Tag Archives: education

Naperville/Aurora’s Neuqua Valley High School math teacher, Hemant Mehta (aka “The Friendly Atheist”), weighs in on a California Court decision in his usual uncivil, disreputable way.

Bradley Johnson, a California public school teacher, has had a large banner hanging in his classroom for seventeen years on which appear the following phrases:

• “In God We Trust”: the official motto of theUnited Statesand a phrase that appears on American currency
• “One Nation Under God”: a phrase from our Pledge of Allegiance
• “God BlessAmerica” and “God Shed His Grace On Thee” (from “Americathe Beautiful”): phrases from two songs that are part of

Another boneheaded and politically motivated decision by District 113 — the district for which I worked for a decade — has landed the Deerfield and Highland Parkcommunities in the news — yet again. It seems that ever since George Fornero assumed leadership, District 113 can’t stay out of the news. For those aware of the controversies he left in his wake in Ann Arbor, Michigan, this should come as no surprise.*

George Fornero and others he is reluctant to name have decided to cancel the Highland Park High School girls’ varsity basketball team’s tournament trip to Arizona citing the Arizona …

Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn asserts that the “stench of history” lingers in the air following the cancellation of a high school prom in Mississippi. It isn’t the “stench of history” but rather the stench of Zorn’s ignorance that hangs over his diatribe and pollutes both thought and discourse.

By suggesting that the virulent racism of the South in the 1960’s is morally equivalent to societal disapproval of homosexuality, Zorn perpetuates the ludicrous and offensive assumption that race is ontologically (i.e. by nature) equivalent to homosexuality. Zorn conveniently omits any discussion of this unproven assumption upon which his …

Dear Pro-Family Friends,

Here we go again. Liberal proponents of “tolerance” and “acceptance” are once again responding to our Day of Silence Walkout call to parents with a barrage of vile and vulgar hate email and phone calls.

Last week, IFI, working with a coalition of pro-family groups, issued a press release encouraging parents to call their children’s middle schools and high schools to ask whether the administration will be permitting students and/or teachers to remain silent during class on the Day of Silence (DOS) — a day of political activism and disruption promoted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight …

A national coalition of pro-family organizations is once again asking parents to call their children out of school on the Day of Silence if their school will be permitting students and/or teachers to refuse to speak during class. Parents can find out more information about the Day of Silence Walkout, which seeks to oppose the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s (GLSEN) exploitation of public education for partisan political purposes, at www.doswalkout.net.

On Friday, April 16, 2010 thousands of public schools around the country will permit students and sometimes teachers to refuse to speak during class for a political …

The AmericanCollegeof Pediatricians (ACP) is sending a letter to public school superintendents asking that they not tell students who may experience same-sex attractions to simply accept that they are homosexual or destined to be caught up in the dangerous lifestyle. The group has also launched a web site called Facts About Youth, which discusses sexual development and provides facts for parents, school leaders and policy makers on the issue.

The letter points out that, while at various times as many as one-in-four pre-teens or early-teens may report being uncertain of their sexual orientation, only between 2 and 3 percent …

Another glorious Easter has come and gone, a day during which Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ with friends and family. Try as they might, Universityof Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone and the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune couldn’t dampen the spirits of those who know that the work of Christ on the Cross is finished.

But Stone’s op-ed piece and the decision of the Trib’s editorial board call for a response.

Stone’s op-ed titled “The crazy imaginings of the Texas Board of Education” seeks to warn an unsuspecting America that there is “a coterie of Christian …

Some months ago, I filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with School District 113, asking for any documents that mentioned my name. This is the district for which I worked for a decade and from which all four of my children graduated. As I wrote earlier, I was stunned by the unprofessional nature of the emails that I received through my FOIA request. All public school email is government property and therefore is subject to FOIA regulations.

At a recent school board meeting, school board member Harvey Cohen lamented the cost of FOIA requests to the district, costs …

A few weeks ago, it came to IFI’s attention via some obscene hate email that several false rumors about us had started at StevensonHigh Schoolin Lincolnshire, Illinois. The rumors were that IFI was attempting to persuade the Stevenson administration to shut down its gay-straight alliance, to fire a teacher, and to remove the book Flamingo Rising from the curricula.

As much as IFI would like all gay-straight alliances to close their doors forever because of the harm they do to students, the Equal Access Act guarantees their right to exist. IFI would not waste our time trying to get any …

“Nuance”–yet another manifestation of rhetoric serving the cause of sin. Where oh where is C.S. Lewis when we need him to poke holes in the fancy façade of sophistication that we sinners don to conceal our acquiescence to a fallen world.

Grove City College Professor Warren Throckmorton’s feet have been put to the fire recently regarding the Sexual Identity Therapy guidelines that he and Mark Yarhouse of Regent University have developed. Their guidelines state the following:

The emergence of a gay identity for persons struggling with religious conflicts is a possibility envisioned by the recommendations….some religious individuals will determine that …

The Day of Silence is fast approaching. For the uninitiated, the Day of Silence (DOS) is yet another effort by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to use public education to transform the views of our nation’s children on the nature and morality of homosexuality.

In a concerted effort, numerous pro-family organizations are urging parents to call their children out of school on the Day of Silence (April 16, 2010) if their school is permitting students to remain silent during class.

DOS participants have a First Amendment Right to wear t-shirts or other DOS paraphernalia. They do not, …

An article on abstinence-only programs appearing in the Feb. 2010 issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine reports that “Only about a third of sixth- and seventh-graders who completed an abstinence-focused program started having sex within the next two years, researchers found. Nearly half of the students who attended other classes, including ones that combined information about abstinence and contraception, became sexually active. “

The authors concluded that “Theory-based abstinence-only interventions may have an important role in preventing adolescent sexual involvement.”

We can all agree that the fact that any sixth–ninth graders are having sex is unacceptable, but a …