We Value Our Students

Arizona's schools need money. However, they also need an attitude adjustment in the eyes of some of the Bola Bandits in Phoenix, as Howard Fischer reports in the Arizona Daily Star:

Arizona schools whose courses "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization" could lose state funding under the terms of legislation approved Wednesday by a state House panel.

SB 1108 also would bar teaching practices that "overtly encourage dissent" from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious toleration. Schools would have to surrender teaching materials for review by the state school superintendent, who could withhold state aid of districts that broke the law.

Perhaps I missed the opening of the Tucson Academy of Anarchy or the Southern Arizona Socialist Party School.

My bigger concern: whether students are learning any values period or -- as this classic Doonesbury cartoon illustrates -- just writing them down.