John Edwards really need to rediscover his place in this world.

A fairy tale about two princes falling in love sparked a backlash – and a lawsuit – against a teacher and a school last year when it was read to a second-grade class in Massachusetts.

But the three frontrunners in the Democratic presidential race suggested Wednesday night at their debate in New Hampshire that they’d support reading the controversial book to children as part of a school curriculum.

Moderator Tim Russert asked John Edwards, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton whether they’d be comfortable having the story – called “King & King” – read to their children in school.

Edwards gave the first and most definitive answer – a resounding and instant “yes, absolutely” – although he added that it “might be a little tough” for second-graders.

…

The 2004 vice presidential candidate and former North Carolina senator said he doesn’t want to influence his kids’ opinions about the issue.

“I don’t want to make that decision on behalf of my children,” he said. “I want my children to be able to make that decision on behalf of themselves, and I want them to be exposed to all the information, even in – did you say second grade? Second grade might be a little tough, but even in second grade to be exposed to all those possibilities, because I don’t want to impose my view. Nobody made me God.”

Though nobody made John Edwards God, God made him a parent. To throw his hands up and say that since he’s not The Almighty that he has no place in forming his childrens’ views is a major cop-out. I’m sure he’d find some reason to inject himself in their upbringing if, let’s say, the book were instead about a Kingdom where homosexuality wasn’t practiced because everyone thought it was immoral.

And while we’re on the subject of second graders making their own moral decisions, how about a book on adultery? I mean, it happens quite a lot, and some folks don’t see the moral issue with it, so let’s just show the kiddos an alternative. “The Open-Marriage Kingdom”, in the children’s section at a bookstore near you.

Careful, John. If the Lord wants that book out, He’ll reach down with His own hand and smite it Himself. No one made you God.

Technorati Tags: John Edwards, Democrats, Tim Russert, Massachusetts, King & King, homosexuality, public school, education

In February, 2008, Ben Stein (yes, that Ben Stein) is coming out with a movie that exposes the scientific community’s rather non-scientific silencing of those not towing the line.

Evolution – and the explosive debate over its virtual monopoly on America’s public school classrooms – is the focus of the film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”

In the movie, Stein, who is also a lawyer, economist, former presidential speechwriter, author and social commentator, is stunned by what he discovers – an elitist scientific establishment that has traded in its skepticism for dogma. Even worse, say publicists for the feature film, “along the way, Stein uncovers a long line of biologists, astronomers, chemists and philosophers who have had their reputations destroyed and their careers ruined by a scientific establishment that allows absolutely no dissent from Charles Darwin’s theory of random mutation and natural selection.”

“Big Science in this area of biology has lost its way,” says Stein. “Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are. Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it’s anti-science. It’s anti-the whole concept of learning.”

Nice to see someone taking on this issue in what looks to be a funny and informative, Ben Stein sort of way.

Technorati Tags: Ben Stein, evolution, intelligent design, movies, Charles Darwin, documentary

From Gizmodo comes word of this new item that, frankly, speaks volumes about our public school system.

Made from 13 layers of K-29 Kevlar, this thin, lightweight plate fits in most backpacks and can stop every bullet from a 9mm all the way to Dirty Harry’s .44 Magnum.

Yeah, that’s the kind of “socialization” my homeschooled kids are missing out on.

Technorati Tags: education, homeschooling, guns, public schools, socialization, bulletproof backpack

…if running were allowed.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) – An elementary school has banned tag on its playground after some children complained they were harassed or chased against their will.

“It causes a lot of conflict on the playground,” said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus school.

Running games are still allowed as long as students don’t chase each other, she said.

OK, I guess running amok is still fine, just that chasing amok isn’t.

How did us parents survive childhood without these people watching over us, eh?

Technorati Tags: Colorado Springs, tag, playground, school, education, Cindy Fesgen, Discovery Canyon Campus

Jeff Jacoby presents, in a style not unlike Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story”, a story about a scientist, and the school that he applied to, that will amaze you.

DID YOU hear about the religious fundamentalist who wanted to teach physics at Cambridge University? This would-be instructor wasn’t simply a Christian; he was so preoccupied with biblical prophecy that he wrote a book titled “Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John.” Based on his reading of Daniel, in fact, he forecast the date of the Apocalypse: no earlier than 2060. He also calculated the year the world was created. When Genesis 1:1 says “In the beginning,” he determined, it means 3988 BC.

So we have a young-Earth guy who seems really into this Christianity thing, and who is applying for a science job at a very prestigious university. Did he get the job?

Hire somebody with such views to teach physics? At a Baptist junior college deep in the Bible Belt, maybe, but the faculty would erupt if you tried it just about anywhere else. Many of them would echo Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, the prominent evolutionary biologist, who writes in “The God Delusion” that he is “hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. . . . It subverts science and saps the intellect.”

In today’s academic climate, things don’t sound promising for our intrepid physicist. Religion and science don’t mix, so they say.

But such considerations didn’t keep Cambridge from hiring the theology- and Bible-drenched individual described above. Indeed, it named him to the prestigious Lucasian Chair of Mathematics….

To find out who this guy was who beat all the odds to get hired, click here for the full column. (And if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may already know the answer. I covered it last month.)

Technorati Tags: science and religion, Cambridge, Christianity, young Earth, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, education

The right to freely exercise one’s religion outside of the 4 walls of a place of worship was affirmed by the Texas legislature. It’s unfortunate that it had to be affirmed at all, but in today’s church-and-state climate, it’s necessary.

The House embraced legislation Monday that seeks to clarify the rights of Texas public school students to offer public prayers at football games or graduation, hand out religious messages or hold religious meetings during the school day if they want.

Supporters said the Schoolchildren’s Religious Liberties Act, which passed on a 110-33 vote, would protect districts from lawsuits by setting guidelines for students’ religious expression while protecting students from being admonished, for example, if they talk about Jesus in an assignment about Easter.

You can’t keep people insulated from each other, and this bill takes the common sense step of acknowledging that.

“Freedom of religion should not be taken as freedom from religion,” Gov. Rick Perry said. “This was a vote for tolerance of diverse views in our education system so that students are not admonished for wishing a soldier overseas a ‘Merry Christmas’ or for any other harmless forms of expression.”

Precisely. The “diversity” crowd is the very group trying to remove diversity in the public square.

The bill has its opponents, who, as usual, use exaggerated language when describing religious speech.

“The intent of this bill is to enable people to impose their religious beliefs on people, and I stand four-square against that,” said Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, who is a Quaker.

“I was one of those students of a minority religion who was frequently subjected to unwanted … advice and insults when I was in the public schools. I do not believe the intent of the author [to avoid lawsuits]. I believe the intent of the author is to facilitate imposing certain religious values on students regardless of their religious faith.”

Sorry, but freedom from getting unwanted advice is not in the US Constitution. Those who insult you because of your faith should be punished by their parents or, for adults, marginalized, but it’s still not a legal issue, and it doesn’t mean that because some kids were mean to you in school that now all kids must be silenced on religious issues. Bathwater, meet baby.

And rather than dream up your own view of what the bill’s author intended, let’s just ask him.

Author Charlie Howard, R-Sugar Land, said repeatedly that the bill “does not allow anything that isn’t in the current law.”

What the bill does is specify that “a school district shall treat a student’s voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint, if any, on an otherwise permissible subject in the same manner the district treats a student’s voluntary expression of a secular or other viewpoint” as long as the expression isn’t obscene or vulgar and doesn’t discriminate against homosexuals or religious beliefs.

Further, the bill says students may not be penalized for expressing religious views in classwork, and they may organize religious meetings and use school facilities like any noncurricular group.

Not sure why homosexuality was specifically singled out, but this is a good step in the right direction.

Plano ISD has been at the center of this debate since 2003, when school officials told a student he could not hand out candy cane pens with a religious message during a holiday party.

Rep. Burnam can hand-wring all he wants about how hearing religious speech is somehow imposing values onto him (is he that impressionable?), but if we can’t give away pens in the name of religious freedom, things really are upside down.

Technorati Tags: religious freedom, Texas, Charlie Howard, Rick Perry, Lon Burnam, church and state, First Amendment, education

That’s the bumper sticker that Linda Whitlock used to have on her car. She’s got a great article on the socialization of homeschool kids, including her grandchildren. OK, she may have a conflict of interest, but she still makes great points.

Technorati Tags: Linda Whitlock, homeschooling, education, socialization

In February, a couple of folks from the Gideons were arrested for trespassing while on a public sidewalk in front of a school handing out Bibles. A comment to my post on that story noted that the trespass charges were related to the two men staying in their cars on school property after being asked to leave. Well, regardless of the actual act that was the cause of the charges, they have been dismissed by the state.

Only to be replaced with new charges.

“Following the initial motion to dismiss filed by [Alliance Defense Fund] attorneys, the state dismissed the charges but then filed new ones under a different statute,” the ADF said.

“The distribution of Bibles on a public sidewalk is not a criminal offense,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman. “The attempts by Florida officials to continue pressing for the prosecution of Mr. Mirto and Mr. Simpson is not only blatantly unconstitutional, it borders on religious persecution.”

The incident developed Jan. 19, when the two men were distributing Bibles on a public sidewalk outside Key Largo School but did not step onto school grounds, the ADF said. Both men were arrested, booked, and charged with trespassing after the school’s principal called police. On March 8, ADF attorneys filed a motion to dismiss and the state did dismiss those counts.

However, it filed new charges under a different law that prohibits anyone from being within 500 feet of any school property, including on public sidewalks and streets, without having either “legitimate business” or permission, the ADF said.

“The facts are clear: Mr. Mirto and Mr. Simpson are guilty of nothing more than peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights,” Cortman said. “For whatever reason, the state is grasping at straws in order to justify the punishment of these men.”

The state of Florida is now in the “untenable position of trying to justify the punishment of fundamental First Amendment activities in a quintessential traditional public forum,” the law firm said. Under U.S. Supreme Court precedents over the last century, that is a “blatant violation of their constitutional rights.”

The school disputes that they were on a public sidewalk, saying that they were in fact on school property, but one imagines that if that were so then the initial charges would have stuck.

Technorati Tags: Gideons, Key Largo School, Alliance Defense Fund, Anthony Mirto, Ernest Simpson, David Cortman, Florida, education, Firsr Amendment

Welcome to the age where encouraging abstinence until marriage is considered offensive. OK, truth be told, we’ve been in this age for quite some time now, except that the sentiment wasn’t quite as outspoken. Now that abstinence groups are being formed in places like Harvard and MIT, however, the ridicule is boiling over.

This article talks about the new group at Harvard, secular in nature, that is trying to promote abstinence on campus. Seniors Sarah Kinsella and Justin Murray started “True Love Revolution” in response to all the other overt encouragment of sex on campus, and to the white flag waved by the administration. In response, those oh-so-tolerant folks on the Left are outraged.

Some feminists, in particular, have criticized True Love Revolution’s message.

Harvard student Rebecca Singh said she was offended by a valentine the group sent to the dormitory mailboxes of all freshmen. It read: “Why wait? Because you’re worth it.”

“I think they thought that we might not be `ruined’ yet,” Singh said. “It’s a symptom of that culture we have that values a woman on her purity. It’s a relic.”

Yeah, who needs self-control, eh?

A little common sense, however, is seeing the light of day.

In the student paper, The Harvard Crimson, columnist Jessica C. Coggins praised the group’s low-key approach and scolded Harvard students for their “laughter at the virgin.” She said students on the campus, which has 6,700 undergraduates, should “find a different confidence booster than making fun of celibate peers.”

As usual, the administration gets it wrong.

Dr. David Rosenthal, director of Harvard health services, disputed the notion that the university promotes sex.

He said students mistakenly think everyone on campus is having sex. The National College Health Assessment Survey, which included Harvard and hundreds of other campuses, found that about 29 percent of students reported not having sex in the past school year. For the 71 percent who are having sex, it is crucial to promote safety, Rosenthal said.

“Some students may have a feeling that acknowledgment is condoning,” he said, “and it’s not.”

But it’s not just “acknowledgement”, as noted earlier in the article.

True Love Revolution members say the problem starts with the university. They say Harvard has implicitly led students to believe that having sex at college is a foregone conclusion by requiring incoming freshman to attend a seminar on date-rape that does not mention abstinence, by placing condoms in freshmen dorms, and by hosting racy lecturers. (Harvard students have also launched H-Bomb, a magazine featuring racy photos of undergraduates.)

Acknowledging is one thing. But this is encouraging. When you remove the consequences of bad decisions, you get more bad decisions. Shouldn’t take a university degree to understand that.

Technorati Tags: True Love Revolution, Sarah Kinsella, Justin Murray, Harvard, Dr. David Rosenthal

When the public school system starts forcing kids to lie to their parents about what they’re being taught, you know it’s time to homeschool.

And when what they’re being taught is homosexual sensitivity training, you have to wonder why they feel they can’t be open and honest about it. Yeah, I know the presumed reason; that parent might object. But if parents are not allowed any say as to their children’s education, it’s no longer public education anymore, is it? It’s state education. (And I really hope this school district doesn’t ever complain about not enough parental involvement.)

Click here for a link to audio from Concerned Women for America, and click here for the WND news story.

Technorati Tags: education, homeschool, homosexuality, Concerned Women for America