confederate flag ban in n.c. schools

[doug]

More Person students sent home  By CLAUDIA ASSIS and MARK SCHULTZ : The Herald-Sun
Oct 8, 2003 : 10:54 pm ET
ROXBORO -- More students at Person High School were suspended Wednesday for violating a new ban on clothing with Confederate flags or symbols, Assistant Principal Margaret Bradsher said.
Four or five students were suspended, but it was a "calm day" at the school, said Bradsher, who is also a Person County commissioner.
"We had lots of opportunities to talk to the kids, explain the situation surrounding that ban, and hopefully, more of them understand it now," she said.
Person High Principal Greg Hicks announced the ban Monday after several incidents at the school, including at least one fight between a white student and a black student.
Person High, which has about 1,700 students, is the county's only high school. Its enrollment is about 70 percent white and 30 percent black, with other minorities comprising about 1 percent, officials have said.
Hicks, who replaced longtime Principal Larry Oakley, who retired last year, said students were allowed to wear Confederate symbols in the past without incident. However, Person High began to see problems this year, including racial slurs directed at black students, he said.
Five or six students were suspended Tuesday, all sent home for one day. The only exception was one student who was suspended for three days, Hicks said.
Tenth-grader Roger Moore said he was suspended for three days for wearing a shirt with the Confederate flag on the front and back. He sports two flags on his notebook as well, he said.
Moore said he was first drawn to the flag because it graced the top of the General Lee, the famous orange car in the "Dukes of Hazzard" TV show.
"[The flag] is a symbol of less government, less taxes and people governing themselves," he said. "It's not a racist flag."
Moore said school officials have peeled Confederate flags off students' car windows and towed at least one truck from the school parking lot because it boasted a Confederate flag.
"[Officials] went way overboard," he said.
At least one parent, David Watson, has said he opposes the ban and plans to challenge it, calling it a free speech issue.
Watson, who collects Civil War memorabilia, said he owns several Confederate flags, soldiers' uniforms and other items.
"To me, so many people died fighting for that flag -- what's the problem?" he said. "I don't like Martin Luther King Day, but I put up with it."
Watson's son, Daniel, 14, who is in the ninth grade, said he knows the students involved in the fight, which he said started after one student threw a french fry at another.
"They think everybody who owns a flag is racist," he said. "The only reason I wear the flag is heritage. My family was in the war and they died."
Daniel said he might wear one of his Confederate shirts today, even if it means getting sent home.
"I plan on it, probably," he said. "I gotta do what I think is right."
Daniel was not the only student planning to buck the ban today.
Fourteen-year-old Brian Williams, also a ninth-grader, said Wednesday evening that he would wear a Confederate shirt today.
"It wasn't a flag for slavery," Brian said. "It was a flag we fought under."
Hicks said earlier this week that he consulted Person County Schools Superintendent Ronnie Bugnar before implementing the ban. The school first tried suspending the students causing the problems, he said, but the incidents continued.
The new ban comes on top of Person High's already strict dress code, which prohibits bare midriffs, clothing that starts more than 3 inches above the knee and white T-shirts, among other items.

© 2003 The Durham Herald Company

[doug]

School officials OK clothing displaying Confederate flag
By Lynn Hotaling
Local school officials Monday (Sept. 22) overturned a principal's decision to suspend four teens because their clothing displayed the Confederate flag.
Cullowhee Valley Principal Theresa Peters suspended the middle school age students, two boys and two girls, because they refused to turn their T-shirts inside out, said Mike Parris, commander of the Jackson County Rangers, officially Camp 1917 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Parris and another member of his group met with school board members at the request of the suspended students and their parents, he said Tuesday.
"The way it ended, the school board decided children in Jackson County can wear shirts with the Confederate flag," Parris said. "I am very thankful for what (school board members) did, and I appreciate the way they handled it."
According to Parris, the situation at Cullowhee Valley had been simmering for about a year, and Peters had on several occasions asked students to turn their shirts inside out if they displayed the Confederate flag.
"This is a heritage thing," Parris said in explaining why his group was willing to intercede on the students' behalf. "We support banning shirts that promote alcohol or tobacco or have vulgar language, but there is nothing mentioned in the schools' code of conduct about the Confederate flag."
Jackson County Board of Education Chairman James Roper concurred.
"There is nothing in our handbook that says (students) cannot wear shirts that have the Confederate flag,"
Roper said Tuesday. "They can wear it as long as it doesn't cause a disturbance and it's not vulgar."
Board members' decision to overturn the students' suspension was unanimous, Roper said.
Principal Peters was out of town due to illness in her family and was unavailable to meet with board members Monday night, Roper said.
"We don't know the whole story, but there is nothing in our handbook that says they can't wear it," he said.
The question of whether students could wear clothing that displays the Confederate flag came down to a "free speech" issue, said Superintendent Mack McCary.
"Unless there was evidence the clothing was disrupting learning, we really couldn't say they couldn't wear it," he said.
Cullowhee Valley had an "unwritten rule" that students couldn't wear the Confederate flag out of a sensitivity to the concerns of those who might perceive it in negative way, McCary said.
But the school board's dress code policy contains nothing about the Confederate flag, McCary said. The policy leaves a determination of what is disruptive to the principal's discretion.
"The evidence of any disruption of learning is missing here," the superintendent said.
Cullowhee Valley's nickname is "Rebels," and the school's mascot, as depicted throughout the school and on the baseball field, is a southern gentleman, or "colonel" in 19th-century attire.
When Cullowhee Valley opened in 1994, it retained the Rebel mascot that had historically been the symbol of its predecessor, the K-12 Camp Lab School located on Western Carolina University's campus.
A CVS eighth-grader addressed the mascot issue in a Feb. 7, 2002, letter to the editor of The Sylva Herald.
Her contention that the mascot and nickname are offensive to African-American students and are no longer appropriate symbols for the school triggered close to a dozen responses.
While several praised the writer for her courage in speaking out, most of the letters The Herald received favored keeping the Rebel mascot because it was part of Cullowhee's heritage.
Peters is beginning her third year as principal at the K-8 Cullowhee Valley. School board members earlier this month extended her contract for four years.

[doug]

http://ncsouth.blogspot.com/2010/02/dumbing-down-history-again.html
DUMBING DOWN HISTORY (AGAIN)

Once again, North Carolina's educational system is making national headlines. Thanks to Fox News for alerting us to this year's plan by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to remove U.S. history from the course in U.S. history. Under the plan, the required 11th-grade course will now include "U.S. history only from 1877 onward."

Not so fast, says June Atkinson, Superintendent of Public Instruction, who claims the plan increases the amount of history education in the curriculum. "The years prior to reconstruction would have been covered with students three times before - in fourth grade (as part of North Carolina history) in fifth grade and in seventh grade."

However, a closer look at the proposed elementary school curriculum shows what's really going on. The 4th grade class in North Carolina history seems to be transformed into a study of how the North Carolina colonists destroyed the indigenous Native Americans. Fourth graders will now learn to explain the "causes and effects of European exploration and colonization on North Carolina American Indian groups." Fifth graders will learn to "analyze the relationships between European explorers and native peoples."

Things don't get better in middle school. Gone is any mention of the War Between the States in the 7th-grade course in North Carolina history. Instead, our children will learn about "the Indian Removal Act, governmental authority & racial tension during the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898, desegregation during the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education." [Question for DPI: Are there any historic events worth teaching that don't involve discrimination against minority groups?]

This is the same stunt DPI attempted in 2001, when it plotted to remove the middle school course in North Carolina history, all the while claiming that it was actually increasing North Carolina history education. We didn't fall for it then, and after outraged parents showed up at town hall meetings around the state, the N.C. General Assembly amended the General Statutes to require two full years of North Carolina history education in the public schools.

Since DPI apparently didn't learn its lesson, contact your legislators again and let them know that you oppose this plan. North Carolina has too much history for the public schools to ignore it.