Tag Archives: Parents

News

Will McGuinty revive plan for no-parental-notification, no-opt out sex education?

Leave a comment

Remember a while when I blogged about the Ontario Liberal government’s plan to push sex education onto kindergarden and elementary children, with no parental notification and no opt-out option for parents? The end result of that was that Dalton McGuinty, the Liberal leader, backed down. But, apparently there is an election going on up there, and McGuinty might get another chance to appease his gay-rights special interest groups with some new education proposals put forward by the Toronto District School Board.

Here’s Michael Coren explaining: (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)

Brian Lilley interviews a Toronto pastor about McGuinty’s plan: (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)

Prince Albert now explains what’s in the proposed standards:

Excerpt:

As the Ontario election campaign moved into the final two weeks Friday, Dalton McGuinty, the self-proclaimed education premier, was accused of keeping parents in the dark about a new policy to combat homophobia in schools.

The Toronto District School Board developed a 219-page curriculum resource guide for the new school year to cover kindergarten through Grade 12 called “Challenging Homophobia and Heterosexism.”

Among other things, it recommends schools not advise parents when teachers will be introducing concepts such as gender discrimination, homophobia and non-traditional families in the classroom.

[…]The school board guide recommends schools not send home notes or permission slips before starting any class work on lesbian, gay, bisexual transgendered or queer issues.

If a school treats sexual orientation or anti-homophobia differently from the other curriculum topics “this could be construed as discriminatory practice,” concludes the curriculum guide.

The guide also says there should be no accommodations for parents who want their children exempted from the anti-homophobia discussions because of religious reasons or for teachers who feel it contradicts their beliefs.

“If a parent asks for his or her child to be exempted for any discussions of LGBTQ family issues as a religious accommodation, this request cannot be made because it violates the human rights policy,” states the guide.

I think that this proposal will become Ontario law if the Ontario Liberal Party wins the election on October 6th.

McGuinty is also pushing the cap-and-trade carbon tax, which will wreck the Canadian economy even more by raising the price of electricity even higher than he already has raised it, with his existing green energy policies.

News

New study: marriage and church attendance help kids finish high school

1 Comment

From the Marriage & Religion Research Institute. (I grabbed the PDF in case it disappears)

Excerpt:

The 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that students who now worship weekly and who grew up with two married parents are most likely to have received a high school degree.

Examining current religious attendance and structure of family of origin, 93 percent of students who grew up in intact married families and who attend weekly religious services have received a high school degree. Only 68 percent of students from all other family structures who never attend religious services received a high school degree. Eighty-nine percent of those who never worship but grew up in intact families and 81 percent of those who attend religious services weekly but come from other family structures received high school degrees.

Examining current religious attendance only, 87 percent of students who attend weekly religious services received a high school degree. In contrast, only 70 percent of those who never worship received a high school degree. Between these two extremes are those who attend at least monthly (81 percent) and those who attend less than monthly (76 percent).

Examining structure of family of origin, 91 percent of individuals who grew up with married biological parents received a high school degree. They are followed by those who grew up in a married stepfamily (80 percent), those who grew up with a single, divorced parent (76 percent), those who grew up in a cohabiting stepfamily (68 percent), those who grew up with an always-single parent (63 percent), and those who grew up in an intact cohabiting family (60 percent).

See the original article for footnotes, including links to other studies that confirm this finding.

The reason why this matters is because finishing high school is very important in order for people to avoid being poor.

Black economist Walter Williams explains.

Excerpt:

Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior.

If you graduate from high school today with a B or C average, in most places in our country there’s a low-cost or financially assisted post-high-school education program available to increase your skills.

Most jobs start with wages higher than the minimum wage, which is currently $5.15. A man and his wife, even earning the minimum wage, would earn $21,000 annually. According to the Bureau of Census, in 2003, the poverty threshold for one person was $9,393, for a two-person household it was $12,015, and for a family of four it was $18,810. Taking a minimum-wage job is no great shakes, but it produces an income higher than the Bureau of Census’ poverty threshold. Plus, having a job in the first place increases one’s prospects for a better job.

Finishing high school is a major factor to prevent poverty, but research shows that the greatest preventer of child poverty (and child abuse) is marriage. Marriage stability also increases with regular church attendance. So, church attendance promotes both the completion of high school as well as the stability of marriage. Therefore, regular church attendance prevents poverty by helping two of the causes of poverty-avoidance.

Now… should we expect the secular left to promote church attendance based on this evidence? I think not.

One other point. The more marriage declines, the more children are raised without fathers, which makes it much less likely that children will accept the faith of their parents, leading to lower church attendance for the children of these fatherless homes. It’s a vicious cycle. The policies of the left that undermine marriage stability, like sex education, taxpayer-funded abortion, no-fault divorce and single motherhood welfare, actually cause the decline in church attendance that drives marriage rates and high school graduation rates down.

News

What could Stephen Harper teach Michele Bachmann about winning elections?

Leave a comment
Michele Bachmann should adopt Stephen Harper's plan
Michele Bachmann should adopt Stephen Harper's plan

Michele Bachmann is soliciting questions for her townhall meeting on her Facebook page. Please “like” her page and then like my question, so that it will be asked.

The post that she is asking for questions in has this text:

Excited to join Tim Scott for Congress for a town hall live on Facebook from Charleston, SC tomorrow at 7PM ET, where we’ll be taking questions from our community of constitutional conservatives. Have a question? Please ask in the comments below:

My question is reproduced below:

Mrs. Bachmann, in the 2011 Canadian federal election, Stephen Harper, a conservative, managed to win a majority in a country that is only one-third conservative. He did this by creating N-point plans that clearly laid out his plans for each term.

The reason I think this is important is because he was able to neutralize the attacks of the media and the three left-leaning political parties because they were not able to accuse him of having a “hidden agenda”. My question for you is, have you considered laying out a clean, specific N-point plan for what you would do as President of the United States? You could even have 3 plans, one for social issues, one for fiscal issues, and one for foreign policy.

If you like my question, please like the “TeamBachmann” Facebook page, and then go to her post asking for questions, and like my question.

Here are the Harper plans:

2006: (won minority)

  • Cleaning up government by passing the Federal Accountability Act
  • Cutting the GST (the national sales tax)
  • Cracking down on crime
  • Increasing financial assistance for parents
  • Working with the provinces to establish a wait-times guarantee for patients

2008: (won minority)

  • The minister of finance and the Bank of Canada will constantly monitor financial markets and the impact of developments in other countries.
  • The global financial crisis will be discussed at the Canada-European Union Summit, which Harper will attend on Friday.
  • Parliament will be summoned to meet this fall and the minister of finance will table an economic and fiscal update before the end of November.
  • Canada will be represented at the meeting of G-20 finance ministers scheduled for early November in Brazil. Canada has also called for a second meeting of G-7 finance ministers.
  • Government spending will be focused and kept under control as the strategic review of departmental spending — now in the second year of a four year review – continues.
  • Harper will hold a first ministers meeting on the economy to discuss with premiers and territorial leaders a joint approach to the global financial crisis.

2011: (won majority)

  • Creating jobs through training, trade and low taxes.
  • Supporting families through our Family Tax Cut and more support for seniors and caregivers.
  • Eliminating the deficit by 2014-2015 by controlling spending and cutting waste.
  • Making our streets safe through new laws to protect children and the elderly.
  • Standing on guard for Canada by investing in the development of Canada’s North, cracking down on human smuggling and strengthening the Canadian Armed Forces.

Actually, Canadian conservatives are much more liberal than we Republicans are – they are soft on social issues. Harper himself is an evangelical Christian, though, but his hands are tied when it comes to social issues. He tries to support stronger families as a way to reduce abortion and to ensure that children grow up with mothers and fathers. Even Stephen Harper is not able to do anything about same-sex marriage and abortion, which are both legal in Canada.

I think Michele would do well to pretend that she was running for office in Canada, and then create her plans that way. All the conservatives already know that she is a solid evangelical and a Tea party stalwart. What she needs to do is come up with a list of specific smart policies that will win over two-thirds of the independents.

Some things I would like to see: transparency in government, sensible spending cuts, tort reform, cut employer payroll tax to 0%, cut federal funding for abortion/Planned Parenthood, increased tax credits for MARRIED couples, matching grants for states that create voucher programs, etc, a federal right-to-work law, a tax credit, usable at any time in the future, for all salary income earned by young people under the age of 22. Etc.