TEACHERS GET HIT ON THE BUTTON

No matter who you are voting for in the upcoming election I am sure you do not want your child's teacher promoting any presidential candidate. Considering dismal reading, math and science scores across the country teachers should be spending more time educating America's children instead of indoctrinating our children.

The following piece appeared in the New York Post.

TEACHERS GET HIT ON THE BUTTON

By YOAV GONEN, Education Reporter

Last updated: 10:49 am
October 2, 2008


The teachers union has been handing out thousands of Barack Obama campaign buttons to its members, sparking a clampdown by education brass.

The Department of Education - which has a long-standing policy barring teachers from wearing campaign buttons in schools - is set to send out an e-mail this week from Schools Chancellor Joel Klein laying down the law.

"Schools are not a place for politics and not a place for staff to wear political buttons," said department spokeswoman Ann Forte.

"We don't want a school or school staff advocating for any political position or candidate to students and we don't want students feeling intimidated because they might hold a different belief or support a different candidate than their teachers."

United Federation of Teachers official LeRoy Barr told his members in a recent e-mail that union chief Randi Weingarten is fighting the DOE decision.

Officials of the union - which has endorsed Obama - said they didn't know of any schools where button-wearing teachers were told to zip it, but they said they were exploring the matter "to ensure members' rights to free speech and expression."

While department officials said the courts are on their side in the matter, many city teachers say their right to wear partisan buttons is a matter of free speech.

Several cited a landmark 1969 Supreme Court ruling involving students who planned to wear black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. It affirmed that constitutional rights don't get dropped "at the schoolhouse gate."

"It's not teaching kids to vote for Obama; rather, it's showing them the democratic process in action," said Patrick Compton, a social-studies teacher at Lafayette HS in Brooklyn, who said he has been wearing an Obama button handed out by the union.

"It is shocking to me, truly, that in this day and age, the school system wants to diminish, rather than increase, participation in our democratic system."

Other teachers said they were extremely careful not to let free speech morph into any kind of partisan preaching.

"As long as you don't preach to the children about who you should vote for, I don't see anything wrong with it," said Ellen Eisenger, a teacher at PS 35 in Queens. "It's still America."

Last week, employees at the University of Illinois received an e-mail forbidding them to wear partisan political buttons on campus, while teachers at a high school near Santa Cruz, Calif., agreed to remove their "Educators for Obama" buttons in class after complaints from a parent who supports John McCain.

yoav.gonen@nypost.com

Here are two more pieces on the same subject.

Virginia Teachers Union Sparks Outrage with "Obama Blue Day"

Obama Children Sing for Change for Dear Leader another story appears here. It kind of reminds me of the Hitler Youth.