The Savage Republican

This is exactly what most parents have against the "teaching establishment"! A substitute teacher in the Lickdale (PA) public schools decided that it was her duty to tell her class of first graders that Santa Clause didn't exist.

Theresa Farrisi stood in for (Jamey) Schaeffer’s regular music teacher one day last week. One of her assignments was to read Clement C. Moore’s famous poem, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” to a first-grade class at Lickdale Elementary School.
“The poem has great literary value, but it goes against my conscience to teach something which I know to be false to children, who are impressionable,” said Farrisi, 43, of Myerstown. “It’s a story. I taught it as a story. There’s no real person called Santa Claus living at the North Pole.”

Well you'd better get out of teaching now, Ms. Farrisi. If you have such a problem teaching this "false" story to children, there will come a time in your teaching career, when you will have to teach on such fictional works as Aesop's Fables, The Brothers Grimm, Romeo and Juliette, The Odessy and the Illiad. Part of teaching is teaching children about fictional stories (like A Visit from St. Nicholas) and teaching them about real people (like our Presidents and other news makers).

Schaeffer got off the school bus later that day, dragging her backpack in the mud, tears in her angry little eyes.
“She yelled at me, ‘Why did you lie?’” recalled Jamey’s mother, Elizabeth. “‘Why didn’t you tell me Santa Claus died?’”
Elizabeth Schaeffer said she was appalled by Farrisi’s bluntness.

I hope you are happy Ms. Farrisi....you're actions interfered in this parent's relationship with her child. Pray that no one ever does this to you and your children (should you have any).

What's worse is that now, Ms. Farrisi is trying to cover her tracks - she knows she was wrong!

“I did not tell the students Santa Claus was dead,” she explained. “I said there was a man named Nickolas of Myrna who died in 343 A.D., upon whom the Santa Claus myth (is based).”

However the kids in the class tell a different story...

“The teacher stopped reading and told us no one comes down the chimney,” Jamey said, curling into a ball on the couch, bracing her chin on her knees, her voice shrinking away like melting ice cream. “She said our parents buy the presents, not Santa.”

Here is a news flash for all of you teachers out there! Your role (in the parent/teacher/child triumverate) is to partner with, not usurp, the parents authority. You are to teach my child reading, writing, science and math! If my child believes in Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Buddah, Allah Jesus Christ or whomever - it is not your job to interject YOUR VALUE SYSTEM into the way I am raising my child! It is not your business to tell my child that his/her beliefs are "a myth".

Ms Farrisi, you stepped way over the line here. It is not your place to override the parents of these children! You owe the parents of these students a big apology.

I hope you are happy, Ms. Farrisi. You ruined this Christmas for these children. I hope you sleep with a clean conscience tonight!