Graduation speaker turned away for fear he may be “too conservative”

The Hollywood Reporter says a Montana High School principal told Gerald Molen that he could not deliver his commencement speech to the graduating class in Ronan Montana even though he was the invited speaker because he is “a right-wing conservative.” Molen, who lives in Montana, is well known for winning a best picture Oscar for co-producing Schindler’s List with Steven Spielberg and has produced other Hollywood blockbusters like the Jurassic Park films. Molen has spoken at dozens of schools and never accepts a fee.

In a letter written to the Daily Interlake Molen said;

Recently I was invited to speak to the Ronan High School seniors. After three weeks of preparation, research and re-write after re-write, I arrived at the appointed hour only to be told my talk had been canceled. The reason: “some” callers had informed the principal that they were concerned about the scheduled speaker being too right-wing or having an opinion that might be counter to theirs or some other lame excuse.

When I was informed of the decision, I asked to speak to the principal and he agreed to meet with me. He apologized for the inconvenience of being canceled and said the decision to cancel was his alone. He was concerned about my presentation. No, he didn’t ask me of the content. No, he didn’t ask to read the speech for any clarification as to content. No, he would not tell me who the complaining party or parties were, nor would he give me any further explanation. Just that there would be no presentation by me that day.

I have to agree with the blog writers at 2 Helena Handbasket who suggest that it is time we get back to education over indoctrination and look for a new direction for our schools. Let’s make some changes in the status quo in our education system by getting behind a new thought process by supporting Sandy Welch for Public Instruction.

Thanks to 2 Helena Handbasket for pointing out this story and be sure and read the whole story by clicking on the links in red.

On the home front --  the word around town is that our local school is asking the school board to approve the purchase of approximately $250,000 dollars worth of new IPads for the upcoming school year. We have been told that this money is from budget savings and unused funds this past year. That seems rather odd considering that back in May of 2011 The Corrector reported that school officials were asking for additional mill levy funding to “keep our schools afloat.” The trustees ran a mill levy of $73,000 to address anticipated shortfalls and an additional mill levy of $370,000 for the building reserve. Both requests were given the green light just over a year ago under the threat of having to cut services and lay off teachers and yet now they seem to miraculously have an ending balance adequate enough to squander over a quarter-million dollars. Ever heard of refunding the over collected tax amounts back to the taxpayers?

I think we need a new direction from the top down. We need Sandy Welch to win the race for the office of Public Instruction for starters.