WHY ALTERNATIVE (HOMESCHOOLING) IS NECESSARY!

Quotes From the Teacher Talk Forum on Violence in the Schools http://education.indiana.edu/cas/tt/v2i3/quotes.html

Drugs and Violence in the Schools

How Schools Are Trying to Prevent Violence

School Violence

Are U.S. Schools Safe?

There is so much cruelty and violence in the schools these days. What is going on? Is there anything that can be done? I am seriously thinking about home-schooling my children just to keep them alive. http://www.reporternews.com/2000/features/abbo0729.html

Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2001 7:41 PM
Subject: UNICEF Owns Your Kids

United Nations Children's Fund
Seeks to Usurp Parental Rights
By Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition

Washington, D.C. – Whenever a United Nations agency meets to discuss
children's rights, parents should be wary. In September, 2001, the
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is organizing a New York
summit on children's rights. UNICEF is celebrating the 10th
anniversary of the implementation of the U.N. Convention on the
Rights of the Child.

In U.N. Newspeak, "children's rights," typically means that the state
will become the final authority over a child. The parent is relegated
to the role of caretaker. In the U.N.'s view, the "family" is just a
subunit of the state and is subservient to the state's needs.

The officials who are organizing this UNICEF summit have recently
created new rules for determining who can participate in various
closed negotiating sessions over children's rights. UNICEF has ruled
that the Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) participating in this
summit can only have two representatives in each closed negotiating
session. This children's summit will discuss abortion as well as
homosexuality this fall as "human rights."

What this means in practice, is that pro-family NGOs will be vastly
outnumbered in the final sessions. They are usually outnumbered
anyway, but this new rule will severely limit the ability of pro-
family groups to fight these pro-abortion and pro-homosexual
proposals.

The primary goal of this UNICEF summit is to redefine the role of the
traditional family and to promote the idea that children ages 10-18
have an inalienable right to be sexually active with same-sex
partners and to abortion their unwanted babies if they choose
opposite sex partners. These notions spring directly from the U.N.
Declaration on the Rights of the Child.

The U.N. Declaration, a treaty that has been warmly supported by
President Clinton and Senator-elect Hillary Clinton, is a parent's
nightmare. Clinton has been reluctant to send this treaty to the
Senate because he knows Senator Jesse Helms will keep it bottled up
in the Foreign Relations Committee. Helms is a vigorous opponent of
any U.N. treaties that would erode parental rights or American
sovereignty. If ever passed by the Senate, however, this treaty would
usurp the right of parents to determine the moral and spiritual
development of their children.

In rather innocuous language, this U.N. document turns the United
Nations into a global parent, wipes out parental rights, and gives
children nearly unlimited freedoms to determine their own destinies
without parental interference. The full text of this frightening
document is available on UNICEF's web site.

It is sobering to realize that even though this U.N. Declaration has
been passed by nearly every nation on the earth, except the United
States and Somalia, it has really done little to stop the abuse of
children. Boys are still being routinely molested by homosexual
predators in Thailand, kids are still being sold into sex slavery in
the Sudan, and NAMBLA's worldwide outreach is still promoting the
molestation of children. The Declaration usurps parental authority,
while not really protecting children.

The upcoming UNICEF summit will prove to be yet another effort of the
United Nations to destroy the traditional family and to place all
authority for parental decisions in the hands of a totalitarian U.N.
agency. If the U.N. ever gains authority over parenting in the United
States, we can say goodbye to freedom. It is our hope that President
George W. Bush will never send this treaty or any other treaty to the
Senate that gives this kind of totalitarian power to the United
Nations.

It is also our hope that pro-family NGOs at this UNICEF summit will
be successful in overturning any U.N. proposals that will further
erode parental rights in nations that have already signed the U.N.
Declaration. Parenting should be left to parents, not a U.N. agency.
======================================================

School Shooting 911 Call: A Recording of Terror
Saturday, March 10, 2001

EL CAJON, Calif. — The girl on the cell phone was panting, nearly hysterical. She said she'd been shot at her high school. She was lying on the floor of a bathroom, bleeding. Other students had also been shot. The gunman was still roaming the campus.

"I don't know where he went. Everyone was running around," the panicked student said in portions of a 911 tape released Friday. "I just got a glimpse of him ... A friend of mine has been shot. I think a few others have."

Dispatcher Karrie Scully stayed on the other end of the line for 17 minutes.

"I know you're really afraid but we're on our way, OK honey? We're on our way," she said. "I just want you to stay there. We're on our way."

A one-minute portion of the tape was released Friday, along with brief portions of two other calls dispatchers received about the Monday morning shooting at Santana High School.

The calls came in as Charles Andrew "Andy" Williams, 15, was allegedly on a six-minute shooting rampage that left two students dead and 13 others injured, including two adults.

Friday night, thousands of students and families jammed into a flower-laden church for a public memorial service for the two slain students, Randy Gordon and Bryan Zuckor.

"I just hope maybe it'll help to come together and show emotions together," 17-year-old Amie Walter said at Sonrise Community Church just down the street from the school. "But I don't know if there will ever be closure."

Among those attending Friday night's memorial were Gov. Gray Davis and his wife, Sharon, a 1972 graduate of Santana. They joined the victims' families in a front row seat shortly before the memorial began.

Earlier Friday, the Davises visited two injured students still hospitalized. Doctors say both are in good condition.

The family of the alleged gunman released a statement expressing condolences to the families of the injured and slain students.

"They would like all of you to know that they were horror-stricken by the events that took place at Santana High School and they remain shocked and confused," read the statement, issued through the public defender's office.

"The Williams family would like to express their deepest sympathy to the family and friends of both boys who were killed," the Williamses said. "They send their heartfelt condolences to people who were injured, and to their loved ones."

The 911 tapes were edited at the request of prosecutors so they would not compromise the ongoing homicide investigation, said Jeff Fehlberg, director of Heartland Fire Communications in El Cajon, which handles medical and fire response calls in the area.

The first call was from a woman in the school counselor's office. She told Scully: "Students just came running into the office saying a student had been shot." She said she didn't know where the shooter was, but said, "he's still shooting."

The second call was from the injured student, whose name was not released.

The third call was from a man who'd fled the school along with a group of students. "It sounds like a shooting at Santana High School," he said. "We all ran out of the school."

Williams was arrested in a boys bathroom, where authorities say they found him with a fully loaded .22 long-barreled pistol.

He is being held in juvenile custody and is being charged as an adult with two counts of murder, 13 counts of premeditated attempted murder, and 13 counts of assault with a firearm. He has not yet entered a plea.

http://images.foxnews.com/national/031001/school_shooting_911.sml

========================================

Parents Outraged After Son Strip-Searched At School

Wednesday, February 28, 2001 - 01:32 PM ET

(KCNC) Parents of an eight-year-old Fort Collins boy say they are outraged that teachers strip-searched their little boy at school. The school claims it was looking for signs of child abuse, but the search turned up nothing. NEWS4 Investigator Brian Maass tells us more.

The parents have no criminal record in Colorado and say they have never been contacted by any child protection agency. But based on a complaint, Jim and Kim Tassitano's eight-year-old son Nick was strip-searched at school.

Nick Tassitano likes what most eight-year-olds like, but he doesn't like what happened at Odea Elementary School in Fort Collins.

It was December 1st. Nick was in 2nd grade at Odea. A teacher and vice principal pulled him into an office.

"They pulled down my pants and one of them, Mister Grote took my underwear and looked if there were any scars or scratches," remembered Nick.

Brian Maass asked, "Do you remember what they said to you?"

"We're just going to see if you have any scars or bruises they said that. "I just pulled my pants down and Mister Grote went and just looked," answered Nick.

"How'd that make you feel?"

"Uncomfortable."

Nick says another adult at the school talked to him after the search.

It didn't take long for Nick's parents to find out what happened.

"To remove his underwear to look at his genitals and buttock area that was uncalled for. This wasn't Nicholas removing his underwear. This was a male teacher with no supervisor removing his underwear," said Nick's mother Kim Tassitano.

"I think what they did was outrageous. I'm very angry that they feel so justified in this," said Jim Tassitano.

The school confirms teachers searched Nick for signs of bruises, apparently after an unsubstantiated report of abuse.

The school's attorney says, "The district has done nothing wrong. This examination was done in the utmost reasonable good faith and nothing inappropriate or indecent was intended or occurred."

But what triggered the strip search? The school's not saying. But according to a Fort Collins Police report, "social services had not requested the search."

Nick's parents have moved him to a private school. They insist the only time Nick was ever abused, was when he was strip searched at school.

Colorado law says teachers have an obligation to report suspected child abuse to police or social services. The law says nothing about school officials conducting strip searches. Not only did Larimer County Social Services say they did not request the search, but an employee there says they would not suggest teachers investigate on their own and do a strip search.

Finally, the Tassitanos say on occasion they spank Nicholas, but they say that's as far as it goes. The Tassitanos have notified the school district they may sue for half a million dollars.
CBS.Com http://www.kcncnews4.com/now/story/0,1597,275184-326,00.shtml

Counseling Programs

Sent: Friday, April 06, 2001 8:02 PM

Subject: Counseling Programs

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH)
has just published a report on the dangers of promoting homosexuality in the
public schools. In "Risky Sex and the Adolescent Brain: Implications for
School Counseling Programs," author Linda Nicolosi points out that
psychobiologists are learning that the teenage brain undergoes significant
changes which predispose teens to engage in risky behaviors.
This may explain why young homosexuals and bisexuals are now engaging in
unsafe sex practices at higher levels than ever before. According to NARTH's
Joseph Nicolosi, "We now have evidence that the adolescent brain leads
teenagers into high-risk behavior, and that young gays are increasingly
engaging in unsafe sex." Nicolosi cautions schools against introducing
pro-homosexual counseling programs that will encourage teens to go into an
unsafe lifestyle. To read this report, go to:
www.narth.com/docs/implicatons.html.

WIRE: 05/04/2001 7:51 pm ET

First-Grade Girl Molested by Classmate, Suit Alleges

PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - A Portland mother has filed a $2 million federal lawsuit against the city school system charging it failed to protect her first-grade daughter from months of sexual abuse by a second-grade classmate.

"There is an obligation of school to protect the children," one of the woman's attorneys, Randall J. Wolfe, said on Friday.

Asked to characterize the alleged abuse, Wolfe said: "There was oral sex, hands in pants, rubbing on top of one another." But City officials voiced confidence that they would prevail in court. "We will be dealing with these issues in court," school district spokesman Lew Frederick said. "We have a very strong case."

The alleged sexual activity took place between September 1999 and May 2000, according to court documents. The girl waited until March to tell her mother, who then notified her teacher.

Despite the March complaint, a teacher's assistant allegedly found the boy, with another second grade boy, abusing the girl in a storage room in May.

"The boy has been removed from the school," Wolfe said, "but because of privacy concerns we have very little information on this little boy."

District spokesman Frederick declined to discuss the boy's whereabouts or background.

The girl still attends the school, Frederick said.

ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL!

The Danger of Hepatitis B
Vaccine

by Kevin B. O'Reilly

Kristin Jennings was explaining what
happened to her 3?-year-old son, Dylan. She
recounted how he was a "completely healthy"
two-week-old baby before he received his
hepatitis B vaccination, at the
recommendation of his pediatrician.

She told of his extreme agitation and high
fever the night of the vaccination, and how
he stopped breathing in the doctor's office
the next day. He was feverish for three days
and projectile vomited on the fourth. On the
fifth day, all the tests came back negative
and Dylan was to be released. That's when he
started having seizures, and drifting in and
out of consciousness.

Jennings relayed how a CAT scan revealed
tremendous swelling of Dylan's brain. Three
months later, she and her husband, Jeb
Jennings, learned that Dylan had suffered 40
percent brain damage as a result of
meningo-encephalitis (swelling of the brain)
- almost the entire left side of his brain.

Even under the best of circumstances Dylan
would have a severe learning disability and
mild cerebral palsy, doctors told the
Jennings. Under the worst case scenario, he
would be mentally retarded and confined to a
wheelchair.

That's when Dylan could be heard crying and
yelping in the background, having just
awakened from a nap. His mother asked him
whether he wanted to say, "Hi." A sweet
little boy's voice spat out the word. "Hi,"
Dylan said.

"Do you want to say, 'Bye'?" his mother
asked. In the same fashion, he spat out a
heartily brief, "Bye."

"That's about half his vocabulary," Jennings
said.

Though it has cost the Jennings, who live in
Vail, Colo., more than $50,000 for
occupational, physical, and alternative
therapies in the last three years to ensure
that Dylan could walk on his own and "be the
best person he could be," he was fortunate,
at least, to survive.

Not An Isolated Story

Lyla Rose Belkin of Manhattan, N.Y., was not
so lucky. She died on Sept. 16, 1998 at the
age of five weeks, about 15 hours after
receiving her second hepatitis B vaccine
shot. That night, her father Michael Belkin
said, Lyla "was extremely agitated, noisy,
and feisty, and then she fell asleep
suddenly and stopped breathing."

The New York City medical examiner ruled the
death Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS),
because there wasn't evidence to indicate
any other cause of death. The coroner's
notes said, "brain is swollen" - just like
Dylan's was.

These are just two of the many stories of
parents whose children, usually infants,
have suffered severe reactions shortly after
being given the hepatitis B vaccine, which
was licensed by the FDA in 1982. As of 1999,
about 36,000 reports had been filed with the
Centers for Disease Control's Vaccine
Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) since
1991, when the hepatitis B vaccine was
recommended for all infants by a CDC
advisory panel.

Hepatitis B is a serious disease caused by a
virus that attacks the liver. The virus can
cause lifelong infection, cirrhosis of the
liver, liver cancer, liver failure, and
death.

It is present in the blood and bodily fluids
of an infected individual and can be
transmitted through sexual activity,
intravenous drug use, and perinatally - that
is, from an infected mother to her child
during birth.

"It's not like a flu virus, where you get
the virus and you get over it and it goes
away," explained Dr. Pamela Diaz, medical
director for acute disease surveillance at
the Chicago Department of Health. "With
hepatitis B, there are two possibilities:
you can get over it and it goes away, or it
can stay with you as a chronic infection for
the rest of your life."

The CDC estimates that there are as many as
1.25 million Americans chronically infected
with hepatitis B. Every year, the CDC says,
between 140,000 and 320,000 people in the
United States become infected with hepatitis
B, but only half of those infections are
symptomatic. Every year, between 140 and 320
Americans die of the disease, according to
the CDC.

The CDC says that hepatitis B rates were
down 55 percent through 1993, though they
are going up among three groups: "sexually
active heterosexuals, homosexual men, and
injection drug users." Forty-one states have
added hepatitis B to their list of
vaccinations required for children entering
elementary school.

Neurological Damage from Vaccination

Many of the parents who have reported
adverse events to VAERS believe that the
hepatitis B vaccine injured their children,
though researchers at the Atlanta, Ga.-based
CDC say that there is no scientific evidence
of any serious reactions to the vaccine.

"The most common side effect is a mild
redness at the injection site, and an
occasional mild fever," said Diaz of the
Chicago Health Department.

Dr. Jane M. Orient, executive director of
the Arizona-based Association of American
Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), and an
opponent of the mandatory hepatitis B
vaccine, disagrees.

"It's much more common for the baby to
scream for days on end inconsolably," she
said, "which is probably evidence for some
neurological damage that's going on, which
may or may not be permanent."

Diaz noted that in order for the hepatitis B
vaccine to be licensed by the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), it had to go through a
"very, very rigorous" testing process. The
approval process usually takes 10 to 12
years, Diaz said, and includes randomized,
double-blind clinical trials using placebos.

"The hepatitis B vaccine was tested on
adults and in infants, because of the high
rate of carriage in China and Southeast
Asia," Diaz said, "where there were problems
with perinatal transmission, and a huge
problem with liver cancer, etc. Initially, a
lot of the vaccine trials were done in that
part of the world."

It is precisely where the trials were
originally conducted that troubles Orient.
"All the really bad long-term chronic
crippling conditions [caused by the
hepatitis B vaccine] have occurred in
Caucasians," Orient said.

"But the safety studies pre-licensure for
infants were done on Asians, like Taiwanese
or Alaskan Indians or Eskimos, who have a
much higher risk for the disease and may
also not have the genetic factors that
predispose a bad reaction to the vaccine."

Jennings said she almost immediately
suspected that Dylan was injured by the
hepatitis B vaccine, and mentioned it to her
doctors. She says they dismissed her
concerns, saying that the hepatitis B
vaccine couldn't have caused Dylan's
problems.

"They made me feel like I was a bad mother,
that I exposed the baby to some unknown
virus," Jennings said. "I took him out to
the supermarket when he was two weeks of age
and he caught something there. You know
that's the way that I think they make you
feel. They don't mean to, but the burden's
placed on you that your baby got sick." Not
one of the doctors who treated Dylan during
his first stay in the hospital, when he was
having seizures and his brain had swollen,
reported the matter to VAERS, Jennings said.

No Report, No Data

This is in spite of the fact that VAERS
"encourages reporting of any clinically
significant adverse event that occurs after
the administration of any vaccine licensed
in the United States, even if it is not
certain that the vaccine caused the event."

This is one of the many controversies
surrounding VAERS. Parents and advocates for
limiting the hepatitis B vaccine's use among
infants and children say that, at most, 10
percent of doctors report adverse reactions
to VAERS.

In spite of VAERS being "underreported," in
their opinion, these same advocates have
attempted to use VAERS data to show that for
children under 14 the risk of an adverse
reaction to the hepatitis B vaccine is
higher than the risk of acquiring the
disease itself.

"There were 872 serious adverse events
reported to VAERS in children under 14 years
of age who had been injected with hepatitis
B vaccine," said Barbara Loe Fisher,
co-founder and president of the National
Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a vaccine
safety advocacy organization.

"The children were either taken to a
hospital emergency room, had life
threatening health problems, were
hospitalized or were left disabled following
vaccination. Forty-eight children were
reported to have died after they were
injected with hepatitis B vaccine in 1996.
By contrast, in 1996 only 279 cases of
hepatitis B disease were reported in
children under age 14."

Diaz says that VAERS data cannot be used to
reach such a conclusion. "VAERS is an
adverse events reporting system, so any
adverse event that occurs after vaccination,
no matter how long after vaccination, can be
included.

"And so," Diaz continued, "albeit that VAERS
collects a lot of information about adverse
events and vaccine history, it's not
designed to associate causality."

Dr. Deborah Wexler explained it differently.
"Many times in looking for answers [about
why children become ill], we do tend to draw
associations to something that happened very
recently," said Wexler, executive director
of the St. Paul, Minn.-based Immunization
Action Coalition, which works to boost
immunization rates.

"In terms of children," Wexler continued,
"it would not be uncommon to be able to find
within a certain time frame a point at which
a vaccine was given. That doesn't make it a
cause."

So, if VAERS is not designed to associate
causality and is statistically questionable,
what is its purpose? "There might be very,
very rare events that wouldn't get picked up
in clinical trials that might be detected
with VAERS," Diaz explained.

"It should be looked at in the sense that,
'We've had these reports, could there
possibly be an association, let's go look
and find out and do a study do determine
that.' It's a way of generating hypotheses
post-licensure."

Sexually Active, Heroin-Injecting Babies

So, don't the thousands of adverse events
reports so far justify a new round of safety
studies on the hepatitis B vaccine? "Most
definitely," Diaz said, "we always need to
continue to monitor safety." What especially
angered Michael Belkin and his wife, Lorna,
was when they discovered that hepatitis B
was most prevalent among high- risk
populations of adults such as the sexually
adventurous, intravenous drug users, and
medical workers.

"Why in the world is this being given to
babies?" Belkin asked himself.

The reason, says Diaz, is that while most
adults do not become chronic carriers of the
disease, "if you acquire it as an infant,
unfortunately the scales are tipped toward
the baby being a chronic carrier.

"Ninety percent of babies become chronic
carriers," said Diaz. "Many who have the
virus chronically are asymptomatic. A number
of individuals will, however, go on to
chronic hepatitis B symptoms mostly
associated with liver damage, like cirrhosis
and liver cancer."

Wexler added that "children who acquire
hepatitis B have a 25 percent chance of
dying of liver disease as adults."

Jane Orient of AAPS finds this logic
questionable. "They say that the risk of the
disease is worse than the risk of the
vaccine. Well," she said, "if you get
hepatitis B the chance of having a bad
outcome is maybe greater than your risk of
getting a bad outcome from taking the
vaccine.

"But what they don't take into consideration
is that you may be very, very unlikely to
ever get the disease. It is not easily
contagious. It is often a lifestyle or
occupational factor, something that you are
not likely to get in casual contact."

Barbara Loe Fisher of NVIC agrees. "You know
you don't get hepatitis B by being next to
someone who sneezed in an elevator. It's not
like whooping cough or the measles. This is
a very different kind of disease to require
children to be vaccinated for."

"We're taught to believe that vaccinations
are safe and effective," Kristin Jennings
said. "We all buy into that - I, as a new
mother, did. I'm not against all
vaccinations. Every parent should have the
right to choose what is right for their
child.

"But with the hepatitis B vaccine ? it is
criminal to require it to be given to a
newborn. They are not in a high-risk
category."

Home School is the answer to all the above!!!!

Quotes From the Teacher Talk Forum on Violence in the Schools http://education.indiana.edu/cas/tt/v2i3/quotes.html