By Ken Eyring
It appears the Windham School District’s Administration has a double standard regarding when parental approval is deemed appropriate regarding student instruction. In September 2016, parents were required to sign a permission slip before their children would receive a copy of the United States Constitution on Constitution Day (Sept. 17th). That request rightfully raised some eyebrows in town. (And many students were never even offered a copy, even though the district was offered a donated copy for every student in the district…hmmm…)
The Superintendent’s response was that the donated Constitutions were published by the National Center for Constitutional Studies – and their website (www.nccs.net) had references to religion – so out of respect for parents and their values, the administration said it was appropriate to seek parental approval before children were allowed to receive a copy of the United States Constitution.
Many of our Founding Fathers believed that our Constitutionally protected inalienable Rights come from God – and not from the government… and therefore, the government cannot take our Rights away. That’s an important concept that our children are not being taught, but should be.
One of those inalienable Rights is “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Now compare the fact that parents had to sign a permission slip for their children to receive a copy of the United States Constitution… with the fact that the district did not ask parents for permission to indoctrinate Windham children in a protest of one of our inalienable Rights; the Second Amendment. Superintendent Langlois instead called it a “civics lesson … led by students.”
In fact, the protest was not organized by students, but by a national lobbying organization; www.womensmarch.com. I encourage you to go to that website as well. It clearly states they are lobbying for changes in firearms laws.
Regardless of your position on the Second Amendment, this is inappropriate. Any conversation regarding an organized protest to reduce any of our inalienable Rights does not belong in our classrooms where our impressionable children can be coerced with selective narratives. Those conversations should take place between parents and their children at home. But as we have seen over the past year, Parental Rights are now being dismissed more prevalently.
Instead, the education that we pay dearly for to teach academics to our children, is increasingly being replaced with ideologies.
Ideologies do not belong in our schools. In fact, according to Title I Section 15:5 it is a prohibited act for any recipient of State funds (ie. Schools) to participate in any Political Activity. And we should certainly not be paying for it. This is not the return on investment that we expect.
Respectfully Submitted,
Ken Eyring
