Two years ago my daughter came home from school and announced smokeless tobacco companies put fiberglass in their tobacco. I hadn't heard that before so I decided to investigate it.

I spent a few hours trying to find a reference to this "fact", but couldn't. Not that there weren't enough websites making this proclamation. So in the end I determined it wasn't true. (Something I did find was one smokeless tobacco company accused another of starting this rumor to gain market share from them)

Instead of sending a note to my daughter's teacher I added a few lines at the end of my next letter to the local paper (which was published) and figured every school teacher would now be aware, not just the anti-tobacco class teacher.

Fast forward to last week. My son came home from school and said his anti-tobacco assignment was to write a letter to Philip Morris about their deadly products (including smokeless which PM doesn't even sell yet), their marketing to children, etc. After he said actually mailing the letter to PM was optional I gave him the ok to write it, but not to mail it.

In the furnished tips on what to say in the letter the old fiberglass myth was there. My son, already educated on this matter mentioned in his letter to PM about the myth being told about smokeless.

He turned in his assignment and after the teacher read it he told my son that it was not a myth. My son told him I said it wasn't true, that it was just an urban legend. The teacher said he would provide me with the proof. (The teacher also said it was a great letter and my son should mail it)

A few days later my son brought home "the proof": 16 pages from several websites that stated smokeless tobacco companies put fiberglass in their products.

The teacher had highlighted the claims and had written that the reference was on the last page. I laughed after looking through all the pages. I then said to my son, "Your teacher is an idiot."

I shouldn't have said that, but what this clown called a reference was merely the name of some youth anti-tobacco organization. There was not a reference. There was not one refence anywhere in those 16 pages.

I wrote a note back to the teacher that explained that there were no references cited and until such time he finds one that to please stop teaching this crap to kids. I said I had researched this earlier and that I could find no credence to this claim.

The teacher told my son to ask me to provide references that this myth was indeed a myth. When my son told me that I laughed and explained to him what proving a negative is. I wrote a note back explaining this to the teacher and told him the best I could do was direct him to www.snopes.com (Urban Legends) and read their take on the matter.

The next day my son handed the note to the teacher. He said the teacher took the note, crushed it into a ball and threw it in the trash without looking at it. He then told my son that he and I have a different opinion.

Real nice, huh?

BTW, my son said the teacher told the class that he's a paid lecturer on this subject.

He's also told the class some weird things. He said he's tired of seeing people driving around smoking and drinking in their cars. I don't know where he drives but I've never seen drinking in cars around here.

Another thing he told the class is he's tired of seeing fat guys washing their cars in their driveways when they should be out exercising.

What is it with these people?

This teacher is obviously a product of our school system. He is obviously biased in his opinions, as a paid spokesman for anti-tobacco.

What would be the incentive for any tobacco manufacturer to insert fiberglass into their products? It is probably more expensive than tobacco and would show up in the user's mouth diswading the user to repurchase the same brand again.

How many students in your son's class are on ADD or ADHD medication? Compare the results of tobacco and these drugs on the brain, I can see no difference. Yet many school nurses are passing out many doses each day. If you see the similiarity between the effects on the brain why is it impossible to know exactly what is in these drugs? I have often wondered if it isn't tobacco.

quote:

Originally posted by Bruce:
How many students in your son's class are on ADD or ADHD medication?

Leading contributor to ADHD- a fluoride overdosed population.

Once you attack the root of a problem, you will stumble upon a solution.

Bruce,
I don't know how many kids in my son's class have ADD. I remember reading a few years back that my city had a boatload of them though.

Jason,

I don't know if you're correct or not, but fluoride isn't really anything new. ADHD is. At least the "epidemic" is.

Interesting story, squeezer.

Several years back I got a phone call from a firend whose, then 9 year old, daughter had come home from school and told him she had learned that the tobacco companies were putting rat droppings into cigarettes. I helped him out in his quest to get the teacher to stop lying to the children, with some research very similar to your own.

As far as I am concerned, being a paid propagandist for the anti-smoker cartel should automatically disqualify your son's teacher from teaching any such thing in the classroom.....he is biased, agenda driven, and has a financial conflict of interest and has no business using it to indoctrinate children.

I do not know what grade your children are in, mine is just finishing 2nd and hasn't encountered this in the classroom yet.......however, she has heard stuff on the school bus from kids that attended headstart prior to beginning school. She no longer rides the bus. Not for that reason, but other issues, and she may very well not be attending the same school come September.

Regardless of where she attends school in September, like you, I will counter any of the anti-smoker propaganda that comes home.

This is why our public education system has become the laughing stock of the world. If teachers spent half the time actually teaching academic subjects that they do being social engineers - maybe our kids wouldn't keep falling futher and further behind.

Excellent point, Nick. There is far too much time spent on social engineering/indoctrination going on in today's classrooms.........and it's not just in the public schools. While it is not quite as bad in private schools, the nannyist incrementalism is there......as it also is in the supposed higher education levels.

Gabz,
My son is in 6th grade.

This was in health class. They spend a week a year I'm thinking on anti-tobacco, including a cartoon movie with a character named Professor Grosso who makes tobacco products while he drools. I'd have to ask my kids, but when Gabz mentioned rat droppings I think that's one of the things Grosso puts in his cigarettes.

I don't remember exactly, but the anti education stuff starts in a lower grade than 6th here.

I have absolutely no doubt my kids are better informed on tobacco than any of their teachers, but that still leaves the rest of their classmates and former and future classes to come out filled with BS.

As I once said in a letter to the editor about anti-tobacco education: "It's education where students come out dumber."

As I've said before, I'm waiting for the day my 9-year-old daughter comes home from school and tells me that I'm "killing her." She's going into 4th grade, so I guess I've got a couple of years.

Pat, you and me both, as mine is going into 3rd grade I hope there is still some time.

Squeezer, I found that the kids spouting the anti lines, except in the older grades, were the ones that were enrolled in head start. I was talking with a friend, whose daughter is the same age as mine, who told me about the nonsense in head start, because she heard it from her daughter. She is a non-smoker, and she was annoyed with what her daughter was being taught.

My friend is a good bit younger than I am, and I didn't know her when her daughter was in head start, but even as a non-smoker she can tell the difference between propaganda style indoctrination and education.

Pat,

I'm thinking your daughter will get her first dose of indoctrination in the upcoming school year. 6th grade is definitely NOT the first year my kids came home with anti-tobacco stuff fed to them. I don't remember if it's a solid week of it though. If not 4th, definitely 5th because my son brought up the "Tar Wars" crap he had been taught and that wasn't this year.

Gabz, I wouldn't doubt some kids are taught that crap in Head Start. We keep hearing how some in anti-tobacco say it's never too soon to start teaching them. I have no personal knowledge if it happens here though.