NewsWatch | thebereancall.org

Various

The Real Reform of Education

IntellectualTakeout.org, 4/6/23, “The Real Reform of Education” [Excerpts]: Unlike any other point in the prior four decades, the push to reform the education system through school choice has serious political support and is likely to be passed in many states in the coming years.

[Education] reformers have met with success in showing how the education system, despite sucking up ever more taxpayer funds, has declined so precipitously that many teachers and schools fail to achieve the mission of educating America’s youth.

The great catalysts to change, though, were not the work of education reformers but rather the combination of lockdowns and woke teachers revealed through social media…. The COVID lockdowns allowed parents to see what is passing for education these days [with many] troubled by the apparent leftist cultural framing of nearly every subject…. Libs of TikTok revealed the radical LGBTQ+ propagandizing taking place in classrooms…. Parents were horrified and rightly so.

Due to what they saw, many parents made dramatic changes…. Homeschooling has skyrocketed while private schools find their student populations growing. With parents getting more engaged and shouldering the responsibility of pulling their kids from the public schools, it [is] no surprise that they look at the current education situation as unfair and want education reform.

https://bit.ly/43ggdEJ

Children Under Assault

MidwestOutreach.org, 5/18/23, “Children Under Assault” [Excerpts]: The sweeping away of Judeo/Christian morality left the gates wide open to devalue humans, especially children, and use them in the most important pastime for progressives, sex! The current administration, in collusion with the institutions of “higher learning” and progressive media, has staged a united assault on children. For example, the name you cannot trust, “NYT Publishes ‘Shameful’ Article Dismissing Kids Who Regret Chemical Castration”; [The author] “...also noted that while the NYT article touted sex changes for minors as medically approved treatments for gender dysphoria, it made no mention of the myriad of European countries moving to limit sex changes and classify those offered to minors as “experimental.”

“So I think this was a shameful paper because it shamed and it criticized these children. It really was a very dishonest article. It was hardly journalism. It was advocacy,” [the writer] continued.

Kara Dansky, a self-described feminist who campaigns for sex-based rights for women, blasted the NYT article on Twitter.

“You paint detransition as a rare occurrence. You couldn’t bother to mention that the detrans subreddit [online discussion] has greater than 47,000 members as of today?”

While the Progressives are busy experimenting with and harming the minds and bodies of the children, “The Next Frontier For The Hypersexualized Left: Normalizing Pedophilia”: “As The Federalist has recently reported, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the left is pushing toward social and legal approval of pedophilia. A failed effort in the Minnesota legislature to extend state-law protection to pedophilia as a sexual orientation should remove any doubt about where we’re headed.”

https://bit.ly/44uJY5T

Did Beetles Feed on Dinosaur Feathers?

AnswersInGenesis.org, 5/4/23, Did Beetles Feed on Dinosaur Feathers?” [Excerpts]: What you believe about the past becomes the lens through which you interpret the evidence in the present. Another great example of that was in the news recently under the headline “Beetles fed on dinosaur feathers 105 million years ago.”

In a chunk of amber…researchers discovered bits of downy feathers and larval molts from beetles that are very similar to beetles that live today. Now, our beetles today often live in bird’s nests, nibbling away at shed bird’s feathers. But what was the headline announcing the discovery of these beetles with a few feathers? “Beetles fed on dinosaur feathers.”

Is there any evidence these feathers came from “an unknown theropod dinosaur,” as the article states? No, none at all—they look like feathers that come from birds. But because of the scientists’ assumptions about the age of the amber, the evolutionary history of birds, and the belief that dinosaurs were birds, we get a silly headline stating that beetles ate dinosaur feathers. This is a reminder that you can’t believe everything you read in science articles and need to carefully check things out for yourself.

https://bit.ly/44rcwxd