An Advanced Placement World Geography teacher at a Texas high school who encouraged students to dress in Islamic clothing also instructed them to refer to the 9-11 hijackers not as terrorists – but as “freedom fighters,” according to students who were in the class.
Students at Lumberton High School were also told to stop referring to the Holocaust as Genocide – instead they were told to use the term “ethnic cleansing.”
John Valastro, the superintendent of the Lumberton Independent School District, told Fox News that the teacher did absolutely nothing wrong.
“What is more dangerous – fear and ignorance or education and understanding,” he asked. “From our standpoint, we are here to educate the kids.”
Valastro said the teacher involved is a 32-year veteran who was simply following state teaching guidelines.
“I don’t think my freshman-level teacher was trying to politicize radical Islam or anything like that,” he told Fox News. “I don’t think our teacher has..to my knowledge ever converted a single student to Islam.”
More @ Fox
I think the Nazi SS was just following guidelines as well. Might be time to check out those guidelines and who wrote them.
ReplyDeleteI believe their legislature is looking into it.
DeleteI read the entire article. NOWHERE are students "instructed to call 9-11 hijackers freedom fighters." Notice the lack of any QUOTES...
ReplyDeleteDid they call "terrorists" "freedom fighters"? That's possible. OR... perhaps it was an actual instructing, learning class, where students are playing "devil's advocate"...
I think that ONE parent didn't like this class (whether the class is "right" or "wrong" is not my point), and that one parent "added in" a few spicy things, like the "9-11 hijackers are freedom fighters" bit.
I emailed Todd Starnes directly and asked him a direct question: "where are the quotes?"
So far, no response.
I think MAYBE this was a sort-of "cowboys and Indians" type environment. If you are an "Indian", obviously the "Cowboys" are bad, and vice-versa.
Were the 9-11 hijackers "evil terrorists"? Of course they were. But I'm calling BULLSHIT on THIS class calling them, specifically, "freedom fighters", until I see some DIRECT QUOTES.
My take is the teacher (per the instruction manual) said something like "well, they see themselves as freedom fighters" (meaning: all the Muslim fighters in general) and a biiiiig leap to include the (alleged) 9-11 terrorists has been made by Fox & friends to stir up hysteria.
NOWHERE are students "instructed to call 9-11 hijackers freedom fighters." Notice the lack of any QUOTES...
ReplyDeleteThat is evidently what the child told the mother and this isn't the first out of Texas.
LeBlanc said the students were told that they could no longer use the terms suicide bomber or terrorist. Instead, they were instructed to use the words “freedom fighters.”
http://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2013/02/texas-schools-force-girls-to-wear.html
Odd....you cannot find the name of the marxist teacher ANYWHERE ! MY guess is the teacher is a follower of soetoro-obama. And this is the crap the .gov schools are cramming down our children's throats.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't the citizens organizing a burning in effigy of the teacher with a Palestinian flag draped around the dummy ?
And people think Texas is a bastion of patriots and conservatives ? I think not.
Maybe the Obama worker who was photographed in Texas with a Che poster on the wall behind her desk.:)
DeleteGuys: what I said, ALL I said was, there are no QUOTES, to show that this happened.
ReplyDeleteThere is NO LINK between "call them freedom fighters" and "the 9-11 hijackers"... I'm a professional journalist. The term for this is "REACHING"...
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Here is the ONLY passage in the article:
And then came the comparison between the 9-11 hijackers and the freedom fighters.
Madelyn said a young man sitting beside her was stunned.
“He was shocked that we had to call them that,” she told Fox News. “He laughed and asked the teacher, ‘Is that a joke? Are you serious? Why do we have to call them that? That makes it sound okay (what they did) And it’s not.’”
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Me, as a writer, and a professional journalist... I can't in good conscience say that this is "calling the 9-11 hijackers 'freedom fighters'".
The word used here is "COMPARISON" , NOT "calling them". Words are very, VERY specific things, and "comparison" does NOT equal "calling them"...
Note the superintendant's words:
The superintendent also defended the lesson on freedom fighters.
“The whole idea behind this particular lesson – do you call yourself a freedom fighter or Islamic jihadist – or whatever it is you want to be called – you’ve got to put things in perspective,” the superintendent said. “We’re trying to teach the kids to discern for themselves that one thing can be called many different things.”
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Again: my take is that the teacher was making the TEACHING POINT to make the kids UNCOMFORTABLE, TO MAKE THEM THINK, and to play devil's advocate.
I could be wrong, of course, but in the absence of any direct quotes, I'm still calling BS on this.