Posted on 03/16/2006 5:17:36 PM PST by wagglebee
(AgapePress) - A proposed bill in the Oklahoma Legislature would require public libraries that receive state funds to remove materials containing sexually explicit content or homosexual themes from general reading areas.
The proposed law easily passed a State House panel last week and now heads to the full House for a vote. The bill would withhold state funds from public libraries that do not put objectionable material in a special place. Steve Crampton, chief counsel with the American Family Association's Center for Law & Policy, says the bill is reasonable.
"All it does is remove [the material] from, basically, an accidental kind of discovery by children that oftentimes are pre-kindergarten in age," says Crampton. "There's just no excuse for allowing kids to access this kind of material in a public library paid for by taxpayer money."
And contrary to what liberal groups might try to portray, says the constitutional legal expert, the bill is not a form of censorship. "The liberal ACLU types are looking at it with that in mind," he suggests, "but I think they may not rush into court."
He points out that the legislation does not call for anything to be removed from the libraries. "Though the easy pot-shot made at it is that it constitutes 'censorship,' the reality is that you're not removing a single book," Crampton says. "All you're doing is putting them into a restricted access section. So I don't know that they would be successful in the event they did raise the challenge."
The bill's sponsor, Representative Sally Kern of Oklahoma City, says she is not trying to censor materials. She explains that she just wants to shield children from language and behaviors they are not mature enough to understand.
You've disproved your own point. There is fierce competition among universities for students. Tuition keeps rising and the politics keep turning left.
Not necessarily, durasell. Parents with younger children may take more a personal interest in what is being put into those tender minds. They also can do more about it on a local level. Too bad that doesn't carry over to higher ed, huh?
Parents with younger children may take more a personal interest in what is being put into those tender minds. They also can do more about it on a local level.
Why don't they do that now where they have voting leverage in their communities?
And just maybe by the time the youngster becomes college age his choices diminish somewhat the influence that ma and pa formerly had in his life.
By the time a "youngster" is college age they are already adults. As adults, they get to make their own choices in regards to what to believe and how to behave. If they don't share the values of their parents, it would not be the first time it's happened.
The point I'm trying to make is that children are not robots that parents can program and send out into the world to be exact duplicates of themselves.
Many try, but they now must send their kids to the schools serving the area in which they reside. It's hard to change anything when your hands have been tied behind you, durasell, agree?
You might read "The N.E.A. Trojan Horse in American Education", by Sanuel Blumenfeld.
Tragically, Ronald Reagan didn't get around to discontinuing the Federal Education Department.
Also, because our children have been thoroughly indoctrinated by the time they are through the 12th grade, they are beyond listening to anything ma and pa have to say regarding "his life". Nes paz?
>children are not robots that parents can program and send out into the world to be exact duplicates of themselves<
LOL Good parents do not try to do that, but government schools do exactly that!
I'm reminded of the writer, Anthony Burgess (Clockwork Orange, etc). Like him, not like him, he was a pretty decent writer. The fascinating thing is, his parents were almost completely illiterate. Not a book in the house.
A similar thing with the screenwriter/director Paul Shraeder (sp?). The guy came from a very religious household and wasn't allowed to see a movie until he was 15.
Just two odd examples of kids differing from their parents.
As I've said previously, I believe people should be allowed to educate their kids as they see fit. The potential mistake I see is that many parents are all too willing to tear down a flawed but functioning system with little more than vague hopes in the free market allowing them more control over what will replace it.
Oops! That last one was for you! It's late. Ta ta!
We are all born unique, with innate gifts and drives. Good parents nourish their children as they would a garden they expect good things from. They feed them, shelter them from the storms of life as best they can, give them love and discipline them from the baser natures we are all also born with. They do not "smother" them. Mind you, I said Good Parents. No one is perfect, no not one. We hear alot about disfunctional families (and I suppose most families experience occasional disfunction). Like the news, only the exceptional, or bad news gets reported. Rarely the good, or "normal".
Philosopher that I think you are, lighten up a little. There is a bright side. If you came from an unhappy background, forgive and any bitterness will flee from you.
As far as public schools are concerned, like society as a whole, we get what we deserve if we do nothing about it.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. -- the first line from Anna Karenina
My personal view is that education is currently under attack from the right and the left. Kids today are caught in the crossfire of doctrine, dogma and agenda. And no good will come of it.
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