Pandemic Discovery

Despite the illness and death there has been a silver lining to the pandemic: we have, almost by force, confronted some harsh realities many had long chosen to ignore. We knew the city was designed to be of, by and for businesses but now they are much more open about it, revealing internal dissonance. Which winner will she pick? That might seem important until you recall that the city we thought we would get was always a myth about as real as the bodacious babe the old fart gets with each bottle of Viagra. You know it isn't real, don't you? 

So what is important? Well, we now know that as far as parents are concerned their children are important. The pandemic has burned away reliably opaque clouds of delusion as parents were forced to see what was being called "education." Not a pretty sight. Not only did parents realize they could see, they seem to have discovered there was quite a bit they needed to look into. The more they saw the less they liked and so they took and demanded action. The system, unaccustomed to scrutiny let alone criticism, pushed back declaring upset parents should be considered domestic terrorists. What is actually quite impressive is the handbook describing how the deflection techniques long used by teachers and principals can be leveraged in board meetings. Apparently some folks always held the opinion that parents should have no say in what their children were taught and were bold enough to say such things out loud. But not without consequence. This happened alongside CRT infused pedagogy and elimination of assessments and standards for social justice reasons. The latter revealed internal dissonance (much like we see with our head dwarf) with teachers at odds with admin. 

Now we know that DeKalb County Schools are not expecting a rebound in attendance and while some blame the pandemic these are the same people who've been immune to criticism until recently. Maybe the pandemic was just a catalyst.

Hurts When It's Your Turn

There's been a whole lot of misappropriation going on over the last few years but this has been almost exclusively under the control of the left. In media. In politics. In academia. 

Now the worm has turned and the term for the worm is Critical Race Theory. Until recently CRT was the lab research spinning out escapees trying to go viral but also unnoticed and certainly unlabeled. Then it DID go viral and it wasn't just the dogma that escaped but the label itself. That is when they lost control of both the label and its meaning. The combination of "critical," "race" and "theory" was perfect for appropriation by those pushing back against leftist extremism, particularly in schools. You don't have to be a Tiger Mom to get fired up when someone messes with your kid.

The academic branch of the left protests that opponents don't really understand CRT and that CRT is not what is being pushed into classrooms across the country. They're not accustomed to having their expertise and authority questioned and have yet to realize, let alone accept, that they have lost control of what CRT means outside their ivory tower. It now means whatever those pushing back against indoctrination want it to mean. 

Beyond protests of angry parents there is legislative action that explicitly avoids the use of any specific label, particularly CRT? Why? Because if the extreme left regains control of what CRT is and is not they can use this power to neuter any law that explicitly names CRT. Instead, the legislation is crafted to explicitly define prohibited indoctrination without any specific, fungible label. Just because they're not on the left doesn't mean they're stupid.

You Were Misinformed...

Once again, with another sky-is-falling school redistricting, we are confronted with the assaults and insults of otherwise intelligent folk who claim "they moved here for the schools." No. Really. That is exactly what they are saying. Well, except for a few malcontents who think their kids should be moved to the new Austin primarily because, well, it IS new. Others are just PO-ed that their kids remain in a school with trailers and they somehow posit that it is sane and reasonable that a brand spanking new school, designed to be higher capacity than the others, should start, right out of the gate with trailers. They seem to adore the idiocy of celebrating poor planning. But it all goes back to the insanity, the absolute ignorance surrounding the idea that someone moved to this little corner of what is certainly the worst school district in the metro area for the schools!

If that's why you came here, to Dunwoody, then you're a bit like Rick in Casablanca.