A Batavia High School teacher's fans are rallying to support him as he faces possible discipline for advising students of their Constitutional rights before taking a school survey on their behavior.
They've been collecting signatures on an online petition, passing the word on Facebook, sending letters to the school board, and planning to speak at Tuesday's school board meeting.
Students and parents have praised his ability to interest reluctant students in history and current affairs.
But John Dryden said he's not the point. He wants people to focus on the issue he raised: Whether school officials considered that students could incriminate themselves with their answers to the survey that included questions about drug and alcohol use.
Dryden, a social studies teacher, told some of his students April 18 that they had a 5th Amendment right to not incriminate themselves by answering questions on the survey, which had each student's name printed on it.
NEW YORK — Albany school district officials have placed a high school teacher on leave for having students pretend to be Jew-hating Nazis in a writing assignment.
The teacher at Albany High School caused a storm of criticism after having students to practice the art of persuasive argument by writing a letter to a fictitious Nazi government official arguing that “Jews are evil.”
District Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard held a news conference Friday apologizing for the assignment.
The Times Union reports that the teacher, who the district did not name, was not in class Friday and has been placed on leave.
While antisemitism and Holocaust history are certainly sensitive issues, this seems like knee-jerk reaction to a legitimate writing assignment. When studying the art of persuasive argument, one must challenge their own belief systems, and strive to be "shocking" or to make the most unacceptable premise, acceptable. That is the very nature of the lesson. In this manner not only does the student learn to be persuasive in their own arguments, but more importantly perhaps, learns how persuasive argument can be used to lead a person to accept what they might normally otherwise find unacceptable. Such a lesson teaches a student, in essence, how not to be brainwashed by media rhetoric.
If you have never read it, I suggest this classic lesson on persuasive argument.
Our Constitution is already in peril, and it's little wonder why when you see the Leftist agenda being carried out in our public school systems. Nevertheless, the Constitution is still the law of the land and to call for its subversion, to teach anti-Constitutional values to young students, is nothing short of subversion of government, sedition.
The father of a 4th grade student in a Florida public school was furious to discover a crayon scrawled statement in his son's back pack. It read:
"I am willing to give up some of my Constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure."
The paper is reported to have been written after a lawyer visited the class to discuss the Bill of Rights. The teacher and school administrators claim the student wrote the statement spontaneously, of his own free will. However, the father of the young 4th-grader maintains that such a complex political statement is beyond his son's reasoning and writing skill. He also claims that other students have corroborated his son's account that he was one of several students personally selected by the teacher to write out that specific sentence.
You can read details of this story first reported at: The Blaze
5-year old Ethan Clos was suspended for sporting a hair-do that administrators deemed "disruptive" and against the school's policy.
Last year one of the district's football coaches also wore a mohawk haircut and had his dyed in a frost style, but that was a totally different situation according to district superintendant Gregg Morris.
While
the superintendent may see football sportsmanship as different than
what is "proper" for a young student, also consider the 8-year old
sportsman Steven Poulin featured in the following video:
It is frightening notions like this which lead to all sorts of abuses by government, particularly in family courts and through child-protective services. In the long-run too, it leads to a complete denial of personal liberty, and rather places the individual as having little more value than a drone. A page right out of the Communist manifesto. -JMV
In the video below, college professor and MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry says your children are not yours – they are owned by the community. She says public education has failed because we have not allowed the state to confiscate more of our money.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy there has been a big push to put armed guards, police, even troops in our schools. Personally, I don't believe that militarizing our school and turning them into prison camps any more than they are now is really the answer. Making a uniformed target for someone looking to shoot up a school is not exactly a well thought out tactic either.
But I am no anti-gunner. I believe the solution is simple. Lift the ban on school employees from exercising their 2nd Amendment rights. There is no need to hire additional resources or enact new laws, when the 2nd Amendment has been there for us since the nation was founded. There is no reason why a person who is legally permitted to own and carry a gun should not be allowed to carry it with them to work. Teachers and staff at schools should not be barred from exercising their rights, but rather encouraged.
Now, when we see indicents like this, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that police are some sort of special superhumans that make them any more qualified than the rest of us to carry a firearm.
In this particular incident, a part-time Town of Lloyd police officer and School Resource Officer for Highland High School accidentally discharged his service weapon in a school hallway.
Here is another example of how police are not perfect:
UPDATE:
What are the odds of two accidental discharges in a school on the same day? This story out of Manchester, Connecticut now where a SWAT officer was wounded in an unintentional shooting.
MANCHESTER, Conn. (AP) — The campus of Manchester Community College was locked down Wednesday after a student reported seeing a man with what she believed to be a gun in his waistband, and one of the officers involved in the response was apparently injured in an accidental shooting. -SOURCE
UDPATE 2: The officer in the Highland case has resigned. He does not face any criminal charges.
