A sixth true thing about education reform

 Nearly 13 years ago, I wrote a very serious and not at all sarcastic blog post titled, “Five True Things About Education Reform,” which holds up pretty well because, like Jesus Christ, education is the same yesterday and today and forever. Now, as then, greedy teachers, evil unions, and lazy poor people are some of the biggest problems with public education in America. But thanks to groups like Moms for Liberty, I've discovered it's high time to add a Sixth True Thing About  Education Reform:

6. Teachers are racist groomers from whom we must protect children.

Shocking but true. Whereas in the late-20th and early-21st centuries, teachers were mostly bad in the screwing-taxpayers kind of way (by demanding to be paid living wages within school systems that have adequate infrastructure, safe conditions, and sufficient supplies), in the 21st century, teachers have begun to reveal a whole new level of evil as they implement their true Secret Agenda: using woke indoctrination to turn kids into trans, reverse-racist, liberal deviants who hate America. Teachers have many tools at their disposal in the pursuit of this agenda, including but not limited to: critical race theory, sex education, social-emotional learning, school libraries, rainbow flags, pronouns, Michelangelo’s David, drag story time, the word gay, posters of Martin Luther King Jr. and Harriet Tubman, rap music, the New York  Times, CNN, condoms, Mickey Mouse, Barbie, the green M&M, Bert & Ernie, Dumbledore, vaccines, masks, Juneteenth, Pride, atheism, globalism, Karl Marx, and of course, history, science, and books. But we have two powerful weapons with which to beat these godless, perverted teachers into submission: Jesus and gerrymandering. Remember what a great man once said: “He alone who owns the youth gains the future.”*

* Hitler, as quoted by Moms for Liberty, a right-wing ed reform group that is not afraid to tell you who they truly are.

Source

Poetry Slam: Me vs. ChatGPT

One of these was writ by me,
The other by ChatGPT.

Last year, when I was sick in bed with Covid and feeling like crap would feel if crap had Covid, I wrote the pastiche of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" that T.S. Eliot would have written if T.S. Eliot had Covid. Today it occurred to me to wonder how my poem would compare to one written by an AI, so I put it to ChatGPT. Below is the prompt I gave, followed by two poems. Decide for yourself who or what did the better job. To find out which is mine, scroll down my blog.

The Prompt

Write a pastiche of the poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot, incorporating ideas, themes and imagery related to Covid-19, the pandemic, lockdown, social media, and 21st century technology. Use enough language from the The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock so that the reader can recognize the source material, but also use enough original language so that the resulting poem would be considered a new and original work.

Poem 1

Let us scroll then, you and I, 

Through the endless feeds of social media high, 

Like a digital ether that numbs the brain; 

Let us waste away the hours and days, 

With likes and comments in a virtual haze, 

In the blue light of screens that drain.

Let us scroll, through memes and news, 

The endless posts with no real views, 

And the endless stories, where the filters never fade, 

The emojis that replace human emotion, 

And the gifs that keep us in perpetual motion.

In the chat rooms, the conversations start, 

With no real connection, just words apart, 

And fingers tapping, messages sending, 

Asking, "Are you there?" with no pretending.

And indeed there will be time 

To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" 

Time to turn back and descend the stair, 

With a phone in hand— 

(They will say: "How his eyes are strained!") 

My headphones on, blocking out the mundane—

(They will say: "But how his mind is always preoccupied!")

Do I dare 

Disturb the universe? 

In a time of pandemics, technology and vice?

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, 

And I have seen the endless feeds get thicker, 

Inhaling the doomscroll, exhaling the rage, 

But still, life goes on, albeit in a digital cage.

Would it have been worth while, 

To have put down the phone with a smile, 

To have lived in the moment, not for the screen, 

To have seen the world beyond the virtual scene?

The notifications pile up so fast, 

Distractions and temptations that last, 

But we succumb, and we keep scrolling on, 

Lost in the digital world, until it's all gone.

I grow old, I grow old, 

I shall wear the wearables, and hear the data told. 

Shall I post my life online? Do I dare to disconnect? 

I shall tweet and like and share, and live in neglect.

I have heard the algorithms humming, each to each. 

I have seen the social media creeping, trailing on the beach. 

But I have the power to log off and disconnect, 

And so, let us go, and live in the present, not regret.

Poem 2

Let us stay then, you and me,

When the waiting room is spread against the screen,

Like a patient seeking telemedicine;

Let us stay, in certain nicely done-up rooms,

The muttering retreats

Of endless days on droning video calls

With coffee mugs and Zinfandel.

Rooms that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question.

Oh, do not ask, “Am I muted?”

Let us sit until we’re rooted.

In the Zoom the women glitch and freeze,

Talking of their NFTs.

The bluish light that rubs its back upon the laptop screens,

The bluish glow that rubs its muzzle on the smartphone screens,

Clicked-on links to fill the emptiness of the evening,

Lingered on Twitter memes and TikTok tunes,

Let fall upon its queue whatever falls from algorithms,

Slipped by the sort order, made a sudden beep,

And, seeing that the battery was dangerously low,

Curled once about the bed, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the bluish light that slides along the line,

Rubbing its back upon the laptop screens;

There will be time, there will be time

To mask your face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to contact and expose,

And time for all the works and days of lungs,

That leave contagious droplets on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred failed inspections,

And for a hundred infections and reinfections,

In restaurants while taking toast and tea.

In the Zoom the women glitch and freeze,

Talking of their NFTs.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to apply a background of my choice,

And a filter to enhance my voice – 

(They will say: “How her face has grown fat!”)

A fancy blouse, some makeup and my cat,

My face composed while on my phone I chat --

(They will say: “Even her cat is fat!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the Twitterverse?

In a minute there is time

For tweets and retweets which a keystroke will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Asynchronous lectures, webinars, livestreams,

I have measured out my life with quarantines;

I know the voices fading as connections fail

Leaving silence shouting from the laptop screen.

So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all –

The eyes that peer above the mask begging to be seen,

And when I am vaccinated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am jabbed, rejoicing, at the mall,

Then how should I begin

To face the variants that soon come on in waves?

And how should I presume?

And I have known account names, known them all—

Selfies edited with automated care

(Removed are age lines and some graying hair!)

Is it pictures from a trip

That I would like to skip?

Selfies taken in a crowd, no masks in view at all.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched miasmas rising from the lungs

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a valiant Antifa

Marching along the streets of mad cities.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Dulled by TV binges,

Biopics of singers,

Edgy standup comics, blood-soaked fantasy.

Should I, after comedies and spoofs,

Have the strength to make the nation face its truths?

But though I have masked and distanced, vaxed and boosted,

Though I have seen my hair (pandemic grown) resume its natural shade,

I am no influencer – my content’s undisplayed;

I have seen my viral moment pass and flicker,

And I have seen the eternal A.I. flag my post and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the chat, the messenger, the Skype,

Among the pizza boxes, among the endless hype,

Would it have been worthwhile,

To have logged off the webcam with a smile,

To have squeezed the internet into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I’m David Bowie, CGI’d from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all” -- 

If one, settling a MyPillow by her head

Should say, “That is not what I meant at all;

OK Boomer, not at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worthwhile,

After the riots and the protests and the insurrections,

After the shootings, after the terror, after the blood that spilled along the floor –

And this, and so much more?--

It is impossible to type just what I mean!

But as if an Oculus Rift threw the vid directly on my eyeballs:

Would it have been worthwhile

If one, whose All Lives Matter t-shirt falls,

And turning toward the browser, should say:

“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

No, I am not Captain America, nor was meant to be;

Am a nameless extra, one that will do

To fill a crowd shot, start a fight or two,

Back up the star; no hero, not super,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Fine for exposition, but no backstory; 

Almost, at times, a blooper.

I’m not here… I’m not here…

I’ve looped a clip I took last year.

Shall I dye my hair orange? Do I dare to eat indoors?

I shall wear Manolo Blahniks and walk upon the floor.

I have heard the people clap for health care heroes. 

I do not think that they will clap for me.

I have seen them surfing nowhere on their phones,

Checking for comments from people never met,

And whatever’s pinged the saved searches they didn’t set.

We have lingered in the matrix of the net

By viral memes we give a thumbs up or thumbs down

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

On gender: You don't know what you don't know

Two things I generally avoid: Getting into it with transphobes on social media, and using my personal story to prove anything. But for some reason, a comment I saw recently on a friend's social media account made me want to break both those rules. My friend had reposted this viral post about the science behind the complexities of gender, and someone commented:

Not sure why that, of all things, really got me going. But it did. So here's my reply:

Hi. You don't know me. My name is Tamar. As a rule, I don't usually answer comments coming from your perspective, because frankly, it's exhausting. But your specific comment resonated with me in a surprising way. So I figure, what the hell, rules are meant to be broken. I'll say my piece, for whatever it's worth to you or anyone else. So pop some popcorn, pour yourself a libation, put up your feet, here we go.

Twenty-four years ago, I became the mother of twins I presumed were boys, and 18 months later, a child I presumed was a girl. As a teenager, one of the twins came out as a transgender woman. Believe it or not, having been through this makes me understand the thinking behind your question better than you'd imagine. And in a weird way, it makes my better able to empathize with you.

The subtext of your question about birthing babies (everybody knows women have the babies!) is based on a logical fallacy, one that people use all the time: the appeal to self-evident truth. It seems to you crystal clear that certain things are true, in this case, that anatomy = gender. You know what you know. You have no patience for the sophistry of those who would argue otherwise, whom you presume to have ulterior motives.

It may surprise you to learn that I understand your thought process, though not your conclusions, in my very bones. My reasons may have been different than yours, but when my daughter came out, my brain screamed, loudly and insistently: I KNOW WHAT I KNOW. The truth is self-evident.

Like you, I was raised in a world that had so marginalized transgender people that I had never thought deeply about the whole matter. Unlike you, I suspect, I supported the right of trans people to live as the gender they know themselves to be, and I believed them when they proclaimed their true gender (or so I thought). But as it turned out, I held a whole lot of faulty assumptions about what transness was, and who was trans. I knew what I knew. Transness is obvious from childhood; trans kids are deeply depressed and often suicidal; trans girls have always been effeminate. None of this applied to my kid.

My brain was screaming at me because I had dedicated my life to being the best parent to my kids that I could possibly be, and the biggest part of that was to truly and deeply KNOW my kids. And here is this kid telling me she is a girl? How could I not have noticed that? I felt like a terrible failure, a bad parent who had missed something so incredibly important. I will not lie, it took me awhile to get over myself and really listen to her, and to others, and come to understand that our children are unique individuals with complex inner lives that we cannot fully know.

Beyond that, there was the terror. I wanted what every parent wants for their child: love, comfort, confidence, a chance to thrive. And SAFETY. I kept thinking, the world will be so cruel to her. Doesn't she know that? I know that! Everyone knows that! Can't she just...find some safe middle road?

Because I love my child (all my children) with all my heart, the most important thing to me was to treat her with kindness, support, and seriousness. We found all kinds of professional help for all of us, including support groups where we could discuss, really discuss, our innermost thoughts and fears. (Maybe there are some parents out there who adjust to a child's transition easily, but I have yet to meet them.)

The most important thing I've learned is that sometimes, we don't know what we don't know, which is very hard and scary to admit. Our culture, our language, and most importantly, our own feelings and experiences ingrain in us notions of gender that we take to be obviously true. But they are subjective. They are not universal.

So you do not know what you think you know. Your world view tells you that gender, sex, and anatomy are all neatly packaged in one certain way, and that anything else is, at best, a misguided untruth, and at worst, a perversion of nature. But your world view is narrow and false. Your world view is as flawed as those who believed that illness was caused by imbalanced humors or that whales are fish.

You probably think that, if transness were real, it wouldn't have just popped up out of nowhere all of a sudden. That, too, is false. Trans people have always been here, but they have coped with cultural taboos as best they could. And if you think widespread taboos are proof of some natural order, please keep in mind that widespread human beliefs perpetuate all manner of horrors. Slavery. Misogyny. Racism. War. The MCU.

I have lived through letting go of what I thought I knew -- including having to admit to myself that I didn't know my own kid as completely as I'd assumed. It's so, so hard. (But I have also discovered that the human being she is is the human being she always was, with the same loves, talents, sense of humor, intellect, etc, and she's more open than ever, which is wonderful.) I hope that you are a person capable of empathy and open to reason (including the reason on display in the original post), and that you can acknowledge that you might have much to learn.

Here endeth the lesson.

A Prufrock for the Covid Era, or, How I Spent My Day in Quarantine

Prufrock's Streaming Consciousness
By Tamar Wyschogrod

(With apologies to TS Eliot)

Let us stay then, you and me,

When the waiting room is spread against the screen,

Like a patient seeking telemedicine;

Let us stay, in certain nicely done-up rooms,

The muttering retreats

Of endless days on droning video calls

With coffee mugs and Zinfandel.

Rooms that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question.

Oh, do not ask, “Am I muted?”

Let us sit until we’re rooted.

In the Zoom the women glitch and freeze,

Talking of their NFTs.

The bluish light that rubs its back upon the laptop screens,

The bluish glow that rubs its muzzle on the smartphone screens,

Clicked-on links to fill the emptiness of the evening,

Lingered on Twitter memes and TikTok tunes,

Let fall upon its queue whatever falls from algorithms,

Slipped by the sort order, made a sudden beep,

And, seeing that the battery was dangerously low,

Curled once about the bed, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the bluish light that slides along the line,

Rubbing its back upon the laptop screens;

There will be time, there will be time

To mask your face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to contact and expose,

And time for all the works and days of lungs,

That leave contagious droplets on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred failed inspections,

And for a hundred infections and reinfections,

In restaurants while taking toast and tea.

In the Zoom the women glitch and freeze,

Talking of their NFTs.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to apply a background of my choice,

And a filter to enhance my voice – 

(They will say: “How her face has grown fat!”)

A fancy blouse, some makeup and my cat,

My face composed while on my phone I chat --

(They will say: “Even her cat is fat!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the Twitterverse?

In a minute there is time

For tweets and retweets which a keystroke will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Asynchronous lectures, webinars, livestreams,

I have measured out my life with quarantines;

I know the voices fading as connections fail

Leaving silence shouting from the laptop screen.

So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all –

The eyes that peer above the mask begging to be seen,

And when I am vaccinated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am jabbed, rejoicing, at the mall,

Then how should I begin

To face the variants that soon come on in waves?

And how should I presume?

And I have known account names, known them all—

Selfies edited with automated care

(Removed are age lines and some graying hair!)

Is it pictures from a trip

That I would like to skip?

Selfies taken in a crowd, no masks in view at all.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched miasmas rising from the lungs

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a valiant Antifa

Marching along the streets of mad cities.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Dulled by TV binges,

Biopics of singers,

Edgy standup comics, blood-soaked fantasy.

Should I, after comedies and spoofs,

Have the strength to make the nation face its truths?

But though I have masked and distanced, vaxed and boosted,

Though I have seen my hair (pandemic grown) resume its natural shade,

I am no influencer – my content’s undisplayed;

I have seen my viral moment pass and flicker,

And I have seen the eternal A.I. flag my post and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the chat, the messenger, the Skype,

Among the pizza boxes, among the endless hype,

Would it have been worthwhile,

To have logged off the webcam with a smile,

To have squeezed the internet into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I’m David Bowie, CGI’d from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all” -- 

If one, settling a MyPillow by her head

Should say, “That is not what I meant at all;

OK Boomer, not at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worthwhile,

After the riots and the protests and the insurrections,

After the shootings, after the terror, after the blood that spilled along the floor –

And this, and so much more?--

It is impossible to type just what I mean!

But as if an Oculus Rift threw the vid directly on my eyeballs:

Would it have been worthwhile

If one, whose All Lives Matter t-shirt falls,

And turning toward the browser, should say:

“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

No, I am not Captain America, nor was meant to be;

Am a nameless extra, one that will do

To fill a crowd shot, start a fight or two,

Back up the star; no hero, not super,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Fine for exposition, but no backstory; 

Almost, at times, a blooper.

I’m not here… I’m not here…

I’ve looped a clip I took last year.

Shall I dye my hair orange? Do I dare to eat indoors?

I shall wear Manolo Blahniks and walk upon the floor.

I have heard the people clap for health care heroes. 

I do not think that they will clap for me.

I have seen them surfing nowhere on their phones,

Checking for comments from people never met,

And whatever’s pinged the saved searches they didn’t set.

We have lingered in the matrix of the net

By viral memes we give a thumbs up or thumbs down

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Kornacki Tint My World (from the Election Horror Picture Show)

It was great when it all began

I didn’t care so much about who ran,

I thought that anyone could beat a man,

With glued-on hair and a bright orange tan,

Now the only thing that gives me hope,

Is that New Jersey legalized the dope,

Steve Kornacki tint my world

Cuz he’s the only thing that’s keeping me sane.

We knew results would be coming late

With zen-like patience we would have to wait,

We still need news from just a few more states,

To call a winner and reveal our fate,

Orange man complains the vote is fixed,

And somehow now we’re at November sixth,

Steve Kornacki tint my world

Cuz he’s the only thing that’s keeping me sane.

So much drama!

Help! Obama!

We’ll build, you’ll see,

A post-racial society!

Health care for free,

We’ll listen to Fauci,

End our misery,

Just tell us Biden won!

Vote counts increase,

As more results are released,

There’s so much unease,

About the course we’ll steer,

There’s no decision,

Just hatred and division,

And a thing that clouds our vision,

Trump’s greed is so sincere…

White House Social Media Summit

Seen here for the first time, shocking footage from the recent White House social media summit.

MAGA hat kid vs chanting Native American. I weigh in.

Do I know with certainty why MAGA-hat kid smirked creepily at chanting Native American man? No, I do not. Neither do those who insist that an innocent kid was victimized by social media gone mad and liberal media turned hateful toward white boys. The kid’s motive is known only to him. It is not a fact that can ever be established.

Here’s what I do know:

1. Donald Trump panders to racists. Not only don’t people who wear MAGA hats mind —  that’s why they wear MAGA hats. They’re the ones to whom he’s pandering. A MAGA hat is a public proclamation of allegiance to a fascist-leaning president who routinely uses “Pocahantas” as an insult and treats Wounded Knee as a joke. To an authoritarian buffoon who whips up fear and support in his base by characterizing Mexicans as violent rapists and urban (read black) America as a pit of crime and depredation. To a corrupt autocrat who rode to power courting white supremacists and who put Breitbart and the alt-right in the White House. To a president who praises foreign dictators and disdains democratic allies. A MAGA hat is a statement, just like a KKK hood is a statement. It speaks volumes. When you are wearing it, you are by definition non-neutral. You are saying something. This is a fact.

2. It’s beyond obnoxious for a Catholic school to send a bunch of teenage boys to protest abortion. If they tell a 14-year-old boy that he is qualified to dictate family-planning morality to adult women, it’s not unreasonable to infer he’s been raised with a sense of privilege that would make him act like an entitled brat when confronted by soapbox extremists and Native American activists. This is inference supported by reason, but not hard fact.

3. A bunch of sheltered Kentucky boys from an overwhelmingly white, largely Republican town came to the Big City. They encountered some batshit-crazy soapbox preachers. In New York, we’d have called that Tuesday. Or possibly Wednesday. Or Any Day. In fact, Black Hebrew Israelites were a Times Square staple for ages. We Coastal Elites know fringe nut jobs when we see them. But of course, if you’ve led a sheltered life in a mostly white, Republican Kentucky town, and been weaned on Fox News, you’d probably think this miserable little group of black men represented an entire race bent on destroying you and your whole way of life. Instead of ignoring them (if you haven’t been moved away from them by responsible adults, as should have happened), you’d engage them, and in your adolescent wisdom, you’d think school spirit cheers were a clever, passive-aggressive way to express yourselves while your MAGA hats do the real talking. Fact-based inference again.

4. Since the D.C. event went viral, other information has emerged about Covington Catholic that reflects a school culture that conforms to what one might expect of an elite Catholic boys’ prep school: sports-obsessed, aggressive bro culture. Whatever you think of this video of a basketball game or this photo (Is that kid in blackface? Are they verbally harassing a black player? Or is it just some school tradition of body paint combined with the usual displays of aggression boys are taught to make at sporting events?), it sure puts into perspective what this school considers to be “school spirit.” Fact, some inference.

5. The first time I ever saw someone whom I could readily identify as Native American was in a Wyoming diner in the mid-1970s. A Native American woman ate while her two young children played on the floor under the table, bothering no one. A white waitress approached the woman and yelled at her to “keep her brats quiet or get the hell out.” It was one of the most blatantly racist moments I’ve ever witnessed. It created a prejudice in me. Ever since, I have been disposed to take the word of a Native American over that of a white person in interpreting the racial subtext of an encounter. Of course, in any given encounter, the Native American could be wrong and the white person could be right. A prejudice is not rational. Personal bias. But...

6. MAGA HAT. FACT.