Most of the problems of modern public education originate outside the school building. The locus of the worst influences are schools of education that turn out teachers and administrators who have absorbed four to six years of fantasy–based theory and practice.

If these dreamy theories were confined to Ed schools the situation would be tenable, but that’s unfortunately not the case. Implementation of these fads and fancies does real damage.

The most recent example takes place in West Potomac High School, located in Fairfax County, VA, where Principal Cliff Hardison attempted to deal two body–blows to education standards by first eliminating the ‘F’ from report cards and following that with a policy banning zeros for students caught cheating on tests.

I don’t think anyone with a mere bachelor’s degree would have the necessary woolly–headed thinking process required to formulate and then implement two policies like this, so I’m guessing Hardison has at least a master’s degree in Education. Maybe even a doctorate.

Cheaters and the indolent were strongly in favor of these changes, once someone woke them and read the announcement. Unfortunately for Principal Hardison, outraged parents formed an organization called Real World, Real Grades to fight the changes. Parents were joined by teachers who could see how making high school an academic consequences–free zone would undermine their authority and the student’s motivation.

Evidently the backlash took Hardison completely by surprise (another indication of a man with a rich fantasy life) and he was forced to backtrack on both.

His explanation regarding his reasoning pretty much makes my point. Hardison is an acolyte of “mastery learning” one of the newer Ed school fads. Most parents were under the impression we already had a very successful system commonly known as grades for indicating “mastery” of a subject. An ‘A’ indicates complete mastery, ‘B’ somewhat less “mastery” and so on.

But in Ed school grades are “punitive” and can be “false” measures of what students know. So what’s “false” about an ‘A?’ At my house the son earns ten bucks for each ‘A’ on his report card and the grade is a useful rule of thumb for evaluating if he learned anything.

As for cheating, it is back on the forbidden list — along with bullying, drugs, weapons, OTC medicine, prescription medicine, traditional views on sex, traditional views on sexual orientation, traditional views on sex education and Christmas. Cheaters will once again receive a zero on their test.

Prior to Hardison’s backtracking, his views on cheating had been influenced by “grading experts” producing a belief on his part that cheating should “result in a disciplinary consequence separate from an academic consequence.” So under the new regime test cheaters would be given a chance to take an alternate test, but would also be denied privileges and be required to take an “ethics” study accompanied by a series of self–esteem booster shots.

This is the academic equivalent of allowing embezzlers to retain the money thereby keeping the incarceration consequences separate from the economic consequences. This soft tolerance for dishonesty also devalues the hard work of the students who studied for the test and made their grade without resorting to cheating.

This refusal to adhere to standards and recognize absolutes is not confined to secondary education. It permeates higher education, too. A recent study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni revealed that students graduate from elite schools, including Yale, Brown, Cornell and Amherst, without being required to take any courses in math, science, history, economics, language, literature and composition.

Dean Katherine Bergeron, an apologist for academic apathy, told the Washington Post her goal is to teach students how to think, solve problems and change the world, not “download a compendium of facts.”

But what do students think about when they are ignorant of the basics of history, philosophy, economics and literature? It’s like building the most powerful computing hardware in the universe, yet not providing the finished product with any programming. You produce potential without purpose.
Closer to home, the redoubtable Principal Hardison suffered a setback but has not given up. This particular parent rebellion is only a small bump on the road toward his goal of a “smoother transition” to new learning and grading approaches.

In his public statement Hardison explains, “This initiative is a paradigm shift that conflicts with traditional grading practices… We will examine how we can avoid using grades punitively because our transformation into a Professional Learning Community (PLC) compels us to define essential learning, reward mastery learning, and tackle necessary teaching about responsibility and personal accountability in different ways than we have done in the past.”

Translation: I’m waiting for the furor to die down, so I can complete West Potomac’s transition to buzzword–based learning.

Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He’s a dynamic and entertaining speaker and can be reached at michael–shannon@comcast.net.

 

WesternFront America

As the nation’s children return to elementary and secondary schools, it is increasingly essential that their parents and communities coast to coast realize how poorly served they are and how their learning environment is increasingly tainted by a socialist agenda.

Our nation’s schools have long been factories of boredom, centers of academic incompetence. High school graduation rates have been in a fairly steady decline. At its peak in 1969, the rate was 77 percent. By 2007 it was 68.8 percent.

In mid-August, The Wall Street Journal reported that “New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S. high school students in the last few years.”

What caught my eye was a quote from Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, who said that “if our kids aren’t dropping out physically, they are dropping out mentally.”

The subject of education is important because they are the generation to which the future of the nation must be entrusted and “A recent study found the U.S. ranks only 12^th in the percentage of adults aged 25 to 34 who hold college degrees.”

The failure of our nation’s schools, to my mind, coincides with the creation of the U.S. Department of Education in 1979, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, and which began operating on May 16, 1980.

The word “education” does not appear in the U.S. Constitution and, until the Department of Education came along, it was the responsibility of States and local communities. A government that has managed Conrail since 1976 without once making a profit should not have been trusted with the nation’s educational system.

I opposed No Child Left Behind when former President Bush proposed it and, like former President Reagan, I have long believed the Department of Education should be ended and that responsibility be returned to the States and local communities. The DOE exists today as little more than an obstacle to learning in the classroom and a giant funding machine.

The DOE is pretty much owned by the National Education Association which is not an “association”, but a powerful union, the largest with an estimated 3.2 members. The Democrat Party is heavily indebted to it for funds and campaign workers.

It is doubtful that most Americans know that, for the past several months, the NEA’s website has recommended that its members read “Rules for Radicals” by the late Saul Alinsky, a dedicated communist. If NEA members adopt its political agenda, the enemy will literally be in our nation’s classrooms.

It has not gone unnoticed that Obama’s “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”, otherwise known as the “Stimulus Act” enabled the education lobby to suck up billions more from taxpayers.

The Act allocated $5 billion to early learning programs, including the failed Head Start and Early Head Start, child care and programs for children with special needs. It also allocated $77 billion for “reforms” to allegedly strengthen elementary and secondary education, including $48.6 billion to “stabilize” state education budgets. It was a Full Employment Act for teachers and school administrators.

Apparently those billions were not enough because on August 11, President Obama signed a bill authorizing an additional $10 billion to states for education salaries. The Senate was so concerned the money might be spent for other purposes it included a provision that the money could not be used for anything else.

It apparently was not enough because in July the NEA president, Dennis Van Roekel, was calling for a complete overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act, one that is entirely test-based without any notice of the fact that individual children learn at different rates. He didn’t much like the Obama Race to the Top program where schools competed for grants if they demonstrated any improvement in learning and graduation rates. Another $3.4 billion in grants is at yet unspent. Roekel didn’t like the idea of competition.

Clearly, schools that are graduating students ill-prepared to go onto college and that continue to experience high dropout rates are doing something wrong. Putting kids into teach-to-the-test straight jackets is not working.

In a new book by Dr. Tim Elmore, “Generation iY: Our Last Change to Save Their Future”, the author who founded a non-profit organization, Growing Leaders, writes that “I have spoken to employers who told me they will never hire another new graduate. I have heard teachers say they can hardly wait for retirement since they can’t do a thing about kids today. I’ve had parents confide in me that they don’t know what to do with their kids except scream at them.”

Statistics published by UNESCO and the CIA reveal that, while American students spend twelve years in school, ranking them first out of a hundred, they rank fifteenth out of twenty-seven in terms of literacy. Their math and science scores are poor. They poll at 35%, fifth out of seventeen, for their dislike of school, and 61%, second out of seventeen, find school boring.

The schools are failing, the students are being cheated of the knowledge, skills and attitudes they need to become productive adults, and the U.S. government thinks that, if it just spends a few more billions, this will change. It won’t.

The federal government must get out of the education business, must devolve responsibility back to the states and local communities, and they in turn should refuse to deal with teachers unions in order to regain control over the education of the nation’s most precious resource, its children.

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, science and business writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

 

WesternFront America

By: SARTRE

For well over a century, the systemic dismantling of traditional education is an essential objective of transforming America into a despotic dependency. Education is a process, not an indoctrination. Schools should be about tutoring in the methods of critical thinking. Sound techniques and competent teachers can assist learning development. However, it has been decades since public schools provided a positive function. Dysfunctional Public Education Is No Accident sums up the issue:

“Government schools have worked their socialization for several generations, with alarming success. Their objective is not the education of the individual pupil, but the assimilation of the next generation into society. The kind of conversion that is sought, impedes independent thinking. Areas of inquiry are now limited to ‘PC’ approved viewpoints.”

The “TC” mindset is an outgrowth of the “PC” culture. Government schools primary mission is to program underdeveloped minds with a State approved curriculum. The net result of this civic brain washing machine is a dumbed down idiot that is unable to function as an independent individual. Totalitarian Collectivism is all about the supremacy of the State and a genuinely educated population is the greatest threat to the regime.

Government schools act as community social welfare centers. Outreach and remedial education is not just for “special needs” students, it is a staple of the state syllabus. Can this reality be attributed to genetic defects alone? Blaming it on the drinking water just does not fly. The more money spent on public education, the greater the decay in intellectual standards.

Culture, media influences and peer group pressure all reinforce the limited world vision that is the hallmark of producing obedient servants. Instead of working the fields, these serfs supply a boundless stock of sheep to eat the grass of government addiction. Their function is to consume useless products and services by running up debt. Honest work is discouraged, while government employment is preached as an ongoing community service. Service to the State and servicing the corporate economy is the sure recipe to become a valedictorian.

Lost in this assembly line factory and pseudo erudite mess is character development and moral values.

The National Character Education Center provides 10 reasons to Cultivate Virtues in Schools.

1. Value-based schools and homes develop value-driven children.

2. Children who are clear about their values have minimum problems in decision-making!

3. Children learn how to respect others when there is a program on respect.

4. Cooperation and collaboration are priorities in a value-driven school and home!

5. Rules and laws alone will not improve our society!

6. When children encounter problems, schools with a values program have clear performance and behavior reference points.

7. A values program fosters personal responsibility and initiative in each child.

8. A values program will develop an understanding, an appreciation, and an acceptance of diversities in children and in their cultures!

9. Values develop inner strength and integrity, which builds a “you-can-count-on-me” generation!

10. A value-driven program develops children with a positive mental attitude who have determination and perseverance.

Sounds good, but the question is what kind of value-based education should parents allow for the education of their children? National Education is too important to allow government control. “The children of America are not wards of your collectivist vision. Parents must retain the ability to educate their offspring according to the values that they hold. The scam of a national education policy is the kiss of death for our Nation.”

A new Rasmussen Report concludes that sixty percent (60%) of Americans with children in elementary or secondary school say most school textbooks are more concerned with presenting information in a politically correct manner than in accuracy.

This point is timely with the recent Texas Board of Education approval of a new school curriculum, which influences all textbooks. Some of their additions include:

Question the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government

• Cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state

Stress the superiority of American capitalism while eliminating the word “capitalism” from the text

Refer to the United States form of government as a “constitutional republic,” rather than “democratic republic”

• Give Confederate president Jefferson Davis equal footing with Abraham Lincoln

The “TC” society is appalled at such heresy as constitutional restraints, which might be taught to young virgin minds. All that matters to the didactic validation masters is the official approval pedagogic propaganda. No, wonder that any challenges to the education establishment meet with vicious abhorrence.

The National Center for Policy Analysis refers to “a report out of Stanford University shows that parents like the idea of school choice and that children in the voucher system are more apt to stay in school, learn more and earn their high school diplomas.

The study surveyed programs operating in Milwaukee (which has two), New York City, Indianapolis and San Antonio. Together, the five programs are serving more than 7,000 students from low-income families.”

Here are some of the findings:

Two to three times as many parents of voucher-school students gave “A” ratings to their schools as did parents of public school students.

While children of low-income families tend to change public schools during the year — often at a rate of 20 percent to 30 percent of the enrollment — the rate for voucher students in Milwaukee was no more than four percent to five percent.

Voucher students attending religious schools (New York and San Antonio) made remarkable test score gains; but data concerning those attending secular choice schools is flawed or incomplete because of lack of information about family background.

In New York, 69 percent of voucher students are staying in school and graduating, versus 39 percent of all students in public high schools, and 29 percent in the high schools voucher students would have attended.

The teachers union reflects the notion that government schools are untouchable and parents or local government must continue unlimited funding for excessive benefits and extravagant retirement costs.

School Vouchers Long Overdue cites the mindset that creates this accountability disconnect. “Writing for the New York Times, Albert Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers referred to the potential of turning an education endeavor into a profit-making venture as the “threat of an educational industrial complex.”

Eliminating coerced government school attendance with a viable private sector educational competition could break the reckless cycle of pouring more money down the drain of “TC” brainwashing. Abolishing property taxes to finance destructive institutions of mass disinformation needs to become a national cause.

In an exhaustive and comprehensive study from the Cato Institute – They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools, Adam B. Schaeffer provides evidence of financial disparities.

“To put public school spending in perspective, we compare it to estimated total expenditures in local private schools. We find that, in the areas studied, public schools are spending 93 percent more than the estimated median private school.

Citizens drastically underestimate current per-student spending and are misled by official figures. Taxpayers cannot make informed decisions about public school funding unless they know how much districts currently spend. And with state budgets stretched thin, it is more crucial than ever to carefully allocate every tax dollar.”

He outlines aspects of the Financial Transparency in Education Act, as a needed policy. This formula uses a base state and education fiscal transparency model for legislation that is adopted by the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Schools need to become cherished institutions for cultivating natural instincts and curiosity for intellectual development. What Price We Pay For Incompetent Education illustrates a case study in a broken educational system. “Public education has become government schooling by the ignorant, administered by the incompetent. . . . Embedded in the very composition of its organization are the kind of personnel that create and perpetuate this bureaucratic tragedy.”

College and higher education experience is worthless when functional idiots are granted matriculation for the price of an average starter house. The student loan fiasco is just another tyrannical entrapment into a system of endless debt consumption with diminished benefits. As the economic prospects for our offspring evaporate, future progenies will seek the rewards of real education and avoid the snares of compulsory stupidity.

The Totalitarian Collectivists fear an enlightened populace. A populist political schooling, based upon traditional values, classical training, founded upon a comprehensive study of history; has the best chance of producing individuals of character and moral fiber. The American chronicle is grounded and based upon this foundation. The “TC” educational, politically correct, absolutism is anti-intellectual at its core. A purely secular government is a curse in the American Saga. The Texas Board of Education has its history right.

Related article:
TOTALITARIAN COLLECTIVISM PART 1 – INTRODUCTION
TOTALITARIAN COLLECTIVISM PART 2 -STATE

TOTALITARIAN COLLECTIVISM PART 3 – CHURCH

TOTALITARIAN COLLECTIVISM PART 4 – FAMILY

TOTALITARIAN COLLECTIVISM PART 5 – ECONOMY

Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”

 

WesternFront America

The left tends to define Conservatives by what they are against, rather that what they favor or support.  While this is a little piece of propaganda, i.e., “the party of no,” I think it’s always useful to define what we are supporting.  So, I thought I might review a few issues that most Conservatives and Libertarians would be able to support, and are, frankly, important to me.  As such, these are my opinions, not necessarily the opinions of the other contributors at the CH 2.0.  They are open for debate, as debate is good.

As for the series, I will cover what I think Conservative politicians should pursue.  I know repealing ObamaCare will be attempted (or there will be more “angry mobs”).  I also know that there will be other things that will need removing.  But rather than say what we’re against, and it’s pretty obvious what those things are, I will discuss things that we are for.

My top priority has most always been to free our children from the government and it’s influences.  I have posted several times before regarding the openly stated goal of achieving socialism by infiltrating the major institutions of our society and using them to manipulate the people towards a pre-determined goal.  That goal of course, is socialism (or fascism, or progressivism-all closely related).  The weapon of choice is Cultural Marxism, and the targets are children.  Here are some quotes from public education supporters to justify this point of view.

John Dewey, called “the father of modern education,” was an avowed socialist, the co-author of the ‘Humanist Manifesto’ and cited as belonging to fifteen Marxist-front organizations by the Committee on Un-American Activities. Do the words (the father of modern education) now take on new meaning? Remember, Dewey taught the professors who would train America’s teachers. He was obsessed with “the group.” In his own words, “You can’t make socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.”

Paul Haubner, specialist for the NEA, tells us, “The schools cannot allow parents to influence the kind of values-education their children receive in school. That is what is wrong with those who say there is a universal system of values. Our goals are incompatible with theirs. We must change their values.”

Professor Chester M. Pierce, M.D., Professor of Education and Psychiatry at Harvard, has this to say, “Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our Founding Fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well — by creating the international child of the future.”

In the Humanist Review magazine it was observed that, “Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?”

P. Blanchard, in ‘The Humanist” 1983, continues: “I think that the most important factor moving us toward a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny how to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is 16 tends toward the elimination of religious superstition. The average American child now acquires a high school education, and this militates against Adam and Eve and all other myths of alleged history.”

So, for many decades now, there has been a concerted effort to take over our education system.  They have succeeded.    The system itself is now set up as a progressive manipulation machine.  Why try for universal daycare?  To separate kids from the parents!  Why belittle and attempt to limit home schooling, especially when home schooled kids, as a group, out perform the public schools by a large margin?  It’s all about control!  Get the kids away from the parents, and their beliefs, and indoctrinate them into the collective/progressive drones of the future.

I wrote this a few months ago…

People that believe in freedom are already the new pariahs for the left.  One only needs to look at the media coverage of the Tea Parties to confirm this.  The drumbeat will only grow.  As it does, the left will continue to indoctrinate more and more children.  We might yet defeat the socialized medicine, and we might prevent passage of Cap and Trade.  Obama may lose his congressional majorities in 2010.  He might even be defeated in 2012.  But if we continue to give our kids to the government every day, those victories will be temporary, delaying the socialists for a few years to be sure, but in the end, futile.

So, what is the solution?  The Parental Rights Amendment has been discussed since the 90’s.  It’s gaining more and more traction as our government becomes increasingly intrusive.  Its text is simple.  The following is from the site that supports the Amendment, with an explanation of each of the three sections.

SECTION ONE

The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.

In the 1925 decision of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a compulsory attendance act that required all parents to send their students to public schools, instead of private or religious schools. The court concluded that the act was unconstitutional because it “unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.”

Section Two

Neither the United States nor any State shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.

Because fundamental rights are so important to our freedom as Americans, the government must meet a heightened burden of proof in order to restrict those rights. In legal terms, the government’s case begins with a positive demonstration – they must prove that there is a government interest in restricting the right, and that the government has a specific interest in restricting the right of the particular parents whose actions are being challenged. In early 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court used this very language when talking about violations of religious liberty. According to the Court, the government must “demonstrate that the compelling interest test is satisfied through application of the challenged law ‘to the person’–the particular claimant whose sincere exercise of religion is being substantially burdened.” Gonzales v. O Centro Espirito Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, 548 U.S. 418, 430-431 (2006). The text of this proposed parental rights amendment merely takes this well-established principle of law, and applies it explicitly to the fundamental right of parents.

SECTION THREE

No treaty may be adopted nor shall any source of international law be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.

According to Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, international law is comprised of international treaties, international customs which have been accepted as law by general practice, the general principles of law recognized in civilized nations, and the judicial decisions and teachings of legal authors and scholars. All four channels of international law currently pose a significant threat to parental rights.

The Parental Rights Amendment would prohibit the use of all four sources of international law in determining what rights of parents should be protected. Treaties that were ratified by the United States would need to be interpreted in light of what the Amendment guarantees to citizens, instead of using the treaty to interpret the meaning and extent of constitutional liberties. Furthermore, federal courts would not be able to impose harmful principles of customary international law on parents, because the rights granted in the text of the Constitution override and overwhelm conflicting principles of customary international law.

So, this would protect the rights of parents to raise them in accordance with their wishes and conscience.  It would provide safeguards against child abuse, and would, at the same time, make children immune from such things as UN treaties that undermine families.

Will this prevent the schools from being indoctrination centers?  No.  Will it make all the Marxist professors or “progressive” educational programs go way?  Also no.  What it will do is “etch in stone” the rights of parents to guide the upbringing of children.  It prevents the government from moving on desired usurpations of rights, and it gives parents recourse to defend their children against the indoctrination machine.

So, why make this first?  For me, it protects our children from indoctrination.  It frees home-schooled families from the fear of one day being forced to subject their children to something they may not want.  But also, it is achievable; the left will have to ties itself into knots to not appear to be anti-family.  It could also give a new Conservative administration or Congress a quick win.

Now, some will say that I’m being political and playing the game.  Perhaps that is true.  But I know the left will have a significant reaction to this.  Untold billions of dollars are tied up in the public indoctrination machine.  The unions, the special interests, and the politicians that want a complaint army of useful idiots, all have a stake in indoctrinating youth.  They won’t let this pass lying down.  So, we structure the fight so they have to show their true colors.  Let them come with false claims.  We’ll show where the money goes.  Let them deride the supporters of the Amendment.  We’ll point out that they are anti-family.  We don’t have to lie, or invent any evidence.  They do.  Let them fall on their swords for it.  It’ll take the wind out of their sails for other efforts.

© Matt Ross

Originally posted at Conservative Hideout 2.0

The Liberty Pen

 

WesternFront America

Most Americans would agree that freedom of conscience ranks among our most cherished liberties. As such, the state should protect this particular right by almost any means necessary and reasonable (especially for citizens).

In California, an initiative has been undertaken to get a ballot before voters to determine the propriety of Christmas music in California public schools. Within the measure is a clause that would require schools to notify parents 21 days before the specified tunes would be played or performed so that students can opt out of being exposed to such material.

Those having embraced a rigorous interpretation regarding the separation of church and state will applaud the measure as a enlightened compromise as these voices will be among the first to point out that, in these swinging days of free thought, not everyone embraces the Christianity espoused by these Yuletide harmonies. One must ask then would the exponents of the unsullied conscience be as outspoken in defense of those wanting to be excused from exposure to more progressivist causes and material.

Absolutarian relativists claim that, in order to ensure the scholastic neutrality of the classroom, not even a whiff of religious material can be permitted to waft across young impressionable minds. That might be what is claimed in theory, but the reality falls far short as an exclusionary objectivity is applied only to Christianity with other worldviews and religions actually imposed upon students.

Any rational person will admit that, in order to have the most comprehensive understanding of the world possible, one must have an understanding of religion as one of history’s most influential motivating forces. However, there is a point at which education becomes advocacy.

For example, it has already been stated that even if authorized, traditional Christmas music will be categorized as quasi-subversive in nature as one has to admit exposure to these lyrics could potentially alter the very spiritual identity of those exposed to them. However, such caution is not exercised in regards to Islam.

According to a WorldNetDaily.com story titled “Islamic studies required in California district” posted 1/2/02, students there are required to learn about this prominent world religion. However, students were not going to be doing this via the traditional social studies methodology of reading a standard text detached in tone about the tenets of this system of belief and its impact upon the world in terms of history, geography, and culture. Rather, the curriculum required students to live out Islam. This was to be achieved by having students memorize Koranic verses, praying in the name of Allah, adopting an Islamic name, and staging a pretend jihad.

Wonder if the name Nadal Malik Hassan mmmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmmm is available with students able to pretend to shoot up an army base. When one takes all this into consideration, the above lesson plan sort of looses its grade school charm, doesn’t it?

Mass death brings up yet another disturbing point. According to Islamic teaching, all one has to do to become a Muslim is to say with conviction that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.

Parents need to seriously investigate if this is one of the Islamic phrases being chanted in the public schools where an accommodationist approach to the study of Islam has been adopted, and if it has, parents need to be quite insistent as to having their children removed from the program even if it means withdrawing from the particular school all together. For you see, to a sizeable percentage of Muslims around the world, one is justified in murdering someone that apostasizes or leaves the faith.

To many, this may seem like theological nitpicking on the scale of debating how many angels can dance on the head of a needle. However, should we, with little resistance, be giving these fanatics another reason with a straight face to kill Americans?

Numerous Muslims will insist that their faith does not condone the slaughter of innocent people. They just don’t tell you that their definition of innocent is much narrower than ours. Never has an insincerely or regretfully sung Christmas Carol resulted in anyone’s death.

The hypertolerant will sneer that this extremism of either Christians wanting everyone to sing Christmas tunes or Islamists demanding students recite the Koran and even miss recess as a simulated form of Ramadan fasting are shortcomings inherent to the traditional religious mindset irrespective of the belief system in question. However, the agnostic reprobate can’t resist to impose their belief on everyone else either.

To both the pagan who sees the natural world as God and the materialist who believes in nothing beyond the natural world, there is nothing as important as the reproductive pleasure cravings we all posses and know as the sex drive. Since it is claimed that there is no absolute truth in these particular worldviews, the “is” automatically becomes the “ought” and however the libidinous impulse manifests itself is acceptable upon the particular social context. Therefore, those wanting a world with the fewest taboos possible have a vested interest in convincing the greatest number possible to this perspective.

And unlike the Christian and even the Muslim for all that matter, this persuasion is not so much for the benefit of the soul of the person whose mind the adherents of these respective outlooks are out to change. Rather those trapped in lives of carnal destitution are so wracked by personal guilt that they cannot bear the thought of others disapproving of their individual predilections. That is why students cannot be permitted to privately make their own decisions about what we are continually reminded are private decisions.

When it comes to matters of traditional religious belief, the secularists believe that children should not be exposed to theology until they reach maturity. However, when it comes to conjugal relations, indoctrination is suppose to commence nearly the first day of kindergarten.

In June 2009, a California school district approved a mandatory homosexual appreciation curriculum. As part of the curriculum, five year olds will study a book titled “And Tango Makes Three” about two “gay” penguins that hatch an egg together. They name the chick “Tango” because “…it takes two to make a Tango.”

This propaganda will cause mental damage that will take years to undue if it can be done so at all. Likely contrary to the mantra of the illustrated tractate, these were not the two that made Tango.

Like it or not, a male and a female penguin had to copulate together in order for little Tango to be brought into existence. All the two penguins in the story can do is raise him.

Do four and five year olds really need to be exposed to the intricacies of human relationships and reproduction? Most can barely tie their own shoes.

The lessons learned about the biological impossibility of a child having two parents of the same sex and what ought to be a legal impossibility as well since two unmarried people shackedup should not be permitted to simultaneously adopt the same child will not stop in kindergarten. They will be expanded upon from year to year as the student progresses through the statist school system.

In the first grade, according to WorldNetDaily, the book “Who Is A Family” will dupe students into believing that “in our school and our community there are many different kinds of families that provide love and care to each other. Remind the students that all family structures are equally important.”

Do these “equally valid family structures” include fundamentalist polygamist Mormons? Does this also include radical Islamist families where the fathers murder their daughters in so-called “honor killings” for exhibiting such proclivities towards harlotry such as wanting to pursue higher education and not wanting to wear burlap bags over their faces? After all, even if we find these practices abhorrent, it must be reminded they fall under the rubric of “all” family structures being equally valid.

Technically, a number of the social arrangements being promoted as such aren’t even families. But Western society has become so unhinged morally that only the most daring are publicly willing to enunciate these observations.

A family consists of a married man and women and any children that might result from their fecund union or any children such adults united together might adopt. If one is feeling especially innovative and cutting edge, one might be able to expand the definition to include the unmarried propagating offspring via fornication.

However, no matter how much we might want it to be so, the non-biologically related unmarried adult residing in the home with the actual parent is not part of the family. They might be the concubine or harlot of the adult residing in a particular domicile, but they can only be a friend or acquaintance of the child not all that different in terms of relationship than the next door neighbor.

Even if the laws are altered to let anyone live anyway they want with all the accompanying tax breaks and even welfare handouts to which they claim they are entitled, it will not be enough. The consciences of those living in manners contrary to both theology and biology are so pricked that they will not be content letting you simply put up with the iniquities they have wrought but also compel you to applaud and embrace these appalling decisions.

Fourth graders will be required to read an essay titled “My School Is Accepting — But Things Could Be Better”. Along with this assignment, elementary students will be required to define “gay”, “lesbian”, and “LGBT”. By the way, to the pure of mind, that acronym is not a reference to a deli sandwich.

About all children need to know about human reproduction at that age is that babies somehow grow inside women’s stomachs. My grandfather didn’t know what the word “pregnant” meant until after he got married in his early 20’s and he came from a family of ten kids that lived on a farm. Things might not need to be that hushed over, but neither does everything need to hang out in the open classroom either.

As part of the curriculum, students will be extended the opportunity to learn of the warped affections of Elton John, Ellen Degeneres, Christina Aguilera, and Lance Bass. Are we going to also learn about the preferred bodily orifices of other historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson’s alleged bout of jungle fever?

In all likelihood, his name won’t even come up in class. Familiarity with the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and third president might fortify students against the efforts to deprive them of their liberty.

In their preparation for world conquest and hegemony, do Red Chinese pupils sit around discussing what celebrity likes what hole? Maybe if American students spent less time on these frivolities, educators would find the traditional 180 day school year sufficient and no longer need a reason to threaten an extended academic calendar.

It is claimed such acculturation (more accurately indoctrination) is necessary to prevent bullying. However, wouldn’t a generalized policy of don’t make fun of anyone at school without bogging down young minds with things that would make even grown adults blush and giggle in mixed company be enough?.

Familiarity breeds contempt. Though social engineers might try their hardest, human nature is pretty set within established parameters and as such these educators might end up stirring up the very animosities this ideological indoctrination is suppose to prevent.

Whether this contraindicated outcome is what is actually desired or not could be open to debate. The state benefits even more when the results are the opposite of peace and understanding as activists believe they are then justified in calling for additional restrictions on speech and thought.

Isaiah 5:20 warns, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” American society is swiftly approaching the point of no return when those that run our educational institutions would rather the nation’s children be acquainted with the most shameful of deeds and desires rather than the noblest of truths that have inspired the highest of ideals for millennia.

 

WesternFront America

Just when you thought it was safe to send your children to school, the Jennings scandal expands yet again.  Several days ago, Big Government broke the story that the Jennings led GLSEN passed out directories to school aged kids attending GLSEN events.  The directories contained addresses to gay bars and anonymous sex clubs.  Here is their coverage…

Only in the Obama White House can a man with a history of handing out bar guides to teens be promoted to Safe Schools Czar.

Earlier today it was reported that Kevin Jennings’ Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) organization was distributing gay bar directories to high school students at the 2005 Massachusetts GLSEN conference.

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This wasn’t an isolated incident.
Mass Resistance Blog today reported that GLSEN passed out directories to gay “leather” bars to teens at several of their events.

GLSEN organization also passed out guides to gay leather bars in Chicago to students in 2000.

World Net Daily reported:

LaBarbera questioned why GLSEN’s organizers — already bruising over the recent arrest of a Chicago GLSEN leader for soliciting sex with an underage boy (GLSEN expelled the man) — did not take the “simple step of keeping these gay sex club ads from reaching the teenagers in their care.”

“For years, GLSEN has claimed to protect ‘at-risk’ kids. But they are now helping put young teenage boys at risk by uncritically passing out a gay guide that hawks anonymous sex clubs and ‘leather’ bars in Chicago,” he said. “This fits into a pattern of GLSEN failing to shield its young followers from a homosexual male sexual culture that not only tolerates, but often celebrates promiscuity.” (At last year’s GLSEN conference in Atlanta, a similar sexually-laden booklet was passed out to attendees.)

Jennings’ organization handed out bar guides to teenagers. Today Kevin Jennings is Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar.

You figure it out.

So then, how much evidence do we need to get the administration to throw Jennings under the bus?  Quite a bit, apparently.  With the attack on FOX, the administration has “persuaded” (Yeah, persuaded, that’s it) the MSM to not follow these stories, so there is a big segment of the population that has not heard of this situation, and likely never will.  That gives the administration cover.  They can pretend that the story doesn’t exist.

There is also another, even more  important issue with the campaign to get Jennings to join the growing crowd under the bus.  Jennings may, one day, be gone from the administration, but his agenda, propelled by GLSEN, will still be in the schools.  We can cut the head off the snake, but this snake will simply grow another.  It would be a victory to send Jennings back to GLSEN, but it will be a hollow one.  GLSEN will still have access to million of children in the public schools.

So then, how might we correct this?  I know, many of you will say “get out of the public schools.”  I believe that many of the readers here have already done this.  However, there are obviously people out there that are either ignorant of the agendas being pushed in the schools, or are approving of them.  The people that agree, we will never reach no matter how much information we show them.  They are either useful idiots, or blind followers, so they are a waste of our time.  It is the people that don’t know that we need to reach.

To reach some of these still unsuspecting parents, I came up with some ideas.  This might be useful if a school already has had some dealings with GLSEN, or is considering it.

1. Get a group together and pass out information on GLSEN to parents.  It could be at a school board meeting, a sporting event, or any other event that there will be a large number of parents.
2. Go in a group!  There is always strength in numbers.  Everyone should have a camera, in the event that things get ugly.
3. Use direct quotes from GLSEN.  They are our best tools.  You can be discounted (and people will no doubt try).  Direct quotes from GLSEN cannot (they will try, but the bulk of evidence will make them look even worse) .  Make fliers or other materials that have quotes from the books on the recommended list, or quotes from Jennings.  Also, you can quote media reports of GLSEN’s misdeeds as described above.  I wouldn’t add too much commentary or interpretation.  The content should speak for itself.  Their material is so obvious and over-the-top, that we won’t need to add commentary to help people connect the dots.
4. Get on the agenda for the local school board meeting.  There is often local media at school board meetings.  I know where I used to live, there were some meetings televised on local stations. That is all the better.  If you get a chance to speak, still try to use a much of GLSEN’s materials as possible.  Try to remain calm, and cite your sources.  Do you homework, and be able to speak with clarity and conviction.  Remember that we have GLSEN exposed; all you have to do is repeat what they have already said or done.
5. Did I mention ALWAYS HAVE CAMERA? the Gay Rights Crowd does have a habit of threatening people.  Including attacking little old ladies, so be careful.  Know that fact going in, and take precautions.  ALWAYS post a copy of video footage to YouTube.  If we see it, we’ll make copies so the GLSEN folks can’t get it “scrubbed” from the Internet.
6. Don’t turn up the rhetoric.  You don’t have to get dramatic.  You don’t have to over blow a thing.  GLSEN has already indicted itself-they need no help.  Drama just makes people question what you are doing.
7. Be aware that the left tries to change the subject from the content to the individual.  Don’t fall for it!  They’ll call you a homophobe so you’ll start trying to defend yourself.  This takes you off message.  If this happens, continue with the content.  Something like, “Calling me a name doesn’t change the fact the GLSEN gave the addresses of gay bars to school-aged kids,”  would suffice.  No matter what they say, keep on the content.  Let them get flustered and act foolishly.  Believe me, it isn’t hard.
8. If you’re really wanting to get the message out, consider leaving flyers in public areas, like Dr. offices, grocery stores, churches, and so on.  Again, we don’t have to embellish this, just present what GLSEN has said or done.  Hyperbole will not convince a skeptical person, facts will.
9. If you’re really fired up, use a word processor to make up some small cards, or even slips of paper.  Then cut them out and slip them into books at a bookstore or local library.  I don’t think it’s illegal.  If it is, don’t do it.  Otherwise, be aware that librarians or bookstore managers may not appreciate it, so use your own discretion.  As for the content, keep it short, maybe just a short statement and a web address.
10. NO VIOLENCE!!!  I cannot state this one enough.  It’s wrong.  Additionally, violence does not advance our goals, and it plays into the hands of GLSEN.

I think if some folks can spread the word about GLSEN, we can do the same thing to them that is being done to ACORN; exposing their misdeeds to so many people that no one will trust them.  If folks get on board with this, GLSEN will become as big of a joke as ACORN has.  People will see the name, and automatically know that they seem to suggest a lot of things about sex with kids.  Not because we said it, but because GLSEN has.

UPDATE: Representative Micheal Burgess (R-Texas), has introduced House Resolution 966, calling for the firing of Kevin Jennings.  Getting Jennings put under the bus may get the media’s attention.  However, just expect another report saying that the poor guy was the victim of the evil, redneck, terrorist, teabaggers.

© Matt Ross

Originally posted at Conservative Hideout 2.0

The Liberty Pen

 

WesternFront America

I imagine the Postmaster General grinds his teeth when he thinks about how much easier his life would be, if he had a monopoly like the “public” schools. If customers were forced to buy the equivalent postage before they were allowed to ship FEDEX or UPS his competition worries would be over.

Then he would be free to test innovative shipping concepts like “mailing without boxes” or “approximate delivery” the same way the schools build “schools without walls” and introduce “fuzzy math.”

We had a perfect example of education monopoly in action where I live, but before I get to that, take this brief exercise:

Let’s say you have this concept for a new airline. It’s completely different from other airlines; so different that you are not sure if the public will react favorably. Consequently, you start small with one plane.

Low and behold demand is tremendous from day one. People are camping on the tarmac so they will be first in line when a seat opens up. You add another plane, yet demand only increases. And that’s in spite of the fact that your airline has a strict dress code and rules of conduct.

So what do you do? If you said buy more airplanes and meet customer demand, you’d be correct. You would also continue adding aircraft until the wait list disappears and the passenger load index starts to decline.

At the same time, you’d make sure the quality of your product remains consistent and you offer all the amenities of the competition, without diluting the standards that set your airline apart.

On the other hand, if you were a multi–degreed, highly credentialed education bureaucrat operating my analogy, you wouldn’t do any of that because it conflicts with your Soviet theories of air travel.

On the contrary, you would restrict your air fleet to two planes and require each passenger to write an essay pleading for an opportunity to buy a ticket and justifying his desire to arrive at your particular destination.

Of course the essays are just busy work, because you like to make people jump through hoops. All ticket pleas are dumped into a big hopper and only six new names are drawn and allowed to fly each year.

The final indignity is after passengers have made a set number of trips, your rules require they be tossed off the aircraft and never allowed to fly again.

Now substitute “traditional” school for airline and you have the situation facing parents where I live.

We have two “traditional” schools with grade 1 through 8 — the first opening in 2000. Both schools have wait lists and only five or six spots open each year.
Parent’s desire to have their children attend these schools is so strong they write the essay and wait expectantly for the lottery. I know because I wrote one — although the response evidently wasn’t any better than I get with this column, because my son goes to “regular” school.

This means 94 percent of the parents are satisfied with the “traditional” education their children are receiving. By way of comparison, if Sprint — my former cell provider — only had a 6 percent disconnect it wouldn’t be the sick man of cellular communication.

“Traditional” schools are a roaring success and parents obviously believe the staff and teachers are doing a fabulous job. The education is so important it makes up for the limited extracurricular activ ities offered.

Students there are essentially second–class in the eyes of the education bureaucrats. Neither school offers an athletics program like the other schools.
If parent want their child to compete in football, basketball, wrestling, soccer or other sports they just have to send them to Lord of the Flies Middle School like the other parents.

This year educrats surveyed parents and discovered 44 percent favor opening a “traditional” high school, so they are grudgingly considering the idea. And the potential due date of one of the options is 2016 — by which time the first crop of “traditional” students will be juniors in college!

But when you run a government monopoly there is no penalty for failure to plan ahead, unless you schedule snowplows.

Why the delay? For one, in the mind of an educrat “traditional” means retro and educrats prefer “paradigm shifting” breakthroughs in education theory like the recent decision in Arlington, VA to call “at–risk” students “at–promise” students instead.

Problem solved! What’s next on the agenda?

Maybe the big thinkers at Indoctrination Control were hoping parents would change their collective mind and decide a school with uniforms, expectations, community service and discipline was a bad idea after all and embrace more “progressive” educational theory like “white guilt.”

School administrators get away with this lethargy because parents don’t have the kind of “public option” the country really needs. Parents who tire of unresponsive educrats and send their children to private schools pay double: property taxes for the public schools and tuition for the private.

If education money followed the student instead of vice versa, PWC school administrators would be sharing a seat at the legislative hearing table with the USPS ($3.4 billion lost and counting).

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Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He is a dynamic and entertaining keynote speaker. He can be reached at
michael-shannon@comcast.net.

 

WesternFront America