If Barack and Michelle Obama feel comfortable allowing Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to babysit their children, that is their problem. The question is, would you allow them to babysit yours? Let’s take that a step farther: would you let them raise your children? Would you give them exclusive supervision over the majority of your children’s daylight hours up to age eighteen, primary control of your children’s academic curriculum and teaching methodology, and authority to arrange the broad social and moral framework within which your children will be educated?
No? Then why do you accept modern public education? Furthermore, why, after having delivered generations of children into this Marx/Dewey/Marcuse/Ayers educational program, is anyone perplexed at people’s inability to respect individual freedom, understand property rights, or hold themselves to standards of character and reasoning higher than that of a mugger?
Perhaps, as Allan Bloom suggested with regard to gladiators, witch burnings, and rock music, a civilization’s greatest absurdity always seems normal to itself. In seeking to explain such a quotidian absurdity, the best angle from which to begin our search may be sideways.
I have a family member in Canada who, a few years ago, suffered a spinal injury. Although her case was not technically an emergency, her surgeon told her in no uncertain terms that the damage to her back was degenerative, and that her condition would continue to deteriorate, irreversibly, until she had the necessary surgery.
Canada’s health care system is, of course, fully socialized, which means it is a bureaucratic nightmare beset with shortages, outrageous wait times, and the impersonal disdain for individual patients that leftists euphemize as “universal care.” My family member got her needed surgery at the earliest available date – which happened to be nine months after being told her spine would continue to degenerate until surgically repaired.
At one point, around halfway through this nine month wait, I suggested that she drive a couple of hours south and pay to have the surgery done at a U.S. hospital. It would have been very expensive, I conceded, but she had to measure the potential gouge out of her savings against the threat of having to give up so many favorite activities forever, and ending up in a wheelchair at sixty.
She would not hear of it. It was not a matter of being a strident defender of socialized medicine, or of nervousness about a foreign hospital. Though frustrated and worried about her future, she simply could not take seriously the possibility of pursuing alternatives, nor question the causes of the ordeal she was being put through, even though her own health and quality of life were at stake. Indefinite wait times guaranteeing permanent, unnecessary harm are just “the way things are” in a public health care system, so you learn to turn off your critical apparatus and accept it stoically. Thus, having been told that surgery was needed to halt life-altering spinal deterioration, my relation simply accepted her unjust sentence: wait as long as it takes to get the “free” health care you have coming to you, even if it means never recovering full health. “What else can you do?”
She got her “free” health care, albeit months late — and will never again enjoy full freedom of movement, agility, a natural gait, or many of the physical activities she used to partake in.
That’s what happens when government controls your body. They decide on matters of your preservation and well-being; you try not to go mad thinking about all that you might lose at their whim.
Now let us get a little closer to the issue at hand, and consider what happens when government controls your mind, or your children’s minds.
To begin with what everyone knows:
(1) Modern public school education throughout the West discourages high achievement. The teachers themselves are generally among the bottom feeders from the previous generation of the same public system. (By and large, they became teachers because it seemed the most respectable job they could get with the least real knowledge, skill, or work. There are exceptions, of course, but they are increasingly rare in a school system that is so discouraging of talent, effectiveness, and non-approved approaches and opinions.)
(2) Public schools actively teach relativistic, anti-individualist morals. This is the Dewey model of education, and it has been faithfully expanded and pursued by educational decision makers and their gofers (the teachers) for the better part of a century.
(3) The standards of academic achievement are dropping at an accelerating rate with each passing decade. High school graduates today are deficient in general knowledge, literacy, and basic reasoning skills. They lack common sense, as well as a sense of common heritage based on shared experiences of something beyond the latest popular song. In other words, their education has taught them no connection to a world before their birth, thus converting the natural distance between generations into an impenetrable dividing wall. (This wall, of course, facilitates the disruption of traditional family life and devotion to one’s elders — as it is meant to do.)
In light of all of this, how are we to understand a society that continues, however unhappily, to send its children into this system, in effect saying, like the victim of socialized medicine, “What else can you do?”
Every day, parents are sending their children to a place where they will be taught: (a) that getting along with others is the primary social skill, regardless of who the “others” are and what they are doing; (b) that failing to follow the latest trends in music (lust, hate, violence), fashion (slovenliness, sexiness, disrespectfulness), or social behavior (drugs, drinking, sexual pressure) will make you a “loser” among your peers, and — at best — a pity case among the teachers; and (c) that excelling is only appreciated or encouraged within the range of achievement set by the curriculum (agenda-driven drivel), class average (lower every year), and teacher expectations (finish the textbook on time).
(See Glenn Fairman’s account of some of the manifestations of all of this, here.)
And then there is the realm of language and literature, without which men are left helpless in a narrow tunnel of fixed moral and intellectual possibilities, lacking even the ability to ask what they are missing. A visitor from only fifty years ago would be shocked to learn that in today’s North American schools, Shakespeare, Austen, Donne, and Swift are out; lifestyle choices, green studies, and diversity are in.
Whereas the “boring,” antiquated studies that are being phased out taught real diversity — diverse character types, potential outcomes of various choices, subtleties of human morals, motives, and feelings — the approach to all modern education, by contrast, is derived from one basic (and superficial) perspective on life, namely leftist-relativist-cynical-cool.
Whereas history and the classics teach the various degrees and shadings of human nature, greatness, and evil, as well as ideals against which to judge oneself and others, modern education teaches the normalization of deviant behavior, the moral equivalency of aspirations, and reverence for the flavor of the month — exactly what education was supposed to help us rise above. In short, modern education is intended to produce exactly the kind of human beings that result from the most pessimistic understanding of the pre-societal state of nature: irrational; ruled by fear, lust, and laziness; unable to form a unified conception of last week, and with no coherent hopes beyond tomorrow.
Until this public school system — built on leftist agendas, enforced mediocrity, and teachers motivated by greed varnished with sentimental slogans about “the children” — is broken into a million pieces and scooped into the trashcan of history, it is silly to imagine that the West will escape from the multifaceted cage it has constructed around itself. The force and centrality of this education in the souls of young people is too great to be counteracted with a little “quality time” on weekends. All are stunted by it to some degree; most are irreparably harmed.
And no simple legislative act can solve this problem, even if there were legislators with the will to perform such acts. Many Americans, for example, lament the failure of Republican presidents to dismantle the Department of Education. It must never be forgotten, however, that this department was made possible by the preceding decades of the progressive takeover of education. Abolishing the department, though highly desirable, would not eradicate the deeper problem of the presiding and pervasive educational philosophy.
Bill Ayers is a prominent teacher educator, and would still be one even if the Department of Education were shut down tomorrow.
This brings us back to the question with which we began: why do people put up with this? Why do parents willingly (or reluctantly, for that matter) send their own children — their own future — to socialist reeducation camps? “From my cold, dead hands,” they proudly say of their guns. Are not their children worthy of at least so strong a grip?
Perhaps the remnants of real learning that are still, though dwindlingly, accessible in the public system — primarily in math and science — are enough to persuade some parents that the system is salvageable at its core. In truth, that “core” is the problem. The parts of the program that resemble legitimate education are merely tolerated as necessary adjuncts or teasers to justify the project of soul-stealing in the eyes of ordinary citizens who would be uncomfortable if the virtues of bisexuality, the evils of capitalism, and the coolness of Barack Obama were the only things their kids learned at school today.
Perhaps part of the problem is that the teachers’ unions are so huge that everyone has a few teacher friends. Therefore we all feel a vested interest in the “teachers are trying their best” apologetic. This allows us to despise the “system,” while comforting ourselves with the thought that the teachers, on the whole, are on our side. They are not. The majority are, at best, unwitting dupes; many are just people looking for a respectable paycheck at a job with long holidays and many places to hide; and some are genuine leftist collectivists, either of the bleeding heart variety, or of the “where do I sign?” variety. The rare exceptions are martyrs — and they know it. They will be invaluable allies in the educational revolution that must take place.
Perhaps anything so long in existence begins to seem indispensable or essentially unalterable. As much as we know change is needed, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine away features of life that have “always” been there. Before it has even been fully implemented, opponents of ObamaCare have begun to concede that it is “the law of the land” now, and will admit of no change more radical than a tweak here and there. Progressive public education has been with us for a century. We are all products of its earlier stages. It feels as inescapable as our most uncomfortable memories.
Whether for these reasons or others, one thing remains undeniable: most North American children are spending the most influential waking hours of their formative years with Bill Ayers, or — if they are lucky — with Ayers’ lazy cousin. As long as this continues, Marx and Dewey win, and freedom and individualism lose. It is that simple.
Since November 6, there has been a lot of talk among conservatives (or classical liberals) about “starving the system” as a way of forcing progressivism into dissolution and collapse. No system deserves to be starved more ruthlessly than public education. This is, in many ways, the hardest fight of all, but it is also the most indispensable, and the one that will pay the greatest dividends. This is no time for recriminations or regrets about past error or shortsightedness. And it is no time for careless lunges. It is time to think carefully but efficiently, alone and together, about how to extricate the current and upcoming generations of young people, or at least that portion within our influence, from an education system explicitly designed to shrink their world to the pinhead of the present, to blunt their thought, to erase their conscience — in sum, a system designed to turn them into the useful idiots of global progressivism.
This battle will require weapons we have never used before, and even some we have not yet invented. And the battlefield is strewn with landmines. This will take time, planning, and coordinated action by people prepared to take chances and forsake other, lesser priorities.
A victory here, however, would be a bargain at almost any price. A soul is a terrible thing to waste. A hundred million souls — now we are talking about the difference between desolation and hope.
The best-kept secret in America today is the precipitous drop in the quality of college since the Left seized power in higher education. Every year, various magazines publish a list of rankings for American undergraduate institutions. Forbes assures parents that “Every school with a Forbes grade meets a high standard.” U.S. News and World Report assures its readers that they consider a wide variety of factors in measuring a college’s effectiveness. While American colleges were once great institutions of learning, those who know higher education today recognize that “high standards” of quality are casualties in the war against traditionalism and American values. Where religion and love of country and family were once revered, radical Leftist ideology now prevails. Traditional values have been replaced by moral relativism, anti-establishment teachings, and the breakdown of the family.
The radicalization of colleges did not happen overnight. What we have now is a product of past indifference and disinclination to do anything to reverse the spread of Leftist trends. John Howard’s new book, America’s Best Colleges! Really?, lays out his analysis of how the traditional purpose of education has been eradicated and replaced by radical ideologies of the Left. Howard outlines a brief history of how our Founders desired our public education system to reinforce religion and morality in order for our self-reliant experiment to survive and thrive. In contrast, he points out how the Left has imbedded its teachings in America’s educational system and perverted the Founders’ original intent in order to undermine the country’s foundation.
Howard quotes ancient philosophers about the purpose and foundations of education. Aristotle: “Of all the things I have mentioned, that which contributes most to the permanence of constitutions is the adaption of education to the form of government.” Howard then states that “schooling is the foremost determinant of the well-being of a nation,” with the exceptions of religion and family. Howard cites Diogenes Laërtius who said, “The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.”
In one of the book’s most compelling stories, John Howard recounts a revealing meeting with government officials concerning educational objectives:
In 1963, a group of college presidents – I was among them – visited a number of members of Congress and officials from the Office of Education with a proposal to substitute tax credits for gifts to colleges in place of Federal grants. When we explained the plan to Dr. Francis Keppel, the U.S. Commissioner of Education, he said “We couldn’t allow that! It would prevent us from accomplishing our social objectives!” It was his intention to convert the educational institutions into agencies for achieving social objectives determined by the Federal government. Commissioner Keppel had just proven that the worst fears of what would happen to education if it were federalized, had already been fulfilled.”
So the federal government’s “social objectives” were paramount in the nation’s educational institutions. Certainly, the history of radicalization isn’t something that appeared out of nowhere. To anyone paying attention at the time, it was a steady pounding of extremist rhetoric and action in every aspect of the classroom.
Howard explains that during the 20th Century, extremists – such as Carl Rogers, Bill Ayers, Bruce Franklin, Herbert Marcuse, Charles Hurst Jr., Michael Klonsky, and Angela Davis – saw fertile ground on college and university campuses where they were able to infiltrate and produce a sea change in how Americans viewed their country, families, morality, and religion.
In addition, radical activism spread rapidly – college students increasingly identified with Che Guevara, Castro, Mao Tse Tung, Lenin, and Trotsky. Howard noted that “The Underground Press, virtually unknown to the public, exerted a wide and powerful influence on the youth of the 1960s and 1970s.” Indeed, radical publications grew from a handful in 1964 to over 400 in 1969 and more than 800 in 40 states in 1971.
Howard contends that morality is “the essential and irreplaceable foundation in a free society.” He then documents how everyone from Edmund Burke, President John Adams, President James Madison, and President John Quincy Adams, all declared political liberty can’t exist without morality. Howard believes that the “acculturation of the young for life in Christendom is carried on by religion, by the families, by educational institutions, by literature, and other cultural influences.” They then have to constantly be reinforced by the culture around them.
Revolutionaries inevitably begin with an assault on religion. The Wall Street Journal reported on July 5, 2002, that three quarters of all college seniors believe in moral relativity. An October 2012 Pew Research poll showed, “One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.” Because anti-American radicals have succeeded in undermining religion, standards of civil behavior have deteriorated, and our free society isn’t so free anymore.
Colleges and universities – even such high-prestige institutions as Princeton, Yale, and Harvard – accept moral relativism as the intellectual standard. This widely prevalent attitude was exemplified very early on by Dr. Lewis Mayhew in his address as the new president of the American Association of Higher Education in 1969: “Colleges are not churches, clinics or even parents. Whether or not a student burns a draft card, participates in a civil rights march, engages in pre-marital sexual activity, becomes pregnant, attends church, sleeps all day or drinks all night, is not really the concern of an educational institution.”
Political correctness, rejection of in loco parentis, and moral relativity are the new standards on campuses in both public and even private institutions, and the ramifications are staggering. Crime, drug use, cheating, money fraud, and a seemingly endless variety of licentious conduct are all accepted. This moral breakdown is producing no outrage from parents or the public. As long as parents demand nothing more from those who teach their children and those to whom they give their hard-earned money, nothing will change, except more erosion of values and more harm to young people.
Howard would like to see education restored to a place where it is seen as “helping the learners to come of age as a people, to conceive a good idea of themselves and to learn that the expression of the human spirit is most truly made in terms of wonder and delight. If education can move toward that ideal, it becomes its own abiding cause for optimism.” Man is “a thinking and feeling being,” a “social being,” and a “spiritual being.” Because of this premise, he asserts that our nation’s colleges should “seek to improve and refine the educational process” and design programs that “will be valid and vital for each generation of students.”
If higher education institutions would do that, there is hope for the future. … And, perhaps, America’s great institutions of the past will return to their former glory.
Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., is a former college professor and university academic officer. She is now Senior Fellow at Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, a conservative think tank.
Back in the good old days, when a few million humans were evenly distributed across the planet, every young man was a rampage killer. In the dawn raid, the idea was to kill all the men in the neighboring village and grab a few women. Remember the Sabine women? It was rape and pillage, and a jolly good time was had by all the rampagers.
A mere thousand years ago, the Vikings liked nothing better in the autumn than to rampage up the rivers of southern England, killing the men, grabbing the grain, and selling the women and children in Dublin, the main slave market in NW Europe.
Now we have the modern rampage killer, who, with benefit of modern technology, can kill a whole classroom of children on his own, without benefit of a band of brothers.
Are things getting better, or worse? According to Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, things are getting better, because the annual death by violence back in the hunter-gatherer age was 500 deaths per 100,000 per year. In the agricultural age, it was 50 deaths per 100,000. And today, it is one to five deaths per 100,000 per year.
Well, you say, we are more civilized today, and that is true. Today we humans are concentrated in cities in a way unthinkable two hundred years ago. But that also makes us much more vulnerable.
Remember who invented the concentration camp? No, it wasn’t the Nazis or the Soviets. It was the Brits during the Boer War. They concentrated the women and children of the rebellious Boers in camps. They wanted to have them under control.
Commerce seems to require concentration: think Champagne fairs, Hanseatic ports, Manchester, Pittsburgh, Wall Street, Detroit, Silicon Valley, “ideopolises.”
Industry likes concentration: think slave plantations and mass-production factories.
Ruling classes like concentration: think collective farms and planned cities, one-size-fits-all social programs.
But why do we need to concentrate our children in government factory schools? OK, we know. The Jesuits did it because if you gave them the boy, they could give you the man. So the Enlightenment’s “sophists, economists, and calculators” could hardly do less. The French wanted to get children away from the Jesuits, the Germans wanted to train up soldiers and thinkers to beat the French, and the Harvard Unitarians in Boston wanted to get the children away from the Puritans.
What any ruling class wants is to get children away from the influence of their parents. And what better way could there be to concentrate and homogenize children than in government child custodial facilities?
It is curious that the modern rampage shootings started around the time that the best and brightest decided that the big youth problem was the education of girls — even though it stands to reason that boys are the ones who need to be socialized away from their dawn-raid instincts, and always will.
It is also curious that the very people who argue for saving the planet by preserving species diversity, and who want a neo-pastoral culture in which people eat and work and live locally, are also the people who insist on the concentration of everyone in government schools, government health care, government pensions, and government-planned cities.
On the one hand, these people want to unwind the remarkable human mobilization of the last two centuries, the strategic concentration of humans into cities which in the last decade was moving 10 million Chinese per year from the countryside into the cities. On the other hand, they want people mobilized into virtual armies in schools, factories, office parks, social programs — for what?
We modern conservatives talk a pretty good line about freedom, and our liberal friends talk a pretty good line about liberation. But how can you call a people free or liberated when its members spend their entire childhood confined in government schools and then spend their adulthood in offices staring at computer screens? What is the goal of all this strategic concentration.
Army generals have always known that strategic concentration is a tricky business. When you concentrate your forces, things can go very wrong. When you have achieved strategic concentration, you had better fight a battle and win it real soon, before you run out of food, or succumb to disease, or find that your army is in the wrong place. We in the West have been strategically concentrating ourselves for two hundred years. For what? For Obama’s War on Inequality?
There is probably no more mindless concentration today than the concentration of children in government schools, according to a plan that was already old in 1850.
My guess is that in the next few years, from bitter experience, we will increasingly come to judge this strategic concentration of children as utter folly
To deliberately deprive a child of a good education is a sin against the child and the nation. To abuse a pupil’s trust is despicable. To manipulate history in the classroom as a means to promote a political or religious ideology is diabolically unethical. To throw away teaching methods that work for practices that do more harm than good is a tragedy. To walk out on a classroom of pupils for personal gain is maniacally egocentric. Sadly, this is precisely what is happening to children in public schools today.
Unfortunately, most teachers join a union like the National Education Association, and in so doing new members must agree (pg. 120) to the union’s goals and objectives. In turn the union protects their members no matter how badly the teachers serve the students.
In stark contrast, even though teachers are public servants, they do not sign an agreement with pupils and parents. Such prioritization is misguided and must change, or we will never overcome the flaws in our schools. Unions are undermining public education.
For example, teachers heeded the union siren and abandoned their pupils to protest Michigan’s proposed right-to-work law, even though striking is illegal. Similarly, In 2011 Wisconsin teachers illegally walked out on their students to protest the limiting of collective bargaining rights.
Parents are not alone in their anger when teachers are derelict in their duty. Last week a student in a Chicago classroom raged against her music teacher because he and his colleagues went on strike for a week over a wage dispute. When her teacher returned to the classroom the student screamed, “I want an education!”
Union action in school districts is egregious, but even worse are incidents of sexual contact between a teacher and his or her pupils. In just one elementary school in Los Angeles parents filed 189 claims of sexual abuse. Sadly, there is an endless rogues gallery of teacher sex offenders, and shockingly, unions want to protect these offenders.
Atrocious union activities and sexual misconduct by teachers are only part of the rot we face in education. Parents are also realizing that their children are being politically indoctrinated, primarily towards socialist goals. They are deprived of historical truths such as the important role black Americans played during Reconstruction. Furthermore, professors of education teach experimental pedagogical methods to their protégés, who in turn experiment on their young pupils in the classroom. From this wellspring of fads our children have suffered such theories as whole language, authentic assessment, and constructivism. The results have not been good.
All of these behaviors are unforgivable, and beg the obvious question: Which is the greatest priority in public education, teaching our children, or fulfilling a teacher’s selfish interests?
Clearly, a student’s education, as well as his or her safety in the classroom, should be the highest priority in every school. If a teacher isn’t willing to put students ahead of self, then that educator should not be in the profession.
What can we do? Changing minds first requires changing hearts, one step at a time. Therefore I recommend that parents and students start the process of change by insisting educators sign a Teacher’s Oath. One has been provided below which might serve as a model.
Imagine a school where all its teachers live up to these promises, and school administrators vigilantly support the teachers who subscribe to these covenants. Over time, union membership would wane, parental involvement and local control would increase, and America’s children would finally receive a education that matches their talents.
It’s not too much to ask when our nation’s future is in the balance.
TEACHER’S OATH
I swear by my honor, and all who witness my pledge, that I will fulfill according to my ability this oath and covenant to my students. I agree to:
Competence: • Achieve mastery in all subjects that I may be expected to teach. • Keep my skills up to date with changes in technology. • Encourage my pupils to research and evaluate pro and con arguments when the topic is subjective, rather than parroting the consensus of a supposed majority of opinion. • Understand and teach the scientific method. • Understand, teach, and apply logic where appropriate.
Priorities: • Place the educational needs of my pupils before my self interest or that of my collegial affiliations. • Not strike and abandon my students. • Reach out to parents, encouraging them to take an active role in their child’s education, and help them find resources when needed. • Maintain discipline in the classroom. • Grade fairly, and honestly.
Advocacy: • Practice my First Amendment right to free speech by challenging authorities who push me to adopt teaching methods that I believe are illogical and detrimental to the education of my pupils. • Advocate for phonics instruction at the elementary level. • Advocate for maintaining strong core subjects of reading, writing, mathematics, and science at all levels of education. • Advocate for textbooks that are historically complete, factually correct, and which do not omit key figures because of political correctness. • Advocate for textbooks that accurately describe the founding principles of the American government, with an emphasis on The Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the role of free market capitalism in the growth of our nation. • Uphold, support, and defend the laws of the U.S. Constitution and my State constitution.
Ethical Behavior: • Treat all students equally regardless of their status, both with respect to academic expectations and discipline. • Never humiliate a student for expressing an opinion that differs markedly from my opinion or others’ opinions. • Never use a captive classroom as a forum for proselytizing my political or religious views, even if I am teaching a subject directly related to politics or religion. • Serve as a positive role model for my students, both in the classroom and in my personal life. • Never participate in an unethical, sexual, or otherwise illegal relationship with a student.
____________________ __________________________________ Date Signature
December 20, 2012 – 11:17 pm EST |NoisyRoomBy: LM & AJ
In light of the recent massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, we learn today that, “The Newtown school gunman’s mother was so angry at education chiefs for failing her son, she thought ‘screw them’ and refused to stop dealing with them anymore, a relative has claimed. Nancy Lanza pleaded for better services for her disturbed son Adam, but was apparently rebuffed so many times, she took it upon herself to home school him.”
One can imagine there isn’t a Special Education Director who isn’t wondering if they could do more to identify students with mental health disorders. In fact, there are some who know they can do more – *and the law requires them to do it. However, the administrative apparatus of the public school system is managed in a way that restricts access to the supports and services needed by children with mental illness or disabilities.
Too often, pressure from school Superintendents require Special Education Directors to reduce their budgets, thus leaving Directors no choice but to purposely deny eligibility, interventions, appropriate services and/or supports to children who need them. In essence, school districts claim these children are fine or they’re “cured” because they really don’t need interventions or services despite clear warning signs that something’s very wrong.
Adam Lanza was no exception. Educational professionals report they saw Adam Lanza’s problems as early as 9th grade. At Newtown High School, he was often having episodes and the protocol used by the school was to call his mother, Nancy Lanza, and have her come in to diffuse each crisis.
The head of security for the school district at the time, Richard Novia, told AP reporter Adam Geller, “He would have an episode and she’d have to return or come to the high school and deal with it.”
While Nancy Lanza suffered in silence and rarely spoke of the seriousness of Adam’s problems, the indicators of her son’s severe mental illness were there. Nancy Lanza’s friends knew Adam had switched schools more than once and that Nancy tried home schooling him.
John Tambascio said, “I always said that I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes. But I thought, “Wow. She holds it well.”” Russell Hanoman said Adam was “clearly a troubled child.” Ryan Kraft, who babysat Adam when he was younger, said, “His mom Nancy had always instructed me to keep an eye on him at all times, never turn my back or even go to the bathroom or anything like that. Which I found odd, but I really didn’t ask; it wasn’t any of my business.”
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) includes a legal mandate requiring school districts, under the “Child Find” provision, to seek out and find children who exhibit significant problems at school, to include developmental and functional problems; not just academic problems. Most parents aren’t aware of this and the media and politicians won’t tell you about it, but all school districts know.
Under IDEA, anyone concerned about an individual can refer the student, confidentially, to the school district for assessment.
Usually, it is a teacher who refers a student for assessment. Unfortunately, due to the nationwide “budget constraint” mantra from the educational system, we are told that teachers are discouraged by their districts in the referral of students with suspected disorders and that “it’s a big waste of time as districts take no forward motion” according to one teacher who has asked to remain anonymous.
Did Lanza’s school district follow the Child Find law? Did they refer him for a psycho-educational assessment and provide the interventions and services needed? As we now know, they did not.
You may wonder, “Why at school?” Children with mental illness or disabilities experience the majority of their difficulties within and because of school. The random, unpredictable and social dynamics and demands of all school campuses generally intensify the manifestations of a child’s disorder.
Their inability to properly navigate the school environment is the first warning sign that, without proper interventions and supports, they will be unable to navigate in the real world when they reach adulthood.
Unfortunately for parents, their distraught and possibly violent child is often denied an assessment by the school district or, if given an assessment, they’re denied Special Education eligibility and/or appropriate supports and services, especially if the child is demonstrating “adequate academic progress.” Parents are often pleading and begging for help from the school.
This is where school districts misinterpret the law. Clearly, IDEA legislation requires that students who demonstrate issues of functional, social, and/or emotional development are to be assessed and the needed interventions, supports and services must be provided. If Adam Lanza’s school district had followed the law, they would have requested Nancy Lanza’s consent to conduct a psycho-educational assessment in all areas of suspected disability, which includes mental health, in order to get to the bottom of his mental illness, thus enabling them to determine the interventions and services he needed (to include institutionalization if necessary). In addition, he would have been closely monitored via an Individualized Education Plan (IEP).
Adam Lanza’s problems were no secret; his brother told reporters that Adam suffered from a “personality disorder” (the clinical term is usually “sociopath” or “psychopath”). Adam Lanza’s mental illness was evident and Nancy Lanza’s problems with the school district have been reported.
Ask yourself… could things have been different if the school district had followed the law just a few short years ago? Would it have revealed the severity of his mental illness? Would interventions have been provided that may have prevented the murder of 27 innocents? We’ll never know the real answer to that question now.
But we do know his mother, Nancy Lanza, suffered in silence, was murdered by her son and friends and educators knew something was seriously wrong with Adam Lanza.
Often, when a parent is struggling at home with a child who has a mental illness or disability, they are completely overwhelmed and very few can understand this unless they walk in the parent’s shoes. More often than not, parents are not aware of the laws and provisions of IDEA and rarely do they have the energy or resources to fight the educational apparatus’ complex, bureaucratic and lengthy legal process. Not all school districts create barriers such as what is described in this article, but the problem is that the vast majority do.
Like Nancy Lanza, many parents end up pulling their children out of school and implementing a home school program. Consequently, removed from the social world, the child’s problems may appear to diminish somewhat… but those problems re-emerge when they are adults and attempt to re-enter mainstream society.
Did you know that twelve children commit suicide every day in the US? Everyday. One must ask what educators knew and what they did or didn’t do while those children were in their care.
Adam Lanza became an evil killer and educators saw signs of trouble as early as the 9th grade. One must ask what educators knew and what they did or didn’t do while he was in their care.
For parents of children with autism, it’s important to correct the media’s unsubstantiated reference to Asperger’s Syndrome with regard to Adam Lanza. Although Adam Lanza’s brother said “somewhat autistic,” if reporters had done their due diligence, they would have learned that an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is not a mental illness and it was not in any way related to what Adam Lanza did.
No evidence exists to link autism and premeditated violence. Suggesting otherwise is wrong and harmful to the more than 1.5 million individuals living with autism in the United States.1
Individuals with autism and those with other disabilities are more likely to be victims of violence than the perpetrators.2
Many of the individuals with Asperger’s syndrome who have committed crimes had co-existing psychiatric disorders.3 1. Gunasekaran, S., & Chaplin, E. (2012). Autism spectrum disorders and offending. Advances in Mental Health and Intellectual Disabilities, 6, 308-313.2. Hughes, K., Bellis, M. A., Jones, L., Wood, S., Bates, G., Eckley, L., … & Officer, A. (2012). Prevalence and risk of violence against adults with disabilities: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies. The Lancet. 379, 1621-1629.
3. Newman SS, Ghaziuddin M: Violent crime in Asperger syndrome: the role of psychiatric comorbidity. J Autism Dev Disord 39:1949-52, 2008.
The media has yet to discuss the real issue regarding Adam Lanza, the failure of the educational system and what might have prevented the massacre of 27 innocent people in Newtown, CT.
Did his school district follow the law and provide the appropriate interventions, supports and services that he needed while he was young, which could have prevented him from becoming an evil killer that took so many innocent lives on December 14th?
President Obama said that he will put funding toward a solution. Well, here it is Mr. President. Clear evidence of what can be, and should have been, done. These laws are already mandated; they’re on the books. The job of the Executive Branch is to enforce the laws of the land that are enacted by Congress, so that’s what the American people have hired you to do. Enforce the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
—————-
*Excerpts of IDEA Legislation:
Child Find System – Sec. 303.321 – IDEA requires all states to have a “comprehensive Child Find system” to assure that all children who are in need of early intervention or special education services are located, identified, and referred.
(a) General. As used in this part, the term individualized education program or IEP means a written statement for each child with a disability that is developed, reviewed, and revised in a meeting in accordance with Sec. Sec. 300.320 through 300.324, and that must include–
(1) A statement of the child’s present levels of academic achievement and functional performance, including–
(i) How the child’s disability affects the child’s involvement and progress in the general education curriculum (i.e., the same curriculum as for nondisabled children); or
(ii) For preschool children, as appropriate, how the disability affects the child’s participation in appropriate activities;
Case law has further clarified the specific parameters of functional, social, and emotional progress. An example of this is Acalanes vs. Student in California .
About the authors: We are parents of children with disabilities and have collectively advocated for the needs of children with disabilities for twenty years. LM is currently a paralegal involved in litigation against the CA Department of Education. This litigation, which was filed one year ago, alleges the State’s failure to appropriately monitor how individual school districts provide supports and services to children with special needs. AJ is currently working as a special needs consultant and has served on various autism-related, non-profit boards. AJ has been very involved in legislative change regarding how children with disabilities are provided services and spearheaded the creation of pilot classrooms for school districts to help them meet the educational needs of children with autism.
“Teachers unions are, by far, the most powerful force in American education…They use their power to promote the job related interests of teachers and, in particular, to promote job protection.” – Terry M. Moe
WatchBloodsucking Capitalists: Emotional Reading of Excerpts at Tucson School Board Meeting From a Book Used in the Controversial Ethnic Studies Curriculum for Grades 3rd – 12th (Content Warning)
It is the job of educators to “change the thoughts, feelings, and actions of students.” So proclaimed psychologist Benjamin Bloom, originator of Outcome-Based Education. The U.S. Department of Education was created in 1979, setting the stage for Bloom’s decree only two years later. In the 1980s, the already ugly transformation of America’s schools gained momentum.Many of today’s K-12 and university classrooms serve as laboratories in which instructors breed minds poor in knowledge and logic but rich in political correctness. Morally bankrupt values like “tolerance” and “diversity” are recurring themes. Such conditioning often aims to create “citizens of the world,” despite there being no planet-wide entity of which people can become citizens. But educators wedded to utopian visions have no time for such mundane reality. Time is precious. Students must be conditioned to join the “global community.”more…
REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST/MARXIST GROUP PLANING TO RECRUIT CHILDREN IN JR. HIGH SCHOOL
Nearly 100 people attended the first Socialism Conference sponsored by the Washington, D.C., branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) on April 1. “If we liberate the wealth of society from their ownership and we produce based on logical, ecological sustainable development, we can take and use the wealth for the sake of society, for the vast majority of people”. This is Socialist/Marxist ideology that has not worked in any place that was installed. Look at Cuba, Venezuela, the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. Only the Communist leaders will have the wealth and the rest will become poorer.
The average American, as parent, student and taxpayer, has little idea of the academic rot at so many of our colleges. Save for a tiny handful of the nation’s colleges, what distinguishes one college from another is the magnitude of that rot.
May 02, 2011 By Stuart Schwartz (Mr Schwartz, a former media and retail executive, is on the faculty of Liberty University in Virginia. He is an “academic” by credentials only.)
excerpts: Professors gone wild. That is the only conclusion you can come to when you apply Sherlock Holmes’ astute dictum to the striking similarities between the widespread failures of American education and government, institutions universally dominated by a self-proclaimed “educated class.”
behind just about every institutional dysfunction — from media to government to education — is an academic. In healthcare, Harvard’s Donald Berwick is in Washington presiding over the slashing of medical treatment for seniors; over at the federal energy department, Berkeley’s Steven Chu is assisting the administration with the destruction of the private energy sector; and Harvard’s Kevin Jennings is in the White House promoting same-sex education for inner-city schools. Children may not know how to read or write but, gosh darn it, they’ll know how to “fist” (“forcing one’s entire handinto another person’s rectum or vagina” — Jennings sponsored a program for Massachusetts public schools that “included an educational seminar for kids that graphically described some unorthodox sex techniques”). Meanwhile, on another part of planet academic, the Washington Post put its reasoning ability on display last week with the pronouncement that Barack Obama is too smart for the office he holds. Government-run institutions are collapsing because the nation is “too stupid” to fall “adoringly at Obama’s feet” and simply do what he says.Which brings us to “Girls Gone Wild — Academic Version.” Our educated elites are the product of the cumulative efforts of approximately two million professors — almost 70% working at taxpayer-funded institutions — who, at any given time, are a major influence in shaping the behaviors and thoughts of the nation. From Harvard to Michigan to Berkeley, these professors have done their “Girls Gone Wild” thing in the classroom. Too many are engaged in the intellectual rape of students, pushing aside education in favor of Marxist propagandizing and adolescent antics. The Northwestern University professor who recently concluded a class with a live demonstration of a naked woman using an automated sex toy is, sadly, merely one of hundreds of instances of professorial malpractice occurring every day. Too often, providing students with the knowledge, reasoning ability, and judgment to meaningfully function in American society is an afterthought. Professors, once a cultural pillar of the most successful nation the world has seen, no longer do the hard work of teaching. Instead sex, Marxism, and blatant anti-Americanism have become the norm for faculties that view higher education as the main front of a war on American success.
Smart people can be dumb…and vicious.
And incompetent. The federal government, led by the largest contingent of academics ever to inhabit the Beltway, is failing; public education, entirely a product of higher education, has failed; and the economy is groaning under the weight of officials schooled by the professoriate.
click the heading to read the article in it’s entirety.
Two egregious examples of anti-abortion literature being censored because school authorities disagree with the message.
Exotic Dancers in Catholic Univ. Business Class Students paid $150 each to attend a business symposium at LaSalle University, billed in advance as including strippers. The professor “teaching” the class was caught in the act by the dean of the business school, and was subsequently suspended.
Moral Values Cause Teen Suicides: Study The study released by Mark Hatzenbuehler of Columbia University shows that high schools dominated by conservatives have higher rates of teen suicides; his solution is to approve of, and celebrate homosexual behavior.
Gay Recruitment of Kids: Obama’s Czar Legacy President Obama’s “Safe Schools” Czar, Kevin Jennings, founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which was exposed this week recruiting children through Facebook by promoting the annual homosexual celebration in schools called the “Day of Silence.”
Hypersexualized White House and Sexual Violence in Schools The Obama administration has been proud to elevate sexuality at every opportunity, including filling the Department of Education with homosexualists, trashing President Bush’s emphasis on abstinence education, and so on. Appropriately, now the White House must also address the sexual violence committed by “well-educated” students.
. . . Free Condoms to 11-year-olds from Philadelphia Government The Philadelphia Department of Health has launched a massive free condom giveaway to children from a website that includes explicit instructions on condom usage and more (videos available).
‘Teaching Gay History’ Law for California Although there’s no state requirement to teach Christian history in California public schools, soon the children will be taught a sanitized version of the history of sexual deviancy regarding homosexual behavior because it will “help curb the bullying of gay children [sic].”
Posted on April 28, 2011 at 6:31am by Emily Esfahani Smith
A former high school band teacher in North Carolina was arrested on sex charges after a young woman wrote in an essay in her college newspaper that he got her pregnant – and took her to get an abortion – when she was his student.
The essay, “I had an affair with my high school teacher,” used some fake names but identified the Winston-Salem school, and the principal there tipped off authorities. It was originally written for a composition class at North Carolina Central University and appeared in the campus paper this month as part of an annual special section.
The piece, which describes a relationship that started when the student was 17 and her teacher 24, begins with a chilling description of the abortion.
“The sound of the vacuum still rings in my ears almost three years later,” she wrote. “He had taken me to Greensboro because he was scared of someone from school or anyone catching us together at the abortion clinic – didn’t want anyone `getting the wrong idea.’”
The teacher, Terry Lamar Jones, now 28, turned himself in on Monday and was charged with 64 felony counts of sex with a student, each one punishable by 15 months in prison. He was jailed on $500,000 bail.
Jones left the Winston-Salem school system in November 2008. Freedman and district officials would not give details about his departure, saying only that he had no demotions or suspensions and submitted a letter of resignation. He had been a band teacher since last year at a middle school in Durham, a position he resigned the day after he turned himself in.
There was no indication in the essay that the woman wanted to see her former teacher arrested or otherwise punished.
The fomer high school student said things quickly turned sexual, and the two spent nearly every night together for a whole school year. She said the relationship faltered when she learned that Jones had also been involved with her best friend, but she stayed with him anyway until she graduated in 2008.
The student wrote that she still feels guilt about the relationship.
“I am still scarred by the experience. I lost my only friends and abused and embarrassed myself by sleeping with a teacher and having an abortion,” she said. “A lot of girls can talk the talk, but we all have to be aware of that guilty walk that comes along with the territory.”
Posted on April 30, 2011 at 10:41pm by Scott Baker
The Daily Mail reports that an English teacher at a Middleburg, Pennsylvania high school has a much racier job when she’s outside the classroom – and some parents are none to pleased with the revelation:
A group of high school parents have complained to their local education board after discovering a quiet English teacher writes racy, erotic novels when she’s not working with their children.
They are asking that the board investigates the matter and presents Judy Buranich with a choice: either quit teaching or quit writing the books.
Mrs Buranich has taught at the Midd West High School in Middleburg, Pennsylvania, for nearly 25 years.
But recently parents and students found out that outside of class she is Judy Mays, author of titles such as A Breath of Heat, Undercover Heat, and Rednecks ‘N’ Romance.
The books, which feature aliens, vampires and werewolves, are freely available at web sites such as Amazon.com and at book chain stores such as Waldenbooks.
But for the parents, the racy novels are just a little too racy.
“Now my son knows so how is he thinking when he’s sitting in her class knowing what she does on the side,” Apple said. She added she found all of the information on the internet. Apple said Buranich writes under the pen name Judy Mays.
If you go to Judy May‘s website she said she’s disguised as a mild-mannered tenth grade English teacher in a small public high school. If you want to get in contact with her you are asked to write to a post office box in Selinsgrove.
A photograph of Buranich matches a YouTube interview in which she talks about her novels.
Parent Deanna Stepp said the evidence is clear. “She is teaching children that are under the age of 18 and definitely the books that she is writing are adult books. I think she needs to make a decision as to what she wants to do. Either be a school teacher or author,” Stepp said.
“I was shocked. If you are a teacher you shouldn’t be doing that,” said former student Shanette Apple.
“I was sort of shocked.Sitting in her class I had no idea. She is a good teacher but I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes,” said former student Drew Hollenbach.
7 Child Predators Protected by American Teachers Unions
Megan Fox is a stay-at-home mom, blogger, radio-talk show host and conservative folk-singer.
How many times have you heard that public school teachers are sorely underpaid, under-appreciated public servants with hearts of gold who love your kids more than you do? There is a myth out there that every person who enters into the sacred field of education has the heart of a servant, a love of children and no desire for personal gain or satisfaction. And certainly, there are teachers that fit that description (I’ve had a few myself.)
But I’ve also had teachers who should never have been allowed within fifty feet of children. A 2004 study by Hofstra University scholar Charol Shakeshaft on the sexual misconduct of public school teachers is a shocking wake-up call that was widely ignored by the public union-friendly press. And even worse, the public teachers unions protected many of the offending teachers and allowed them to quietly transfer to other schools where they victimized more children. “Examples include touching breasts or genitals of students; oral, anal, and vaginal penetration; showing students pictures of a sexual nature; and sexually-related conversations, jokes, or questions directed at students.”
Everyone agrees that the sex scandal in the Catholic Church is a tragedy of immense proportions and the media has done a good job at uncovering the network of cover-ups and lies that harmed children irreparably. But what would you say if I told you that the public school system, which is about the same size as the Catholic Church in America with a school in every parish, has more sexual abuse cases in ten years than the Catholic Church has had in fifty? The mishandling of sex offenders in the public school system has cost hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees to the taxpayers and unmeasurable damage to the victims. The following are among the worst offenders in the public school system.
“Oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms need to be taught in education,” Diane Schneider told the audience at a panel on combating homophobia and transphobia. Schneider, representing the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the US, advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in US schools, with curricula based on liberal hetero and homosexual expression.”
The curriculum suggests that educators engineer a society to think and act a certain way. It brainwashes children, teachers and parents to conform to a government-decided norm, not a natural, religious, or familial one. Even if we were to agree with the ideas in the curriculum, it is not the government’s job to play parent, religion, or mind police. Doing so is unconstitutional, because it violates the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights…
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (Source: Wikipedia)
The NEA is obligated, at the very least, to promote a system of learning that teaches students the skills needed to think on their own, and at the same time insures that teachers are treated fairly. A quick look at NEA’s website tells the story of a union more concerned with “collectivism,” “equality,” and “funding” than improving an educational system that has produced 18 year olds that know how to use a condom, but cannot read.
Here are excerpts from NEA’s website, which details their vision, mission and values:
Our Vision Our vision is a great public school for every student.
Our Mission Our mission is to advocate for education professionals and to unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world.
Our Core Values
These principles guide our work and define our mission:
Equal Opportunity. We believe public education is the gateway to opportunity. All students have the human and civil right to a quality public education that develops their potential, independence, and character.
A Just Society. We believe public education is vital to building respect for the worth, dignity, and equality of every individual in our diverse society.
Democracy. We believe public education is the cornerstone of our republic. Public education provides individuals with the skills to be involved, informed, and engaged in our representative democracy.
Professionalism. We believe that the expertise and judgment of education professionals are critical to student success. We maintain the highest professional standards, and we expect the status, compensation, and respect due all professionals.
Partnership. We believe partnerships with parents, families, communities, and other stakeholders are essential to quality public education and student success.
Collective Action. We believe individuals are strengthened when they work together for the common good. As education professionals, we improve both our professional status and the quality of public education when we unite and advocate collectively.
Public education is the gateway of opportunity only if the student actually learns something which would make them productive members of society. We want our youth to graduate college, and get jobs, not live in their parent’s basement collecting health insurance until their 27 years old.
The NEA, on the other hand, require that students “work together for the common good” and encourages a warped sense of “character” (based on a government decided norm) that encroaches on individual liberty and parental rights.
Lisa Douglas of Hudson Valley Patriots says the following:
“The last time I checked (which was this morning) I, as a mother of 5, have the SOLE JOB of teaching my children MORALS. The NEA can keep their disgusting agenda to their own children – not mine! If this doesn’t anger you – nothing will. I’ve sent a letter Diane Schneider telling her as such and also told her if she really wants to help the kids – to stop teaching sex and start teaching history, geography, math, science and English – leave the rest to us parents!” (Agreed!)
Working together for the common good is important and noble, however, individual drive and determination makes leaders and prosperous creators. Collective action makes sheeple out of sheep. It dictates our sense of “democracy” and “justice” into a collective norm.
Government dictating societal norms is antithetical to individual liberty, and doing great damage to our society, because it limits knowledge to one mind set, over another. It redefines roles, and relationships to suit a sexed up society they so enjoy—they want to push it on our children.
Parents are the correct moral arbiters of children, not public education.
Both parents and educators can take a lead in strengthening future communities by promoting a wholesome environment where kids can be kids, and also where kids can be given the tools necessary to grow into productive individuals. Our future depends on adults being proper role models and educators. The NEA is hell bent on sexing up our culture. Do not be sheeple, America, our future needs us now, stand up for the kids!
The Dues and Don’ts of (Public Employee) Union Membership, and relationship with the Left
Yesterday, it would have been easy to mistake Wisconsin’s unions for an angry third-world mob. For three weeks, state Republicans have been under assault from Big Labor over a collective bargaining agreement in the latest budget bill. By Wednesday, the assault was real. Angry throngs stormed the capitol after the state senate voted to pass the proposal without help from Democrats, who stomped out of the capital like angry toddlers and refused to work. A lot of the credit for yesterday’s vote goes to new Gov. Scott Walker (R), who stood his ground in what became a national standoff with union leaders, liberals, and even the President, who felt compelled to insert himself into the state’s business. Walker, who has just three months under his belt, refused to crumble under the pressure and plowed ahead to do what he had been elected to do: balance the budget. Within an hour of the vote, however, local protestors had “climbed through windows and flooded the Capitol.” According to the Associated Press, “protestors had seized the building’s lower floors, creating an ear-splitting, free-for-all of pounding drums, screaming chants, horns and whistles.” At one point, “Police gave up guarding the building entrances and retreated to the third floor.”
While some see it as a messy fight over worker rights, others see it as a fight for democracy. “Remember back during the health care debate when the Republicans fled D.C. to hide in hotels, the Tea Party protestors manhandled women & pushed people around culminating in that grand sacking of the Capitol we did?” RedState’s Ben Howe asked. “Of course you don’t. Because conservatives believe in protest as well as the rule of law. And when we don’t get our way, we win at the polls, not at the end of a stick.”
As shocking as yesterday’s riots were, it’s even more stunning how many Americans don’t make the connection between the Left and the unions. While members are faithfully sending in their dues, some of them have no idea that their leaders are not focused on making America competitive–but using their power to underwrite an agenda most of them would never support. From labor to education, unions have been walking in lock-step with the liberal agenda and this administration. We witnessed it with ObamaCare, as unions spent millions endorsing a law that many have since been exempted from. At the National Education Association (NEA), the radical politicking is legendary. The NEA officially supports same-sex “marriage,” abortion, and more recently, kids’ programs on sexual satisfaction. It even has its own Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Caucus. When Planned Parenthood made headlines for supporting child prostitution, Service Employees International Union rushed to the organization’s defense. Of course, these organizations don’t go out of their way to tell members about their positions, because they know a majority would oppose them! It’s time we started pulling back the curtain on the real union agenda so that more Americans understand where their dues are going.
** Sex Trafficking in America: from the Boulevard to Planned Parenthood **
Each year, right under our noses, 100,000 American children each year are victimized by sex traffickers. Make no mistake, this is not a problem that’s just “over there.” These heinous crimes are happening in our own backyards. A special live video webcast hosted by Family Research Council on Tuesday, March 15 at 2:00 p.m. ET will bring together leading experts shed light on this growing problem that affects every corner of our nation–from neighborhoods, playgrounds, and malls to the local Planned Parenthood clinic. You will also learn what actions you can take to help restore these victims, and stop those who prey on them.
Obama’s Bully Pulpit
Anyone who has survived middle school knows that bullying is real. You’ve probably experienced it. I certainly have. As an overweight kid growing up in Ohio, I know how hard it is to be ridiculed and laughed at for how you look. While I relied on my faith, humor and a determination to change to make it through those difficult middle school years, it was painful–and it’s a big reason why I’ve taught my kids not to make fun of people who are different. But just because people are different doesn’t mean we can’t engage them in conversations about decisions that could harm them and positive choices that can change the future.
Unfortunately, I think that message is missing from today’s White House conference on bullying. As Christians, we don’t believe that a person should be harassed for their sexuality, their physical appearance, their beliefs, or any other reason. But sadly, the Left tends to spin the issue of bullying as a uniquely homosexual problem. They hold up tragic incidents like Tyler Clementi’s suicide to push for school-based curriculum and other initiatives that give homosexuals a platform for normalizing their behavior.
Even the government’s StopBullying website is dominated by information about LGBT bullying. This is the liberals’ way of turning a serious problem into an opportunity for greater censorship of those who disagree with their behavior. In the White House materials, they turn a dialogue about bullying into a conversation about protecting homosexuals. The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Alliance (GLSEN) is featured in the government’s resources with a generous plug from President Obama. The debate has also created a window for homosexual Kevin Jennings, the embattled “safe school czar,” to spread his propaganda in the classroom–and on the White House website. Does the anti-bullying initiative extend to young people with Christian beliefs, who find themselves the subject of a teacher’s ridicule on subjects like sexuality or science? If it doesn’t, then America is only exacerbating the problem.
Remember the “special interests” Gov. Andrew Cuomo portrayed as a fighter plane in his State of the State presentation?
On the subject of education cuts, those interests are firing shots across Cuomo’s bow.
Two leading organizations concerned about Cuomo’s proposed cut of $1.5 billion in state education aid launched campaigns last week as another poll found that most New Yorkers oppose cutting state aid to school districts.
New York State United Teachers launched an ad campaign targeting the proposed education cuts by calling for “shared sacrifice.”
According to a NYSUT press release, the ads will air in several markets across New York, including Syracuse. The ads are expected to run until March 3rd NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi said.
Alliance for Quality Education, an “education advocacy organization,” released a video called, “Priorities” featuring Cynthia Nixon, an actress best known for her role in the TV series “Sex and the City”.
The Alliance for Quality Education, the labor & parent group arguing against Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed $1.5 billion cut to school aid, released the below video as part of the organization’s contest to hear real stories about the cut’s impact.
It features Cynthia Nixon, who like most of you, I keep in my rolodex under “noted fiscal analyst.” The “Sex in the City” star, who has in the past argued for the legalization of same-sex marriage, warns that over 10,000 teachers could be laid off and over 100 schools could close under Cuomo’s plan.
Brian Ach/ID-PR/AP Meet Max Ellington Nixon-Marinoni!
Cynthia Nixon and Christine Marinoni (AN EDUCATION ACTIVIST) pose with their newborn son — who arrived Monday, Feb. 7 — in a photo taken Friday in New York City.
Nixon, 44, and Marinoni, 43 — who delivered Max — began dating in 2004 and announced their engagement in 2009.
The Sex and the City star has two children, Samantha, 14, and Charles, 8, from her previous relationship with (MALE) teacher Danny Mozes.
and much more, direct links to van jones website – different initiatives of Van Jones that includes resources for students and volunteers to get involved, they’re basically teaching kids to become communist activists. “Became a Defender” “opportunities for activism both through local and national programs”
After this lesson, students will be able to:
Know who Van Jones is and why he is a human rights defender.
Oddly in their profile of Van Jones, NYSUT does not mention he is a radical leftist, his penchant for Black power initiatives, and how it all ties in to him being an avowed communist!
On Dec. 27, 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote about his vision for the University of Virginia (chartered in 1819), “This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error as long as reason is left free to combat it.”
But what should happen 200 years later when our public schools and universities avoid the testing of truths? Or suppress alternate opinions because they are unpopular or politically incorrect? Or no longer tolerate opinions now considered errors or obsolete by the elite? What happens when sociopolitical agendas or scientific paradigms dominate academic views to the exclusion of a minority even being mentioned?
What happens when the political and public educational pendulum swings from concern for the tyranny of sectarianism in Jefferson’s day to secularism in ours? What happens when U.S. public schools become progressive indoctrination camps?
Northwestern University Investigating Live Sex Show in Class
MyFox New York
Published : Thursday, 03 Mar 2011, 8:51 AM EST
(NewsCore) – Northwestern University began to distance itself Thursday from a professor who allowed an explicit after-class demonstration involving a woman and a motorized sex toy.
Although the school initially defended the raunchy display as a legitimate teaching exercise, President Morton Schapiro later released a statement calling it “extremely poor judgment.”
“I simply do not believe this was appropriate, necessary or in keeping with Northwestern University’s academic mission,” Schapiro said, noting that he had opened up an investigation into the incident.
“Many members of the Northern community are disturbed by what took place on our campus,” he added. “So am I.”
The display, which involved a naked 25-year-old woman and her fiance, took place for a course called “Human Sexuality.”
Four members of Chicago’s fetish community had been invited to speak and answer questions about “bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism,” before being invited to demonstrate their sexual behavior, also known as BDSM.
“The demonstration, which included a woman who enjoyed providing a sexually explicit demonstration using a machine, surely counts as kinky, and hence, as relevant,” Psychology Prof. John Michael Bailey said in a statement issued to FOXNews.com late Wednesday…..
See how homosexual radicals are indoctrinating very young children in elementary schools!
No opting out of pro-gay school propaganda
A foretaste of what the American military will experience?
(Diversity training and anti-bullying, NO – this is quite simply homosexual propaganda and it’s reprehensible. Your lucky our kids don’t go to your schools! Forget the ACLU, it’s about time straight parents start suing you)
Promo picture for GroundSpark film ‘That’s a Family’
If your child attends school in Vallejo, California, he will watch pro-gay propaganda videos whether you like it or not.
Forced by the ACLU to provide “mandatory diversity training” to students and faculty, the Vallejo Unified School District is now showing all students “anti-bullying” films produced by a homosexuality affirming San Francisco group called GroundSpark. Among other topics, the films discuss same-sex relationships.
“No one should take my rights and tell me what can be shown to my children,” said Vallejo mother Cookie Gordon at a fractious Nov. 18 school board meeting.
“We do not feel that this is an area that students can opt out,” school superintendent Floyd Gonella told KNTV after the meeting. He continued, “We feel this is an area we don’t have to give prior notification.”
Courageous Christian Student Confronts Teachers Promotion of the National Homosexual AgendaThursday, December 2, 2010Daniel Glowacki, a 16-year-old junior at Howell High School in Howell, Michigan, has unexpectedly found himself at the center of a national firestorm and the target of homosexual activists across the country, including national lesbian TV host, Ellen DeGeneres. It came about when he defended another students free speech rights, and when confronted by his pro-homosexual teacher, Daniel ended up defending his Catholic faith that considers homosexual conduct a sin.The incident occurred on October 20, 2010, the day that Daniels economics class teacher, Jay McDowell, wore a purple Tylers Army t-shirt as part of a national campaign to highlight the alleged bullying of homosexuals. McDowell was taking part in a national Anti-Bullying Day promoted by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. To further promote this national pro-homosexual agenda, McDowell was planning to show the class a video concerning such bullying.Ironically, McDowell ended up bullying his own student who dared to defend his Christian beliefs about homosexuality.When McDowell ordered a student in his classroom to remove her confederate flag belt buckle because he was offended by it, Daniel pointed out the teachers obvious hypocrisy: the teacher can promote a message and an agenda that might be offensive to students, but students cant wear clothing that expresses a message that is offensive to the teacher. When asked by McDowell whether he supports his activist agenda, Daniel responded that as a Catholic he does not. The outraged teacher angrily threw Daniel out of his classroom and gave him a written referral for his answer.According to news reports, written statements by students in McDowells class indicated that McDowell told them, If the student was Catholic, hed be or should be in Catholic school and followed him into the hall yelling he was a racist.Predictably, homosexual activists across the country are hailing McDowell as a hero and vilifying Daniel and his family, describing them as bigots and referring to Daniels religious objection to the homosexual agenda as hate speech. McDowell is head of the school districts teachers union; unsurprisingly, the Michigan Education Association, the state teachers union, has come to McDowells defense.Dozens of students and teachers packed a school board meeting to protest the two-day suspension of McDowell. One student, a 14-year old openly gay student who supported McDowell at the Board meeting, appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to discuss his speech. Subsequently, a digital media company rewarded the student with a $10,000 academic scholarship.As a result of this public pillorying for standing up for his religious beliefs, Daniel and his parents have retained the legal services of the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. TMLC is representing the family at no charge.Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of TMLC, commented: Rather than teach the required economics curriculum which he is paid to do, McDowell used his position of authority to promote his homosexual agenda at taxpayers expense. There is no question that he violated Daniels constitutional right to freedom of speech. But this case illustrates much more. It shows the pernicious way in which homosexual activists have turned our public schools into indoctrination centers, and are seeking to eradicate all religious and moral opposition to their agenda.Continued Thompson: Its time that parents stand up to the slick gimmicks used by homosexual advocacy groups to promote a dangerous and immoral lifestyle to our children under the guise of tolerance. School districts should fire any teacher who uses class time to advance such a deadly lifestyle.
Today, TMLCs Senior Trial Counsel, Robert Muise, sent a Michigan Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the School District, requesting various district policies as well as other documents related to the October 20th incident. [Read a copy of the FOIA request here]
November 16, 2010
Hundreds of riders escort ‘Flag Boy’ whose school told him to remove Old Glory from his bike
Rick Moran
Definitely the feel good story of the day.
I Pledge Allegiance… Kind of
Each morning when I was in school, we would start the day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Thankfully, many schools still honor the practice, but it is becoming painfully obvious that patriotism is the next target of the left wing thought police. In Oklahoma, a student was given the assignment of reciting the Pledge in Spanish, and now in a New York town students are not even saying the full Pledge. The school kind of starts it then stops. What in the world is going on? ++ Read More
N.Y. School to Maintain ‘Partial’ Pledge of Allegiance Policy
By Joshua Rhett Miller
Published November 10, 2010
| FoxNews.com
The superintendent of North Collins, NEW YORK Central School District told FoxNews.com that North Collins Elementary School will continue announcing the first six words of the pledge — “I pledge allegiance to the flag” — and then let students continue at their own pace. (North Collins Elementary School)
Despite pleas that the Pledge of Allegiance should be recited in unison over the public address system, students at an upstate New York elementary school will continue to hear only a six-word prompt before they continue the recitation in their classrooms.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag” will be heard over the intercom at North Collins Elementary School, but then the sound system will shut off and the students will finish the pledge in class at their own pace, Ben Halsey, superintendent of North Collins Central School District, told FoxNews.com on Wednesday.
“It has been the philosophy of the building that the pledge does indeed get recited every day, but it gets recited by teachers and students individually, so the pace is appropriate for their level,” Halsey said. “The public address system simply serves as a prompt to start the pledge.”
He said the practice enables students to recite the pledge at their own pace, which is typically slower for younger students.
Dozens of people, including a board member who resigned over the controversy, attended a school board meeting Tuesday night to plead to have the pledge recited in its entirety over the school’s intercom. The former board member, Rosemarie Troidl, resigned on Oct. 26 after fielding what she said was a growing number of complaints from parents and residents about the pledge.
Troidl, whose daughter, a fourth-grader, is one of a number of students who recite the first six words on the intercom on a rotating basis, said the school should be able to squeeze in the entire pledge, since all students at the school recite a 68-word “character pledge” each morning.
“What the people were asking for is that the pledge be given the same amount of respect as the character pledge,” Troidl told FoxNews.com on Wednesday. “If our children are able to say the character pledge in full, you can’t do the same thing for the pledge?”
Troidl, a board member for the past two years, said critics of the current system submitted a petition with 250 signatures asking that the policy be changed. But she said she was not optimistic entering Tuesday night’s meeting.
“Their minds were already made up,” she said. “What upsets me is that the people made such a simple request. They weren’t asking for anything other than giving the Pledge of Allegiance the same amount of respect as the character pledge. But I knew they weren’t going to do anything.”
On average, Troidl said, it takes about 10 seconds to recite the entire pledge. She said her daughter has frequently said she’d like to recite the entire pledge to students school-wide, but fears she’ll be disciplined for doing so.
“I said it in its entirety as a kid, and it’s a learning process,” Troidl said. “It should be said as a unified group.”
But as far as school administrators are concerned, the matter is largely closed, said Halsey, who added that he was surprised about how heated the controversy became.
“It’s been very troubling to someone like myself,” he said. “We do teach patriotism and the meaning of the flag. All those things are in place. It’s been a misunderstanding.”
Troidl, for her part, said there is no misconception involved.
“It’s closed issue, it’s not going to change,” she said. “Where’s the democracy there?”
High Salaries for Long Island Schools Officials
Updated: Saturday, 13 Nov 2010, 8:29 AM EST
MYFOX NEW YORK STAFF REPORT
MYFOXNY.COM – Some residents of Commack, Long Island, are mad about the eye-popping salaries paid to some school district officials and retirees.
Most notable on the salaries revealed by Empire Center’s SeeThroughNY site: Retired Commack Superintendent James Feltman made close to $658,000 last year. His pay included 20 years of unused sick and vacation time.
The district is defending the pay, saying Feltman was “much respected” statewide and that as superintendent his strategies saved the district hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Education reform advocates say that change will come to compensation levels when residents go to the polls for school board elections and vote out the members who have approved pay packages.
Other school districts on Long Island also have some of the highest-paid school officials in the state.
Harlem School Officials Face Firing Over Fling
Updated: Friday, 12 Nov 2010, 10:15 PM EST
By YOAV GONAN and AMBER SUTHERLAND / New York Post
NYPOST.COM/NEWSCORE – A New York City high school principal and assistant principal could be fired for carrying on a lesbian fling while on the job, officials said Friday.
The romance between Academy for Social Action principal Crystal Simmons and assistant principal Candy Jones came to light after Simmons accused her lover of making a death threat when asked to resign for poor performance.
Simmons and Jones “engaged in intimate conduct in the school during school hours,” according to a report conducted by city’s Special Commissioner of Investigation (SCI).
The special commissioner referred the matter to the New York District Attorney and the state Education Department for further review.
Jones said that she and Simmons began having a sexual relationship in August 2007, according to the report.
Simmons confirmed their affair, but said she noticed a decline in Jones’ work ethic and began to keep a record of her performance in Nov. 2009.
By June 2010, Simmons asked Jones to resign and then gave her a “U” or “unsatisfactory” rating, according to the report. That same month Simmons filed a complaint with the SCI and the NYPD about receiving a death threat from Jones.
Simmons “reported that Assistant Principal Jones had threatened to kill Simmons if Jones received a “U” rating,” the SCI report said.
According to the report, the school’s Community Associate Chante Alexander confirmed that Jones threatened to kill Simmons.
“Jones explained to Alexander that it was easy to purchase a gun down south and that her father had already purchased one for her,” the report said. “Jones also informed Alexander that she had spoken with her sister about caring for her son if something were to happen.”
Simmons’ complaint prompted the investigation, according to the report.
MYFOXNY.COM – Authorities have charged a Berkeley Heights high school science teacher with providing alcohol to a minor and allowing kids to drink at his home.
The Morris County Prosecutor’s Office says Frank Melchiorre, 26, is charged with possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, providing alcohol to a person under the legal drinking age and making his residence available for the consumption of alcoholic beverages by persons under the legal drinking age, according to a prosecutor’s office.
The Daily Record reports Melchiorre, has been suspended from Governor Livingston High School. It’s unclear if the minors connected to the arrest were his students.
The Chatham resident is charged with possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, providing alcohol to a person under the legal age, and making his residence available for the consumption of alcoholic beverages by minors.
He was hired as a science teacher for the high school for the 2006-07 school year at a starting salary of $42,500, according to NJ.com .
School Backpedals on Bike’s Flag Display
Updated: Friday, 12 Nov 2010, 8:49 PM EST
(FOXNews.com) – A California school did a U-turn Friday after it earlier forced a student to remove an American flag attached to his bike, saying the Stars and Stripes could spur racial tensions on campus.
Cody Alicea,13, had been flying the flag on the back of his bicycle for almost two months to show support for veterans like his grandfather, Robert Alicea.
But just in time for Veterans Day, school officials at Denair Middle School told Cody he would no longer be allowed to display the flag, citing complaints from other students.
Now, after a public outcry, the school decided that the grand old flag can come back.
Superintendent Edward Parraz said the school was trying to avoid racial tensions that stemmed from a “little issue” that arose when Hispanic students brought Mexican flags to school on Cinco De Mayo [“fifth of May” which commemorates the May 5, 1862 victory of Mexican troops over French forces].
“That’s when it all kind of started, and I think it carried through so that when Cody started doing his flag everybody said, ‘well why isn’t he getting in trouble?'” Parraz told KTXL-TV in Sacramento.
So the school asked Cody to remove the flag, both to keep the peace and for his own protection.
“It was a safety concern that that particular campus supervisor called at that particular time based on information she had heard,” Parraz said.
Cody said he complied with the request to avoid trouble, but he asked the school to reconsider because he believed the decision was wrong.
“I’m supposed to be free in this country and I should be able to fly the flag wherever I want to,” he said.
Apparently, he wasn’t alone.
Parraz said the school got flooded with so many complaints from upset parents both inside and outside of Denair that he was called in to “handle the situation.”
“It was crazy,” he said.
Parraz said the school decided Friday to allow Cody to display his flag again, and would be shifting its focus to the students who complained.
Chicago High School Uses ‘Straight Pride’ Shirts for Rights Education
By Joseph Bland
Published November 12, 2010
| FoxNews.com
A Chicago high school has decided to allow a small group of students to wear “Straight Pride” T-shirts, despite resistance from other students who say they found the clothing offensive on a week that the school was bringing attention to the bullying of gays, lesbians and transgenders.
A spokesman for St. Charles North High School says the decision was intended to be an educational moment.
“Considering they’re teenagers and becoming more socially aware, we need to do our job as educators,” Director of School and Community Relations Jim Blaney told FoxNews.com. “We need to help students find their way through this new world.”
The controversy started on Monday when the high school began “Ally Week,” a program in which students demonstrate their alliance against the bullying of gay students. Three students came to school wearing “Straight Pride” T-shirts bearing the Bible quotation, “If a man lay with a male as those who lay with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination and shall surely be put to DEATH,” which appears in Leviticus 20:13.
Several students complained, and the “administration had to determine if the students were posing physical or emotional threats, and that wasn’t the case,” Blaney said. “The discussion they had was that, while you certainly have a right to express your opinion via a T-shirt, please understand that your message can be perceived as hurtful.”
The students agreed to cross out the message with a permanent marker, but when two different students came to school the next day with homemade “Straight Pride” shirts without the Bible quotation, they were asked to cover them with sweatshirts.
Although the two students complied with the request, they said they weren’t satisfied with how their free speech rights were being treated.
“I was shocked,” Jake Pezzuto, a senior, told the Daily Herald. “There is clearly a double standard here, and we’re really upset about this.
“They said the reason we can’t wear ‘Straight Pride’ shirts is because they are disruptive. And I can understand how maybe some people were intimidated by the shirts with the Bible verse. But I don’t understand how some students are able to wear ‘Gay Pride’ shirts while we can’t wear shirts that just say ‘Straight Pride.'”
The incident also sparked a controversy among St. Charles students on the other side, including Amanda Harshbarger, who started a Facebook group titled “SCN Students Against Bullying” to get students to express their thoughts on the matter.
“That’s where the bad feelings started, because they chose to wear the shirts on a day specifically about gay teen suicide,” Harshbarger told the Daily Herald. “What the shirts said were making kids feel violated and intimidated.”
Harshbarger was joined by more than 150 students in the group, who all plan to meet with the Board of Education in December to discuss future action plans for these situations.
Despite the reaction among students, Blaney says the school never considered harsher disciplinary action for the five students.
“Discipline is the last thing we do when dealing with students,” Blaney said. “While you certainly have your rights to free speech, you also need to know that with that right, comes responsibility.”
“The important thing is, even if someone is on the opposite side, you need to respect their opinion.”
The new change to state adoption law permitting adoptions by unmarried couples, including homosexuals, is being praised as a victory for gay rights advocates.
What does the Ithaca IAN and DSA tell it’s members regarding the homosexual agenda:
Please do this:
Write a letter to the school board. Let them know you want a curriculum with contraception, condoms, gay and lesbian relationships, and abortion as a legal option in unwanted pregnancy within our school district.
You don’t want any faith based curricula and abstinence programs.
Teacher’s Union Gone Wild Video
Updated: Tuesday, 26 Oct 2010, 9:38 PM EDT
MYFOXNY.COM – A video posted on YouTube titled “Teacher’s Union Gone Wild” claims to capture New Jersey teachers changing against Governor Chris Christie, using racial slurs and joking about tenure.
The undercover video was produced by conservative activist James O’Keefe. He says the video and audio was recorded during the New Jersey Education Association’s leadership conference this summer.
In the video, people identified as teachers bash the governor.
Another woman is shown playing a video game laughs that taxpayers are paying her to play it.
Another clip shows people sarcastically talking about tenure that it is a “joke” and teachers can do almost anything without being fired.
Gov. Christie Responds to New Jersey Teachers Union Video
New Jersey Gov. Christie responds to NJ Teachers and NJEA members from the “Teachers Gone Wild” video. Previously posted from the National Review …
by bagelj |2 weeks ago|1,041 views
6:10Add toAdded to queue
Teachers Unions Gone Wild – Volume II
NJ Superintendent caught covering up n-word incident in school with reporter posing as parent. Teacher who said n-word is confronted and chases …
by veritasvisuals |2 weeks ago|66,173 views
5:00Add toAdded to queue
Teachers Unions Gone Wild – Volume I
veritasvisuals | October 25, 2010 www.theprojectveritas.com NJEA Union Teachers call black students n*****, talk about slandering Christie, say …
by TrendingToday |2 weeks ago|1,404 views
7:12Add toAdded to queue
Top Union Official Caught on Tape Discussing Voter Fraud
www.theprojectveritas.com Top Official at NJEA (New Jersey Education Association) discussing what he describes as a rigged election in Hudson …
Teachers Blame Firing On Sex Toy Party Complaints
Updated: Tuesday, 12 Oct 2010, 7:45 PM EDT
(NewsCore) – Three former teachers suing a Texas school claim they were fired for complaining about on-campus sex toy parties, the San Antonio Express-News reported Tuesday.
In June, KENS 5 reported that the principal of Gabriel Tafolla Academy, a charter school in Uvalde, in southwest Texas, took part in sex toy parties hosted by a teacher at the school.
Three unnamed teachers complained that Principal Deanna Kilpatrick, who they said kept some of the items she purchased from Sensual Play Things in her office, was promoted to superintendent.
The lawsuit filed in Bexar County last week by Deanna Allen, Janice Mireles and Rosalinda Padilla does not say whether they were the local television station’s anonymous sources for the story, but the former teachers claim they were fired after reports about the parties surfaced.
The plaintiffs claim their First Amendment rights were violated and are seeking damages for alleged loss of income, mental anguish and damage to their reputations.
(NewsCore) – A New York middle school principal was awarded tenure just days after a 12-year-old student drowned on a field trip he set up, the New York Post reported Saturday.
While Jose Maldonado-Rivera’s tenure was approved in late April and passed a second review 30 days later, it did not officially go into effect until July 1 — nine days after Columbia Secondary School student Nicole Suriel drowned in the turbulent waters off Long Island.
Although officials could have altered or delayed the tenure decision until after an investigation was completed, Department of Education (DOE) officials said they had not thought to revisit Maldonado’s status in the aftermath of the drowning.
“In the heartbreaking days following Nicole Suriel’s death, our primary focus was not on the tenure status of Columbia Secondary School officials,” said DOE spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.
A report issued this week by school investigators found that Maldonado had failed to get trip-consent forms signed by parents and that he took responsibility for sending three young adults to chaperone 24 kids — some of whom could not swim.
Complaints by teachers at the school, who objected to Maldonado’s punishment of just two years’ probation while the teacher in charge of the field trip was fired, may lead to a second look at the principal, however.
Education officials said late Friday that they forwarded new complaints about Maldonado to the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation, which had conducted the drowning probe.
Ravitz would not discuss the nature of the complaints, but teachers told The Post this week that Maldonado had often flouted rules designed to keep kids safe — including using unscreened, uncertified teachers.
Maldonado’s lawyer, Gary Naftalis, did not respond to a request for comment.
In a related matter, this goes to show where society has gone. This show is supposed to be about school kids (really!)
GQ: Racy ‘Glee’ Photos Are ‘Gift That Keeps on Giving’
1:40 PM 11/1/2010 by Lindsay Powers (Mediaweek)
Courtesy of GQ/Terry Richardson
After getting 33 million pageviews in a week for the nearly-nude pics, the magazine announces plans to release behind-the-scenes video from the shoot.
GQ‘s controversial nearly-nude pictorial of Glee stars Dianna Agron, Cory Monteith and Lea Michele is still delivering dividends for the magazine.
After its website received 33 million pageviews in just a week after posting the racy pics – which the Parents Television Council criticized as “bordering on pedophilia” — the magazine has announced plans to release never-before-seen video footage from the shoot online. (The site, which launched a year ago, normally gets 2.5 million pageviews for its popular stories within a week; a topless pic of Miley Cyrus posted on Conde Nast-owned Vanity Fair in 2008 got 19 million pageviews in two days.)
“It’s going to be the gift that keeps on giving,” vp, publisher Peter King Hunsinger told Mediaweek Monday.
Mediaweek also points out that Marie Claire‘s website traffic spiked after one of its bloggers expressed her disgust at watching the stars of Mike & Molly make out, earning 2,724 comments. Read what the creator of the show had to say to THR.
PTC slams ‘Glee’ pictorial as ‘pedophilia’
11:33 AM 10/20/2010 by James Hibberd
The PTC is clashing with broadcasters again.
The parents group is slamming Fox’s Glee for a GQ pictorial they say “borders on pedophilia.”
“It is disturbing that GQ, which is explicitly written for adult men, is sexualizing the actresses who play high school-aged characters on Glee in this way,” said PTC President Tim Winter. “It borders on pedophilia. Sadly, this is just the latest example of the overt sexualization of young girls in entertainment.”
The actresses are far from underage, however. In the pictures below, Dianna Agron and Lea Michele are both 24 and Cory Monteith is 28.
On Fox, Glee has been known for delivering a fair amount of risque content, as well as drawing praise from parents for its handling of family and high school relationships.
The PTC also has a long history of clashing with Glee creator Ryan Murphy, who was the showrunner of FX’s edgy Nip/Tuck. Not for the first time, Winter pointed out Murphy’s comment during an interview, where the writer-producer said, “It’s tough to get that sexual point of view across on television. Hopefully I have made it possible for somebody on broadcast television to do a rear-entry scene in three years.“
“Parents need to be on guard as we expect the show to push the envelope even further,” Winter said. “Unfortunately, it seems Glee is only masquerading as family show and is far from appropriate for young viewers.”
Fox had no comment, but GQ released this statement: “The Parents Television Council must not be watching much TV these days and should learn to divide reality from fantasy. As often happens in Hollywood, these ‘kids’ are in their twenties. Cory Montieth’s almost 30! I think they’re old enough to do what they want.”
‘Glee’ Star Blogs About GQ Photo Controversy
12:06 AM 10/21/2010 by Kimberly Nordyke
Dianna Agron: “Nobody is perfect, and these photos do not represent who I am.”
“Glee’s” Dianna Agron has responded to the controversy over a GQ pictorial that features her and co-stars Lea Michele and Cory Monteith in suggestive poses.
The pictures, in which the 24-year-old actresses appear dressed in skimpy outfits, was criticized Wednesday by the Parents Television Council, which said the pictorial “borders on pedophilia.”
Agron weighed in on her blog Wednesday night, apologizing to anyone who might be “hurt” or “uncomfortable” by the photos but noted that “we are not the first” public figures to push the envelope.
“Nobody is perfect, and these photos do not represent who I am,” she wrote, adding that GQ “asked us to play very heightened versions of our school characters. A ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ version. At the time, it wasn’t my favorite idea, but I did not walk away.”
The actress — who wrote she was speaking on behalf of herself only and not her co-stars, the show or Fox — also argued that parents have ways of keeping this kind of content away from their kids.
“And if your eight-year-old has a copy of our GQ cover in hand, again I am sorry,” she wrote. “But I would have to ask, how on earth did it get there?”
Katie Couric has joined the chorus of people coming out against GQ’s racy photo shoot with the cast members of “Glee.”
“As Seth Meyers might say on Weekend Update, Really?!” Couric, who watches the show with her daughters, said of the photos. “These very adult photos of young women who perform in a family show just seem so un-‘Glee’-like. The program is already edgy in the right ways, these images don’t really — in my humble opinion — fit the ‘Glee’ gestalt.
“I know there are a lot of bigger problems in the world right now, but still, as Mr. Schuester might say to the club, I’m really disappointed,” Couric said in her “Notebook.”
The Parents Television Council also blasted the shoot, calling it “disturbing” and saying it “borders on pedophilia.”
GQ responded to that claim, saying that the actors are in their 20s and that “The Parents Television Council must not be watching much TV these days and should learn to divide reality from fantasy.”
NEW YORK — CBS News anchor Katie Couric is returning to high school for a guest appearance on the hit Fox television series “Glee.”
A Couric spokesman confirmed Thursday that she is booked for a cameo role on a future episode of the show, which tracks the musical adventures of a high school glee club. He said Couric will be portraying herself.
It was unclear whether Couric, who in her own school days was a cheerleader, would be singing or dancing on the episode.
A parents’ group has taken issue with the racy GQ shoot that shows ‘Glee’ stars Lea Michelle and Dianna Agron (both 24) stripping in the…
Glee‘s Jane Lynch (WHOS SUPPOSED TO BE A HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER/COACH) Poses for More Racy Photos
By Alison Schwartz
Friday October 22, 2010 08:00 PM EDT
Jane Lynch and friends
Always one to one-up the kids of McKinley High in her role as Sue Sylvester, Glee star Jane Lynch didn’t pass up the opportunity to show the world what those stuffy sweatsuits on the show cover up.
The actress, 50, dons a leopard print ensemble in one picture and cozies up to a furry friend in another, all the while sharing the tongue-in-cheek photo-op with hunky, half-naked men.
But Glee‘s Cheerios coach has a serious side, as she reveals in an accompanying interview. She has been sober for nearly 10 years after she decided to ditch her “drinking culture” roots when she was 31. Although she says her problem was mild, she says she was sick of waking up hungover.
“Relatively speaking, my personal bottom was rather benign,” she says. She’d joke at 12-step meetings, “Had I know I’d be telling my story over and over again, I would have made it a lot better.”
The actress is settling down with her wife, psychologist Lara Embry, whom she met last year at a lesbian rights fundraiser.
“I’d never dated anyone that I wanted to marry,” she says. “I didn’t think it was going to be out there for me. But the minute we were married, I felt the difference. I felt like I am no longer alone.”
And it’s a double-high note: “I got married – and I married a doctor!”
Jane Lynch Lets Down Her Guard
Interview by Margy Rochlin
In the November 2010 issue of MORE (on newsstands October 26), Jane Lynch talks frankly about becoming a stepmother, her obsession with tidiness, getting sober and becoming mellow. (AND LESBIANISM AND GY MARRIAGE AND LESBIANISM AND GAY MARRIAGE, AND A KID – GOD HELP HER)
Jane Lynch, who won an Emmy this year for her performance as the unapologetically fearsome cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester on Glee, has more than professional success to be happy about these days: She’s also a newlywed. Lynch met her wife, Lara Embry, last year at a lesbian rights fundraiser. A week after meeting her, Lynch flew to Sarasota, Florida, where Embry lived. Just before takeoff, Lynch tells MORE, she called Embry and said, “We need to acknowledge how courageous both of us are that I’m coming into town and you really don’t know me. And I’m hopping on a plane to visit someone I really don’t know. So for a moment, let’s give ourselves a little pat on the back.”
After six months of dating, Embry proposed to Lynch. On May 31, the two women exchanged matching wedding rings in a small ceremony. “I shouldn’t say this, but I’d never dated anyone that I wanted to marry,” Lynch told writer Margy Rochlin, who interviewed the actress for MORE. “I didn’t think it was going to be out there for me. But the minute we were married, I felt the difference: I felt like I am no longer alone.” Lynch says she loves being able to realize two wishes many mothers have for their daughters: “I got married—and I married a doctor!” (WHAT AN IDIOT, SPEAK FOR YOUR OWN MOTHER, NOT OURS)
Lynch also talked with Rochlin about deciding to become sober in 1991. She says that at 31 years old, she realized she was getting drunk every night. “I was hungover all the time.” One evening she told a friend, “I’m pouring out this glass of wine and never drinking again.” She kept her promise. “Relatively speaking, my personal bottom was rather benign.” Lynch says she used to stand up at 12-step meetings and apologetically say, “Had I known I’d be telling my story over and over again, I would have made it a lot better.”
Lynch is currently renovating her home to make room for Embry and her eight-year-old daughter. Until they move in together, the actress is confronting what she feels is a holdover from single life—her obsession with tidiness. “I’m a little OCD,” admits Lynch who says she stares longingly at the dozen or so boxes of Embry’s belongings that have been shipped and fantasizes about paring down. “I don’t want to start going through them and saying, ‘Well, we can get rid of this, and that!’ But it’s hard.” As for her new role as Stepmom? She’s getting into the swing of things: “I took her to school. I picked her up. I went to lunch with her. So I kind of had a test run. We’re pretty darn good together.”
And of turning 50, she says, “I like the equanimity that comes with my age. I don’t have big highs, and I don’t have big lows. Even if this job goes away tomorrow, the nonstop ambition is a thing of the past for me. I’ve mellowed.”
Cody Alicea , the young man who rode his bike to school with an American flag on the back and was told to remove it by his middle school, enjoyed the company of some very special folks on his way to class yesterday:
Hundreds of American Legion riders and others joined Cody, sporting flags on their own bikes.The school had already relented and allowed Cody to fly the flag on his bike, but the community decided to teach the PC nutcases at Cody’s school a lesson anyway.
Chastity and purity are words hardly used or understood, yet are needed to counteract the bombardment of sexual imagery in the media, movies and television that is being forced down the throats of our youth, today. It is a sexed up culture – brain child of the 1960s and 70s generation that says sex, drugs and rock-n-roll is cool for kids, and critical analysis is a hardship on a student’s self esteem. It is this mindset that has infected the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teacher’s union in the United States.
Instead of providing a place for students to learn the basics (reading, writing, arithmetic), public education in the United States has become a tool for educators to sex up our culture even more. It is the “anything goes” mentality. No rules, no responsibility, no consequences to their actions, and as a result, they (and we by standing silent) have created a selfish, lazy, and destructive generation of young adults, who have no idea what chastity and purity means, but should.
I claim [George Washington] for America . . . To him who denies or doubts whether [America’s] fervid liberty can be combined with law, with order, with the security of property, with the pursuits and advancement of happiness; to him who denies that our forms of government are capable of producing exaltation of soul, and the passion of true glory; to him who denies that we have contributed anything to the stock of great lessons and great examples;—to all these I reply by pointing to Washington!
Daniel Webster, "Address on the Completion of Bunker Hill Monument," quoted in Verna Hall's The Christian History of the Constitution of the United States of America,
Vol. I. Christian Self-Government, p. 416.
Quick Quote:
"Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them."
Justice Joseph Story, U.S. Supreme Ct. 1811-1845
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." - Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book
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"This home is protected by the good Lord and a gun..."
"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government." ~ George Washington
A Nation of Riflemen: “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” – Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto WWII
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Restoring the Balance of Power: We have assembled ALEC Model Legislation and Resolutions that can be introduced at the state level to encourage a return to the proper balance of power between the state and federal governments, to reassert state sovereignty.
"I, do solemnly swear, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic: that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion: So help me God."
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Quick Quote
One of our most basic American foundations - Authority comes from God:
When Jesus of Nazareth would not answer Pontius Pilate, Pilate said to Him, "Do you not know that I have authority to release you, and I have authority to crucify you?" To which, Jesus said to Pilate, "You would have no authority over Me unless it had been given you from above." (John 19:11- 15)
Freedom Road - The Music and the Message - Faith Hope & Charity
No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
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President Calvin Coolidge
"To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race."
"In a free republic a great government is the product of a great people. They will look to themselves rather than government for success. The destiny, the greatness of America lies around the hearthstone. If thrift and industry are taught there, and the example of self-sacrifice oft appears, if honor abide there, and high ideals, if there the building of fortune be subordinate to the building of character, America will live in security, rejoicing in an abundant prosperity and good government at home and in peace, respect, and confidence abroad. If these virtues be absent there is no power that can supply these blessings. Look well then to the hearthstone, therein all hope for America lies."
Support Our Troops
Looking for ways to support and honor U.S. military servicemembers and veterans who protect our security and freedom? Cards, Letters, Gifts and Care Packages, USO, Blue Star Moms, more; Health Care, Hospitalization, Hospice, and Recovery; Transition, Scholarships and Vocation Rehabilitation; Counseling, Community and Other Relief and Support; •America Supports You•
Standing For Those, Who Stood For Us.
Support the Patriot Guard, because "Freedom isn't free"
The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. - Ayn Rand
Walter E. Williams is a syndicated writer and professor of economics at George Mason University.
Emily Esfahani Smith
Scott Baker
Yesterday, it would have been easy to mistake Wisconsin’s unions for an angry third-world mob. For three weeks, state Republicans have been under assault from Big Labor over a collective bargaining agreement in the latest budget bill. By Wednesday, the assault was real. Angry throngs stormed the capitol after the state senate voted to pass the proposal without help from Democrats, who stomped out of the capital like angry toddlers and refused to work. A lot of the credit for yesterday’s vote goes to new Gov. Scott Walker (R), who stood his ground in what became a national standoff with union leaders, liberals, and even the President, who felt compelled to insert himself into the state’s business. Walker, who has just three months under his belt, refused to crumble under the pressure and plowed ahead to do what he had been elected to do: balance the budget. Within an hour of the vote, however, local protestors had “climbed through windows and flooded the Capitol.” According to the 
Anyone who has survived middle school knows that bullying is real. You’ve probably experienced it. I certainly have. As an overweight kid growing up in Ohio, I know how hard it is to be ridiculed and laughed at for how you look. While I relied on my faith, humor and a determination to change to make it through those difficult middle school years, it was painful–and it’s a big reason why I’ve taught my kids not to make fun of people who are different. But just because people are different doesn’t mean we can’t engage them in conversations about decisions that could harm them and positive choices that can change the future.
Promo picture for GroundSpark film ‘That’s a Family’
Daniel Glowacki, a 16-year-old junior at Howell High School in Howell, Michigan, has unexpectedly found himself at the center of a national firestorm and the target of homosexual activists across the country, including national lesbian TV host, Ellen DeGeneres. It came about when he defended another students free speech rights, and when confronted by his pro-homosexual teacher, Daniel ended up defending his Catholic faith that considers homosexual conduct a sin.The incident occurred on October 20, 2010, the day that Daniels economics class teacher, Jay McDowell, wore a purple Tylers Army t-shirt as part of a national campaign to highlight the alleged bullying of homosexuals. McDowell was taking part in a national Anti-Bullying Day promoted by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. To further promote this national pro-homosexual agenda, McDowell was planning to show the class a video concerning such bullying.Ironically, McDowell ended up bullying his own student who dared to defend his Christian beliefs about homosexuality.
When McDowell ordered a student in his classroom to remove her confederate flag belt buckle because he was offended by it, Daniel pointed out the teachers obvious hypocrisy: the teacher can promote a message and an agenda that might be offensive to students, but students cant wear clothing that expresses a message that is offensive to the teacher. When asked by McDowell whether he supports his activist agenda, Daniel responded that as a Catholic he does not. The outraged teacher angrily threw Daniel out of his classroom and gave him a written referral for his answer.According to news reports, written statements by students in McDowells class indicated that McDowell told them, If the student was Catholic, hed be or should be in Catholic school and followed him into the hall yelling he was a racist.Predictably, homosexual activists across the country are hailing McDowell as a hero and vilifying Daniel and his family, describing them as bigots and referring to Daniels religious objection to the homosexual agenda as hate speech. McDowell is head of the school districts teachers union; unsurprisingly, the Michigan Education Association, the state teachers union, has come to McDowells defense.Dozens of students and teachers packed a school board meeting to protest the two-day suspension of McDowell. One student, a 14-year old openly gay student who supported McDowell at the Board meeting, appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to discuss his speech. Subsequently, a digital media company rewarded the student with a $10,000 academic scholarship.As a result of this public pillorying for standing up for his religious beliefs, Daniel and his parents have retained the legal services of the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. TMLC is representing the family at no charge.Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of TMLC, commented: Rather than teach the required economics curriculum which he is paid to do, McDowell used his position of authority to promote his homosexual agenda at taxpayers expense. There is no question that he violated Daniels constitutional right to freedom of speech. But this case illustrates much more. It shows the pernicious way in which homosexual activists have turned our public schools into indoctrination centers, and are seeking to eradicate all religious and moral opposition to their agenda.Continued Thompson: Its time that parents stand up to the slick gimmicks used by homosexual advocacy groups to promote a dangerous and immoral lifestyle to our children under the guise of tolerance. School districts should fire any teacher who uses class time to advance such a deadly lifestyle.
Katie Couric has joined the chorus of people coming out against 
ccrofny's blog 
First Posted: 10-21-10