“The View’s” views are so skewed to the left that the show should be re-named “The Leftist View” and none of its panelists is more liberal, ignorant, hateful, and bigoted than Joy Behar.
Sometimes, however, Behar outdoes herself in the stupid department such as when she recently said of kids who are taught at home, “A lot of them are demented when they’re homeschooled.”
Feel free to watch the clip here and notice that Behar’s outrageous put down of homeschooling gets barely a blip of a reaction from the other women on “The View:” http://michellemalkin.com/2008/11/19/demented-joy-behar-disses-homeschool-students/.
Even the only conservative voice on the show, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who normally takes on Behar, doesn’t react nor does the clownish Whoopi nor the Botox queen, Baba Wawa.
I guess it becomes tiresome to react to Behar’s ignorance when it’s so repetitive.
Calling homeschooled kids demented, however, demands rebuttal since the comment reflects an attack on all those kids and on their parents who are choosing to bypass the traditional educational system in favor of having control over what their kids learn and how they learn it.
The chief articulated criticisms of homeschooling is that the home teachers, normally the parents, are unqualified to properly instruct their charges and that as a result of being isolated from their peers for six or so hours a day, the children are missing the “socializaton” they would experience in a classroom environment on a daily basis with twenty or thirty other kids.
What goes unspoken is that homeschooled kids and their at-home teacher-parents have the audacity to buck the establishment.
Aside from the fact that Behar is totally unqualified to make her own pronouncements on every issue confronting the human race, her dissing of homeschooling is truly over the top.
The divorced mother of a thirty-seven year old daughter, Behar is a former public school teacher which in itself should have given her pause before uttering that slander. But, no, that background proved no obstacle to her slamming kids as retarded, crazy, unbalanced, and insane, all of which are synonymous with her chosen word, demented.
And just why are they demented? Simply because their parents don’t wish their progeny to be exposed to what they would be in public classrooms, exposure dictated to public educators by the National Education Association, the NEA?
I’ll wager that Joy Behar was an NEA and local teacher union member during her teaching career, and it shows.
In principle, the NEA is a fine institution. Founded in 1857 and with over three million current members, it is dedicated, in principle, to improving education. Its ”vision, mission, and values” statement reads, “Our mission is to advocate for education professionals and to unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world”: http://www.nea.org/aboutnea/statement.html.
And who can argue with that?
Many people can argue with that based on the word, “diverse,” as well as on the line, “We believe individuals are strengthened when they work together for the common good.”
The problem is, Who defines diverse and the common good? The NEA, of course, and as a result of their definitions, that organization has effectively abandoned its mission of supporting the public educational system in the nation, the teachers who work in that system and, most importantly, the millions of students subject to its leftist philosophy.
As it gradually evolved into a virtual arm of the leftist elements in the Democratic Party, the NEA long ago embarked on whole other social and political missions at best tangential to its primary purpose.
A vivid example of its current teachings came on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. In commemoration of those acts of war by enemies of the nation, the darkest moment in our history which claimed over 3000 innocent lives, the NEA cautioned its affiliates and vast membership against casting blame for those unspeakable acts of barbarism.
Instead, it suggested that teachers tell their students that “some of this country’s darkest moments resulted from prejudice and intolerance for our own people” and to examine “historical instances of American intolerance:” http://www.mfc.org/contents/article.cfm?id=764.
Say, what??
As Joe Field, the author of the above article, wrote, “Perhaps what the NEA could use is a good dose of therapy itself. Here’s some: It’s okay to admit it. Al Qaeda did it. Now, let’s go get them!”
If that un-American expression of insensitivity were the only outrage committed by the NEA, that organization would still be eligible for the award as Most Damnable Group in America but that was simply one of its positions that hit the public fan.
There are more, many more, such positions which are generally less well known.
Another article lists the elements of NEA agenda: ”They include the following ‘educational’ issues. B-11: Racism, Sexism, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identification Discrimination, [the NEA opposes the first two, which is commendable, and promotes homosexuality, which is not], B-45: Environmental Education, (Emphasis on bio-diversity, Evolution and Agenda 21 concepts), B-75: Home Schooling (Against), and I-1: Peace and International Relations [peace at any price and subservience to the United Nations]“: http://www.newswithviews.com/Evensen/greg4.htm
Coincidental with those mission changes, America has been witnessing unprecedented chaos in classrooms, numerous and public sexual liaisons between teachers and students, burgeoning dropout rates, failing schools and failing students.
Is it any wonder that more and more concerned parents want to keep their kids out of that environment and to educate them in the friendly, and safe, environs of their homes?
Joy Behar and the NEA may not grasp the reasons for homeschooling but normal Americans do.
