What Is Wrong With Our Schools

I was looking at the www.Foxnews.com and came across these headlines.  I just wanted to point out the ridiculous, asinine and pathetic headlines in our school systems today.  What happened to respect for students?  What happened to obeying the school laws?  What happened to dress codes?  What happened to moral teachers?  What happened to people not suing over the word Jesus (they are offended)?  What happened to the Pledge of Allegiance? What happened to holding parents and students accountable for getting good grades?  We have work to do.

• What else is new?  But this one should be top of the list.  No student should be exposed to this intolerable conduct.  This should be 0 toloerance.  The young teacher hung his head, avoiding eye contact. Yes, he had touched a fifth-grader’s breast during recess. “I guess it was just lust of the flesh,” he told his boss. When I send my child to school I expect they be protected from abuse. 

• U.S. District Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. sided with the parents of the students, who had been threatened with suspension by the Bayonne school district last fall for wearing the buttons. However, the judge added in his ruling that the boys will not be allowed to distribute the buttons at school. No protests in school should be allowed period.  Here is the dress code and it should be inforced!

• The suburban Washington school is among 3,000 across the nation that have tossed aside the traditional calendar for one with a shorter summer break and more time off during the rest of the year. The goal: preventing kids from forgetting what they have learned.  So I guess the last 70 years of schooling was wrong?  I enjoyed my summers off and so do my kids.

• A student who said she was told she wouldn’t get her diploma unless she apologized for a commencement speech in which she mentioned Jesus has filed a lawsuit alleging her free speech rights were violated.The school district contends its actions were “constitutionally appropriate.”Erica Corder was one of 15 valedictorians at Lewis-Palmer High School in 2006. All were invited to speak for 30 seconds at the graduation ceremony. When it was Corder’s turn, she encouraged the audience to get to know Jesus Christ.  What is wrong with society now?  I believe a speech is personal and if they don’t want people to give personal speeches then don’t allow them to.  There was nothing racist, ignorant or alarming that should not have been heard.

• The eight-page booklet, subtitled “Wucha dun did now?”, was handed out to about 15 Houston Independent School District police officers at a May meeting, district spokesman Terry Abbott said. Officials declined to identify the officer who handed them out, but said he had been ordered to attend diversity training.  How about teaching the students proper ENGLISH! ”Wucha dun did now?” won’t get a job in society!

• Three Eastern Michigan University administrators who admitted lying to cover-up the rape and murder of a student last year will receive a combined $550,000 in severance packages, documents show. What about jail time?  Give them money?  What is wrong with society?  Cardinal Law all over again!

• Middle School student Kyleray Katherman had a hunch something was amiss with the school’s drinking fountain water. And right he was.  For an English assignment, he tested the bacteria content at four water fountains and one toilet to challenge a ban on students from bringing bottled water to class. It seems some were using it to sneak in alcohol.  Guess which was cleaner? It wasn’t the water fountains.  Don’t we have Health Officials for this?  How about every school do this test!

• Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck could become regulars in elementary and middle school classrooms after Maryland’s top educator encouraged teachers Thursday to use comic books to inspire students to read.  The state worked with Disney Publishing Worldwide and its educational division last year to develop a pilot project to put Mickey and Donald in eight third-grade classrooms. Disney took Maryland’s reading standards and created comics-based lesson plans, incorporating skills students needed to learn, such as how to understand plot and character. The kids loved it, educators said.  I guess I can’t disagree if Disney is involved.  But what about the Hulk?

• The school superintendent denied Wednesday that his district was discriminating against a high school freshman for not allowing her to wear a pagan symbol on her cheek to celebrate a religious holiday.  Hanover Community School Superintendent Michael Livovich Jr. said any student who wore a cross on their face to celebrate their Christianity or the Star of David to celebrate being Jewish who refused to take it off also would have been sent home.  How about strict dress codes and no drawing on anyone’s face?

California Student Suspended for Urinating in Bottle During Class; Teacher Transferred

•  School officials on Monday suspended a 14-year-old boy who said he had to urinate in a bottle after his science teacher refused to let him use the restroom. The teacher was being transferred to another school.”I can’t believe they don’t believe me,” student Michael Patterson said in a telephone interview after he was given the five-day suspension. “I have no reason to lie. What I said happened, happened.”  What the hell is this about?  It is all wrong!

• Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious — students were writing the answers under the brim.Then schools started banning cell phones, realizing students could text message the answers to each other.Now schools across the country are targeting digital media players as a potential cheating device. Devices including iPods and Zunes can be hidden under clothing, with just an earbud and a wire snaking behind an ear and into a shirt collar to give them away, school officials say.  We never had radios in schools or walkmans!  I am dating myself.  They should not be allowed period!

• Arizona Principal Hesitates to Excuse Absences of GI’s Kids

• When her husband comes home to Tucson on leave from Iraq, Keila Rios could face a dilemma she finds infuriating.She plans to take their children out of school for a week to spend time with their Army dad.But when she asked for makeup work they could do at home, she initially was told they’d receive zeros if they didn’t go to class.  Here is a debate to start!

• A seventh-grader might end up in court for wearing Winnie the Pooh socks to school.  Toni Kay Scott, 14, was sent to an in-school suspension program called Students With Attitude Problems last year for violating a dress code, according to a lawsuit against the Napa Valley Unified School District and Redwood Middle School. She had donned socks with the Tigger character from the Winnie the Pooh cartoons on them, along with a denim skirt and a brown shirt with a pink border. But the school’s policy requires students to wear clothes with solid colors in blue, white, green, yellow, khaki, gray, brown and black. Permitted fabrics are cotton twill, corduroy and chino. No denim is allowed. Again uniform is a uniform so don’t voilate it!

• Public school students in the state’s largest school district will attend classes in uniform if a dress code recommended by a district task force is adopted.  Indianapolis Public Schools officials will present the proposed guidelines on March 22 at the first of five public meetings. The uniform policy will undergo public review before its adoption, the school said.  Superintendent Eugene White assembled a task force in response to complaints from district officials that students were attending school in excessively baggy pants and revealing shirts. See a trend here?

• A small northern Kentucky school district that has eliminated the “D” as a passing grade is now considering making students earn better than a “C” to pass. The Eminence Independent School District eliminated D’s four years ago, meaning students would have to earn a C or better to pass. “Getting a D is like doing the bare minimum,” said Carter Martin, a middle and high school business teacher. “Life isn’t like that.” The school district in Henry County will vote next month on whether to eliminate C’s beginning in 2009-10, which would require about 300 middle and high school students to score no lower than 80 percent to earn a passing grade.  I guess they want a smarter bunch of kids there!