Tag Archives: education

America’s War on Children Part II

I’m sorry gang, you probably want to hear more about Trader Joe, but I just got this from Fox News and almost spilled my coffee reading it. Are there any sane humans still living in California? If you know of any, please ask they why and let us know what they say.  It has to have something to do with family, ya think?

Anyway, this is a hoot, I mean an absolute hoot,. Even worse than banning straws. What is interesting is to read what some members of the school board said to defend their 6 to 1 decision. They have literally no clue what they were elected to do. We didn’t hear from the one dissenting vote, wonder why? Maybe he’s in hiding?

What’s even funnier is to read some of the idiotic comments responding to this post by Fox News. Should you desire to do so, please cut and paste the following into your browser. Otherwise read on and enjoy!

https://www.foxnews.com/us/san-francisco-school-board-votes-to-rename-schools-honoring-washington-lincoln-feinstein-others

San Francisco school board votes to rename schools honoring Washington, Lincoln, Feinstein, others.

Replacing signage at the 44 schools will cost more than $400,000, a report says, plus other related costs. The price tag could also go up to around $1 million for schools to get new activity uniforms, repaint gymnasium floors, etc., according to the Chronicle. The district is facing a budget deficit.

Not even revered former presidents George WashingtonAbraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson are safe from “cancel culture,” it appears.

The American icons were among a list of historical figures whose names will be removed from San Francisco’s public schools following a 6-1 vote by the school board Tuesday, according to multiple reports.

Washington and Jefferson were both slave owners and Lincoln, who ended slavery, became controversial because critics claim he oppressed indigenous people.

The presidents were among a long list of men and women whose namesake schools will soon be renamed. Others on the list include Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to the national anthem, former presidents William McKinley, James Garfield, James Monroe, and Herbert Hoover, Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere and author Robert Louis Stevenson, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Even an elementary school named for current U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., will be changed over allegations that she replaced a damaged Confederate flag outside of City Hall when she was the city’s mayor in 1986, according to Courthouse News. She didn’t replace the flag after it was pulled down a second time.

Historical figures have come under a sharp focus since anti-racism protests swept the country last summer, with some protesters ripping down Confederate statues but also those of figures like Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and others they deemed offensive.

STATUE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN WITH KNEELING SLAVE REMOVED IN BOSTON

Mayor London Breed rebuked the plan in October as “offensive,” saying the school board should be focused on reopening schools closed during the pandemic rather than renaming them. Wow, a sane statement in a sea of insanity; remarkable. Heck she might even have a piece of a brain left, ya think?

(Abraham Lincoln High School, among 44 schools targeted for renaming, is seen in San Francisco. (Google))

“It’s offensive to parents who are juggling their children’s daily at-home learning schedules with doing their own jobs and maintaining their sanity,” she said at the time, according to Courthouse News. “It’s offensive to me as someone who went to our public schools, who loves our public schools, and who knows how those years in the classroom are what lifted me out of poverty and into college. It’s offensive to our kids who are staring at screens day after day instead of learning and growing with their classmates and friends.”

Replacing signage at the 44 schools will cost more than $400,000, according to the Courthouse News. The price tag could also go up to around $1 million for schools to get new activity uniforms, repaint gymnasium floors, etc., according to the Chronicle. The district is facing a budget deficit.

While the board focused on renaming the schools in the Tuesday meeting, it did not discuss reopening schools from coronavirus shutdowns.

Other critics complained the panel that reviewed the appropriateness of school names used little input from historians and didn’t put the figures into a historical context or weigh their contributions with their failings.

Others argued the research process was thin, relying on selective sources and using websites like Wikipedia to back up claims.

NY TIMES COLUMNIST: ‘YES, EVEN GEORGE WASHINGTON’ STATUES MUST GO

In the case of Roosevelt Middle School, it wasn’t clear if the board knew which former President Roosevelt it was named for, but decided to have it removed anyway.

Board member Mark Sanchez, however, called the decision a “moral message.”

“It’s a message to our families, our students and our community. It’s not just symbolic,” he said, according to the Chronicle.

Board member Kevine Boggess, who supported the resolution, suggested schools shouldn’t be named after anyone.

We “should not make heroes out of mortal folks,” he said, according to the Chronicle. “I think we need to examine our naming policies across the district and really consider how the way we go about naming schools reflects our true values.”

School staff and families have until April to suggest new names for the schools.

Originally posted 2021-01-27 12:07:04.

Critical Race Theory II

Before I speak of the YouTube video on this post, I’d like to talk briefly about my post a few days ago entitled “A Man vs A Movement.” That particular post went absolutely viral, all over the world. It had 2,240 views in one day, yes, in one twenty-four hour period and is still getting views daily. It set a record for the most views on one day. So, if you haven’t looked at yet, you owe it to yourself to do so. For those of you who did read it, 1,034  of you passed it on to others to read. THANK YOU!

Now to this particular post. Much has been flying around cyberspace about this thing called Critical Race Theory, but how many of you know what it really means and where did this term “Critical Theory” itself come from? Well, I have done some research and I believe this video by Liz Wheeler explains it better than anything I have seen yet. Personally, I watched it twice and picked up some of her comments I had missed the first time. It’s not that long, but definitely a worthwhile watch. Just left click on the link below then click on the link that shows up. Enjoy and let me hear your comments.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPhtgbIs6AY

Originally posted 2020-10-15 12:41:05.

John is My Heart

I have received this many times over the past several months, and each time I stop what I am doing and read it again. Wonder why that is? Any thoughts on that?

A well-written article about a father who put several of his kids through expensive colleges but one son wanted to be a Marine. Interesting observation by this dad.  See below.  A very interesting commentary that says a lot about our failing and fallen society

John Is My Heart

By Frank Schaeffer of the Washington Post

“Before my son became a Marine, I never thought much about who was defending me.  Now when I read of the war on terrorism or the coming conflict in Iraq, it cuts to my heart. When I see a picture of a member of our military who has been killed, I read his or her name very carefully. Sometimes I cry.

In 1999, when the barrel-chested Marine recruiter showed up in dress blues and bedazzled my son John, I did not stand in the way.  John was headstrong, and he seemed to understand these stern, clean men with straight backs and flawless uniforms.  I did not.  I live in the Volvo-driving, higher education-worshiping North Shore of Boston I write novels for a living. I have never served in the military.

It had been hard enough sending my two older children off to Georgetown and New York University. John’s enlisting was unexpected, so deeply unsettling.  I did not relish the prospect of answering the question, “So where is John going to college?” from the parents who were itching to tell me all about how their son or daughter was going to Harvard.  At the private high school John attended, no other students were going into the military.

“But aren’t the Marines terribly Southern?” (Says a lot about open-mindedness in the Northeast) asked one perplexed mother while standing next to me at the brunch following graduation.  “What a waste, he was such a good student,” said another parent.  One parent (a professor at a nearby and rather famous university) spoke up at a school meeting and suggested that the school should “carefully evaluate what went wrong.”

When John graduated from three months of boot camp on Parris Island, 3000 parents and friends were on the parade deck stands.  We parents and our Marines not only were of many races but also were representative of many economic classes. Many were poor. Some arrived crammed in the backs of pickups, others by bus.  John told me that a lot of parents could not afford the trip.

We in the audience were white and Native American.  We were Hispanic, Arab, and African-American, and Asian. We were former Marines wearing the scars of battle, or at least baseball caps emblazoned with battles’ names.  We were Southern whites from Nashville and skinheads from New Jersey, black kids from Cleveland wearing ghetto rags and white ex-cons with ham-hock forearms defaced by jailhouse tattoos.  We would not have been mistaken for the educated and well-heeled parents gathered on the lawns of John’s private school a half-year before.

After graduation one new Marine told John, “Before I was a Marine, if I had ever seen you on my block I would’ve probably killed you just because you were standing there.” This was a serious statement from one of John’s good friends, a black ex-gang member from Detroit who, as John said, “would die for me now, just like I’d die for him.”

My son has connected me to my country in a way that I was too selfish and insular to experience before.  I feel closer to the waitress at our local diner than to some of my oldest friends.  She has two sons in the Corps.  They are facing the same dangers as my boy.  When the guy who fixes my car asks me how John is doing, I know he means it.  His younger brother is in the Navy.

Why were I and the other parents at my son’s private school so surprised by his choice?  During World War II, the sons and daughters of the most powerful and educated families did their bit.  If the idea of the immorality of the Vietnam War was the only reason those lucky enough to go to college dodged the draft, why did we not encourage our children to volunteer for military service once that war was done?

Have we wealthy and educated Americans all become pacifists?  Is the world a safe place?  Or have we just gotten used to having somebody else defend us?  What is the future of our democracy when the sons and daughters of the janitors at our elite universities are far more likely to be put in harm’s way than are any of the students whose dorms their parents clean?

I feel shame because it took my son’s joining the Marine Corps to make me take notice of who is defending me.  I feel hope because perhaps my son is part of a future “greatest generation.”  As the storm clouds of war gather, at least I know that I can look the men and women in uniform in the eye.  My son is one of them.  He is the best I have to offer.  John is my heart.

Faith is not about everything turning out OK;  Faith is about being OK no matter how things turn out.”

Oh, how I wish so many of our younger generations could read this article.  It makes me so sad to hear the way they talk with no respect for what their fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers experienced so they can live in freedom.   Freedom has been replaced with Free-Dumb.

 

 

 

Originally posted 2017-06-21 11:28:09.