Tag Archives: education
Texas School Teacher Violates Student’s Rights
A freshman boy in Ft. Worth, Texas, Dakota Ary, was recently given an in-school suspension and two days out-of-school suspension because he told a classmate that because he’s a Christian, he believes homosexuality is wrong.
The German teacher in whose class this took place accused Dakota of “possible bullying” and wrote that the student’s comments should not be expressed in public school, even though the class discussion was on religion in Germany and another student had asked a question about homosexuality. How can the expression of a moral position about behavior, even a negative moral position, constitute bullying or …
The Battle Over Vouchers in Indiana
By Alicia Constant — World Magazine
More Indiana parents are choosing to send their children to private and parochial schools in the state, which has enacted the nation’s largest school voucher program.
More than 3,200 students received vouchers to attend private schools this year-with nearly 70 percent of them attending Catholic schools.
Catholic schools are in the minority among Indiana private schools but received a majority of vouchers because many are venerable and already have state accreditation. They also have more space: One Catholic school in South Bend had seen enrollment dwindle from 702 students in 1953 to 135 last …
ACLU Sues Missouri School District for Blocking LGBT Websites
The ACLU finds itself in the midst of another controversial legal battle, this time in Missouri where they are suing a school district to allow K-12 students to access GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) websites. The ACLU’s Eastern Missouri chapter wrote to the school district in May telling it to stop using the sexuality blocker on its filtering software. But doing so would likely put the school in violation of the federal Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires public schools and libraries to protect children from harmful web content as a condition of receiving federal funding. The heros …
The Southern Poverty Law Center Infiltrates Public Education
Decades ago, summer was the time that necessitated increased parental vigilance. School was the safe place. But the times they have a’changed. Self-righteous “agents of change” stand ready at the schoolhouse door to mold other people’s children into ideological replicas of themselves. So now the school year has become the time that necessitates increased parental vigilance.
One organization that warrants particular attention is “Teaching Tolerance,” which is laughingly called an “educational project,” but is, in reality, the pernicious propaganda project of the leftwing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This is the organization that has listed the Illinois Family Institute, Family …
Religious Discrimination at Glenbard South High School?
Anyone who has spent any extended period of time in a public high school, either as an employee or student, knows that discrimination exists in these purported bastions of tolerance and diversity. Just ask any conservative Christian teen — especially those teens who take their faith seriously. For example, ask the members of the extracurricular club “Growing in Faith Together” (GIFT) at Glenbard South High School in the Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn.
Members of GIFT have experienced resistance from the administration, particularly from Principal Terri Hanrahan, for the better part of this school year. Among other things, Principal …
Becoming One with the Earth at Prairie Ridge High School: Teaching The Alchemist (part 2)
In Part 1 of this two-part article about a recent dust-up at Prairie Ridge High School in Crystal Lake, I discussed English teacher Christine Wascher’s decision to teach meditative techniques as a means of helping “students forge a deeper connection to the text.” The text she was teaching was Paul Coelho’s The Alchemist. As reported in a Trib Local article, Superintendent Jill Hawk said, “In this case, we had a teacher using a creative activity to engage her students in good literature.”
This statement confirms what I have previously written about the teaching of English: the beauty of teaching English …
Lyons Township HS and Day of Silence
Last week Peter Geddeis, the director of student activities at Lyons Township High School, sent the entire staff and faculty an email in which he said the following (emphasis added):
…On Friday, April 15, a number of our students will be participating in the National Day of Silence, sponsored by our PRISM (gay-straight alliance) club. On this day you will see some students wearing rainbow ribbons, Day of Silence t-shirts, and/or mainly black clothing. These students will not be speaking all day as they take a day-long vow of silence to echo the silence endured by LGBTA (Lesbian,
Day of Silence: Misleading Event Reflects Myth-Based, Shallow Educational Standards
NEA and GLSEN Push Schools to Low-Quality Education
In the wave of heated debates about public sector unions, many are evaluating the teaching profession and teachers’ union policies. Are American students being taught to think independently and logically, to evaluate issues critically, to verify and fact-check using multiple and diverse sources?
Or do most schools, pressured by the National Education Association, employ politically biased, emotion-based, left-wing methods and practices that result in censorship and an inability to think critically and logically? Nowhere does this question surface more quickly than on the hot-button issue of homosexuality.
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight …
More on Feckless SB 1619, the Comprehensive Sex Ed Bill
SB 1619, the comprehensive sex ed bill that is heavily promoted by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, is one more demonstration of the left’s fervor to mainstream homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder through legislation. Some may wonder just how ideas about homosexuality and “transgenderism” will work their way into sex ed curricula if this bill should pass. This dangerous goal will be accomplished through SB 1619’s requirement that “all course material and instruction shall be free from bias in accordance with the Illinois Human Rights Act.” There are significant problems with this language and its intent.
First, …
VICTORY: Illinois Public School Officials Agree to Stop Instructing Students in Buddhist-Based Chants & Meditation Exercises During Class Time
CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill. – School officials at an Illinois high school have agreed to stop organizing and leading students in transcendental meditation exercises, which are rooted in the Buddhist religious practice, during class time and as part of the honors English curriculum. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute warned officials at Prairie Ridge High School in Crystal Lake that conducting the transcendental meditation exercises, even if students were allowed to opt out of them, put the school at risk of violating the Establishment Clause’s prohibition against the government endorsing a religion. The Rutherford Institute intervened after being contacted by a parent …
Washington Invents an Anti-Bullying Law
There’s no federal law against bullying or homophobia. So the Department of Education recently decided to invent one. On October 26, it sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to the nation’s school districts arguing that many forms of homophobia and bullying violate federal laws against sexual harassment and discrimination. But those laws only ban discrimination based on sex or race – not sexual orientation, or bullying in general. The letter from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights twisted those laws, interpreting them so broadly as to cover not only bullying, but also a vast range of constitutionally protected speech, as …
UN’s Kinsey Report
Parents who wonder how much more aggressive sex education can get should be concerned about guidelines which the United Nations is concocting, inspired by Alfred Kinsey. “Promoting sex education to the youngest of the young has drawn harsh criticism to a UN agency and its interpretation of age-appropriate education,” Terrence McKeegan, J. D. reported in an update for the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute on November 4, 2010.
“It is never too early to start talking to children about sexual matters,” the guidelines issued by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization proclaim.
Please bear in mind, …
Up Next — School Board Elections
Our public schools are under assault by activist ideologues both in administrations and on faculties. This activism is quickly invading even our elementary schools.
Teachers and administrators are exploiting legitimate anti-bullying sentiment to introduce homosexuality normalizing resources to all children using public money.
They are exploiting legitimate concerns for the less fortunate to promote controversial “critical race theory” and “critical pedagogy” by euphemistically calling it “teaching for social justice.”
They are exposing students to ever more profane and obscene resources by calling parents who object “book banners” and “censors,” all the while hoping no one will notice their astonishing censorship …
