More Sheltered

But not from Europeans, conspiracy theory, police intervention, or death threats... A story in tomorrow's Guardian about a Pittsburgh area school board that dropped the International Baccalaureate (IB) for being too foreign:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1730530,00.html

(I'm using Safari and last time I checked I can't link any other way. I'm too lazy to see if that has changed).

It's just one more thing Republicans seem to be disagreeing about lately. From the article:

"The irony for Upper St Clair is that the Republican district board members who have banned the IB are going against the views of the president. Despite his disdain for the UN, the Kyoto protocol, the International Criminal Court and many other international institutions, Bush specifically called, in this year's state of the union address in January, for expansion of the IB programme.

Despite the cost of the Iraq war and America's ballooning deficit, which is robbing social, health and educational programmes of funding, he announced an extra $380m to boost IB initiatives and a homegrown alternative called Advanced Placement."

A similar recent effort in Fairfax , VA failed. Maybe the Virginia contingent didn't call their opponents Marxists enough times as did the Upper St. Clair anti-IB camp.

To be fair, the guy who received death threats was in the anti-IB camp.

And I just noticed...BBC uses the term "The American President" - at least in its radio programs. The Guardian does not. Hmm. I guess they haven't got the the AP style guide, eh? Anyway, I wonder what the rational is at the BBC v the Guardian. I have to say, I like the British press more and more the American press less and less. The brits still have a healthy adversarial tone to their reporting and their commentary that is more and more rare here.