Sadly, I do believe it. I also believe that those teachers who do such things ought to be fired. The same idiots would be all over anyone who tried to interject any idea they found offensive and not politically correct thinking on children that young. It seems teachers no longer "teach," they indoctrinate, not the thing they were hired to do.

I remember another teacher I know of personally in southern Sillyfornia who refused to allow one child the right to bring her father to school to discuss his job on a "Career Day" where the parents of her students were invited to come give brief presentations about what they do for a living. Her reason for denying this father the right to speak? He is in the military and the teacher claimed that "... allowing a man whose job it is to carry out 'murder' for our nation would set a bad example for the children." The school board upheld her decision.

How do I know about this? The teacher is one of my cousins. She is an avowed Marxist and teaches "the values of Marxism" to her students almost daily, incorporating it into almost every subject she teaches with the blessings of the school's administration and the school board. A real example I saw her present to her class during a visit there once went like this: "Johnny took four hours and picked ten apples. Mary picked for two hours and got two apples. Bobby picked for fifteen minutes and picked one. How many apples does Johnny owe Mary and Bobby because he took more than his fair share?"

If you haven't figured it out by now, this is not one of my cousins with whom I have much to do. She became enraged when I told her Johnny didn't owe Mary or Bobby a damned thing. He did more work and should be allowed to do with his apples as he damned well pleased. I got a ten minute lecture, complete with wagging finger in my face about how Johnny has an obligation to give some of his apples to the others, even if he worked longer than they did. It ended when I suggested that Mary and Bobby didn't need apples. They needed ambition, personal resposibility and a work ethic.

And, no, I don't mind that she doesn't speak to me any more. At a family reunion once, she labelled me as a "baby killer" and "murderer" because of my service to this nation in southeast Asia. I was still in the wheel chair then (1970) and she said it was what I deserved for "attacking" innocent "freedom fighters who only wanted to be free to embrace socialism and throw off the yoke of imperialistic American tyranny." She even claimed the North Vietnamese soldiers who were there were only there "to help the oppressed people of South Viet Nam throw off the yoke of American colonialism." Of course, she had never been to South Viet Nam and had never spoken with anyone who had lived there or were born there.

As you might expect, she also punishes small boys in her class who dare play "soldier," "cowboys and Indians" or "cops and robbers" during recess. She makes me happy that I am not like her and did not come from the shallow end of our family's gene pool. The rest of her siblings aren't a whole lot better. Her older sister dances topless in local bars there, one of her brothers is a member of a Hare Krishna group and they have no idea where he is. The other brother is a drug addict with multiple convictions for a variety of crimes - all drug related. She became particularly incensed when I expressed gratitude for her lesbian lifestyle because it meant she would not be able to reproduce and that her sister's numerous abotions have left her sterile. Neither brother will ever know parenthood as well. The cultist would rather clash finger symbols and cavort stupidly in safron colored robes and chanting nonsense while the only injection in which the other brother has any interest involves hypodermic needles. He is HIV positive as well, so his time to litter the landscape is also limited. Of course, those things are not his fault. He's like that because "the United States society forces people into those conditions."

All families have a family tree. Mine has this bunch as a sign of root rot in that structure.