Open Letter To Richard Broderick,

Open Letter To Richard Broderick, Part II - On September 9, I wrote an email to Richard Broderick, Green Party candidates for the St.Paul school board.

I never got a response.

He has a website, now - and on it he says that, in addition to all his earlier statements (use the school board to "nurture kids' intrinsically Green consciousness", build a "Peace Curriculum", yadda yadda), he also wants to use his position on the School Board to "...help lead the fight to remove the many destructive provisions of No Child Left Behind and to repeal Minnesota's new Conceal-and-Carry law - a major safety threat to students and teachers alike."

Yet again, Mr. Broderick never responded to my email.

So I just sent him another.

Mr. Broderick,

My name is Mitchell Berg. I'm a St. Paul resident, and father of two St. Paul Public School children.

On September 9, I sent you an email with three questions addressed to your campaign. I haven't received an answer yet - and in the intervening five weeks, I've come up with another question.

I believe these are questions on the minds of a number of St. Paul parents, and I'd like to try again here.

1) On your website, you say you want to create a "Peace Curriculum". What is YOUR vision for the "Peace Curriculum", as reflected in how children study, say, world history or current events?

2) You plan to have "organizations like Friends for a Non-Violent World
with a proven track record in training people in the theory and techniques
of non-violence" involved in creating this curriculum. Leave aside for a moment that FNVW (and most other such groups) have a very defined political agenda (can you imagine someone proposing bringing in the NRA to help with a curriculum?), I have to ask: are you going to have any countervailing opinion involved? In what way do you plan to seek balance from the broader community in creating this curriculum?

3) In your press release announcing your candidacy, you said "...we need to nurture the instinctively Green consciousness of our young people through the comprehensive application of these principles to *curriculum* [my emphasis], instruction, administration, and district-wide decision-making processes."

To a non-Green observer, that sounds like you plan to use the school system to indoctrinate students with the Green worldview. Could you please elaborate on this statement?

4) Finally, on your website you say "I will help lead the fight...to repeal Minnesota's new Conceal-and-Carry law - a major safety threat to students and teachers alike." Two questions, actually:

* How do you answer someone who asks why you'd
use School District time and resources to
try to affect legislative business - effectively
turning the School District into a PAC (for
non-school-related issues)?

* Could you please document instances of
*legally-permitted* people (as opposed
to people without permits) in any of
the 35 other shall-issue or no-permit
states committing ANY crime, much less
a shooting, against "students and
teachers?"

Again, I eagerly await your response.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Berg

Again, I'll be waiting to see if he responds.

Posted by Mitch at October 15, 2003 06:04 AM