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In his January 16, 2026 X post, James Lindsay treats the “ICE is Trump’s Gestapo” line as more than overheated language. He reads it as a political technique: a framing move that aims to provoke escalation, polarize interpretation, and sap legitimacy from federal immigration enforcement by making every subsequent clash look like retroactive confirmation.
Even if you don’t accept the strongest version of his claim (that it is centrally orchestrated), the underlying mechanism is worth taking seriously—because it doesn’t require orchestration to work. It requires an audience that consumes politics in fragments, and a media ecosystem that pays for heat.
The point of media literacy here is not to pick a side. It is to recognize when you are being handed a frame that’s designed to steer your moral conclusion before you are allowed to know what happened.
The loop, reduced to mechanics
The escalation loop has four moves.
1) Load the moral frame early.
“Gestapo” is not an argument. It is a verdict. It tells the audience what they are seeing before they see it. It collapses a contested enforcement dispute into a single image: secret police.
2) Convert observation into resistance.
Once people believe they’re facing secret police, ordinary scrutiny becomes morally charged. Disruption can be reframed as defense. Escalatory behavior becomes easier to justify, especially in crowds, especially on camera.
3) Force a response that looks like the frame.
As tension rises, agents harden posture: more crowd-control readiness, more force protection, more aggressive containment. Some of that may be lawful, and some may be excessive; the loop does not depend on the fine print. It depends on optics.
4) Circulate optics as proof.
Clips win. Captions win. The most provocative 15 seconds becomes “what happened,” for millions who will never read a court filing. The frame spreads because the frame is legible in low context.
Frame → friction → hardened posture → optics → reinforced frame. Repeat.
Notice what’s missing: slow adjudication of facts. The loop thrives on speed. It preys on low-context attention.
Why Minnesota is an instructive case
Minnesota matters here because the escalation loop is visible across multiple lanes at once: street-level conflict, political rhetoric, and rapid legal constraint.
Recent reporting describes the Department of Homeland Security deploying nearly 3,000 immigration agents into the Minneapolis–St. Paul area amid intense protests and public backlash. In that environment, a fatal shooting—Renée Good, shot by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026—became a catalytic event for further demonstrations and scrutiny.
Then the conflict moved into procedural warfare. On January 17, a federal judge issued an injunction restricting immigration agents from detaining or using force (including tear gas or pepper spray) against peaceful protesters and observers absent reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. That order is narrow, but it is not trivial: it codifies a boundary in exactly the arena where optics are most easily weaponized.
The rhetorical layer matters too. DHS has publicly condemned Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for using “modern-day Gestapo” language about ICE (and the White House has amplified that criticism). Whatever you think of the underlying enforcement operation, this is the accelerant: the label that turns complexity into a single moral picture.
If you want a single media-literacy takeaway from Minnesota, it’s this: the escalation loop often ends up constraining policy through courts and procedure, not merely through street confrontation. Once the story becomes “secret police,” legal process itself becomes part of the narrative battlefield—injunctions and motions become content, and content becomes legitimacy.
“Low information public” is the wrong diagnosis
“Low information” is typically used as a sneer. The sharper term is low context.
Most people aren’t stupid; they’re busy. They consume politics the way they consume weather: by glance. They get fragments, and fragments invite frames.
The “Gestapo” label works on low-context audiences because it is:
- Instantly moralized: villain and victim are assigned immediately.
- Highly visual: it primes the brain to interpret normal enforcement cues (gear, urgency, crowd control) as secret-police signals.
- Clip-native: it fits perfectly into captions and short video, where emotional clarity beats evidentiary completeness.
- Correction-resistant: anyone who says “slow down” can be painted as defending tyranny.
This is the real vulnerability narrative warfare exploits: not ignorance, but context starvation.
The key analytical distinction: intent vs incentives
Here’s where writers often lose credibility: they jump from “this pattern exists” to “this was orchestrated.”
Sometimes there is coordination. Often there isn’t. And you typically don’t need it to explain outcomes.
Shared incentives can produce coordinated-looking behavior without a central planner:
- Outrage frames mobilize attention.
- Attention produces fundraising, followers, and headlines.
- Headlines pressure officials and constrain institutions.
- Institutions respond in ways that produce more outrage footage.
That is enough.
The media action depends on showing a self-reinforcing system: rhetoric that increases confrontation risk, confrontation that increases hardened posture, posture that increases “secret police” plausibility to spectators.
That is media literacy: the ability to separate “this felt true on my feed” from “this is true in the world.”
How to defuse the loop
Defusing the escalation loop means starving it of inputs. That requires two fronts: institutional discipline and citizen discipline.
What institutions can do
1) Treat optics as a real constraint (not PR garnish).
In a clip-driven environment, unnecessary spectacle is narrative fuel. If tactics can be lawful and less visually coercive, the second option is often the strategically sane one.
2) Over-communicate rules, thresholds, and remedies.
Explain what triggers stops, detentions, and uses of force; explain complaint pathways; publish policy boundaries. If courts are drawing bright lines around peaceful protest and observation, those lines should become part of the public-facing doctrine, not buried in litigation.
3) Correct fast and publicly when mistakes occur.
Silence functions as permission for the loudest interpretation to win. Delay is a gift to the escalation loop.
4) Avoid “timing that reads like punishment.”
Even lawful actions can look retaliatory if they cluster around protests. In narrative warfare, timing becomes motive in the audience’s mind.
What readers can do
1) Treat moral super-labels as a stop sign.
When you see “Gestapo,” “fascist,” “terrorist,” “insurrection,” assume you’re being pushed into a conclusion. Slow down.
2) Refuse clip capture.
Ask: what happened thirty seconds before this clip starts? If you can’t answer, you’re watching a weaponized excerpt.
3) Use a two-source minimum.
One source gives you mood. A second source often provides the missing constraint—timeline, legal posture, or what is actually being alleged. The injunction’s specific limits, for example, are precisely the kind of detail clips rarely include.
4) Separate event, legality, and morality.
“This happened” is not “this was lawful,” and neither is “this was tyranny.” Narrative warfare succeeds by collapsing those categories into one reflex.
5) Ask what behavior the story is trying to elicit.
Is it trying to make you understand, or to make you react—share, donate, show up, escalate? That question alone breaks many spells.
Where this ends if we don’t learn
If the escalation loop runs unchecked, politics becomes performance for low-context consumption. Enforcement becomes optics. Protest becomes optics. Courts become props. Everyone plays to the camera because legitimacy is increasingly adjudicated there.
The antidote isn’t bland neutrality. It’s refusing to let a frame do your thinking for you—especially one engineered to convert fragments into certainty.
That’s what media literacy looks like now: not knowing everything, but knowing when you’re being steered.
“When a word arrives preloaded with a verdict, your job is to slow the tape.”
References
- James Lindsay, X post (January 16, 2026), “ICE is Trump’s Gestapo” narrative thread. (X (formerly Twitter))
- Reuters (January 17, 2026), report on federal judge’s injunction limiting immigration agents’ tactics toward peaceful protesters/observers in Minneapolis–St. Paul; includes mention of DHS deploying nearly 3,000 agents and context following Renée Good’s death. (Reuters)
- Associated Press (January 17, 2026), coverage of the same injunction and the lawsuit context, including limits on detentions and crowd-control measures against peaceful protesters/observers. (AP News)
- ABC News (January 14, 2026), background reporting confirming Renée Good was fatally shot by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026 and noting an FBI probe. (ABC News)
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security (May 19, 2025), DHS statement criticizing Gov. Tim Walz’s “modern-day Gestapo” language about ICE (useful for documenting the rhetoric’s public circulation). (Department of Homeland Security)
- White House (January 2026), article compiling public statements about ICE and “modern-day Gestapo” language (useful as an example of administration amplification rather than a neutral factual source). (whitehouse.gov)
In a captivating episode 0f Wired & Watched 101: EdTech, host Missy Carwowski sits down with Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, a neuroscientist, former teacher, and leading expert on the science of learning. For two decades, Horvath has studied how humans truly learn—focusing on memory, attention, and brain function—and his findings deliver a sobering message: despite billions spent and endless promises, education technology (laptops, tablets, one-to-one devices, and now AI) is not transforming learning for the better.
In many cases, it is actively harming it. Far from making children smarter, the explosion of screens in classrooms is contributing to the first measured cognitive declines in generations, leaving parents and educators searching for answers.Horvath traces the problem to three fundamental ways technology clashes with how the human brain learns.
First, screens destroy focused attention through constant multitasking—something the brain cannot actually do. Students now spend over 2,500 hours a year switching between tabs, messages, and videos, training them to task-switch rather than concentrate. Second, learning relies heavily on empathy—the biological synchrony that happens when humans interact face-to-face—which machines simply cannot provide. Without that human connection, students lack the motivation to push through difficulty and often quit at the first sign of struggle. Third, “transfer” fails: knowledge learned on screens in an easy, narrow context rarely moves to the varied, complex real world, because computers remove the very effort and contextual cues that make learning stick.
The evidence is stark and growing. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are the first generations to show declines in memory, attention, and general intelligence compared to their parents—the reversal of the Flynn effect that had been climbing for a century. Raw scores on international tests like PISA and the SAT have been dropping 15–30 points per decade, hidden only by constant renorming and grade inflation. Meanwhile, handwriting boosts memory through spatial context and forces deeper processing, while typing often produces shallow, verbatim notes that students barely remember. Even binge-watching studies (which helped shape Netflix’s release strategy) show that spaced practice beats massed screen exposure for both understanding and enjoyment.
Horvath dismantles the common defenses of edtech with clarity. Claims of “potential” admit that promised benefits aren’t happening yet—hardly a reason to double down. Arguments that children must master today’s tools to be “work-ready” ignore the fact that K–12 education has always been about teaching adaptable thinking, not specific software that will soon be obsolete. And the excuse that teachers or students are simply “using it wrong” falls flat: real-world use, not inventors’ intentions, determines a tool’s impact. After sixty years of waiting for the edtech revolution, the data remains underwhelming at best and damaging at worst.
So what should classrooms look like? Horvath envisions a return to pre-2000 norms: computer labs used intentionally for specific lessons, not ubiquitous devices in every hand. Teachers and parents should demand true opt-out policies, forcing schools to maintain analog alternatives. When educators must prepare both digital and paper versions of assignments, most quickly discover that analog methods produce deeper understanding with greater flexibility. Above all, Horvath reminds us that learning has always happened best through human relationships—between teachers and students, students and students—not through screens. As cell-phone bans spread across schools, the next frontier is reclaiming classrooms from compulsory edtech, giving children back the focused, empathetic, effortful environment their brains need to thrive.
References for “The Digital Delusion: Why EdTech Is Failing Our Children”
- M forl Academy podcast episode with Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath (full transcript basis for the essay):
https://www.mforlacademy.com/ (specific episode featuring Dr. Horvath on education technology – check recent releases or search “Jared Cooney Horvath”) - Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath’s upcoming book:
Horvath, Jared Cooney. The Digital Delusion: How Technology Is Failing Our Children and What We Can Do About It. (Expected release December 7, 2025) - Horvath’s website and research hub:
https://www.lmeglobal.net/ - Jared Cooney Horvath YouTube channel (features breakdowns of learning science and edtech research):
https://www.youtube.com/@JaredCooneyHorvath - OECD PISA reports (raw score declines and renorming examples):
https://www.oecd.org/pisa/ (see technical reports on score equating and trends since 2000) - Flynn effect reversal studies (cognitive declines in Western countries):
Bratsberg, Bernt & Rogeberg, Ole (2018). “Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused.” PNAS. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718793115
Additional meta-analysis: Wongupparaj et al. (2023) on Gen Z/Alpha declines. - Handwriting vs. typing note-taking research (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014 – foundational study):
Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard.” Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581
See Jonathan Kay’s X thread on the queering of outdoor education.
The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) has introduced a framework termed “Queering Outdoor Education,” which integrates queer theory, drag pedagogy, and decolonial approaches into environmental learning. This curriculum comprises lessons that encourage students to interpret natural phenomena through the lens of fluid identities, anti-normative critique, and social justice. While the framework is promoted as fostering inclusivity and challenging colonial and heteronormative assumptions, it raises substantive concerns regarding developmental appropriateness, educational clarity, and the potential for early ideological enculturation.
Metaphor and Conceptual Instability
The initial lessons employ metaphor as a primary pedagogical tool. Students are encouraged to draw analogies between natural elements—such as clouds, logs, or plants—and human identities, emphasizing fluidity and anti-essentialist perspectives. While metaphor can be valuable in education, these lessons risk overextending conceptual abstraction, replacing concrete environmental observation with ideological instruction. For children, particularly in early or middle childhood, excessive abstraction can hinder cognitive development by conflating empirical phenomena with normative social and political constructs.
Additionally, the curriculum critiques conventional linguistic frames, including metaphors like “birds and the bees,” positioning them as instruments of colonial and heteronormative power. Such framing may introduce complex sociopolitical interpretations into contexts traditionally reserved for foundational biological and ecological learning, potentially overwhelming young learners.
Moralizing Nature and Identity
Subsequent lessons extend these metaphorical frameworks into moral and social instruction. Students are asked to emulate the perceived allyship of natural objects and to conceptualize human identities in terms of ecological hierarchies, categorizing queer identities as “native” and others as “invasive.” While intended to promote reflection on inclusion and belonging, these exercises risk essentializing human worth according to ideologically charged criteria, substituting experiential learning with prescriptive social norms. By conflating ecological systems with social hierarchies, the curriculum may foster confusion rather than ethical understanding, undermining both environmental literacy and social cohesion.
Sexualization and Performative Instruction
The later lessons introduce overtly sexualized and performative elements, including the celebration of non-reproductive animal behaviors and the incorporation of drag-based exercises into outdoor activities. While drag pedagogy emphasizes self-invention and challenges normative binaries, its application to children’s environmental education raises questions of age-appropriateness. Embedding explicit discussions of sexuality and performative gender in contexts intended to cultivate observation, curiosity, and engagement with nature may distract from core learning objectives and impose adult conceptual frameworks onto immature cognitive and moral development.
Implications for Pedagogy
The queering of outdoor education exemplifies a broader pedagogical tension between radical inclusivity and the developmental needs of children. Integrating complex adult theoretical frameworks into early environmental education risks destabilizing students’ conceptual understanding, substituting guided inquiry with ideological instruction. While well-intentioned, such approaches may inadvertently limit children’s capacity for independent exploration, critical reasoning, and unmediated interaction with the natural world. Educational practice promote the idea of equality, not equity, along with the preservation of developmental appropriateness and cognitive accessibility.
Glossary
- Queer Pedagogy: An educational approach that incorporates queer theory to challenge traditional assumptions about gender, sexuality, and identity.
- Drag Pedagogy: A subset of queer pedagogy emphasizing performance, self-invention, and the destabilization of normative social roles.
- Decolonial Education: Curriculum frameworks aimed at addressing and countering the legacies of colonialism, often by centering Indigenous perspectives.
- Anti-Normative Critique: A critical approach that questions conventional social, cultural, or gender norms.
- Cognitive Development: The mental growth and acquisition of knowledge, reasoning, and understanding in children.
- Ideological Enculturation: The process of instilling a particular worldview or set of political beliefs, often through education.
References
- British Columbia Teachers’ Federation. Queering Outdoor Education Newsletter. 2025.
- Lacandona, Gaia. Drag Pedagogy: Performance and Learning. 2018.
- Polukoshko, Jody. Queer and Decolonial Approaches to Outdoor Learning. BCTF publication, 2024.
- Sumara, Dennis. Alternative Pedagogies and Cognitive Development: A Critical Review. 2017.
Suggested Readings Critiquing Queer Pedagogy
- Lindsay, James & McEwen, Bob. Critical Pedagogy and the Limits of Ideological Education. 2021.
- Wood, Peter. The Manipulation of Youth: How Ideology Enters the Classroom. 2019.
- Scholes, Robert. Childhood, Ideology, and the Limits of Social Theory. 2018.
- Davies, Belinda. Rethinking Radical Curricula: Balancing Innovation with Developmental Appropriateness. 2020.
Alberta’s first province-wide teachers’ strike has drawn national attention, exposing deep tensions between educators’ demands for fair compensation and the government’s drive for fiscal restraint. With more than 51,000 teachers on strike, classrooms across the province remain closed, and Premier Danielle Smith’s government prepares back-to-work legislation. Here’s what’s really at stake—and where both sides stand.
The Dispute at a Glance
The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA), representing over 51,000 public, Catholic, and francophone teachers, initiated a province-wide strike on October 6, 2025—the first full withdrawal of services in its history. Collective bargaining began more than 18 months ago, but talks broke down after the ATA tabled a comprehensive proposal on October 14, which the government rejected as unaffordable, estimating an added cost of nearly $2 billion beyond current budget projections.
As of October 26, no new bargaining sessions are scheduled. Premier Danielle Smith has pledged to introduce back-to-work legislation on October 27 if no deal is reached, and her government has signaled readiness to invoke the notwithstanding clause to preempt legal challenges.
Core Issues and Divergent Positions
The ATA argues that chronic underfunding, rising classroom complexity, and stagnant wages threaten teacher retention and student outcomes. The government counters that its funding model already reflects enrollment growth, claiming the union’s proposal exceeds fiscal limits without introducing new revenue sources, such as a provincial sales tax.
Both sides cite inflation and federal immigration policy as aggravating factors but assign responsibility differently.
Key Positions Compared
| Issue | ATA Position and Demands | Government Position and Offers |
|---|---|---|
| Salary Increases | 15% compounded over three years to offset inflation (20–25% since the last agreement) and keep wages competitive. | 12% over four years (3% annually), plus a $4,000 one-time retention bonus; claims this would make Alberta teachers the second-highest paid in Canada. |
| Class Sizes and Complexity | Enforceable class caps (20–23 students max, K–9) and 200 minutes of guaranteed weekly prep time for high school teachers. | No mandatory caps; promises to hire 3,000 new teachers and 1,500 educational assistants, citing federal immigration policies as the main driver of class complexity. |
| Educational Supports and Funding | $2.6 billion in stable, dedicated funding for mental health, professional development, and special needs support. | $2.6 billion in base funding tied to enrollment, alongside over 130 new schools; focuses on infrastructure and hiring without raising taxes. |
| Negotiation Process and Strike | Rejects mediation as overly restrictive; frames strike as a lawful escalation after failed talks. Will adopt “work-to-rule” if legislated back. | Labels union demands as inflexible; offers enhanced mediation if the strike ends immediately. Proceeding with back-to-work legislation to “protect students.” |
Escalation and Public Response
What began as rotating regional walkouts has now become a province-wide shutdown, impacting hundreds of thousands of students and families. Public sentiment remains split—polls show strong support for smaller class sizes but growing concern about prolonged disruptions to schooling.
The ATA has twice rejected the government’s 12% wage proposal, calling it insufficient given inflationary pressures. Finance Minister Nate Horner maintains the offer exceeds adjustments made under the previous NDP government and aligns with broader public-sector restraint measures.
What Comes Next
With back-to-work legislation imminent, Alberta faces a pivotal test of both fiscal discipline and labor relations. The proposed bill would compel a return to work while imposing fines for defiance. ATA leadership warns that if the law passes, teachers will respond through work-to-rule actions and broader public advocacy campaigns.
Observers note that this standoff could galvanize other public-sector unions, creating a wave of coordinated opposition to legislative back-to-work measures across Canada. Whether a negotiated settlement or legal confrontation emerges first may determine the tone of public-sector labor relations for years to come.
References and Data Sources
- Alberta Teachers’ Association. “Moving forward with bargaining.” October 15, 2025.
https://teachers.ab.ca/news/moving-forward-bargaining - Alberta Teachers’ Association. “ATA rejects government’s biased mediation proposal.” October 17, 2025.
https://teachers.ab.ca/news/ata-rejects-governments-biased-mediation-proposal - Alberta Teachers’ Association. “Bill 2 won’t fix the crisis in Alberta classrooms.” October 24, 2025.
https://teachers.ab.ca/news/bill-2-wont-fix-crisis-alberta-classrooms - CBC News. “Province will consider back-to-work legislation for Alberta teachers if no deal.” October 15, 2025.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/nate-horner-alberta-teachers-strike-talks-legislation-9.6939589 - CBC News. “Back-to-work legislation to end Alberta teachers’ strike coming Monday, says premier.” October 23, 2025.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/back-to-work-legislation-to-end-alberta-teachers-strike-coming-monday-says-premier-9.6949884 - Calgary Herald. “Alberta teachers’ union has proposal for province amidst strike.” October 15, 2025.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/teachers-union-contract-proposal-alberta-teachers-strike - Edmonton Journal. “ATA angered by back-to-work legislation, but still considering options.” October 24, 2025.
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/edmonton-teachers-have-harsh-words-for-the-upc - Nate Horner (@NateHornerAB) on X (Twitter), October 2025 posts detailing government offer.
https://x.com/natehornerab - Red FM Calgary. “ATA President Jason Schilling calls for smaller class sizes and fair wages as teacher strike talks continue.” October 16, 2025.
https://calgary.redfm.ca/ata-president-jason-schilling-calls-for-smaller-class-sizes-and-fair-wages-as-teacher-strike-talks-continue/
As Alberta’s teachers’ strike enters its fourth week, the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) continues to frame its demands as a crusade for student welfare. Yet the claim that “more money equals better outcomes” collapses under scrutiny. From OECD comparisons to provincial spending data, the evidence shows that educational achievement depends far more on teaching quality, curriculum, and social factors than raw dollars. The strike, for all its moral packaging, reveals a deeper struggle over power, perception, and the limits of evidence-based policy.
The Alberta Teachers’ Association claims more funding will improve student outcomes—but decades of Canadian and international data show little correlation between spending and achievement. Here’s what the evidence actually says.
The Illusion of “Funding Equals Outcomes”
The ATA has justified its province-wide strike—launched on October 6, 2025—as a moral stand for students, demanding over $2.6 billion in new funding, along with wage hikes and class-size caps. This narrative, however, fails the empirical test. International and domestic data demonstrate no consistent correlation between per-student spending and academic performance in either Canada or the United States.
By invoking student welfare while halting instruction for hundreds of thousands of children, the ATA’s rhetoric converts a standard labor dispute into a manipulative moral appeal. The union’s campaign, in effect, weaponizes classrooms to secure greater compensation—substituting sentiment for substantiation.12
International Comparisons: Money Doesn’t Buy Results
Cross-national data dispels the myth outright. In 2021–22, the United States spent an inflation-adjusted $15,500 per K–12 student, compared to $12,229 in Canada.3 Yet on the 2022 PISA assessments, Canadian students outperformed Americans across all domains—mathematics (497 vs. 465), reading (507 vs. 504), and science (515 vs. 499).4
Within Canada, spending disparities tell the same story. Quebec, investing roughly $11,000 per pupil, consistently ranks among the top performers in PISA literacy and numeracy, while Saskatchewan, despite a 14.8% real spending increase from 2018–2022, has seen no corresponding gains in outcomes.56 As the Fraser Institute concludes: “Higher levels of per-student spending do not achieve higher student scores on standardized tests.”7
U.S. Evidence: The Plateau Effect
American data reinforces this pattern. Brookings Institution research on state-level NAEP scores finds that per-pupil expenditure is “only weakly related” to student performance, with intrastate differences far outweighing funding gaps between states.8 The Mountain States Policy Center adds that even after controlling for demographics, “little if any positive correlation” remains.9
Despite record K–12 spending of $857 billion in 2022, U.S. achievement continues to slide: 8th-grade reading scores fell three points since 2022, even after adjusting for inflation.10 Meta-analyses from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) quantify these effects precisely—every 10% increase in spending yields only a 0.05–0.09 standard deviation improvement in test performance, with benefits plateauing beyond basic adequacy.1112 In short: money matters, but only up to the point where systems are competently run.
Alberta’s Context: Selective Honesty and Strategic Obfuscation
ATA President Jason Schilling claims “chronic underfunding” drives poor outcomes. Yet Alberta’s per-student funding already aligns with or exceeds most provincial benchmarks when enrollment growth is accounted for.13 The union’s October 14 proposal advances structural demands unsupported by the evidence it cites, while rejecting a 12% wage offer that would make Alberta’s teachers the second-highest paid in Canada.14
This contradiction reveals intent. The ATA’s approach—threatening continued disruption and “work-to-rule” resistance post-legislation—shows the strike is less about pedagogy than about extracting concessions under moral camouflage.15 Polling confirms this miscalculation: while Albertans sympathize with smaller class sizes, they oppose protracted strikes that harm students.16
What the Evidence Actually Shows
Decades of research converge on one conclusion: achievement is driven not by spending, but by teaching quality, curriculum coherence, and socioeconomic stability.17 The global example is Estonia, which spends less than half the U.S. per pupil yet consistently ranks among the top five PISA performers due to its rigorous national curriculum and teacher accountability systems.18
The ATA’s position, by contrast, exemplifies a form of narrative warfare—a strategic fusion of moral rhetoric and material self-interest. Its funding narrative exploits public empathy while sidestepping empirical accountability. Policymakers should reject this coercive model and instead target resources toward proven reforms: effective instruction, rigorous content, and genuine equity—not symbolic spending.
Footnotes
- Alberta Teachers’ Association, “Moving forward with bargaining,” October 15, 2025, https://teachers.ab.ca/news/moving-forward-bargaining ↩
- CBC News, “Back-to-work legislation to end Alberta teachers’ strike coming Monday,” October 23, 2025, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/back-to-work-legislation-to-end-alberta-teachers-strike-coming-monday-says-premier-9.6949884 ↩
- OECD, Education at a Glance 2024, Table B1.1, https://www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance/ ↩
- OECD, PISA 2022 Results (Volume I), 2023, https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa-2022-results.htm ↩
- Statistics Canada, “Elementary-Secondary Education Expenditure,” 2023, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/81-582-x/81-582-x2023001-eng.htm ↩
- Fraser Institute, “Comparing the Provinces on Education Spending and Student Performance,” 2024, https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-provinces-education-spending-student-performance ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Brookings Institution, “The Geography of Education Inequality,” 2023, https://www.brookings.edu/research/geography-education-inequality/ ↩
- Mountain States Policy Center, “Education Spending and Student Outcomes,” 2024, https://mountainstatespolicy.org/education-spending-outcomes ↩
- NCES, Digest of Education Statistics 2023, Table 236.10, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_236.10.asp ↩
- NBER, “The Effects of School Spending on Educational and Economic Outcomes,” Working Paper 24649, 2022, https://www.nber.org/papers/w24649 ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Alberta Education, “Funding Manual 2024/25,” https://www.alberta.ca/funding-manual ↩
- Nate Horner (@NateHornerAB), X posts, October 2025, https://x.com/natehornerab ↩
- Alberta Teachers’ Association, “Bill 2 won’t fix the crisis,” October 24, 2025, https://teachers.ab.ca/news/bill-2-wont-fix-crisis-alberta-classrooms ↩
- Angus Reid Institute, “Alberta Teachers’ Strike Poll,” October 2025 (summary via media) ↩
- Hanushek, E., “The Impact of Differential Expenditures on School Performance,” Educational Researcher, 1989. ↩
- OECD, PISA 2022 Results, Country Notes: Estonia. ↩
In Prince George, British Columbia, Grade 12 students were recently asked to “map their identities” on a wheel of power and privilege and define how overlapping traits like race, gender, and class shape their lives. The exercise was meant to foster empathy. Instead, it taught students to see themselves—and one another—through a hierarchy of guilt and grievance.
This is intersectionality in action. Coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, the theory originally sought to highlight how overlapping identities could compound discrimination. But in today’s classrooms, HR seminars, and activist spaces, intersectionality has evolved into something more aggressive: a political sorting tool that assigns moral value based on group identity rather than personal conduct. When used this way, it becomes weaponized intersectionality.
1. Define It Precisely
When arguing against it, start by defining intersectionality clearly. Don’t caricature it. Acknowledge its original intent—understanding overlapping forms of discrimination—but distinguish that from its modern mutation, which treats identity as destiny. This makes your critique credible and inoculates against claims of ignorance or bad faith.
2. Expose the Hidden Premise
Weaponized intersectionality rests on a simple but flawed assumption: that all disparities are the result of oppression and that moral authority flows from victimhood. Challenge that premise. Inequality does not always mean injustice. Lived experience matters, but it does not override evidence or reason.
3. Defend Universalism
Reassert the Enlightenment principle that all individuals possess equal moral worth regardless of group identity. Intersectionality divides by assigning virtue or guilt to immutable traits; universalism unites by judging actions, not ancestry. This is not denial of injustice—it’s the precondition for solving it.
4. Point Out Its Social Effects
Weaponized intersectionality erodes solidarity. It breeds resentment, teaching students and citizens alike to view each other as oppressors or oppressed. Even some leftist thinkers, like Nancy Fraser, have warned that intersectionality replaces economic analysis with “cultural essentialism,” fracturing potential alliances for real reform.
5. Offer a Better Vision
Don’t just oppose—propose. Replace identity grids with human rights frameworks. Discuss shared values such as dignity, equality before the law, and freedom of conscience. These ideas have lifted more people from oppression than any taxonomy of privilege ever could.
The Prince George lesson shows what happens when ideology replaces education: empathy becomes accusation, and learning becomes confession. Weaponized intersectionality promises justice but delivers division. The antidote is not denial of difference but defense of common humanity—an argument every student deserves to hear.
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