Free Republic

We know that children must feel safe and welcome in the classroom to reach their academic potential. To feel safe, welcome, and ready to learn, all children, and especially young children, must be able to discuss themselves and their families in a manner that is caring and respectful. Our tradition of creating an inclusive environment and embracing diversity is consistent with our core purposes: Commitment to academic excellence, respectful and caring relationships, and a culture of reflection, conversation, collaboration, and commitment to continuous improvement. These core purposes have been supported by our School Committee and have been the cornerstone of...

Pre-School propoganda: Why Mommy is a Democrat brings to life the core values of the Democratic party in ways that young children will easily understand and thoroughly enjoy. Using plain and non-judgmental language, along with warm and whimsical illustrations, these colorful 28-page paperbacks depict the Democratic principles of fairness, tolerance, peace, equality, and concern for the well-being of others.

The Academy Fails Again By Lori Lowenthal Marcus When professors hijack their students' efforts to suit their own political agendas, and the students' agenda is obliterated by a professor's implied directive, and a university blames the entire mess on the students, what do you have? The University of Delaware. A close examination of recent events there reveals the leadership's dismal failure to capitalize on positive, mature efforts by students, and to instead hoist them in front of the firing line. In late September some University of Delaware students chose not to participate in the official country-wide Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. Instead,...

Teacher's comments lead to complaint By: JENNIFER KABBANY - For The Californian TEMECULA -- A Temecula Valley High School student has decided to opt for an independent study program rather than finish out the semester on campus because of her teacher's derogatory comments about Christians, the girl's attorney said Friday. Attorney Bob Tyler said 17-year-old junior Brittney Cowles became very upset Thursday after her creative writing teacher allegedly called local Christian parents "crazy" and "prejudiced" for keeping their children home from school to protest a new state law that some parents contend promotes a homosexual agenda in public schools. The...

Looking for information on a North Korean interrogation technique based on 'consistency'. It started with a question like "Is America perfect?" and if one is honest and said "No" you would then be asked to state an example. From there they had a process that led to a number of captured military becoming collaborators. Many more than in World War II. It exploited a person's desire to be consistant in their beliefs and what they tell others. I'm interested in something which would provide details or examples of that process. Has anyone seen an research on the rates and differences...

We all get "those" emails from time to time-the ones making claims that are meant to be passed on. We've learned to check things on sites like snopes.com to make sure what we pass is true. When it comes to the movie The Golden Compass, whats going around is...true

-snip...Much of the controversy surrounding the program has centered on a specific Residence Life Diversity Facilitation Training document that featured definitions of a "racist" ("…The term applies to all white people…living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture of sexuality") and "non-racist" ("A non-term."). Newman said the material came from the director of the California-based World Trust Educational Services Dr. Shakti Butler. She presented the document at RA summer training as, what Newman describes, "tools" that "were by no means what we had to believe." -snip

Group shines a light on PC nonsense run amok. When the government funds education, it's always wise to be alert for the potential for a "two-tiered" curriculum. The public curriculum is easy to ascertain. Ask those in charge of any university for an official list of the subject matter being taught. A handsome catalog is often available, bragging that students have wide opportunities to take courses in engineering and the sciences, in English and foreign literature, in history and psychology and any number of other disciplines. But if your son was attending the University of Delaware in recent years, where...

We continue to get reports from the front, from University of Delaware students—and a former RA—who say that yes, the thought reform program really is this bad at the University of Delaware. These reports are in addition to the reports published earlier this week. One former RA and current student is so scared of retribution that he/she wrote us from an anonymous email address, writing: I was an RA before they started this new curriculum at the University of Delaware. When they instituted this curriculum, they had a "you better love it, or get out!" attitude. I didn't like it,...

Sacramento, Nov 2, 2007 / 11:10 am (CNA).- A Bay Area Middle School has canceled a scheduled cross-dressing or “gender-switch” day after parents complained, according to an Oct. 30 Pacific Justice Institute news release. The Sacramento-based institute is a legal organization that defends parental rights, religious freedom, and other civil liberties. Adams Middle School in Brentwood encouraged students to cross-dress – boys wearing girls clothing, girls wearing boys’ clothing – on the last day of “Spirit Week,” Friday, Nov. 2. Parents were given little notice of the event, said the Pacific Justice Institute, and only found out about it after...

The University of Delaware has suspended a program that had recently come under fire for being nothing more than an indoctrination program. The program required residence hall students to acknowledge "all whites were racist." According to Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the program has been in place four years, but since University President Patrick Harker joined the university, the program has really increased the intensity.

Teachers ordered to dress up as Muslims Last updated at 10:45am on 31st October 2007 Teachers at a primary school have been ordered to dress up as Muslims to promote multi-culturalism. The West Midlands school is belatedly celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid and told its pupils and teachers to don traditional Muslim dress for the day. All 257 pupils, most of whom are Christians, and 41 teachers - two of whom are Muslims - dressed up. Scroll down for more... Teachers were told to dress as Muslims to promote diversity at a primary school A morning assembly was held...

The University of Delaware recently made a decision to subject its students to mandatory "treatment" ('treatment' is a term used by the university) where they learn that "all whites are racist", racism by the 'people of color' is impossible, and George Washington is merely a "famous Indian fighter, large landholder and slave owner". ... Student are also forced to take actions that outwardly indicate their agreement with the university’s ideology, such as displaying specific, school-approved door decorations and taking action by advocating for a social group that is defined as "oppressed" by the University.

FIRE Press Release NEWARK, Del., October 30, 2007—The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students’ rights to freedom...

NEWARK, Del., October 30, 2007—The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The organization cited excerpts from the university's Office of Residence Life Diversity Education Training documents, including the statement: "A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. 'The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class,...

The National Park Service, a branch of the federal government, has joined the Veterans Administration in establishing anti-Christian bigotry as public policy. The NPS has censored “God” from a key display of America's Christian heritage in Washington. The reference is an engraving of "Laus Deo," which is Latin for "Praise be to God," on the east side of the 100-ounce aluminum cap atop of the Washington Monument. Since the actual inscription on the cap is unviewable atop the 555-foot stone column, the NPS created a replica which is on display in the white-colored obelisk of marble, granite and sandstone. Now...

AN AIRPORT suspended a Roman Catholic worker after a Muslim colleague protested about an image of Jesus pinned up on a staffroom wall. Gareth Langmead, 40, was stunned to be sent home from Manchester airport after putting up the image of the Sacred Heart. Bosses are said to have ordered the car parks supervisor to be escorted off the premises after the Muslim complained. Mr Langmead was only reinstated three days later after an investigation found that his action was not intended to be “malicious or provocative”. The row comes a year after BA check-in worker Nadia Eweida was suspended...

Psychiatric Association Releases Final Report on "Lee Bollinger's Disease" By William S. Smith : 03 Oct 2007 (SATIRENEWSSERVICE) The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) today issued its long-awaited, massive study on Intelligentsia Derangement Disorder (IDD). Known popularly as Lee Bollinger's Disease, IDD is characterized by profound disruption in cognition involving the most fundamental human attributes: language, thought, perception and desire for self preservation. The disease has been found in epidemic proportions on university campuses. The WPA study, which included extensive case histories of every single academic in the United States and Western Europe, reports that 99.99999% of all, non-economist social science...

Theologian Says Bible Does Not Condemn Gays An evangelical theologian is visiting several churches this fall refuting the common Christian interpretation of the Bible that Jesus and Scripture opposes homosexuality. Sat, Oct. 06, 2007 Posted: 09:44:38 AM EST An evangelical theologian is visiting several churches this fall refuting the common Christian interpretation of the Bible that Jesus and Scripture opposes homosexuality. Jack Rogers, professor of Theology Emeritus at San Francisco Theological Seminary, is trying to get a positive word out in the Christian churches about the gay and lesbian community and thinks churches should be leading the charge for their...

Supreme Court rebuffs case of teacher fired for comments Tamara Lytle Washington Correspondent October 3, 2007 WASHINGTON Kissimmee Middle School teacher Deborah Mayer's long, lonely and expensive legal fight over a war-related classroom comment ended with two words. "Cert denied," her attorney e-mailed her, which is legalese for the U.S. Supreme Court dismissing her appeal without hearing it. Mayer was fired in Bloomington, Ind., in 2003 after a classroom current-events discussion about peace protesters during which she said "I honk for peace." Mayer claimed her dismissal was an abridgment of her First Amendment right to free speech and a dangerous...

Indianapolis airport officials have announced plans to add footbaths for Muslims who wish to wash before their five-times-daily prayer rituals, and that's just too much for one pastor, who has called for residents to organize and protest such an establishment of religion. The issue has been appearing in more and more airports and other public facilities in recent weeks, where Muslim immigrants are a growing segment of those who drive cabs, and spend hours waiting on arriving passengers for their fares. Several years ago, officials with Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix boasted of providing a new "customer service" by providing...

First Jell-O, now Santa OAK LAWN | School district considers banning traditions seen as offensive to Muslims September 28, 2007 BY ANGELA CAPUTO Daily Southtown So long, Halloween parade. Farewell, Santa's gift shop. The holiday traditions are facing elimination in some Oak Lawn schools this year after complaints that the activities are offensive, particularly to Muslim students. Final decisions on which of the festivities will be axed will fall to the principals at each of Ridgeland School District 122's five schools, Supt. Tom Smyth said. Parents expect that the announcement is going to add to the tension that has been...

"Reclaim Your Rights as a Liberal Educator." That's the title of a short essay in this month's Academe, organ of the American Association of University Professors. The phrase has all the imagination of a slogan unfurled at countless marches, but what it lacks in wit it makes up for in fortitude of the uniquely academic kind. Author Julie Kilmer, women's studies and religion professor at Olivet College, sounds the standard "they're-out-to-get-us" call and rallies her brethren to take back the classroom. We have, too, a vicious aggressor: conservative student groups that confront professors of perceived liberal bias, and they form...

(CNSNews.com) - "Islamophobia" and the defamation of Islam are the most conspicuous forms of racism and intolerance today, and a global U.N. conference on racism planned for 2009 should come up with practical solutions to deal with them, an Islamic bloc representative told a preparatory meeting in Geneva Monday. The 2009 meeting is intended to review a U.N. conference on racism, held in Durban, South Africa, just days before 9/11, but the 56-nation Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) wants Islam to be high on the agenda. "The world since 2001 has not remained static and witnessed new forms of...

ANN ARBOR, MI – Claiming it is nothing more than a thinly disguised incubator for Islamist radicalization, the Thomas More Law Center, a national Christian public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced today that it will represent a group of citizens opposed to the September 4 opening of the publicly funded Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) by the New York City Department of Education. KGIA, which will immerse its students in Islamic culture, has three fundamentalist Islamist imams on its Board of Advisors, as well as other promoters with connections to militant Islamic organizations. “This proposed public...

Boy shown beheading Pakistani soldier in video (AFP) 27 August 2007 DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan - Pro-Taleban militants have released a video of an apparently teenage boy beheading one of 16 Pakistani soldiers kidnapped in a restive tribal area bordering Afghanistan. The gruesome recording, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, will likely put further pressure on embattled US ally President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on Islamist violence in the frontier region. The 35-minute video entitled ‘Revenge’ first shows the 16 soldiers, all of them in uniform, who were taken hostage on August 9 in the South Waziristan...

Hamas TV airs `Lion King' cartoon hero By SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press Writer Fri Aug 24, 4:37 PM ET JERUSALEM - After killing off its Mickey Mouse-lookalike, Hamas has turned to another Disneyesque character — televising a cartoon with a "Lion King" wannabe to portray the Islamic group's victory in the Gaza Strip over the Fatah movement. The cartoon depicts Fatah members as sneaky rats, brandishing guns and being showered with U.S. dollars, while Hamas is portrayed as a confident, calm lion that resembles Simba in the 1994 Walt Disney Co. movie "The Lion King." The five-minute video, titled...

Abraham Lincoln once famously observed, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next." The truth of Lincoln's observation is, no doubt, at the core of the apprehensions that New Yorkers have expressed about the Khalil Gibran International Academy scheduled to open next month in Brooklyn. Adding to their apprehensions is the fact that KGIA is just three blocks from a mosque which has a history of employing radical imams and which was frequented by one of the terrorists implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It takes a lot to...

ROCKVILLE, MD, August 16, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Barring a court overruling within the next few weeks, the Montgomery County School Board is scheduled to go ahead this fall and teach middle and high school students that various forms of sexual deviance are normal, the New York Times Reports.Parents & Friends of Gays & Ex-Gays (PFOX), Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum (CRC) and other pro-family groups have been battling the highly controversial material for years. Parents won a victory in 2004 when the courts granted a delay on the issue. After the Maryland State Board of Education (MSBE) approved the curriculum...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Saraa Barhoum picked at the buttons on her pink bellbottom jeans as she twisted on a chair inside the bustling new Hamas television headquarters. The afternoon light bounced off the sparkly outlines of butterflies on her frilly top, and a colorful hijab framed her 11-year-old face. Saraa wants to be a doctor. If she can't, the young star of Hamas television's best-known children's show said, she'd be proud to become a martyr. Saraa says little Jewish girls should be forced from their homes in Israel so that Palestinians can return to their land. With the...

Any number of examples can be found these days to illustrate the poor or destructive education received by our children in the United States today. All across the country our children are being slighted by Teacher's Unions and organizations who don't wish to teach but wish to indoctrinate our children with their brand of political activism. From the whitewashing and PCing of our history textbooks to the failed "new" concepts in teaching being so regrettably foisted upon our little ones as an "education," the examples are legion and can be found with ease. That activism is almost universally in the...

Public School Socialism by Ed Snyder July 30th, 2007 One of the initial goals that I had when I started this blog was to spur debate within the notes or the discussion board. Although there hasn’t been much participation in the discussion board, my article 5 Reasons Why You Should Homeschool, has led to considerable discussion and emails. Almost all of these responses have been encouraging with people agreeing with at least some of my points. One notable point of dissent from contributor Obsteve was left on the discussion board and later copied unedited to the blog here. Some of...

BEIJING: The Chinese intelligence services are gearing up for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, gathering information on foreigners who might mount protests and spoil China's moment in the spotlight, according to security experts and a consultant familiar with the effort. Government spy agencies and study groups are compiling lists of potentially troublesome foreign organizations, looking beyond the human rights groups long critical of Beijing, they say. These foreigners include evangelical Christians eager to end China's religious restrictions, activists wanting Beijing to use its oil-buying leverage with Sudan to end the strife in Darfur and environmental campaigners.

It had to happen. President Bush’s bungling of the war in Iraq has been the talk of the summer. On Capitol Hill, some of the more reliable Republicans are writing proposals to force Mr. Bush to change course. A showdown vote is looming in the Senate. Enter, stage right, the fear of terrorism. Yesterday, the director of national intelligence released a report with the politically helpful title of “The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland,” and Fran Townsend, the president’s homeland security adviser, held a news conference to trumpet its findings. The message, as always: Be very afraid. And don’t...

Muslim workers in Neb. allege harassment By OSKAR GARCIA, Associated Press Writer 26 minutes ago Supervisors at a meatpacking plant have fired or harassed dozens of Somali Muslim employees for trying to pray at sunset, violating civil rights laws, the workers and their advocates say. The five- to 10-minute prayer, known as the maghrib, must be done within a 45-minute window around sunset, according to Muslim rules. The workers at the Swift & Co. plant in Grand Island say they quit, were fired or were verbally and physically harassed over the issue. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has drafted a...

Bellow you will find an hour length documentary made by international law student Brooke Goldstein about a horrifying reality. The PA has raised a generation indoctrinated to Jihad and a society taught to venerate it. As always, its starts with the Palestinians and slowly but surely engulfs the rest of the world. In Afghanistan, a six year old was recruited for a suicide bombing. This has only just begun and unless we fight this war more vigorously I shudder to think how it will continue for all around the world a new time bomb is ticking. It is made up...

Two Muslim women had the right to continue wearing their head scarves when sitting for a driver's license photo, the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles said. Clerks at separate bureau offices in southwest Ohio were wrong to insist that the women remove the scarves, also known as hijabs, which are expressions of faith and modesty, said Tom Hunter, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, which oversees the motor vehicles bureau. The bureau's offices in Loveland and Mason retook the photos for free. “It was just a misunderstanding on the part of BMV employees as to what the policy was,”...

President Bush got a lesson from a group of recent high school graduates. They were Presidential Scholars, a program designed "to recognize and provide leadership development experiences for some of America's most outstanding graduating high school seniors." The 141 Presidential Scholars were being honored at the White House. One of them, Mari Oye, from Wellesley, Mass., describes what happened: "The president walked in and gave us a short speech, saying that as we went on into our careers, it was important to treat others as we would like to be treated. And he told us that we would have to...

NEW YORK -- Summertime in the city, when activities that would have seemed strange a generation ago (a gay pride parade) take on the appearance of normality, and the normal (eating hot dogs) is taken to amusing extremes. The gay parade late last month followed passage of a same-sex marriage bill by the Democrat-dominated New York Assembly (the lower house of the state legislature). That political victory set the tone for a show of strength: The parade was like the Union Army marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington in 1865 following the Civil War's conclusion, a display of overwhelming force...

Pakistan's army says an operation to flush out militants from a mosque in Islamabad is in its final stages - 24 hours after troops stormed the complex. Several explosions were heard after dawn on Wednesday and sporadic gunfire. During heavy fighting on Tuesday, the Red Mosque's militant cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi and some 50 of his supporters were killed, the army said. Meanwhile a few days ago Top cleric captured in a burqa at besieged Pakistan mosque

They've learned about global warming from animated penguins and woolly mammoths. Are cartoons and toys turning them into stewards of the environment? Forget "Mommy, where do babies come from?" These days, kids can explain how penguins kiss and make mini-penguins. Or how the polar ice caps are melting. Or how your SUV guzzles too much gas, Mom! Saving the world is chic with the PB&J set. And for every environmental morsel taught in school, there's a TV show or movie with an elementary take on the natural world. The characters are snuggly animals or audacious kids. They're happy-go-lucky -- even...

Quick question: Who thinks there isn't enough frank sexual information forced on today's kids? Is the bar for acceptable sexual behavior still too high? You would think so when reading a recent Washington Post article titled "A More Candid Approach to Sex-Ed." As many parents know, most sex-ed classes are already candid enough, thank you very much. The last thing we need is for anyone to spice them up or further complicate what should be a pretty simple subject. But that's what schools in Montgomery County, Md., plan to do by introducing lessons on homosexuality to eight- and 10th-graders –...

A San Diego public school has become part of a national debate over religion in schools ever since a substitute teacher publicly condemned an Arabic language program that gives Muslim students time for prayer during school hours. Carver Elementary in Oak Park added Arabic to its curriculum in September when it suddenly absorbed more than 100 students from a defunct charter school that had served mostly Somali Muslims. After subbing at Carver, the teacher claimed that religious indoctrination was taking place and said that a school aide had led Muslim students in prayer. An investigation by the San Diego Unified...

Feeling down? Paying taxes might cheer you up By Joe Rojas-Burke NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE June 18, 2007 Using brain-scanning technology, researchers have found an unlikely force at play in the minds of people paying taxes: pleasure. In their experiment, taxing people for a charitable cause activated the brain's reward centers – the same areas that respond to such sources of delight as food and sex. “Paying taxes can make people feel good,” said William Harbaugh, an economist at the University of Oregon and co-author of the study. Previous research had established that voluntary giving stirs activity in the brain regions...

Remembering Communism’s Victims By Jacob Laksin FrontPageMagazine.com June 15, 2007 Washington D.C. -- Holocaust victims have one. So do the fallen of World War II and Vietnam. But what of the estimated 100 million who perished at the hands of the last century’s greatest tragedy, communist totalitarianism? Until recently, these silenced masses -- victims of Soviet gulags, Vietnamese concentration camps, Cambodia‘s killing fields, the East German, Cuban and North Korean police states -- had no fitting memorial to remind the world of their unjust, and often inhuman, fate, let alone of the ideology that abbreviated so many lives. That changed...

Homosexuals Brainwashing Our Children In Elementary Schools Extremely slick propaganda directed at the youngest of children! The videos below are from It's Elementary, a 78-minute feature film produced by homosexual activists. These are actual scenes from elementary schools in Massachusetts and New York. It's Elementary is meant to be a training video for homosexual activist teachers across the country. In addition, the film itself has been shown to schoolchildren in public schools in Massachusetts and elsewhere. This is what is actually going on in more and more elementary schools across America. Watching this will really affect you! You will not...

The premiere of a work by the leading composer Sir John Taverner in Westminster Cathedral next week has provoked discord because it glorifies the Muslim deity Allah. Traditionalist Roman Catholics are planning to converge on the cathedral on Tuesday evening to protest over the work, which includes the singing of the 99 names of Allah. A number have written to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, expressing concern that the Church will be seen to be endorsing the Islamic idea of God. advertisementBut having failed to halt the concert, dozens are now...

Government tinkering has torn the content out of the school curriculum in state schools and replaced it with politically correct dogma, a damning report by an influential think-tank warns today. Civitas claims issues and knowledge vital to education have been junked in favour of trendy subjects and fashionable causes. No major subject area has escaped the battery of political interference which has left the system bruised and corrupted, the study claims. The report, called 'The Corruption of the Curriculum', says an educational apartheid is opening up between state and private school pupils, who have not yielded to fad subjects. It...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After years of being taunted as "bin Laden" and "terrorist" at school, Osama Al-Najjar attempted suicide last July at the age of 15. Now 16, he is an extreme example of the difficulties facing some Arabs in New York, the city hit hardest by the attacks of September 11, 2001. "They destroyed everything nice in our life with what they did to him," said Suad Abuhasna, Osama's mother, referring to racist abuse she said was heaped on her son while he was a student at Tottenville High School in Staten Island. Osama is now officially known...