Catholic School Teaches Students How to Keep Minorities Oppressed: Woke Agenda Backfires
It seems likely that Saint Jude is watching over the staff at Benilde-St. Margarets, a Catholic prep school in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.
Catholics revere Jude as the patron saint of lost causes, and when it comes to lost causes, there is perhaps no better example than a Catholic school foisting anti-Biblical principles onto its young students.
Just last week, on Nov. 25, the school’s student newspaper — Knight Errant — published an article detailing the many new additions to the school’s new “social justice” curriculum.
These new changes shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the school’s recent dealings. Last November, BSM developed a “five-year vision” to “access and improve [its] organizational approach to diversity, equity and inclusion,” according to local outlet Alpha News. The outlet further reported that, around the same time, BSM faculty and staff took part in various social justice seminars, many of them pledging to participate in a “year-long program focused on anti-racist teaching strategies.”
According to the Knight Errant, the school’s curriculum has take a decisive direction towards a “social justice” curriculum. One class offered at BSM is “Social Justice and the Written Word.” Another is called “Discipleship in Society,” which is a “semester-long requirement for juniors” that is “incorporated” with “social justice.”
Yet another example of BSM’s new “social justice” initiative is a class referred to by the Knight Errant as “social justice Algebra II.” The class has done away with tests — likely because the left’s campaign to condemn standardized testing as “racist” has infected public school boards across the country.
Testing in the class has been replaced with projects that use algebra to “solve real world problems and help marginalized communities.” That’s what the classes are supposed to accomplish, at least. In reality, by teaching students the tenets of “social justice,” whether the faculty at BSM know it or not, they are actually teaching their students how exactly to keep “marginalized communities” — which are disproportionately minority — oppressed.
This is because virtually every “social justice” solution actually makes things worse for underprivileged, impoverished communities, not better.
Take climate change, for instance, a topic which John Groess, the instructor who teaches “social justice Algebra II,” has used as an area of focus for students. “So far this year we’ve talked about climate change and ice thawing data from Alaska,” Groess explained.
Climate change alarmism has actually resulted in the suffering of poor communities across the world. Author and journalist Michael Shellenberger — well-known for his expertise on climate change issues — explained quite eloquently in a series of tweets published in October how the social justice solution to climate change has harmed the poor.
According to Shellenberger, climate change alarmists like Greta Thunberg begged nations across the world to abandon fossil fuels by over-investing in “unreliable weather-dependent” green energies — and they did. The result? Those unreliable energies failed, and the poor were forced “to choose between food & electricity.”
Greta Thunberg said “I want you to panic” and nations did. They over-invested in unreliable weather-dependent energy sources & under-invested in reliable energy. Now, global energy shortages are forcing the poor to choose between food & electricity pic.twitter.com/bhitwz1AAo
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 21, 2021
Also, in a hilariously ironic twist, this heavy investment in green energy has actually resulted in even greater levels of carbon emissions, Shellenberger argues. This is because “heavy investment in unreliable renewables made energy supplies more vulnerable to a single commodity’s volatility.”
So, kids at BSM will now support policies that lead to energy shortages in poor communities and that — rather than curbing climate change — actually result in an increase in carbon emissions.
But the social justice stupidity doesn’t stop there. Groess also went on to list a few more issues students in his “Algebra” class were being taught to solve — affordable housing and the minimum wage.
The social justice solutions to these problems — just like the solution to climate change — only make things worse for minorities.
When it comes to housing, social justice warriors suggest we institute rent control laws. But, by limiting the amount of money renters can make, these laws actually disincentivize builders from developing new properties in the affected area. Why would they? They won’t be making any money off of them.
Absent the building of new properties, many of the few remaining properties are “luxury housing,” which are often exempt from rent control laws.
If lefties truly wanted more affordable housing to be available, they would remove all regulations and open the rental industry up to the free market. Then, new buildings would be created for the wealthy, and the current “luxury housing” would become outdated, lower in price and then become affordable to lower-income communities.
If BSM is teaching students the “social justice” solution for minimum wage laws — which would be raising them — the effects of such a move would be similar. A rise in the minimum wage would, rather than help “marginalized communities,” actually put many of the lowest-income workers out of work.
Why? Because minimum wage laws essentially outlaw low-skilled labor. Speaking with The Western Journal back in April, economist Mark J. Perry explained why exactly this was the case.
“[E]mployees compete against other employees for jobs and higher wages, not against employers. Employers compete against other employers, not workers, to hire the best workers,” Perry explained.
“Given the reality that low-skilled workers compete against high-skilled workers, an increase in the federal minimum wage say to $15 an hour (a 107% increase from the current hourly minimum wage of $7.25) would make higher-skilled, more productive, more experienced workers more attractive to employers and unskilled workers less attractive,” he said.
In other words, one of the biggest advantages low-skilled workers from “marginalized communities” have is their ability to work at a lower wage. With an increase in the government-mandated minimum wage, that advantage is eradicated.
So, again, if students at BSM are learning the “social justice” solution to these problems, then what the school is actually teaching them is how to keep “marginalized communities” trapped in poverty.
Indeed, Saint Jude must be watching over this sad excuse for a Catholic school.
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