Category Archives: Children and Families

Speaking of Banning Books

Posted on July 7, 2023 by | 20 comments

by John Massoud

Earlier this month, a Warren County resident was complaining about a “small group of people who wish to ban books” from the Samuels Library. The writer talked about how many of the speakers that evening were not Warren County residents, or may have just purchased a library card so they could speak.

The writer may not be aware of this, but by that last statement, he was trying to suppress free speech. Several of the speakers who were supporting allowing these books in the children’s section of Samuels Library were trying to suppress free speech. One of the more egregious examples was a young lady who early in the meeting said that “churches should not be allowed to speak” because they “don’t pay taxes.” What she meant to say was that no person who attends a church should be allowed to speak. So people who attend church, who pay their taxes, should not be allowed to speak, yet anyone who agrees with those wanting to show porn to kids should be allowed to speak as they wish. This according to the logic of those who want to show porn to children.

People like the writer say they are 100 percent for free speech. Yet they want anyone who disagrees with them to not be allowed to speak. The writer does not support free speech. He supports free speech if you agree with him. With that being said, here are the books that many leftists want banned (and in some cases have gotten banned):

Of Mice and Men

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

To Kill a Mockingbird

Six books written by Dr. Seuss

For the record, I, like pretty much every person today, finds use of the N word despicable. Yet, the fact is that “Huck Finn” is an American classic. Should Huckleberry Finn be banned because Mark Twain used a word which may have been acceptable in the late 1800s but is now rightly seen as disgusting? Of course not. Dr. Seuss is coming under fire because some radicals’ sensibilities are offended over artwork. Dr. Seuss was the least racist person of his time. Continue reading →

20 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Culture wars, Education (Early Childhood), Politics

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Equal Protection, Affirmative Action and Effecting Generational Change

Posted on July 6, 2023 by | 40 comments

by James C. Sherlock

America is the most successful nation in the history of the world because of the freedoms and rights guaranteed by our Constitution.

More than a hundred other nations have emulated the American Constitution.

Without constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and rights, we would be chained to the whims of the state. Most immediately to the whims of the executive branch. There would be precious little for the judicial branch to protect.

A recent Supreme Court decision found affirmative action in college admissions to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, Section 1:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Justice Roberts for the majority ruling that the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause:

Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.

Three justices disagreed.

Justice Sotomayor read her opinion from the bench — a sign of strong disagreement. An excerpt:

Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits. In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.

Note that Justice Sotomayor, as always careful of the words in her opinions, chose “endemically” to modify “segregated.” Oxford dictionary: “regularly found and very common among a particular group or in a particular area.”

That is different than the word “systemically” — Oxford: “in a basic and important way that involves the whole of an organization or a country and not just particular parts of it.” Continue reading →

40 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Courts and law, Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Governance, Politics, Poverty & income gap

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Virginia: Look West To See What’s Coming

Posted on June 29, 2023 by | 108 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Reason #5,692 not to vote for ANY Democrats running for the General Assembly this fall:

We all know that Virginia’s leftists in Richmond yearn for our lovely commonwealth to be more like California. When last they controlled the state legislature these nuts directly tethered our energy policies to that “progressive” utopia.

It won’t stop there, so let’s see what else is on its way from the West Coast.

Looky here! It’s Assembly Bill 665, working its way through the legislature. When this passes — and it’s just wacky enough to win approval — it would essentially emancipate some 12-year-olds, allowing them to seek mental health care without their parents’ approval. Continue reading →

108 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Culture wars, DEI, Elections, General Assembly, Uncategorized

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Post Attacks Homeschooling Because It Succeeds

Posted on June 12, 2023 by | 11 comments

Derrick Max

by Derrick Max

Over the last few years, homeschooling has grown in Virginia by almost 40 percent. In fact, homeschoolers in Virginia now account for almost 60,000 students — making homeschooling the fifth largest school district in the Commonwealth. Because homeschoolers are self-funded, this saves Virginia’s state and local governments almost $800 million per year.

More importantly, homeschoolers outperform public school students in almost every measurable category. Homeschoolers score significantly higher on standardized tests, have higher college graduation rates, lower rates of depression and anxiety, and succeed at higher rates as adults.

Yet, The Washington Post reported in The Revolt of the Christian Home-Schoolers (May 30, 2023), based almost solely on one couple’s experience, as a “conscious rejection of contemporary ideas about biology, history, gender equity and the role of religion in American Government.” The article, with scant evidence, concludes that there is an “unmistakable backlash” of formerly homeschooled children denouncing homeschooling.

Riddled with references to “indoctrination” and “abuse,” homeschooling is painted by The Washington Post as a fringe and dangerous educational option. These homeschoolers “could not recover or reconstruct the lost opportunities of their childhood” as “there were so many things they had not learned.” Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Education (K-12), Homeschooling, Media

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School Boards, Model Policies and Parental Rights in the Raising of Children

Posted on June 11, 2023 by | 16 comments

by James C. Sherlock

The Virginia Beach School Board will vote tomorrow.

The announced subject will be transgender rights in schools.

It is couched by The Virginian-Pilot as the school board defending transgender students against “unnecessarily cruel policies.“  As opposed, one supposes, to necessarily cruel policies.

The local paper refers, of course, to the Youngkin administration’s “Model Policies” on the subject. Which, like their predecessors from the Northam administration, are not mandatory, so need not be debated at all.

The School Board debate is at its core constitutional.

You will note that the Youngkin Model Policies linked its constitutional interpretations to court decisions. The Northam version did not. Northam’s just asserted what the constitution meant. Must have been an oversight.

My take:

  • Families are responsible for shaping the values, beliefs, and personalities of children;
  • Government is required to protect children from abuse and neglect. But government schools are not allowed to substitute their judgements on values and beliefs for those of the families;
  • They are most certainly not permitted to define parental moral or political disagreements with school personnel as emotional abuse at home. Or as harassment of government schools or teachers;
  • And government schools, absent evidence of abuse or neglect, must never be allowed to substitute their own moral judgments for those of parents.

But that’s just me. Not a lawyer. Continue reading →

16 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Culture wars, Education (K-12), Governance, Marxism, Politics, Social Services and Entitlements

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A Fool’s Errand Finds Takers in Charlottesville

Posted on June 4, 2023 by | 45 comments

by James C. Sherlock

As an experiment, I went to the UVa Ed School research page and searched “all topics” for “Charter Schools.” The response: “No research items found matching your search.”

So, I expanded the search to “Charter” and got the same response.

I then investigated what should have proven a promising lead.

The Partnership for Leaders in Education (UVA-PLE) is a unique joint venture between the highly ranked University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and School of Education and Human Development.

Darden is involved, so it must be professional, businesslike, right? It certainly claims so.

UVA-PLE combines the most innovative leadership advancement, practical expertise, and proven methodologies from both business and education to demonstrably improve educational and life outcomes for our nation’s students.

“Proven methodologies” it says.

Now take a look at “UVA Partnership for Leaders in Education – Exploring New Frontiers for K-12 Systems Transformation” published by UVA-PLE in February of this year.

It is a 28-page word salad unblemished by any assessment of the pedagogy of charter schools, especially the most prominent and successful K-12 public school operation in the United States, Success Academy in New York City. Continue reading →

45 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12)

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Judge Orders LCPS to Turn Over Investigation into the Assaults and Rape at Two County Schools

Posted on May 31, 2023 by | 9 comments

by Jeanine Martin

Loudoun County Circuit Court Judge James P. Fischer has ordered Loudoun County Public Schools to turn over its internal investigation into the assaults and rape that occurred in 2021 at two Loudoun County high schools.

The school system had argued that it was privileged information that they need not share with the public. Judge Fischer disagreed and ordered the report to be turned over to the public within 7 days.

From WTOP.com:

The ruling is a win for Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, who has been fighting to expose how he says the school district mishandled the incidents.

The judge agreed with prosecutors from the Miyares’ office that the internal report on the 2021 sexual assaults and rape on school grounds was not protected under attorney-client privilege — noting that then-Superintendent Scott Ziegler gave the perception that any findings from the independent investigation were for the public’s benefit.

In a statement, Miyares’ spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said in part, “We appreciate the courts time and attention to this matter.”

More on the story here.

This piece was originally appeared in The Bull Elephant and is reprinted with permission.

9 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Discipline and Disorder, Education (K-12), Government Transparency, Uncategorized

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FIVE QUESTIONS: Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares

Posted on May 30, 2023 by | 3 comments

by Shaun Kenney

Last week, TRS was able to sit down and talk with Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares (R-VA) about the challenges he is facing from opioid and fentanyl abuse to the FBI Richmond’s targeting of Catholics in the public square.

Miyares — a longstanding conservative in the tradition of Ronald Reagan and a leading thinker in his own right — shares his convictions, his hope for civility over violence, and some discussion on what he rightly calls the American Miracle.

So it seems as if some congratulations are in order. Russian President Vladimir Putin has put you on the Russian sanctions list. What did you do to earn such an esteemed award?

Yeah, I keep making lists!

I keep visiting with the Uigurs in Northern Virginia. I find it interesting but not surprising because we have such a different worldview. I detest autocracy and tyranny in all forms. When Putin said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the single greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, I view that as Ronald Reagan’s greatest victory.

Yet the reality of any autocratic regime is that ideology trumps the individual. C.S. Lewis said that of all the tyrannies in the world, the tyrannies that are for your benefit are the worst in the world. Solzhenitsyn writes about this in the Gulag Archipelago.
Continue reading →

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Posted in Children and Families, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Education (K-12), Elections, Governance, Immigration, Leadership, Uncategorized

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The Virginia NAACP Has Proven Itself an Obstacle to Improving the Educations of Black Children in Virginia Public Schools

Posted on May 23, 2023 by | 45 comments

Courtesy Northern Virginia Black Chamber of Commerce

by James C. Sherlock

I just read that the NAACP has issued a warning against traveling to Florida.

Which must have come as a surprise to the 3.5 million Black citizens of that state.

It did not surprise the NAACP board of directors chairman Leon W. Russell, who lives in the Tampa area. His defense: “We haven’t told anybody to leave.”

I decided to check the Virginia NAACP agenda for education.

I checked to see what they advocate to change the lives of the tens of thousands of Virginia Black public school students who can neither read nor perform math at grade level. Some of these public schools in inner cities have not provided a basic education to Black students for generations.

Certainly the NAACP must be pushing hard for basic changes. Not just pressing for more funding, but also for measures to ensure that children go to school and giving parents alternatives to schools that have failed them and their children.

Right?

Wrong. Continue reading →

45 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Culture wars, DEI, Education (K-12), Entrepreneurs and Innovation, Excellence and grace

Mother’s Day: Meandering Through Virginia

Posted on May 15, 2023 by | 7 comments

A bridge of Madison County. (Virginia).

Regular readers of this space know that I am still seething over the actions America’s fascists embraced during Covid.

The fact that they haven’t apologized and admitted that stomping on Constitutional rights over a virus was a colossal mistake is infuriating. That said, Covid brought two very good things.

First: my daughter met the love of her life, a soldier who was stationed in Monterey in 2020.

He was invited to join an online game her old pals played almost nightly during the early days of the lockdowns. These two strangers on separate coasts quickly developed a bond through their shared life experiences, offbeat senses of humor and quick wits.

By the time they met in person, they were already in love. They married, had a baby a year ago and this weekend my son-in-law surprised his wife with a Mother’s Day “golden doodle” puppy to replace her beloved husky who died recently at 16.

The second marvelous thing that happened during covid was that we began a tradition of celebrating Mother’s Day by traveling with extended family to different parts of Virginia.

In fact, I’m writing this from a rustic table in a sprawling old farmhouse in Madison, Va., where 12 of us and our four dogs spent the weekend.

Back in the spring of 2020 we were already weary of hysterics screaming about masks and telling us not to gather with friends and family. Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Virginia history

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Virginia Lacks Regulations for the Safe, Scientific and Effective Diagnosis and Treatment of Transgender Youth

Posted on May 14, 2023 by | 75 comments

UVa Children’s Hospital Courtesy UVa

by James C. Sherlock

To get this out of the way, I personally support qualified diagnosis and psychological treatment for gender dysphoria in children and adolescents.

I oppose puberty suppression, cross-gender hormonal treatments and transgender surgical procedures in minors.

That said, transgender individuals, like everyone, deserve skilled, safe and standards-based medical care.

Virginia laws and regulations protect people from all sorts of things, but somehow they do not protect transgender persons from bad medical treatment. It seems axiomatic to regulate transgender medical practice to the most up-to-date and widely accepted professional standards.

But that is not the case in Virginia. It is not that the standards are out of date; they apparently do not exist.

I searched the regulations of the Department of Health for the term “transgender” and it came up “no results found.” But VDH protects us from bad shellfish.

The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Health has lots of regulations, but a search for the term “dysphoria” comes up empty. Continue reading →

75 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Culture wars, Ethics, General Assembly, Health Care, LGBQT, Virginia Law

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Teachers’ Unions and Virginia Schools

Posted on May 10, 2023 by | 15 comments

Courtesy VEA

by James C. Sherlock

Virginia is a government union state.

Because of the federal workforce in Northern Virginia, Virginia in 2021 had the third highest percentage of any state of government union members as a share of total union members at 64%.

That is a higher percentage than Washington D.C.

Of all employees in Virginia, 22.5% worked for the government in 2021. Virginia is one of only seven states over 20%. D.C. is 29%.

The National Teachers’ Unions. Many Virginia teachers and support personnel belong to local teacher’s associations and unions that are affiliates of the two major national public school teacher’s unions, the National Education Association (NEA, 3 million members) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT, 1.7 million members).

Together they represent one in four union members in the U.S. The leadership of both are hard-core progressives.

Those national numbers of members are provided by the two unions and include retirees. In 2021 together they had about 3.6 million working members.

In the years 2019-21, the National Center for Education Statistics counted three million teachers in public schools and 500,000 in private schools. But the NEA and AFT represent large numbers of other school staff to account for the apparent discrepancy.

The two unions are overtly political and focused on social issues warfare.

In Virginia, the two national unions claim 45,000 members, which, since they both include large numbers of non-teacher staff, means together they represent significantly less than half of Virginia teachers. Continue reading →

15 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Culture wars, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Government workers and pensions, Uncategorized, Unions

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Does Virginia Beach School Board Care About Girls’ Sports?

Posted on May 9, 2023 by | 22 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

If you live in Virginia Beach, I have some questions for you:

Did you sit at home while the Bathrobe Brigade on the School Board fought to keep schools closed, long after we knew kids weren’t at risk from Covid-19?

Did you watch on public access TV as the hysterical hypochondriacs of the School Board battled to keep face diapers on kids long after we knew they were doing absolutely nothing to stop the spread?

Did you sit on your hands when you learned that graphic novels featuring oral gay sex were on the shelves of public schools and the woke majority on the School Board wanted to keep them there?

Well, it’s time to get out of your La-Z-Boy and join the weary parents and grandparents who have been fighting your battles for you.

Get to tonight’s school board meeting at 6 p.m. Join the 87 people who had signed up to speak as of late yesterday, according to board member Vicky Manning.
Continue reading →

22 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Culture wars, Discipline and Disorder, Education (K-12), Leadership, Uncategorized

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Primary Care for Underserved Virginians

Posted on May 9, 2023 by | Leave a comment

by James C. Sherlock

It is an old story for Virginia: shortages of primary care providers in inner cities and rural areas.

Perhaps the best article I have ever seen on the unique value of primary care and payment reforms to reflect its value was published in 2021 in the Harvard Business Review.

I recommend it wholeheartedly. Especially to Virginia Medicaid.

But if all of the excellent recommendations in that article were adopted, they would not by themselves put primary care physicians where they are needed most.

Solving primary care shortages in Virginia should be a bipartisan issue because it affects Democratic and Republican strongholds roughly equally. But it has never in my experience gotten enough traction in Richmond.

The problem is centered around the fact that government insurance alone does not reimburse primary care physicians or nurse practitioners sufficiently to support a practice.

Whether single practitioner or groups, including hospital-owned groups, they currently need some minimum percentage of privately insured patients to pay the bills.

Otherwise, to serve the poor, they generally have to work for the government, which itself cannot fill the jobs it already has in underserved locations.

What to do?

First, care enough about the problem to address it. Then, think outside the current box. Continue reading →

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Posted in Children and Families, General Assembly, Health Care, Poverty & income gap

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Virginia Democrats – “Progressive for Who?”

Posted on May 8, 2023 by | 46 comments

Al Sharpton. Courtesy New York Post

by James C. Sherlock

“Progressive for who?”

That question was asked by Al Sharpton directly to a gathering of his supporters at a conference hosted by his National Action Network while flanked by Lori Lightfoot, Eric Adams and two other big city Democratic mayors.

“Anybody that tells you they’re progressive but don’t care about dealing with violent crimes are not.”

“Progressive for who?”

“We gotta stop using progressive as a noun and use it as an adjective.”

“You’re labeled progressive but your action is regressive. I’m woke? You must think I’m asleep.”

He demanded “a national agenda around urban violence, urban crime and accountability.”

“Accountability.” There is no word more anathema to progressives. He could not have hurt them worse.

Watch the video.

That was not the first shot, but one of heavy caliber, in the revolution against progressive destructiveness by the Black people who are among its primary victims. Continue reading →

46 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Politics, Race and Race Relations

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