Thread by @EclecticRadical

I have been talking a lot about classicial education and Western culture lately because of my discovery of one the groups involved in attempting to rewrite our educational system in states like Flordia. This organization is "Classic Learning Test"

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The Association of Classicial Christian Schools holds a conference every year, "Repairing the Ruins," dedicated to their project of replacing the public school system with a Christian school system.

Check it out.

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repairingtheruins.org

Who attended Repairing the Ruins 2023? Let's see how would be attracted to the convention.

Let's look at the plenary speakers, shall we?

First up is evangelical politician and failed Secretary of HUD Dr. Ben Carson. This is a bad sign.

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repairingtheruins.org

After Dr. Ben Carson comes evangelical author Rosaria Butterfield. Ms. Butterfield has written extensively about the challenges faced by gay Christians and the need for gay people to put their Christianity before their homosexuality.

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repairingtheruins.org

Finally, the last plenary speaker at the Restoring the Ruins conference is Dr. Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It's pretty clear that Repairing The Ruins is a conference with a clear political agenda.

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repairingtheruins.org

Let's debrief this. Classic Learning Test CEO Jeremy Tate is a practicing Catholic who graduated from a Calvinist seminary. He is a member of a political action group, the Association of Classical Christian Schools, that pursues an anti-gay agenda.

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cltexam.com/about/leadersh…

The President of the CLT Board of Academic Advisors is Dr. Angel Adams Parham. She is the co-author of "The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature." Dr. Parham appears to be an accomplished liberal academic.

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iasculture.org/scholars/profi…

Dr. Angel Adams Parham's book, co-authored with Dr. Anika T. Prather, is based on the thesis that "our common heritage in the classics and liberal arts" is a "shared story" that unites Black and white Americans in their shared Christianity.

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classicalacademicpress.com/pages/black-in…

The problem with this premise that this isn't something shared naturally or organically. The shared story of Christianity in America is actually two stories, one of white Christians and the struggle between Catholic and Protestant and Christian and secular society.

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The other story of Christianity in America is the story of slavery, forced conversion, denial of education, racial violence, and the struggle for emancipation from slavery and liberation from racial oppression. This is a very different story that White people can't share.

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Let's put this information in context with what we already know. The CEO of the Classic Learning Test is a member of an organization dedicated to replacing public education with Christian education, and the president of the board believes in Christianity unites Americans.

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The basics are out of the way. We have established that the Classics Learning Test org's CEO is a conservative Christian with connections to anti-LGBTQ+ organizations and individuals. The board's President believes Christianity is what unifies America.

On to the board!

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Dale Ahlquist is the founder of the "American Chesterton Society," the editor of the magazine "Gilbert," and the host of Catholic tv show "G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense." He's not just a fandom scholar, however.

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chesterton.org/dale-ahlquist/

In addition to his status in G.K. Chesterton fandom, Ahlquist founded a Catholic high school, the Chesterton Academy. Dale Ahlquist worked as a political lobbyist before becoming a superfan.

In 2020, Donald Trump appointed him to the National Board of Education Sciences.

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Of course, Dale Ahlquist's Chesterton Academy is just the beginning. The real purpose of the Chesterton Society is not Jeeves and Wooster lore, sadly. It's a charter school operation.

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chestertonschoolsnetwork.org

Another board member, Deborah Allen, runs "Athena College & Vocational Coaching." She consults for college students, including vocational coaching and offering "outsourcing of student tasks."

Does that mean you pay her to do your homework?

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athenacollegecoaching.com/about-us-1

The next board member, Peter Alvarez, is the headmaster of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in Boonton, NJ. They promise to teach your kids, using the guiding stars of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, to imitate Christ and be a light to the world.

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olmc.academy/our-mission

Our Lady of Mount Carmel School, under the direction of Peter Alvarez, bases its program on "the four goods."

* A classic liberal arts approach
* Catholic identity
* Emphasis on academic excellence
* Commitment to good character formation.

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olmc.academy/four-pillars

Dr. Daniel Baillargeon is the former Superintendant of Catholic Schools for the Dioecese of Springfeld, IL and the founder of Mission Driven Catholic, LLC. He appears to have run the company while still holding his position as superintendant.

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missiondrivencatholic.com

Mission Driven Catholic, LLC is another consulting business. Deborah Allen's Athenia College and Vocational Consulting focuses on students, Mission Driven Catholic works for schools.

Deborah Allen and Daniel Baillargeon aren't grifting, are they?

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missiondrivencatholic.com/services

CLT board member Jon Balsbaugh was the president of Trinity Schools until this year, when he resigned over complaints that he had mishandled parental and student reports of "teacher misconduct."

Amy Comey Barrett helped hire Balsbaugh as a trustee.

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theguardian.com/us-news/2023/j…

"Balsbaugh’s tenure as president of Trinity, which came to an abrupt end in April... ...including an alleged culture of sweeping serious allegations of abuse against minors by some members of the faith group under the rug."

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theguardian.com/us-news/2023/j…

So here we have an organization that wants to completely change education and put it on a Christian orientation. It's an org that specifically benefited from Republican anti-gay moral panic against public schools. Yet a board member helped cover up grooming by teachers?

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Mark Bauerlein is an English professor emeritus at Emory University and a visitor at Ralston College. He wrote the 2008 book "The Dumbest Generation," calling millennials and Zoomers stupid.

Bauerlein is another peach.

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slate.com/news-and-polit…

Mark Bauerlein is opposed to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in education. He famously said that working to publish more papers by authors who are not white men immediately causes standards to drop and politicizes process.

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Matthew Beatty is the head of Bloomfield Christian School in Bloomfield, MI. He's another MDiv, graduating from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and he was a church pastor for two years. He's spent much more time in education.

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linkedin.com/in/matt-beatty…

Bloomfield Christian School's statement of faith is explicitly anti-LGBTQ+. It is very clear in its belief in the absolute determinism of biological sex over gender. It lists homosexual sex with incest and bestiality as behavior offensive to God.

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bloomfieldchristian.com/statement-of-f…

Laura Berquist, also a CLT board member, is the director of a home schooling organization called Mother of Divine Grace School. Berquist is unpopular in some Catholic classical education circles because of her association with Protestant orgs.

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classicalliberalarts.com/blog/how-laura…

Mother of Divine Grace's website says they are committed to Catholicism, and it looks like rival Catholic classics educators don't like that Laura Berquist works with the Protestant/evangelical Association of Classical Christian Schools.

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modg.org/aboutus

Board member Matthew Bianco is the COO of the CiRCE Institute and the lead mentor of their apprenticeship program. The CiRCE Institute sells curriculum and classroom supplies to Christian schools, providing teacher training as well.

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circeinstitute.org/about-us/

What’s fascinating from checking the schools and orgs these people work with is that they pay lip service to “the classics” but this a Christian education org and not a “classical” education org at all. All the schools are anti-queer.

This is a dangerous group.

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CLT board member Robert Bortins was heir to a homeschooling fortune. Bortins is CEO of Classical Conversations. He’s also on the board of C12, an org that “develops Christian CEOs.”

His mother wrote the curriculum, Robert sells it.

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cchomeoffice.com/robert-bortins…

Classical Conversations sells Christian homeschooling curricula to home schooling parents. They don’t just encourage abusive white Christian parents to control their kids’ education, they profit from it.

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cchomeoffice.com

John Burtka, president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, is another member of the CLT board. Burtka is the former executive director and acting editor of “The American Conservative.”

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isi.org/team/john-burt…

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute exists to support students who feel “isolated or attacked for questioning progressive orthodoxy.” It USA racist, gay bashing org dedicated to making academia reactionary again. It’s another scary group.

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isi.org/about-us/

The ISI encourages conservative students and teachers to fight progressive thinking in education and in academic culture. They are seeking to preserve the white Christian control of the American academy that has always been assumed.

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isi.org/about-us/

Jason Caros is the founder and headmaster of another Christian school, part of a larger Christian charter school organization, Founder's Classical Academy - Lewisville, TX. Has it escaped anyone that these folks are making money off education?

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linkedin.com/in/jason-caros…

Founders Classical Academy has multiple schools in TX and Arkansas, of which the Lewisville school is just one. Like the Chesterton Academy network, it is a conservative Christian charter school organization competing for public money.

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founderslewisville.com

Here we have a board member still in a significant position of institutional power: Thomas Carroll is the Superintendant of Schools for the Archdiocese of Boston.

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thebostonpilot.com/article.php?ID…

What did Thomas Carroll do before being apppointed to Superintendant of Schools for the Archdiocese of Boston?

Carroll was president of the Invest in Education Foundation, a right wing non-profit that lobbies for school choice.

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influencewatch.org/non-profit/the…

CLT board member Kevin Clark is the founder and president of another Christian charter network, Ecclesial Schools Initiative, Inc or ESI. His philosophy is that schools serve church and family. That's a very white patriarchal position.

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esischools.org/kevin-clark-bio

ESI, in its own words, "builds partnerships with local church congregations that have a vision for Christian education and a heart for the families of their communities."

They help bigoted churches start their own charter schools.

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esischools.org/mission

The next board member is Dr. Margarita Mooney Clayton. Dr. Clayton is an associate professor in Princeton University's Practical Theology department. Her writing and thinking is highly praised by David Brooks and writers at National Review.

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margaritamooneyclayton.com/bio/

Dr. Clayton is also the founder of the Scala Foundation, which says that it is "restoring meaning and purpose to American culture through beauty, liberal arts, and religion." That's a strong Christian nationalist statement.

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scalafoundation.org/about/

The next board member, Azin Cleary, the Executive Director of the Chesterton Academy of Annapolis, Maryland, has almost no digital footprint. I can't even tell their gender from the resources available. Which is kind of ironic.

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chestertonacademyofannapolis.org/board-of-direc…

Interestingly, neither Azin Cleary (as Executive Director), nor the school's president and chairman of the board William Cleary appear on the school's faculty and staff page. I guess they don't work with students or parents?

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chestertonacademyofannapolis.org/faculty-staff-…

What I can say for sure that is that Chesterton Academy of Annapolis is a member of the Chesterton Schools Network. That means it is a private Catholic charter school. The CSN promises "parent-led" education.

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chestertonschoolsnetwork.org

CLT Board member Eric Cook is President of the Society for Classical Learning. This is yet another organization that makes money providing "support" (curriculum material and staffing services) for Christian charter schools.

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societyforclassicallearning.org/about/

Prior to joining the SCL full time, Eric Cook was the Head of School at Covenant Classical School in Fort Worth, TX. Once again, "classical school" is code for a Christian charter school. The model for this one appears to be Hogwart's, plus Jesus.

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covenantclassicalschool.org

Phil Cook (no apparent relation to Eric) is the President of the North American Coalition of Christian Admissions Professionals. He is also the VP for Enrollment at Lee University. Both roles are important, so we will take a look at both.

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naccap.org/news/564096/NA…

The North American Coalition of Christian Admissions Professionals is what it sounds like, a professional association for admissions/enrollment execs at Christian colleges; promoting "career development, spiritual growth, and mutual cooperation."

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staging-naccap.site-ym.com/page/Our_Missi…

Lee University is a private Christian university in Cleveland, TN. It used to be the "Church of God Bible Training School." It is a Christian insitution that prohibits homosexual relationships between students.

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leeuniversity.edu

In 2019, Lee University filed an amicus brief in favor of employment discrimination in employment for the SCOTUS case Bostock v. Clayton County. That's right. Lee University filed an amicus brief arguing that it is legal not to hire gay people.

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usatoday.com/story/news/edu…

Phil Cook is the Vice President of Enrollment at a college that discriminates against gay people. It is in this light that his position as President of the NACCAP and a member of the CLT board should be examined. It looks like CLT is anti-queer.

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naccap.org/news/564096/NA…

Another member of the CLT board who wears more than one hat, Martin Cothran is a teacher, editor of The Classical Teacher, an author, and a Senior Policy Fellow at the Family Foundation of Kentucky. He also blogs at "The Imaginative Conservative."

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theimaginativeconservative.org/author/martin-…

The Family Foundation of Kentucky is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. It is assuredly not non-partisan, advocating for conservative legislation in the Kentucky state legislature. Martin Cothran supports abortion bans. We can infer that.

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ballotpedia.org/Family_Foundat…

As director of the Classical Latin School Association, Martin Cothran helps transmit the culture of the "Christian West" through the "Classical Core Curriculum," which was developed at Highlands Latin School in Louisville, KY, where he teaches.

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classicallatin.org/about/

Jon Daly is Director of Admissions at Thomas Aquinas College. Mr. Daly is an example of the incestuous functioning of the Christian educational system. He got a job as an admissions counselor at Thomas Aquinas right out of graduation.

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thomasaquinas.edu/directory/jona…

Thomas Aquinas College is a private Catholic liberal arts college located in Santa Paula, CA. Married students may live off campus, but male students are not allowed in the women's dorms or vice versa. Jon Daly has never worked anywhere else.

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thomasaquinas.edu/about

Clay Daniel may not be a religious zealot, I can't tell, but he's definitely in the business of profiting from the educational system. His company "Clayborne Prep" made me think he was the director of a prep school, but no. He does test prep.

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clayborne.com/about/

Clayborne Prep doesn't just provide tutoring services, but they also provide counseling to help a student decide which college admissions test to take. So it's very clear that Clay Daniel sees the CLT as a business opportunity, religious or not.

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clayborne.com/college-test-p…

Corey DeAngelis is a Senior Fellow at the Federation For Children, a one of the organizations attempting to hijack public school money into private religious schools. He is also the executive director of the Education Freedom Institute.

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federationforchildren.org/staff/corey-a-…

The Educational Freedom Institute is a libertarian org that uses lots of buzzwords to disguise what they really want: to privatize education.

DeAngelis is also a an adjunct scholar at the Cato institute, and a Reason magazine Senior Fellow.

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efinstitute.org/2023/07/disrup…

Most importantly for understand his real political orientation and views, Corey DeAngelis is a board member of the Liberty Justice Center as well. It's a shady dark money scheme to influence the membership of the Supreme Court. Yes, Corey did that.

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splinternews.com/the-right-wing…

CLT board member Patrick Deneen is the author of “Why Liberalism Failed.” Deneen is a professor of Political Science at Notre Dame and a Catholic communitarian scholar. Before he taught at Notre Dame, he taught at Georgetown.

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en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_D…

Patrick Deneen is the kind of conservative who is very scared of liberalism, and the kind of Catholic who is very scared of modernism. He loves the classical world and hates the modern world.

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en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_D…

Patrick Deneen believes that America should be a government of Catholics, by Catholics, for Catholics in which everyone else in America should follow Catholic rules. His political ideology is best compared to Narendra Modi.

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en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_D…

As a reminder that this isn't just about kids learning Latin, David Diener is the assistant professor of education at Hillsdale College. He's also a speaker at Christian education conventions.

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classicaleducationsymposium.org/speakers/david…

Hillsdale College isn't just a top liberal arts school, it's also a private Christian institution that refuses federal funds so it doesn't have to enforce Title IX. It is a pro-discrimination institution.

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usnews.com/best-colleges/…

The CLT organization also has direct ties to the Republican Party machine.

Board member Erika Donalds has been a Republican "school choice" activist for years. She transitioned from private activism to entrepreneurial activism in 2017.

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floridapolitics.com/archives/28605…

In 2017, Erika Donalds founded the Optima Foundation, a "non-profit" that runs a charter school network affiliated with pro-discrimination Hillsdale college. The Optima Foundation receives 10% of the money the state grants its schools.

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floridapolitics.com/archives/28605…

Erika Donalds is not just a Republican education activist, she's also married to Republican politician Byron Donalds. Donalds is part of the extreme MAGA wing of the party.

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donalds.house.gov/about/

CLT board member Mary Pat Donoghue is the Executive Director of the Secretariat of Catholic Education by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. So who are the USCC?

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usccb.org/news/2018/mary…

The USCC are the hierarchical leadership of the Catholic Church in the United States. They trend conservative, and the president of the USCC attacked *Joe Biden* for being pro-abortion and pro-LGBTQ+ on Inauguration Day.

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americamagazine.org/politics-socie…

As an aside, I have to ask, do you think being chastised on Inauguration Day by the spokesman for US bishops has perhaps chilled Biden's enthusiasm to protect the right to abortion and the rights of trans people in states like Texas and FL?

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In a 2019 interview with "Streetcar Suburbs News," Mary Pat Donoghue expressed her commitment to fighting the loss of students from Catholics schools through her support of the Classical Education model. This explains her involvement with CLT.

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streetcarsuburbs.news/mary-pat-donog…