The University of Wisconsin Madison denies that such a policy is in force. But take a look at the babble in this truncated version of the official policy of the University of Wisconsin [Ludicrous babble alert!]:
Definitions for Inclusive ExcellenceWho has the time or the mental strength for lesson plans if one has to read an entire volume of such babble?
Working Definitions for Inclusive Excellence
Inclusive Excellence brings together a comprehensive knowledge base – research and theory—from a variety of sources. Within this framework there are some concepts and terms that are fundamentally linked to the educational mission and institutional practice, and thus deserve to be highlighted. The definitions have been categorized by four essential pillars of Inclusive Excellence-Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Excellence.
Diversity
Diversity: Individual differences (e.g. personality, learning styles, and life experiences) and group/social differences (e.g. race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, country of origin, and ability as well as cultural, political, religious, or other affiliations) that can be engaged in the service of learning.
Compositional Diversity: The numerical and proportional representation of various racial and ethnic groups on a campus. (Milem, Chang and Antonio).
Critical Mass: Meaningful representation. Refers to a number that encourages underrepresented minority students to participate in the classroom and not feel Inclusion.
Inclusion: The active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity—in people, in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geographical) with which individuals might connect—in ways that increase one’s awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions.
Equity
Equity Mindedness: Refers to the outlook, perspective or mode of thinking exhibited by practitioners and others who call attention to patterns of inequity in student outcomes, and are willing to assume personal and institutional responsibility for the elimination of inequity. This includes being “color conscious,” noticing differences in experience among racial-ethnic groups, and being willing to talk about race and ethnicity as an aspect of equity. Equity perspectives are evident in actions, language, problem-framing, problem-solving, and cultural practices. (Bensimon, 2008)
Deficit Mindedness: Deficit thinking “posits that students who fail in school do so because of alleged internal deficits (such as cognitive and/or motivational limitations) or shortcomings socially linked to the youngster-such as familiar deficits and dysfunctions” (Valencia, 1997). In other words, deficit thinking “blames the student” for unequal outcomes.
Representational Equity: Proportional participation of historically underrepresented racial-ethnic groups at all levels of an institution, including high status special programs, high-demand majors, and in the distribution of grades. (Bensimon, 2008)
Excellence
Excellence: The quality of being excellent; state of possessing good qualities in an eminent degree; exalted merit; superiority in virtue.
Take it from a teacher. So-called institutions of learning at all levels are filled with volumes of this kind of convoluted language, and teachers have to wade through this muck, usually called "The Policy Handbook."
You Liberals, Democrats, Progressives who are complaining that the Republicans are hooked , and stuck on Benghazi, let me ask you this: if it was your Son that was killed in Benghazi, would you want it to be dropped or would you want answers?? So many of you say it should be dropped , but put yourself in the shoes of the 4 dead American's parents, and answer that question! Try to answer that question without telling me about “What Bush did”
ReplyDeleteI can't think of any subject more important when I go into the voting booth, but I'd bet that you can!
Like what? Gun Control?
“Race-Based Grading”... Humm, lets see, a Genius Is a Genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race and a Moron Is a Moron, regardless of the number of Geniuses who share his racial ancestors, or background.
ReplyDeleteAs a famous quote goes, “Stupid is as Stupid does”
Let me put that into the proper context. As you might know, intelligence is difficult to measure, so we measure Stupidity instead.
If we are to judge people as Stupid we need to have a way to measure Stupidity. I would suggest that we place Barack Hussein Obama at the TOP of the Stupidity scale along with the people that voted for him. And the people that still support him are breaking the Stupid Meter along with Nancy Pelosi, so we really have no intelligent way of measuring that degree of Stupidity .
Lets face it, it’s very rare for racists to admit that they are racists! But they are right up there at the front of the line to admit that they are Progressive’s or Liberals or whatever the hell they want to call themselves these days!
Why is it that Republicans don’t get the same Free pass that Liberals do when it comes to Racism?
ReplyDeleteJust look back in our news headlines for th past few years and you’ll see what I mean. For example recently Los Angeles Clippers team owner Donald Sterling was vilified, and made a complete fool out of because of an audio recording made on his own telephone in his own home saying something that Yes he shouldn’t have and yes it was racist, buy it was in a private conversation. UNKNOWN TO HIM THAT IT WAS BEING ILLEGALLY TAPED! Bur after all, this is still America and we still have Freedom of Speech (or do we?)
In other words, if you support the liberal agenda enough, you get a lifetime of “Get Out of Jail Free” cards
Stering wasn't punished? Get a clue.
DeleteJK points out how Sterling WAS punished. Now UCLA has returned a $3M research grant to him, and the researcher who it was funding it out of luck with his kidney program. Not just punishment to Sterling, but to the thousands who might benefit from the cutting edge work this doctor was investigating. But the sheeple at UCLA just joined the herd. Baa, baa, baa.
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ReplyDeleteNo doubt it was already in place when foreign student Barack Obama applied to American colleges.
ReplyDeleteI thought that "Race Norming" was outlawed years and years ago. Why would a university jeopardize the value of its product by implementing such an archaic notion? It seems to me that "diversity", in the context presented here, amounts to nothing more than a form of [institutionalized] racism, in and of itself!
ReplyDeleteI disagree with just about everything that Obama, says, does and even thinks, so .I guess that makes me a racist!
ReplyDeleteI quite agree that the policy as written is undigestible babble, but I remain skeptical that race-based grading is part of it. Hopefully this scandal will motivate the authors of such policy documents to write clearly enough for this type of accusation to be more easily dismissed.
ReplyDeleteDidn't we have this exact discussion just the other day? I believe it was you who kindly supplied a link to the primary source.
DeleteAmerican "Pedaguese" is one of the more woeful abuses and grotesque perversions of our beautiful English language. It's frightening to think that halfwits with academic degrees of which we unfortunately have millions actually get paid for generating garbage of this sort.
We did. I'm a little disappointed to see so many people proceeding as if there were no need to question it.
DeleteJez,
DeleteWas the discussion at this blog or over at FT's blog?
Jez,
DeleteYes.
But I added some other material.
Do your additions confirm the different grading curve accusation?
DeleteJez,
DeleteIt's there. Read the following as an example:
Representational Equity: Proportional participation of historically underrepresented racial-ethnic groups at all levels of an institution, including high status special programs, high-demand majors, and in the distribution of grades. (Bensimon, 2008).
Note the phrase the distribution of grades.
Noted, but this is just a definition of the term. The accusation is that Wisconsin intend to achieve "representation equity" as defined here would by applying different grade curves to each race. I can't see that here. As far as I can tell, this is one of the measures by which they will judge the success of their inclusiveness policies, not an outcome they will engineer by direct manipulation of grades. (you may balk even at this use of "representational equity," and I haven't decided yet whether I'd disagree with you.)
DeleteNow this is partly my guess-work. I'd avoid reading these awful documents if they were paying me, I'm certainly not going to read them for fun. But just because someone writes down their target weight, it doesn't follow that they intend to recalibrate their scales.
Jez,
DeleteI worked for the public education system and was forced out because I refused to pass the star football player.
The vague language in the information posted publicly indeed gives administrators the power to bring about race-based grading. There are also more subtle pressures.
Been there, seen that, left that -- in both public and private education.
I don't doubt your experience, but I find individual instances of fraud such as the case of your football player far easier to believe than a systematic distortion of results throughout the entire school.
DeleteAnyway, we agree that the policy is poorly written at least. Wisconsin's only way out of this is to rewrite it in clearer language. I hope other schools do the same thing!
This is merely another example of the corrosive policies of the left. Rather than to examine a person based solely upon the content of their character, as Martin Luther King, Jr. would have had it, they instead toss out character as being too constraining and go with race. They have even accused King's niece as being a bigot for speaking out against such insanity. All leftist policy does is to keep the disenfranchised down and under the heel of a leftist jackboot.
ReplyDeleteFrom the Jacobin revolution that gave them their start to their height of glory with Soviet Union, the left has always targeted the vulnerable and made them more so in order to exploit them. This business with the grades is more of the same. Frankly, you had better check to insure that the University of Wisconsin does not have an engineering and/or medical program. Because if they do and they go that route, people will die as a result. But that wouldn't be the first time that leftist policy cost human lives.
We have too many "go along to get along" people inthis world to start with. So, these morons have designed a system to produce more "go along to get along" people. That' "progressive"?
ReplyDeleteYes,"go along to get along" people are the least trustworthy (most dangerous) of all. You can never tell what they think or predict what they will do next. I call them [jellyfish]!
ReplyDeleteThis probably goes on in more places than we would like to admit. It just usually does not get posted in the medial
ReplyDeleteDebbie
This deserves a four-letter rating:
ReplyDeleteESS-AITCH-EYE-TEA!
Heh, wingnuts brains are 'truncated.'
ReplyDeleteOh, that's why we're racist? Nice spin! No, it couldn't be the racist actions of Ted Nugent and Rush Limbaugh, could it? Sorry dude, the right has cornered the market on racism.
ReplyDeleteBecause they are not and never will be "gentlemen." Except for a very few surviving fossils, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Old School no longer exist. Unfortunately, most people today have no idea what the terms mean.
ReplyDeleteIf you'd like to see a good example of what it once meant to be a lady, watch at Hitchcock's Rebecca and observe the behavior of "Bea" the charming-but-doughty country gentlewoman portrayed by Gladys Cooper.
These policies have evolved to protect the edjucaters (smile) who cannot write, recognize a ninety degree angle, convert fractions, nor contemplate string theory or thermodynamic laws. They have to teach something, so they teach kumbaya/feel good courses. Naturally, the schools produce a more pleasant level of idiot.
ReplyDeleteTammy
What an insult to 'real' students who apply themselves. When this happens in the sciences, how do you know you're getting a low rate doctor or engineering? Especially since they'll gravitate to government jobs. Yeech!
ReplyDeleteOne of the most tragic results of misguided policies of this sort is that a perfectly splendid example of sterling competence and sincere high-mindedness such as Dr. Ben Carson might get mistaken for an example of "Affirmative Action," and either CELEBRATED for all the wrong reasons by Leftist Bigots eager to toot their own horns, or REVILED and DISMISSED by the ignorant assumptions of Right Wing Bigots disgusted by the tendentious, disingenuous, always destructive machinations of the Left.
DeleteTRUTH is what we need. TRUTH is what we must long for. And TRUTH is what we must learn to serve.
If we don't, we will DIE.
Sorry for my lack of participation at this thread. I've been in the throes of preparing for the classes I teach. The 2014-2015 school term begins on September 2, and I was doing start-up lesson plans almost all day long yesterday.
ReplyDelete