Free Republic

Children in California will be learning to identify historical personages by their sexuality.The Advocate reported that the California state board of education approved “10 LGBT-inclusive history textbooks” for elementary school students in grades K-8 last week. It also rejected two textbooks on the grounds that they did not include “LGBT history.” The exclusion of LGBT history violates California’s FAIR Education Act.The FAIR Education Act, once informally called the LGBT History Bill, was written by Senator Mark Leno. FAIR stands for “Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful.” It ensures that the political, economic and social contributions of people with disabilities as well...

Lily Eskelsen García: “Thoughts and prayers are not enough.” WASHINGTON - November 15, 2017 - NEA President Lily Eskelsen García issued the following statement in reaction to yesterday’s shooting in Northern California, which targeted students and educators at Rancho Tehama Elementary School:“We pray for the victims of this latest tragedy in Tehama County, California, and the schoolchildren and adults shot by another out-of-control man who could spray bullets through a classroom and down the street with a rapid-fire weapon. We’re grateful to the educators who heroically protected their students in this rural school, the heroes in a Texas church, and...

A proposed education regulation in Delaware allows children to self-identify as any race and gender regardless of reality. “All students enrolled in a Delaware public school may self-identify gender or race,” Regulation 225 says, and that will be maintained in official records. The regulation stipulates that students’ parents may only be notified of their child’s trans-race or transgender identification if they are “supportive of the student” and his or her confusion. It says: A school may request permission from the parent or legal guardian of a minor student before a self identified gender or race is accepted; provided, however, that...

A New York public school teacher has been suspended after outraged parents accused her of distributing materials on gender identity that were inappropriate for seventh-graders. The health teacher at Cambridge Central School, north of Albany, was suspended with pay Tuesday after a parent told other parents on Facebook live that his 11-year-old son brought home a packet of information about sex change operations that included graphic sexual definitions, WRGB-TV reports. The parent, Sirell Fiel, posted the video on Monday. As of Sunday morning, it had been viewed more than 683,000 times. “Genital reconstruction surgery.” Fiel says in the video. “Is...

A 9th-grade assignment at a Mississippi high school is causing concern and disgust among parents. A mother recently posted her student's assignment to Facebook in a special group that was created for the growing discontent parents feel toward public school education — "Inappropriate Common Core Lessons." This particular assignment asked 14-year-old students to determine the identity of a fictional rapist based on sperm DNA.Not surprisingly, parents were not amused. The mother who posted the assignment reported that the teacher did not require the students to complete it — and parents were grateful for that — but she was still disturbed...

A highly charged political debate between a student and his teacher is garnering a lot of attention. The video captured 10 minutes of the confrontation, though the student said the debate lasted longer.What happened? The video begins as the Latino student and his teacher debate about police brutality in America. The student cites facts — that black-on-black crime is more prominent and police shoot more white people — but the teacher simply dismisses the argument by criticizing him.“You’re clearly a radical, a conservative,” the teacher says.As the debate goes on, the student says he obtains his statistics from the FBI,...

Nicomi Stewart, a mother in Rochester, New York, is “disgusted” after an automated call sent to her phone from the city’s school district mispronounced her daughter’s name as a racial slur. Stewart’s daughter is named Nicarri. Stewart told WHAM TV the message clearly began, “This is Edison Career and Technology High School. Your daughter, N****r, has missed period one on…” The call came after Nicarri missed a day of class at Edison Career and Technology High School. The racially insensitive robocall came more than once so Stewart was able to record the message. “I was like, wow, am I really...

The family of a South Carolina girl who committed suicide says she shot herself because she was bullied. Toni Rivers, 11, confided to friends before her death, saying that “she just couldn’t do this anymore, and she was going home, and she was killing herself,” the family told news station WTOC. The sixth-grader reportedly returned home Oct. 25 from her Hampton County School District elementary school and shot herself. Her 14-year-old sister found her lying on her back with a gunshot wound and called 911. {..snip..}

Seminar focuses on improving dialogue with LGBTQ community and inclusion in schools. Substitute teacher Meghan Buell gets a kick out of her second-grade students who ask if she’s a boy or a girl. She tells them she’s a girl, of course. Then they invariably ask why her voice is so deep. “I don’t know,” she tells them. “I was born this way.” One child, trying to help the transgender woman, suggested she eat a cough drop to help her voice. “I’ll give that a try,” she said she told the child. “Thanks.” The cough drop didn’t help, Buell told about...

A Virginia middle school worksheet about the American political spectrum has angered some parents due to the fact that it identified the Ku Klux Klan as “right wing” and “reactionary.” The 8th grade handout from Loudoun County’s Harmony Middle School features examples ranging from “Radical” to “Reactionary,” with “Liberal,” “Moderate,” and “Conservative” in between. There’s also the labels “Left Wing” and “Right Wing” with the two major political parties in the middle of the two. The Klan was the only organization specifically aligned with a political designation. According to The Washington Post, school board member Eric J. DeKenipp said after...

There’s a common quote, frequently attributed to G.K. Chesterton: “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.” In our modern context, this should be rephrased a bit: “Don’t try to pull down a statue if you have no idea who or what the statue was really about.”

GRUNDY COUNTY, Tenn. - A Grundy County school official who has asked to remain anonymous said a recent attempted rape allegedly carried out by five football players against a fellow teammate is just the latest in a long line of assaults tied to hazing in the school district. The source provided NewsChannel5 with a detailed timeline of incidents that have occurred since 2015, and insists officials within the district have known about the hazing, but chosen to sweep it under the rug. In the timeline, he alleges students were beaten with belts and bats, had their heads dunked in toilets...

In 2015 we voted unanimously at the NEA Representative Assembly to confront institutional racism in our schools. That means looking at the structures and processes that advantage some students and disadvantage others, especially students of color. Those structures and processes include the harsh disciplinary practices that directly or indirectly push students out of school and into the criminal justice system. We call this the school to prison pipeline. We’re standing together to shut down the pipeline and bring an end to the unfair imposition of discipline that alienates far too many students from their own schools. NEA is building awareness, educating members and the community...

'Mom, it's like instead of them telling us how to not do it, it's like they gave us a road map'! Parents are outraged after discovering their children were being taught about “mutual masturbation” and “anal sex” in their Oklahoma public middle school. Students in Jay, Oklahoma, were given sex-ed handouts from Lighthouse Pregnancy Center teaching that there are “four types of sex.” The graphic sex lesson handouts were culled from a program called “Shape, Sexual Health Awareness, Prevention and Education.” Comprehensive Sex Education came to Jay Middle School in Oklahoma last week. https://t.co/4eAzPeyG1w pic.twitter.com/Ps3yPJU5lS ​ ​ — ShannonJoy (@ShannonJoyRadio)...

NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. (WIVB) — Parents in North Tonawanda could end up behind bars if their child is found bullying others. The North Tonawanda Common Council hopes the new law will help end bullying by holding parents accountable for their children’s actions. If a child is caught bullying, or attacking another student, their parent will pay the fine or do the time, according to a law unanimously passed by the North Tonawanda Common Council last week. The parent could spend up to 15 days in jail, pay $250 or both.

Safety, religious bias, sexualization of the classroom are factors bolstering school-choice argument! In his newly published book, The Corrupt Classroom, Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute illustrates how the public school classroom has become increasingly politicized, with liberal teachers indoctrinating students with an anti-Trump and leftist agenda. Izumi makes the case that while many school choice supporters rely on academic school performance data to show that public schools are failing, there are many other equally important reasons to support it. "Many parents, for example, are rightly concerned about the growing politicization of the classroom," Izumi explains. "Far from being...

Gay and transgender activists in Tallahassee, Florida are really mad because the taxpayer-funded local school district reassigned a fifth-grade teacher after she told the little kids in her classroom to address her with the title “Mx.” and refer to her using the third-person plural pronouns “they,” “them” and “their.” The teacher, Chloe Bressack, pulled her transgender pronoun stunt at Tallahassee’s Canopy Oaks Elementary School earlier this school year. Bressack, who identifies as gender neutral, sent a note home to parents saying that she expected their fifth-grade children to address her as “Mx. Bressack” and to use plural pronouns when discussing...

She then characterized Dr. Seuss's illustrations as racist and said that they were steeped in "racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes," listing several examples in her letter. Soeiro did not note that former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama both read Dr. Seuss books to children several times during their eight years in the White House.

As we reflect on law and policy, it is often useful to see how changes play out in the practical, nitty-gritty of everyday life. For example, we can consider how progressives have, over time, separated love, sex, and marriage. Divorce has skyrocketed during the post-WWII years, out-of-wedlock children have come into existence by the millions, sexually transmitted disease has become rampant, cohabitation is becoming more and more popular with each passing year, the porno industry has captured the time, money, and imaginations of tens of millions of men on the Internet, and there is a gossip feeding frenzy regarding the...

Offered 'free' laptops in exchange for attending public district for 1 day! A public school superintendent in South Dakota was being investigated for an apparent “scam” involving local homeschoolers after he offered them a “free” laptop computer in exchange for their attendance in his district for a single day, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association. The Argus-Leader in Sioux Falls reported the “offer” from Tri-Valley School District Supt. Mike Lodmel was to homeschoolers, explaining he wanted the children to spend one day in public school “and go home with a new laptop.” The invitation was for Sept. 29,...