Posted by
Arnie on Thursday, May 24, 2007 7:18:01 AM
Here is one teacher who understands freedom and imparts a lesson to her students. This is one of those e-mails that is making the rounds, that you think might be made up and be one of those urban legends. But it's not. It is real. It did happen. As it happened. Freedom is not free, it does have a cost. Why don't someone apply that principle to the immigration debate? Oh, they did. $5,000 will buy their freedom and lots of benefits.
Sorry, back to the teacher who gets it.
"I have a friend who's a schoolteacher at the Robinson High School in
Little Rock, Arkansas. Her name is Martha Cothren. She's a social
studies teacher and a coach on the side. Back in September of 2005, on
the first day of school, Martha Cothren did something that I'll never
forget. Martha, on the first day of school, with permission of the
school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, took
all of the desks out of the classroom.
The kids came into
first period, they walked in, there were no desks. They obviously
looked around and said, "Ms. Cothren, where's our desk?" And she said,
"You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn them."
They thought, "Well, maybe it's our grades."
"No," she said.
"Maybe it's our behavior."
And she told them, "No, it's not even your behavior."
And
so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the
classroom. Second period, same thing. Third period. By early afternoon
television news crews had gathered in Ms. Cothren's class to find out
about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the
classroom. The last period of the day, Martha Cothren gathered her
class. They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of
the room. And she says, "Throughout the day no one has really
understood how you earn the desks that sit in this classroom
ordinarily." She said, "Now I'm going to tell you."
Martha
Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it, and as
she did 27 U.S. veterans, wearing their uniforms, walked into that
classroom, each one carrying a school desk. And they placed those
school desks in rows, and then they stood along the wall. And by the
time they had finished placing those desks, those kids for the first
time I think perhaps in their lives understood how they earned those
desks.
Martha said, "You don't have to earn those desks. These
guys did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it's up to
you to sit here responsibly to learn, to be good students and good
citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that desk, and
don't ever forget it."
My friend, I think sometimes we forget
that the freedoms that we have are freedoms not because of celebrities.
The freedoms are because of ordinary people who did extraordinary
things, who loved this country more than life itself, and who not only
earned a school desk for a kid at the Robinson High School in Little
Rock, but who earned a seat for you and me to enjoy this great land we
call home, this wonderful nation that we better love enough to protect
and preserve with the kind of conservative, solid values and principles
that made us a great nation."
Now, forward this to your contact lists and even all your democrat liberal friends (if there are any) and the anti-war crowd.
Freedom is not free, it comes at a price. The price of freedom is not a bunch of cash paid to the feds. No. Not ever.