Posted on 05/07/2003 4:13:42 AM PDT by .30Carbine
Vermont Cop Story: AP's Bias or America's?
May 6, 2003
I spent Tuesday's Hour One discussing this story about Vermont police officer John Mott. While off duty at 1:30 AM, Mott entered a high school through an open service door. He then asked a janitor to unlock a classroom so he could take pictures of displays by "passionate pacifist" teacher Tom Treece to present to an attorney.
The Associated Press headlines this story: "Vt. Cop Photographed Class Projects," pointing a finger at the cop as the villain. We had to go to a local paper, the Barre Montpelier Times Argus, to find the classroom details. But this is not a media bias story. I held off giving my opinion on these events just to see what my audience's reaction would be, as you'll see below. More:
The officer reports taking pictures of "a poster of President Bush with duct tape over his mouth and a large papier-mâché combat boot with the American flag stuffed inside stepping on a doll, along with pictures of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and his co-thug reactionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. They aren't "pacifists"! Besides, the whole so-called peace movement was organized around defending and protecting Saddam Hussein! The slogan: "All hail the idiot boy king" was posted next to a picture of President Bush as, Treece claimed, "a reason to reject the high school budget."
If Mr. Treece posted pictures of me and Ronald Reagan on the wall, this cop would be a hero and the teacher would be on his way out. Apparently there were "rumors" about this teacher's curriculum, so this officer investigated. It's reported that there's a "backlash" against Officer Mott, but not that there was any sort of backlash against the class content. Why does it take a cop, taking pictures at 1:30 AM on his own time, to find out what's going on in this class? Where are the parents?
Is this not a public school? Our legal division doesn't see any constitutional issue on the officer entering the classroom in his private or public capacity; there's no expectation of privacy in a public school. We had a police officer call us up and say that Mott was off duty and out of his jurisdiction, so he shouldn't have entered the school or asked to be let into the locked classroom. You can hear such calls below along with my lengthily reporting of the details. I dedicated more than an hour to this story, and here's why:
After 70 minutes of discussion, all my e-mails and calls similarly focused on the cop - just like AP did. "So what, Rush?" So we hear education this and education that all the time in this country. Everybody claims to care about teaching "the children." But if we really cared about education, 90% of the garbage going on inside classrooms wouldn't be permitted. We would have parents involved in their children's education that know every word on the chalkboard and in the books. A police officer - who from this story doesn't seem to have any kids in the school much less in Treece's class - wouldn't have to enter through a service door and then ask a janitor to unlock the classroom for him. The parents would have expressed their outrage; instead, there wasn't a peep.
So we can agree to disagree, respectfully or not.
Absolutely! Just do not ask (or force) me to pay for your platform to espouse what you feel or believe or to teach it to my children.
Hank
You were not mistaken. Parents and concerned citizens in Barre are in an uproar over this, and School Board meetings have been packed to the hilt. 29 different school budgets did not pass on Town Meeting Day, among them Barre Town and Barre City. People are fed up with the state of things in our public schools here in VT, and the cry for school choice is growing louder by the day.
The War on Terrorism has brought the battle of ideologies and community values in our public schools to the fore. This well-publicized incident is not the first of its kind here in VT.
The NEA is very well entrenched, but we the people are taking back control of our children's education.
Thank God for Republican Governor Jim Douglas, who recently appointed a homeschooler, Susan Schills, to the VT State Board of Education. Gov. Douglas is a strong proponent of school choice, and the voters are with him.
My husband also noticed a Buddhist prayer flag hanging inside the classroom in one of the pics.
Irrelevant.
Mostly because we do not sink to our opponents' level, but perhaps some parent will do as you suggest.
Then why can't I say a slew of words that begin with n, f, k, c, g, w, m, d, etc.? Without being accused of 'hate speech'? Regardless of context, these words are being expunged from our culture to the sometimes detriment of its history and literature.
I noticed the 'Impeach Bush' bumper sticker, which looked like a production unit. If the students made these posters, were they the result of an assignment? Why were there no posters supporting the president if there is free speech in the classroom? Have you, personally ever openly disagreed with a teacher? Was your free speech stifled?
From what I have gathered, this is harder to accomplish than it ought to be, and as the situation stands now the pacifist professor is being defended and commended by the school administrators.
It's a tight group, the NEA. It is a far more dangerous and invasive monopoly than microsoft ever thought of being, very profitable financially and politically. It's time to break them up.
They had.
The bumper stickers on the door, extreme projects, etc, show that the school was failing to do anything about the problem. This needed to be exposed.
And thank God Rush Limbaugh has exposed it to the whole nation!
A student would face potential grade problems or hassle from the teacher if one of them tried to take the pictures him/herself to expose what was happening. School officials can prevent parents from doing the same, especially if the parents are seen in "conflict" with the school or teacher already.
One parent was arrested at a Middlebury HS for trying to find out if his children were being forced to attend a "peace protest" there -
Quote:
One father, Ron O’Neill, a former Philadelphia police officer who was concerned about his two daughters at the school, was arrested for trespassing on school grounds [during school hours!] after he made repeated attempts to find out firsthand and from the principal, William Lawson, what was actually happening at the school.
According to O’Neill, “My daughters were in that school and I had no way of knowing whether there was anything a father should be concerned about. These are things I feel I shouldn't have to worry about while my children should be receiving an education. However, I really wanted to know if my children were being forced to participate in the protest, or if they were missing valuable class time because of it.”
You're not going to get it from the local VT newspapers.
Why did this cop have to go to the school in the middle of the night? Has there been an effort to keep parents from seeing what is going on in the class?
Yes. See my post above about the Middlebury parent who was arrested for "trespassing" on school grounds.
The voters have made their voice loud and clear on this one - 29 school budgets went down in flames on Town Meeting Day, including Spaulding's. The schools just keep rescheduling votes, however, until they get the answer they want. It is chaos in the classroom and everywhere the NEA sets its footprint.
I agree with every word you wrote. Thank you for saying it. My guess is that Rush is right not only about the AP bias but also about the lack of real concern over the state of public education in America - a lot of words, and not a lot of action. I'm so proud of my fellow Vermonters.
...and are the cause of the chaos in the public school classroom. It's flabbergasting that it has to come to this, but there is an effort under way in Barre to define "Community Values" and have them recorded in the school board's directives on running the school.
Only in an alternate universe.
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