Minds Full Of Mush

I heard mention of this story on the talk radio shows yesterday, and my blogging acquaintance Kat over at CatHouse Chat made mention of it in her blog and provided a link to the story.

It seems that a bunch of Brooklyn middle school children were taking a “social studies” class and had a letter writing assignment that has caused a bit of a stir.

You remember “social studies,” don’t you? You know, the one-hour rest that your brain got to take between math class and science class? The class that, in retrospect, should have been called “multiculturalism” when I took it? Who really gives a damn about life on Fiji spent eating breadfruit and running around in a loincloth, with your private parts flapping in the breeze, while the mean old USA has aircraft carriers and submarines destroying the marine ecosystem on which your entire culture’s very existence has been based for the past five thousand years, you know?

I’m certain that things in “social studies” class have only gotten worse in the past thirty-five years since I took it.

I used to cause my “social studies” teachers’ heads to spin around at 3000 revolutions per minute, ultimately separating from their bodies and flying around the room while screaming my name. I nearly caused my fifth grade “social studies” teacher, Mrs. Williams, to have a cerebral hemorrhage several times. If there had been such a thing as speed dial in 1970, my mother’s phone number would have been at the top of the list.

Any way, back to the goings on at the Brooklyn middle school, JHS 51 William Alexander. Teacher Alex Kunhardt’s little angels had an assignment to write letters to soldiers overseas. So good so far.

But…Apparently Comrade Kunhardt had been doing a little political demogogging in front of the old chalkboard or something, because the writers of 9 of the 21 letters sent to 20 year old PFC Rob Jacobs serving in South Korea were, shall we say, a bit “mis-informed” or just down right “insensitive.”

“Pfc. Rob Jacobs of New Jersey said he was initially ecstatic to get a package of letters from sixth-graders at JHS 51 in Park Slope last month at his base 10 miles from the North Korea border.”

“That changed when he opened the envelope and found missives strewn with politically charged rhetoric, vicious accusations and demoralizing predictions that only a handful of soldiers would leave the Iraq war alive.”

"It's hard enough for soldiers to deal with being away from their families, they don't need to be getting letters like this," Jacobs, 20, said in a phone interview from his base at Camp Casey.
"If they don't have anything nice to say, they might as well not say anything at all."

And this rhetoric is coming to a kid serving his country overseas from children only a few years younger, sitting comfortably in the homes that Pfc Jacobs is defending.

“One Muslim boy wrote: "Even thoe [sic] you are risking your life for our country, have you seen how many civilians you or some other soldier killed?"

His letter, which was stamped with a smiley face, went on: "I know your [sic] trying to save our country and kill the terrorists but you are also destroying holy places like Mosques."”

Excuse me Severely Mis-informed Muslim Child, but why don’t you save up your vitriol and write to the Muslim “Insurgents” that want to use your holy Mosques as armories and insist on blowing up your own Muslim people as they go to worship? What about writing a little love note to complain to the terrorists that worked under Saddam to kill hundreds of thousands of your fellow Muslims?

“The JHS 51 teacher, Alex Kunhardt, did not return phone calls, but the school principal, Xavier Costello, responded with a statement:

"While we would never censor anything that our children write, we sincerely apologize for forwarding letters that were in any way inappropriate to Pfc. Jacobs. This assignment was not intended to be insensitive, but to be supportive of the men and women in service to our nation."”

Well of course Alex Kunhardt isn’t going to face the music that his efforts in his “Social Studies” class have produced. Alex Kunhardt has no gonads. Alex Kunhardt uses children as a tool to express his own warped political beliefs. For all I know, Alex Kunhardt has his “Kunhardt” for his own young male students and it is just a matter of time until Alex’s “Kunhardt” gets his stupid ass put in prison.

And by the way, Principal Xavier, why is it that you have no trouble censoring the information provided to your students by your teachers, but you will allow anything that comes out of their young “minds full of mush” to be written down and sent to young solders overseas?

If one of Principal Xavier’s parent’s as a roaring alcoholic and died as a result, would he sanction his parent’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor standing up at the funeral and saying: “ we all loved ole’ Xavier Senior, but good God, the man was a useless womanizing drunkard.”

Sorry Xavier, but we would never censor…