Category Archives: Education

Student gets damages awarded for discrimination – $1.

Posted on October 7, 2009 by | 5 Comments

So a NYC School District has awarded a whopping $1 to a student who was denied the right start a Bible book club.

A New York school district will pay a student a paltry $1 in damages after he accused officials of prohibiting him from forming a Bible club.

The Lindenhurst School District on Long Island denies it violated the unidentified student’s civil rights, but agreed to settle the lawsuit. It also paid his $2,500 legal expenses.

One dollar. Talk about your slap in the face. At least they paid for his legal fees. A month after the lawsuit was filed, the school realized it’s error and allowed the group to form. But seriously, a kid had to file a lawsuit and enlist the help of the Alliance Defense Fund to get a book club started? They would SO not have had the same issue if the word “Bible” wasn’t in the group’s name. Just saying.

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Posted in Education, General Controversy, Politics

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But of COURSE conservatives are paranoid!

Posted on September 24, 2009 by | 4 Comments

Remember all the outcry when we raised hell about President Obama’s address to students? Our concerns were “baseless“. We’re clearly nothing but “paranoid right wing nut jobs“. And of course, don’t forget RAAAACIST!! Fine, other Presidents have spoken to students before. THAT is not what we took issue with! How many Presidents issued study guides? And how many treated everything the President said as fact? I wrote about this yesterday:

So much for objectivity, right? As I said yesterday, the things that are being presented as fact are, well, not so much fact. When the experts are still hotly debating the legislation, and there can be no clear answers derived from the bill itself, it is NOT fact. Go read this, from HSLDA.

The most interesting thing about the abortion issue? BOTH sides are protesting! The right is angry because they believe it IS included, and the left is angry for the opposite reason. The wording is SO loose that no one actually knows what’s in it. The fact that a teacher presumes to know the truth and teach it to the class as fact is inexcusable. Of course, abortion is NOT the only issue. The rest of the numbers used are skewed at best, if not flat out wrong. Such as the number of people who are uninsured, which mysteriously changes. This is EXACTLY the issue we were concerned about. Then yesterday, this video was released (which I’m sure most of you have seen by now): So this is all after the fact. Are we just looking for things to justify our accusations after the fact? No. My first cue that there would be indoctrination of children involved was this: THIS IS NOT NORMAL. And parents are right to object. When there are teachers like Diantha Harris around, there is a justifiable concern for parents who are sending their children to public school every day. So lefties, keep your head in the sand. Pretend your children are independent thinkers. But if you think your 5 year old has the intellect and wit to out-think an authority figure and come to their own conclusions regarding the President of the United States, I feel for your child.

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Posted in Abortion, Education, General Controversy, Health Care, Obama, Policy Issues, Politics

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Indoctrination: Quizzed on Obama's speech

Posted on September 23, 2009 by | 4 Comments

From Smart Girl Nation:

A member’s daughter, a senior in high school, had come home upset because, although the speech was not shown in her school, her anatomy teacher had made the class watch the President’s health care speech. After the video was shown, the students were given a short quiz about the speech. The questions asked gave the assumption that the answers provided in the President’s speech were fact and not opinion. The students were given no opportunity to discuss opposing views or have a debate on the topic. In fact, when one student stated that the President had lied, the student was told that kind of talk was unnecessary. Students in the class with opposing views were forced to remain silent or whisper amongst themselves.

The daughter of our member was so upset about what had occured that she refused to finish the quiz and brought it home to her mother for review. A copy of the quiz is provided below. Some of these students were educated on the health care debate going on in the country, while others simply took the information as fact and filled out their quiz. For those students, President Obama’s speech was their education. Is that not considered indoctrination?

So all the lefties that laughed and did the “I told you sos” over the speech. It was obviously scrubbed once the parents across the country raised hell. They didn’t hand out the study guides that they’d previously shown. Things were changed.

However, it’s become a battle between the education system and parents. You cannot present things that are not facts as, well, fact. I know from my own experience in the public education system that there are things that are just accepted by teachers as truth, when really, they’re not… mostly centering around religion and science and history. It is then passed on to students as truth. It’s a trend, one that has been heading heading leftward since the 60′s. This is the culmination of that.

The responsiblity of an educator is to present fact and facilitate critical thinking and dicussion. Spoonfeeding high school students misinformation as fact is not okay on any level.

If pundits and other political and health care professionals still do not have the answers to the questions asked in the quiz, there is no solid ground for the teacher to be presenting this as fact.

Education fail. Reason #48975478 I want to home school my kids.

Kudos to SGP and Michelle Malkin for bringing this public.

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Posted in Education, General Controversy, Health Care, Obama, Policy Issues, Politics, smart girl politics

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CampusReform.org launches TODAY!

Posted on September 15, 2009 by | Leave a comment

ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Leadership Institute today launched CampusReform.org, a new social networking website for conservative student activists. Designed to help student groups promote conservative principles and fight liberal abuses at colleges and universities across the country, CampusReform.org offers its users advanced networking capabilities, training, and a variety of continually updated activism resources.

The website includes a unique subsite for each of the 2,376 four-year colleges and universities in the country and offers customizable pages for both student groups and individual users.

“CampusReform.org will dramatically increase the number of battles fought against leftist abuses on college campuses this year,” said Morton Blackwell, Leadership Institute founder and president. “And based on long experience, conservative students will win most of those new battles as they identify, expose, and combat leftist abuses and bias.”

Blackwell started CampusReform.org to provide an online organizing platform for conservative activists who want to stand up for their principles on campus and reclaim American higher education from the left. He organized the 1980 Youth for Reagan effort and was on the Steering Committee of National Youth for Goldwater in 1964.

“CampusReform.org will help students break the left’s stranglehold on the ivory tower. Enough is enough, and it’s time for conservatives to stand up against liberal indoctrination on college campuses,” said Tyler Millage, a junior political science major at UNC-Wilmington who works with the Leadership Institute.

Established in 1979, the Leadership Institute increases the number and
effectiveness of conservative activists across the country. To do that, the Institute identifies, recruits, trains, and places conservatives in government, politics, and the media, enrolling more than 74,000 students in its unique programs since its inception.

LI’s Campus Leadership Program, which encompasses CampusReform.org, has already organized over 1,100 currently active independent student groups and publications at colleges across the country and maintains a correspondent relationship with these campus activists.

For more information about CampusReform.org, visit www.campusreform.org or email Adrienne Royer, New Media Director at aroyer@campusreform.org.

For more information on the Leadership Institute, visit www.leadershipinstitute.org.

For more information on the Campus Leadership Program, visit
www.thecampusright.com

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Posted in Education, General, Liberals

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Iowa school: "Strip searches are rare"

Posted on September 10, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Rare.  Apparently not non-existent. From Omaha.com:

A girl approached a teacher after a gym class and reported that she was missing $100 from her purse. The teacher consulted an administrator, who asked a female counselor to supervise a search of the five other girls in the locker room. Noethe said the girl who reported the loss was also present.

Noethe said that the girls were all asked to remove their clothes and that one girl was asked to remove her undergarments as well. No money was found.

Seriously?! For $100, a counselor (not a law enforcement officer) demands that the girls be strip searched? The school didn’t have much to say for themselves. At first, they outright denied it. Then they said they were in “investigate stages”.

The ACLU has reported that it has been at least 10 years since a strip search occurred in schools. Which makes sense, because they’re not legal. According to Iowa law, “A school official shall not conduct a search which involves … a strip search.” Seems valid to me. After all, if a situation is serious enough to warrant a strip search, shouldn’t the authorities be called? However, they weren’t.

Cass County Sheriff Darby McLaren and Atlantic Police Chief Stephen Green said Wednesday that they would have assisted any investigation into the missing money if they had been asked. A Cass County deputy serves as a school resource officer for many schools in the county but was not at Atlantic High at the time, McLaren said.

“We would have been there if they would have called,” McLaren said.

Unbelievable. Over $100. Welcome to public education facilities! Apparently, as long as it’s in the name of “safety”, they’ll do what they want… legality be damned.

Strip-searches of students rare

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Posted in Education, General Controversy, Politics

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$68k/yr To Stay Home.

Posted on May 7, 2009 by | 4 Comments

From the LA Times:

For seven years, the Los Angeles Unified School District has paid Matthew Kim a teaching salary of up to $68,000 per year, plus benefits.

His job is to do nothing.Every school day, Kim’s shift begins at 7:50 a.m., with 30 minutes for lunch, and ends when the bell at his old campus rings at 3:20 p.m. He is to take off all breaks, school vacations and holidays, per a district agreement with the teacher’s union. At no time is he to be given any work by the district or show up at school.

He has never missed a paycheck.

Just as a reference, Kim has severe cerebral palsy, but went on to obtain two master’s degrees. He requires an aide and has very limited mobility and difficult to understand speech. So what exactly did he do to earn a seven year paid vacation?

Kim has been repeatedly accused of inappropriate sexual comments and advances.When he applied for a full-time teaching job, he was turned down by more than 15 schools in L.A. Unified, he said in a 1999 letter filed in court. Only after he threatened to sue the district for disability discrimination did he get a teaching job at Grant High School, records show.

Kim’s troubles with the district began in 2000, when a classroom aide reported inappropriate comments and advances.

In class one October day, according to her testimony before an administrative panel, Kim asked her to stand closer to him while interpreting his speech for the students. When she moved closer, she said, he touched her breast with his left hand, the only one he could slightly control.

Students immediately started making comments about what they’d seen. One said: “Oh, come on, Mr. Kim, you know you liked it,” according to a summary of allegations against Kim prepared by a state review panel in 2008. Kim responded to the students that he had.

Over the next two years, another adult and six students would make similar complaints against Kim,according to the summary.

The same month the aide complained, Kim asked a girl if she had a boyfriend and if she was a virgin, according to the girl’s testimony during an administrative hearing.

So, despite classrooms full of witnesses to his blatant sexual harassment, the courts can’t fire the man. Probably because they’re afraid of a countersuit for disability discrimination.

And he’s not alone. The LA Unified School district pays out about $10 million yearly – for teachers that are not working. This is not including legal fees… of which Kim alone has racked up $2 million. So, just to clarify this, the district is facing financial difficulties and contemplating widespread layoffs. At state struggling financially, billions in debt. But we’re paying teachers that are accused of sexual contact with students, harassment, theft or drug possession to stay home.

The problem is nationwide. NYC has the largest school district in the country, with a total of 80,000 teachers. 550 of those are paid to sit in rooms and do crossword puzzles while their cases are sorted out – some of them for years. There are some fairly simple solutions to this problem. Personally, I think they should all be suspended without pay. But since that’s not the country we live in, they should at least be assigned some sort of warehouse work or clerical duty until they are either convicted or cleared. Believe it or not, Chicago already does this – “They’ve got to be doing something,” senior assistant general counsel James Ciesil said. Even if it’s answering phones.

But of course, LA teachers are above that. Now, district officials say, they are prohibited from assigning chores under the contract with the teachers’ union. Although there is no specific reference in the contract to housed employees, an attorney for L.A. Unified pointed to Article 9, Section 4.0, which defines the “professional duties” of a teacher, such as instructional planning and evaluating the work of pupils.

With no mention of photocopying, stuffing envelopes or answering telephones in the contract, the district and union have interpreted this provision as prohibiting clerical duties.

And we wonder why our education system sucks.

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Posted in Education, Politics

Through The Eyes Of A Liberal: GOP Change

Posted on December 17, 2008 by | 8 Comments

So someone tweeted this post yesterday, and if I could remember who it was I’d give credit. Just a heads up: language warning. Lots of it is liberal hate speech but I want to touch on a few things, since I think what he’s saying about GOP is pretty much in line with the rest of the left. I’m censoring what I quote.

Global Warming is Real – Even if you don’t believe it, the rest of the world does. That means you have to accept the reality of the situation and adjust accordingly. Suddenly it is cool to be eco-friendly and you guys are still the party that wants to drill in ANWAR. Even if you take the approach of “we don’t necessarily believe in it, but we are going to scale back efforts to <mess> up our environment just in case” that would be leaps and bounds ahead of your current strategy.

No and no. I’m all for taking care of the environment. Yeah, we make a mess of things and should clean it up. I do know that energy independence is critical, and I support drilling wherever there is oil. Our relations with the Middle East and Latin America depend on it. And if we are a nation that values the rights of polar bears over those of unborn children, we have way bigger things to deal with.

Education is Cool – Nominating Sarah Palin told the world that the GOP endorses stupidity. Cut. That. <junk>. Out. Even if you manage to elect a candidate that is obviously a moron, the truth will eventually come out. Didn’t we just go through this with 8 years of Bush? Hasn’t he effectively shown that electing unqualified people isn’t a good idea?

First of all, you’d be hard pressed to find a conservative who still supports Bush. Yes, I acknowledge that the GOP is not conservative anymore. Even so, I’d be willing to wager that most of the GOP faithful aren’t behind him either. Second, are we really still playing the Palin is stupid card? That seems to be the best course of action for the left when they can’t find anything else to shred her for. Did anyone listen to Biden throughout the campaign? Not only did he make FAR more detrimental gaffes, he has 36 years in the Senate behind him… shouldn’t he know better? Palin was an unbelievably quick study.

We want to talk about unqualified? I hate even validating this statement with a response, so I’ll keep it brief. No one has been able to show me one thing that Obama accomplished. Palin has done exceptionally well in her current office. Running a state requires a whole lot more intelligence than voting “present”. If we’re being completely honest, this whole conversation is irrelevant since Palin was running for VP and Obama’s campaign was for POTUS.

Stop Fighting Evolution – This is a hopeless battle that, in the long run, you won’t win. In fact, fighting this is just drawing resources away from more important issues. You need to tell you constituents that if they really believing in Intelligent Design, then they should teach it to their kids at home. End of story, move on.

I think part of this is true – it IS drawing resources away from more pressing issues. However, the ending statement completely lost me. Intelligent Design is a viable alternative to evolution and should be taught as such. Saying it should be taught at home when you fight so hard for public sex education, however,  is a logic fail. Personally, I think THAT is what should be taught at home. I’d much rather teach my kid what they need to know about sex and let a teacher handle the theory of evolution. What kind of parent gets offended by the Intelligent Design teaching, but allows their kid to learn about sex from a stranger?

The Internet is Important – If you looked at the top 20% of Internet movers & shakers you would find that they are virtually all Democrats. And why are they Democrats? Because the Republicans have done their best to let the Telecoms, the RIAA and the MPAA run the Internet as they see fit. The DMCA is perhaps the best example of how conservatives don’t get it. You are doing your best to alienate a key group of young, intelligent, industrious innovators.  Brush them off at your own peril. (incidentally, if you think I’m blowing this out of proportion look at Obama’s grassroots movement on the web and then look at McCain’s. Nuff said)

This point is one that we should take to heart. We absolutely dropped the ball on the internet campaign. 100%. I’m glad to see the movement on here now, and we need to keep the ball rolling forward. Groups like Smart Girl Politics, The New Republican, The Next Right, #dontgo, and #TCOT are moving us in the right direction. We need to keep that momentum going.

But by far the craziest has to be the notion that in order to fix the party the GOP has to become more conservative. Ok stop, you’re doing it wrong. You aren’t going to win anymore Presidential elections by campaigning harder in the South.

***

After all, Obama (if you haven’t noticed) is a centrist. And he will no doubt pull the Democratic party more into the mainstream. So what core issue will Republicans run on? Defending the country from terrorism? Good luck with that. Gay marriage is from the devil? Not enough people will care. Fiscal responsibility? Ha ha ha ha ha.

Wow. Could this be any more inaccurate? If we move any further to the left we will be to the left of a lot of Democrats. Conservatives are everywhere, and if Obama does 1/4 of what he says he’ll do, our country will implode and conservatives will be the ones rebuilding it.

Obama is a CENTRIST? His abortion stance is enough to remove that one. Take in to account his blatant redistribution push, his health care stance, and his plan to slash military spending, he is anything BUT a centrist. That just makes my head hurt. If you’re so far to the left that you think Obama is a centrist there may be no hope for you.

The end question, however is a good one. What DO we stand for? In my eyes, that should be small government, accountability for individuals and businesses, and minimal government spending. If we can’t lock down these basic principles, there really is no difference between us and the democrats, and we will be absorbed.

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Posted in Bush, Education, GOP, Liberals, Obama, Politics, Sarah Palin

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America's Education Failure

Posted on December 6, 2008 by | 6 Comments

I’m not that old, but even in the 15 years since I was in elementary school, the landscape of our education system has changed immensely. Homeschooling has increased steadily for the past 20 years, growing from just 300,000 to over a million. Why is this?

Some (Joy Behar) would have you believe that all homeschoolers are fringe religious cultists that want to isolate themselves and/or their children from reality. The facts tell a very different story. While it’s true that many homeschool for religious reasons, many don’t. There are countless reasons to pull your children out of school. This one and this one among them. Not to mention this one.

Anyone paying attention would know that there are fundamental problems with America’s education system. Kids are not learning what they need to know, and teachers are not being given an incentive to invest in their students. Our politically correct approach to education is damaging. Teachers are so bound by the possibility of offending that they are forced to bend over backwards to accommodate every child, diluting the education experience.

Prime example of political correctness gone awry: Schools in my part of North Carolina cannot discipline children in any way. My dear friend Dana’s 5 year old son started kindergarten this year. His teacher informed her that the school policy on discipline was a “preventative” one. In other words, the teacher was supposed to determine when the child was getting angry and preempt any episode by sending the child to the “beach” to calm down… a bean bag in a beach themed corner of the room.

No, I’m not making this up. The sad part is that I don’t think it’s all that uncommon.

With policies like this in place, it’s no wonder parents are pulling their kids out of school. Having full control over what your child learns and how they are disciplined is invaluable.

As a side note, since I now fall into this category, the “pajamas media” would be prime candidates for homeschooling their kids. Why? Because we’re PAYING ATTENTION, and are concerned about the direction of mainstream education. With indoctrination beginning in elementary school, is it any wonder conservatives have lost the youth vote? Your kids are going to be the future leaders of this country. How will they do?

Education begins early. Obviously, America’s kids are getting a bad start. I think homeschooling is a perfect way to change that.

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Posted in Education, Politics, Uncategorized

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