Superintendent Todd Carlson of Shawano High School in Shawano, Wisconsin is sorry a student observed his First Amendment rights and had his article published in the school newspaper that denounces homosexuals adopting children. And so Superintendent Carlson is making amends by punishing this Christian kid for being so darn Christian. Superintendent Carlson has also decided in his infinite wisdom to censure this article by having it sent down the memory hole so that no one else will be confronted with this evil Christian’s views.

That’ll show that darn Christian kid, won’t it?

The article, “Should Homosexual Partners Be Bale to Adopt?,” was written by Brandon Wegner who was assigned the task of writing a counter-point to another student’s pro-homosexual adoption article. The piece was then published as an insert in the school newspaper, the Shawano Leader.

Shortly after the newspapers containing the insert were distributed, Superintendent Carlson issued a formal apology to the school and parents, removed the insert from surplus issues of the paper, and censured young Mr. Wegner claiming his article violated the school’s “anti-bullying” policy.

Wegner says that Carlson grabbed him up out of class and began to brow beat him in an attempt to get the kid to disavow his religious-based beliefs. According to Liberty Counsel, a First Amendment law firm, Wegner was quixotically bullied by Superintendent Carlson in an attempt to deter bullying.

Brandon was hauled before the superintendent on charges that he had violated the school’s bullying policy. Superintendent Todd Carlson told him that the column “went against the bullying policy,” and asked him if he “regretted” writing it. When Mr. Wegner stated that he did not regret writing it, and that he stood behind his beliefs, Superintendent Carlson told him that he “had got to be one of the most ignorant kids to try to argue with him about this topic,” that “we have the power to suspend you if we want to” and that the column had “personally offended me, so I know you offended other people!”

Carlson’s action is itself “ignorant.” Ignorant of our American laws, ignorant of tenets of tolerance, ignorant of public comportment, ignorant for abuse of his position as an authority figure, and just plain ignorant in a moral fashion.

Carlson’s bullying also makes the lie to the claim that our schools are meant to teach our children. The truth seems to be that Mr. Carlson simply wants to indoctrinate, not help students come to their own conclusions when offered all sides of the issues.

In fact, the school newspaper deserves kudos for having handled the issue properly. It gave room to advocates of both sides to air their views so that readers could make up their own minds. But Carlson doesn’t want any of this horrid teaching going on. He wants to tell kids what to think based on his own warped, left-wing ideology. None of this freedom of choice nonsense in HIS school, I’ll tell you what.

Superintendent Carlson should be fired. Not because he’s an extremist liberal, but because he has violated this kid’s rights at worst and violated the principals of actual teaching at best. He is no educator. He is an indoctrinator and that is just un-American.

(H/T Moonbattery.com)

(Fox News) School districts and their supporters around the US have launched a wave of lawsuits asking courts to order more spending on public education, contending they face new pressures as states cut billions of dollars of funding while adding more rigorous educational standards.

About half of the school districts in Texas have sued the state since the legislature cut more than $5 billion from school budgets last year, citing fiscal pressures.

School-funding suits also are pending in California, Florida and Kansas, among other states. The suits generally claim schools lack the resources to provide the level of education required by state constitutions.

Critics of such lawsuits — and states being sued — say it is the prerogative of legislatures to decide how much states should spend on education.

Perhaps The People should start suing the Government to stop spending so damned much of the money The People work hard to earn.

And perhaps the schools should learn to live within their means. Spending more of the appropriations on the classroom instead of the administrative offices would be a good start. Perhaps the power of the public sector unions should be pared back so that incompetent teachers can be terminated. Perhaps the pay system should be based on merit, rather than seniority. Perhaps tenure could be done away with. Perhaps they should start teaching subjects, instead of sociology, political leanings, and ways to increase feeling good.

There’s the old Benjamin Franklin quote “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” I wonder what he would say about one government entity suing another government entity for more money forcibly taken from private citizens.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Abdullah Faaruuq, a Muslim “spiritual advisor” and chaplain from Boston-based Northeastern University, was a key speaker at a fundraiser for al Qaeda’s Ma Barker, the criminal female terrorist named Aafia Siddiqui, also known as “Lady al Qaeda.” This man, Faaruuq, is living off American taxpayers yet advocates for his followers to use “the gun and the sword” to advance Islam in America.

The fundraiser for Siddiqui was held at the Islamic Center of Worcester, Mass. on Dec. 8 with the stated goal of raising $30,000 to assist this female terrorist convicted in 2008 of attempting to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.

As Steve Emerson of Family Security Matters reports, Abdullah gave Siddiqui high praise.

“What a brave woman she continues to be, and how much her bravery and her faith and her belief warrants our support at this time,” said Faaruuq, an imam at Roxbury’s Mosque for the Praising of Allah. “It is said that we’re trying to raise $30,000 tonight. I would say it’s better that we’ve raised your awareness and raised your ire, as your anger against a government who would level the charges that they have against this woman and they say she is guilty. I would say she’s only guilty of defending herself.”

In addition to lauding Siddiqui’s “bravery,” Faaruuq also condemned American soldiers, the very people who defend America, as “kafirs,” meaning infidels.

“And if my mother was in the same place,” he said, “she would have took (sic) her West Indian machete and cut her way through those kafirs.”

According to the Northeastern University website, “Imam Abdullah serves as Northeastern University’s Muslim chaplain, as well as spiritual advisor to the Islamic Society student group.” Sadly he is advising students at a public university in the ways of violent jihad. And our taxes go to fund his actions.

Imam Abdullah has for some time been a controversial figure. As part of a violence-advocating, jihad-pushing, terror-funding mosque that was helped to come to fruition by public officials and politicians in Massachusetts, Abdullah has been advocating violence against Americans for years.

No wonder radical Islamists think America is the “weak horse” in the world. We are with our own taxes funding our own home-grown terror supporters like Abdullah.

Kids’ obsession with President Obama fades

At Barack Obama Elementary School in Upper Marlboro, Md., a giant mural of Obama and a glass case in the main entry filled with Obama books and photos greet students as they enter and exit.

But Tanya Moreland’s daughter Brea, in fifth grade, goes in and out every day and rarely brings up the president.

“To be honest, all the ‘hoorah’ is gone,” Moreland said while waiting outside the school in her car to pick up Brea on a recent Tuesday afternoon.

Kids are such pains in the butt: how dare they lose interest in displays and banners that the teachers and administrators surely put up and made the kids get involved.

The president’s galvanizing appeal to young people in 2008 has become the stuff of political legend, and while the polls stopped recording data at the voting age of 18, the trend by all accounts didn’t. Obama, at the height of his cultural ubiquity in his magical election run, exerted a particular charm on children. His big smile, big ears and bouncy personality made toddlers his unofficial base. In Iowa in 2007, children carved Obama pumpkins, phone-banked for Obama and pitched the candidate to their parents. The Kids for Obama blog on the campaign website linked a page describing “10 ways kids for Obama can get involved,” including holding an Obama sleepover party.

Again, how much of this was forced on the kids by teachers and parents?

Back then, conservatives fulminated that Obama was “brainwashing” the youth. Liberals speculated warmly on what it would be like to grow up under the first black president. But in interviews with kids and their parents around the country this fall, hopes have been disappointed, and concerns about brainwashing can probably be put to rest. The kids, as kids do, have moved on.

The kids probably learned that Obama has not much more experience and capability at running the executive branch than they do. That said, if you read the second page of Politico article, you see that some of the ObamaLuv and excitement is still there. They think of Obama as a rock star, and idol to worship. This begs the question, should any politician be treated in this manner? My answer is “hell no!” By placing politicians on such high pedestals, we forget that they are supposed to be there for the People, and not visa versa. If you want to worship a politician after they are gone from office, holding them in high regards, well, that would be more appropriate. While they are in office, their feet should be held to the fire, regardless of party affiliation.

Net of the attitudes and other characteristics students bring with them to college, the small changes reported in students’ political orientations (on a continuum from left to right) virtually disappear.

In other words, college students end up a bit leftist because they start a bit leftist, not because their profs “raise their awareness.”

While college fails as a leftist re-education camp, it does have measurable effects on two narrow areas:

1. “[S]tudents’ racial, ethnic, and multicultural attitudes and values”:

The link persists in the presence of a wide array of controls, including those reflecting students’ precollege attitudes and values, and across various outcome measures, including cultural awareness, acceptance of different races and cultures, commitment to promoting racial understanding, support for busing, viewing racism as a continuing problem, and increases in openness to diversity broadly defined.

2. Gender attitudes. College increases support for equal economic opportunity for women and intolerance for date rape, and decreases support for the view that “women’s place in in the home.”

Bottom line: Whether you love P.C. or hate it, don’t overrate it. Colleges nudge students’ views on multiculturalism and sexism. But they don’t turn moderates into liberals, or liberals into socialists.

SOURCE

Changes in expressed attitudes may not mean much — particularly in the area of race and racism. Since LaPiere’s study in the 1930s, psychologists have known that the relationship between expressed attitudes and behavior is weak to non-existent. So the kids may learn to say the “right” thing but how they act when free to do so will be another matter.

Note also that Right/Left orientation is highly hereditary so again little real change is likely as a result of the college experience — JR

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

“Students in a Texas public high school were made to stand up and recite the Mexican national anthem and Mexican pledge of allegiance as part of a Spanish class assignment, but the school district maintains there was nothing wrong with the lesson.

It happened last month in an intermediate Spanish class at Achieve Early College High School in McAllen, Texas — a city located about 10 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Wearing red, white and green, students had to memorize the Mexican anthem and pledge and stand up and recite them in individually in front of the class.

That didn’t go over well with sophomore Brenda Brinsdon. The 15-year-old sat down and refused to participate. She also caught it all on video: “I just thought it was out of hand, I didn’t think it was right,” she told The Blaze. “Reciting pledges to Mexico and being loyal to it has nothing to do with learning Spanish.”

When Brenda made clear she would not stand up and recite the pledge, she was given an alternative assignment: an essay on the history of the Mexican revolution.

School district spokesman Mark May defended the presentations, saying it’s a state requirement for upper-level language classes to teach about foreign culture.

According to the state’s Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, students are expected to gain “knowledge and understanding” of other cultures and use the language to demonstrate understanding of different practices and perspectives. There are no specific requirements about learning to recite pledges or anthems.

Source

There are certainly other ways of teaching Western Spanish and Mexican history

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

A middle school in Smyrna, Georgia included in an assignment material that essentially shows 7th grade children that Islamic polygamy is a perfectly legitimate concept and that there is nothing wrong with the strict dress codes used to oppress Muslim women the world over.

The material was presented to the 7th graders at Campbell Middle School as part of a discussion of the school’s dress codes, apparently meant to use the ideas of Islamic culture for women’s clothing as some sort of example to compare how the school regulates clothing for its students in Georgia.

The concepts were presented in the lesson as a letter from a fictional 20-year-old Muslim woman named “Ahlima.” In this letter “Ahlima” tells readers that she wouldn’t mind if her husband took a second wife and also extolled the virtues of the burkha. She claims that American women are “horribly immodest” in the way they dress.

As to polygamy, the fictional Ahlima says, “I understand that some Westerners condemn our practice of polygamy, but I also know they are wrong.”

A father of one of the students was not very happy with the assignment. He complained that the lesson is “promoting or positively depicting their belief that polygamy” is acceptable. He also felt that there should have been some sort of disclaimer that we Americans don’t accept these concepts and he worried that the Muslim ideas were presented as completely acceptable.

Another page of the assignment explained the “seven conditions for women’s dress in Islam,” presenting all of them without discussion and, in essence, endorsing them as acceptable or normal.

The school told the WSB TV, Channel 2 News that it did not create the lesson plan and that it came from the state. The school pledged to review the material to see if it was appropriate.

But, it is not appropriate. Not at all.

First of all, this lesson plan is built on lies. The burkha, for instance, is not a requirement of Islam. It is a cultural practice that only some Muslim cultures observe. The burkha has nothing at all to do with Islam directly. Not all Muslims practice polygamy, either, so even that isn’t necessarily a strict Islamic idea, either.

But, worse, the idea that burkhas should at all be acceptable to an American is a slap against our own ideals and promotes the oppressive ideas of enemies to our culture as perfectly acceptable.

The culturally strict proscriptions against freedom forced on Islamic women are a crime against humanity, yet here we have our own schools presenting to our own children the idea that the oppression of women is a perfectly acceptable cultural choice.

It would be exactly the same if they had a letter from a female slave saying that she was OK with being a slave. That it was perfectly acceptable for her to be owned by someone.

We are teaching our children that our own principles are not the optimal principles. We are teaching our children that our own culture, our own ideals are not supreme. We are teaching our children that the oppressive ideas of Islam are just as good as American ideals.

This is a result of liberals trying to make sure Muslims know that we “like” them in a post 9/11 world. With this weak, kow towing we are also making of ourselves a bigger target because there is another cultural ideal in Islam. Muslims feel that such bending over backwards as this is a weakness to be despised. Such kow towing is looked upon as pitiful. Muslims feel that such groveling is not “nice” or “neighborly” but spurs them to imagine that they can easily attack and dominate such a weak-willed culture.

But, even that aside, it shows how the liberals that wrote these lesson plans despise America. It shows that they do not value our own culture. It shows that these liberals are always in search of ways to further tear down the United States and make of her just another nation with just another set of cultural ideas.

If we want to bring America back from the brink of the destruction liberals have led us to we need to take back our educational system and get back to a time where we are teaching our kids why the United States is the best nation on earth.

Unfortunately, today our schools are filled with lessons like this, lessons that teach our own children that the US is nothing special.

(The following is not an endorsement or lack thereof, it is an observation.)

When it comes to evolution, Presidential Candidate Jon Huntsman (R-UT) reveals a serious character flaw for a man who wants to become president. He ignores facts and disregards the latest findings by experts in the field of science while accusing others of “running from science.” It is Huntsman who is clearly “running from science” as he displays an Obama-Pelosi-Reid dictatorial style of declaring an issue settled when clearly the debate is far from over.

Huntsman appears to be a politician who suffers from a lack of basic knowledge and shows no desire to explore or correct it. Real science requires the full spectrum of information as Huntsman remains stuck in evolution’s hypothesized “mud-puddle.” Long-standing and recent scientific data reveal that the scientifically exposed flaws and frauds of evolution are so numerous that evolution should be relegated to no more than a scientific curiosity devoid of empirical scientific data. Perhaps Mr. Huntsman does not understand the difference between micro-adaptations to the environment vs. macro-evolution’s claim that one species evolves into another. Macro-evolution has never occurred anywhere in nature. Micro-changes occur, such as the darkening of one’s skin in sunnier climes, but too drastic a change to the human species (or any species) results in deforming or killing the species. Clearly, that is the direct opposite of “evolving.”

Crass proposal or not, $250,000 has been offered to anyone who can prove that macro-evolution occurs. The response to that quarter of a million dollar offer?: Crickets. Nothing, nada, zippo, dead silence as the money goes uncollected. The reason no scientist can step forward to collect a quarter of a million dollars with their evidence of evolution – is because none exists. Surely Presidential candidate Huntsman could use an additional quarter of a million dollars in his campaign coffers. Just “name it and claim it,” “put up or shut up” – whichever idiom applies.

It is true that Governor Huntsman is a politician and I am a news commentator and contributor. But, the primary difference is that I have studied evolution and co-wrote a book on the topic. Since Huntsman appears driven to portray himself as the final say, it is my pleasure to challenge the former Governor to a debate. If he does not want to debate the issue (since he appears to prefer a “science-stifling the debate is over” mentality), then I suggest he order a copy of the book, “Darwin’s Racists – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” (www.DarwinsRacists.com). He will read the conclusions of brilliant scientific minds who dismiss evolution as mere theory and recognize that it has been and continues to be an obstacle to real scientific study. He will find that proponents for evolution are, for the most part, either on the government-grant dole or are such hyper-secularists that the idea of a Creator God is abhorrent to them. The latest polls show that the majority of Americans, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or other faiths, do not believe in evolution which puts them in disagreement with Huntsman.

Huntsman accuses others of “running from science.” The conclusion is that it is Huntsman who is uninformed, outdated and a threat to serious science. Brilliant men and women of science from top biologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, cosmologists to rocket scientists have denounced “evolution” as a man-made, anti-science theory with racist underpinnings. World renowned and revered pro-evolutionist scientist, Dr. Stephen J. Gould, Harvard professor of Geology and Paleontology who devoted his entire career to studying evolution has written: “We are not evolving.” After years of probing the tenuous claims of evolution, this top scientist, Dr. Gould, concluded and stated clearly on record:

“For all practical purposes we’re not evolving. There’s no reason to believe we ‘re going to get bigger brains or smaller toes or whatever – we are what we are.” This career Darwinian evolutionist went on to say: “The fossil record does not show gradual changes [of evolution] and every paleontologist has known that since Cuvier.” Stephen J. Gould, Harvard Scientist and Professor

Many other top-tier scientists are named and quoted in the book, “Darwin’s Racists,” should the former governor wish to give it a read. (Also see peer-reviewed I.D. studies at: http://www.discovery.org/a/2640 )

Jon Huntsman is the product of a program of misinformation long taught and perpetrated by Fabian Socialists who gave birth to the American Progressive-Liberal party. At its core, evolution is a racist theory that declares people of color as less evolved and more closely connected to African apes. It is a belief stated by Charles Darwin, who introduced his theory of evolution over 150 years ago. Famed Fabian-Socialist and fierce eugenicist, George Bernard Shaw, thought evolution was a dandy idea. The liberal-environmentalist Shaw first proposed using gas chambers for population control and ridding the planet of lesser human beings. That Huntsman’s position on evolution is opposed by the majority of Americans, is anti-science and is, by association, racist at its core should be noted by every American. It is a good thing that former Governor Huntsman opened that can of worms from which he believes all humans evolved. Once again in national discourse, Americans can decide what is fraud and what is truth.

An elementary school in Fort Collins, Colorado came under fire last week for having placed in the school a smaller sized Saudi Arabian flag in a higher, more prominent position than the flag of the United States. Many locals called this a disrespectful display and even wondered if it was part of some effort at anti-American indoctrination.

Colorado blog Greeley Report first noted the flag controversy by posting a photograph of the lobby display calling the positioning of the two flags “an outrage” and saying how the disrespect to the U.S. flag “shows how the indoctrination process continues without your consent or knowledge.”

Bauder Elementary School Principal, Brian Carpenter, told the Greeley Gazette that this was simply a careless mistake. Not only was nothing meant by the placement of the flags, but the matter was quickly corrected to have the U.S. flag hang higher than the others in the lobby.

But what was the Saudi flag even doing in the school in the first place?

According to the school, the purpose of the international flags is to recognize the nationality of the many students in the school who come from other countries. Carpenter said the school has many parents from other countries who attend Colorado State University… Carpenter said the school has approximately 20 other flags besides the U.S. flag throughout the building.

There doesn’t seem to be any reason to imagine that this school had any intention of demoting the importance of Old Glory, especially to give the Saudi flag a place of higher prominence. I see no reason to think that the school is engaging in any direct anti-Americanism.

However, there is still a problem here. The whole reason these flags of other nations were there in the first place is something that as a culture we should stop doing. This whole idiotic celebration of everyone’s “heritage” is a dangerous and self-destructive habit that we should end forthwith.

Over the last few years many European nations like France and England have seen their cities burning to the ground in riots caused by the same idiotic indulgence in multiculturalism as being displayed in the school in Fort Collins.

There is absolutely no reason whatever to have flags of other nations hanging in an elementary school. We are Americans, not Saudis or Mexicans. The more we push this unhealthy focus on distant heritage in the classroom the more we risk diluting any connection our young citizens have with this country.

There is nothing wrong with being interested in genealogy and family history, of course. But these interests should be the subject of things better done at home or at the very least if it has to be a part of the school curriculum as a single classroom project that can be done once and then left behind while other subjects are pursued.

There should be no large, permanent displays of other nation’s flags and other nationalities in our schools.

Knowing little about former Utah Governor John Huntsman, except that he was hand-picked by Barack Obama to be his man in China, it was revealing to learn through his recent statements that he belongs to “the debate is over” crowd. The “debate is over” crowd never bellows louder than when it comes to global warming and evolution. They are the people who push fiction as if it were fact and then denigrate anyone who disagrees.

Huntsman revealed a major unawareness of current scientific data when he attacked fellow presidential candidate Rick Perry (TX-R) on his position on evolution and global warming during an ABC interview stating:

“I think there’s a serious problem. The minute that the Republican Party becomes the …

anti-science party, we have a huge problem … When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said … I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science and, therefore, in a losing position.”

Huntsman’s statements are misleading and rife with misinformation. Huntsman misleads by stating that 98 to a 100 climate scientists support global warming, but leaves out the documented fact that some 33,000 scientists worldwide consider man-made global warming to be total nonsense. The carbon-credits scheme is proving to be a scam. Yet, Huntsman appears to be a man after Al Gore’s heart. Huntsman would do well to Google the article: GLOBAL FRAUDS: AL GORE & CHARLES DARWIN at:

http://darwinsracists.com/book/?p=62.

On the topic of evolution, Huntsman joins the more strident “the debate is over” crowd as he personally “embraces” evolution. Even Barack Obama was quick to give a “shout-out to Charles Darwin on his 150th birthday.” Evolution is mere theory without empirical scientific data to support it. As a life-devaluing, God-denying, racist theory, evolution was readily embraced by Karl Marx, the father of Communism, who wrote that he was “a devoted admirer” of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Others who anxiously “embraced” evolution were murderous tyrant Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky — who fanatically persecuted the Christian church while claiming that Darwin’s ideas “intoxicated him.” Another avid fan of evolution was Soviet mass murderer Joseph Stalin who became a devout atheist after determining that evolution does not require conscience or morals. One politician of note who “embraced” evolution was Adolf Hitler who was an avid follower and wrote in his book, Mein Kampf, that he believed in “natural selection” and the “survival of the fittest” as propagated by Darwin. Hitler’s reign resulted in the murder of some 6 million Jews as well as Slavs, Poles, Blacks, Gypsies, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled and other groups he deemed unfit to live.” (Excerpts from book: Darwin’s Racists – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.)

Darwin’s theory of evolution became a political tool for murderous tyrants who used it as a mechanism to devalue life, justify racism by labeling various groups of humans as less evolved, and as a means to eradicate God so that the “state” could become god to the people. Avid American abortionist and purported mother of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, embraced evolution as an argument for abortions and the denial of care for America’s poor, sick, elderly and disabled.

Where evolution and Huntsman lose legitimacy is when both face the advancements of hard science in the 21st century. DNA proteins are providing evidence against the possibility of evolution and reveal that no species can “jump its DNA code” to evolve into another species. Even in his rudimentary analysis Charles Darwin wrote: “When we descend to details, we cannot prove that a single species has changed.” Evolution scientists themselves are abandoning the theory in droves and have gone so far to say, “That it ought not to be taught in High School.” Yet, Huntsman’s opponent did not take it that far. In what appears to be a balanced approach, Governor Rick Perry did say that both evolution and creation are taught in Texas schools because he thought students would be smart enough to decide for themselves. Even Charles Darwin professed serious doubts about the validity of his theory of evolution vs. creation and wrote that: “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” Charles Darwin. At least, Darwin got that one right.