WELCOME TO THE CONTINUING COLLAPSE!* * By Bruce N. Shortt, J.D., Ph.D. * Exposing Government Schools: The Youth Ministry of the State Church of Secular Humanism* ** March,*Anno Domini 2010 *** "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies." (Groucho Marx)*?* Here richly, with ridiculous display, The Politician's corpse was laid away. While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged. (Hilaire Belloc) * WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT THE CONTINUING COLLAPSE REVEALS? * * At times The Continuing Collapse fears that you, Dear Reader, see TCC mainly as a source of dark amusement. TCC's purpose, however,*is not to entertain, but to equip you to evangelize on behalf of Christian education and to*be a prophetic voice on education in your church and community. * Our collective ministry is to help families and churches return to a Biblical understanding of education so that Christians will rescue their children from the dark and decaying government school system. This, in turn, will bring reformation to our families, churches, communities, culture, and country and repentance to the government school tares in our midst. * Remember, a child's soul is a terrible thing to waste... * * Even big media guys like Glen Beck are beginning to talk about the rampant pathologies of the government schools. If you missed Beck's recent program titled "What are your kids learning?", here's a link: http://www.watchglennbeck.com/video/2010/March/Watch-The-Glenn-Beck-Show-March-5-2010/ * Now, if you listened very carefully Beck even says at one point "sell your car" and get your kids out. It goes by in a flash, and there is also some blather about calling your highly trained education professionals, but Beck has now timidly stuck his toe in the water regarding the only real solution to the problem. * As you will find*IF you but persevere to the end of this month's TCC, chaos will soon be upon the government school system. In fact, the chaos is being organized. * Please use the information in TCC to help*others understand the times so they will rescue their children and work to defeat bond levies.* * * ONCE*MORE*INTO THE BREACH, DEAR FRIENDS, ONCE MORE...* * Henry The Fifth Act 3, scene 1, 1–6 * YouTube- Henry V - The Breach * * Every month The Continuing Collapse is faced with a*sisyphean task. No sooner is a draft completed of an evening than the next morning journals, newspapers, books, and web-browsers innundate*The Continuing Collapse with a torrent of yet more compelling material*illustrating the irrepressibly*degenerate and ridiculous folkways of our highly trained professionals. * Thwarted from completion, like King Henry before the walls of Harfleur, The Continuing Collapse*again and again*urges itself forward redrafting*until the measure of the month in government education has been taken....which, this month, leads The Continuing Collapse to return to developments regarding*a supperating wound within the very soul of Pharaoh's schools.... * * * YOUR SCHOOLS AREN'T "DIFFERENT"...BUT THEY SURE ARE GOING TO BE...* * Just over a year ago California's SB 777 made it mandatory that every government educational institution in California promote both gender confusion among children*and*the sodomite and other perverse lifestyles. The Continuing Collapse also predicted that this would spread rapidly. So far, the expansion of government school promotion of sexually degenerate lifestyles has*indeed been occurring rapidly, largely by stealth at the state and local levels. Now, with Kevin Jennings safely installed as the "Safe Schools" czar, the sodomites*have come flouncing out of their closets in the federal government to seize*an opportunity to mandate approval of their "lifestyle" across the country.* A homosexual congressman from Colorado has proposed a law critics say would give controversial federal school safety czar Kevin Jennings – a longtime homosexual-rights advocate – almost unlimited authority to mandate indoctrination in public schools at taxpayer expense... * Under the legislation by Democrat Rep. Jared Polis, Jennings "can create pro-homosexual programs and policies to their hearts' delight," Harvey wrote...Polis' proposal would provide special protections for students who claim they are discriminated against because of their "perceived sexual orientation." The bill would call down the wrath of the federal government on offenders by classifying "actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity" alongside race, color, sex, disability or national origin as factors on which protections are based... * "If a school receives federal funds from one of these agencies or any other, it is subject to the new rules that agency devises to conform to this bill," Harvey explained. "And states can be held liable for violations, so state governments will have incentives to put pressure for compliance on local schools." ... * "The purpose of this bill is not what is being stated, but is quite simply to mandate in public schools one acceptable viewpoint on the issue of homosexuality, using purported violence or harassment as the rationale, and the power of the feds as the hammer," Harvey said. "The goal is to silence those who may warn about or object to student expression of homosexuality or gender confusion. Such warnings might literally save a child’s life." *http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=124704 * * HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS PROVIDE A SEX EDUCATION WORKSHOP AT A PEP RALLY * When speaking with older, sane school prinicpals and other administrators, The Continuing Collapse not infrequently hears complaints about the teachers coming into government schools since the early 90's. Evidently, schools of education have omitted instructing aspiring highly trained education professionals that flip-flops, see-through blouses, bare mid-riffs, jeans, and pajamas are not appropriate attire for a work day at government school. Ah, but time marches on. As The Continuing Collapse has repeatedly pointed out, in more recent years highly trained education professionals*are increasingly "sexting" students and*are also selflessly providing them with one-on-one sexual "mentoring". Now it appears that principals will have to further instruct the highly trained education professionals under their supervision that acting out their sexual fantasies on one another at pep rallies in front of students is frowned upon.* Two teachers... took part in an eyebrow-raising lap dance at a high school pep rally...have been told not to report back to work. The dance, caught on video by one of the 100 students at the Churchill High School rally, shocked many of the students, who say the teachers went too far. The two teachers, one a man, the other a woman, were dressed as a cheerleader and a football player. The female teacher is seated on a chair with her legs spread as dance music plays. The male teacher approaches her between her legs. He then straddles her and gyrates his hips. He bends over, while she slaps his bottom, his hips bouncing to the beat. They then take it one step further. While the female teacher throws her head back, the man dips his head down between her legs and simulates oral sex. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOplTIvAJaA Readers who can explain how this represents a multigenerational government school negative feedback loop may go to the head of the class. * "MAN BITES DOG" * OR "THE WASHINGTON POST CALLS OUT THE EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT" * If the Washington Post allows George Will to tell the truth about the government school education establishment, why won't allegedly conservative pastors and Christian leaders tell the truth? * Only two things are infinite -- the expanding universe and Democrats' hostility to the District of Columbia's school choice program. Killing this small program, which benefits 1,300 mostly poor and minority children, is odious and indicative. It is a small piece of something large -- the Democrats' dependency agenda, which aims to multiply the ways Americans are dependent on government. * Democrats, in their canine devotion to teachers unions, oppose empowering poor children to escape dependency on even terrible government schools. Unions and their poodles say school choice siphons money from public schools. But federal money funds the D.C. program, so killing it denies education money to the District while increasing the number of pupils the District must support.... * A century ago, Herbert Croly published "The Promise of American Life," a book -- still in print -- that was prophetic about today's progressives. Contemplating with distaste America's "unregenerate citizens," he said that "the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities." Therefore, Croly said, national life should be a "school" taught by the government: "The exigencies of such schooling frequently demand severe coercive measures, but what schooling does not?"... * Subordination is dependency seen from above. Today, it is seen approvingly by progressives imposing, from above, their dependency agenda.... The dependency agenda is progressive education for children of all ages, meaning all ages treated as children. *http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/12/AR2010021204007.html * * Speaking of the liberals' disdain for "unregenerate citizens", here we have an example of how our highly trained education professionals are doing their part in North Carolina to stamp out heretical Christian teaching about the most holy sacrament of the church of liberalism: abortion. * Charlotte, N.C., Feb 13, 2010. A proposed school textbook that describes Roe v. Wade as a ruling against government oppression of rights should be opposed by Catholics, the bishops of North Carolina have said. They argue the text implies that opposition to abortion is wrong... * They said the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction is considering a proposal for a revised textbook on Civics and Economics. The proposed text asserts that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that mandated permissive abortion laws nationwide, is an example of the Supreme Court upholding rights “against oppressive government.” * If the text is approved, the bishops warned, children will be taught the textbook’s interpretation is the correct one http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/n...opposition_is_wrong_n._carolina_bishops_warn/ * * GEORGIA'S HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS* PERSECUTED FOR *TRYING TO RAISE*STUDENTS' SELF-ESTEEM * * In a shocking display of insensitivity, someone in Georgia is insisting on characterizing tampering with student answer sheets as "cheating" rather than as "an emergency intervention to maintain and improve students' self-esteem". * From the New York Times: * ATLANTA — Georgia education officials ordered investigations on Thursday at 191 schools across the state where they had found evidence of tampering on answer sheets for the state’s standardized achievement test.... The order came after an inquiry on cheating by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement raised red flags regarding one in five of Georgia’s 1,857 public elementary and middle schools... * The inquiry flagged any school that had an abnormal number of erasures on answer sheets where the answers were changed from wrong to right, suggesting deliberate interference by teachers, principals or other administrators. * Experts said it could become one of the largest cheating scandals in the era of widespread standardized testing. * “This is the biggest erasure problem I’ve ever seen,” said Gregory J. Cizek, a testing expert at the University of North Carolina who has studied cheating. “This doesn’t suggest that it was just kids randomly changing their answers, it suggests a pattern of unethical behavior on the part of either kids or educators.” * Professor Cizek praised Georgia for conducting the analysis, saying that many states do not monitor erasure rates to check for potential cheating... * “The amount of cheating is staggering,” said Ben Scafidi, the director of the Center for an Educated Georgia, which promotes education reform. * Dr. Scafidi said he was concerned that the state did not flag enough schools, and that the districts were being asked to investigate themselves. He said he did not believe teachers could be responsible for a problem as widespread as the study indicated. “When you get even 5 percent of the classrooms that have cheating, you get the sense that there was orchestration from above,” he said. *http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/education/12georgia.html * This witch-hunt*must be stopped before it gets out of hand. If Georgians addicted to aid-to-dependent-parents knew how badly their children are really doing academically, the nation would have to mobilize and deploy to Georgia an army of grief counselors and other practitioners of the psychiatric and psychological black arts to minimize the trauma. * By the way, the same*story could be written about your state... and probably has. * * SCHOOLS OF EDUCATION LEAD THE WAY...BUT WHERE? * The real story behind cheating scandals across the country is the conflict between what regular folks believe that children should be learning and what our highly trained education professionals want to teach. * For example, why should teachers and administrators allow their jobs and bonuses to be jeopardized*by standardized tests that demand a knowledge of standard English rather than rewarding a solid grasp of Ebonics? * Here is Mike Adams reporting from inside the education establishment: * Some people call them “wiggers” but I just call them “idiots”. I used to wonder where they learned to be so racially condescending - presuming that dressing and “talking black” was a cool thing to do. But now I suspect that many of them have taken a course under Maurice Martinez, an education professor at UNC-Wilmington. * The class “Teacher, School, and Society” (EDN 200) is required of all education majors. When students take Maurice Martinez for the class they get a special treat. Maurice teaches them “Black English.”... * In his class, students are taught that “many African Americans speak and use a form of English that is somewhat different from Standard English.” They also learn that “the rules of Black American English are functional to those who use them.” ... * Maurice devotes dozens of pages of class notes to teaching white future teachers the specifics of Black English. It isn’t rocket science but it’s darned close. For example, Maurice teaches his students that while whites use terms like “This, that, them, these, and those” blacks often say “Dis, dat, dem, dese, and dose.” His notes say “There is a ‘duh’ sound substituted for the ‘th’ sound in the beginning of the word. * Actually, the “duh” sound was the student reaction to Professor Martinez’ lecture. There are some things so obvious that even education majors can learn them on their own. * Of course, if a white teacher is going to teach black kids, she needs to learn how to curse like they do. Here, Professor Martinez is brilliant. He informs us that while whites use the terms “mother” and “brother,” blacks often prefer to say “muvah” and “bruvah.” Maurice even gives a sample sentence: “My muvah cook grits.” But he cautions that when using profanity in conjunction with the “F-word” it is best to pronounce “mother” properly. Well, I’ll be a muvah f----r! I mean, I’ll be a mother f-----r! ... * After sending their kids to study education at UNC-Wilmington, many parents may decide they want their tuition money back. Thankfully, Maurice teaches 18 ways to say “money” in Black English: Book, bread, cake, cash, cheddar, cheese, chump change, coins, crumbs, dough, eagle, fitty, green, jingle, loot, moola, scrilla, and Benjamin. * I recommend that parents, black or white, call UNC-Wilmington and say “I want my chump back, ‘cause Professor Martinez is whack!” Or, to make it less personal, they could say “I want my scrilla, ‘fo rilla!”... http://townhall.com/columnists/MikeAdams/2010/02/15/wigger_please! * Martinez would give these girls an A+, and their parents are probably proud of what their girls are doing. YouTube- Zeta Tau Alpha: Epsilon 1st Place Winners of Sprite Step-Off Challenge 2010 * * SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENT NOW LEADS DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS * (NO, TCC IS NOT MAKING THIS UP.) * * Many readers of TCC no doubt think that much of what TCC says about the intellectual and moral level of today's highly trained education professionals is hyperbolic. Regrettably, all of it is fact-based. * For example, it was a former president of Columbia Teachers' College, not TCC,*who first pointed out that those administering government schools are shown by standardized tests to be on average less academically capable than kindergarten teachers, who themselves are not academic luminaries. * Now let us go one more rung up the ladder from school administrators to school board members. What do we find? All too often school board members hold various degrees in education, which is one of the seven warning signs of being pedagogically "challenged".*Indeed, TCC has provided many reports showing that decisions by school board members all too often reflect the general views of the education establishment. * But statistics and generalizations are bloodless things. Sometimes we need to see what "not as smart as the average kindergarten teacher" really means. * Here we have a story describing in small part what it means to have a former special education student in charge of one of the nation's largest government school systems. Before you think that Otis Mathes is an "exception", consider that he was elected as President of the Detroit School Board by a 10-1 vote. What does that say about virtually the entire board? * The president of the Detroit school board, Otis Mathis, is waging a legal battle to steer the academic future of 90,000 children, in the nation's lowest-achieving big city district. * He also acknowledges he has difficulty composing a coherent English sentence. * Here's a sample from an e-mail he sent to friends and supporters on Sunday night, uncorrected for errors of spelling, grammar, punctuation and usage. It begins: * If you saw Sunday's Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason's he gave for closing school to many empty seats. * The rest of the e-mail, and others that Mathis has written, demonstrate what one of his school board colleagues describes, carefully, as "his communication issues." But if these deficits have limited Mathis, as he admits they have, they have not stopped him from graduating from high school and college... * His difficulties with language were spotted as early as fourth grade, when he was placed in special education classes. His college degree was held up for more than a decade because he repeatedly failed an English proficiency exam then required for graduation at Wayne State University... * He graduated from Southwestern High School in 1973 with what he says was a 1.8 grade-point average but was previously reported as a .98 average. After serving in the Navy, Wayne State placed him in a special program to help academically unqualified students move forward, on the G.I. Bill. He stayed at Wayne for 15 years, as a student and a counselor, becoming a virtual "prisoner of Wayne," as he jokes, unable to graduate. * Here's another mass e-mail from Mathis, from Aug. 11, 2009: * Do DPS control the Foundation or outside group? If an outside group control the foundation, then what is DPS Board row with selection of is director? Our we mixing DPS and None DPS row's, and who is the watch dog? *http://www.detnews.com/article/2010...er-s-writing-send-wrong-message#ixzz0hKmvVBtZ * Can anyone really say without laughing that Detroit's government schools are run for the benefit of children? Of course, for the children,*Otis Mathes*is no laughing matter. * * FEELING SMUG BECAUSE YOUR*CHILDREN DON'T ATTEND "INNER CITY" SCHOOLS WITH "TROUBLED YOUTH" ? * Do you live in*Oregon, for example? You're getting*"gamed" too. * Oregon is moving its 10th-grade tests in reading, writing, math and science to the 11th grade, saying many students need another year of high school to learn the skills covered on the tests. The tests were written for sophomores, and the minimum passing scores were set based on how sophomores performed on the tests. But, beginning next school year, they will be given to juniors, and the state's high schools will be judged by how many of their students pass the exams by the end of junior year. Oregon got permission from the U.S. Department of Education to make the standard easier for schools. When Oregon sophomores take the tests, a lot of them fail, particularly in math. Last year, 46 percent of 10th-graders flunked that test, 45 percent failed the writing test and 42 percent failed in science. Low passing rates on the state reading and math tests are the main reason that Oregon high schools get worse ratings on state and federal accountability reports than the state's elementary and middle schools. Educators are hopeful that, with another year of instruction under their belts, more high schools students will be able to pass. Jack Jennings, president of the non-profit Washington, D.C.-based Center on Education Policy, has tracked how states have changed their testing programs since the 2001 passage of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which increased accountability and sanctions for schools that post low test scores. Some states lowered the scores a student needs to pass the state test to help schools avoid low ratings. Jennings could not recall another state moving its high school exams to a higher grade, and said it suggests Oregon may be lowering its expectations for its schools or its students. "It does seem unusual to move a 10th-grade proficiency set of tests to the 11th grade," he said. "If you thought 10th-graders could do something, and then you shift the measurement of that skill to 11th grade, it at least raises the question of whether they have lowered the standard." Schools will still be able to give the tests to sophomores, and those that pass won't have to retest as juniors, said Susanne Smith, communications manager for the Oregon Department http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2010/03/post_6.html * State "accountability tests" are notorious for their low standards. In fact, they are mainly political tools designed to*gull the public into thinking that Johnny can read and Suzy can do math. Amusing, isn't it, that the expert quoted in the article has difficulty stating straight up that moving 10th grade proficiency standards to 11th grade is a flagrant lowering of standards. * GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS: THE RETURN OF THE*"EYE OF SAURON" * * Over two years ago The Continuing Collapse wrote about government schools experimenting with using RFID chips to track children through lunch lines, buses, bathrooms, and classrooms. * Apparently, our highly trained education professionals like this technology, and George Soros is looking to help spread it while making a buck. * Nevermind that it conditions children to accept living in a total surveilance society like a prison or a police state and that it will radically deform the next generation's*sense of privacy. Or, perhaps, that is the point. * What's billionaire George Soros doing investing in a tiny company out of Jamaica? Answer: He has found a company that tracks student lunches and is working on tracking: attendance, transportation, grades and welfare payments.??It is becoming increasingly clear that if George Soros makes an investment, there is usually some government backing of the investment in some fashion, and it is generally an investment that is not moving the world in the direction of freedom and the pursuit of happiness... http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/02/soros-invests-in-people-tracking.html * * HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS CAUGHT HAVING "FUN" WITH STUDENT WEBCAMS * Many readers of TCC may have seen the stories about the school officials who were remotely accessing students webcams in the students' homes, including their bedrooms. * In case this*tale eluded you, however, the basic storyline is this: 1. high school requires students to have laptops to do homework, 2. students notice laptop webcam lights flashing at inappropriate times while they are at home, 3. students discover that school officials*can turn the webcams on and off remotely, 4. school officials issue various denials, and 5. a blogger who is smarter than said school officials finds blog entries and blogcasts by one of said highly trained educational professionals boasting about his ability to remotely activate student webcams. With surveillance technology like this, highly trained education professionals don't need to visit websites like "Webcam Girls Gone Wild." Your*14 year-old*provides their "enter-tainment" for free. * This investigation into the remote spying allegedly being conducted against students at Lower Merion represents an attempt to find proof of spying and a look into the toolchain used to accomplish spying. Taking a look at the LMSD Staff List, Mike Perbix is listed as a Network Tech at LMSD. Mr. Perbix has a large online web forum footprint as well as a personal blog, and a lot of his posts, attributed to his role at Lower Merion, provide insight into the tools, methods, and capabilities deployed against students at LMSD. Of the three network techs employed at LMSD, Mr. Perbix appears to have been the mastermind behind a massive, highly effective digital panopticon... * The primary piece of evidence, already being reported on by a Fox affiliate, is this amazing promotional webcast for a remote monitoring product named LANRev. In it, Mike Perbix identifies himself as a high school network tech, and then speaks at length about using the track-and-monitor features of LanRev to take surreptitious remote pictures through a high school laptop webcam. A note of particular pride is evident in his voice when he talks about finding a way outside of LANRev to enable "curtain mode", a special remote administration mode that makes remote control of a laptop invisible to the victim. Listen at 35:47, when he says: ?"you're controlling someone's machine, you don't want them to know what you're doing" ...?http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html * THE COLLAPSE IS ACCELERATING. * WILL YOU LISTEN NOW? * As the recession threatens*its "iron rice bowl", the education establishment is mobilizing its financial and ideological special interests to threaten to destroy or disrupt the "Little Red Schoolhouse" if its demands aren't met. * Here we have a story*reporting that*Oakland's teachers' unions are threatening to shut down Oakland's schools unless they get the collective bargaining contract they want. * * Oakland teachers have set a one-day strike for March 24, an action that could shut down schools unless district officials make major concessions at the bargaining table, union officials said Wednesday... * The strike could leave parents scrambling for child care and force the financially strapped district to decide whether to keep schools open with administrators and support staff in classrooms or tell students to stay home. Teachers who represent the union at the school sites cast the strike votes this week, and the result was overwhelmingly for the one-day walkout, an action the union's general membership, which includes 2,700 teachers, authorized in January.... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/04/BA9T1CA8MQ.DTL&tsp=1? "MR. BIRTHDAY SEX" PROVES IMPOTENT TO RESTORE CHICAGO SCHOOLS' FINANCES * If you are new to TCC, don't start "Tsk, Tsking" over the title. Regular readers recall that in the August 2009 edition The Continuing Collapse wrote about the impending bankruptcy of the Chicago school system and an "extraordinary" measure*taken by*the successors to "His Education Secretaryship", Arne Duncan, to avert financial calamity. * Did they look for waste to eliminate? Certainly not. Instead, they sought to increase enrollment*by increasing*their capitation funding. And just how were the educational swamis*of The Second City*going to entice more young people to return to the fetid educational*swamps of Chicago public schools? * Easy.*Bring in*a "celebrity" to spearhead the "back to school" effort, and, they maintained,*the gangbangers and other dropouts will come. * The celebrity, the*"Chosen One", upon whom the financial hopes of Chicago's highly trained education professionals rested was none other than 21-year-old R&B singer Jeremih, whose song and music video,*“Birthday Sex”, hit number 4 on the charts*last summer. “Birthday Sex”*is in essence the tender story of*a generous man who offers his girlfriend sex for her birthday in lieu of a gift or a cake. * Unfortunately for Mr. Birthday Sex and the wizards of Chicago's public schools, the "troubled youth" were quite capable of figuring out how to cash in on a little free entertainment*while managing to stay out Chicago's finest institutions of lower learning.* * The end result was that the "Mr. Birthday Sex gambit"*shrivelled like a*failed souffle, and now Chicago's government schools face a*$900 million budget shortfall and the prospect of a teachers' strike.** The Chicago Public School system is broke. By now you know the score: pension promises cannot be met and union salaries and benefits are out of line with reality. Combined with bloated administration costs, the system is bankrupt...Unions being unions, and administrators being administrators, neither will be willing to negotiate a fair compromise. Instead, look for massive teacher layoffs as the union and administrators throw the kids to the howling wolves... * Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman on Thursday painted the grimmest financial picture the Chicago schools have ever seen..."We're alerting parents now, when there's still time, to try to resolve this crisis and avoid a strike."... By the way, I am not talking about just Chicago. Expect to witness a nationwide phenomenon of teachers unions and administrators combine to throw kids to the wolves to protect their own cushy jobs. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/02/chicago-public-schools-system-is-broke.html * * * WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENS IN KANSAS CITY WHEN YOU TRY TO*ELIMINATE A BUDGET SHORTFALL BY IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL CLOSINGS? * Do we really need to ask? * Kansas City’s Afrikan Centered Education Collegium Campus struggled a quarter-century for its three-building campus at Southeast High School. The hundreds of supporters of ACE who packed Thursday night’s school closings forum made it clear they have no intention of letting any of it go — marking the strongest resistance yet to Superintendent John Covington’s unprecedented “rightsizing” school closings plan... * The school-closings plan makes up the driving force of an effort to cut $50 million from the district’s budget, which is strained by a steady loss in enrollment and declining revenues. * Thursday’s forum, the third in the series, was the most contentious so far, with the crowd occasionally shouting over the district’s opening presentation with choruses of “No!” http://www.kansascity.com/2010/02/18/1758697/backers-of-african-centered-education.html * * TEAMSTERS AND TRADE GROUPS*JOINING RHODE ISLAND TEACHERS TO "PROTEST" LAYOFFS * When highly trained education professionals are laid off, what is a teachers' union to do? The answer is easy: Rent a mob of Teamsters and bus in teachers from other areas to "protest". * An estimated 600 to 700 people, many of them teachers from other districts, rallied Tuesday afternoon at Jenks Park to support Central Falls High School teachers facing layoffs at a Board of Trustees meeting Tuesday night.... Busloads of teachers arrived from Coventry, Warwick, Providence, East Providence and Cranston. The Teamsters Union Local 251 parked a full-size tractor-trailer rig in front of the park, and people in stood with others in matching jackets, representing various trade groups. http://newsblog.projo.com/2010/02/commissioner-gist-approves-cen.html * * THE RETURN OF THE 60'S: STUDENT PROTESTS AS A MODERN CHILDREN'S CRUSADE * In an effort to relive the halcyon days of their youth, the aging leftist hippies in the education establishment and allied "community organizers" are trying to get our semi-literate "youth" to take it to the streets to save the cashflow of those who have rendered them the what can only be called "the least capable generation". * Thousands of students rallied today at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University and many other schools across the Bay Area, expressing frustration over the decline in funding for California's beleaguered public education system...* * Similar rallies and protests were planned in other states that have also experienced funding cuts... * High school students also participated in the day's events... * In San Francisco, more than 50 Commodore Sloat Elementary fifth-graders boarded a Muni bus to the state building, each wearing handmade sandwich board signs protesting budget cuts to schools. * Teacher Libbie Schock said the "field trip" was in line with social studies curriculum and was a real life lesson in civics. "Students need to know that they have a voice and that voice can be heard if we speak together," she said. * The students were well prepared to make their voices heard. "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! The budget cuts have got to go," the students yelled as passing cars honked... * School districts across the state have issued nearly 19,000 pink slips to public school teachers, warning that they may lose their jobs at the end of the semester, the California Teachers Association reported. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/04/BAC41CAAM1.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0hLEyhjpA * * *As tax revenues continue to decline, you can expect the momentum toward system wide chaos in the government schools to accelerate. Government schools are a burning building, and we need to help families find the exits. * * That's a wrap for this edition of The Continuing Collapse. So, TCC bids you a fond adieu and asks you to:??REMEMBER: 1. Feel free to circulate The Continuing Collapse. 2. If you aren't hearing about at least some these government school problems from your pastor, why is he your pastor??*? 3. FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS*SEND THEIR CHILDREN TO GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS.* * “I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher whofinds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.” (Aldous Huxley [evolutionist, leftist, and grandson of T.H. Huxley, known as "Darwin's bulldog"]: Ends and Means, pp. 270 ff.) “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm – but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” *T.S. Eliot More...
I read your blog with some interest, hoping to find something from which I could learn. But, alas, just more complaining. I determined in my own mind about two years ago that our present US society was doomed to radicle change and that I would have to prepare for it. But, in my mind, preparation means trying to do good, to be kind, to be a good neighbor, as well as preparing for hard, and possibly violent, times. I bought plinking ammo from a guy last week. He used to work for a large company and made very good money. He sells 10 to 20 thousand rounds a week, just in our small area. He said something that got my attention when he predicted "fighting in the streets" in the future for our country. Of course, the conversation quickly turned to health care reform, liberals, etc. But, he seemed thoughtful. So, I shared with him my beliefs that both political extremes are part of the problem because they allow themselves to be played like pawns by the politicians and the "Glen Becks" of the world. We disagreed on many things. But, we talked for about an hour about our views, and we talked respectfully with each other, not like so many do recently. At the end of the conversation, I told him that I hoped our county did not turn into a giant Somalia, with rival gangs running around, and that maybe people like him and I, who disagree on many things, could still find common ground and rebuild some semblance of a peaceful and lawful society. He seemed eager to accept that idea, and I left more hopeful for my children's future than I had been feeling for a long time. I think we Americans have not had to really sacrifice together for a long time. The British were losing 3,000 civilians per day during the height of the Battle of Britain, and it bound them together in a way that we have never really experienced. I hope our coming troubles will bind at least some of us together and not simply destroy us. If we do come together, it will be because reasonable people agree to disagree on many things, but agree on the common goal of a peaceful, fair society. But, if that's going to happen, it has to start with each of us, and it has to start now. I think the first step is to stop complaining and accusing those who disagree with us and to find common ground. Even among those on sites such as this one, there must be people willing to sacrifice a little of their own comfort, and even ideas, for the good of all. If not, I fear we really are doomed.
