Posted 10:52 AM by Susan Darst Williams

MIGRANT STUDENTS CHALLENGE NORFOLK SCHOOLS

‘’Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, your English Language Learners challenging my public schools’ ability to educate. . . .’’

Of course, Emma Lazarus never ghost-wrote that last part for the Statue of Liberty, but that’s the effect of immigration, one of the hottest issues in K-12 education today.

Nebraska is reportedly second in the nation, behind South Carolina, in the growth of foreign nationals attending public schools and putting extra pressure on everything from staffing to lunchroom etiquette.

Within the state, the northeast Nebraska of Norfolk, population 24,000, is No. 1 in the growth of migrant pupils. It posted a 44 percent increase in that student population since the 2000-01 school year, according to the Nebraska Department of Education. Statewide, non-English speaking students have increased from 3,737 to 5,698 in four years, with additional school spending to match.

The influx of Hispanics to Lexington, Neb., has been going on for years, and indeed, that city has one of the largest proportional migrant school populations, with 510 children. Grand Island’s 372 and South Sioux City’s 286 are also significantly larger than in past years.

Of the 4,200 students in the Norfolk Public Schools, 25 percent are minorities, chiefly Hispanics. An unknown percentage of those are illegal aliens, a student population that is said to be inflating our nation’s school expenses by $7.4 billion a year. But neither Norfolk nor any other school district can ask about an enrollee’s citizenship status because of the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Phyler v. Doe. It said that under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, public schools can’t prohibit any children an education.

What is known, though, is that in Norfolk, 194 students are from foreign countries and have been in the U.S. fewer than three years. In Norfolk, the three main language groups are from Mexico, the Sudan, and Somalia.

According to Doug Witte, director of student services, even though the new arrivals have pushed the free and reduced lunch rate to 33 percent, a key poverty indicator, and the student mobility rate to 40 percent, ‘’our native students are not suffering a deficit in learning because of our English Language Learners.’’

However, Witte said, “It’s very high demand on our teachers.’’ No kidding.

With a philosophy of keeping each student’s home language active, yet melding them into the mainstream classroom as quickly as possible, the Norfolk program’s biggest need is to find interpreters for the Nuer language of the Sudanese children and parents, and the many tribal dialects of the Somalians.

He said Norfolk’s situation is nothing compared to the Lincoln Public Schools, with 1,041 immigrants whose families speak something like 60 different languages, or the Omaha Public Schools, with 1,823 immigrants, according to the State Ed Department.

Funding for the additional staff that the trend has required is met in part by federal tax dollars, including Title III of the No Child Left Behind act, Witte said.

Posted 1:19 PM by Susan Darst Williams

A SIMPLE DEFENSE: EQUAL TIME

I was really happy to see that the school board in Dover, Pa., voted to alter the ninth-grade biology curriculum. It made way for some honest criticism of evolutionary theory, and allowed for the introduction of the theory of intelligent design – that life is too complex to have evolved by random chance.

It’s pretty hilarious to see the American Civil Liberties Union and other proponents of smelly anti-Christian, anti-American ideas get into a tizzy over this. Remember, it was the ACLU who paid for the Scopes monkey trial in 1925, fighting to get evolution into the schools. Now that evolution is ‘’in,’’ they don’t want the kids to learn any OTHER theories.

Censorship: it never makes sense.

I hope Nebraska school boards get a clue, follow suit, and get some academic freedom into our science classrooms. I also hope the next time Nebraska’s science standards come up before the State Board of Education, we bring them up to speed, too. Right now, the standards assume that evolution is true, a done deal, there are no problems with the theory, it’s the only possible answer to the perplexities of the origins of the universe, yadda yadda yadda. It’s embarrassing to see the misguided, secular dogma behind those standards. But the other side of the origins story has been censored out of our schools for years. So people just don’t know.

Again, I say, censorship never makes sense.

Along these lines, I was sad to see that a fifth-grade teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area had to sue his district for violating his First Amendment rights last week, and you won’t believe why. He was teaching the kids using the Declaration of Independence, the diaries of George Washington and John Adams, the writings of William Penn, and the wording of various early state constitutions. He was teaching his pupils truthful American history, which includes the writings of our founders, who repeatedly and passionately referenced God.

And that’s why he got into trouble: that ‘’God thing.’’

Since last May, he has had to turn in his lesson plans and supplemental handouts to the principal, and she finally had kiboshed him so much that he felt he had no choice but to file suit in U.S. District Court in San Jose, aided by the Alliance Defense Fund.

The teacher is Steven Williams of Stevens Creek Elementary School, Cupertino Unified School District.

Isn’t that silly? So his boss says he is supposed to put ‘’spin’’ on American history, and teach the kids something different than what our founders really believed? Censor God?

I say it again: censorship never makes sense.

A third example: the ACLU is forcing public schools in Boyd County, Ky., to put their students through ‘’tolerance training’’ on ‘’sexual diversity’’ and ‘’gender identity’’ issues, including an hour-long video, because the district refused at first to allow the Gay-Straight Alliance to meet on school grounds and got themselves sued over that.

The club can now meet after school, but the forced ‘’training’’ came as part of the lawsuit’s settlement aimed at reducing what the ACLU calls ‘’harassment.’’ However, in the 10 months since the punishment came down, more than one-third of the kids haven’t seen the film. Why not? Because their families object, that’s why. According to Sunday’s www.worldnetdaily.com, 105 of the 730 middle-school students opted out of the film, and 145 of the 971 high-schoolers did. On the day it was to be shown, 324 students didn’t show up for school. And the ACLU is all mad about it.

What are they going to do -- strap the kids down and pin open their eyes, as in the forced indoctrination sessions of the cult movie, A Clockwork Orange? Give them an ‘’F’’ if they won’t knuckle under and say that homosexuality is great?

We all know it: censorship stinks.

Here’s what school boards faced with these sorts of issues ought to do: simply invoke the principle of equal time. Let the free marketplace of ideas do its work.

Evolutionary theory has some features that are pretty convincing, but more and more are being soundly discredited as science advances. Intelligent design and creation science also have some fascinating and valid points, although these two theories have their clunker ideas, too. Just give the various scientific theories equal time in the classroom, with clear-eyed scientific scrutiny, and the kids will be brought a lot closer to the truth. Quit censoring ideas: it isn’t healthy. Instead, study them. Isn’t that what schools are supposed to do?

It’s the same thing with the teaching of American history. We can’t change what our founders said about God, but we certainly should teach our kids what they said. For a better understanding of our culture and what we’re going through right now, we need to understand THEIR culture and what THEY were going through. Good teachers are never afraid to do that. And if you’re worried that it is somehow establishing religion to allow speech about God in public schools, just give equal time to the other point of view – the agnostic but all-American thinker Thomas Paine springs to mind.

As for the gay-rights propaganda, the way out is simple: don’t force parents to opt their children OUT of such fare. Instead, offer the opportunity for parents to opt their children IN. And make sure that the other point of view is given equal time, for this issue and all others. In this case, if children are to be taught that homosexuality is OK, they need to hear the other side of the story, that it is not OK. Anything less than that is censorship, and political propaganda.

Free choice, fair play, equal time: isn’t that what we expect from our schools?

It’s all-American . . . and it makes sense.

Posted 1:27 PM by Susan Darst Williams

GIVING THANKS FOR GOOD TEACHERS

Bret Williams, a fifth-grade teacher in the Blair (Neb.) Community Schools, is the winner of Go Big Ed’s “Give Thanks for Teachers” award. He and his wife, Jennifer, will receive dinner for two in the restaurant of their choice.

Williams, who also coaches football in Blair, is a popular teacher who formerly taught fourth grade at Skyline Elementary School in Elkhorn. He and his wife had their first child this past summer, and Zane was born with spina bifida.

The baby has required seven surgeries, and medical bills could exceed $1 million in this first year alone. Although insurance is covering most of those costs, household expenses associated with the baby’s condition are mounting.

As news spread of this difficulty, the Blair community has come around the family to help in many ways, and Williams’ old pupils at Skyline put on a drive for household items that was much appreciated.

Now the rest of us -- parents, taxpayers and educators united in improving the quality of Nebraska’s education system -- are chiming in with a token of our support and esteem.

We give thanks for you, Bret, and for the many, many teachers like you who come into the hearts of our children, and stay there.

To all readers: God bless you and yours this Thanksgiving. Go Big Ed will resume on Monday.

Meantime, how ‘bout those Husker seniors! Good luck in your last home game. Go Big Red!

Posted 2:11 PM by Susan Darst Williams

SHOULD HIGH SCHOOLS DROP ADVANCED PLACEMENT CLASSES?

There’s a good story in the Wall Street Journal today (p. D1), “Elite High Schools Drop AP Courses.” A handful of highly-regarded private schools are dropping Advanced Placement designations on their most challenging courses. They’re not steering students toward taking the year-end AP exams which can give you college credit hours if you can score a “4” or a “5” on the 5-point scale.

The top schools say that the AP curriculum forces them to cover the subject matter ‘way too broadly, instead of going as deeply as they would like. That’s probably true. Top private schools are generally acknowledged to have superior curriculum to most schools, and to many colleges, for that matter.

But the AP system is important for public high schools, and ought not to be dropped. Why? Because they give public high schools at least a modicum of accountability. It’s important for parents of younger students to find out how many students are taking AP classes in the upper grades; if it’s less than 5 percent of the student body, that school might not be as academically-focused as you’d like.

On the other hand, parents need to find out what percentage of the kids taking those AP classes actually wind up with college credit. In some schools – and you’d be surprised to find out which ones – very, very few kids in those AP classes actually get the credit.

That’s because top colleges often require a “5” and there may be only one or two kids in that entire high school who scored it.

On the other hand, in the majority of universities, a “4” or a “5” will get you full credit for the same introductory course on the college level. That can save parents thousands of dollars, and can save the student lots of time out of boring intro courses on material the student already mastered.

Most of all, AP courses are needed in public schools, but more information needs to be distributed to the general public about them, and the results of the test scores. It means a lot more to parents to know that not a single student in a high school received college credit for calculus, while the school’s average ACT score might be OK. AP data is a reliable source of information on how a high school stacks up, nationwide.

And this data can be utilized to drive quality higher in our public schools. So let’s keep AP, ASAP.

Posted 1:02 PM by Susan Darst Williams

CLEANING UP THE *$%&(@^ CURRICULUM

Here’s something nice: the Greenville (S.C.) public schools are putting in place a new policy -- Profanity-Free School Zones.

Despite efforts to date, students are still cursing and generally using speech that reflects the coarsening of the culture. Currently, if a student is caught cursing, he or she is called into the office or gets a phone call home. Bad or recurring cases result in a suspension or a recommendation for expulsion.

But as teachers all know, the vast majority of the cursing just goes on unhindered. It’s to the point where staff and students alike are sometimes unaware of it, they’ve become so accustomed.

Our daughter Neely, now a college sophomore, was becoming increasingly incensed about the profanity in her upper-level English courses, especially a Vietnam War first-person book which repeatedly had the ''f'' word. In her quiet, determined way, she led student discussions about how unnecessary that word was and that whole book was, since there were Vietnam vets in our community who could come in and give a MUCH more appropriate account of their feelings, sans profanity. I think both the teacher and the students appreciated her courage in facing the matter, and I do think the book got lost after that semester.

But it's sad that it takes a KID to get it done. No wonder there's so much interest in homeschooling.

Well, those South Carolina schools are doing two smart things about this issue:

1. They’re making their own staff members clean up their acts.

2. They’re changing the school environment, which means they’re taking a long, hard look at their own curriculum. There is profanity aplenty in the assigned books from senior year on down to grade school. It’s pretty hard to maintain decorum in the halls when the same words are right there in your textbooks.

How about it, Nebraska schools? With a few exceptions in which the coarse speech is necessary to the literary purpose of the work, I’d say there’s a whole *$%&(@^ bunch of profanity in the assigned reading in Nebraska schools, from what I’ve seen.

If we’re on Coach Callahan’s case so hard for using the ‘’f’’ word, we’d better make sure it’s not in our K-12 playbook, too.

Posted 1:33 PM by Susan Darst Williams

GIVING THANKS FOR GOOD TEACHERS

Announcing a fun little Thanksgiving contest: in 100 words or less, nominate an outstanding Nebraska teacher for a free dinner for two. It’s Go Big Ed’s way of saying that we give thanks for good teachers. Current public school, private school and homeschool teachers, K-12, are eligible.

We will publish the winning nomination, so include your name, city of residence, job title and how you know the teacher, along with why this teacher deserves dinner out. You may choose to remain anonymous, of course, so there’s no question you’re doing this simply to honor the teacher -- not to get your child an ‘’A.’’

Go Big Ed will cover the tab for two diners at the Nebraska restaurant of the teacher’s choice.

Nominations are due to swilliams1@cox.net by 5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 23. The winner will be announced the day before Turkey Day.

Posted 10:21 AM by Susan Darst Williams

WHO’S CRAZY, AND WHO SHOULD BE HISTORY?

Two particularly dangerous and wacky education matters are being battled out in the halls of Congress in these lame-duck weeks. The urgent call has gone out for concerned citizens to contact their senators and representatives on these. To do that, visit www.EdAction.org, an excellent grassroots group that’s getting important results and doing a lot of good:

1. Universal Mental Health Screening:

There’s major, major egg on educational faces over the ADHD scandal, misdiagnosing and overdrugging kids. This latest proposal would dwarf that, bigtime. With ADHD, educators used amateur diagnosis and all kinds of smarmy coercion on parents to get kids on Ritalin for their ‘’learning disability’’ . . . when the truth is, nine out of 10 kids labeled with LD’s don’t have them at all; they’ve just been in schools that have failed to teach them to read, write, do math, and think properly.

Now the government nannies want the right to force ‘’mental health screening’’ on all 54 million American children and 6 million adults in our schools and preschools. With their track record, then 90 percent of them will get permanent false labels as having ‘’mental health problems,’’ There are likely to be all kinds of inappropriate pop psychological ‘’interventions’’ and forced compliance with prescriptions for psychotropic drugs despite the fact that most drugs that may work pretty well on adults have perplexing paradoxical counter-indications for kids.

Niiiiice.

Granted, there are kids with depression, bipolar disorder and plenty of other mental-health issues. But they have the Three P’s already in place to meet their needs: Parents, Pediatricians, and Other Professionals. There’s encouraging news from specialty preschools which can get kids with special behavior problems ‘’kindergarten-ready’’ with smart techniques, not ‘’sandbox psychiatry’’ and drugs. It’s not as if the private sector isn’t already helping, and then some.

Do we really want the government, that has already shown it doesn’t ‘’get it’’ about ADHD, now getting carte blanche to call all kinds of children ‘’crazy’’ and making THEM get on psychotropic drugs, too? Think of the privacy problems we’d have if this sensitive psychiatric data is shared, as it will be, from government agency to government agency to college admissions office to future employer. Think of the Medicaid costs and all that additional dough going to pharmaceutical companies for, frankly, no good reason other than income stream. The list of sad, bad consequences just goes on and on.

You know, when I was a kid, I used to dress myself funny -- a walking fashion faux pas. I had an invisible friend. I fidgeted. I ‘’talked out’’ a lot. I made animals out of straight pins and erasers. I spent a lot of time in class staring out of the windows and humming. Everybody told me all the time that I was ‘’insane.’’ But somehow, some way, I wound up as a commended scholar in the National Merit competition, and was named to Mortar Board in college.

I have no doubt, though, that if this cheesy universal mental-health screening bureaucracy had been in place when I was a kid, I would have been labeled cuckoo, put on drugs or given shock treatment or whatever, had my brain cells permanently fried, and that would’ve been all she wrote . . . literally. I’d never have developed into a writer if my ‘’unique’’ behavior hadn’t been tolerated and, indeed, encouraged, in school as well as at home. My parents ‘’got it’’ about me because they LOVED me. My behavior wasn’t seen as weakness, but as evidence of strength – of creativity -- and my parents made sure it was protected. One of the worst features of this proposed new system, you see, is that parents would be totally out of the loop in defining and controlling their own children’s mental health status and responses thereto. Now THAT is the most dangerous matter of all.

So we’re talkin’ serious, here. Please contact your senators and representatives and urge them to deep-six this horrible idea, STAT. We need to de-fund the New Freedom Commission -- sounds like a feminine hygiene product -- but actually, it’s the bureaucracy that would put universal mental health screening and treatment programs in place.

The real crazies are the control freaks who want to standardize, homogenize, stifle, dumb down, oppress and intimidate individuality, creativity and intellectual rigor in our schools with whacked out ideas like this. We’d be . . . crazy . . . to let ‘em.

2. Substituting Anti-American Propaganda for American History and Civics Education

Senators and representatives also need to be urged to drop-kick the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad American History and Civics Education Act of 2004, H.R. 5360. It’s being pushed by a global-village touting, world citizenship-promoting, limousine liberal organization called the Center for Civic Education (www.civiced.org).

They forgot to notice that in 1996, the Senate voted 99-1 to LOSE the truly deplorable, anti-American history ‘’standards’’ that now form the basis for the ‘’civics education’’ they would like to foist on America’s schools. These ‘’standards’’ ignored, misstated or minimized many of our most cherished principles, including national sovereignty and inalienable rights; left out minor details like the Second Amendment; implied that the Bill of Rights is an irrelevant non sequitur from the past, and so forth.

They sucked. We booted them. But now . . . THEY’RE BAAAAAAACK!

This radical group put all that rejected propaganda back into their curriculum, cynically mislabeled ‘’We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution.’’ And now they’re trying to get Congress to authorize the funding of 12 ‘’federal academies’’ that would teach students and teachers allllllll about their greasy little lies and distortions, and then spread it across the land under the guise of ‘’best practices.’’

Eww! Eww! Ewwwww!

These same folks forgot to notice another minor detail called the Tenth Amendment, which prohibits federal intrusions into education, since that’s one of the many matters our Constitution leaves to the states. That gives them, in the words of the ancient scholars, a big, fat ‘’F’’ on their OWN knowledge of the Constitution!

Again, seek more information from www.EdAction.org, and take time to urge your senators and House reps to speak and vote against this. They also should de-fund the Center for Civic Education and all of its evil spawn, which should, excuse the pun, be history. And THAT would be, in the words of the OTHER ancient scholars, ‘’way wicked cool.’’

Posted 11:02 AM by Susan Darst Williams

$614,000 SCHOOL THEFT CASE PROVES WHY WE NEED ‘GRUMPY OLD MEN (AND WOMEN)’

The former schools chief for the State of Georgia has been indicted for conspiracy, wire fraud and theft of public funds in the alleged embezzlement of $614,000 in federal education funds.

According to Monday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Linda Schrenko is accused by prosecutors of setting up a bilking scheme to siphon the money away from state schools for the deaf and the Governor’s Honors Program. She allegedly got the money through surrogates into her own campaign for governor, which was unsuccessful. She’s a former teacher and a Republican.

I hate that they think this happened. But I love how they found out:

The chairwoman of the State Board of Education noticed a series of checks that Schrenko had ordered made out in amounts just under $50,000. That’s the minimum state expenditure which requires board approval. An audit showed that the checks were going to various companies owned and controlled by Schrenko’s buddy, who in turn allegedly kicked back a lot of it to others to help with her campaign.

The alleged scheme involved back-dated contracts, false cover stories, false campaign disclosure forms, and lies to state auditors.

Now, here’s my point: do you THINK this kind of stuff DOESN’T happen in Nebraska? Even on a much smaller scale? I’m not accusing anyone, least of all our state schools chief. But think about the billion-dollar plus education empire in this state. Do you really think we’ve never had a scandal anything like this because it isn’t happening? Or because we aren’t looking?

It’s just another reason I plead for the go-ahead to let the state auditor give a business bath to all that state aid we pay out every year, at the very least. If we even found one-tenth as much fraud as I think we’ll find, it’d be worth it.

And at the district level, I plead for grassroots committees of ‘’Grumpy Old Men and Women’’ to volunteer to start going over those checks that cascade out of the central office.

Because if ye seek, O chillun, believe me, ye shall find.

Posted 1:00 PM by Susan Darst Williams

INFLUENCING TEXTBOOK SELECTION

Garbage in, garbage out. That goes for school curriculum as with everything else. If our kids are learning distorted history because of a crummy textbook, whose fault is that? Ours! It’s the responsibility of the community to make sure educational materials are high-quality.

So it’s a no-brainer that if we want our public-school graduates to be better educated, we should focus on the quality of the curriculum with which they’re being instructed.

One of the best ways to do that is to get involved with the purchasing of that curriculum.

Parents and taxpayers who would like to influence textbook selection in a public school district can do three things:

1. Contact your principal or district official and ask to be put on a book selection committee.

2. Call around to the private schools in your area, or public schools perceived to do a better job than your own school, and find out what textbooks they are using. Call friends in other cities as well. Ask to borrow these books for a weekend and check them out.

3. Research the educational market, starting with these three sources of reviews and analysis about popular textbooks:

Educational Research Analysts:
www.textbookreviews.org

American Textbook Council:
www.historytextbooks.org

Textbook League:
www.textbookleague.org

Posted 10:28 AM by Susan Darst Williams

YEAH, BUT D-DAY DOESN’T FIT THE AGENDA

We’ll have to re-fight WWII, this time with rulers. Yes, it’s another easily-measurable case of historical revisionism in school textbooks.

This is another footnote to Thursday’s story about ‘’Farewell to Manzanar.’’ That’s the frequently-taught novel that distorts the truth about the World War II relocation and internment program for ethnic Japanese and other Axis-power people from the West Coast after Pearl Harbor. I plead for better perspective and accuracy in the way historical events such as that are taught in schools.

The Japanese camps got more than twice as much coverage as D-Day did in our daughter’s Advanced Placement U.S. history book. The book is ‘’America Past and Present’’ (Divine et. al., Addison-Wesley, 2003).

Let’s review:

The internment involved 112,000 people and no loss of life. It got 62 lines of text, plus a picture of an adorable Japanese family.

World War II resulted in the deaths of 56 million people, and its climactic moment, D-Day, involved millions of people and heavy casualties. D-Day got 32 lines in the textbook, and no picture.

So, in the eyes of the textbook publishers and the educators who bought this product and use it to teach our kids, D-Day is less than half as important as the Japanese internment program.

Riiiiiight. You’ll note there’s not a word in this 1,014-page book about the 300,000 people, many of them women and children, murdered by the Japanese in the late 1930s in the Rape of Nanking. That figured heavily in people’s minds after Pearl Harbor and the relocation a few years later. I mean, the death toll of 9/11 is only 1 percent of that event, and look at all the reaction and response in our country as a result of 9/11. Yet Nanking merits not a mention.

While the textbook does cover the Nazi Holocaust, it neglects to give any idea of the total death count -- more than 6 million. The only numbers given in the book were 3,000 bodies found at Nordhausen and 3,200 at Ohrdruf. So, to the average student, it was an aberration, but NOTHING like those terrible internment camps on the West Coast!

Meanwhile, there’s ample coverage of the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with a gruesome after-bomb picture, and the immediate death count of 100,000 was mentioned in the copy and the caption.

So the impression left is that the U.S. was terrible and horrible to those 112,000 ethnic Japanese and foreign nationals on our West Coast, and horrible to the people of those two Japanese cities we bombed . . . ‘’horribler’’ than anybody else in that whole, wide world war.

You’ll also note there’s not a word in this textbook about the tens of millions of people thought to have been killed in the former Soviet Union under Stalin, and the 35.2 million death toll in communist China under Mao, nor about the 2 million slain by the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, nor the 1 million victims of the Rwanda genocides. . . .

But ohhhhhh, boy. Does this textbook let America have it for interning those 112,000 people, even though none of them died, and many of them said that, though it was deplorable, they totally understood why it had to be.

Sure does bolster the notion that schoolbooks today overemphasize racial conflict and ethnic alienation instead of telling the kids who, what, when, where, why and how.

Quick: what aspects of WWII would YOU include in a textbook? Famous generals and battles spring to mind, and yes, some are mentioned in passing. But there’s no Iwo Jima. No Bataan Death March. Nothing about kamikaze pilots or the brutal torture of Christians in Korea by the occupying Japanese.

That’s not the war the kids are being taught. Here’s what this book lists in the index under WWII:

African Americans and
Allies after
Atomic bombing of Japan
Decryption and
Division of Europe after
Economic aid after
In Europe and North America
Home front in
Impact of
Japanese Americans in
Mexican Americans during
migration during
in Pacific Ocean region
politics of winning
prosperity during
race riots during
recruitment during
reparations after
SAT tests in
U.S. entry into
Victory in
War aims of
Women in workforce during

See the agenda in action?

Makes you wonder if maybe renting a few WWII movies might be a faster, cheaper and more accurate way to help the kiddies study ‘bout the Big War . . . and keep it in perspective.

Posted 10:35 AM by Susan Darst Williams

TGIF: FUN ED NEWS TO WRAP UP THE WEEK

Did you notice that the Nebraska student who got the perfect 1,600 on the SAT attends Omaha’s Creighton Prep . . . a private school? Congratulations to Colin McMahon and for his parents for putting him in position to maximize his education and name his own ticket for college. Last year, not a single Nebraskan made that top score, although five Iowans were among the 939 students nationwide who met the mark.

-------------------------

Cases of Hepatitis B have plunged by 90 percent among children and teens in the past decade, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since 1999, all children have had to be vaccinated, but now the incidence has fallen to .034 per 100,000 of the total population. Obviously, the rate is far smaller among children. You get it through exposure to infected blood or body fluids, having sex and sharing needles -- not big risks in the kindergarten crowd, one would think. Since the risk is so small, and since there are huge, valid concerns about overvaccinating our children and exposing them to all kinds of unintended consequences, including autism, it’s hoped that the Hepatitis B shots now will be made optional again, as they should’ve been in the first place.

-------------------------

Footnote to Thursday’s story about ‘’Farewell to Manzanar,’’ an anti-American textbook commonly taught in schools today that greatly exaggerates and distorts the relocation and internment of 112,000 ethnic Japanese on the West Coast after Pearl Harbor: There’s a new kind of relocation project going on right now that officials of the National Education Association should look in to. See www.HelpThemLeave.com, a nonprofit, tax-deductible organization set up to move people who can’t stand four more years of President Bush, especially because they disapprove of the war on terrorism. The NEA was brutal against the Prez this past election and ought to have their feet held to the fire for it. John McCaslin of The Washington Times reports that, in return for a permanent renunciation of American citizenship, the group will fly you, free of charge, in a chartered jet, to your choice of a country that fits your political leanings better:

Leftists: France, Germany, Italy or Spain
Socialists: Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, Norway or Sweden
Communists: Cuba or North Korea

Bon voyage! Maybe your replacements will know how to protest and criticize what’s going on in our country without being anti-American, disloyal and downright mean.

-------------------------

Footnote to my story on the lack of perspective about American history and war on the part of many educators, who joined the NEA in campaigning against President Bush, often within school walls, from a Go Big Ed reader who’s a teacher in greater Nebraska: ‘’Fortunately, the schools in central Nebraska don’t appear to have some of the problems of the larger cities. On the issue of today’s topic, it is very interesting that as a former Marine and Gulf War Veteran, who now works in the public school system, many teachers who were and are bashing Bush’s foreign policy and the Iraq War from afar, march to a different drum once they find out that I was once there and hear my current views on the situation at hand. So much of life is a perception. It’s unfortunate that most of our perceptions are derived by the liberal media.’’

Hang in there, Mr. Teacher. You’re one of the good guys. And guess what: we’ve got ‘em outnumbered. Semper fi!

Posted 9:57 AM by Susan Darst Williams

A CASE HISTORY ABOUT BAD HISTORY . . . FOR VETERANS DAY

A salute to all of our great country’s military veterans today, and every day. My grandfather was a doughboy in WWI and my dad was a 17-year-old ensign on a Merchant Marine ship off the Philippines in WWII. We are among those who believe Hiroshima was necessary to prevent a massive land invasion of Japan to end the war. That invasion would quite possibly have taken the life of my father and far more people than the A-bombs killed.

So I’m a proud, patriotic American and a bit of a history buff, and that’s why I was appalled when one of the nine assigned novels for English classes at my daughters’ former middle school in central Omaha was ‘’Farewell to Manzanar.’’ Published in 1973 by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, it’s one of the most slanted, anti-American books I’ve ever seen.

It’s a histrionic, exaggerated account of the relocation and internment of ethnic Japanese people on the West Coast after Pearl Harbor. It practically equates those camps to Auschwitz. Much to my chagrin, I learned that this vicious screed is one of the most frequently assigned books in middle schools around the country. It is taught, uncritically, with reverence, as proof of what a horrible, racist nation we are. Meanwhile, it’s about an alcoholic whose family suffers domestic violence and other consequences that have NOTHING to do with WWII, but are used to instill an air of rampant discrimination and victimization.

Totally bogus, totally unfair . . . and impossible for those of us who know better to rebut the outlandish claims and falsehoods that teachers are feeding kids through books like this.

The book’s many slams included this one on p. 92: “In addition to the traditionally racist organizations like the American Legion. . . .’’ How’s THAT for Veteran’s Day? Hey veterans, how you do like your tax dollars at work, propagandizing your grandkids and great-grandkids against you, after you risked your life for your country? Niiiiiiice.

I still have the formal ‘’Request for Reconsideration of Educational Materials’’ that I filed on it in 1996, never receiving any response whatsoever from school officials. That hurt . . . and is one of the many reasons we left that district. We were distraught over the politicized curriculum that effectively censored out all the classics of literature and the quality curriculum that we wanted for our kids, and subjected them to this P.C. garbage instead.

Now, eight years later, I’m finally vindicated. I’m rejoicing over nationally-syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin’s new book, ‘’In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling.’’ With mountainous research, this brilliant Filipino writer demolishes all the lies and ‘’spin’’ that educators have been using to make kids believe that the relocation and internment program was horrendous and caused by racial discrimination and hysteria -- ‘’The American Holocaust.’’

Here’s a little of what Ms. Malkin documents, conveniently left out of the ‘’Manzanar’’ book:

-- Of the 112,000 people interned, one-third were foreign nationals – not American citizens. The father of the ‘’Manzanar’’ author, for example, had lived here for 35 years but had never attained citizenship. Most others of Japanese descent who were relocated into the camps, often at their own request, had more recently lived in Japan. But it should be noted that nearly half of the people in the camps were from Germany, Italy and other Axis nations, not just Japan.

-- The internment program began at the behest of Japanese-American civic organizations, not forced upon people by the government. The civic clubs’ members were urged to move to the other 44 states away from the West Coast, but declined. Many camp members, especially wives and children of men who had recently been in Japan, actually volunteered to go there to stay with them.

-- There was ample evidence then, and plenty more now, of disloyalty to the U.S. among these foreign nationals. There also was evidence for the existence of a network of spies and saboteurs among the ethnic Japanese people on the West Coast, many of whom owned boats and posed a threat to harbors and so forth. American officials were painfully aware of how the 30,000 Japanese people living in Davao, Philippines, became turncoats and helped the invading Japanese as scouts and translators. Also, the Japanese military planned to use ethnic Japanese people in Hawaii, part of a spy ring that led to the Pearl Harbor attack, if they had later been able to invade Hawaii. There was no reason to believe that the West Coast wouldn’t have been incredibly vulnerable to such treachery, too. Also note that this was just a few years after the Rape of Nanking, in which Japanese soldiers raped, tortured and murdered more than 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians during their occupation of that eastern Chinese city – three times the casualties of the two atom bombs, by the way. So for West Coast Americans, fear, at that point, was not irrational.

-- Nothing was confiscated; nobody lost any money or property unless they made stupid business dealings on their own, and yet many took the $20,000 resettlement checks, nearly $50 million worth. They included many people who had returned to Japan when the war broke out, repatriated, and fought against us, before returning to the U.S. after the war to reclaim their stuff and their $20,000 resettlement payment. Again, niiiiiiiice.

-- Nobody died in the camps; there was plenty of food, plenty of jobs, Shinto shrines were allowed, and many of the camps weren’t even guarded.

In rereading my notes on ‘’Manzanar,’’ I was struck by the many anti-Christian statements in it. I had complained about them to school officials along with the inaccuracies about the internment. But again, my concerns were ignored:

‘’Papa . . . was always suspicious of organized religions. . . .’’ (p. 30)

‘’In this sense, God and the Sears, Roebuck catalogue were pretty much one and the same in my young mind.’’ (p. 94)

‘’My faith in God and in the Catholic church slipped several notches at that time.’’ (p. 94)

So the book is anti-American, anti-Christian, full of lies and distortions . . . and yet somehow, educators thought it was better than a million other books that might be worth the time of the middle-school English students who only read nine assigned books in two years.

Niiiiiiiice.

Now, no one, including Michelle Malkin and me, is calling for racial profiling at airports of people who look like the terrorists who caused 9/11, or any kind of a roundup into camps or other perversions of our civil liberties. But this book is instructive indeed for our public debate on national security in the aftermath of 9/11.

This book can and should be used in schools to teach kids the facts about the WWII internment, and help them draw sound conclusions about lessons learned from it to apply to the real world they will soon inherit.

Meanwhile, call your local school, and see if they have ‘’Farewell to Manzanar’’ on the assigned or recommended reading lists for English or history classes, or if it’s in the school library. Then demand they get rid of it, or at the very least provide equal time for the Malkin book . . . equal time for the truth and freedom that so many Americans fought and died to protect.

Posted 10:36 AM by Susan Darst Williams

TEXAS TEXTBOOKS: DON’T MESS WITH MARRIAGE

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were amused by the wording on a form our daughter’s preschool sent home for us to fill out. Instead of asking for the name of her “mother’’ or ‘’father’’ or even her ‘’parents,’’ the form asked for the child’s ‘’sponsors.’’

Sponsors? As in . . . this child is brought to you by . . . ?!?

Smarmy Political Correctness oozed off that sheet. We just crossed it out and put ‘’mother’’ and ‘’father’’ by our names, and hoped it would make a quiet but firm point.

Over the years, I’ve become aware of other kinds of wording in school materials and textbooks that has gotten on the silly side. For instance, you never, ever see the word ‘’wife’’ in kiddie lit any more -- the feminists have expunged that word -- even though we all use the term freely and frequently in everyday life.

Even ‘’mother’’ is on the way out: the well-known children’s book, “Brown Bear,’’ has in recent years replaced the line, ‘’Mother, Mother, what do you see?’’ with ‘’Teacher, Teacher, what do you see?’’ The reason given: some children might not have a mother in the home and it would hurt their self-esteem to read that.

I don’t go for that hogwash. And what is it they say? If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!?! I suppose they want to change THAT to ‘’If an older individual of the female persuasion ain’t happy. . . .’’

Sheesh.

So I was glad to see a plain and simple change involving the wording in textbooks that is being required by the Texas State Board of Education.

In a 10-4 vote Friday, that powerful ed board required secondary-level health textbooks used in Texas public schools to define marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman. The move was a rebuke to what one board member called ‘’asexual stealth phrases’’ such as references to ‘’individuals’’ who marry, and using the term ‘’married partners’’ instead of ‘’husband and wife.’’

Since Texas and many other states ban homosexual ‘’marriage’’ and grant no legal recognition to ‘’gay civil unions,’’ and also in light of the overwhelming victories at the polls last week for traditional marriage in several states, the board decided it would be stupid and silly to OK textbooks which imply to minor children that those sorts of arrangements are A-OK, legal, and on a par with traditional marriage.

Texas, the second most populous state after California, is one of the largest textbook purchasers in the world, and sets the tone for the rest of the country.

Nebraska does not have the same textbook review and adoption process as Texas has. There is considerably more freedom in Nebraska and many other states for locally-elected school boards to select textbook series to fit their preferences and guidelines.

However, when a change is made in a textbook because of a requirement in a large market state such as Texas or California, it is bound to trickle down and affect Nebraska eventually. In this case, that’s good.

Publishers which agreed to make the changes are among the nation’s largest: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, and Glencoe/McGraw-Hill.

Posted 10:30 AM by Susan Darst Williams

BUFFETT AWARDS: TEN GRAND FOR NUTTIN’?

Year after year, it’s a disappointment and a head-scratcher. The full-page ad announcing that nominations are open for the Alice Buffett Outstanding Teacher Award in the Omaha Public Schools promises 15 prizes of $10,000 each.

That’s the good news. The BAD news is that the ad goes on to say that if you want to nominate a teacher, ‘’don’t worry about grammar and spelling -- these letters won’t be graded.’’

In other words, accuracy doesn’t matter in education, much less excellence. If the ‘’great’’ teacher you are nominating somehow neglected to teach proper grammar and spelling, that doesn’t matter . . . because they don’t matter.

And yet somehow, according to the ad, despite an utter contempt for the basics of written communication, the Omaha district still manages to be ‘’one of the very best in the nation.’’

Riiiiiight.

I mean, imagine it: what if you won a MVP award even though you whiffed on two field goals, had a third one sail wide, and had an extra point blocked . . . but were trying your very, very best?

What if you could win an engineering award for a bridge you designed even though there were math errors in the calculations you used for its load-bearing properties . . . but you really burned the midnight oil on your design so you ‘’deserved’’ it?

Think about it. What is this saying about education, and the importance of getting things right?

Think what a different message would have been sent if that ad had read, ‘’Errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation will disqualify letters of nomination because they violate the intention of these awards.’’

Join me in dropping them a line thanking them for the encouragement their award gives to teachers, but advising them of the DIScouragement their criteria gives to parents, taxpayers, employers and everybody else who wants young people to learn how to write correctly:

Buffett Foundation
222 Kiewit Plaza
Omaha, NE 68131

Posted 11:12 AM by Susan Darst Williams

‘I AIN’T GONNA STUDY WAR NO MORE’? WHY NOT?

Basic ignorance of our nation’s military history was apparent through the recent Presidential campaign, as potshots were taken at President Bush and efforts to quash terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq. To the extent that this happened within school walls, you can blame in part the propaganda from the National Education Association, whose national convention last summer was markedly anti-war and anti-Bush.

A look through a typical American history textbook in high school often reveals a lack of historical perspective about war. It’s in the classrooms and in teachers’ minds, too. Many of them think we have a sordid, warmongering history. They have a very negative slant against the military, I’ve found over the years.

I’ve also found that the best way to change their minds is to offer the facts, in perspective. For instance, to counter a claim that America is a racist country, acknowledge that over the years 10,000 people have been lynched in this country, most of them black . . . but there were 1 million casualties in the Civil War that freed the slaves.

Similarly, when teachers in our old middle school used to bash America for interning 100,000 Japanese-Americans on the West Coast after Pearl Harbor, I made a chart that compared that number to the 40 million who DIED in WWII, and the tens of millions that tyrants like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot murdered and put in the Gulag, etc. None of that was in the curriculum; schools never seem to teach about the bad guys beyond our shores.

Perspective! It’s all about perspective. So I was happy to receive this election-related email last week, and hope you’ll pass it on to students or teachers who might want to work a little perspective into their classroom discussions and assignments about war:

-- There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq during the month of January. In the fair city of Detroit, there were 35 murders in the same month.

-- When anyone claims President Bush shouldn't have started this war, note the following:

FDR . . .
led us into World War II.
Germany never attacked us: Japan did.
From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost, an average of 112,500 per year.

Truman...
finished that war and started one in Korea.
North Korea never attacked us.
From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost, an average of 18,334 per year.

John F. Kennedy...
started the Vietnam conflict in 1962.
Vietnam never attacked us.

Johnson...
turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost, an average of 5,800 per year.

Clinton...
went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent.
Bosnia never attacked us.
He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by the Sudan and did nothing.

-- Osama has attacked us on multiple occasions.

-- In the two years since terrorists attacked us President Bush has . . .
liberated two countries,
crushed the Taliban,
crippled al-Qaida,
put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran and North Korea without firing a shot,
and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.

-- The Democrats are complaining about how long the war is taking, but . . .

It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation.

We've been looking for evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records.

It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick.

It took less time to take Iraq than it took to count the votes in Florida!!!!

Posted 10:59 AM by Susan Darst Williams

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

Good news: Another stellar fiscal conservative, Rich Hansen, was reelected handily to the board of the Blair (Neb.) Community Schools. He was the top vote-getter in a field of 10 candidates for five board slots. That’s an awesome mandate, and we look for more good news out of Blair from this able leader.

Bad news: It looks like longtime educator Rich Pahls has squeaked out a victory in Legislative District 31 in the Millard area of southwest Omaha over Ben Thompson. Pahls was the grade-school principal who looked the other way several years ago when a teacher whipped up her pupils into a frenzy and got them to write nasty political letters to state senators pleading for them not to put a spending lid on schools, or they’d lose their playgrounds, would have to use corncobs in the restrooms, and have green speckled mush for lunch, etc. etc. Of course I’m exaggerating, but not much. Pahls has been with the Millard Public Schools for 30 years and his wife is a teacher there. Even though he had a lot of Republican support, I don’t look for him to be anything but a drag in the Unicam on efforts to improve our schools and especially their fiscal accountability.

And ugly news: The Lincoln Journal Star put a story on Page 1 Sunday about a longtime substitute teacher in the Lincoln Public Schools who’s charged with first-degree sexual assault of a minor. (Find it by searching for Kaela Down on www.journalstar.com) Kaela is a 15-year-old who ‘’felt creepy’’ around the teacher two years ago because he was putting his hands on the girls in the class and other objectionable behavior. She took an ‘’F’’ rather than dressing out for gym and participating in his class. But nothing happened to the teacher . . . at least, then. It’s good that the guy got caught on down the road, if indeed he’s found guilty and is indeed a pedophile, and it’s good that the paper put this story on Page 1. But it’s really, really ugly that the real, honest concerns of students and their families two years ago didn’t prevent the inevitable from happening, again, if the man is eventually found guilty. It’s just another example of the attitude change we hope and demand in our schools . . . to put the kids first, for heaven’s sake.

Posted 11:26 AM by Susan Darst Williams

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ OF PARENTAL ACTIVISM

Good Election Day news for fiscal responsibility in education comes from Santa Cruz, Calif. It’s even better than southeast Nebraska’s good-news story, that voters put in place a fiscally-conservative school board majority in Educational Service Unit #6.

In Santa Cruz, not one, not two, but THREE fiscally-conservative school board members were elected. They replace incumbents who had apparently driven the Scotts Valley Schools into a fiscal crisis. It had reached the point where parents were being asked to donate $365 per child just to make ends meet. But fiscal conservatives contended the real problem was voracious overspending for frills in the district.

Financial management was the dominant theme of the school-board race, after a $1 million deficit in the tiny, four-school district resulted in county action appointing a fiscal adviser with veto power over school purchasing decisions.

What’s exciting and instructive is that concerned citizens got organized, put up good candidates, created a website, put on a voters’ forum, and swept all three into office -- kind of like the cavalry.

Read more about them on www.ScottsValleyParents.org

Challenge: why couldn’t parents and taxpayers in ALL Nebraska school districts do this same thing?

Or am I . . . California dreamin’?

Posted 3:17 PM by Susan Darst Williams

WOO HOO! ANGIE EBERSPACHER WINS!

One if by land, two if by sea, and, if you want fiscal responsibility, you signal it with a resounding election victory for people who promise to keep a lighthouse beaming on educational spending.

Last month’s dashing Paul Revere-like move by Nebraskan Alan Jacobsen paid off (‘’The Midnight Ride of Angie Eberspacher,’’ Oct. 28 Go Big Ed). His goal was to alert southeast Nebraska voters to spending patterns of his fellow educational board incumbent. Jacobsen’s widely-circulated info ad explaining the situation contributed to a smashing 58.4 percent victory for the challenger.

Angie Eberspacher, who has pledged to be financially conservative, was elected to the Seward County seat on the board of southeast Nebraska’s Educational Service Unit #6. She will replace board chairman Clark Kolterman, joining Jacobsen on that board and forming a majority now who claim to be fiscal conservatives. She will represent Milford, Centennial and Seward School Districts. It will be interesting to watch that board over the coming years. Hopefully, it’ll be a shot heard ‘round the state!

Angie Clark
County Eberspacher Kolterman

Seward 3,747 2,938
York 504 143
Butler 121 42
Polk 10 6
Lancaster 6 0

Totals 4,388 3,126
58.4% 41.6%

-------------------------

Monday’s Go Big Ed report on improper electioneering in the classroom by public-school teachers brought an outcry, and a request to be informed of other instances. If you know of any educators who overstepped the boundaries of free speech and wandered into political propagandizing, please let me know for a future story.

Posted 10:48 AM by Susan Darst Williams

A LITTLE ELECTION DAY HUMOR

Happy Election Day! This is the day we celebrate what we have in this country, even more directly than on Independence Day. We party by voting!

Many thanks to all those who took time to go over the candidates and the issues – in a balanced and fair manner, of course – with young people in Nebraska. And many thanks to all the candidates and their volunteers for participating in the process.

I needed a break and a laugh after these many intense months of politics, and I got one. It came from a little monthly newspaper I subscribe to, the Imogene Hub, the funniest thing to come out of southwest Iowa. This issue’s story, ‘’PMS Club Has Presidential Debates,’’ was hilarious.

Now, if you believe life is totally serious and we have to be absolutely reverent at all times, change the channel. For you NORMAL readers, then:

In a crazy debate to determine who would be the next president of the PMS Club, the question was asked, ‘’Do you think the term ‘Towel Heads’ used in reference to Islamic terrorists is politically correct?’’

One candidate answered no. Why?

“The item they wear on their heads is actually a small sheet and, therefore, they should be referred to as ‘Little Sheet Heads.’’’

She got a standing ovation.

-------------------------

Monday’s Go Big Ed report on improper electioneering in the classroom by public-school teachers brought an outcry, and a request to be informed of other instances. If you know of any educators who overstepped the boundaries of free speech and wandered into propagandizing, please let me know for a future story.

Posted 1:26 PM by Susan Darst Williams

PROPAGANDIZING IN THE CLASSROOM

A Go Big Ed reader tells this tale: a student in the Omaha Public Schools came home from school last week and asked her mother who she was voting for. The reader reports:

‘’She proudly stated, ‘President Bush,’ and her daughter told her she shouldn’t because her teacher said if they don’t get John Kerry elected they will lose their schools and education funding.’’

Who knows how much of that NEA-driven propagandizing has been going on? Should that teacher be disciplined, even fired? Doesn’t that violate a teacher’s code of ethics or code of conduct? Doesn’t it constitute a breach of the ‘’in loco parentis’’ agreement, whereby teachers act as parental stand-ins during school hours, but not supplanters?

Or do teachers have free speech rights with regard to politics, but somehow, not for religion? But do those rights still stand when obviously an expressed political opinion is based on a falsehood which with very little effort could have been discovered as false? (Federal spending on K-12 education has INCREASED by 49 percent since Bush took office, for example.) Isn’t that ‘’malice’’ on the part of the teacher, to deliberately spread a falsehood?

Recommendation: that mother should check with the teacher to make sure this incident is true, and to find out if the teacher is the union representative in that school. If those two things check out, then whoa: action needs to be taken. She should then write a letter to the Public Pulse and appear before the school board about this incident. Others should demand that teacher’s job and maybe even union decertification in that school, if the teacher is a union official.

Too harsh? Well, why not? Propagandizing captive children in schools is deplorable, and needs to be exposed and given strong consequences to be stopped.

If you’re thinking this is one isolated incident, think again. Go to the Family Research Council’s website, www.frc.org and download a handout, ‘’Reading, ‘Riting, and Rhetoric,’’ that was given to students recently in a classroom in Pulaski, N.Y. It was supposed to “help’’ students choose a Presidential candidate based on which of their ‘’viewpoints’’ match the students’ own. Here are just a few items that should make your blood boil:

BUSH:
Wealthy people pay fewer taxes.

KERRY:
Working class people pay fewer taxes.

BUSH:
Fight the war in Iraq alone (just the U.S.) and don’t work with the United Nations.

KERRY:
Work with the United Nations and join together with our allies to rebuild Iraq.

BUSH:
Dig for oil and gas in wildlife refuges.

KERRY:
Against destroying wildlife to explore for gas and oil.

Go ahead and see for yourself. There are eight items, all with that incredible bias and distortion.

Should this teacher be fired? I say yes.

Should the parents of those children pull them out and put them in private school, where the wishes of the parents are heeded and respected, and the kids aren’t somebody’s political cannon fodder?

I say yes.

What do YOU say?

Election Day is our celebration of freedom, even beyond the Fourth of July. A big thank you to all the candidates and their committees for stepping forward to participate in the process. You are appreciated! Here’s hoping that wisdom is the life of this party Tuesday -- and that honest, ethical, faithful people gain office, and go to work to stop this kind of stuff.