Sixth-grade children in many Texas public schools are being tasked with designing flags for a new socialist nation as part of the state's curriculum, EAG News reported Monday.
"Notice socialist/communist nations use symbolism on their flags
representing various aspects of their economic system. Imagine a new
socialist nation is creating a flag and you have been put in charge of
creating a flag," says a lesson plan being used as part of CSCOPE, the
curriculum being used by over 70 percent of Texas school districts.-[Full Article]
At Cary-Grove High School in Illinois, a scheduled Code Red lockdown
was performed. This drill was complete with the firing of blanks into a
hallway to give the students the very real impression that they were
being attacked. Officials claimed
that this exercise would help teachers and students “recognize the
sound and react quickly should an active gunman situation occur.”
According the school website: “The drill will begin with a public
address announcement about the lockdown. After staff have secured their
rooms, Cary police and administrators will sweep the building to ensure
all students made it into secure locations and assess any potential
issues that may become apparent from the practice. Following this, a
second PA announcement will be made informing students and staff that
gunfire will be simulated so that they might be able to recognize the
sound and react quickly, should an active gunman situation occur.”
They went on to explain: “Following the drill, a discussion will
ensue between the students and their classroom teacher. We will utilize
this feedback as a building and police department to assess our security
and make any necessary adjustments to our building plan. Our sole
purpose for utilizing the blanks is to fully prepare our students and
staff. “
Parents whose children attend the school were concerned that the
simulated gunfire was going beyond necessities. One parent said: “If you
need to run a drill, you run a drill. They run fire drills all the
time, but they don’t run up and down the hallway with a flamethrower.”-[Full Article]
In the ‘you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff’ category, the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation is spending about $1.1 million to develop a way to
physiologically measure how engaged students are by their teachers’
lessons. This involves “galvanic skin response” bracelets that kids
would wear so their engagement levels could be measured.
If this tells us anything, it is that the obsession with measurement and data in school reform has reached new nutty heights.-[Full Article]
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -
In some places it's fine to be proud of your graduating children -- just not too proud.
A
mother in South Carolina was arrested moments after she cheered for her
daughter as she walked across the stage to accept her diploma.
Shannon Cooper was handcuffed at the South Florence High School graduation ceremony and charged with disorderly conduct.-[Full Article]
Northside Independent School District plans to track students next
year on two of its campuses using technology implanted in their student
identification cards in a trial that could eventually include all 112 of
its schools and all of its nearly 100,000 students.
District officials said the Radio Frequency Identification System
(RFID) tags would improve safety by allowing them to locate students —
and count them more accurately at the beginning of the school day to
help offset cuts in state funding, which is partly based on attendance.-[Full Article]
It should be painfully obvious to everyone by now that it is time to get all of our kids out of the government schools. The public school system in the United States has been dramatically declining for a long time, and in most areas of the country the public schools are open sewers at this point. Yes, there are some U.S. public schools that are still very good and that do a decent job of preparing our young people for their adult lives. But those good schools are the exception to the rule. Hopefully the school shooting that just happened in Ohio will be a wake up call to millions of parents out there. Drugs, sex and violence are rampant in American public schools today. The "teachers" are endlessly pushing specific political and social agendas down the throats of our kids, and the skills that our children really need such as reading, writing and mathematics are often badly neglected. Hopefully we can get more parents educated about what is really going on in these schools. After all, why would any parents want to send their children into an environment that is going to be highly destructive for them for six to eight hours a day? (Read More.....)
A preschool girl was told her homemade meal wasn't healthy enough so a school cafeteria monitor made her eat chicken nuggets instead.
What could be less healthy than chicken nuggets? A turkey and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread with a side of a banana, potato chips, and apple juice.
'What got me so mad is, number one, don’t tell my kid I’m not packing her lunch box properly,' the mother from North Carolina, who wished to remain anonymous, told a local newspaper...[Full Article]
It has been said that children are our future, and right now the vast majority of our children are being "educated" in public schools that are rapidly being turned into indoctrination centers and prison camps. Our children desperately need to focus on the basics such as reading, writing and math, but instead a whole host of politicians, "education officials" and teachers are constantly injecting as much propaganda as they possibly can into classroom instruction. Instead of learning how to think, our children are continually being told what to think. Not only that, our children are also being trained how to live as subservient slaves in a Big Brother police state. Today, nearly everything that children do in public schools is watched, monitored, recorded and tracked. Independent thought and free expression are greatly discouraged and are often cracked down upon harshly. If students get "out of line", instead of being sent to see the principal they are often handcuffed, arrested and taken to the police station. In addition, law enforcement authorities are using weapons such as pepper spray and tasers against young students in our public schools more than ever before. Children in U.S. public schools are not learning how to live as strong individuals in the "land of the free and the home of the brave". Rather, they are being trained how to serve a Big Brother police state where control freaks run their entire lives. If we continue to allow all of the liberty and freedom to be systematically drained out of our school children, then there is not going to be much hope for the future of this nation. (Read More.....)
Government-supported effort to ‘encourage critical thinking’ actually encourages obedient regurgitation of lies
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Tuesday, September 6, 2011
“We don’t need no education….we don’t need no thought control.”
In a week where the establishment is desperate to reinforce the official 9/11 fable, a government-supported charity group has embarked on a mission to include the state-approved version of events on the school curriculum in the UK as part of a bid to “demolish conspiracy theories” surrounding the attacks.
As we reported yesterday, the launch of the project was timed to coincide with the unveiling of a macabre 9/11 “memorial” in Battersea Park, London, after which Mayor Boris Johnson resolved to carry out a “controlled demolition” of conspiracy theories to “remind people of the tragedy of what really happened”.
A website for the “9/11 London project” has been launched which includes downloadable lesson plans for teachers. The program is designed “to teach schoolchildren in Britain about the events of 9/11 and “demolish conspiracy theories” surrounding the attacks,” reports AFP.
The project is supported by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, as well as establishment figures in Britain such as Common Purpose member Maqsood Ahmed, Lord West, Lord Carey, and Lord Fink, CEO of International Standard Asset Management (ISAM) and Treasurer of the Conservative Party.
“A lot of the children… didn’t know much about the event, some had only heard a lot about the conspiracy theories, so it’s great to have another insight,” 26-year-old history teacher Nat Ogborn told AFP.
In explaining the need for such an educational program, the website for the project states the goal is to develop the critical thinking of students who are “confused about the actual events of the day.”
However, in announcing its purpose is to “demolish conspiracy theories,” ie any evidence that contradicts the state-approved version of events, the program has already ‘demolished’ any notion that it will encourage critical thinking. It will only pursue the exact opposite.
It’s not the first time the state has relied on using the power of the curriculum to brainwash British schoolchildren into accepting the official narrative about a subject.
A controversy ensued in 2007 after the government sent Al Gore’s global warming polemic An Inconvenient Truth to schools in England, Wales and Scotland, advising that teachers make the documentary part of the curriculum.
A parents group later brought the case the court, complaining that the government’s circulation of the film amounted to “political indoctrination” and was in breach of the Education Act 2002.
Assessing whether it should be shown to school children, a British High Court judge later ruled that the documentary contained nine significant errors, that claims in the film were made in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration,” and that the documentary was of a political and not scientific nature, therefore should not be used in school curriculums without the material also including opposing arguments.
Along similar lines, a University Professor in the United Kingdom recently conducted a comparative analysis of a BBC documentary on 7/7 “conspiracy theories” and an independent documentary in which the official story behind the London bombings is questioned. The Professor concluded that the documentary produced by “conspiracy theorists” was more accurate and more likely to be a truthful representation of the events of 7/7.
You can be certain that the evidence contained in the video below will not be part of the 9/11 school curriculum, primarily because it actually encourages critical thinking, unlike the “911 London Project,” which only encourages children to blithely regurgitate what they are told by the authorities.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
If Tara Keener had known that her 5-year-old son was only sleeping, she might not have acted this way.
But Keener, an emergency room nurse, didn’t know. All she knew was what she could see through the windows of a big yellow school bus as she walked down her Perry County driveway. Other kids were standing over the kindergartner’s assigned seat, yelling that Xander was slumped over.
“Help, he’s not moving,” she recalled during a recent court hearing. “We can’t wake him up.”
So she ran to the bus, up the steps and to the landing. The driver told her she couldn’t get on the bus. It’s against the law.
Keener kept going. “My focus was on my son,” she told a judge.
What happened on that bus Dec. 15 has earned Keener a misdemeanor charge of unlawfully entering a school bus. She’s now awaiting trial in Perry County Court...[Full Article]
America's second-largest schools district is giving students a break with a new policy ruling that homework can only count for 10% of a student’s grade.
Los Angeles is joining the growing list of school districts across the country that are downgrading the importance of time children have to spend working on assignments at home.
The idea is to allow students to spend more time with their families or on extracurricular activities such as sports or hobbies.
Parents are increasingly worried that the competition to get into good colleges is leaving their children exhausted with all their free time taken up doing hours of homework.
But teachers worry that the move penalises hard-working youngsters who are eager to improve by taking on extra studies at home.
Critics also say the Los Angeles Unified Schools District is effectively rewarding slackers who don’t bother doing their homework...[Full Article]
Schools are helping teenage girls keep abortions secret from their parents. Imogen Neale reports.
A MOTHER is angry her 16-year-old daughter had a secret abortion arranged by a school counsellor.
Helen, not her real name, found out about the termination four days after it had happened. "I was horrified. Horrified that she'd had to go through that on her own, and horrified her friends and counsellors had felt that she shouldn't talk to us," she said.
She had suspected something was wrong, but her daughter insisted her tears were over everyday teenage dramas.
But Helen confronted her daughter's friends, who said the counsellor had taken the girl for a scan and to doctors. "I didn't know that they could do that."
Helen said teachers could discuss how a student was doing in school or phone parents when their child misbehaved, but would then keep life-changing situations such as abortions secret.
Her daughter had since told her the counsellor "wasn't very forthcoming" with advice. The counsellor did ask the girl if she had talked to her parents, but never pursued it.
Helen said follow-up counselling for her daughter was "nonexistent". She concedes patient confidentiality is a tricky issue and said her child feared she'd be disowned. "She's come to realise that's not the case. But if you're responsible for them, surely you should be told."
Helen has been too upset to approach the school. "Afterwards I was too wild, and I probably still am."
Another mother who was worried for her 15-year-old daughter "hit a brick wall" when she approached the school, and eventually discovered it was a friend of her daughter's who had undergone an abortion. "But I went through the horror of knowing that under the legislation, they did not need to say anything to me."
One teacher told the Sunday Star-Times she had seen parents become "absolutely livid" after finding out they had been kept out of abortion decisions...[Full Article]
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Chicago school bans some lunches brought from home To encourage healthful eating, Chicago school doesn't allow kids to bring lunches or certain snacks from home — and some parents, and many students, aren't fans of the policy
ChicagoTribune
Fernando Dominguez cut the figure of a young revolutionary leader during a recent lunch period at his elementary school.
"Who thinks the lunch is not good enough?" the seventh-grader shouted to his lunch mates in Spanish and English.
Dozens of hands flew in the air and fellow students shouted along: "We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!"
Fernando waved his hand over the crowd and asked a visiting reporter: "Do you see the situation?"
At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago's West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria...[Full Article]
Lansing— Swift and severe changes are coming to Detroit Public Schools.
State education officials have ordered Robert Bobb to immediately implement a financial restructuring plan that balances the district's books by closing half of its schools, swelling high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidating operations...
ARVADA, Colo. -- An 11-year-old Arvada boy was arrested and hauled away in handcuffs for drawing stick figures in school, something his therapist told him to do.
His parents say they understand what he did was inappropriate, but are outraged by the way Arvada Police handled the case. The parents do not want their real names used...
Officials in the Anaheim school district in southern California are taking a new technological approach to cutting high school truancy: GPS devices.
According to the Orange County Register, students in seventh or eighth grade who cut class more than a few times can avoid "continuation school" or juvenile prosecution by agreeing to carry a handheld GPS device the size of a cell phone. Then, at critical times of day where they might skip out -- like on the way to school and at lunch -- they are supposed to enter a code that tells officials where they are...
Skipping class, though frowned upon, is practically a rite of passage for young teens, but thanks to an elaborate system involving GPS being used by some school districts, it is practically being eliminated completely.
The Orange County Register reports that the Anaheim Union High School District in California is currently participating in a pilot program which involves using a combination of Global Positioning System technology, automated telephone reminders, and one-on-one coaching to cut down on truancy. It's similar to programs being used in Baltimore and San Antonio...
The Anaheim Union High School District in California is currently cracking down on students who have a penchant for missing classes. The Cali school district is currently taking part in a pilot program in association with The Orange County Register Reports, which will be tracking lackadaisical students who have 4 or more unexcused absences throughout the year. How will they track them? Through a complex GPS system that works in conjunction with automated telephone reminders, coaching, and student responses. According to reports, 7th and 8th grade students will be enrolled in the Anaheim program who have a history of cutting class. These kids will receive a GPS tracking device, which will need to be used on a regular basis.
“Each morning on schooldays, [students will] get an automated phone call reminding them that they need to get to school on time. Then, five times a day, they are required to enter a code that tracks their locations – as they leave for school, when they arrive at school, at lunchtime, when they leave school and at 8 p.m...
A teacher at a Chicago school did not act outrageously in screening part of the movie “Brokeback Mountain” — including gay sex scenes — to a class of seventh- and eighth-graders, a jury has found in rejecting an unusual emotional injury lawsuit.
Jessica Turner, a 12-year-old seventh-grader at the time, and her grandparents claimed she suffered “severe emotional distress” as a result of seeing the R-rated Oscar winner at Ashburn Community Elementary School. They sued the substitute teacher, Marnetta Buford, and the Chicago Board of Education in May 2007 for at least $500,000 in damages.
Buford showed the film in, of all things, a math class, allegedly after warning students that “what happens in Ms. Buford's class stays in Ms. Buford's class.” The school allows only G-rated movies to be shown to students and requires teachers to get the principal's permission before screening a film.
But after a three-day trial, On Point has learned, a Cook County Circuit Court jury last month cleared Buford and the school board of liability, finding the teacher's behavior did not meet the “outrageousness” standard of claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
According to trial testimony, Buford screened the first 44 minutes or so of the film during the final period of the school day on May 26, 2006. That segment includes the film's most explicit scene as the two cowboys played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal begin a homosexual relationship while herding sheep in the Wyoming wilderness.
But perhaps crucially, there was no evidence to support the plaintiffs' allegation that Buford “deliberately screened only the sexual segments of 'Brokeback Mountain.'”
“The sex scenes were not specially screened or specially highlighted,” Joseph D. Gergeni, an assistant general counsel for the school board, tells On Point. “They were shown in the context of the movie as a whole.”
The children in Buford's class viewed two scenes of Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) making love in their tent. During the first 44 minutes of the film, there are also glimpses of male nudity along with some drinking and swearing.
“[S]ubjecting Jessica to view an 'R' rated movie with adult themes and strong homosexual content was extreme and outrageous,” Turner and her grandparents said in their complaint.
In Illinois, the legal test for intentional infliction of emotional distress “is met only if the distress inflicted is so severe that no reasonable person could be expected to endure it.” Buford did not testify in the trial, leaving her motives for showing “Brokeback Mountain” unclear.
“The evidence was that Ms. Buford did not seek permission [from the principal],” says Lisa Decker Hugé, co-counsel for the board. “No one knew she was going to show the movie.”
The jury wasn't swayed by the plaintiffs' argument that Turner and her classmates were particularly vulnerable at their age. The evidence of emotional trauma was also somewhat flimsy — Turner had an initial visit with a counselor but did not return for a therapy appointment.
“The counselor testified that she was not qualified to make a diagnosis,” Hugé says.
A judge dismissed Turner's other claims for negligent hiring and false imprisonment before the trial. Her lawyer asked the jury for only $40,000 in damages.
Detroit — Detroit Public Schools would close nearly half of its schools in the next two years, and increase high school class sizes to 62 by the following year, under a deficit-reduction plan filed with the state.
The plan, part of a monthly update Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb gives the Department of Education, was filed late Monday to provide insight into Bobb's progress in his attempt to slash a $327 million deficit in the district to zero over the next several years. Under it, the district would slim down from 142 schools now to 72 during 2012-13...
"Killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive. I had a really hard time with this problem when I returned to the United States, because turning this addiction off was impossible," Whittington wrote in the essay for his class at the Community College of Baltimore County in Catonsville, Md.
"I wrote this essay and the teacher gave me an A for it, and she encouraged me to publish it in the school newspaper," Whittington said. "Two weeks later, it was published."
After reading it, college administrators called Whittington into a meeting.
"They said he's barred until he gets a psychological evaluation," said Deborah O'Doherty, president of the Maryland chapter of American War Mothers and a friend of Whittington's family. She attended the meeting with Whittington. "They also gave him a no-trespass notice and kept bringing up the Virginia Tech shooting."...
system that works in conjunction with automated telephone reminders, coaching, and student responses. According to reports, 7th and 8th grade students will be enrolled in the Anaheim program who have a history of cutting class. These kids will receive a GPS tracking device, which will need to be used on a regular basis.
