Happiness in Slavery?

“Of all the views of this law [for public education], none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe as they are the ultimate guardians of their own liberty.” –Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782. ME 2:206

“Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”–Article 3, Northwest Ordinance

“I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. All reforms which rest simply upon the law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile…. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move…. Education thus conceived marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience.”–John Dewey,  My Pedagogic Creed, 1897

“Anita Bryant was also for homophobia.  She started a campaign in the late seventies called ‘save our children.’ which was designed to repeal the few protections that existed in that time in our country for LGBT people. She succeeded. She panicked our nation. She started a nationwide crusade that led to the creation of the moral majority and the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. She was very successful, and I look at Oregon in the year 2000, and I think history repeats itself, and as Marx once said the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. I am hoping this will be a farce.”–Current Assistant Deputy Secretary for Safe and Drug-Free Schools Kevin Jennings, speaking to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), in Iowa, 2000.

Jennings founded GLSEN, and was its executive director for a long time.  GLSEN promulgates a reading list that it purports promotes safe schools.  Teachers can order these books as part of their curriculum, or students can order them directly.

Gateway Pundit has more on the books, including excerpts.   You don’t have to be a Christian to find them wildly inappropriate for children, and it is just one more indication among many that Mr. Jennings should not be allowed near children, let alone acting as a safe schools czar.  One could ask, with cause, just who he is making the schools safe for,  since he has already indicated that he is perfectly ok with adults stealing our children’s innocence. 

Reading even a portion of the excerpts, and considering the judgement that finds a place for this sorry excuse for a human being in education, or an educational establishment that would for even a second, tarnish its credibility by even considering letting him be involved in any way, shape, or form, it is clear that we have departed completely from the goals set forth in the Northwest Ordinance, and as that has happened, can the safety of our people, resting on what is now an unguarded liberty, be far behind?

Of course there are many who think that Mr. Jennings needs to go.  I’m given hope by the fact that I am not the only one.  But it does nothing to soften my opinion.  It’s time for Mr. Jennings to go…before he makes the mistake of getting too close to my children.