Organization: Virginia Department of Health
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Mon, 14 Dec 1992 22:27:00 EST
From:         "Michael A. Kline" <MKLINE@VDH.BITNET>
Subject:      Children of the Rainbow-5

    Children of the Rainbow, Part 5
    Education Activity in New York City Schools, and later yours? ------>

    Maks> There was a spill about Fernandez and his aspirations to seek
a post on a national level. I didn't bother about that, because I wanted
to get to the part of educating our children and this dealt with
Fernandez. There was the following political cartoon that was quite good.

    Rush: Political Cartoon in the New York Post after Fernandez
thing.... Two homeless people are in a dumpy room looking over the want
ads. One says to the other "Here's one, School Chancellor, We seek
individual who has experience with condoms, previous drug experience
and/or distribution of gay literature to children, a plus. High profile,
exorbitant salary, call David N. Dinkins."

    Now I want to go a little bit further here because we have the time.
I want to illustrate to you just how pervasive this is. It's not just in
New York. This is a FAX I received today. Right here it is, holding it in
my formally nicotine stained fingers.

    This is from the Raleigh, North Carolina News and Observer. The
headline here says "Teachers Not Culturally Equipped To Educate
Minorities, Report Says." They have had a study going on there for a
year by a group of teachers, administrators, and higher education
officials. And there are 50 recommendations on how to curb the problem of
teachers being out of touch culturally with some of the students.

    It says here in the story, "Many teachers are so out of touch, with
other cultures, that they often don't recognize their own biases." So the
problem in schools according to this bunch is that teachers come in with
bias. They don't understand the cultures of these kids. My friends,
multi-culturalism has caused this. Multi-culturalism takes a bunch of
American kids and teaches them about a bunch of culture that is not part
of their lives.

    It may be the culture of their heritage, but they're not living where
their heritage is, they're living in America. There is a distinct
American culture. You want to know what it is? It's called "Rugged
Individualism". Now that has come to mean negative things now a days.
Rugged Individualism is portrayed today as selfishness and greed and
caring only about one self. Rugged Individualism is what built this
country.

    Freedom. More freedom here than anywhere in the world, and people
using that freedom, celebrating that freedom, being the best they can be.
If you have a country where individuals are free to become the best they
can be, then you're going to have a great country, and we're not heading
down that direction with this kind of stuff. Teachers not being
culturally equipped.

    I want to share with you ONE of the recommendations of the 50 that
were made. "Make cultural diversity training as important as improving
student's academic performance." That is EXACTLY what's wrong.

    "Make students LOVE one another. Hi. I see you and I LIKE you. I LOVE
you. We are friends. Isn't it wonderful?" 2 + 2 may not equal 4 anymore
if the teacher and the student don't FEEL right about it. But at least
they're going to love one another. Now, this is not just confined to
Raleigh, North Carolina.

    Here I hold, a column by the miraculous timed column written by Susan
Fields. She lives in Washington, DC. This is a column about Lynn Channey
leaving the National Endowment for the Humanities. Channey is leaving 15
months before her term expires because she doesn't want to compromise her
beliefs perhaps with the new Clinton administration. I want to read to
you some of what comes from her column as to what's being taught on
various college campuses around the country.

    San Diego State University, They have a course in the historical,
cultural and social exploration of lesbianism in western civilization.

    Then, at the University of Minnesota, a student can read a
sociological account of the bathroom line, Butch-Femme relationship, or
offers a history of Lesbian sex wars in the 80's in a course called
"Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual and Transgender Studies."

    As Susan Fields writes here, "Why study 'The Rise And Fall Of The
Roman Empire' when you can analyze 'Pottie Conversation'" That's what
they're teaching. That's what they're teaching.

    Now, there is a woman named Peggy Macintosh, associate director of
the Center for Research on Women at Welmsly. That's were Hillory Clinton
went to school, Mrs. Bill Clinton, I'm sorry. (Staff plays Hail to the
Staff followed by short giggle that's supposed to be Hillory's.)

    She, Peggy, says that the problem with American Education today is
"Vertical Thinking." What is "Vertical Thinking?"

    "'Vertical Thinking' is stimulated by words such as 'excellence',
'accomplishment', 'success', and 'achievement'." This is all BAD folks,
we can't teach this anymore. "'Vertical Thinking' can be especially
dangerous" she says, "when it's used by certain white males who create
social structures like the military, the government, the academy and the
CHURCH."

    These are the values, EXCELLENCE, ACHIEVEMENT, SUCCESS that made this
country great, and if we want to keep the country great, we'd better keep
teaching this stuff and find a way to derail these phycho-babblers...

    MAKS> That's it on the education side as well. As far as I know, that
was all that was brought up this last week.

    In His Love,
    Maks
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