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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Lawrence, KS Fires Teacher for Conservative Views, but Backs Down

Tim Latham is a history and government teacher in Lawrence, KS with over 15 years teaching experience. This was his first year at Lawrence High School and looked to be his last. He was popular and inspired indifferent students to want to learn history and government. Latham emphasized that he wanted to encourage youngsters to love their country and the American way of life.

And that was part of Tim Latham's problem...he's an apple pie conservative American in a liberal profession among many who blame the country for everything wrong in the entire world. Their motto might as well be, "Blame America first." With a McCain Palin bumper sticker on his car and a website that was "too patriotic" in the eyes of some administrators Tim Latham found that his contract wasn't going to be renewed. It looked like he would be one more casualty of the "tolerant" liberal left.

But that's not the end of the story.

Several of Mr. Latham's students started a Facebook page, Save Mr. Latham, that garnered 2,000 members within just a few days, many of them students at the high school. Latham also appeared on FOX telling his story and received thousands of emails and Facebook messages, one from as far away as China. Several students, having learned how the system works from Mr. Latham, decided to act and testified before the local school board about how their teacher made them excited about what they expected to be a boring subject. They didn't want to see the school fire a gifted and charimatic teacher. They expressed their views articulately before the board.

To make a long story short, Mr. Latham has a new contract for the upcoming school year. The administration failed even to meet the requirements in their contract with the union for reviewing a teacher's classes before dismissal. In the agreement between Mr. Latham and the school, the biased administrator who thought he was "too patriotic" is prohibited from reviewing his classes.

Keep your eyes on this one. There's more than one way for a liberal to undermine and destroy someone he doesn't like. And there's always next year. Pray for Mr. Latham. We need men like him in education, especially for boys being raised by single moms. Good strong male role models are in short supply and blessed is the young man who has one.

2 comments:

  1. Public education was taken over by the communist element in the USA
    by the 1960's. Bella Dodd, a former high ranking American communist, defected in 1952, converted to Catholicism, ( bishop Sheen was the one who converted her) and then told all. she testified and also wrote the top priority of communists were Catholic seminaries and the public school system. Labor unions were also a priority. She testified by 1940, the NY school system was full of communists. They had a tight rein on the unions and that gave them full control. \
    My point is anyone working for the public schools should know this.
    She also said in 1952, 6 of the 80 Cardinals in Rome, were communists. Clearly the percentages today would be chilling.

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  2. Hmmm... not clear that the percentage of communists among the cardinals has been growing. It's always possible of course. The church has to look like a great sinecure for folks wanting an easy job with a lot of influence, but you probably have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get to be a prince.

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