Free Republic

A new plan approved by the California Legislature could be used to ban the words "dad" or "mom" in all public schools as being discriminatory against "partner 1"' and "partner 2" in same-sex relationships, according to critics. The legislation, in fact, seeks to impose a "radical homosexual indoctrination" on the young children in the state, according to Karen England, the executive director of Capitol Resource Family Impact, a new affiliate of Capitol Resource Institute. The plan, SB777, has passed the state Assembly on a 43-23 vote and it now moves forward to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who previously vetoed another similar...

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...

Students at New York City's Beacon School are getting a real education this week: The law is for chumps. Teacher Nat Turner and about a dozen of his Beacon students traveled to Cuba this month to check out life in a workers' paradise - in contravention of a Department of Education directive and in violation of federal law. Beacon - a so-called alternative public high school that caters to the bright and the privileged - dotes on teachers like Turner, who festoons his classroom walls with Che posters as he pines in public for a revolution that will never come....

Maryland Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick yesterday denied a request from three citizen groups to halt field tests of new sex-education lessons about sexual orientation in six Montgomery County schools and said she was convinced of "the value of going forward" with the pilot program. With Grasmick's endorsement, there is nothing to stop the field tests from proceeding. Opponents of the new curriculum, approved in January by the county Board of Education, say they look forward to the decision of the Maryland State Board of Education on whether the curriculum should be overturned. [...] That the field tests are happening --...

The nature of God will no longer be part of an atheist teacher's American literature class at Lake Stevens High School.

Artifact: A Chilling Tale of Global Warming Katherine Mangu-Ward | February 2007 Print Edition The United Nations has ventured into children’s publishing with a scary story about a small boy who loses a dogsled race because of global warming. In November the odd little picture book cum policy brief, Tore and the Town on Thin Ice, made the rounds at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Kenya.The night after he loses the race by falling through a weak place in the ice, Tore has a dream in which he sees the Inuit goddess Sedna, who warns him that “rich...

As a new School of Ed student hoping to become an English teacher, I'm perfectly used to left-wing academic claptrap. I've already suffered through four years of it as an liberal-arts literature-major undergraduate. Deconstructionism and Derrida ruled the day. But now I'm with the School of Education folks and it's a rather different strain of pseudo-Marxist hogwash. The problem is this: with the Literary Liberals, it was just a zoo of academic dimwits up in the ivory tower babbling to each other. These Education Liberals are the ones teaching the people who will be teaching the children of America; they...

Children will be taught race relations and multiculturalism with every subject they study -from Spanish to science - under controversial changes to the school curriculum announced by the Government. In music and art, they could have to learn Indian and Chinese songs and instruments, and West African drumming. In maths and science, key Muslim contributions such algebra and the number zero will be emphasised to counter Islamophobia. And in English, pupils will study literature on the experiences of migration - such as Zadie Smith's novel White Teeth, or Brick Lane, by Monica Ali. One critic accused Education Secretary Alan Johnson...

FEDERAL WAY, Wash., Jan. 24 -- Frosty E. Hardiman is neither impressed nor surprised that "An Inconvenient Truth," the global-warming movie narrated by former vice president Al Gore, received an Oscar nomination this week for best documentary. "Liberal left is all over Hollywood," he grumbled a few hours after the nomination was announced. Hardiman, a parent of seven here in the southern suburbs of Seattle, has himself roiled the global-warming waters. It happened early this month when he learned that one of his daughters would be watching "An Inconvenient Truth" in her seventh-grade science class. "No you will not teach...

U.N. threatening to trump U.S. Constitution By Olivia St. John As the political cauldron heats up for the coming 2008 presidential election, few Americans seem to realize that their personal freedoms secured under the Constitution are perilously close to being trumped by the United Nations. Preposterous, you say? Not if a Democrat Senate and Democrat president ratify U.N. treaties, such as the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, aimed at dangerously weakening national sovereignty. A case in point is the European Convention on Human Rights, an offshoot of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is currently...

GENEVA - Everyone has the right to an education. That's one of the 30 articles in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted Dec. 10, 1948. And it was also something that West Street Elementary second- and third-graders learned about Friday when the Geneva Human Rights Commission presented its Human Rights 4Kidz program. The program was the GHRC's way of celebrating Human Rights Day 2006. Executive Director Karen Baer told students about the basic ideas of human rights and some of the articles in the universal declaration. She used an umbrella to explain who the declaration...

 The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) might finally be learning that bashing Israel isn’t a job for teachers. It is no secret that the teachers union did everything in its power to defeat Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his educational reforms during last year’s special election in California.  What wasn’t as widely known until this month was that UTLA has also been doing its part to bring Israel, a country many of UTLA’s radical leaders detest, to her knees.   Not until it was bombarded by complaints from concerned citizens did UTLA cancel its decision to host a meeting sponsored by the...

Conservatives, welcome back to campus, that bastion of hostility toward your faith, politics and lifestyle, where Marx is revered, common sense eschewed, and multiculturalism matters more than mathematics. Are you ready for the semester—ready to stand up for those principles, to fight for your right to express opinions that are unpopular, and ready to make a difference for the conservative movement? Brendan Steinhauser, a former executive director of the Young Conservatives of Texas at Austin, wants you to fight and win battles against liberals on your campus and in order to help you he has some advice. His advice is...

The history of the United States is a tale of constant oppression— a story of a checkered past where political leaders and economic moguls continually acted in their own self-interest… or so many left-leaning history authors would prefer modern Americans to believe. American history has been hijacked by the left wing, where the mistakes of America’s past such as slavery, disenfranchisement, and class warfare are overemphasized, while Franklin D. Roosevelt is simultaneously glorified as the savior of the twentieth century with his New Deal policies. While most textbooks of that nature may cast American history in a bad light and...

Legislation Would Dictate Gay and Lesbian Teaching Materials Written for the web by Marcey Brightwell, Reporter Conservative groups are blasting a bill that would dictate the way public school teaching materials reflect gay and lesbians. The State Assembly passed Senate Bill 1437 Monday, prohibiting classroom instruction materials that reflect "adversely" on a person's homosexuality. "We're just the latest community to come along and say, 'Look, we're now the targets, we need protection,'" said the bill's author, Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles. Kuehl said the bill is needed to help protect gay and lesbian students from discrimination and prevent hostile learning...

Dan Holden, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Stuart Middle School, burned two flags Friday as part of a lesson on freedom of speech, said Jefferson County schools spokeswoman Lauren Roberts said.

This lady tells Franklin Graham, who proves daily he is a very small man, a very small man, that he is full of shit. via the best blog on the net: http://mainstreambaptist.blogspot.com/ from: http://ethicsdaily.com/article_detail.cfm?AID=7762Franklin Graham Bashes 'Godless' Schools A Kentucky educator criticized evangelist Franklin Graham for bashing public schools in a letter promoting a program aimed at equipping youth to share their faith. Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, began a June letter promoting a new ministry called "Dare to be a Daniel" like this: "Are you saddened as you watch our country's public schools systematically...

I must confess that I had trouble following David Parker's rambling version of the events surrounding the schoolyard fight between his child and his child's friend (with whom he had a play date later that week). However, a few questions clearly remain unanswered: Why is Mr. Parker subjecting his young child to nationwide publicity through the press releases of a fringe political group? How does this help his child to have normal school relationships (or even a normal childhood)? How can he use his child to gain maximum publicity for his cause and at the same time decry the fact...

From baynews9.com: Hearing both sidesSunday, July 16, 2006For the past year, the former president of Tampa Bay Veterans for Peace, Dwight Lawton, has been trying to spread a message to Pinellas County high school students."For students, it is that they have equal access to information so that they can make decision based on understanding the pros and cons of going in the service," Lawton said.Lawton, 75, was drafted into the Navy and fought in the Korean War. He says although he had no choice in serving in the military, kids today do. He's pushing for the Pinellas County school board...

A children's school book titled Let's Go to Cuba depicts Castro's fiefdom as a combination Emerald City and Willi Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Some American parents of Cuban heritage noticed it and filed a complaint with the Miami-Dade school board, who voted to remove the book from the public school library. The ACLU claims to be scandalized and filed suit to retain the book. [...] "The Soviet Union has already created liberties far greater than exist elsewhere in the world." rhapsodized the ACLU's founder, Roger Baldwin about the Soviet Union. "Today I saw fresh, vigorous expressions of free living by workers...