Keeping politics out of government run schools requires constant vigilance.  In recent years, political ideology has been brazenly imposed on students across the country.  Woodbrook Elementary School in Charlottesville, Virginia, provides the latest example of a government school imposing left wing ideology, this time with the Marxist rhetoric of the Occupy movement.

Woodbrook Elementary, (principal Lisa Molinaro), allowed leftist activists into the school to train third graders in writing songs which were performed at an assembly organized by an outside group –  Kid Pan Alley – in October of this year.  The tune the 3^rd graders “wrote” and performed could have come from the soundtrack at Zuccotti park, minus the drug overdoses and rapes.

Some people have it all,

but they don’t think that they have enough

They want more money

A faster ride

They’re not content

Never satisfied

Yes-  they are the 1 percent

I used to be one of the 1 percent

I worked all the time

Never saw my family

Couldn’t make life rhyme

Then the bubble burst

It really, really hurt

I lost my money

Lost my pride

Lost my home

Now I’m part of the 99

I used to be sad now I’m satisfied

Cause I really have enough

Though I lost my yacht and plane

Didn’t need that extra stuff

Could have been much worse

You don’t need to be first

Cause I’ve got my friends

Here by my side

Don’t need it all

I’m happy to be part of the 99.

On June 5, Andrew Coulson posted a disturbing graph at Big Government:

He showed that public education costs are skyrocketing while student achievement remains flat.  In another graph in the same post, he showed that the public school bureaucracy is growing TEN times as fast as the student body.

The bottom line:  The growth and cost of the education establishment is out of control, while the quality of public education is in desperate need of improvement.

Regarding the latter, just how bad can things be?  Check out this brief video clip:

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AFT President Randi Weingarten may have inadvertantly put her finger on one of the major problems with public education today.

During an Oct. 28  forum at the Center for American Progress, Weingarten told the assembled panel that teachers unions, along with the general labor movement and the nation’s public schools, should be agents for social justice. She said “we have to do more than simply instruct children seven hours a day” and that “community schools should be the hub of the community.”

We suppose she means that our public schools, and the people who teach in them, should be actively engaged in political issues that have little or nothing to do with education –  like abortion, gay marriage and the sort.  That’s all fine and good, to a point. We live in a free society, where labor unions and their members can spout off about anything, just like the rest of us.

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