Biased Reporting, Hypocritical ‘Educators’

A 3/5/23 Washington Post news story, Florida bills would ban gender studies, limit trans pronouns, erode tenure, is a case study on biased reporting and hypocritical educators. The article by Hannah Natanson, Lori Rozsa and Susan Svrluga, opens with, 

Florida legislators have proposed a spate of new laws that would reshape K-12 and higher education in the state, from requiring teachers to use pronouns matching children’s sex as assigned at birth to establishing a universal school choice voucher program.

Note my highlighted portion. Sex is an observed biological fact. It is not “assigned” by anyone. Calling it “assigned” is Woke unreason, not objective reporting. An objective reporter would fact-check the idea that sex is assigned by anyone, and immediately conclude the falsity of the idea, based on the evidence. Of course, unpleasant facts are, well, unpleasant. That’s why there is a move in the journalism field to abandon objectivity altogether, on grounds that it is “a distortion of reality” and even racist—if you can believe it. Rather than accept the truth, even if uncomfortable, why not abandon objective truth and create your own truth to fit your narrative? This is a manifestation of what Ayn Rand identified as the primacy of consciousness, which is the opposite of what objective journalism is based on, the primacy of existence.

Teachers peddling this line—that sex is assigned, rather than observed, at birth—are guilty of gross educational malpractice. The observational biological facts are plain, and it is these facts, not choice or whim, that determines gender. Telling children that gender is a mere arbitrary designation, or “assignment”—at birth or at any time—is to undermine the ability of children to distinguish between what’s real and what’s only in her mind. This is the path to destroying the child’s rational faculty before it is even fully developed. It is a crime. It is monstrous.

Getting back to the Florida legislation, Rozsa and Svrluga write:

Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, warned that the legislation — especially the bill that would prevent students from majoring in certain topics — threatens to undermine academic freedom.

“The state telling you what you can and cannot learn, that is inconsistent with democracy,” Mulvey said. “It silences debate, stifles ideas and limits the autonomy of educational institutions which … made American higher education the envy of the world.”

On this issue, I posted this comment, edited for clarity:

Mulvey whines that “the legislation . . . threatens to undermine academic freedom.”  Is he joking? Aren’t these the same schools that happily soak in torrents of government money? Well, he who pays the piper, calls the tune. Mulvey apparently wants to have his government money, and eat it, too. If the Professors want a free reign, then don’t take government money. Otherwise, accept that you are accountable to the legislature, the taxpayers’ representatives.

“The state telling you what you can and cannot learn, that is inconsistent with democracy” is an even bigger joke. In fact, that is precisely what democracy is—electoral majority rule, with the emphasis on RULE. Apparently, Mulvey wants to have his democracy, and eat it, too. Well, it doesn’t work that way. In a democracy, your freedom is subject to majority rule—or, as Biden put it, “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.” Indeed. If the elected legislature, the voters’ representatives, tells you how and what to teach, that’s it. You do it. Is the right to vote the right from which academic freedom flows—or not? The right to vote is primary, according to democracy. Like it or not, that’s democracy. Contrary to Mulvey, The state telling you what you can and cannot learn is perfectly consistent with democracy. Why should only educators decide what to teach? Majority rules, right?

People need to realize that government funding is tyranny. Fundamentally, it’s as simple as that. When funding is obtained voluntarily from willing consumers, educators can decide, and consumers can accept or go elsewhere. The state has no role, except to police the market for force and fraud. True academic freedom is the separation of education and state, under a constitutional republic with a democratic process of limited powers. In other words, the original American system, a free society based on unalienable individual rights, from which everything else, including the right to vote, flows. 

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