Posted on 12/24/2010 5:44:58 AM PST by Kaslin
The metaphor "the War on Christmas" can be mocked -- as if Santa and his reindeer are dodging anti-aircraft fire. But many of our public schools have church-and-state sensitivity police with an alarming degree of Santaphobia. Anyone who's attended a school's "winter concert" in December with no traditional Christmas music -- not even "Frosty the Snowman" -- knows the drill. The vast Christian majority (that funds the public schools) is told that school is no place to celebrate one's religion, even in its most watered-down and secularized forms.
There are real-life stories of Scrooge-like school administrators, like the one at the appropriately named Battlefield High School in Haymarket, Va. A group of 10 boys calling themselves the Christmas Sweater Club were given detention and at least two hours of cleaning for tossing free 2-inch candy canes at students as they entered before classes started. They were "creating a disturbance." One of their mothers, Kathleen Flannery, told WUSA-TV that an administrator called her and explained, "(N)ot everyone wants Christmas cheer, that suicide rates are up over Christmas, and that they should keep their cheer to themselves, perhaps."
Of course, that level of sensitivity is not applied when it comes to slamming Christianity during the Christmas season. On Dec. 16, The Washington Post paid tribute to another suburban school in northern Virginia, McLean High School, for warming hearts during the season with "The Laramie Project." This play is a political assault, using transcripts of real-life interviews by gay activists out to blame America's religious people for the beating death of homosexual college student Matthew Shepard in 1998.
The Post championed how in the play, "there is a Baptist minister who says he hopes Shepard was thinking of his lifestyle as he was tied to the fence ... There is a young woman who grew up in the Muslim faith in Laramie and thinks the town and nation need to accept what the case has laid bare. 'We are like this,' she says."
This account actually underplayed what the character "lays bare" -- a guilt trip. In the script, she says "there are people trying to distance themselves from this crime. And we need to own this crime. Everyone needs to own it. We are like this. We ARE like this. WE are LIKE this." (Emphasis by the playwright, Moises Kaufman.)
That attack keeps coming. A Catholic priest insists the killers "must be our teachers. What did we as a society do to teach you that?" A character also reads an e-mail from a college student: "You and the straight people of Laramie and Wyoming are guilty of the beating of Matthew Shepard just as the Germans who looked the other way are guilty of the deaths of the Jews, the gypsies, and the homosexuals. You have taught your straight children to hate their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters -- until and unless you acknowledge that Matt Shepard's beating is not just a random occurrence, not just the work of a couple of random crazies, you have Matthew's blood on your hands."
This is vicious anti-Christian propaganda, plain and simple. Any teaching that homosexuality is a sin is an invitation to murder? These mudslinging culture warriors are celebrated as compassionate by administrators, while just down the road, the Christmas Sweater Club is given detention for spreading Christmas cheer.
The McLean High students putting on this play are candid. They are trying to walk people away from the Bible. "I hope that this changes some people's perspectives on gay rights and maybe opens their minds a little bit," proclaimed Lauren Stewart, 17, the student-director. "I think the way to progress on issues is to talk about them."
Another student added, "If one person comes into the theater and is on the fence about ... any discrimination and leaves questioning their beliefs, I think we've done this play justice."
Making people "have conversations" is presented as glorious. But it wouldn't be a constructive conversation if students were trying to convert people to Christianity -- only when you try to convert people away from it.
A little research shows plenty of "socially conscious" public high schools have staged this propaganda bombing, aiming to crush biblical "discrimination." But it takes a really special school administrator to let it be scheduled in the last two weeks before Christmas. It's amazing that at Battlefield High School, the accusation was that Christmas cheer invited suicides, but plays about murderous "hate crimes" that America has collectively committed by our "fear and ignorance of the Other" somehow should make our spirits bright.
Who the heck do these Christians think they are? They’re trying to force their religion down our throats, so, we
must force our atheism down THEIR throats in public places.
/sarcasm/
You are correct. It was revealed at trial. One of the guys tried the “gay rage” temporary insanity defense, but eventually he switched to “We were robbing him and it got out of hand.” But we don’t have to believe the scumbags...their girlfriends turned states evidence and testified that the murderers had planned in advance to rob “a gay kid in town” because he was “from a rich family” and the plan was to take his money and keys and then go clean out his house.
“I thought it was revealed several years ago that the Matthew Shepard killing was not “gay bashing,” but a botched robbery attempt that turned into murder?”
You’re correct, but it was “an inconvenient truth”. He is a fabricated martyr for the cause.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, parents and students who are upset by this should walk away from schools that diminish their faith and tell the administration why they are doing so. Who would willingly send their kids to a school that mocks their children’s beliefs?”
People who can’t afford $5K private school tuition on top of $7K public school tax annually. For many people to do that (especially here in NJ), parents would have to work so much they’d never see their children. Homeschooling is an option easily discussed for younger children, but as they grow older this becomes more impractical (unless both parents are PhDs).
“Get your children *OUT* of the government school system as soon as possible. Children are its food, and the Beast must be starved.”
Any public school district running out of “food” quickly found thousands of illegal children to fill the seats; now the American taxpayers get to foot the bill for them (and their free breakfast & lunch at school) as well. Does anyone have any stories of a public school closing for lack of children? Seriously, anyone?
Nice, but we shouldn't have to "slip in" Christian music. We shouldn't have to be "sneaky" and "clever."
I was watching an old episode of "Leave it to Beaver," where the Beave was in his grammar school's Christmas play. There it was, on a network television program, a depiction of public school kids playing shepherds and Mary and Joseph, etc., and singing songs about Jesus! It struck me that that would NEVER happen today, and I realize how much things have changed just in my lifetime. And we have all just taken it. We've all meekly accepted it.
How many high school teachers in public school systems have PhDs? Heck, how many private school teachers have their PhD? Since the answer is “almost none,” how are these people managing to teach 30 kids the stuff you say my wife and I can’t teach one kid?
The very idea that it takes an advanced degree to teach or facilitate the learning of stuff you’ve already mastered in detail is just absurd, and that characterization was said to me by a high school principal friend of mine who has a masters of English and Ed and an honorary doctorate.
"Let's stay aboard the Titanic, dear. Those lifeboats leaving the ship aren't doing anything to slow the rate of sinking."
The solution is a tax writeoff for parents who use private schools. Unions will hate it, but it will help immensely.
I am shocked and appalled that this student should be so unfeeling and insensitive as to use this metaphor.
Where is the evidence that children learn anything inside an institutional school? Really? I mean this question seriously? I have asked so-called "educators" for the links to the scientific research papers that sort out **exactly** WHERE children are acquiring their knowledge. Is it at home or is it in the classroom?
This is a simple but important question and **every** educator should be able to give me the definitive answer but can't. Why? I suppose that if serious researchers were to examine the question they would find the following:
1) The only thing an institutional school does is send home a curriculum for the child and parent to follow in the **HOME**!!!
2)It is the parents and the child, himself, that are doing 99.99% of the brute work of learning in the **HOME**!
3) There is little difference between the home habits and home study efforts of academically successful homeschoolers and academically successful institutionalized children. Both are doing the same amount of work, in the same manner, in the **HOME**!
4) The only thing institutional schools do is administer tests and grade assignments. While an institutional school may have some lab facilities and offer a few whiz bang lab projects, these few worthwhile experiences are easily available to students at the local community college.
5) If where and how children acquire knowledge were seriously studied it may be found that institutional schools in reality artificially ** RETARD** the social and academic development of children.
As for my own homeschooled children, they entered community college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. Two finished B.S. degrees in mathematics by the age of 18. One had a masters in math by the age of 20. The oldest, took a different path but has been equally socially and academically successful. It does **NOT NOT NOT NOT** take parents with Ph.D. to accomplish this. Homeschoolers are doing it all over the country. What ever my husband and I lacked as parents was found in pre-college level courses at the community college.
All collectivist government indoctrination camps ( mis-named “schools”) are godless! The very minute a child steps foot into one of these collectives he begins his godless indoctrination.
It is better for a child to learn **nothing** at all than to learn to think godlessly.
Every government collectivist indoctrination camp ( mis-named “schools”) in this nation is a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination. **ALL** of them! ( The good, the bad, and the ugly.)
bookmark
If they didn’t get him on the religious angle, they’d get him that new policy that bans anything that tastes good in the public schools.
Schools today must be a sad, miserable place to be, and the people running them are for the most part absolute idiots. Ugh.
So, handing out candy canes is disruptive but other schools allowing a day of silence to support homosexuals isn't?
Don’t you want home-schooled children to be able to do the highest math possible at a high school level? The lack of our current teachers’ knowledge is just one of the problems in the current system; the fact that a math or science teacher is paid on the same scale as an English teacher is another (all necessary, but some topics simply require a lot more education/training/IQ than others).
The fact that I mastered these things decades ago doesn’t help, either. On top of that, at least one parent (both if they don’t earn enough) have to generate income (that is where the second PhD comes in). NJ isn’t a cheap place to live, either.
I’m not in the position you apparently are to pay twice to educate my children; if you’re footing the bill I’ll give it a shot...
: )
A tax deduction will not address the problem; it wouldn’t scratch the surface. To exempt $5K of my income from taxation, while I still pay $7K for my public schools AND $5K for the private one, is completely inadequate. Vouchers are the ony solution, but everyone knows public schools would be closed within one year of their use; ALL of them.
That unconscious mind is always working.
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