Education

I think it's harmful to foster anti-American, anti-Capitalist anger in children. It's also logically nonsensical: Do everything you can to get good grades so that you can participate in the system, work in the field of your choice. Oh, and that system is evil and your bosses will exploit you, if you don't start your own business, in which case you'll be evil.

I'm the coach of the Huntington Park Debate Team, and we had a tournament at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles, by Echo Park. The faculty and administrators at LAUSD schools lean left, as you might imagine (most of the parents aren't attuned to the nuances of American politics). Still, I was sort of shocked by the completely lefty atmosphere. I took some pics and added commentary under each one. The flyers also have PDF downloads.

Please keep in mind that all but the last one was on the bulletin board of the teacher's class- the teacher put it up- this wasn't something one of the kids brought from their brother's Maoist reading section at the community college. Also, be aware that most of the students are first-generation Americans, if not immigrants themselves- this is pretty much the only view they get of the country: Welcome, now let us tell you how bad we are.

Not pictured is the copy of the Communist Manifesto- no kidding- in the teacher's bookshelf next to a bunch of other Marxo-racist books. I don't remember seeing Paolo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed; the teacher may have kept it in his desk.

Here, the school encourages students to seek free lunch because if 85% of the student population gets free lunch, everybody gets it. Talk about perverse incentives! The correct message would be: you should do everything possible to not be on government assistance.

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Our debate on Wednesday, December 9th was a great success primarily- in fact, almost exclusively- due to the hard work of the participating students. They chose a topic a couple of months ago and under the direction of the captains, Priscilla for the affirmative and Mabel for the negative, proceeded to do all of the research, studying after school and during some lunches.

The auditorium was 3/4 of the way full with maybe 20 classes and 500 people attending. Brett Flater, the coordinator of the Los Angeles Metro Debate League (LAMDL) scored the event. He's still tabulating, but said that it was close, a sign of a good debate.

The only issues was a delay caused by the microphone volume. That glitch robbed the students of their prep time and each teams' final rebuttal.

Riot, from my fourth period class took video, below:

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