Remember When Children Were Allowed To Be Innocent?

On Monday, The Daily Wire posted an article about a child between the ages of 3 and 4 being suspended from nursery school for being “transphobic.”

The article notes:

“Department for Education (DfE) data show the child, aged either three or four, was suspended from a state school in the 2022-23 academic year for ‘abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity,’” The Telegraph reported.

…“Worse still, this is not an isolated case,” she continued. “Apparently, 13 four and five-year-olds were suspended or permanently excluded from school for the same reason. Teachers and school leaders involved in this insanity should be ashamed of themselves for projecting adult concepts and beliefs onto such young children. It’s unforgivable for children’s vital early education to be so traumatically disrupted by school leaders who prioritize activists’ demands over their charges’ wellbeing.”

Although the article does not cite the specifics of the incident, it notes:

“In 2022, a Church of England school in the Isle of Wight warned a six-year-old boy’s parents that he might be deemed ‘transphobic’ if he were to question another pupil wearing a dress,” The Daily Mail pointed out.

I can easily picture a three-year-old boy walking up to another three-year-old boy and asking him why he is wearing a dress. That is not transphobic–that is a normal childhood question from a child that is probably too young to have the proper social graces.

Settled Science?

First of all there is no such thing as ‘settled science.’ The scientific method calls for constant questioning and re-evaluating. Second, if something is declared settled science, you can be sure that someone with a potential financial gain is promoting it (sorry for my cynicism).

On Sunday, WattsUpWithThat reported that the idea of net zero carbon is based on insufficient date. Wow. We are crippling some of the world’s major economies based on insufficient data.

The article quotes and article from The Telegraph posted on Saturday:

Britain’s climate watchdog has privately admitted that a number of its key net zero recommendations may have relied on insufficient data, it has been claimed.

Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, who led a recent Royal Society study on future energy supply, said that the Climate Change Committee only “looked at a single year” of data showing the number of windy days in a year when it made pronouncements on the extent to which the UK could rely on wind and solar farms to meet net zero.

“They have conceded privately that that was a mistake,” Sir Chris said in a presentation seen by this newspaper. In contrast, the Royal Society review examined 37 years worth of weather data.

Last week Sir Chris, an emeritus professor and former director of energy research at Oxford University, said that the remarks to which he was referring were made by Chris Stark, the Climate Change Committee’s chief executive. He said: “Might be best to say that Chris Stark conceded that my comment that the CCC relied on modelling that only uses a single year of weather data … is ‘an entirely valid criticism’.”

The CCC said that Sir Chris’s comments, in a presentation given in a personal capacity in October, following the publication of his review, related solely to a particular report it published last year on how to deliver “a reliable decarbonised power system”.

The article at WattsUpWithThat concludes:

It is now clear that Parliament authorised Net Zero without any proper assessment, whether financial or energy, and the whole Net Zero legislation must now be suspended until a full independent assessment is carried out.

In addition, the whole of the CC should now be disbanded. Unfortunately it is still required by law, but it should now be staffed by truly independent members, with a remit to prioritise energy security and cost/benefit goals. The ideological pursuit of Net Zero must not override the wellbeing of the British public, put its energy security at risk or make the public worse off.

But the current and past members of the CCC who have overseen this attempt to bamboozle and defraud the public must be held to account, and excluded from any further influence over the country’s energy policy, or indeed on any issue of public policy.

So why are we even thinking about doing some of the things we are doing to bring down carbon?

A World Turned Upside Down

On Friday, The Geller Report reported:

The West Bank city of Bethlehem, famous for being the birthplace of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, has declared that they will be removing all decorations celebrating the annual holiday of Christmas.

“Bethlehem Municipality crews announced the dismantling of Christmas decorations installed several years ago in the city’s neighborhoods and removing all festive appearances in honor of the martyrs and in solidarity with our people in Gaza,” the municipality wrote on Facebook.
Why are the festivities being canceled?

A spokesperson for the city also told the Telegraph “The reason is the general situation in Palestine; people are not really into any celebration, they are sad, angry and upset; our people in Gaza are being massacred and killed in cold blood.”

“Therefore, it is not appropriate at all to have such festivities while there is a massacre happening in Gaza and attacks in the West Bank.

The massacre happened on October 7th. That was an attack on civilians. What is happening in Gaza right now is an attack on military targets. I am sorry that the people in Bethlehem are upset, were they this upset after October 7th?

Ignoring The Truth At Your Own Peril

American schools are not the only schools in the world that are forgetting that their job is to teach children. Teaching children means telling them the truth about their history and the world we live in at the present time. On Friday The U.K. Daily Mail reported that the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has cancelled an event with ISIS survivor Nadia Murad. Ms. Murad was taken from her home and sold into sexual slavery at just 14 years old. She was scheduled to discuss her book, The Last Girl: My Story Of Captivity, in February 2020.

The article reports:

Murad was scheduled to sit down with students from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) – the largest school Board in Canada with nearly 600 schools – to discuss her book The Last Girl: My Story Of Captivity in February 2022. 

Murad’s graphic exposé detailed how she escaped the Islamic State, where she was ripped from her home and sold into sexual slavery aged just 14 years old, according to The Telegraph

…But before the event could happen the superintendent of the Board Helen Fisher said that her students would not participate.

She has since issued an apology but refused to allow her students to attend. 

Fisher expressed that she believed the book would ‘promote Islamophobia’ and cited how offensive the book was to her Muslim students as her reason for cancelling the event.

The decision enraged TDSB parent Tanya Lee, who wrote an email to the superintendent about the decision.

Lee also founded the book club – called A Room Of Your Own Book Club – which allows teen girls aged 13 to 18 from secondary schools around the country to hear from female authors, and was hosting the event set to feature Murad. 

‘This is what the Islamic State means. It is a terrorist organization. It has nothing to do with ordinary Muslims. The Toronto school board should be aware of the difference,’ she wrote, as reported by The Telegraph.

The article concludes:

However, this isn’t the first time Fisher banned a book from a book club event.

Back in October, A Room Of Your Own Book Club featured author and lawyer Marie Henein, who defended Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi while he was being faced with sexual assault charges.

Although Ghomeshi was acquitted on all charges in 2016, the TDSB sill refused to let its students attend the event.

In response, dozens of users took to Twitter to express their fiery discontent towards TDSB’s decision.

One user referred to when Holocaust survivors spoke to TDSB schools and sarcastically said: ‘I guess all the Holocaust survivors who have spoken at schools were promoting hatred of Germans – any response to your idiotic position on Nadia Murad???’

Meanwhile, another user said the school’s choice to cancel Murad’s event is ‘sad (because) she is being de-platformed’. 

Yet another response said the decision is the ‘opposite’ of cancel culture, ‘where incompetent professionals face no consequences for bungling their jobs, because their errors are seen as being committed in the (nominal) service of social justice’. 

I’m not sure I would want thirteen or fourteen-year olds reading Ms. Murad’s book–I think I would want to let the parents decide that, but ignoring the culture of Islamic jihad is something all western nations do at their own peril.