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Thread: 130 suspended for protesting over the end of building trades program, Mike Rowe gets involved

  1. #1

    130 suspended for protesting over the end of building trades program, Mike Rowe gets involved

    More evidence that it's all about the money, and the only thing schools are interested in "teaching" now is how to take tests. They certainly don't want students graduating high school with any marketable skills.

    Mike Rowe Is Back With a Powerful New Video Addressing a Specific Situation That Has a Small Town Up in Arms
    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014...wn-up-in-arms/

    Mike Rowe is back with a brand new video about hard work and the “demise of vocational education,” which is just as inspiring as his Walmart ad. However, this particular video was inspired by a specific situation currently impacting the small town of Ottawa, Ill.

    The school board in the town recently voted to discontinue the building trades program at Ottawa Township High School and fired instructor Dave Keely.

    Students, parents and tradesmen came together last week to protest the school board’s decision. Students held U.S. flags and homemade signs advocating for the reinstatement of the building trades program.

    The school responded by slapping 130 students with three-day suspensions for being “disruptive to the educational process,” the local newspaper reports. Some were also reportedly banned from their senior prom.
    [....]
    Rowe responded to the story on his website, ProfoundlyDisconnected.com, and then followed up with an inspiring video. Though he admitted he generally doesn’t support many “protests,” he said he stands with the students at Ottawa Township High School.

    “I can’t speak to their motives. I have no idea if they care more about the teacher, or more about the demise of vocational education. Maybe they’re just bored high-schoolers looking to snap the monotony of a long winter,” he writes. “But either way, if I could be there with them, I would. Because I like what’s happening. I like that these kids are willing to suffer the consequences of speaking their minds. I like that the local trade unions are supporting them. I like that the press is covering it. But mostly, I like that somebody is standing up for the skilled trades. Finally. In a place where it really matters.”

    That brings us to Rowe’s new video, titled “I Am a Woodshop.” It uses the same general template as the popular Walmart ad he narrated, replacing “work” and manufacturing with “wood” and building trades programs.

    I read a letter to the editor that stated the board wanted to end the ag program too, in the middle of farm country.

    The Ottawa Township High School Board of Education has decided to abolish the building trades program. This decision is from the same board who wanted to eliminate the OTHS agriculture program.

    Realizing the school was situated amongst some of the best farmland in the country, and that farmers feed the world, they did not rid their fine institution of ag. Why cut the trades program? Perhaps because those skills learned in the trades are not tested on those standardized tests that evaluate the school. With that evaluation comes money. That is the same money that over the next two years will line the administrators' pockets with their 5-percent raises.
    [...]
    The students whom the school should be educating are standing outside the school. But not to worry, they will be educated, by punishment and bullying. The school is not a castle, and the administrators are not kings. This is a public trust, and the keepers would do well to remember that. Take down the barricades.

    Are the protesters disrupting the serious and solemn effort of education? The Fine Arts Fair was presented. Please, nobody interrupt their TV time.
    Last edited by Lucille; 03-27-2014 at 11:22 AM.
    Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access; and beyond that it does not go. The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
    --Albert J. Nock



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  3. #2
    More proof this country has lost it's noodle. I guess in the new global economy we will spend all out time outdoors.
    "The Patriarch"



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