Education: November 2007 Archives

TOMPKINS - A state police report confirmed what residents of the area had long suspected; the incidence of gang violence, break-ins, and stolen vehicles is up 25 percent over the last decade, following the closing of all local high schools and their replacement by e-schools.

"We used to call the schools 'babysitters,' and now I know that was true," said Tompkins County Chief Luis Valeria in a SAT-interview. "At least we haven't given up on babysitting the littler kids, or we'd have a real mess on our hands."

E-schools were originally planned to mesh with internship programs to enable students to work at their own pace from home while learning a trade or profession. However, the internship programs were unable to keep pace with students' desires to learn cosmetology rather than, say, cosmology, and higher-level internships went without interns while students in lower-level internships found that no jobs awaited them on graduation.

In addition, e-schools proved a failure at instructing students in the foreign languages needed to obtain professional jobs. Hindi and Urdu were popular, but most students were unable to complete the difficult courses, and although thousands of students took Mandarin as their first language, regional dialects were apparently impossible to master without face-to-face contact and practice.

The result has been teenagers who are left alone all day with no place to go, in theory working electronically to complete coursework, but in reality roaming the towns in pairs, small groups, or gangs.

In a related story, former principal Varushka Knight was among the spectators as the wrecking ball hit Dryden High School, the last high school standing in the region. Because the building once also housed middle school students, it was spared when many other high schools were demolished. However, by 2048, decreases in rural population made it possible to move all middle school students into the new Central Dryden Elementary/Middle School.

Like all school districts, Dryden had long since stopped spending money on facilities for high school. "We saw the handwriting on the wall back in the late '20s," said Knight. "That's why the building was in such bad condition that it was ultimately condemned, luckily not until right after we made the move to CDEMS."

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Susan Charlton
Upstate Family Alliance
22 Genesee Street
Rochester, NY 14611
585 555 9762

Upstate Family Alliance to Join Lawsuits Against State Brainwashing System

Rochester, NY, January 7th - Calling the "Curriculum for a New New York" a "brainwashing experiment on a gargantuan scale", the Upstate Family Alliance's President, Reverend William Stanton, announced that his group would lend financial and moral support to a series of lawsuits challenging New York's imposition of a single curriculum on all of its students.

"First, they came up with wicked testing schemes to deter homeschoolers," said Stanton, "and then they decided that computerized homeschooling would be a much cheaper way to educate children. Now that they have turned our homes into their government schools, their complete agenda is clear: brainwashing our children to clear away the inconvenient values of their parents."

The Upstate Family Alliance will join lawsuits already filed in various New York State Supreme Court jurisdictions, arguing that the new curriculum was created using a faulty procedure and is riddled with errors and biases, including:

• Emphasis on New York City and its suburbs with scarcely a mention of Upstate after 2010;

• Comments dismissive of religion's positive contribution in the histories of the United States, New York State, and the world;

• Untestable scientific hypotheses presented as fact in the biology, physics, and economics sections;

• Claims that current climate patterns are the result of excessive carbon usage during our state's economic peak;

• Disparaging comments about three of the greatest U.S. Presidents of the last hundred years, Reagan and the two Bushes;

• Excessively violent and sexual moments in video coverage of history, literature, and health;

• Constant use of Spanish in contexts where English should be the only language in use;

• Tests that expect students to regurgitate the false stories contained in the curriculum;

• A complete failure to allow parents and students to opt out of this curriculum.

"We intend to see justice served," said Stanton. "Our children's future is much too precious to us to turn it over to a state whose interests plainly do not serve our children well."

About the Upstate Family Alliance:

The Upstate Family Alliance, formed in 2035, brings together a variety of community organizations and individuals to remind New York State and its citizens that New York City is not and should not be the sole arbiter of values in this part of the country.