An educational expert is questioning the need for universal pre-kindergarten.

Chester E. Finn is senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and chair of the task force on K-12 education. He is also author of the new book Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut. According to Finn, universal pre-K takes a one-size-fits-all approach and really fails to meet the needs of children from poor families.

“I think the universal approach strikes out on two grounds. One is that it provides a large, unnecessary windfall to millions of families that have already got their own preschool needs being reasonably well-met,” he explains. “And secondly, it does not provide the kind of intensive preschool help that a much smaller population of very needy kids should get in order to be ready to succeed in school when they get there.”

Finn contends there should be a publicly funded preschool program for needy kids, but not for middle-class families who can afford to pay for preschool themselves. He adds that most of the poor children already qualify for the Head Start program, but he says that program is not a preschool program because it focuses more on building social skills than preparing kids for school.

He would like to see the Head Start program developed into a preschool program for needy children, complete with a preschool curriculum. 

There is a new report out from the Educational Testing Service (ETS) that the mainstream media for some reason seems reluctant to cover. According to their website, the Educational Testing Service “is a non-profit institution with the mission to advance quality and equity in education by providing fair and valid assessments, research and related services for all people worldwide.”

Those schools, like District 113’s Deerfield and Highland Park High Schools, that spend public money hand over fist on programs like Peggy McIntosh’s SEED and Glenn Singleton’s “Courageous Conversations” in order to close the racial learning gap ought to read this report.

Highland Park High School has a minority Hispanic population that does not perform well on standardized tests, and as a result Highland Park High School repeatedly fails the “Adequate Yearly Progress” evaluation of the No Child Left Behind Act. To close the racial learning gap in District 113, Superintendent George Fornero hired Glenn Singleton, an expensive “diversity” consultant from San Francisco whom Fornero had used in Ann Arbor, Michigan when he worked there.

At the all-staff meeting to introduce District 113 to his “social justice” theories, Singleton made some surprising statements. Singleton explained that many experts believe that the causes for the underperformance of minority students are poverty, language issues, mobility, and lack of family support. He then made the startling claim that none of those factors is the cause. The causes, he claimed, are “institutional racism” and “whiteness.”

He went on to classify audience members into three categories according to their potential responses to his theories: The first group were those who would agree with him immediately. The second group were those who would be on the fence and need to be convinced. And the third group were those “who are gifted at subverting reform.” In other words, those who dare to suggest that limited English skills likely affect test scores are “gifted at subverting reform.” Singleton cunningly attempted to prevent criticism by pre-labeling pejoratively those who disagreed with him.

Mr. Singleton conveniently excluded one other important category: well-informed, compassionate, and intelligent listeners who had valid justifications for their criticism of his theories.

To understand further the nature of the ideas being promoted by “anti-racist, social justice” proponents, you can read this hand-out entitled “Detour-Spotting for white anti-racists” that was distributed to District 113 staff and faculty at one of Glenn Singleton’s re-education seminars. Here’s just one provocative quote:

To fill a void in their own spiritual core, some white people are drawn into the New Age garden to pick from a variety of Native spiritual packages usually offered for sale. Since Native spiritual practice is inseparable from their history and current community, it cannot be disconnected from that context to service white people searching for life’s meaning. Appropriating selected parts of Native cultures romanticizes the lives of Native peoples while denying their struggles. Their lands and livelihoods stolen, indigenous peoples now witness white people trying to steal their spirituality. Rather than escape our white racism by finding a spiritual path, we instead collude in one more way with the genocidal attacks on Native cultures (emphasis added).

The new ETS study contradicts the theories of Singleton (and other “social justice” theorists), which he has so successfully exploited to extract boatloads of money from public coffers all over the country. This new study shows that lack of family support, mobility, and poverty are, indeed, contributing factors to the racial learning gap. Nowhere in this new study does “institutional racism” even appear.

Instead it finds that “curriculum rigor, teacher preparation, teacher experience, teacher absence and turnover, class size, availability of instructional technology, fear and safety at school (e.g., street gangs and fights at school), lack of parent participation, frequent changing of schools, low birth weight, environmental damage, hunger and nutrition, talking and reading to babies and young children, excessive television watching, parent-pupil ratio (i.e., minority students were less likely to live with two parents),and summer achievement gain/loss (i.e., minority students grow less academically over the summer)” are the causes of the racial learning gap.

After spending two years and thousands of dollars on Glenn Singleton’s doctrinaire and racist theories, George Fornero, perhaps unintentionally, acknowledged precisely what District 113 got for their time and money in a recent letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:

Dear Honorable Duncan,

. . .

As was the case in the spring of 2008, our non-English speaking students were once again asked to demonstrate their academic abilities by taking the ACT and the WorkKey assessments in English. And once again, despite taking the test seriously and despite working for hours longer than other students to complete it, when these students receive their results next fall, they will all fail (emphasis added).

One would hope that an admission like this would be the nail in the coffin of divisive, intellectually vacuous, ideologically driven expenditures. But the public should never underestimate the fervor of a true proselyte driven by political motives. They will continue to abuse their access to public money until community members publicly and vigorously oppose them.

To read more from other school districts that have been taken for a financial ride by Glenn Singleton, read here or here.

School districts all across the country are spending taxpayer money to promote controversial, unproven theories like those of Peggy McIntosh’s SEED program and Glenn Singleton’s “Courageous Conversations.” Taxpayers should closely examine any programs, including staff development opportunities, that embody “critical theory,” or employ the language of “diversity,” “institutional racism,” “whiteness,” or “social justice.”

A Homewood-Flossmoor reporter for the Southtown Star, John Ryan, posted a criticism of my article about a Homewood elementary school that has spent public money on the National SEED Project on Inclusive Curriculum. In it, he explained that he “requested the Illinois Family Institute forward . . . the names of any parents from the Homewood area they’ve heard from who have a problem with the program.”

First, IFI does not give out the names of parents who contact us about school issues. Second, my article was not written in response to a parental complaint. I wrote it to expose the content of SEED to the uninitiated and uninformed. Many schools spend public funds on SEED, and very few parents know with any degree of detail what SEED is all about. That certainly is the case in Deerfield where the school in which I worked until last August has offered SEED for many years. In all communication with the public, the administration provides brief, general descriptions with benign-sounding phrases that conceal the highly politicized, leftist nature of the foundational theories on which SEED is based. I would expect that few Homewood-area parents or community members are familiar with the specific content of SEED training for staff and faculty.

Mr. Ryan mentioned seeing little evidence of SEED’s promotion of homosexuality in the third-grade class he observed. But I never claimed that the third-grade version included what the adult version includes. What I said was that when the District newsletter described the SEED teacher-training, it failed to mention the fact that the SEED curriculum for teachers addresses homosexuality. As evidence for my claim that SEED promotes liberal views of homosexuality in the teacher-training program, I provided both the analysis by Barbara Anderson and the book titles that SEED has recommended in the past.

My point is that taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to fund the promotion of arguable, unproven theories about the nature and morality homosexuality, and District 153 has, indeed, used public funds to subsidize the leftist agenda of SEED through the seminars offered to teachers.

But apparently the issue of homosexuality has been introduced to Churchill elementary school children which I didn’t expect. Mr. Ryan reported that he “asked Jeanette Nichols, a Churchill teacher who instructs the SEED sessions with students, if she’s ever addressed the issue of homosexual orientation, [and] she said only as part of a lesson on how derogatory terms can hurt people.” This is how all organizations committed to normalizing homosexuality maneuver the topic into public schools. They use anti-bullying and “safe-school” programs to normalize homosexuality.

Historically, anti-bullying programs focused on non-behavioral conditions like race, biological sex, physical appearance, or disability. There is no evidence that homosexuality is analogous to race or biological sex, which are immutable, heritable conditions with no behavioral implications. Homosexuality is inextricably connected to behavior that many view as profoundly immoral. Therefore, homosexuality is ontologically much more similar to polyamory, which is the emotional and sexual attraction to multiple people at the same time, than it is to race or biological sex.

Imagine a school anti-bullying program that would define polyamory to third-graders, tell them that they should never call polyamorists derogatory names, and that they should try to see things from a polyamorist’s perspective. I assume and hope that the community would vigorously oppose such a program.

And why would they oppose it? Would they oppose it because they want polyamorists to be bullied? Of course not. The reason that society doesn’t include immoral behaviors in anti-bullying programs is that sensible people realize that to do so would have the unintended effect of undermining legitimate and necessary moral disapproval. In other words, if we include conditions defined by immoral behavior in anti-bullying programs, we will eradicate not just bullying, but we will also eradicate the belief that the immoral behavior is wrong.

Children and even adults fail to make the distinction between uncomfortable feelings that result from bullying and uncomfortable feelings that result from moral disapproval. If children hear that bullying makes kids feel bad and that moral disapproval makes kids feel bad, they will come to believe that their legitimate moral disapproval is tantamount to bullying, which is exactly what supporters of programs like SEED are hoping will happen.

Mr. Ryan is also bothered by my disparagement of the term “social justice.” What Mr. Ryan apparently doesn’t know is that the term means something entirely different from justice. It’s an innocuous-sounding term that grows out of “critical theory” and masks a particular set of troubling philosophical commitments.

As I’ve written before, “social justice” theory as embodied by SEED and promoted by the likes of former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers and deceased Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire, is essentially repackaged socialism with its focus on economic redistribution. Social justice theory emphasizes redistribution of wealth and values uniformity of economic and social position over liberty. Social justice advocates seek to use the force of government to establish economic uniformity.

Its other dominant features pertain to race, gender, class, and sexual orientation/ identity/ expression. Social justice theory as I’m describing it encourages people to view the world through the divisive lens of identity politics that demarcates groups according to which group constitutes the “oppressors” and which the “oppressed.” Those who are identified as the “oppressors” need not have committed any acts of actual persecution or oppression, nor feel any sense of superiority toward or dislike of the supposed “oppressed” class. The problem with social justice theory is that it promotes the idea that “institutional racism,” as opposed to actual acts of mistreatment of individuals by other individuals is the cause of differing lots in life.

Social justice theorists cultivate the racist, sexist, heterophobic stereotype that whites, males, and heterosexuals are oppressors. For example, the preeminent “social justice” advocate at Deerfield High School, English teacher Dan Cohen, has said repeatedly that those who are white, male, and heterosexual are oppressors. This is an offensive, prejudiced stereotype that robs minorities of a sense of agency in and responsibility for their own lives, telling them that their lot in life cannot improve through their own efforts but only through an appropriate degree of self-flagellation on the parts of the purported oppressors. It cultivates a sense of perpetual victimization and powerlessness on the parts of minorities and an irrational and illegitimate sense of guilt on the parts of whites, or men, or heterosexuals.

Finally, social justice theory is distinctly anti-American and hyper-focuses on America’s mistakes and failings. Social justice theory diminishes or ignores the remarkable success America has achieved in integrating virtually every ethnic and racial group in the world, and in enabling people to improve their lots in life through economic opportunity and American principles of liberty and equality.

Critical thinkers, whether parents, teachers, students, or reporters need to study the ideas of both “social justice” proponents and critics of social justice/critical theory. If Mr. Ryan is truly invested in learning about “social justice” theory, he might want to look to someone other than Jeanette Nichols. He might want to spend some time reading what F.A. Hayek, Antony Flew, Sol Stern, and Thomas Sowell say about it. I suspect they’ve thought about it more deeply than Ms. Nichols.

If Mr. Ryan is interested in another perspective on social justice theory, he could start here.

You can contact Mr. Ryan at jryan@southtownstar.com

All over the country, taxpayers are unwittingly funding dubious professional development opportunities that schools provide to teachers through conferences, workshops, and seminars that teachers attend during the school year and summer vacation. I’ve written about these primarily in the context of high schools, but, unfortunately, these ideologically driven professional development activities have been making their way into middle and even elementary schools.

According to the Homewood, IL, District 153 Winter 2008 Newsletter, taxpayers have been subsidizing the deeply troubling National SEED Project on Inclusive Curricula for several years: “Over the past three years, about 90 staff members have participated in the training, meeting for three hours every month.”

The National SEED Project on Inclusive Curricula explores “white privilege,” race, gender (i.e., feminism), class, disability, and sexual orientation. Curiously, in the description of the SEED training for teachers in the District 153 newsletter, there was no mention of “white privilege,” feminism, and sexual orientation–topics that might have led community members to ask some hard questions.

SEED is just one more “social justice” program. It’s the brainchild of Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley Centers for Women. The SEED co-directors are dyed-in-the-wool feminists who promote the very same identity politics theories of Bill Ayers. And they, like Ayers, are disciples of deceased Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire whose book Pedagogy of the Oppressed is required reading for all authentic “social justice” “educators.”

Brenda Collins Flyswithhawks, national co-director of SEED and community college professor of psychology, espouses quintessential social justice ideas-ideas straight out of Pedagogy of the Oppressed: “I teach you nothing . . . I only facilitate bringing forth that which you already know.”

According to Sol Stern, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Freire and his “social justice” disciples reject “teachers -directed instruction as a misguided ‘banking concept,’ . . . Freire proposes instead that teachers partner with their coequals.”

Stern says this about Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

Pedagogy of the Oppressed mentions none of the issues that troubled education reformers throughout the twentieth century: testing, standards, curriculum, the role of parents, how to organize schools, what subjects should be taught in various grades, how best to train teachers, the most effective way of teaching disadvantaged students. This ed-school bestseller is, instead, a utopian political tract calling for the overthrow of capitalist hegemony and the creation of classless societies. Teachers who adopt its pernicious ideas risk harming their students-and ironically, their most disadvantaged students will suffer the most.

Flyswithhawks wants her students to stop “manifesting what your parents, coaches, priests, and peers want you to think.” She explains that some of the students “don’t want to listen” because “listening is not honored in the Western world.”

She also shares how she persuades her students that schools and society have kept events in history hidden from them in order to “dupe” and “seduce” them. Apparently, Flyswithhawks doesn’t see her own classroom machinations as manipulative. She doesn’t see the anti-American bias that is woven into “social justice” theory. She fails to recognize that all history courses must, out of necessity, omit some historical events. She fails to acknowledge that some historical events are omitted simply because of time constraints rather than some nefarious desire to “dupe” or “seduce” children.

SEED encourages both teachers and students to view the world through the divisive lens of identity politics, which separates the world into groups according to who are the oppressors and who are the oppressed. This requires the stereotyping of people and robs minority students of a sense of agency in and responsibility for their own lives.

But even more troubling, SEED promotes subversive views of the nature and morality of homosexuality. Here are just some of the books SEED has used in its training seminars for teachers:

• ·  Free Your Mind: the Book for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youth-and their Allies
• ·  Out and About Campus: Personal Accounts by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgendered College Students
• ·  Stranger at the Gate by homosexual Mel White
• ·  Tackling Gay Issues in Schools
• ·  Two Teenagers in Twenty: Writings by Gay and Lesbian Youth
• ·  When the Drama Club is Not Enough: Lessons from the Safe Schools Program for Gay and Lesbian Students

These are just some of the dubious ideas promoted by SEED. For a more in depth analysis of SEED, please read this report by Barbara Anderson of the Minnesota Family Council who participated in a SEED training seminar.

The goal of these publicly subsidized, ideologically biased seminars is to effect “personal transformation” in teachers which they will then take into their classrooms, which is exactly what has happened inHomewood’sChurchillSchool:

Inspired by their own SEED experience, ChurchillSchoolteachers Jeanette Nichols and Melanie Mandisodza developed a student-version of the project. Armed with a grant from the Homewood Foundation for Educational Excellence and encouragement from school administrators, the pair piloted their creation in their classrooms during the 2006-07 school year…. Encouraged by the preliminary results, the school board decided to take the experiment one step further in the 2007-08 school year. Nichols was hired as the district’s SEED facilitator to work with all 3rd- and 7th-grade classrooms each month.

Nichols and Mandisodza developed what they call SEEDkids, which is an apt name in that the SEED curriculum plants the seeds of its own ideology in the minds of young children who too become the seeds of cultural transformation.

District 153 Superintendent Dale Mitchell made the same unsubstantiated claims that many “diversity” devotees in the field of education make. He said “the district views SEEDkids as one tool in the fight against educational ‘achievement gaps.'” Has anyone thought to ask Mr. Mitchell for research supporting his claim that teaching faculty and students about “whiteness,” or “white privilege” or “classism” closes the gap between the test scores of different groups of students?

SEED does precisely nothing to develop the skills or knowledge-base of teachers who were hired to teach math, science, foreign languages, history, literature, writing, art, P.E., or music. Parents in Homewood and every other school district need to ask some direct questions of their local school administrations. Ask about the content of all professional development opportunities that are provided to staff and faculty. Ask because the goals of SEED and other “social justice” programs are to indoctrinate students with leftist, feminist, pro-homosexual, anti-American, anti-capitalist ideologies and to fill the coffers of the organizations that develop these curricula with the hard-earned money of hard-working taxpayers.

At the April 21, 2009 meeting of the Local School Council, Principal Deborah Clark made the stunning announcement that a representative from the homosexual activist organization, Lambda Legal, would be making a presentation to 7th and 8th graders on MAY 13, 2009 on the topics of gender identity and sexual orientation sensitivity training. This is manipulative rhetoric meaning that Lambda Legal will be coming to Skinner to indoctrinate middle school students with the utterly fallacious and calamitous ideas that gender identity disorder is not a disorder; that cross-dressing and homosexual behaviors are moral behaviors; and that homosexuality and gender identity disorder are analogous to race.

Lambda Legal is committed to using the legislative and judicial systems to impose their unproven, radical, and subversive moral views of homosexuality and cross-dressing on American society. According to their website:

Lambda Legal is the oldest national organization pursuing high-impact litigation, public education and advocacy on behalf of equality and civil rights for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and people with HIV. The work we do has impact on the way we live — we change laws, policies and ideas.

And now activists within the public education system are aiding and abetting Lambda Legal’s pernicious agenda.

Here are just a few of Lambda Legal’s dubious actions plucked from their twenty pages of news releases:

• Lambda Legal successfully sued the state ofIowato compel the state to legalize same-sex marriage.
• Lambda Legal successfully sued theIndian RiverCentralSchool DistrictinNew Yorkto compel it to allow a gay-straight alliance.
• Lambda Legal sent an “advocacy” letter toSouthMedfordHigh SchoolinOregonexpressing opposition to the school’s requirement that the gay-straight alliance get administrative approval for their announcements and activities.
• Lambda Legal filed a legal challenge toCalifornia’s Proposition 8 ballot initiative.

Allowing Skinner parents to opt their children out is woefully insufficient: The Lambda Legal presentation should be cancelled. Parents and all concerned taxpayers should voice their vociferous and unambiguous opposition to the school District’s foolish and inappropriate decision to invite Lambda Legal to advocate views that are unproven and highly controversial.

Parents and concerned taxpayers must demand to know the name of the District employee who proposed this invitation and hold him or her publicly accountable.

And if the District refuses to cancel this event, the public should demand that the District bring in a speaker to present an alternative view of the nature and morality of homosexuality and “transgenderism” (e.g., IFI’s Division of School Advocacy). If they refuse to present an alternative view, the Skinner community will have further proof that the District is more invested in indoctrination than they are in critical thinking and the exploration of ideas.

Illinois Family Institute is urging parents and other concerned taxpayers to act now.

What will legalized “civil unions” mean for public education?

The manipulation of language is the homosexual movement’s stock in trade. The creation of the term “civil union” is intended to conceal the reality that civil unions are, in fact, marriages. Legalizing civil unions would be tantamount to legalizing “homosexual marriage.” Of course, anyone who’s paying attention knows that homosexual activist organizations have no intention of settling for civil unions. It’s merely a stepping stone on their relentless, illegitimate quest to have their profoundly disordered relationships accorded the moral legitimacy that comes with the term “marriage.” But in the meantime, while homosexual activists await the further clouding of the minds and hearts of Americans and the weakening of their collective will, activists will make do with “civil unions.”

So, what will legalized civil unions mean for public education? Legalized civil unions will provide homosexual couples and their supporters the legal support necessary to compel schools to include families led by homosexuals whenever teachers address issues touching on family life.

We are all aware that our relativistic or nihilistic contemporary American life includes the tragic phenomena of children being raised in deliberately fatherless or motherless homes. A foolish society is allowing homosexual couples to procure children through illegitimate means. But that truly sad fact does not and should not compel publicly funded schools to expose all children to the notion of homosexual unions. Unfortunately, there currently exist families headed by homosexual couples, just as there are families headed by polyamorous partnerships, but public school teachers need not include them in discussions of family life.

Knowing that many still view homosexual unions as deeply immoral, teachers have the freedom to omit them from discussions, which is a freedom particularly important in elementary schools. Parents still have the capacity to limit children’s exposure to deviant ideas and images at that age. The legalization of civil unions, however, will seriously undermine public school teachers’ capacity to omit discussions of homosexual unions from discussions of family life and family structures.

If we hope to preserve the only true definition of marriage, the one that reflects objective reality and ensures the future of any society, and if we hope to protect our children from exposure to ideas and images that will undermine truth, we must vigorously and boldly oppose the legalization of same-sex unions. And we must do so even if our opposition results in hostility and persecution.

King and King is a picture book recommended for children ages 4-8 years old.

It’s the story of a young prince who does not want to marry a princess. The prince falls in love with another prince, and they begin marriage preparations at once. The story ends with a kiss between the two kings.”

This was read to a second-grader in MA with no prior parental notification or opportunity for the parents to opt them out of hearing it.

Although the experience of being slandered over the past couple of weeks has been painful, the reason I’m writing about it has nothing to do with my feelings. My experience is, unfortunately, not unique. All over the country, those who publicly affirm conservative beliefs about homosexuality with the same conviction that supporters of subversive views of homosexuality affirm theirs will experience “the wrath of the tolerant” in the form of lies, obscenities, name-calling, or worse.

It’s important that people be prepared for the hostility and deceit they will encounter if they speak publicly and resolutely about homosexuality. My hope is that conservatives will neither allow this kind of hostility to silence them, nor allow it to embitter them. We desperately need more courageous conservatives who will speak the truth graciously as Miss California, Carrie Prejean, recently did, even if it results in being publicly called scurrilous names.

Recently I wrote an article in which made several unambiguous statements regarding bullying, which were then twisted beyond recognition by homosexual blogger Timothy Kincaid:

• I said that name-calling is deplorable and should stop; Mr. Kincaid says I approve of such name-calling.
• I wrote that all are created in the likeness and image of God; Mr. Kincaid says I think it’s okay to “push gay kids into lockers, beat them up, threaten them, and subject them to a constant barrage of insults.”
• I wrote that I have never bullied a homosexual teen or endorsed such despicable behavior; Mr. Kincaid says “Laurie finds it reasonable . . . to torment gay kids . . . with taunts of ‘faggot’ and to physically abuse and threaten them. Because in her world Christians are required to ‘condemn’ objectionable behavior – which means public derision and abuse.”
• I wrote that no conditions, volitional or non-volitional, including homosexuality, diminish the pleasure I take in people’s company or my respect for their myriad good qualities; Mr. Kincaid says that “To Laurie, Christian students should show contempt and disgust and derision. It is a good thing to abuse their fellow students that they think might be gay. It’s the Christian thing to do.”
• I wrote that schools must work to end bullying; Mr. Kincaid says I think nothing of the deaths of children.

IFI and over twenty other pro-family organizations opposed the exploitation of the classroom for the Day of Silence political protest. Somehow supporters of the Day of Silence persist in making the absurd claim that anyone who opposes classroom silence supports bullying. They are saying that unless you support their particular endeavor to curb bullying, you support bullying. That sounds rather like blackmail to me: Either adopt or acquiesce to their particular disruptive plan for combating bullying, or they will publicly vilify and lie about you. GLSEN has been remarkably successful in duping school administrators, teachers, parents, and the public at large into believing that the only way to prove that one opposes bullying is to support student vows of silence during instructional time.

But student vows of silence are not the only way or an appropriate way to combat bullying. And GLSEN is not the organization whose anti-bullying efforts public schools should adopt. GLSEN has a well-known socio-political agenda that is woven into all their public school efforts, including the Day of Silence. Integral to that agenda is the goal of undermining moral opposition to homosexual behavior. But I will let Mr. Kincaid make that case in his own words. Here is what he wrote on his blog:

“This is why they fight so hard against the Day of Silence and Gay-Straight Alliances. Not because of sex, but because these groups help counter the culture of disapproval and condemnation.”

Here Kincaid acknowledges precisely what I’ve said: Day of Silence and gay-straight alliances seek to end bullying by transforming disapproval of homosexuality into approval.

For organizations like GLSEN, the goals of ending bullying and normalizing homosexuality are indissolubly linked. They refuse to decouple them. In their view, statements of moral disapproval of homosexual acts are tantamount to bullying. Already schools expend an inordinate amount of time and money on illegitimate efforts to equate homosexuality to race and biological sex, and to persuade children and teens that homosexual behavior is morally equivalent to heterosexual behavior. These claims are neither factual nor true. Moreover, it is not the business of schools to advance them.

Despite Mr. Kincaid’s dishonest efforts to demonize me and mischaracterize the Walkout, many people still possess sufficient common sense to realize there are ways to go about curbing bullying that don’t involve intrusive classroom vows of silence or affirmation of behavior that many find immoral. And despite Mr. Kincaid’s protestations to the contrary, many people who oppose the exploitation of the classroom also care deeply about the suffering of bullied children. In fact, it might surprise Mr. Kincaid to learn that many teachers who hold politically left-of-center beliefs and who detest bullying as much as Mr. Kincaid and I do also dislike the Day of Silence. They dislike it because the best teachers want to teach the subject matter for which they were hired to teach without the distraction and disruption of classroom political protests.

All schools have anti-bullying policies and the vast majority enforces them. But no policy and no curricula can prevent all bullying. And the fact that kids are still bullied is certainly not evidence that vows of classroom silence are needed. We should look for better means for combating bullying, but GLSEN offers none.

In a recent interview, I made the statement that virtually all schools have ample anti-bullying policies, a statement with which Professor Warren Throckmorton disagrees. He sees the recent suicides of Carl Walker-Hoover, Jaheem Herrera, and Eric Mohat, three young boys who could not endure another day of relentless, senseless ridicule at the hands of peers, as evidence that schools lack sufficient anti-bullying policy. I and many others hope their tragic suicides will result in better solutions to the seemingly intractable problem of bullying. But their deaths tell us precisely nothing about the appropriateness or efficacy of classroom vows of silence.

The fact that bullying persists may have nothing to do with the content or implementation of school policy or curricula. The cause of the problem may be the diminishing influence of faith and the growth of family dysfunction. The problem may be that splintered families create hurt and anger in children who look for vulnerable peers upon whom to unleash their anger. The problem may be that there are too few intact families raising children with authentic Christian beliefs. It is Scripture that would teach children to love their neighbors as themselves, and to know right from wrong. It is also Scripture that would teach kids who experience same-sex attraction that they are no different from those who experience other sinful desires and that they too are of infinite value to God. It is Scripture that would teach them God’s design for sexuality and that Jesus Christ offers freedom and hope.

This, of course, isn’t the business of public schools. Nor is it the business of public schools to promulgate to children the bleakly deterministic, arguable theory that homosexuality is inherent and immutable, or the non-factual belief that homosexuality is morally equivalent to heterosexuality.

There is no evidence of which I’m aware that suggests that compassionate, intelligent expositions of conservative views of homosexuality are the cause of either hatred or violence. Rather, it is ignorant, hate-filled, deceitful rhetoric that fuels ignorant, hateful bullying. It’s rhetoric not unlike that used by Timothy Kincaid that spawns ignorance, hatred, and violence.

Another cacophonous, divisive Day of Silence has come and thankfully gone, but it’s important to take a moment to reflect on the vitriol and deception promulgated by some of its supporters. It’s important because their deceitful words expose the dark underbelly of the movement well underway to use publicly funded schools to undermine conservative beliefs about homosexuality.

The homosexual blog Box Turtle Bulletin carried an article last week in which Timothy Kincaid spread pernicious lies about me. I don’t know Mr. Kincaid, so I don’t know if he has a limited capacity for following the logic of an argument or if he has a limited commitment to truth and an unwillingness to provide evidence for his defamatory claims.

What Mr. Kincaid’s article did provide of value, however, is evidence for my claim that for homosexualists like him and those who support the philosophical positions of GLSEN, there is no distinction between orthodox Christian moral claims about homosexual behavior and bullying.

In a stunning display of malicious, deceitful non-reasoning, Mr. Kincaid wrote the following about me:

“it’s quite clear that [Laurie Higgins] does not at all wish that the bullying of gay kids should end at all.”

“Higgins actually supports making schools unsafe for gay kids.”

“Higgins believes that adults – teachers and administrators – should also condemn gay kids.”

“[Higgins] believes it is a Christian kid’s duty to bully his gay classmates.” (boldface is Kincaid’s)

“[Higgins] endorses the . . . ridicule . . . of others.”

All of Mr. Kincaid’s nasty prevarication resulted from my very orthodox claim that Christians must affirm the entirety of Scripture which necessarily entails condemnation, which means strong disapproval, of volitional homosexual behavior. Nowhere in my writing and at no time in my life have I advocated bullying or ridicule of homosexual kids. I have never bullied a homosexual teen or endorsed such despicable behavior. I worked for the last ten years in a public high school and have never treated any student or colleague with anything other than congenial good will, civility, and respect. As a writing instructor, I have helped students strengthen their pro-same-sex “marriage” debates, and I have taken genuine pleasure in the company of diverse students, including students who self-identify as homosexual.

No conditions, volitional or non-volitional–not race, biological sex, religious affiliation, political affiliation, sexual “orientation,” “gender identity,” “gender expression,” intellectual ability, athletic ability, social skills, appearance, drug habits, alcohol habits, or sexual behavior–diminish my recognition that all are created in the image and likeness of God. Nor do any of those factors diminish the pleasure I take in people’s company or my respect for their myriad good qualities.

There is an important distinction between interacting with individuals and participating in public debates. Mr. Kincaid apparently doesn’t understand that distinction.

For example, I may believe that abortion or polyamory are profoundly immoral and may make those claims in public discussions, while at the same time deeply loving and interacting respectfully with my friends who have had abortions or identify as polyamorous. My claims about the immorality of abortion or polyamory do not constitute bullying of individuals.

In my interactions with individuals who identify as homosexual, I would never articulate my views about homosexuality unless the topic were introduced by them. If the topic were introduced by them, I would speak the truth graciously.

But one-on-one interactions with individuals are an entirely different ball game from addressing this issue in the public square. Once the judicial and legislative branches of government as well as public education are involved, it is ethically legitimate for all citizens to participate in the public discussion regarding what best serves justice and the common good.

If public school administrators and teachers insist on promoting a particular understanding of the nature and morality of homosexuality — which many are hell bent on doing — then they are compelling dissenting voices to speak out. Conservative views are not bigotry, and demanding that publicly funded schools allot equal time and commit equivalent resources to conservative views does not constitute bullying.

In fact, if conservative views are true, censoring them constitutes an act of incalculable harm. If conservative views are true, then using public money to affirm radical, subversive, ahistorical views to teens constitutes an unconscionable social injustice and one that no one committed to truth should countenance.

If school administrators refuse to allow traditional views of homosexuality to be studied in schools because they erroneously believe such views constitute bullying, then those administrators must remove the issue completely from public schools. Traditionalists have no interest in articulating orthodox Christian, Orthodox Jewish, Muslim, or non-religious conservative views on the nature and morality of homosexuality in public schools. The issue of homosexuality should be left to parents, churches, synagogues, mosques, and private organizations.

But if activists insist on keeping this issue alive and kicking in public schools by introducing activities, protests, curricular resources, panel discussions, speakers, and films that implicitly or explicitly espouse unproven theories on the nature and morality of homosexual behavior, public schools must spend equal time exposing students to equivalent resources and activities from opposing viewpoints. Public schools should neither condemn homosexual behavior nor affirm it.

Taxpayers need to understand that the anti-bullying efforts of groups like the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network are inextricably linked to destroying traditional beliefs about homosexuality. Day of Silence is not merely about ending bullying. It’s about ending bullying by eradicating the belief that homosexual behavior is immoral.

The truth is that public schools can find ways to curb bullying without addressing homosexuality. For example, students who engage in promiscuous behavior, particularly girls, are often called “sluts,” “skanks,” and “whores.” Public educators deplore such bullying, and yet even in the service of ending bullying they would never permit books, plays, films, days of silence, newspaper articles, essays, speakers, panel discussions, and “diversity” weeks to be employed in the service of transforming students’ views on the morality of promiscuous behavior. They would find ways to curb bullying of promiscuous teens without ever specifically addressing promiscuous conduct.

Mr. Kincaid’s hackles are likely raised at my comparison of homosexual behavior and promiscuous behavior because he views homosexuality and promiscuity as ontologically different. He views homosexuality as ontologically analogous to race and biological sex, and he views homosexual behavior as moral. But his views on the nature and morality of homosexuality are neither factual nor universally held. And public schools have no right to implicitly nor explicitly endorse them.

Conservative parents must understand that it is impossible to participate in the public debate about homosexuality without generating hostility. No matter how carefully you craft your words; no matter how much evidence you provide for your claims; no matter how kindly you interact with people; no matter how many times you affirm that the sin of homosexuality is no worse than the sin with which you struggle; no matter how many times you affirm that your words grow out of love rather than hate; if you dare to say that homosexual behavior is immoral and soul-destroying, you will be met with hostility, name-calling, and lies.

But if you allow those bullying tactics to silence you, your cowardice will result in the spread and intensification of pro-homosexual activism in our schools. In some states, it has already reached our elementary schools, and the goal of organizations like GLSEN and the Safe Schools Coalition is to have it in all government schools, from pre-schools through high schools.

If you care about children’s temporal and eternal lives, please oppose any anti-bullying efforts in public schools that imply that homosexual behavior is worthy of affirmation.

Once again another academic frets over the rare occasion of a school district acquiescing to the concerns of taxpayers who are tired of funding the efforts of “social justice” teachers to use public money to advance their particular socio-political ideology. Chicago Tribune columnist Shawn Healy claims that “academic freedom is truly under attack” because Naperville North High School rescinded an invitation to the foul-mouthed, former domestic terrorist, capitalism-hating, “social justice” proponent Bill Ayers.

Academic freedom conventionally and properly understood refers to the right of college professors to conduct research free from government interference. It does not suggest a right of high school teachers to use their classroom and public funds to advance their moral, social, or political visions. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Naperville North teacher who invited Ayers has a history of doing just that.

The body of thinking that Bill Ayers promotes goes by the beguiling name of “social justice” theory, which speciously confers on it a patina of legitimacy and leads many to confuse it with compassion and justice. “Social justice” theory, however, is a conceptual framework that entails what numerous scholars, including F.A.Hayek, Thomas Sowell, Sol Stern, and David Horowitz, consider problematic philosophical commitments.

“Social justice” theory (or “critical theory”) emphasizes socialist, redistributionist economic policies. It values uniformity of social and financial position over liberty. It offers an imbalanced, cynical view of American history. It encourages students to view the world through the divisive lens of identity politics, which divides people into groups according to who are the oppressors and who are the oppressed. It teaches that institutional racism–not to be confused with actual racism–is the cause of the underperforming of certain minority groups on standardized tests. It cultivates a sense of undeserved guilt on the part of purported oppressors and robs minority students of a sense of agency in and responsibility for their own lives. It offers up the racist, sexist, heterophobic stereotype that if you’re white, male, and heterosexual, you’re automatically an oppressor.

It’s not the parents who opposed Ayers but the social justice ideologues in public schools who are attacking academic freedom by demanding an ideological monopoly and refusing to allow students to study criticism of the fundamental tenets of “social justice” theory.

In high dudgeon, the ideological compeers of Healy and Ayers wail about “free speech,” “academic freedom,” “critical thinking,” and “diverse viewpoints” only and ever in the service of leftist speakers like Ayers and obscene or anti-American texts like Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.

For years, in Deerfield and Highland Park High Schools, the school board has provided professional development opportunities to teachers that promote the “social justice” theories of Ayers, Paulo Freire, James Banks, and Glenn Singleton. For years, the board has had taxpayers subsidize these “opportunities” while never subsidizing even a single workshop that looks critically at the flaws of “social justice” theory. Where were the academic freedom fighters during these many years of–dare I call it–censorship?

Despite what many high school teachers believe, the concept of “academic freedom” does not justify the promotion of their personal ideologies in class. When teachers present resources that espouse only one viewpoint, they violate their pedagogical obligations and cripple their capacity to cultivate critical thinking.

High school teachers have a responsibility to teach facts and methods, and if their particular discipline requires them to address controversial cultural issues, they have an ethical and pedagogical responsibility to expose students to the voices of experts from diverse viewpoints — including on the controversial topic of “social justice” theory.

Perhaps parents would have been less outraged by the Ayers invitation had the teacher who invited him not been long known for using his classroom to promote his own political ideology. Perhaps parents would have been less outraged if this teacher had arranged a point/counter-point discussion between Ayers and someone like Sol Stern or David Horowitz. Perhaps Mr. Healy’s claim that he longs for an academic “marketplace where ideas would be forced to compete” would be more credible if leftist ideologues who dominate discourse in public schools would spend equal time exposing their students to resources from dissenting voices.

A national coalition of pro-family organizations is urging parents to call their children out of school on the Day of Silence (DOS), an annual event sponsored by the partisan political action group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). On the DOS, students and sometimes teachers are permitted to remain silent during instructional time to protest the bullying of students who identify as homosexual or transgender.

The coalition that opposes the DOS believes that it’s inappropriate to allow political protests to intrude into instructional time. Grove City College professor, Dr. Warren Throckmorton, on the other hand, is recommending that students join his “Golden Rule Pledge” effort which urges them to remain in school and pass out cards on which the Golden rule is printed. Apparently, he finds greater moral offense in parents removing their children from class on the DOS than he does in school-sanctioned political protest in the service of GLSEN’s goals, which extend far beyond reducing bullying. Unlike Dr. Throckmorton, we believe that the worthy ends of ending bullying do not justify the means of exploiting instructional time.

According to the DOS website, last year “Hundreds of thousands of students” participated in the Day of Silence, yet school administrators persist in telling gullible parents that this political action is not disruptive to the educational process. DOS participants have a captive audience, many of whom are made uncomfortable by the politicization of their classroom.

Perhaps it’s easier to notice the disruption by imagining what would happen if an anti-war group wanted to remain silent during class to draw attention to the voices of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan; and another group wanted to remain silent during class to draw attention to the silenced voices of women in Muslim countries; and another wanted to remain silent during class to draw attention to the plight of persecuted Christians around the world; and an animal rights group wants to remain silent during class to draw attention to animals killed during medical research; and another group wanted to show solidarity with conservative Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews who are silenced by the hostility of left-leaning educators who dominate discourse in public schools.

Dr. Throckmorton suggests that the “Walkout” is ironic in that it is even more disruptive than silence. I agree that the Walkout is disruptive, but school administrations have turned a deaf ear to reasoned pleas to remove divisive political action from the classroom. Whereas the DOS is intended to politicize the classroom, the “Walkout” is intended to remove children from exposure to yet more pro-homosexual activism and restore political neutrality to the classroom.

Dr. Throckmorton misapplies the “Golden Rule” in his efforts to promote heretical views of the nature and morality of homosexuality. The Golden Rule, which is found in both Luke 6:31 and Matthew 7:12, properly understood, does not mean that believers should affirm all seemingly intractable human desires. Nor does it mean that Christians should refrain from making public statements regarding the immorality of homosexuality. “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets,” means that Christians should affirm to others God’s Word–the entirety of God’s Word–in a godly way. It is absurd to suggest that in order to live out the Golden Rule faithfully Christians must affirm every desire that another human experiences, including even sinful desires.

Last year on his website, Dr. Throckmorton offered an account of ugly behavior on the parts of purported Christians, thus perpetuating, perhaps unintentionally, the myth that all Christians are hateful. Clearly, people who exhibit the behavior described are not living authentic Christian lives. But living authentic Christian lives and protecting those who are being persecuted do not require intrusive classroom political action.

Dr. Throckmorton also raises the specter of “judgmentalism.” Often homosexualists proclaim “Judge not, that you be not judged” as biblical justification for the position that Christians ought not to state publicly that homosexual behavior is immoral. But this verse means that we are not to engage in unrighteous judgment. We’re not to hypocritically condemn the speck in the eye of others while ignoring the plank in our own. We’re to recognize the universality of sin and offer forgiveness as we have been forgiven. This verse does not prohibit Christians from making distinctions between moral and immoral behaviors.

DOS participants claim they merely want to end bullying. The central problem with this claim is that DOS supporters fail to acknowledge the means by which they seek to curb bullying. Supporters of DOS seek to end bullying by undermining the historical and orthodox Christian belief that homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors are immoral. What Day of Silence supporters rarely if ever admit is that they believe that disapproval of homosexual conduct is bullying, and therefore they are working to undermine that belief and prohibit its expression.

The fallacious claim being leveled at critics of the DOS is that opposition to political action in the classroom constitutes support for bullying. Some speciously claim that those who oppose DOS must not care about the suffering of “GLBTQ” teens. Put another way, this implies that the only way parents, students, and teachers can prove they care about the suffering of “GLBTQ” students is to allow classroom political protest. Those who level this charge are suggesting that there are only two options: either you support political protest during instructional time or you support bullying. This is a classic false dilemma. The truth is that students, parents, and teachers can oppose bullying while concomitantly opposing the politicization of instructional time.

DOS participants claim they seek to end discrimination. The problem is that DOS supporters believe that moral convictions with which they disagree constitute discrimination. If, however, we allow schools to define discrimination so expansively as to prohibit all statements of moral conviction, character development is compromised and speech rights are trampled. And if administrators continue to define discrimination in such a way as to preclude only some statements of moral conviction, they violate pedagogical commitments to intellectual diversity and render the classroom a place of indoctrination.

Dr. Throckmorton believes that “Christian students should be leading the way to make schools safe and build bridges to those who often equate ‘Christian’ with condemnation.” In this statement, Dr. Throckmorton glaringly omits the truth that God condemns homosexuality, and therefore all Christians must condemn volitional homosexual conduct. And to those who view homosexuality as moral, this necessary Christian condemnation of homosexual behavior renders homosexuals “unsafe.” Of course, homosexualists don’t apply this principle consistently. They don’t, for example, say that condemnation of polyamory or adult consensual incest or promiscuity renders those who engage in polyamory, promiscuity, or incest “unsafe.”

Christians are obligated to balance truth with grace and love, but on this issue, the church errs on the side of grace and retreats from truth with all due haste. The body of Christ has become cowardly. American Christians flee from the persecution that inevitably results when we speak the truth about homosexual behavior, and then we rationalize our cultural conformity and self-censorship as Christian compassion. Living an authentically orthodox Christian life is irreconcilable with the goals of GLSEN.

Foolish, superficial thinking has resulted in the commonly held belief that affirming students’ feelings represents the zenith of wisdom and compassion. The truth, however, is that the minds and hearts of fallen humans are rife with thoughts and feelings that ought not to be affirmed, even as we affirm the people who experience them.

Teens who experience same-sex attraction no more choose their feelings than any of us choose ours. But as moral beings living for a time in a fallen world suffused with brokenness of all kinds, we are all charged with the same moral task: We all must determine which of our myriad messy feelings are morally legitimate to act upon. Adults are supposed to help children navigate those murky waters.

Many Christians desire to build bridges between the Christian and homosexual communities. The problem is that they are pursuing this noble effort by concealing from their “GLBTQ” friends the true nature of orthodox theological positions on homosexuality.

The goals of building bridges, cultivating community, and fostering relationships between the orthodox Christian community and the GLBTQ community, and spreading the Good News of Christ’s work of redemption within that community are not only noble but critical goals. And certainly different people are called to approach these goals in different ways. But the methods or strategies employed must never sacrifice, obscure, or compromise truth.

If we strain to find ways to avoid speaking the truth that God proscribes homosexual practices, we do a disservice both to those experiencing same-sex attractions and to our relationship with Christ. Our equivocations, evasions, or ambiguity will either appear as untruthful and manipulative, or they will deceive people into thinking we believe something we do not. We should instead do as we are commanded and speak the truth in love.

Dr. Throckmorton might be well-served by remembering the words of Martin Luther:

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

Those who self-identify as homosexual are no different from those of us who struggle with other sinful inclinations. All of us come to the cross as sinners, and none will be fully sanctified until Christ’s return, but retreat from or obfuscation of what the Bible teaches about, for example, selfishness, greed, envy, pride, promiscuity, fornication, gossip, gluttony, or any other of the myriad manifestations of sin is simply not scriptural–and therefore not good. We don’t want teens bullied for these or any other behaviors, and yet we likely wouldn’t support days of classroom silence during which teachers and students show support for those who engage in these sinful behaviors.

I can already hear the cries of indignation over my analogy. Supporters of the DOS will take umbrage with it because they view these other behaviors as immoral and not constitutive of identity.

But you see, that is the debate. Orthodox Christians view homosexuality as immoral and not constitutive of identity, and therefore we don’t want public education to be used as a conduit for the spread of beliefs we see as false and destructive.

If parents leave their children in school on the Day of Silence as Dr. Throckmorton recommends, they become complicit in the exploitation of the classroom for partisan political purposes. Dr. Throckmorton’s misguided effort does nothing to restore political neutrality to public education. In fact, his effort will help to further institutionalize GLSEN efforts to use public education to undermine orthodox Christian beliefs on the complex and emotionally charged issue of homosexuality.

There is a resolution before Congress asking the federal government and all public schools to officially recognize and celebrate the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s Day of Silence and its pernicious goals, which extend far beyond the elimination of bullying.

Take ACTION: Contact your U.S. Congressman and both U.S. Senators now and ask them to oppose H. Con. Res. 92.

Background
Being an eternal optimist, every time some execrable cultural event takes place, I think, finally this will be the event that awakens the conservative masses from their moral slumber. As each travesty passes, however, and another one arrives with nary a peep from the conservative masses, I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve ingested a lethal dose of Ambien.

We now have openly homosexual and cross-dressing public school administrators, teachers, and support staff in elementary, middle, and high schools. We have publicly funded schools whose central identifying feature is their philosophical commitment to affirming homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors. We have elementary schools reading picture books to our little ones in which sexual perversion is portrayed as morally equivalent to heterosexuality. We have a California law that requires that homosexuality and “transgenderism” be presented positively from kindergarten through high school. We have the Massachusetts Supreme Court deciding that parents have no right to be notified when elementary school teachers will present pro-homosexual resources to children and no right to opt their children out of class when such resources are presented.

We have medical professionals facilitating the creation of children for homosexual couples — children who are being denied their fundamental right to be raised by both their mother and their father. We are allowing homosexual couples to adopt children. We have activist judges usurping the will of the people to impose their own radical, subversive moral views by absurdly ruling traditional marriage unconstitutional. We have feckless government employees illegally issuing marriage licenses to homosexual couples when only state legislatures-not judges-can change marital laws. We have a lesbian law professor from Georgetown University telling us in plain, unambiguous language that when same-sex marriage is legalized, conservative people of faith will lose religious rights.

And still we remain silent.

Well, here’s one more insidious, incremental step on the march to widespread cultural approbation of sexual deviance: There is a resolution before Congress asking the federal government and all public schools to officially recognize and celebrate the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s Day of Silence and its pernicious goals, which extend far beyond the elimination of bullying.

Promoters of the Day of Silence are successfully seducing the public into believing that this day of public school political protest is centrally about bullying. It’s not. It’s centrally about using public resources to transform the views of children and teens on the morality of volitional homosexual and cross-dressing behavior. When promoters of the Day of Silence assert that its purpose is to end bullying, they conveniently avoid saying that the means they use to end bullying are to affirm volitional homosexual acts as normal and good.

Public schools should combat bullying, and they can do so without ever mentioning behaviors that many taxpayers view as disordered and immoral.

Read this and weep for our nation and our children. Then do something:

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That Congress–

(1) supports the goals and ideals of the National Day of Silence;
(2) requests that the President issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe the National Day of Silence with appropriate ceremonies, programs, and activities; and
(3) encourages each State, city, and local education authority to adopt laws and policies to prohibit name-calling, bullying, harassment, and discrimination against students, teachers, and other school staff regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, so that the Nation’s schools are institutions where all individuals are able to focus on learning.

Remember, cultural change rarely if ever happens through dramatic single events, but rather through the slow accretion of little events that we ignore or dismiss.

The Day of Silence fast approaches, so Illinois Family Institute wants to encourage parents to spread the word about the Walkout. As you call your local high schools, be prepared for evasive, lawyerly responses from administrators.

I just spoke with Mr. Pryma, the principal of Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook IL. When asked whether students would yet again be permitted to remain silent during instructional time in order to participate in the GLSEN-created political action, Day of Silence, Mr. Pryma responded that students have a constitutionally protected right to remain silent all 180 days of the school year. Apparently, with a straight face he is trying to suggest that the expectations for student participation are precisely the same on the Day of Silence as they are on any other day of the school year.

I then told him that generally if students refuse to answer a teacher’s questions or give a presentation, they are disciplined and/or lose points. In other words, a refusal to participate usually results in some negative consequences. I further explained that the ACLU and Lambda legal have written that a “school can regulate what students say. . . and it can also insist that students respond to questions, make presentations, etc.” Mr. Pryma then said that if silence or refusal to speak ever becomes disruptive, the administration will address it.

This is the standard administrative talking point. Administrators publicly claim that this day of political action is not disruptive, often despite the fact that many of their faculty members, including even politically liberal faculty members, do view it as disruptive. When I worked at Deerfield High School, the conservative teachers dreaded the Day of Silence, and even many liberal teachers opposed it. The best teachers want only to teach their subject matter. They have no interest in using their position, their power, and public resources to transform the views of their students to align with their own socio-political values and vision. It is only the activist ideologues who are committed to abusing their positions, their power, and public resources in the service of propagandizing students. And those activists are not educators; they are exploiters.

Mr. Pryma may not realize that many of his own staff as well as many parents and other taxpayers who subsidize public schools do, indeed, view formally sanctioned student silence in the service of a GLSEN-created political action as disruptive.

When I asked Mr. Pryma whether teachers will be allowed to remain silent during instructional time, he responded that “Teachers are required to present lesson plans.” Someone smarter than me will have to figure out whether that it a yes or a no.

Schools are fully capable of combating bullying without implicitly or explicitly affirming controversial, unproven beliefs on the nature and morality of volitional homosexual behavior, and they can certainly combat bullying without allowing instructional time to be hijacked for political protests. Public educators who acquiesce to the exploitation of public education for political purposes are either activist ideologues or spineless cowards, trembling at the specter of the GLSEN bullies tarring them as bigoted homophobes.

Virtually all organizations committed to legitimizing homosexual behavior seek to use public education to accomplish their morally dubious social goals. And they have all ages of children in their sights. Organizations like GLSEN, the Safe Schools Coalition, the National Education Association, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Anti-Defamation League seek to expose even elementary school students to their pernicious ideology using public money. These organizations seek to eradicate the belief that marriage is intrinsically and objectively the union of one man and one woman. They seek to eradicate the view that volitional homosexual behavior is profoundly immoral. They seek even to normalize “transgenderism.” And they seek to use public money to advance these radical, subversive, corrosive sexual views.

How young do children have to be before the conservative community will, with courage, conviction, vigor, perseverance, and boldness, take a stand against the use of public money to inculcate children with evil ideas that will result in sexual anarchy and untold suffering?

Parents, call your local high school and middle school principals and ask whether students and/or teachers will be allowed to remain silent during instructional time without consequences in support of the GLSEN-created political action DOS. If they answer yes, call your child out of school. If we don’t oppose the usurpation of public resources to advance destructive and unproven ethical beliefs, their presence will only increase. Don’t let your children see acquiescent conformity as way to negotiate life, and don’t leave to your children a society of in which sexual deviance is celebrated and truth is censored.

The ghosts of elections’ past are haunting Pennsylvania Avenue. If you’ll remember, it was Illinois’ own fallen Governor Blagojevich who promised Universal Preschool. Likewise, the massive tentacles of the new administration are prying their way into the nation’s playpens, targeting children so young they still hug their mother’s knee at the sight of a stranger.

Nationalizing preschool, like medical care, will not just be for those who can’t afford it, it will be for everyone. I won’t glaze your eyes or numb your mind with the staggering numbers it would take to pull this one off. Leave it to say that when it was proposed here in Illinois, it was projected that at three years the expansion would hit the $400 million a year mark. (Should I mention that, currently, 21 percent of all school districts in Illinois are on the state’s financial warning or watch list?)

California also spent untold amounts of money trying to convince voters that Universal Preschool was a good thing, yet they voted it down.

Every time they try to push this, they pull out the same tired laundry list statistics: failing schools, illiterate children, plummeting math scores, drop out rates, unemployment, crime rates, and incarceration costs. In a nutshell, they are saying that government schools have failed at every level, and their proposed solution to this crisis is… give us your babies.

Let’s stop a minute and take a look at just who they are talking about. They are talking about very young children still in critical developmental stages of life. Many of these little people have barely mastered speech. I have known many bright, inquisitive, intelligent 3-year-olds who needed to have a translator (mommy) by their side to ask for a drink of water.

This is an age where the world is just opening up to them, as their language and cognitive skills are beginning to hit full stride. They argue, “So put them in school and get them ready to learn.”

Consider this; let’s say that there is a real problem with toilet training. Teachers are complaining that children are coming to school who are not ready to learn. Some children are not being trained appropriately at home and teachers are spending too much time in remedial potty training. It is a health hazard to the staff and the rest of the student population, and a financial burden to the state.

New legislation is proposed; all children must be completely toilet trained by the beginning of school. We must start earlier screening and intervention for “at risk” children. Perhaps it could read something like this:

Whereas; all children have a right to a fresh start in education from the earliest possible moment,

Whereas; too many children come to school unprepared to learn the fundamentals of education,

Whereas; the cost to the state in antiseptics and diaper supplies is reaching into the millions,

Whereas; sickness and disease are easily spread by inappropriate disposal of soiled diapers and clothing,

Therefore; Be it enacted this day, that all children will have the opportunity to begin toilet training by age 6 months. We must start earlier screening and intervention for “at risk” children.

Absurd?

Yes it is. And so is ignoring the facts that children need to learn more than their abc’s; basic developmental and emotional needs must be met before academics should be introduced.

It is also illogical to ignore the mountains of research pointing to the consequences of institutionalizing young children. It is unreasonable to take a child away from the one person he or she needs and relies on the most and place him in a system that is fundamentally flawed and admittedly inadequate.

The obvious is often overlooked by policy makers, and bad laws and programs are also made when politicians read polls rather than research, and when parents listen to rhetoric rather than their own better judgment. 

Sadly, it is a political sin to tell intelligent young mothers that their children need them.  Instead they feed them the lie that they are easily replaced by paid professionals, and brush good mothers aside while children are turned over to a fat, soulless government nanny.

Again, Illinois Family Institute wants to commend all those Naperville taxpayers who acted on their convictions, expressing their vigorous opposition to the Bill Ayers invitation. If only more communities would follow your example, we could effect positive change in our public schools by ridding them of the influence of political activists who seek to use public education to bring about cultural transformation in the direction of their values and beliefs.

Illinois Family Institute and many others were very happy that the administration at Naperville North decided to cancel the Bill Ayers speaking engagement, but I was troubled by two of the comments Superintendent Alan Leis made in his formal announcement.

He wrote that “parents and others have written urging us to continue with the event because they want students exposed to diverse viewpoints.” What troubles me about this claim is its transparent hypocrisy. Appeals to “exposing students to diverse viewpoints,” or “teaching the controversy,” or “fostering critical thinking,” or “honoring all voices” are only made in the service of exposing students to left-of-center, including far left-of-center ideas. These appeals are never made in the service of exposing students to conservative viewpoints, particularly on the topic of homosexuality, which is one of the topics on which “social justice” theory advances a left-of-center position.

Dr. Leis’ comment reminds me of a comment a teacher made in the Deerfield Review last year during the community brouhaha over the teaching of the obscene pro-homosexual polemic Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes at Deerfield High School. The faculty member who was teaching it, Jeff Berger-White, wrote this troubling statement: “There are going to be times during their years in high school, if we [teachers] are doing are [sic] jobs well, when most students should feel intellectually, emotionally, and even morally challenged.” He also said that “I’ve been given a lot of trust and autonomy in designing curriculum. It’s one of the chief pleasures of my job.”

What is curious about this statement is that it contradicts the very reasons teachers and administrators offer to justify their absolute refusal to expose students to any writing or speakers that espouse conservative viewpoints on the controversial topic of homosexuality while presenting them with numerous resources that espouse liberal viewpoints. So, which is it? Should teachers “expose students to diverse viewpoints,” “honor all voices,” “teach the controversy,” “foster critical thinking,” and “challenge students”–or not?

In public schools, homosexuality is the central topic on which faculty refuse to expose student to diverse viewpoints and one on which “social justice” theorists take a left-of-center position. Social justice proponents believe that those who experience same-sex attraction constitute a group of people defined, not by desire and volitional behavior, but by immutable, inherent traits. Social justice proponents believe, with no proof, that homosexuality is equivalent or analogous to race and biological sex, and that volitional homosexual conduct is moral conduct. And they believe that those who disagree with those unproven claims are “oppressors.”

Where you find an ardent proponent of “social justice” theory, you will often find someone who ardently seeks cultural affirmation of volitional homosexual conduct. It’s no surprise that Kermit Eby, the Naperville North teacher who invited Ayers, is the faculty sponsor of Naperville North’s gay-straight alliance.

Dr. Leis went on to say that “What was most unfortunate was that a few directed their anger toward an outstanding high school and at a well-regarded, award-winning teacher who encourages students to think for themselves.” Dr. Leis doesn’t elaborate who exactly regards this teacher well and on what basis they so regard him. Is it rebellious teens who hold liberal views that regard him positively, or is the positive regard widely held by both students and parents? Is the positive regard based on his likeable personality, or is it based on something more substantive such as a willingness to expose his students to diverse perspectives on controversial issues, which is one of the hallmarks of good teaching? Dr. Leis didn’t share precisely how Mr. Eby encourages students to think for themselves. Dr. Leis also did not elaborate on what award Kermit Eby won or what the selection criteria were for that award.

This “excellent teacher” defense is the same irrelevant defense that Deerfield High School’s administration used when Angels in America was challenged. I say irrelevant because it has nothing to do with the particular controversial decisions at issue. Is Dr. Leis suggesting that good teachers never make mistakes?

Even well-regarded teachers who have won prestigious awards are capable of serious errors in judgment, particularly once they allow their own personal socio-political values and motives to shape their classroom commentary and curricular choices, and once they relinquish commitments to honor all those parents who entrust their children to them. Is Dr. Leis willing and able to prove publicly and with evidence that Mr. Eby has not used curricula and classroom commentary to express and promote his own philosophical, moral, and political views?

Comments and decisions like those of Mr. Berger-White, Dr. Leis, and Mr. Eby raise a number of critical questions:

• Do we taxpayers believe that the job of good teachers is to challenge students emotionally and morally?What hubris for teachers to think their jobs involve challenging the morals of students. In so doing, they’re likely challenging the morals of parents who work hard to counter the effects of our corrosive culture as they struggle to train up their children in the way they should go–and who pay these teachers’ salaries.And how dare teachers presume to challenge the emotions of students who may be emotionally fragile for any number of reasons of which teachers are completely ignorant and which are none of their business.
• How much autonomy are we taxpayers obligated to grant teachers who demonstrate the lack of wisdom and judgment that far too many public school educators demonstrate?
• Has our trust been terribly misplaced?
• If teachers and administrators truly believe that it is their job to expose students to cultural controversies and diverse viewpoints as well as challenge students emotionally and morally in order to foster critical thinking, will they write policy to ensure that the diverse viewpoints to which students are exposed include conservative viewpoints? And will policy be written that prohibit the kind of political commentary that too many teachers engage in behind their closed classroom doors?

In my experience, activist ideologues in public schools count on conservatives becoming battle-fatigued and retreating after an intense skirmish. Then they continue with the status quo. It is only sustained vigilance and public pressure that can effect systemic changes.

We must be vigilant about what’s taking place in the schools we fund. We must pay attention to our children’s complaints about the political commentary that takes place in publicly subsidized classrooms. We must pay attention to curricula and even assemblies. We must examine school policy. We must examine the content of professional development opportunities that we subsidize, including the in-house Institute Day, late-arrival day, and summer workshops provided by school districts and the seminars, workshops, and conferences that teachers attend. If necessary, taxpayers should file Freedom of Information Act requests to access this information. “Social justice” ideologues use all of these contexts to advance their arguable beliefs, and they count on the apathy, busyness, ignorance, fear, and battle-fatigue of conservatives to achieve their dubious goals. We must persevere.

I posed the following questions to Naperville North Superintendent Alan Leis and the members of the District 203 Board of Education:

Of all the people Naperville North or teacher Kermit Eby could have invited to speak to students, Bill Ayers is the best you could come up with and the person Leis believes students from other schools would “die” to hear? While it seems unlikely that students would die to hear him, I have no doubt that many adolescents, trapped as they are in a period of immaturity and rebellion, would love to hear an adult who remains, like a much darker Peter Pan, trapped in immaturity and rebellion. But with all the remarkable professors available in the Chicagoland area, this is best you could offer students?

Click here to view Ayers and his equally radical wife defending Ward Churchill, the disgraced, discredited, goofball professor who was fired from the University of Colorado:

This is the professor who “called victims of the 9/11 terror attacks ‘little Eichmanns,’ comparing them to Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann.” The college had received “numerous complaints of academic misconduct.” Churchill “was accused of plagiarism, inventing historical incidents and ghostwriting essays which he then cited in his footnotes in support of his own views,” and he “did not express regret, apologize or agree to refrain from this behavior in the future.”

After reading a Daily Herald blog post from a parent of two of Eby’s former students, I have a clearer understanding of Mr. Eby’s reason for inviting Ayers: Ayers embodies the same troubling ideas that Eby uses his classroom and public funds to promote.

It might behoove public school teachers, administrators, and school board members, including Mr. Eby, to read some of the substantive criticism of the “social justice” theories of Bill Ayers, Maxine Greene, Paulo Freire, and their devotees.

Many educators and taxpayers mistakenly believe that the phrase “social justice” is synonymous with justice, which it decidedly is not. “Social justice” theory is a particular socio-political conceptual framework that includes a number of troubling philosophical assumptions with which many scholars disagree, including scholars “of color.” Here are links to a few short articles that discuss the problematic features of “social justice” theory.

http://www.i2i.org/main/article.php?article_id=315

http://www.psaf.org/archive/2006/June2006/PolitcalAssaultonK12SchoolsDHStatement.html

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guides/Z-Social%20Justice-Code%20for%20Communism.htm

http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=2702

http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_3_ed_school.html

http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-05-11ss.html

http://socialfoundations.blogspot.com/2007/04/choice-versus-social-justice-professors.html

http://instructivist.blogspot.com/2007/05/social-justice-assault.html

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/eduwonkette/2008/04/guest_blogger_sol_stern_weighs.html

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=AD7B4270-B375-4CAB-93E1-48472748E5E9

Since District 203 is so manifestly committed to exposing students to diverse views on controversial issues, thereby fostering critical thinking, it seems that administrators would want to require teachers who promote “social justice” theory through either curricular resources or classroom commentary, also to present criticism of its arguable propositions. Without spending equal time and equivalent resources on all sides of cultural debates, including the debate on the value and soundness of “social justice” theory, education becomes indoctrination.

Here is the Daily Herald blog posting on Kermit Eby which if even only partially accurate should be deeply troubling to the administration:

Both my daughter and my son sat through Kermit Eby’s (the Naperville North teacher who invited Bill Ayers to come talk to students) American history classes. My son also had him for American government. Both those classes are required by the district. I know Mr. Eby. I sat through five parent conferences with him and I had several conversations with him and exchanged three years of email notes with him. Kermit Eby is the stereotype of the so-called-progressive teacher. When I called to complain about a gay-rights skit he put on in which two girls held hands and kissed during a mandatory attendance assembly he justified himself by claiming to be a “progressive missionary working for social justice in the underbelly of affluence.” . . .

And there is no balance of any kind. My kids sat through his classes and listened to daily rants about the evils of the Republican party, conservatives, religion, America, capitalism and especially George Bush. Just like this Leis character Eby will tell you he does things like inviting Ayers in the name of diversity and letting the kids make up their own minds. Don’t buy it.

Any student who dared to counter the straight left party line was humiliated and shouted down. According to my daughter Eby’s students learn very quickly to shut up and toe the line if they want a good grade from the man.

He tells students that the textbook supplied by the district is full of lies and supplies them with copies of Howard Zinn an American hating communist historian to provide “balance.” His classroom is plastered with bumper stickers for liberal politicians and causes. According to my son another teacher put up Marine recruiting posters in the same room which Mr. Eby made a show of removing and tearing to shreds. He hangs a universal peace flag outside his class but refuses to stand during the daily pledge of allegiance. This man is about many things but balance isn’t one of them.

And believe me he is loving every second of the controversy is being stirred up. He lives for it. Like a lot of liberals the guy has a big ego and he loves to be the center of attention. He poses as some kind of brave anti-establishment crusader but he has worked his entire life for the state. He tells his students he is a socialist but draws a six figure paycheck.

He says he is a pacifist but he brings domestic terrorist Ayers into the school. He says he supports diversity but won’t tolerate or present any perspective that isn’t 100% so called progressive.

And oh yeah he has tenure so there is nothing we can do about it.

Illinois Family Institute wants to commend all those Naperville taxpayers who took the time to express their concerns about the Ayers invitation. We hope that other communities will learn that civic engagement is a critical obligation we all share and that it can effect positive change.

We also want to commend those District 203 administrators and School Board members who had the wisdom and humility to rethink the Ayers visit in response to community concerns. We hope that they and all public school educators will think more critically about how teachers use public resources and their classroom.

Finally, we want to encourage taxpayers to demand that policy be written that requires teachers to spend equal time and present equivalent resources on all sides of cultural debates–including the debate over the value and soundness of “social justice” theory.