During my Thanksgiving vacation, I didn’t do any blogging but I did still read the news.  I’ll have long posts about some of the items later on, but just wanted to do a quick hit of some bits I found interesting:

* Tying up some loose ends, the state agency director that pried into Joe "the plumber" Wurzelbacher’s confidential information will be punished, if by "punished"  you mean "one month unpaid leave".  I think that qualifies more for "lightly tapped on the wrist". 

* The singles dating service eHarmony had chosen not to match same-sex couples.  The reason shouldn’t matter, as its a private business, but psychologist Neil Clark Warren, who started the site, had done his personality studies on heterosexual couples and didn’t think that, scientifically, he could extrapolate his findings to homosexual couples.  Disagree if you want, but it was his business and he can run it the way he wants to.

Well, perhaps not.  eHarmony has just caved to a lawsuit by a gay man, and now has a new site for same-sex matches.  Coming next; meat-eaters suing vegetarian restaurants.  So much for "tolerance".

* Archaeologists have found new evidence that they have indeed found King Herod’s tomb. 

* A funny little list that has made the rounds on why public schooling is better than homeshooling.

* Opposition parties gained ground in Venezuela against Chavez. 

* Academia’s assault on Thanksgiving is descending into self-parody, where a pair of public schools decided to stop a long-standing tradition of having kids from one school dress up as pilgrims and the other as American Indians and come together for Thanksgiving.  When opponents of this celebration of a very bright spot in our nation’s history protest it with signs saying "Don’t Celebrate Genocide", you know that either they are just full of anger or are simply products of the public education system.  Or both.

* Academia’s assault on Christmas is descending into self-parody (sensing a trend here?) with one school banning, not just Jesus, but even Santa.  When Jews and Wiccans are standing up for Christmas, you know you are light-years over the line.

* Salvation Army bell-ringers considered noise pollution?  Now, while I rang those bells as a kid growing up, and even in college, I just gotta’ say that this is serious over-sensitivity.  Bell ringers have been at malls for decades; it’s not all that loud.  If the bell-ringer can handle the "noise", the kiosk merchants should be able to.  And let’s not forget that the Christmas song "Silver Bells" was inspired by those bell-ringers.

In Florida, evidence of a growing problem with the public schools.

At least 150 Florida teachers have been disciplined in the past three years after being accused of sexual misconduct with students, an Orlando Sentinel review has found.

Some of the most severe cases resulted in arrests and criminal convictions for offenses such as secretly watching a boy change and shower, tricking elementary-school girls into touching a man’s genitals and having sex with minor students. But the Sentinel’s case-by-case review of teacher discipline records from the Florida Department of Education found that a lot of the alleged misconduct did not rise to the criminal level.

Still, parents would be alarmed.

[…]

Those 150 cases don’t include the dozens of educators who have been suspended or lost their teaching certificates since 2006 for molesting non-students, downloading porn at school, having sex in public and trying to pick up prostitutes.

There is no research to show whether this is indeed an actual trend or a case of students reporting it more often.  However, there is research, cited later in the article, that shows that students now are very reluctant to report it.

Researchers, however, say far more children are affected by sexual misconduct at school than many people may realize.

The most in-depth study to date, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education in 2004, showed that nearly 10 percent of the country’s public-school students — 4.5 million children — had received unwanted sexual attention from school employees, including teachers.

Only 11 percent of students who are sexually abused by teachers report it, said Charol Shakeshaft, an education professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who authored the 2004 study and is one of the nation’s top experts on the issue.

If only 11 percent reported it in 2004, we’d have to believe it was in the low-to-mid-single-digits in the decades prior to that.  That’s stretching things rather thin, in my opinion. 

And if only 11 percent are reporting it now, what we’re seeing, in Florida and elsewhere, could be 9 or 10 times worse that it looks. 

Homeschooling keeps looking better all the time.

This was the title of a post on Redstate by Aaron Gardner, regarding where the Republican Party goes from here.  Gardner started, as his foundation of what the Republicans need to stand for, from the party platform of 1980, when Reagan was swept into the White House with 489 electoral votes.  He made some of his own modifications, but overall the (lengthy) statement stands as a good starting point.

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When sexual abuse in the Catholic church was uncovered, the national mainstream media was all over the story, as it should have been.  But when it’s a public school system that is involved in the same thing — including sending known offenders back in to work with kids, and trying to minimized the issue — their silence betrays their bias.  Then, there was outrage and daily reports on the evening news.  Now, local reporting but not much else.

Dave Pierre of NewsBusters chronicles the issue here (back in May) and here (last week).  The national media ignores a government program but wallops Christians over the same issue.  Yeah, no bias there, right?

Shire Network News #146 has been released. The feature interview is with Australian academic, Dr Mervyn Bendle, who has queried the appointment of a man who doesn’t believe the West is better than the Jihadi terrorists, to a teaching position at the Australian Defence College. Needless to say, in the politicized world of modern intellectual life, it’s the whistleblower who finds himself up on a charge. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

I did not have a commentary this week.

The media has seemed to take Obama’s side in McCain’s ad accusing the Democrat of signing a bill that would bring "comprehensive sex education" to children as young as kindergarten.  The Obama camp called this a lie, that it was mostly about inappropriate touching at the young ages, and the media have played it that way.

Except that, as Byron York notes, when you actually read the bill and speak to its cosponsors (well, the one he could ever contact about it), that’s not necessarily the case.  Now, Obama may have had his own reasons for voting for the bill, but as York summarizes:

But we do know that the bill itself was much more than that. The fact is, the bill’s intention was to mandate that issues like contraception and the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases be included in sex-education classes for children before the sixth grade, and as early as kindergarten.  Obama’s defenders may howl, but the bill is what it is.

Read the whole thing(tm).

When he simply doesn’t want to be.  Dealing with people who have it in their heads that they really should’ve been the other gender is becoming less shocking in our culture these days.  The next step, however, is being taken in Philadelphia.

For school officials in Haverford Township, the challenge was daunting: What do you do when a 9-year-old student, with the full support of his parents, decides that he is no longer a boy and instead is a girl?

I’m wondering how many other life-altering decisions these parents have allowed this third-grader to make.

The government schools are more than willing to be codependent in this matter.

Parents of a third-grade student at Chatham Park Elementary School approached the administration on April 16 to ask for help in making a "social transition" for their child.

The Haverford School District consulted experts on transgender children, then sent letters to parents advising them that the guidance counselor would meet with the school’s 100 third-grade students to explain why their classmate would now wear girls’ clothes and be called by a girl’s name.

Some parents are, as one might expect, upset that the school is requiring that everybody else’s third graders now will receive this specific kind of sexuality training at this young age.  And they sprung this information on the parents at the very last minute.

"Why is the school introducing this subject to 8- and 9-year-olds?" wrote the parent who started the blog thread, which had been viewed more than 3,000 times as of yesterday. "Why were we not notified sooner. We received the letter today, the discussion at school is tomorrow."

This is not going to be very politically correct of me, but the group most in need of counseling at this point is the boy and his parents, not the rest of the 3rd grade.  This is not like complaining that you think your hair’s too curly or your nose is crooked.  This is indeed life altering, and allowing a 9-year-old to make this change seems like a huge mistake.  Fortunately, surgery is not involved, but changing fundamental identities at this point does not sound wise.

This also says something about our culture, that younger and younger children are, somehow, coming up with this idea and getting their parents to go along with it, whether those parents come along easily or kicking and screaming.  Something tells me that the Dr. Spock generation is less likely to put up a fight.

Technorati Tags: transgender, Philadelphia, Haverford School District, sexuality

The purpose of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been eroded and molded to fit 21st century liberal sensibilities; that is to say, to take it as much out of the public square as possible.  When Thomas Jefferson responded to the Danbury Baptists, he was responding to a specific question — government interfering with or establishing a religion — and he gave a specific answer.

Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

Basically, the government will not try to take away man’s natural right of conscience.  It’s the coercion factor that was at issue.  An established religion would require allegiance to the state church for all public servants. 

But no matter how much you want to mangle this straightforward concept, did it really mean to abolish this?

East Brunswick High School football coach Marcus Borden, who said he is fighting for his peers nationwide, is expected to petition the U.S. Supreme Court for a review of Tuesday’s federal appeals court ruling that prohibits him from participating in team prayer.

The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia unanimously reversed a July 2006 lower-court ruling that permitted Borden, through his lawsuit against the East Brunswick Board of Education, to silently bow his head or "take a knee" with players as a sign of secular respect for student-led team prayer.

The plaintiffs, represented by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, say respect is indeed the issue.

"The ruling underscores that school district employees, including football coaches, have to obey the establishment clause and have to respect the religious rights of students," said Richard B. Katskee, assistant legal director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, which represented the school board in its appeal of U.S. District Judge Dennis Cavanaugh’s ruling.

Respecting the fact that they were praying, then, is somehow a disrespect of their religious rights?  And what of the rights of the coach?  Does he have to check them at the locker room door?  Note that we’re not talking about him bringing a Bible or leading the prayers; he’s just in the room when the students pray and takes the same position as they do. 

The judges opinions in this case are just as tortured as the logic used to misread the First Amendment. 

Read the rest of this entry

And another reason homeschooling looks better all the time (and why those folks in California need a re-hearing on that homeschooling case).

It’s an increasingly familiar scenario: An educator or coach, someone in a position of great trust, is accused of sexual misconduct with one or more students.

In Chicago, former Walter Payton College Prep basketball coach George Turner, 45, was charged recently with the criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse of two 15-year-old female students.

While it’s "increasingly familiar", a study in 2004 makes one wonder how bad it must be now.

In 2004, Congress released the results of a report it had commissioned on teacher sexual misconduct. Compiled by Hofstra University Professor Charol Shakeshaft, it concluded that an estimated 4.5 million of 50 million students in American public schools "are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade."

It’s still a very underground sort of thing, as it mostly goes unreported.

"These cases tend to slip under the rug," said Terri Miller, president of the national organization Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation. "They let teachers quietly resign and move on."

That’s possible in part, she said, because state boards aren’t required to report incidents to the U.S. Department of Education.

"One of the big problems is that you’re in a situation where the acts by themselves are very private," said Chicago personal injury attorney Joe Klest, who has represented victims of sexual abuse by teachers and coaches.

"And even though they’re involving minors, and minors can’t legally consent, they are often groomed into consenting. So you’ve got two people — one saying it happened, one saying it didn’t — and there’s very rarely any extrinsic physical evidence."

I’ve covered this before, but it bears repeating.  What I’m waiting for is a public outcry like that which followed the same issue among Catholic priests.  The cynic in me wonders how much of this goes unreported so that the public school system doesn’t look bad, which would put privatization and homeschooling in a much better light.  The Teacher’s Union should be taking the point on this, but other than issuing statements tut-tutting each incident, not much changes. 

Technorati Tags: education, homeschooling, sexual abuse, George Turner, Charol Shakeshaft, Terri Miller, Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct and Exploitation,

I understand that schools should and do determine what’s appropriate to be said during school hours, but with all the other speech and such that they do allow, this prohibition looks rather targeted.

A federal judge has rejected a claim that the Poway Unified School District violated a teenager’s First Amendment rights by pulling him out of class for wearing a T-shirt with an anti-gay slogan.

Tuesday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge John Houston reaffirmed an earlier decision in which he found the school district’s policy on hate speech lawful.

Tyler Harper sued the school in 2004 after the district said he could not wear a shirt printed with a Bible verse condemning homosexuality. His younger sister, Kelsie, was named as a plaintiff after he graduated.

Via Stop the ACLU.

Technorati Tags: Bible, Poway Unified School District, hate speech, homosexuality