Hopefully the Seattle Public Schools Board will learn a lesson from this
A protest of military recruiting in Seattle Public Schools has shut down tonight’s School Board meeting.
Acting President Darlene Flynn recessed the meeting before she could even take roll because about 30 students marched into the meeting room chanting, “Yo School Board, what’s up? We’re here to say we’ve had enough.”
Some students covered with fake blood collapsed on the floor, then were carried around the room. After the demonstration, the students spoke to the meeting’s attendees in support of a proposed policy they wrote that would require military recruitment to be confined to twice-yearly recruitment fairs.
After more than a half-hour, the board convened with the district’s attorney to discuss its course of action. Board members re-entered the board meeting room, where the students demanded 10 to 15 minutes to address them.
This is what you get when you give students a high point value end of term assignment with no wrong answers like this one
If Adolf Hitler had an iPod, he’d be rocking out to anthems by Queen. Marie Antoinette’s playlist would feature Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”
So say the students in Ballard High School teacher Alicia Hale’s advanced European history classes. For their final project of the year, the tech-savvy teens wove together snippets of those and other contemporary songs with commentaries on how they relate to historical figures.
Though it was the end of term and students may have been tempted to slack off, every student turned in the project, Hale said, and some even made short videos. There were iPod playlists for Phillip II of Spain and Rasputin; music ran the gamut from classic opera to the theme from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
Great googly-moogly! I would have been a 4.0 student if my assignments had been this insipid.
These students should really sue the district for making them idiots.
And how is this supposed to be preparing them for life as an adult? What kind of an idiot came up with that idea?
Well the reason that military recruitment is allowed to happen at public schools more than other recruiters is because the schools get kick backs from the government to allow the recruiting to happen outside of job fairs. Personally I think that the military should be treated just like any other employer or college recruiter and only be present at a time when other recruiters are allowed to be on campus as well. And the students protest is allowed under the First Amendment (even though I feel the approach was wrong and reeked of sensationalism).
As for the class project, yes, some of them are getting asinine. I’ve already posted that I think the public school system is a joke. It’s a shame that history isn’t actually teaching history anymore.
Chris, then you are fine with your property taxes going up because of the lack of recruiting and therefore the lack of extra government dollars?
I have a whole other view of the public school system which I posted in another thread. I’m not a fan of public schools in this day and age and don’t think any of my taxes should be going to support them.
But I also don’t think the military should be given special recruiting privileges over other places either. Hell, lower our property taxes by letting other companies/recruiters pay for the privilege of recruiting on compass then. Just make it equal and available to everyone.
But since the schools are government owned and not a business, and the military is the same, I don’t see this “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” deal ending any time soon.