Who schooled the Senate?

I’m sure you all remember the fuss Senate Democrats made over the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. Some of the most commonly voiced criticisms stemmed from DeVos’ lack of personal experience with public schools, either as a student or professional educator and her personal advocacy for charter schools and school vouchers.

A good education is for me and mine, but not for you.

You’d think that Democrats and other leftists would be champions of charter schools and school vouchers. Instead, one of the first things Barack Obama did as president was to end the voucher program for Washington, D.C., students, despite evidence that the program was improving performance. The Democrat-controlled Congress was silent.

It’s not that Senators don’t love private schools. In the 114th Congress, 26 of 100 Senators attended private high schools, compared to about 8% of the general population. Six of ten Democrats who questioned DeVos in committee prior to her confirmation vote were, themselves, the beneficiaries of public school educations, chose private schools for their own children, or have grandchildren attending private schools. In 2009, 45% of Senators elected to send at least one of their own children to private school.

Why is it, then, that Democrats and leftists are so opposed to charter schools and school vouchers? It could be that they’re just that beholden to the National Education Association.

Or it could be this:

Wealth has it’s privileges and those privileges are not for you and especially not for your children. If allowed a superior education*, the next generation of riffraff might presume to compete with the children of the upper crust to become the power brokers of tomorrow and that cannot be tolerated.

The Democrats and their leftist masters rely on a permanent underclass to maintain their power base. Anything that challenges that must be stopped by any means possible and than includes sacrificing future generations on the altar of public schools.

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* Another advantage of the most elite private school education is the opportunity to build networks among the already-advantaged.

Northeastern University’s Finest

According to her LinkedIn bio, Keely Mullen is a “student pursuing opportunities in community organizing and anti-racism advocacy work.”

No wonder she’s advocating for student loan forgiveness. She’ll never be able to pay hers back working in those fields. Although given her apparent understanding of math and economics, it’s a wonder she was able to figure that out.

In case you’re wondering how I feel about loan forgiveness, I’ve written about it before.

This. Is. Insanity.

I don’t care how you feel about firearms, it should concern you that the people charged with educating children are too stupid to be able to differentiate between a weapon and a keychain.

Yet another student has landed in trouble for having something that represents a gun, but isn’t actually anything like a real gun.

This time the student is 12-year-old Joseph Lyssikatos, a student in advanced math who had perfect attendance last year. The seventh-grader made the mistake of bringing a ridiculously small, silver keychain shaped like a gun to Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School in Coventry, R.I, reports local NBC affiliate WJAR.

The two-inch keychain fell out of Lyssikatos’s backpack while he was at school.

After another kid picked it up and displayed it to other students, a teacher intervened and impounded the keychain.

And it’s even worse than that.

The Feinstein Middle School handbook entitled “Serious Disciplinary Infractions” declares: “Possession/carrying/use of/threat of use of a firearm or replica shall result in a recommendation for expulsion for a period of time up to one full calendar year.”

I wonder. Do the school officials who handed down the suspension believe that the keychain is an actual firearm or a replica of a firearm? It’s hard to tell which it is from the photo.

Just kidding.

Not only are these school officials too stupid to differentiate between a real threat and, shall we say, no cause for concern whatsoever, they can’t even correctly interpret the language used in their own policies. In my dictionary, and I’m guessing in every other dictionary in America, “replica” is defined as “any close or exact copy or reproduction.”

I admit to not keeping current with all the latest trends in firearms, but I’m fairly certain no one is making any that are barely larger than a quarter. I wonder what kind of ammo that would use, anyway. Seed beads?

Do I believe middle school students should be allowed to bring weapons to school? Of course not. Do I believe they should be allowed to bring toys that no rational person with an IQ over 17 would mistake for a firearm? Why, yes. Yes, I do. So shoot me with a keychain.

Read more here.

Teaching All The Wrong Lessons

I know and respect many teachers, but “educators,” taken as a group, must be among the stupidest people on earth. Their inability to distinguish between a one-inch plastic toy and an actual weapon is legendary. And who else would think it a good idea to strip search a middle school student in a frenzied search for…Advil?

Please click through and watch this video. (But remember to come back and read the rest of this post!)

Do you know what this reminded me of? Friday Flip-Up Day. When my oldest daughter was in kindergarten, The boys at her elementary school had a “game” they would play to torment the girls, Friday Flip-Up Day. Every Friday, any little girl who was so foolish as to wear a dress would be at the mercy of the boys, who would attempt creep up behind her and flip up the hem of her dress, hoping for a peek at her panties.

Friday Flip-up Day had been going on for years and, while it was officially forbidden, it was forbidden in a wink-and-a-nod, boys-will-be-boys sort of way. Other parents were apparently resigned to it; I first heard about it from another mother who told me, “Whatever you do, don’t let your daughter wear a dress to school on a Friday.”

So naturally, I told my daughter that if anyone ever flipped up the hem of her dress, she was to turn around and smack him in the face as hard as she could. Which is what I would do if some random guy flipped up the hem of my dress; it was a teachable moment.

Then I phoned the school principal to let him know what I’d done. He was indignant!

And doesn’t that attitude illustrate nicely exactly what’s wrong with the situation in this video? Every adult in this boy’s life has failed him. Think about that. Every adult, his parents included. Whether through a failure of resolve, of ability or of empathy, they’ve failed to protect him from apparently relentless bullying. Then when he’s lost all hope that the adults can or will do anything to improve his situation (or that they even know or care) and decides to take matters into his own hands, there they are to hand out some “consequences.” It was another teachable moment but it’s one lesson I hope he fails.

Hispanic Students In California Offended By The Stars And Stripes

Update: How awesome is this:

 

One wonders why people want to come here if the mere sight of Old Glory offends them.

A Stanislaus County school is forcing a student to take an American flag off of his bike.

Snip…

“(The) First Amendment is important,” Superintendent Edward Parraz said. “We want the kids to respect it, understand it, and with that comes a responsiblity.”

Parraz said the campus has recently experienced some racial tension. He said some students got out of hand on Cinco de Mayo.

“Our Hispanic, you know, kids will, you know, bring their Mexican flags and they’ll display it, and then of course the kids would do the American flag situation, and it does cause kind of a racial tension which we don’t really want,” Parraz said. “We want them to appreciate the cultures.”

More from Michelle Malkin.