Why Johnny Really Can't Read

   Why Johnny Can't Think

      Why Johnny Really Can't Read

    Why Johnny Can't Think: The Politics of Bad Schooling by Walter Karp (from Harper's Magazine, June 1985) 

Sean In The Middle

       Meet the teenagers' latest idolS -They vomit on stage, sing of hate, and sell a million copies of their album. Just another outrageous but passing fad? Johann Hari fears that Slipknot represent something deeper and altogether more disturbing

     "Generation U" by Jason Lubyk 

''The anti-intelligence movement'' By Matthew Riemer

Fistgate Report: Students Given Graphic Instruction In Homosexual Sex

    Why Johnny Really Can't Read

Reproduced gratefully from:

Why Johnny Can't Think: The Politics of Bad Schooling 

by Walter Karp (from Harper's Magazine, June 1985)

 http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/johnny.html 

Until very recently, remarkably little was known about what actually goes on in America's public schools.

There were no reliable answers to even the most obvious questions. How many children are taught to read in overcrowded classrooms? How prevalent is rote learning and how common are classroom discussions? Do most schools set off gongs to mark the change of "periods"? Is it a common practice to bark commands over public address systems in the manner of army camps, prisons, and banana republics?

Public schooling provides the only intense experience of a public realm that most Americans will ever know. Are school buildings designed with the dignity appropriate to a great republican institution, or are most of them as crummy looking as one's own?

The darkness enveloping America's public schools is truly extraordinary considering that 38.9 million students attend them, that we spend nearly $134 billion a year on them, and that foundations ladle out generous sums for the study of everything about schooling-except what really occurs in the schools. John I. Goodlad's eight year investigation of a mere thirty-eight of America's 80,000 public schools - the result of which, A Place Called School, was published last year is the most comprehensive such study ever undertaken. Hailed as a "landmark in American educational research," it was financed with great difficulty. The darkness, it seems, has its guardians.

Happily, the example of Goodlad, a former dean of UCLA's Graduate School of Education, has proven contagious. A flurry of new books sheds considerable light on the practice of public education in America. In The Good High School, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot offers vivid "portraits" of six distinctive American secondary schools. In Horace's Compromise, Theodore R. Sizer, a former dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Education, reports on his two-year odyssey through public high schools around the country. Even High School, a white paper issued by Ernest L. Boyer and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, is supported by a close investigation of the institutional life of a number of schools. Of the books under review, only "A Nation at Risk," the report of the Reagan Administration's National Commission on Excellence in Education, adheres to the established practice of crass special pleading in the dark.

Thanks to Goodlad et al., it is now clear what the great educational darkness has so long concealed: the depth and pervasiveness of political hypocrisy in the common schools of the country. The great ambition professed by public school managers is, of course, education for citizenship and self-government, which harks back to Jefferson's historic call for "general education to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom."

What the public schools practice with remorseless proficiency, however, is the prevention of citizenship and the stifling of self-government. When 58 percent of the thirteen-year-olds tested by the National Assessment for Educational Progress think it is against the law to start a third party in America, we are dealing not with a sad educational failure but with a remarkably subtle success.

Passive, Docile Students

Consider how effectively America's future citizens are trained not to judge for themselves about anything. >From the first grade to the twelfth, from one coast to the other, instruction in America's classrooms is almost entirely dogmatic. Answers are "right" and answers are "wrong," but mostly answers are short. "At all levels, [teacher-made] tests called almost exclusively for short answers and recall of information," reports Goodlad. In more than 1,000 classrooms visited by his researchers, "only rarely" was there "evidence to suggest instruction likely to go much beyond mere possession of information to a level of understanding its implications."

Goodlad goes on to note that "the intellectual terrain is laid out by the teacher. The paths for walking through it are largely predetermined by the teacher." The give-and take of genuine discussion is conspicuously absent. "Not even 1%" of instructional time, he found, was devoted to discussions that "required some kind of open response involving reasoning or perhaps an opinion from students.... The extraordinary degree of student passivity stands out."

Sizer's research substantiates Goodlad's. "No more important finding has emerged from the inquiries of our study than that the American high school student, as student, is all too often docile, compliant, and without initiative." There is good reason for this. On the one hand, notes Sizer, there are too few rewards for being inquisitive." On the other, the heavy emphasis on "the right answer ... smothers the student's efforts to become an effective intuitive thinker."

Yet smothered minds are looked on with the utmost complacency by the educational establishment - by the Reagan Department of Education, state boards of regents, university education departments, local administrators, and even many so-called educational reformers. Teachers are neither urged to combat the tyranny of the short right answer nor trained to do so. "Most teachers simply do not know how to reach for higher levels of thinking," says Goodlad. Indeed, they are actively discouraged from trying to do so.

The discouragement can be quite subtle. In their orientation talks to new, inexperienced teachers, for example, school administrators often indicate that they do not much care what happens in class so long as no noise can be heard in the hallway. This thinly veiled threat virtually ensures the prevalence of short-answer drills, workbook exercises, and the copying of long extracts from the blackboard. These may smother young minds, but they keep the classroom Quiet.

Discouragement even calls itself reform. Consider the current cry for greater use of standardized student tests to judge the "merit" of teachers and raise "academic standards." If this fake reform is foisted on the schools, dogma and docility will become even more prevalent. This point is well made by Linda Darling-Hammond of the Rand Corporation in an essay in The Great School Debate. Where "important decisions are based on test scores," she notes, "teachers are more likely to teach to the tests" and less likely to bother with "non-tested activities, such as writing, speaking, problem-solving or real reading of real books." The most influential promoter of standardized tests is the "excellence" brigade in the Department of Education; so clearly one important meaning of "educational excellence" is greater proficiency in smothering students' efforts to think for themselves.

Probably the greatest single discouragement to better instruction is the overcrowded classroom. The Carnegie report points out that English teachers cannot teach their students how to write when they must read and criticize the papers of as many as 175 students. As Sizer observes, genuine discussion is possible only in small seminars. In crowded classrooms, teachers have difficulty imparting even the most basic intellectual skills, since they have no time to give students personal attention. The overcrowded classroom inevitably debases instruction, yet it is the rule in America's public schools. In the first three grades of elementary school, Goodlad notes, the average class has twenty-seven students. High school classes range from twenty-five to forty students, according to the Carnegie report.

What makes these conditions appalling is that they are quite unnecessary. The public schools are top-heavy with administrators and rife with sinecures. Large numbers of teachers scarcely ever set foot in a classroom, being occupied instead as grade advisers, career counselors, "coordinators," and supervisors. "Schools, if simply organized," Sizer writes, "can have well-paid faculty and fewer than eighty students per teacher (16 students per class without increasing current per-pupil expenditure." Yet no serious effort is being made to reduce class size. As Sizer notes, "Reducing teacher load is, when all the negotiating is over, a low agenda item for the unions and school boards." Overcrowded classrooms virtually guarantee smothered minds, yet the subject is not even mentioned in "A Nation at Risk," for all its well-publicized braying about a "rising tide of mediocrity."

Do the nation's educators really want to teach almost 40 million students how to "think critically," in the Carnegie report's phrase, and "how to judge for themselves," in Jefferson's? The answer is, if you can believe that you will believe anything.

The educational establishment is not even content to produce passive minds. It seeks passive spirits as well. One effective agency for producing these is the overly populous school. The larger schools are, the more prison-like they tend to be. In such schools, guards man the stairwells and exits. ID cards and "passes" are examined at checkpoints. Bells set off spasms of anarchy and bells quell the student mob. PA systems interrupt regularly with trivial fiats and frivolous announcements. This "malevolent intruder," in Sizer's apt phrase, is truly ill willed, for the PA system is actually an educational tool. It teaches the huge student mass to respect the authority of disembodied voices and the rule of remote and invisible agencies.

Sixty-three percent of all high school students in America attend schools with enrollments of 5,000 or more. The common excuse for these mobbed schools is economy, but in fact they cannot be shown to save taxpayers a penny. Large schools "tend to create passive and compliant students," notes Robert B. Hawkins Jr. in an essay in The Challenge to American Schools. That is their chief reason for being.

"How can the relatively passive and docile roles of students prepare them to participate as informed, active and questioning citizens?" asks the Carnegie report, in discussing the "hidden curriculum" of passivity in the schools. The answer is, they were not meant to. Public schools introduce future citizens to the public world, but no introduction could be more disheartening. Architecturally, public school buildings range from drab to repellent. They are often disfigured by demoralizing neglect"cracked sidewalks, a shabby lawn, and peeling paint on every window sash," to quote the Carnegie report. Many big-city elementary schools have numbers instead of names, making them as coldly dispiriting as possible.

Stamping Out Republican Sentiment

Public schools stamp out republican sentiment by habituating their students to unfairness, inequality, and special privilege. These arise inevitably from the educational establishment's longstanding policy (well described by Diane Ravitch in The Troubled Crusade) of maintaining "the correlation between social class and educational achievement." In order to preserve that factitious "correlation," public schooling is rigged to favor middle-class students and to ensure that working-class students do poorly enough to convince them that they fully merit the lowly station that will one day be theirs. "Our goal is to get these kids to be like their parents," one teacher, more candid than most, remarked to a Carnegie researcher.

For more than three decades, elementary schools across the country practiced a "progressive," non-phonetic method of teaching reading that had nothing much to recommend it save its inherent social bias. According to Ravitch, this method favored "children who were already motivated and prepared to begin reading" before entering school, while making learning to read more difficult for precisely those children whose parents were ill read or ignorant. The advantages enjoyed by the well-bred were thus artificially multiplied tenfold, and 23 million adult Americans are today "functional illiterates." America's educators, notes Ravitch, have "never actually accepted full responsibility for making all children literate."

That describes a malicious intent a trifle too mildly. Reading is the key to everything else in school. Children who struggle with it in the first grade will be "grouped" with the slow readers in the second grade and will fall hopelessly behind in all subjects by the sixth. The schools hasten this process of failing behind, report Goodlad and others, by giving the best students the best teachers and struggling students the worst ones. "It is ironic," observes the Carnegie report, "that those who need the most help get the least." Such students are commonly diagnosed as "culturally deprived" and so are blamed for the failures inflicted on them. Thus, they are taught to despise themselves even as they are inured to their inferior station.

The whole system of unfairness, inequality, and privilege comes to fruition in high school. There, some 15.7 million youngsters are formally divided into the favored few and the ill-favored many by the practice of "tracking."

About 35 percent of America's public secondary-school students are enrolled in academic programs (often subdivided into "gifted" and "non-gifted" tracks); the rest are relegated to some variety of nonacademic schooling. Thus the tracking system, as intended, reproduces the divisions of the class system. "The honors programs," notes Sizer, "serve the wealthier youngsters, and the general tracks (whatever their titles) serve the working class. Vocational programs are often a cruel social dumping ground."

The bottom dogs are trained for jobs as auto mechanics, cosmeticians, and institutional cooks, but they rarely get the jobs they are trained for. Pumping gasoline, according to the Carnegie report, is as close as an auto mechanics major is likely to get to repairing a car. "Vocational education in the schools is virtually irrelevant to job fate," asserts Goodlad. It is merely the final hoax that the school bureaucracy plays on the neediest, one that the federal government has been promoting for seventy years.

The tracking system makes privilege and inequality blatantly visible to everyone. It creates under one roof "two worlds of schooling," to quote Goodlad. Students in academic programs read Shakespeare's plays. The commonality, notes the Carnegie report, are allowed virtually no contact with serious literature. In their English classes they practice filling out job applications. "Gifted" students alone are encouraged to think for themselves. The rest are subjected to sanctimonious wind, chiefly about "work habits" and "career opportunities."

"If you are the child of low-income parents," reports Sizer, "the chances are good that you will receive limited and often careless attention from adults in your high school. If you are the child of upper middle-income parents, the chances are good that you will receive substantial and careful attention."

In Brookline High School in Massachusetts, one of Lightfoot's "good" schools, a few fortunate students enjoy special treatment in their Advanced Placement classes. Meanwhile, students tracked into "career education" learn about "institutional cooking and cleanup" in a four-term Food Service course that requires them to mop up after their betters in the school cafeteria.

This wretched arrangement expresses the true spirit of public education in America and discloses the real aim of its hidden curriculum. A favored few, pampered and smiled upon, are taught to cherish privilege and despise the disfavored. The favorless many, who have majored in failure for years, are taught to think ill of themselves. Youthful spirits are broken to the world and every impulse of citizenship is effectively stifled.

John Goodlad's judgment is severe but just: "There is in the gap between our highly idealistic goals for schooling in our society and the differentiated opportunities condoned and supported in schools a monstrous hypocrisy."

Phony Reforms

The public schools of America have not been corrupted for trivial reasons. Much would be different in a republic composed of citizens who could judge for themselves what secured or endangered their freedom. Every wielder of illicit or undemocratic power, every possessor of undue influence, every beneficiary of corrupt special privilege would find his position and tenure at hazard. Republican education is a menace to powerful, privileged, and influential people, and they in turn are a menace to republican education. That is why the generation that founded the public schools took care to place them under the suffrage of local communities, and that is why the corrupters of public education have virtually destroyed that suffrage.

In 1932 there were 127,531 school districts in America. Today there are approximately 15,840 and they are virtually impotent, their proper role having been usurped by state and federal authorities. Curriculum and text. books, methods of instruction, the procedures of the classroom, the organization of the school day, the cant, the pettifogging, and the corruption are almost uniform from coast to coast. To put down the menace of republican education its shield of local self-government had to be smashed, and smashed it was.

The public schools we have today are what the powerful and the considerable have made of them. They will not be redeemed by trifling reforms. Merit pay, a longer school year, more homework, special schools for "the gifted," and more standardized tests will not even begin to turn our public schools into nurseries of "informed, active and questioning citizens." They are not meant to.

When the authors of A Nation at Risk call upon the schools to create an "educated work force," they are merely sanctioning the prevailing corruption, which consists precisely in the reduction of citizens to credulous workers. The education of a free people will not come from federal bureaucrats crying up "excellence" for "economic growth," any more than it came from their predecessors who cried up schooling as a means to "get a better job." Only ordinary citizens can rescue the schools from their stifling corruption, for nobody else wants ordinary children to become questioning citizens at all. If we wait for the mighty to teach America's youth what secures or endangers their freedom, we will wait until the crack of doom.

Reproduced gratefully from SourceText.Com

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/17/2132249&mode=thread 

Sean In The Middle

Posted by JonKatz on Thursday April 19, @10:30AM from the SOS-from-a-geek-dad-and-kid dept.

Last week Sean, a 16-year-old computer geek and gamer who has never been in serious trouble, was thrown out of a Texas school and ordered into "alternative education" for responding to a year's worth of bullying and harassment, some verbal, some physical. His crime was to fantasize out loud about revenge. He got as much due process as Chinese dissidents get. His father, a Slashdot reader and graphic designer, has pulled his son out of the system and into home schooling. He asks for help and advice. This is a story about life in America's schools these days for people who are "different," who live at the mercy of jerks and cover-your-butt administrators. (Read more.)

Last week, Sean Sheeley -- computer geek, gamer, and high-school junior in the McKinney Independent School District north of Dallas -- was confronted by a group of students in one of his classes. They'd been tormenting Sheeley for much of the school year, he says. He'd been jabbed, ridiculed, baited, had disks stolen from his computer.

Sheely's father Patrick, a graphic designer, says the incident unfolded this way: one of the kids in his class came up to Sean while others were taunting him and said aloud with others present, "One of these days, he's going to bring a gun to school and shoot us."

Patrick Sheeley, a Slashdot regular, says that "my son, being a little sarcastic, took out a small case that he carries his keys in and pretended to be loading a gun. The same student then said, 'Look, he's loading his gun.'

At some point, says Patrick, one of the other students joined in with some additional comments, further upsetting Sean, who then responded:

"If this had been a real gun,you'd be dead now." One of the kids turned him in.

Sean was called into the principal's office where he got suspended for three days and sent home. School officials then notified his parents that Sean was being removed from the high school and sent to an alternative school for kids with learning and other problems. He was no longer fit for mainstream education, the school had decided.

The decision was "unappealable" to school administrators, Patrick was told. He could appeal to the school district, but not until May, when the school year was virtually over. None of the other students involved have been disciplined, nor, to the Sheeleys' knowledge, even questioned. Patrick says officials told him that the school has a statement from a single student who overheard the remark and reported it.

Sean says that he'd like to forget the whole day, but here's what he remembers:

"There was much of the usual taunting, mocking my intelligence, mocking things I hold interest in, etc. Then one of them said, 'You know, one of these days he's going to bring a gun to school and kill us all.' And that is, so to speak, what knocked over the first domino. I also remember one of them trying to take the computer disks out of my backpack... the same person who went through my backpack accused me of being gay."

Sean said he'd prefer the high school to an alternative school. Othwerwise, he says, "why would I want to go back to a school that lies, breaks state laws, and gets rid of bright students who finally snap, merely to 'make the school feel safer?' All the school is doing is satisfying a few parents' false sense of insecurity, brought on by the intense media attention to the recent school shootings, by giving them a false sense of security, at the expense of students like myself. The ONLY reason I'd want to go back is to see my few friends again, and I can keep in contact with them without going to school."

Sean's comment was foolish, his father says, especially in the post-Columbine environment where candid speech about schools is dangerous. And he isn't averse to some milder form of punishment.

I wonder if Sean deserves anything more than a useful speech on sensible responses to morons. Perhaps he should be called into an office and told that one of an individual's noblest callings is to make fools reveal themselves. There appear to be mitigating circumstances, to say the least, and Sean was defending himself, reflexively and verbally, if not wisely. Patrick is surprised by the profoundly anti-democratic, Banana Republic policies that govern public schools in America, where there is no Constitution, protected speech, or due process for citizens under 18. Thousands of kids like Sean won't be the least bit surprised.

In fact, school officials across the country may be chasing the wrong kids out of school. The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that more than 2,000 school age children 19 or younger take their lives each year in the United States, many citing depression, social cruelty and bullying and other forms of harassment. That means that many more kids harm themselves as the result of social cruelty than harm other kids.

"I just don't know what to do," says Patrick, who can't afford a lawyer, and who wants to protect his kid. Sheeley is aware that this kind of record could have implications for Sean down the line. "...I would appreciate any suggestions as to what recourse we may have, or where we might find some help."

In the meantime, he and his wife have pulled Sean out of the district rather than submit to his being shunted to an altenative school. The Sheeleys are home-schooling him, an increasingly popular alternative for individualistic kids facing creative suffociation or social isolation and persecution in larger schools. "What's the lesson for him?" his father asks. "This wasn't a fair process. The kids who provoked him were not disciplined equally, or at all. It could have been me," Patrick says, of the incident. "I felt the same way when I was in school. I probably even said the same thing." It could have been lot of people.

Even though administrators have deemed Sean too dangerous to stay in high school -- perhaps he triggered one of their dangerous-kid-profiles -- the junior has never been in trouble of any sort, his father says, inside or out of school: never been arrested, disciplined, suspended, or even involved in a fight.

I called the school district to ask if there was any comment. A secretary in the administrators' office asked me if I was kidding. "No," she said. We don't have any. And what is a Slashdot?"

Sean provides a nearly classic example of kids in the middle of an increasingly insane social situation. We know this story. Sean and his father are both self-professed computer geeks. Sean has a few friends who are into computers and gaming, and who generally feel isolated and excluded at school. Sean finds many of his classes boring, although he has met academic requirements, and spends most of his time in his creative other life, building computers, programming, networking, writing games, especially RPG's.

His experience shows that a culture of harassment remains tolerated in many educational institutions; where kids can be taunted and bullied at will, sometimes into retaliatory statements or actions.

Patrick Sheeley has some decisions to make and could use some help. Should he try to get Sean back into school or walk away? Should he take legal action to force due process? (Many Slashdot community members are familiar with home schooling, judging from my e-mail). He would appreciate hearing from lawyers with expertise in cases like this. He's contacted the ACLU, but isn't sure whether it can or will represent Sean. He knows that irrational policies and the post-Columbine hysteria are all closing in on his kid, and he wants to do something about it.

Meet the teenagers' latest idols

http://www.consider.net/ 

by Johann Hari Monday 18th March 2002

They vomit on stage, sing of hate, and sell a million copies of their album. Just another outrageous but passing fad?

Johann Hari fears that Slipknot represent something deeper and altogether more disturbing

The bestselling single this week will almost certainly still be "Evergreen" by the Pop Idol winner Will Young. Will is a posh Tory from the sticks and, unlike Sixties rich kids such as Mick Jagger, he doesn't even try to adopt a mockney accent or a caring agenda. He hangs with the ultra-wealthy, bows and scrapes to duchesses and insists that he has no time for gay rights causes (despite having finally come out on 10 March). In fact, he is so socially conservative that when he was asked recently what his ideal date would be, he said - with no irony - "it would be having tea with the Queen". So you might think that all is lost and that the only way your kids can shock you now is by being more conservative than you ever dreamt. Think again: Slipknot are in Britain. To pluck one random example of their on-stage behaviour: at one gig in the US late last year, they took out a dead beaver, sucked its tail and head, squeezed its guts on to their faces and spent the next ten minutes vomiting all over the stage and on to the audience. One fan claimed she would never wash the puke from her hair. So what, I hear you cry. What's a little dead-animal-sucking when you're young? And you're right. That is not the worrying thing about Slipknot. What is worrying is that they indicate a wider value-shift in western countries. People on the left, in particular, are extremely wary of discussing this kind of youth music and movement in a negative way, for fear of sounding like Melanie Phillips or Peter Hitchens or any number of the reactionary bores who ranted against Elvis's pelvis. No doubt, most New Statesman readers would rather their kids went on the road with Slipknot than the dreadful Will Young or one of the manufactured, ball-achingly dire boy bands prancing around these days. (And don't even mention Cliff Richard and his posse of evangelical maniacs, who are more terrifying than Slipknot will ever be.) But the popularity of Slipknot does illustrate worrying developments. Right-wingers and Christian fundamentalists are not alone in being concerned about teenagers who have lost faith in pretty much everything. Slipknot are not scary because of their "shocking" stage act (unless you're a beaver). They are scary because they articulate (brilliantly, I might add) a candid, self-destructive nihilism that is increasingly the world-view of a significant minority of western teenagers. The most prosperous and healthy generation that has ever lived on this planet is increasingly drawn to people whose philosophy can be outlined in these statements, fairly randomly plucked from Slipknot songs: "Someone hear me please, all I see is hate" or "My life was always shit/And I don't think I need this any more". Or how about: "I tear away with my nails and teeth and fists/Touch the hands of inverted saints/Follow my heart through the threaded pain . . ./I see the future; the future is bleeding". (In fact, this last passage is pretty feel-good as Slipknot songs go.) There is absolutely no redemption, no possible future happiness in the band's albums. The closest they get to a love song is "I wanna slit your throat and fuck the wound". Slipknot sing about and appeal to a generation of radically disconnected young people who have no purpose in life, no values, nothing but a gnawing sense of emptiness. There is not even a conservative longing for a world that has been lost, or a liberal hope that things could get better.

Far more teenagers are drawn to this dark sphere than the much more analysed acolytes of anti-globalisation. More than a million kids have bought into the Slipknot agenda by buying one of their albums; more than 150,000 are sufficiently hard-core admirers to have attended one of their gigs. (Even the gurus of anti-globalisation would kill for a tenth of those sales, never mind that turnout for a public meeting.) A certain degree of anomie and hormonal flux is an inevitable part of being a teenager. There is an inescapable I-hate-you tendency that can easily descend into melodramatic daddy-shocking of the Marilyn Manson variety. Clearly, there's a large contingent of Slipknot fans drawn to this whining who will soon grow out of it. But we cannot casually write off the huge numbers of kids buying this stuff. The evidence of what we could call a Slipknot generation of despairing kids is not hard to find. More than 100,000 teenagers in the US (and 26,000-plus in the UK, according to the Samaritans) self-harmed last year, usually by slashing their arms or legs with knives and razors. Slipknot's music is filled with imagery of self-harm and suicide: "I've felt the hate rise up in me . . ./Kneel down and clear the stone of leaves . . ./I wander over where you can't see . . ./Inside my shell I wait and bleed . . ./Goodbye!" Jill Eastham, a counsellor at the Carlisle Counselling Centre in Cumbria, who works extensively with self-harming teenagers, believes that there is a growing trend towards self-harm among the young. "They use it", she says, "as a way of dealing with difficult feelings. It gives them some release. The pain of cutting is preferable to the pain inside." Revealingly, several therapists who work in this area have noted that teens from high-achieving and wealthy schools and families are considerably more likely to self-harm. The choice of recreational drugs made by these teenagers is very revealing about their mental state, too. If their self-harm and extreme activities (animal torture seems to be a recurring theme in the Slipknot-related internet chatrooms) were merely attention-seeking designed to appal parents, this self-destructive mindset would not also reveal itself in their drug-taking habits. They would stick, like most people of their age, to the almost entirely harmless mood-enhancers such as Ecstasy or relaxants like cannabis. But recent statistics reveal that the drug which is rapidly climbing up the dealers' charts (as it were) is ketamine, which is particularly popular with the miserable young white kids who form the spine of Slipknot's fan base: according to an extensive drugs survey in the US last year, 2.5 per cent of high-school students were using ketamine regularly; and British police have identified it as the drug with the fastest-growing use in the UK today. The record company HMV was so worried about Slipknot fans using ketamine that it cancelled an appearance by the band at one of its UK stores. Ketamine is an anaesthetic commonly used as an animal tranquilliser. In very small doses, it can induce a giggly mood where everything seems hilarious; but if you take a reasonable amount, you go into "a K-hole". This is a blank, empty state, "turning you into jelly" or making you "feel like you're wrapped in a blanket". You can barely move, and certainly can't communicate. Unlike the other widely available hallucinogens - LSD, or magic mushrooms - it does not create a feeling of transcendence. The word that crops up again and again when users describe the experience is "empty". Amphetamines can enhance your mood and enrich your experiences. A generation filled with amphetamines sees itself as a positive generation seeking to get the most out of life and not wanting to waste its time on dull activities such as sleeping. A generation filling itself with ketamine (and related analgesics such as tramadol), in contrast, admits that it has serious problems. It is a generation that does not want to be awake, a generation that wants to hide from the world and live in a darkened, empty room. Ketamine is not even a "happy" hallucinogen as some mushrooms and, if you're lucky, LSD can be. Ketamine has even - as the psychiatrist Karl Jansen of the Maudsley Hospital, London, has shown in a study - been used to induce near-death experiences. Many users find the idea of simulating death appealing. And if self-harming, the growth in the use of ketamine and the rise of Slipknot weren't enough to convince you of the existence of a minority who genuinely see no purpose other than hatred and destruction, the increasing number of high-school shootings might do it. More than 100 kids were killed in such incidents last year in the US, and random violence among teens is becoming endemic there. A Washington Post poll found that 40 per cent of US pupils believe a fellow student is capable of murder. Right-wing commentators will no doubt claim that Slipknot and similar bands "cause" self-harm, high-school shootings and the ketamine craze. If only life were so simple. Slipknot are but one symptom which, together with these other trends, points to a crisis at the heart of consumerist capitalism. Slipknot wear barcodes and inhuman masks. In the Land of the Free, they appropriate hyper-capitalist imagery to show they have been deindividuated; the band members are identified only by numbers. The events of 11 September might have been expected to jolt these teens from their gloom, but actually they have only increased their misery. Germaine Greer has spoken acidly about the "self-pity" of US teenagers. Young Americans many hundreds of miles from New York City (and many years from the Vietnam war, another source of US introspection) were heard sobbing and saying: "I'm going to die!" Greer's retort to this kind of teen is: "Yeah, you're going to die in your bed at 90 when the rest of the world dies at 40." She is right, and most nihilistic teenagers across the United States know it. They know they face no real threat to their lives but their own despair. (It is overwhelmingly middle-class teenagers buying Slipknot - poor kids, who have real struggles in life, shun them.) Shorn of anything to struggle for, they have turned upon themselves - and recognition of this only deepens their contempt for themselves. These kids, who hate themselves so much that they will swallow a drug that knocks them out, lacerate their own skin, and think that 40 per cent of their classmates are prepared to shoot them in the back, are not the image of the wholesome young American that George Bush wants us to see. He would have us believe that their problems are rooted in the Sixties, in promiscuity or the absence of religion. To prove him wrong, the left will have to find alternative explanations for why kids idolise Slipknot.

"Generation U" 

by Jason Lubyk 

jasonlubyk@hotmail.com 

This isn't the mid-to-late 90's, which was like some fun-house-mirror sixties, where kids dropped out of school and tuned into the rhythms of the IPO/internet-start-up/day-trader New Economy instead of the rhythms of the universe, where revolutionaries read George Gilder instead of Che Guevara, hallucinating Fortune magazine glossy visions of desktop utopias where work is a playhouse and all are watched over by the computers of loving NASDAQ. Self-loathing grunge death rockers had burned out and faded away, replaced by lip synching sex robots too beautiful and vacant unable to even think of hating themselves and wanting to die. The digital Singularity humanity was evolving towards was easy to see, getting there as predictable as Moore's Law.

After a few heady years some cracks in the new paradigm began to appear, hinting that all was not quite right in info-age: the surprising comeback of the disaffected masses in Seattle, the NASDAQ crashing harder than Robert Downey in police custody and the shifty military dictator antics of Bush Coup 2000.

That idea something might be happening was easy to ignore, just cut back on the espressos, get some more sleep and maybe the bad thoughts will go away.

When planes hijacked by young men dreaming of fleshly paradise flew into the symbols of American military and financial dominance on 9/11 the realization that everything has changed and a new zeitgeist was upon us was as impossible to ignore as the images of death and destruction being psychically driven into your mind.

Now your everyday life is more like some direct-to-Christian video store adaptation of the Book of Revelations than an episode of Friends: anthrax has usurped your credit card bill as the scariest thing that might appear in your mailbox, ponzi -economies implode, non-linear wars explode, and America becomes an EMPIRE, the Empire that WSJ editor Max Boot calls "an attractive Empire, the one that everyone wants to join," until you're inside it of course, and you're getting a little spooked out with all the talk of microchip implants, the blatant suspension of civil liberties and the Bush Youth volunteer citizen corps that are monitoring the black Marxist professor on your block. The fact that clones are being born every week and that the world is getting so hot that the polar ice caps are melting faster than Michael Jackson's face almost seems like small beer when your wondering when WW3 is going to begin.

No one gives a flying fuck about the revolutionary potential of motor scooters anymore.

So it's natural that the youth culture will also change. Generation X has finally got its shit together and become their parents with nose rings and a bag of grass, and the frosted hair, breast implants and cell phones of marketing construct generation Y seems empty and irrelevant as the Oscars.

The exact details at this point are impossible to predict, but I do know that recession instead of boom-times and war instead of peace will spawn a new generation that's edgier, darker and more paranoid, but also more intelligent and street wise, looking more like the Dickensian street whelps that coalesce in art neighborhoods and the center of every city than soap opera actors.

So get your quarters ready; soon Generation Urchin is going to be everywhere.

Bio: The work of writer, video-maker and musician Jason Lubyk has appeared in such places as Disinformation, The Thresher and The Konformist. He is also the madman behind the New World Disorder weblog ( http://www.nwd-blog.blogspot.com  ).

''The anti-intelligence movement'' 

By Matthew Riemer YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

''The anti-intelligence movement'' Printed on Friday, June 21, 2002 @ 00:34:44 EDT http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=411 

By Matthew Riemer YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

(YellowTimes.org) – Culturally, the United States presents conflicting messages concerning intelligence/education and their relative value to society. On the one hand Americans are required, for many years of their lives, not only to attend school but to excel there as well, and then go on to college. The connections between having a nice life, "doing well," realizing the American Dream, etc., and shining achievements in the academic world are not only common but also fairly explicit.

On the other hand there exists the pervasive presence of an anti- intelligence culture: best described as that common sentiment and practice prevalent in pop culture and media, indeed almost everywhere, that, in addition to de-emphasizing the value of an individual's intelligence and pursuits to that end, seeks fairly systematically to engage in "everyday" or "normal" discussions and conversations that focus on the "popular" themes of one's culture, for fear of appearing too intelligent, bookish or serious.

In the former case the system is one based upon the idea of reward, which is now being attached to the previously unrewarding (at least materially and externally) pursuit of knowledge. The reward one receives is the sense that one has "succeeded" or is "successful," which is reinforced by money and respect and other such things. So to succeed (in terms of the American Dream) one must be intelligent (according to subjective standards) and well schooled (or just get lucky). This half presents a view that is very pro-education and intelligence; formal schooling is seen as being vital to our success as a country and as a species. This defines academia.

In the latter case, within the context of pop culture, being popular and cool (these things last far beyond our teenage years), or having the right outfit, are more important than being well educated or intelligent.

The depth of coverage along with the airtime of important information is clearly disproportionate to the deluge of media exposure afforded movie and rock stars, TV personalities, and sporting events. There is a de-emphasis of what is, in the above example, emphasized: education and intelligence.

One is usually not scolded to watch more CNN or more documentaries on the History Channel or to first go to the "what's happening in the Balkans" link on a news site. This is partially the inability of a shallow and advertisement-rich media, filled with the ubiquitous "superstar," to represent anything but the most distracting and demeaning elements of a culture.

It is this phenomenon that is the unconsciously developed underpinnings of anti-intelligence culture. A culture that mires us in the vicissitudes and banality of others' lives and gloriously decadent fictional worlds, while keeping us so occupied as to steal away most of our free time during which we could have actually achieved something for ourselves as separate, sentient beings.

One would think that under such a system as America claims to have, one, which at least superficially prizes intelligence and education (case 1), highly intelligent conversations and observations would be blossoming on every street corner; that the stranger you met at the bar would engage you in Iranian history, an analysis of some specific historical event, or the latest in robotics, pharmacology, or woodcraft. In short, that most people would be critical and able thinkers, eager to participate in in-depth discussion covering a variety of topics.

But this is far from being the truth. In fact, there is a common, unspoken fear of this. The perpetuation of such a leaning is only strengthened by the virtual vacuum that is corporate media (case 2) - filled with its infotainment and sound bytes fed to a ravenously impatient and distracted audience; it emphasizes the trivial and hampers deep inquiry.

The superficiality and distraction epitomized by case 2 has now far out balanced its opposite (academia) and overstepped its bounds. The front pages of magazines, newspapers, and of all the printed media in general, along with TV and Internet News prove this point daily.

Many times, such as on homepages of AOL and Yahoo!, international news or political events occupy the tiniest of spaces and are entirely invisible next to the splash of loud advertisements and over-the-top pop. (A great irony: AOL's "top news" is neither at the top of the page nor positioned prominently.) Print media frequently underreport important stories, while over emphasizing others so as to best fit the ideological projections of their paymasters.

Moreover, one of the constants in the above analysis, in reality, is actually that of a variable – education - which today has added to the imbalance. Our questions should be: "What purpose is the education system serving, and what are its quality and diversity truly like?" If these questions are fully analyzed we can begin to see the more subtle functions institutionalized, mass education takes on.

The further problem of the education system

If the imbalance between the two sides observed above wasn't enough the very institution that fuels the pro-intelligence camp - education system itself - is questionable at best when it comes to its prescribed duties. Over the years of increasing institutionalization the system has received many blows to its integrity and validity.

The first blow to education was its commodification. The very concept, as well as the actual institution, of formal schooling erodes the integrity and naturalness of learning about one's world by commodifying and then dispensing it. Education, now filtered through amoral capitalism, is really just a capitalistic venture and vehicle for making money by the institutions that sell it. This, ultimately, affects the quality and diversity of intercourse between student and school (buyer and seller).

The second blow was the homogenization of curriculum and methodology, which was then tailored to provide the current economy and status quo with the necessary workers to perpetuate such a system. If the true purpose of education was to educate and empower sovereign thinkers then perhaps the somewhat idealistic, highly talkative individuals described above would be met on every street corner, but the purpose of education seems more like a method by which to integrate one's citizens with the self-perpetuating machinations of the globalizing capitalist/corporate system.

The third blow was a popularity and attendance growth that lead to a watering down of the student pool by the inclusion of passive individuals who were in attendance solely to acquire a degree and not to broaden their horizons through the fulfillment of the true potential of a well used education.

Now college has become obligatory - stressing and strengthening this homogenized thought. Westerners go to institutions of higher learning because it's culturally demanded, because all respectable people do it nowadays. Because it's an institutionalized institution. Basically, you either have to (most people now) or you can't (the poor). Of course, one could become a professional athlete or a rock star but the success rate is far too low for those paths to be taken seriously by the masses.

Often the most dangerous effect here is that we take our education only so far as our chosen paths' prerequisites so dictate. Since we're there only because we have to be or because we want to have a "good job" someday are primary concern is not how much we've grown or how much we've learned.

What has education given us and where are we going?

It seems that with the rising rates of college admissions and enrollment over the past fifty years that a truly enlightened society would be on the rise, emerging from the intellectual mediocrity and exclusivity of the past. But is this really happening and is the past, a time when most individuals didn't attend institutions of higher learning, or places where most people don't receive formal, extended educations really mediocre, less informed or less civilized? Does education necessarily make us smarter, more insightful, or "well read," or is that yielded by certain ways of thinking - not of content but of motion?

This should be looked at closely through the classic and categorical lenses of art and science. Surely, in the objective world of pure science, Western institutions and tradition have advanced the various disciplines staggeringly to the apparent and immediate benefit of the planet, spurring critical debate and inquiry that are essential to an integrated and informed participant; thorough analysis, rigorous examination, and the occasional controversy round off an engaging intellectual process that virtually guarantees insight.

Unfortunately though, this is not the case with the arts, or more broadly, non-science. In these fields there is often very little of the above-mentioned zeal for thoroughness and rigor when examining one's subject. Many times one encounters extreme one-sidedness of interpretation and thought. This is especially true of history and politics. It would seem that certain taboos with regard to critical inquiry suddenly arise when we tread such waters.

Consider that U.S. president George W. Bush was once unable to identify the leaders of Pakistan and Indonesia when asked by a reporter from a major network. No one made a big deal about it. Many Americans in polls frequently cannot identify significant historical and modern figures, yet can readily expand on the personal lives of celebrities when simply shown their photograph.

But why is this the case? It may stem from the simple phenomenon of exposure time. It would seem that very few individuals immerse themselves in as intensive a study of history or economics as the average person does of their favorite sitcom. While this may be a sad comment on the current state of affairs, it may also be less so if the situation was more the result of access and exposure as opposed to that of genuine disinterest.

Eqbal Ahmad, the brilliant Pakistani writer, teacher, and activist observed that

intellect as a whole is under attack in America, and social intellect in particular. The scientist can do whatever he wants to. But the social intellect is under assault in very insidious ways. The publishers are not really publishing radical works. The media are extraordinarily full of vacuous talk. People sit around on television and radio talk shows and pontificate on Islam, China, Japan, India, the Arabs. None of them that I can recall knows a single language of these places on which they are pontificating, can identify five central dates of our history, can look at the roots of any struggle.

Knowledge, intelligence, and education have become a ghostly commodity like everything else in Western culture. They're quantified and sold, purchased and then forgotten, or used like a tool and put away when they're not needed. They're presented like some foodstuff. What you see is what you get. Here you go – here's the history of Islam, here's some other country or culture or religion simulated, packaged, and glorified as the real thing.

So we see an anti-intelligence movement manifested in a highly bureaucratic, inefficient, impersonal education system with reluctance to conduct truly critical thought regarding certain political and historical issues, and a sex and violence crazed pop culture purveyed by a monopolistic, ratings-obsessed, dishonest media. This alliance far overshadows the valuable and important efforts of the multitude of sincere and genuine educators throughout America and the world.

How is this trend to be abated? While as of now it would appear that this question remains unanswered, alternative media, combined with the speed and breadth of the Internet, is beginning to seem more and more like a viable solution, especially with regard to organization of affinity groups and information dispersal. However, we must never forget the value of knowing our neighbor. We must not lose touch with our own flesh and blood.

[Matthew Riemer has written for years about a myriad of topics, such as: philosophy, religion, psychology, culture, and politics. He studied Russian language and culture for five years and traveled in the former Soviet Union in 1990. In addition to his work with YellowTimes.org, he's also maintaining http://www.rottenindenmark.org , as well as being in the midst of a larger autobiographical/cultural work. Matthew lives in the United States.]

Matthew Riemer encourages your comments: mriemer@YellowTimes.org 

YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction must identify the original source, http://www.YellowTimes.org . Internet web links to http://www.YellowTimes.org  are appreciated.

http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=411 

See the FBI files on the Columbine Massacre on The Memoryhole.org:

http://www.thememoryhole.org/columbine/columbine-fbi.htm

Fistgate Report

Students Given Graphic Instruction In Homosexual Sex

"Fisting [forcing one’s entire hand into another person’s rectum or vagina] often gets a bad rap....[It’s] an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be that close and intimate with...[and] to put you into an exploratory mode."

By Brian Camenker and Scott Whiteman

The above quotation comes from Massachusetts Department of Education employees describing the pleasures of homosexual sex to a group of high school students at a state-sponsored workshop on March 25, 2000. On March 25, a statewide conference, called "Teach-Out," was sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. Among the goals were to build more Gay/Straight Alliances in Massachusetts and expand homosexual teaching into the lower grades. Scores of gay-friendly teachers and administrators attended. They received state "professional development credits." Teenagers and children as young as 12 were encouraged to come from around the state, and many were bussed in from their home districts. Homosexual activists from across the country were also there. To say that the descriptions below of workshops and presentations of this state-sponsored event for educators and children are "every parent’s nightmare," does not do them justice. It is beyond belief that this could be happening at all. One music teacher who attended out of curiosity said that she could not sleep for several nights afterwards and had nightmares about it. "Queer sex for youth, 14-21"

In one well-attended workshop, "What They Didn’t Tell You About Queer Sex & Sexuality In Health Class: A Workshop For Youth Only, Ages 14-21," the three homosexual presenters acting in their professional capacities coaxed about 20 children into talking openly and graphically about homosexual sex. The purpose appeared to be to train adults who are running the student clubs. The three presenters, who described themselves as homosexual, were:

o Margot E. Abels, Coordinator, HIV/AIDS Program, Massachusetts Dept. of Education

o Julie Netherland, Coordinator, HIV/AIDS Program, Massachusetts Dept. of Education

o Michael Gaucher, Consultant, HIV/AIDS Program, Massachusetts Dept. of Public Health

The workshop syllabus included:

o "What’s it like to be young, queer and beginning to date?

o "Are lesbians at risk for HIV?… "We will address the information you want about queer sexuality and some of the politics that prevent us from getting our needs met." The workshop opened with the three public employees asking the children "how they knew, as gay people, whether or not they’ve had sex." Questions were thrown around the room about whether oral sex was "sex," to which the Department of Public Health employee stated, "If that’s not sex, then the number of times I’ve had sex has dramatically decreased, from a mountain to a valley, baby." Eventually the answer presented itself, and it was determined that whenever an orifice was filled with genitalia, then sex had occurred. The Department of Public Health employee, Michael Gaucher, had the following exchange with one student, who appeared to be about 16 years old:

Michael Gaucher: "What orifices are we talking about?"

Student: [hesitation]

Michael Gaucher: "Don’t be shy, honey; you can do it."

Student: "Your mouth."

Michael Gaucher: "Okay."

Student: "Your ass."

Michael Gaucher: "There you go."

Student: "Your pussy. That kind of place."

But since sex occurred "when an orifice was filled," the next question was how lesbians could "have sex." Margot Abels discussed whether a dildo had to be involved; when it was too big or too small; and what homosexual resources students could consult to get similar questions answered. Role playing and "carpet munching"

Then the children were asked to role-play. One student was to act the part of "a young lesbian who’s really enraptured with another woman, and it’s really coming down to the wire and you’re thinking about having sex." The other student played the "hip GSA (gay, straight alliance) lesbian advisor, who you feel you can talk to." The "counseling" included discussions of lesbian sex, oral-vaginal contact, or "carpet munching," as one student put it. The student asked whether it would smell like fish. At that point the session turned to another subject.

"A lesson in fisting?" There was a five minute pause so that all of the teenagers could write down questions for the homosexual presenters. The first question was read by Julie Netherland, "What’s fisting?"

A student answered this question by informing the class that "fisting" is when you put your "whole hand into the ass or pussy" of another. When a few of the students winced, the Department of Public Health employee offered, "A little known fact about fisting: you don’t make a fist like this. It’s like this." He formed his hand into the shape of a tear drop rather than a balled fist. He informed the children that it was much easier.

Margot Abels told the students that "fisting" is not about forcing your hand into somebody’s "hole, opening or orifice" if they don’t want it there. She said that "usually" the person was very relaxed and opened him or herself up to the other. She informed the class that it is a very emotional and intense experience. At this point, a youngster of about 16 asked why someone would want to do that. He stated that if the hand were pulled out quickly, the whole thing didn’t sound very appealing to him. Margot Abels was quick to point out that although fisting "often gets a really bad rap," it usually isn’t about the pain, "not that we’re putting that down." Margot Abels informed him and the class that "fisting" was "an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be that close and intimate with." When a child asked the question, "Why would someone do this?" Margot Abels provided a comfortable response to the children, in order to "put them into an exploratory mode."

"Rubbing each others’ clits…" Michael Gaucher presented the next question, "Do lesbians rub their clits together?"

Michael Gaucher and Margot Abels asked the kids if they thought it was possible and whether someone would do a "hand-diagram" for the class. No one volunteered, but a girl who looked about 15 or 16 then stepped up to the board and drew a three foot high vagina and labeled each of the labia, the clitoris, and "put up inside the ‘G’-spot." While drawing, Michael Gaucher told her to use the "pink" chalk, to which Margot Abels responded, "Not everyone is pink, honey." All of the children laughed.

After the chalk vagina was complete, the children remarked on the size of the "clit," and the presenters stated that that was a gifted woman. Then Margot Abels informed all of the young girls that, indeed, you can rub your "clitori" together, either with or without clothes and "you can definitely orgasm from it." Michael Gaucher told the kids that "there is a name for this: tribadism," which he wrote on the board and told one girl who looked about 14 to "bring that vocabulary word back to Bedford." Julie Netherland informed the children that it wasn’t too difficult because, "When you are sexually aroused, your clit gets bigger."

"Should you spit after you suck another boy (or a man)?" Michael Gaucher read the following from a card: "Cum and calories: Spit versus swallow and the health concerns." Gaucher informed the children that although he didn’t know the calorie count of male ejaculation, he has "heard that it’s sweeter if people eat celery." He then asked the boys, "Is it rude not to swallow?" Many of the high school boys mumbled "No," but one about the age of 16 said emphatically, "Oh no!" One boy, again about the age of 16, offered his advice on avoiding HIV/AIDS transmission while giving oral sex by not brushing your teeth or eating course food for four hours before you "go down on a guy," "because then you probably don’t want to be swallowing cum."

Another question asked was whether oral sex was better with tongue rings. A 16-year-old student murmured, "Yes," to which all of the children laughed. Michael Gaucher said, "There you have it" and stated something to the effect that the debate has ended.

Use a condom? It’s your decision, really. One often hears that there is an aggressive HIV/AIDS prevention campaign, but the session ran 55 minutes before the first mention of "protection" and safer sex came. In the context of the "safer sex" discussion, however, it was pointed out that these children could make an "informed decision" not to use a condom. Outside in the conference hall, the children could easily obtain as many condoms, vaginal condoms and other contraceptive devices as they wished from various organizations which distribute such.

Well, yes…it really is about sex! Another popular session was presented by the same three public employees in their professional capacity and was called, "Putting the ‘Sex’ Back Into Sexual Orientation: Classroom Strategies for Health & Sexuality Educators." The workshop included:

What does it mean to say "being gay, lesbian and bisexual isn’t about sex?…How can we deny that sexuality is central for all of us? How do we learn to address the unique concerns of queer youth?…This workshop is for educators to examine strategies for integrating sexuality education and HIV prevention content specific to gay, lesbian and bisexual students into the classroom and GSA’s….additional strategies will be discussed."

The three presenters now assumed the task of teaching teachers how to facilitate discussions about "queer sex" with their students.

Tired of denying it Margot Abels opened by telling the room full of teachers (and two high school students), "We always feel like we are fighting against people who deny publicly, who say privately, that being queer is not at all about sex… We believe otherwise. We think that sex is central to every single one of us and particularly queer youth."

Margot Abels, Julie Netherland and Michael Gaucher reviewed a few "campaigns" that have been used to demonstrate to queer youth how to best "be safe" while still enjoying homosexual sex.

The campaign, "Respect yourself, protect yourself," was thought to be good in getting the message to kids that they should use protection, but since it made children who didn’t protect themselves feel bad, it ultimately was a poor message. Michael Gaucher pointed out that children "with an older partner that they are not feeling they can discuss things with, does that mean that they don’t respect themselves?"

The campaign, "No sex, no problem," was ridiculed, as the campaign assumed that children could opt not to have sex. Additionally, the campaign made those children who had already had sex feel bad or think they had a problem, since they had had sex.

After reviewing a few of the campaigns, Margot Abels described the project she works on. The "Gay/Straight Alliance HIV Education Project" goes to five different schools each year conducting up to eight "HIV prevention sessions" in that school’s gay club. These same presenters who just told a group of children how to properly position their hands for "fisting" were now telling a room full of educators that they would visit their schools and conduct the same workshops for their students.

Bringing homosexuality into the middle school One participant remarked half-way through that Margot Abels just wasn’t "talking to" her, since she, the participant, was a lesbian, middle school teacher. She wanted to know specifically what she could do to facilitate discussions about homosexuality in middle school. This was solved in another session entitled, "Struggles & Triumphs of Including Homosexuality in a Middle School Curriculum." Christine L. Hoyle, Special Education Teacher and workshop presenter, told the story of how she turned the holocaust portion of her curriculum into a gay affirming section. Ms. Hoyle allowed the group at the conference to watch a video which she had her students produce and which was narrated by a seventh grade girl. This girl told the audience that ancient Greeks "encouraged homosexuals; in fact, it was considered normal for an adolescent boy to have an older, wiser man as his lover." Thus, this teacher informed her adolescent students that it is okay if an older man approaches them for sexual gratification.

Finally, the handouts An enormous amount of very disturbing material, most of it aimed at children, was distributed at the conference. Much of it encourages young children to become actively engaged in homosexual activities. The Sidney Borum Community Health Center table was giving out a cassette sized "pocket sex" kit, which included two condoms, two antiseptic "moist" towelettes, and six bandages, which were for "when the sex got really rough" according to the high school volunteer behind the desk. There was a countless supply of condoms supplied by both Sidney Borum and Planned Parenthood, all of which were for the taking by any child who wanted them. One could see children as young as 12 or 13 at the conference participating and receiving "information" and materials.

It shocked this reporter.

For the reporter and the music teacher, this "conference" was a shock that words can barely describe. One wonders whether it was similar to the experiences of American GIs when they first approached the concentration camps. They had heard stories and rumors, but no one could imagine it was like this. It was a mind-numbing experience.

But most shocking of all was that none of the adults seemed to be bothered by any of it. In fact, there was an eerie sense of solidarity in the air, against "those bigots, those homophobes who would stop our progress."

After our paper was delivered to 250,000 homes across the Commonwealth and after our Internet site carried the news around the country, many citizens expressed their shock and anger. When talk show host, Jeanine Graf of 96.9FM, spent three hours every evening for two weeks on the issue, many more expressed their outrage. When all of this pressure hit, the Dept. of Education terminated the two employees and apologized to the state. But the homosexual activists did not want copies of this tape to be heard by the public. So they went to a judge in secret the night before a rally of parents was to be held and asked him to issue an emergency order stopping anyone from talking about the scandal or distributing a tape recording of what had happened. The unconstitutional order that was issued shocked the entire nation, but not Massachusetts.

The following stories were on the daily Internet site of Massachusetts News

After receiving terrible publicity from across the country, Judge van Gestel removed the press from his unconstitutional Order, but he did not remove Brian Camenker or Scott Whiteman. This is an editorial that was written by Massachusetts News.

Judge van Gestel ­ Please Read the Constitution

Judge van Gestel said yesterday that he saw the editorial in the Boston Herald on Tuesday which questioned whether he’s read the Constitution lately. Although the judge assured everyone that he has read the Constitution, it isn’t only the Herald that is wondering. The judge told lawyers for FOX News that if they didn’t like the wiretap law, they had to go back to the state legislature. He said the language of the law was very broad and could be understood to include the press. "That is the law they gave me to uphold." What a Dumb Statement! That is not the law they gave him to uphold. It is only because of how he has interpreted the law that makes it facially unconstitutional. There are two elements that he must decide. 1) Did the law forbid what Scott Whiteman did? 2) If the law does forbid it, is the law permissible under the First Amendment? #1 Does Law Prohibit Scott Whiteman from Taping? As to issue #1, it is not at all clear that the legislature intended to stop Whiteman from taping this public Conference. It is very clear in the Preamble that the law was enacted primarily to protect the public against organized crime and to allow the police to wiretap their conversations. At the same time, the legislature was not opening the door to unlimited wiretapping by anyone. The lawmakers said they were concerned about the "uncontrolled development and unrestricted use" of "modern electronic surveillance devices." (This hardly sounds like a pocket tape recorder.) Clearly, this law does not stop anyone from taping a public meeting such as a town meeting, a school board meeting or similar event. But a judge could look at the explicit words of the law and say that it does prohibit taping those events if the judge doesn’t have any common sense. And one of the first things most people learn in law school is that a judge has to construe a law so that it will not be unconstitutional if it is possible for him to do so. But Judge van Gestel is construing the law in defiance of common sense and with a determination to make it unconstitutional. He told FOX News, "That is the law they gave me to uphold." But that is not true. He is totally misconstruing what they gave him. There have been very few court opinions on this particular law, but the few that we have indicate that what Whiteman did was not unlawful. But Judge van Gestel did not encourage any discussion from the attorneys before making his decision. Very few judges are so authoritarian as to enter a Restraining Order like this before any trial has been held without meticulously discussing the law and the facts of the case with the attorneys. #2 If Law Does Forbid Whiteman, Is It Unconstitutional? If the judge is correct that this law does prohibit what Scott Whiteman did, it is clearly unconstitutional. This was a public meeting where everyone had been invited to hear public employees instruct teachers and students. Even the judge agrees that Whiteman had a right to be at the meeting and to report what was said. The only problem is that no one believed what he told them. He (and many other parents) had been rebuffed time and time again by state and local employees. It was necessary that he report this information totally and accurately. The judge agrees Whiteman could have gone to shorthand class and then transcribed the session and no one could complain. He could have hired a court stenographer and no one would have complained. But neither of those would have been as accurate as a tape recording. Judge’s 17-Year-Old Daughter This judge was a member of a silk-stocking law firm for 35 years before becoming a judge and obviously has very little contact with the real world. He said at the hearing that he has a 17-year-old old daughter and, "I feel very strongly about someone secretly taping my daughter and selling it on the State House steps." He obviously has no idea what went on that meeting. Perhaps he should listen to the tape before he rules on it. Wouldn’t that be a sensible idea? This was criminal conduct by public employees who were corrupting the morals of children by promoting dangerous and harmful practices to their bodies. This was not instruction about AIDS prevention. The practices of fisting, oral sex and many others that were promoted would cause disease, not prevent it. And it does not bother this judge that other people’s 12-year-olds are being subjected to this without their knowledge or consent? In addition, the tape has been altered so that no voices are recognizable. Is the judge really so naïve that he would believe Camenker and Whiteman are making money from this? What a stupid idea!! These people are parents who are making a tremendous sacrifice to alert other parents ­ including Alan van Gestel, parent ­ as to what is happening in the schools of Massachusetts. He doesn’t have the common sense to believe them even with the tape. We’re lucky that most parents are smarter than he. Why Didn’t Boston Media Complain? It’s strange that the Boston media did not complain about this serious abridgement of their First Amendment rights. Many people across the country are worried about this historic infringement upon the rights of the press. And yet the media in Boston were strangely silent. One possibility or explanation that anyone must consider is that they knew the judge was going to rule in their favor and lift the ban. Their reporters certainly have contacts and friends all across the city, including the courthouse. And they have lawyers who are probably friends with this judge. If they did know in advance, it would certainly explain their lack of concern.

Even the state Senate was forbidden by Judge van Gestel from discussing what had happened at the sex conference, one of the most bizarre occurrences in the Constitutional history of our country. Yet, almost no one in the state knows it occurred.

Judge Forbad Debate by State Senate

As a Result, Senate Refused to Cut Gay Funding During Yet Another Nighttime Session

While an Emergency Restraining Order was in effect, which prohibited anyone from discussing the graphic sexual instruction given to school children by Department of Education employees at a Conference in March, the state Senate refused on Monday night to discontinue the funding of homosexual programs in the state’s schools.

The entire legislature was sent an email by Rep. Jarrett T. Barios (D-Cambridge), an open homosexual, warning them that they could not mention anything that had occurred at the March Conference that has led to the firing of two state employees.

The Senate session was labeled an "emergency."

The judge who issued the Order last week was scheduled to consider lifting the Order yesterday, the day after the emergency Senate action.

The radio talk show host who had alerted the state to the problem was scheduled to go on the air at 7 p.m. on Monday to warn the state that the Senate was moving to consider this matter. Therefore, the Senate called an emergency and passed the measure shortly before the time when Jeanine Graf was scheduled to begin broadcasting at 96.9FM.

Press Does Not Report It Even though Attys. Alan Dershowitz, Harvey Silverglate and many other lawyers denounced the court’s attempt to muzzle the legislature, neither the Boston Globe nor the Boston Herald reported anything about the unusual and historic, unconstitutional event.

The Globe reported on Tuesday that, "The state Senate yesterday rebuffed an effort to slash funding for gay and lesbian teen suicide programs…" It said the action came on the first day of debate on the Senate’s debate on the budget. But it did not report that the Senate had been unconstitutionally gagged by a state judge from debating the subject.

The Globe wrote that Sen. Edward J. Clancy Jr. (D-Lynn) wanted to cut the item from $1.5 million to $1 million but was satisfied when the money was specified for suicide prevention and not for sex education.

But Brian Camenker, President of the Parents Rights Coalition, which has been spearheading the parents’ outrage over the scandal, said, "This is a lie. The same funding remains. There was no ‘gay sex education’ money to start with. All of it that was used to pay for the March 25 Conference was so-called ‘suicide prevention money.’ This won’t change a thing."

Camenker also noted that it was a lie that the Conference was not funded by the state. "Through various sources, it was almost entirely state funded," he said. The Boston Herald noted that the Senate had banned the use of money in sex education workshops but it did not report anything about the ban on debate that the court had imposed.

Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg (D-Amherst) also expressed concern during the debate, according to the Herald. "The inappropriate use and abuse of the program cried out for some recognition and articulation," he said. But the measure apparently passed unanimously. Judge Gags Everyone

The gag Order was imposed in secret by Judge Allan van Gestel on Wednesday afternoon at the request of lawyers for one of the Department of Education employees, Julie Netherland, who had been fired because of what she did at the Conference. She told the judge that she was instructing the children in prevention of HIV/AIDS.

"She told the judge a lie. She was not instructing the children in preventing disease," said Camenker. "All of the sexual instruction she gave in ‘fisting’ and other kinky sex is terribly dangerous to their health in many ways, including AIDS."

Netherland also told the judge that, "The distribution of this tape recording would cause irreparable harm to me as an HIV/AIDS educator regardless of where I work." To which Camenker responded, "She should have considered that before she dumped on those innocent children."

The other person who requested the Order was a high school junior from Watertown who was concerned that her voice might be recognized on the tape. But Camenker explained that all voices had already been altered and could not be recognized. "I really am perplexed how these people can tell us they are concerned about the privacy of the children and reveal this girl who was at the Conference," he said.

One of the most striking aspects of the scandal was the way the Boston Globe misinformed the public about what was happening. It is a classic case of how that newspaper uses its power to push its own agenda. We demonstrated that in this story.

Boston Globe Misleads About Sex Scandal

Although Judge Allan van Gestel has overturned the draconian Order which gagged everyone from talking about the sex scandal which caused the firing of two state workers this month, this wasn’t even mentioned in the article that appeared in Friday’s Boston Globe.

The judge had been under severe attack from all across the country for his violation of the First Amendment. Some of the severest criticism came from liberal lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Harvey Silverglate; FOX News dispatched a lawyer to the hearing. But the Globe never mentioned any of that. It printed a headline, "Ruling halts parents group on workshop tape."

The Globe’s first paragraph was, "A Superior Court judge yesterday barred a group of parents from disseminating secret tape recordings of Department of Education workers having a graphic sexual dialogue with teenagers at a recent workshop."

But the judge dropped everyone from the Order except for the parents who made the tape. The Globe was incorrect when it said that the judge barred the parents in his Friday ruling. He merely continued his old Order against them. But all of the media are now free to distribute tapes to anyone they wish.

The judge had warned the homosexual plaintiffs during oral argument, that if he dropped the Order against the media as they requested, it wouldn’t be a victory for them. It would mean that the audiotapes of the March 25 sex Conference would be open to everyone. But he followed their request.

Moreover, the judge did allow the parents more latitude in that, in contrast to his previous Order, they can discuss any part of the sessions that they can remember without referring to the tape.

But the Globe did not report it that way. It reported it as a victory for the homosexual group which sponsored the Conference.

Judge van Gestel sits as a Superior Court judge in Suffolk County.

The Boston Globe mounted an intensive attack on the parents. It was not concerned about the teaching of explicit homosexual sex to children. On just one day, June 2, it printed two stories side-by-side on the front page of the Metro section. We responded on our website with the following.

Globe Reporters Are Ignorant About Law

Will someone please tell the Boston Globe that no one has decided whether the audiotapes that were recorded by parents were in violation of wiretap laws. Despite this, the Globe continues to tell everyone that the judge has already held that the parents violated the law.

The Globe did it again on Friday, when it reported, "A state Superior Court judge has since barred the group from distributing the tapes, ruling at the request of a gay advocate that they were made in violation of wiretap laws." It is obvious that the Globe desperately wants the judge to hold that way, but they should report the truth. The judge has not made any decision in the matter. Explain It to the Globe

What has happened is this.

Homosexual lawyers went to the judge in secret, just before the parents held a big rally at the State House. Because the judge believed the homosexual lawyers, he issued a draconian, unconstitutional order which gagged the entire world from discussing anything about the scandal ­ and learning what the homosexuals had taught the children.

This attack by a judge upon the U.S. Constitution shocked the entire country. Fox News sent lawyers to protest. Even Boston’s liberal lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Harvey Silverglate expressed their shock and dismay. Incredibly, even the state legislature was told that it could not discuss the issue when it debated funding of $1.5 million for homosexual groups to use in our schools last week.

When he realized ho