Smith College has always been woke to the point of insomnia. Now, however, it has embraced an “anti-racism reform” that even some on the left call looney. As discussed in a prior column on the same reform implemented at the University of Southern California, Smith has removed the word “field” from its social work program as racist. The reason? It reminds some of the field work of slaves.The department formerly known as the “Office of Field Education” will be now referred to as the “Office of Practicum.” Carolyn McDaniel, a spokesperson for Smith College, explained that this change is “consistent with the guiding principles of the social work profession, Smith College’s School for Social Work strives for intentional accountability.”“Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign…This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language.”
The school heralded its replacement of the word “field” as another triumph in the fight for “dismantling oppressive and discriminating systems.”
Neither Smith nor USC is saying that the word is racist. They are saying that some may be reminded that slaves worked in fields. It does not matter that the word is not being used in even a remotely racist way. Rather than expect students to understand how words are used, it is better to ban them.
We faced the same type of logic at George Washington University when the school dropped the long moniker of “The Colonials.” I previously wrote about my opposition to the dropping of “The Colonials.” The university assembled a committee that seemed pre-disposed to drop the name after objections that, in my view, were historically and logically wrong. That followed an earlier panel that lacked any opposing views on the matter.
Now the school has adopted “The Revolutionaries” — a moniker that has greater appeal for many at the school but will likely be as usable in a sports context as the “Confectionaries.” Rather than expect students to know that our “Colonials” fought a war against an Empire and colonization, the school decided to drop the beloved moniker because some dismissed the actual reference and meaning. After all, a university can hardly be expected to stand on the meaning and history of language as an educational institution. The key is that when “The Revolutionaries” go to practice, they may want to avoid going to the “field” as opposed to “practicum place.”
It is that simple. The important thing is to believe . . . just like they said in the movie “Practicum of Dreams.”
I am certain that this monumental task will improve the lives of countless black and brown people. Just as tearing down statues of Confederates, pioneer settlers, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt…countless others has stopped black and brown crime, illegitimacy and closed the education gap.
antonio
College and University Alumni don’t intercede to stop this ridiculous lunacy because they assume that it’s only a “phase” for college students and it will pass. They assume incorrectly in communist Amerika. Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article.
@skyraider
Yep. Time to pull heads out of holes. I often wonder just how privileged and delusional people have to be to not fully grasp what you have posited. That ‘real world’ they are supposed to magically bump into and make better decisions regarding is a fantasy (project much, Alumni?)
Sometimes, my NPR lovin’ brother gives me the answer. 🙄
In other news:
Smith College has banned the use of the word “racism” (and any form of it), stating that the word might remind the eternally aggrieved that slavery is ______.
Can you use the word ‘slavery’?
Doesn’t that remind blacks of _______?
Banning it would end a lot of nonsense talk.
LOL. What the left is coming to grips with and flailing about in doing it, this banning of a word is example 46,275 of that, is that as hard as they have tried to integrate one particular race, they have failed. Now we have the attempt to coerce inter-breeding in every ad and tv show and movie in a last-ditch attempt to level the FIELD. Smith College and the rest of the neo-bolshevik hens are a laughingstock as is anyone that remotely believes that the nanny-statism, language/media curators are capable of anything positive. The never-ending rush to acquire unintended consequences never fails to entertain, as does the march towards the historical cycle of comeuppances.
Free education, free housing, free food, free drugs, more free education, unbalanced contracting and education opportunities…all fail, so why not try removing the word field? More genius from the ‘educated.’ LOLOL.
Don’t do that, then you’re a white supremacist. Of course biden got more votes than Obama or Trump – everyone loves old white mentally disabled men, especially democrats.
The MIC would never do anything fraudulently to expedite a war. The media wouldn’t lie to you about something as sacrosanct as DEMOCRACY…lol. BTW, I have cases of aluminum centrifuge casings if you need any, cheap.
How many people have been killed or had their lives ruined in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and now Ukraine/Russia because of f-wads like the Bushes and clintons and obamas and bidens?
The myth of white supremacist terror is laughable. You’re being manipulated and if you know it, you’re complicit and if you don’t, you’re blind.
If you are “, Triggered” by a ” microaggression” and need a ” safe space” you are a PU**Y!! Grow the F**K UP!!!
How convenient and virtue-signaling to repeat ad nauseam that the “nation was largely built on the back of slavery.” But partial truths are as useless as no truth. The nation was built on the back of slavery, for a while, and then on the backs of working class men and women (they knew their genders back then) who were worked to death in fields and factories, whose camps were raided by Pinkertons, whose children were forced to work at young ages, and who half starved to death because they didn’t have “Masta” doing his duty and feeding them, however meagre the grub. This race-based distortion of history erases the struggles of the working class and how it survived — despite trauma and microaggressions.
Boom! My thoughts exactly. In CA, there are probably more descendants of Chinese and Irish laborers who built the railroads than there are descendants of slaves. Fat chance they will see any reparations for their ancestors’ indentured servitude and fat chance they would even push for it. Isn’t there a progressive organization called MoveOn? Well, time we do just that because the country is going down the toilet at an ever-increasing rate.
“And the nation was built on the back of slavery. I know it’s tough to deal with, but slaves got the worst of the worst. It’s just reality.
bug”
No one but the slaves did any work. No one worked to free slaves. There were no inventors, writers, or pioneers except slaves.
Bug, you are a slave to your stupidity. Thank goodness you are erased like you should be while this response will stand.
I can’t stop laughing over this one. Every time I think we have reached the limits of inanity, a new disclosure stretches those limits.
My thoughts exactly. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
The smothering, nanny mentality of presuming to anticipate another’s feelings and walking on eggs to avoid any dissonance because, well, some people are just too fragile to handle real life, so we have to take their hand and walk them through it. Says a lot about how the folks at Smith view African Americans and how they’re preparing their students (patients?) for life outside the cocoon.
The Boards of Trustees of colleges and universities are composed of very successful alumni and other influential people who are taken to be intelligent and rational. So why do those Boards tolerate the Woke insanity? Why do the rich alumni who got rich via non-Woke capitalism continue to write checks to their schools?
The root cause of higher-ed social pathology is not the administrators who parasitically embrace Woke momentum as normative, it is the oversight boards and alumni who have the power to intervene and punish the stupidity, but choose not to exercise it.
Smith College, small, elite, nestled in a charming New England town, can boast that the percentage of Black students is 5%. Also noted, the percentage of male students is 2%. Facts are facts.
So, no more use of this:
“She hopes to find work in the health field.
She is a pioneer/leader in the field of genetic research.
a lawyer who is eminent in his field”
Left Fielder — nope, and no more field of dreams. The left crushes everything it touches.
Progressive clowns are funny and stupid
I have about this much patience left for snowflakes. These people are either r*t*rded, mental, or both, and I cringe when I imagine them within an adult milieu. Do they distribute pampers and teddy bears (my wife’s 14 year-old students still bring stuffed toys to class) on matriculation day too? I have a feeling I’m going to be making a lot of people scream and cry in the future by simply existing. Tough ****.
For Pete’s sake: raise your kids better, and stop supporting these clown schools. Enough, already. Oh, and either do away with tenure or make it mean something other than a fat paycheck and professional invulnerability.
James,
Good news!
Oklahoma enacts universal school choice
https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/oklahoma-enacts-universal-school-choice
@Upstate
Definitely a start! 👏🏼
Terrible news. Sorry taxpayers of Oklahoma–you just lost oversight of the use of your tax dollars.
You have been duped into handing over another piece of your representative constitutional republic. Just like the Patriot Act and Obama’s NDAA (well, I won’t use that bit about indefinite detention) you either happily handed it over or acquiesced to its erosion.
“You have a republic, madam, if you can keep it.” ~Ben Franklin
A fool and his liberty are soon parted. 🙁
Conservatives sure aren’t conserving the republic.
Terrible news. Sorry taxpayers of Oklahoma–you just lost oversight of the use of your tax dollars.
Did they teach gaslighting in your progressive, public school system? I tell you what, do tell us how taxpayers, having more freedom to choose where to send their children to school, are losing oversight of their tax dollars? Do you think their too stupid to know how to choose the right school, how to monitor the performance of that school, and then make choices on that information?
” tell you what, do tell us how taxpayers, having more freedom to choose where to send their children to school, are losing oversight of their tax dollars?”
Not all taxpayers have kids in school but yet they pay to support the education of kids in their community because the kids are the future of the community and you want well-educated people in your community. They have oversight of the use of their tax dollars with their elected school board.
Those people LOSE that oversight when unelected people take the pooled tax dollars and do what they wish with it. And, many of those people taking their neighbors’ tax dollars to use at charter schools don’t even pay taxes!
It is treating taxpayers like a feeding trough and it is taxation without representation!
Not all taxpayers have kids in school but yet they pay to support the education of kids in their community because the kids are the future of the community and you want well-educated people in your community.
Aw, isn’t that sweet. I can just see them now. Waving flags, mowing their lawns behind a white picket fence, block parties, ice cream sodas at the corner five and dime. That’s lovely, I want to live there. Well that is until I find out the local public high school cancelled graduation because only 5 of the 33 seniors met the graduation requirements. Yup.
Marlin High School has announced that high school graduation will be rescheduled for June,” the Marlin Independent School District said in a letter posted on Facebook. “The decision by the high school to postpone graduation will provide more time for students to meet necessary requirements for graduation.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/26/us/marlin-high-school-texas-graduation/index.html
So who do you blame? You blame the parents that have been forced to send their children to a school that is failing their children, and all they want to do is to be able to pay for a school that will get them a quality education. Why don’t you blame the school? The teachers? The system? The taxpaying community (with or without children) that continue to pump money into school that is robbing the community of their future, well-educated children? Shame on you.
The taxpaying community (with or without children) that continue to pump money into school that is robbing the community of their future, well-educated children? Shame on you.
Agreed on the latter. Shame on you, Prairie Rose. I have become tired of your constant complaining of parents. Parents have had bullseyes planted on their foreheads by the Attorney General, by the DOJ, by Superintendents of School Districts (Virginia and Florida), and when they do appear at school board meetings, they are demeaned, insulted, their microphones turned off at the public podium, while school board members can talk endlessly.
Wake up, already. Enough of your yammering about parents being to blame. My parents never finished grammar school in Cuba, and paid dearly for Miami Dade County Public Schools as homeowners. yet, they sent me to Catholic schools because public schools during desegregation busing would have been near fatal to send their Latino sons to black schools since blacks beat the snot out of immigrants at black schools. No one ever refunded my parents their hard earned money, considering they worked 6 days/week, 2 jobs just to put food and clothing on our backs. Millions of parents were like my parents, and school boards, school districts, teachers unions, all prey on the incomes of parents by demanding more money. Here in Richmond, new public schools look like miniature Taj Mahals, and yet the results from these school curriculums, school districts, school superintendent and teacher unions are criminal. The Richmond Public School Superintendent is a Marxist who……. I could go.
No Prairie Rose, you are wrong. Not all parents have the luxury of time like you do, not the facile understanding of America culture, language, political machinations, heck many of them would collapse to speak in a public microphone to address Americans.
Defund Public Schools. Let parents teach their own children, or send them to schools that do work. Catholic schools run at a fraction of the budget of government schools.
I have no doubt you’re quite the warrior and physical presence in your children schools, and good for you. My parents, and many parents like my parents, didn’t have that privileged.
I am not ashamed of standing up for their and our equal right to representation in our constitutional republic. The system should NOT be broken–then everyone loses.
They should wear their shame like an albatross for failing their children and their community for so badly abusing tax dollars.
“My parents, and many parents like my parents, didn’t have that privileged.”
So taxpayers who aren’t stretched quite so thin on time should step up to the plate. Most people waste their time on TV or on their phones. Surely they can find time to learn while commuting or doing laundry. Maybe they should read and learn about education and self-governance. That would be good for their pocketbook and for better governance of schools and likely the wider community.
“when they do appear at school board meetings, they are demeaned, insulted, their microphones turned off at the public podium, while school board members can talk endlessly.”
I cannot speak for everywhere but I have only seen this happen when someone goes way over time or are particularly abusive in their language generally or towards a board member individually.
Yes, I do blame the parents. Make sure your kids are doing their homework, studying, going to bed at a reasonable hour. Make sure the curriculum is good, the books are of high quality. If you’re not sure what that means because your own education was mediocre–look into it, ask around, see what good schools are having students study. Taxpayers ought to double-check that their tax dollars are being spent well on great books, a great curriculum, and well-educated teachers (Note to universities: increase your dang minimum GPA for teachers so prospective teachers have to have at least a 3.0 or 3.25 GPA in order to teach.)
“Yes, I do blame the parents. “
Yet, the parents that take an interest sign up for the NYC lottery to get their children into charter schools. Their children that get in generally do well. Why are you blaming them for choosing correctly and making sure their children are educated?
I am blaming years of parents and taxpayers (and motivated politicians and interest groups) for either letting the schools deteriorate as they have or worked to erode them (a la NCLB). We have met the enemy and it is us.
“We have met the enemy and it is us.”
If the enemy is us, we must change, and many are doing that. School choice permits good public schools to remain and bad public schools to improve.
The next time you make your arguments think of what you said. “We have met the enemy and it is us.” That means we have to change. I have, have you?
“That means we have to change. I have, have you?”
I have. I am paying way more attention. I am reading coursebooks, curriculum, policies, and voicing my perspectives, and talking to my friends and representatives about what I see and think. Could do better still but I do have a garden to plant and I am quite busy still with kids’ activities.
Who needs to watch TV when there is plenty of drama going on in the real world.
“I have. I am paying way more attention. I am reading coursebooks, curriculum, policies, and voicing my perspectives, and talking to my friends and representatives about what I see and think.”
That happens when people get incensed, and then they tend to the garden. Education needs a movement, not an intermittent glance announcing the change is on the way, only to cease when it is time to manage one’s garden.
A movement took place. They built charter schools in NYC and proved that kids didn’t have to leave school uneducated and die in the streets. Instead, those children could graduate proficiently or very proficiently and attend college.
I am sorry that your gardening gets in the way of children obtaining a good education. They can’t wait for you to recognize ompetition offers them a chance for a good education. The children aren’t asking much of you or others like you. They are only asking you to get out of the way.
“The children aren’t asking much of you or others like you. They are only asking you to get out of the way.”
Yep, get out of the way and give them your tax dollars. They have seized unfettered use of other people’s hard-earned money. I garden and can, in part, to offset the costs of grocery bills, yet charter schools can be spendthrifts with taxpayer money because there isn’t any oversight. They can advertise with taxpayer money to get more people to drink from the taxpayer trough. In cyber charters, they can make sure every enrolled child gets a new textbook every year because taxpayers cannot hold the charters to reusing textbooks and other items since they have no representation and no recourse and no reason to be responsible with taxpayers’ money. If they fail with taxpayers’ money, well, gol-durnit, they failed and all that money just went down the drain. So, get out of the way and give them your money!
“Yep, get out of the way and give them your tax dollars. ”
If you feel that way, end public funding of the school system.
“yet charter schools can be spendthrifts ”
They have a fixed budget in NY, 75% of the per capita rate.
“they can make sure every enrolled child gets a new textbook ”
And that reduces the 75% funding, yet they reverse proficiency ratios so kids are educated and can go to college.
“If they fail with taxpayers’ money,”
If they fail, the Charter School closes. The public schools failed, and they remain open.
“[M]any of those people taking their neighbors’ tax dollars to use at charter schools don’t even pay taxes!”
Name a single person who does *not* pay taxes.
You have a nasty authoritarian streak. According to the anti-choice view, parents cannot, and do not have the right to, select their child’s education. The Elected Ones should compel parents to send their children to the school that the Elected Ones dictate.
“According to the anti-choice view, parents cannot, and do not have the right to, select their child’s education.”
Not with other people’s money.
They can use their own money or scholarship money or maybe even charitable donations to go to other schools. They should NOT use other people’s money. That money is meant to have representation in elected government–the school boards. It should not be disengaged from that system and used however and whereever unelected people wish at schools whose boards are not elected either.
It is taxation without representation. Where’s the TEA Party on this? We are taxed enough already and then to not even have control via representation and elections?! The public-private partnerships that are working together on this are skating at the edge of economic fascism via private gain/public loss. The public has no recourse to fix the problems at charter schools so if they fail–they just fail, taking those hard-earned, yet unrepresented, tax dollars down the drain with them. Private gain, public loss.
I’m not the only one who sees this:
“Now, nearly ten years later, this 90% privatization overhaul is being touted as a model for a total charter privatization takeover of the United States national education system through P(K)-16/20 workforce development councils.
This fascistic merger of America’s national school system and the corporate economy for public-private workforce planning is bad enough. But there is a more pernicious endgame to the “cradle-to-career” charter school movement: corporate governance over all public/civic spheres of the United States political-economy.
Incentivized by the current era of contrived economic depression, the unelected councils of corporate charter school governance are integrating “cost-effective” public-private partnerships with other fiscally starved public institutions, including health and human services and criminal justice departments. The corporate interlocking of these three public/civic spheres under regional and state P(K)-16/20 council governance is setting the precedent for the erosion of civil process until democratic governance and Constitutional protections are ostensibly usurped by corporate charter bylaws enforced through unelected public-private councils.”
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/20005
Prairie, school choice is known as choice. Unless you believe all parents hate their children their choices will be better than 50% wrong and lead in the right direction. Presently too many American children are being mistreated by public school systems.
I am thinking of starting an organization called “Save the Children give them choice”. I guess you don’t want to join.
“Prairie, school choice is known as choice”
Taxpayers without kids in the district do NOT get a choice. Their tax dollars are used by unelected people without oversight and representation.
If they’d like to discuss or change the dollar amount, the curriculum, the salaries, etc they cannot. Nor can they unelect charter school board members because they aren’t elected.
Public schools have been hurt by motivated corporatists and federal officials and people not paying attention to the ramifications of bad laws and people not paying attention to their school districts when they should be. If they kept pressure on school districts to keep the quality high and advocated to prevent bad laws from being passed or got bad laws rescinded, that would go a long way. People need to pay attention and ask themselves whether the education is going to build free and independent people.
“Public schools have been hurt by . . .”
You’re not even close.
Public schools, and education more broadly, has been destroyed by an irrational philosophy of education — such as that peddled at Columbia University. Start with Dewey’s pragmatism, then work your way down.
Sam,
I do not entirely disagree/agree–I haven’t decided whether I’m half full or half empty on your comment. ;).
There is nuance regarding Dewey.
I agree that an unwise philosophy or being ideologically possessed can wreak havoc. Dewey is complicated. I agree that there are some elements of his writing and perspective that, especially when taken to extremes, are detrimental. Ideas should be wrestled with rather than wholeheartedly accepted or rejected at first blush. Perhaps that is primarily where the fault lies–some of his ideas were implemented wholesale to the extreme and without temperance. I need to find which book I have that notes some of the problems with Dewey have more to do with his acolytes than with the man himself. However, perhaps even some of his ideas were not always well-considered, which, is understandable since he was quite the prolific writer.
In my comment I had in my mind on some of the major overt elements that have caused problems in education–NCLB, Common Core, Race to the Top, A Nation At Risk are all meddling from the Federal level.
“Taxpayers without kids in the district do NOT get a choice. ”
They do. They can push to make public schools better. Have they done that? No. The parents whose children are involved should have that choice, which you deny. That they do not is a problem, and in the process (NYC), tens of thousands of students wishing for a spot in a charter school that affords them an education are denied. They end up on the street and die. Is that what you want to see by denying them this opportunity where the school system pays only 75% of the usual per capita expense?
“If they kept pressure on school districts ”
For decades those parents have not used their political voice. You want to protect something that doesn’t exist while the children die and remain uneducated.
Why not close public schools entirely since you are satisfied with children that develop no skills?
“Their tax dollars are used by unelected people without oversight and representation.”
That is not true since most charter school children graduate with proficiency proven by the state with head-to-head comparisons.
“If they’d like to discuss or change the dollar amount, the curriculum, the salaries, etc they cannot.”
They can and do so. We see that in per capita increases spent by the schools.
“Public schools have been hurt by motivated corporatists”
True. When charter schools educate children, parents move their children to charter schools. To compete, the public schools have a chance to improve.
“People need to pay attention and ask themselves whether the education is going to build free and independent people.”
There are volumes of proof in NYC. Charter school children are better able to handle what is coming their way.
Choice and competition improve education.
“Terrible news. Sorry taxpayers of Oklahoma–you just lost oversight of the use of your tax dollars.”
Wasn’t it the taxpayer who indirectly voted for school choice? They gained education.
They voted to erode our republic just like we all did when we foolishly supported the Patriot Act and said nothing about Obama’s NDAA that included “indefinite detention of Americans”, among other things.
Wrong. They didn’t vote for the government to spy on us. They voted to better educate the children. They tried one way that didn’t work. Therefore either get rid of the public school system or change the dynamics with competition.
“Therefore either get rid of the public school system or change the dynamics with competition.”
It isn’t binary. Maybe people should shoulder their responsibilities of citizenship and pay attention–not just to local school districts, but also to city councils, county commissions, state legislatures, and the federal House and Senate. An awful lot has been overlooked and allowed to pass by without commentary or accountability.
“They tried one way that didn’t work.”
They gave up or didn’t realize they had a duty to their local schools to begin with–who teaches the duties of citizenship anyway? Civics and Cicero has been essentially booted from schools. And, the citizenry allowed others to manipulate the system so it was too big, too unwieldy, too bureaucratic, and thus impenetrable for the general public to easily direct it. Bring it back to the size a community can manage to oversee. It can work.
“It isn’t binary.”
It isn’t binary. School choice is many different systems where one can use the best from each system. What you want is no choice.
“Maybe people should shoulder their responsibilities of citizenship and pay attention–“
When people do vote for change, you act negatively because the people opted for choice. It is you who does not want the public active. You like one system and only one. Unfortunately, you want the state in full control.
“They tried one way that didn’t work.”
That is your fault. You wanted that singular way and did nothing to make things better. The people realized you will do your gardening before trying to better the school system. They want you to garden and let others take care of the children’s education.
OT but relevant,
At High School Debates, Debate Is No Longer Allowed
“At national tournaments, judges are making their stances clear: students who argue ‘capitalism can reduce poverty’ or ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ will lose—no questions asked.”
“But let’s say when the high school sophomore clicks Tabroom she sees that her judge is Lila Lavender, the 2019 national debate champion, whose paradigm reads, “Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist. . . . I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging. . . . I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments. . . . Examples of arguments of this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.”
https://www.thefp.com/p/judges-ruin-high-school-debate-tournaments?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=260347&post_id=123544292&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
Racism is the number one problem in the US
Much like the FBI, the college is forced to fake incidents of racism in order to prove the all encompassing breadth racism covers, ever expanding their tyrannical power over the plebes.
“Cotton” is next. You heard it here first.
Thanks! You made me giggle.
Followed closely by tobacco.
The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing practicum (?) of Eton.
Duke of Wellington
Doesn’t quite have the same effect
Update: Smith College announced that all English words have been banned as racially insensitive because English was the language spoken by the slaveholders. It was admittedly a very awkward announcement given that it was made in English, and Smith College apologized for its insensitivity, and then apologized for its apology because it was also in English.
@pudnhead
😂 No kidding. It’s another step toward Lord of The Flies. These kids will be poking each other with sticks in a generation or two.
Minefield.
What would Neville Marriner: Academy Of St. Martin In The Fields think?
Good one. It is nice to know that there are no great problems facing us these days than language. I’ll sleep better tonight…not.