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During the
1960's, there was the "establishment." The giant
military industrial complex with greedy and
heartless corporations who waged war for profit
with no regard for the suffering it brought to the
millions of poor souls who were in the wrong place
at the wrong time. There were student
demonstrations on college campuses and school
administrators calling in the National Guard to
stop those demonstrations.
It was a "war" of the young, started by the young,
against the institutions of America. It was the
powerless against the powerful. At the time, some
referred to the disparity of views as the
generation gap. The young were rebelling against
the old establishment. No one taught the students
to rebel or why. It was a time when independent
thought was just that, it was a time when you
didn't trust anyone over thirty. Students with the
same ideas of what was wrong with waging a war in
Vietnam came together to express their sentiments
and protested. Feelings and passions were strong
on both sides of the political spectrum due to the
very nature of those feelings. They were so
ingrained with zeal because individuals were able
to view all sides of the question and decided on
their own how they felt about the issues; the
decision to protest war in Southeast Asia was a
part of each of the protesters, because it was
each one’s individual idea. Whether you agreed
with the demonstrators against the war in Vietnam
or not, you couldn’t disagree about their passion.
Somehow, in the past few decades, things got
turned around. The young in America are now more
apt to agree with the government than the old. In
a recent poll taken by the Pew Research Center for
the People & the Press, Americans ages 18-29
support the Bush Administrations intention to use
military action against Iraq. The poll shows that
nearly 70% of young people agree that military
action in the Gulf is called for. On the other end
of the spectrum, only 51% of people over the age
of 65 support a war against Iraq.
If you are an old ex-war protestor in a position
of power over young people, there is only one
thing to do when you find out that the people in
your charge not only think independently after
viewing all sides, they also think differently
than you. You need to indoctrinate your captive
audience. You see, when you were young, you had
the ability to think on your own, and make up your
own mind. However, the young people
today aren't as smart or savvy as you were, so
they need the benefit of your ideology forced on
them to the exclusion of anyone else's.
That's what the ex-hippies on the San Francisco
School Board have decided. In an unanimous
decision they voted to "educate" parents on how
not to talk to military recruiters, condemn any
war against Iraq, and to have a district wide "day
of public discussion" against war with Iraq. In a
recent newspaper article a San Francisco school
board member was reported to have said, "Our
district has had a long-standing policy that we
will not share student information with military
recruiters."
Forgetting the American tradition of schools being
places of learning all sides of a political issue
and thus allowing students to make up their own
minds about subjects that affect them—and also
forgetting that they are part of America-- the San
Francisco School Board has chosen to thumb their
noses at not only the United States, but at their
own student population and their families.
Current law requires school districts in the
United States to give the federal government
certain identifying information about students in
their schools. In the event school districts do
not, they risk losing federal funding.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 says in
pertinent part under Section 9525 (a) (2) titled
Armed Forces Recruiter Access to Students and
Student Recruiting Information:
Each local educational agency receiving assistance
under
this Act shall provide, on a request made by military
recruiters or an institution of higher education,
access
to secondary school student's names, addresses, and
telephone listings.
However, individual students or their parents, not
school districts, may request their contact
information be withheld unless written permission
is given by the student's parents:
Consent- A secondary school student or the parent of
the student may request that the student's name,
address,
and telephone listing described in paragraph (1) not be
released without prior written parental consent, and
the
local educational agency or private school shall notify
parents of the option to make a request and shall
comply
with any request.
The San Francisco school district is already
facing a 22 million dollar budget cut; the loss of
federal funding could be devastating for them.
However, such possibilities, and the deleterious
effect on their students, are not enough to stop
the actions of the San Franciscans on the school
board. Nor were the protests from the PTA, who
condemned the Board's actions as promoting a
political agenda, or concerned parents of students
who complained the resolution only named anti-war
organizations; nothing could stop them from
passing the resolutions.
They are on a mission.
A day earlier the city of Oakland, a neighbor of
San Francisco, had "a timely exercise in critical
thinking," by staging a "teach-in on Iraq." During
which time only speakers who were against any
possible war spoke. San Francisco's "teach-in" is
scheduled to take place sometime in the next two
months.
The Left, like other tyrants and despots across
the globe, chose to program rather than teach.
After all, if people are allowed to make up their
own minds, they might choose the "wrong" path. The
San Francisco school board is seeking the advice
of psychologists in order to gear their message
correctly depending upon the age of the
schoolchildren being taught. They need to be sure
their message is fully absorbed and parroted by
all children within their realm.
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