Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative is praising textbook publishers for “swapping out cupcakes for apples in math problems,” in a campaign to incorporate health information into the learning resources for kids. “Today at the White House, we celebrated a group of educational publishers on their development of voluntary guidance to incorporate health information into textbooks and other learning materials,” Let’s Move! said in a blog post entitled, “Cookies 2 Carrots,” on Wednesday. “Publishers are making simple changes, like swapping out cupcakes for apples in math problems,” the anti-obesity initiative noted. “They are also finding ways...

Eighth-graders in Wisconsin’s Union Grove school district were assigned to fill out a “Liberalism vs. Conservatism” crossword puzzle, and they learned some new and very questionable “facts.” Students learned conservatism is “the political belief of preserving traditional moral values by restricting personal freedoms … ” Conversely, they learned liberalism is “the political belief of equality and personal freedom for everyone, often changing the current system to increase government protection of civil liberties.” See the photos here. The crossword puzzle was part of a civics assignment that was forwarded to EAGnews by Tamara Varebrook, a local conservative activist whose eighth-grade daughter...

VCU Holds Second Lavender Graduation Cassie Williams Jones University Public Affairs (804) 828-7028 cwjones@vcu.edu 5/2/2013 Approximately 40 graduating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex seniors participated in the second VCU Lavender Graduation on April 26. Lavender Graduation is a special graduation ceremony that honors the achievements of graduating gender and sexual minority students on campus. Participants received a rainbow cord to wear with their academic regalia at the university’s official commencement activities on May 11. “It was such a delight to be part of the second annual Lavender Graduation planning group and to see the room full of people...

COEUR d'ALENE - Gary Brown wouldn't tell The Press anything more than he told a Fox News reporter about the genesis of a video in which North Idaho school-age children say that because of their Christian beliefs, they've endured ridicule and had their rights trampled on in public schools. The video titled "The Thaw" features kids who participate in Reach America, a Coeur d'Alene-based Christian ministry and education program run by Brown. The video has been rapidly gaining viral ground on the Internet. By Saturday afternoon, it had been viewed just shy of 84,000 times. Brown told Fox News' Todd...

SUFFOLK, Va. — Two Suffolk second graders have been suspended for making shooting noises while pointing pencils at each other. Media outlets report the 7-year-old boys were suspended for two days for a violation of the Suffolk school system’s zero-tolerance policy on weapons. They were playing with one another in class Friday at Driver Elementary. “When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,’” said Paul Marshall, one of the boys’ fathers. “It’s as simple as that.”

Outraged parents say a New York middle school instructed young female students to ask one another for a lesbian kiss – and boys learned how to spot young sluts – in an anti-bullying presentation on gender identity and sexual orientation, according to Fox News’ Todd Starnes. According to Starnes’ Report, the children attended a special April 11 health class taught by college students at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, N.Y. Parents say they were not notified of the presentation. The students were introduced to terms such as “pansexual” and “genderqueer.” Some of the young female students said they...

The Western world since Nietzsche is on a path to collectively and systematically "amoralize" culture to somehow generate a better populace... ...It has been said that all education is inescapably religious. If we take that statement to its logical conclusion, it might as well be a constitutional argument for the separation of school and state under First Amendment provisions...

Red Hook, New York – A recent anti-bullying presentation at a middle school in New York that focused on homosexuality and gender identity has angered parents after their daughters have come home to tell them they were forced to ask another girl for a kiss.According to reports, the session occurred last week at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, New York, near Poughkeepsie. A group of students from Bard College led two workshops for the youth, separated by gender.During the workshop for girls, the 13 and 14-year-olds were told to ask one another for a kiss. They were...

Washington state’s governor signed into law on Monday the final piece of a six-year effort to rewrite state laws using gender-neutral vocabulary, replacing terms such as “fisherman” and “freshman” with “fisher” and “first-year student.” Lawmakers have passed a series of bills since 2007 to root out gender bias from Washington statutes, though a 1983 state mandate required that all laws be written in gender-neutral terms unless a specification of gender was intended. “This was a much larger effort than I had envisioned. Mankind means man and woman,” said Democratic state Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles of Seattle. The bill passed the Democrat-controlled...

Parents in Red Hook, New York are outraged after a public school workshop on sexuality instructed middle school students to “ask one another for a lesbian kiss.” The workshop, led by college students from a nearby school, was officially tasked with giving an anti-bullying presentation on sexual orientations and gender identities. Parents say they were given no prior notification concerning the workshop and that the class went “way over the line.” The school’s superintendent, however, defended the workshop, telling local media the workshop, ”focused on improving culture, relationships, communication and self-perceptions. These are issues schools are obligated to address under...

Brevard Community College has fired Professor Sharon Sweet who forced her students to sign this pledge: Brevard Community College (BCC) has fired a professor after a school investigation concluded she required students to sign a pledge to vote for President Obama in the run-up to the 2012 election. The school’s spokesman John Glisch, said the Board of Trustees voted Wednesday morning to terminate mathematics professor Sharon Sweet with an overwhelming vote. “The board voted 3-1, with one member absent, to dismiss professor Sweet,” Glisch told Campus Reform Wednesday afternoon. “The termination took effect immediately, ending pay and benefits for Sweet...

The father of a Connecticut child is furious after discovering that his son’s school is teaching students that Americans don’t have a Second Amendment right to bear arms. “I am appalled,” said Steven Boibeaux, of Bristol. “It sounds to me like they are trying to indoctrinate our kids.” Boibeaux’s son is an eighth grader at Northeast Middle School. On Monday his social studies teacher gave students a worksheet titled, ‘The Second Amendment Today.’ “The courts have consistently determined that the Second Amendment does not ensure each individual the right to bear arms,” the worksheet states. “The courts have never found...

In the name of tolerance, of course. At least a dozen students, including seniors Damian Legacy and Blake Bergen, say they have left the Newman Center in the last several years because Father Greg ShafferÂ’s strong anti-gay and anti-abortion views are too polarizing. Shaffer, a Roman Catholic priest, has spent five years preaching to GWU students.The former Newman Center members are creating a video with testimony from 10 other Catholic students, who cite Shaffer as the reason they left the chapel, hoping to inflame a largely liberal campus and force University administrators to act. Legacy and Bergen also plan to...

Johns Hopkins’s And Planned Parenthood’s Troubling Extremism By George F. Will April 5 We know Johns Hopkins University is devoted to diversity, because it says so. Its “Diversity and Inclusion Statement,” a classic of the genre, says the university is “committed to sharing values of diversity and inclusion by recruiting and retaining a diverse group of students.” Hopkins has an Office of Institutional Equity and a “Diversity Leadership Council” that defines “inclusion” as “active, thoughtful and ongoing engagement with each other.” Unless you are a member of Voice for Life (VFL), an antiabortion group. Hopkins’s Student Government Association has denied...

A 15-year old student at Appleton North Highschool in Appleton, Wisconsin, is claiming that he was bullied by faculty members for being a conservative. Now, the school district has launched an investigation into Benji Backer’s accusations and are taking the claims “seriously.” Backer told Fox News that he has had to endure name-calling and harassment as well as watch other students be indoctrinated. According to Backer, the tensions began to mount when he was 12, during Governor Scott Walker’s battle with the unions and liberals’ unsuccessful re-call bid. Since then, Backer claims that teachers denigrated Walker and labeled Republicans as...

Religious liberty groups are mobilizing to defend the chaplain of George Washington University’s Newman Center after gay students launched an effort to have the priest fired because he preaches against homosexuality and abortion. “It’s discrimination against Catholics,” said Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society. “Secular colleges are fast becoming a very unsafe place for Catholics who hold true to their faith. This is a very, very sad situation.” Damian Legacy and Blake Bergen said they want the university’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion to investigate the priest and they are calling for the student government association to defund...

CINCINNATI — A Jesus portrait that has hung in a southern Ohio school district since 1947 was taken down Wednesday, because of concerns about the potential costs of a federal lawsuit against its display. The superintendent of Jackson City Schools said the decision was made after the district’s insurance company declined to cover litigation expenses. He said the faculty adviser and two student members of the Hi-Y Club, a Christian-based service club that the school says owns the portrait, took it down at his direction. “At the end of the day, we just couldn’t roll the dice with taxpayer money,”...

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger. And, as two educators have recently learned, it’s also generally good advice to avoid stomping on Jesus and the American flag in public schools. The Florida Atlantic University instructor who asked students to step on the word “Jesus” has been placed on administrative leave on the same day that the high school teacher in South Carolina who stomped on an American flag in front of his students way back in December finally resigned. The incident in South Carolina...

Liberals who demand church-state separation would pitch a fit if a public school decided to perform a play that reverently told stories of the Old Testament, whether it was the story of creation, the story of Noah, or Moses or Joseph and his brothers. But somehow, if a public school decides to put on a play mocking God and the Old Testament, that is not a church-state violation. The separation police don't want religious (or atheist) minorities to face religious indoctrination in a public school. But anti-religious indoctrination mocking the Judeo-Christian majority is a glorious festival of free speech.

As a 15 year old, I never imagined my activism in politics would translate into controversy for me at school. My name is Benji Backer and I attend a public high school in Appleton, Wisconsin. I have always supported the public school system and plan to do so for the rest of my life. Many Americans who stand up for the public school system and the unions believe there is no attempt to sway opinion or that students with opposing beliefs are singled out. Unfortunately, experiences I have had with harassment and bullying prove that wrong. This is a timeline...