Another reason why I'm so glad

1) we don't live in VA anymore

and

2) we don't send our kids to school to see this overt effort at swaying children.

When I started my teaching career, Chris warned me that the teacher's unions are forcefully liberal, and he was going to keep an eye on me to make sure I didn't get brain washed. And yes, the liberal "junk" was all over the place in that little school. Fortunately the teacher across the hall from me was an ultra-conservative, so we were able to vent about this issue. I've never understood why teachers, as a rule, are so liberal. Conservatives don't want to crush the teachers - they want to offer choices to parents. The option of having vouchers and letting parents send their kids to another school if their school is failing scares the beejezus out of most teachers. It forces them to look at themselves and realize that they can't just sit on their tenure and get by.

And don't even get me started on the No Child Left Behind policy - which by the way keeps getting blamed on George W. Bush, but in actuality was a bill proposed and co-authored by Ted Kennedy - a Democrat in case you weren't aware. All this bill does is cause teachers to feel forced to teach to the test. So if you teach science and you are studying the solar system, and your students get really excited about this topic you have to stop studying because you have to move on. This crushes the natural excitement that children have for learning. We are teaching our children to just be memorizers, not learners. All in the name of getting a high enough score to please the federal government. What?? Does that sound like a way to get our children to the next level? I don't think so.