“Peak Woke”

Arlington County, Virginia, recently introduced a proposal for a new grading system, based on the idea of equity, that would allow an unlimited number of retakes on assignments, ban extra credit, and would block grading on homework assignments, Fox News reported on Thursday. In response, numerous teachers from Arlington slammed the proposal, saying that it would essentially give children a free pass and dramatically reduce the quality of education in the county.

When the holidays arrive, I often take the occasion to write solemn think pieces that survey the human condition in all its many facets — as with my 2019 Christmas essay about how Ambrose of Milan’s response to the Massacre of Thessalonica in 390 A.D. shaped the western Christian tradition. But writing those thumb-suckers takes a lot of “emotional labour.” So this year, as yuletide approaches, I’ve instead acceded to my editor’s request that I write a trashy listicle cataloguing the most hilariously woke Canadian social-justice meltdowns of 2021. “It is easier to look wise than to talk wisely,” Ambrose sagely advised. Here are some social-justice enthusiasts who had challenges on both fronts.

A good compilation of the people who make Canada suck.

Football, cricket, Olympic gymnastics… no sport is now safe from woke politics.

In 2021, the culture wars thoroughly colonised all of our favourite sports.

Nowhere was this clearer than in football. The people’s game was rife with woke politics this year, as it was last year. Players are still ‘taking the knee’ before each game, more than 18 months after the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, which first inspired all the knee-taking. The kneeling still frequently features as a highlight alongside shots and saves on Match of the Day, in case we hadn’t got the message yet.

The classroom will be the key battleground in the 21st-century culture wars.

One of the most significant events of 2021 was the revolt of frustrated and angry parents in Virginia, against the teaching of so-called critical race theory in local schools.

The revolt precipitated the shock defeat of a one-time Virginia governor, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, at the hands of Republican Glenn Youngkin in November’s gubernatorial elections. This was not just a serious setback for the Biden presidency, in a state the Democrats won easily in 2020; it also demonstrated, perhaps for the first time in the current phase of the culture wars, that the social-engineering efforts of America’s cultural elites can be contained – and perhaps even defeated.

The woke’s vocabulary is a weapon in their culture war.

I never had kids and when I look at Facebook friends’ photos of their own I realize that that’s probably a good thing. I am a graduate of the school of hard knocks. I know how tough life can be. Children’s dewy, defenseless skin, their huge eyes, the easy pleasure they take in puppies, dandelions, and bubbles, break my heart. As a parent, I’d be wracked by anxiety.

Mount Sinai embraces ideologically charged DEI programs in medicine

Last year, administrators at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine published an article describing the school’s long-standing “cultural change initiative.” Appearing in the journal Academic Medicine, the article is unequivocal in its charge. “We have to go out there and seek the truth,” it declared, “part of which is accepting that, if we are White, we are a big part of the problem. We are part of the reason that structural racism imprisons and oppresses people of color every day, everywhere they go, and no matter what they do.”

Teenagers used to crave fun and freedom. Today’s lot are more uptight than their parents.

In pre-industrial societies, you went straight from being a child to being an adult the minute you hit adolescence. Then you laboured on the land and you fought in wars. No one raised an eyebrow when Shakespeare had young teens Romeo and Juliet get married; in Italy, as in England, the age at which a couple could undertake marriage – without parental consent – was 14 for boys and 12 for girls. The idea of a teenager didn’t exist because those in their teens were all too exhausted having children, being parents, fighting wars and labouring on the land to even contemplate jiving, jitterbugging and the like.

The Salvation Army, having faced a massive backlash because of November’s “Let’s Talk About Racism” guide, doesn’t seem to have learned its lesson. It’s now announced that, in January, it will be offering a two-day racial justice forum in Illinois. This turn to the left does not bode well for an organization that has already seen a significant drop in charitable donations since it decided to embrace leftist politics.

Idaho’s state motto is Esto Perpetua, or, in English, “It shall be perpetual.” That may well characterize the state’s population situation in the Pandemic Year of Our Lord, 2021.

Idaho realized the highest percentage increase in population in 2021 in America: 2.9%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Oxford University’s race equality task force has reportedly published recommendations that could see academics judged and hired based on what’s been described by one professor as a “woke score.”

The proposals are aimed at raising the number of hires from ethnic minority backgrounds, according to The Telegraph, which reviewed the task force’s consultation document. The equality panel reportedly noted that it was “important to embed EDI [equality, diversity and inclusion]” into “all recruitment.”