Believe It - I got this email from a regular reader today, regarding
the "Unbelieveable" story (earlier today):

Mitch,

I just finished catching up on your blog today, and your headline story
?Unbelieveable? left me shaking my head.

I wasted the better part of a year attempting to pass along this message
to the members of the [E-Democracy St. Paul Politics discussion] list. And
when ?the fur flew? even you could not help but step back from the fracas.

The correspondent is referring, I believe, to a thread on the
St. Paul politics list that involved him taking on the St. Paul school board's
support for the "Out for Equity" program, a program that arguably promoted
the glorification, rather than acceptance, of the gay lifestyle to district
students. The details aren't as important as the background - I supported
the writer of this email on the key points, while I was uncomfortable with
some of the specifics of the discussion. What can I say - I don't have
many beliefs that'll fit in a seven-second sound bite.

We continue:

You say: ?I feel sick. If my kids are exposed to
any of this crap, fur will fly. I guarantee it.? My response is why should
that be a possibility? Just what will it take for YOU to pull your kids
out of the public meat grinder?

About the same thing as it'll
take for a lot of us to do it; winning the Lotto (or getting serious
tuition tax credit passed. I'm a single parent with ene income - a decent
one, but just one. Being well within the income band that Roger Moe considers
"Rich" and most of us consider "middle class", I can afford to pay for school
- once. Private school is not, at the moment, an option. One day, I hope
it will, but at the moment, no.

But onward:

If you mean what you say, then you have already
wasted precious time on making the fur fly Mitch, because I GUARANTEE that
your kids have been exposed to just this kind of thing on a daily basis.

He's
right. And I fight with my school's principal and teachers on a probably
biweekly basis about these sorts of things. I look over what's in my kids'
textbooks, and provide very insistent counterpoint to lots of it.

Horror story: two years ago, a little girl (race immaterial) was picking
on my daughter. Bear in mind, my daughter is very tall and strong for her
age - she could have cleaned the bus with this little brat. But the little
girl picked on her veyr aggressively, and the bus driver did nothing, and
my daughter followed my family rule - fight only in self-defense - and came
to me about it.

And I went to the school. I told the Assistant Principal (in charge of
"discipline") what this little girl was doing.

"Oh", she said, "her. Yes, well, she's [fill in ethnic group], they have
a different cultural perspective on female aggressiveness than we do. We
need to be sensitive to it".

I stood, dumbfounded. Then: "My kids are descended from Vikings. We are
used to standing up on the bus, er, Longboat, and pillaging everything in
our path. Could we be sensitive to that?" The woman got the point, and
the little girl was told to back off.

All by way of saying, I'm not one to blindly accept the status quo
- not perfect, but I try. But onward:

Talk is cheap; action requires sacrifice. Fighting back means many hours
of meeting with the enemy on their grounds, and digging up their dirty laundry
for a public airing sometimes incurs the wrath of the enemy?s Children of
the Corn, but if one is truly outraged the cost is well worth the effort.

The forces arrayed against our kids, literally storming the gates of the
schools, are a force to be reckoned with. They aren?t stupid and they have
momentum on their side.

All totally true.

Forget
the sawing on the Oak; attack the acorn on the ground.

Welcome to the real world Mitch, we all have our marks in the sand..looks
like you may have had yours stepped on. But take some advice: Forget writing
to the NEA, they will post your message on their bulletin board for a laugh.

Also true. Writing to the "enemy"'s house infopipe is probably
more a feel-good exercise than anything. A fair point.

If you
want to make a difference start showing up at the board meetings, that?s
where the fur needs to fly. See you there?

Regards,

[name withheld]

Yes, indeed. That is what needs to happen.

I'm as overworked as they come. But until I have the money to get my kids
out of the big social experiment lab, that is what I'll have to do.
So I will.

Keep the email coming, and thanks.
posted by Mitch Berg 8/20/2002 12:16:55 AM