Constituent Letter to Congressmen
To the Hon. Rep.
Jennifer Dunn [with copies to Sen. Gorton & Sen. Murray]
May 18, 1999
Dear Rep. Dunn,
On May 15, I received your letter and
Citizen Survey on School Violence. I
have filled it out and plan to send it today. However, you did not leave enough room
for comments and I am afraid that my attempt to fit mine on the survey form
will be illegible. I also consider
this issue be important enough for more proactive action on my part,
particularly since your survey indicates how misguided the thinking is in
Washington, DC. My comments, as
written on the form, follow.
Most of these 'solutions' [on the
survey form] are simplistic and come from a Nanny State mentality. They also do not address the root
causes: government's and schools' systematic undermining of parental authority,
combined with offensive and damaging curricula such as Values Clarification, OBE [Outcome-Based Education, via Goals 2000], and Death
Education. These were ALL used at
Columbine and had been for over a decade.
[If you have never heard of Death Education, I urge you to investigate
it. In Cottage Grove, Oregon, high
school students were taken to view dead bodies being embalmed. Columbine's program in the late '80's
taught reincarnation, had students write their own obituaries and suicide
notes, and made death look glamorous, according to Tara Becker-Merrill, who was
a student there at the time. Under
the influence of this class, she planned her own suicide. This was reported on ABC's 20/20
in late 1990 or early 1991. Eric
Harris participated in a class in which he was required to write his own will.]
Your touting of DARE as an 'excellent
program' that is 'working' simply illustrates your ignorance of the issue. DARE is a PROVEN FAILURE. Study after study has shown it to be
either worthless or actually counter-productive. (See cover story in The New
Republic, "Don't You D.A.R.E.",
3/3/97) My own assessment of DARE
comes from reading the teacher's manual when my daughter's class
participated. It is very
anti-parent. [The kids in the
stories they use are all subjected to parents who are uncaring, abusive, cold,
distant, or clueless. The
'rescuers' are all teachers, counselors, police officers, or peers.] It also has the students list the 'good'
and 'bad' effects of alcohol and drug use, as well as violence. [I do not appreciate the schools
encouraging my child to discover the 'good' in illegal drug and alcohol use and
violence.]
Colorado's standards (a model for the
country) require that students tolerate political views of others, including
those they find abhorrent.
[H.B.1267 was called "Recommended Guidelines For
Law Related Education." — PG 121 — One
of the goals of LRE is to help students tolerate
ambiguity. PG 124 — students
are to have "more political tolerance…including those ideas they may
find distasteful or abhorrent".]
The tolerance shown for Harris' and Klebold's
Nazi behavior merely illustrates how effectively the students and STAFF at
Columbine have absorbed the tolerance message.
As to the community forums on youth
violence in Washington [which you lavish with praise] — they were a
complete farce with absolutely predictable outcomes. May I direct you to the Citizen's Report on Youth Violence prepared last summer. [This report details how citizens were
purposely excluded from these meetings and how the input was controlled. It predicts the outcomes of the
meetings. And we were right on all
of them. Why? Because the 'citizen forums' were held
as a tool to mold opinion, not to truly gather input.]
I am an activist, a lifelong
Republican, and the chair of a statewide coalition of citizens and citizen
groups concerned with education: Citizens United for Responsible Education
(CURE). My husband is the PCO for Nathan precinct in the 47th district. We are interested in your response to my
comments.
Marda K. Kirkwood
Constituent
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