What Would You Do?

Your elementary school kids come home from from their first day of class and say, "Mom and dad! Guess what? Ms. Foxboro is now Mr. Foxboro! But I don't understand, how can a man become a woman?"

It happened in Vacaville, CA.

It's just one more reason to pull your kids out of public school.

A Strange Alliance

I wouldn't normally find myself agreeing with a Muslim wanting to practice her religion in a public school however...

In Germany, a Muslim family sued to keep their daughter out of swim lessons because of Islamic indecency rules. If this happened in the U.S. I wouldn't have much sympathy for the family at all because they'd have the option of just pulling the girl out of school and educating her the way they want to. From the article: "The court sided with the school, saying that the state’s responsibility to educate the girl outweighed an infringement on her religious freedom."

Another way to say that is: "Too bad mom and dad, we really own your children and we will do as we please with them no matter what you want."

Why do I care? I have no interest in this particular family. However, we need to keep watch because we're headed that direction here. A California court ruling that is now under review would have basically made criminals of all parents homeschooling their children. It will probably get overturned.

As a nation, we're increasingly coming under the impression that we, and our children are the property of the government. We let the government assert authority over us it has not historically had nor should it ever have. How long will it be before bringing your kids up as Believer's and rejecting government indoctrination will be seen as a crime? Based on what's going on in Texas, I say it won't be long.

Not Much Sympathy

An illegal immigrant from the Philippines is having a rough time. She's trying to get through school at UCLA and she has to take time off to work to pay for it.

It's not her fault she's an illegal immigrant, America is the only country she knows. Her parents brought her here when she was very young. I guess what gets me is that in the article she's whining about the difficulties she's having and the fact that she's not going to be able to do anything with her degree when she's done because it will be tough for her to get a job.

Nowhere in the article is there any line such as, "Even though I'm struggling through things here, I'm grateful for growing up in a place with much better living conditions than I might have had back in the Philippines."

She's nearly done with her degree. I happen to know that in the Philippines, people are educated in English. She'd have very little difficulty getting along in Manila on English alone while she applied her self as hard to studying Tagalog as she did her university studies. In the mean time, I've no doubt that a school there would accept someone as a teacher with a degree from UCLA.

I'm not even saying she should be deported, I'm just saying that if she's having such a rough go of it here, maybe she should return and give it a shot there.

Family Friendly Education

...but only if you're a homosexual family.

In May of last year, I wrote about a bill introduced in to the California Senate which was ultimately defeated. Not only is it back with a vengeance, it's the law of the land.

Our Not-So-Beloved Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 777 in to law. He should be recalled as governor immediately. This bill was authored by Representative Sheila Kuehel, an activist lesbian.

This law is nothing short of forced homosexual indoctrination of our children. Please have a vomit bag handy before continuing.

Here is the full text of the bill under question.

There are two major things that this law accomplishes:

1. It removes the definition of "sex" (biological sexual trait) and replaces it with "gender" which is one's own perception of sexual identity regardless of actual biological sexual assignment.
2. It defines atheism and agnosticism as religions in the educational code.

From the bill:

SECTION 1.  Section 200 of the Education Code is amended to read:
  200.  It is the policy of the State of California to afford all
persons in public schools, regardless of their  sex, ethnic
group identification, race, national origin, religion, mental or
physical disability, or regardless of any actual or perceived
  disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity,
religion, sexual orientation, or any other  characteristic that
is contained in the definition of hate crimes set forth in Section
422.55 of the Penal Code, equal rights and opportunities in the
educational institutions of the state. The purpose of this chapter is
to prohibit acts which are contrary to that policy and to provide
remedies therefor.

Notice what was changed. 'Sex' was replaced with 'gender'. 'Mental or physical disability' was replaced with the nebulous 'disability', and 'national origin' was replaced with 'nationality'.

• Gender For Sex - 'Sex' is a biological definition. There are two sexes; male and female. Yes, there are some people born with both traits but it's very rare. Replacing sex with gender opens us up to how any individual perceives his/her/its sexual identity. The law now says that we have to accommodate that persons perceptions.
• Disability - This is a suspicious change. Why take out "mental or physical" from that list? Section 210.1 was added to the code to define disability as mental or physical but the change still concerns me. If some of you have ideas on how this can be manipulated, I'm open to suggestions.
• Nationality - 'National origin' indicated where some one has come from. Having that term replaced with 'nationality' tells me that it's ok to come here, use our public resources, supported by taxpayers without any regard for integrating oneself in to American culture and society. It's a minor change I realize but it was changed for a reason. Again, it makes me wonder what it leaves open for legal manipulation.

Back to the sex vs gender deal. Look at this:

210.7.  "Gender" means sex, and includes a person's gender
identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not
stereotypically associated with the person's assigned sex at birth.
 SEC. 5.  Section 212 of the Education Code is repealed. 
  212.  "Sex" means the biological condition or quality of being a
male or female human being. 

Why the change? What mischief does this open us up to? The term 'sex' was completely stricken from the code. Biology is no longer legally relevant. Boys can wear dresses to school and use the girls bathrooms and locker rooms because they want to act female. Brianna can force her teachers to call her Bob and dress like a boy. Girls can run for homecoming king, boys for queen, etc. Does this also mean that a boy who's perceived gender identity is female can join the girls soccer team? You can bet it will happen. And what happens when other students, who have moral and values that view cross-dressing and homosexuality as wrong speak up and refuse to accept the new gender definitions foisted upon them? If Andrew starts wearing dresses and makeup to school and the other kids tease him, will they be forced in to "sensitivity" classes? You can bet that various districts will be proactive and start forcing children in to these classes anyway without parental consent.

Given the non-discrimination clause, this means that homosexuals, transsexuals and bisexuals must be positively portrayed in textbooks etc. There is wide speculation that the terms "mom" and "dad" will be eliminated from the text books because those terms are seen as discriminatory toward same sex couples with children by the homosexual activists. There are way more implications to all of this than I can even begin to explore here. Please add your own thoughts in the comments.

One of the more troubling aspects of this law isn't even being mentioned by anyone else.

SEC. 25.  Section 66262 is added to the Education Code, to read:
  66262.  "Religion" includes all aspects of religious belief,
observance, and practice and includes agnosticism and atheism.

Make no mistake here. The Republik of Kalifornia has just codified atheisim and agnosticism in to law as religions. Non-belief is now a religion according to the law. This will be used as the final push to get any religious references out of the schools (particularly Christianity). Now, people who don't believe God exists can sue because they simply have to say that atheism is their religion and they're being discriminated against.

This should be, but sadly won't be the the death knell of the public school system, or, as I like to call it, the Collectivist Education Camps. Please go read my post from two years ago about shutting down the public school system completely.

This also has national implications, so don't think that because you don't live in California that this won't affect you and your children eventually.

Bragging Rights

Little Dif continues to amaze her proud father.

She was reading a book to me this evening on the phone. I can't always understand her because the phone tends to drift away from her mouth, but it was about cats and something in there to do with nutrition. She's merrily reading along and comes across the word "carbohydrates". Did she stumble, falter or otherwise hesitate? Noooooooo not my kid! She read it like she's said it a thousand times before. She went on to tell me about other "important nutrients." She still has some work to do though as she struggled with "Phoenicians." Even so, she redeemed herself a moment later with "ancient Egyptians." Did I mention she's not even seven years old yet?

Educating Children

Little Difster is an awesome kid. She's a total sponge when it comes to learning and I love it. Lately I've been spending more time on focused learning with her as well as our normal impromptu lessons about this that and the other thing. Keep in mind that she is not quite six years old yet.

A few weeks ago, I spent about an hour with her on counting coins. Like her dad, math is not her strong point but it's obviously something she needs to know and I think I've neglected it a bit with her. So I decided to play a little catch up with her on that. I had a pocket full of coins so I took them out and put them on the table. She already knew how much each coin represented so we skipped that part. She was a little frustrated at the beginning of the lesson but within an hour, she could add up any combination of coins I threw at her. After a little practice and some review drills, she can now do it in her head. This all came from an hour in concentrated instruction.

Just this evening I decided to pull out her dictionary and we flipped through pages and I had her reading some fairly difficult and unfamiliar words. For example, she read the word 'vocabulary' without missing a beat and then asked me what it meant. My reply was, "This is a dictionary, you can read the answer to that yourself." So she read the definition and she understood it. Great. For the next 45 minutes, her wee little brain learned added a bunch of new words to her vocabulary. Then something occurred to me; she doesn't know how to actually find a word in the dictionary for herself. After a respite, we sat down on the couch and I showed her how to find words and then gave her some words to find. She did great; I was really proud of her.

My point in all of this is not to brag about my daughter (which I am not loathe to do) but to demonstrate that it really takes very little effort to teach a child. An hour counting coins and 1.5 hours with a dictionary and she's got some knowledge that will propel her forward to the next level of learning.

You, as a parent have NO excuse not to educate your child. Don't trust the schools to do it; not even the private ones. And don't just educate them; teach them how to think. You can stuff volumes of information in to the head of a child but if he don't teach them how to apply it, how to reason things out and come to a conclusion, the knowledge is of no value. Furthermore, if you don't teach them to use the knowledge they have to serve God where they can, it's even worse. Knowledge must be heavily supplemented with virtue and with that we can hope to raise wise and godly children.

Knowledge alone is useless; it's only a starting point. Educating a child is the whole package; knowledge, virtue and reason. If you've been lagging behind so far, it's not too late to start.