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OK, class. Time for a discussion question. What, if anything, is wrong with this picture?
The graphic comes from a website — Learn Our History — touted by potential Fox News commentator and no-longer-a-GOP- presidential-wannabe Mike Huckabee for the edumacation of the youngsters in This Great (Christian) Nation™.
Huckabee’s been palling around with revisionist “historian” David Barton, whose whole shtick is to convince people that the Founding Fathers (like Franklin, Reagan and Washington, above) really and truly intended the USA to be a Christian Nation run under Biblical Principles. All that stuff about separation of Church and State is a just a lot of hooey, Barton says.
Since the sample videos on Huck’s site are hosted on Youtube, I can’t watch them from here in China. Thankfully. I heard they’re awful. Maybe you can check them out for me, and report back. (500 words, double-spaced, MLA style, due next class)
Here’s another critique of the vids, with the cartoons embedded.
Just in case you’ve been taken in by Barton and Huck’s sideshow history lessons, Chris Rodda has written a book, Liars for Jesus, that meticulously takes apart every one of Barton’s claims.
What scares me is that a lot of Christian homeschoolers will buy these third-rate videos from Huckabee’s company, and we’ll have another generation of ill-informed citizens to deal with.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — Back in 2006, a really good Western Kentucky middle school science teacher had to quit her job because someone (a student, it seems) saw her in a porn movie done when she was younger.
She got married, left the Paducah area and found work under a different name in a school in Missouri.
History repeated itself last week. Another student with too much …uh … time … in his hand .. on his hands … put two and two (or something) together, and found out his teacher, Tera Myers of Parkway North High School used to be Tericka Dye of Reidland High School, who once performed in a few porn movies as Rikki Andersin some 15 years ago.
Apparently, the boy approached Myers with this knowledge, and she then went to her superiors, told them what’s what, and asked to be put on administrative leave. They agreed, and she is not in the classroom now.
She should be back in it. From all the reports from her schools, Myers is an excellent teacher, and in Kentucky, was a great volleyball coach, well liked by parents and students. Considering the lack of decent middle school science teachers in the USA, it’s a crime to lose her — again.
I’ve blogged about Myers before. The last post was an update in December 2007 that got several comments. One anonymous commenter, Terri, in October 2009 not only identified Myers, her husband and an (incorrect) school by name, but gave her physical address as well. I redacted everything but her first name and the state. In retrospect, I should have omitted that information, too.
This is a preview of Tericka Dye = Tera Myers = Another lost teaching job . Read the full post (579 words, 1 image, estimated 2:19 mins reading time)Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — Like the fabled “Song That Never Ends,” the story of John Freshwater, a middle school Ohio science teacher bent on proselytizing his students, seems to have gone on and on and on …
The end is this: he will be dismissed from his teaching job at the Mount Vernon public schools.
Actually, that’s the same ending as before, but he was entitled to an administrative hearing, which dragged on for almost two years. In a decision released this week, the referee for the hearing agreed with the school district, and said, “Yup, Freshwater is out.”
John Freshwater purposely used his classroom to advance his Christian religious views knowing full well or ignoring the fact that those views might conflict with the private beliefs of his students. John Freshwater refused and/or failed to employ objectivity in his instruction of a variety of science subjects and, in so doing, endorsed a particular religious doctrine. By this course of conduct John Freshwater repeatedly violated the Establishment Clause. Without question, the repeated violation of the Constitution of The United States is a “fairly serious matter” and is, therefore, a valid basis for termination of John Freshwater’s contract(s). Further, he repeatedly acted in defiance of direct instructions and orders of the administrators – his superiors. These defiant acts are also a “fairly serious matter” and, therefore, a valid basis for termination of John Freshwater’s contract (s). My recommendation to the Board of Education of the Mount Vernon City School District is that the Board terminate John Freshwater’s contract(s) for “good and just cause”.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — From my distant perch here, I’ve heard the news about the film, Waiting for Superman*, which ballyhoos the charter-school model as the solution for America’s supposedly failing public schools.
Oprah, queen of fads-du-jour, had the filmmakers on her show. Bill and Melinda Gates are involved. It’s the latest “big thing” in education, which has been plagued by about a hundred “big things” in as many years, all promising to solve problem X, where stands for the Dilemma of the Moment.
I haven’t seen the flick, but as they say, I’ve read the reviews. While some reviews just gush about the film, a more nuanced review is in The Nation. I encourage you to read it, as a counterpoint to the mostly mindless adulation of the film and its rather one-sided message.
Today I read an article in The New York Times about a huge public high school in Boston that got results, not by adopting the education fad-du-jour, but by doing things the old-fashioned way. Instead of throwing up their hands and declaring “The public school is dead!” teachers at Brockton High School rolled up their sleeves and restructured the school’s instructional plan.
Brockton was among Massachusett’s lowest performing schools, based on state language arts exam scores. A team of teachers, with the support of the principal, proposed a school-wide emphasis on teaching core concepts of reading, writing, speaking and reasoning. Students in every single class, including art and PE, had lessons in at least one of the four core concepts. The results were a dramatic increase in the students’ state test scores.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — The lesbian teenager denied a decent high school prom has won her discrimination case against Itawamba Agricultural High School in Mississippi.
The school agreed to revise its prom policy to be non-discriminatory and to pay Constance McMillen $35,000 in damages and her legal fees.
McMillen last fall had asked her school if she could come to her prom wearing a tuxedo and bring her girl friend as her date. The school said no. So, she and her parents approached the American Civil Liberties Union, which agreed to represent her in a civil action against the school.
So, the school canceled prom altogether. A judge subsequently required the school to hold a prom open to everyone, including McMillen and her date. Then, the school sponsored a fake prom, while a “secret” prom was held elsewhere for the rest of McMillen’s graduating class.
McMillen was harassed so much at school that she transferred to a school in Jackson just to graduate with some dignity.
Itawamba becomes the first high school in Mississippi to have a policy barring discrimination or harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Talk about irony.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — I may seem to pay too much attention to religion in public high school graduation ceremonies, but for me it’s fascinating to see how the courts resolve two apparently conflicting clauses in the First Amendment.
On the one hand, the Establishment Clause states the government can neither promote a particular religion nor prevent the free exercise of any religion. On the other hand, the Free Speech clause prevents the government from limiting or banning speech or any other kind of expression, no matter how obnoxious it may be.
So, what happens when someone (a public school student, say) wants to talk about God or religion during a graduation ceremony? A public school is, after all, an institution of the government, so one might assume that student would have to rewrite the speech to omit the God stuff. This is exactly what school officials in a Nevada town believed in 2007 when they told Brittany McComb she had to take her witnessing for Jesus out of her valedictory. At first, McComb agreed, but when it came time to deliver her speech, she still referred to Jesus, etc., and school officials literally pulled the plug on her microphone.
Dumb.
If McComb were speaking just for herself, then her comments would have been protected under the Free Speech clause, although she was speaking to a captive audience in a public school. If, however, she were speaking on behalf of the school (or if a school official delivered such an address), it would run afoul of the Establishment Clause. A public school cannot legally teach one particular faith or insist its students, parents, staff, etc., worship in a particular way. Testifying would imply that there was only one “preferred” way to worship.
This is a preview of Graduation speeches, prayers and the First Amendment . Read the full post (892 words, 1 image, estimated 3:34 mins reading time)Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — It’s time to blog about stupid high schools again. The fruit is hanging low this season, so let’s take a look at Itawamba Agricultural High School (IAHS) in the fine “Christian” community of Fulton, Mississippi.
This tiny high school in a tiny town (populated by people with tiny minds) has made international news because it told a lesbian student, Constance McMillen, that she (a) could not bring her female date and (b) could not wear a tux to the senior prom on April 2.
After she asked to bring her girlfriend, IAHS school officials told McMillen there were Rules for Senior Prom, which specifically forbid same-sex couples and stipulate that only boys can wear tuxedos. (For girls to wear tuxes apparently would bring on a plague of frogs, or some other Biblical catastrophe.)
McMillen and her parents approached the American Civil Liberties Union, which sent a letter of demand in February to the principal of IAHS informing her that the rules violated McMillen’s constitutional rights. So, the school did the honorable chickenshit thing — it withdrew its sponsorship and canceled the prom.
Of course, who became the scapegoat? Not the school, which had reneged on its traditional prom sponsorship, oh no! Her classmates and the community blamed poor Constance McMillen (and the commie atheist ACLU) for challenging what most would consider overly restrictive rules.
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