Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson         Red Bluff Daily News 3/04/2025

        What’s in store for our young people

Friday’s Daily News article, “College and Career Fair set for March 11,” described what should be a well attended event for local students; parents may also want to help them find a vocation, career or college path toward productive adulthood. Such paths are limited only by a young person’s ambition, motivation, and willingness to invest time and effort to learn—with inherent intelligence playing a factor.

Setting sights too high can bring disappointment; unnecessarily lowered goals can lead to boredom. The lifetime experience of most will take turns, find various jobs and fields, and hopefully lend itself to career, educational and financial advancement. Private and public sector opportunities abound, which should include serving in military branches, offering many other paths.

Such career and job fairs should, emphasis should, be the culmination of a K-12 education system focused on filling heads with information and skills—the “Rs” of Reading, Writing and ‘Rithmatic. Sadly, some employers and colleges are needing to back-fill primary/secondary school learning on those very subjects. Beyond the course material—mental processes, logic and intellectual inquisitiveness are things that should get a good start through problem-solving as in mathematics, etc.

Moreover, and disappointingly, American education spends record dollars per pupil, but is reported in last place out of 40 nations in testing results. Compared to many, particularly Asian, nations, American youth spend exorbitant time on dumbness-inducing social media, as well as brain-destroying drugs—of which marijuana tops the list, according to empirical studies.

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Controversies rage nationwide over non-traditional course topics, ideologies and agendas; many states, like California, deemphasize essential educational goals and subjects mentioned above.

One example: “California Law Mandating Indoctrination Of Students On Climate Change Goes Into Effect This Year, (Tristan Justice, Thefederalist.com, 9/24). So, with limited time for students to receive basic instruction, precious time must be spent propagandizing about things that have little to no relevance in their lives and livelihoods.

The highly speculative topic of climate change, about which genuine scientific research cannot settle on provable patterns of human-causation over the course of human existence—replaces other legitimate subjects. Students are short-changed on preparation for a career or college so they can be induced to fear for the future of our planet, as if humans can just dial the climate preferred by the self-appointed authorities over the details of our lives. Give me a break.

The top abominable education subject is the obsession over “gender” and what I refer to as “sex change ideology.” How on God’s green earth did the honorable field of education attract relatively under-educated devotees of freakish, perverted, sex-obsessed lifestyles? I highly doubt such teachers occupy our local schools and staff, but I can’t rule it out.

It is, sickeningly, California state law: “California is 1^st state to ban school rules requiring parents get notified of child’s pronoun change” (Sophie Austin, AP, 7/15/24). How did our schools become places where biological male/female sex identity induces a child to ask what “pronouns” he or she can choose. “Sex-change” advocates should be “tared, feathered” and run out of town.

Also, “California School District Subjects Students to Marxist-Inspired Privilege Exercises” (7/26/24). “A California school district forced high school freshmen to evaluate their so-called ‘privileged’ identities and give a presentation on ‘systems of oppression,’ per a report from the Daily Wire’s Spencer Lindquist. As part of its ethnic studies course, Alameda Unified School District gave students a handout titled ‘My Relationship with Privilege and Oppression,’ to determine ‘whether you are privileged or oppressed.’”

That is what takes apparent priority over Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM subjects). It’s the DEI garbage (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) that has infected education at all levels, businesses and the military, which must be removed by Executive Order, at the cost of federal funding.

As of last July, litigation against the Capistrano Unified School District proceeded to the Ninth Circuit Court over a girl’s punishment for a drawing. Attorney Julie Harmill stated: “If the district court’s rationale stands, and the infusion of racial ideology in elementary schools continues, young children attempting to connect with their peers will be punished when they fail to parrot appropriately the new government-prescribed social justice orthodoxy.”

1) On election day, a Southern California teacher lost it and had a meltdown over a boy wearing a Trump hat (Gordon K., Twitchy.com).

2) So-called “transgender”—boys pretending to be girls—athletes continue to be allowed to compete, disadvantaging girl athletes, in California, in defiance of Executive Orders and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

3) Menstrual pads and tampons have showed up in, for instance, Kira Davis’ child’s school in SoCal.

4) “Silicon Valley Teacher Slams DEI, Bravely Weathers Backlash From Intolerant Left” by Ward Clark, Redstate.com, 2/13. “Student Who Sued College Over Trans-Identified Athletes Forced Off Campus” by Jeff Charles, Townhall.com, 2/27. What is it that turns rational people into little left-wing fanatics, self-empowering to harass those they disagree with?