Desks are the real reason we are in Iraq

[brettdale]

"This email is doing the rounds"

Subject: where's our desk?



Hooray for this Teacher! Too bad there aren't more like her.



Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, AR, did something not to be forgotten.



On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she took all of the desks out of the classroom.



The kids came into first period and there were no desks. They obviously looked around and said, "Ms. Cothren, where's our desk?" And she said, "You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn them."



They thought, "Well, maybe it's our grades."



"No," she said.



"Maybe it's our behavior."



And she told them, "No, it's not even your behavior."



And so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the classroom. Second period, same thing, third period too. By early afternoon television news crews had gathered in Ms. Cothren's class to find out about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the classroom.



The last period of the day, Martha Cothren gathered her class. They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of the room. And she says, "Throughout the day no one has really understood how you earn the desks that sit in this classroom ordinarily." She said, "Now I'm going to tell you."



Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it, and as she did 27 U.S. veterans, wearing their uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. And they placed those school desks in rows, and then they stood along the wall. And by the time they had finished placing those desks, those kids, for the first time I think perhaps in their lives, understood how they earned those desks.



Martha said, "You don't have to earn those desks. These guys did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it's up to you to sit here responsibly to learn, to be good students and good citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that desk, and don't ever forget it."



Friends, I think sometimes we forget that the freedoms that we have are freedoms not because of celebrities. The freedoms are because of ordinary people who did extraordinary things, who loved this country more than life itself, and who not only earned a school desk for a kid at the Robinson High School in Little Rock, but who earned a seat for you and me to enjoy this great land we call home, this wonderful nation that we better love enough to protect and preserve with the kind of conservative, solid values and principles that made us a great nation.



"We live in the Land of the Free because of the brave."



Please remember our Troops.

[Critters2]

1. If my kid's teacher did this, I'd start homeschooling the next day

I'm a religious pacifist, and I don't need the schools propagandizing against my faith.

[lostnotforgotten]

2. Please - You Can't Believe This Tripe

eom

[silverweb]

3. True story.

Except that Ms. Cothren did not teach social studies, but military history.

Details here: http://www.snopes.com/glurge/nodesks.asp

[Divernan]

5. Amazing that a public high school has a military history class.

U.S. students get so little education/class time in international/world history, and are so poorly educated therein compared to students in other "first world" countries, that it's a shame some pubilc school is shoveling out glorification of the Vietnam War, as this woman does. She doesn't even use a textbook - it's all her version of "military history", while she writes her own book.

I do appreciate the sacrifices of vets and their families - my family has a large number of vets from the Revolutionary War to both sides of the Civil War, WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I and Iraq II. But starting with Vietnam, I question the necessity and true purposes of the wars - it's about power and profits, now more than ever.

[Divernan]

4. Really maudlin.

Students had desks before the War of Independence, the Civil War, and every other war or "police action" in which U.S. soldiers fought. Now maybe if their hard working, tax paying PARENTS had carried the desks in, it would have been a valid lesson.

The whole implication of this tripe, at this time and place in our history, is that were it not for the carnage/slaughter/maiming of young U.S. servicemen and women in Iraq/Afghanistan - today's students would be deskless. What bunk! The teacher could have explained to the students that thanks to the US's unprovoked war on Iraq, over 1/5 of Iraqi children no longer have schools to attend, and those that do are at risk of lethal attacks before, during and after school.

War is about power and profit, now more than ever. It is not about the welfare of our schoolage kids - other than propagandizing them to enlist to keep up the endless supply of cannon fodder to the military industrial war machine.

[SoCalDem]

6. Sounds like a freeper-tale to me

i smell fish :)