Is this what passes for "teaching" our kids these days?

[Barbella]

We trust people like this to help shape our kids' minds and mold their future? Scary....

The North Carolina high school student who was berated by his teacher after he spoke critically of President Obama told Fox News on Monday that he wanted to "laugh" when he heard the teacher suggest he could be arrested for criticizing a sitting president.

"Honestly, at the time I wanted to laugh at her, because I've been taught all my life that nobody can take your opinion," Hunter Rogers said. He said he knew that it takes an actual threat against the president, not just criticism, to be arrested.

Hunter Rogers and his mother Gina spoke to Fox News about the incident and the recording of the argument that later went viral on YouTube.

"(The teacher) doesn't want to hear anything but what she believes, and ... if you disagree, you get berated and put down," Rogers said. "I just decided to finally get some proof of it."

The web video does not show faces, but the heated argument in the classroom can clearly be heard.

The argument started when the classroom began discussing news reports that Mitt Romney bullied a fellow student when he was in high school. At the time, The Washington Post had recently published a lengthy article alleging that Romney, as a teenager, had cut off another student's hair.

"Didn't Obama bully somebody though?" a student in the North Carolina classroom asked when the report was brought up, referring to an incident Obama described in his memoir "Dreams From My Father." In the book, Obama wrote that, as a child, he once pushed a female classmate after other students taunted them -- the only two black students in their grade -- and called Obama her boyfriend.

The teacher, in the video, said she didn't know whether Obama bullied anyone -- but the argument quickly escalated, as the teacher yelled at the student, telling him "there is no comparison."

"He's running for president," she said of Romney. "Obama is the president."

The teacher later said: "Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?"

The student told the teacher that someone can't be arrested "unless you threaten the president."

The Salisbury Post reported Monday that district school officials suspended the teacher in the course of their investigation into the incident.

Rogers' mother Gina told Fox News she was "shocked" when she heard the tape. She said her son had told stories about the classroom arguments, but she didn't realize they were this "extreme."

"I don't feel the teacher should have started a political discussion if she wasn't willing to hear both sides," she said.

The school system said in a statement that it "expects all students and employees to be respectful in the school environment and for all teachers to maintain their professionalism in the classroom."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...riticism-obama/?intcmp=trending#ixzz1vhElZrW9

 

[LeRoy_Was_Here]

Very bad teacher. Should probably be fired. But someone should probably point out a few things to the student:

(1) Obama was six years old at the time of his bullying incident. Mitt Rmoney was an eighteen-year-old adult at the time of his, uh, rather more serious bullying incident.

(2) People WERE in fact arrested for simply criticizing the Bush administration. A man in Colorado was arrested after telling Dick Cheney that "your policies in Iraq are reprehensible".

 

[Doc]

Yes, it is.

At least, if you send your children to most Public Schools.

There is a real reason (Numerous reasons, actually) that Private and Charter Schools are increasing, while, at the same time, more and more parents either Home School their children, or, move to suburbs where you tend to have better Public School districts.....

 

[Arkady]

I'd expect private and charter schools to increase at a time of increasing wealth inequality. If you have a society with a great middle class, like the US in the 1960s, the bulk of the society's wealth is going to be concentrated in the hands of the vast majority of its people, who are going to make sure there are good public schools for their kids. When, on the other hand, you have a society where a huge portion of its wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small minority, it's much cheaper for them to assure good education for their kids at exclusive schools that only their kids go to, while letting the rest of the society to fall into near-illiteracy. The more wealth inequality we get in this country, the more you should expect the public schools to deteriorate and the economic elite to move their kids into private and charter schools.

It's a similar phenomenon to gated communities. When most of a nation's wealth is in the hands of a vast middle class, wealth will be spent to keep communities, generally, safe, clean, well-maintained, etc. When, however, most of a nation's wealth is in the hands of an elite group, it's cheaper to wall off a few communities and make those incredibly nice.

You can see the difference if you compare a nation with very high wealth inequality (like Mexico) versus one with very low wealth inequality (like Norway). If you were in the right neighborhood in Mexico, it would seem like a very wealthy nation -- clean, safe streets, good schools, etc. But if you were in the wrong neighborhood, it would seem like a third-world slum -- filth in the gutters, rampant violent crime, mass illiteracy, etc. Norway, on the other hand, is generally a nice place regardless of neighborhood... even the kids of the poor and middle class get excellent educations and live in safe neighborhoods. Unfortunately, we're descending towards Mexico, rather than rising towards Norway.