Trolling for outrage across the Bay in Oakland again, eh Tom? Definitely a target-rich environment for you.

Hard to dispute that that special school is way off at the fringe. However, it was interesting to read down a ways in the article that the school is working, by traditional measures: Attendance and grades are up, dropouts and behavior problems are down. The school is portrayed as designed to appeal to kids with special problems, using a curriculum designed to resonate with them. Activism doesn't sound like the worst possible approach (though you dislike where their activism takes them), especially in contrast to the passivism of government dependency that you decry so much.

I understand that a special part of your ire is that this is being done with tax money. That raises an interesting question: Would it be OK with you if this curriculum were taught at a private school? How about a private school paid for by vouchers?

More broadly, seems to me that any voucher system leads to Balkanization of curricula...you'll see more of this kind of thing under vouchers than you see under a government schools system, with its natural bureaucratic bias towards standardization and inoffensiveness. The Right focuses on liberation of Christian schools to teach "traditional values" under a voucher system, but it will also facilitate the teaching of values you find offensive. Can you handle it?

--Robert