Middle-school students threatened by faculty over "offensive" t-shirts

Genoa-Kingston Middle School student Michael McIntyre is a young supporter of the men and women serving in the armed forces.  So much so that he has taken to show his enthusiasm for the United States Marine Corps by wearing this t-shirt (left).

But in spite of wearing it many times to school, Michael has now been threatened with suspension by his school's faculty and administration unless he removed or "covered up" his Marines shirt.  It was deemed inappropriate and against school policy to have an image of a gun.

It's the sort of story that we're hearing too much of lately: public school students either threatened with suspension or suspended outright because they draw pictures of guns, or point their fingers like guns on the playground, or even go "bang bang!" at each other.

Now it's a t-shirt that says "Marines" and features two military rifles crossed.  As if Marines have any other tool of their trade...

"What the hell are we supposed to use man? Harsh language?"

Pull the trigger here for the full story at usofarn.com.

Meanwhile in Florida, student Summer Schreiner was told she'd be suspended from school if she refused to doff her t-shirt bearing a pro-abstinence message.  From the story at the Christian Post:

A school in Florida asked an 8th-grader to change her t-shirt carrying a message of sexual abstinence that she received at a Christian conference, saying it is "inappropriate." The t-shirt the 15-year-old girl was made to change into said, "Tomorrow I will dress for success."

Summer Schreiner of Cocoa, Fla., wore a t-shirt with the words "Don't drink and park... accidents cause kids" to class at Clearlake Middle. She says she was told by the assistant principal to change it because it was "inappropriate."

"I got through lunch, and on my way back, the assistant principal tells me I need to go to the office and change my shirt," she told Fox 35.

Summer received the shirt the night before at a conference organized by The Silver Ring Thing conference, which seeks to "create a culture shift in America where abstinence becomes the norm again rather than the exception." After teenagers make the pledge of abstinence, they receive a silver ring.

"I was pretty upset. I thought it was silly," Summer said. "It's not like I was wearing a curse word or something that was promoting violence. It's the shirt I got at a conference that is something that is very important to me."

Is it just me, or do too many school systems seem to have a requisite that teachers must lose their common sense before being employed?  If she were a few years older Summer could probably go to the nurse at her high school and get free condoms, no questions asked.

No, I won't put my children through a public school system.  Not if the public schools keep up with this ludicrous behavior.  My children aren't here yet but I already love them too damned much than to subject them to this kind of insanity.

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Victoria Soto, 1985 - 2012

Victoria Soto, teacher of first graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School. She had just turned 27. Bright, beautiful, with a love of teaching and her whole life ahead of her...

She was killed during Friday's massacre after hiding her students in a closet, then using her body to shield them against the bullets.

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."

-- John 15:13 (New International Version)

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Fire the striking Chicago teachers... and ban them from the classroom for life

More than 400,000 schoolchildren in Chicago are without educators today after the teachers union there went on strike. I say "educators" lightly because by some accounts nearly 80% of eighth graders in Chicago public schools don't have adequate reading skills.

So these "teachers", who are already paid on average between $71,000 and $76,000 before benefits, and are only working nine months out of the year anyway, are going on strike because a 16% pay raise apparently isn't enough. These people's starting salary is $50,000.

Chicago is paying an insane amount of money out of the public treasury and getting some piss-poor results from it. So who the hell are these "educators" to demand more pay?

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel should take some real leadership initiative and order every teacher back into the classroom within 48 hours, under penalty of being banned for life from teaching in the city's public schools. Just as President Reagan fired thousands of air traffic controllers who went on strike in 1981. I don't doubt that there are many sincere and dedicated teachers out there looking for work and who would be exceedingly satisfied to take those positions... and for a far more sane rate of pay, at that.

Would Mayor Emanuel have the courage to defy the teachers union like that?

Never mind answering that question. I was being facetious.

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MPAA wants teachers to camcorder movies, not rip DVDs

Try this one the next time you go to see a blockbuster movie like Star Trek in the theater: record it with a camcorder and if you get caught, tell the cinema management that "I'm a teacher who needs this for my students!"

Nutty though it sounds, that is what the Motion Picture Association of America is telling teachers to do instead of ripping video from copyrighted DVDs if they want to get clips for classroom purposes. The MPAA has even prepared an instructional video (left) demonstrating how teachers can set up a television with DVD player, and then aim their camcorder at the screen to record it. Which is not only silly but as the article at Ars Technica notes, this is much more laborious and time-consuming on the part of the teacher as opposed to digitally capturing (AKA "ripping" the video segments that they need).

This should be a moot thing anyway, since use of copyrighted material for legitimate educational purposes has long been acknowledged and allowed under fair use provisions.

And how is this different from letting students come in with projects they have made using copyrighted material anyway? I took some communications classes at Elon and a lot of other students did work with clips from movies and TV shows that flat-out astounded everyone who watched 'em. In the modern era does that mean that according to the MPAA those students would all be criminals 'cuz they didn't capture their footage with a camcorder?

(They'd prolly still look better than the MPAA's own "instructional video", that's for sure...)

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My wife, the political activist and teachers advocate

A few months ago my wife Lisa shared on her own blog her thoughts and experiences about the problems with the federal government's teacher loan forgiveness. She's received quite a bit of correspondence since then from teachers all over the country who have experienced similar frustrations.

Well, now Lisa is taking it an extra mile further by directly petitioning not only her own senators and governor, but some of those who created the legislation that led to this. You can read the full text of the letter she has sent out here.

Wouldn't it be neat if we wound up seeing Lisa testifying on live television before a congressional committee in Washington D.C.? :-)

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Teachers suffering unfairness in government's loan forgiveness

My wife Lisa has posted her account of applying for the government's Teacher Loan Forgiveness program. She's been teaching for a few years now and by all measure has done an exemplary job both in her profession and in managing her post-graduate finances (and I'm not just saying that 'cuz I'm her husband). She should have qualified for this. Unfortunately she was deemed "not eligible" apparently to do some very odd terms in the program. And also she's far from the only teacher who this has happened to. Here's the story in Lisa's own words.

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