The Washington Post gave a lot of attention to Kali and Joshua Fantanilla today, for reasons I can’t comprehend. It’s another example of the press featuring otherwise unnotable nobodies with far right views and giving them a neutral treatment.
The story is about a couple who were, once upon a time, public school teachers who were so offended at the liberal agenda of the schools that they quit their jobs, moved to Florida, and founded their own online Christian school. They were “displeased by some colleagues’ embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement, which both thought was wrongheaded and hateful for what they saw as its anti-police stance.”
So now they offer a YouTube curriculum for $2000-$8000 a head which, to my surprise, is accredited and offers the equivalent of a high school diploma. I don’t know how they get away with it — is Prager U going to be handing out diplomas soon?
There are way too many red flags in the article, like this photograph caption.
Joshua Fontanilla became a Seventh-day Adventist after researching dozens of faiths online. He was drawn to his religion partly for its Bible prophecy.
“Researching” “online” — those two words together are already a problem. The second sentence gives his game away. He was just looking for a religion that would accommodate his prior beliefs about the Bible, and was looking for the religion that would support his conclusion. And then to settle on the Seventh-day Adventists, one of the more batcrap looney Christian sects that certainly does promote prophecy…let us immediately call into question his rationality.
Furthermore, his concerns with the public school system were petty and bigoted.
Around the same time, Joshua Fontanilla said he was also spotting what he perceived as bias at school. His suspicions stirred, he said, when he noticed his high school always announced meetings of the Gay-Straight Alliance club over the loud speakers — but not those of other clubs, like his chess group.
Joshua then began combing through the “American Dream” unit of the English curriculum, researching the politics of every author. He concluded that too many (at least 12 of 19) were “left-leaning,” including — as Joshua saw it — “leftist” historian Studs Terkel, “socialist” poet Langston Hughes and “Dem” Walt Whitman.
You know how you get your club meetings announced on the morning PA? You request it. You go to the school secretary and hand them your meeting details. I’m pretty sure schools aren’t biased to favor the Gay-Straight Alliance — if my local school is any example, school boards try to ban such organizations. The GSA was just a more activist organization than the chess club.
As for his categorization of authors he didn’t like — those are McCarthy-ite tactics. If you oppose indoctrination in the schools, don’t charge in and start banning authors whose politics you dislike.
Here’s another red flag:
The couple have ambitions to scale up: Kali and Joshua hope to eventually cross 1,000 students, at which point, they calculate, they will no longer have to pursue side jobs like Kali’s current gig as a senior fellow at the Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank. So far, Kali has found most success attracting clients through Instagram, despite the fact her account is regularly suspended for “community violations,” she said.
The Capital Research Center is an offshoot of the Heritage Foundation, funded by well-heeled conservative millionaires and billionaires. She has a “gig” there? What does that mean? What does a “Senior Fellow” to a right-wing think tank do? I’m just wondering if there were a left-wing think-tank that would pay me a living wage for doing the equivalent of whatever the fuck Kali Fontanella is getting paid for. Somehow, I don’t think those kinds of sinecures exist on my side of the political fence, but I could be wrong. Let me know!
Every one of their complaints are absurd and pathetic, like this one:
…Kali passed a series of posters featuring student artwork, erected every spring as part of a public art installation. This year’s iteration included a painting of a book in chains — and another of a student wearing earrings that each bore the slogan, “ASK ME ABOUT MY PRONOUNS.”
It was just one more reason, Kali told herself, to pray. She sat beside her husband and closed her eyes. Together, they bent their heads to thank God.
Right-wing freaks are so easily perturbed by the most trivial phenomena. I guess praying is the modern substitute for the fainting couch.
I’m just left wondering what the point of the whole article was. I don’t care about the Fontanellas, I don’t want them arrested, but I also want them to fail and stop corrupting children’s education. I don’t think their story is particularly interesting, except as an example of America’s terrible standards for education. But yay, they get a front page feature in the WaPo!
…they get a front page feature…because media has a liberal bias…???!
Accredited by who and where?
Not impressed.
Most high schools these days offer an internet distance option for free.
I just checked the local school district. They have an online curriculum from grade 1 to 12.
They also have an alternative high school for people who don’t fit into the regular schools for one reason or another. Which is also…free.
There are also huge numbers of online high schools and many of those are free.
Why am I supposed to care about these snowflakes?
They are idiots.
The equivalent would be me having a panic attack and having to stop the car and read Carl Sagan’s “The Demon Haunted World.”, Freethoughtblogs, or something because I passed a house with a Blue Lives matter flag and a dozen Trump for President signs left over from 2020.
You see these occasionally in rural areas and I just saw a few driving back from a recent trip.
I just pass them and they barely register. Oh, another right wing crackpot, of which there are many millions in the USA these days.
Yeah, the Seventh Day Adventists certainly do promote prophecy… my understanding is that, as a group, they hold the record for number of failed ‘end of the world’ predictions. They started off as a doomsday cult back during the Second Great Awakening (though they weren’t called the Seventh Day Adventists yet back then) and they’ve been predicting the imminent end of the world off and on for over two centuries now.
… Kali and Joshua hope to eventually cross 1,000 students, at which point, they calculate, they will no longer have to pursue side jobs …
So they figure ~1.5 “faculty” suffice for teaching 999 students? A lot of somebodies aren’t getting their $2000-$8000 worth.
(Oh, and Joshua – Whitman was a big Lincoln fan, hence probably a Republican.)
Pierce R. Butler
A 19th century Lincoln-loving New Yorker is the equivalent to a 21st century “Dem”; particularly if he wrote avant garde, homoerotic poetry.
The student art was probably amazing and vivid, and the fact that she could only see something offensive pretty much sums up conservativism in a nutshell. Their fear shrivels their world and robs it of beauty.
Also: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/07/27/you-know-who-was-into-karl-marx-no-not-aoc-abraham-lincoln/
Third world pathetic – actually living in poverty and misery through no fault or your own rather than politically religiously pathetic ally reichwing snowflake pathetic.. That’s how pathetic you need to be to be ignored by US (& Aussie & probly English etc..) media.
Famine in Sudan :
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/29/sudan-slips-into-famine-as-warring-sides-starve-civilians
or suffering climate caused disasters in Malawi :
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2024/03/18/back-back-climate-disasters-malawi-farmers
Or Madagascar type pathetic..
https://news.un.org/en/interview/2024/02/1146152
Real human suffering and pathos IOW not just “Oh noezZ!!1ty! I saw some earings and artwork I dislike that made me uncomfy type pathetic.
Yeah, I’m not seeing the point of this Washington Post article at all.
This is a story about extremist fundie xians who are also right wingnut crackpots.
Who are upset that the entire USA is not composed of extremist fundie xians who are right wingnut crackpots.
Their goal is not the least bit realistic.
Reality doesn’t care what they want.
The USA is a diverse place with a lot of different people and the Fontanillas, as Seventh Day Adventists and right wingnut snowflakes are a small minority of us.
PS Even by fundie xian standards, the Seventh Day Adventists are extreme.
They are creationists who believe the earth is 6,000 years old and Noah had a boatload of dinosaurs. They also don’t accept the theory of evolution.
A few decades ago, they had a purge of their university biology departments and fired all the biologists who openly accepted modern science and the theory of evolution.
As we well know, most of the American press is controlled by large corporations, so the messages always suit their interests in one way or another. This morning there was a protest that blocked the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. Big traffic snarl, of course. The media…local and national…put it as either a Pro-Palestinian Protest, or an Anti-Israeli Protest. Not a single one that I saw put it as a Peace Rally or Stop the War or anything like that.
I bet Kali pronounces her name “Kay-lee” instead of like the Hindu goddess.
That crowd likes to tell us that Jim Crow as erected by Democrats, so I will remind them that Walt Whitman was an ardent Republican.
The assumption that the kid who did the “ASK ME ABOUT MY PRONOUNS.” picture is pro-trans or whatever may not be the case. The painter might be the kind of smartass who pulls out the “I identify as an attack helicopter” routine that was tired the minute the first person used it.
And of course Kali is the Hindu goddess of death and destruction.
Training school for next generation of pig-ignorant bible-bashing MAGA voters.
Actually, it’s the LESS pathetic people who tend to be ignored by the media. Right-wing freaks like the ones described in the OP get plenty of attention — at the expense of ordinary decent people like, say, the teachers and other civil servants who get bullied and threatened by the right-wing freaks.