Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

What Should Be the Separation of Schools and Politics

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Today is Earth Day. Friday is the Day of Silence. Both are celebrated, acknowledged, taught – what is the right verb? – in Virginia public schools. What are the public policy issues for politics in schools? Set aside support or opposition to Environmentalism as theology or the Homosexual political agenda.

Consider who decides what – and who should decide and how – for the Day of Silence in Virginia on April 25th.

The Concerned Women of America report “The “Day of Silence” (DOS) is organized by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), one of the most militant and well-funded of the powerful homosexual pressure groups. DOS purports to confront the alleged systematic harassment and bullying of children who self-identify as homosexual, bisexual or “transgender.”

During DOS, children and teachers are encouraged to disrupt the school day by refusing to speak, in a show of support to self-described “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual” and “transgender” students. Kids are additionally taught that Biblical truth, which holds that human sexuality is a gift from God shared between husband (male) and wife (female) within the bonds of marriage, is “homophobic,” “hateful” and “discriminatory.””

Who approves the Day of Silence in Virginia’s Public Schools? The school board, superintendent, principal, or any teacher?

What is the recourse for any student or parent who objects to the DOS?

How do they decide – which political groups for what events – are recognized in public schools?

Who is in and who is out of access to public schools?

Interesting to see the list of high schools which will recognize DOS. I see in my area that only JCC/Williamsburg is supporting DOS officially. I wonder who is doing what – unofficially?

APPOMATTOX REGIONAL GOV SCHOOL
BROAD RUN HIGH SCHOOL
CENTREVILLE HIGH SCHOOL
CLOVER HILL HIGH SCHOOL
EDISON HIGH SCHOOL
FAIRFAX HIGH SCHOOL
FALLS CHURCH HIGH
FLINT HILL SCHOOL
GALILEO MAGNET HIGH SCHOOL
HAMPTON ROADS ACADEMY
HAYFIELD SECONDARY SCHOOL
HERNDON HIGH SCHOOL
JAMES RIVER HIGH SCHOOL
JAMESTOWN HIGH SCHOOL
JOHN HANDLEY HIGH SCHOOL
LAFAYETTE HIGH SCHOOL
LAKE BRADDOCK SECONDARY
LANGLEY HIGH SCHOOL
MADISON HIGH SCHOOL
MAGGIE L. WALKER GOV SCHOOL
MARSHALL HIGH SCHOOL
MCLEAN HIGH SCHOOL
MEADOWBROOK HIGH SCHOOL
MONTICELLO HIGH SCHOOL
OAKTON HIGH SCHOOL
POTOMAC HIGH SCHOOL
ROBINSON SECONDARY
ROBIOUS MIDDLE SCHOOL
SCIENCE & TECH CENTER
ST CATHERINES SCHOOL
ST STEPHEN’S & ST AGNES SCHOOL
STUART HIGH SCHOOL
T. C. WILLIAMS HIGH SCHOOL
THOMAS JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL
WAKEFIELD HIGH SCHOOL
WASHINGTON LEE HIGH SCHOOL
WEST POTOMAC HIGH SCHOOL
WEST SPRINGFIELD HIGH SCHOOL
WESTERN ALBEMARLE HIGH SCHOOL
WESTFIELD HIGH SCHOOL
WOODBRIDGE HIGH SCHOOL
YORKTOWN HIGH SCHOOL

Update: Here’s another interesting case study. The Virginia Gazette reports:

An evangelical Christian group is challenging [Williamsburg-James City County] Schools in federal court to get equal access for religious-themed Good News clubs. …

Child Evangelism Fellowship, a non-profit founded in 1937, sponsors Good News clubs after school in public school buildings. … Tom Boor, the local coordinator for the Christian clubs, began applying to use school facilities in 2006 but was ignored for more than a year, according to Staver. Liberty Counsel sent a letter to the division in March 2007 expressing concern over the lack of response and the possibility that they were being denied for discriminatory reasons.

He said WJC Schools responded in August by saying that the clubs could use school facilities, but at a cost ranging $12.50-$25 per hour, while other groups like the Boy Scouts were allowed to use the facilities for free.

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  1. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    How about if we just renamed it to say – “Let’s publically rebuke hateful behaviors that sometimes leads to Columbines”.

    Is it a good public policy to encourage kids to stand tall against bullying and hate?

  2. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    LG: Your question isn’t mine. An aphorism can be answered with an aphorism.

    The issue I ask is when, what, who, how and why for politics in schools?

  3. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    is teaching kids that bullying and hate are anti-human behaviors – political?

  4. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Let’s set aside the question of whether the causes favored by public schools are right or wrong. Let’s return to JAB’s question: Who decides? Who is calling the shots? Do these issues pop up in school board meetings? Or do they fly under the radar and somehow get institutionalized?

  5. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    James Atticus Bowden,

    To answer your question, one of my daughters goes to the Appomoattox Regional Governors School for Arts & Technology in Petersburg. Her older sister graduated from same school last year.

    Their gas and lesbian club did hold the moment of silence you seem to have trouble with. They did not celebrate Earth Day.

    As a parent I have absolutely no troubles with high school students knowing and dealing with homosexuality. I have many gay friends here and in larger cities.

    This is one area where I do not agree with you. It is an area where religion should not be permitted to trump individual rights. And I don’t give a damn what your version of the bible says.

    Peter Galuszka

  6. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    How do the schools decide whether to recognize the Day of Silence?

    Good question.

    I read a few blogs where a spokesman for the Fairfax County School system insisted that the system has never formally supported this.

    I looked on West Potomac High School’s web site (West Potomac was once named Groveton High School – sort of). No mention.

    I looked on Langley High School’s web site – no mention.

    I ran a Google search and came up with this from Edison High School:

    “Day of Silence
    Friday, April 25th is the Nationally recognized Day of Silence. The Edison GSA has planned a few events in honor and appreciation of the day. Rainbow ribbons will be on sale all week in Ms. Kiggins room for 25 cents. On Thursday, April 24th, we will host a dinner and a movie event, Victor/Victoria, and of course on Friday, we will pass out the Day of Silence cards, followed by a breaking the silence meeting at TJ. For any information, please see Ms. Kiggins or a member of the GSA.”.

    Sounds like it’s being organized by a group called the GSA (that’s either the Gay Student Alliance or the Government Services Administration) and a teacher.

    This seems like much ado about nothing. A few students and a teacher or two stay silent for a day. I also read an article from a few years ago at TC Williams High School. The DOS was recognized at that school with about 40 students participating. There are almost 3,000 students at TC Williams. I guess the other students were busy doing something else … like outclassing the supposedly invincible RoVA high school basketball teams by winning the 2008 Boys VA Basketball championship.

    Sorry … couldn’t resist.

    At least RoVA high schools will always win the state championship in football. Oh wait … yeah … that was Loudoun County’s Stone Bridge High School that won that last year.

    How are your chess teams doing?

  7. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    PG: The issue wasn’t about the right to commit sodomy. The issue is about politics in public schools – who decides etc.

    Are there no readers out there who are members of a School Board, or school administrators or from the VA Department of Education?

  8. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    What is this? Bacon’s Rebellion seems to be getting into a Greek Colonel style, right-wing crackdown on what students can learn and talk about learn.

    Colleges can’t examine legal prostitution.

    High Schools can’t have gay and lesbian clubs.

    The cross at William & Mary is foder for dozens of blogs.

    The trend seems to be to take names, go to politicians and have them order school officials crack down on free speech.

    When you point out the angers, you are told that it isn’t the point.

    Hell yes, it is the point And, to quote some of my high school-aged friends, “This Sucks.”

    Peter Galuszka

  9. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Peter, Peter, Peter… (Bacon sighs in frustration)… Permit me to address your comment regarding the “Greek Colonel” style you see pervading Bacon’s Rebellion. You cited one of my posts ad advocating, “Colleges can’t examine legal prostitution.”

    I never said anything remotely close to that. My take on the Randolph-College-sends-a-class-to-a-Nevada-whorehouse story from the perspective of the parents paying good money for tuitions.

    When you equate my lament about the quality of higher education with “Greek Colonels” you imply that I would support some kind of government-powered crackdown on views that I oppose. I never hinted at such a thing. To the contrary, I believe in the right (and responsibility) of people acting in a free marketplace to hold the purveyors of educational services more accountable. It’s a concept called consumer sovereignty.

    By equating my personal criticism with Greek Colonel-style censorship, you are effectively trying to shut down any debate at all about what’s taught in Virginia universities. That, my good sir, smacks more of Greek Colonelism than anything I have written!

  10. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Jim:

    Let me brighten your day. No matter how upset you are with money being wasted by W&M field trips to Nevada brothels or how JAB decries the gays and lesbians running amok in the public school system – nothing can quite top this:

    http://www.thenonsense.com/2008/04/fun-times-at-uc/

    10,000 students (I guess they were students) smoking pot on campus in public and in front of the police. Unlike prior years, the police did nothing. It seems they have given up enforcing those laws – at least on April 20.

    I wonder if any of the parents feel that their tuition is essentially going “up in smoke”.

    Jim Bacon’s talkin’ to me,
    try to tell me how to live,
    but I don’t listen to him
    ’cause my head is like a sieve.

    J-A-B, he disowned me
    ’cause I wear my sisters clothes.
    He caught me in the bathroom
    with a pair of pantyhose.

    Ahhh…the classics never die.

    So, the Groveton poll –

    Which is worse?

    a) Gay and Lesbian silence day in high school
    b) 10,000 stoners at UC
    c) W&M field trip to whorehouse
    d) The Virginia General Assembly

    You know my vote.

  11. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Cols. Baconikis and Bowdenitis,

    One of my favorite movies from the 1960s is “Z” about the Greek colonels’ crackdowns. Even Shakespeare didn’t go untouched.

    So, when you two Colonels start your cultural crackdowns, consider me spray-painting the Rebellion with the letter”Z” for “He Lives.”

    Peter Galuszka

    PS: Groveton, you have a genius for prose. Keep it up!

  12. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    I give up! I’m selling everything I own and I’m moving to Jarvis Island, a remote and uninhabited Pacific atoll. Just me, my tent, my machete, my speargun, and my solar-powered, satellite-linked laptop!

  13. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Tommy Chong gets credit for the rhyme. I modified the lyrics to Earache My Eye – the closing song in the cult movie favorite Cheech & Chong’s “Up In Smoke”.

    Jim:

    Jarvis Island – “Located only 25 miles south of the equator Jarvis has no natural fresh water lens and scant rainfall. The outcome is a very bleak, flat landscape without any plant larger than a shrub.[5] There is no evidence the island has ever supported a self-sustaining human population. Its sparse bunch grass, prostrate vines and low-growing shrubs are primarily a nesting, roosting and foraging habitat for seabirds, shorebirds and marine wildlife.

    Sounds nice.

  14. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    OK, I’ll build a cistern — and add bird meat to my diet.

  15. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “I give up! I’m selling everything I own and I’m moving to Jarvis Island,”

    Let’s see.. did you “discover” Jarvis Island the same way I did?

    following up geographically on the Snickers the dog marooned on Fanning Island… story?

    re: Groveton’s Poll

    add another

    5. right wing “thought” police to ride herd on lefty-leaning institutions of learning..

    Just the ticket… Let’s clone the William and Merry approach to dealing with Academics who have gone off the ranch…

    and apply it to all institutions of learning in Va.

    No more trips to Reno..

    no more overt displays of support for Gays and Lesbians…

    oh… and let’s give them uniforms and model them after the ones used in China to deal with those who fail to deal with the world in a “right” way…

  16. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Jimbo,
    Jarvis Island sounds great! Think of the new patterns of human settlement you could create and analyze! Plus, it would be pure and “virginial” territory. No nettlesome moral issues!

    PG

  17. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Part of the history of Jarvis Island is that it had 200 feral cats in residence and the bird critters were taking a real beating until the cats were converted to food for sea critters.

  18. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Getting pack to the original topic of this post, I just thought I’d throw this fuel on the bonfire.
    The Virginia Gazette reports today:

    An evangelical Christian group is challenging [Williamsburg-James City County] Schools in federal court to get equal access for religious-themed Good News clubs. …

    Child Evangelism Fellowship, a non-profit founded in 1937, sponsors Good News clubs after school in public school buildings. … Tom Boor, the local coordinator for the Christian clubs, began applying to use school facilities in 2006 but was ignored for more than a year, according to Staver. Liberty Counsel sent a letter to the division in March 2007 expressing concern over the lack of response and the possibility that they were being denied for discriminatory reasons.

    He said WJC Schools responded in August by saying that the clubs could use school facilities, but at a cost ranging $12.50-$25 per hour, while other groups like the Boy Scouts were allowed to use the facilities for free.

    With a culture war raging in society at large, it’s no surprised that a culture war is raging in the schools as well. Both sides — the cultural left and the cultural right — see schools as a battleground. Both see the other as an oppressor attempting to impose its will, and both are fighting back.

    Private schools are looking pretty good. If you don’t like the values taught at one school, you exercise your free choice and send your kids to a different school.

  19. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    Jim Bacon: I got an email heads up about the suit against WJC.

    Maybe this should be a separate thread. We haven’t gotten responses from the educational community on who makes what decisions when, why and how. I’d like to know what is what across the Commonwealth.

  20. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Here’s a suggested policy to be implemented at the State level.

    Students and Teachers are ALWAYS permitted to speak out/show support against against ANY anti-human acts and behaviors to include bullying and hateful behaviors no matter what the professed reason are for such behaviors.

    Virginia should enact a “hostile school” act modeled after the “hostile workplace” act.

    Make it a state law and make it mandatory for all Principals and Teachers and have sanctions for failure to follow the law.

  21. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    JAB:

    I am interested in hearing what you find about the governance process. I’ll wager that it is an ad hoc, decentralized decision process – unless the decision involves religion of any kind. For example, I notice that West Potomac High School is on the Day of Silence list while Mt Vernon High School (another Fairfax County High School just down the road) is not. I bet that any school with a few interested students and a teacher – sponsor can pursue just about any non-religious activity (such as the Day of Silence). However, I am also confident that any overtly religious activity gets broad, high level scrutiny. I hope I don’t sound defensive because I am not. I just think there is a sensitivity in the public schools to religion whereas there is no such sensitivity to non-religious activities.

    Now I will sound defensive. This June will be the last time that any of my kids will be attending Fairfax County Public Schools. As a graduate of that system I find it disappointing to put the boys in private school. One boy is graduating from a Fairfax County high school and going to college. One is too young to attend any school. The other three will all be in private school this September. This has nothing to do with the class wars. I think children should get their moral instruction from parents and priests so I don’t really care about Days of Silence. I am schocked by the class size in the Fairfax County Public Schools. I am also stunned at the generally poor facilities. Finally (and here’s where I get defensive) I have become convinced that the public schools have slanted their teaching approach to teaching girls. While I understand the schools’ interest in making sure that girls receive a first rate education I don’t believe this should happen at the expense of the boys they are supposed to teach. I have looked at boys’ test scores (in coed classes) over time and I have spoken to educators (both men and women) who have told me this is happening. I do not see anything intentional in this but I do see a misguided philosophy on the part of public schools. Maybe I am just paranoid but I cannot take the chance any longer. Besides – I know for a fact that the paranoids are out to get me. They are everywhere.

    One of the sadder points of this whole deal is that I thought the teachers in the Fairfax County Public Schools were great when I went to those schools. I think the teachers are still great. They just have to deal with too much BS from those who use the schools to fight their various battles and from a county that can’t grasp a very important fact:

    Students in Fairfax County excel because they have rich parents who take their education seriously and becuase they have (at least for now) good teachers – not because of any clever schemes designed by the administration.

  22. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    Groveton: I’ve heard nothing about the policy. So, I think you are right that the decision making is very de-centralized. The school principals may be making it up as they go along.

    I invested 3 kids in public schools and colleges.

    My chief concern is about excellence in education. Secondly, I care about indoctrination.

    The dearth of commonsense seems common among educrats – the administrators.

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