For those on Fox News trying to convince us that the idea of separation of church and state is a recent invention, yeah not so much.

As you can see there is no date on the comic to tell us when it was printed, however a quick Google search of the cartoonist Watson Heston tells us that he died in 1905.

So that should provide insight into how long this debate has been raging.

Especially considering the fact that it was not until 1870 that all of the states at that time even had public schools.

If we are to continue to provide our students with a well rounded education job one should be keeping religion as far away from our schools as humanly possible.

Ohio Republican Governor forcing public schools to partner with faith based organizations in order to qualify for tax dollars set aside for mentoring program.

Courtesy of Cleveland.com:  

Gov. John Kasich's $10 million plan to bring mentors into Ohio's schools for students now has a surprise religious requirement – one that goes beyond what is spelled out in the legislation authorizing it. 

Any school district that wants a piece of that state money must partner with both a church and a business – or a faith-based organization and a non-profit set up by a business to do community service. 

No business and no faith-based partner means no state dollars. 

"You must include a faith-based partner," United Way of Greater Cleveland President Bill Kitson, told potential applicants at an information session the United Way hosted Thursday here in Cleveland. 

Asked why the governor is mixing religion with a state program - items usually required to be kept separate - Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said: "The governor believes faith-based organizations play an important role in the lives of young people." 

And Kasich's recorded video welcoming the applicants made the importance he places on faith in this effort clear. 

"The Good Lord has a purpose for each and every one of them (students) and you're helping them to find it," Kasich said on the video.

Yes the Governor believes that "faith based organizations play an important role in the lives of young people" and that "the good lord has a purpose for each and every one of them" because he is an Evangelical. And Evangelicals simply cannot accept that others will be offended by the inclusion of religion into a public school that is supposed to serve students of all faiths, or not faiths.

That is why the separation of church and state is so vital. And why people like Governor Kasich refuse to accept that it even exists.

Arizona school board member complains that Biology textbook violates her "religious rights." Decides to cut out offending pages. A little thing we call "censorship."

Courtesy of The New York Times:  

The textbook, the one with the wide-eyed lemur peering off the cover, has been handed out for years to students in honors biology classes at the high schools here, offering lessons on bread-and-butter subjects like mitosis and meiosis, photosynthesis and anatomy. 

But now, the school board in this suburb of Phoenix has voted to excise or redact two pages deep inside the book — 544 and 545 — because they discuss sexually transmitted diseases and contraception, including mifepristone, a drug that can be used to prevent or halt a pregnancy. 

A law passed two years ago in Arizona requires schools to teach “preference, encouragement and support to childbirth and adoption” over abortion, and the school board decided that those pages were in violation of this law — even though the Arizona Education Department, which examined the book for compliance, found that they were not. 

The controversy has turned into a referendum on the 2012 law, with supporters saying the textbook content cannot be removed fast enough and opponents crying foul for any number of reasons: technical, ethical, pedagogical. But the Gilbert school board is moving forward, trying to figure out how to remove the material in question — by way of black markers or scissors, if need be — despite resistance from parents, residents, the American Civil Liberties Union and even the district’s superintendent. 

“It comes down to, it’s the law, and we need to be in compliance with the law,” said Julie Smith, a member of the Gilbert Public Schools governing board and also a parent who raised concerns about the book. “If people don’t like the law, they need to take it up with their state legislator. I don’t write the law. It’s my job to uphold it.”

The offending pages.

By the way that Julie Smith woman is apparently the driving force behind this censorship.

And here are her reasons why:

Ms. Smith, the school board member and parent, said she had been driving her family home from church back in January when her son told her about what was in the textbook. “I almost drove off the road,” she said. 

“I’m Catholic; we do not contracept,” Ms. Smith said. “It is a grave sin.” By including those pages in the curriculum, she added, “you have violated my religious rights.”

"We do not contracept?"  Well considering this woman's heavy handed parenting style that's probably too bad.

As for violating her religions rights? Well nobody's religious rights should have any impact whatsoever on what is taught in a public school classroom.

And in my opinion if science classes are taught in a factual manner than they should violate somebody's religious beliefs almost daily.

By the way you know that removing these pages, or using a sharpie to black them out, is going to do NOTHING to stop students from accessing them. It's called the internet folks, and if the kids want to read them (And after this you they all will.), then by gosh they will do exactly that.

Oklahoma cancels Hobby Lobby bible course in response to protests.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

An Oklahoma school district scuttled plans to offer an elective religion course developed by the head of the Hobby Lobby retail chain. 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) said on its website on Tuesday that the Mustang Public Schools district canceled the course, “The Book: The Bible’s History, Narrative and Impact.” 

“The topic of a Bible course in the Mustang School District is no longer a discussion item nor is there a plan to provide such a course in the foreseeable future,” superintendent Sean McDaniel was quoted as saying. 

The district’s decision came after the foundation made a second open-records request in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United. 

Hobby Lobby allegedly did not provide the district with “legal coverage” for offering the course, nor did it allow the district to review the final curriculum beforehand.

Though I am very glad that this course will not be offered in Oklahoma public schools, I am still more than a little concerned that it might have been offered at all.

If students wish to learn about Christianity there are these almost impossible to miss buildings called "churches" where that information is readily available.

I also understand that there might be some kind of a handbook available that explains it as well.

I wonder if the people who decided to introduce this class had even considered that doing so would open the schools up to challenges from OTHER religious groups demanding equal time?

Could you imagine a class schedule that offered "Islam 101?" Or "Buddhism for Beginners?" Or "An Introduction to Scientology," with guest instructor Tom Cruise?

No I think the Oklahoma public school district really dodged a bullet with this one. And the students certainly did.

New Texas textbooks teach that the Constitution is based on the teachings of the biblical Moses. And that my friends is how religion hijacks public education.

Courtesy of Progressive Secular Humanist: 

Christian conservatives win, children lose: Texas textbooks will teach public school students that the Founding Fathers based the Constitution on the Bible, and the American system of democracy was inspired by Moses. 

On Friday the Republican-controlled Texas State Board of Education voted along party lines 10-5 to approve the biased and inaccurate textbooks. The vote signals a victory for Christian conservatives in Texas, and a disappointing defeat for historical accuracy and the education of innocent children. 

The textbooks were written to align with instructional standards that the Board of Education approved back in 2010 with the explicit intention of forcing social studies teaching to adhere to a conservative Christian agenda. The standards require teachers to emphasize America’s so called “Christian heritage.” 

In essence, Christian conservatives in Texas have successfully forced a false historical narrative into public school textbooks that portray Moses as an influence on the Constitution and the Old Testament as the root of democracy.

This was a statement released by the Texas Freedom Network, a watchdog group that focuses on fighting against the Religious Right:  

Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller had the following statement on today’s State Board of Education vote to adopt new social studies textbooks for Texas public schools. “What we saw today shows very clearly that the process the State Board of Education uses to adopt textbooks is a sham,” Miller said. “This board adopted textbooks with numerous late changes that the public had little opportunity to review and comment on and that even board members themselves admitted they had not read. They can’t honestly say they know what’s in these textbooks, which could be in classrooms for a decade.” Miller was critical of board Republicans for rejecting a common-sense proposal by their Democratic colleagues to delay adoption of the textbooks until Dec. 1 so that late changes could be vetted for accuracy. 

The Texas Education Agency posted scores of pages of publisher comments and textbook revisions after the last public hearing on Tuesday. Miller said scholars did not have an opportunity to review and comment on the numerous changes publishers have submitted since the last public hearing on Tuesday. Some of those changes appeared to have been negotiated with state board members behind closed doors. 

During a months-long process, publishers made a number of improvements to their textbooks. Those improvements included removing inaccurate information promoting climate change denialism; deleting offensive cartoons comparing beneficiaries of affirmative action to space aliens; making clearer that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War; and revising passages that had promoted unfair negative stereotypes of Muslims. Scholars and the general public had ample opportunity to review and comment on those revisions. However, the new textbooks also include passages that suggest Moses influenced the writing of the Constitution and that the roots of democracy can be found in the Old Testament. Scholars from across the country have said such claims are inaccurate and mislead students about the historical record.

The Founding Fathers were scrupulous in keeping religion out of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and in one fell swoop these right wing revisionists have undone much of their hard work.

Great job Texas!

Students and teachers terrified as Florida police spring surprise "active shooter drill" on local middle school.

Courtesy of CBS Tampa Bay: 

Students, teachers and parents were taken by surprise after an “active shooter drill” brought the Winter Haven middle school into lockdown as armed police officers burst into classrooms with their weapons drawn. 

Students at Jewett Middle Academy said they were terrified when police officers burst in the doors for a planned active shooter drill – but students and teachers are irked they were not told ahead of time. 

Seventh-grader Lauren Marionneaux told WTVT-TV that when the officers burst into her class with an AR-15, she was in fear for her life. 

“We actually thought that someone was going to come in there and kill us,” the station quoted her as saying. 

But police say they conduct these drills for the absolute safety of the students. 

“These types of drills are vital in order to evaluate not only law enforcement response, but more importantly to educate the students and school officials in case an actual event were to occur,” Chief Charlie Bird said in an email to media. 

Parents were notified of the drill through email after it was over, but many parents, however, received panicked texts from their children as the drill was going on.

This the America we live in today. The America the NRA and their paid for political allies have allowed to replace an America where school children feel safe inside their own classrooms.

After all a fearful populace is a populace that tends to vote conservative. A fearful populace is a populace that buys more guns. And a fearful populace is a populace that is easily manipulated by the media.

There is no logical reason to do this to these children, their teachers, and their parents. No logical reason unless you realize that safety is not the goal that is behind the drills.

One New York teacher's resignation letter will break your heart and frighten you for the future of education in America.

Courtesy of Democratic Underground: 

Mr. Casey Barduhn, Superintendent 
Westhill Central School District 
400 Walberta Park Road 
Syracuse, New York 13219 

Dear Mr. Barduhn and Board of Education Members: 

It is with the deepest regret that I must retire at the close of this school year, ending my more than twenty-seven years of service at Westhill on June 30, under the provisions of the 2012-15 contract. I assume that I will be eligible for any local or state incentives that may be offered prior to my date of actual retirement and I trust that I may return to the high school at some point as a substitute teacher. 

As with Lincoln and Springfield, I have grown from a young to an old man here; my brother died while we were both employed here; my daughter was educated here, and I have been touched by and hope that I have touched hundreds of lives in my time here. I know that I have been fortunate to work with a small core of some of the finest students and educators on the planet. 

I came to teaching forty years ago this month and have been lucky enough to work at a small liberal arts college, a major university and this superior secondary school. To me, history has been so very much more than a mere job, it has truly been my life, always driving my travel, guiding all of my reading and even dictating my television and movie viewing. Rarely have I engaged in any of these activities without an eye to my classroom and what I might employ in a lesson, a lecture or a presentation. With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me, I’ve used it so very often) that “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching, attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any topic. I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised. STEM rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education and particularly not at Westhill. 

A long train of failures has brought us to this unfortunate pass. In their pursuit of Federal tax dollars, our legislators have failed us by selling children out to private industries such as Pearson Education. The New York State United Teachers union has let down its membership by failing to mount a much more effective and vigorous campaign against this same costly and dangerous debacle. Finally, it is with sad reluctance that I say our own administration has been both uncommunicative and unresponsive to the concerns and needs of our staff and students by establishing testing and evaluation systems that are Byzantine at best and at worst, draconian. This situation has been exacerbated by other actions of the administration, in either refusing to call open forum meetings to discuss these pressing issues, or by so constraining the time limits of such meetings that little more than a conveying of information could take place. This lack of leadership at every level has only served to produce confusion, a loss of confidence and a dramatic and rapid decaying of morale. The repercussions of these ill-conceived policies will be telling and shall resound to the detriment of education for years to come. The analogy that this process is like building the airplane while we are flying would strike terror in the heart of anyone should it be applied to an actual airplane flight, a medical procedure, or even a home repair. Why should it be acceptable in our careers and in the education of our children? 

My profession is being demeaned by a pervasive atmosphere of distrust, dictating that teachers cannot be permitted to develop and administer their own quizzes and tests (now titled as generic “assessments”) or grade their own students’ examinations. The development of plans, choice of lessons and the materials to be employed are increasingly expected to be common to all teachers in a given subject. This approach not only strangles creativity, it smothers the development of critical thinking in our students and assumes a one-size-fits-all mentality more appropriate to the assembly line than to the classroom. Teacher planning time has also now been so greatly eroded by a constant need to “prove up” our worth to the tyranny of APPR (through the submission of plans, materials and “artifacts” from our teaching) that there is little time for us to carefully critique student work, engage in informal intellectual discussions with our students and colleagues, or conduct research and seek personal improvement through independent study. We have become increasingly evaluation and not knowledge driven. Process has become our most important product, to twist a phrase from corporate America, which seems doubly appropriate to this case. 

After writing all of this I realize that I am not leaving my profession, in truth, it has left me. It no longer exists. I feel as though I have played some game halfway through its fourth quarter, a timeout has been called, my teammates’ hands have all been tied, the goal posts moved, all previously scored points and honors expunged and all of the rules altered. 

For the last decade or so, I have had two signs hanging above the blackboard at the front of my classroom, they read, “Words Matter” and “Ideas Matter”. While I still believe these simple statements to be true, I don’t feel that those currently driving public education have any inkling of what they mean. 

Sincerely and with regret, 
Gerald J. Conti 
Social Studies Department Leader 

The conservatives have wanted for years to destroy public education in this country, but I never thought they could pull it off as long as we remained vigilant.

I am sad to see that they are winning. 

In wake of National Guard scandal Anchorage school district bans military recruiters indefinitely.

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:  

On the heels of scathing allegations of sexual and other misconduct against officers in the Alaska Army National Guard, the Anchorage School District has halted all military recruiting at its schools indefinitely, according to Heidi Embley, district spokeswoman. 

Ed Graff, district superintendent, started alerting all branches of the military Monday that they could no longer recruit on school property until they met individually with Graff to "discuss student safety and other issues," Embley said. 

Embley said Graff's action came in the wake of media reports on leaked investigative files that describe sexual misconduct in the Alaska Army National Guard, some accounts involving high school students. 

According to the files, a former student at Dimond High School in Anchorage said that an officer repeatedly asked her out on dates. The woman said that the officer told her she was pretty and that her eyes “stunned” him. When he tried to take her to his home, she jumped out of the car and used a stranger’s phone to call her father for help. 

Two other former Dimond High students said the same officer invited them to parties where there would be alcohol. They were underage. A sergeant said the officer bragged about having sex with several people, including a high school student, according to the files prepared between 2010 and 2014.

The Alaska National Guard expressed disappointment in the school district and claims to have replaced all the bad apples, but it is really hard to blame the school district for demonstrating caution.

Besides I actually think that it would be a great thing is recruiters were simply kept out of high school from now on. It was one of the worst features of the No Child Left Behind Act and I think it is time for it to come to an end.

Attempts by conservative school board members in Colorado to teach revisionist history to AP students is turning angry Republicans into Democrats.

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

"For the first time in my life, I will probably vote a straight Democratic ticket." 

That realization came as something of a surprise to non-practicing attorney Wendy McCord, who has always thought of herself as a Republican. The mother of two children in Jefferson County's public school system, McCord told The Huffington Post that she has been politically transformed by the actions of the new conservative majority on the county school board, which presides over the state's second-largest school district. 

Here in Jefferson County, a bellwether battleground that is almost evenly split between Republicans, Democrats and independents, a local educational controversy is resonating with county voters who otherwise might not have been engaged in this year's elections. Frustrated Republicans like McCord could be the deciding votes in Colorado's gubernatorial race, in which Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) faces a strong challenge from former Rep. Bob Beauprez (R), as well as its Senate race, in which Democratic Sen. Mark Udall is in danger of being unseated by Republican challenger Rep. Cory Gardner. 

The battle began last November, when three conservative candidates for county school board swept into office, establishing a majority on the five-person board. The newly-elected board members hired their own attorney and proceeded to clash with teachers and parents over issues such as pay, charter schools and kindergarten expansion. The move that garnered the most national attention, however, was a proposal for a new Advanced Placement U.S. history curriculum that would de-emphasize civil disobedience and disorder while emphasizing patriotism, citizenship and "respect for authority." To protest the proposal, thousands of students left their classrooms and held demonstrations in solidarity with their teachers, who called in sick.

I have already covered this Colorado debacle both here and here.

At the time of those two posts I was frustrated that conservatives were once again trying to hijack public education, and also encouraged by the fact that the teachers and students were standing up to them.

But now it looks like the whole thing may be backfiring in a big way. Which of course is good for everyone.