The Sandstorm: X-Rated Ed

Written by Larry Sand

Pedophilia is proliferating in the nation’s public schools. Going back to 2004, a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Education revealed that nearly 9.6% of students are victims of sexual abuse by school personnel, and these are just the reported cases.

Additionally, Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct & Exploitation (SESAME), an organization that works to stop childhood sexual abuse by teachers and other school employees, disclosed that in 2015, about 3.5 million 8th-11th grade students, or nearly 7% of those surveyed divulged that they had experienced “physical sexual contact from an adult” – most often a teacher or coach. The type of physical contact ranged from “unwanted touching of their body, all the way up to sexual intercourse.”

Even worse, when other types of sexual misconduct are taken into consideration, such as being shown pornography or being subjected to sexually explicit language or exhibitionism the number increases to about 4.5 million children (10 %). SESAME also explains that one child sex offender can have as many as 73 victims in a lifetime.

And now, a report published on Jan. 1 by the Chicago Board of Education’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), reveals that hundreds of public school students in Chicago were either raped, sexually assaulted or groomed by their teachers during the 2021-2022 school year. The report discloses that a total of 772 investigations into the alleged crimes occurred over the year. Additionally, the OIG was able to close 600 “adult on student” cases with “more than half of the allegations being substantiated.”

But the abuse in Chicago isn’t the only story. The fact that the mainstream media has ignored the findings is also scandalous. As of this time, just a handful of conservative news outlets have covered the story. Perhaps child abuse in America is just not newsworthy anymore.

As sex crimes against children proliferate, the efforts of the sex and gender cult are also growing. What follows is just a tiny sampling of the education-sexualization complex behaving badly:

–Teachers in San Francisco are letting children as young as kindergarteners choose their gender, then helping those same students to “transition” without even informing their parents, as the release of explosive documents by Chris Rufo shows.

–In Madison, WI, school board president Ali Muldrow called out former Gov. Scott Walker for his comments on the now-cancelled drag show at East High School in the state capital. Walker had tweeted, “Let’s be clear: ‘drag shows’ are strip shows. They are wrong. They are particularly wrong at school. They are definitely not ‘family-friendly.’”

–Infuriated at Walker’s common-sense comment, Muldrow fumed, “I am outraged that politicians would risk subjecting children to hatred and violence while desperately seeking attention, inciting fear and misunderstanding. Using children at school to stoke division is not only irresponsible, it’s dangerous.”

–On Nov. 20 in Los Angeles, the “Transgender Day of Remembrance” honors the memory of transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence. While this day is acknowledged, Thanksgiving, also in November, isn’t doing well in L.A. schools. A lesson about Thanksgiving created by the district Human Resources, Diversity, and Equity division now stresses that the holiday is evil, because it claims that the Pilgrims stole land from the native inhabitants.

–In eastern California, Steven Llanusa, president of the Claremont Unified School District, held a “naughty” holiday party at his home, which had an open bar for the students who were also treated to the sight of shirtless male dancers and a “dirty Santa.” (At least the pervy school board president had enough sense to resign after being outed.)

–In Springfield, MO, teachers are trained that people are given a “biological sex assigned at birth,” which often conflicts with their “gender identity” and “gender expression.” As Chris Rufo reports, teachers are asked to recognize and affirm identities such as “non-binary,” “gender non-conforming,” “drag queen,” “pansexual,” and “polyamorous,” which is described as having “[ethical], honest, and consensual non-monogamous relationships (i.e. relationships that may include multiple partners).”

Not surprisingly, the teachers unions are leading the charge to destroy what has been the norm since Adam and Eve became an item. The National Education Association has issued a “Pronoun Guide,” which instructs teachers, “In English, we have two sets of gendered pronouns: ‘she/her/hers’ and ‘he/him/his’ are pronouns that are attached to a particular gender. We likely all grew up assuming we knew someone’s pronouns just by looking at them, or knowing their gender, but that isn’t the case. In an effort to be more affirming of all, it is important to get out of the habit of assuming pronouns.”

On its website, NEA offers trainings focused on pronoun usage for elementary school teachers, as well as advice on how to “create safer learning spaces for transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming students.”

The New Jersey chapter of the NEA hosted a “LGBTQIA+ banned books drag queen story hour” at its 2022 convention as a way for educators to “explore and express their intersectional identities.” Drag queens read educators “And Tango Makes Three,” a story of two male penguins who have a baby penguin together, and “Prince & Knight,” a picture book about a prince and knight who fall in love.

It bears mentioning that the sexual obsession in the education world is not limited to government-run schools. Project Veritas released an undercover video during which Joseph Bruno, Dean of Students at Chicago’s tony Francis W. Parker School – a private school that charges over $40,000/year in tuition for upper level students – discussed pride week. “So I’ve been the Dean for four years. During Pride — we do a Pride Week every year — I had our LGBTQ+ Health Center come in [to the classroom]. They were passing around butt-plugs and dildos to my students — talking about queer sex, using lube versus using spit. They’re just, like, passing around dildos and butt-plugs. The kids are just playing with ‘em, looking at ‘em…They’re like, ‘How does this butt-plug work? How do we do – like, how does this work?’ That’s a really cool part of my job.”

Bruno went on to say, “We had a Drag Queen come in — pass out cookies and brownies and do photos.”

The sex and gender cult has also invaded corporate America. At Disney’s theme parks in Anaheim and Orlando, diversity and inclusion manager Vivian Ware explains that Disney made the decision in 2021 to eliminate all mentions of “ladies,” “gentlemen,” “boys,” and “girls” in order to create “that magical moment” for children who do not identify with traditional gender roles.

General Motors donated pro-transgender children’s books to the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), an organization that supplies sex- and gender-related material to kindergarten and elementary classrooms. GM also provided a grant to GLSEN to fund the organization’s “Rainbow Library” Program, according to the corporation’s 2021 Social Impact Report. This document explains that the Rainbow Library “provides supportive curriculum materials and book sets that are LGBTQ+ centered, racially diverse, and multicultural to K-12 schools.” The report did not specify how much money was awarded to the pro-transgender organization.

Additionally, the CDC has now joined the sex and gender cult. On its website, there is an entire section devoted to “Supporting LGBTQ Youth,” which includes “LGBTQ Inclusivity in Schools: A Self-Assessment Tool.”

As Dennis Prager points out, a number of countries in Europe are going in a different direction. Switzerland has just announced that as far as the Swiss nation and government are concerned, sex is not “nonbinary.” Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare ended the practice of prescribing puberty blockers for minors under age 18. In France, rather than hormone blockers and surgery for young people with gender dysphoria, the National Academy of Medicine has issued a statement advocating “psychosocial support.”

Maybe one day we in the U.S. will wake up, come to our senses and fight back against the sex and gender cult, and do so before any more children are sacrificed.

Illinois Buzzards Want Your Kids

There’s a grand act of un-creation taking place all across this nation. Leftists are busy with this ugly business of un-creating decency, order, justice, compassion, and beauty, and children play a central role in this ugly business. To leftists, children are both objects of un-creation and tools for un-creating society. If we want to see with greater clarity the plans leftists have for the nation, there is no better place to examine than Illinois. Let’s hover above Illinois for a few minutes to get a bird’s eye view of this dark project.

Abuse in Chicago Public Schools

On Jan. 1, 2023—a Sunday—the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Chicago Board of Education released its annual report on “investigations into allegations of waste, fraud, financial mismanagement and employee misconduct” between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022. This year’s report cost taxpayers $6.54 million.

(As a noteworthy aside, the CPS spent $97 million of federal pandemic relief money on “academic recovery + social and emotional learning supports.” Further, CPS plans on spending $430 million more of federal money over the next two years for the same academic, social, and emotional learning problems caused by the refusal of Governor J.B. Pritzker to open schools and the refusal of teachers to teach during the pandemic.)

What is revealed in this report should shock all parents of CPS students and all Illinois taxpayers:

The OIG received 1,825 complaints alleging misconduct, waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement at Chicago Public Schools, including allegations of adult-on-student sexual misconduct.” Of those nearly 2,000 complaints, the OIG opened investigations into fewer than half (39.7%).

Of those 1,825 complaints, 470 were sexual allegations.

Because of a 2018 Chicago Tribune exposé of sexual abuse in Chicago public schools, the OIG “created a special Sexual Allegations Unit” which “has grown exponentially into a team of more than 30 … staff responsible for handling hundreds of sexual misconduct allegations per year.” The OIG report describes the number of cases as “extraordinarily high case volume.”

The complaints include allegations of sexual grooming, sexual intercourse, sexual assault, sexual touching, and graphic sexual texts.

Since many victims are afraid to report sexual abuse, Illinoisans can justifiably assume that the numbers of adult-on-student sexual misconduct cases are far higher than 470.

CPS scores

Apparently, faculty are too busy abusing children to teach them how to read, write, add, and subtract. In September 2022, Wirepoints reported on the abysmal academic performance of CPS:

Student achievement remains badly sub-par at CPS. About 70 percent of CPS students in grades 4, 8, and 11 – and 80 percent or more of its tested black students – aren’t proficient in reading and math. In some schools, reading proficiency is still in the low single digits.

Sex Education Law

Shameful, sub-proficient, and stagnating test scores suggest that Illinois lawmakers—a super-duper majority of whom are leftists—don’t care about educating Illinois children, so where do their interests lie? A recent bill from Illinois Senator Ram Villivalam (Democrat from Chicago of course), points to the educational priorities of Illinois’ leftist ideologues. He proposed a tyrannical amendment to Illinois’ already offensive sex education law.

In 2021, Villivalam sponsored a bill mandating that K-12 schools that offer “health and safety” classes must include indoctrination with leftist gender theories and leftist views of homosexuality. But this bill, which became law, allowed schools to opt out of such indoctrination, which 70 percent of schools did. Can’t have that, thought Big Brother Villivalam.

So, he proposed an amendment during this recent lame duck session to remove the school opt-out option. It didn’t pass during the lame duck session, but mark my words, Big Brother Villivalam will, like the Terminator, be back.

Teachers often defend their teaching about sex by claiming they are “experts,” and by claiming what they teach is “age-appropriate,” so let’s spend a minute discussing purported teacher “expertise” and “age-appropriateness.”

Illinois teachers—including teachers in high performing suburban districts—are rarely “experts” in even the disciplines for which they were hired to teach. Don’t believe me? Ask your children’s teachers if they have advanced degrees, and if they do, ask what field their advanced degrees are in. Relatively few teachers pursue advanced degrees in biology, chemistry, physics, English literature, or history. They don’t, because it’s easier to get an advanced degree—and, thereby, increase their salary—in educational policy as opposed to biology, chemistry, physics, English literature, or history.

If they’re not experts in the field for which they were hired to teach, how are they experts in sexuality? What criteria do they use to establish their sexuality expertise bona fides?

And what criteria do they use to determine the “age-appropriateness” of sex education content. Who established those criteria. So many questions taxpayers never ask.

“Trans” policy

Sex is definitely where the “educational” interests of leftists lie, particularly deviant sexuality. Look no further than the Pritzker family that scurries about the world throwing their money and ample weight behind the effort to promote cross-dressing and child mutilation.

Governor Pritzker’s first cousin, whose transonym is “Jennifer” Pritzker, is the cross-dressing man in woman-face who tried to extort the GOP by proclaiming that if the GOP didn’t toe the line as he toes it in his lady pumps, he would take his money and move to the dark side—which he did.

He and the Pritzker family also use their money to fund university and hospital programs around the world to indoctrinate students into the “trans” cult and to mutilate the healthy bodies of children.

On a local level, upon his first election, J. B. Pritzker created a “trans” cultic task force composed of all lefties to socially construct a plan for “transing” public schools.

Now that leftists control public education in Illinois, our shameless governor/chief propagandist hopes to further diminish the influence of parents on their own children. In Pritzker’s second inaugural speech, he announced his evil plans: “I propose we go all in for our children and make preschool available to every family throughout the state,” and “let’s focus on making [college] tuition free for every working-class family.”

Get ‘em while they’re young and keep ‘em.

Research has long established that college and university faculty and administrations skew wildly left. Further, research has demonstrated that of those students who self-censor out of fear of repercussions, well over half are conservative. And this is the “learning” environment where Pritzker seeks to send more students and at taxpayer expense. Pritzker wants to cram as much propaganda into the minds of as many young people as possible, and wants you, conservative friends, to pay for this indoctrination.

To mix bird metaphors, Illinois is both a canary in a coal mine and a buzzard in a killing field.

Conservative parents, get your kids out of government killing fields now before the buzzards devour them.

Chicago Public Schools Promote Hindu Religious Practice of Transcendental Meditation

Next time you hear some arch-defender of the a-constitutional “wall” of separation between the church and state whose knickers are in a twist because a school allows ten seconds of silence during which students may pray, remember this story, reported last summer by the Chicago Tribune:

Students at a Chicago high school were led into a room with shades drawn and door windows papered over, lit only with candles and scented by incense. They were handed flowers and told to pay attention to instructors, according to one student’s account.

Jade Thomas, an incoming sophomore at Bogan Computer Technical High School, said instructors “chanted in a foreign language” and “threw rice, seasonings and oranges in a pan in front of a picture of a man.” She described the ritual, which she said involved a “secret mantra,” to a rapt audience at a Chicago Board of Education meeting Wednesday.

At one point, Jade said, “they tell us to place the flowers in the pan with everything else, and they ended the song. I felt uncomfortable because I didn’t know what they were saying or who the man was in the picture.”

Jade Thomas’ discomfort was entirely warranted. The program to which she was objecting is called Quiet Time, a euphemistic name that conceals from parents that it’s the practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM), which is Hinduism repackaged (and trademarked) for Western audiences.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, disciple of Guru Dev (aka Swami Brahmananda Saraswati), repackaged Hinduism—which emerged from the ancient religious Vedic tradition—in a form more acceptable to western minds and brought it to American hippies in the 1960s and 1970s. While disciples of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi publicly (and deceitfully) claim that TM is solely a scientific method of relieving stress, they conveniently omit the religious dimensions of the program and practice.

The Chicago Board of Education is colluding with the University of Chicago Urban Labs, which is, in turn, partnering with Hollywood director and long-time Transcendental Meditator David Lynch to experiment on Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students. They hope to determine whether introducing students secretly to Hindu religious practices can “help youth reduce their toxic stress, succeed in school and stay safe.”

The Quiet Time website includes this claim:

Transcendental Meditation, the core intervention of the Quiet Time Program. … does not involve any religion [or] philosophy.”

“Does not involve any religion”? Lol. You be the judge of that claim. As a former TMer married to a former TM teacher, I’ve already judged that claim.

Decades ago when I became a TMer and my husband a TM teacher, mantras—the secret word repeated soundlessly during meditation—were assigned during the “initiation” ceremony that Jade Bogan described, which is called a puja. Initiates were asked to bring a piece of fruit, a new handkerchief, and flowers to the ceremony which was conducted in a darkened, incense-filled room in front of a de facto altar. The TM teacher would then begin the ceremony which was conducted in Sanskrit, so the initiate had no idea what was being spoken. Much later after studying in Spain with Maharishi and becoming a TM teacher, my husband learned the Sanskrit words spoken during the ceremony:

To LORD NARAYANA, to lotus-born BRAHMA the Creator to…GOVINDA, ruler among the yogis…to SHANKARACHARYA the redeemer, hailed as KRISHNA and BADARAYANA, to the commentator of the BRAHMA SUTRAS I bow down. To the glory of the LORD I bow down again and again, at whose door the whole galaxy of gods pray for perfection day and night…GURU [Dev] in the glory of BRAHMA, GURU in the glory of the great LORD SHIVA, GURU in the glory of the personified transcendental fullness of BRAHMAN, to Him, to SHRI GURU DEV adorned with glory, I bow down…with Brahman ever dwelling in the lotus of my heart…to That [Brahman], in the form of Guru Dev, I bow down.

At various points during the ceremony, the teacher would pause and ask the initiate for one of the gifts they were asked to bring which the teacher would then place on the altar, thus making the initiate an unwitting participant in a distinctly religious ceremony. At the end of the ceremony, initiates were given their mantras, which, as it turns out, are the names of Hindu gods.

Initiates were prohibited from telling anyone their secret mantras, which I eventually learned were chosen according to the initiate’s age. My mantra was pronounced “ah-ing” and is intended to honor the Hindu goddess of Saraswati.

So, does that sound like it “does not involve any religion”?

As to the claim that TM involves no philosophy, ask any long-time meditator about transcendental consciousness, cosmic consciousness, unity consciousness, god consciousness, and sidhis. If you have the patience to slog through Maharishi’s thicket of religious/philosophical dogma, click here.

David Lynch created the David Lynch Foundation, which then created the Center for Wellness and Education in order to promote TM by renaming it Quiet Time. Unfortunately, CPS is not the only school district introducing children to the ancient Vedic practice of TM.

TMers continually cite positive effects. They even take credit for civil conflict ending, claiming that any place where at least 1 percent of the population is meditating, peace ensues. Maharishi claimed that,

the nature of life is to grow. Ninety-nine people can violate their own nature to grow and maybe weave around non-growth. One man, having a desire to evolve, having a desire to progress, having a desire to grow, by nature, he’ll take up Transcendental Meditation. On that basis, he will start producing a harmonious influence around him. Without knowing how he does it, without knowing the mechanics of how the radiations go from a more orderly mind to influence the less orderly minds around him, without knowing it, invariably he’ll be producing a harmonious influence in the whole society. Then the whole society will find a trend in the direction of evolution.

Here are two questions that Chicago Board of Education members should be asked:

1.) If it is legal and appropriate for public schools to promote and teach ancient Vedic/Hindu meditative prayer practices, is it legal and appropriate for schools to promote and teach Muslim prayer practices, Kabbalistic meditative practices, and Christian prayer practices?

2.) If the possibility of a reduction of problematic behaviors justifies the formal implementation of Hindu religious practice in public schools, will public schools now permit the implementation of other religious practices in order to determine their efficacy in positively affecting school climate?

For years, the TM organization has been plagued by myriad criticisms for deception like its failure to acknowledge its religious nature or promises of superpowers (sidhis) like Yogic flying. Over 40 years ago, Maharishi told his disciples that by attending longer residential courses during which attendees would meditate for extended periods of time and receive additional magic words (i.e., sutras), they would start levitating and shortly thereafter flying. Of course, the TM organization profited from these longer courses.

Well, here we are decades later and to my knowledge, no TMer is flying. You can find amusing videos online of TMers still “hopping.” Well, you can find videos of hale and hearty men “hopping” whilst huffing and puffing. I’ve yet to see a video of a frail elderly woman “hopping.”

There are also criticisms of the studies the TM organization touts regarding its efficacy as well as more serious concerns about potential risks to mental health. For more information about TM from a former meditator, click HERE.

In the interest of parental rights and transparency, I hope CPS administrators in schools that are teaching ancient Vedic meditative techniques will reveal to every parent the criticisms of Transcendental Meditation leveled by many.

In the interest of intellectual consistency, I hope those virulent opponents of 10 seconds of silence in public schools during which students may pray (but are not taught prayer practices) will direct their virulence to schools that teach repackaged Hinduism to students.

And in the interest of fiscal transparency and accountability, I hope some public watch dogs will find out if any local, state, and/or federal money is lining the pockets of the David Lynch Foundation.

Here’s more on TM:

Transcendental Meditation in the New Millennium (Part One)

Transcendental Meditation in the New Millennium (Part Two)

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Transcendental-Meditation-and-CPS.mp3

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A “Gay” High School for Chicago?

Next Wednesday, October 22nd, the Chicago Board of Education will consider a proposal for a “gay”-friendly high school for homosexual and gender-confused students. The proposal already has the recommendation of School CEO Arne Duncan.

Despite the fact that 70 percent of Chicago high school students are testing below state standards and the sad reality that almost half of Chicago high school students fail to graduate, Chicago Public School (CPS) officials are seriously considering investing time, energy, and hard-earned tax dollars toward social engineering and the promotion of controversial views of homosexuality.

TAKE ACTION: Contact CPS Chief Arne Duncan and the Chicago Board of Education to express your opposition to the use of public funds to subsidize a school that affirms disputable and divisive views on homosexuality and gender-confusion.

Pasted below is a copy of a certified letter IFI’s Division of School Advocacy sent to the Mr. Duncan and the Chicago Board of Education.

RE: Social Justice High School-Pride Campus

Members of the Board of Education,

The Illinois Family Institute strongly urges you to vote against the creation of a new and controversial Social Justice High School-Pride Campus. Subsidizing this school would represent a gross misuse of public funds.

Public educators have no business taking a position on the nature and morality of homosexuality and “transgenderism,” which Arne Duncan necessarily has done in recommending approval of this school.

Will the board of education also consider a high school for students who are harassed for myriad other reasons, most of which, unlike homosexuality and “transgenderism,” have no moral implications?

Will the board of education and administrators in this high school commit in written policy to allotting equal time and equivalent resources to all sides of the cultural debate on homosexuality and cross-dressing?

Will you ensure that curricula that address these topics are unbiased and uncensored, or will you permit only biased, censored curricula that exclusively affirm controversial, unproven theories on the nature and morality of homosexuality?

How will the faculty and administration teach critical thinking skills on the divisive issue of homosexuality and gender identity disorder if they have previously committed only to affirm homosexuality as normative and morally defensible?

Are the board of education and administration prepared to provide justifications and evidence for claims that homosexuality is biologically determined or that disapproval of behavior constitutes bullying?

Are the board of education and administration prepared to provide justifications and evidence for the implicit claim that volitional behavioral choices that may emerge from biologically influenced impulses are inherently moral?

Are you prepared to apply consistently to all behaviors the principle that disapproval of behavior makes students “unsafe”?

It is an outrage that Mr. Duncan would recommend and the board of education consider using the hard-earned money of Chicago taxpayers to subsidize a school whose curricula will violate fundamental educational principles regarding intellectual diversity and exploration that give public education legitimacy.

And it is an outrage that Mr. Duncan and the board would consider using public funds to undermine the values of many members of the community who supply those funds.

If this school is approved, it will become obvious to all that the promulgation of controversial, unproven socio-political theories has replaced academic inquiry as the guiding principle of the Chicago Board of Education.

Again, we strongly urge you to vote against this proposal.

Sincerely,

Laurie Higgins, Director
Division of School Advocacy
Illinois Family Institute