Michelle Obama wasn't kidding!

I have posted this quote a couple times before, but it bears repeating. Here are the words of Michelle Obama from a speech she made earlier this year:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Barack Obama is living up to his wife's rhetoric with his plans for what he will require our nation's young people to do if they want to graduate from high school. On his campaign website, Obama has posted this info:

Obama will set a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year. He will develop national guidelines for service- learning and will give schools better tools both to develop programs and to document student experience....

What is glossed over in this rosy-sounding tidbit is that as President, Obama would tie the receiving of federal education funds to the successful completion of this requirement by our nation's school districts. While I don't agree that the federal government should be directly funding our educational system in any way, shape, or form; if this is the system within which we must work, then Obama's idea stinks. Does not the term "involuntary servitude" mean something to him? As Jonah Goldberg so eloquently puts it:

There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery....

Try as he might, Barack Obama just cannot hide his enthusiasm for the totalitarian do-gooderism for which the socialist left is famous. What was that quote that I recently posted?

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of
authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution
was made to guard the people against the dangers of good
intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well,
but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but
they mean to be masters." ---Daniel Webster

Obama is the poster boy for examples of people this quote describes.

Good Day to You, Sir

Time for Barack Obama to break out the duct tape

As far as material for my blog is concerned, Barack Obama's wife and her big mouth is the gift that keeps on giving. Once again, Michelle Obama has stepped in verbal doo-doo, although she actually made the following statement a couple weeks ago, and it is just now getting traction. Try scraping this one off your shoe, and yes, she really, really said this:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Uh, CREEPY!!! If you want to hear Mrs. Obama say that zinger in person, Hugh Hewitt has it on audio. Cue the clip to around 8:40.

Good Lord, the last time I read or heard a speech like that was when Snowball the pig was addressing all of Orwell's farm animals.

Good Day to You, Sir

Hillary! is still trying to shove socialist healthcare down our throats

Hat tip to Cox and Forkum for another of their searing political cartoons (See blogroll left)

Saying she has "learned a lot" since the last time she tried to impose socialist health care on us in 1994, Hillary! earlier this week promised "We're going to have universal health care when I'm president, there's no doubt about that. We're going to get it done...." God help us all, I says.

Is our delivery system of medical care perfect? Of course not; show me a human system that has no flaws. Is our delivery system of medical care one of the best in the world? You bet. Just look at all the people from around the world who try by hook or crook to get here for medical procedures.

If you would like to see the future of health care in the United States if Hillary pushes through what she wants, there are plenty of places you can look. One of the best examples is Canada. They have socialist medicine, and it is literally killing their citizens. The backlog for starting cancer treatments can run to almost a year. What is that they always say about cancer survivors? It was caught and treated EARLY! Many Canadians sneak into the United States for immediate medical procedures that see months-long waiting lists in the Great White North.

For another example of socialist health care, look to Great Britain where they are seeing many of the same problems that Canadians are seeing. And of course there is Cuba which the left always raves about as the example for which we should all strive. Never mind that the "free" medical care in Cuba doesn't do you much good when there are chronic shortages of medical supplies and the grossly underpaid doctors make more money bartending in one of the European tourists-only hotels in Havana.

There is one more example of what socialist health care looks like: our own military. The Walter Reed flap referenced by the above Cox and Forkum cartoon shows what happens when there is no competition and hence, no incentive to serve the customer. I experienced various medical issues concomitant with being an active duty soldier, and I saw the inside of Moncrief Army Medical Center at Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Washington; and Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany. While the medical care I received was adequate, I always got the feeling that they were getting to me in their own sweet time. My visit to Landstuhl was especially disconcerting. A routine physical at my local base caused concern for the doctor during the "turn your head and cough" portion of the exam because the doctor didn't like what he felt. Just over one month later, they finally saw me at Landstuhl to determine whether or not I had testicular cancer. Luckily, I was cancer-free. Several fellow-soldier friends of mine with some medical issues distrusted the Army medical system so much that they grinned and beared it until they got out of the military so they could have their respective back and knee surgeries performed in the private medical market.

As usual, the problems we currently have with the cost of health care are largely due to government interference. When LBJ gave us Medicare, it was only supposed to cost around $9 billion dollars a year. However, even taking inflation into account, the Medicare monster has ballooned into a grotesque financial black hole. It is a common rule of human behavior: that which is subsidized will go up in price. Look at the cost of health care; look at the cost of college tuition. Government heavily subsidizes both, and both continue to skyrocket. Couple that with government laws that prevent insurance companies from offering cheaper plans to younger, healthier clients. Instead, all ages, sexes, and health conditions are, in the words of of Stuart Browning of the On the Fence Films, thrown into the same risk pool. Browning has done extensive research and video documentation on the dangers of socialist medicine. You can see his films and articles at the linked website.

As usual, what works in this country is apparent by the number of people who vote with their feet. We have people from Haiti turning the roof of their house into a boat in an attempt to land on our shores, and we have people from Canada sneaking across the border into the U.S. to quickly obtain simple medical procedures that take months back their home country, and people from all over the world coming here for procedures that are not offered anywhere else. If Hillary! becomes our next president, her intention is to force us all into this rationed health care system where the government literally holds our lives in its inefficient, often corrupt little hands. And if you attempt to seek medical services from a doctor outside this wonderful system that Hillary! wants to set up, you and the wayward doctor can be arrested and imprisoned. That is what Hillary! proposed the last time she was put in charge of socializing our health care. Think about that in 2008 when it comes time to pull the voting lever.

Good Day to You, Sir

I just saw "Letters from Iwo Jima"

It was a very well done movie, and I enjoyed it more than Flags of Our Fathers. I realize that Flags had a large backstory to tell with the War Bond drive after the battle and what not, but I found that Flags jumped around way too much as one second we're watching combat on Iwo Jima, then we're jumping forward a few months to the War Bond Drive, then we flashback to Iwo Jima. I never got confused, but my patience began to wear thin.

Letters from Iwo Jima was a more straightforward, more conventional war movie, with just a few quick pre-war flashbacks. The twist of course was that the movie looked at the battle for Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective, complete with Japanese subtitles. As the viewer, it is quite an exercise to watch a movie from the enemy's point of view. As I watched the protaganist(s) of the movie attempt to cross No Man's Land in order to link up with their unit, and get shot at by nameless, faceless U.S. Marines, I found myself hoping the Japanese soldiers would make it, but also hoping that they would get killed too. After all, for any of them to live meant more U.S. Marines dying in the battle.

On my way home from work the other day, I turned on Michael Savage in time to catch him in a tirade about how Clint Eastwood, who directed Letters, tried too hard to rehabilitate the image of the Japanese soldier and gloss over their atrocities. After watching the movie, I have to say that I mostly disagree with Savage. The movie did have scenes that illustrated the brutality of the Japanese during World War II. In one scene, some Japanese soldiers drag a captured and terrified U.S. Marine into a cave and taunt him for a few moments before using him for bayonet practice. There is also a pre-battle scene where a Japanese officer instructs his men to specifically target American medics. Yes there are other atrocities that were committed by the Japanese during the War, like performing horrible medical experiments on prisoners in Manchuria, the Rape of the Chinese city of Nanking, the Bataan Death March - but none of those events happened on Iwo Jima; and the movie was only about Iwo Jima. Perhaps Savage was unhappy with the fact that the movie humanizes the Japanese soldiers to a certain extent, showing them talking about their families back home, and their lives before the war, along with all the usual gripes and terrors experienced by soldiers in combat conditions. But what did Savage want the movie to show? I was in the Army, and I can easily surmise that a Japanese soldier was just as bitchy and bored while digging a fighting position as I was. To show this fact is not acknowledging to everyone that the Japanese were then just as righteous as we were in the fighting of World War II.

Ironically, the worst brutality the Japanese inflicted during World War II was often on themselves. Dying with honor was very important to them, and they would usually kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner. This was graphically shown in the movie when a group of enlisted men - at the behest of their officer - hold grenades to their chests and are turned - one by one - into a mass of flesh lying on the floor of their cave. Watching that scene, Eastwood's direction made it clear that these soldiers did this act, maybe not so much for national honor, but more because of the tremendous peer pressure being put upon them by the other soldiers and the officer in their midst. Quite often, the Japanese soldiers seemed to be more at risk from their fellow soldiers than from the Americans, for if they retreated from a fight, even if it was to live to fight another day, or if they even had "unpatriotic" thoughts, they were in danger of being killed by their own officers.

Letters from Iwo Jima was just recently nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. I believe that the movie deserves that nomination, and I'm glad it got the nod rather than Flags of Our Fathers. Letters did a wonderful job of illustrating the duality of man's nature, where he can be a most brutal being, while tenderly dreaming of the life he left behind.

Good Day to You, Sir

The GOP lives up to its reputation

Here they had a chance to make a splash, and then in an all-too-typical move, the Republicans once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by nominating the wishy-washy Mel Martinez to the position of Chairman of the Republican National Committee. If you remember, I recently posted that Michael Steele of Maryland was being considered for the job. This was just too much so I fired off the following (rambling) letter to the RNC:

To Whom it May Concern:

Please tell me you're not serious. Please tell me its all a big
practical joke and that you are all going to jump up and say, "Just
kidding!" Please tell me you learned something, anything, from last
Tuesday's smackdown at the hands of the Democrats.

I just read that you plan to install Senator Mel Martinez of Florida as
the new Chair of the RNC. Again, have you learned nothing from last
week's election? Senator Martinez is a nice guy and all, but he has no
business being the Chair of the RNC. Aside from being an incompetent
campaigner, he should not be splitting his duties between being a
full-time Senator and the RNC Chair. That has conflict of interest
written all over it.

I have been a registered Republican for most of my life - I flirted with
the Libertarian party for a couple of years - and I am beginning to
wonder if I goofed by switching back to the GOP in time for the 2004
election when I thought it was so important that President Bush defeat
John Kerry. What has President Bush given me? Democrat-lite, that's
what. If I wanted to vote for a Democrat, I would have voted for a
Democrat. President Bush has not vetoed a single spending bill, he has
caved in, big time, to the open borders crowd, and what do you geniuses
do? You nominate a guy for RNC Chair who thinks the same way. Are you
aware of why you lost this election, aside from the corruption of
dummies like Cunningham, Ney, Pombo, and Foley? It is because you have
abandoned the likes of me, the kind of Republican who keeps you in
office. The Republican candidates may have lost their seats hand over
fist, but you will notice that traditional conservative ideas cleaned
up. All the defense of marriage amendments passed, with the exception
of Arizona, a liberal state like Michigan repudiated affirmative action,
and speaking of Arizona, they voted to cut off certain government
services from illegal aliens. All you have to do is come home to the
conservative ideas we are known for, and we will dominate once again.
If you continue to abandon me and millions of other like-minded
Republican voters, by supporting higher spending and illegal alien
amnesty, and if you show that support by nominating an advocate of those
policies like Mel Martinez, then you can kiss my Republican vote
goodbye. Will I vote for the Democrats? Hell no, but I won't vote for
you either.

I am sick and tired of you squishy jellyfish giving in time and again to
the Democrats, and then patting yourselves on the back because of how
gentlemenly you were. Have you forgotten everything Ronald Reagan
taught you? Stand up to the Democrats! Don't offer yourselves up as a
lighter version of them. Don't install Mel Martinez as the new RNC
Chair.

I can't tell you how excited I was when I heard that Michael Steele of
Maryland was being considered for the job. He is fresh, exciting,
"steele" willed, and did a heck of job running against an establishment
candidate in a very Democrat state. Bottom line, Mr. Steele is not
afraid to stand up to the Democrats. That is exactly what we need.

In the name of all that is good and holy, please re-consider Michael
Steele and do not install Mel Martinez as the next Chair of the
Republican National Committee. Your vote from me and from millions
of other Republicans will depend on the decision you are about to make.

Thank you,
Chanman
Sacramento, California
Registered Republican

Not my best effort, but my brain is a little hazy from being up all night with a teething six-month old. Apparently, the final decision won't be made until all the state party chairmen meet in January. During that time, we can do our part by bombarding the RNC with correspondence expressing our displeasure with their business-as-usual crap. If you care to opine, write to them at

info@gop.com

Good Day to You, Sir

Don't forget the scariest quote of all

Expanding upon my previous post, I just remembered the scariest quote of all from the Obama campaign, about which I have blogged before. Again, we turn to Obama's bitter half:

"And Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism, that you put down your division, that you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones, that you push yourselves to be better, and that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual - uninvolved, uninformed...."

Now that he is the presumptive nominee for the Democrats, the more the Obama campaign continues, the more frightened I become. Of course, with the Son of Cain out there also spouting off about how he is going to combat global warming, I don't see a happy ending no matter who gets elected.

Good Day to You, Sir

Iraq War (Persian Gulf War II): Ten years ago today

Difficult as it may seem to believe, it was March 19, 2003 (March 20 in Iraq's time zone) that the United States launched an all-out assault on Saddam Hussein's Iraq for a second time.  The first time around had gone swimmingly, but when the smoke had settled Saddam Hussein was still in control of Iraq.  We did not make the same mistake twice.

The actual invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam Hussein from power lasted only about a month-and-a-half; it was all over by early May.  The cost was a relatively low 140 American servicemembers killed.  Little did the American people realize that successfully invading Iraq would be the easy part.  As usual, winning the peace turned out to be exponentially more difficult than winning the peace.

The United States would continue to conduct combat operations in Iraq until the middle of 2011.  When all was said and done, the total casualties for the United States in Iraq was just under 4,500 killed and just over 32,000 wounded.  I'm sure you have seen some of the more gravely wounded who will spend the rest of their lives missing some of their limbs, their brain power, or some cases, their sanity.

The natural question many are asking was if it was worth it to invade Iraq.  Just today, Barack Obama's slimy little press secretary, Jay Carney, had no choice but to give credit to George W. Bush for removing Saddam Hussein from power after being pressed on the issue by a reporter.  But what if Saddam Hussein was still in power today?  With all the craziness in the Middle East and North Africa, what with Iran, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and the never-ending showdown between the Palestinian Arabs and the Israelis, would Saddam's Iraq really matter all that much?

I believe that perhaps we should have not gone into Iraq at all, or at least left after Saddam Hussein was removed from power.  Just like we should have gotten the hell out of Afghanistan as soon as we removed the Taliban from power.  The United States has always been very good at winning wars, but our record on nation building is spotty at best.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be."  -Thomas Jefferson

A bumper sticker that would make Orwell blush

Traveling the highways and byways of the Sacramento area on a daily basis gives me witness to occasional displays of stupidity on the bumpers of people's cars.

On my way home from work this afternoon, I glimpsed a bumper sticker that said this:

Pro-Child

Pro-Family

Pro-Choice

Really? So which part of this stance is "pro-child"? Is it when a pair of scissors is inserted into the back of the baby's skull? Is it when a baby is torn and picked out of the womb, limb by limb? Is it when a still-alive baby that has just been aborted is shuffled off in a bucket to the corner of the room where he or she dies slowly and painfully?

At this point, a naysayer throws the usual argument at me that it is just as well that these abortions take place because many of these aborted babies would have been born into terrible circumstances such as poverty and abuse. To that I say, if this is your criteria for playing God and deciding who is born and who isn't, then why should we stop at the unborn? My wife and I both teach in pretty dysfunctional parts of town. We could give you quite a lengthy list of elementary and middle school-age kids who live absolutely miserable lives, and this jackwagon driving the car with that bumper sticker could end their misery right quick. Heck it makes more sense to kill these kids who have been born, as we know they live miserable lives, whereas with unborn babies, we can only guess. I know this is quite a swiftian proposition I am making here, but it is a road that has been traveled before in world history.

When I was young and dumb, I considered myself "pro-choice." Now that I am a father of two children, I definitely don't think that way anymore, but I actually changed my stance in my mid-20s, years before I had kids of my own. I think what changed my views on abortion the most was a news story sometime in 1998 out of Montana - or some state up in the northwest - where a pregnant woman was jailed and slated for trial on charges that she was using illegal drugs while pregnant, thereby abusing her unborn baby. So you know how she got the child abuse charges dropped and gained her freedom? She got an abortion. Think about it: She skated on the charges of abusing her baby by killing her baby.

Let's put that on a bumper sticker.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

In-service Blues

On Monday, my entire district met at one of our high schools for an in-service training day. It still means going to work, but at least it is a break from the relative stress of teaching students.

As usual, for the most part, this in-service day was a waste of my time, but there was one bright spot. We all started in the gym, where we listened to a guest speaker named Stephen Peters. He is a former teacher, vice principal, and principal who has written several books and heads a publishing and motivational speaking company. He is very in tune with the motivational problems many of today's students face. He particularly focused on the behavior and performance of our minority students. At one point he showed a short film that asked a bunch of middle school-age boys what they wanted to do when they grow up. While the white and asian boys wanted to be doctors, lawyers, or maybe a firefighter here and there, almost every black boy interviewed said he wanted to be an NBA player. I can vouch that this is the case on my campus too, as that is a common answer when that question is asked at SST meetings with students who are struggling.

Mr. Peters then put a copy of the front page of the New York Times that showed a picture accompanying an article declaring that school was back in session for the year. The picture showed a bunch of students looking at their teacher. Front and center in the photo is a cute little black boy looking up at his teacher with a look of wonder and admiration, seeming to enthusiastically say, "What are we going to learn about today???" Mr. Peters said, "The question we need to answer and address is, how do so many of our minority students go from being this little boy here who admires his teacher, to one who admires these guys?" The image of the NYT article disappeared from the screen, and up came pictures of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., two gangsta rappers who were both murdered in the 1990s, and whose influence still holds sway over the hip-hop generation today.

Mr. Peters displayed a very telling chart on the screen that graphically demonstrates what we teachers are facing every day in the classroom. The chart showed the results of a study that was done by, I believe, the University of Michigan, and indicated the top five influences in young people's lives over the past few decades. Here is a reproduction of the chart:

When you have the double whammy of the crap our youth watch on television and listen to on their iPods, plus the blind-leading-the-blind influence of their peers, it is small wonder that we teachers often find ourselves pulling our hair out by the end of the day.

While the rest of the day was essentially a waste, I did enjoy Mr. Peter's presentation very much.

Good Day to You, Sir

The dim bulbs lord over us

I don't know if this is truly sinking in yet for most people, but in 2012, our incandescent light bulbs will be no more. That soft, warm pleasing light that has illuminated our lives will be replaced by a rapidly pulsating and toxic harshness that will make life that much more miserable.

And as usual, who is it that is imposing their morality on us? The dim bulb environmental activists using the power of government to make us live the way they want us to live.

ReasonTV has summed it all up for us in this succinct yet informative video:



If this were merely a dopey California state law, I would go to Nevada for my incandescent light bulbs, hiding them from the border inspectors as I crossed the state line. However, since this banning of our old light bulbs is a federal law, there will be nowhere to hide.

Funny, I have checked Article I Section 8 of the Constitution several times, and I can't find anything in there about Congress having the power to ban light bulbs. Yeah, yeah, I know: light bulbs didn't exist back then. Hmmm, I'm looking it over again, and I don't even see anything about banning candles or oil lamps either.

Isn't it great having a scolding school marm for a government?

Good Day to You, Sir

The Aurora Massacre: the usual calls for gun control commence

Snow is cold, the sun rises in the east, and leftists want to disarm you.

It didn't take too long after the murders in the movie theater for the usual suspects to begin calling for some kind of ban on guns.  Here in my city of residence, that call came from local gadfly Marcos Breton of the Sacramento Bee.

Breton half-heartedly tries to sound reasonable, saying "I don't want to take away your gun, so please spare me your Second Amendment screeds."  No, he only wants to ban "assault weapons," but in the end, he sings the same old tune.

First off, Mr. Breton, please define for me what an "assault weapon" is.  As Dennis Prager always insists: we need clarity before agreement.

Not that I would agree with Mr. Breton even if we had clarity.  Here is how he couches his argument regarding "assault weapons":

The AR-15 was initially designed for U.S. armed forces. According to the Associated Press, Holmes' weapon allegedly had "a high-capacity, drum-style magazine … some range from carrying 50-90 rounds apiece." Such a weapon is designed to kill large numbers of people quickly – in combat. That's it. So why are they sold legally to civilians under any circumstances?

I'll tell you why:  Because civilians have the God-given right to defend themselves from not only nut jobs like James Holmes, but from the tyranny of our own government.  Now, now - I can hear some of your eyes rolling already.  If you think I am being overly dramatic, kindly remind yourself how the United States became the United States in the first place:  We rose up against the tyranny of our central government (which at the time was King George III and Parliament).  We rose up and killed British soldiers, and we used weapons that were equal, and even superior, to the weapons the British soldiers had.

Again, throughout Breton's screed, he tries to sound reasonable.  He tries to emphasize that he is familiar with all the arguments that people like me (who only listen to the NRA according to him) use to support the keeping and bearing of arms.  The problem is that Breton badly contradicts himself.  Early in his screed, he says:

This isn't an argument about legislating ourselves into a better world. Many of us know that we can't eliminate danger in our lives. We can't send our kids to the movies with a guarantee they will come home safely. We can't stop emotionally detached and spiritually vacant misanthropes from killing us where we live. And you know what else? Many of us know about the epidemic of illegal guns and how gun-control laws often are obeyed only by law-abiding people while criminals keep stockpiling weapons and killing people.

So, Breton acknowledges - in so many words - that if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns. And yet, at the end of his anti-Second Amendement screed, Breton makes it clear that he apparently wants only outlaws to have guns:

As a culture, we're always preaching personal responsibility. Why can't we insist on more responsibility in the gun culture? No one is arguing that any and all public massacres can be prevented. Even without an AR-15 involved, people still likely would have been killed in Aurora. But maybe not as many people would have been killed. Maybe if it were harder to be a gun owner – if there were a federal assault weapons ban, longer waiting periods, stricter psychological evaluations linked to gun ownership – there would be fewer gun victims.

So Breton acknowledges that only law-abiding people abide by gun laws, and yet he wants to make it harder for law-abiding people to keep and bear arms. Seriously, Mr. Breton? The Bee is not a high school newspaper, yet your column sounds like it was written by a student who works for one. This is because the level of your analysis on this subject reaches only to that maturity level.

Let me explain this to you like you're a four year-old, Mr. Breton.  The bad guys are going to get any kind of gun they want, and they will willingly break any gun law to get it.  If James Holmes wasn't afraid to walk into a movie theater and break Colorado's murder and attempted murder laws 80+ times over, do you really think he is going to shed even one bead of sweat breaking any gun laws that are designed to keep "assault weapons" out of people's hands?

But don't just listen to me, listen to the great Thomas Jefferson, who said the same thing in a much more eloquent manner than I:

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

I own what you would consider an "assault weapon," Mr. Breton.  Come and take it.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be."  -Thomas Jefferson

The core of the problem

***WARNING: Bad language follows***

As I usually do (being a schoolteacher and all), I have been giving a lot of thought into why our nation's school system is circling the drain; especially when considering the fact that test scores show that the longer our students are in our nation's schools, the more academically incompetent they become.

I'm sure you have heard all the usual reasons: not enough money for our schools; the achievement gap; kids in poverty; teachers' low expectations of the students; poor teacher training; constructivist education where the students are expected to teach themselves. Believe me, all of these play some part (except for the excuse of the schools not getting enough money - they are getting more money than ever before).

However, when you look past the symptoms and begin looking for the disease, your view of our educational system can look much more clear if you compare our system of today to our system of yesteryear when our nation's schools were the envy of the world. What changed? Among other things, what changed was the whole idea of why our students are in school in the first place. In the last few decades, there has been an undeniable shift in the whole purpose of our schools from that of an academic institution to that of a social institution. Say all you want about our current obsession with standards and test scores; none of that matters as long as the current mission of schools continues to be to keep as many of our kids in these places no matter what the cost. A good way to illustrate this point is to compare discipline policies. What would have happened to a high school or junior high school student in 1960 if he or she had cussed out or otherwise verbally abused a teacher? The default would have been instant and permanent expulsion. How about today? I can give you examples from my own campus, and I can assure you that the situation is similar on tens of thousands of other campuses across our nation. Frankly, it takes a heck of a lot more bad behavior to be permanently removed from school today, than fifty years ago. Because of this, we have a multitude of students who, even though they make up a small minority, are tearing apart the solemn academic environment that could exist if they were permanently removed. But they are not. Keeping in mind what would have happened to these students fifty years ago, take a look at just a few examples of the behavior of some students at my site and what their punishment ended up being for their transgression(s):

• "[the student] got upset and yelled out loud at me, "You better not be yelling at me, Nigga!" I sent him out of the classroom to the VP's office. On his way out, he exclaimed, "I don't care about this bitch ass nigga." - The student received a two-day teacher suspension from the classroom, and even though the administration received a referral from the teacher, no administrative suspension or expulsion hearing was administered.

• ...[the student] called me a "crackhead". She was given a consequence earlier this year for calling a teacher a "bitch." - This student received a one day suspension from school for this incident.

• The sub in his math class sent a referral for [the student]. He was disruptive, Talked to another student and was constantly off task. He told [the sub] to "shut up" and later said, " women never shut-up." He also made a verbal slur saying she had a "Mexican mustache." - This student received a one-day classroom suspension from the teacher, even though a referral was turned in to the administration.

• [the student] responded to the teacher saying, "stop all that nonsense," by saying, "You are nonsense and I should drop you." - This student received a two-day suspension from school.

• [the student] was observed hanging out of the bus window as she yelled at a student passing by on the sidewalk to "lick my ass!" I boarded the bus and told the student to come with me to the office. The student refused to leave the bus until she was told the bus would not leave with her on it. Once off the bus, the student refused to follow my instructions to follow me to the office, instead, walking away from me. I followed the student and continued to instruct her to follow me to the office. The student then yelled a string of profanities at me that included multiple uses of the the words "fuck" "fucking" and "motherfucker." - This student received a three-day suspension from school.
  

Once again, I ask you to imagine the fate that awaited these students at your average high school or junior high school in 1960. Do you imagine their punishment would have stopped at a mere few days of suspension?

With this modern-day mindset permeating our educational system: that it is essentially acceptable for students to talk to teachers this way, it is perfectly natural that you are not going to see a lot of excellence in our schools. You cannot expect students to do well in school if they are surrounded by these kinds of disturbances all day, every day. Keep in mind that these are merely the disruptions that were actually reported. A long slow burn of behavior like this is the norm in so many of our schools - even schools that are thought to be quality campuses in desirable locations.

Now, why is this behavior tolerated like it is? That brings us to the next big problem, and that is our lawmakers. So many legal protections have been instituted to keep these students from facing the consequences of their actions, that to act the way they do has become practically painless. The painful truth is that the default behavior of young people can be quite savage unless there is some kind of outside influence to contain their natural instincts. That is what we adults are for, but as the adults in charge of our nation's schools, we have been hogtied by state education codes that create a labyrinthine set of rules to which we must comply before a disruptive student can finally be dealt with. And even then, when a student is actually expelled, he is, more often than not, back the following school year. So an expulsion isn't even an expulsion anymore.

I have a student who is currently serving a five-day suspension for bringing a steak knife to school. This is his second offense now for bringing a knife. Last year, he was kicked out of summer school for bringing a knife and actually threatening other students with it, including even chasing them. Not only that, this student was expelled from school last year for exposing his genitals to a girl on the bus. This was the second time he had exposed his genitals to a girl, and he also has been in trouble for touching girls in inappropriate ways. But there's more. This student has received multiple suspensions this year for leading a little posse of cohorts on our campus and randomly attacking smaller, weaker students, including one assault that was caught on one of our school's video cameras. After this latest incident with the knife, the admin referral that I read on our system says this student "will possibly be recommended for expulsion." This latest five-day suspension now gives him a total of 19 days this year that he has been suspended from school. Keep in mind, that after all I have told you that this student has done, he continues to sit in our classrooms and patrol our campus every day, intimidating other students and making miserable the lives of students and teachers alike.

Lawmakers and squishy high-level administrators will tell you that students like this must be kept in school because by law, all kids have a legal right to a free and appropriate public education, and that keeping him out of the classroom or the school is violating that right. My retort is to always ask about the effect on other students and their right to that same education when they are being abused and intimidated by this student and many others just like him.

It was when public education went from being a privilege to being a right that we lost our educational system in this country and we began losing generations of Americans to the personal prison of ignorance and our country to a path toward decline.

What was it Thomas Jefferson famously said? "A nation that expects to be ignorant and free... expects what never was and never will be."

Good Day to You, Sir

Hey, Union soldier! What have you done for me lately?

During the first week or so of every school year, I have a few requisite lessons that I always conduct. Aside from the usual briefings on rules, routines, and procedures, I also do a lesson on historical fallacies, such as when people use today's moral standards to judge people from the past; B.C. and A.D., and how to compute the two; basic geography; and sources of history, where we discuss the sources that are used to piece together the historical record.

During my sources of history lesson yesterday, I was reminded of a couple things about my students that sometimes disturbs me. The problem is that I don't know if what disturbs me is something about which I should get bent out of shape, or is it one of those things that young people have always done that I simply don't remember doing when I was their age.

I give the Sources of History lesson as a Power Point slide show on the LCD projector. When I get to newspapers, I show a photo of an issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette from 1748. When I discuss letters, I show a photo of a letter written by a Union soldier who wrote to his brother while hunkered down during the Siege of Vicksburg in June, 1863. When I get to photographs, I show the first photo ever taken (which was in 1826, in case you were interested), and I also show this photo:

You have probably seen it before. It shows Union dead on the field a couple days after the end of the Battle of Gettysburg. I show the photo to discuss the impact that photography has had on the way people at the time viewed current events and later how we view the history of the event.

When the photo came up on the screen, the predominant reaction from my students was laughter. Perhaps it was the gaping mouth of the dead soldier in the foreground, but my students' initial reaction was to find humor in the image; and this happened period after period. Each time, I would admonish my students by informing them that the people in this photo were truly dead, and that they were Union soldiers killed during the Battle of Gettysburg. I would then remind them that they would be studying that battle when we get to the Civil War sometime this Spring. I then admonished my students that these were real people and they should show some respect to the dead.

In one of my classes, a black female student piped up when I spoke of showing respect for the dead, and she asked, "Why should I? What did they ever do for me?"

My immediate answer was to tell her, "Well, giving their lives to help free the slaves, for one thing. Those are Union soldiers. The fact that they won this war caused the slaves to be freed at the end of it."

I must admit, my response shut her up. She could only say, "Oh."

What bothers me most about her question to me is that she didn't feel it necessary to show any respect for the dead American soldiers in the photo unless they had "done something" for her. It's not enough that they were American soldiers who had died in battle.

To recap, two aspects of this interaction with my students bothered me greatly: First, the fact that they laughed at a photo of obviously dead people lying on a field. Were they being immature and didn't know how to react, or have young people today become that detached from reality? Second was the entitlement mentality of the student who piped up about the dead soldiers having had to "do something" for her in order for her to show them any respect. Is this how many students dole out their good will, or was she an outlier?

Just another typical day in a middle school classroom.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Mama Moonbat is coming to town!

Cindy Sheehan, the woman who most recently said that she wishes she could go back in time and kill President George W. Bush when he was an infant, is going to be the guest of honor at an upcoming anti-war protest at the intersection of 16th and Broadway in Sacramento. This is the same location where I photographed all those beastly people at the Hate-Israel fest a couple of months back.

One of the pro-Israel counterprotestors that I met at that rally sometimes lets me know about the really good Moonbat rallies coming up, and she has alerted me once again. Here is the info about the rally that she sent me. This info was of course, written by the Moonbats:

Announcement from the usual suspects:

Huge Peace Demo with CINDY SHEEHAN!
START DATE: Friday October 27
TIME: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Location Details:
All four corners of the intersection of 16th & Broadway, IN SACRAMENTO
Event Type: Protest
Contact Name Stephen & Virginia Pearcy
Email Address stephen.pearcy [at] sbcglobal.net
Phone Number (510) 559-3118
Address
Hello everyone,

Please join Cindy Sheehan, and many other peace activists, at 16th & Broadway, in Sacramento, FRIDAY, October 27th, from 4pm to 6pm, to protest George Bush's catastrophe in Iraq and the most corrupt American presidency in history!

A heartfelt patriot, Cindy continues to work tirelessly to prevent other parents, widows, orphans, relatives of soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians from becoming the next victims of an unjustly prosecuted, obscene, genocidal, illegal war, fought in violation of international law, Geneva Convention accords and our currently imperiled Constitution.

As elections approach, and during a month on par to be the deadliest ever for Americans in Iraq, it's particularly important now to keep the spotlight on the Republican-orchestrated disaster that has already claimed the lives of over 655,000 Iraqi civilians and 2,800 American soldiers.


There will also be a major demonstration (and counter demonstration) in San Francisco the next day, UN PLaza 11:30 -1:30.

I don't know yet if I can make it to this protest, but if it turns out I can, I know of at least two of my fellow local bloggers who I would love to join me (paging Darren and George!). Again, I will check with she-who-keeps-the-calendar (my wife), and see if I can swing this one. If I can, I will be there with digital camera in hand. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll get a shot like this one:

Good Day to You, Sir