She's not mentioned in the article, but my mom (who still teaches in the system) says the new principal is the one who pulled the paper. In a perhaps-unrelated story, a month after school started, the entire math department apparently threatened to resign over something she'd done. The entire department. Shortly after, the English department did the same.
Couple days after this went down, the Sentinel published pictures of the student editor and staff holding up the "banned" pages. One of them was wearing a t-shirt that read "Censorship got me pregnant".
Tom Bailey's quote is a real screamer: "We have a responsibility to the public to do the right thing...We've got 14-year-olds that read the newspaper." The Surgeon General, among others, has reported that teaching preaching abstinence to teens doesn't keep them from having sex, but from having safe sex. Why do the OR administrators want to subject our little brothers, sisters, and friends to inferior educational practices? Ask them.
And the worse part is that it's happening here, in our supposed bastion of, if not liberalism, moderation and rational thought. More PhDs per square mile than any other city on earth, and now we're no better than the rest of our howl-at-the-moon swamp-dwelling moonshine-swilling cousin-fucking* red state.
[edit, 11:52 PM: Thanks, Linda.]
There's a reason that we have a child care center AT SCHOOL, and that reason is NOT because our 14-year-olds are pure and innocent.
Posted by: grrr at November 28, 2005 02:43 PMI know I keep bringing this up, but I still think it's a great idea - let's start leaving unwanted babies on these do-gooders' doorsteps. "You wanted 'em? You raise 'em!"
Posted by: Holly at November 28, 2005 02:45 PMOh, the asterisk. Right.
*It's not safe sex just because it's a member of your family.
Funny you should mention moonshine, as they ran a story on NPR today bemoaning the modern moonshine epidemic. At least they did us the small favor of highlighting Virginia as ground zero. For once.