School Board 3/30/2001

3/30/01
 
What qualifies you to run for school board?
 
I am a parent and a former teacher and I think I have enough common sense and independence of spirit to make me immune against "psycho-babble." For example: The school where I was teaching (not Mfield) hired a young psychologist.  She put up a big poster in the hallway "Problems are temporary, suicide is permanent." I marched to the principal and asked him to have that poster removed. Kids who would never have thought of suicide everyday walked past that poster and saw: Suicide, suicide, suicide. What wasn't in their mind, was put into their mind by an "expert," a trained psychologist.

Now and then I browsed through the magazines which were in the school library. I brought one sexually explicit and vulgar  issue  to the principal.  He blushed and canceled the magazine.  Our high school students have enough to do to cope with their surging hormone levels. They do not need  magazines to egg them on.
 
Why should the voters vote for you on April 3?
 
Our school libraries have book upon  book on the shelves about the holocaust. Some of these holocaust books are very blatant in their last chapter. But blatant or not there  is always the implication that  on account of the "holocaust" you, as an American have the obligation to morally, politically and financially support  Israel. Our Marshfield school libraries indoctrinate every new generation to give loyalty to a foreign nation. Unfortunately most Americans do not realize what devastating consequences accrue from that to our foreign policy.  When I requested that a few books be added which refute gas chambers and thereby the "holocaust"  I was brushed off.  Right now on the shelves of our  Senior High School  library is the holocaust book "Fragments"  by Binjamin Wilkomirski. A clever Swiss, by the name of  Bruno Doessecker, must have felt what is gravy for the Jews is gravy for the gander and why should he not  make money of the holocaust industry.  Doessecker pretended to be  a Jew  by the name of Binjamin Wilkomirski, a "survivor" of Auschwitz when in reality he lived in Switzerland throughout the war years. He cobbled together "Fragments" from other holocaust lore and passed it off as survivor testimony.
 
What do you feel that you can bring to the board?
 
I can bring to the board  an independence of thinking. We always tell our students: "Think for yourselves!" Our school board however is  all compliance. I have heard not one voice of protest concerning the  high school graduation test dictated to us by Madison.. Our high schools developed on account of our unique settlement pattern. They have served us well. To impose  a European  testing system on our American high schools is like putting  a square peg into a round hole. When one of the student's composition was corrected in Madison, the evaluator called a grammatical mistake a sophisticated stylistic devise. I wrote  letters to all the administrators in the Department of Education. I advised them to take Freshman English.  
 
What makes Marshfield's schools thrive and how do you intend on maintaining the level of excellence?
 
What  I  write now will be considered politically incorrect. What makes for a good school is not how the school system is set up, it is not the administration, and it is not the teachers, but it is the kids. In this community we have disciplined and intelligent children. I  had the privilege to teach, or just pass in the hallways students who in the scientific community are now world renowned. It is about time that the News-Herald  acknowledges these former students of  this community.
 
What do you feel you can bring  to the board?

I wish for the present school board to be less politically correct and  to have more guts. I am not politically correct. That does not mean one has to  be impolite or abrasive. One of my sons took a  summer job  as a salesman. He asked me how  to deal with  a  coworker who a flagrantly homosexual  tried  to entice him into the homosexual scene. My advise was: You  treat him with the utmost  civility and reject him firmly, but politely.
 
How does the role of the school board member fit into the school district?

A school board member does not only have an obligation to see to it that the students learn reading, writing, rithmatic. The school board is a bully pulpit and I will use it. 

I have always fought the tobacco industry. Too many of our young people smoke. I would like to urge every teacher to be a crusader against the smoking habit. I harped on my students: "Don't start smoking because if you want to stop you can't. Nicotine is quickly addicting. Why would you want to chain yourself  to cigarettes like prisoners used to be chained to heavy iron balls."

If I were elected  to the school board I would campaign very hard  to ban every pop machine from every Marshfield school premise. Our children are hyped up on sugar.

The Coca Cola company tailors its coke to national taste. The Coca Cola bottled in Germany has a much lower sugar content than the one bottled here. When my mother visited us from Germany she wanted me to buy her a coke. She took one sip, said "phui" and poured it down the drain. All the American soft drinks are overloaded with sugar.

I  also suspect that the sugar companies had a hand in writing the American recipe books. Sugar enhances the flavor, but too much sugar overwhelms the flavor. Our children are not born with a "sweet tooth." That "sweet tooth" is developed. Our Home Ec. departments can counteract that. If a recipe calls for a cup of sugar  I only add  a fourth. My children could  simply not stomach the deserts offered at the school luncheons. They were too sweet for them. That overload of sugar predisposes people to diabetes and obesity. 

I also wonder if so much of the hyper activity we see in the children nowadays is not connected to the sugar overload.

To every decision which has to be made by the school board I will try to bring  a sense of fairness,  and common sense. I will try to do the best for the most.