Kenji And Matsuko And Seiichi And Hanako, All One And The Same

If you thought the PC goons are far too powerful in our schools -- banning dodgeball and purging "most likely to succeed" from the yearbook -- you haven't been to Japan lately. This just in from the C-SM Asia Bureau:

The stage was set, the lights went down and in a suburban Japanese primary school everyone prepared to enjoy a performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The only snag was that the entire cast was playing the part of Snow White.

For the audience of menacing mothers and feisty fathers, though, the sight of 25 Snow Whites, no dwarfs and no wicked witch was a triumph: a clear victory for Japan's emerging new class of “Monster Parents."

For they had taken on the system and won. After a relentless campaign of bullying, hectoring and nuisance phone calls, the monster parents had cowed the teachers into submission, forcing the school to admit to the injustice of selecting just one girl to play the title role. (Fox News)

I can't help it. Images of the fall of Rome overwhelm me. Images of Bushido, the Japanese samurai ethic disappear like a mist in bamboo. Japan has raised a generation that curses any hint of the societal regimen that has served the nation so well, replacing it with a bunch of blame-shifting, over-protective infighters and ear-biters.

The article concludes:

Previously, when a child was in trouble the parents apologized profusely to the teacher; nowadays, they try to have the teacher sacked.

Where previously schools were trusted and respected, they are now the targets of concerted activism. Dozens of educators have been forced to resign in the face of the blazing fury of parents who no longer tolerate anything that appears to disadvantage their offspring.

Any guesses how this coddled, uncompetitive population will turn out? How many of these kids will turn out to be whining primadonnas, serial_killers_in_a_cubicle and never_leave_the_nest middle-agers?

How few will be able to lead their country to anything beyond descending mediocrity?

How much alike our two countries are.

hat-tip: Jim

Obama's Man: Teaching Tomorrow's Terrorists

Barack Obama referred to Bill Ayres, his Chicago buddy and former Weather Underground domestic terrorist, as an "English teacher." Would that it were so! A better phrase would be a "Terror teacher." From Sol Stern in City Journal:

As I have shown elsewhere in City Journal, Ayers’s politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America’s future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.

Indeed, the education department at the University of Illinois is a hotbed for the radical education professoriate. As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K–12 teachers need to “be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation.” Ayers’s texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nation’s ed schools and teacher-training institutes.

One of Ayers’s major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.

And therefore, the mission of teachers is not to teach children real skills they need in the real world, like math, English and science, which after all are also nothing more than reflections of capitalist hegemony. Ayres is not even bright enough to figure out why capitalism has become the global economic hegemon (because it has proven itself better and more progressive than any other system), yet he is entrusted to teach the teachers of our children.

Does Obama know this? Possibly not, or he wouldn't have referred to Ayers as an English prof in the debate. I'm much more upset about what Bill Ayres says about the state of education in America than I am about what he says about Obama.

Public pressure and a deceitful resume brought down Ward Churchill, who was much less dangerous than Ayres because he didn't teach teachers. Let's take a lesson from Ayres' own playbook and show some struggle, outrage and action to get this #$%@! out of the classroom and banned from influencing future generations.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Homeschooling Threat

Hugh Hewitt listeners might want to listen in tonight at 6 p.m. (PDT) for what looks like something of an unusual hour -- one dedicated entirely to the challenge homeschooling in CA is facing.

This all stems from the actions of one whacked California judge (how often have we put those four words together?). The Second Appellate District in Los Angeles County's pivotal ruling, which came down on February 28th, found that a homeschooling family from Southern California did not have a right to “homeschool” under the California Constitution unless the parent is a credentialed tutor.

The ruling stemmed from a Juvenile Court case about allegations of abuse or neglect that originally had nothing to do with homeschooling, writes the Christian Home Educators Association of California:

When the Juvenile Court judge would not prohibit the parents from home schooling their children, the court-appointed attorneys for the children went to the California Court of Appeals. The Appellate Court went further than they needed to, and essentially ruled that State law does not provide any options that allow parents to teach their own children at home.

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), representatives of which will be interviewed by Hugh today, wrote:

There are two basic issues in the case:

1. Does state law allow parents to homeschool without a state teaching credential?

2. If not, is this law unconstitutional?

Below are three short quotations from the case which give the clear answer:

“It is clear to us that enrollment and attendance in a public full-time day school is required by California law for minor children unless (1) the child is enrolled in a private full-time day school and actually attends that private school, (2) the child is tutored by a person holding a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught.”

“California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to school their children in their own home.”

“We agree with the Shinn court’s statement that ‘the educational program of the State of California was designed to promote the general welfare of all the people and was not designed to accommodate the personal ideas of any individual in the field of education.’ ”

In the first quote the court makes it clear that it believes that parents may not operate their own private schools. In the second they deny that a parent has a constitutional right to homeschool, and in the third they concur that California law does not accommodate parents pursuing their own education program for their children.

As you can see, the decision is categorical and was not written to be limited to just the facts of this case.

Nothing has changed in California homeschooling ... yet. The case has some court-wending to do yet until anything becomes final.

There is something you can do in the interim -- sign the HSLDA's petition. A lot of people are -- the HSLDA is getting enough traffic to justify routing their home page hits directly to their petition page.

Every signature will help shine a light on this issue, forcing cockroach judges to scurry under the law library bookshelves again -- where we are safe from them.

Two of our three incredible daughters spend some time in homeschooling and are much the better for it. Dedicated parents can be terrific teachers, better than many credentialed teachers struggling with stupid regulations and a perpetual shortage of funds. And homeschool teachers can still teach values.

What a concept! And certainly one worth protecting.

Transgender Wars

Last weekend, I put up an "Our Crumbling Civilization" post about a second-grade boy who wants to go to school as a girl, and a school system that was allowing it.

Perhaps you read it and nodded in agreement. Not everyone did. You might want to revisit the post and check out the comments that are coming in from the transgender community. Stuff like:

• "it is so sad that people are so close minded. You people who have the nerve to call a child "perverse" or label TSism as a "perversion" really need to wake up. If you spent just one day in their shoes I seriously doubt that you would be spreading hate speech and outright lies."
  
  
• "My current nine-year old doesn't seem to have a problem with his mother who has been transitioning/ed since he was five. He has been told age-appropriate and understandable facts about what has gone on. He seems perfectly well-adjusted, shows no signs of ever wishing to 'be a girl' or any of the difficulties you seem to think he might have from such a 'traumatic' experience as having his 'father' be who she actually is."
  
  
• "Tolerance has replaced not 'sanity', however you define that, but cruelty. ... Between one in 500 and one in 2000 Americans seek to change their genders."
  
  
• "i am married, transgendered and have two kids, one boy and one girl. it is quite offensive that people call this perversion. i suppose it would be more liberating that a girl would want to be a boy? no one would find that strange because she wants to be masculine. my daughter and son both seem to be masculine and feminine. my daughter rips holes in the knees of her pretty jeans and my son screams at mom putting on makeup. if they grow out of it-fine-if they don't-fine."

The comments are thought-provoking to say the least, and I encourage you to give them a look.

They haven't changed my view one iota in this case, which to me is all about the kids in the classroom, not the kid who wants to dress as a girl.

I don't think that as second graders they should have to deal with this, and the school district should have required the boy and his parents to go through several years of therapy, allowing him time to consider his desires and the consequences of his choices from a more mature perspective, and time for the kids in the class to mature before being asked to deal with issues like transgenderism.

Secularists Place Their Faith In Corbett

The tale of Dr. James Corbett and his frothings against Christians and Conservatives before his high school Advanced Placement classes is big news -- it's now up to 398,000 hits on Google's blog search engine. And as you can imagine, those who believe in Secularism but are rabidly anti-religion nonetheless, have a lot to say.

Let's start with a post at The Seven Solitudes called, ahem, Dr. James Corbett is an American Hero:

It isn’t enough that the school system is still a breeding ground for religious indoctrination, and non-believers and other people who would rather teach their kids at home about religion have been ostracized and having failed previous attempts to bring these lawsuits to the courts, this Fascist Law Firm decides to copy the work of organizations like the ACLU. In these previous cases we, the secular taxpayers, have been found to not have standing. Our only victory was erasing mandatory prayer from school and the occasional Lemon Test success, but Christian proselytizing from the podium is not a phantom. If this brings about the demise of teacher’s personal freedoms of ranting about religion from either way… it is a victory for us.

What school district does this guy go to? Is he a time-traveler or something, perhaps confusing 2007 with 1907? I wasn't aware that Secularist home-schooling was a trend, and haven't heard of any public school districts that were forcing Christianity into, instead of out of, the schools.

Admittedly, Capo Unified, my district and Dr. Corbett's, isn't utterly devoid of Christianity. When Incredible Daughter #1 was in Jr. High chorus, they sang (beautifully) medieval vocal pieces with religious themes, and we even had an entirely voluntary parent-student Hallelujah Chorus one year. She also got a good grade on a paper on Abraham's travels for an ancient history class.

This seems to me appropriate in all ways because no one can deny the power of the church in the formation of our musical heritage, and the Abraham paper was a research exercise whether one were to agree the source material was historical or not.

What is wrong with Seven Solitudes, and indeed most of these posts, is that they don't want "Christian proselytizing" in the schools, but very clearly are comfortable with Secularist proselytizing, whether Christians are made uncomfortable or not.

A blog with the uncondensed name of Esoteric Dissertations of a One Track Mind fisked my most recent post on Corbett in a post called On the Religious Reaction to Dr. Corbett. The writer makes such universal statements like:

First, I find it rather inarguable that religious conservatives want to control women’s reproductive capacity.

I find this extremely funny, given the "anti-breeder" pressure that the Left slams parents with. Who, in fact, wishes to control women's reproductive capacity? He thinks conservative men dictate to their women, "Thou shalt calve," whereas in Christian circles the number of children is a decision husband and wife come to through discussion and prayer.

To compare fundamental Islamic childbirthing trends to Christian trends is silly because in dirt-poor Islamic countries, where humans and animals are the main means of production, the economics of child-bearing are entirely different.

Over at the "revolutionary" blog (Why would we want a revolution? So we could have what sort of system instead?) Blogging the Collapse, there's a post called Heroes and Zeros. Guess which one the blogger thinks Corbett is?

As you’ve seen, I have a general revulsion for all gods, prophets, angels, and higher powers in general. The wisdom that I would like to see kids arrive at through education is that there is no such thing as a cosmic hierarchy (which makes other hierarchies, such as corporate or governmental hierarchies, all the more meaningless); and that the universe doesn’t work through power or control.

How does he know this, if not by faith? Where is it written that there is no higher power in the universe?

I've saved the worst and the funniest for last because there is nothing sillier than a hater of intolerance being intolerant. Here's Dr. Naysay's Nay of the Day, Chad Farnan is a Douche and his Parents are Evil:

This piece of Orange County s*** hails from San Juan Capistrano and attends Capistrano Valley High School where he is enrolled in Dr. James Corbett's Advanced Placement European History class.

Recently this little f***ing twit and his parents filed a FEDERAL lawsuit claiming that Dr. Corbett violated his Constitutional Rights. How does a High School history teacher pull off such a feat you might ask?

By allegedly making statements that Mr. Farnan (and his evil parents) feel "make religious students feel like second class citizens."

I think Dr. Naysay makes a pretty darn good case for why morality and values ought to be taught more in school, because the Judeo-Christian tradition certainly teaches a greater deal of brotherly love, understanding and compassion than Dr. Naysay has picked up along his troubled way.

In closing, let's go back to the top post and the allegation that "the school system is still a breeding ground for religious indoctrination." In case you haven't been keeping up on your reading of The Bismark Tribune over the Christmas holidays, I offer this:

A Simle Middle School teacher has been suspended without pay after parents complained about a video he showed in a class.

Superintendent Paul Johnson outlined the investigation and discipline at the Bismarck School Board meeting Monday.

Teacher Michael Nider will be on unpaid leave starting today until Jan. 1. He showed a video called "A Letter from Hell" that he had found on Godtube.com in his fourth period eighth-grade health class Wednesday. It was not shown in any other classes.

In addition to the unpaid leave, Nider also must take a sensitivity training class by May 30. A letter of reprimand is part of his personnel file, and if he violates the school policy again, he will be fired. A new teacher will be assigned to the fourth period eighth-grade health class.

This is the first time in the four years Nider has taught with the district that he has been disciplined, and he has had good evaluations. He has taught 20 years prior to coming to the Bismarck district. Two messages were left Monday night on an answering machine at Nider's home. He did not attend Monday night's meeting.

Parents Steve and Hannah Balaban heard about the video from their daughter, who was in Nider's class. They sent a letter of complaint to the teacher, principal, school board, superintendent and other community members, because of their concerns about its religious content.

Let's review, class:

• Nider has a 20-year-plus teaching record without complaint. This is the third time Corbett's radical Secularism has caused trouble at Capo Unified.
• Nider showed one film in one class. Corbett routinely blasts Christians and their beliefs in his classes and has for years.
• Nider was suspended without pay. Corbett is still teaching with pay.
• Nider has to take sensitivity training, has a letter in his file, and will be fired if anything like this happens again. While it's early in the process still, no such action has been taken against Corbett.
• The action against Nider was taken because one set of parents called to complain. Corbett continued to teach following many such complaints, including parents pulling their children from his class.
  

Again, the model that should be followed is that the teacher in a class like AP European history should, as Corbett did, encourage their students to think hard on provocative questions, but he should do so by asking pointed questions from all points of view, so his students have no idea what his personal beliefs are.

These beliefs should not be a factor. Students should learn from a teacher's character and qualities, not his political diatribes.

Update: The Capo Unified School District apparently feels the same way, according to this OC Register editorial summarizing its policies:

It shouldn't take a lawsuit to force a public school system to consider whether a teacher lives up to district policy, which requires that staff neither promote a religious viewpoint nor "interfere with the philosophical/religious development of each student in whatever tradition the student embraces." According to a Register report, district policy also calls on teachers "to ensure that all sides of a controversial issue are impartially presented with accurate and appropriate factual information."

I don't advocate that Corbett be fired, only that he be forced to follow these policies, and that the District itself develop a method for seeing that the protocols are followed. If Corbett isn't comfortable with that, then he doesn't have to continue taking a publicly funded paycheck.

Separation Of Church And State, Secularist Style

"When you put on your Jesus glasses," Dr. James Corbett told the students in his Advanced Placement European history class at Capistrano Valley High School, "you can't see the truth."

The doc also shared with his class that he just doesn't think much of believers ... any believers:

... Conservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies. That's interfering with God's work. You got to stay pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen to have babies until your body collapses. All over the world, doesn't matter where you go, conservatives want control over women's reproductive capacity. Everywhere in the world, from conservative Christians in this country to, um, Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan. It's the same. It's stunning how vitally interested they are in controlling women.

In fact, he thinks religion draws a society down:

People ... in the industrialized world the people least likely to go to church are the Swedes. The people in the industrialized world most likely to go to church are the Americans. America has the highest crime rate of all the industrialized nations and Sweden has the lowest. The next time someone [like your parents] tells you religion is connected with morality, you might want to ask them about that.

The US does, in fact, have the highest crime rate -- a function of excellent and transparent record keeping as much as anything else. But if Corbett were to look at crime rater per capita -- the stat that matters, since he's talking about individuals' relationships with God here -- he'd' find that many much more secular industrialized nations, Finland, Denmark and the UK, all have higher crime rates.

Godless Sweden's rate is lower, but it has a higher per capita adult suicide rate than religious America. Corbett didn't share that with his students.

Moving on through this fascinating review of European history, we find the doc saying this:

I love Rush Limbaugh. A fat, pain in the ass liar. And boy is he a liar. Unbelievable.

And this important analysis of European history:

U.S. regulators -- U.S. regulators say they added new warnings about the potential risks of sudden hearing loss among men who are using Viagra, Cialis or Levitra. So what they've been telling you for all these years, that you'll go blind, isn't true. ... So you know, you know, so if you run into somebody who is, you know, deaf and whose pants felt stiff, he's probably using the drug. They're happy, but they're deaf.

In the same class, after denouncing the Boy Scouts for being "in their own mind a homophobic and racist organization," he said:

It's simple. It's called separation of church and state.

In his mind, there is no religion called "Secularism," but it's evident by his comments that there is, and he is a devout believer in that faith. One of the students in his class, Chad Farnan, has filed a lawsuit with the assistance of the Christian legal group Advocates for Faith and Freedom. Read the full complaint here.

Farnan liked Corbett's class at first, then, according to yesterday's OC Reg, he became more and more uncomfortable, and gave a recording of one of Corbett's classroom rants to his mother. All quotes in this story are from that one tape, from one class.

This isn't the first time Corbett's gotten in trouble for his views, according to the Reg:

Corbett has been involved in at least two prior court cases as a Capistrano Valley High teacher. In 1993, he was named in a lawsuit brought by colleague John Peloza, a biology teacher who challenged Capistrano Unified's mandate to teach evolutionary theory.

Corbett was listed in the suit as one of the defendants with a "class-based animus against practicing Christians" who attempted to "force" Peloza to teach evolution through "harassment and intimidation." A trial court and an appeals court ruled against Peloza, although the appeals court said the complaint was "not entirely frivolous" and awarded attorney fees to Peloza.

Despite this, Corbett is still teaching, and Capistrano Valley High principal Tom Ressler hasn't commented on his teacher's latest transgression yet, except to say that 33 percent of Corbett's students flunked the state's Advanced Placement exam. (Actually, he said 66 percent passed, but I thought I'd emphasize that Corbett is a lousy teacher, too, not just a bigot.)

Were a teacher to lead his students in prayer, you can bet that Corbett would be at the front of the crazed pack, calling for that teacher's "fat, pain in the ass" head. Were a teacher to attempt to teach the true history of Communist violence and abuse, or the terrorist acts of the Palestinians, you can bet that Corbett would be the loudest voice crying "Foul!" (or something more profane).

Yet he feel free to encourage kids to have premarital sex and to not trust their parents ...

So you know, some parents are objecting, saying [handing out birth control pills is] taking too much power away from the parents. Parents are pretty irresponsible. And so is the Bush administration with its abstinence policy. Spending billions of dollars [!!] on something they know doesn't work, wonderful. Wonderful. Idiotic.

... to not trust America, and above all, to not be a fool who believes in God.

And we pay him to do this, and if the school district -- the school district my taxes go to, as a matter of fact -- doesn't fire him, we will pay for his defense.

Update: Here's a follow-up article on the spirited debate the first article on Corbett generated.

Unhappy Thanksgiving Wishes

Happy Thanksgiving ... unless, of course, you're one of those grumpy PC types who just can't stand the fact that the Eurocentric, patriarchal American civilization kicks global butt ... folks who feel it's important to subject American children to re-education, as the Seattle school district did to mark this Thanksgiving.

A letter sent to teachers encouraged them to myth-bust Thanksgiving and helpfully provided tips like this:

Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a happy time.

Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.

Heaven forbid that white Americans should every be happy. But according to Fox, the author assumes the worst -- as we see manifested continually by the negative world view of the PC-ites:

[O]ne Seattle-area tribe says Thanksgiving is not somber on the reservation but a time to see friends and family, as it is for other Americans.

Native Americans in the Northwest celebrate the holiday with turkey and salmon, said Daryl Williams of the Tulalip Tribes. Before the period of bitter and violent relationships between natives and their culturally European counterparts, they worked together to survive, he said.

"The spirit of Thanksgiving, of people working together to help each other, is the spirit I think that needs to grow in this country, because this country has gotten very divisive," he said.

And yes, Virginia, there are ten preceding "myths" in this dose of Thanksgiving nastiness, which the Seattle school district felt compelled to share with its students. Imagine how the Christian kids felt about this one:

Myth #3: The colonists came seeking freedom of religion in a new land.

Fact: The colonists were not just innocent refugees from religious persecution. By 1620, hundreds of Native people had already been to England and back, most as captives; so the Plimoth colonists knew full well that the land they were settling on was inhabited. Nevertheless, their belief system taught them that any land that was “unimproved” was “wild” and theirs for the taking; that the people who lived there were roving heathens with no right to the land. Both the Separatists and Puritans were rigid fundamentalists who came here fully intending to take the land away from its Native inhabitants and establish a new nation, their “Holy Kingdom.” The Plimoth colonists were never concerned with “freedom of religion” for anyone but themselves.

"Rigid fundamentalists,"' as opposed to "rigid politically correct doctrinaire grumps," I guess.

Shame on me for thinking the way I do. So I'd best re-visit my salutation. Happy Unhappy Thanksgiving to you all.

A Caitlin Upton Moment

Who hasn't heard the hapless answer of Miss South Carolina, Caitlin Upton, to the question, How can it be that a survey found that 25 percent of Americans can't find the U.S. on a map? [See comments for a more accurate rendering of the question.] If you haven't, you can watch it here, or read it here:

I personally believe the U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh ...; people out there in our nation don't have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and ...; I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., err, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future ... for us.

Three thoughts:

First, pity on the poor girl. She is no doubt at least somewhat brighter than her answer would have you believe. She just choked ... big time ... nationally. For the rest of her life, she'll hear, "Are you the Caitlin Upton, the 'South Africa and, uh, the Iraq' Caitlin Upton?" She'll just have to overcome it, and overcoming it will make her a stronger, smarter person.

Second, I don't know what survey it was that found that 25 percent of us can't find the U.S. on a map, but I can tell you what the right answer to the question is, the answer Caitlin should have come up with:

I personally believe that the only way a survey could report such a finding is that it was a biased, left-leaning tool, not a truly scientific survey. I would be willing to bet my crown, which I sure hope you will place on my pretty blond head soon, that the survey was doctored by a National Education Association in order to dupe Congressmen and Congresswomen into sinking even more money into the bottomless pit of our failing public education system. Americans are smarter than that, but the NEA apparently knows members of Congress aren't.

But I wasn't on the spot like Caitlin was, so who can fault her?

And third, if you haven't ever had a "Caitlin Upton moment," it's probably because you've never had the courage to step out in front of a crowd of people and accept a spotlight.

My Caitlin moment came when I was emceeing an annual awards ceremony for our professional association -- a big deal, hundreds in attendance. The night had progressed well, and it was time for the big award.

What I meant to say was, "This is it ... hold your breath ... the winner is..."

What I said was, "This is it ... hold your breasts ...."

There was no point in even trying to get to "the winner is," because the laughter was so loud and I was so mortified. Fortunately, I don't remember then next few seconds, I just have vague sense that somehow the award was announced and a recipient -- who no doubt holds a grudge against me to this day for spoiling his or her big moment -- came up and accepted the reward.

Have you got a Caitlin moment? Want to share it?

Paying To Value The Differences In American Society

There's a Steiner cartoon in last week's Weekly Standard that I can't find on-line. It shows a professorial sort talking to a mom, dad and incoming college student. The professor's dialog balloon:

At Yale we regard the dormitory experience as essential. It teaches students how to get along in an amoral and dissolute society.

The reality of this hit home today when I was looking at Incredible Daughter #1's fall schedule for her Junior year at Chapman University, a great school right here in the heart of conservative OC, and there it was:

HMDV-300-01 (00274) Valuing Differences in Am Soc

Here's the email chain that followed. First, me to ID #1:

Looks good – but I really can’t believe we have to pay for you to take a course called “valuing differences in American society.” It sounds like multi-culti brainwashing; I value assimilation into the American culture more than continuing divisive differences. Put on your native clothing once a year and dance your native dances, then go back to baseball, apple pie and the red, white and blue.

She to me:

It fulfills some intercommunication pre req or something. I don’t remember right now what my other choices were, but this one had the best time, and still had seats available. ... Some of the classes I was trying to get had only 2 or 3 seats left. Beggars can’t be choosers. Besides, I have a degree in Environmental Science, you really think a multi-cultural class is going to brainwash me? I have 4 years of multi-cultural education under my belt as well.

Me to she:

“Beggers can’t be choosers.” I think you do need some multi-culti brainwashing after all. Beggars are people too, and they certainly can be choosers, just like all of us.

I've learned to wait and see; sometimes things aren't as bad as you think they'll be. Perhaps a part of this course will be careful analysis of the benefits of fitting in vs. the liabilities of refusing to do so. But I expect I'll be disappointed on that count.

Perhaps We Should Dunk The Administrators In The Toilet

Do not, not ever, trust the education of our children to those who run our schools and universities. They are, by and large, incapable of standing up for what's right and difficult, opting always for what's wrong and easy.

Case in point: Two Qurans were found stuffed in toilets at Pace University in NY recently. A suspect has been charged with a hate crime (where's the ACLU; is this not free speech?), and -- here's the big rub -- school administrators have been sucker-punched by Muslim student groups and now are offering sensitivity training for students.

Students: It's OK to declare jihad against entire civilizations. It's OK to behead homosexuals and stone or whip adulterers. It's OK to wage infitada targeting innocents. It's OK to fly airplanes into buildings. It's OK to call people infidels or the devil. It's OK to burn American flags (there are 69,900 hits at Google images for "Muslim burn flag"). But it is not OK to treat a book badly.

The lesson our kids will take away from this "sensitivity training" is that we Westerners are the insensitive ones, that we are the mistake-makers, that we are the uncaring ones -- and nothing could be further from the objective truth.

I'm all for educating about religion and civilization and what one finds offensive about the other, but let's make it a balanced curriculum. Let's be sure to spend some considerable time teaching the students about Islamic hate, hate that is nicely captured in this collage:


Hat-tip: memorandum. Collage: DanzFamily

Mr. Rogers: Public Enemy Number 1?

Could the old guy in the cardigan -- come on, isn't that how you thought of him? -- really be Public Enemy #1? Or at least in the top 10?

Let me back up a week or so. Incredible Wife and I were driving somewhere when she brought up some murder case or another -- her fascination; I don't get it. I mentioned that the murderer certainly wasn't suffering for a shortage of self-esteem.

"What does high self-esteem have to do with it? I think he was probably suffering from very low self-esteem," she answered.

I went on to explain a Dennis Pragerism that I think is spot on: That the indoctrination of self-esteem has gotten out of hand, and at its worst is the murder who kills because whatever he wants is more important than the very life of the person he murders.

In today's WSJ, Jeff Zaslow says the same thing, blaming the up-and-coming generation's sense of entitlement on the guy in cardigan.

Don Chance, a finance professor at Louisiana State University, says it dawned on him last spring. The semester was ending, and as usual, students were making a pilgrimage to his office, asking for the extra points needed to lift their grades to A's.

"They felt so entitled," he recalls, "and it just hit me. We can blame Mr. Rogers."

Fred Rogers, the late TV icon, told several generations of children that they were "special" just for being whoever they were. He meant well, and he was a sterling role model in many ways. But what often got lost in his self-esteem-building patter was the idea that being special comes from working hard and having high expectations for yourself.

Now Mr. Rogers, like Dr. Spock before him, has been targeted for re-evaluation. And he's not the only one. As educators and researchers struggle to define the new parameters of parenting, circa 2007, some are revisiting the language of child ego-boosting. What are the downsides of telling kids they're special? Is it a mistake to have children call us by our first names? When we focus all conversations on our children's lives, are we denying them the insights found when adults talk about adult things?

Some are calling for a recalibration of the mind-sets and catch-phrases that have taken hold in recent decades. Among the expressions now being challenged: "You're special."

Other phrases that should be dustbin-bound: "They're just children," "Call me Cindy" (parents on a first-name basis), "Tell me about your day." Instead, parents should act like adults around kids and let the kids see what adults do, what they talk about, what's on their minds -- not an endless discussion of who's going to get them to soccer practice.

This astute professor notes that Asian students who grew up without Mr. Rogers and the culture of self-esteem see a B or a C as a grade they deserved because it was given by someone older and more knowledgeable than they. They see it as a motivator to do better, to work harder.

By contrast, American students often view lower grades as a reason to "hit you up for an A because they came to class and feel they worked hard," says Prof. Chance. He wishes more parents would offer kids this perspective: "The world owes you nothing. You have to work and compete. If you want to be special, you'll have to prove it."

Amen. But what do you think there's any chance that the liberal bastion of children's TV and children's books will do anything about it?

"Hey, kid. Welcome to my neighborhood. Hang up my jacket and get me my cardigan."

Nukes And Brats: Britain's Crumbling World

Two stories in the Observer show how England is tumbling into the abyss, its glory gone, its purpose adrift.

First, this:

A British company has been closed down after being caught in an apparent attempt to sell black-market weapons-grade uranium to Iran and Sudan, The Observer can reveal.

Anti-terrorist officers and MI6 are now investigating a wider British-based plot allegedly to supply Iran with material for use in a nuclear weapons programme. One person has already been charged with attempting to proliferate 'weapons of mass destruction'.

During the 20-month investigation, which also involved MI5 and Customs and Excise, a group of Britons was tracked as they obtained weapons-grade uranium from the black market in Russia. Investigators believe it was intended for export to Sudan and on to Iran.

Let's take care of one obvious foreign policy statement before returning to England: If Iran's intents for its nuclear program are peaceful, why is it trying to secure black market weapons grade uranium via a clandestine Russia-Sudan-Iran triangulation?

People, found primarily on the Idiot Left, continue to buy the Ahmadinejad lie despite evidence like this that reasonable people easily read as proof of Tehran's true intent.

Back to the Brits. People like those tracked by M16 exist in every culture, certainly. Germans, Americans and others have been caught in similar plans to supply weapons to those who would turn the weapons on us.

What is interesting about this case is that the article reveals no names -- the company is not named, nor are the people being investigated.

They very well could be British Muslims, and the British government and press would not see any particularly important reason to tell us that. If they are, it tells us a lot about how dangerous a place Britain has become because of its obsession with multi-culti.

They could be bred and born Brits -- fish and chips eaters with Grade B teeth -- and I would be no less surprised. Britain has celebrated its move away from absolute morality, making it a fine home for people who better themselves without concern for others.

The other story is perhaps even more interesting than the scheme to supply Iran with that critical material they need so much: Jewkilium. It shows us a bit more of how the British lion has been replaced with the British pansy, as we saw when Iran captured the British sailors a few months back.

Call to Ban Exams for Under-16s

All national exams should be abolished for children under 16 because the stress caused by over-testing is poisoning attitudes towards education, according to an influential teaching body.

In a remarkable attack on the government's policy of rolling national testing of children from the age of seven, the General Teaching Council is calling for a 'fundamental and urgent review of the testing regime'. In a report it says exams are failing to improve standards, leaving pupils demotivated and stressed and encouraging bored teenagers to drop out of school. ...

Some [teachers] are under such pressure from trying to keep schools at the top of league tables that they have gone further and fiddled results or helped children to cheat, according to Keith Bartley, chief executive of the council, the independent regulatory body set up by the government in 2000.

Yesterday, it emerged that Vanessa Rann, a 26-year-old teacher found hanged in her home, was being investigated for allegedly helping students to cheat in a GCSE exam.

Perhaps there's too much testing; perhaps some teachers and schools have lost their morals and cheated, but there are good and bad ways to respond to such a situation. This is how the lost and spineless respond.

The solution isn't to throw out testing -- testing which celebrates personal effort, competition and mental strength -- and settling for a milquetoast feel-good education experience where there is no measurement, no testing. Rather, work to make the tests more meaningful within the context of a broad educational experience.

Oh, but that would take work and require hard choices.

The solution isn't to avoid having crooked teachers by eliminating testing, it's to find the crooks and make a national shame of them, so students learn that being a crook is not the route to go. If the alternative suggested by the General Teaching Council is taken, the lesson will be that if people do immoral things, it's only because society asked too much of them.

Oh, but that would require moral judgments.

Britain has become a petri dish in the grand experiment of good vs. evil, morality vs. secular relativism and national pride vs. multi-culturalism, and the foul mold is thriving.

We Trust These People With Our Children?

As reason number infinity minus one to not subject your children to public schools, I submit this photo from the June 25, 2005 issue of Teachers United, showing LA County Unified School District teachers participating in a gay pride parade.

Note the T-shirt of the guy on the left in the back: Buck Fush.

Note the sign he [?] is carrying: Teach Respect.

Note: You can't teach respect; you can only earn it or deserve it, or neither earn nor deserve it.

hat-tip: Dennis Prager

Weekend Reading ... For A Lifetime

Recently, Hugh Hewitt introduced a segment with this:

A few days ago, I was riding around with my intern, who is an enrollee at the Torrey Honors program at Biola University, and we were talking about what he was reading and not reading. And it occurred to me that most young college students are absolutely lost. They lack a program like Torrey, they lack a teacher like David Allen White, to tell them what they ought to read, at least when they’re freshmen or sophomores. And so I conspired with David Allen White, professor extraordinaire at the United States Naval Academy, where he’s been teaching Shakespeare and other matters to the mid-shipmen for more than a quarter century, and John Mark Reynolds, professor of philosophy at Biola University, and the head of the Torrey Honors program there, to put together a reading list, and it’s the top 30 books that every one of you ought to have read, and certainly freshmen and sophomores ought to have read.

The able Dwayne prepared a transcript (audio is also available), and I dove into it to snag all the titles and all the links. So, here it is, the combined reading list of two men with voracious appetites for books, lucid comprehension of human character and history, and an enviable knowledge base.

They both disclaimed on the Bible, saying it was firmly planted at the top of both of their lists, as it is on mine. I shall be reading that one daily until they nail the coffin shut.

So take a look at the White/Reynolds list, and count the ones you've read as you go. Let's meet again on the other side.

1. Plato’s Republic

2. Homer’s Iliad

3. Dante’s Divine Comedy

4. Cervantes’ Don Quixote

5. Dickens’ David Copperfield

6. Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov

7. Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited

8. Odyssey

9. Oedipus Rex

10. Augustine’s Confessions

11. Second Treatise on Government by Locke

12. Virgil’s Aeneid

13. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

14. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

15. Charles Dickens’ Child’s History of England

16. The Birth of the Modern, Johnson

17. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States

18. Federalist Papers

19. Democracy In America

20. Wealth of Nations

21. Communist Manifesto by Marx

22. Origin of Species

23. On The Genealogy of Morals

24. Civilization And Its Discontents

25. C.S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man

26. Pensees of Pascal

27. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

28. Immortal Poems of the English Language

29. Melville’s Moby Dick

30. Essays by Montaigne

31. Canterbury Tales

32. The Prince

33. The Faeire Queene

34. Calvin’s Institutes

35. Chanson de Geste from the Song of Roland

37. Alice In Wonderland

38. Through The Looking Glass

39. King Lear

40. MacBeth

41. Henry V

42. Julius Caesar

43. As You Like It

44. Twelfth Night

45. Henry IV, Part 1

46. Winter’s Tale

47. Tempest

48. Paradise Lost

49. Boethius, the Consolation of Philosophy

50. Cicero on Friendship and on Duties

51. Hobbes’ Leviathan

52. Anna Karenina or War And Peace

53. collected poems of T.S. Eliot

54. Witness by Whittaker Chambers

55. Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor

56. Norman Mailer’s Of A Fire On The Moon

57. Walker Percy’s Lost In The Cosmos

How'd you do? Let me know! Suggestions for books you would add to the list are also welcome.

I only checked off 11 or 12 (I'm a little rusty on what Shakespeare I've read), so I'm feeling overwhelmingly under-read. I'm going to order two of my unreads as soon as I post this (The Federalist Papers and The Abolition of Man should be a good start), and encourage you to do the same ... unless of course you've read them all already.

Their lists are entirely Western, which is fine because we are still a European/American culture and there's plenty of learning for us/me to do just on the home field. A little Lao Tsu , Sun Tsu or Confucious wouldn't hurt anyone, though, and I'd be interested in reading some of the foundational thinking of Islam, given that it's pretty hard to avoid dealing with Islam nowdays.

Look at the list again and think about high school and college curricula. How lost are we? Very! Imparting meaningful knowledge no longer seems to be the goal of our education system, as thousands of graduates with degrees in Women's Studies, various ethnic studies, environmental studies and other useless degrees are hanging sheepskins on their walls without one iota of knowledge about their history, the foundations of their culture, and why our society still remains superior.

Two Schools, Two Teachings, Two Results

My friend John Gillmartin assures me this story is true; he checked it through Urban Legends and I've confirmed -- they say it's true.

In September of 2005, a social studies schoolteacher from Arkansas did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent, the principal, and the building supervisor, she took all of the desks out of the classroom. The kids came into first period, they walked in; there were no desks. They obviously looked around and said, "Where's our desks?"

The teacher said, "You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn them."

They thought, "Well, maybe it's our grades."

"No," she said.

"Maybe it's our behavior."

And she told them, "No, it's not even your behavior."

And so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the classroom. Second period, same thing. Third period. By early afternoon television news crews had gathered in the class to find out about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the classroom. The last period of the day, the instructor gathered her class.

They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of the room. She said, "Throughout the day no one has really understood how you earn the desks that sit in this classroom ordinarily. Now I'm going to tell you."

She went over to the door of her classroom and opened it, and as she did 27 U.S. veterans, wearing their uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. And they placed those school desks in rows, and then they stood along the wall. By the time they had finished placing the desks, those kids for the first time I think perhaps in their lives understood how they earned those desks.

Their teacher said, "You don't have to earn those desks. These guys did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it's up to you to sit here responsibly, to learn, to be good students and good citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that desk, and don't ever forget it."

It's particularly appropriate that John sent this today -- for two reasons.

First, I heard this morning about a New Jersey high school that wanted to train kids for a terrorist attack, and decided to use Christian, not Islamist, terrorists in their drill. Here's how the American Center for Law & Justice summarized the event:

On March 23, 2007, the Burlington County Times reported that Burlington Township High School conducted a simulated hostage drill to test the reactions of the police, faculty and school administration. Officials were quoted as saying, “We need to practice under conditions as real as possible in order to evaluate our procedures and plans so that they’re as effective as possible.”

According to the article, two officers, playing the role of the armed intruders, invaded the school and pretended to shoot several students. Although the full student body was not present for the drill, several students volunteered to act as hostages or wounded victims. The officers barricaded themselves in the school’s media center with ten student hostages. The school resource officer and the Burlington County Joint Tactical Team worked to secure the school, and faculty members simulated a school lockdown and evacuation.

While preparing for a potential hostage situation is certainly a legitimate and important activity, the school went far beyond what was necessary to fabricate an outrageous story-line for the mock attack. According to the Burlington County Times,

Investigators described [the gunmen] as members of a right-wing fundamentalist group called the “New Crusaders” who don’t believe in separation of church and state. The mock gunmen went to the school seeking justice because the daughter of one had been expelled for praying before class. (emphasis in original)

Do you suppose the Burlington Township High School's administrators would have allowed the demonstration that was allowed in the Arkansas school? Most certainly not!

Rather than teach respect for the military and an understanding of the Judeo-Christian principles of honor, sacrifice and the protection on innocents, they would have their students think the biggest threat we face is evangelical Christians. Because they are so tolerant, they are blind to the real threat, and unfortunately they are in a position to spread the blindness with an evangelic fervor that outpaces that of most Evangelicals.

Put another way, they do not feel an obligation to teach the students entrusted to them anything truthful about their nation and the threats it faces. They might as well teach their students that on Dec. 7, 1941 American warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor.

Schools are obligated to teach more than reading, writing and arithmetic. More important than any of those skillsets to the furtherance of Democracy is the teaching of cognitive skills, analysis, discernment and something that is becoming all too uncommon today: common sense. How can we expect future citizens to analyze the world and act appropriately, to have the courage to defend what others have fought for, if we allow students today to see an ongoing onslaught of news about Islamist acts of terror around the planet, then ask them to accept Christian terrorists for their drill?

It's cognitive dissonance, and it destroys learning.

The other reason John's post is timely is that it's impossible to read what the Arkansas social studies teacher said of the soldiers ...

These guys did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it's up to you to sit here responsibly, to learn, to be good students and good citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that desk, and don't ever forget it.

... without thinking of Christ on the cross. Sure, there are differences of a cosmic scale between His sacrifice and theirs, but there are also similarities so close and profound that one can only stand in mute awe of our troops. God bless and protect them!

Two school districts, two teachings, two results. Which one would you rather have your children attend? And if you lived in Burlington Township, how terribly frustrated would you be knowing your tax dollars are supporting a school that does so very much worse than merely teach poorly?

Kids, Courts, Government And Free Speech

I've always found it interesting that current news often creates a diarama in the foreground of older news that is just reaching the courts. As Tinker v. DesMoines, the landmark decision on the extent of freedom of speech in high school, comes up for a challenge before the Supreme Court, the world marches on, presenting us with examples that underscore the importance of the case.

Tinker grew out of the Vietnam era, when a couple high schoolers were suspended for wearing anti-war T-shirts. It's been a tough issue for the courts ever since, with the basic rule now being along the line of, "As long as they don't interrupt the school's purpose of education, anything goes."

As high school freedom of speech and Tinker come before the Court for a new review, from different sides of the world two very different stories frame Tinker with new urgency and clarity. First, from New Hampshire:

HAMPTON, N.H. (AP) - Some parents are protesting the "sex" edition of the student newspaper at Winnacunnet High School. Several said they were especially offended by a photograph of two women kissing under the headline, "Why men love women who love women," a quiz question about anal sex, and an interview with an unnamed custodian who said he had found a vibrator in the girls' shower.

"Those articles offended me personally as a parent," said Venus Merrill, a school board member. "It's not something you want to read with your 10-year-old and it's not something that should be going home."

Principal Randy Zito said the Winnachronicle had crossed the line of responsible reporting and that he had dealt with the problem privately. He also said he had pulled copies of the paper that normally would have been sent to middle schools in the cooperative school district.

The newspaper's faculty adviser defended the editors' decisions and said the February edition of the paper was intended to inform students, not shock people—although they knew it would stir controversy.

"The kids wrote the articles and came up with the topic," said adviser Carol Downer. "They didn't go out to cause controversy, but the Winnachronicle is also not a P.R. piece for the high school. This is a place for students to express their view and talk about the issues that are troubling the student body."

The newspaper is not reviewed in advance of publication by administrators. The school board has not discussed the controversy in a public meeting, but parent Paula Wood, of Seabrook, said she wants it on the agenda for the next one.

Under Tinker, parent Venus Merrill may not have much to say about the newspaper. If the girls in the photo were students at the school, that could disrupt education and be grounds for stopping publication. Anal sex? That's probably not something Tinker would meddle with.

Abe Fortas, who famously said in the Tinker decision that freedom of speech doesn't end at the schoolhouse door, probably didn't anticipate school newspapers writing about anal sex and vibrators; we just don't know how he would have differentiated political protest from sexual messages.

Meanwhile in Europe, there's a flare-up between the EU and Poland:

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The European Parliament is poised to investigate the legality of draft restrictions against discussion of homosexuality in Polish schools, if a bill is formally proposed. But a leading NGO has already expressed concern over civil liberties in Poland.

Warsaw is planning to ban discussions on homosexuality in schools and educational institutions across the deeply orthodox Roman Catholic country, with teachers set to be fired, fined or imprisoned if they violate the rules. Openly gay teachers would also be in line to lose their jobs.

The European Parliament's committee on civil liberties discussed the Polish ideas on Tuesday (20 March) and decided to launch a study into the compatibility of such legislation with EU rules, if the bill is ever officially submitted to the Polish lower house.

"The disturbing proposals to outlaw discussion of homosexuality raise serious concerns about the commitment to fundamental rights in Poland," said Dutch green MEP Kathalijne Buitenweg in a statement after the meeting.

"It is shocking that the government of a modern European country would even consider such draconian legislation. The promotion of gay hatred is the antithesis of EU anti-discrimination rules and the Polish government must publicly reject this approach," she added.

Odd, isn't it, that disallowing the teaching of homosexuality is seen as "the promotion of gay hatred?" Be that as it may, this case frames a counter-extreme to cases like that unfolding in New Hampshire.

To look at Poland's proposed restrictions under a Tinker lens, imagine a school newspaper running a story calling for a ban on the teaching of homosexual issues and the expulsion of gay teachers. Such an article, offensive as it may be to Lib sensitivities, would certainly be allowed.

Libs pushing for expansion of free speech through a more liberal interpretation of Tinker need to be aware that the decision would allow more conservative actions -- like challenging the imposition of the homosexual agenda in the classroom -- not just liberal messages. And while Libs like big government, they can see in Poland's proposed new law the risks that come with letting government control too much of education.

Conservatives offended by the New Hampshire newspaper (or a "bong hits for Jesus" T-shirt, as is going before the Court now) and hoping for a more narrow definition of free speech on campus should pause as they consider the EU's heavy-handed meddling in Poland's affairs, which is very parallel to states rights issues here in America. Do we want federal law dictating what can or cannot be said in our schools, or should that be left to local school boards?

Me? I prefer that schools be places of learning. Part of that learning experience is to give the students the chance to debate hot issues, and part of it is the opportunity to see adults acting intelligently. That means principals have to actually think, be role models and take actions.

Sometimes, letting free speech rule makes sense and spawns debate and learning. Sometimes defining the limits of free speech and prohibiting certain actions makes sense and spawns debate and learning. If the standing policy is "anything goes all the time," students will not learn anything useful, just as will be the case if the policy is "anything controversial must be avoided."

Of course, my idea requires bold principals who are not afraid to act. Don't laugh; it's not impossible. It is what we should ask of those to whom we entrust our children's education, and failure to model effective moral clarity should be grounds for dismissal.

Hat-tips: Breitbart and Brussels Journal

Black Forget Our History Month

Emmett Till, the Chicago teenager who, when visiting in Mississippi, allegedly whistled at a white woman and was subsequently killed by angry whites, is apparently not someone enlighted black teachers want upwardly mobile young blacks to learn about.

Nevermind that his death is widely regarded as one of the sparks that lit the fire of the civil rights movement, making their upward mobility more possible. Nevermind that he's part of black American history, whether we like it or not.

At a charter school in LA, two teachers were fired after they planned to have their 7th grade students recite a poem about Till during a Black Hisory Month assembly, then participated in protesting the school administration's action when the administration forbade the reading of the poem.

The administration gave three reasons. First, and believe it or not, the more plausible of the two reasons, the poem was deemed unsuitable for young school audiences, says the LA Times. Granted, there's plenty of stuff in Till's story that you wouldn't want a kindergartener to hear:

Till's mother had an open casket funeral to let everyone see how her son had been brutally killed. He had been shot and beaten; he was then thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan tied to his neck with barbed wire to work as a weight. His body remained in the river for three days until it was discovered and retrieved by two fishermen. (source)

The LAT did not share the poem with its readers, so we don't know how rough it was. Certainly, there would have been room for the administration and the teachers to work out a reading that would have pleased both.

Second, believe it or not, the administration nixed the poem because Emmett whistled at a girl, an act the female principal of the school regards as sexual harrassment.

What is she doing leading a charter school if she can't apply historical context to events? A whistle in the 50s is not the same thing as a whistle in the 00s. And besides, would she justify Till's death because he whistled? Is sexual harassment now a capital offense?

The third reason is the most interesting of the three:

School officials refused to discuss the particulars of the teachers' firings but said the issue highlights the difficulty of providing positive images for students who are often bombarded by negative cultural stereotypes.

"Our whole goal is how do we get these kids to not look at all of the bad things that could happen to them and instead focus on the process of how do we become the next surgeon or the next politician," said Celerity co-founder and Executive Director Vielka McFarlane. "We don't want to focus on how the history of the country has been checkered but on how do we dress for success, walk proud and celebrate all the accomplishments we've made."

I wonder if McFarlane has ever heard anything about running the risk of re-living history if you don't know history. Even though the school's position is a refreshing turn away from the victimization that seems to be the dominant curricula at many black schools, it is very frightening to think of history not being taught merely because it's painful.

Emmett Till's death, the civil rights movement and more than 40 years of laws and court decisions have transformed McFarlane's "bad things that could happen to them" into "bad things that are very, very unlikely to ever happen to them." In that light, Till's death could be a positive lesson about how far America has come in so short a time.

The matter raises a final question: Who's poems do the children at Celerity get to hear? Is Angela Davis a positive role model they'd be introduced to? Maxine Waters?

I'd rather they learn about the black boy who whistled at the white woman.