2014-03-07

From The Mouths Of Babes

Here's another one that's been making the rounds on social media.

An organization that calls itself the American Association of University Women has been promoting an article about twin girls who created "a website devoted to educating other students about Title IX’s history and value." The website is here.
“My friends had never heard of this law before, and the thing I wanted to stress to them is how Title IX was a social revolution and how [it created] all these opportunities,” says Kavya.
Okay, I admit it: Criticizing the politics of an eighth graders is a pretty cheap shot. So that's not what I'm going to do. Instead, I'm going to point out how disturbing it is that anyone would laud young people for creating and spreading state propaganda.

The award-winning website's "Road to Title IX" page cites only one source: The Title IX legal manual published by the US Department of Justice. The website provides only two quotes outlining criticism of the law: one good and one bad. The good one comes from former president of the National Women's Organization, Judy Goldsmith, who said that the law was a "setback." The bad one was a quote from a seemingly random university student. The rest of the website is devoted to promoting the law.

I'm no historian, so I can't say whether Title IX has been the main driver in the push to more equal rights for women. Presumably, a website that purports to teach about the history of the law would tell me something about that. Unfortunately, all I get from the website is goose-stepping.

It's not a good thing to teach our children to sing praises for federal legislation. That is not a practical skill. It is not even a laudable skill. It is something reasonable people can do at the dinner table, nothing more. If the Ramamoorthys had created a website devoted to providing a historical account of women's rights, then I think that is a laudable endeavor. But to simply promote a highly contentious law as a "social revolution" is not worthy of our praise. It is propaganda.

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