Gilbert Gets Creative to Assist Schools

Some creative proposals for closing budget gaps for schools from The Podium's representative in the House of Delegates, Todd Gilbert.

And Speaking of the Steve Hunt...

...Spock on one of NLS's comment threads finally explained this "ex-gay" thing about Steve Hunt to me. Kudos to Spock for finally answering my questions on this. He stated...

Phil- As a school board member, Hunt tried to bring "ex-gays" into the public school classrooms to tell kids how not to be gay if they are.

He also tried to do this without the consent of the rest of the school board.

This busted open a pandora's box of questions about Hunt, his own sexual orientation, and his lack of respect for policy procedure and his agenda.

I'll reiterate what I said in my reply to this. I don't endorse anything of this nature (despite the fact that it puts me at odds with some Republicans). I don't think that the schools should encourage or discourage anyone from deciding on their sexual orientation. It is not the place of public schools to do so. The fact that he did so by going around the rest of his board members is just an extra foul on this matter.

I know that there are Social Conservatives that don't like that I hold this viewpoint (especially since that I am, for all intents and purposes, on the right side of the aisle...just a bit "north" of the right) but that's just how I feel. A person's sexual orientation is a part of their genetic composition, it's more than just a simple choice, IMO.

Feel free to disagree with me, I'll probably understand why you would, but I simply do not endorse what Hunt apparently did.

Elementary School Principal in McLean Bans "Tag"

Good lord, this is what liberalism does to people.

Tag is the latest activity either banned or quietly dismissed in Fairfax County Schools. No more dodgeball, touch football, and now tag.

Why tag? Because a couple of kids were "tagging aggressively". Then you know what you do...YOU PUNISH THE OFFENDERS, NOT ALL OF THE KIDS. Next thing you know, all kids will spend their recess periods staring at the monkey bars for 15 minutes, then it'll be time to go inside and continue their indoctrination by taxpayer-funded public schools.

I love the comments that were left by readers in the Washington Post article online...a lot of angry readers. Glad to see common sense reigns supreme somewhere in the midst of all of this.

When it comes to calling people both senseless and spineless, I just want to go up to this principal and say "tag, you're it!"

The Abstinence Uproar

(cross-posted at Daily Whackjob)

Governor Tim Kaine cut federal funding that was provided to schools that promoted abstinence-only sexual education. Conservatives (of the social variety) have been spewing various amounts of outrage. Many state this is promoting immoral behavior, encouraging promiscuity, and so forth.

However, let's be realistic here. Teenagers have been trying to find ways and reasons to have sex since the beginning of recorded history.

Should we have sex-ed programs that stress and promote abstinence? Of course! Anyone who says "we should encourage teens to have sex as early and as often as possible" would be nuts! That's something that the vast majority of us would agree with. However, we have to be smart about this and realize that abstinence-only hasn't exactly proven to be a big hit or a successful deterrent to teens doing...well, "it".

Parents should have the ability to opt their children out of sex-ed classes, and most people also agree with that.

I also believe we teach sex-ed at too young of an age. I remember being in the 3rd grade, all of 9 years old, doing diagrams of the different parts of a penis and a vagina. Even though I do believe that kids these days "grow up faster" and learn more at an earlier age than previous generations...there is no need to augment the rapid decrease in time that a child has to simply be a child. I'd say that 5th grade (normally 10-11 years old) is a good time to start with sex-ed, but go with the basics (anatomical differences, etc...)

Anything earlier than that is the responsibility of the parents to decide if their kids are mature enough to handle the subject matter at hand.

Let's be fair about this, as well...promote abstinence from the start. However, starting in late middle-school and high school, lay it out there that if you choose not to abstain from pre-marital sex, one should use protection. Teach the mechanics, talk about the risks of unsafe sex, especially with multiple partners. Talk about STD's, et cetera...pretty much common-sense stuff.

On the issue of homosexuality, I believe that children should be taught what it is and that it exists...but no moral "Yes, it's OK" or "No, it's wrong" stamp should be placed on it. There's too much gray area in terms of how people feel about homosexual relationships that to have the public schools approve or disapprove of it, that would be wrong and exclusive.

The point of my idea is that you wait until the kids are mature enough to handle the subject matter before the schools get involved. Also, I believe that this idea of mine allows for a fairly universal form of objective morality (promote abstinence or at least "waiting" until you're older, teaching safe sex habits...the things we all generally agree on). At the same time, it reduces the effect the curriculum has on the more subjective aspects of people's morals. (whether or not being gay/lesbian is OK, whether or not abstinence is the only way, etc...)

Obviously, I'm not an expert on this subject. I'm just simply attempting to apply common sense to an issue that people take so many different sides on.

Thoughts?

Obama's "Pizza" Metaphor

Courtesy of Extreme Mortman...

Barack Obama made this statement to a 5 year old, I guess to make socialism seem more appealing to youngsters.

“We’ve got to make sure that people who have more money help the people who have less money,” Obama said. “If you had a whole pizza, and your friend had no pizza, would you give him a slice?”

While Mortman and a few others make some jokes about Obama promoting subsidized childhood obesity (which is really funny), I have my own response to this line of thinking.

Much like teaching a man to fish, you'd be better off teaching your friend how to make a pizza. In the end, though, I would give my friend a slice...but I would do it out of the goodness out of my heart, not because the federal government mandates that I do so. They already take enough slices of pizza from my hard-earned pie.

Some Things Cannot be Forced

Though some people (especially many liberals) believe differently.

Example 1: The Immigration Bill, and the attempts to railroad it through by Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and George W. Bush. The American public thought it was flawed. Over half of the Senate thought it was flawed, and a growing number of those in the House thought it was flawed.

It failed, it's done and over with, and maybe now we can get to creating a more sensible, secure series of reforms on immigration.

Example 2: You can't force integration when it's not sensible. The Supreme Court's ruling on the "racial integration" plans in Louisville and Seattle was the right ruling. It's a waste of money to bus kids all over the place just to simply meet certain "race quotas". It is a waste of taxpayer dollars, and is not a sensible plan.

How about this...why not bus kids to the school closest to their residential area. The exceptions being due to students who are expelled from one school and are forced to go to another, private/religious schools (who should have their own bus system if possible), and students attending magnet/TAG schools...which are few and far between compared to regular schools.

Attorney Teddy Gordon, who argued against the Louisville school district's policy, said it best...

"Clearly, we need better race-neutral alternatives. Instead of spending zillions of dollars around the country to place a black child next to a white child, let's reduce class size. All the schools are equal. We will no longer accept that an African-American majority within a school is unacceptable."

Exactly, in this day and age...we need to start finding race-neutral policies, and put everyone on equal ground. That is the goal of racial equality, isn't it?

When Educators Exercise Power...

...ridiculousness tends to occur.

Kilmer Middle School in Vienna has banned all forms of "touching". Not inappropriate touching. Not physical violence. All forms of touching. No high-fives, hugs, hand-holding, or handshakes. Nothing.

Why? It's all in the name of "prevention" according to school officials. Apparently, high-fives/handshakes = gang signs, and signs of affection and puppy love aren't welcome by the girls of the school.

Well, that's how the school's administrators feel, at least.

It's obvious you want to prohibit inappropriate conduct and contact like fighting and groping. However, can we be serious and sensible about this? I'm glad to see the parents are fighting for a change.

Ward Churchill, Your 15 Minutes Are Up

Ward Churchill, extreme leftist extraordinaire and professor at the University of Colorado is on the verge of being fired. Now, Churchill and his extremist apologists act like this is an attempt to abridge his free speech. Let's remember, Churchill is the person who called the victims of 9/11 "little Eichmanns".

However, the president of the university is requesting that the Board of Regents fire Churchill. His reasons are due to "serious research misconduct". In fact, Churchill has blatantly plagiarized the work of others, intentionally falsified research, and had ghost-written articles that he had used as supporting opinions of his viewpoints.

Thankfully, many on the web are noting the clear and present facts about Churchill's impending fate.

And Rightly So! puts it well, stating that this whole issue wasn't and isn't about free speech. It's about a really shoddy professor who couldn't find research to back up his extremist statements...so he made it up.

Mad Hatter at Daily Whackjob states an obvious, but probably overlooked, truth about Churchill's 1st Amendment rights..."The first amendment guarantees that the GOVERNMENT will not restrict your speech. You restrict your own speech when you are employed, putting yourself under the control of your employer."

Personally, I think it's time for the Fake Native American himself to bow out gracefully, and take his act to the hippie communes outside of Boulder.

American Students - Not as Dumb as You're Led to Believe

h/t to Barticles for the link.

In today's Washington Post, Gerald W. Bracey provides some interesting statistics comparing American students to the rest of the world, and why we shouldn't be so worried about our children's test scores compared to those of other countries.

Click here for the article.

A Story I've been Watching

I've been following this story for a while.

It seems that the URI College Republicans, who placed a satirical advertisement in the school newspaper offering a $100.00 scholarship to a "white, heterosexual male" in protest of URI's apparent abundance of race, gender, and sexuality-based scholarships.

URI's Student Senate has taken exception to this, and has pressured the College Republicans to issue a written apology. So far, the College Republicans have refused to issue any apologies, but have been more than willing to issue a written explanation of the satirical advertisement.

The Student Senate will vote on Wednesday on whether or not to revoke the status of the College Republicans as a school-sanctioned group.

The school's president, Robert Carothers, has directed the School Senate NOT to impose any sanctions on the College Republicans, as that would violate their freedom of speech. The School Senate has decided to go forth with a vote on the matter anyway.

So, what I gather from this, is that the School Senate feels that they have the power to not only tell the College Republicans what they can't say, and what they must say...but that they have the power to override a directive by the man who runs the university.

Where's the ACLU on this one?

Weekly Podium: "No Child Encouraged to Move Ahead"

Somewhere along the course of American history, we decided that education would become the breeding ground for political correctness and socialist brainwashing.

I’m not sure exactly when it started, but I would venture to say that it started when the leftist radicals grew up after their psychedelic anti-war protesting the late ’60s and early ’70s, they decided that in order to spread their ideologies to the world and create a society more favorable to their beliefs, they had to spread into the two areas of greatest influence in modern America - media and education.

Education in America is flawed. One of the staples of George W. Bush’s presidency has been No Child Left Behind. This was not a novel concept, as many educational experts (read: “liberals in the field of education”) had long believed that many of the policies in Bush’s program were the best way to improve the education of K-12 students in America.

Virginia jumped on a similar bandwagon before Bush’s election, creating the Standards of Learning test to be administered to these same students to make sure they learned a certain amount of subject matter before they moved on to the next grade. This way, students would be prepared for the next level of education.

We also spend billions of dollars on programs to help those with learning disorders. I’m not talking about children who have problems such as mental retardation; I’m talking about students who are just not as smart as the others. There is no such thing as a dumb kid anymore. If a child underperforms in school because he’s just not that smart, or just doesn’t care, why do we have to create every excuse possible to explain why they’re not performing well?

Come to think of it, why is it that we allow children who are just a little slower than average a whole class period to get tutoring and assistance each and every day of the school year? Yet, gifted students get barely anything from the educational system.

When I was living in Pennsylvania, I was in a gifted program in that was obviously created by non-gifted educators. My gifted program consisted of two 30- or 45-minute sessions each week in which I was to leave class halfway through a particular subject! Then, on top of that, I would have to still have to learn the subject matter outside of the classroom, meaning that I actually had to teach myself what I missed, and then do the homework.

"Hey, this kid is smart! We can't have that, it will demoralize the other students! Let's punish him with more work, that'll teach him not to be intelligent!!!"

Since we can’t allow the dumb kids to feel dumb, we make the smart kids not want to be smart. Then complain that our schools are lagging behind other the schools in places like Japan and China. How hypocritical is that?

Speaking of hypocrisy, we spend taxpayer dollars on programs such as DARE, and then advise every parent with a child that is either an A student or a D student that they need Ritalin and other drugs to normalize them and bring them to the average level. Thereby making the teacher’s job easier, as they don’t have to teach to a wide variety of learning speeds.

Young gifted students are fed Ritalin because they restless due to the lack of mental stimulation provided by the teachers. However, it’s not the fault of the teachers, really. It’s the fault of such standardizing of education like the SOLs. We force the teachers to teach the kids to pass the test instead of teaching the subject matter so it can be learned. Since principals can’t be pressed to actually observe their teacher’s performance, we use the SOLs as a standard in which not to just measure the student’s success, but the teacher’s success.

Why not just eliminate grades altogether, then? The almighty SOL was designed to determine whether or not a high-school student will graduate or not.

Every child should have the opportunity to succeed, this is true. However, not every child has the same mental capacity and/or intelligence. So why do we treat all children the same although there is such a wide range of mental capabilities amongst these kids? This also contradicts the liberal ideological theory of teaching children to embrace our differences as individuals. So how’s it going to be, educators of America? Are we all the same - or are we all different?

No wonder our kids are so mixed up.

We live in a country that has the best college system in the world. People flock here from all kinds of foreign nations to study. However, we have a mediocre-at-best elementary and secondary educational system. It is the lack of focus upon the important subjects, like English and math, and too much focus on such subjects as sex ed, that we fall behind as a nation.

It is also the educational system’s overall lack of impetus to encourage the gifted and talented children to explore their own higher level of thought and intelligence that causes many of our future’s brilliant minds to accept mediocrity as success - just so the dumb kids in the corner feel better about themselves. My experience has told me that 85 percent of the time the dumb kid in the corner doesn’t care one bit about the smart kid, unless he wants the smart kid’s lunch money. He will get pushed through the system anyway, because no child can be left behind, right?

Some states have been making the attempt to educate the gifted students in a suitable way. The state of Maryland has invested a lot of money in magnet and Montessori schools that are made to enrich the minds of the gifted, and there are plenty of these schools around throughout the state, in areas both urban and rural. Where’s Virginia’s effort to push the talented and gifted? Where’s the enlightening of advanced minds?

I am the proud father of an almost 15-month old. Speaking objectively, my son is very, very intelligent. He does things kids his age just don’t do. I almost feel that, in order for my child to escape public schools with some semblance of motivation and drive, I shouldn’t tell him that he’s intelligent. I should let him just think he’s an average student and hide his gifts from him - because if he knows his gifts and potential, the current educational system will only tatter and tear his self-esteem, and destroy any drive he may have to get an education and become a better person.

And that, my friends, is the saddest thing of all.