Posted on 04/24/2002 9:28:29 AM PDT by Spiff
Saturday, April 20, 2002
'Freedom' banned in school?
By Joel Miller
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
A music teacher in an inner-city Michigan grade school is getting an earful from the higher-ups about the type of songs she can use in her classroom.
According to the April 17 issue of the Rutherford Institute's Insider, the teacher isn't in trouble for having the children sing lines from the latest Snoop Dogg rap album or even getting the tykes to trot out with something as strictly verboten as "Jesus Loves Me."
No, said the Insider, "school administrators informed her that she could not use any songs in class that contain the words 'freedom' or 'liberty.'" Why not, you might wonder. Simple: "Because some children in the school are not U.S. citizens."
I won't bother raising my hand before asking the following questions:
As imperfectly as we protect and defend our liberties, Americans should be proud of them. We should exult in the providence that took Hebraic legal tradition, hundreds of years of English common law, the guts, wits and wisdom of a few pasty, colonial landholders and distilled it into the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
While Rutherford is looking to take a whack at the offending educrats in Michigan, we should use this example as a temperature reading of how chilling the atmosphere is to traditional American values the nation over.
Beyond that, we need to reflect upon the fact that as traditionally American as those values may be, they are not exclusively American. Championing freedom around the globe is just as important as it is in the classrooms – which also provides a nice comparison with which to judge the public-school establishment:
The people most opposed to the propagation of freedom abroad are typically the dictators and strongmen who stand everything to lose if liberty should prevail in their countries. They value their power and pelf more than others' freedom.
So, dispensing with the hypersensitive hogwash, it's clear that the reason teachers are being forbidden to utter the words "freedom" and "liberty" has little to do with offending foreigners, as was suggested, and a lot more to do with the fact that educrats simply don't put a high value on freedom and liberty.
For these mini dictators, freedom and liberty are all well and good so far as they go, but they're not so important that we can't shut up about them if a few kids and their parents get flustered over the fact.
Back to reality for a moment: Even if people are so sensitive they break out in rashes over use of the words, gagging a pedagogue in this manner is hardly defensible.
This isn't as simple as some misguided separation-of-church-and-state argument, where folks quickly concede to a position at which the founders would have laughed out loud. This is like separating government from government:
Governments are instituted to secure liberty. So keeping a public school teacher from using the word "liberty" in a song is tantamount to the separation of the government and its very purpose for existing. As the founders were well-aware, this is precisely the junction at which tyranny arises in a society.
When the government values other things above the life, liberty and property of its citizens, the citizens had better watch out – you can read the rest of the Declaration to see what happens next.
Forbidding a teacher from chirping choruses with "freedom" won't roll us into a dictatorship tomorrow. But when public school officials – the people entrusted with your children's education – don't value freedom and traditional American liberties, you can rest assured that plenty of kids coming out of those propaganda mills won't either, and creating a few generations of children that don't respect basic liberties is the surest way to lose them.
It follws the liberal PC attitude that since everyone can't win, everyone should be losers.
NONE!!!!
It's time for the American public to stand up to the liberal PR machine and the media. This nonsense is ruining our Counrty!
Indeed!
We're just lucky they haven't figured out a way to protect the short, fat and ugly kids from the tall, slender and pretty kids.
Of course, they did figure out how to deal with the smart kids: They dumb-down the entire student population. The dumb kids are still dumb, but they don't stick out any more.
The Star Spangled Banner
O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
There are only four kinds of people living in the U.S.A.:
Native Americans
Naturalized Americans
Guests of the American people
Criminals
The kids who are not U.S. citizens but are here legally are guests of our country, and as such ought to be taught to respect our cultural traditions.
The kids who are not U.S. citizens and are here illegally ought not be in our public schools, but ought to be deported, along with their parents.
What is so difficult to understand here?
In a way they have. They have promoted promiscuity through a sex education which is more of a how-to manual that a this-is-what-it -is education. They have lowered our moral values to the point that all are equally squalid. To be an achiever, a true achiever rather than one given A's just for being there, and one of high standards and moral values, is much, much more difficult than it used to be. Those who make it are true heroes whether the are short and fat or trim and attractive. They, the powers that be, aren't so concerned with looks as they are with mandating mediocrity at all meaningful levels.
Bet it is in Detroit, maybe Fint but Detroit has a very large Arab population and is more likely.
The rest of Michigan is sane, honest!
a.cricket
Nothing, but you are committing a no-no, you are thinking. That makes you a dangerous person who must be shouted down or silenced completely. You should be feeling, not thinking.
Just imagine yourself as a very young person from a totalitarian country and you are singing, or hearing, these songs with words like "freedom" and "liberty". How would that make you feel? Wouldn't you feel like a second rate person just because you are from a rotten country, something you had no control over?
No, you would probably feel exhilerated about these new concepts and delighted that you are in such a country. See, I knew you were dangerous! Regardless, these ideas must be stamped out. They are way overrated. Besides, it is something you need to be prepared to forget because your freedom will begone soon anyway, if we have our way.
a.cricket
They have figured out a way, one of my close friends has a younger brother in school, in gym class, the teacher breaks up the kids to do excersises, no sports that involve competition, and they're not allowed to act or do anything competitive if they have free time, plus no score or personal score keeping. No taunting, or even congrats, since congratualting a teamate on anything leaves people out. Same school also doesn't do dances or social activities because certain kids may get the feelings hurt, etc. Public school in my neighborhood.
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