Free Republic

Geico might be known for its little lizard, but it's the camel that’s stirring up trouble. You might have seen their latest commercial. A camel walks through a workplace asking people what day it is. He’s super excited about it being hump day. Funny, right? Teachers at least one Connecticut middle school aren’t fans, because the kids are screaming “HUMP DAY” in the halls, students told HLN affiliate WFSB. They say it’s distracting, and they want it to stop. …

Oregon school cancels zombie survival classes, ensures students will be eaten Armand Larive Middle School had what is perhaps the greatest junior high social studies class ever: Zombie Survival Skills. But the killjoy parents and administrators put the kibosh on the post-apocalyptic class, feeling that undead studies were not appropriate for growing minds. The East Oregonian reported on Rich Harshberger's zombie survival classes at Armand Larive earlier this week, a class that focused largely on real-world survival skills and also had a reading and writing component. Apparently, parents were a bit surprised to learn the school was teaching a class...

Students who appear to be middle schoolers witnessed a teacher blowing up a condom like a balloon as a part of a sex ed lesson in a health class somewhere, quite possibly in Canada. A video of the incident was posted on YouTube by a user October 21, 2012. The user listed her country as Canada but offered no hometown, and no clue about the identity of the school where this took place. SEE IT HERE. But it’s an odd occurrence, to say the least. At the risk of sounding like prudes, we have to ask if it’s appropriate for...

Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey’s Center for Family Life Education held its sex education conference on November 18th and 19th, 2010 at the Imperia Conference Center in Somerset, NJ. Roughly half the attendees were NJ educators whose $250 conference fee, daily salaries and substitute salaries were paid for by their school districts. At first glance it would appear that this conference was intended to enhance the knowledge base of health educators and as the program guide stated, “keep our communities safe and healthy.” In reality these two days did not fit the criteria of a health conference. The...

Apparently if your child draws a flag in class, the student better put it in a circle so as not to offend the teacher. “The principal of a Central Coast school thrust in the national media spotlight over a drawing of the American flag said a teacher accused of calling the drawing offensive is ready to bring closure,” KSBW reported from Salinas, California on May 13, 2010. “Earlier this month, a seventh-grader at Gavilan View Middle School said her teacher told her to stop drawing a picture of the American Flag and called it offensive before praising another student’s drawing...

Unions: Let’s Teach Social Justice to Middle Schoolers — But Don’t Tell Glenn Beck http://www.breitbart.tv/unions-lets-teach-social-justice-to-middle-schoolers-but-dont-tell-glenn-beck/ Breitbart.TV and Naked Emperor News

Practice makes…? Malcolm A. Kline, March 4, 2010 Ooops. “What was supposed to be a school wide assembly featuring a motivational pep talk turned into an impromptu and explicit discussion on sex acts at Crosby Middle School in Texas,” the National Abstinence Education Association reports. “Parents were outraged to learn that their young girls were given how-to type information on oral and anal sex.” Meanwhile, across the pond, our British cousins who have been where we are going are looking for an exit ramp. “School children in England are to be given advice designed to protect them from feeling pressurized...

A middle school in Marin City will not be renamed after President-elect Barack Obama. Sausalito Marin City School District officials nixed the idea of renaming the Martin Luther King Jr. Academy Thursday after dozens of community members voiced opposition to the idea at a meeting.

Nov. 23 -- BURLINGAME -- California's largest teachers union will back a fight in court to overturn the state's new eighth-grade algebra requirement. The Burlingame-based California Teachers Association has joined the lawsuit by the California School Boards Association and the Association of California School Administrators against the state Board of Education's decision to require all middle school students to be tested in Algebra I by the end of eighth grade starting in 2011. The state board "acted abruptly, imprudently and without fully understanding the consequences of its actions on our schools, teachers and students," said David Sanchez, president of the...

Multiculturalism Gone Berserk by: Deborah Lambert, June 27, 2008 What has happened to New Hampshire, the Granite State, proud supporter of the American revolutionary spirit over two hundred years ago? Why are school children forced to “bow to the altar of multiculturalism” as they did at the Amherst Middle School when kids had to celebrate something called “Open Tent Day” by parading around the school dressed as Saudi Arabians, according to pcblogspot.com.? The local newspaper, the Milford Cabinet, reported that this exercise was designed to “encourage participants to reach out and learn from people around the world, and to promote...

Seven ninth-graders at Pascack Valley High School have been suspended for the rest of the school year for distributing racy photos of middle school girls via cell phones and school-issued laptops. A student who saw the photos on a laptop tipped off a teacher, and the administration alerted Hillsdale police last week, district Superintendent Benedict Tantillo III said today. More than 20 girls who are now in ninth grade were in the photos, the superintendent said. Some pictures appeared to have been taken two or three years ago, and some of the subjects moved to private high school instead of...

Melancholy Serenades by: Malcolm A. Kline, June 11, 2008 Education professionals think that they have come up with a way to get middle school students to share their life experiences in a way that is both therapeutic and instructive but the exercises they have concocted may prove to be intrusive at best. “In their writer’s notebook, students draw a horizontal line across the page,” Karen D. Wood writes in the May 2008 issue of Middle School Journal. “Above the line, they note the highlights of their lives; moments that are fond memories.” “Below the line, they note the lowlights of...

Gender San Francisco Style by: Deborah Lambert, January 29, 2008 A San Francisco area middle school recently cancelled a “gender-switch” day in response to complaints from parents. A Catholic news agency report noted that “Adams Middle School in Brentwood encouraged students to cross-dress – boys wearing girls clothing, girls wearing boys’ clothing – on the last day of ‘Spirit Week.’” According to the Pacific Justice Institute, parents were given little notice of the event, “and only found out after flyers were posted at the school.” When parents notified the school that they would keep their children home if the event...

SIERRA VISTA — Ron and Joanne Wagner were guests of honor during a special celebration at Sierra Vista Middle School on Monday. The Wagners, who had purchased a Christmas tree that had been donated to the Festival of Trees by the middle school, gave the tree back to the school for students and staff to enjoy. This marked the fourth year the Wagners purchased a tree at the Festival and returned it to the school that donated it. All the ornaments on the tree were hand made by special education students. Now on display in the school library, the tree...

Sacramento, Nov 2, 2007 / 11:10 am (CNA).- A Bay Area Middle School has canceled a scheduled cross-dressing or “gender-switch” day after parents complained, according to an Oct. 30 Pacific Justice Institute news release. The Sacramento-based institute is a legal organization that defends parental rights, religious freedom, and other civil liberties. Adams Middle School in Brentwood encouraged students to cross-dress – boys wearing girls clothing, girls wearing boys’ clothing – on the last day of “Spirit Week,” Friday, Nov. 2. Parents were given little notice of the event, said the Pacific Justice Institute, and only found out about it after...

Students who have parental permission to be treated at King Middle School's health center would be able to get birth control prescriptions under a proposal that the Portland School Committee will consider Wednesday. The proposal would build on the King Student Health Center's practice of providing condoms as part of its reproductive health program since it opened in 2000, said Lisa Belanger, a nurse practitioner who oversees the city's student health centers. If the committee approves the King proposal, it would be the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available to some students in...

Judge dismisses sexual harassment charges against 2 Ore. teens 08/20/2007 By WILLIAM McCALL / Associated Press Two 13-year-old boys accused of slapping girls' bottoms and poking or cupping girls' breasts at school apologized on Monday as a judge dismissed charges against the two, ending a six-month case that drew national attention. The charges triggered a debate over whether such behavior in school should be considered criminal. Four girls listed as victims by the prosecutors had asked the judge to drop the charges against Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison. Yamhill County Judge John Collins did so on Monday, saying it was...

PHOENIX — On Tuesday afternoon, January 16, an old man walked into the administrative office of a small charter school on the high desert plains north of Prescott. He was skinny, with floppy jowls that made him look like the Bitter Beer Face man of the old Keystone ads. But other than his goofy face and laughable name, the staff at Mingus Springs Charter School thought little of him. The old man introduced himself as Lonnie Eugene Stiffler. He asked if the school had any slots open for a seventh-grader. Stiffler said he had home-schooled his grandson, but believed it...

It’s hard to write this without sounding like a prig. But it’s just as hard to erase the images that planted the idea for this essay, so here goes. The scene is a middle school auditorium, where girls in teams of three or four are bopping to pop songs at a student talent show. Not bopping, actually, but doing elaborately choreographed re-creations of music videos, in tiny skirts or tight shorts, with bare bellies, rouged cheeks and glittery eyes. They writhe and strut, shake their bottoms, splay their legs, thrust their chests out and in and out again. Some straddle...

QUARTZ HILL - It's not every day middle school students get to arrest their principal or watch a teacher peal out of the school parking lot. But for 60 students at Joe Walker Middle School, daring escapes and creative costumes were as much a part of the school year as textbooks and rulers. These students spent months of class time writing and producing their own movie, a 30-minute mystery/action/comedy titled "White Rose." "I was waiting to find the right teacher to work with," Anderson said. That person turned out to be computer lab teacher Debbie Fitzpatrick. Since teaming up in...