NO MENTION OF THE "3 R'S"

Inspired by the need to pay for the school’s beloved drama program, the Parent Teacher Student Association at Malcolm X Arts and Academics Magnet School has come a long way from bake sales. In 1998, Malcolm X, at 1731 Prince St., was selected to become a magnet school, and receive a $650,000 federal grant in three annual installments. The one requirement was to establish a program that would prosper when the money ran out. Principal Cheryl Chinn says the money was used for teacher training workshops and construction, but the majority was spent on the visual and performing arts program. “We had to go with our strengths,” Chinn says. “We had to give parents a reason why they would choose Malcolm X over the other schools.” When the magnet money ran out, the Malcolm X PTSA took over the responsibility of paying for the drama program.....

As early as kindergarten, arts are incorporated into the student’s curriculums through classes such as drama, singing, art and cooking. Every year, Malcolm X students present many different productions, including an All-School Singing Chorale and operas, like last year’s An Adventure like No Other, that are written, directed and produced by the students. “When you see a kid on-stage singing and dancing you can see it empowers them. It’s incredible,” Wild says. “You see confidence in a child to do that.” .....

Last year, the school’s sports, drama and after-school programs like karate and ceramics, as well as salaries of the school librarian and drama teacher were completely paid for by the PTSA’s fund raising.... “This school is in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city and there’s kids being bussed in from the other side of town because they want to be a part of the programs we fund,” she says.

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THE FAR-LEFT ACADEMIC CULTURE THAT SUPPORTS WARD CHURCHILL

"For all the ink devoted to the Ward Churchill case, the Denver dailies have done virtually nothing to investigate the dysfunctional campus academic culture which led to the Churchill fiasco.

Here are some of the questions the Denver media have not even attempted to probe: Why did the University of Colorado Arts and Sciences administration continue to promote and laud Churchill after the late- 1990s publication of professor Thomas LaVelle's articles alleging extensive academic fraud and plagiarism on Churchill's part? Are there other academic frauds and plagiarists at CU whom the administration has protected? How did CU become such a racist institution that a patently unqualified man was pushed for tenure in three departments because he claimed to be an Indian? How many other poorly-qualified teachers have gotten jobs at CU, based on their ethnicity or their pretended ethnicity? To what extent does the extreme left dominate hiring at CU, so that highly qualified applicants for teaching positions are rejected, whereas politically correct hacks get the job? How often do other CU teachers act like Churchill allegedly did by punishing students for expressing opinions contrary to the teacher? Has CU protected other teachers who have been credibly accused of making violent threats and/or perpetrating on- and off-campus violent crimes against people who disagree with them?

Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi is virtually alone in the Denver media in attempting to examine the reality of academic freedom at CU. His column last Monday detailed the plight of CU instructor Phil Mitchell, who is apparently being pushed out of CU because of political pressure from the far left. Harsanyi and Mitchell also made an important distinction between CU's "liberals" (who support true academic freedom and diverse viewpoints) and its hard left (which attempts to suppress the speech of everyone but itself).

A few years ago I interviewed CU Honors Program Assistant Dean Christian Kopff on KBDI- Channel 12, and he described a campus atmosphere where most conservative professors, except him, hide in the closet. Other professors, speaking to me off the record, have confirmed the diminished academic freedom at CU, where even very liberal professors have to tread carefully to make sure they don't offend the far left. If I've heard such stories without even going looking for them, imagine what the media might find if it bothered to examine the hard left's suppression of academic freedom at CU.

As reported in Wednesday's Rocky Mountain News and Boulder Daily Camera (but not in the Post), CSU-Pueblo anthropology professor Dan Forsyth has been placed under administration investigation because a freshman was offended about some remarks Forsyth allegedly made criticizing illegal aliens. Watch to see whether the newspaper columnists who have argued that a tenured CU professor has an absolute right to say anything he wants will agree that a tenured CSU professor has the same rights. Or whether the only free speech that they actually defend is left-wing speech."

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Why academic malpractice matters: "At one time, the function of a liberal education was thought to be the cultivation of rigorous reasoning processes and refined tastes by which educated people could arrive at the most informed judgments possible on political, social and cultural questions. Liberal education was itself a product of the Western cultural tradition, which had brought unprecedented freedom and prosperity to unprecedented numbers of people. Therefore, it seemed reasonable to give all college students a fair exposure to the very best minds that had contributed to that tradition (and ideally, at least one other tradition as well). This would enable our planet's painfully acquired cultural capital to be maintained and even increased by each succeeding generation. The majority of people now teaching the humanities and social sciences in North American colleges and universities no longer take that as their purpose."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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