This is just getting out of hand.

Public praise doesn’t come so easily anymore in some Nashville schools.

Parents must sign a permission slip before students can receive academic awards in front of their peers.

At Cumberland Elementary School in Nashville, principal Renita Perkins had to get parental permission to have the names and photos posted of all the students honored for good behavior, reading skills and artwork.

The school district adopted the policy after the parent of an honor student complained that posting the names of award recipients was an invasion of privacy.

Common sense has, once again, left the planet.

So that’s how the left “protects free speech”?

Wise-cracking funnyman Al Franken yesterday body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down Gov. Howard Dean.

…

“I got down low and took his legs out,” said Franken afterwards.

Franken said he’s not backing Dean but merely wanted to protect the right of people to speak freely. “I would have done it if he was a Dean supporter at a Kerry rally,” he said.

So, protecting free speech means physically taking out someone exercising their right to what, speak freely?

“I was a wrestler so I used a wrestling move,” Franken said.

Oh, I get it now.

Astounding. The Associated Press reports:

The school honor roll, a time-honored system for rewarding A students, has become an apparent source of embarrassment for some underachievers.

As a result, all Nashville schools have stopped posting honor rolls, and some are also considering a ban on hanging good work in the hallways â?? all at the advice of school lawyers.

After a few parents complained their children might be ridiculed for not making the list, Nashville school system lawyers warned that state privacy laws forbid releasing any academic information, good or bad, without permission.

Some schools have since put a stop to academic pep rallies. Others think they may have to cancel spelling bees. Now, schools across the state may follow Nashvilleâ??s lead.

Well, let’s go ahead and get rid of grading, too. Might as well remove all homework, since the public school system to a great degree is a babysitting institution now, anyway.

via ToungeTied.

Words mean things, and apparently that bothers some people in the education establishment in this country. According to this article at washingtonpost.com (via TongueTied), things are getting downright Orwellian (and kids probably aren’t even allowed to read 1984 and Animal Farm in schools these days).

This sanitization of language for euphemistic reasons is ridiculous. Whatever happened to calling a spade a spade? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, why should it be called anything other than a duck?

Look at some of this:

At many schools, 6-year-olds don’t compare books anymore — they make “text-to-text connections.” Misbehaving students face not detention but the “alternative instruction room,” or “reinforcement room,” or “reflection room.” Children who once read now practice “SSR,” or “sustained silent reading.”

And in Maryland, high schoolers write “extended constructed responses” — the essay, in a simpler time.

Reflection Room? And we wonder why people can’t tell right from wrong in society today.

This student nails it:

Robert Maeder, 17, a senior at Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, finds the terms demeaning — especially “learning cottage,” instead of “classroom trailer,” and “assessment” for test.

“It’s like renaming a prison ‘The Happy Fun Place,’ ” Maeder said. “Tests should be called tests. ‘Brief constructed response’ — you just wonder why they don’t say ‘paragraph.’ It doesn’t really serve any purpose renaming them.”

Remember, kids are learning much more than the facts in schools. Oops, sorry, “Social Education, Adjustment and Reflection Facilities.”

So much for that conservative media slant… According to a recent Gallup poll

Forty-five percent of Americans believe the news media in this country are too liberal, while only 14% say the news media are too conservative. These perceptions of liberal inclination have not changed over the last three years. A majority of Americans who describe their political views as conservative perceive liberal leanings in the media, while only about a third of self-described liberals perceive conservative leanings.

Hmm…