All babies are born right-wing!

...so if they grow up to be liberals... or worse... blame the wokesters and ideologues in the education establishment and meeja like the Disney Grooming Corporation. Teachers are not the role models you're looking for!*

Question: Is there no way I can protect my kids? Answer: home schooling!

* Thanks to BCF for the photo and the caption.

Recommended reading/listening for parents

While I'm on the subject of book/podcast recommendations (see "Where to find new stuff by Scott Adams", WWW 8/9/23)... Mrs Walt tells me our blog is too "male-oriented". She's not one of those feminazis, just suggesting that there should be more content that real women, particularly parents, would find interesting and helpful. So we're happy to pass along these recommendations from Parents As First Educators.

Parenting Great Kids is a highly recommendable podcast curated by Dr Meg Meeker. She's a founatin of information on topics such as: how to communicate with your children, keeping them sae online, and advice for homeschoolers.

Dr Meeker isn't the only speaker. Recent episordes have included "A Guide to Homeschooling" (209), with Jennifer Pepito is the author of Mothering by the Book, host of the Restoration Home podcast, and the founder of The Peaceful Press. 

"Overcoming Hidden Loneliness with the Power of Friendship" (211 - added today!), with guest Justin Whitmel, is about cultivating meaningful relationships for our children.

In "Navigating Children's Gender Dysphoria: The Hidden Dangers of Transgender Treatments" (204), Dr Meeker and Dr Jill Simons [a REAL "Dr Jill". Ed.] encourage listeners to ask themselves some tough questions, challenging popular narratives and encouraging informed decision-making. 

Lots of great stuff there. So it is, too, with the blog edited by Dr Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D. He's a primary care physician who has been speaking to parents on issues of child and teen development since 2001. His books include: Why Gender Matters, Boys Adrift, The Collapses of Parenting, and (shown at right) Girls on the Edge: Why So Many Girls Are Anxious, Wired, and Obsessed--And What Parents Can Do.

In this book, Dr Sax reveals the four biggest threats to girls' psychological growth and explains how parents can help their daughters develop a healthy sense of self. He argues that many girls today have a brittle sense of self. They may look confident and strong on the outside, but they're fragile within. 

He offers the tools parents need to help their girls become independent and confident women, with practical tips on everything from helping their daughter limit her time on social media, to choosing a sport, to nurturing her spirit through female-centered activities.

I hope you'll follow the links and check out these helpful resources. Do you want more of these reviews and recommendations? Use the comments window to let Walt know what you think.

UPDATED: Ontario's "dirty" sex ed curriculum going ahead. Worried parents scramble to get kids out

For Ontario students, the school year begins the day after Labour Day. Threatened strikes by teachers have been averted by the customary throwing of taxpayers' money at them, in spite of promises by Premier Kathleen Wynne and her minion, Education Minister Lez Sandals, that there'd be no raises. And the proudly lesbian premier's cherished new sex education curriculum, co-written by convicted pedophile Benjamin Levin, will be taught as planned, in spite of protests by 1000s of parents concerned about its pro-LGBTQ, anti-morality agenda.

Across the province, protesters gathered in front of the constituency offices of Liberal MPPs. Outside the Premier's office in Dawn Mills [Whatever became of Sid Barron? Ed.], a public school student, Umeema Khalil, aged only 9, declared she won't go to school this year because of the province’s "new dirty curriculum".

Under the new curriculum, students of Umeema's age will already have been exposed for three years to gender ideology propaganda -- it's cool to be gay, and "transgendered" people like Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner are normal. The curriculum teaches Grade 3 students about homosexuality and Grade 6 students about masturbation and "gender expression".

Grade 7 and 8 students -- "tweenies" -- will learn about contraception, oral sex and the potential pitfalls of "sexting". Anal sex and other perversions come a bit later. But, Umemma told the Toronto Sun, "I want to be inspired by education, not forced to learn unspeakable stuff."

Unfortunately for Umeema and her parents, they're not going to have any choice in the matter. When the new curriculum was rolled out last year, parents were assured that they had the right to withdraw their children from sex ed classes if they had religious or other objections to the material being taught. Really? Err, no... not really.

Tony Pontes, Director of the Peel District School Board -- Ontario's second-largest -- told PDSB teachers and superintendents today that parents may be allowed to remove their kids from sex-ed classes for religious reasons, but any requests for students to opt out of learning about "gay families" or "diverse gender identities" will not be tolerated. Period! See "Peel board won't exempt kids from learning about gay families, gender issues".

Mr. Pontes said that if parents have a problem with such strong support for "equity and inclusion", the public system [sic] may not be right for them. "Let's be clear," he said. "Some in our community may not like this.... Some parents may choose to switch school systems. If so, that is a price we must be willing to pay."

Even as he spoke, one of the demonstrators in front of Premier Wynne's office, Mohammed Azhar, a father of two school-age children, decried the provincial government’s lack of consultation with parents. "They are imposing this sex-ed curriculum, which is against our moral and cultural values. Parents are the first educators."

Will Mr. Azhar, Miss Khalil and groups like PAFE (Parents As First Educators) succeed in stopping the lesbian premier's pro-queer juggernaut? Walt thinks they have two chances....

Further reading: Use the search tool to check WWW for "sex education" and you'll find 31 previous posts. The most recent, posted May 29th, is "Ontario sex ed curriculum called 'bad for Catholic kids, bad for all kids'".

UPDATE 3/9/15 - A growing number of parents across Greater Toronto who oppose Ontario’s new sex-ed curriculum are making a desperate, last-minute attempt to get their kids out of the public system. They’re considering home-schooling their children or sending them to private schools, even if just for a short time, to show how upset they are. Click here to read the full story in the Toronto Star.

Political orthodoxy on same-sex marriage, pro-queer sex education harms parental rights, freedom of speech and religion

Who says so? None other than the Honourable Bradley W. Miller, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, who Canada's Conservative government has just appointed to the bench of Ontario's Superior Court of Justice.

Since he doesn't become a judge until next month, we'll just call him "Professor Miller" for now. "Progressive thinkers" and the liberal media in Canada are already pissing and moaning about his appointment. Why? Because Prof. Miller had the temerity to say, in "Same-Sex Marriage Ten Years On: Lessons from Canada" that the legalization of same-sex marriage in Canada has harmed religious freedom and free speech, and led to the indoctrination of children in public schools.

In his article, Professor Miller writes that the "new orthodoxy" about gay marriage in Canada means that those who object to it are treated  [by the media, "human rights tribunals", and, worse, the courts - Walt] as bigots. They are denied their rights as parents, workers, pamphleteers or religious believers.

He also said that parents who do not want their children hearing discussions on the subject would have to pull them out of public schools. And this was written two years ago, before Kathleen Wynne (North America's first openly lesbian government leader) reintroduced her controversial "modernized" sex education bill.

Referring to her previous attempt to push the pro-LGBT agenda down the throats of children as young as 8, Prof. Miller wrote, "The new curricula are permeated by positive references to same-sex marriage, not just in one discipline but in all. Faced with this strategy of diffusion, the only parental defense is to remove one's children from the public school system entirely."

Walt notes with alarm that in Ontario the term "public schools" includes all schools receiving government funding, including "Catholic" schools. Thus the only options for parents who don't want their kids to be persuaded to "re-examine their gender choices" is to send them to private schools or home-school them.

Prof. Miller said that while the goal of promoting tolerance of all people is laudable, "the means chosen to achieve it is a gross violation of the family. It is nothing less than the deliberate indoctrination of children (over the objections of their parents) into a conception of marriage that is fundamentally hostile to what the parents understand to be in their children's best interests."

The chattering classes are already branding Prof. Miller as a homophobic right-wing religious nut, and demanding that his appointment to the bench be rescinded. Too bad for them that the Canadian system doesn't require any kind of confirmation process. Once the appointment is made, that's it. So, beginning on January 15th, there will be at least one voice of liberty... and sanity... in Ontario's Superior Court.

Congratulations to Mr. Justice Miller (as he then will be)... and good luck to him!

Stupid iliterate inumerate kids!

Two related items caught Walt's eye yesterday. The first was a speech given by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to the Centre for Policy Studies. In his address, entitled "What would Maggie [Thatcher] do today?", Bojo averred that achieving economic equality is impossible because some people are simply too stupid to get ahead in the modern world.

Mr. Johnson's remarks were immediately decried by the usual suspects as elitist and possibly racist, but no-one had the temerity to challenge his basic premise. That's because it's true! Remember what George Carlin used to say about the stupidity of the average person. If you think the average person is as stupid as he/she appears, consider that half the population is even more stupid than that!

Apart from genetic differences, today's younger people are the victims of bad education. Boris Johnson may have been thinking about a major study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which showed that that young adults in England scored among the lowest results in the industrialised world in international literacy and numeracy tests.

Out of 24 countries, England ranked 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy. The study also showed that, unlike in other developed countries, young people in England are no better at these tests than people in the 55 to 65 age range.

When this is weighted with other factors, such as the socio-economic background of people taking the test, it shows that England is the only country in the survey where results are going backwards. The older cohort scores higher than the younger.

British Skills Minister Matthew Hancock was shocked -- SHOCKED -- by the report. "This shocking report shows England has some of the least literate and numerate young adults in the developed world," he said. Then he came to the nub of the problem. "These are Labour's children," he added, "educated under a Labour government and force-fed a diet of dumbing down and low expectations." [My emphasis. Walt.]

Walt wonders if Mr. Hancock has visited North America. If the average British yoof is thick as a plank, the average American (and his/her Canadian cousin) is thick as two planks! If you don't believe me, ask one of them. A couple of days ago Walt saw a news reporter asking students at Harvard to name the capital of Canada. The only one who could was a visiting student from, errr, China.

And that's Harvard, the institution which educates America's brightest and best! Those kids aren't the ones who would have been left behind but for the Bush league educational reforms. If you want to see what those kids are like, try conversing with one of the gum-chewing, glassy-eyed "associates" at the Gap.

These are the kids who graduated from high schools and colleges unable to read their diplomas or make change without using a calculator. See also "Downward mobility haunts US education", from BBC News, December 2012.

The problem is with "child-centred education", the 60s fad that persists half a century later, under which no-one is "left behind" and no-one "fails" because that would be damaging to their self-esteem [and probably racist too! Ed.] Instead, our educational institutions turn out [churn out? Ed.] graduates utterly unprepared to cope with a troubled economy and shrinking job market. It is there -- in the real world -- that these kids fail.

The problem is hardly new. Dr. Rudolf Flesch wrote about it way back in 1951, in the original Why Johnny Can't Read. Why Johnny Still Can't Read: A New Look at the Scandal of Our Schools appeared in 1981. And yes, Dr. Flesch does propose a solution -- part of the home schooling answer to the crisis in education.

What you should do is teach your kids phonics! Walt recommends Why Johnny Can't Read and What You Can Do About It, from Harper Collins. The book is endorsed -- but apparently not followed -- by the US Department of Education. You can find it at your local library. Your community does still have a library, doesn't it?