'Blasting Bush OK, but don't criticize terrorists'

A college in Michigan has decided to allow harsh criticisms of President Bush to be posted on university property, but has banned criticism of violent terrorists and abortion, according to an educational rights group that is challenging the school's practice. The issue involves Lake Superior State University in Sault St. Marie, which has ordered Professor Richard Crandall, a nearly 40-year veteran of teaching, to remove the expressions of opinion from his office door and practice his academic freedom with "responsibility."

"LSSU is displaying serious disrespect for faculty rights by demanding that Professor Crandall remove materials about public concerns from his office door," said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. "The political double standard in this case is striking."

Crandall has been teaching at LSSU since 1969, and has adorned his office door – as have other professors – with various political cartoons and postings. His, however, were all of a conservative leaning, FIRE noted.


A cartoon showing comparing the number of abortion deaths in the U.S. to the population of the blacked-out states

His postings have included a photograph of President Ronald Reagan, a cartoon mocking Vice President Cheney's hunting accident in 2006, cartoons addressing Islamic terrorism and abortion, among others.

But the university said it had received a complaint about the postings, and while keeping details about the concern secret, on March 12, 2007, ordered Crandall to take down the display, threatening him with "insubordination" if he failed to comply with the censorship. Crandall acquiesced to the restrictions imposed by Provost Bruce Harger, but then turned to FIRE for help in restoring his right of free expression.

FIRE wrote to Betty Youngblood, who was president of LSSU at the time, suggesting that such actions constituted viewpoint discrimination since other professors were allowed their cartoons. "An outside law firm responded to FIRE on behalf of the university, insisting that LSSU has not infringed on Crandall's First Amendment rights and absurdly declaring that Crandall's displays would somehow threaten the civil rights of LSSU community members," FIRE said.


A listing of the conservative's point of view on the U.S. military

"LSSU's embarrassingly poor grasp of the law and its obvious viewpoint discrimination against Professor Crandall are clear indicators that, like too many of America's universities, LSSU is ready to abandon fundamental rights in the name of making some students or faculty feel 'comfortable.' Yet the right to free expression exists to allow people to challenge the beliefs of others – even if this leads to discomfort," said Robert Shibley, vice president for FIRE. "It's time for LSSU to acknowledge the Professor Crandall has the same right to express himself as any other LSSU professor," he said.


A cartoon noting the violence of radical Islamists

The school had warned the professor: "The materials that you posted were inappropriate and you are not to post these materials or any similar materials on university property, including both the door and the wall surrounding the door... Removal of materials followed by replacement with new materials at a later date constitutes insubordination."

But FIRE noted such actions are common, "including at LSSU." "Other professors on Crandall's floor have posted materials such as a Far Side cartoon, a bumper sticker reading 'Honor Veterans; No More War,' and a twelve-point list outlining how President Bush's election was a result of corruption, among many other expressions of personal beliefs. As those professors have been granted the right to post materials as they see fit – most of which are not germane to the subjects those professors teach – so should Crandall, a political conservative, be allowed to post items reflecting his ideological viewpoints," FIRE said.


Another professor's posting that criticizes President Bush and Vice President Cheney

"The speech in question here – a form of political commentary comprising the very heart of the expression the First Amendment exists to protect-simply does not meet the exacting demands of this precise and well-established legal standard," FIRE said.

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Randy Principles: First Grade outrage

By Mark Steyn

Is American public education a form of child abuse? A week ago, the Washington Post's Brigid Schulte reported on a student named Randy Castro who attends school in Woodbridge, Va. Last November at recess he slapped a classmate on her bottom. The teacher took him to the principal. School officials wrote up an incident report and then called the police.

Randy Castro is in the First Grade. But, at the ripe old age of six, he's been declared a sex offender by Potomac View Elementary School. He's guilty of sexual harassment, and the incident report will remain on his record for the rest of his schooldays - and maybe beyond. Maybe it'll be one of those things that just keeps turning up on background checks forever and ever:

Perhaps 34-year-old Randy Castro will apply for a job and at his prospective employer's computer up will pop his sexual-harasser status yet again. Or maybe he'll be able to keep it hushed up until he's 57 and runs for governor of Virginia and suddenly his political career self-detonates when the sordid details of his Spitzeresque sexual pathologies are revealed. But that's what he is now: Randy Castro, sex offender. The title of the incident report spells out his crime: "Sexual Touching Against Student, Offensive." The curiously placed comma might also be offensive were it not that school officials are having to spend so much of their energies grappling with the First Grade sexual-harassment epidemic they can no longer afford to waste time acquiring peripheral skills such as punctuation.

Randy Castro was not apprehended until he was six, so who knows how long his reign of sexual terror lasted? Sixteen months ago, a school official in Texas accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment after the boy was observed pressing his face into the breasts of a teacher's aide when he hugged her before boarding the school bus. Fortunately, the school took decisive action and suspended the sick freak. By the way, is that the first recorded use in the history of the English language of the phrase "accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment"? Well, it won't be the last: In the state of Maryland last year, 16 kindergartners were suspended for sexual harassment, as were three pre-schoolers.

School officials declined to comment to the Washington Post on Master Castro's case on the grounds of student confidentiality. However, they did say that the decision to call the cops was "the result of a misunderstanding." And it's not like he was Tasered or anything.

When school officials call 911 because of a "misunderstanding" with a six-year-old, the fault is theirs: He's a kid; and they're school officials who are supposedly trained and handsomely remunerated to know how to deal with children. Incidentally, the phrase "school officials" isn't quite as rare as "37-year-old teacher's aide accuses four-year old of sexual harassment" but it would still ring foreign to your average old-school schoolmarm in a one-room schoolhouse. Back then schools had schoolchildren and schoolteachers and that was pretty much it. But now grade schools are full of "officials," just like the Department of Homeland Security.

So who does get a little breast and butt action in American schools these days? Obviously not your four-year-old gropers and six-year-old predators: The system's doing an admirable job of cracking down on those perverts. No, if you want to get up close and personal with body parts you've got to be a "school official." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recently heard oral arguments in the case of Savana Redding. Back in 2003, Savana was an Eighth Grader at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, when the vice principal, Kerry Wilson, "acting on a tip," discovered a fellow student to have a handful of ibuprofen tablets in her pocket. The other girl said she got them from Savana, who denied it. She had no tablets in her own pockets or in her backpack.

Vice Principal Wilson, whose mind works in interesting ways, then decided that Savana might be hiding the ibuprofen in her cleavage or her crotch. So, without contacting the girl's parents, he ordered a school official to strip-search Savana. She was obliged to expose her breasts and "her pelvic area." If Vice Principal Wilson were a four-year old pre-schooler who'd been involved in a stunt like that, he'd now be a registered sex offender for life. But fortunately he's a "school official" so if he decides to apply search techniques associated with international narcotics traffic he pretty much has a free hand to do so. After all, ibuprofen is serious stuff. As Reason's Jacob Sullum put it, "It's a good thing the school took swift action, before anyone got unauthorized relief from menstrual cramps."

The policies of these "school officials" are dignified by the name of "zero tolerance." "Zero sanity" would be a more accurate description. One day we'll look back at this period of government-instituted madness and wonder why those entrusted with the care of minors (or, to be more accurate, those who enjoy a de facto state monopoly over the care of minors) were unable to do what teachers in civilized societies have been able to do throughout human history - exercise individual human judgment. This week Michelle Obama called for Americans to pony up even more dough for their public school system. The United States already spends more per student than any other developed nation except Switzerland, and at least the Swiss have something to show for it. By any reasonable measure, at least a third of the cash dumped into American schools is entirely wasted. And, if we simply shipped every youngster to boarding school in the Alps instead, the kindergartners might have a sporting chance of making it to Second Grade before being designated as sexual abusers.

But I don't expect Michelle Obama to see it like that. Last week, an Obama delegate was revealed to have told her next door neighbor's kids to come down from the tree and quit playing "like monkeys." Unfortunately for her, they were African American, so she was "ticketed" for racist speech by the Carpentersville police, and, after issuing the usual solemn statements deploring such decisive remarks, Senator Obama removed the delegate from his campaign, had her encased in a cement overcoat and lowered into the Chicago River. He, too, operates a "zero tolerance" policy. Amid the debris of human lives caught up in these idiocies, you can also find the ruins of an indispensable element of civilized society: a sense of proportion.

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Australia: Desperation to find teachers

The article below uses the rather implausible excuse that many potential teachers would rather be miners. What they omit to mention is the unattractivesness of teaching politically correct rubbish in undisciplined classes

Before he has even finished his university degree, Michael Briggs is signed up for a six-figure salary in his new job - not as a lawyer or dentist, and not in the mines, but as a high school science teacher. Under a scholarship program unveiled by the West Australian Government, Mr Briggs will receive a $60,000 lump sum on top of his regular teaching salary. In exchange, he will teach in a country school for four years, receiving half his bonus payment now, and the rest at the end of his contract.

The bonus $60,000 is paid on top of a first-year teaching salary that is worth more than $50,000, and any other allowances, which can be worth almost $20,000 depending on the posting. The bonus can be paid in a lump sum or, as in Mr Briggs's case, as a fortnightly payment. This brings his starting salary to at least $110,000, an amount few teachers in government schools achieve. The $19million teaching scholarship program is the latest scheme launched by the state Government to attract teachers into its schools, particularly in rural and remote areas.

While all states and territories are suffering from a shortage of teachers, the problem is worse in Western Australia, with prospective and even practising teachers giving up school-work for the big salaries in mining.

Mr Briggs, 32, said his decision to enter teaching was prompted by having children and wanting a secure career and job satisfaction rather than the enticement of extra money. "I could have done a six-week course and become a crane driver or similar on six figures in the mines but it is just not challenging intellectually," he said. "This is the job I want to do. I would be doing it anyway, without the extra money." ...

State Education Minister Mark McGowan said the teacher scholarship program had received 346 applications to date, with 32 signing up for country service and the $60,000 bonus. Mr McGowan said the scholarships were designed to attract final-year teaching students to regional schools and to attract teachers into areas of serious shortages, such as maths, science, design and technology.

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