The Adults ... Have Left the Building.

One of the saddest things I've read in a long time.

Personally, I subscribe to Justice Clarence Thomas' views of what civil and free speech rights students have in the public school classroom.

If we truly want to educate academically, and efficiently in an age of dwindling resources, we have to eliminate the distractions in the classroom, period. For black and white students, straights and gays, religious, agnostic and atheists.

School is school. Do your advocacy work -- whatever your preferred cause -- in your own time. Like at the mall, if you crave a public audience.

Pubic schools, if education is mandatory up until 16, need to set down basic rules -- like dress codes, if need be -- and enforce them. And if well-intentioned progressive teachers want to distribute green taffeta dresses, instead of working 100% to teach basic subjects as they were hired to do under contract, they should find themselves another job.

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* Let those who want their children to have greater freedoms/distractions at school pay for progressive private schooling, instead of the default being parents who want their children to focus on academic education at school have to pull them out in favor of homeschooling or private education.

Betcha we'd see public school competency rates rise if we can get back to just plain educating the students, and protecting all of them from harrassment and mutable distractions ...

(= wear the makeup, heels, and boobie bracelets on your own time, kids.)