opinion

ffany B oyd

dents into career pathways from a very early age.

A student’s course of study will be dictated by this data. The data will be used by schools and the Department of Labor to determine career pathways that are in demand and a student’s coursework will be formatted to include only what is needed for that career. This effectively strips away a student’s future choices and career opportunities.

These are not the vocation classes you may remember from yesteryear.

slated into one of these pathways in order to fulfill the position of being a producer within the globalist agenda. Sounds Orwellian, right? I wish it were merely fictional. This has been the plan all along and makes perfect sense. It is akin to the Prussian caste system—and we must not forget that our educational system is founded on the Prussian model.

What type of data mining Is occurring in our schools?

ments that children are being subjected to are for the purpose of designing a workforce that will benefit those in control.

yOu MAy hAvE hEARd the term “innovative school model” before. In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee and the Tennessee General Assembly made an investment that pumps $500 million into this initiative bringing this to every public high school and middle school across the state.

“The future of innovative programs to boost student and workforce readiness in Tennessee is brighter than ever. Through reimagining the high school experience; becoming more strategic about engaging younger students in career exploration; expanding access to courses; improving how data is collected and used; and being even more intentional in how we listen to—and learn from—Tennesseans, we will continue to keep our state’s workforce strong for years to come,” according to information released by Lee and the Tennessee Department of Education.

Tennessee is one of the many states intent on creating “worker bees.” Why is this dangerous? This initiative restricts educational opportunities.

Once upon a time, education was knowledge-based, with schools exposing students to a multitude of different subjects. Everyone had the opportunity to pursue their own personal interests upon graduation. With the workforce training model, data is being used to pigeonhole stu-

In 2006, Vocational Tech was rebranded to Common Career Technical Core. Here, you can see their objectives. The Common Career Technical Core (CCTC) initiative is an effort led by the states to ensure rigorous, highquality Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs through a set of common CTE standards that will better support students in preparing for high-skill, highwage, or high-demand careers in the competitive global labor market of the 21st century.

These common standards built from industry-validated Career Cluster Knowledge and Skills statements include:

— Standards for Career Ready Practice

— Career Cluster Anchor Standards, applicable to each of the 16 Career Clusters; and

— Career Pathway Anchor Standards, linked to specific Career Pathways and industry benchmarked when possible

Once common core was exposed as having nefarious roots, educators decided to change the name once again, this time to Career Technical Education. Career Technical Education has 16 career clusters that effectively pigeonhole students.

When you visit the Career Technical Education website at careertech.org, you will see that they refer to the Common Career Technical Core and their standards. Almost every job you can imagine falls under one of these pathways. Students will be

Non-cognitive data such as social emotional data and character trait data as well as cognitive data are all necessary in order to produce desired work-based outcomes. The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was changed: now schools can collect our children’s private data without consent. Any entity, in the name of education research, can access data if the schools choose to give it to them—and they are often handing it over.

We now have statewide longitudinal databases set up that are interoperable, meaning they are able to easily exchange this private data that has been collected on children. That data is then being used to create software and education programs for the purpose of modifying our children’s values, beliefs and behaviors.

You can hear more about this on the Free YOUR Children radio show, which can be found on the Free YOUR Children Spotify channel, with guest Alice Linahan.

One way that this data is being collected and utilized is through the various SEL programs that are being implemented in schools across the nation. I have written about the intentions of SEL in a previous Murfreesboro Pulse article titled “What is Social Emotional Learning? More Government Indoctrination.”

Parents need to understand that the current purpose of government school is not to provide their child with an education but simply to decide where they are going to fit in the spokes of the globalist agenda. The assess-

Linahan summed it up when she said, “In this new P-20W [preschool through workforce] global system, all students will be sorted, tracked, assessed and modified by the state; which allows third-party interests (social impact bond investors), in the U.S. and globally to have access to our children, to use as an [investment vehicle for profit], along with controlling the next generation of Americans from cradle to grave.”

UNESCO has been working toward a one-world curriculum for decades. Their Sustainable Development Goals are seeking to do just that.

Our nation’s schools are not producing critical thinkers. They are intent on creating a populace that will simply slide into the job that has been predetermined for them without complaint. The dumbing-down process is almost complete. Are we as a nation going to sit idly by and continue to allow this to happen? Are we going to continue to allow our children to be used as pawns? If you would like more information on how the federal government is usurping your parental rights, the plan to globalize education via mental health initiatives, and what you can do, contact me. The time to act is now.

Tiffany boyd is the founder of Free yOuR Children, a homeschool advocate, consultant, speaker and the founder of Middle Tennessee Christian homeschool Connection. She holds a b.S. degree in interdisciplinary studies from MTSu and is a former tenured public school teacher. She is a wife of 30 years and mother to five children, grandmother to two. She and her husband have home educated for 18 years. Find more at freeyourchildren.com if you are considering home schooling, you may contact her at freeyourchildren@gmail.com.

ENviRONMENTAL,

SOCiAL ANd gOvERNANCE

(ESG) investing has become a hot-button topic recently. ESG has become the new catchphrase for initiatives that show sustainability, climate consciousness, equality, inclusion and equity. It can focus on how the employees are treated or the diversity present on an executive board, or other factors that are difficult to define. These factors can be quantified with an ESG score, and companies can share those scores in the hope of drawing more investors.

The ability to promote a strong ESG score seems beneficial, but many of these initiatives are difficult to measure, and companies can often participate in “Greenwashing” (think whitewashing, but green) where the company is making small changes to appear to increase the ESG score for their benefit. Because so many of these measures are subjective, companies may make some moves to appear to be more compliant with accepted ESG practices, when in reality they are not—similar to the memes that popped up about a certain beer giant spending millions and millions of dollars to advertise that they had donated thousands of dollars’ worth of water to communities in need.

The hope for the companies is that ESG initiatives will improve the bottom line as customers choose them over the competition because they “care.” However, some initiatives are very expensive or impractical. In the short run, they may actually hurt the bottom line for a company; for example, when a large corporation outfits all of its buildings with LED lighting and solar panels. When they spend $1 billion on this initiative it means that there is $1B less profit in the short term. How long does it take for the company to reap financial benefits from this investment? Will it provide an actual positive financial return or did the company make an expenditure simply to look good?

While the intention of increasing diversity in the workforce to prevent discriminatory hiring and promotion practices is sometimes well intentioned, the implementation may result in hiring people based on characteristics other than their actual qualifications for the job. In the best-case scenario, you may find the best person for the job in whatever desirable characteristics of diversity are trending at the moment. Focusing on diversity means many corporations now have Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) officers. Their departmental costs add to company costs.

Bottom Line: Is ESG a good investment?

Anyone who has watched the billions of dollars

Budweiser and Target have lost so far in 2023 knows that is a very loaded question. If a company wants to take on a public ESG strategy, they better make sure it aligns with the values of their core customer base. Otherwise, they stand to face substantial losses. Bud Light has been buying back cases of beer from distributors who could no longer sell the product. When the company backtracked and said they made a mistake in having a transgender spokesperson for their brand, they then alienated the smaller, but significant, new customer base.

There may be countless other issues that you find that speak to you either for or against ESG initiatives, and it’s something you want to consider in your investment strategy as well. Investors are looking for ways to align their investments with their values.

A 2021 report by the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance reported that ESG assets under management reached $35.3 trillion, up from $22.9 trillion in 2016. The difficulty is that ESG factors can be subjective and difficult to measure. Another challenge is that ESG funds often have higher fees than non-ESG funds. Additionally, whatever meets your values will be different from someone else’s needs. One person might be against abortion but fine with tobacco products, whereas another might not like either. Some might choose a particular value that is important to them and choose not to support a company that is involved directly or indirectly with violating that value. Others might recognize that even though a company might not support their particular value, they are okay with it as long as that company isn’t directly engaging in those activities.

The more strictly you want your investments to align with your values, the more companies you eliminate; eliminating a significant number of possibilities may compromise the return on your investments.

Interestingly, some people are investing in companies that do things they don’t agree with, because it gives them an opportunity to vote their shares against that practice.

Red Barn Financial can help you make an educated decision on which companies you want to invest in. We can make a custom portfolio that meets your values. I specifically do this from a faith-based perspective. If that’s something you want to take a look at, feel free to reach out.

Contact Sean Moran with Red barn Financial at 615-619-6919 or smoran@redbarnfinancial.com.