Tag Archives: education

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 …

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 …

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,

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

The following is a reprint of an editorial in The Daily Targum, the student newspaper for Rutgers University (and one of the longest-operating student newspapers in the country). Clearly, those (non-homosexual-activists) closest to the scene recognize that “gay” groups are cynically exploiting this tragedy – even before all the facts are in – to advance their political and cultural agenda. Per the usual, it’s all about the Homosexual Lobby (see this shockingly arrogant release redefining morality by the homosexual lobby Human Rights Campaign). Even homosexual- and “nonmonogamy” advocate Dan (‘Three-Way”) Savage [his blog HERE] is in on …

Editor’s Note: Reader Discretion Is Advised

Two videos of a freshmen orientation presentation at Gustavus Adolphus College, a small Lutheran College in St. Peter, Minnesota, have come to light that expose the repugnant ideas and images that college students at a purportedly Christian college think are funny. I have a personal connection to this story: One of my daughters graduated from Gustavus six years ago.

We learned from her four years there that Gustavus is Christian in name only. In response to these videos, my daughter wrote this to me:

I suppose this should come as no surprise from a …

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently thanked Governor Patrick Quinn (D) for rejecting Title V federal funds for abstinence education and praised him for turning instead to the new federal program for funding comprehensive sex ed called the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP).

According to Planned Parenthood it was “The recently passed health care reform law” that “created the first ever state-grant program from the federal government that funds comprehensive sex education” (emphasis added).

Whereas Title V abstinence education funds must be matched by the state at the rate of $3 from the state for every $4 of …