Va. Students Forced to Support Obama Re-election Campaign

Students at a Virginia middle school were forced to think up ways to support President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, reports The Daily Caller.

Teacher Michael Denman assigned his eighth-grade Civics Honors class a project that required them to research a Republican presidential nominee hopeful, identify their weaknesses, suggest ways in which they could be exploited, and find someone in the Obama campaign to whom they could send their report.

Parents are livid, saying the assignment was “just creepy beyond belief — like something out of East Germany during the Cold War,” one father told the Caller.

No similar assignment looking at Obama was assigned, said the parent who blew the whistle. “I was shocked that a school teacher would so blatantly politicize the curriculum of a middle-school classroom,” he said, noting that a number of parents telephoned the school to complain.

John Torre, a spokesman for the Fairfax County Public School system, told the Caller that students had not been instructed to actually send their reports to the Obama campaign, but just find out who would receive such information.

School Principal Catherine Cipperly “advised the teacher that he should emphasize to his students that this assignment was meant to learn a process and not to endorse a particular candidate,” Torre said. “The teacher agreed with the principal’s direction.”

Denman and Cipperly declined to comment on the incident.

According to a district policy on political activities, employees “shall not involve their schools in political campaigns, distribute political literature on school property, or attempt to indoctrinate students with their personal political beliefs.”