Monday, August 11, 2008

America - Land of the Free and Home of the Brave

I'm passing this message on to others. Too many of us have taken and are taking our freedoms as something owed to us.

Not hardly.

It is embarrassing that many kids don't know much about about our history. Too many of our new generations don't know how and why we are the most free country in the world.

Merle Widmer says if you haven't heard from me lately is because my computer system was down for eight days.

Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 5:44 PM

Subject: A Great Teacher



Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a
social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, did
something not to be forgotten.

On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent,
the principal and the building supervisor, she took all of the desks out
of the classroom.

The kids came into first period and 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 too. By early
afternoon
television news crews had gathered in Ms. Cothren's class to find out
a bout 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 her e
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."

Friends, 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.

"We live in the Land of the Free because of the brave."

Please remember our Troops!



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A follow-up to the above





http://www.snopes.com/glurge/nodesks.asp

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