As many on this blog know, I have long been an advocate for public schools, which I believe serve a critical function in shaping future citizens. However, teachers and administrators seem intent on fueling calls for even greater private school voucher programs and other alternatives to the public schools. Some schools seem more focused on indoctrination than education. That is the concern with a video recently shared by a mother in New York. In the video, students at the Upper West Side’s M.S. 243 Center School where students held up signs for Pfizer and Moderna and sang “It’s safe to vax and if your friends don’t vax then they ain’t no friends of mine.” Students are not required to be vaccinated in New York and the song appeared to be an effort to stigmatize and isolate those who have declined vaccination. The New York school system is investigating the matter.
A mother, Antigone Michaelides, shared recordings with Just the News and said that participation of students was mandatory. The kids sang a parody of the Men Without Hats song, “Safety Dance,” which includes the line “Your friends don’t dance, and if they don’t dance, well they’re no friends of mine.”
Michaelides tweeted an image of skit:
There were also signs reading “I FEAR GOD NOT COVID” and “I AM NOT A SCIENCE EXPERIMENT.” Rather than offer a counterpoint, critics say that those holding the signs were portrayed as crazy or unstable.
Regardless of how these signs were presented, the controversy highlights the unnecessary politicalization of our public schools. This is just a little play and a small school. However, it is indicative of a rising concern over teachers using schools — and our kids — for political agendas.
This week, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly recalled three school board members. We previously discussed their controversial agenda, including renaming schools and opposition to gifted programs as inequitable. Other officials in San Francisco have denounced meritocracy itself as racist.
Some in the media have responded to the recall with outrage like CNN’s column “San Francisco school board recall sends a dangerous message” explaining that “the rhetoric of ‘parents’ rights'” is merely a substitute for “right-wing school politics.” This view was echoed by ousted San Francisco school board president Gabriela López who tweeted Thursday that these voters were “aligned” with white supremacists. That’s right. With more than 70 percent removing the three Democrats, we have learned that San Francisco is a hotbed of white supremacy and far-right politics.
Others have warned that the use of schools to advance controversial political and social justice agendas is backfiring on Democratic figures. As shown in Virginia, it could well backfire at the polls.
However, my concern remains the impact on public schools, which are now viewed as largely hostile to conservatives or libertarians. Others feel that teachers and administrators have increasingly put education as a secondary priority despite continuing low performance rates in many of our public school districts. The result can be a further exodus from our schools and even greater pressure for vouchers to allow parents to go to private schools. Again, this is just one school and one little skit. However, it reflects the poor choices fueling the shift away from public schools.
I’m vaccinated myself, because I’m high risk.
I still think that people should not be punished for having sincere concerns about taking the vaccine, or whether it’s needed with new variants. People are doing the best they can to make health decisions.
Everyone reading this who believes in the vaccine mandate, consider this. One day, there might come a vaccine that’s mandated that you don’t want. Maybe you don’t like the initial safety data. Maybe you think it’s too new and you want more long term safety data. Maybe you’re not at risk for the disease.
If you give away your right to say “no”, then you won’t have that right in the future, when perhaps you’ll wish you had the right to decline a vaccine, or other medical procedure.
That’s just sad.
It’s also not based on science.
The vaccine was developed multiple variants ago. Vaccinated people can get, and transmit, Omicron just fine. The vaccine does not prevent infection or spread. Treating the unvaccinated like lepers is morally wrong, and serves no public health purpose.
In addition, as noted earlier, people who have recovered from Covid have immunity similar to or greater than that of the vaccinated, according to the studies that I’ve read. There was a CDC study that claimed the opposite, but it’s wildly different than everything else I’ve read, globally. In addition, studies will have to determine how long immunity lasts, although that will be complicated. People who recovered from the original wild type SARS-CoV-2 will have less protection to current variants than someone who recovered from a current variant like Omicron. However, those who were vaccinated would only have immunity based on exposure to the wild type S protein.
Naturally acquired immunity, as well as declining disease severity, should be part of an effective public health policy.
Instead, politics ruins everything. Politics took a good thing, a vaccine, and beat people over the head with it, threatening impoverishment for non compliance.
It is also a travesty that the FDA rescinded approval for the monoclonal antibody treatment.
Looks like something out of Mao’s Culture Revolution.
To add, while this may seem to be a one off, there have been other incidents of similar indoctrination going on in public schools.
Go and Duck, duck, go it for yourself.
Do your own research, make your own analysis, draw your own conclusions.
Think for your self (hat tip, Sharyl Attkisson).
Keep putting this poison in your body that the Government is forcing on you…….tps://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/very_quietly_2_federal_agencies_are_studying_postvaccination_neurological_issues.html
Public school children are being indoctrinated that the world is round, even though some flat earthers disagree and feel victimized by that.
It appears that What about should think a bit more about what he says. The world (earth) is not round. It is spheroid, and I learned that in grade school. Not only that, but the reasons for its shape are reasonably well known.
Instead of making low-brow insults against conservatives, maybe it is you who needs to study more.
Oh such a clever little minion you are!
Take your kids out of the Public School system. This is what it looks like to indoctrinate kids. It’s sickening. How would progressives like it if a conservative school did a play about the horrors of abortion?? Let’s tell the kids the truth.
If soldiers want to defend my freedom, then why is it so wrong for me to want what the soldiers want? In this view, calling people “armchair warriors” and “chicken hawks” is irrational, unfair, and not as clever as the isolationists and pacifist might like to think it is.
If it is desired that no soldiers bleed, then why not disband the military?
Darren, this site is broken. Flakey at the best of times, at the worst won’t display recent comments.
Scatter walnuts thickly in your entry way so that intruders lose their balance.
Turley observes:
“However, my concern remains the impact on public schools, which are now viewed as largely hostile to conservatives or libertarians.”
Hell, Conservatives have viewed public schools hostile to them ever since government removed religious indoctrination from the classroom and mandated the teaching of Evilutionism. Conservatives just don’t cotton to science when it undermines their blind faith. They have to invent pseudo-science:
https://www.discovery.org/
https://creationmuseum.org/
To get the Communazi message across better, I heartily recommend that Leftist Indoctrination Entities (“LIEs”)–which have replaced most schools today–integrate their Communazi principles into the West Side Story musical itself. Henceforth, the story should concern a bitter rivalry between the Jets, a white gang that refuses to get vaccinated, and the Sharks, a Puerto Rican gang that is fully vaxxed and boosted. However, for the new dramatic ending, after Tony and Maria commit suicide, the Sharks engage in a bloodbath, wiping out all members of the unvaccinated Jets, representing a victory of equality over white supremacy.
Jonathan: Speaking of the play “West Side Story”, Bryan Cranson, the winner of two Tony Awards, is the latest white guy to recognize his own “white blindness” on racial and other social justice issues. He said recently: ‘Oh, my God, if there’s one, there’s two, and if there’s two, there are 20 blind spots that I have.. what else am I blind to?'”. So Cranston ditched one production to appear onstage in “Power of Sail” about a Harvard professor who invites a white nationalist to speak at his symposium prompting questions about free speech. About the play Cranston says: “If someone wants to say the Holocaust was a hoax, which is against history…to give a person space to amplify that speech is not tolerance. It’s abusive”. In the play Cranston’s character is an avowed “free speech absolutist”. He says: “The answer to hate speech is more speech”. Sound familiar? As someone who has also demonstrated “white blindness” and is also an absolutist when it comes to free speech, “Power of Sail” would seem the perfect play for you. I am sure Cranston would want to give you a front row seat. If you do see the play we would all be interested in your review.
Once sentient robots replace teachers, we hopefully won’t have crap like this. Humans are a pox on the Earth.
Peopleless Factories – Peopleless Schools
If you want to be MAD, or really MAD, Concerned, or really CONCERNED, read about the Gates Foundation “Event 201” and what John Hopkins Center for Health Security said “CLADE X”
Link to “Event 201” Resources for Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise | Oct 18, 2019 (centerforhealthsecurity.org)
Pay particular attention to the date of the “Event 201”.
OT
The names of “Tech Executive” Rodney Joffe and his operatives, Paul Vixie and L Jean Camp are added to the list for:
“…dredging up ‘derogatory’ information on Mr. Trump that would please ‘VIPs’ in the Clinton campaign,” as a “benevolent posse” of “computer scientists,” “spurred by a sense of shared idealism,….”
– Joe Hoft
________
The Obama Coup D’etat in America is the most egregious abuse of power and the most prodigious crime in American political history.
The co-conspirators are:
Kevin Clinesmith, Bill Taylor, Eric Ciaramella, Rosenstein, Mueller/Team, Andrew Weissmann,
James Comey, Christopher Wray, McCabe, Strozk, Page, Laycock, Kadzic, Sally Yates,
James Baker, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Priestap, Kortan, Campbell, Sir Richard Dearlove,
Christopher Steele, Simpson, Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer, Stefan “The Walrus” Halper,
Azra Turk, Kerry, Hillary, Huma, Mills, Brennan, Gina Haspel, Clapper, Lerner, Farkas, Power,
Lynch, Rice, Jarrett, Holder, Brazile, Sessions (patsy), Nadler, Schiff, Pelosi, Obama,
Joe Biden, James E. Boasberg, Emmet Sullivan, Gen. Milley, George Soros, John McCain,
Marc Elias, Igor Danchenko, Fiona Hill, Charles H. Dolan, Jake Sullivan, Strobe Talbot,
Cody Shear, Victoria Nuland, Ray “Red Hat” Epps, Don Berlin, Kathy Ruemmler, Rodney Joffe,
Paul Vixie, L. Jean Camp et al.
You need to see a therapist.
Yep! I and John Durham do so need analysis. How are you doing? You haven’t debated, you’ve merely attacked in ad hominem form. Where’s the production in that?
What I wrote isn’t ad hominem.
What you wrote does not address the Obama Coup D’etat in America, which John Durham has presented empirical and direct evidence of.
C’mon, Anny, take the medicine the doctor ordered, Tryactin.
Try debating with facts, not ad hominem.
Try actin’ like a man, oh, and a man with a name.
That’s correct. It wasn’t ad hominem. It was projection. (Projection is a defense mechanism involving the process of displacing one’s feelings onto others.)
“SHUT UP AND TEACH”
Lincoln’s “Reign of Terror” began the 100-year incremental implementation of communism in America.
(Letter of congratulation from Karl Marx to Lincoln, 1865 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm )
Public schools are under the dominion of the communist teachers unions which are guilty of egregious usurpation of power, subversion, insurrection and treason.
Teacher strikes in America must be suppressed and smashed as Trudeau smashed the truckers’ strike in Canada – teacher strikes must never happen again.
Organizations are free to hire and fire; workers are free to accept or reject employment.
Teachers unions must be irrevocably decertified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and with extreme prejudice.
Public agencies must be extensively reduced back to constitutional levels and public worker numbers must be similarly lowered and eliminated.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“They are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.”
– President Ronald Reagan
Jonathan: I agree with the kids. Every effort to “stigmatize and isolate” the anti-vaxers should be encouraged. My patience has run out for all the conspiracy theories by Fox, GOP politicians and even you against Covid restrictions and vaccines. If it takes kids to shame the adults I’m for it! But you claim the “controversy highlights the unnecessary politicalization of our public schools”. Then you conflate signs being held up by kids into your larger hair-on-fire theme that public schools are “largely hostile yo conservatives or libertarians”. Wow! Would that kids could be so politically sophisticated. But, of course, you blame teachers and administrators who are “more focused on indoctrination than education”. Kids are smarter these days. They aren’t susceptible to “indocrtination”. When my three pubescent granddaughters became eligible for the vaccines last year they were the ones to tell their parents: “You need to get us vaccinated”. They are keenly aware of the dangers from Covid and have no patience for those who refuse the needle. Tom Waits said it best: ” I have learned everything I know from my kids”.
When it comes to “indoctrination” and the “unnecessary politicalization ” of public schools you have totally ignored what is going on in Texas, Tennessee and other states to ban books and suppress the “free speech: rights of administrators and teachers. In Texas the GOP is banning the use of many books in classroom discussions. Texas doesn’t want white kids to feel “uncomfortable”. In Tennessee a school district has banned the Holocaust graphic novel series “Maus” by the Pulitzer award winning author Art Spiegelman. But there has been a lot of blowback against book banning. Kids are like adults. If you tell me I can’t read a certain book that is the book I will get. When my parents told me I couldn’t subscribe to “Mad” magazine I found a way to get copies from my friends. But I digress. In Missouri a school board has permanently banned 8 books including “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “Invisible Girl” by by Lisa Jewell dealing with race and sexual identity. The ACLU has filed suit against the school board. When you address the real threats of “indoctrination” by right-wing book banning zealots in GOP controlled states I will stop laughing over this column.
Your grandchildren have been propagandized. Maybe even by Big Bird and Dr. Gupta. It’s sick what they are doing to kids. I mean, it’s not like pharmaceutical companies have ever lied about the safety, the effectiveness, the need, or even the addictiveness of their drugs, is it? Nah.
This explains a lot of commenters here on the blog. (Looking at you, Dennis)
“You can’t rationalize facts to a person whose position is based on emotion.” ~Mike Metzger, Ethics Professor
Holy yeezuz Turley, you sure know to build mountains out of ant hills.
“ Again, this is just one school and one little skit. However, it reflects the poor choices fueling the shift away from public schools.”
Lately Turley’s columns have become more like National enquirer type fodder than anything else.
Turley insinuates that this “skit” was the school’s choice and therefore a reflection of many poor choices public schools do. Hey Turley, how about the idea that this skit was entirely the STUDENT’S idea. They too observe the world around them and have their own opinions. It’s right along those “academic freedom” kind of lines often practiced in high schools everywhere.
There are FAR, FAR more interesting things going on than Palin being an idiot and proving it in court or stupid criminals. Speaking of stupid criminals, Trump is in big trouble on several fronts involving free speech, fraud, and now breaking the law by taking classified documents home. How about Texas legislators proposing banning teaching CRT in universities and punishing professors by getting rid of tenure. There’s an academic freedom issue just ripe for your picking.
Turley, the national enquirer gets a lot of business by making one story more outlandish and stupid than the next. Hey man. You’re not trying to compete are you?
“[W]here students held up signs for Pfizer and Moderna and sang ‘It’s safe to vax and if your friends don’t vax then they ain’t no friends of mine.’”
Using art to propagandize students. How very Soviet.