Back to school

Editorial
web posted July 25, 2005
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is a very long read. It is in no way a reflection on our local school system, though they are cited twice to show some of the issues are local. We encourage readers to place your pointer over the links to stories contained and right-click to "open link in new window" as you continue to read.

It is that time of the year, kids and parents are ending the summer early to prepare to go back to school. The first day of school is August 8. Yes, you read that right, August 8, a full month earlier than when we parents used to go back to school. 

We are all for education, we certainly do not want a lot of uneducated people ending up running our government or being elected or appointed to positions of power. The age old desire is to make things better for your children than you had it. 

So every year we end our summers to send little Johnny or Sue back to school to receive knowledge that they can use to better society. Frankly, we’d settle for just local improvements from them in the future.

Government schools are constantly under attack. Neal Bortz, a syndicated talk radio host and published author, opines “the harsh and uncomfortable reality that these marvelous public schools to which you have entrusted your children serve more as indoctrination centers as they do places of learning.”

That is a rather harsh, but he makes a good point, “It makes sense to believe that If your child is attending a Catholic school your child would be taught that the Catholics pretty well have this religion thing down cold,” Bortz says and the same holds true for any other Christian, Jewish, or other private school, “Why, then, would you expect a school owned, operated and staffed by the government to be any different?” he says.

Alan Keyes has asked "Do we really think that a government-dominated education is going to produce citizens capable of dominating their government, as the education of a truly vigilant self-governing people requires?" 

We are not saying that holds true for Edgefield County Schools, but what starts in other educational programs filters down to our area. Edgefield Daily.com reported on the “We are Family” video that was being distributed to our local schools in early March. The video, designed to be shown to our youngest of students also came with a recommended reading list for children and adults that included such illustrated children’s books as the lesbian tome, “Heather Has Two Mommies,” which discusses artificial insemination, and “Daddy’s Roommate,” which included an illustration of two men in bed together.” 

Because of our report the video was never shown in our local schools thanks to Superintendent Sharon Keesley being alerted to the content. That is how they work, under the guise of a good thing; those opposed to the values we all share try to make their message sound “friendly”.

But it goes far beyond a simple video. The US Educational system is plagued with reports of the political left using the school system to advance what the general public opposes. 

Shrewsbury, Mass., school officials defend asking, without parent permission, survey questions about how many “sex partners” the sixth graders have had and how many times they have had “oral sex”. Nothing like spurring the interest of what “oral sex” and “sexual partners” are to the budding minds, but it is okay because the left likes to pass out condoms to the small children too. Complete with class time being directed at teaching the children how to apply them to bananas and the like.

We thought our last President said “oral sex” was not sex. It is so confusing.

Speaking of Presidents, we can not fail to mention the recent cases of teachers being fired from their job for, God forbid, a picture of the President of the United States hanging in a display of all the Presidents. Try to explain the actions as not being political posturing by administrators if you can.

"I'm requiring that you take the picture down," Shiba Pillai-Diaz says she was told by Mark Daniels, assistant principal at the Crossroads South Middle School in Monmouth Junction. The teacher refused and now faces dismissal for insubordination. 

Then there is Jillian Caruso, 26, of Suffolk, N.Y., who is suing the Massapequa Union Free School District in Long Island because the principal Joyce Becker-Seddio, who happens to be the wife of state Assemblyman Frank Seddio, a Brooklyn Democrat, ordered the same removal and fired Caruso even after she complied.

Of course, it is not just the President the left hates, it is our military too. The latest example of the looney left is Anita White Carson Middle School in Greensboro, Greene County, Georgia where principle Ulrica Corbett refused to allow a Marine Sgt fresh out of Iraq to speak to the students who wrote letters to him and his fellow marines during his tour. Corbnett’s reason for refusing to allow the marine the preplanned personal appearance to thank the children and having the marine escorted off campus?, the safety of the children. 

We certainly cannot have the men and women who are defending our freedom coming home and harming our children now can we. 

Of course, the more subversive the message the more it is respected. An eleven year old Muslim girl who writes a story and is awarded a first place prize by the tax funded Adult Multicultural Education Services is hailed and marveled at for her writing skills. What was the wonderful first prize winning story about? Killing American solders.

“The back door opens. Two American soldiers. The enemy. The destroyers, who say they are here to save us. I hate the Americans ...” she writes, “To truly show the world what it means to be Muslim, I reach under my salwaar kameez and release the catch of dynamite strapped to my chest. Two minutes. Silence. THEN!!!!!  How powerful is war?”

We are to be “tolerant” of Allah and those who want to kill us, but God and our military men and women are not allowed in our schools. The telling line, "To truly show the world what it means to be Muslim, I reach under my salwaar kameez and release the catch of dynamite strapped to my chest,” does not fit the “peaceful religion" we are told Islam is by the liberal media.

Along with politicizing the education our children receive, the constant cover up of what is wrong in our schools is also alarming. Rape, molestations, and molesters are shielded but a six year old is punished for a bag of dirt and a Strom Thurmond Valedictorian is suspended for a used shotgun shell left in his truck after a weekend hunt.

Mifflin High School in Columbus, Ohio had to deal with the sexual crimes committed by students and did it by trying to cover the incident up. That is Ohio you say. However, we deal with the issue locally as in the case of Columbia County Riverside Elementary School Principal Jeanie Hill doing pretty much the same thing. And how many Edgefield County residents know of the Merriwether Middle School student who was arrested, charged, and sentenced for molesting children as young as three, once while out on bond for another attack? "He was a little pervert," one MMS student told us on his constant harassment of students.

We never got the letter from the school advising parents on that one.

The Cobb County School System in Georgia was sued over placing a sticker in science books stating the fact evolution is a theory while teaching the “theory of evolution”.

And “higher education” gets even worse with professors like Ward Churchill who compared the victims of 9-11 to Nazis and Black Hawk College sociology teacher, Bruce LeBlanc, who was reported for using the entire two blackboards in the classroom to contain the words “F-word” and “God” respectively and displaying them to the class.

In order to prepare our children for the educational process ahead, and all the problems that are evident, educators are worried about red pens being too “scary”. "If you see a whole paper of red, it looks pretty frightening," said Sharon Carlson, a health and physical education teacher at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Northampton. Call us old fashioned, but we remember the great big F at the top was supposed to be scary. Come to think of it, that was a time when we, as children and teens, respected teachers and respectfully feared the principle and the parents (plural) too. 

With all that is wrong in local schools funded and directed by Washington DC, the color of a pen is what is important, not the cheating of administrators to cover things up so they (the school) do not get a “bad grade”.  

Everyone debates what is wrong in the schools as graduation rates and drop-out rates show failure, pregnant unwed teen mothers become prom queen; shootings, stabbings, and outright rape by teachers and students are becoming the norm. The answer from the Department of Education? They need more money to create more bureaucrats to implement more of the ideology that got us into the mess in the first place.

Here is an idea, rather than try to fix what is so completely broken, why not go back to what was working before you changed it. A wise man once said, if you tinker with something long enough you will break it. We would add that tinkering with it for fifty years after you broke it makes those responsible incapable of repairing it.