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Colorado News Miner 38
Reading wars, schools, crazy Republicans, and more.
Copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong
January 18, 2023; ported here May 11, 2025
The Reading Wars
When recently I listened to the six-part podcast series, "Sold a Story," I was alternately dumbfounded and outraged. The series, by Emily Hanford, tells the story of how, for decades, many U.S. schools subjected students to "reading" programs that encouraged them to guess at words rather than to read them. The outcome of such an approach is perfectly predictable, and, indeed, perfectly predicted: Many students failed to learn how to read well.
Recently Complete Colorado published my article, "Colorado kids the losers in reading wars," that discusses the podcast series and its relevance to Colorado. As I review, in response to a 2019 law, schools have been replacing programs that encourage guessing with programs that focus on phonics.
Crazy Republicans
Quentin Young writes about a candidate to head the state GOP:
[Aaron] Wood, who calls himself a "Christian Conservative, a marketer, a business leader, a grassroots activist, a husband, and a father," is the founder of Freedom Fathers, a group of men who want "to ensure Christian conservative values remain strongly rooted in our society." He most recently gained attention as one of the organizers of the Save Colorado Project, a far-right faction of Republicans that on Nov. 30 held a press conference outside Boot Barn in Greenwood Village, near the state GOP headquarters.
Wood admires the election conspiracy monger Tina Peters, Young writes, and organized the event at which one speaker called mainstream Republicans "whores," "liars," and "asswipes."
ColoradoPols quotes Republican legislator Ken DeGraff:
Last year, fetal harvesting bill HB22-1279 . . . specifically removed any rights of personhood but even any mention of humanity of the unborn human for the purpose of specifically denying the 5th, 8th, and 14th amendments stating a fertilized embryo or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights under the laws of the state and authorized extermination via any medical procedure, any instrument, any agent, or any drug. And 'any' is a very broad range. This is a very dangerous vector. What we learned from history is that we never learn from history, but if we did, we would recognize that normalizing the stripping of any creator-endowed image of god of a humanity or personhood leads to subjugation, slavery, and genocide. That is a vector we should avoid, not champion as a growth industry.
For an explanation of why DeGraff's views on abortion are wrong, see my article over at Self in Society, "On the Right to Get an Abortion."
DeGraff's remarks—on the floor of the Capitol, mind you—well illustrate why Republicans probably will not have any serious power in this state for a long time to come.
But wait, there's more! Among other candidates for GOP Chair, Erik Aadland "said the 2020 election was 'absolutely rigged,'" while Casper Stockham "has suggested Antifa was behind the January 6 attack" on the Capitol, reports Kyle Clark.
This might be a good time to review my article, "The Case for Liberty Activists Joining the Democrats."
Quick Takes
Elections: Jon Caldara and Ted Trimpa discuss the Republican implosion in Colorado. As I Tweeted, "Coloradans need either a 'reality caucus' to win back the GOP from the conspiracy mongers or a 'liberty caucus' within the Democratic Party to save it from its hard-left crazies."
Transgender: Ted Trimpa also discusses transgender issues (time-stamped link). He makes a couple of points. The demonization of transgender people has been absolutely detestable. Yet on issues such as sports there has to be room for common sense in terms of not putting large, strong transgender women up against cisgender women. See also my article and video discussion about this general issue.
Gag: A judge sentenced a woman to 23 months in jail for violating a "gag order." Although Shaun Boyd does not offer much detail in her article on the matter, on its face the case seems concerning.
Skiing: Recently I went to Powderhorn, a nice little resort west of Grand Junction.