Meeting focuses on middle school transition

"Some red flags that have surfaced include peer pressure to experiment with drugs and sex and students having trouble peacefully resolving conflicts with their friends.

Another disturbing trend has been an increase in students inhaling spray deodorant to get high. The school responded by banning spray deodorants, she said."

http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_7734374

secular progressives

This is what's wrong with our increasing "secular" society. We took the pledge of aligiance out of schools, will not teach or even expose intelligent design along with evolution. Also, our society values invidualism over family cohesiveness (which is the driving force behind America's entrapeneurship, but not so good at the grammar school level). Many of our kids are first generation from immigrant parents, who may be more naive about these things. I could see why some parents home school and/or consider non-Catholic private schools.

Meeting focuses on middle

Inhaling gas is so "retro". Didn't loadies do that in the 1970s? I don't see how banning the spray at school is going to help. They need to ban it at the stores. Inhaling solvents totally destroys the body.

Intelligent design has no place in our schools, except in a comparative religions class. It's just a strategy to get the creation story of Genesis accepted as valid as scientific theories of evolution.

It's interesting that some Christians want to get the Bible stories into science class, but they don't agitate for a course on comparative religions.

In a multicultural, multi-religious area like LA, comparing religions would probably help build some kind of mutual understanding and cohesiveness. As I recall, as a child, at school, I heard Christians (Protestants) criticize Catholics, Catholics put down Christians, Catholics get racist on Jews (a lot, and there weren't many around to defend themselves), Christians put down Buddhists (as idol worshippers! talk about ignorance)... that was all I could recall. It wasn't theoretical - these were arguments between members of these various religious sects. Nowadays, I get to occasionally hear someone put down Muslims or Arabs just as a matter of course, but we all know thats going to happen, what with the war. (Now that I think about it, I do recall Armenians getting racist on Turks, and there's a religious angle there. Justifiable, to some extent I guess, but, Turks are people too, and this is America not Armenia.)

These issues of faith are divisive and could lead to violence, as they have been in South LA, where Christians kids and Muslims kids get in fights because they're busy putting each other down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_religion