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Is American public education a form of
child abuse?
WELCOME TO THE CONTINUING COLLAPSE!
[COMMENT: Please believe that these are not
made-up fantasies.
E. Fox]
APRIL IS NATIONAL CHILD
ABUSE PREVENTION MONTH...
SO WHY ARE CHRISTIAN CHILDREN -- STILL IN
GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS?
April 2008
MARK STEYN ASKS THE RIGHT QUESTION!
Is American public education a
form of child abuse? A week ago, the
Washington Post’s Brigid Schulte
reported
on a student named Randy Castro who attends school in Woodbridge, Va. Last
November at recess he slapped a classmate on her bottom. The teacher took
him to the principal. School officials wrote up an incident report and then
called the police...
Randy Castro is in the First Grade. But, at the ripe old age of six, he’s
been declared a sex offender by Potomac View Elementary School. He’s guilty
of sexual harassment, and the incident report will remain on his record for
the rest of his schooldays — and maybe beyond....
Randy Castro was not apprehended until he was
six, so who knows how long his reign of sexual terror lasted? Sixteen months
ago, a school official in Texas accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment
after the boy was observed pressing his face into the breasts of a teacher’s
aide when he hugged her before boarding the school bus. Fortunately, the
school took decisive action and suspended the sick freak. By the way, is
that the first recorded use in the history of the English language of the
phrase “accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment”? Well, it won’t be the
last: In the state of Maryland last year, 16 kindergartners were suspended
for sexual harassment, as were three pre-schoolers....
So who does get a little breast and butt
action in American schools these days? Obviously not your four-year-old
gropers and six-year-old predators: The system’s doing an admirable job of
cracking down on those perverts. No, if you want to get up close and
personal with body parts you’ve got to be a “school official.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
recently heard oral arguments in the case of Savana Redding. Back in 2003,
Savana was an Eighth Grader at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona,
when the vice principal, Kerry Wilson, “acting on a tip,” discovered a
fellow student to have a handful of ibuprofen tablets in her pocket. The
other girl said she got them from Savana, who denied it. She had no tablets
in her own pockets or in her backpack.
Vice Principal Wilson, whose mind works in
interesting ways, then decided that Savana might be hiding the ibuprofen in
her cleavage or her crotch. So, without contacting the girl’s parents, he
ordered a school official to strip-search Savana. She was obliged to expose
her breasts and “her pelvic area.”
If Vice Principal Wilson were a four-year old
pre-schooler who’d been involved in a stunt like that, he’d now be a
registered sex offender for life. But fortunately he’s a “school official”
so if he decides to apply search techniques associated with international
narcotics traffic he pretty much has a free hand to do so. After all,
ibuprofen is serious stuff. As Reason’s Jacob Sullum put it, “It’s
a good thing the school took swift action, before anyone got unauthorized
relief from menstrual cramps.”...
MARK, THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION IS OBVIOUSLY
"YES"
ANTI-NAPPING 5 YEAR-OLDS KIDNAPPED
AND CUFFED BY HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS
March 10, 2008 -- The parents of two Bronx
preschoolers are suing the city, charging that their kids were tossed
out of class - and handcuffed by a school-safety officer - for refusing
to take a nap.
Lawyer Scott Agulnick said Jaden Diaz and
Christopher Brito - both then 4 and students at CS 211, The Bilingual
School - told their parents that a substitute teacher took them and
another boy to an empty classroom on Nov. 17, 2006, and left them there
alone.
CAN YOU SAY "INSTITUTIONALIZED CHILD
ABUSE?" THERE, I KNEW YOU COULD...
BEHOLD THE FRUIT OF
INSTITUTIONALIZING CHILDREN IN GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
CHICAGO (AP) At least one in
four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, or
more than 3 million teens, according to the first study of its kind in
this age group....
Among girls who admitted ever having sex,
the rate was 40 percent. While some teens define sex as only
intercourse, other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can
spread some infections.
For many, the numbers likely seem
"overwhelming because you're talking about nearly half of the sexually
experienced teens at any one time having evidence of an STD," said Dr.
Margaret Blythe, an adolescent medicine specialist at Indiana University
School of Medicine and head of the American Academy of Pediatrics'
committee on adolescence.
But the study highlights what many doctors
who treat teens see every day, Blythe said.
Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC's
division of STD prevention, said the results are the first to examine
the combined national prevalence of common sexually transmitted diseases
among adolescent girls. He said they likely reflect current prevalence
rates...
The CDC's Dr. Kevin Fenton said given that
STDs can cause infertility and cervical cancer in women, "screening,
vaccination and other prevention strategies for sexually active women
are among our highest public health priorities." ...
Four common diseases were examined -
human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer and
affected 18 percent of girls studied; chlamydia, which affected 4
percent; trichomoniasis, 2.5 percent; and herpes simplex virus, 2
percent.
Blythe said the results are
similar to previous studies examining rates of those diseases
individually.
Chlamydia and trichomoniasis can
be treated with antibiotics. The CDC recommends annual chlamydia
screening for all sexually active women under age 25. It also
recommends the three-dose HPV vaccine for girls aged 11-12
years, and catch-up shots for females aged 13 to 26...
The American Academy of Pediatrics
has similar recommendations.
Douglas said screening tests
are underused in part because many teens don't think they're
at risk, but also, some doctors mistakenly think, '"Sexually
transmitted diseases don't happen to the kinds of patients I
see."'
Blythe said some doctors also
are reluctant to discuss STDs with teen patients or offer
screening because of confidentiality concerns, knowing
parents would have to be told of the results.
The Guttmacher Institute
claims that by age 25 roughly 50% of young adults will have
contracted an STD.
SPEAKING OF THE "NEW
SEXUAL MORALITY" OUR HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS
ARE IMBUING OUR CHILDREN WITH...
Forget about passing notes in
study hall; some teens are now using their cell phones to
flirt and send nude pictures of themselves.
"I've seen everything from your basic
striptease to sexual acts being performed," said
Reynoldsburg police Detective Brian Marvin, a member of the
FBI Cyber Crime Task Force of Central Ohio. "You name it,
they will do it at their home under this perceived
anonymity."...
Candice Kelsey, a teacher from
California, said some teenage girls think they have to be
provocative to get boys' attention. As a result, they will
send photos they hope their parents never see.
"This happens a lot," said Kelsey,
author of Generation MySpace: Helping Your Teen Survive
Online Adolescence. "It crosses every racial socio-economic
group. Christian kids are doing it.
Jewish kids are doing it."....Mark Raiff, a principal at
Columbus' Olentangy Liberty High School, said they don't see
anything wrong with it," he said. "It leaves me speechless."
Any questions about why 50% of
young people are likely to end up with various loathesome
diseases?
FORTUNATELY
GOVERNMENT SCHOOL OFFICIALS ARE KEEPING THEIR EYES ON THE
IMPORTANT THINGS...
Contraband candy has led
to big trouble for an eighth-grade honors student.
Michael Sheridan was
stripped of his title as class vice president,
barred from attending an honors student dinner and
suspended for a day after buying a bag of Skittles
from a classmate.
The New Haven school
system banned candy sales in 2003 as part of a
district-wide school wellness policy, said school
spokeswoman Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo.
Shelli Sheridan,
Michael's mother, said he is a top student with
no previous disciplinary problems.
AREN'T YOU GLAD
WE ARE "INVESTING" ROUGHLY $600 BILLION A YEAR ON
INSTITUTIONALIZING CHILDREN IN GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS?
(P.S. I'm not
including revenues from the school cookie, candy, or
bake sales that are held as a result of the severe
underfunding of our highly trained education
professionals and their friends)
American students’
math achievement is “at a mediocre level”
compared with that of their peers worldwide,
according to a new report by a federal panel,
which recommended that schools focus on key
skills that prepare students to learn
algebra....
The report cited a
number of troubling international comparisons,
including a 2007 assessment finding that
15-year-olds in the United States ranked 25th
among their peers in 30 developed nations in
math literacy and problem solving.
Fractions are
especially troublesome for Americans, the report
found. It pointed to the
National
Assessment of Educational Progress,
standardized exams known as the nation’s report
card, which found that almost half the eighth
graders tested could not solve a word problem
that required dividing fractions. Panel members
said the failure to master fractions was for
American students the greatest obstacle to
learning algebra.
Just as “plastics”
was the catchword in the 1967 movie “The
Graduate,” the catchword for math teachers today
should be “fractions,” said Francis Fennell,
president of the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics.
After hearing
testimony and comments from hundreds of
organizations and individuals, and sifting
through a broad array of 16,000 research
publications, the panelists shaped their report
around recent research on how children learn.
For example, the
report found it is important for students to
master their basic math facts well enough that
their recall becomes automatic, stored in their
long-term memory, leaving room in their working
memory to take in new math processes.
“For all content
areas, practice allows students to achieve
automaticity of basic skills — the fast,
accurate and effortless processing of content
information — which frees up working memory for
more complex aspects of problem solving,” the
report said.
Suburban parents
smugly think that their schools are different
because they compare them with inner-city
schools such as those of New York, Richmond, Los
Angeles, Indianapolis, or Detroit. But, when the
Japanese, Indians, Finns, Swiss, and many others
look at your school district, they see "Detroit".
And when they look at your government
educated children, they see....
MORE EVIDENCE
THAT SODOMITES ARE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE...
Councillors in the Netherlands have
agreed to allow gay sex in the public area of an
Amsterdam park.
Gay men having sex in the city's famous
Vondelpark will be permitted as part of a set of
new rules of conduct for the country's
best-known park.
"Why should we try to impose something
that is actually impossible to impose, which
also causes little bother for others and for a
certain group actually means much pleasure?",
said Paul van Grieken, an Alderman in the
Oud-Zuid district of the city.
The park's rose garden has become a well
known spot for gay men looking for sex.
Mr van Grieken stresses that tolerance
to "cruising" gays, aimed at protecting
homosexuals from violence, will have "strict
rules attached."
"Thus, condoms must always be cleared
away, it must never take place in the
neighbourhood of children's playgrounds and the
sex must be restricted to the evening and
night-time," he told The Telegraph.
The new park rules have the blessing of
the Dutch police, who have urged all Dutch parks
to follow Amsterdam's lead.
The park, which draws hundreds of
visitors, families, skaters and joggers over the
summer will be fining those whose dogs are
allowed to run around the Vondelpark off the
leash.
Well, I'm glad
that they at least don't let dogs run off-leash
in the park. It might be embarrassing.
"THE SUBURBAN
SCHOOLS RELIEF ACT"
The Bush
administration said Tuesday it is willing to
soften its long-held stance that every failing
school, whether it fails marginally or
miserably, be treated the same.
Under a plan
unveiled by U.S. Secretary of Education
Margaret Spellings, states would be allowed
to differentiate how they label — and punish
— schools, based on the degree to which a
school fails to meet No Child Left Behind
standards...
Some educators
and policy makers praised Spellings'
proposal. But Michael Petrilli, who served
in the Education Department in Bush's first
term and now works for the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute, likened it to a "suburban schools
relief act."
"This proposal
creates a real risk that we could step back
from the pressure currently on suburban
schools to close the achievement gap and get
all students up to proficiency," said
Petrilli, vice president of the conservative
think tank.
The "tough as
nails" Bush administration compromised with The
Hero of Chappaquiddick to get No Child Left
Behind passed - an "accountability in exchange
for more money" trade-off. Now our highly
trained education professionals are
demonstrating yet again that no one can hold
them "accountable" - but they will keep the
money, thank you very much, and get more. Aren't
we lucky to have such strong conservative
leadership in Washington, D.C....
NO,
SCHWARZENNEGGER IS NOT SERIOUS - NO ONE TOUCHES
OUR HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS'
MONEY...
California's
perennial debate over how much it is and
should be spending on its
largest-in-the-nation public school system
has escalated sharply this year as the state
faces a whopping budget deficit and Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger proposes – whether
seriously or not is uncertain – to take a
big bite out of the schools' money to close
it.
The
educational establishment and its allies in
the Democratic leadership of the Legislature
are howling about the governor's proposal
that school spending be whacked by $4.8
billion from what the constitution otherwise
would require it to be through the 2008-09
fiscal year....
In the midst
of this Sturm und Drang, the Census
Bureau on Tuesday issued an extremely
detailed accounting of what states (and the
District of Columbia) are spending on their
schools. It undercuts the mantras being
chanted by both of the Capitol's warring
political factions.
Unlike other
statistical compilations about school
spending, the Census Bureau's report is
based on hard numbers, is as up-to-date as
such data can be (2005-06 fiscal year) and,
most important, includes financing from all
sources and spending on all categories,
rather than the selective figures being
batted around by others.
The Census
Bureau report strongly refutes the oft-cited
"fact" that California is near the bottom in
per-pupil school spending. The national
average was $9,138 in 2005-06. California
was at $8,486, with New York the highest at
$14,884 and Utah the lowest at $5,437 – one
of 22 states, in fact, that fell below
California's level.
In terms of
school revenues, California was 25th among
the states at $10,264 per pupil, just under
the national average.
By the way, I
wonder how California government schools
manage to scape by on roughly $250,000 per
year per classroom...
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