Father Outraged Over Crayon-Written Note Son Made At School
Jacksonville, FL – A father was outraged over a crayon-written note he discovered in his son’s backpack which read: “I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure.”
Florida father Aaron Harvey says that in January, a local lawyer visited Cedar Hills Elementary, where his fourth-grade son attends school.
The lawyer was there to teach students about the Constitution, but after leaving, Harvey claims that his son’s teacher dictated the sentence “I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure” to the students.
He says that several of his son’s classmates also confirmed this to be true.
The crayon-written note was in his son’s backpack for months until it was discovered last week. Harvey then reported the story to Conservative publication The Blaze instead of taking it to the school.
“Everybody has their opinions,” he told the publication.
“I am strongly for proper education, for the freedom of thought so you can form your own opinion and have your own free speech in the future… [but] the education is, ‘when was the Constitution drafted, when was it ratified, why did this happen, why did we choose to do this…all these things, why did they particular choose those specific rights to be in our Bill of Rights.'”
Harvey continued, saying that he wants an unbiased education for his son free of religion and politics.
“I believe in our Constitution. I am a veteran, I served for six-and-a-half years proudly and I served to protect our rights. Now whenever I have someone coming in and trying to pollute my child’s mind with biased opinions…there’s no education in that.”
The Blaze reached out to Cedar Hills, and were told that the district and principal were “checking into” the situation. On Friday, Harvey received a call from school officials during which they said that his son “wrote it on his own free will.”
Harvey says that a girl in the class told him that the teacher had hand-picked specific students to write the dictated phrase. Further, he doesn’t believe the sentence is something his fourth-grade son would have come up with organically.
“All the children are pointing at the teacher,” Harvey said.
“They [the school] told me that my son wrote that on his own free will — there’s no way he knew how to write that on his own free will. He likes to use some big words to flourish — [but] if he was going to put together a sentence that political I’m sure it would be more jumbled than a nice sentence like that.”
Is it just me, or is there quite a bit missing from all parties concerned in this story?
[Image via: George Hernandez, Wikimedia Commons]
