SAN JOSÉ, Calif., July 26, 2010—Nearly three years after terminating her over her protected classroom speech, the San José/Evergreen Community College District (SJCCD) has agreed to pay adjunct professor June Sheldon $100,000 in lost earnings in exchange for dismissal of her First Amendment lawsuit. In 2007, Sheldon had led a brief discussion about the nature/nurture [...]

U of I to review removal of religion professor Teacher barred after discussion of Catholic position on homosexuality By Manya A. Brachear, Tribune reporter Faculty at the University of Illinois will review the case of a religion professor removed from the classroom after a student labeled his explanation of the Roman Catholic teaching on homosexuality [...]

Being force-fed a single side of the story is only half of the problem with classroom indoctrination; the other half is silencing the other side. At Chicago Now, Emily Zanotti has a simply unreal story about a professor who was fired for discussing the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality—in a class about the Catholic [...]

When the principles of academic freedom are codified as rights for students, an important and potentially contentious issue arises, which is whether such rights lend themselves to interpretation in a way that infringes on the authority of the instructor in the classroom. Clearly the teaching relationship is (and must be) an unequal one, since it [...]

A truly saddening state of affairs exists in Arlington, Massachusetts. Students at the local high school have not said the Pledge of Allegiance in decades. No American flag hangs in any classroom. Some school administrators have suggested that this is to avoid religious controversy over the unmentionable G-word contained within the Pledge. No one, of [...]

Since I read the latest racial rant from Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor, the Irreverent Jeremiah Wright, I can’t stop thinking of Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers.
Erin Gruwell’s first classroom as an idealistic, new teacher brought her face to face with a microcosm of the gangs of Long Beach, California. These freshmen, many with learning [...]

You wouldn’t know it from how the current ruling class treats dissent, but once upon a time, there was no greater crime in America than “questioning someone’s patriotism.”  The accusation that conservatives had been making a habit of this at all was severely overblown, but the other side of the coin is that, as much [...]

Two recent events brought me to seriously doubt if personal involvement in politics is worth the Mount Everest of laundry that accumulates while I attempt to “change the nation,” by campaigning, making phone calls, and pounding the pavement for the latest “real deal.”
The first “final straw,” was the pathetic betrayal of voters by Scott Brown, [...]

More of the best.  Less of the worst.
Few issues spark more heated emotions than education spending, and New York City Education Department Chancellor Joel Klein’s new Daily Beast piece is likely to be no different.  According to him, attempts to control costs in the Big Apple will end up hurting lots of teachers and students [...]

The intrepid mujahedin, attacking schoolgirls with chemical weapons. “Afghanistan: Gas attack targets third girls’ school,” from AdnKronos International, May 11: Kunduz, 11 May (AKI) – At least 30 schoolgirls were poisoned on Tuesday in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, the third such attack on a girls’ school in the…