Virtual schools threatened by court ruling

An attack on homeschooling by teachers succeeds

Seventh-grader Marcy Thompson cried when she heard that a court had ordered the state to stop funding the virtual school she has attended for the last five years. The ruling, the first of its kind in the U.S., placed the Wisconsin Virtual Academy at the center of a national policy debate after critics raised a key question: Do virtual schools amount to little more than home schooling at taxpayer expense? School districts across the country are closely watching the case, which could force the academy to close and help determine the future of online education.

"It's a great education option for lots and lots and lots of people, and they need to save it," said Marcy, who is among more than 90,000 students from kindergarten through high school enrolled in virtual schools nationwide.

Virtual schools operate in 18 states, according to the North American Council for Online Learning, a trade association based in Virginia. Supporters say the schools are a godsend for parents who prefer that their children learn from home. But opponents, including the nation's largest teachers' union, insist the cyber charter schools drain money from traditional schools.

Marcy, 12, was home schooled through second grade, then began attending virtual classes in third grade.

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DE-PAUL SHOULD REINSTATE TOM KLOCEK

In Addition to Depriving Him of His 1st Amendment Rights this "University" Betrays its Once Catholic Heritage.

Founded in 1898, DePaul University holds itself out as America's largest Catholic University. Named for St. Vincent de Paul, who established the Congregation of the Mission (known as the Vincentians), the motto of the university is "Viam sapientiae monstrabo tibi". It's from Proverbs meaning, "I will show you the way of wisdom.".

Sometimes, I wonder if DePaul maintains its "Catholic" identity simply to retain tax exempt status. The classrooms and offices of the university have been almost completely denuded of crucifixes and religious artwork of any kind. After my time at DePaul, all that remains is inoffensive and nondescript representations of the saint making him appear unidentifiable.

Few of my old classmates express any loyalty to DePaul as our alma mater. Most who were graduate students described it as the most "secularized" of all of the Catholic schools they attended. For that reason, their affection and gift dollars generally go elsewhere. One local jurist, now serving in the criminal court, told me DePaul did not rate highly with him. Others told me its relationship to them is simply "cash and carry." You pay your tuition, pass your classes, take your degree and get out at the earliest possible moment.

It is difficult to imagine the reaction of the hardworking Catholic immigrants, who sacrificed from their meager earnings to help build DePaul from the ground up, if they could see it now. It hosted a recent "Out There" diversity conference for lesbian, gay, bisexual, "queer" and transgender communities, severely criticized by Cardinal Francis George. Fr. Dennis Holtschneider, the president of DePaul, defended the controversial decision to hold the conference along with the decision to permit the play "The Vagina Monologues" to be staged on campus. And that's not all. Including these items: Consider two of the other intriguing off campus conferences recommended to DePaul students which were advertised as opportunities for diversity education on the DePaul University web site:

1) "Queering the Church" Conference

"Queering the Church" conference asks this question, `Can the Church Be Queered, and if it can, how?' The conference's format is panel Discussion between pastoral and practical theologians, systematic theologians, and critical theorists The synopsis describes it this way. "What happens to the church when it is queered, where queering as a verb can denote a rethinking of sexual identities as well as a challenging of normative understandings of ecclesiology and liturgy? Can a queering of theology do more than critique and deconstruct traditional church structures, practices, performances, and self-understandings by pointing the way forward to the renewal of the church by suggesting new, more liberating and truthful structures, practices, performances, and self-understandings?"

2) "Let's Talk About Sex."

An organization of the school known as "SisterSong" proclaims itself as "proud to present our 2007 National Conference entitled `Let's Talk about Sex.' It continues: " To be held in Chicago and hosted by African American Women Evolving. Why?: Since the right to have sex is a topic rarely discussed when addressing reproductive health and rights issues, The organization "SisterSong" believes that sexual prohibitions are not only promoted by moral conservatives in this country, but also by reproductive rights advocates who fail to promote a sex-positive culture. We believe that sex for procreation or sexual pleasure is a human right, and we are striving to create a pro-sex space for the pro-choice movement. This four-day conference will include workshops and plenaries on topics such as birth control, senior sexuality, STDs, microbicides, gynecological health and wellness, erotica, militarism, and more, all through a reproductive justice lens. There will also be a special track of workshops designed by and for young women and teens."

There has been a necessary abridgment of the above to meet the requirements of a family website.

3. The Injustice to Tom Klocek.

During 2004, Thomas E. Klocek, an adjunct professor at the School of New Learning, engaged in a lively discussion with students distributing literature outside of a cafeteria. The students were members of two groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and United Muslims Moving Ahead. The literature repeated various anti-Semitic claims that Israel ought to cede its territory to the Palestinians under the theory of the so called right of return. When Klocek disagreed with the students, one compared the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazis. Subsequently, several of the students complained about Klocek to DePaul officials and launched a smear campaign describing him as a bigoted individual on account of his support for Israel.

In the upside down logic of Dean Susanne Gumbleton, Klocek, who was not in a classroom when the incident occurred, was disciplined for disagreeing with the students distributing the inflammatory literature. He was suspended with pay for the duration of the semester on September 24, 2004 by Gumbleton and advised that he would have to submit an apology to the students and he would have to consent to having his lectures monitored in order to continue teaching at DePaul in the future. Klocek objected to this treatment as a violation of his academic freedom and unsuccessfully sought to obtain a formal hearing on the allegations conducted by DePaul. When Gumbleton granted an interview to the student newspaper which justified the decision and omitted to include any meaningful references to Klocek's side of the story.

Klocek filed suit in the circuit court seeking redress for wrongful termination and defamation. The wrongful termination count was dismissed, the defamation suit continues. Klocek's mistreatment at the hands of university administrators has made the case extremely noteworthy in academia.. Free speech advocacy groups have championed his cause and DePaul finds itself defending anti-Semitic student extremists while persecuting a highly regarded Catholic faculty member who defended the traditions of the West and Israel.

DePaul has maintained a posture of official silence on this issue but in correspondence, Holtschneider backs Gumbleton and criticizes Klocek for suing the university. DePaul has repeatedly attempted to have the case dismissed, but thus far judges have refused to strike the defamation count of Klocek's complaint. I can understand the official silence of the university. It needs to continue the local news blackout. Reason: the more he Klocek case is known, the worse DePaul looks. In her own way, Dean Gumbleton treats this injustice not unlike the Islamic world where diversity and multiculturalism are not discouraged. How long the local news blackout will continue is unknown. But some day a spotlight will be shone on the anti-intellectualism of DePaul in this case. When that occurs, the lawsuit will be ended and a freshly reinvigorated university administration will reinstate Tom Klocek.

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Australian kids get distorted and inadequate history lessons

By Christopher Bantick

As we begin to think about celebrating Australia Day, the armbands will be dusted off. There will be the black armbands of shame over European colonisation, and the white armbands triumphantly boasting the nation's achievements won from a hostile land. The symbols of armbands illustrate how increasingly divisive Australian history has become, whether this is the protracted battle of the "history wars", where interpretations of indigenous ownership and colonial occupation have been raging, or the "culture wars" between previous prime minister John Howard's view of the past and Labor's.

Now with Labor in power, a new front has opened over how history is to be taught. While Labor has agreed with the Howard view of the need for a national curriculum, the critical question is: What will it contain? Australian history has become so contentious and politicised that it no longer is a subject of content and commonly agreed facts. Instead, it has morphed into an ideological minefield. Those who lose out are the kids.

Am I overstating the case? Consider this. In New South Wales schools, children as young as eight have been taught, from a government-approved textbook and distributed to NSW schools, the Sorry Song. The song. written by Kerry Fletcher in 1998 for Sorry Day festivities, contains the following words: "If we can't say sorry, to the people from this land, sing, sing loud, break through the silence, sing sorry across this land. We cry, we cry, their children were stolen, now no one knows why."

This is one example where a broad and well-rounded representation of the past has been sacrificed for an ideological position or, more bluntly, the indoctrination of eight-year-olds.

An uncomfortable reality is that there are many children in Queensland classrooms who know little history. They would fail the citizenship test on knowledge about Australia's past and society. Why? They have no factual basis. The assumption is otherwise. As then-immigration minister Kevin Andrews said in May last year: "It is the sort of thing you would expect someone who goes through school in Australia would know by the end of secondary school, and probably in some instances by the end of primary school." Wrong!

But it has not taken federal Labor long to take the high ground over history in the classroom. Where Howard wanted all Year 9 and 10 students to undertake a compulsory and factually-driven Australian history course measured out in a series of milestones, federal Labor has other plans, as Education Minister Julia Gillard indicated through a spokeswoman last week. "Australian history is a critical part of the curriculum and should be included in all years of schooling, not just for a few years in secondary school. The government will work co-operatively with the States and territories through Labor's national curriculum board to implemenmt a rigorous content-based national history curriculum for all Australian students from kindergarten to Year 12."

There is a little word missing here: facts. Moreover, there is no mention of another: chronology. The Labor take on the past sounds like the states will write their own content under broad national guidelines. It is conceivable that students will be receiving- at the whim of teachers and schools - content that although fitting a broad sense of a national curriculum has little national coherence.

Moreover research has consistently shown that children learn most successfully when they can see sequential links and associations. The British Inspectorate of Schools charged with monitoring standards, Ofsted, had this to say last year about students studying topics in isolation. "Children do not understand the chronology of what they have studied and cannot make links between important historical events."

The omission of a factual emphasis and stated chronology in the Labor plan, and let's keep in mind facts are different to content, is at odds with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's preferred position. In July last year, the then-leader of the opposition said: "Our young kids just need to be introduced to the facts in our history and facts in our society and then later on as they move through high school they can start rnaking up their own minds about what is right and wrong."

This view would seem at variance with his deputy Gillard's ideas and, curiously, squares with the Howard attempt to ground children in factual knowledge about the past. The moot point is: What will Labor's national history curriculum include? Children should be taught about their past free from ideological positions and political spin - a point Gregory Melleuish, Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Wollongong, noted in August: "In recent times there has been a move to consider history in political rather than professional terms. Many professional historians are more interested in serving political causes than historical ones."

Moreover, evidence shows that children don't want the politics. The History Teachers Association of NSW, in a submission to a Senate inquiry into school standards in July, noted students do not like politics in the classroom, or indigenous history. HTA executive officer Louise Zarmati said: 'This is a somewhat delicate subject but they don't like the indigenous part of Australian history. The feedback I get is that they are not prepared to wear the guilt. I think it sparks a lot of racism."

The fact is that Australian children are effectively being disenfranchised from knowing about their past while governments bicker about the politics of history. It is a sad indictment on the education system that many grandparents know more about Australian hisdtory than their children and certainly their grandchildren. That is something to worry about.

The article above appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on January 20, 2008