THE LOCAL AREA WATCH

THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS

You will recall back in July during the Grand Rapids mayoral race, incumbent George Heartwell sent out a notorious postcard targeting Catholic voters.  It featured local Catholic landmarks and the endorsement of prominent Catholics in the area including members of the clergy.  It gave the impression that Heartwell had the backing of the Catholic establishment while concealing his support for abortion-on-demand and other life issues offensive to the deep convictions of most Catholics.

The postcard's purpose was to undercut the Catholic vote for his pro-life opponent Rick Tormala.  It probably succeeded, because all Heartwell needed to do was keep enough Catholic voters untroubled by his real positions on abortion, assisted suicide, and embryonic stem cell research, and so at home on election day, to squeak out a victory over Tormala.  And that is what happened when Hizzoner crawled over the finish line with just over 50% of the vote.

Heartwell justified this little bit of creative politicking by arguing that he didn't have to publicly declare his opposition to Catholic positions on the life issues, because as mayor he had no way to influence government policy regarding them.  You have to hand it to Heartwell.  He explained away one deceit with another.  Well, a leopard doesn't change his spots, does he?  After maintaining an unprincipled silence during the mayoral race about his opposition to what Catholics and others call the "culture of life", Heartwell as mayor of Grand Rapids is now beating the drums for embryonic stem cell research.

On Wednesday, November 7th, Heartwell will appear as one of the speakers at an event promoting embryonic stem cell research.  It is called "Stem Cell Research: The Science, the Potential, and the Law" and is presented by the advocacy group Michigan Citizens for Stem Cell Research and Cures (MCSCRC).  In turn the whole affair is hosted by the liberal political action committee Democracy for America, founded by Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, a pro-abortion extremist.  MCSCRC purports to dispense with the myths that have surrounded stem cell research during the ongoing political controversy over the use of embryonic human beings (or in MCSCRC's parlance, a small clump of cells) in some of that research.  However, MCSCRC's actual agenda is to push a set of talking points to be used against opponents of embryonic stem cell research.

So why are Heartwell, MCSCRC, and Democracy for America hepped up about opposition to embryonic stem cell research?  Because, folks, the MCSCRC has filed paperwork last week to put the issue on the ballot in November 2008.  MCSCRC wants to not only remove the long-standing restrictions under state law against killing embryonic humans in medical research but also to require taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research.  To win that battle in Michigan, a strongly pro-life state, MCSCRC has to equip the troops with the right soundbites for the campaign.  Hence, events like the one Mayor Heartwell is speaking at next week.

So much for the mayor having no infuence on government policy in these matters.

MORE STUDENTS FLEE CITY SCHOOLS

Grand Rapids Public Schools Superintendent Bernard Taylor has finally released the enrollment figure for the new school year.  Almost all of the other public school districts in the state released their figures last month.  Taylor embargoed the figure for the GRPS without much explanation, although there really wasn't much doubt why.  After Taylor's media blitz to support spending on new consultants, new programs, and new schools to bring back students to the declining school district, not only were this year's losses in enrollment not stemmed, they were greater than last year's.

Nothing but whistling past the graveyard, making a show of what's new and glitzy while ignoring the fundamental problems destroying the school district.  Now the official enrollment figure proves it.  The number of students attending Grand Rapids public schools this year is just above 20,000.  That's a loss of 880 students and about $1.27 million in state taxpayer subsidies for the district.  This compares to a loss of 745 students in 2006 and 902 in 2005, which are merely part of a decade-long 25% decline in enrollment.  Keep in mind that the losses in those years were not mitigated by Taylor's newly implemented Iron Curtain forcing students exiting charter schools to attend city high schools.  Otherwise this year's enrollment loss would have probably exceeded one thousand students.

The school district's official line is that the bad economy is driving families out of Michigan and so students from the Grand Rapids public schools.  But I don't think there has been a four percent decline in the city's population over the past summer to match the decline in enrollment.  Plus, most of the enrollment losses show up in the elementary schools, not spread out across all grades as would be expected from a general loss of population in the region.  Nor are the enrollment figures for other school districts and charter schools consistent with this explanation.

It's true that many breadwinners have left the local area to earn a living elsewhere.  Their families have not necessarily followed.  And school districts even in the worst hit regions of the state have increased enrollment.  So the "bad economy" excuse does not wash.  If it did, then the Grand Rapids public schools should have stemmed the enrollment decline by picking up students from families whose stretched budgets can no longer cover parochial or private school tuition.  That didn't happen.  What did happen is that parents continued to be disgusted with city school officials who won't maintain discipline (here and here), won't enforce basic standards of decency (here and here), think the school district exists for the benefit of those drawing a paycheck from it (here, here, and here), and have nothing but contempt for those who don't want to put their in kids in a rotting system (here).

That last point is important.  We can all agree that school board members who call dissenting parents racists or tell them to get the hell of the city if they don't want their kids in the Grand Rapids public schools are a part of the fundamental problem with the district.  But consider Superintendent Bernard Taylor's performance in the recent textbook controversy.  There was strong objection from the community to a high school textbook laced with obscenities.  Taylor thought the book was fine and should be used unaltered.  Then he pressed the school board to make a quick decision on it and sweep the matter under the rug.  Just who does Taylor think is fleeing his school district?  Students with parents who are against obscenity in the classroom or those with parents who don't?

Of course, it is mostly the former.  Taylor is either contemptuous of the families he wants to bring back into the school district or he is completely clueless as to what is ticking them off.  Either way he is not the man for the job, and keeping the lid of bad news like the big decline in enrollment only delays the day of reckoning.

A PRIMER IN CUSSING

I was reading a Grand Rapids Press article about Monday's city school board meeting at which the members approved by a 5-2 vote, with Superintendent Bernard Taylor's backing, the use of The Literary Experience as a textbook in City High's Honors English class.  As readers of L.A.W. are well aware, this textbook contains the Suzan-Lori Parks play "Topdog/Underdog" and provoked controversy because of excessive foul language and graphic depictions of sex.  Reporter Rick Wilson repeatedly wrote that it was the play's "profanity" that raised hackles.

Also I noted that in the lead editorial a few days earlier, the Grand Rapids Press was quite high on having City High students read Parks's play:  "College-bound seniors -- the ones who would be using the book -- are generally mature enough to handle an edgy work with profanity and sexual content.  In fact, they should be encouraged to read the unassigned stories in any textbook they have."  [Our emphasis.]  Others supporting the use of The Literary Experience have also repeatedly spoken about the play's profanity and the need to expose high schoolers to it.

Well, OK.  But is it too much to ask all those who are ardent in their commitment to this "foul language as literature" education project to get a clue about their subject?  As far as I know, Parks's play contains no profanities.  It does have more than a hundred uses over a run of 70 pages of variations of "s---" and "f---", neither of which are profanities.  The former is either a vulgarity or obscenity depending upon its usage, and the latter is almost always an obscenity (although arguably the indiscriminate use of "f---" over the past few decades has so reduced its force that some usage of it is now merely vulgar).

In brief, if it is such a good idea to teach the kiddies swear words, then teach them!  That means understanding the difference between a profanity, an obscenity, and a vulgarity.  A profanity is sacrilegious.  It takes God's name in vain, which the utterance of neither "s---" nor "f---" do.  So the dispute over Parks's play has nothing to do with profanities.  Indeed, in light of the secularist dogma that predominates public education these days, any grievance against genuine profanity in the classroom would likely bring down the wrath of the ACLU as a violation against the separation of church and state.  Yes, I exaggerate, but you get my point:  Few today work up much of a fuss over real profanity.

So the dispute lies with the obscenities and vulgarities in Parks's play.  An obscenity is a depraved or disgusting reference to the body or bodily functions, most often sexual or scatological.  Therefore, "f---" is clearly an obscenity, and "s---" often is.  Therefore, Park's play is obscene not profane on account on the usage of those words, not to mention the graphic depictions of sex.  Finally, a vulgarity is a crude or crass expression that lacks an obscene connotation but remains impolite, mild examples of which are the words "ass" and "crap".

One way to remember the differences is that these days a vulgarity will probably get you in trouble only with your grandmother, an obscenity with the FCC, and a profanity with the Almighty.  Now you know how to swear, folks.

YOU WON'T %$*!@#& BELIEVE THE $#!% THEY WANT OUR KIDS TO READ IN SCHOOL

... Or maybe you will.  After all, this is about the Grand Rapids public schools.

Allegedly without reviewing it, the city school district ordered 140 copies of The Literary Experience as an literature appreciation textbook for advanced placement classes at City High.  After shelling out sixty bucks a pop for the book and receiving shipment, administrators finally got the idea of checking out its contents.  Only then did they discover the mistake they had made.

The Literary Experience is a collection of short stories, the prize pig of which is a 70-page tale of two brothers who cannot utter a sentence without a "s---" or a "f---" in it as they talk about their vile lives of sex, drugs, and crime in the urban jungle.  Now I would have thought that if an honors English cirriculum needed a good story about brothers with a penchant for finding trouble, Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov would have fit the bill.  Certainly a bill less than $60 a book.

Well, at least school administrators, after having failed to vet The Literary Experience before taking delivery of the volume, didn't fail to recognize its unsuitability as a textbook.  Plan "A" is to return the books.  If they can't do that (seeing that they have already stamped them the property of the Grand Rapids Public Schools), Plan "B" is to cut out the pages of the offensive short story from each book before distributing it to students.

Of course, that back-up plan already has the usual suspects hysterically denouncing school administrators as censors.  Need we discuss the idiocy of defining censorship as the adult exercise of judgment as to what textbooks should be used for the instruction of minors?  No, anyone who can't get that, won't ever get it.  Instead, let's turn our attention toward the captain of this ship of fools.  That would be none other than the Board of Education vice president, Lisa Hinkel.

She is horrified at the prospect that school administrators might deny their young charges the joys of reading filth.  Shaken by their tyrannical designs upon our youngsters, Hinkel shuddered, "I can't advocate for cutting pages from a book.  That just goes against everything I believe."  This from the woman who a couple of weeks ago told parents unhappy with the quality of education at the city's public high schools to pack their bags and get the hell out of town.  Maybe it's time parents told Hinkel to pack her bags.