A Cookeville (Tenn.) High School administrator said Veterans for Peace and a Quaker group can't come back into his school with materials considered ''anti-American'' and ''anti-military.''
The groups plan to go before the Putnam County school board tomorrow with claims that
they're being denied privileges afforded to other organizations, including military recruiters.
The war veterans, some who also belong to the Quaker group, were allowed into the school during a September fair for organizations. They set up a table with books about U.S. wars and offered photocopied fliers and pamphlets from both organizations about the war in Iraq and military careers and alternatives
Quaker and veteran Hector Black said several students stopped by the table and asked questions, and a couple of teachers even thanked them for coming.
He said there wasn't any indication of a problem until later that evening, when he got a phone call from Principal Wayne Shank.
Shank told Black that some of the groups' materials may be proper for adults, but he thought they were inappropriate for the students.
[...]
Black said Shank specified some quotes in the literature that he objected to, including one from a 1953 speech by President Eisenhower that said,
''Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed. Those who are cold and are not clothed.''
[...]
County School Director Michael Martin said, ''Parents found the materials to be anti-American, anti-military. That didn't come from us. That came from the parents who saw the materials when their kids brought it home.''
[...]
The principal also said their literature could be shown only in a classroom setting that would allow an opportunity for a ''balanced'' presentation. Military recruiters and other groups don't face that restriction, the peace activists said.
You might want to read this too, and learn how junior uses the No Child Left Behind Act to give military recruiters access to your children's school records.
...not to mention your children.
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