More Nanny State Intrusion
Apr 14, 2014 Political
New rules will go into effect this July and those rules will ban all junk food from schools. We are not talking just banning the food in vending machines or in the cafeteria (the food served there) no sir, we are talking about no junk food on the premises.
This means that school children will not be able to take a candy bar or bag of chips to school whether it is part of the lunch they brought or not. It means that parents have no say at all in what goes into their children’s lunch. This is the nanny state.
It is up to parents to decide what to give their children. If the school wants to ban the vending machines or cafeteria that is the school’s business but what a child brings to eat is between the child and the parents.
I see no problem with so called junk food being part of a balanced lunch so long as that is not the only food. Chips or pretzels go well with a sandwich and children can burn those calories off. If they want to encourage children to be healthy then they should put recess back in school.
In any event, how will this square when the school wants children to sell candy bars or pizzas as part of fundraising activities? Will the girl scouts who use the school for meetings be able to sell (and eat) their cookies?
Parents and students should decide and do as they wish no matter what the school says.
It would also be good for them to refuse to participate in ANY fundraisers (regardless of what is sold) to make a point about the entire process.
Source:
The Weekly Standard
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Tags: intrusion, junk food, nanny state, recess, schools
Affirmative Action For Bad behavior
Jan 9, 2014 Political
I have had many issues with the way schools discipline children. Many schools jump right to suspension or expulsion for the most minor infractions when a whole host of other, more suitable, punishments are available. I have seen this applied to many children who misbehaved regardless of their skin color. Zero tolerance policies are certainly a factor in these punishments but often the school jumps to the toughest punishment when other options are available.
What does Eric Holder want to do about this? Well, one would think he might want to revamp the entire system so that children are judged on the merits of their individual case and not by a one size fits all standard but one would be wrong.
[note]I do not think the Attorney General should be involved in school issues and am not saying he has a responsibility here but since he thinks he does I address it from the point of view that if he is going to do something one might think it would be this…[/note]
Holder says that too many black kids are being suspended so he wants schools to stop doing that. He wants fairness in the punishment arena (which means being less strict on black kids) or schools might just face “strong action”.
The problem here is that the way punishment is handled in schools does not only affect black children nor are those children singled out because of color. All kids are affected by bad policy.
Eric would rather schools ignore the bad behavior of black children or treat them differently when they do something wrong. He seems to think punishing children who misbehave crates a pipeline from school to jail.
The pipeline from school to jail is created by a black community (which is what Holder is concerned about) that has a high incidence of single parent families, poverty and government dependence. The real issue is that children who are chronically bad are not being disciplined at home and Holder seems to want them not to be disciplined in school (or to have their punishments greatly reduced).
To Holder having children go unpunished for being bad is the way you teach them to be responsible adults. This seems to be a recurring theme for liberals as many engage in bad behavior and are rewarded.
There was a school district in Florida that did not punish black kids for being bad. The edict was put out to stop because too many black kids were being disciplined (like Holder claims). One young man was very bad in school and was in trouble a number of times. He was not disciplined very much because he was black and the school did not want to have bad statistics on the numbers of black kids disciplined.
That young man was named Trayvon Martin and think we all know how things turned out in his story…
Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
Tags: affirmative action, eric holder, punishment, schools, trayvon martin, zero tolerance
Teach Your Children
May 21, 2009 Political
In Texas, there has been an insidious tendency to give students grades that they have not earned through doing their work. Currently, if a student does not feel like doing the work of an assignment, they still receive a 50 on their gradesheet.
In addition, some teachers are being told that students can take tests multiple times, and pick the highest score among them. This, of course, results in much more work for the teachers, and an unwarranted sense of entitlement among these students.
Karen Garza, chief academic officer of Houston Independent School District said, ” A teacher’s professional judgement” should replace a student’s responsibility for fulfilling academic requirements.
The tendency of schools to just rotate our children through with no real sense of education clearly makes education a farce, but much of this is parent- driven, as they believe that their children should be the equivalent of Einstein- after all, these children are brilliant in their parents eyes.
Well, unfortunately, we may never know, if this trend of just giving grades away continues- with as much new knowledge as we have gained over the years, you might think the standards of schools had increased, not slid to the bottom of the heap in a wild rush to ignorance. What do you expect though, if you happen to be among those who use a Playstation to keep their children placated, and do not insist to be included in their childrens’ education. Ignorance breeds ignorance, and we, as a nation, are rapidly losing the race to every other nation with regard to the level of education and professional skills.
When you have an educational system that has a policy of giving grades to those who didn’t earn them, you have the same situation as happened when the Catholic Church was selling dispensations and blessings. A totally crooked system that should be shut down and reset.
But this seems to be the norm in educational circles, even in universities now. The Ivy League Universities- Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, and others, have dropped the requirement of History as a subject that must be taken. How utterly stupid is THAT? If you cannot put the world in context of what has happened before, you have no “roadmap” of where you want to go, nor of the best way to get there. That these “prestigious” universities would even consider this means that they have lost their prominence in intellectual terms- now they are just expensive “community” colleges. I would wager the Community Colleges are better, because they actually have to produce results and work twice as hard as those who sit on their “laurels”.
The fact that a State Senator, Jane Nelson, R- Flower Mound, even has to propose a bill that would ban the practice of school districts granting minimum grades is in itself a disgrace. Our future rests with these young people and to falsely grant them any grade for work they did not do is a crime against our country, and serves these children not at all for their future.
It is true that the world needs janitors too- but do you want your child to be a janitor just because the teacher was allowed to take the easy way out and pass your child through with no knowledge at all, or would you feel better if you had a say in your child’s education? To do this, you have to take an active part in your child’s education, you have to hold both your child AND the teacher to the highest standards possible. If the school you have your child in won’t raise their standards, raise hell- you have a PTA- these teachers work for you- and get together to demand the best for your children.
On the other side of the equation, push your children- demand that they excel in class. They may dislike you now, but they will thank you later, when they find that educationally, they are at the top of the food chain, and they have their choice of jobs they will actually like to go to, and jobs that actually pay well. They will not have to be janitors- they will have a choice, and choice is a good thing.
If you teach your children right, they will teach theirs, and the world will improve.
[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]
Tags: bad teachers, ignorance, schools, universities