Monthly Archive for December, 2005

Suspected of a lesbian friendship, two 16-year-old girls were expelled from a Lutheran high school in Riverside, California. They’ve sued the school for invasion of privacy and discrimination.

The lawsuit alleges that the school’s principal, Gregory Bork, called the girls into his office, grilled them on their sexual orientation and “coerced” one girl into saying she loved the other.

The next day, the lawsuit says, Bork told the girls’ parents they could not stay at the school with “those feelings.” In a Sept. 12 letter to the parents, Bork acknowledged that officials had seen no physical contact between the girls but said their friendship was “uncharacteristic of normal girl relationships and more characteristic of a lesbian one.”

They’re not accused of having sex. They’re accused of love.

A private school has considerable leeway in who is allowed to remain as a student. However the girls’ lawyer said the school can’t collect tuition and violate California’s civil rights laws. I wonder if the school’s “Christian Code of Conduct” bans loving relationships. I doubt it.

Military recruiters are having trouble getting names, addresses and phone numbers of students at some high schools as middle-class parents sign forms requesting confidentiality. The Dayton Daily News contrasts opt-outs at affluent, nearly all-white Beavercreek High, where 1,369 parents signed forms in 2005 compared to 2 in 2004. At some other area schools, opt-outs still run in the 0 to 1 range.

Some parents think their teen-agers aren’t ready to make life decisions, reports the Christian Science Monitor, which has a round-up on the issue.

On the new Carnival of Education, Pig complains that students were allowed to create a “Kick the Teacher” class fair booth: Students paid to kick a soccer ball at a teacher’s photo. Rejecting suggestions to substitute a picture of the Grinch, Voldemort or Count Olaf (the villain of the Lemony Snicket books), the principal renamed the booth “Pick the Teacher” and let it go on. Pig writes:

I’ve never had a job in which I just feel defeated day in and day out. I’m starting to feel that this school does not deserve me. I’m not being cocky, but I am a hard-working, dedicated, caring, thoughtful, talented teacher. I’m good at what I do. I don’t need constant praise or pats on the back to know that I’m doing a good job, but I also can no longer tolerate an environment in which I’m unsupported, belittled and ignored in the course of doing a good job.

“Pick the Teacher” won the contest, “thus teaching kids that violence toward your teachers wins first place.”

The principal had called the booth a “suspendable offense,” until she learned the students involved were the children of a PTA leader and a teacher.

Never Yet Melted links to the story of the substitute teacher in Pennsylvania who told first graders not to believe in Santa Claus.

LICKDALE — Jamey Schaeffer stretched her mouth open wide, showing off a pair of twin gaps in her smile. With a mouthful of fingers, she said she has no interest in two front teeth for Christmas.

Instead, she’d like a Barbie doll from Santa Claus — and Santa Claus only.

But a substitute music teacher almost came between the 6-year-old and a Christmas Eve spent dancing cheek to cheek with sugar plums.

Theresa Farrisi stood in for Schaeffer’s regular music teacher one day last week. One of her assignments was to read Clement C. Moore’s famous poem, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” to a first-grade class at Lickdale Elementary School.

“The poem has great literary value, but it goes against my conscience to teach something which I know to be false to children, who are impressionable,” said Farrisi, 43, of Myerstown. “It’s a story. I taught it as a story. There’s no real person called Santa Claus living at the North Pole.”

Some of the first grades went home crying.

Later, Farrisi explained she believes Santa is religious.

A secular public school should not be propagating any kind of religion. The belief in Santa Claus as a divine, magical, omniscient, powerful, giving, loving father-figure, to whom children are taught to make supplications and requests, is a religion indeed — a distorted substitute for the Judeo-Christian God.

On Christmas Eve, my niece Virginia, a six-year old in first grade, read The Night Before Christmas (originally A Visit from Saint Nicholas) all by herself. The next day I overheard her discussing Santa Claus with Joshua, who’s also in first grade. Joshua had been explaining how Santa gets his sleigh to fly and delivers thousands of presents. “Obviously, it’s magic!”

“I have a friend who thinks Santa Claus isn’t real,” she confided to Joshua.

“That’s silly!” Joshua said. “Who eats the cookies?”

“I think Santa is real,” said Virginia.

“Of course, he’s real,” said Joshua. “He’s got magic. That’s how he does it.”

They went on to a serious discussion of real and unreal Santas. Some are “store employees,” Joshua explained. Virginia, who believes a Santa who asks your name can’t possibly be keeping a list of who’s naughty or nice, had been greeted by a Santa who’d been tipped off by her mother. “Virginia! Good to see you!” Santa said. “That was a real Santa,” she said.

Educators are shocked by the declining literacy of college graduates, reports the Washington Post.

“It’s appalling — it’s really astounding,” said Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association and a librarian at California State University at Fresno. “Only 31 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it. That’s not saying much for the remainder.”

While more Americans are graduating from college, and more than ever are applying for admission, far fewer are leaving higher education with the skills needed to comprehend routine data, such as reading a table about the relationship between blood pressure and physical activity, according to the federal study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics.

. . . The test measures how well adults comprehend basic instructions and tasks through reading — such as computing costs per ounce of food items, comparing viewpoints on two editorials and reading prescription labels. Only 41 percent of graduate students tested in 2003 could be classified as “proficient” in prose — reading and understanding information in short texts — down 10 percentage points since 1992. Of college graduates, only 31 percent were classified as proficient — compared with 40 percent in 1992.

I’m puzzled at the experts’ puzzlement. More poorly prepared students are going to college, pressuring instructors to lower standards so at least some can pass.

Critics of state graduation exams, which typically require partial mastery of ninth grade reading, writing and math skills, complain that the exams — not poor skills — will prevent students from going to college.