THEEPOCHTIMES.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2016: "Often, we find it easier to define our identity by what we are against, than by what we are for."] ARTICLE: Cancel culture penalises anyone with views not approved by the left. Now, it's targeting the whole of Russia and all things Russian. Besides America, Western countries are all getting into the game. One of the world's great chess players was banned because he supports the Russian president, people, and army. If India invaded Pakistan -- rightly or wrongly -- 99% of Indians will support the Indian prime minister, people and army. An international cat federation has banned Russian cats and a global tree festival has banned a tree planted almost two centuries ago by a great Russian writer. There is something comic in all this. Will all this virtue signalling really make Putin change his mind? Why should the Russian people ...

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THESTAR.COM -- Following the 2019 [pre-pandemic] release of Ontario provincial test scores, the Toronto District School Board can't explain why most math results are dropping. Across Ontario only 58% (down from 63% and 71%, 4 and 9 years earlier) of 3rd graders are performing at or above provincial standards. And just 48% (down from 50% and 61%, 4 and 9 years earlier) of 6th graders are performing at or above provincial standards. In Toronto, the largest school board in Canada with 246,000 students, 3rd and 6th graders are doing worse than the provincial average. Only 61% of 3rd graders and 53% of 6th graders are meeting standards. At the Toronto Catholic District School Board, just 58% of 3rd graders and 44% of 6th graders met standards. In Peel District ...

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ZEROHEDGE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2007: "The path to meritocracy in leadership is meritocracy in education."] ARTICLE: In 2021 there's an outright holy war against scholastic achievement. Oregon passed a bill that says high school students don't need be able to read, write, and do math to graduate, even though the latest Rasmussen survey finds that 81% of American adults oppose such laws and only 12% favor them. Mathematics, we are told, should be replaced by "social justice" mathematics, in which there are no correct answers and, in English, students should not be judged on the quality of their writing. Recruitment of future scientists and science teachers and researchers should no longer be based on achievement, merit, and potential, but on "diversity, equity, and inclusion." Opinion polling shows that a supermajority of Americans, including every racial minority group, oppose ...

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THEEPOCHTIMES.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 1978: "Some might say that our academic systems [in Aga Khan schools] are a little old-fashioned. Yes, we believe in examinations."] ARTICLE: California State University, the largest public university system in the United States, said it will no longer use entrance exams in undergraduate admissions. ACT criticized the move, arguing that it is more likely to harm than help students, especially those of underrepresented demographics who depend on standardized test scores to showcase their academic achievements. "Abandoning objective assessments, like the ACT test, introduces greater subjectivity and uncertainty into the admissions process," ACT said in a statement. "Solving the prevailing education inequities requires focus on root causes, rather than dismissing the tools that substantially improve our understanding of them," the company added. Both Cal State and UC administrators suspended ...

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DAILYWIRE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: While we normally do not post on political matters, we are posting on the situation in Ukraine because it is an invaluable case study about Big Tech and Western media.] ARTICLE: "Hi there, I'm writing from The New York Times," an email from the reporter to Candace Owens started. "We note that you advanced the idea that Ukraine was a corrupt country, which matched comments we've seen from Russian state media," it continued. "I'm very confused by this email," Owens responded. "I educated myself about both the neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine and the unyielding corruption by reading your newspaper, not Russian state media. You guys have covered the corruption in Ukraine extensively. Here is a piece from the NYT Editorial Board titled, 'Ukraine's Unyielding Corruption.' Here are some more past articles written from reputable sources over the past few years about the corruption and neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine," Owens wrote. She also provided screengrabs ...

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BMJ.COM -- BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: The British Medical Journal (BMJ) is, arguably, one of the world's top three medical journals.] ARTICLE: Evidence based medicine depends on reliable data from clinical trials, most of which are conducted by the pharmaceutical industry and reported in the names of senior academics. Previously confidential industry documents have provided insight to the degree that industry sponsored clinical trials are misrepresented. Until this problem is corrected, evidence based medicine will remain an illusion. Medicine is dominated by a few very large pharmaceutical companies which suppress negative trial results, fail to report adverse events, and do not share raw data with the academic research community. Regulators receive funding from industry and use industry funded and performed trials to approve drugs, without in most cases seeing the raw data. In essence, drug companies "mark their own homework" rather than ...

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