CALIFORNIA'S CATASTROPHIC PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM: HOW "WHITE GUILT" IS REPLACING MERITOCRACY & CORRUPTING EDUCATION

By Olivia Benbow (guest contributor)

Much earlier this summer, Olivia Benbow, who is from Santa Barbara and is currently matriculating her senior year at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland, signed on as an intern while I was still writing a weekend column for the Santa Barbara News-Press.

I assigned Ms. Benbow to research and write a column on the state of public schools in California.

Unfortunately, by the time Olivia’s column was ready for publication, the News-Press had declared bankruptcy and ceased to exist.

Moreover, schools were on summer hiatus.

School is now back in session and our presence on Substack has cultivated a healthy number of subscribers.

Thus, I present Olivia Benbow’s well-researched column.

Have YOU – student or parent – ever wondered about the “Pride” flag patterns in schools?  The push for “Ethnic Studies” classes?  The lack of a rigorous curriculum and subsequently low or nonexistent exam scores? 

They are all fundamentally linked. 

SAT and ACT standardized tests used to be an immovable part of the college application process, dreaded by high schoolers as a necessary hurdle.  But these bastions of the school system face elimination. 

Traditional math, science, and humanities courses are obliterated then “reworked.”  Consequently, California’s national education rankings are in the gutter.  And the state’s situation worsens as its citizens are increasingly blamed for systemic intolerance. 

This is far from coincidental.  Current cultural ideology is directly connected with curriculum – the next generation is most malleable and most fit to bear whatever torch, whether for good or evil.  The core problem with California schools is “anti-meritocracy” and the “white guilt” that fuels it.  

The graduating high school class of 2023 reflected a mere 50% reading proficiency.  Abysmal.  Faculty are more focused on introducing an Ethnic Studies class for freshman students than inculcating an interest in classical literature. 

By law, this course will be a new, semester-long requirement for graduates of 2030.  Staff are busy hiring not only “social justice minded” teachers, but also those with “proper credentials.” Cal Matters is a benign name but beware the content. 

As Santa Barbara parent and education activist James Fenkner notes, it could be a fantastic course, covering distinct cultures and customs across the globe.  He reveals that “white guilt” made his daughter’s ninth-grade experience of Ethnic Studies a grave disappointment.  Rather than a harmlessly informative class, it seeks to indoctrinate California’s youth yet further by highlighting minority grievances and imperialist atrocities.  For example, no one speaks of American soldiers who perished en masse in Japanese POW camps during WWII.  Hush-hush.  We are always the bad guys, right?  

Kenny Xu,  author of An Inconvenient Minority “debunks critical race theory” – Asians are racially different, yet they consistently prove their merit and ability to succeed in the US. 

Elite colleges are busy filling quotas based on “identity” rather than intelligence, work ethic and passion.  This mentality filters down to high schools as well, demonstrated by the classes and content offered, such as Ethnic Studies, suggesting that the education system no longer exists for education, but rather for dissemination of racial and sexual propaganda.  There is little meritocracy left in American academia—and hardly any in California.     

“White guilt” covers Christians too. 

In an International Baccalaureates class discussion of “What is art?” at Dos Pueblos High School the teacher showed a slide of a crucifix in the “artist’s” piss.  This went too far, sparking fury amongst Catholic students and parents who fought in court against such blasphemy.  Later, it was found that the government endorsed the piece known as “Piss Christ.”  Apparently, it is deemed “creative” to soak the cross in human urine, but these staff members would not dare display Mecca to Muslim students up in flames.  That would be considered insensitive.       

Earlier this summer, SBHS Ethnic Studies teacher and black activist Matef Harmachis was found guilty of sexually harassing a teenage girl at school.  An obvious outrage.  It was reported that Harmachis consistently cried “racism” to “allow him to do anything he wanted.”  So – class content brainwashes students and predatory teachers abuse them.  One hell of a combination.

Without competent teachers, there is little substantive material that can be taught.  California State Board of Education reports a disappointingly vague high school curriculum.  Traditionally rigorous content is overly associated with “being European” and an “imperialist past.”  Supposedly old-fashioned authors are anathema to the “modern” and “woke” educational agenda.  History learning outcomes are the “emergence of Romanticism, social criticism, and the move away from Classicism in Europe.”  English is even simpler – “an understanding of euphemism, oxymoron, hyperbole, and paradox as figures of speech.”  Common Core math replaces specific courses.  In science, “actually engaging in the practices” replaces “learning facts.”  YOU – student – you cannot practice in any field without knowing the facts.

We can thus trace this “white guilt” through the dumbed-down curriculum.  It no longer features geometric proofs; pivotal European historical figures; grand poets, playwrights, and novelists.  “White guilt” spurs the “anti-meritocracy” across California.  It explains open-border policies and floods of illegal immigrants, who are hindered by the English language barrier.  This inevitably lowers education standards since proficiency cannot be expected from all students. 

California Teachers’ Association reports a move towards grading equity.  In Sacramento, Ds and Fs are phased out so as not to derail any students from four-year college.  Even TikTok videos are allowed as a “creative” demonstration of knowledge.  In Alamo, a four-point scale is being implemented in place of letter grades – Mastery, Proficient, Emerging, and No Evidence.  According to a Sacramento teacher, “Assigning 50% for work that’s not done is worse than the unwitting promotion of racism.  It is racism.”  Since when?  Is she not being inherently racist by suggesting such a thing?

To take a deep dive into literature – school staff promote horrifying content in libraries associated with LGBTQ ideology that is actively disseminated and forced onto young students.  Let no man, woman, or transgender individual tell you otherwise.  It is everywhere.  The rainbow is widening, the latest example of social contagion.  And it is not God’s rainbow of love and purity.  Instead, it is a colorful veneer hiding indoctrination, confusion, depression, and sterilization. 

Drag Queen “Miss Angel D’mon” hosted a read-aloud event for young students at Chaucer’s bookstore and had them repeat “positive affirmations” about themselves.  Students ought to be learning their letters more carefully, otherwise they will end up like the Class of 2023.  They are misguided into congratulating themselves from such a young age for merely existing and achieving nothing.  Here is an exceedingly vibrant example of LGBT propaganda.             

Gender Queer is a graphic-art memoir by Maia Kobabe, a 33-year-old cartoonist and graduate from California College of the Arts.  Shockingly  Kobabe’s cartoon compilation is an attempt to sexualize children.  It is also an insult to womanhood and a threat to society.   Yet it is found in school libraries throughout the state.

Open Gender Queer and Maia’s unnerving, vivid tale unfolds.  It traces her life as a girl confused by gender differences, scarred by puberty, and uninterested in dating.  She eventually adopts the pronouns “e, eim, eir.”  Hit page 31 and the horrors begin.  Ladies, especially – please remain seated for the entire performance.

Backtrack to pages 23 and 24.  We meet Maia’s parents, whose characteristics scream of the Hippie ’60s.  Drugs and dirty hair now seem minor compared to the obsessions of the Queer ’20s generation, including perverted pronouns and sterilizing surgeries. 

Maia sits on the toilet, horrified at the stains of her first period.  Nightmarish graphics of a blood-soaked pad and her blood-spattered legs span a gruesome nine pages.  Her parents gift her a gold floral necklace “to celebrate” her maturation.  However, Maia takes P-R-I-D-E in that she never wears such a feminine piece of jewelry.  Purposefully or not, this sequence devalues family cohesion and parenthood through presenting a woman’s period as terrifying and denigrating acknowledgment of sexual development. 

Speaking of surgeries, Maia detests her breasts, not to mention her no-no square downstairs.  She welcomes breast cancer and even mastectomy.  Maia wiles her day away by jerking off with a vertical bunch of grass between her legs (p. 60) and fantasizing about gay sex, even referencing Plato’s Symposium (p. 135).  How educational.  Additionally, she abhors lace bras and pink underwear.  What does that tell little girls who love pink?  Young women suffer from enough body dysmorphia without gender dysphoria on top of that.  They hate themselves enough.  Leave their sex alone. 

It gets worse.  Let us not forget the pornography.  Gay hip thrusting (p. 61) and oral sex between Maia and her date “Z” (p. 167) are enough to have the book banned from every bookshelf west of Baku.  Her visit to the gynecologist culminates in Maia imagining a thick, bloody stake driven through her naked body (p. 128).  So, our young ladies will be frightened of healthy, straight sex, and our young men will be terrified to date them.  For good reason, especially if these ladies do not believe there is such a thing as a biological “woman.”

What are we teaching our children?    

Gender Queer has nothing to do with loving your body as it was created.  Nearly every character is LGBT+++ in a clear attempt to normalize the abnormal.  Maia takes her readers on a journey of profound self-hatred that transcends teenage discomfort during puberty.  She tries to remake herself.  Her book is proof of the final step to a process removing the different layers of a person’s identity. 

The current cultural ideology consists of white guilt interwoven with youth sexualization.  Inundating California’s schools, it results in anti-meritocratic practices that prevent capable students (of any race, religion, and sex) from learning if offered a real education. 

No one is to blame, bar Americans themselves.  It is our internal problem. 

We have allowed ourselves to be pummeled by accusations of “systemic intolerance,” and thus, our children know nothing, subjected to wasted class time, nonexistent grades, and pathetic teachers. 

The next generation knows nothing, not even who they are.