Some future guests of a Manhattan hotel could be upset over a fellow traveler’s presence. He’s quiet, keeps to himself and takes up very little space but they’ll still have a difficult time avoiding him and the controversy he’s created.

The guest in question is a six-foot statue of Jesus made entirely of chocolate. Dubbed “My Sweet Lord” by its creator Cosimo Cavallaro, the figure is scheduled for display at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York beginning Monday and continuing through Easter Sunday. That day will mark a special viewing from midnight to one a.m.

Aside from the obvious, calculated timing of the statue’s unveiling (the sculpture gallery’s creative director says the timing of the unveiling was an “unfortunate coincidence”), and the ridiculous appearance of the figure (by the way, it’s anatomically correct where that sort of thing counts and there’s no loin cloth), what’s astounding is the surprise those involved with the sculpture expressed at the religious community’s response.

The aforementioned creative director, Matt Semler said, “We’re obviously surprised by the overwhelming response and offense people have taken.” Well what did you think would happen Matt? Did you think you could unveil a nude statue of the most revered religious figure in history, a figure many consider God in the flesh and not make people angry? Are we to believe you’re so insulated in your “art” community you really had no idea this would offend people?

No, this was indeed calculated and designed to generate the exact sort of buzz it’s getting (yes, I know I’m contributing to the buzz and that irks me somewhat). The feigned surprise of Cavallaro and his keeper is laughable, as is the statue itself. Really, once you see the thing it’s not that impressive.

The face has very little detail and the only thing anatomically correct is the pelvic region. The rest of the figure looks gaunt and weak as if it was derived from photos of Holocaust victims. Only someone who’s never familiarized themselves with Jesus’ life would conceive him thus. The man was a carpenter. He cut, lifted and smoothed heavy wood before shaping it with his hands into something useful. No way was he the effeminate pansy portrayed in this sculpture.

But see that’s the point. Cavallaro did not familiarize himself with his subject at all. He chose it, the medium and the timing of the unveiling as pure self-aggrandizement. He couched his expression in a sweet solid to hide his flagrant ignorance. His Jesus is a sweet, skinny wimp who is much less threatening than the muscular carpenter who was strong enough to be tender and compassionate. Cavallaro’s Jesus is much easier to control and is therefore subject to his creator, which is ironic considering the opposite is true.

With his hands, this “artist” fashioned an object of mockery and divisiveness that will disappear on the ash heap of history. With His hands, his subject fashioned a world-wide faith of healing and unity that’s lasted more than two-thousand years.

Can’t understand why anyone’s upset, Cosimo.

Unwavering values and a quiet strength are Tony Dungy’s hallmarks. The Super Bowl-winning coach of the Indianapolis Colts makes no secret of his religious faith and the fact that he places it above all else in his life. His Christian beliefs have been somewhat public for some time now, but recent comments by Dungy have thrust this area of his life onto the national stage, and are now being unfairly attacked.

At an awards dinner held by the Indiana Family Institute recently, Dungy declared his support for the Institute’s efforts at convincing lawmakers to amend the state constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

“I appreciate the stance they’re taking, and I embrace that stance,” Dungy said. “We’re not trying to downgrade anyone else, but we’re trying to promote the family – family values the Lord’s way.”

While most of us could guess this would be Dungy’s position, the controversy arose after he made his views public. The response from the gay community was predictable.

“When the head coach publicly states that part of the Colts fan base should be second-class citizens, you can’t expect those same fans to support the team.” So says Bil Browning, operator of a blog site focusing on homosexual issues.

The hypocrisy by the gay community in reaction to Dungy’s comments is astounding.

Not only was Dungy not classifying homosexuals as second-class citizens, he unwittingly exposed the double-standard of the gay agenda.

Dungy is at the pinnacle of his chosen profession. He coaches, trains, teaches, and builds his players into a winning team. No one can dispute his success on the field, and isn’t that what homosexual advocates have been preaching for decades? That it doesn’t matter if a businessman or actor or politician or anyone else is gay, as long as they do their job and do it well? That our bedroom activities are personal matters and off-limits for public debate? Most major corporations go to great lengths to make sexual orientation a non-issue by teaching employees to treat everyone equally regardless of their beliefs. Job performance is the yardstick by which they’re measured, not whether they’re attracted to men or women.

But in the same breath, gay advocates criticize Dungy for having personally-held beliefs in conflict with theirs, even though his job performance is the best in his profession. As long as you fall in line with the gay mantra your job performance is the ultimate measure. But if you refuse to drink the kool-aid, suddenly your job success is irrelevant, and in fact should not even be brought up in the context of the conversation. All that matters then is that you don’t subscribe to the cult of tolerance, which is code-speak for acceptance and affirmation.

Make no mistake: Had Dungy made these comments in his coaching apparel during a post-game interview when he clearly represents the Colts organization, I too would question his timing. But when he makes the comments as a private citizen, invited to a ceremony honoring his commitment to family values (the same values by the way, that helped him build a winning team), then they should be left alone. Yes he’s a public figure and yes what he says carries more weight than some guy off the street. But he’s also a human, entitled to privately held beliefs as we all are, and entitled to express those beliefs without fear of reprisal.

Kudos to the Colts ownership for defending Dungy's right to express himself in this way. May the Colts enjoy Tony's brand of success for years to come.

Five British citizens, going about their daily work have been kidnapped by Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval personnel. A domestic coup in London perhaps, or a daring strike in England’s heartland? No. This happened to British sailors and marines as they completed a routine search of an Iraqi merchant vessel sailing through Iraqi waters.

That the Iranian crazies violated every known practice and expectation of sovereign nations, not to mention Iraqi and British territory, is really not the most dangerous part of the story. True, this incident heightens tensions between Iran and the West, but what’s new? Iran has, in their view, been officially at war with us since the early seventies. And it’s also true that this incident comes at a time when Iran is lumbering towards nuclear capability. But for the British, this incident holds far more dangerous consequences domestically than abroad.

A few facts:

-The total population of England is roughly 60-million.
-The total number of Muslims in England is roughly 1.6-million, nearly 3% of the population.
-Of England’s Muslim population, 96% are Sunni’s, the same strain of Islam once practiced by Saddam Hussein, and now followed by terrorists blowing up American and British troops in Iraq.

So what’s the connection between London’s Sunni’s and the ones now fighting in Iraq with the blessing of the Shia regime in Iran?

Religion, mainly, but consider that this religion offers no compromise when it comes to assimilation with host countries. Followers of Islam do not migrate to other nations with the goal of becoming a part of that nation’s tapestry. Rather, the stated goal of their religion is to devour non-Islamic cultures until none stand but “The One True Faith.”

Unlike other ethnic groups that swarm our shores and, to a lesser extent the coasts and borders of European countries, these immigrants do not want to fit in; they want to transform the very makeup of the countries in which they settle, typically by force. And once they enter another country, they don’t simply ignore the events in their sacred land. Make no mistake; they’re intimately in tune with what happens to their brethren in the Middle East.

And should British response to this kidnapping consist of military force (most likely with American aid), is it a stretch to imagine the violence that could erupt in London or elsewhere in England? The British now find themselves in the middle of a political crop-field, learning firsthand the law of sowing and reaping.

In the almighty name of tolerance and enlightenment, they’ve allowed unfettered immigration, embracing Muslims by the thousands each year, with naïve expectations that they’ll settle down and become “good Britons.” Sowing in self-imposed ignorance, they’re poised to reap violence, death and national dissolution. If the bullets start flying in Iran, the Molotov cocktails and car bombs could start flying in London. Witness France just last year. This makes a decision on how to respond to the kidnapping dicey indeed. A strong response could trigger massive violence at home. A weak or no response could trigger massive violence at home, as Islamo-facists understand nothing but superior strength.

Lest we sit back and cluck our American tongues in arrogance at English folly, we’d do well to tend to our back yard. True, the Muslim population in the U.S. is less than 1%, and most of them are converts, not immigrants, but we don’t necessarily need a large bloc of Muslims to reap the same crop as the British. There are those in our own Congress sowing seeds of defeat in the Middle East, overtly signaling their intention to hand victory to the terrorists.

The recent vote by the House of Representatives ordering President Bush to withdraw all troops from Iraq by the fall of 2008 is treasonous. By codifying a timeline for withdrawal, they’re telling the very lunatics murdering our troops to hang on just a little longer and victory will be theirs. They could not do much more to aid a victory for terrorists and a defeat for the U.S. if they grabbed a rifle and shot our troops themselves. The only difference is shooting them face-to-face takes guts; something in short supply on the Hill. They’ve taken the cowardly way out, using their positions of responsibility as blunt instruments of power.

We pat ourselves on the back and feel safe from the crucible of war. But a lesson the British are now learning the hard way is on our syllabus as well.

I’ve long been a proponent of school vouchers, and the five-year anniversary of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) seems as good a time as any to explain why.

Notice I said I’m a proponent of vouchers, not necessarily of the NCLBA. As it was originally written, the Act did much to push authority and decision making down to state and local levels where it belongs. After enduring the massage parlor that is Congress, it came out looking much different and added layers of federal bureaucracy instead of eliminating them, leaving many of the provisions giving parents education choices on the floor. What remained in the way of school choice were very minor allowances that have failed. As just one example, the White House Office of Management and Budget revealed that the NCLB Act resulted in an additional 6.7 million hours of additional paperwork and reporting requirements for state and local educators. As Ronald Reagan was so fond of saying, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”

Let’s look at Government’s report card and see if he was right:

• -Total education spending per child has doubled since 1975 and Federal spending per child has doubled since 1980.
• -National test scores have remained stagnant, especially for those receiving federal aid.
• -Federal education spending has increased so dramatically that states now hold a combined $6-billion in unspent funds. (The location and disbursement of these funds is a topic for another day)
• -The pupil/teacher ratio has decreased from 22/1 in 1970 to 16/1 in 1999.
• -For every dollar spent on education, 40 cents is taken for bureaucracy and never reaches the classroom (my bet is much of those funds are routed to union groups via educators paychecks which isn’t fair to the teachers).

I’d say that amounts to a D- at best.

There are signs of hope, however. Several states have enacted their own version of school choice programs, none quite as exciting as the one Utah’s governor recently signed into law.

Under the law, called the Parent Choice in Education Act, families choosing to send their children to private schools of any type will receive scholarships based on family income and the number of children in the home. The amounts range from $500 to $3,000. All students currently attending public school now have the option of changing schools and using taxpayer funds to help defray the costs. Students already attending private schools are not eligible for assistance unless they meet the federal free or reduced lunch criteria. Over time this will change. All students entering kindergarten in 2007 or later, regardless of where they attend school, will be eligible for the scholarships.

Many of the misleading arguments against school choice raise the specter of funding reduction for public schools resulting in critical degradation of resources. Well guess what? Utah’s plan compensates for that, making it a non-issue. Each time a student transfers to a private school, the state will send the public district funds, amounting to more than the average voucher amount paid throughout the state. Initially, this will result in a slight cost increase for taxpayers, but will save significant amounts in the mid and long-term.

Once the new school year rolls around, all children entering Kindergarten this fall and beyond will be able to choose public or private schools, with no additional funds sent to public schools if the child never attends one. This means there will be thousands of students who never darken the door of a public school, and taxpayers will not be stuck with the bill to support those schools. They’ll know their money is being used to support an education product they choose to consume.

This all leads to a basic market principle that’s been pushed to the side of the education debate for far too long: Competition. Once Utah’s plan has time to take hold, those schools providing an inferior product will give way to others providing a product of choice. Studies conducted on other school choice programs have all shown several benefits. Parent’s satisfaction with the schools they choose is dramatically higher, academic achievement is higher and participating schools respond to the competition by improving performance and becoming more efficient.

This comes as no surprise to those who make their living fighting for consumer dollars; the question is why teacher unions and legislators have refused to recognize this dynamic force for change? Back to Reagan for the answer:

“This is the issue… Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

Amen Ronnie, amen.

I’ve long been a proponent of school vouchers, and the five-year anniversary of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) seems as good a time as any to explain why.

Notice I said I’m a proponent of vouchers, not necessarily of the NCLBA. As it was originally written, the Act did much to push authority and decision making down to state and local levels where it belongs. After enduring the massage parlor that is Congress, it came out looking much different and added layers of federal bureaucracy instead of eliminating them, leaving many of the provisions giving parents education choices on the floor. What remained in the way of school choice were very minor allowances that have failed. As just one example, the White House Office of Management and Budget revealed that the NCLB Act resulted in an additional 6.7 million hours of additional paperwork and reporting requirements for state and local educators. As Ronald Reagan was so fond of saying, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”

Let’s look at Government’s report card and see if he was right:

• -Total education spending per child has doubled since 1975 and Federal spending per child has doubled since 1980.
• -National test scores have remained stagnant, especially for those receiving federal aid.
• -Federal education spending has increased so dramatically that states now hold a combined $6-billion in unspent funds. (The location and disbursement of these funds is a topic for another day)
• -The pupil/teacher ratio has decreased from 22/1 in 1970 to 16/1 in 1999.
• -For every dollar spent on education, 40 cents is taken for bureaucracy and never reaches the classroom (my bet is much of those funds are routed to union groups via educators paychecks which isn’t fair to the teachers).

I’d say that amounts to a D- at best.

There are signs of hope, however. Several states have enacted their own version of school choice programs, none quite as exciting as the one Utah’s governor recently signed into law.

Under the law, called the Parent Choice in Education Act, families choosing to send their children to private schools of any type will receive scholarships based on family income and the number of children in the home. The amounts range from $500 to $3,000. All students currently attending public school now have the option of changing schools and using taxpayer funds to help defray the costs. Students already attending private schools are not eligible for assistance unless they meet the federal free or reduced lunch criteria. Over time this will change. All students entering kindergarten in 2007 or later, regardless of where they attend school, will be eligible for the scholarships.

Many of the misleading arguments against school choice raise the specter of funding reduction for public schools resulting in critical degradation of resources. Well guess what? Utah’s plan compensates for that, making it a non-issue. Each time a student transfers to a private school, the state will send the public district funds, amounting to more than the average voucher amount paid throughout the state. Initially, this will result in a slight cost increase for taxpayers, but will save significant amounts in the mid and long-term.

Once the new school year rolls around, all children entering Kindergarten this fall and beyond will be able to choose public or private schools, with no additional funds sent to public schools if the child never attends one. This means there will be thousands of students who never darken the door of a public school, and taxpayers will not be stuck with the bill to support those schools. They’ll know their money is being used to support an education product they choose to consume.

This all leads to a basic market principle that’s been pushed to the side of the education debate for far too long: Competition. Once Utah’s plan has time to take hold, those schools providing an inferior product will give way to others providing a product of choice. Studies conducted on other school choice programs have all shown several benefits. Parent’s satisfaction with the schools they choose is dramatically higher, academic achievement is higher and participating schools respond to the competition by improving performance and becoming more efficient.

This comes as no surprise to those who make their living fighting for consumer dollars; the question is why teacher unions and legislators have refused to recognize this dynamic force for change? Back to Reagan for the answer:

“This is the issue… Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

Amen Ronnie, amen.

What is it with Washington State? Not only did they have the most unusual looking group of folks audition for this year's “American Idol," they also have state legislators calling NASCAR fans criminals who leave junked cars in their front yards, and teachers conducting Marxist experiments on their students (see Re-Thinking Re-Education below).  I know Washington is a pretty liberal state, but some of the things coming out of Starbucks/Microsoft/Google-land are unbelievable.

I just finished reading a bill working its way through the Washington state legislature that gives near carte-blanche freedom to high school students producing school-sponsored media. By the way, the bill would also apply to colleges, but most of them already let students do or say anything they like as long as it is liberal in scope and message. No right-wingers in academia please.

The bill states that students, according to the American and Washington State Constitutions, have the right “…to engage in robust and uninhibited discussion of issues.” I’m okay with that. Nothing wrong with discussions that lead to realization of truth. But the bill doesn’t stop there. It gives students freedom to write, speak or show anything as long as the words, speech and images aren’t obscene, libelous, slanderous or an incitement to break school rules or federal communication laws. In the same breath, it denies school administrators the opportunity to inject sanity through editorial review by saying the student-produced content is “…not subject to prior review by school administrators.”

There used to be a time when school teachers and administrators were understood to be acting in Loco Parentis: In Place of Parents. They were authorized and expected to keep peace and order in schools by drawing up and enforcing rules that enabled children to learn. This bill, if passed into law, would remove from the schools the very restraints most parents employ at home. Well, in homes outside Washington State at least.

The bill’s definition of the areas students cannot explore; obscenities, slander, libel and inciting others to break rules, are laughable at best. To be classified as obscene, the student-produced media must relate to sex. That’s it. Any profane or obscene word or act is fair game as long as it doesn’t invoke sexual acts. As for inciting others to break rules/laws, the only ones mentioned are school rules and federal communications laws. That means a student could write or speak the following sentence with complete impunity:

“All Americans are filthy @#!!$% pigs who deserve to die, and anyone who wants to kill as many $##&%# Americans as possible has my undying gratitude and will receive ten-thousand dollars in cash from a Kill %%&#** Americans fund I started three years ago. Please do not kill any #@@$&$ Americans on campus though, or I’ll be in trouble.”

Under the bill’s provisions, not only would these statements pass inspection, they aren't even open to inspection! They could be published school-wide with no administrative review or ramifications. In fact, the bill specifically protects school officials from being “…terminated, transferred, removed or otherwise disciplined for refusing to suppress the protected free expression rights of student journalists.” Beautiful. Students get a free pass to say the most vile things imaginable and school officials posses a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Under these rules, you can’t publish an article in the school paper telling kids to run in the hallways, but you can absolutely tell them to blow up the principal’s car with a pipe bomb.

This stuff is unbelievable. If a student ever felt oppressed and filed a suit against an offending school administrator and won, the school (which of course means the taxpayers) would have to pay attorney’s fees at a minimum, with some monetary damages thrown in for all the emotional turmoil and life-altering stress the student no doubt suffered.

I have no problem with students expressing themselves and will champion a student’s right to say, discuss, debate and propagate any ideas, beliefs or issues they hold dear. What I cannot understand is state lawmakers saying the taxpayers must fund this expression with no oversight. Governing processes must be put in place. Appealing to the Constitution as a guarantor of minors’ rights to say practically whatever they want whenever they want doesn’t make sense. The Constitution also guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, yet we restrict that right for handguns to citizens over the age of 21. Same for the right to vote, except the age is 18. But for the right of free speech, we’ll open the flood gates to words and expressions that, in the long run, could do more damage than any handgun ever could.

After watching Seattle's “Idol” auditions and hearing their views on NASCAR fans, I’m glad I live where I do, even if there is the occasional junked car in a front yard.

*Quotes from House Bill 1307

My last post detailed the unbelievable situation at Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle.  The teachers at Hilltop perform the most amazing curriculum contortions, and see their work educating children as a “political” tool to generate a socialist nirvana.  You can read my blog below (Lego Lunacy) and the article by Hilltop’s Mentor Teacher Ann Pelo here.

Prior to doing research on Pelo and her comrades (yes, communist inference intended), I thought this level of social engineering took place only in the lofty halls of academia, the Hillary Clinton campaign war room or, thanks to her husband, in the U.S. Military.  How wrong I was.  It seems there is a whole cadre of educators linking arms around this system of learning.

Pelo’s article was featured as a cover story for “Rethinking Schools” magazine.  The publishers are in the vanguard of teachers pushing for educational change along the lines of Pelo’s efforts.  Although self-identifying as an activist organization, Rethinking at first paints their vision in very broad strokes saying, “...public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy.”  Lest you think the inclusion of race in that statement is odd, Rethinking’s website continues with this gem:

“While writing for a broad audience, Rethinking Schools emphasizes problems facing urban schools, particularly issues of race.”

And there you have it. Rethinking Schools approaches the same socialist promised-land as Pelo, but from a different route.  She wants to break down the walls of capitalism while Rethinking strives to arrive at the same destination by wiping out all racial inequality, an enemy which, by Rethinking’s definition doesn’t exist.

Further into its manifesto, Rethinking asserts that, “…racial and class inequalities are growing in our country.”  No doubt some inequality still exists in America.  I know I don’t pull down the same income as say, Bill Gates.  But are today’s disparities due to race and the enforcement of a class structure?  There are literally hundreds of laws, regulations and best practices that effectively close if not eliminate any inequality between races, especially in the schools.  Does Rethinking really believe that some races are afforded better educational opportunities than others?

My wife and I both work to provide for our three children.  Without question, we don’t have the financial resources to fully-fund our oldest daughter’s college education. But does that mean she has fewer opportunities than any other college student?  Has she been denied access to any part of the educational process because she’s Caucasian or not as well-off as wealthier students? Absolutely not. She can pursue the same educational opportunities as anyone else, but she’ll have to take different, more difficult routes to get there.

As for public schools, any family's children are welcomed regardless of what economic level or race they come from.  But Rethinking’s vision isn’t really about equal access; it’s about equality at the expense of freedom. In their world, all things and all people should be equal without distinction. No winners or losers, no haves and have-nots because such delineation would be unfair to those who must work harder than others to achieve the same success. Their world is one where all are the same, and to suggest that one’s skills are better honed or applied to a certain task than another’s is to create an “inequality” that simply cannot be tolerated. In fact, Rethinking lists several items about which they think we should be “discouraged.” They include:

“School districts nationwide continue to slash budgets; violence in our schools and cities shows no signs of abating; attempts to privatize the schools have not slowed; and the country's productive resources are still used to make zippier shoes, rather than used in less profitable arenas like education and affordable housing.”

Okay, I’m with them on stemming violence. But an attempt to privatize schools, and making footwear the public obviously wants is discouraging? No mention of terrorists or global warming caused by Al Gore's hot air? And how in the world does Rethinking link education and affordable housing? I guess the better educated we are, the more we’ll realize how guilty we should feel for spending money we earned in ways that benefit our families instead of everyone else’s.
This is the basis of their thinking and it’s communism/socialism at its very core.

Think it won’t affect your schools? Rethinking boasts adherents in all 50 states and all 10 Canadian provinces. If Rethinking has its way, American schools will become “classrooms…where students and teachers gain glimpses of the kind of society we could live in…” You get three guess as to what kind of society they mean, and democracy and republic are not correct.

*Quotes from: Rethinking Schools website; www.rethinkingschools.org Copyright 2002 Rethinking Schools

Building The Socialist Community One Child at a Time, could be the motto for one Washington-state school. Seattle’s Hilltop Children’s Center has found itself in a not-so-flattering light after a Lego-banning exercise came to national attention.

The center’s teachers decided a Legotown built by Hilltop’s after-school students fostered too much competition, power-grabs and class-consciousness, so they banned the blocks before rugged individualism became rampant.

In an interview, the center’s Mentor Teacher Ann Pelo said banning the toys led the children to a 
“…strikingly profound understanding of the ways in which private ownership falls short, or the ways in which private ownership is inherently unfair,"

I see. The system that provides her a building in which to indoctrinate young minds along with an ever-increasing salary as her tenure lengthens is “inherently unfair.” I expect to see that next paycheck evenly distributed among all the staff members at Hilltop, Ann.

I did some investigating and found this sort of Marxist drivel is not unique, but actually endemic among the staff and curriculum at Hilltop, and taught in pre-school as well as before and after-school programs. Pelo outlined part of her systematic approach to education (or re-education, as the Soviets liked to call it), in an article for Rethinking Schools, a print and on-line publication dedicated to shaping “reform throughout the public school system in the United States.”
(More about them in a later blog).

The article begins with Pelo describing an exchange between three, four-year-old boys in one of Hilltop’s pre-school classrooms. Each boy had a doll tucked under their shirt and announced, “It’s time to have our babies!” Pelo then describes how the boys removed the dolls from under their shirts, and cradled them before cutting the umbilical cords, wrapping them in blankets and “…holding their babies to their chests to nurse.” According to Pelo, the boys were “…wrestling with how to be both male and maternal.”

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that schools, (and in this case Pelo and the rest of Hilltop’s staff clearly think of themselves as a school, complete with a teaching curriculum), were designed to teach information that led to assimilation of facts, figures and skills. Said knowledge was then used to pass those infernal final exams, as well as secure a higher-education leading to a decent paying job, or to excel on a chosen career path sans a college degree, with the exception of the military which, as John Kerry recently informed us, is only for idiots who don’t stay in school.

Lest you think the exchange between these boys is abnormal, Pelo and her colleagues actually studied this type of behavior among their students as a “research question” in order to produce a curriculum “that counters racist, sexist, and classist understandings.”

But who gets to define those terms, and who gets to determine the antidote to them? Pelo and her staff do. In her article, she says the curriculum was built with the goal of strengthening the “values we want to pass on to the children.” Values like socialism, gender neutrality, and racial guilt. Pelo says it’s “…an aspect of white privilege not to think about race…” Sorry, but I never thought about race or the difference between myself and any other kid, and I was raised in a lower-middle class family.

It’s this kind of schlock that would have me pulling my child out of Hilltop faster than Pelo could pose another “research” question, and “study” my kid right into the left-wing fringe.

Towards the end of the article, Pelo exposes her liberal agenda in all it’s glory:

“I wanted us to acknowledge and claim our work as political work—seeing teaching as not only about supporting children's individual development and learning, but also about cultivating particular values and practices that counter oppression and enhance justice.”
(Emphasis added)

Oppression like a new, privately-owned building the center is moving into and a paycheck assembled from the $1,000 per week fees the center charges parents for each pre-school child. Thanks Ann, for stamping out that kind of evil before we all go down to our doom.

*Quotes from “Playing With Gender,” by Ann Pelo: Rethinking Schools, Volume 20 No.1
“Inside Our Schools: Lego Ban Intrigues Local Educators,” by Meghann Cuniff, SpokesmanReview.com, February 3, 2007 and
www.rethinkingschools.org