Education Briefs
The popular and long-running children's television show, Sesame Street, is planning to air a drag queen segment in 2020. The program announced it will feature LGBTQ activist and drag queen, Billy Porter, wearing a "tuxedo gown" in an upcoming episode. Sesame Street is the latest vehicle to promote the drag queen agenda, following on the heels of libraries across the country and even a commercial that briefly showed drag queens during this year's Super Bowl. LifeSiteNews sponsored a petition to HBO and its parent company, AT&T, to stop the airing of the proposed Sesame Street episode. "By contributing to this social contagion," the organization wrote, "Sesame Street is forcing children to deal with adult concepts and notions about sexuality which are beyond their level of maturity, and which can leave psychological scars." (LifeSiteNews, 1-31-20)
Progressive candidates' promise of free college tuition would benefit only 14% of Americans. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both touted their free college tuition plans on the campaign trail, but a research study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) shows these plans would offer little real value despite their enormous cost. For example, free tuition could be expected to lower the college dropout rate by only four percentage points, to 58% from 62%, but would result in higher taxes and siphon off K-12 resources at the state level. More than 86% of all households would lose while only 14% would benefit. (NBER, Working Paper #26425, November 2019) (WashingtonFreeBeacon. com, 11-5-19)
TikTok is a social media platform for creating music videos — a kind of digital Karaoke, but is it a legitimate educational tool? Popular with middle and high school students, TikTok is a social network typically associated with dancing, singing, and lip-syncing. In the classroom, some teachers allow students to use it as a creative way to handle "dry" subjects, such as history and social studies. One teacher gave students the option of creating TikTok videos "to demonstrate their understanding of the Missouri compromise of 1820." But as with any public platform, it contains songs and videos with explicit content, and has also been associated with bullying and other digital media dangers. Some teachers see it as a huge distraction, which begs the question, might it be better to stick with traditional teaching methods? (Education Week, 11-27-19)
Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, offers racially segregated residential options for sophomores, juniors and seniors. These new residence halls opened last September, one designated for "black students" and another for "students of color." According to Breitbart, an anonymous Twitter user claiming to be associated with the famous women's school tweeted: "The message is loud and clear: skin color dictates common attitudes, likes, interests and culture. Most people call this racism. Smith College calls it 'progress.'" College administrators say any student may apply for the new housing regardless of race, color or ethnicity, and many colleges now offer segregated housing options. But critics say this trend is a step back for racial equality in America, and one social media user wondered: "What happens if people lying about their race becomes mainstream? Will colleges begin requiring DNA samples for proof of racial heritage?" (Breitbart.com, 2-20-20)
Number of homeless students hits record high of 1.5 million in U.S. Figures are for the 2017-18 school year, an increase of 11% over the previous year and nearly double the number of a decade ago. Causes cited for the increase, include displacement from natural disasters and parental unemployment. (National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE), January 2020)
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