But I was going to visit Mr. Fisher anyway. Even though I kind of like the Gap.

Mr Fisher, his door will be knocked
by a Brownshirt, his principles hocked

to enemies of Gandhi
who feed Jesse candy

doped with drugs known as Kristallnacht.

Please let me place my comments in context. I grew up in Mississippi, a place I love because it is my home, but to the extent there was any indoctrination there, it was from the conservatives, and the predominant Christianity was Southern Baptists, a denomination formed, started, founded, birthed in defense of slavery. The message of Christ and the message of the churches are not always synonymous, but I am aware of the many great churches, especially the Quakers, my personal favorite. I apologize if I implied all Christian teachers, or a significant number of them, were indoctrinators, But in my experience from the South, conservatives and right-wing religionists push their views more than liberals. This could be a regional difference. We would likely disagree on the issue of the role of individuals in a capitalist society–because I would ask–do you mean free-enterprise like when our country started–a nation of free and fairly equal individuals, or a nation where corporations dominate one political party and own fifty percent of the other one? Buy American, definitely, you are preaching to the choir, but don’t run over people in other countries either. I don’t know if you are speaking honestly or ideologically, but I am just glad when students express an independent opinion about any serious issue, I jump for joy when they take their heads away from the damn cell phones and express.

School should be a place of positive reinforcement, of growth and learning and a safe setting for the spark of curiosity to lead to the development of knowledge, perception, logic, and self-confidence. It is sad that many kids today are having to learn how to censor the statement of their core beliefs to maintain their GPA’s. The whole PC thing should be, if it exists at all, an exercise conducted by and with adults, not inflicted on our kids. In my daughter’s previous school district, if she even said something as mildly conservative as “I think we should buy American,” quite a few of her teachers would have told her that was politically incorrect speech and she would have seen a negative effect in the next grade sheet.

My somewhat educated guess is that the KIPP schools are more like my daughter’s current school, where a statement like that might engender an interesting conversation about economics, trade policies, the power of the individual in a capitalistic society, etc., but she would not be persecuted for her statement.

Oh, and 159 might want to attend an Episcopal church that has a gay or lesbian priest and serves supper one Sunday a month to the local homeless population and has a very liberal parish. Not all Christians are conservatives.

Indoctrinating a stu
is something that I never do

tho a Christian will
spill conservative swill

us lefties are ALL pure and true!

2. That charter schools are designated “public” is legal trickery. They are about as public as Haliburton. They are run by non-govermental organizations and their employees are not public employees with the rights of public employees. The myth of charter as public school won’t outlast the Era of Big Business.

3. “Never, in the history of mankind, has a monopoly reformed itself from within. When reform has happened, it has always been because an external threat, a mortal competitor, spurred the necessary change.” This is describing why the Annenburg Challenge was destined to fail.

4. I may have overstated your contributions to the Republican Party. I was aware your father was a contributor, but thought he would be identified as Jr. and as Chairman of the Linbeck Corporation. I don’t have time to research it thoroughly now, beause there are committees, and state and local offices to be considered. Clearly you and your wife have given to Republicans, Bush in 2004 for instance. As for giving to Democrats, probably one-third of them are very conservative on economic issues anyway. I was only trying to make it clear you were a conservative, which I think you would agree with. I am not much of an agreable gentleman, but I highly value honesty.

5. As for taking your posts being taken out of context–that is just wrong. The posts show you are a free-market conservative. I would say free-market utopian, admittedly that is my interpretation. There is a pattern. If I found a liberal-oriented post, and tried to paint you as a liberal, that would be out of context. Your posts reveal a conservative, my only point.

6. Mr. Larsen’s comment. “Without naming names, might i observe that teachers who grant themselves permission to work out their own (sometimes clearly considerable) issues on other people’s kids should probably not be teaching at all –and are probably one of the major incentives for parents to seek alternatives to schools where open political indoctrination is carried on regardless of what parents might think of it.” I guess this was aimed at me, since only two teachers were posting yesterday. You might be right on my having “considerable personal issues,” which considering our two recent Presidents should qualify me for high office, but I do not indoctrinate students, and I’ve never seen a liberal teacher who does. I have seen Christians and conservatives who do. And I would never place my students on stage at a national party convention.

I like YES and the service KIPP provides. I have written in many places, I would send my own kids there, and I want that choice preserved for the dedicated kids who would choose it, but do not exploit these schools in order to attack our public schools.

Mr. Linbeck, I have no way of gauging your own personal genuiness about providing better education for working-class kids, but when I see a collection of conservative Republicans and neoliberals–who oppose our families on nine out of ten issues–just down-right passionate about education for poor kids that makes me suspicious, as it will others. The struggle continues…

USA is “…the most unequal country among affluent countries.”

Mississippi is our poorest state, with a per-capita income of 32K. The nation as a whole has a Per Capita Income of 37.5K.

This is “the most unequal country among affluent countries” ?