average of 7.2 percent. That’s because over 85 percent of students who enroll at NYU graduate, and because NYU graduates are competitive for high-paying jobs.
Other selective schools have similarly low student loan default rates, because, despite the high cost of attending these schools, the wage premium that comes with a respected credential more than covers the loan burden. But, for those who don’t graduate, there’s no wage premium. While less-selective public four-year schools and two-year community colleges typically cost a lot less than elite universities, it’s easier for elite graduates to manage large debts than it is for borrowers who don’t earn a credential to manage small ones.
Education Sector, a non-profit behavioral and social science organization, found in a 2013 survey that 514 US colleges and universities had higher percentages of students who defaulted on student loans than graduated. A disproportionate number of these institutions were for-profit institutions, but 314 were public two-year colleges. That means that one in five community colleges has more students who default on student loans than graduate.
Every academic measure shows that a large percentage of American high school graduates lack the reading, writing and math skills to pass introductory college courses, and despite reliable data warning that these students are unlikely to succeed in college, hundreds of thousands of them are permitted to enroll in college each year, only for them to inevitably to fail out. The practice of admitting students who are not capable of doing college-level work causes a great deal of misery and an enormous waste of time, public resources and the students’ money.
SOURCE
I am a Male Teacher Surrounded by Women. But Please Don’t Call Me a Victim of Sexism
written by N.P. Ingram
The conversation surrounding gender discrepancies in workplaces and universities often focuses on STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — because these are high-paying fields in which women typically lag men in both representation and advancement. There is far less attention paid to similar or greater disparities in other disciplines. Rarely, for instance, does one hear much complaint about lower-status professions such as construction, logging or roofing, all fields where, in the United States, men make up over 96% of workers. The pattern is similar in my own country, Canada, and in the wider Western world more generally. In regard to skilled occupations that women dominate — such as accounting, nutrition, pharmacy, physical therapy, psychology, veterinary medicine, social work and nursing — advocacy groups fighting for equal representation tend to fall mute.
My own field, education, also features a striking gender imbalance. As a man with hopes of becoming a teacher, I am embarking on a career that is overwhelmingly dominated by women. According to Statistics Canada, women make up roughly 60 percent of high school teachers, 84 percent of elementary school teachers, and 97 percent of early childhood educators. A similar trend plays out in all OECD countries. If across-the-board gender parity were the priority of those who fight for equal representation in STEM, surly those same voices would also be militating on behalf of men in education. But this isn’t happening.
The Canadian Teachers Federation, a national trade group that represents teachers, holds an annual Women’s Symposium that “aims to gather women teacher leaders from across the country to study a particular theme or issue which will strengthen the status of women and improve the situation for women within the teaching profession.” Such an event would make sense in a field such as physics or manufacturing, where there really is a relative dearth of women. But in the teaching field, an event like this makes as much sense as a “Men’s Symposium” conducted by air force pilots.
Studies that have been conducted on the lack of female representation in STEM typically concern themselves with male prejudice as both indicator and cause of sexist bias. The demographics of enrollment at universities, participation rates in the workforce, and the selection of award recipients in a given field also are held up as proof of a wider climate of discrimination. A whole typology has emerged to categorize this evidence, a process that has made terms such as unconscious bias, stereotype threat and microaggressions common currency in media and academic discussions of the issue, even though such concepts rest on shaky scientific footings. In STEM, this body of evidence would serve to include anything from a “stereotypical ‘geeky’” work environment to a workplace with “an emphasis on logical thinking.”
My own experience has led me to question such arguments. That’s because all of these exact same indicators could be applied, in precisely the same manner, to make the case that men are the subject of systematic discrimination in the field of education. Yet I see no first-hand evidence of such discrimination. In fact, I see the opposite. My experience shows that sometimes gender discrepancies develop within a professional field for reasons that have little to do with discrimination, and everything to do with personal choice.
Because I am not inclined to think of myself as a victim — and have not been encouraged to do so by my educators—I do not systematically catalog instances in which I perceive myself to be discriminated against or subject to artificial barriers. While I am still completing my degree at a Canadian university, I already have served as an unqualified emergency supply teacher at the elementary level. During this time, a number of my experiences could certainly be taken as evidence of discrimination if I were eager to interpret the actions of those around me in the most negative possible manner. In one case, it was assumed that I was the parent of a young child, and not the teacher. On other occasions, it was presumed that I would prefer to teach older children, since that would follow the usual pattern among male teachers. In another instance, I sat around a table in the staff room as the lone male, and listened as female teachers discussed their experience at a male strip show in Las Vegas. Surely this could be categorized, by some, as a toxic and alienating work environment. I also was once warned by a fellow teacher that I should keep my distance from female students because one never knows when, and from whom, accusations may arise. If I were looking to cast myself as a victim, I would go to my bosses — or even the media — and claim discrimination, torquing these stories in such a way as to suggest that I had endured real emotional harm; that the field of education is truly hostile and exclusionary towards men. I would also name names and shame their alleged misandry.
But I don’t have a victim mentality, so I would never do such a thing. Moreover, I know that, even to such negligible extent that my experiences could be construed as expressions of sexist bias, they are orders of magnitude less significant than the very real (and often vicious) discrimination that generations of women faced when they began courageously taking their place in the workforce in the latter half of the twentieth century.
My parents were both teachers. Unlike my father and I, some men no doubt have abandoned thoughts of becoming a teacher because of the anticipated discrimination they might face, or because they felt the urge to pursue a more stereotypically male profession. But that’s their choice. And I won’t patronize them by calling them victims. Moreover, many of these men probably made the right choice, because, by my observation, there is something about teaching that really does appeal more to women than to men.
I have taught everything from kindergarten to grade eight, and am comfortable with students of all ages. Despite my lack of experience, I believe I am an effective teacher who creates a climate of comfort and safety for my students. But as a general rule, the younger the children, the less interest I have in teaching them. Not because my confidence has been sapped by prejudicial, misandrous colleagues scrutinizing my every move, but simply because, I, as an autonomous individual man, prefer teaching older children, full stop.
As noted above, my preference fits in with a commonly observed pattern. As pupils rise in age, so too do the number of men inclined to instruct them. This gender-based difference in professional focus should not surprise anyone, since men and women have different kinds of brains. On average, men are more interested in things and less interested in people. They underperform in verbal fluency compared to women; and score lower on the Big Five personality trait of agreeableness, and the Gregarious aspect of extraversion.
When teaching very young children how to read and write, teachers must rely on oral communication to maintain an enthusiastic, cooperative and amicable learning environment. Men, more than women, might balk at this kind of work. Also worth noting is the male tendency to score higher in the assertiveness aspect of extraversion, which might help explain a disproportionately high preference for instructing children who respond to sterner forms of direction without tears.
To say that women score higher than men in an area such as verbal fluency does not mean all women score higher in verbal fluency than all men. What this means is that within a large population sample, more women will tend to score higher on verbal fluency than men. Put another way: To the extent that measures of such traits may be represented by a normal distribution curve, the average (corresponding to the peak of the curve) will be shifted to the right for women vis-à-vis men.
Note also that most women and most men are not teachers; but those who become teachers tend to be those who score especially high on verbal fluency — a fact that exacerbates the female “advantage” (if one may use that term) thanks to the mechanics of Gaussian probabilistic distribution. Although you cannot determine on an individual level who would score better on a certain ability simply by looking at someone’s sex, you can, on a population level, determine what sex will be overrepresented in careers that tend to attract people with that ability. And despite what James Damore’s bosses at Google would have you believe, describing human abilities in this way isn’t tantamount to discrimination, because it isn’t inconsistent with the need to view people as individuals with unique talents and desires.
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