Posted on 05/11/2019 2:12:50 AM PDT by Steve Schulin
Over the past week, two events occurred involving my kids that made me realize that America is failing our children. We are raising what might be the most closedminded and indoctrinated generation ever to grow up in this country. If we cannot course-correct and start teaching our kids to be open-minded, get informed and always be civil to those they oppose, then the current civic war rifling through our politics and social media lives will only grow worse as this generation comes to power. Let me explain.
The first event occurred in California when my daughter and I were touring the University of CaliforniaBerkeley. As background, Berkeley is where the free speech movement started back in 1964-65 when students demanded the university respect their free speech rights.
Thanks to that movement, students across America secured their right to protest and speak their minds. America was made a better place because of that movement.
In recognition of that movement, the campus hosts the Free Speech Movement Café for students. Ironically, free speech isn’t very free at Berkeley these days. Just last fall a conservative was suckerpunched simply for trying to sign up students for his group. As a result of that attack, we asked our tour guide if Berkeley was a safe place for my daughter given her conservative beliefs. The tour guide’s response stunned us.
The guide said that of course she would be safe if she didn’t say things that offended someone. Given the utter impossibility of knowing what would offend someone, that standard seemed incredibly loose and divorced from the whole concept of free speech.
Next, the guide said my daughter would be fine so long as she didn’t join a “right-wing group like the College Republicans who have brought controversial speakers like Sean Spicer to campus.” My eyes must have widened to the size of basketballs, as it seemed quite a stretch to refer to College Republicans as “rightwing” given the mainstream existence of such groups across college campuses. The former White House press secretary for President Trump may be many things, but Spicer is certainly not known for being a rhetorical bomb-thrower.
[pull quote] My daughter said she couldn’t go to Berkeley despite liking what she saw. She felt she would have to hide who she was and just couldn’t live that way for four years.
After our tour guide left, my daughter said there was just no way she could go to Berkeley despite liking what she saw. She said she felt that she would have to hide who she was and just couldn’t live that way for four years. She said she wouldn’t feel safe.
The second event occurred at her high school. My daughters decided they wanted to start a club for conservatives at the school, as they felt there was no place for students with those beliefs to gather and talk. After designing a flyer and getting it approved by the principal, the girls and their friends hung nearly 200 flyers around the school. As she was doing it, a fellow student told her she was starting the “KKK” club and that she was a racist. Thankfully, my daughter isn’t a snowflake so she just soldiered on without collapsing.
In less than 24 hours, nearly half of the flyers had been torn down, which has never happened to any other group’s flyers including the center-left group’s flyers. My daughters dutifully replaced the ones that had been torn down.
Perhaps you think these two events represent nothing more than “kids being kids,” but I respectfully believe these events signal a critical societal and parental failure that could cascade into even worse behavior in the coming years. If free speech doesn’t exist at the very campus that launched its movement, imagine how those young adults will act as they enter the real world. If high school students think it is OK to selectively tear down one group’s flyers because they don’t believe the same thing, imagine how that mindset will harden in the coming years.
If a fellow student feels perfectly comfortable calling another student a racist merely for putting up signs for a conservative group, imagine what other banal actions will provoke such venom.
As parents, we should be teaching our kids to be open-minded, inquisitive and respectful, not act like hooligans and haters. If we truly want to fix what ails America, we must start at home by teaching our kids the right lessons that they will carry throughout their lives.
Matt Mayer is president of Opportunity Ohio, a conservative state policymaking think tank based in Dublin
Completely true.
And our side, frankly, has done NOTHING to oppose it.
Nothing.
Nobody. We are mute, silent, and cowed frankly.
For more than the entire last GENERATION.
Nothing.
I fear it doesn’t end well, and in a major way.
I hope I am wrong.
Schools should have no place for Communists or Islamists or any other ideology which opposes the very purpose of education in a free society.
I doubt any school would hire an advocate for human sacrifice; any pretense that ideology doesn’t matter is a baldfaced lie.
I have come to realize your fear is my Hope.
That’s all the public schools and universities have these days: Sodomy, Stalinism and Satanism.
Ohio PING!
It was not a "free" speech movement, it was a LEFTIST speech movement, and America is a much worse place because of it.
The Left sure attracted a lot of folks during that free speech movement, but the question of whether we should have been involved as we were in Vietnam was not inherently a left-right matter. The right chose wrong in that, and we’re still paying a terrible price as a nation.
When FreeRepublic started, Rep. Bob Dornan often gave special order speeches, up to an hour long, during dinner time here on east coast. One of the matters he often discussed was how our government lied to us about Vietnam in the 1960s. His excoriations of Robert McNamara were memorable. The freely available online Congressional Record archives go back to early 1990s and a search for [Dornan AND McNamara] will pull up many a good read. The year that Dornan and Alan Keyes were in the GOP presidential debates was the pinnacle of the RIGHT’s messaging (along with the 2000 debates which included Dr. Keyes). I don’t recall Keyes talking about Vietnam, but he was the only candidate on the GOP debate stage to oppose the US intervention in the Kosovo unpleasantness. I had voted Republican for president (except in 1972) every time until that 2000 election. If Keyes had been the nominee, I’d probably still be a reliably Republican voter.
Some may remember Boris Kizenko from Holmdel High School (NJ) was denied National Honor Society membership because of a “character flaw.”
Feb 3
HS Student Claims National Honor Society Rejected Him Over Trump Support
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEdmHbLN1-s
He was on Fox and Friends this morning and said he has created an organization called high schoolers for freedom whose goal is to expose bias in the classroom and give a voice to all students in classrooms.
The organization is: High schoolers for freedom on @HS for freedom on instagram where students will share their stories.
link to story
https://clashdaily.com/2019/02/school-spikes-maga-honor-students-nhs-application-because-of-character-flaw/
This ping list is for the other articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)
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High school student starts grassroots effort for conservative high schoolers
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6035482472001/#sp=show-clips
May. 11, 2019 - 3:31 - Boris Kizenko speaks out about being rejected by the National Honor Society over his support for Trump.
“It was not a ‘free’ speech movement, it was a LEFTIST speech movement”
My husband was in the Physics program at Berkeley in the early ‘70s, and he was non-political. Observing the crazies there turned him in to a staunch conservative.
I am a National Merit Scholar.
Way back when, I attended a “meet and great’ for other NM scholars.
Let’s just say it was the last I went to one.
OHIO PING
A REALLY SHOULD READ
“Schools should welcome all political persuasions”
Columbus Dispatch
Guest editorial by Matt Mayer, president of Opportunity Ohio, a conservative state policymaking think tank based in Dublin.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3748521/posts
Please let me know if you want on or off the Ohio Ping list.
WELL......Let’s see if I get it right this time.
OHIO PING
A REALLY SHOULD READ
“Schools should welcome all political persuasions”
Columbus Dispatch
Guest editorial by Matt Mayer, president of Opportunity Ohio, a conservative state policymaking think tank based in Dublin.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3748521/posts
Please let me know if you want on or off the Ohio Ping list.
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