KURT SCHLICHTER WILL NEVER LACK FOR MATERIAL.

I have my doubts about the geopolitics of his People's Republic series.  That the people turning the People's Republic of North America into an incoherent pesthole along the way do so while saying silly things I have no doubt.  Joanne Jacobs recently came up with another candidate for mockery.

“Marcellus is cooking hot meals to hand out to a small group of twelve Black Lives Matters protestors demonstrating against separating families held at the U.S./Mexico border. He is making a meal of rice, cornbread, and red beans. He wants to make enough red beans for each person to have more than ¾ cup. Determine whether each inequality or number lines correctly models c, the number of red bean Marcellus needs to make."

She quips, "Of course, if Marcellus was doling out Irish stew or if Helga was cooking sauerkraut for neo-Nazis, the answer be the same."  But that wouldn't be social justice mathematics, would it?

Later in the journal article, she complains that test questions are written in standard English, rather than African-American Vernacular English. Solving that would require "separate but equal" assessments written in students' preferred modes of communication. Perhaps text-speak and emojis?

That's right, there's peer-reviewed research, and apparently "separate but equal" is again a thing.  Predictably, the abstract has that stupid use of "interrogate."

Jennifer Randall argues that it is not possible to build race-neutral and cultural-neutral tests, and what the field thinks of as race-neutral actually represents whiteness masquerading as neutrality. She provides a heuristic for interrogating the initial stages of our assessment development process from an antiracist framing to disrupt white supremacist approaches to construct definition and representation.

All the predictable Theory-speak, and when it's done, the students will not be any better at doing mathematics, although the "heuristics" in the paper (unsupported by any field evidence) will create ideological clones of the people play-acting as teachers.  If that sort of language can't make it into a Kelly Turnbull story, it is at least providing entertainment for Real Clear Education's Max Eden.

The mathematical goal is for students to multiply twelve by three-quarters to get nine, and then represent “greater than nine” symbolically. But professor Randall rather butchered the task of making this math question “anti-racist.”

A 6th-grade level literate student might note that the “red beans” is carelessly misspelled in the final sentence. A culinarily literate student might note that the question doesn’t actually ask for the number of cups of red beans that Marcellus needs to make. A generally literate sixth grader might note that Professor Randall misspelled “Black Lives Matter.” A politically literate sixth grader might wonder why, exactly, an organization that recently endorsed Hamas’s rape of women and murder of babies needs to be referenced at all on a standardized test.

But the fundamental idea behind Randall’s work is even more stupid than her exemplar question. In recent years, conservative critics have accused the woke of believing that “2+2=4” is racist. Randall all but agrees that, in fact, it is. “Students are rarely taught ‘2+2=4’ absent of context,” she writes. “And, I argue, that when context is not clear (or seemingly not present), the implied context, historically, has been whiteness.” She is not quite arguing that “foundational math items such as “2+2” are always racist.” But, “[b]ecause we are unaware of this context and the cultural norms/values that students must draw on to respond, “2+2” is not necessarily a neutral item-type and should no longer be referred to as one.”

She means us to believe that it’s better, in other words, to write something like: “Two BLM protestors join two other BLM protestors at a rally against police brutality. How many BLM protestors are rallying for racial justice?”

Even if asking “2+2=4” is the best and most efficient way to know whether students understand the addition of single-digit integers, Randall argues that still shouldn’t ask that question, citing John Rawls. Randall writes, “We understand from the work of Rawls (1999) that policies/practices must be abolished—regardless of their perceived or actual efficiency and standing—if those policies/practices are inherently unjust.”

Professor Randall’s royal “we” here likely refers to critical race theorists (CRT). Her work is shot through with CRT phrases and references to CRT authors.

It has long been the practice of a class of education theorists to invoke Rawls without understanding him, let alone to go behind the veil of ignorance and ask themselves if they would prefer to be born innumerate and raised innumerate.  I never thought that what once circulated as a parody of the Howard Law School bar exam would become a recommended practice in middle school number theory.

But I haven't run out of material for the Colonel.  Who knew that a government official could protest being caught out fishing off the company pier because releasing that information was deplorable?  "In an epic 1,312-word email to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Bice, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ Communications Director Britt Cudaback demanded that the state’s largest newspaper censor information about her alleged romantic relationship with Evers’ powerful Chief of Staff Maggie Gau, arguing that publishing the information could lead to anti-LGBTQ violence."

In the words of Anna Russell or Dave Barry, "I'm not making this up, you know."

The central argument in Cudaback’s email to Bice was that the newspaper should not write about an alleged supervisor-subordinate romantic relationship between public employees if those people are not heterosexual, as if a person’s sexual orientation renders them immune from any questions about their public roles.

“We decline to comply with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s demands that we take the extraordinary and unprecedented step of answering questions that could disclose staff members’ potential LGBTQ status and identity for publication in the state’s newspaper of largest readership,” Cudaback wrote Bice in August 2023.

The emails reveal the increasingly frantic campaign by Cudaback and Evers’ office to stop the Journal Sentinel from reporting that Cudaback and Gau, her supervisor, were allegedly involved in a live-in romantic relationship that was causing consternation among members of the governor’s staff. Gau is so powerful that some people around the Capitol routinely refer to her as the “real governor.”

And here I thought Governor Evers, although old, was more in control than Dementia Joe. Moreover, the opportunities for word-play involving Gau proliferate.  In the absence of clarity on the meaning of "protected class," we quickly find ourselves in the world of Jonathan Swift and the sovereign's favorite cushions.

Cudaback even claimed publishing the abuse of power allegations could lead to Evers’ staffers being stalked, as she fielded Bice’s questions, which he was trying to direct to Gau. The email implied there was “no journalistic value or legitimate public interest” to whether Gau and Cudaback were dating.

That’s even though Cudaback admitted, “The communications director (Britt Cudaback) has reported directly to the chief of staff (Maggie Gau), and that continues to be the case.”

In a complete tangent, Cudaback even claimed that Gau responding to Bice’s questions about the supervisor-subordinate relationship could lead to the media questioning people about their disabilities or race.

There have to be surviving members of the People's Republic hierarchy for whom Clay Deeds has compromising material on.  In Wisconsin, there can be benefits to fish swimming by the company pier.

Bice reported that the situation is causing other state workers discomfort in the office; there are ongoing questions about whether anyone could question Cudaback’s performance.

In addition, both are taxpayer-funded employees, and many businesses and governmental offices have policies against supervisors dating subordinates. Cudaback received an “80% pay increase in four years,” according to Bice’s story. Furthermore, Evers has taken prior stances against sexual harassment in the workplace.

“Publishing staff members’ LGBTQ status and identity in your paper could directly cause and result in undue emotional and physical harm, including but not limited to harassment, stalking, targeting, and violence, among other concerning behavior, against members of our staff,” Cudaback wrote, saying that Bice could attribute the lengthy statement to her.

Bizarrely, the emails reveal, Cudaback was leading the governor’s office’s increasingly urgent PR response to Bice’s questions… about Cudaback’s own alleged romantic relationship with her supervisor, the governor’s chief of staff. Yet Evers’ office somehow convinced the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to redact both Cudaback’s gender and name from their story, according to Bice’s email responses.

The governor professes not to be troubled by a senior advisor carrying on with a subordinate, and the tone coming from the Capitol Gau seems to be that any reference to any same-sex tryst is one step short of somebody being beaten up.