Posted on 06/10/2012 7:30:05 AM PDT by Patriotic1
A New York principle has sparked fury among parents, students and teachers after banning a patriotic song from being sung at graduation.
Kindergartners at PS 90, the Edna Cohen School in Coney Island will not be allowed to sing ‘God Bless the USA’ at their moving-up ceremony because principle Greta Hawkins has decided it is inappropriate.
The lyrics, she says could ‘offend other cultures’ and are ‘too grown-up’ for five-year-olds.
Controversially, Hawkins is allowing alternatives including ‘Baby’ by Justin Bieber, with flirty lyrics such as: ‘Are we an item? Girl, quit playing.’
In past years the kids would sing the song with pride at the end of their June 20 commencement, waving tiny American flags, all dressed up for the occasion.
But Hawkins has pulled the plug on their patriotism, much to the annoyance of many parents. 'A lot of people fought to move to America to live freely, so that song should be sung with a whole lot of pride,' mom Luz Lozada told the New York Post. She recalled one of her children singing the song at last year’s celebration. 'Everybody applauded and whistled,' she said. 'They gave it a standing ovation.'
It is not the first time that Hawkins, a Jehovas Witness, has tried to stamp down on the school's patriotic rituals. A few years ago she tried to end the tradition of students reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing ‘America the Beautiful’.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
F other cultures, this is Americas. If they don’t like then go back to your sick Country. Americans are getting tired of this shit.
As usual, the advice is for 10 or more parents to arrange when they and their kids will break out into the song and take over the assembly. Best to be well-distributed among the crowd so as to ignite a mass singing. Best also to bring flags in bags and break them out when you begin singing. And, of course, film it all so all America can be inspired.
Principle?
So we can allow kids to sing a Justin Bieber song, but not God Bless the USA? Was it God Bless the USA or God Bless America? The article mentions both of those songs.
A Jehovah’s Witness principal is imposing her standards on everyone. Jehovah’s Witnesses are known to eschew patriotic feelings, in any country in the world in which they live.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are also known to be wary of the popular culture. So why she would allow a somewhat suggestive song by some teen idol, for kindergartners, is really amazing.
More journalistic excellence.
This unprincipled principal should be finding a new principal income stream, though this reporter would probably get the reporting wrong then, too, the principles of proper spelling being unknown to him/her/it.
Geez.
Cheers,
Jim
This from the NY Post article:
“The principal, a Jehovah’s Witness, does not recite the pledge because her religion forbids followers to salute any nation’s flag. Staffers gripe she doesn’t stand in respect during the school-wide ritual.
The song uproar comes amid tensions. Hawkins has been called a tyrant and bully by some staffers.”
The DOE reprimanded her in 2010 after teachers complained she called the school “racist” and declared: “I’m black. Your previous principal was white and Jewish. More of us are coming.”
Draw your own conclusions!
Fire the principal and incarcerate her in a re-education camp for life.
I have come to the conclusion that Liberals and their ilk are not unlike pedophiles, in that they are incapable of reform or cure once they reach the age of 30. Beyond that subjective age, they are irreparably damaged and must be forceably removed from the general population.
Question Authority
If the principal of our high school banned God Bless America, a bunch of us would stand up when the principal stepped up to the mic and would start singing it.
What is wrong with people that they accept this nonsense.
Parents, keeps your kids home that day. They’ll be allowed to go on to 1st grade without their Kindergarten diploma!
Strike that, re pedophiles. At no age are they redeemable. Execute them on the spot.
Hmmmmm.....now, for Liberals........
That principle needs to be replaced and should go back to cleaning up elephant dung at the Circus training camp!
Bring bullhorns.
God bless America.
Land that I love.
Stand beside her,
And guide her,
Through the night with the light from above.
From the mountains,
To the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam.
God bless America,
My home, sweet, home.
God bless America, my home, sweet HOME!
God may find Greta Hawkins inappropriate
Just don’t let any of them graduate. Wouldn’t want to offend any body who flunked kindergarten. Schools must have “equitable” outcomes after all.
Well, it’s the principal that counts, right?
Hey! Works for me!
Sing it anyway. What are they going to do, arrest you? On what charge? To hell with this PC nonsense!
I taught school in the late 60’s in a small Texas town. It used to drive me nuts because I had 3 Jehovah witness students and they would not say the pledge or even stand up. They couldn’t even celebrate any holiday or even their own birthday. Totally unAmerican!!
Sad, how far we've fallen.
I know graduating from Kindergarten is cute and all, but I just think it is silly and inflates the concept of graduation, real accomplishment, working towards a longer term goal. It is akin to the participation trophy. Kids should not have so many celebrations of themselves that it becomes “old hat” by the time they are 16 years old. Mileposts in life are significant relative to the effort and length of time and rarity. If you graduate from Kindergarten and then from Middle School, your High School graduation is just a third in a series. I guess I am cynical.
>>>Sing it anyway. What are they going to do, arrest you? On what charge? To hell with this PC nonsense!<<<
Absolutely correct. Hell, I’d even pass out flyers just before starting to sing it, assuming I could sneak them in. I’d even sing it with while displaying a middle-finger salute.
I often regret my rebellious and unfortunate past as an East Coast liberal, but it was how I was raised and I didn’t know better until I got out into the real world. (In fact, my mom was born about 80 years right near the school in the story.) However, this is one of the those moments where it is an advantage. I know exactly how the left would spin an incident like this that was to their disadvantage. Conservatives have been far, far too polite, and this is the repayment. You have to hit back fearlessly and without delay at injustice, and if this isn’t an example of injustice, nothing is.
I’d also be selling baseball caps with the words “American Pride” to be worn at the graduation. Hell, it’s New York. Should be easy enough to find someone to do that at a moment’s notice.
A nuisance complaint or lawsuit against this obviously racist principal also comes to mind.
I’m sick of the left trying to tell me what I can do and say. We’ve ceded too much ground on our liberty as it is. IMHO
Here’s another one!
:::shakes head with exasperation:::
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Well....That’s how I felt about my last graduation. I just had the school mail my certificate of graduation ( a doctorate) to my home.
Why does she get to IMPOSE her RELGIONOUS beliefs on others?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Hm?....Because it’s a government socialist-entitlement school.
Fundamentally, NO government school is religiously neutral because NO school of any kind can be. Religiously neutral is an impossible state of being in any sentient being!
Here’s a solution: Abolish all socialist-entitlement, godless, compulsory, and government owned and run schooling. Work toward complete separation of school and state.
I graduated kindergarten in ‘72, and still have the ribbon! I have no idea if we sang or what happen, but there were some cute pix.
But as another poster mentioned, they had a convocation for their HS graduation. So it is possible, but just not in this anti-religious/aggressively secularist environment!
Guess it's more important to not offend some hut dwelling aborigine in Australia than the parents of the children attending that school. Here's my guess - she doesn't care about how the aborigines feel either - it's just an expression of her contempt for traditional Americans. And she wants someone to blame it on... the unknown 'other' who would be offended.
This convocation was a bandaid on a mushy mess of godless gangrene, and a mere nod to God after 13 years of unrelenting godless indoctrination in the government establishment of the socialist-entitlement faith of atheistic secularism. Just to cooperate in the godless classroom the children must think and reason godlessly. How could it be otherwise?
1) It is impossible to have a religiously neutral education. Such a state of neutrality can not exist in the mind of a sentient being....therefore....government schools are not now, and never have been, religiously neutral.
2) Godless Secularism is not religiously neutral.
3) At the beginning of modern government schooling ( mid-1800s to early 1900s) government schooling offered up a lukewarm and generic Protestantism. It was sufficiently offensive that Catholics opened their own parochial schools and other denominations also had private schools for their children. ( What does Christ do with the lukewarm? He spits them out of His mouth.)
4) By my grandmother's day, government schooling was godlessly secular with an occasional nod to God. By the 1960’s it was utterly godless.
5) Government socialist-entitlement schooling has **always** been a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination.
6) Progressives pushed the idea of compulsory government schooling. Progressives have always controlled teacher training, certification, and curriculum development. The goal of progressives was **always** toward more and more godless secularism.
6) Finally, It is NOT possible to have a government socialist-entitlement school that does not trample the First Amendment Rights of its citizens ( children, parents, the taxpayers who are under police threat to fund this godless indoctrination) . This includes all of the rights outlined in the First Amendment: speech, press, assembly, free exercise of religion, and establishment of religion.
Solution: Begin the process of privatizing all K-12 education. What is needed is complete separation of **school** and state.
At first, Obamacare won't be that bad. The reason will be due to the values and ethics of those who were trained in the old system of private health care. It will take a generation or two for the full horror of socialist-entitlement and single payer health care to manifest itself.
Well...Modern Government compulsory education ( enacted into law in the mid1800s to early 1900s) has **always** been a socialist-entitlement and single payer system. It just didn't seem that bad due to the values of those running it. For example, my father ( born 1913) lived in the same household with his grandmother and grandfather who served in the Civil War. Even into the 1960s the teachers staffing the government socialist-entitlment schools carried with them the values and morals of the pioneers who tamed the land and immigrants who built this country.
My father retired from his job in 1978. It does seem that the moral and ethical environment within the government socialist-entitlement schools began to deteriorate when those of his generation began retiring in the 1960s and 70s.
By the way, my dad died when he was 96. He was 41% as old as our nation when he died. He lived almost half as long as our nation has been in existence.
Bookmark
Thanks for posting the lyrics.
We would have had so much fun with this situation when we were in high school. We probably would have done the song ten times back to back.
What is wrong with kids these days?
Someone will probably consider going off to some separate location to sing the song, like they do when the pray before school. Like I need someone’s permission where and when to pray, or sing a song if I want to.
It is not like they are putting epoxy in all the locks to the class rooms the night before the first day of school. That would be really bad.
I can still recall being in first garde and singing ‘’America, the beautiful’’, every morning after the pledge of allegiance. That was 46 years ago. I remember Kate Smith’s recording because of being a Philadelphia Flyers fan.
Back when I was in school, had any school administrator or teacher suggested such a thing as to ‘’ban’’ an American classic patriotic song, they’d not have been employed very long and we’d have sung, anyway.
If those parents had any gonads, they’d just stand up, en masse, and start singing and damn the ‘’consequences’’.
What will Missy Principal do? Call the cops? Make everyone stay in detention? Give ‘em all a spanking?
Bring it on!
Before there was a “Department of Education,” A Teachers Union and “tenure” and education was a local affair, teachers were picked from the local population and most likely attended the same church.
People knew the morals(or lack thereof) these teachers and were quick to rid themselves of unfit teachers.
An example:
I had a couple of harsh(my opinion at the time) teachers whom we called “the old dragons.” Nobody wanted to be in their class because they were very big on disciple and quick with the paddle.
One day my grandmother took me visiting to her friends as she often did when to my horror, Mrs Win opened the door. Little did I know my grandmother knew them all. Quiet as a church mouse I entered and discovered "the dragon" didn't breathe fire and have fangs of iron but was the nicest, kindest lady who chatted, made jokes and offered us cookies(homemade of course).
I was flabbergasted!
This couldn't be the same mean old woman in the classroom and the terror of all fifth graders..
But she and the rest of the “dragons” were kindly old grandmothers and I got to know them better in the years to follow. They were the best of their generation and took their job seriously. They weren't bottomfeeders looking for a cushy job with good 'benies" and the summers off. Like most things in life, I didn't know how good I had it until it was gone.
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